BALTRUM

June 2nd, 1942.

Night watch was my least favorite part of my time while deployed here. We’d been stationed in Baltrum, Germany on this oceanfront for about three weeks up until this point, and the monotony of it continued to bore me. The only thing that held my interest long enough to keep entire boredom from entering was seeing the beautiful view of the ocean from our watch post. It reminded me a lot of home.

I flicked my wrist around to check the time on my watch. “3:00” it read, barely being able to make out the time. A.M., to be exact. The only thing keeping this stand, which was an elevated boxed-in sniper post, lit whatsoever were the dim street lights behind us a few houses back. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to keep you from tripping over yourself. They wanted to keep the post out of clear view from any potential ships or planes as best as they could, so I understood why it didn’t have lights built in. We were given small flashlights, but they were to only be used if we had to notify the house if we saw something we didn’t like (three flashes through the left side window), or if it was a dire emergency (5 flashes). I let what light I had hit the latch that revealed the ladder to get down. I flipped it open, grabbed the rifle we used for the designated watch shift, a Lee-Enfield with a medium-range scope on it, and slid down.

My bunkmate, Harry, walked out the house we had been given to stay in for the time we’re here. “Slow night, huh?” he whispered.

“You already know. Not much has happened since we got here,” I whispered back. “I don’t think we’re getting much else other than roaring waters and the smell of dead fish while we’re here.”

“You don’t think so?”. “Sarge said this spot isn’t being heavily sought after by the Germans, they don’t see it has high priority. We’re most likely moving out of here by the end of the week”.

I handed Harry the rifle and looked out to the sea. “I’ll miss this view though.”

Harry sighed. “Me too, Hoffa, me too”. I smack his shoulder, and walk past him to the house. The boys thought I looked like Jimmy Hoffa a bit, so I got stuck with it, as much as I didn’t care for it. Name wasn’t Jimmy either. It was Charlie. Charlie Griff to be exact. But I guess it could’ve been worse.

Walking through the door, I saw the other two soldiers we were stationed with, Pat and Quincy, asleep in their respective bunks. The floorboards creaked ever so slightly as I moved over to my bunk. I unbuckled my helmet and laid it on the floor next to me. My feet felt like two cinder blocks, having shuffled around in these boots all day, as I swung them up onto the bed. It was better to keep them on all night while you had the night watch shift so you didn’t have to go through the hassle of lacing and unlacing them every single time your shift hit, but the helmet wasn't required when you were in your resting period. On the nightstand laid our shift log. It was a small notebook given to us by our sergeant, used to make sure we had taken our proper shifts and rests for the watch. I grabbed the pen sitting beside it and wrote down “3:00 AM” in the box designated for the return time, and initialed next to it “CG”. It was set up as a multicolumn chart – two rows for the times of shift starting and ending, and the last column initialing for whoever’s time block it was. I get why the sergeant did it, but we weren’t children, and it felt like we were back in school again.

I laid my head back into the slim pillow I had, of which each man was given at least one. Quincy got the nicest one somehow. His felt like the softest bag of feathers you’ve ever felt in your entire life, and I mean it. He never complains of neck pains, and I’m jealous, I’ll tell ya. Having grown up with a slight curvature in my neck, I could’ve used it. He wouldn’t budge on giving it up. We all tried to trade for it, but I don’t blame him. He slept on hay a lot at home, according to him at least. His family owned a dairy farm, and he tended to the cows a lot. So much so, he said he barely ever saw his room with how much he worked. So to him, this pillow made up for all the hell and brimstone we were put through in boot camp. This slim, cheap cotton feeling pillow did for now. Maybe I’d get a new one when we get moved to our next outpost, wherever that would be.

Laying the backs of my hands over my eyes, I tried to fall back to sleep as best as I could. It was awfully tough with Pat, to be honest. He was a loud snorer, and I mean loud. But it would come and go in droves. You wouldn’t think this scrawny, nerdy kid would be able to snore like someone’s drunk uncle after a couple rounds at the local dive bar, but here we were. It didn’t seem too bad tonight, but we’d said that five nights in the past, and four out of those five ended up being bad nights for sleep for us. He’s a good kid though. We all liked him a lot.

I finally drifted off, and it seemed like it was going to be an awfully quiet, peaceful rest of the night. Pat’s snoring didn’t actually end up being nearly as bad as we thought it would be. As I laid there, something was telling me to wake up. It wasn’t noisy, and temperatures didn’t rise or drop. I raised my head up, slightly irritated. I had been looking forward to this nap the moment I climbed into the tower at 12:00 sharp. I looked around the room, and nothing stood out. I stared at Pat for a second. He was silent. Quincy hadn’t made a peep either. It must’ve been the wind maybe, we were on an oceanfront, after all. As I started to lean my head back, I saw it.

Three flashes of light coming through the side window, glistening off the metal portions of my boots.

My heart sank, and my adrenaline spiked. My bed sat directly opposite from the window, so if any light were to come through, it would essentially be hitting me first. We hadn’t had to use that signal yet for anything, and I mean anything. “Shit,” I whispered to myself. Snatching my helmet off the ground, I fast-walked my way to the door, as quietly as I could. Sneaking out the door, and slowly closing it behind me, I made my way over to the tower.

Climbing up to the top of the ladder, I made my way directly into the perch, since Harry left the door wide open. “Jesus man, what took you so long?” he scoffed at me.

“Why, how many times did you hit that signal?” I asked as I latched the door shut behind me.

“Five man, five. Listen I don’t know what to think, but I need you to look at this,” he whispered as he handed me his pair of binoculars. “Look at 2 o’clock, out northeast, past our docked boats.” Harry pointed slightly up and right., “Into the clouds there.”

I tried to focus on the clouds the best I could. I didn’t see much of anything. “What am I looking for exactly?” I said as I kept looking around.

“There were these three little lights that kept…surveying…us? I don’t even know if that’s what you would call it.”.

“So there were three lights, and they were ‘surveying’ us? Like they were watching us, and perhaps examining us?”

“Yes!” he loudly whispered.

I looked around...and looked…and looked. Nothing. I pulled the binoculars down, and pushed them a bit lightly into Harry’s chest. “I think you’re seeing things,” I whispered.

“No no, I’m serious! And they kept moving side to side, and the lights were changing and everything, I’m serious!” Harry begged.

“I think what you need is some sleep, maybe I’ll cover the last hour of your watch early for ya,” I said, as I went to grab the latch to the door.

Before I could, Harry grabbed my arm and violently yanked me back over. I stood there a little flabbergasted, but before I could get a word out, he shoved the binoculars back into my hands, turned my head to the area we were looking at before, and said: “Look...there they are.”

I looked through the lenses, prepared to prove him wrong. Until my stomach dropped. He was right, way out in the further reaches in the skyline were these bright, but very fine, fluorescent lights, in this oddly well constructed triangle formation. “Huh, yeah you’re right. But…I just don’t know if I’d be all that worried about th..”. The words hadn’t even fully left my mouth, and I was already taken aback.

The lights moved sharply to the left, perfectly aligned with the middle of our base, but still extremely far out, and I was unable to nab an exact distance on it.

“See, it's been doing this for the last few minutes. I don’t know what to make of it,” Harry worryingly said.

As I continued to look, it then sharply moved again, but this time, far over to the left. ”The fuck is it doing?” I questioned Harry.

“No idea, but I think we should tell someone.” Harry answered. The lights moved further left, just about completely opposite from where they had started.

“What do we tell them though? And what if the lights fully disappear?”

Harry stood there for a second, contemplating. Before he could answer, the lights shifted back to the middle of our view, sat there for another second or two, then split off. Each area of the sky where it previously was, was now occupied by its own, separate light. In a blink of an eye, they all simultaneously shot into the ocean, both of us just barely seeing the splashes each of them made.

“What the fuck was that?” Harry exclaimed.

“Shh, quiet down ... .I don’t know,” I whispered back. I moved closer to the short wall of the watchtower, and looked out into the ocean where they each landed. “They’re just…gone.”

Bright, long beams of light shot up from each of the landing points, straight into the sky, and beyond. At least, that’s what it had looked like. We both looked up, as they neared the stars.

“This is crazy, I’ve never seen anything like this, Hoffa,” Harry said, “We gotta tell the others”. He opened the latch, and slid down the tower. I didn’t even need the binoculars at this point, so I placed them on the ground, and watched them with a naked eye.

Harry walked back outside with Pat and Quincy, both in drab sweatpants and shirts, rubbing their eyes. He was grabbing them and pointing out towards the sky. “See? Look I wasn’t kidding,” I could vaguely hear him saying. They stared off into the sky with him.

As we all looked off, the most amazing thing happened. As the beams of light cut themselves off and left an empty sky, thousands upon thousands of those little lights slowly floated down from the sky at a snail’s pace, not making a single sound. “You seeing this Hoffa?!” Harry exclaimed. I didn’t even care that he was yelling at this point, I was mesmerized. It looked like a brand new constellation, and it felt like I was witnessing history. As the lights went lower, and lower, they vanished one by one into the ocean, just like the previous three we had seen. For about a minute we all stood in silence. I felt like I couldn’t move, as the other three looked off as well.

Seconds later was the moment that changed everything.

The skyline turns a dark, almost blood red. My jaw dropped, and before I could speak, emerging from the cosmos was this huge, bright sphere of fire, reminiscent of the sun. It came hurling towards the ocean like a meteor, far out towards where the smaller lights landed. It crashed into the water, creating a bright flash of light, blinding me briefly. I covered my eyes with my arm as I looked away. Looking back the light started to dim, and the sky slowly faded back to blue. I had no idea how the other guys were reacting to this, and I couldn’t look away. A couple of large waves crashed continuously up onto the shores ahead. Not as violently as I thought it’d be, considering how viscerally massive this…thing…was that had just flown from space, but still loud enough to cause a commotion. Some of the lights from other bunkhouses had turned on, and some of the other soldiers had started walking out to see what was going on. “The hell is going on out here?!” I could hear my sergeant exclaim from across the base. As the conversations about what was going on started to get a bit louder, nothing could’ve prepared me for what was about to happen next.

That sphere that had come from the sky now slowly emerged back from the water, only about halfway, water pouring off of it. Everyone had gone silent, all in unison watching this thing. As we all stood there in awe, a higher pitched roaring sound came from it, almost like it was its own engine. A light from the center of it started to slowly light up, pulling water in towards it. This lasted for about 10 seconds. After that, it came to a sudden stop. The light stayed on, but the roaring was abruptly halted. I looked around for a second to see how everyone else was reacting to this. We were all just…speechless.

“What the fuck is that thing, Hoffa?!” Harry exclaimed.

In a bright, photographic kind of flash, this thing lit up from every side of it. A split second later, a silent, fluorescent beam of light emerged from it and shot through the water towards us, hitting one of our small docked battleships.

I felt the impact, with the entire watchtower being thrashed. I was flung backwards, at a distance I couldn't even comprehend because it had all happened so fast. Before I had hit the ground in the rubble of the tower, all I could see was the orange explosion from the ship, and shrapnel being thrown everywhere. As I hit the ground and started to fade out from the impact, the loudest BOOM I’d ever heard followed. Everything started to become blurry, and everything was muffled.

I was in and out of consciousness, looking around. Nothing made sense. People were running around frantically, I couldn’t tell who was who, though. Someone ran over to grab me and pick me up, and from what I could tell, it was Pat. “We n…move….ow…” was all I could hear from him. Everything was in slow motion but moving at a rapid pace at the same time. I couldn’t decipher anything. My hearing was still muffled, but my sight came back. Pat had my arm over him, guiding me to the barracks. The only thing I could clearly hear was the air raid siren being wound up. Looking around, it was pure chaos.

Windows had been blown out of every building, and people were sprinting, screaming, and grabbing weapons. The entire base was lit up now, from the fire of the battleship. It had a massive gaping hole, fire and smoke spewing out from the entry and exit holes of it, as it slowly sank into the ocean. I looked around as Pat was guiding me, and I saw Harry. He laid dead on the ground, impaled in the chest from a large piece of shrapnel, and was sunken into the pavement from the impact. Quincy wasn’t anywhere to be seen. Right as all of my senses started to come back, I saw the lights from before rapidly approaching, as the sphere was raised above the water, glowing with rays of light all across it in these jagged formations. The lights approaching were all now seen as not just lights. They were these large metal disc looking things, what I could only assume were aircraft. We made it to the barracks, and started rapidly grabbing what was left of the guns and ammo. I loaded up a Sten submachine gun, grabbed a grenade, and ran back out.

“Charlie!” Pat yelled. I turned back and looked him dead in the eye. “Try and find Quincy, and I’ll go to the ships to see if there’s any surv-” Before he could finish, a beam of light from one of these crafts struck him, propelling him at the speed of a monoplane into the ground. His body contorted in a horrific way I don’t even know how to properly describe. His face had completely melted into the ground upon him smashing into it. I looked back and around. The countless aircraft had completely taken over the airspace, and were rapidly swooping down and shooting everything, and everyone. They had destroyed all of our battleships and grounded planes. It was chaos incarnate.

We were all going to die.