Thread: I'm trying to write a fiction book in English. Just for fun :)

I have one more minute question about the plot. Not long before Ann refused to leave the village since she had to take care of her pupils. Now she's leaving with Peter without any hesitation.

Reasonable. I've gotta bring it into the plot. Anyway, they're leaving for only a day trying to escape. I'll have to think it over thoroughly.

They stopped for the night when the thick darkness dawned on the forest.

had downed

Plot:

They decided not to build campfire because it might attract the pursuers

later:

After the lesson they all shot a tree

They didn't bother with the noise?

Peter finally changed his clothes covered with gore blood

Personally I would do that before I sleep. And also I'd tried to find some water to wash.

they had little breakfast

Did they take some food with them?

then packed things and started on their way back

Peter insisted that they carry a recon they have a look around so they had to spend another hour just sitting at the edge of the forest and observing

Everything seemed to be alright given judging by the villagers wandering around here and there, even despite their slightly depressed look.

I think nothing was allright. All communists and jews should have been hanged or shot by now. Several women were raped. Yet you say 'everything's allright' Not to mention that some reprisals for a dead soldier should have taken place.

At sometime when they were sitting at the edge of the forest, Ann came crawled over to Peter and sat beside him.

Then I’ll go to the Minsk airport. When on board...

‘You’re kidding joking, right? Even if we forget for a moment that there’s kinda this little war around, still you’re talking nonsense.

Ann could not possibly know the words 'kidding' or 'kinda' in 1941. They came into use much much later.

there are no planes in the world that can cover such a distance between us and the United States over the ocean. They will simply run out of fuel... (later) The airflow will just tear the hose apart

She's surprisingly well-informed for a rural linguist. Is she a physicist also? Airplanes were still a wonder at that time. Pilots were all heroes. 'Stalin's falcons'.

she giggled

Personally, I don't think she was able to giggle after all that had happenned the day before.

Sorry, but it looks like a fantastic story, sort of like those about the Martians and UFOs

Flying saucers first appeared long after the war. She wouldn't know what UFO is.

How will the a plane share is its fuel?

‘I don’t think old Nikolai and his wife are daydreaming of saying thanks to me for what I’ve done to their house.’

Oh, don't worry, Peter. They both quite likely are dead by now.

Hanna, thanks.
There's no other way Peter could use to escape from the Union other than get to Minsk. Moscow or something seem just impossible. He would've been caught, interrogated and executed in a wink of an eye on the way there. So I'll better adjust the plot so that Ann wouldn't know if there is a consulate in Minsk and would just hope there is. I'll also find a better way how she got the newspapers because it sounds hardly possible. If you keep an eye on the story, her mum could have sent them to her too keep her English up to date.

I just remembered - it WAS possible to fly to USA without re-fuel. And Ann should certainly know that. This flight was very famous.

And the first commercial trans-Atlantic flight happenned in 1928. Before that - there were Zeppelins.

They didn't bother with the noise?

Cuz it happened in the morning on the next day and the pursuers must have been long gone.

Personally I would do that before I sleep. And also I'd tried to find some water to wash.

Good note

Did they take some food with them?

Oops!

Not to mention that some reprisals for a dead soldier should have taken place.

Doubtful, I think. The terrorists were in a hurry because they'd got a lot of things to do. War began, they had their own objectives and they must have been going to cut wires, attack headquarters and stuff. Not to play with a godforsaken village.

Ann could not possibly know the words 'kidding' or 'kinda' in 1941. They came into use much much later.

Okies

She's surprisingly well-informed for a rural linguist.

Look at who her mother is

Personally, I don't think she was able to giggle after all that had happenned the day before.

Okay, she will grin then

How will the a plane share is its fuel?

Oops, typo (its) and the plane was supposed to be the plane that would be carrying out the flight Peter would travel to the US.

Oh, don't worry, Peter. They both quite likely are dead by now.

Amen

P.S. Thanks for the corrections, I'm just at the beginning of 'polishing' my story. Renewed version will be available tomorrow.
I'll also post here the exerpts that I changed so that you don't have to bother rereading it.

Okay, better than nothing; I think guess she’ll have to teach me,’ Peter said slightly embarrassed by the fact that he has to learn from a girl how to shoot a gun.

Okay, this brings up some questions about Peter's back-story. If he was 63 in 2014, he would've been 18 in 1969 -- so he's the right age to have done military service during the Vietnam war, where he would have learned how to use firearms and other weapons. Unless, of course, he avoided the draft by luck, or bad health, or educational achievement, or family connections, or by illegally running to Canada!

Also, IF he had entered the US military as a commissioned officer (i.e., with a 4-year college degree, and with the rank of "Second Lieutenant," not "Private") he would certainly have been required to learn much more about Soviet military achievements in WW2 than the average college-educated civilian American of his age -- though probably much less than a typical 63-year-old Soviet citizen with an ordinary high-school education!

So, Medved, if the action later in the story requires Peter to be rather clueless about guns and military tactics and the history of the Eastern Front of WW2 Great Patriotic War, you might want to mention at some early point that he has no military background -- and I'd take out the reference to hunting, too.

The simplest way for Peter to have avoided service in the Vietnam era would have been if he had good grades, was in college, and received a "student deferment". It's possible that he might have then been drafted after completing college, but the war might have ended while he was still at "boot camp" in the US, before he was ever sent to Vietnam.

P.S. Ooops, I hadn't read through the end of the thread when I wrote this -- I see that Medved has already said that Peter has no military background. Still, it doesn't hurt to mention that he had been at university during the later years of the Vietnam war, in case readers wonder.

Amendments to the story:

He was rambling through the forest, crouching through dense thickets, crossing small clearings and shallow creeks

weak little woman who was going to fight till the end for herself and for a handful of little kids

United States, ma’am,’ he replied, thinking to himself: ‘It looks like the interrogation is starting sooner than I expected. It had to happen sooner or later.’

‘I don’t think so,’ she said smiling, ‘as far as I know it’s Franklin D. Roosevelt, at least he was the President three months ago when I last saw your newspapers. I recently received a couple of issues from someone for my students.’

The old man said something to Ann

‘You are in the Soviet Union, Belarus, about 110 kilometers due North from Minsk,’ she said with a slight accent, 'it must be something around 70 miles if you prefer these units,' she added after a short pause.

‘The Soviet Union? I can't believe it,’ he said aloud, while thinking to himself: 'Did she really say Soviet Union?! Was she kidding? The Union joined his maker, uh, what's his name... Ahh, Lenin, more than a decade ago... One of us must have been gone off his nut'.

‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.

‘It’s not about my belief or disbelief,’ she said becoming serious, ‘I think you must know that; tomorrow you shall have to tell something to our district officer, and you better tell him something he would believe in, otherwise things might get very ugly.’

‘I gather that, miss,’ Peter said with a tired smile, 'I don't know how to prove it but I'm not an American spy sent here in the middle of nowhere to mouse out the up-to-the-minute methods to boost the production levels of your dairy cattle.'

'Umm, I'm not sure I understood you completely, but I think I got the point,' she added incredulously, 'mister "not-an-AMERICAN-spy"'.

'What are you trying to say? I'm neither an American spy, nor a Chinese spy, nor even an Uruguayan spy. I am not a spy at all,' Peter said, slightly irritated in tone.

‘Okay, It’s late now, you better get some sleep and tomorrow we will try to help you. I think our police will contact USA consulate in Minsk, if there is a consulate, and Mr. Roosevelt will help you out,’ Ann back-pedalled, a note of resignation in her voice.

‘Can you bring them with you when you come to see me tomorrow?’

I see,’ Peter said slowly as a thought struck his mind:

Nikolai took out of the old scarred cupboard

As far as I understand both scarred (with marks on skin) and battered (subjected to heavy repeated blows) impose some kind of physical impact. If the thing if falling apart for natural reasons: old, rotten, etc., what will it be?

Considering the bombers flying overhead, the border has got to be a stone’s throw away, the Germans can get here in a week or so. When are you going to evacuate?’

This is what the regular army should do, not you.

What if they DO treat the civilians bad?

then who the hell am I

‘Why did God or whoever else, who played this mean joke, stick me into this very place?’

There is not a single clock in this house

I saw comrade Somoff

Somoff? Who is that?

There were a dozen soldiers in the truck's bed with strange dated guns with drum magazines in their hands.

Throughout this whole paragraph, there should be a "the" before "sergeant," unless "Sergeant" (capitalized) is used as a title before a surname such as "Somoff."

ok

only by chance not tearing it off the old rusty hinges

seemingly still in a daze

It’s empty, get into it

Peter just grabbed her, lifted her up and slid her into the barrel

Wasn’t that barrel empty?

What was in there?

‘Mushrooms’, she said fixing up her hair. ‘Pickled.’

Agree

Okay, I'm done with Throbert's corrections, some of them were edited, some were applied 'as is' but anyway, that was just great!
Special thanks for detailed explanations!

P.S. Too tired to continue, will work through Ramil's tomorrow.

If the thing is falling apart for natural reasons: old, rotten, etc., what will it be?

For old wooden furniture, you could say "weathered" or "weather-beaten" (and it's okay to use these even if the cause was not literally from being left outside in the rain and sun, but the wood LOOKS that way).

If the wood appears to have holes caused by some sort of bugs, you could say "worm-eaten" or "termite-ridden". (NB: here, "ridden" means "full of," not "freed from"!)

Or, most generally, "worn" will do.

PS. And you're correct that "battered" and "scarred" suggest that someone has been kicking or throwing the furniture.

Comrade Somov, not Somoff why you're using the French-style endings?

Thanks Throbert.
Ramil, I just spell what it's pronounced like (I mean the endings, not the whole words).

P.S. Rebuilt the page, moved different chapters to different pages (it's getting harder to edit).

Just a few places in Peter's dialogue that sound "too ESL-ish" --

‘Why did God or whoever else, who played this mean joke, stick me into this very place?’

Much more natural: ‘Why did God, or whoever else played this mean joke, stick me in a place like this?’

The Union joined his its maker, uh, what's his name... Ahh, good ol' Mr. Lenin, more than a decade almost a quarter-century ago... One of us must have been gone off his nut'

A native English speaker would never use the masculine pronoun "his" for "the [Soviet] Union" -- or for any other country. The poetic feminine "her" would be possible, of course -- but that sounds a bit too affectionate for an American to use about the USSR. (Russia can be "she," but the USSR is/was an "it".) So the neuter pronoun should be used here. (Also, I think "went to join" sounds a bit better here than "joined" -- but "joined" is okay.)

And while it's quite believable that an educated American like Peter doesn't know the difference between Leningrad and Stalingrad, it's less believable that he would have trouble recalling Lenin's name (note that "good ol'" is sarcastic here), or remembering that in 2014, it was over 20 years since the USSR dissolved.

'I don't know how to prove it but I'm not an American spy sent here in the middle of nowhere to mouse sniff out the your up-to-the-minute methods to boost the production levels of your dairy cattle.'

I've NEVER heard an American use the expression "to mouse out"* -- but "to sniff out" or "to root around for" or "to ferret out" would all sound good here. (Metaphorically, "to root around for" suggests the image of a trained pig seeking truffles, while ferrets were used to hunt rabbits.) And of course, a spy would be interested in "your (Soviet)" methods, not "the" methods already known in the States.

* Except possibly in computer-programming contexts that don't fit here: "mouse-out," "mouse-over", etc.

a flask or water. Certainly it wasn't a bottle.

To an American like Peter, a soldier's container for carrying water is called a canteen -- here's an antique example from the US Civil War:



But the word "flask" (for an American) would suggest a small, easy-to-hide container that a soldier uses (generally against the rules) to carry vodka, whisky, gin, etc. -- Peter could count himself lucky indeed if it turned out that the soldier had a flask of alcohol, in addition to his standard canteen of water!

Thanks guys. Corrected.

I haven't had time yet to read Medved's additions to the story -- I was celebrating St. Patrick's Day, and we also had some more snow, which meant a snowball fight and sledding with my nephew!

But I did have some further thoughts about that "tommy gun" problem:

There were a dozen soldiers in the truck's bed with strange dated guns with drum magazines in their hands.

Aha, NOW I have a clear picture of the guns!



Yes, tommy-guns is totally correct here, but modern readers (especially younger ones) might not immediately understand this "old-skool" slang without a reminder. So I have a suggestion for rewriting this sentence.

The entire looong section in red is, of course, far too much information here -- "Hello, Mr. Powers, I'm Basil Exposition!" -- and is not meant to be included in the story. (But the sentence in blue at the beginning had been my original idea for explaining "tommy guns" to the reader, before the idea about "old gangster movies" came to me.)

Anyway, the part in red is just me "thinking out loud" to Medved -- some bits-and-pieces of cultural trivia for filling in Peter's psychological background.

I also kept in mind Ramil's correct objection that in 1941, Ann couldn't possibly have used the term "UFO," which didn't exist then -- the expression was coined in the '50s. However, it's quite possible that Ann had read H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds from 1898, and she's intelligent enough to realize that "Martians" could be a literary symbol for "foreign enemies." So I wanted to give Medved some suggestions about how this extra-terrestrial symbolism might work from the POV of Peter, an American born in 1951.

There were a dozen soldiers in the truck's bed, holding strange guns that looked like old props from a B&W gangster movie, with large drums on the barrels. Al Capone and Elliot Ness would've probably called them "tommy-guns," Peter recalled.

[From Peter's distant childhood memories, the old slang "tommy-gun" suddenly arose. That's what guns of this design had been called when Peter played cops-and-robbers as a little boy in the 1950s.] Sometimes, instead, it had been cowboys-and-Indians, with the kids forming their fingers into Colt revolvers, not tommy-guns. But even more often, in the '50s, it had been "the Army versus the Reds" -- or "humans versus Martians". Only adulthood, and college psychology textbooks, had brought the realization that those childhood "Martians", all along, had really been "proxy-Reds".

Glancing at Ann, Peter felt a sudden twinge of guilt, though of course right NOW it would be another 15 years or so before Hollywood began to re-imagine Ann and her people as green-skinned, skull-faced invaders, especially after Sputnik scared the hell out of Americans. (Peter had been -- no, would be! -- six or seven, but he would never forget his dad pointing out the tiny metal basketball moving dimly across the stars: "No, Petey, it's not a shooting star -- they go much faster." Of course, he was slightly too young to remember that the Soviets had successfully tested the A-bomb in 1949, and the hydrogen bomb in 1953 -- but he clearly recalled the grim worry in his mom's eyes when his dad tried to explain what a "spoot-neek" was. His parents, being self-educated bookworms who encouraged Peter to read science magazines, had attempted to use the correct Russian pronunciation for a week or so, but had then fallen into the Americanized "spuht-nick" like everyone else -- they took pride in education, of course, but even so, there was no point in SOUNDING too much like a Red!)

Still later, in the '60s, after the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine had introduced a bizarre peace that even Lewis Carroll would have thought too nonsensical for words, color television had finally arrived in Peter's home. And along with it had come the Klingons of _Star Trek_ as a whole new breed of "space Commies" -- who no longer threatened to invade Earth itself, but who were still locked in a perpetual Cold War with the "American" Earthlings for dominion over unclaimed territories of the galaxy.

Again, only as an adult would Peter later figure out that although Lt. Chekov from _Star Trek_ spoke with a Russian accent (or a bad imitation of one), and would even boast proudly to Captain Kirk about "ROO-shun in-WEN-shuns", Chekov was REALLY some sort of naturalized Russian-American, at least on the level of Freudian/Jungian subtext that Hollywood screenwriters had all learned about in college literature classes. An immigrant with a funny accent, perhaps, and a minority with ethnic pride in his grandparents' ways, but still properly belonging in America, just like Lt. Sulu and "Scotty" and Spock and Uhura -- she was definitely born in Africa, as _Star Trek_ fans knew, but had no accent at all, and wore a daringly sexy miniskirt like any stylish American girl from the 1960s.

As for Spock -- one could argue (and many had!) that the Vulcans were symbolically intended to be "space Jews". But if so, then green-blooded, pointy-eared Spock was nevertheless, beyond any doubt, a Jewish-American -- and therefore, to Peter, he was one of OURS, despite his odd Vulcan habits -- not a menacing foreigner like THOSE Klingons and Romulans! (The only point of uncertainty was whether the Klingons were "Rooskies" and the Romulans were "Ching-chongs," or vice-versa.))))))

The brief interlude of WW2, when the US and USSR were friends-of-necessity allied against the Nazis, had never been a part of Peter's everyday consciousness as an American born in 1951. For about four decades of his life, the Soviets had been an alien threat; and for two decades after that, the "Soviets" had become "Russians" -- no longer quite as threatening, but still rather alien, and not to be confused with NICE Russian-Americans, like Lt. Pavel Chekov from _Star Trek_, and Martina Navratilova, and Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Yakov Smirnoff...

The truck pulled up right in front of the sergeant...

I would add (to Medved, as more cultural background for Peter) that during the 1970s, Hollywood's anti-Sovietism cooled down slightly -- partly because of public anti-war sentiment after Vietnam, and perhaps also because of the optimism created by the SALT talks. Notorious examples such as Red Dawn were a 1980s phenomenon. And when Star Wars revived the sci-fi genre in 1977, the bad guys were blatantly modeled on the Third Reich, not the USSR.

A little more stuff that might be of interest to the author:

In the mid-1960s (when Peter was about 15) "GI Joe" dolls action figures became some of the top-selling toys for boys. (They were the same scale as Barbie -- ~30cm tall -- and just like Barbie, they could be dressed in different clothes.)



Virtually all the uniforms and weapons for GI Joe were based on American designs of the WW2 era. "Generic enemy" uniforms (based on WW2 German uniforms, but without swastikas!) could be bought separately -- so that boys who owned two or more GI Joe dolls could "переодеть" one of them into an enemy for the "American hero" to fight with -- but Soviet, North Korean, Chinese, and/or Vietnamese soldiers/uniforms/weapons were never officially sold.

Of course, little American boys most likely PRETENDED that the "generic enemy" soldiers were Soviet, Chinese, and/or Vietcong, but the toys weren't labeled as such by Hasbro, the company that produced GI Joe. And all the dolls were, at first, white men with various colors of hair -- an African-American GI Joe was added a bit later, but there were never dolls with "Oriental" eyes.

Hasbro stopped selling the original ~30cm GI Joe dolls by the mid-'70s, but they had a (hugely successful!) reincarnation in the mid-'80s, as ~10cm "action figures" -- Hasbro's answer to the Star Wars figures produced by the Kenner company. This time, countless enemy figures were sold for GI Joe to fight -- but they weren't Soviets or Red Chinese or Arabs, they were "generic" high-tech terrorists of no identifiable national loyalty, similar to SPECTRE from the James Bond movies. None of this was part of Peter's childhood, of course, but it would have been part of his consciousness as an American man from the Baby Boomer generation.

And, incidentally, the phrase "GI Joe" (meaning "typical US soldier") had possibly existed as obscure military slang since WW2, and was definitely in widespread use among the US military in the Korean war, but it did not become a "household word" for American civilians until the dolls were introduced in the late 1960s. So, if Peter were to say "I'm not GI Joe," it would have been as meaningless to Ann as "UFO" or "Star Wars."

Sorry this was so long... but I hope that it might give Medved some insight into Peter's psychology, while also helping him to avoid anachronisms in Ann's English usage.

It's a Tommy-gun because it's named after its creator, Thompson. Thompson gun.

Originally Posted by Medved

It's a Tommy-gun because it's named after its creator, Thompson. Thompson gun.

Interesting, I didn't know that! I assumed it had something to do with "Tommy (Atkins)" as an old nickname for British soldiers.

More edits and suggestions -- with some of my long-winded (and less important) comments in small text, to save space!

‘Don’t touch the curtains,’ Peter said, ‘you can might give us away with the heaving movement.’

As Ramil said, "movement" (or "motion") sounds best here. "Heaving" suggests the movement of something heavier than curtains -- like a woman's breasts when she's crying. Seriously -- Google for "heaving" and "bosom"!

She nodded and peered into through (or: "out") the window, trying to comment on what was going on outside.

You can only peer "into" a window if you're standing OUTSIDE the house!

‘He says the invincible German army is now approaching -- well, his Russian isn't very good, but he talks about brutally crushing weak...

I suggest this small addition just to make absolutely clear for the reader that the speaker is a German invader, not a Soviet traitor! It also helps to emphasize that the speaker switched languages when he got to "half an hour for amusement".

'...we are now slaves of the Umm... "People of the highest level", maybe...'

'Overhuman, above-human Übermenschen, super-humans, I got it, go on.'

Even if he doesn't speak German at all, Peter is definitely educated enough to be familiar with the Nazi expression Übermenschen and the antonym Untermenschen, and to know that they respectively translate as "super-humans" and "sub-humans."

Also needing no explanation for Peter or English-speaking readers (because they're heard so often in Hollywood movies about WW2!) are German expressions like Achtung!, Schweinhund, kaput, ein, zwei, drei, ein Führher, ein Volk, ein Reich, Scheiße -- and of course "Gesundheit!" when somebody sneezes. (Although Gesundheit! may have been popularized in English by way of Yiddish, and not directly from German.) All of these would normally be italicized in English text, by the way.

'...slaves of the Germans who are the only God-chosen people on the planet...'

Peter, as an English speaker, would tend to "hear" the word "God" as capitalized when the monotheistic deity of Abraham is referred to, whether or not he's a religious believer. The phrase "Red Army" should also be capitalized in English, by the way.

'Nazis,' Peter shuddered, 'I've heard Jews were claiming the same’'doing a really sick parody of Jewish Scripture.'

Caution: Any type of comparison between Jews and Nazis must be phrased with extreme tact to avoid accidentally offending your readers! Here are my thoughts on this delicate subject:

Both the Jews and the Nazis may have seen themselves as "God's Chosen People" (and quite possibly the Flying Spaghetti Monster, may His most holy noodles be blessed, doesn't agree in either case!) but there's one VITALLY important difference: even in backwards Old Testament times when the Jews were stoning blasphemers and homosexuals to death and slaughtering "Amalekites" left and right, Judaism recognized that a foreigner/pagan could freely choose to make a religious conversion, accept YHWH as the One True God, and become a "full Jew."

No such conversion was possible under the Nazi regime, however -- large numbers of baptized German Christians who were only 1/4 Jewish by blood, and who knew absolutely nothing about Jewish religion and customs, were taken to the Nazi death camps -- that's why Israel's "right of return" law is written the way it is.

With the result that Israel has sometimes had a bit of a problem with anti-Semitic Soviet "refugees" who were allowed to immigrate because they happened to have ONE Jewish grandparent! And, incidentally, Jews have always believed that non-Jews of good moral character will be welcomed by the Jewish God (i.e., the ONLY God) into Jewish Heaven (i.e., the ONLY Heaven). Admittedly, there are some Jews who use the word goyim as though it were a slur, thinking that non-Jews are inferior in God's eyes -- but Jews who look down upon Gentiles in this way are BAD JEWS, ignorant of how their own religion actually defines the concept of "Chosen People."

And although Peter's own upbringing was Christian, and perhaps he doesn't know Jewish theology very well, he's certainly aware that Nazis, in the end, will get melted into bloody puddles of goo by a very pissed-off YHWH, as was realistically shown in the 1980 documentary Raiders of the Lost Ark.))))))

In short, Jewish religious law has allowed since ancient days that a non-Jew can "choose to become Chosen" by a personal act of free will. But the Nazis -- obsessed with race-purity and their own comical misunderstanding of Darwinian evolution -- didn't see things this way.

So, in summary, I think that calling the German guy's speech "a sick parody" of Jewish thinking will work very well here, and won't offend anyone (except for neo-Nazis, of course -- but they're a bunch of pencil-dick no-balls losers, so one should strive to offend them whenever possible!)

His experience as a mature businessman, and aged adult six decades of living, told him something terrible was going to happen.

"Aged" (pronounced, in this context, with two syllables!) implies very, very old, like one of those Georgians who lives to be 135 by eating yogurt every day. A self-respecting 63-year-old like Peter wouldn't think of himself with this word, especially not in the era of Viagra -- he'd be like, "I'm sixty-three years young, dammit!"

One of the soldiers was approaching the gate (or: "the fence"?), laughing, to the wicket hauling a young woman -- scarcely more than almost a girl -- as she tried trying to break free.

I assume that by "wicket," you mean either забор ("fence") or ворота ("gate")? Nowadays, "wicket" usually refers either to the wooden targets used in cricket, or to the arches used in croquet (the croquet-wickets made from playing cards are called воротца in my Russian edition of "Алиса в стране чудес"!). Anyway, the original word-order "to the wicket/fence/gate hauling" is impossible; the other changes are only style-suggestions.

Peter had never had served in the Army military, he wasn’t a special forces police SWAT officer, he wasn’t a martial arts master either. But he had grown up in a tough suburban district blue-collar suburb and all his childhood and youth went he'd been in endless fights with other terrors like him.

Definitely switch the order of "never" and "had"!

Special forces, in US English, generally refers to elite, highly-trained divisions of the military, such as Army "Rangers" and Navy "Seals." But I assume you're talking about a special division of the civilian police, so the acronym SWAT would be the correct term here.

And, of course, "to swat" is what one does to cockroaches and other obnoxious bugs: "fly-swatter" = хлопушка для мух. Also, to an American (even a civilian), the word "army" excludes the Marines, the Navy, and the Air Force -- it just means "the U.S. Army," which is only one branch of the American armed forces. So Peter would more likely use the non-specific term "military" instead -- but maybe he'd say "army."

"Suburb" sounds more colloquially American than "suburban district," and "blue-collar" suggests that it was a rather rough place, even if not as bad as "the inner city."

Later, in his life as a businessman, it helped him a lot, in business because the contemporary business world obeys follows (or "works by", or "proceeds according to") the same cruel rules. Life is the best teacher and life in the district that neighborhood made him learn the rules very well. He drew in had internalized a few basic concepts: like always fight back, never surrender, never or hit from behind.

Except for the mandatory "the" before "contemporary business world," the above changes are merely style suggestions.

But I don't like the word "obeys" here, because it sounds too respectful for the context. Again, using "district" in this context doesn't sound very American, so I recommend "neighborhood" instead. And I would definitely repeat the word "never," because no-surrendering and no-hitting-from-behind are two entirely different rules. (God didn't say "Thou shalt not kill or steal or commit adultery" in just one commandment!)

He found a couple of pretty crappy knives -- they were pretty crappy, but the quality of thesteel didn't matter...

"Pretty crappy" sounds great to me; only the word-order needed slight adjustment. (To improve the "sentence rhythm" -- it wasn't so much a problem of grammar.)

Peter found a place out of the view of both the guy and the girl, lest she could give him out away to the guy with a sudden gaze behind the guy's his back.

"lest she give him away" -- note that there's no -s at the end of "give," even though it's 3rd-person-singular, because "lest" requires a subjunctive verb after it. You could also say "so that she wouldn't give him away." In either case, changing the word-order to "with a sudden gaze behind the guy's back" avoids the ambiguity of "his" (Peter's, or the German's?)

He caught an appropriate moment, jumped on the guy would-be rapist, covered his mouth with a hand, yanked the guy’s jaw up to open expose the neck and slit it open, still holding him tight in a tight grip with both hands, and legs crossed round the guy’s waist, until the blood fountain from the open severed vein ran dry and the shudders of the guy German subsided to trembles.

"To open the neck" really must be changed to "expose" -- and I took out the "and" between "hands" and "legs" because otherwise it gives the impression that Peter has four arms (two of which are cutting the man's throat, while at the same time the other two are crossed around the man's waist, along with the legs!). The other edits are purely about style, however.

(And, by the way, arteries spurt blood in "fountains" more than veins do, you know. Then again, I've never slit anyone's throat. I suppose the jugular vein would produce quite a fountain, while a severed carotid artery would become an absolute GEYSER of blood!)

Also, you are overusing the word "guy" a bit. "Fellow" can be a neutral synonym for "guy", especially from someone Peter's age -- "he watched the fellow ripping the clothes off the woman" sounds natural and colloquial to me, for example.

"Thug" or "scumbag" are appropriate to describe a Nazi who's doing something bad, like raping a woman (but perhaps not when he's innocently smoking a cigarette, or whatever.) As ruder synonyms for "thug," you might occasionally use "bastard" and "son-of-a-bitch" (or "S.O.B."). They're relatively mild vulgarities (especially in 2014, but even in 1941 they fell short of "мат"), and to me they sound appropriate for the "internal narrative voice" of a respectable 63-year-old American gentleman. However, reserve any hardcore obscenities -- such as "motherfucking Nazi cocksucker" -- for Peter to scream in rage during a one-on-one fight (if you use them at all!)))))