Let them all go.

“Scram!” He shouts. “Get out of here. All of you!”

The girl looks confused. Graeber stomps forward and leans in. “We’re here to kill you! I’m giving you a chance to flee. Now go!”

Tears fill her eyes as panic sets now. Graeber points to where the battle hasn’t yet reached. “Go!”

“Danke,” she whimpers, stepping away with the others before running off, unarmed and still free. Graeber cursed under his breath. He just let the enemy get away…

He stepped backward, hoping no one had seen what he had just allowed. Then, to look busy, he started to search the buildings. Most of which were inside were military hardware and rations. Still, when he goes through the houses, he threw the grenades, and he discovers bloody evidence of bombs… not everyone here were soldiers, apparently. As the rest of his squad files in, they find more bodies— bodies that did not belong in war. Pets, diaries, and pictures.

Felix rifles through a lot of the drawers. He finds a shirt and uses it to clean his bayonet. Spoils of war and rules of the winners. Some of the soldiers do the same, but the way Felix does it makes his stomach churn with awkward discomfort. “Have you no dignity for the dead?”

“They’re subhumans, Graeber. What's the matter with you?” Someone shouts.

He’s about to bark back, but Lukas stops him. “It isn’t worth it. Let’s get this over with.”

“Did we…did any of our own die?” Graeber grabs the arms of a deceased Russian and helps Lukas drag the body to the side.

“No,” Lukas says. “We caught them by complete surprise.”

Graeber and the rest of his squad stay there until an SS Division comes in to handle the rest. Lukas, in particular, seems more distressed by the entry of these men in camouflage smocks, but luckily for him, Schnieder talks to them.

Felix seems somewhat intrigued by their introduction, but he’s busy going through the loot that was leftover from the fight. Graeber, on the other hand, feels entirely out of place. The numbness doesn’t fade until he’s in his tent with Lukas...

..Both men are lying down in silence. Some small talk kept them company, but that died when Graeber asked when this operation was supposed to push the Soviets to their breaking point.

Lukas shuffles around and sighs. “Soon,” he says, but Graeber doesn’t believe he’s telling the truth.

“How soon?”

“When Stalin is dead, and his generals are killed by their soldiers,” Lukas says. “No one can sustain these kinds of casualties.”

“Casualties,” Graeber muses, remembering they took none when they took that village. “You’re probably right.”

As soon as Lukas started to sleep, Graeber realized his mind was fixated more on the war than the life he wanted to live… somehow, civilian life seemed more distant than ever after the events of the combat mission.

“What made it so different?” He wondered and then remembered this campaign was a war of annihilation— it was further than conquest and gathering living space. A cold sweat traveled down his spine; it was something he already technically knew but hadn’t understood what it meant until playing his first card in the east. He rolled to his side and let all the air out of his lungs. A sleep so deep that it disallows dreams comes to Graeber. However, the morning brings war that creates nightmares that will be forever unique to this country.