NO MAN'S LAND
By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM
WWW.TOMMYHAWKSROGUEMOON.COM
I raced down the trail, the German soldiers only a short distance behind me. I couldn't tell for certain that they were chasing me...but they were running, too! God, was there a place I could hide? Hide and be sure, really sure, that they couldn't find me?
There was a reason they called this "no man's land," and it wasn't because neither side held the area, it was that our two forces, American and German, were interpenetrated here, you could run into a German patrol one moment, and then further on toward enemy lines, find an American patrol. Every man was a potential enemy, every gun a potential threat, every bullet able to steal your life from you. Every shot you heard, it made you startle, made you fear, made you aware of how tenuous a thread held your life above the hell that waited beneath you; sometimes you felt the flames as they licked at your heels...like now.
This was the purgatory where I was now...stranded out in no man's land. I had started out part of a recon patrol, a three-man team, just out to search and identify movements of the enemy. The idea was just to go, look and come back, not to take on the German army, we were to run if confronted with any force of any size. Look, see, come back alive. Well, George and Fred were now captured...I hoped! The Germans sometimes shot scouts; God, I didn't dare get captured as well! The German men behind me, they must be chasing me! Why else would they be running, in my direction?
Okay, I was in trouble. I had to hide, fast! But where? There were trees and there were bushes, but they were all singletons, no groups of bushes anywhere, no trees that weren't surrounded by a wide patch of bare grass, yellowed and laying down as the result of the hot summer! This wasn't wild country, this was well-tilled Italian countryside, lying fallow only a short time, I had even found gardens which had been planted before the residents had to flee, before the armies met and clashed around them. Before they had become part of no man's land.
Those Germans couldn't be more than a hundred yards behind me. If I ever hit a large meadow or such, I would be seen and shot, probably not even hearing the bullet before it struck my flesh and took my life!
A house. A peasant hut! God, yes, anything! The Germans would search it, but if there were people in the house, they could help me hide. The locals were all rabidly anti-German, I had at least that on my side. Except sometimes the Germans shot peasants for hiding American soldiers, and sometimes the peasants would attempt to win favor from the Germans by pretending to hide an American soldier, and then call for the Germans, point us out! A friend of mine had been captured like that; if he hadn't escaped soon after by dint of the luck of a fortuitous airstrike and the confusion that caused, if he hadn't escaped, he would either be en route to a German prison now, or there, or dead, shot in the back of the head and left lying in a ditch.
But the house sat at the edge of a sizeable meadow, cattle grazing in the fields. If they didn't hide me, I had no hope of escape now!
Panting heavily, I got up to the door and hit the wood, rat-at-at-at-at-at!
"Sì? Chi è esso?" came the voice. (Yes, who is it?)
"Sono un americano, prego aiuto!" I answered. (I'm an American, please help me!)
As I hoped, the door opened quickly. A young man was there, dressed in rags of clothing. "Come in, quick!" he said to me in creditable English. I was glad of that, I had used up about one-fourth of all the Italian I spoke!
I went inside and he closed the door, plunging us into darkness. The only light was from the fire burning in the fireplace, above which hung a small pot, his dinner, most likely. The sun would go down before long.
"The Germans are coming." I said to him, and his face showed only concern for me. I noticed then how young he was, how handsome his face was, broad with rounded, ruddy cheeks and bright, deep brown eyes that matched his deep brown hair, nearly black. "Can you hide me?"
"Si, si!" he said quickly. "This way."
As I had hoped, he had created a hiding space. Many of these people who lived in the lines of war did so, a place to keep things they didn't want soldiers to steal. In his case, it was a large box. He pulled it away from the wall...and there was a space behind it that must have been dug into the wall and floor. About the size and depth of a grave...but I was glad enough to crawl down inside. He shoved the box back over me and I was plunged into darkness.
Then I waited. Waited for the knock and the sounds of German voices.
They didn't come. I don't know if the Germans went on by the house, or if they weren't chasing me after all. There is such a "fog of war" that you live with while in the front lines. You do what you can with what you know...and maybe twenty years later, you can read a book and find out what was really going on.
After what must have been an hour, my rescuer said, "It is dark now, and all is silent outside." He didn't say that in perfect English, it was a mixture, and I had to ask him to repeat himself, this was how we talked, me sometimes having to guess at his meaning or try with words of my own, but I'm not going to slow things down here by making you listen to all that.
"Okay." I said.
"Are you hungry?" he asked me.
"Yes." I said, and quickly reached for my pack. These peasants didn't draw a ration like we did, I would pay for sharing his soup or whatever by giving him one of my C-rations, and both of us would water at the mouth at the thought of what the other was offering.
The pan contained some kind of meat (I didn't ask what kind, for fear he'd tell me!) mixed in with some coarsely ground wheat, making a sort of mash. It needed salt, but it was hot and it was filling, and it wasn't a damned C-ration, I gratefully accepted the half he dished out and ate it with the utter lack of grace that only a soldier on the front line can get away with!
Then I offered the next thing that makes us American soldiers so darned beloved by the people of Italy...a cigarette. I only had six, but I gave him one like I had a whole damned pack of them.
He fished out a coal from the fire and we used it to light our cigarettes. He sucked on his gratefully and blew it out with the reverence it deserved. "Ah, that is good." He said. "It has been a year since I last had a cigarette, and that was a damned German cigarette!"
I nodded and we finished our smokes in silence. He leaned back and began to rub at his crotch, not looking at me, not looking at it, it was like he wasn't aware he was doing it. He wasn't looking at it and not at me...but I couldn't look at anything else.
God! That was all I needed, to let this guy know I was gay! There were men in the Army I knew and could talk to...a couple. There had been one guy who had let me play with his cock late at night. I had been able to do that three times...then he had pushed me away. That had been the totality of my sexual experience so far. Putting the move on an Italian peasant was just beyond the pale of possibility. What if he said no? What if he told my commander! I could go to jail!
"Thank you for hiding me." I said as I finished mine.
"You will stay here tonight?" He said to me, seeming surprised.
"I should try to slip back to my own side tonight." I said. "Less likely to hit a patrol at night."
"If you feel that is best." he said. "But I was hoping you would stay."
And now he did look down at his hand at his crotch, then back to me, and his tongue ran over his lips in an insolent gesture.
My stomach promptly tied itself into a knot! Oh, God! So long! So long!
I crept over toward him like an alligator, like a whipped dog, on my stomach, and he just smiled as I reached him and pulled myself up his legs like I was climbing out of quicksand. Like he was my lifeline, like he was my salvation, and I was rescued once again.
When I reached for the top of his pants, he said to me, "No, no!"
I looked up, startled.
"Kiss me." He said. "First, you kiss me."
Those lips, God, yes, those lips! I was trembling when my lips got up high enough to meet them. He was letting me kiss him! He was kissing me back!
I damned near came just from that kiss. I had never kissed a man before, not like this. He was giving himself to me in that kiss, really giving me everything I wanted, no hesitation, no guilt, nothing but him, the young man he was, giving himself to me!
I felt the warmth of his lips on mine, I felt the heat of his breath from his nostrils as he breathed in and out, brushing my cheek, soft as the back of a mother's hand upon her sleeping child. And his hands went around me, I felt his hands on my back, God, yes, on my back, he was holding me, he was holding me!
At that moment, I could have died and still been happy. It was such a relief to have someone in my arms, wanting me, it was like just this kiss, this holding me and being held by me, was enough!
But he pulled away from me, smiling, me able to see his face now only by the firelight, and he said, "Make love to me, American. I want to feel you inside of me."
I was panting like I'd run hard and fast, panting harder than I'd been while running from that German patrol. "Yeah, sure, sure." I said in hoarse whispers.
"You want to make love to me, yes?" he said.
"Yes, God, yes!" I said.
"Then undress me." He said. "I am yours this night. All yours."
God, my fingers were twitching so much, it was a wonder I managed to get his pants down. He was in rags, I think I have said already, but the pants were mostly together at his waist, they were tied with a thin rope that he had threaded through them by punching holes in the material, that puzzled me, but then I got to the knot and had to pull that apart. I'm not sure how he managed them when he had to take them down, but the knot was tight and didn't want to come off.
But I persevered, with the treasure of the ages waiting for me on the other side of that knot, I had all the energy I needed and more, I got that knot untied at last, and then I was able to slide them down, his legs were thin and white in the light and between them...God! Between them!
I shuddered as I reached for it, that tower of manhood there, and his smile like the sun above it, guiding me there. When my hand reached it, felt the warmth and the power of it, he gave out a small groan and he said, "Kiss it for me, American, kiss it for me."
Kiss it! God, I just wanted to take it all down. I'd heard about oral sex, the men of my company talking about it, about the hookers they had been with and how they had been brought to pleasure by their mouths. Listened so intently, wishing it had been me instead of some filthy woman in a dirty bed. I knew just what to do, and I did it, I got that cock of his into my mouth and deep inside and the taste of it was just so good...I could have died in this moment and been nothing but happy.
His hands at my head pulled me up, my lips clinging to his prick, and then he released me and I moved back down and the sound of his happiness that oozed out of him in the low tone of a groan, that was like it threw a switch in my brain, and I was moving up and down on his prong like the best damned cocksucking whore back in Naples the guys had bragged about.
"Oh, oh, oh, love me, American soldier, love me!" gasped out my still-nameless friend (we hadn't given each other our names, a caution of war, maybe afterwards, in the moments of trust after making love, I would give him my name and take his in exchange). "I need to feel you inside me, please, I need you inside me!"
Now it was my pants I was pushing down and my hands at least knew how to do this, and as I did this, he turned and got onto all fours, looked back at me, that smile, that beautiful Italian smile, it called to me like a beacon into a safe harbor!
I was inexperienced, as I have said, I pushed my cock against his ass without lubrication and maybe he didn't know any better himself, or he had enough experience to let him take me without undue pain, I don't know, all I know is that he opened himself for me and I slid into his ass so easily. The intense agony of the pleasure of that simple act was excruciating, I felt like I was about to come again, this time for real, my balls were boiling angrily, clutching my shaft.
"Oh, oh, yes, love me, American, love me but slowly." he said. "Let me feel your man within me, let me feel it, let me love it as you love me."
It was agony, I say, to not just burst into his ass, but somewhere within myself, I managed to pull upon some unknown reserve of control and I began to move back and forth, my cock was screaming at me with every move, the tight sphincter was mangling me with joy, and I still, somehow, held back.
"Ah, now, faster, American, fuck me faster." he said. He said "fick," the German word, actually, but I forgave him that; if he'd used the Italian word, I probably wouldn't have known it.
I began to fuck him faster, the joy of my prong was an overwhelming burden to me, I was awash in an ocean of boiling lust, my very self was a piece of flotsam upon the waves that were crashing all around, I could only endure this. Had the German soldiers entered the hut at that moment, they could have shot me and I would have died happily, never noticing as death overtook me.
As it was, I was buffeted by my pleasure and it was my will that kept me from creaming into him, somehow, I held back until his own body spasmed and he groaned in his own orgasm, and then, only then, I told my cock to go ahead.
With a rush of energy that I can only describe by saying it's like having a train suddenly rush past you, very close, that you hadn't noticed until then, suddenly your entire world is sound and the wind and the noise and the light, and the you that is you is somewhere inside of that, lost, overwhelmed, buried within the events around you.
And then I came and it was like an immense draining of myself, my maelstrom of senses all rushed out of me, leaving my brain and my feet as they swarmed toward my cock, turned themselves into my sperm and spurted out of my cock into his warm asshole.
Drained out of me, everything drained out of me, and I fell limply over him when I was finished, tried feebly to make it loving, make it romantic, but it was all exhaustion, and I could only grope him and hope he translated it wrongly into loving caresses, not anaemic motions of my fingers upon his sweat-drenched body.
"Ah, yes, American soldier, yes." he said to me as I managed to crawl off of him and lay alongside. "We are good together, yes?"
"Yeah, oh, yeah!" I said.
"You will stay the night with me now, yes?"
"Yes, oh, yes!" I said.
"Good." he said to me. "You sleep now, next to me. No, don't get dressed, I want to hold you while you sleep." And he made his meaning clear as he grabbed hold of my sticky prong and kissed me, wishing me a beautiful night's sleep in his fluid Italian syllables.
My sleep then was the most restful I'd had in some time, I had so many dreams, all of them happy and carefree and living the life that others had always promised, always had, a home for the two of us, living and loving and being together. Beautiful, beautiful dreams!
Perhaps it was the long discipline of the Army, perhaps I felt/heard/sensed something with that unknown psychic power a soldier on the front line develops...or dies for lack of. I woke up at what I could feel was just before sunrise, and I was alone in the bed.
That sense told me to go look out of the hut and I did, and there was my Italian friend, and he was talking to a German soldier, and I saw as he pointed up to the hut.
If there hadn't been a back door to the hut, one I hadn't noticed in the night, I would have been captured, but as it was, I raced out the back door, not stopping for my pack, nor my pants, racing bareassed, wearing only my shirt, across the Italian countryside and this time the Germans were truly after me.
When I heard the bullets, I thought I was dead. But the bullets were American ones, and they were fired to rescue me, and I was then back among friends, a company not my own, but American.
"Where the hell are your pants?" a sergeant asked me when we were all safe.
"Back in that hut up the road, along with my pack and my gun." I said. "It was run out here bare-naked or be captured by the Jerries, and so here I am."
He smiled at me and said, "Then let's go get your pants if we can."
My gun was gone as was my pack, but my pants, at least, they had left behind. The Italian wasn't in the hut, but I hadn't expected he would be. He would be somewhere, with the Germans or hiding nearby.
I got my pants on and said, "I sure am glad you guys came along. I would have been turned in by the farmer that owns this place, me thinking he was a friend."
"You have to be careful here." the sergeant agreed. "You can't hate them too much, it isn't like we can offer them any protection against the Germans here."
"Yeah." I agreed. "No man's land is hell."
"It can be." the sergeant said to me. He put his arm around me and it felt so warm there. "We'll have to get you back to your company, won't we?"
"Yeah." I said, looking at him and he was smiling at me. It was a good smile, maybe more. I carefully put a hand on his leg, just on top of it, nothing more, and the smile got bigger.
"Then again, you can stay with us a few days, meet up with your company later." the sergeant amended. "We're about to make a push against the German lines, I hear, so we can use an extra fighter, if you want to stay with us a few days until you can rejoin your company." He licked his lips and looked down at my crotch, and I knew that he was remembering me without my pants. Licked his lips again and said, "We'll share with you until we can get you outfitting."
"Thanks, Sarge." I said. "I'd like that." My hand dared to squeeze his leg and his hand squeezed my shoulder.
"Hey, Sarge!" one of the men of his company said, "We'd better haul ass."
"Sure." the sergeant said. "By the way, Private, what's your name?"
"Kelly." I said. "William Kelly."
"I'm Sergeant Paul Longstreet." he said. "Let's go. We got to get the hell out of no man's land."
I followed him, my heart pounding, and I dared to hope. Maybe he could be the one, the man that meant my lonely days were over.
Maybe I was finally going to get out of no man's land in more ways than one.
THE END
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