The Assault Read Online Free PDF Page A

splinters. What bastards! Where would his parents get new panes? Surely no more glass could be found. Luckily they seemed to have caused enough damage, for one by one the soldiers came outside. They left the front door open.
    Nothing more happened, but they didn’t leave. Some of them lit cigarettes and chatted together, hands in their pockets, stamping their feet against the cold. Others aimed their flashlights at the house, as if they enjoyed the spectacle of what they had destroyed.
    Anton tried again to see his parents, but further away in the darkness, people were only shadows in the flashlights darting back and forth. Dogs were barking. His thoughts returned to before, in the room, how the man with the hat had yelled at his father … Thinking of it became unbearable.It was much more painful now than while it was happening. His father, who had had to take his hat off … he pushed the image away, wanted never to remember it again; it should never have been allowed to happen. Never in his life would he wear a bowler; after the War no one would ever be allowed to wear a hat.
    He looked out and wondered. It was growing quieter. Everyone stepped back to a safe distance; no one moved. An order was given, after which a soldier walked toward the house, threw something into the middle bay window, and came running back, bent in two. There was a resounding explosion. Briefly a blinding bouquet of fire lit up the drawing room. Anton ducked. When he looked again, a second grenade exploded in the bedroom. Right after this a soldier appeared with what looked like a fire hose in his hands and a cylinder on his back. He stepped forward and began to spray the windows with long, thundering streaks of fire.
    Anton couldn’t believe it. Was it believable, this thing happening there? Desperately he searched for his father and mother, but because of those bright lights he couldn’t see anything. One stream of smoking light after another flew into the front room, the vestibule, the bedroom, and finally onto the thatched roof. They were really doing it; this could no longer be stopped. The house was burning inside and out. All his possessions, his books by Karl May, his
Nature Studies of the Open Field
, his collection of airplane pictures, his father’s library whose shelves were lined with green baize, his mother’s clothes, the ball of yarn, the chairs and tables: nothing was spared.
    The soldier screwed his flamethrower shut and disappeared into the darkness. Laughing and talking, a few men of the
Grüne Polizei
with carbines slung over their shoulders came forward, tucked their gloves into their belts, held up their hands to the crackling flames as if they wanted to push them back.
    A little further on, another truck stopped. Standing in itsopen bed was a group of shivering men in civilian jackets, guarded by soldiers with machine guns. In the light of the flames he recognized them by their black helmets as SS troops. Shouts, commands. Two by two, handcuffed, the prisoners jumped down to the street and disappeared in the night. The house, dried out during the frost, was burning as greedily as an old newspaper. Anton himself began to feel the glow inside the car. The pointed flames danced through the overhanging dormer window on the left: so now his room went, but at least he felt a little warmer. Suddenly the flames broke through the roof and lit up the whole quay with a brilliant light, as in a scene at the theater.
    He imagined that further on, between the cars, he caught a glimpse of his mother, her hair hanging loose, and a man running toward her. Something was taking place over there; but hardly anything could touch him anymore. He was thinking: how can they do this in the blackout? Before you know it, the English will see this and then they’ll come; if only they would come … On the sign attached at an angle to the frame over the bay window, the name of the house, although singed, was still readable:
Carefree
. In the