Short Story

The old man sat warily in his chair, thinking of recent events that had an effect on his life. He recalled his life in previous terms, and began to sweat in remembrance of his time in the Great War.....
.... A crackle, and then a spurt of blood, as the man beside him fell to the ground, bleeding out of who knew how many places. Jerome tried to bend over and pick him up, but the man shoving from behind didn't let him slow down. He heard several men weeping inwardly, in self doubt. And he began to devise a plan. He would wait for a shift in guard duty, where the guards on shift, would move to a guard house, and then new ones would come in the next 5-10 minutes. He thought that if he gathered enough men, most of them would escape a hail of gun fire that would surely ensue any sort of escape. He turned to a man, who had joined him in small snatches of conversation when the guards would let them talk, and told him of the plan. The man was quick to respond by letting him know it would probably work, and that he'd help gather the men's support. After 2 minutes of gathering, they had over 40 men to follow Jerome out of the guard post. They gathered themselves, and began a blood curdling decent down a hill, past a battery of machine gun setups, and that's when things became bloody.Almost instantly, 2 men at Jeromes side went down with the sudden barage of ear torturing fire. Blood sprayed Jeromes face, as another behind him fell, then the tortured screaming began. Men went down, and started screeching and writhing in agony as their internal organs were flayed by the shrapenal of bullets, and small land mines, set up along the road. The screams gave him a boost, a boost of wanting to get away from the terrible onslaught. He ran harder... harder.... HARDER....He looked around. Nothing. No one had made it besides him, and already he heard the sounds of men trailing him, and small arms gunfire, as men with their .30 calibur carbines took the lives of those who hadn't been killed outright. The sun glistened in it's midday might, and he felt the heat rising, and the saw the glowing of the pavement as he walked the road. Men still pursued him, and where they went, he soon heard screams and small -booms- of their small handguns. He was busy making sure he was alright, and was rounding a corner when he saw them, 4 men in colors of the SS, nazi police. They saw him, and not 2 seconds later were unleashing rounds from their rifles into his only cover: A tree. He tried desperately to find more adequate cover, and was shocked to see a sharp reflection of sun off blued metal. The barrel of a small pistol stuck up out of some leaves near the tree. Without thinking, he grabbed at it, picked it up, and began to turn into an easier postion for firing. It was then that he realized that the firing had stopped, and he heard rustling of approaching footsteps. He peeked around the tree, nearly screamed in terror. 6 men approached his standpoint, and each had a weapon of his own. He readied for a gun fight, and was about to jump out and fire....
A sharp pounding rattle of a browning .50 calibur machine gun, and the Nazi's began screaming. There was some rustling, and some spray of dirt, as the gun shrieked it's bullets into the ground, creating a cloud of dust, and tattered leaves. Some sounds of jeeps alerted him of what he had wanted the whole time in his 3 year imprisonment in a Ghetto camp..... Liberation. He was saved.