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So does anyone remember that AAR I attempted to do in WWZ format? The one that I decided took too long. Well, if there's enough interest, I've decided to try and finish it. But I'm not just adding chapters on to the original, I'm completely redoing the entire thing, and posting it all here IN FULL when it's done.
The reason for redoing it is because a lot of the original wasn't really too well developed, and at times, some of it just plain didn't make sense. Remember the British recon plane that was shot down by a torpedo? XD
I won't lose Africa for long. I need it for slaves. - SANAND
yea go for it i never got the see the first one
- StormHawk
- location: Unknown
- joined: May 25, 2010
- posts: 20
Still fictional, right? This is really sweet Dizzle. Keep it up. BTW, whos next?
"Mors ultima linea rerum est mortalis."
- MajorLufbery
- MHII, MH GOLD
- location: France
- joined: Aug 12, 2009
- posts: 1173
Like I said, I'm not just continuing where I left off, but completely redoing most of it. So the first time I post it will be the entire revised version of the first set that I posted. Expect it later today or tomorrow.
Mostly what I've worked on was the one about the British pilot that flew the recon plane. I'm sure most of you thought that shooting him down with the force from a torpedo explosion was just downright stupid, and I'll admit that it was just a lazy last minute thing. I've already given that chapter an entire new ending, which is still extremely unlikely for good storytelling, but not impossible like the first one.
I won't lose Africa for long. I need it for slaves. - SANAND
What you call stupid, I call, "interestingly creative".
"Mors ultima linea rerum est mortalis."
- MajorLufbery
- MHII, MH GOLD
- location: France
- joined: Aug 12, 2009
- posts: 1173
Alright, here's the revised original set.
[Adalberto Marmaduke greets me as I enter his office. The newly elected President of Germany has asked me to create a history of the Second Great War. I figure there is no better place to start than with Marmaduke himself, Adolf Hitler's successor.]
I was only 17 years old at the time. My homeland of Austria had been annexed several days ago, and I watched from my bedroom window as the Fuhrer's motorcade came down my street. I had seem him before, on posters and on the radio. I admired him, making such progress at rebuilding his country. And now, he was sharing the prosperity with us Austrians!
Please understand, this was before we knew about the death camps. We didn't learn of those until after the war. I would never give him praise now, but at the time he seemed like a God! We never could have known that Austria was only the first of many.
His car was right in front of my house when I heard a loud bang, and then screaming. When the smoke cleared, I saw that the Fuhrer's car was on it's side. Some of his guards were trying to help him out of the wreck. Others were lying by the side of the road, I couldn't tell whether they were breathing or not.
It was soon clear what had happened. A bomb had gone off. This was an assassination attempt. Anyway, the Fuhrer survived, and was released after a brief stay in the hospital. When he got back to Berlin, the announcement came. The Gestapo had determined that the attempt on Hitler's life had been ordered by the Polish government.
But it wasn't the Polish.
Yes, we know now that Hitler wanted an excuse to invade. But at the time, I, and many other Germans - I guess we could call ourselves German at that time - would have believed whatever the told us. I was in basic training by the end of the week. My training was surprisingly short. Before long, I found myself armed and waiting at the Polish border. The excitement was too much, those three long days just waiting there. Then the order came. I got into my half-track, and off we went.
It amazed me how quickly we moved. My father had told me of his experiences in the First Great War, how they had to fight for every inch. That was what I was expecting, but instead we practically strolled in! We drove for a good half hour before we encountered our first resistance.
They had crouched down in a ditch, and opened fire when we passed. Our gunner sprayed them with machine gun fire. A few seconds later, it was strangely quiet, and a light red mist was settling on the field. But the next group wasn't dealt with so easily. Some infantry had fortified a farm house, and the machine gun barrage hadn't killed them all. We got out of the half-track, and went inside.
We went from room to room, clearing out whatever was left. Most were injured, and bled out before we could shoot them. A few times, one would pop out from behind a wall, or some furniture, only to be immediately gunned down. I turned into the final room, and saw a Polish officer.
He raised his rifle, and charged me with his bayonet. He thrust it into the heart of the soldier that had gone in front of me. I fired at the officer, and he collapsed next to my fallen brother. They both looked up at me as they gasped their final breaths.
This was my first taste of war.
[Winston Price invites me to sit down as I walk through the doorway into his Manchester apartment. The former RAF pilot has a long vertical scar underneath his right eye. I can already sense he will have quite a story to tell.]
"We should have seen this coming miles away." That was what they always said during the war. What most people don't know, is that people like me already had. When Poland was invaded, my country decided to increase military production. "Just in case." Just in case...
I already knew we would be going to war. I knew because I had witnessed firsthand Germany's expansion from the cockpit of my scout plane.
I had wondered why I had seen such a modest attack force entering Poland. The next day, however, was when I realized why. A day after the invasion of Poland, German troops occupied the Northern half of Czechoslovakia. I had never seen such speed and precision! I saw German panzers roll right over a trench, completely bypassing the defenders. I saw the Czech HQ go up in flames, and dozens of men trying to fall back, only to be gunned down by German machine gun fire. During that battle, I was almost shot down by the anti-aircraft fire coming from both sides.
On the third day, as Czechoslovakia surrendered, Denmark was attacked! It went on like this for a week. After the surrender of Denmark, Switzerland was attacked. It surrendered in fear before I ever saw a German troop cross the border. On the trip back to London on the ninth day, I saw German tanks rolling into Holland. But even as I passed over the Netherlands, I could still see the flashes of small arms fire. I realized that they were also attacking Belgium as well! There was no stopping them! I reported my findings as soon as I returned to London. My government declared war the next day, and France followed suit. The whole time, I don't think I ever saw a German unit stop it's charge.
Several days later, I was sent to scout the coast of Holland, because our subs had spotted a large ship. They worried it was going to be used to transport German soldiers to Norway. When I arrived, it was already in the water. But as I got closer, I saw that it was painfully overcrowded. These weren't Fascist invaders, these were Dutch civilians trying to escape! I flew down low, but I knew there wasn't much I could do to help. I saw a white streak in the water, heard a large BANG, and people screaming. The bastards had sunk a civilian ship! I saw people fall into the water. People jumping. Men, women, children. Most of them never resurfaced.
There was nothing more I could do. I tried to head out, but that was when they opened up with their AA fire. I felt an intense rocking, and started losing fuel pressure. I knew I'd been hit, and I knew I wouldn't be able to make it back to London. I slowed down a bit, not that I had much choice, when I spotted a place to try and make an emergency landing. A long street was my only hope. It was just wide enough to make it through. I tried to steady myself... at least, get as steady as possible with a damaged fuel line and a now trembling hand.
I came in low and slow, and lowered my landing gear. I bounced in my seat as I scraped the ground, then came back up several feet. I couldn't afford to make any mistakes. I was running out of road, and trying to pull up for another go would mean either running out of fuel, or being torn to shreds by their flak guns. I touched ground again, and this time stayed in a steady roll. I was still moving too fast, but my tail touched the ground. It was then that I began to think about what would happen if I survived.
I didn't have long to think about it. My left wing clipped a house, and I went into a spin. My right wing was completely sheared off on another house. My landing gear broke off, and it was just the fuselage skidding across the pavement, just missing nearby cars. I was coming to the end of the road, and braced for impact. It never came. My plane, or what was left of it, came to a halt just in time. I passed out at that point.
I was only unconscious for about fifteen minutes, but when I woke, it wasn't for long. I opened my eyes, and they were immediately closed by the butt of a rifle.
[He points to the scar under his eye.]
I don't know how long I was out for that time, but the next thing I knew, I was in the back of a truck heading to God knows where.
[Byron Folliot does not smile. He flicks a cigarette onto the floor when he sees me.]
Europe had been conquered by surprise. The invasion of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, all surprises. But it happened over a period of nine days! Why had the Dutch, the Swiss, the Belgians, not prepared? We had been preparing since the First Great War. The Ligne Maginot, the most impenetrable border defense ever created. And in this war, it counted for shit.
We were on high alert that day, recon planes had spotted an infantry force of about 1,500 heading our way. The majority of the French military had it's guns pointed east that day. That was a big mistake. 1,500 infantry? It would hardly take any extra reinforcements to repel that attack, and we needed those troops to be spread out along the border!
We saw the first heads appear on the horizon around noon. We waited until we could see the entire formation. Immediately I knew something wasn't right. No planes. No tanks. Just infantry. And from the looks of it, disorganized infantry. When they charged, the artillery opened fire.
It was a spectacular sight, bodies, or what was left of them, propelled into the air. They were so tightly packed. What trained army stays together under artillery fire? Why would they not spread out to minimize casualties? Their forces must have been cut in half by the time they were in machine gun range. They never stood a chance. Have you ever seen a movie where someone was shot in the head? You usually see a hole in the forehead. This couldn't be further from the truth. The skull is a big round bone, like a hard glass bowl. It shatters when hit with that kind of force. Now imagine a 50. cal round hitting dozens of heads in a row, in a straight line, and yet still they came! By the time the fire ceased, there was literally a river of blood flowing downhill. After a few minutes, a single German stood and raised his arms. We took him into our fortification, and he told us of the suicide mission.
He was a Dutch civilian. He and his family had gotten on a ship to try and escape to Norway, but they were sunk by a German torpedo. He said that the Germans had rounded up more than a thousand survivors from the sinking ship, but hundreds had died. The survivors were taken to the German-French border, and given First Great War era uniforms and weapons, and ordered to storm the border. Anyone who protested had been shot. Bastards.
It was then that we were told that the Germans had entered France through Belgium. I was one of the units that was ordered to go reinforce the border.
But hadn't the Germans already penetrated miles into the country?
We didn't learn that until we were being fired on by tanks inside our own damn border! We didn't have any armor of our own to reinforce the Belgian border, all we had was infantry in trucks. It was a massacre. I just barely made it out of my transport before it was destroyed. What could one soldier do against tanks? I laid in the grass, and prayed with all my might they would assume I was dead. I was fortunate.
I watched them roll over. The first column of German armor went right over me, the second to the right. But the second column... these weren't panzers, like the others. Their armor was sloped, and of a slightly lighter color. The uniforms of the troops that sat on them were also different. These men hadn't been sent to by Germany. One of their tanks came to a halt directly above me. I didn't get a normal night sky that night. That night, I slept under a red star.
[Mark Frampton smiles at me from his wheelchair. He is, surprisingly, not bitter about losing his legs. At least, not that he lets on.]
All hell broke loose after the Soviets joined Germany in the conquest of France. Italy signed an alliance with them the very next day. We lost Cyprus, and any naval forces stationed in the Mediterranean. We should have known. Although it had been slightly less aggressive, Italy was just as Imperialist as Germany. They had conquered Yugoslavia, and now they sought to conquer us. Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary joined too, though it was most likely just to keep their own borders secure. The Soviets and Italians took Greece in just a week.
When I enlisted, I found myself operating an AA gun in south-east London. The first bombers came after France fell, which put Africa firmly in Axis hands. I got the hang of it pretty quickly. The trick is to always lead your target, you see. Fire a bit ahead of them, and they'll run right into your fire. The best kill I ever pulled off was when... do you care about all this?
Yes, please continue.
Alright then. A German Heinkel was flying in a squadron of about three others. It was on the far right of the group. When I fired, I took out the engines on it's left wing. It dipped left, and clipped the wing of the bomber on it's left! Two kills for one barrage. I was quite proud of that one.
It wasn't always like that. Most of Sussex was destroyed in the bombings, though we did manage to protect the major landmarks. Our main priority was keeping Fritz off of Parliament. We succeeded in that, but what of all the people who are still homeless because of that order?
I lost my legs in June of 1940. Our AA gun was in the courtyard of an old school for boys. A stuka came down inside the building itself. At first we thought it wasn't a problem, that is until the South wall collapsed on top of us. I just barely managed to drag myself to the street, where I was spotted by a truck and taken to a medical station.
[He pauses for a moment.]
I did have one good friend, Frederick Clawson. I haven't heard from him in years. I wonder if he's still alive. He enlisted several years earlier, and was called into action after that Dutch ship went down. The last I heard from him was a letter. It seemed even he didn't expect to come back from whatever he was doing, so I don't have high hopes.
[The spires of Alter Hof castle in Munichj, Germany cast an eerie shadow over the courtyard. The former palace of Holy Roman Emperor Louis IV, used by the Nazis as a political prison during the Second Great War, still holds some of its wartime residents.]
Request Permission to Visit Cell: 43567
Prisoner Number : 1273-C
Prisoner Name: Frederick Clawson
You can make excuses for me, you can spout the statistics in my face, but in the end, whatever little expectation was placed on me, I failed. I failed to stop all of this, and I failed to give the most evil son of a bitch to ever have existed what he deserved.
I had been commissioned by the Prime Minister himself to smuggle myself into Germany, and assasinate Hitler. Getting in was the easy part. I traveled legally to Sweden, whereupon I took a British aircraft to northern Germany for insertion. We had to fly in dense clouds, and I never found out if the plane made it back. Broke into a farm house, grabbed myself a pair of civilian clothes, and bingo, Frederick Clawson model citizen. I hitchhiked my way to Berlin.
He was speaking at a rally that day. I made my way into a building across from his balcony, and took aim. I had his head in my sights. I had him. I had him...
[He stares off, clearly deep in thought.]
His damn advisor tapped him on shoulder right as I took the shot. I've heard people say I shaved his moustache. I don't think it was that close, but who knows? I didn't think. I just sat there and waited to be captured.
I won't lose Africa for long. I need it for slaves. - SANAND
DAMN. THAT IS ALOT OF FRIGGEN TEXT. BUT IT'S GOOD.
...sniff..sniff.. and you didn't even add a "wall of text ahead" warning :'( starts to cry deeply, then begins sucking on thumb, and then... erhm.. squealing like a pig?
I can put a box of tissues at somewhere in the thread if you want XD
Due to computer troubles I haven't been writing the new chapters, but expect some soon.
I won't lose Africa for long. I need it for slaves. - SANAND
I had intended to wait until more were ready and release many chapters at once, but what the hell, I've been gone for a while so I guess I can put the next one out early.
[Mitch Ryan asks me to follow him as I arrive at the docked USS Enterprise. We stand on the deck, and enjoy the view overlooking San Francisco Bay.]
I was a gunner on the USS Yorktown when it really became the Second Great War. We were about 100 miles off the coast of China. We were performing reconnaissance on the Japanese, but we weren't expecting much. Although Congress didn't much like their actions against the Chinese, the last conferrence had gone well. Most of us were below deck celebrating. It was almost a few minutes until we welcomed in the new decade.
I was in the mess hall with my buddy Jake. On every wall there was a banner that said "Happy New Year! 1940". There was a radio at each table, I dunno how they managed to get that many, quality ones too, and there must have been 50 guys crowded around each one. The signal was a little fuzzy, but everyone could understand it. President Roosevelt spoke clearly, and with emotion.
"Dear fellow Americans. It has been a turbulent decade for us all. But I for one look to the coming years with a sense of hope! Already, our economy is showing signs of improvement, and I believe that by this time next year, the American standard of living will have improved greatly. God be with us all. Happy New Year."
At that point it went to a different person, who started the countdown. Everyone in the room joined in.
"5"
"4"
"3"
"2"
"1"
"Happy Ne-"
There was a loud crash, and the entire ship shook violently. Several people stumbled. We all scrambled to the deck. Althout it probably only took about a minute, it seemed like hours before I finally got there. I wished I had kept my eyes closed as I ran to my position.
The deck was completely aflame, and most of the planes were wrecked. There were people crawling around in the flames, and some of them were still alive. In the sky, I could see planes, dozens of them. What I had at first thought to be a horrible accident, I know knew was an intentional attack. Any doubts that I still had were wiped away when I saw the rising sun on their wings.
I got to my gun, but it was no use. It was jammed in place, and I couldn't aim the damn thing. I was helpless to stop another one from obliterating the bridge. A few more of them came in, and all scored direct hits on us. I knew there was no chance in hell for us, and it came as no surprise for me when we started sinking. Several more fighters strafed the deck with machine gun fire just to mow some more of our guys down, and just as quickly as they came, they were gone.
The bow of the once great ship tipped forward, and within minutes, we were at such an angle that the destroyed aircraft just slid off into the ocean. There was a deafening crack, and what was left of the deck split in two. The stern fell back towards the waves, the levelled with them, then turned on its side, sending men and debris spilling into the mouth of Poseidon.
Before long, my end followed suit. I fell against my gun, and by the skin of my teeth I was saved from the same fate. I couldn't see the other half of the ship, but mine was going down fast, and I began the vertical climb up the deck that I had walked across hundreds of times before. Normally this would have been impossible, but the bullet holes made for decent hand and footholds. With the waves below slowly creeping up on me, after about an hour I found myself on the side of the hull.
I wasn't the only one, about 30 other guys had made it too, and I was extremely grateful for that. We waited there until the sun poked up over the horizon. By that time we weren't sure if the rising sun was the blessing of light, or just the enemy in a different form. We were ankle deep in water when a friendly cruiser finally rescued us.
I won't lose Africa for long. I need it for slaves. - SANAND
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