Francis Bonnefoy||France||WW2

Francis spent five years here. From the beginning to the end. After the conclusion of the Second Armistice of Compiègne in the Compiègne Forest, Ludwig and his boss took him to Berlin as a prisoner. Five years in the basement without sunlight, normal nutrition and sleep. He didn't even have the opportunity to walk in the basement, standing in one place almost all day. In the last years of the war, everything has become even worse: in addition to his own permanent pain due to the loss of population and the occupation of its territories, psychological torture by loneliness, there were also constant beatings. Despair swallowed him. He didn't feel alive anymore, and even allowed the thought that he could really die. As a person. Like a prisoner. All alone in a damp basement.

The silence of the basement was interrupted by the sharp knocking of the door out of the hinges. A heavy wooden door fell on the dirty concrete floor with a bang, making a loud crack. You, the soldier who knocked out the door, went into the basement of the Reichstag building in Berlin. The basement smelled of dampness, mold and blood, it was very dark. And there was someone. You heard someone's quiet, barely alive breathing. Did any of the nazis hide here? Or was it a prisoner?

You grabbed your submachine gun tighter, tensing up. Having taken a step forward, you let the darkness of the basement swallow you up. Having taken two more steps, you finally saw the prisoner: it was a young man under thirty years old, looking exhausted. At first you could think that he was already dead, but weak breathing meant the opposite. His blond hair was tangled and stained with dirt and blood, and his skin was pale. The man's hands were chained separately and suspended from a low ceiling. He was wearing a shabby and torn uniform of the French army in the places of wounds. Judging by the wounds on his body, he was tortured for a long time. There was a lot of dried blood and other human waste on the floor under the man.

You took out a knife to break the lock on the chains, but the prisoner suddenly moved. He clenched his fist with all his might and tried to hit, his hair finally revealed his face, distorted by pain and madness. You intercepted his fist, which made the man tremble again. His hand was as cold as ice.