Free Dig Two Graves: Revenge or Honor by Nick Vellis

under the pig’s noses.”
    “The rest of them are at the taverna. I could see twenty or twenty-five of them through a back window. They’re all drunk. The two girls are there too,” reported the third scout.
    The Greeks had evacuated all the villagers except for the two young women the Germans held in the taverna. We might have a chance , John thought.
    The enemy was being careless. Half the force was getting drunk, the sentries were undisciplined and the Greeks had slipped in, evacuated the villagers, and slipped out unseen. Keep drinking guys , John thought. Intelligence in place, John studied the dirt map. Looking at it, and then looking down on the village again, he began to devise a plan. Twenty minutes later, he circled up the men.
    Pantheras organized a coordinated attack on multiple locations. It would be fast and hopefully overwhelm the Germans. Pantheras paired his own men with the Andartes and assigned each their objectives. After the Americans synchronized their watches, the men settled down to try to grab a little sleep. They would attack the Germans just before dawn when the guards would be the least alert and others would be sound asleep.
     
    Zabt shook Pantheras awake just before 4 a.m. “L-T., it’s time,” he said.
    Pantheras looked at the radium glow of his watch’s hands in the murky predawn. He got up quietly, trying not to wake Ceres, who slept nearby. He looked at the sleeping boy. He hadn’t wanted to drag him along, but there was no place safe to leave him. The boy was an orphan and the Americans and the Andartes were his only family for now.
    Zabt, Christos, and Pantheras quickly organized the men. By 4:15 a.m., five groups moved silently into Parthos. The men used their knives to eliminate guards on the road and those by the vehicles.
    The machine gun nests in their sheltering houses were destroyed with hand grenades at the same moment the main force broke into the taverna from the front and the back, exactly on the half hour.
    The men in the taverna, ill prepared for an attack, never even returned fire. The attackers found the two village girls huddled together in a corner, fortunately separated from the Germans. All but three of the krauts were killed in the brief firefight.
    “Ah, John, we have prisoners," Christos said. “This is good thing. The people here will take care of them in their own way.”
    “Christos, we can’t leave them to the villagers,” John said, remembering what he had heard about villagers stoning, torturing, and even beheading Nazi prisoners in retaliation for their cruelty.
    “Then I’ll kill them,” said Christos.
    “No … If it has to be done, I’ll do it. I planned and led this attack. It’s my responsibility. I’ll see if they have any useful information first. Have the men gather the villagers and bring them here at sun up. They’ll want to see it,” Pantheras said.
    A few hours later, a new day’s sun shone brightly in the center of the village as the long terrifying night gave way to a cloudless morning. The villager’s suffering at the hands of the Nazis was over. Old women, clad in black from head to toe, as well as the few remaining men and boys gathered in the small square outside the taverna.
    Pantheras had gained little from the three prisoners. Knowing they’d be shot, they clammed up. He emerged from the building and was besieged by the village women wanting to exact their revenge. The other American soldiers came out of the tavern pushing the three Germans forward. The women spit and threw dirt from the hard-packed path on the prisoners until a dust cloud obscured the scene.
    “Against that wall,” Pantheras shouted at the three men in German.
    The frightened men took their places against a wall, knowing what was coming. When Pantheras charged his Thompson, the men fell to the ground begging for their lives as the sea of black clad women parted. So much for the master race, Pantheras thought.
    “John, let me do this,”