Upfall

"You mean the Odyssey? answered Chaim, whose mediocre high school education had taught him little of interest. "I saw a cartoon about that once."

"No, the Iliad. It's the story before the Odyssey. "

"Beseder" yawned Chaim.

"What about the movie — Troy — did you ever see that?"

"The one about the Spartans?"

"No. With Brad Pitt."

"I hate that guy."

"Me too—but did you see it?"

"Yeah, I think so" said Chaim, tossing away a last inedible bite of his raspberry flavored bar. "It was long. Wasn‘t the guy from Lord of the Rings in that one too?"

"I don't know. The point is that movie is sort of like what's happened to us."

"What? Fighting with swords and shields—running around in sandals? Sorry lieutenant, I don‘t get it."

"The soldiers of the Iliad are on a quest—to rescue Helen—but the quest is false, created through the malevolence of the gods. They‘re tossed into a war for the gods‘ entertainment, but that war takes on its own meanings for them anyway Do you understand what I‘m getting at?"

"Not really. If I had to choose, this is more like the cartoon" said Chaim dubiously.

Shapira smiled and left the commando sergeant t0 doze under the tree. He met Sandler resting a few dozen meters away. Together they roused Sandler's motley looking crew and with Shapira‘s men and detailed the plan of attack. It was simple enough said one man—shoot then run.

Two hours later Shapira woke Chaim. It was close to midnight and moonless as they set off for Belzec. They moved through blackened forest with the practiced steps of woodland creatures, ready to dodge an SS patrol or ambush—but the Germans were not about. At two in the morning they saw the lights of Belzec burning ahead of them. For another hour the force infiltrated to positions in the treeline less than a hundred meters from the nearest German trenches.

There was nothing subtle about the attack. Shapira had read enough about World War II combat to know that the Germans frequently used massed machineguns as a kind of light artillery to beat down enemy positions. Now he turned the tactic on them, Four of Sandler's MG 34s opened up at on the German trenches, knocking down patrolling guards and pinning the SS in their positions, while two others covered the flanks. When a German machinegun responded, Chaim put a 40mm grenade on it, and repeated the process, until he'd used all four, and took up sniping at the Germans with his Tavor. Shapira spent a couple of minutes in the treeline sniping as well, shooting at men he suspected were officers or squad leaders.

Three minutes after the first rounds were fired Shapira led his teams forward. They tossed grenades at the thin German wire and then attacked through it. Here and there a man got hung up, and one of Shapira's sappers was shot down, but the rest made it through the beat-up German positions. Shapira ran ahead of his teams into the camp. Without pausing to return German fire, the demolition teams followed Shapira as he headed straight for the gas chambers beyond the German forward trench line. Two more men were hit along the way. One fell to the ground, the other blew up when bullets struck his Molotov, briefly setting him before the flames detonated his grenade bundle.

Shapira and most of his sappers reached the engines, huddling behind the machines as bullets richocetted around them. They began to unload their charges, when, as Shapira expected, the SS counter-attacked, The assault was swift and violent, but Sandler's hammering machineguns made it difficult for the Germans reach around to the back of the gas complex. Shapira's worked breathlessly to attach their charges as tracers arched around them and men on both sides shouted and screamed. Shapira kept his own charges packed, and moved among the sapper teams in the lee of the gas buildingsl He urged the men to stay calm and focused, lest they fail to set the charges properly, either blowing themselves up, or rendering the explosives inert. Sapper teams set the main charges under the engines, and tossed their grenade bundles and Molotovs at the buildings, as they had practiced. Then they ran back for the treeline, unspoiling detonating cord along the way. Once the guessed they were twenty meters away, the sappers hit the ground and detonated the charges.