@CWO:
This was an awesome read - Thanks Marc.
Glad you liked it. The story reminded me a bit of a 1942 British film I have on DVD: “Went the Day Well?”, a movie about Nazi paratroopers in British uniforms who infiltrate an unsuspecting village in England (with the help of a local traitor) for a secret mission, then put it under military occupation when their cover is blown. It’s astonishingly frank and uncompromising in depicting the way war inflicts brutalities on innocent civilians and on the way these civilians respond with equal brutality to defend themselves. The scene that always sticks in my mind is the one in which a sweet little old lady talks pleasantly to a German soldier until he’s lulled into carelessness, then throws a jarful of pepper into his eyes and kills him with a meat cleaver while he’s writing in agony.
It’s a great firm isn’t it Marc … and still very “fresh” fit its age.