The Lithuanian Man
Day 2,752, 04:37
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Published in United Kingdom 
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by
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by Augenis1
a short story about a lone eLithuanian fighting for his country‘s freedom... and what can happen
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It has been months since the Polish panzers stormed through our homeland, slicing it through like a pie and leaving us merely a destroyed countryside and an inactive populace, but to me, it has been an eternity. Ever since the occupation, and the impending annexation, I fought. We fought.
And we are fighting. I took a quick turn while running through the dark and empty streets of Kaunas. My unit is doing a mission here – we were going to destroy a Polish radio tower, built on a small hill in the center of the city. When our country was independent, this used to be one of our most prized cities, the second largest in the entire nation. We would have military parades here, especially in the main street, and our presidents would say patriotic speeches out of one of the balconies. Talking about Lithuanian nationalism and fighting against great threats.
While running through a narrow alleyway, I suddenly saw a group of Polish soldiers standing in the street that the road was leading to. Suddenly jumping to the side and hiding my presence behind an old trash dumpster, I sticked out my head and witnessed a public execution of a group of caught resistance fighters. Some of them I knew, but I couldn‘t do anything about it. There were just too many of them, and also groups of civilians nearby. Instead, I turned around and took a ladder to the top of the building I was standing next to, hoping to move around the enemies.
As said, it was done. Within just a couple seconds, I was already crouching on the rooftop, trying to sneak by. From the top, I could see the execution more clearly, but I almost immediately turned my head around, disgusted. After resistance movements started to spring up, the Polish government started using serious measures. They would bomb entire forests to ash just to prevent any partisans from using them as a hideout. Raids of Lithuanian bunkers could be heard about almost every day. Massive amounts of Polish colonists were sent to our lands to repopulate it with a Polish majority. In almost all ways, they were trying to stamp out our entire existence. And we tried to stop it.
But trying is not going enough. Moving across the flat rooftop, I was about to jump down, when I saw a group of helicopters heading my way. I took a leap to the right and hid behind a pile of boxes, hoping the move past me. Lights coming from them were moving from one building to another, with machine-guns ready to fire. Some cameras were also placed on them, checking the surroundings. I took a gulp, placed my gun, an RPK rifle, to the side, and waited. One second, two... A minute passed, and I‘m still alive. But now they stared checking my building. And quite... contrary to what I wanted to happen, I almost immediately heard automatic fire.
Damn it! Infrared cameras!
Without taking even a millisecond to think, I tossed my gun towards the street and jumped right after it. Thankfully, there were no Polish soldiers down below, but this was a surprisingly tall building, and, after falling and dropping off some balconies, I fell on the sidewalk, right on my rifle. It hurt… I think my arm bone is broken too…
Ignoring the pain, I ran as fast as I could, not bothering with grabbing the weapon.
----
My friend told me that two whole years have passed since the Polish occupation, and we are still not free. I never lost hope, even though I lost my right arm and had to replace it with a prosthetic, but many of my comrades did. And it’s hard to find new ones, and it being winter is not an excuse.
“I’d like two kilograms of apples, please.” I spoke to the young fruit merchant in front of me while wearing a trench coat, with a wooden table between us.
”I nie rozumiem, mówią po polsku, proszę” the merchant spoke in Polish, though very crudely, most certainly not being a native speaker of it. I slowly turned around and talk away. The new generation doesn’t even bother to speak in the language of it’s ancestors. Our previous presidents, political and national leaders and heroes would not be proud. Neither am I. I fought for years, trying to not let this happen, and my friends did too.
But now, they’re mostly dead, or had given up and went to hiding, or emigrated, seeking refuge in other, Lithuania-friendly countries. And I stood here. A year or so ago, our leadership betted on the fact that someday, sometime later, our allies will come save us. I did too. I followed what they said, I always did. But now there’s no leadership to listen to. And our allies… where are they?
After walking out of the town’s market, I entered the main square. At the center of it was a statue of a soldier in Polish uniform, gracefully marching to all four sides. The writings on the base said “To Polish soldiers, defenders of Lithuania against the reactionary separatist threat”. To be fair, thanks to their vast armies Poland did destroy a lot of us. Our forces were at least halved. In the first few months we lost enough men that we never managed to give them a sufficiently strong counterattack.
I took a look at the statue, then sticked my hand in my trench coat and pulled out a small bag and placed it next to the soldier’s feet. Trying to clear away suspicion, I took out my camera from the bag and started taking pictures, as if trying to make an image that I left it on accident. A minute later, I took a walk of a dozen feet away from it, then stopped on the street next to the square, turning around from it, took out a remote and pressed one of the buttons.
If we can’t win by brute force, then at least showing them that we still exist can work.
----
I stopped counting of the years that passed. I stopped counting of the days too. All I know is that it has been a long time, a really long time. And Lithuania is still not free. Oh, I am mistaken. There is no Lithuania left for it to become free. It’s only Województwo auksztoskie for the eastern part and Województwo zmudskie for the western. There is no Lithuania, there are no Lithuanian people. It just makes me cry…
I was standing on a rooftop, with my hands in the pockets of my coat, watching the busy streets of Vilnius, or Wilno if you are anyone but me, as if overseeing this city like a guardian angel. The Lithuanian Resistance War is long over. All of the previous members of it, in our side, have either died, retired or emigrated. Myself included. I am now a bitter old man, with a short white beard and drastically balding head, as if having become some kind of caricature of a socialist political figure. The people of Lithuania, mostly Polish by now, no longer have fear of rebels bombing their national landmarks or attacking their cities. And they use it properly.
I’ve heard that a war is looming over the planet, and many years ago, we would have rejoiced by that. Poland is fighting a massive coalition, and attacked on many fronts. Some of the nations fighting it are longtime allies of Lithuania, but what will they see when they come here, if they do? A Polish province, with Polish people, a Polish culture and Polish soldiers. Will the people here rise in revolt to help them? Probably not. We have become unofficially annexed, and we don’t exist. Even in schools, Polish teachers teach the younger generation about Polish history, how Lithuania was always Polish and how we should love the Polish nation, all in Polish language. Polish, Polish, Polish… And as I am aware, there are no Lithuanian teachers, no Lithuanian history, no love for the Lithuanian nation and no Lithuanian language, even as a side subject.
Looking at what we have now, and looking to the past – what have we, Lithuanians, done wrong? Could we have saved ourselves from the Polish threat? Or was it our fate, being so close to such a belligerent neighbour? After all, before Poland, for many years we were an independent nation. We had our own, not Polish, culture, language, independence. Could we preserve that, or we were doomed to lose? I don’t know, but I see that whatever we could have done right, we didn’t. I stand here, being one of the last remnants of what was before now, before the Polish, and I feel like our ancestors, looking at us from heaven, are not that proud.
But even they can’t change anything. If we were not doomed back then, we sure are now.
----
----
It has been months since the Polish panzers stormed through our homeland, slicing it through like a pie and leaving us merely a destroyed countryside and an inactive populace, but to me, it has been an eternity. Ever since the occupation, and the impending annexation, I fought. We fought.
And we are fighting. I took a quick turn while running through the dark and empty streets of Kaunas. My unit is doing a mission here – we were going to destroy a Polish radio tower, built on a small hill in the center of the city. When our country was independent, this used to be one of our most prized cities, the second largest in the entire nation. We would have military parades here, especially in the main street, and our presidents would say patriotic speeches out of one of the balconies. Talking about Lithuanian nationalism and fighting against great threats.
While running through a narrow alleyway, I suddenly saw a group of Polish soldiers standing in the street that the road was leading to. Suddenly jumping to the side and hiding my presence behind an old trash dumpster, I sticked out my head and witnessed a public execution of a group of caught resistance fighters. Some of them I knew, but I couldn‘t do anything about it. There were just too many of them, and also groups of civilians nearby. Instead, I turned around and took a ladder to the top of the building I was standing next to, hoping to move around the enemies.
As said, it was done. Within just a couple seconds, I was already crouching on the rooftop, trying to sneak by. From the top, I could see the execution more clearly, but I almost immediately turned my head around, disgusted. After resistance movements started to spring up, the Polish government started using serious measures. They would bomb entire forests to ash just to prevent any partisans from using them as a hideout. Raids of Lithuanian bunkers could be heard about almost every day. Massive amounts of Polish colonists were sent to our lands to repopulate it with a Polish majority. In almost all ways, they were trying to stamp out our entire existence. And we tried to stop it.
But trying is not going enough. Moving across the flat rooftop, I was about to jump down, when I saw a group of helicopters heading my way. I took a leap to the right and hid behind a pile of boxes, hoping the move past me. Lights coming from them were moving from one building to another, with machine-guns ready to fire. Some cameras were also placed on them, checking the surroundings. I took a gulp, placed my gun, an RPK rifle, to the side, and waited. One second, two... A minute passed, and I‘m still alive. But now they stared checking my building. And quite... contrary to what I wanted to happen, I almost immediately heard automatic fire.
Damn it! Infrared cameras!
Without taking even a millisecond to think, I tossed my gun towards the street and jumped right after it. Thankfully, there were no Polish soldiers down below, but this was a surprisingly tall building, and, after falling and dropping off some balconies, I fell on the sidewalk, right on my rifle. It hurt… I think my arm bone is broken too…
Ignoring the pain, I ran as fast as I could, not bothering with grabbing the weapon.
----
My friend told me that two whole years have passed since the Polish occupation, and we are still not free. I never lost hope, even though I lost my right arm and had to replace it with a prosthetic, but many of my comrades did. And it’s hard to find new ones, and it being winter is not an excuse.
“I’d like two kilograms of apples, please.” I spoke to the young fruit merchant in front of me while wearing a trench coat, with a wooden table between us.
”I nie rozumiem, mówią po polsku, proszę” the merchant spoke in Polish, though very crudely, most certainly not being a native speaker of it. I slowly turned around and talk away. The new generation doesn’t even bother to speak in the language of it’s ancestors. Our previous presidents, political and national leaders and heroes would not be proud. Neither am I. I fought for years, trying to not let this happen, and my friends did too.
But now, they’re mostly dead, or had given up and went to hiding, or emigrated, seeking refuge in other, Lithuania-friendly countries. And I stood here. A year or so ago, our leadership betted on the fact that someday, sometime later, our allies will come save us. I did too. I followed what they said, I always did. But now there’s no leadership to listen to. And our allies… where are they?
After walking out of the town’s market, I entered the main square. At the center of it was a statue of a soldier in Polish uniform, gracefully marching to all four sides. The writings on the base said “To Polish soldiers, defenders of Lithuania against the reactionary separatist threat”. To be fair, thanks to their vast armies Poland did destroy a lot of us. Our forces were at least halved. In the first few months we lost enough men that we never managed to give them a sufficiently strong counterattack.
I took a look at the statue, then sticked my hand in my trench coat and pulled out a small bag and placed it next to the soldier’s feet. Trying to clear away suspicion, I took out my camera from the bag and started taking pictures, as if trying to make an image that I left it on accident. A minute later, I took a walk of a dozen feet away from it, then stopped on the street next to the square, turning around from it, took out a remote and pressed one of the buttons.
If we can’t win by brute force, then at least showing them that we still exist can work.
----
I stopped counting of the years that passed. I stopped counting of the days too. All I know is that it has been a long time, a really long time. And Lithuania is still not free. Oh, I am mistaken. There is no Lithuania left for it to become free. It’s only Województwo auksztoskie for the eastern part and Województwo zmudskie for the western. There is no Lithuania, there are no Lithuanian people. It just makes me cry…
I was standing on a rooftop, with my hands in the pockets of my coat, watching the busy streets of Vilnius, or Wilno if you are anyone but me, as if overseeing this city like a guardian angel. The Lithuanian Resistance War is long over. All of the previous members of it, in our side, have either died, retired or emigrated. Myself included. I am now a bitter old man, with a short white beard and drastically balding head, as if having become some kind of caricature of a socialist political figure. The people of Lithuania, mostly Polish by now, no longer have fear of rebels bombing their national landmarks or attacking their cities. And they use it properly.
I’ve heard that a war is looming over the planet, and many years ago, we would have rejoiced by that. Poland is fighting a massive coalition, and attacked on many fronts. Some of the nations fighting it are longtime allies of Lithuania, but what will they see when they come here, if they do? A Polish province, with Polish people, a Polish culture and Polish soldiers. Will the people here rise in revolt to help them? Probably not. We have become unofficially annexed, and we don’t exist. Even in schools, Polish teachers teach the younger generation about Polish history, how Lithuania was always Polish and how we should love the Polish nation, all in Polish language. Polish, Polish, Polish… And as I am aware, there are no Lithuanian teachers, no Lithuanian history, no love for the Lithuanian nation and no Lithuanian language, even as a side subject.
Looking at what we have now, and looking to the past – what have we, Lithuanians, done wrong? Could we have saved ourselves from the Polish threat? Or was it our fate, being so close to such a belligerent neighbour? After all, before Poland, for many years we were an independent nation. We had our own, not Polish, culture, language, independence. Could we preserve that, or we were doomed to lose? I don’t know, but I see that whatever we could have done right, we didn’t. I stand here, being one of the last remnants of what was before now, before the Polish, and I feel like our ancestors, looking at us from heaven, are not that proud.
But even they can’t change anything. If we were not doomed back then, we sure are now.
----
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