Beneath The Wayside Cross

In the summer of 1944, the Red Army began its liberation of the Baltic States. Like the other nations of Eastern Europe, the Baltics knew that in the Soviet dictionary, liberation was a euphemism for occupation. Following in the wake of the army the conscription gangs arrived, gathering up young men to be thrown untrained and poorly equipped as replacements into the bloody fight against the desperate Germans. Rather than fight and die for the hated Soviet Union, many of these young men went into hiding. Young Kazimieras Viltautaitas and two of his friends were among these fugitives. After running afoul of the Soviet NKVD, he decides that simply hiding is no longer an option. He elects to go into the forest and join the partisans ln their fight against the despised occupiers of his country.