World War Time Travel
We were paratroopers flying over a non-disclosed eastern European country, moments from jumping out of the plane in an operation to rid the immediate and surrounding areas of the Nazi scourge.
How the hell did I pass training? It was probably my sense of humor.
Seconds before we all jumped we received a report the Nazis knew of our plan and were shooting rockets at the ground where we'd be landing. Awesome.
We got the signal, jumped and it was a short but beautiful descent from the uncomfortable plane to the open field below. I landed and looked behind me in the distance and, true enough, rockets were shooting toward us, low trajectory, bouncing on the ground and continuing toward us, the target. Maybe not rockets so much as bouncing cannon balls or something. Those wacky Nazis.
We humped it toward the town and once we got there were met with the population humping it toward us away from Nazis already in the town. On one street I saw a few Nazis guarding a long bench full of our soldiers, already captured and shooting them in the knees. I found myself standing next to a blonde man & woman who looked familiar. They recognized me right away from when I visited California in 1998. They were in town to either report on the war, help with the underground or both. My squad couldn't help the captured soldiers just yet as a block over there was a huge squad of Nazis coming out of a building and shooting at us. We got some cover as there was a park between us and them. I threw a few grenades and blew away a handful of them. But something wasn't right.
As, in, even though they were shooting at us, and we were returning fire, something wasn't right. Some of the Nazis were wheeling other Nazis in grocery carts. Others had guns and weapons but not everyone was shooting.
We converged at the edge of the park in a miraculously managed cease-fire. One of the soldiers was speaking in a foreign language, really upset and crying. One of our guys understood and parlayed. Looking at him and at some of the soldiers in the shopping carts, I realized they weren't soldiers but were dressed up to look like soldiers. They were all Down Syndrome kids and adults, outfitted to look like Nazis. The more able ones were given weapons and told lies, but after a while they realized they'd been tricked, though not after we (me and others) had killed some of them and they'd killed some of us. Their default leader was so upset he promised to help us rid the town of the real Nazis. I'd lost track of the blonde couple (brother and sister, I think).
I'm fairly sure the idea of the Down Syndrome people was extrapolated from a Stanislaw Lem book I read over a decade ago, and also perhaps from one of my favorite movies, The King of Hearts (in which the inhabitants of an asylum in France sort of outwit a small Nazi occupying force simply by being insane. Whimsical and magical movie & nice metaphor of the insanity of war being overcome by people who are hospitalized supposedly for being insane; starring Alan Bates. Check it).
How the hell did I pass training? It was probably my sense of humor.
Seconds before we all jumped we received a report the Nazis knew of our plan and were shooting rockets at the ground where we'd be landing. Awesome.
We got the signal, jumped and it was a short but beautiful descent from the uncomfortable plane to the open field below. I landed and looked behind me in the distance and, true enough, rockets were shooting toward us, low trajectory, bouncing on the ground and continuing toward us, the target. Maybe not rockets so much as bouncing cannon balls or something. Those wacky Nazis.
We humped it toward the town and once we got there were met with the population humping it toward us away from Nazis already in the town. On one street I saw a few Nazis guarding a long bench full of our soldiers, already captured and shooting them in the knees. I found myself standing next to a blonde man & woman who looked familiar. They recognized me right away from when I visited California in 1998. They were in town to either report on the war, help with the underground or both. My squad couldn't help the captured soldiers just yet as a block over there was a huge squad of Nazis coming out of a building and shooting at us. We got some cover as there was a park between us and them. I threw a few grenades and blew away a handful of them. But something wasn't right.
As, in, even though they were shooting at us, and we were returning fire, something wasn't right. Some of the Nazis were wheeling other Nazis in grocery carts. Others had guns and weapons but not everyone was shooting.
We converged at the edge of the park in a miraculously managed cease-fire. One of the soldiers was speaking in a foreign language, really upset and crying. One of our guys understood and parlayed. Looking at him and at some of the soldiers in the shopping carts, I realized they weren't soldiers but were dressed up to look like soldiers. They were all Down Syndrome kids and adults, outfitted to look like Nazis. The more able ones were given weapons and told lies, but after a while they realized they'd been tricked, though not after we (me and others) had killed some of them and they'd killed some of us. Their default leader was so upset he promised to help us rid the town of the real Nazis. I'd lost track of the blonde couple (brother and sister, I think).
I'm fairly sure the idea of the Down Syndrome people was extrapolated from a Stanislaw Lem book I read over a decade ago, and also perhaps from one of my favorite movies, The King of Hearts (in which the inhabitants of an asylum in France sort of outwit a small Nazi occupying force simply by being insane. Whimsical and magical movie & nice metaphor of the insanity of war being overcome by people who are hospitalized supposedly for being insane; starring Alan Bates. Check it).