To start off, my name is Endrell Forter and I was a part of the 14th regiment of the United States alliance in World War two.
It was a brutal war in many ways more than one, although the terrors of unnecessary bloodshed and countless deaths of those who I knew personally are no light memory, there was something about that war and what I was involved in that I to this day cannot put my finger on. I do apologize if the details are fuzzy as even, I cannot recall everything by pure details. Maybe that’s the thing your brain does when you experience something that it doesn’t understand.
I was born in Massachusetts to a local humble family. We had our place in our town and that was all I asked for. After World War one, everyone was convinced that was the end of the bloodshed that those monsters across the water seemed to love oh so much.
I had a few friends, but I didn’t really have any memorable enough to recall. As my 18th birthday was inching closer, we heard the terrible new of talks of World War two breaking out… All I could do was hope otherwise, unfortunately hope didn’t get me anywhere.
I was drafted to boot camp the second week I turned eighteen years old. It was pure hell…
They were ruthless in our training, and they treated us like we were already in a war zone. Six hours of sleep if any, and the food was terrible too. Almost every single time we had PT one or two people passed out from it, sometimes I was one of those people too.
There was one good thing about boot camp though, I made friends. Roger Fenral, Jensen Seran, and Kordell Siriah, among a few others, but they were the main guys who I always stuck with. I originally met them at chow time which was the few minutes we got of grace which once again, if any, if the Drill Sergeants were feeling nice that hour. They stuck to me like sap to a tree, so much in fact we had to get separated numerous times by the Sergeant for “being combative and disruptive”. I loved those guys and to this day of writing my story I still want to meet up with them and sit around a campfire to just talk about our lives now and what we wished it could’ve been. Roger was a fairly short man probably around 5’7, brown-haired man, If I remember correctly, he was born in Utah to also get drafted just like I did. Jensen was a Taller blonde man who was stuck up when we first met but got to enjoy our company as a group. Lastly Kordell was a black fellow whose family was from an eastern country called Senegal, I was always interested in his culture, but he never got into it as it was a touchier subject for him. I’ve heard of what happened to the Africans prior to me being born so I knew not to dig him for it.
Those guys made boot camp a little more tolerable but fuck, it was still one of the worst things I’ve ever had to go through in my life.
We were lucky enough to become part of the same regiment and get stationed in the same place. Regiment 14 of the United States Alliance and we were shipped off to some part of France named Dunkirk.
It was about as awful as I expected, shouting, guns, explosions, wounded, and about everything you think a war scene from one of those new “nonfiction” movies portrays.
The barracks we slept in were dirty and as pungent as a mudhole I used to play in as a kid. As we were allowed to only take personal belongings with us when we were shipped off, I took a small German to English dictionary to try and learn the language of the Freaks we hear so much about.
It almost did not feel real being there. This type of atmosphere is impossible to convey through writing, but it was horrific being anywhere. I was hoping that I wouldn’t be deployed into the field, I didn’t know if I could handle that. On the other hand, Jensen was about as ready as ever.
He took with him a bullet casing from a Mauser pistol. It had a story. His father was in World War One. He was in a gunfight, and he bent down to pick up the casing as it was shiny and before he knew it, grabbing the casing, a bullet whizzed past his head, or where it would’ve been if he didn’t go to grab the casing, so to this day it’s dubbed their “family’s lucky bullet”.
I thought that maybe If I was round him enough, maybe I’d start feeling that way too, and to some extent… I did. I felt as if nothing could touch us or break us apart, Me, Jensen, Kordell, and Roger…and unfortunately that was one of the last times we as a group felt undying.
The next morning, we woke up to silence everywhere, as if the war had seemingly ended the same night. We went to bed prior, that’s what I’d hoped for at least, right before our Commander of the Regiment came Screaming into the Barracks as if his life depended on it.
“GET UP GET UP SOLDIERS WE NEED TO REPOSITION IMMEDIATELY WE NEED TO GO NOW”.
We jumped out of bed as a cacophony of shuffling shoes and yelling arose from the silence of the moonlight above. Before I knew it, we were all outside, all I could hear was the engines of our old infantry vehicles starting up.
Our commander ordered us to get into them with no questions asked, it was a little hard not to ask anyone but I had to do what I was told.
We left everything that wasn’t an immediate necessity, luckily, I had my dictionary in my backpack, so I had that with me.
I was looking around for Jensen, Kordell, and Roger and I found them loading up into the barracks vehicles across from me. We made eye contact or more of a “what the absolute fuck is going on type look” to each other.
As I was going to sit down the truck darted off leaving a huge trail of mud behind it. I don’t know what the hell caused them to act like this, but I probably didn’t want to know.
We drove, for miles, seemingly for hours too. It was so hard not to ask what made us rush out of our main barracks so quickly, but nobody had a clue, only the commander probably knew but as I said earlier “no questions asked”.
We all eventually gave up the endeavor of trying to figure out what was happening and sat in silence just listening to the roar of the collective engines of our trucks, after all, this is a war, anything could’ve happened.
After about two hours of silent driving, we stopped. “Seems like we drove all the way to the beach” one of the soldiers up front said “Why the hell would we need to go to the beach, maybe they were surprising us with a holiday” jokingly.
“Get out and place all your things on the ground, we’re searching everyone, I don’t care what your rank is or who you are, everyone…” The voice I just heard was Base Admiral Peter Forts, he was one of the people we heard of in debriefing before we were brought here.
I listened obviously, we all filed out of our trucks and placed our things on the ground in front of us, there had to of been around 150 men, this was probably going to take a while.
They finally got to me and pulled out my dictionary, he leaned in closer and said quietly “as soon as everyone bags are checked come see me”, I quietly nodded, and he moved on to the next person.
Twenty maybe twenty-five minutes passed before he was done checking everybody. As I headed off to meet with Peter it seemed I was the only one.
I arrived at his tent and let myself in. “Good! You’re here” he said and ushered me into one of the chairs in the middle of the tent.
He held up the dictionary and said “So, I understand that we are pit against the Germans but why would you need to communicate with them? it’s not like we’re taking any of them prisoner in this section”.
Well, I just wanted to be able to know what they’re saying, you never know what they could be planning, I said back. “You understand you’re currently being questioned under suspicion of being a German spy, don’t you?”. He said in return. I was bewildered, I simply just nodded and said, “I assumed as much, yes Admiral”. Good, we can continue then, he replied.
He asked me questions like “can you sing the United States National Anthem?” and “what is the capital of Washington DC” I understood that was a trick question and replied, “sir there isn’t one”.
Once again, he nodded and continued with the questioning.
Finally, when I thought we were done, he said “one more question and you can go”. “Do you… know why your Regiment had to reposition?”.
No sir, I was wondering if I could know, I replied. He looked at me with stern eyes and said “No, Soldier, some things are best left to the imagination, after all whatever you may be thinking it’s probably better than what it actually is”.
That response left me wondering more than I already had been. He pointed to the direction of the exit of the tent.
I swiftly left leaving nothing behind besides the tension of our conversation. I walked back to our barracks to meet up with Roger, Jensen, and Kordell.
It’s been about two days of nothing.
No bombs going off, no running of soldiers around the camp… nothing. It was almost unnerving, it seemed as if the war was over.
In less than a week everything has changed. It was worrisome. Nobody has any clue what in the hell was going on either. I was about to go to the Admiral myself and damn near demand an answer.
I was resting in my bed as our Regiment Commander called a group towards him.
“Soldiers of the 14th Regiment we are hereby ordered to return to our original base camp as it’s been confirmed by our scouts that it’s once again safe to inhabit”.
Inhabit? I thought to myself, that doesn’t sound like anything they’d usually say.
We all shambled back to our infantry vehicles to get ready to reenter the grounds of war. I hated to think about it, but I was a little excited. The loss of words I’ve been at the past few days was so boring that I wished we were back near the front lines.
As we returned towards our old encampment, I got a good look at it.
Everything was as it was when we left originally, besides one glaring difference. There were these goopy black puddles of water on the group all over the area. The vehicles parked up around our tents and our commander ushered us out.
We got out and awaited instructions.
“From here on out, no one will be allowed to exit the premises and a curfew will be in place. 21:00 will be the time every soldier is required to be in their tents and no matter WHAT you will not go anywhere after hours without supervision of a superior officer. I hope that is clear for you all, no, we will be deployed to the front lines later in the week, so I trust you will all be prepared for that. Now get back to your tents”.
Jesus Christ… This is worse than I ever could’ve imagined. I’m terrified… Theres’s blood everywhere.
Before today didn’t even know a human body could live without that much blood.
There’s gunfire everywhere and artillery going off from both sides of this war. The world has never felt as dark as it is right now, the sun still shines but it feels as if there was nothing at all.
I was laying in a trench when I hear yelling of Germans in the distance.
It sounded like something along the lines of “We will move… ready, four minutes”.
I rushed to find our superior officer but hell, I didn’t even know who to report to.
I ran and ran and ran around until I was lost. I couldn’t recognize anything.
I was in some sort of trench that I didn’t recognize on the layout of the land we were supposed to be in. It looked like no one has passed through here in months. This didn’t make sense as the fight has only been going on for a couple of weeks.
It was quiet here. The only things I could recognize were German books and papers everywhere. I wanted to make some sense of it so I walked up to one of the journals on the ground and attempted to decipher what I could.
“ Black…non human…kill… uncontrolled”
What the fuck… I thought to myself. I know my translations were a little spotty but even this didn’t really make any sense. I kept reading to try and figure out what it meant.
Although I knew for a fact that I was alone, I felt…watched, uneasy and almost horrified yet there was nothing to cause these emotions.
The world felt as if it was closing in on me by the second.
I didn’t want to move or make any sound at all to the point where I held by breathing.
I started to hear footsteps from around the corner of the dugout I was in.
I raised my gun in preparation for performing an act I’d never hoped to have to do. I stood there for so long I could feel my muscles tense up, but I did not want to take any risks…
There was no way I could hear these footsteps for this long and not know where it was coming from but somehow, I couldn’t put my finger on it.
As I was going to lower my gun I saw it, the source of the steps. It… was… not anything that I could ever in my life of imagined. It was tall, way too tall to be a human, it was stark black to the point that it seemed that no sunlight could touch it, and it had wavy tentacle, like arms…four of them.
As I saw it, I wanted to die, every emotion and nerve in my body felt as if it wanted to end.
It stood in front of me, not making any moves besides the arms of it flowing in the air. It just stared at me… I think it could sense my utter fear and wanted to bank on that. The tiny slit eyes it possessed were looking at me and felt as if it was staring into my very soul.
It made a hand motion with its long slender fingers which seemed like it wanted to put my gun down. So that’s what I did, if something like this on a battlefield has survived for this long, I could assume bullets won’t affect it.
It came closer to me, leaving small puddles of black goop in its path.
As I still was petrified, I could move or react to its movement at all.
I blinked and it was in front of my face. I felt like I’ve fallen into a pit so deep there was no escape or any sanctuary of sunlight.
It just stared… less than a few inches from my face it stood.
Suddenly I felt… ok. I felt like I was safe, which made absolutely no sense at all considering I’m currently standing face to face with an otherworldly being that could most likely kill me whenever it pleases.
I almost wanted to hug it but before I made any moves it reached out its arms and grabbed hold of me. I started screaming and flailing my arms to try and get it off me but there was no use. It must’ve had the strength of one hundred men as I could do nothing to stop it. As I reached for my knife, I heard a voice yelling out for me. “Endrell, hey, it’s Roger. I saw you running, and we followed, were all here!” The entity stopped instantly and put its finger onto my forehead, “you are a friendly man, I am happy you showed sympathy towards me, you may live”. It felt like it was speaking directly into my mind.
It faded away like smoke off a gun on a windy day. I fell to the floor unable to move or make any sound at all. With my face in the dirt, I hear muffled screams not too far from me.
I wiped it off and made my best attempt to get up.
As I stood up, I started running. As I turned the corner from where the voices came from, I saw it…
Everyone, all of them…dead. Jensen, Roger, Kordell, face down.
I ran to them as fast as I could with no awareness of it that thing could still be here.
I slapped them and shook each and everyone of them to try to hopefully wake them up but to no avail they did not.
I was torn, crying into the Jacket of Jensen I wanted myself to die along with them.
After about five minutes of pure crying, I stood up and dusted myself off. I took his lucky bullet, I went back and picked up my gun.
I worked my way back to where I thought I came from.
To this day the memory of it all still eats me away as the guilt runs strong along with it. I wish I could’ve done something…anything to keep my friends alive. As I said in the beginning of all of this. I just wish to sit down around a campfire with them one more time and talk about what we would’ve done together if we all made it out alive.