The Writers' Circle

Aleksey heard the sound of footsteps coming near him. He braced himself for the impact of a bullet to end his life. Instead came a voice speaking Russian. "He is alive. Aleksandr? Can you hear me?" It said. Aleksey tried to speak but couldn't get his body to work. He could scream the words in his head, but no words came from his mouth. 
	Aleksey felt his body being lifted onto a stretcher and carried away from where he had been shot. He tried to open his eyes but couldn't, he couldn't move at all. He could still breathe through his nose with ragged breaths and feel the sharp pain in his stomach where the bullet had gone in.

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				Four Months Later
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	Aleksey looked out over the destroyed city. He had fully recovered and was back in the city. They had put him in the same section of the city. He adjusted the straps on the PPS he had slung over his shoulder. He continued walking down the street looking at the damage the city had been dealt. He came to an intersection and stopped. He looked at the window where Dmitry had been shot down. He walked closer and heard the gunshots like an echo in his head. He turned and walked on before he could hear any more. 
	Aleksey came to another place and saw a building collapsed. He stopped and looked at a spot on the ground. He could almost see himself laying there with a bullet hole in his stomach. He shuddered and started to walk closer looking around at the image in his mind. He stood over Sergey's bullet riddled body and up to where Ivan had been hit by the panzer shell.
	"Aleksandr, we are meeting now. Please come." Came a voice behind him. He turned and saw a Russian woman standing there with a PTRD-41 Rifle across her back. She was dressed in tight leather pants covered loosely by a long over coat. She was carrying a PPSh-41 in her hands. 
	Aleksey looked at her and nodded. "Please call me Aleksey, Svetlana. We need to be closer, like a family." 
	"Oh, I'm sure you want to be close to me. Every guy I meet does." 
	Aleksey frowned and followed her to where the rest of the team was standing.  He had been assigned a new team. Svetlana, Ivan, Joseph, Nikolas, and Peter. They had also been offered new weapons but Aleksey declined because he had grown fond of his PPS and AVS. He did however trade in his old revolver for the newer TT-30 handgun. The new gun shined as if it were just off of the line. He looked at it on his hip next to his NR-40 combat knife. He looked up and saw that his team was watching him. 
	"We are close, I can feel it just as I felt the Nazi bullet in my stomach. We can push them from our city and turn the tides of this war. It is up to us. We can win the war for Mother Russia." Aleksey said. The team looked at him with hope radiating off of their faces. Some of them had been here since August when the battle started. It was February and the battle looked grim for them. They readied their guns and heard a shell being fired not far away. 
	The shell hit a building and sent debris showering down on them. Svetlana ran into a building with her PTRD in her hands to take a spot to disable the Panzer tank. Nikolas went onto the other side and took up a spot to help Svetlana. Aleksey and The other three members of the team ran behind a wall for cover. 
	Aleksey heard the staccato sound of an MP40 being fired accompanied by the sound of bullets chipping at the stone wall they were behind. The sound brought Aleksey out of the present and he rolled around the corner and opened fire with his PPS. In his mind there was a crowd of Nazi soldiers falling under his fire. Ivan grabbed his arm and pulled him back behind the wall in time to see a tank shell fly past them and hit a building bringing Aleksey back. He looked around confused. He peeked around the wall and saw a Nazi soldier hanging from the hatch of the tank. The bullets had torn the soldier to pieces.
	Aleksey brought his head back around the cover and reloaded his sub-machine gun. He then heard the loud reports from the anti-tank weapons and ran over to the tank and dropped an RPG-40 grenade down the hatch. He ran back behind cover and saw Svetlana and Nikolas had returned. They waited for the explosion before walking past the tank. 
	As they past the tank a crowd of German soldiers was coming around a corner. They opened fire causing Aleksey's team to duck behind the tank for cover. One of the Nazi soldiers ran towards them and jabbed at Aleksey with a bayonet attached to a Karbineer-98 rifle. Aleksey drew his NR-40 and dodged the Razor-sharp blade and brought his own blade around disemboweling the Nazi, who stepped back in holding his stomach together in shock and was cut down by the fire from MP40's that were trained on the corner. 
	Aleksey looked on in shock as the Nazi fell after being shredded by the friendly fire. Aleksey led half of his team to the other side of the destroyed Panzer and started to fire his AVS-36 at the confused Nazi soldiers. The Germans looked around for the sniper but were unable to find one.
	"Heckenschütze!" One of the German soldiers said before Aleksey cut him down with a bullet in the throat. The surviving Nazi ran back around the corner.
	Aleksey and his team followed the carefully waiting the Fire from the MP40's to cut their legs out from under them, but the shots never came. Aleksey instead went onto a second story balcony and began to fire down at the Nazis. Svetlana Set up her PTRD on the ground and decimated the German infantry. 
	They let one Nazi go so that they could follow him to the rest of his people. Aleksey joined the rest of his team with his PPS raised and at the ready as they followed the German through the debris cluttered streets of the destroyed Russian city. The Nazi led them to a camp on the outside of the city. 
	Aleksey grabbed Svetlana's PTRD while she radioed headquarters. He followed He followed two of the Germans while they went on patrol. Svetlana came back and took her rifle and handed Aleksey her AVS because it had a scope. He watched as she traced the Nazi patrol's path and when they were completely isolated she pulled the trigger killing one, Aleksey fired and killed the second one. 
	The loud reports alerted the other German soldiers, who clumsily grabbed Karabiner-98 rifles and tried to spot the Russians who had found them. Aleksey pulled up his PPS and began to cut down anyone who came near him and Svetlana while Ivan and Nikolas did the same on the other side of the camp. Two German Heckenschütze set up inside the camp covered by the tents and were taken down quickly by Svetlana. The Nazi soldiers began to fall underneath the deadly fire. 
	Aleksey stood and began to move silently through the snow side-stepping bullet riddled corpses and bullets the selves that thudded into the ground. He heard a soft rustling as Svetlana came up next to him with her PPSh raised They moved into the Nazi camp and surrounded the surprised German soldiers. 
	Aleksey moved into a command tent and pointed his gun at the German commanders. They looked at him surprised and raised their hands. Aleksey grabbed them and forced the out side where one of the commanders looked at the Nazis that were being lined up by Russian reinforcements. 
	The Commander looked confused and said. "Angriff die Russin. Werden liebend und zieben." 
	Aleksey looked at the German who had spoken and drew his TT-30 and fired the handgun at the commander's head. The Nazi soldiers looked shocked and watched as Aleksey holstered his pistol and looked at them covered in bits of brain and blood and asked. "Who else wants to speak?" 
	The Germans remained quiet as he pointed toward the city. They marched back to the city with Aleksey and his team taking up the rear with their SMGs at hand ready to kill any Nazis that fell out of line. They would be sent to special Gulag work camp in Siberia where they were to spend almost ten years, some never to return to Germany again.
	Aleksey was sent to Moscow to receive proper medical treatment for his bullet wound and get some rest before he was sent back out into the field.




* It is unknown how many Axis casualties there were. It is believed that the Axis powers suffered 850,000 casualties (killed, disabled, or captured) among all German armed forces branches, many of whom were POWs who died in Russian captivity between 1943 and 1955. Of the nearly 91,000 German POWs taken at the battle of Stalingrad, 27,000 died within weeks, and only 5,000 returned to Germany in 1955.*