I Got Soul but I'm Not a Soldier

4

We took advantage of the chaos and started running away from the place of the disaster. After a few minutes, we had reached a field where no one could’ve seen us. We stopped running and rested for a while, none of us speaking one word for a long time.

“We need a place to sleep tonight,” Ryan eventually spoke up. I nodded in agreement. At that moment, we needed shelter. It would have been too dangerous for us if we had stayed in the field. Yes, we were hidden away from the people on the road a little bit away from us, but the airplane that had bombed the convoy might have returned and spotted us in the field. There were only three of us there, but I knew well enough that only one hostile soldier would have been enough for an Axis soldier to drop a bomb to have him killed. That’s the way things were in that war.

“Let’s go,” I said, getting back onto my feet. Ryan and Spencer followed suite and, at our own pace, we started making our way through the field. “There must be a farm somewhere around here,” Spencer stated matter-of-factly. “We’ll find it soon,” Ryan replied reassuringly. He had been walking next to me the entire time and every once in a while, I would feel his hand brush against mine. Back then, I kept on telling myself that he did it accidentally, but now I know better than that.

As we were walking, I couldn’t get rid of the constant images of the soldiers that had been ripped apart by the force of the bomb. It made me sick to think of it, but I just couldn’t help it. Those images have haunted me like a never-ending nightmare for a long, long time after that day. I also started to feel guilty that we had taken advantage of the terror to run away. We could’ve stayed to help the wounded men, but we didn’t. We ran away like frightened chickens.

After a half-an-hour-walk, we had finally found the farm. We stopped walking, hesitantly looking at it. We couldn’t have just walked in, expecting the residents to hide us for the rest of the world. Hell no. The chance that they would’ve turned us in was too big. “I think we should hide in the hayloft,” I told Ryan and Spencer, breaking the silence. “No one should know we ran away,” I added and looked at the two men. Ryan nodded. “You’re right, we need to be careful and don’t trust anyone,” he said. Don’t trust anyone. Those were some of the most important words during the years that had followed. The more people you trusted, the more chance there would be that you wouldn’t have survived. Cruel, but true.

***

“Did you sleep well?” I asked Ryan when I saw his eyes flutter open in the dim morning light that had crept its way through the cracks of the hayloft. We had made a ‘bed’ out of the hay we found in the barn, making sure that we were hidden well enough, in case someone would’ve had entered. “Not really,” Ryan whispered, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. “I couldn’t stop thinking about all those men and what that bomb did to them,” he said, sitting upright. “Me too,” I replied with a deep sigh. “But I guess we’ll have to be selfish and think that we have gotten away safe,” I told him, already hating myself for not only thinking it, but also for saying my thoughts out loud. “Sorry, that sounded so wrong,” I quickly added. “No,” Ryan replied, shaking his head. “It’s true, we need to be selfish if we want to get through this,” he stated, looking me in the eye. “It’s not like we have much of a choice, do we?” he asked and then we both went silent again. I guess he was right. In order to survive, we had to do things we normally shouldn’t have done. Like stealing. After having run away, we didn’t have anything but the clothes on our backs and each other. We were going to need other clothes, because wearing our uniforms would have been too dangerous. And we would have needed food as well. The only way we could’ve gotten those things, was by stealing them.

A soft chuckle had escaped from my lips when I heard Ryan’s stomach growl. “Hungry?” I asked, shifting a little bit so we were closer to each other. “Really hungry,” he answered, rubbing his belly to emphasise his point. “We need to get our hands on some food,” I stated, biting my lower lip. I knew what we had to do if we wanted to fill our stomachs. “Do you think the people in the farm are still sleeping?” I asked. Ryan shrugged his shoulders. “I have no idea. I’m not even sure if there are still people living there,” he replied and stood up. He brushed off his clothes, getting most of the hay off them. “Shall we check it out?” he asked, looking down at me and offering me his hand. I nodded and took his hand, letting him pull me onto my feet. “What about Spencer?” I wondered out loud, looking at the sleeping man. “I think we better let him sleep,” Ryan answered, still holding my hand. “He was in a pretty big shock yesterday; I’m surprised he managed to fall asleep.”

Ryan and I made our way to the farmhouse that was only a few feet away from the barn we had slept in. We observed the farmhouse for about fifteen minutes by peeking through the windows and trying to pick up noises that might have came from inside the house. “I don’t think anyone’s here,” Ryan stated in a soft whisper. I nodded in agreement. If anyone was still living in the house, we would’ve had picked up at least a few signs, but everything in the house seemed quiet and there were no movements to be seen either. “Do you think we can go inside?” I asked hesitantly. We could’ve always been wrong, so it still would have been risky to enter the house. “I think we can,” Ryan answered, grabbing my hand and giving it a small squeeze. Ryan had always known what to do to calm me down. I smiled at him and while still holding each other’s hand, we walked to the back door of the farmhouse.

“Fuck it,” Ryan cursed after he had tried to open the door. “It’s locked,” he said, letting out a deep sigh. By that moment, we could be sure that the farm was abandoned. Ryan had tried to open the door with such a great force that the noise would’ve caught the attention of eventual inhabitants. “We can break a window,” I suggested, looking around me to see if I could find a rock that was big enough to do the trick for us. I picked up a stone, but before I had the chance to throw it through the window, Ryan stopped me. “I hear voices,” he whispered, pulling at my arm. With pricked-up ears, I carefully listened and heard the voices as well. The voices belonged to two German soldiers. My heart had leapt in my throat and I desperately searched for Ryan’s hand and entangled our fingers. We hid behind a wall of the house and listened to the voices, even though we couldn’t understand them.

Ryan nearly crushed my hand when we heard Spencer’s voice as well. They must’ve found him sleeping in the barn. “Bist du allein?” one of the German soldiers spoke with a questioning voice. I couldn’t see Spencer or the soldiers, but I was sure that one of them had a gun pointed at Spencer’s head. “We have to do something,” Ryan whispered and tried to stand up. I shook my head and kept him on the ground. “It’s too dangerous,” I told him. If we had tried to help Spencer, we all would’ve ended up dead. There was no way we could’ve overpowered the two soldiers. They had guns to protect themselves and we had nothing.

“Please don’t kill me,” Spencer begged them and then we heard a loud slap and a groan of pain. “Schweigen!” one of the soldiers yelled. “Kontrollier ob da noch mehrere Soldaten sind. Ich soll abrechnen mit dieser,” the other one said and his words were quickly followed by a loud gunshot and the thud of Spencer’s body falling down on the ground. At that moment, Ryan and I had both stopped breathing. Spencer was dead.

“We need to find another hiding place,” I whispered, doing my best to regain my composure. I hadn’t known Spencer that well, but his death still came as a shock to me, especially because I was only a few feet away from him when it had happened.

Ryan and I had managed to stay out of the eyesight of the two soldiers and after another ten minutes, they had left again. Once they were completely out of sight, we hurried to Spencer’s lifeless body. I think we both had hoped that maybe, he was still alive. Ryan crouched down next to Spencer’s corpse and let his index finger wander over his face. Spencer’s bright blue eyes were wide open and looking up into the clear sky. It was a beautiful day, even though such a tragedy had struck us. A small, dark-red spot had marked Spencer’s forehead. Small, but deadly.

Ryan closed Spencer’s eyes and stood up again, his own eyes filled with tears. “We should’ve awakened him,” he whispered. “If we had taken him with us, he would still be alive,” he cried and I quickly wrapped my arms around his fragile body. “It’s not our fault, Ryan,” I told him, rubbing my hand up and down his spine to soothe him. “We never could’ve known that something like this would happen.”

We had stood there, embracing each other for a long time, not saying one word. Our thoughts were with Spencer. Eventually, I let go of Ryan and looked down at Spencer’s corpse. “We need to bury him,” I stated, keeping one arm around Ryan’s waist. It had felt good to keep my arm there, as if it had belonged there. Ryan nodded and tore his eyes away from Spencer. “I’m going to find a shovel or something like that. I think I saw one in the barn,” he muttered and walked away.