Drops his medkit and chases the sniper.

“I’m sorry, Heinrich! I can’t let her go!”

Heinrich shouts at him but doesn’t say anything understandable. He breaks into a profound sprint. A surge of strength shoots through him, and he practically bounds towards her. He closes the distance quickly, but she isn’t nearly as disarmed as he suspected. She wings a shot off over her shoulder with a pistol. The bullet zips over his head and splitters into a tree. In response, he aims and shoots his rifle, missing again.

A form of animalistic hate shoots through Graeber as he continues his vengeful chase— he spits out Russian to the best of his abilities, calling her a bitch, a whore, and that if she doesn’t stop, he’ll tear out her eyes and brutalize her corpse. The girl takes another shot at him, and it bites closer. Graeber returns fire, but his nerves get the best of him, and he misses again. He works the bolt, charging forward. One of them was to trip or manage a hit…

A bullet whistles aimlessly over his head, and he stops, this time taking his time to aim. The recoil bucks into his shoulder. Despite thinking he missed again, the girl fell flat. Graeber lowers himself to the earth and listens. The echo of his Mauser has fallen far away, and silence surrounds him.

He waits for a full minute before slowly going over where he fell the sniper, beating her at her own game…

Graeber spots her body, unarmed, and he gets suspicious. “Hey,” he says, suddenly realizing he doesn't know how to address her. “Girl, are you alive?”

He takes his Mauser, still pointed with the bayonet, and jabs into her softly. “Girl!”

She turns, and even though he isn’t necessarily happy about it, he is surprised to see that she’s armed. She pulls the trigger and, this time, hits his shoulder. Graeber gasps but doesn’t fall. He instead tries to lunge at her, but someone tackles him from the side.

He falls with a hard thud. He thrashes hard at first, but he’s overcome by a few solid punches. Before he knows it, he is surrounded and pummeled by multiple attackers— he fears he might be beaten to ****. Someone kicks his ribs, and he feels sharp pain shoot through his entire body. He gasps, breathless and shocked by the intensity of the attack. There’s no time for panic or recovery. He is yanked up and **** to a tree.

His vision was blurry, but he didn’t need much time to see that several Russians surrounded him. They looked like they were standard infantry units.

“Oh,” he spits. “This is just great.”

A massive Russian approaches Graeber and punches him squarely on the nose. Graeber gasps again as his eyes swell with tears, with his nose shattering. He shouts loudly as blood flows from his nostrils. He is held in place while being pummeled yet again.

He is thrown to the ground. Graeber is crumpled there for a few moments before being dragged deeper into the forest. His mind was foggy, but he knew that his life was likely to end soon. He was only glad to know these weren’t partisans.

Before too long, he finds himself in a camp full of not just regular soldiers but also tanks and ammo depots. Other Germans are also there, but they are also other bodies of the Axis combined forces. Some are stripped of their clothes, while others are tied together.

The Russians have significantly organized and are to be a **** to be feared. If they rolled into Graeber’s original position, they’d have their hands full trying to prevent a breakthrough.

He is grabbed again and **** with the others. He is thrown into a small cluster of other Germans. Most look like they’ve deserted since they are clean, but there are a select few bitter-looking Wehrmacht soldiers in the group.

“Where did you come from?” One of them asks.

Graeber, bleeding and sore, takes a moment to respond. “A forward base not far from here. Went out on patrol and got caught in a sniper’s position.”

“Great,” he says. “But where are you from?”

“What?”

“Forget it,” says the man. “Where are we?”

“No idea,” Graeber looks around, seeing a mass of tanks lined up. If there were planes around, they’d send everything in a heap.

“What’s it look like?”

“What?” Graeber was now starting to get irritated with the man. Then he saw that he had bandages on his eyes and was on a stretcher.

“The Russians— they took me because I was left behind, I have no idea what’s going on, and the others are too frantic to give me any attention.”

“How’d you know I wasn’t any of the others?”

“It sounded like you were thrown in, and since I didn’t hear anyone yelling, I figured you were new.”

“Congratulations,” Graeber cracks a smile. “You are right.”

Then, he looked around. “Looks like it’s a forward base of operation of some kind. They’ll probably start sending out strike teams to find where we are…”

The bandaged man moans. “How can they keep going like this? When will they run out of material and men?”

Graeber thought something similar but from a German perspective. “Things will change this season- that much I know for sure.”

“Just how Fall Blau was supposed to change things? Forgive my doubt in Hitler and his control,” the man starts to cough and tries to say more, but a squad of Soviet riflemen approaches.

“Stalin treats his POWs with respect and honesty," The guard announce gleefully. Graeber thinks about his shoulder and wonders how badly he's been hurt. Could he trust getting it checked by the Soviets? He looked down at the man he's been talking to and frowns. It wasn't likely.

Inside the group Axis, there is a decision amongst the ranks. While some jump up to sell out their past comrades, a portion remains low. The Soviets regard the others and then the guards nearby. He shouts something in Russian, hauling them to a muddy pen. Graeber is thrown in, while The man on the stretcher is simply dragged and tossed in like a used rag.

Mixed forces are inside the pen in differing conditions. Graeber scrambles and finds the blind man, helping him to his feet. “Where are we now?”

“They just threw us in with a bunch of others— it’s chaos— you aren’t missing much of a sight.”

“I hear it still,” the man shivers.

Now fearing the worst, Graeber starts to feel sick to his stomach. This was far from being ideal, and it's just now dawning on him that he might be in the grip of the Soviet Armies. He looks around the area and senses panic in himself. The man gropes the air looking for Graeber. "What shall we do?"