A necessary scouting.

“Alright, then... The plumes of smoke came from a small city, look here on the map... Freudenstadt. Considering we don’t know why or how, we need to scout. It’s on the east side of the Black Forest, so we must assume it could be Russians... A single soldier or even citizens wouldn’t bother with putting the city on fire, so we can assume they are in a group. How many, which kind of opposition, which kind of direction, which weapons and materials, jeeps, tanks, troop carriers: we need to know. We’ll be in radio contact, but only when needed. Don’t shoot when you don’t have to, I would like to keep the advantage of surprise if possible. Travel by three cars to here, here and here. Place bicycles on the roofs, then travel to here, here and here.” I pointed my finger at the locations the three scouting parties would travel to.

“So with three scouting parties of each three people you can split up to look a little bit further if you can’t see clearly enough. Collect the information for let’s say a maximum of four hours, then go back to the cars and get back home in one piece. I’ll take S1-command to here, this seems a nice little mountain and I take Ella and Emma with me. Kylie will take S2 to here with Sophia and Clara. Kate will take S3 to this point with Kara and... No, Ambra, you can’t... I’m sure you are brave enough, but you don’t know the region... and Marie. That leaves Didier and Lina, Tom and his girlfriend... what’s her name anyway?”

“Eva.” Tom whispered.

“That leaves them to coordinate from here, warn the villagers, and should we all get fucked badly, in charge of the region.”

They startled all at that. This was real now. There is always a chance we could get caught and die miserably. I had confidence in our skills, we had trained hard before we locked ourselves in. But the fog of war is not to be controlled. Bad luck is all around. Especially for the people with too much luck in their lives.

“No, Kate, I send you to this point for a reason... Yes, I know it is the safest one, but you are our medic and we will need you in the future too.”

I had my reasons to keep Lina and Didier out of it. Lina looked pale and sick, but Didier didn’t look worried at all. She was present, so she wasn’t ill. Not too many reasons for it. Didier had for some reason not wanted to tell me, but I wouldn’t start if he didn’t. I merely looked at him with a faint smile, nodded at him and went on to join my scouting group.

Alex – Diary – Entry DA day 15 – So we survived. We weren’t seen. That’s the good news. The bad news is it were indeed Russians camping in the city. Even worse, our combined scouting suggest at least five BMP3 Infantry Fighting Vehicles are stationed there. That means up to sixty Russians in our neighborhood. Sixty Russian veteran soldiers / deserters... If even one of those IFV’s starts wandering around in the villages under our protection we will have to act. Blowing one up with our Javelins will alert the others. And then what? We’ll need a plan, a good one to blow them all up, preferably at the same time. But with at least sixty soldiers in the city, we can’t enter it... The odd news is that the smoke came from a destroyed gasoline station. The IFV’s need diesel, not the regular fuel from modern cars. Diesel is still provided in the gasoline stations, so Russians wouldn’t blow it up. Is there another section at work? Resistance fighters? Or a single person fighting a one-man-war? Have the Russians encountered them, fought them, did they win? Do they have hostages, are they having their ‘fun’ with them? All questions that cannot be answered now.

We instructed the villagers to be on high alert, keep patrolling their sectors but so far no visuals at all. Tom and Didier volunteered to keep an eye on the city, armed with sniper rifles, anti-thermal camouflage nets and a set of anti-tank javelins.

We checked the houses on our way back. The villages west of the city, deeper into the Black Forest are all lifeless. With lifeless I don’t mean void of corpses. Radiation sickness and suicides were the main causes of **** as far as we could ascertain. A few murders too. We saw victims with blunt object traumas and knife wounds. No food was found in the area around the city. I didn’t expect it to be honest. We had prepared our area to hunt for food, but we couldn’t do the same for the rest of the Black Forest. We can’t save them all. And yet I feel guilty. Moreso to have exposed the members of my section to the horrors of war, mutilated corpses, rotting and swinging cadavers, a stench you can’t get out of your head once you had seen and smelled it. They were shocked by it, seeing a corpse for the first time in their lives. Not by an accident but by the brutal realities of war and its aftermaths. Our recruits puked their guts out, as we had done our first times, before we made of our heart a stone and looked upon dead people as mere flesh. The soulless vessels of once a life full of promise and potential. May their souls rest in peace. – End entry.

“They are rattled, Alex.” Kylie said.

“Scared shitless...” Kara added.

“What do you expect? To see the horrors of war for the first time, up close. It could have been them if we hadn’t come here.” I answered.

“How will they fare in battle? It scares me even to think about it.” Kate whispered.

“I am too... But we can’t run, now can we?” I replied.

“No, we can’t.” Kylie sighed.

“So we need to prepare, and plan ahead...” I ended.