Two versions of an encounter in WW2

This story is prompted by a tutorial request to write to sequences telling the same story but from different viewpoints.
The seed was an encounter between a British and German soldier in WW2.

The Tommy's Tale

The first time I saw a real kraut was exactly ten seconds before I killed one. He was standing to attention, with his arms behind his back and a blindfold over his eyes. I was creeping, quietly, through an empty village in Northern France, four or five miles east of my proper drop point, when I looked round the corner. There he was, blindfolded, with his grey uniform jacket opened wide, showing off a white vest and the top of his pale Aryan chest. An officer stood five feet away from him, his jodhpurs flapping in the stiff breeze, pointing a pistol at his head. From the officer’s movements and puffing cheeks I guessed that he was shouting, but the wind caught every word and threw it down the road away from me.

Shoot the bastard officer first. The revenant of my drill Sergeant shouted in my ear and my arms raised my rifle without conscious thought. I sighted, took a breath, let it out and squeezed the trigger. A hole appeared below the officer’s right ear and he dropped like a theatre curtain to the ground.

‘Who’s a useless pansy now, Sergeant?’

I ran forward in a crouch from my position, ejecting the spent shell as I went. The other soldier had fallen to his knees. As I approached him, I could hear him talking to himself. Hellfire, hellfire. It seemed an odd thing for a kraut to say.

Moving closer, I saw that he was slim and tall, with an ill-fitting uniform. Below the strip of cloth that wound around his head, his pale cheeks were covered with the soft honey down of youth. He curled further and further forward until he toppled over, cracking his head on the ground. I reached down and put my hand on his shoulder, feeling sorry for him. Touching his ear with the outside of my hand I said,

‘It’s alright. It’s alright.’

He rolled on to his back and shouted at me.

‘Nine. Nine. Bitter she’s meek neek’

‘Shush, shush. Quiet down.’

I pulled his blindfold off and his blue eyes flitted wildly across my face, and then looked at my uniform. He scanned down between my legs and gave a look of calm bewilderment. Behind me, lay the body of the officer.

The youth gestured to me to untie his hands then flinched as I reached down to my belt and pulled out my bayonet.

I cut him free and he stretched his hands to my face then kissed me on both cheeks..

‘Tanker’ he said ‘Tanker’, and then kissed me again.

This time, I dropped my rifle and my bayonet and kissed him back.

The Hitler Youth

I stood to attention as Officer Gerhard prepared to carry out my summary execution. He had placed one of his own handkerchiefs across my eyes. It was a nice touch, I suppose, but perhaps it met his own needs more than mine.

When he chose me for his personal assistant, I had assumed it was because he liked me. I was not wrong. We had been corrupted by the rampant power of our overlords and become decadent in our desires.

He justified himself of course in those tender moments after he had used me, with passages of Greek philosophy and stories of Thebes, but all of that was forgotten when he found me with a French boy in my bed. He raged and railed, calling me a pervert and a traitor then made me sign a confession on the spot before dragging me out into the street to shoot me.

Tears ran down his cheeks as he bound my hands behind my back and covered up my eyes.

‘Goodbye’ he said.

‘F___ you, you hypocrite’ I would have spat if my mouth hadn’t been so dry.

That set him off. I heard him step backwards and then he started shouting again, but the wind came up and the blindfold covered my ears so that his angry words were lost on me.

I did hear the shot, but when I did not feel the bullet, I thought his nerve had gone.

I waited for a moment, but my head swam and my legs trembled so much that I dropped to my knees.

Footsteps clattered along the road in front of me with the clicks and scuffs of a common soldier’s boot.

‘Help, Help’ I said

The footsteps closed right in to me and I expected to feel the sharp pain of a bullet or a bayonet. I curled forwards, making myself as small as I could, until my head cracked off the pavement. A strange voice said something I didn’t understand and a hand touched my shoulder. I rolled away from it, onto my back.

‘Please, Please don’t shoot me.’

The hand ripped away my blindfold and I looked into the face of an angel. Then I saw his khaki uniform and there on the ground behind him, was Officer Gerhard.

I worried at what he would do now, but tried to look friendly and gestured to him to cut my hands free. When his hand touched his bayonet hilt, my heart leapt and I fixed him with a pleading gaze. He cut me free and in my relief I kissed and thanked him. As he kissed me back, I wondered what was in his thoughts, but the sheer animal joy of living overtook me and I surrendered.

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The overall title for this should be Brokeback Arnhem reallly .....