Monologue From The Krauts

“Kreuzau-15 km,” I see on the sign as I’m walking down the road. I’ve been away from my Company for 4 days now. The last thing I remember is a Kraut firing a Panzerschreck at my fighting position. After that, everything just kind of went dark. My uniform is muddy, I haven’t slept in 2 days in fear of being caught by the Krauts. I haven’t eaten in 3 days; my stomach feels like it is wrenching together. I was finally able to eat today when I stole food from a German house. It almost seems as they believe they are winning the war, a picture of Hitler was on their wall. I wish they would just give up and stop fighting. No, snap out of it. You must survive. You must get back home to Ma and Pa, you have get back, so you can help Pa with the harvest.
Where am I at? Oh yeah, I’m trying to get back to the Americans at Aachen. I am in the prickly bushes, I’m not sure how I fell asleep, but I at least feel rested. It looks like early morning; the singing birds give an eerie sense of calm to all of this chaos. I get up, I look down the road, no sounds besides the birds singing. I rub my eyes, ouch, I accidently have rubbed dirt in my eyes. I take some water out of my canteen and wash my eyes out. Nice cool water on an early cold morning day. It’s refreshing, but the sense of calm is smashed by the sound of a thundering mortar round crashing near me. I freeze up, but then start to relax when I realize it sounds like American artillery fire. The 1st Division is near, I can sense it. I finally get up and take my first few steps on the road. I hear gunfire maybe a kilometer out to the North. It sounds like German MG-42 fire. I cannot count the bullets coming out of the barrel. What are they shooting at? Americans, maybe their own citizens for being “Defeatist.” Who the hell knows, this war has dragged on for so many years. I feel it coming to a close, do the Germans know that
I keep walking down this road though, right now, this is the only road that I know. I can hear the sound of American tanks, they have a different rumble than the German ones. I can feel myself starting to feel hope, the hope that I will be able to survive and get back to my Company. I haven’t thought about my family in two days. I have just thought about survival. Doing what I need to do to survive. I haven’t eaten in two days, I can feel my guts wrenching once more. I try and imagine my Ma making me a steak, I am trying to remember the taste of it. All I taste is the salt and dirt I’ve accumulated over the past few days. I snap back into reality. A shot rang out. I felt it wiz past my head. I start running. I am in between the lines of my fellow Americans, and on the other side, the