by
Nearing the end of WWII, Lt. Benjamin Pope, co-pilot of a B-17 bomber based at Framlingham, England, has fallen hopelessly in love with Captain Milton Sexton, his commanding officer. The two men engage in sexual relations off base, but when Benjamin demands more than casual sex, Milton makes it clear that two men cannot cohabitate together in a committed relationship citing the probable loss of their careers, persecution from the law and alienation by their families. Feeling rejected, Benjamin swears off love to focus all of his energy on his job as a bomber pilot, until his final bombing mission with Captain Sexton ends in disaster over Nazi occupied Holland. After baling out of their crippled bomber, the two young lovers are the only members of a ten-man crew who escape immediate capture by the enemy. But their adversity is just beginning as the brave men and women of the Dutch underground render aid and shelter along the arduous journey from the Dutch-German border to Amsterdam where the plan is to rendezvous with a British submarine that will return them back to England to rejoin the war.
- 1 To Be Read list
Publisher: Independently Published
Genres:
Pairings: M-M
Heat Level: 3
Romantic Content: 4
Ending: Click here to reveal
Character Identities: Gay
Protagonist 1 Age: 18-25
Protagonist 2 Age: 18-25
Tropes: In Uniform, Love Can Heal / Redemption
Word Count: 33,670
Setting: Holland and Germany WWII
Languages Available: English
We traveled at a high rate of speed for perhaps twenty to thirty minutes before the BMW at long last decelerated, tires squealing on the pavement as the car came to an abrupt halt in front of the Gestapo Headquarters. Only then did the Gestapo agent sitting next to me remove the barrel of his Luger pressed firmly into my right temple. Both men exited the car and hauled me out of the backseat. I lost my balance. The devils didn’t wait for me to recover. Instead, while lying on the sidewalk, I received a jack boot to the gut. “Get to your feet, Schweinhund,” [pig-dog], one of them shouted. Impatient, they took hold of my arms and dragged me along, my back scraping against the unforgiving pavement.
READ MOREOnce inside the building, they dropped me to the floor. Afterward one of the Nazis snatched the black hood from my head. I still hadn’t caught my breath from the boot to the gut and lay gasping for air. Eyes acclimating, I looked around and saw many people sobbing openly, their hands bound in iron manacles, sitting on the cold cement floor as they waited to be processed. The place reminded me more of a prison than any kind of police station.
I suppose I must have been considered a prisoner of considerably higher value, because I was marched to the head of the line and hurled into a dank, dim cell that smelled of urine and feces. Blood-curdling screams set my pulse racing. I felt a sensation of overwhelming doom. Haunting wails and pleas for mercy rang out from holding cells throughout the cellblock where I awaited interrogation. I was never particularly religious, but like many people in dire straits, I found myself praying for a miracle. Short of one, I knew I wouldn’t be spared the Gestapo’s monstrous proficiency in torture. My legs crisscrossed, I sat on the frigid putrid floor wondering where they had taken my Miltie, dreading to think what they might be doing to him.
Within an hour at most, two guards escorted me down a long corridor and placed me in a well-lit room that wasn’t very large but contained an immense desk with three straight-back chairs arranged side by side in front of it. One of two guards gestured to the far right chair and barked ‘sitzin.’ Still trembling with cold and fright, I sat down, my hands still secured behind my back. In an adjacent room, Kate Smith’s A Merry American Christmas blared over the radio, at times obscured by the howling laughter of another gang of jack-booted thugs happily toiling away at their sadistic profession. Suddenly there was a loud crash. I flinched. The entire room shook as if someone had been thrown against the adjoining wall. Listening to stifled punches and slaps with Christmas songs as backdrop was something out of nightmares. At that moment a terrible thought shot into my head. What if the person in the other room was Miltie? My pulse thundered loudly in my ears, my silent supplications for the beating to cease fell on deaf ears.
COLLAPSE
