Travis Tufo - Red Sky

Riding in the back of a jeep returning from his previous mission, Joseph read the letter aloud as he wrote it on the sheet of tattered paper he had been holding. He sat there in his blood soaked Soviet uniform with his helmet on his lap and fifteen German dog tags inside of it. His helmet was dented, scratched and had a bullet hole in it. It had the name Maria carved into it, but you could only see it if you looked hard enough through the dried blood and scratches. Joseph was a Soviet soldier who stood 6-feet and was pushing 245 pounds of solid muscle.

He owned a farm where all he did was physical labor, making him the muscular soldier he was. He lived on his farm with his beloved wife Maria.

Drafted into the war, he became notorious for being a skilled sniper, brutal killer, and an unmatched reconnaissance leader. He was more of a mercenary than a soldier, due to the fact that he was put into a battalion where his officer would assign him and his fellow soldiers certain missions.

Those who survived were sent to do another until they were all dead. For this reason, Joseph met, and shortly thereafter had to bury many of his own friends. Everyone in his starting squad had died, along with the next three squads. Remarkably, he always managed to find his way back alive to his officer, who gave him his next mission with a smirk on his face. Joseph even out lived his starting officer who died in a plane that was shot down by German anti-air cannons. Due to his officer’s death, Joseph was transferred over to another battalion that functioned in a similar way.

The commanding officer would give the soldiers their missions and hoped they returned for another. The soldiers slept in tents around their campsite in a rural area surrounded by trees.

The sunlight never seemed to hit this campsite; it was always enshrouded in dark grey clouds covering a red sky. It was an eerie place to set up, but it worked. As for the commanding officer, he had his own personal quarters in a small building. Inside the building were two rooms, one with a desk where the officer handed out missions to his soldiers and another with a bed where he would rarely sleep.

It was in this battalion Joseph would meet a man equally as savage as himself who would become his best friend—a man by the name of Vladimir. He was a huge man; when he stood next to Joseph; he made Joseph look like a young boy. He was close to seven feet and weighed no less than 280 pounds. Jokingly, but often in a serious way his squad mates referred to him as Vlad the Impaler because he would often de-limb and brutally mutilate German soldiers with his bayonet. For every kill Vlad had with a bullet, he had three more with his bayonet, which he called his “dear Sasha”.

It only seemed right that these two almost inhumane brutes would become great friends and would fight for each other with their own lives at stake. Mission after mission these men would return to their officer, eagerly awaiting their next chance to kill.

Joseph and Vladimir did everything their commanding officer assigned them, from killing multiple guards outside an enemy encampment allowing a battalion of Soviet soldiers to enter unseen, to hunting down and murdering German officers and sergeants in order to demoralize the Nazis.

Neither of them knew the meaning of mercy, which meant gallons of blood were often spilled to complete a mission, necessary or not. They were not against killing a woman or a child if it meant they got to return to their commanding officer with the dog tags he asked for.

The war almost became a game to them; they would see who could collect more of the metallic ID’s by killing the most men, or even who could kill the most unarmed people in a town with nothing but their bayonets. They became so notorious in their ruthless kills that their names would be in German newspapers offering rewards for their heads; later their names were in newspapers telling Germans to stay clear of them.

Joseph only fought in this war to once again be with his wife Maria.

After hundreds of missions and even more Germans murdered along the way, his commanding officer, Viktor, presented Joseph with the opportunity to see her again.

The day after Joseph returned from a mission where he was ordered to track down a German medical caravan and “demobilize” every single truck, Viktor entered his tent to speak to him.

Viktor watched as Joseph bandaged his thigh, which had received a bullet wound from a German MP40 sub-machine gun.

“Hello, Joseph. I see you have returned from your trip,” Viktor spoke in his faded, rough voice.

He paused to cough, as he was an avid smoker. No sooner after he finished coughing he began to light up a large cigar.

“You’re lucky that bullet only nicked your femur bone, “Viktor said with a smirk.

He was an older man with all grey hair, his uniform always kept slick and neat. He liked being in power and always strived for his soldiers to acknowledge his superiority over them. A scar ripped through the top of his forehead down through his milky white left eye and ended in a small hook midway down his cheek.

“Sir, don’t you have something better to do? Like go order some soldiers to kiss your ass before you send them to their death? ” Joseph asked sarcastically with a smile on his face. Ignoring the pain in his thigh, he stood up to be eye level with Viktor.

“You better watch what you say to me, or I might have to refrain from informing you of the good news I have been waiting to tell you,” Viktor responded as he blew a huge smoke cloud into Joseph’s face. Joseph’s eyebrows rose. He was clearly interested in what Viktor had to say.

Ignoring the smoke he asked, “What are you talking about old man? The only time you gave me good news was the day you told me the bullet I took right in my chest wasn’t fatal.”

“Ahhh… yes I remember that day. Well, if you weren’t such a soft solider I wouldn’t have felt the need to tell you that you were going to be all right.” Viktor laughed and paused to cough once again. He stopped to gather his composure before continuing.

“But seriously Joseph, I do have rather good news for you. I have thought for quite a long time now that you have done more than your fair share for the motherland. You will go down in history as a hero to the Russians and a nightmare to the Germans forever.

Stories will be told of Joseph the Tyrant to dirty little German boys and girls before they lay down to sleep in the rubble of where their streets used to be.”

“All right sir, I get it. Cut to the chase!” Joseph said, eagerly awaiting this news Viktor spoke of.

“Patience is the only thing you never learned in the military. My news is that if you do one more mission for me, one simple mission that requires little to no effort for you, I will let you go. ”

A silence filled the tent. The two men stood there, eyes locked.