Sasha

1943. World War II. Winter. The USSR border. The forest.
      Sasha was an exemplary Soviet scout, whose operations almost never failed. He had been taken to the front away from his mother and father, for which he hated the Germans even more.
      "Filthy fascists... we'll drive them off our land and then we'll live... I'll go back home to my mama, she must miss me so... maybe I'll even visit the neighboring kolkhoz, stop by Grandma Nyura's, the poor old woman is all alone..." Sasha muttered, almost in a whisper, somewhere between cursing and dreaming. Suddenly, he noticed steam curling in the forest nearby, under a spreading spruce, as if from someone's breath.
      Clutching his PPSh with frostbitten fingers, he tensed up, expecting an attack.
      Once he realized he was in no immediate danger, he began to slowly approach the source of this mysterious steam.
      Looking around, he saw a man in a German uniform on the snow. Barely alive, wounded, hardly breathing and lying motionless. His dark grey uniform, so starkly different from the RKKA uniforms, stood out too strongly against the white snow.
      Sasha immediately aimed his submachine gun at him, ready to fire. For some reason, the soldier was convinced that this was all a trap set by the enemy.
      "Steh auf, Fritz! Komm schon!" (Get up, Fritz, come on!) Sasha shouted in broken German, using the few phrases he had managed to learn. He hoped the German would jump up and start attacking.
      But there was no answer.
      The young man's hands relaxed, loosening his tight grip on the submachine gun. He looked at the soldier lying in the snow, realizing to his horror that he felt sorry for him. This was just another child, torn away from his parents, who likely didn't want to be here either. Or perhaps he didn't want to hurt Soviet soldiers at all? How was Sasha to know?
      Why was he lying here alone, without his unit? Maybe he'd been shot. Or maybe he simply couldn't go any further because he had been wounded before.
      Sasha sighed heavily and, slinging the PPSh over his shoulder, knelt down in front of the German. Steam was still coming from the wounded man's mouth, meaning he was alive.
      Shedding some of his excess gear, the youth began to rummage through his bags, searching among various items.

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