These people were not soldiers, they were resistance fighters. I was in a chair in a cave with a giant hole letting sunlight in above me. The person in the middle was a teenage girl who looked like she was in charge, as two men stood beside her, each holding German submachine guns. "Hello," said the girl, with a serious tone in her voice. "Are you for the motherland or are you with the invaders. Answer wrongly and you shall die very painfully as I slit your throat with my knife."
The girl seemed too young to be the leader of a resistance movement. She was about eighteen years old. "No" I replied. "I have walked a long way. My town was massacred last night by the invaders. Please, can you spare me food." I pleaded. The girl stared at me with an irritated look on her face. She looked over at one of the men who had led me through the forest. She gave him a quick nod and the man walked off. "Where did you come from," the girl asked." "Volkhov," I replied. The girl stood there unresponsive as I sat there. She just stood there, slightly looking to the ground. She stayed silent until one of the soldiers brought back three potatoes. He walked over to me, with the potatoes in one of his hands. I took the food gratefully from the soldier who had once aimed the barrel of his gun at my face.
The girl finally responded. "You are to get out of this forest if you want to live. If we find you, I will kill you." I nodded, trembling as I stood in front of the furious girl. "I can fight for you," I said. "My family is nothing to me and is probably dead. Let me join you," I pleaded. "We have no need of a fourteen-year-old boy who will run off the first time he has somebody shoot at him," The girl said. "You would be a disadvantage to us, and we will not die because you need somewhere to sleep," the girl replied. "Please," I begged, "I can help." The girl starred at me, with an irritated look on her face. "Fine, but the first time you run from the battle, I will slit your throat and watch your body drift down the Volkhov River."
I walked through the forest with my first assignment of being a part of the Resistance, fishing. I stood near the Volkhov river, catching a few Freshwater Crayfish. Occasionally, I would get a Bream fish, but that was about it. At sundown I began to walk back to the camp.
As I walked the sun began to descend, while darkness spread over the sky. It had been about two days since the German invasion. Before the invasion I had heard things in the town square earlier that year about Germany's conquest to take over Europe. It was mentioned every now and then, but it was not usually the center of conversation. When the invasion finally happened, their brutality was as true as the stories I had heard about their atrocities in France, Poland, and many more occupied areas around the world, ruled by Germany. In many areas in the world, flags burned to the ground as the German flag rose above all other countries across Europe. I can still remember what it was like in the first minute of the invasion.
I sat on a tree log I had found in the forest, to rest my bruised, legs. It was now dark, and the only light was the eerie glow from the full moon, which folk tales told made people descend into madness. As I sat there, I started to drift off into a world of dreams, and nightmares.
I was waking up in my house, I walked out into the main, living area. I saw my father getting ready for his job. One of the reasons he was so cruel, and I came to despise him was because he was the captain of the NKVD troops in Volkhov. He treated everybody like he was better than them, and if anybody talked back or treated my father with disrespect, their body would soon be hanging from a noose. My assignment for today was to get potatoes and cabbage. This though, was the day my life changed and became the fight for survival against the ruthless, foreign invaders.
I woke up from my dream. It was still nighttime, and the moon was still shining its eerie glow across the Slavic land. I began to walk back to the camp until I smelled a familiar scent. Smoke.