~~~The European Freedom Fighters!~~~ A Shifted-Reality Second World-War Role-Play Thread!

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(Thanks, that kind of very detailed writing comes very naturally to me.
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Everyone went silent for a few tense moments as the young German had his smoke, but thankfully he soon continued on, walking farther down the street and out of sight. The young man who was speaking before then responded to Kenny. "Now that you mention it, it would be better to keep the incendiaries concentrated near the cab and engine of the truck." He checked his small equipment sack for a moment and then said "I've got a couple of phosphorus incendiary grenades with me, we could stick them and one of the timed charges in this bag and chuck it under the half-track when the truck hits it. The IED should set of the other grenades and give us a lovely fireworks display when it does."
 
Anton grinned but never averted his eyes from the road. "I like fireworks." It was the first English anyone had heard him speak since he arrived. It wasn't even that heavily accented.
"Told you he was good," Kenny grumbled, before replying to the other man. "I like this plan. I think it'll work. It shouldn't be that hard to get the timing right, unless there's a failure with the igniters or the detonators, which would just be very bad luck, so probably unlikely."

He looked at the other guys in the group. "Who here thinks they could drive the truck and get it rolling? If it comes down to it, I'll do it, but I'm a pretty rubbish driver even in normal conditions. Better someone who could actually set the wheels within a degree of the right course."

Anton poked him again. Kenny went quiet. A group of four Germans was ambling slowly down the road, chatting amongst themselves. One of them threw something, maybe some gum wrapper, into the bushes and it plopped to the ground just centimetres in front of where Kenny was crouching. This was straining his usually quite flexible nerves... The group passed by unsuspecting and Kenny whispered to the others, "At least nobody seems to know anything about us being here. They were talking about some cafe or other..."
 
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An English man who looked to be in his late twenties said "I can get the lorry coasting in the right direction, as long as the rest of you lot get get it rolling for me." The lad who had first suggested the current plan of action was already prepping his satchel with the phosphorus grenades and a timed anti-personel mine. "As long as the coast is still clear, we should be good to make our move now. Who here has the best arm and the best aim with throwing?" he asked, as he took a piece of string and tied the different explosive devices together inside the bag.
 
Kenny looked around. "I'm not a bad shot," he said. "I suppose you'd have to take my word for it though, because I don't suppose this is a very good time for a demonstration." He examined the satchel from a distance. "How does this work? Would I need to do anything besides lob it under the truck?"

Anton was peering down the road and into the park. "Clear," he murmured.
 
"Not really, just make sure you don't bang it up against something before you throw it. When it hits the ground or the vehicle during the throw, that impact should start the 8-second timer on the mine for you." After Anton's signal, he and the rest of the group quickly started crawling from the hedges towards the truck in the concealing darkness of the alleyway.
 
Kenny and Anton were left alone behind the bush.
"Brr, it's chilly out, isn't it?" Kenny said in the sudden silence. Anton didn't seem to react. He had an eye fixed on the alleyway the others had vanished into.

They lapsed back into silence. Kenny wanted to ask if Anton had any snacks on him - he could've sworn he saw an oat bar or two in the car that morning - but Anton seemed to be doing something requiring a lot of concentration - like thinking, perhaps - and Kenny didn't want to interrupt him in case it was important to the mission.

"Sollen wir vielleicht ein bisschen..." Anton was gesturing vaguely down the road towards the German vehicle. Kenny realised his friend was concerned about the 50m distance between them and the vehicle's position. The cover was good where they were, but there was a chance, even with Kenny's nice aim, that the satchel would hit a wheel, or fall short, or long, or skid out from under the truck on the other side if the power applied was not exactly correct.

Kenny nodded. Anton confirmed the absence of any enemy troops and Kenny began to creep along the row of front gardens, keeping down in the shadow of the low walls that ran along the front. He couldn't tell if Anton was following, but that might have been because he was making a bit more noise than he should have been, despite his best efforts. He hoped everyone in the buildings was asleep; it was quite late at night and he could see only curtains over the windows.

About five units along, they stopped behind a very itchy but very large shrub sporting a light sprinkling of purple flowers. Anton had been following, and was glaring at him right then. But they had been unseen, and they were right opposite the German vehicle with a clear line of throw to the road. Kenny got into position behind the low wall, Anton behind the shrub, and waited for the lorry to come into view.
 
They didn't have to wait long. Moments before, the other five members of their group reached the truck and quickly prepped it for one final explosive delivery. Six Molotovs were wired to the front bumper of the old pickup as the Brit climbed into the cab. The lad who had first proposed the approach inpected the truck's cargo and, among the several crates of produce, found a 55-gallon drum of gasoline mostly full. He unscrewed the large cap and punched a few extra holes in the lid with his utility knife for good measure. As he was about to hop down, he noticed one of the crates of fruit was already opened. He knew that all of the Freedom Fighters he was with were in for a long, demanding night, and he hadn't eaten much of anything earlier that day, so he quickly grabbed a few apples, pears, bananas, and whatever else he could fit in his personal knapsack, before he jumped down from the truck bed and started pushing when the Brit in the cab relaeasedthe parking brake. The pushing Freedom Fighters only needed to get the truck out of a standstill before the slope of the hill took over. It quickly gathered speed as the rebels retreated back into the shadows. The man steering the truck aimed his makeshift missile at its target, then opened the door and dove out. He rolled along the cobblestone street for about twenty feet before jumping up and sprinting back into the alley. As the truck silently rolled on, straight and true, the somewhat bored Germans took notice quickly. "Hey, stoppen! Schluss mit dem jetzt!" came the shouts from one of the Nazis, but there was no response. The soldier was about to raise his rifle and fire on the approaching vehicle, but he was forced to dive out of its way instead as it slammed into the side of the SdKfz 7 half-track parked behind him. With a loud crash the German armored vehicle flipped up and onto its side as the heavy delivery truck smashed into it. The impact crushed the Molotovs attached to the bumper and ignited their fuel, lighting the engine compartment and cab of the truck on fire almost instantly. At the same time, the sudden jolt knocked the fuel drum in the back of the truck loose and the gasoline began spilling all over the rear half of the vehicle. As the panicking German troops tried to subdue the blaze, the flames crept farther backwards until they reached the gas-soaked fruit crates. The truck erupted in a ball of fire that sent many of the Germans temporarily scrambling for cover before they rushed back to try and protect the nearby vehicles from the fire. The entire delivery truck was now completely on fire, but the half-track, though flipped sideways, was relatively uncharred.
 
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Kenny watched the scene unfold with a mixture of fascination and sheer terror. Anton seemed to be enjoying himself. Anton had always been a secret pyromaniac.

Kenny looked at the satchel in his hand. The truck was blazing and the flames were licking at the underside of the half-track, where he imagined the fuel tank might be. The top of the vehicle was facing towards him and Anton, away from the fiercely burning delivery truck. The Germans looked worryingly organised. There were six of them that Kenny could see - including the young man who had been smoking on the wall. Three were trying to fight the flames. Three were tying ropes to the half-track, presumably to try to pull the vehicle away from the wall of fire, which was slowly but inexorably advancing towards it. As if to confirm this, Anton shook Kenny's arm and had to yell to make himself heard. "Zwanzig oder so! Aus dem Süden!"

A large number of German troops were sprinting down the road from where they had, Kenny assumed, been guarding the tanks at the other end of the park. They were going to help tow the half-track. It was now or never - the three tying the ropes were momentarily blocked from view by the body of the vehicle. Kenny bought his arm back and sent the package skidding underneath the half-track, where it came to a grinding halt almost exactly where he'd intended for it to go. Just beside what Kenny assumed was the fuel tank. Too late to do anything but hope he was right now.

Kenny counted to himself in his head. The Germans were too close for him and Anton to attempt to take shelter without being spotted, so the low wall was all they were going to have against the blast. Eight, seven, six...
The big group had reached the half-track and were arranging themselves along the three ropes tied to the vehicle. If they managed to get it far enough away before the fuse burnt out, either the tank wouldn't catch or it would look extremely suspicious if it did. Kenny bit his lip. Five, four, three...

"LOS!" yelled one of the Germans. Two... The men began to pull. One...

Nothing happened.
A sense of absolute terror entered Kenny's mind and he felt sick to the bone.

And then there was a sharp crack, audible above the roaring of the flames, and a split-second later a blinding flash lit the night sky as the grenades went up and tore through the steel of the fuel tank, igniting the diesel inside. The ground shook, and the thundering explosion almost blew away the low wall, crumbling it to bricks over Kenny and Anton, thankfully hiding them from view but crushing them badly at the same time. The initial flame from the tank mushroomed high into the air and was replaced by a ferocious and very smoky blaze which illuminated the fronts of the apartment blocks.

About this time, debris from the half-track began raining down onto the ground. Some of the Germans were lying dead or injured on the road, blown off their feet by the explosion. A few, including the lad with the smoke, were running for their lives as chunks of steel crashed to the ground. They mostly fled into the park, not in the direction of the tanks at the other end of the road.
The bricks protected Kenny and Anton from the debris. Anton was the first to try and push himself up from the ground, mumbling something incoherent in Dutch. His leg was cut badly, it might have been broken as well. He pulled the bricks off Kenny, who was lying face down in the grass, dragging his leg along. Kenny was alive, but in no state to move himself. He'd taken a knock to the head and was unconscious. Anton hoisted himself to his feet, cringing in pain as he tried to put weight on his injured leg, and began to drag Kenny up the hill towards the alleyway where the others were, yelling angrily to himself all the way. He reached the alleyway, waved weakly to the young Brit, and collapsed to the ground, exhausted.

There were sixteen Germans lying on the road. That meant ten had gotten away and would still be available to defend the tanks - if they realised the tanks were under threat, that is.
 
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Ohh my detail... just... wow. O_O That's going to be hard to top. Just for historical accuracy, though, the Germans almost exclusively used gasoline engines in all of their land vehicles, not diesel. The Soviets were pretty much the opposite, for what its worth, using almost exclusively diesel engines in their land vehicles. But, you know, whatever; I'm a military/history junkie, so, yeah.
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As the Germans ran around in a fluid state of panick, nobody noticed the huge Jagdtiger II quickly back away and dissappear into the darkness. As Anton and Kenny lay injured on the ground, the other five rebels in Kenny's party ran over to the two striken Freedom Fighters, utilizing the chaos sewn by the collision and explosion as cover. Using several large boards laying nearby as makeshift stretchers, they quickly carried their wounded comrades out of harm's way. One of the Germans saw them as they fled towards the alley, but by the time he had aimed his MP-40, shouting "Halten Sie es, zu stoppen!", the Rebels had already dissappeared into the night. A half-hour later, the Nazis counted their losses. Four men dead, seven other injured. One SdKfz 7 was completely destroyed, with another damaged but salvageable. Strangest of all, though, was that their most important vehicle, their SdKfz 186 Jagdpanzer VI-E 'Jagdtiger II' tank-destroyer had seemingly vannished.

About fifteen minutes after the first phase of the rebels' operation, the whole team had regrouped at the barn hidden in the forest outside Nancy. The capture team had managed to retrieve the Jagdtiger without incident, and several of the rebels had patched up Anton and Kenny's injuries. Kenny only ended up with a minor cuncussion, which was expected to wear off by the time they were supposed to start attacking the airbase. Anton was a bit worse off, having recieved a large gash on his leg and a relatively minor break in his tibia; he wasn't going to be walking without a crutch for a while, but it wasn't going to be very long and he hadn't lost any considerable amount of blood either.. The young Canadian man who had suggested using the delivery truck as a projectile to Kenny earlier had revealed his name was Daniel Lowrey on the way to the regroup point; he had struck up a conversation with Kenny before they got there, but was interupted when Dirk stepped up on an old haybale and started speaking to the team as a whole. "Alright, first of all I need to say 'nice work' to all of you on the decoy team. Though we did have a few minor injuries, nobody was hurt seriously and the distraction you guys set up worked beautifully. I don't know what could have made that half-track explode so violently, but I would have to assume that either it or the truck you guys used was carrying some kind of high-yield munitions or something. But anyways, time for phase two. We'll need four people who know how to operate mortars well, and they will have one of the more difficult tasks of tonight's plan. Those four will need to stay behind on the hill near the airbase after the Jagdtiger and the trucks leave for the factory with the rest of the team. There will be give or take ten to fifteen minutes between when that point and the aproximate time when the Panthers should be arriving from the vehicle plant. The mortar team will need to stay behind and continue shelling the airbase for as long as they can before they need to pack the mortars into the jeep they'll have and drive like h*** towards the woods to avoid the German reenforcements. Anyone who has experience with mortars or good eyesight, please make yourselves known." As Dirk talked, Daniel reached into his knapsack and pulled out a pear that he had grabbed from the truck earlier. As he took a bite, he turned to Anton and Kenny, saying "Either of you two want anything? I've got some fruit from the truck earlier and you'll probably want the energy."
 
:)lol: Thanks for the tip. I like to learn random facts like that. :p And thanks for describing their injuries for me too. I wouldn't have been able to think up anything convincing for it, I know little about the body and its various components, lol.)

Anton had his leg propped up on a wooden crate in the barn. Kenny had been looking woozily around but immediately straightened up at the mention of food. "Yes please. Hmm, those apples look delicious." He took one from the proffered bag and bit into it. It didn't take all that much to make Kenny quite a happy chap.

Anton was listening to Dirk talk. He didn't seem to have heard Daniel's question, and Kenny considerately placed an apple in his friend's hand for him.
Anton spoke up, "Ja, ich... Ich meine, I -" He had to think a bit to remember his English. It had been a long night already. " - have been lookout tonight. I have good eyes. But not good leg." He pointed to his leg.

Kenny put up his hands. "Not I. I have no idea how to use a... mortar, was it? Or any weapon much, for that matter." His only appreciable talent in a combat situation would probably be keeping his cool under fire, or his ability to pass himself off as a genuine Berliner, although he didn't see how that could possibly come in handy for an operation like this one.
 

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