Suanon+(1)

Spectrum’s Story Ok, let’s get this straight, my name is Gregg Spectrum, and this is WWII. I’m a soldier serving for the U.S. Army and I’m seventeen. Right now I’m in enemy territory with only one of my comrades lost in the woods in France, possibly surrounded by hundreds of Germans. The rest of our squad got killed in a Massacre back at Normandy. Right now we’ve set up camp in the forest for about nine hours. Let me explain what happened from the beginning: I was at home in Kansas, and I heard a car in the distance so then I peered out the window and saw an army jeep. Two men came out and knocked on the door. Mom opened- her name is Stephanie-. The two men explained to her that America was at war and they needed all the men and weapons they could get. They said that they would give us twenty four hours to decide which side of the globe to fight, against the Japanese or the Germans. Mom sat down and cried for a long hour. She was so sad to decide against which side I was going to fight, so I knew that I had no option but to go to war. The next day that came, the two men came, I told them I was going to kick some German butt. Then the day after that, the two men came back again and took me to a training camp. At the camp I learned how to un-cook grenades, cook them, shoot guns, and disassemble them. We also did some tough training such as waking up at three o’ clock in the morning and running ten miles with people shooting guns. The rest of survival we had to learn in real combat. After being in camp for four months, I was shipped out to Normandy France. Every single soldier was scared on the ship, no one knew what to expect. For two weeks a lot of soldiers had been sea sick and a lot had fallen overboard trying to vomit into the sea. It was terrible. Then suddenly the boat alarm rang which meant we were under attack; we arrived to the coast of Normandy with Germans shooting everything they had at us. We didn’t go that close to the shore with the big boats, so instead they sent the soldiers in much smaller boats. When each boat got to the shore, each soldier had to get out run to the dirt wall safe under heavy machine gun fire. I was one of the survivors. Later when flame throwers got to the wall, they burnt the machine gunners and we were pretty much done with everyone, but all we needed was to take out remaining enemies which was pretty much a piece of cake for every veteran. Later on, we started moving forward and forward getting closer to more and more enemies. One time we were walking in a so abandoned small village, or so we thought so, instead the Germans had an ambush for us. And that’s where I lost my squad. It was a brutal battle, the Germans won that ambush but we managed to escape, by the way by comrade’s name is Billy Johnson. I’m a Corporal and he’s a Recruit, which means I have a higher rank than he does. When we entered the forest we didn’t know what to expect, soldiers jumping at us and stabbing us with their bayonets or expecting to see five tanks and two enemy trucks all taking aim at us, but instead we entered and heard I quiet sound of birds whistling. In the distance we heard German soldiers shouting, we couldn’t make out what they were saying but it seemed like they were trying to find us. I always write to mom and to my diary, which is this that I’m writing on and always pray for the best. I told Billy that we needed to keep moving and regroup with the other Americans. So we advanced forward and deeper into the forest, we encountered about four enemies and we took them out easily, then we came out of the forest and saw an old billboard on top of a hill. A meter or two in front of the billboard was a set up MG-43 (heavy machine gun) and a mortar pit both manned by Germans. Billy was had a sniper and a rifle, I told him to provide cover fire for me with the sniper while I snuck up and took the enemies out. Billy first took out the machine gunner, and then I told him to stop firing, because the other German had found where Billy was and was going to kill him with the mortar. So before the German could put the Mortar round in the barrel, I stood up took aim, and fired. I killed the guy and now we were safe, for now. We moved up and we saw that an American soldier was took hostage by the two guys we killed. He was tied up so we untied him. He didn’t have a gun so what he did is that he un-mounted the MG-42 and used that as his gun. We went down the hill and what we saw was amazing, a miracle actually. We saw a town token by us Americans and now we had moved our tanks and trucks into there. When went into thee town and reported our IDs. Then we had a warm soup cooked by the army’s chef, it was an acceptable quality, but good enough to get us back on our feet. We set up camp there and settled for about three days. The commander assembled new squads for the ones that were messed up, I was no longer with Billy anymore or with the other guy that we rescued. Soon the commander organized twenty squads of five in each, and then soon we were off to battle. We felt a rumble and we knew it was the enemy’s artillery, we had to move fast, oh and I forgot to mention that the commander promoted me to Sergeant and Billy to Corporal. We started moving up front and then we saw enemy tanks and armored vehicles and infantry approaching in, everyone came into battle, one of the guys in our squad called our tanks to come in and so they did, it was a total and gruesome too, it was the most violent thing I’ve seen, body parts flying everywhere, it was suck a nightmare, I wanted to get out of this place, but I couldn’t. At the end, we won, two of our tanks were destroyed and a fourth of our squad was gone, but we didn’t give up, we kept moving and moving. The commander said that British allies would be coming in from the east and the Canadians would be right behind us. Soon we would all be successful in taking Germany, and I hope I’ll live to tell the story. Now we are all tired and are taking camp here, we’ve been moving for about five days and winter was coming up so it was important for us to get our rest. The next day we kept marching through cities and towns waving at French people thanking us for liberating them from the Germans. I met more and more fellow soldiers, like there was a really nice and funny guy named Doug, I called him snoopy though. He and I were like best friends, when we entered towns and when we met enemies, he would use a concept called “back to back”. He watches the front and I the back to make sure no one sneak attacked us. After days of marching, we entered the most heavily populated city of German soldiers; Chambois. If we took Chambois, we took France. There were about five hundred soldiers to eliminate, excluding tanks and vehicles. We came to a certain point where there were Germans retreating from east to west Chambois; where we were. We had a hard time trying to eliminate them, we had bazookas, grenade launchers but it wouldn’t help defeat the retreating Germans, so we had to call in an air strike, four airplanes came and bombed the heck out of those Germans. The mission was a success. We finally crossed the border into Germany. At the border, there was a lot of fighting. It was heavily guarded by Germans, but we were able to get passed through. We made our way into Augsburg Germany and freed the concentration camps. After that, HQ took us back to the local base in Germany. They wanted us to get some rest because we had done an excellent job of fighting. After a week of rest, they decided to put me into the airborne division. There was a particular target that the army couldn’t destroy with their bombers. It was a giant fortress with anti-aircraft guns and machine guns. We had to invade it and take out all the guns and people. And at the end, blow the damn thing up with a lot of high explosive charges. I never knew that the U.S. army had built a small, temporary airfield near the German border. I was taken there to board the plane to attack the giant German fortress. On a cold Tuesday early morning I went to the airport. There were a lot of other guys to boarding planes. At the airfield there were about thirty planes to be boarded. But only fifteen would be put to use and the other fifteen also would be needed if they needed more men for the invasion. They gave me a BAR rifle (Browning automatic rifle) along with three grenades and a parachute. At the airfield they gave a quick but brief description on how to operate a parachute. After that we were gone. The plane ride was about an hour and half. The closer we got we started getting shot at more. We saw our surrounding planes fall and now there were only about nine planes left, each plane carrying thirty soldiers. Our airborne sergeant told us to get our parachutes ready, walk to the door and jump. And so I did. When I jumped out my first reaction was to panic because the fortress was just huge. But then I realized I had to pull my parachute handle, so I did just that. I saw different parts of the fortress where our guys were; on the ground, at the top and on platforms surrounding the thing. The fortress was a very thick cylinder standing at about 150 meters. I decided to handle my parachute down into the area where there were most of our guys (just to be on the safe side). I had a rough landing and I pulled my muscle but got over it. When I landed I saw our guys shooting and throwing grenades at Germans at least five feet away from us. I moved up to a wooden box for cover. I took a peek up and I saw Germans shooting at one of my guys. I aimed the barrel of my rifle at the German. I fired and I killed the guy. Wait not only one guy, but there were three other guys standing behind the German I killed. So I killed four Nazis in total. The other squad’s sergeant congratulated me, but no time for partying. We had to keep moving. We had various objectives; we had to destroy the anti-air guns that were at the top of the fortress, destroy the small ammo warehouse, and kill all the enemies in our path. So we first decided to work our way down. We first went up to the anti-air guns and destroyed one by one with explosives. There were eight guns and there was at least five Germans guarding each gun so we had quite a hard time getting through. We lost a lot of men also, but at the end we managed to destroy the guns. Luckily, there weren’t many soldiers guarding the ammo warehouse so we pretty much destroyed it easily. Our job was finally done we came to a commander who was setting up charges to blow up the fortress. He said: “So I heard you guys did a pretty damn good job back there at the warehouse,” “Yeah you could say that,” I said “Achtung!! Le bergen trofer!!”(Soldiers exclaiming in German) “Um hey commander, what’s your name??” I asked, “Joey, Max Joey,” he replied, “Well uh Commander Joey, I think we better get out of here before we become German sausage,” I appointed “Yeah let’s get out of here now! Come on hurry up, the activation of the charges is outside we got to go now!” “Okay.” I said, and after that, I ran like hell after Commander Joey. I was so scared, I just told myself that I wouldn’t die in this German building, I would live. Finding the exit was very hard; we couldn’t have gone out the way we came in because there would be a dead end. So we ran down stairs shooting soldiers in our way, and we tried to find any exit available. Joey said, “Hey Gregg, do you see any exit, because I don’t,” he said, “No I don’t either, oh shoot what’s that!?!?” Then once I saw it, my stomach sank. It was nothing like I ever saw. There were five German soldiers, but unique ones. Each one had an MG42 and a gas mask on them. They also had a lot of armor on them. I was low on bullets, and I only had one clip of ammo left, but the bullets couldn’t penetrate their armor. Luckily, Joey had a bazooka he fired at the soldiers but only took out two of them. After that we ran. We went through every hall and corridor expecting to find some exit and at the same time avoiding the bullets. After about a minute of escaping, we finally found a stairway leading through the building’s airway system. Joey and I went through running away as fast as we can. Later we came to the external part of the building and jumped down to the floor. We rushed to the activation of the charges. Joey said, “Hey kid, you want to end WWII?” “Duh,” I replied, “Well then what are you waiting for, blow up the building and there will be world peace!” he exclaimed gratefully. Then I got close to the handle, and pushed……. BOOOOM, the building exploded. We had finally done it. WWII is done, no more war. When we returned to base, all the other soldiers congratulated me and threw me into the air and chanted, “Gregg made victory, Gregg made victory!” All the poor dead soldiers would fly back home and be buried there. When I got back to the States, mom was there to see my arrival. She was so glad to see I was alive, and I was glad to see her. A few days after returning home there was a meeting with the army’s top general, it was the awards ceremony. They promoted me to the rank of commander, and Joey to general. They also gave me awards that included staying the war alive and serving the country with fine work. I was really glad that they did all of that, I didn’t even think that I would become such a hero. And after that day I returned home with mom, and we had a nice dinner. A few years after the war, I went to college and got my master’s degree. Three years after college, I got married to a lady named Anne Marley. She was the best person you could ever meet and then we had a child. My son’s name was Mark Spectrum. He served in the American army in the Vietnam War. And guess what, he also survived the war just as I did. When he came back home, Anne and I were so happy, and we did had a party when he came back from the war. After that, we lived happily ever after. THE END