“Stay down, you damned fool,” Tommy said as Crackers tried to squirm out from under him. A few more rounds bounced their way with another catching Tommy in the leg. Tommy winced.
“You’re still alive?” Crackers asked incredulously. “I’m so sorry. Do you have any messages on you that you want delivered?” Crackers asked sincerely.
“You really think you’re going to make it out of here to deliver one?” Tommy asked.
“Sure…why not?”
“Well, because you’re about twenty meters away from a trench filled with Germans who would say otherwise.”
“Oh them. I bloody well plan on killing them. I came here with four of my best friends, Lumpy Vales, Henry Smith, Wendall Renton, and even the limey bastard Cray O’Malley, loved them all like brothers. They’re dead…every single one of them. The bloody fucking whistle did it just as much as the krauts. But I can’t kill the whistle blower, cstlbroan’t do that. I get shot as a traitor and bring shame to my family. The funny thing, though, I just make it across this little line nothing more than a fly shit on a map and I can kill everything and everyone I see and I’ll be a hero. War is strange.”
Tommy agreed. “First, we stay here for a while, quiet. And when the night comes, we’ll exact some revenge for your friends.”
“You going to make it that long?” Crackers asked. “You got shot up pretty good.”
“Barely scraped me,” Tommy told him.
Crackers wanted to tell him that he’d seen the blood sprays and the approximate locations of the shots, and they weren’t of the fleshy wound variety. But he’d play along for now, a nap was exactly what he needed; and if it gave him a respite from the cries of dying men around him then that was just an added bonus.
The night was cloudy and dark as onyx. Crackers had to blink a few times just to make sure he hadn’t gone blind sometime during his sleep.
“You still with me, Tommy?” Crackers asked softly, not expecting a reply. Not unless ghosts could talk…and those he didn’t believe in. He’d made a pact with his mates that if any of them died, they would haunt the others just for the hell of it, and he’d yet to see any of their ghostly mugs. He was startled a bit when Tommy responded.
“Still here.”
“Able to move?” Crackers asked.
“Can I convince you to head back to our side?” Tommy asked.
“As dark as it is they’d be just as likely to shoot us as the krauts. No, I’ll take my chances on this side. Plus…we’re closer,” Crackers said as he began to silent crawl.
“Ever heard of a plan?” Tommy hissed behind him.
“Heard of it, ain’t never used one,” Crackers replied. Tommy could see Cracker’s teeth as the man had turned to smile at him.
“Apparently. You need to stay safe, you play a much larger role in world events.” Tommy said.
If Crackers heard he didn’t respond, all that mattered to the man at the moment was the here and now. He couldn’t worry about a future he didn’t think he’d be around to see.
Periodically, flares would go up on both sides and Tommy and Crackers would halt their progress until the eerie fluttering light gave out. They crept closer, if another flare were to go up they would have no choice but to rush the Germans, and they were too close to be anything but an approaching enemy.
Crackers slid over the small berm quietly, making absolutely no noise as he dropped into the German trench. Tommy’s foot came down on the edge of an upturned helmet sending it skittering off on the wooden planks inlaid on the bottom of the trench.
“Haben sie eine zigarette?” (Do you have a cigarette?) Crackers asked, trying to cover Tommy’s noise
“Wer ist das?” (Who is that?) the German asked back.
>“Death,” Crackers said before he started shooting.
Pandemonium broke out inside the German trench. Nobody knew who was shooting at whom. Germans spilled more of their own blood with friendly fire than Crackers could have ever hoped for. Tommy ripped a Maxim machinegun from the rapidly cooling hands of the dead German who had been wielding it. A stream of fire shot out from the barrel as he swept it back and forth, harvesting men like a farmer harvested wheat.
He moved slowly North up the trench firing in short bursts. Crackers was watching their back, constantly grabbing new German guns.
“This is the life,” Crackers said in between rounds.
“What?” Tommy asked, hardly believing Crackers words.
“Look at this place. They actually have a floor and they have these dugouts in the back where they sleep. There’s food and supplies everywhere. This is like the Ritz”
“Ever been to the Ritz?” Tommy asked, looking quickly for more rounds. Germans kept coming around blind corners almost too many to keep up with.
“No,” Crackers replied.
“This isn’t like the Ritz,” Tommy said before firing another burst.
When the British realized the Germans were in the midst of some confusion, the whistle blew in quick succession. Soldiers roared out of their holes hopeful that this time their bayonets would finally drink their fill of German blood, a debt owed many times over.
“Bloody whistle. I swear, right after they pin a medal on my chest for this, I’m going to shove it up that blower’s arse. Right now we’re in a bit of a pickle,” Crackers said. “As soon as those soldiers come in here…they aren’t going to ask questions.”
Flares shot up on both sides, the faces of British soldiers were illuminated in various forms, some in utter terror, others exhilaration, determination, and a dozen other variations and combinations. Tommy waited until the soldiers were within twenty meters or so.
“Now we hide,” he told Crackers.
“I’ll do no such thing,” he told Tommy. “Hey! What the bloody hell?” Crackers shouted as Tommy lifted him easily off the ground and shoved him into one of the German sleeping cut-outs. “I suppose you want me to buy you some sweets now that we’re sharing a bed?” Crackers asked.
“Shut up, you fool,” Tommy said, quickly digging at the dirt with his hands to get them further into the recess. Within a few moments they were another two or three feet deeper into the ground, nearly invisible to anyone who might notice.
“Now I guess we just have to hope no one tosses a grenade in here,” Crackers said calmly.
“Hadn’t thought of that.”
“Want some dried meat?” Crackers asked, shifting around until he could get to one of his pockets. “I’m not really sure what it is…could be goat…maybe horse
. Hell, knowing the guy I traded with, it could be rat,” he said as he began to chew.
“You’re eating dried rat?”
“Maybe,” Crackers replied. “I’m starving.”
">“You="3em">As the fighting raged through the night, Tommy made sure Crackers lay where he placed him. The British had finally made some headway that night. They would give it back in less than two weeks at the expense of fifteen hundred lost souls, but it had been a victory nonetheless. Crackers had been sent back to England to receive that medal he had talked about. However, he did not get a chance to fulfill the second part. The whistle blower had caught a bullet in the mouth. The ironic part of it was that the whistle had deflected the shot, but the marble had come loose and lodged in his throat, closing off his airway and killing him before anyone could get it loose.
Tommy melted into the crowd, his uniform discarded when he had completed what he had set out to do. Crackers was up on the stage, cleaner than Tommy ever imagined he could be, a wide, gap-toothed smile plastered on his face.
“...in honor of your achievement while facing down the teeth of the enemy The British Royal Army awards you, Reginald ‘Crackers’ Talbot, with this, the Imperial Gallantry medal.”
And with a complete lack of military decorum Crackers grabbed the side of the general’s face and planted a kiss on it much to the ruckus enjoyment of those assembled.
Talbot-sode #1
During Inuktuk’s tell
ing of the Landians history I drifted back to the first time I had killed a man. I was a kid; old enough to vote for the shithead that sent me off to a foreign land, but not old enough to legally obtain liquor. Strange that it was alright for me to kill someone, but not drink whiskey to forget about it. I had always thought the book, 1984 by George Orwell, was full of shit. How big could the government be that they could control all the transfer of information? Surely those people would be able to find out that they were constantly being fed lies. How wrong I was.
A division of Marines, myself included, had been sent to South Korea in an effort to quell the ranting politics of a dictator throwing a tantrum. Shots would constantly ring out, from both sides; at the time, only the Koreans were involved. We were strictly told that if we weren’t specifically shot at, we couldn’t join in. Never understood that shit. I had to wait for some itchy-trigger-finger asshole to take a shot at me before I could do anything. So if I was lucky and he missed, then, and only then, could I fire back. Bullshit seemed to be the general word of the day when that order came down.
Bobbie-fucking-Chen was his name, I’ll never forget it. Not sure if you could possibly know the difference, but that is not a Korean name. Chinese, to be specific. Unbeknownst to us, the Chinese, in direct response to the Marines landing, had sent four divisions of Chinese regulars to bolster the lines of North Korea. Typical Chinese overkill. China back then was like the big brother of North Korea; kind of despised the little fuck and thought the crazy shit he did was just asinine, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to let anyone else fuck with him, if you get my point. How the higher ups missed four divisions rolling into town is beyond me – my conspiratorial ass will always believe that they did know, and that we were merely pawns in a much bigger game.
If we were to get slaughtered, then that notcl theywould give the allies all the impetus they needed to go in and shut the little tyrant up once and for all. We had satellites, spy planes, CIA agents on the ground, and a sympathetic North Korean populace that would do all in their power at the penalty of death to let people know what was going on, and yet the US Government would feign ignorance to any knowledge of the Chinese build up. Is it any wonder where my mistrust comes from? Luckily this isn’t some socio-economic-political rant, I was closing in on nineteen, and I had no clue what any of that stuff meant. I trusted the guy next to me, and the weapon I held in my hands; that was about it.
We were far enough away from the barricades and fences that the North Koreans couldn’t get off a decent shot, but close enough for them to realize we were still there. I constantly felt like we were being watched. We did combat drills all day, whether in the searing heat or the torrential rain that seemed to dominate that shitty little corner of the world. I don’t know what the fighting was all about; the only thing that wanted to be there were the encephalitis-carrying mosquitoes. We’d been there a few weeks and the abject terror of potentially being thrust into a war had kind of worn off. We were settling in for the long haul. Cards, when off-duty and four hour guard duty shifts during the night, was the norm.
My partner Corporal Quentin Johnson and I had just lost a particularly close game of Spades and we went out of our Quonset hut to get some air and talk about the game. I had fifteen or so minutes before my shift started, and I was trying to convince Quentin he should take my shift.
“Come on, man, if you hadn’t of played on suit and pulled my queen out we could have won,” I told him. “The least you owe me is to take my fire watch so that I can sleep my anger off.”
Quentin lit up a smoke.
“Gimme one,” I told him when he didn’t even respond to my words. He lit my Camel unfiltered, tasted like shit, but better than the bile that was going to replace it in a few minutes. I took my first drag and was about a half a hitch away from coughing my lungs out.
“You hear that?” he asked, placing his hand on my chest – I guess to shut me up.
And I had. Sounded like large birds shooting overhead. Not the cries, but rather the flow of air whooshing over large wings. He poked his head back in the barracks; most of the guys were out like a light considering it was somewhere around three in the morning.
“Get up! Get your rifles!” he shouted.
We were all kids; and you know, if you’re a parent, that waking one of us up in under a half hour is a damn near impossibility…that is, of course, unless the threat of death is a real possible consequence for sleeping in. It was under a minute, and every swinging dick in that barracks was outside, M-16s at the ready. Most not completely dressed, all had boots on, though.
Some were looking around wildly. Quentin had them all shut up, even the ones grumbling that if this was a drill they were going to piss on his bunk. The general alarm had not been sounded, not so much as a firecracker had gone off. I was a moment away from thinking I had imagined it when the world turned on its side, or rather, I did as the concussion from the explosion tossed me on my ass. Sirens wailed, lights blazed, flares were popped off. Multi-colored tracers were flying up from anti-aircraft positions. Giant gray birds floated overs f to head, I didn’t know it then, but they were gliders, gliders big enough to carry a couple of paratroopers who were even now making their rapid descent on our position.
When they realized they’d been spotted, they began to drop grenades to clear a landing zone. You know the expression ‘raining cats and dogs’? Pissed off Pit bulls and crazed, carnivorous cats would have been ten times more preferable to what was falling from the sky that night. I watched as a Marine was nailed in the head with one of the dropped bombs. He had just fallen to his knees from the strike when the explosion ripped his head off. He stayed kneeling longer than seemed possible given the circumstances. The body finally fell forward, smacking wetly against the ground. That vision more than anything is what finally got me moving. Couldn’t hear anything except a nerve-damaging ring in my ears but I could see just fine and we had almost been completely caught off guard.
Grenades were striking and rolling off the sides of the Quonset huts blowing holes in the thin metal as they did so – at least three had struck ours. If not for Corporal Johnson’s quick thinking, more men would have died that night. Most, if not all, of our forces were trained upwards for obvious reasons, but something just didn’t feel right. I can’t imagine the North Koreans putting all their eggs in one basket, even if the country was so damn poor that they only could afford one basket. Didn’t seem right.
We would later learn that Chinese engineers had created tunnels almost a mile in length. They would eventually tie into the existing infrastructure sewer lines that the South had created. Back then, the monitors weren’t as sophisticated, and they had dug them down deep enough so as not to be detected anyway. While our forces were pointing upward, finally inflicting some damage on the invaders, the second part of the invasion was unleashed. Manhole covers behind us were moved, and troops flooded out of the sewers like water-logged rats, and with the same mean, shitty disposition.
Gunfire chattered behind us, most didn’t think anything of it because of its location, and that the bastards were even using M-16s as opposed to their normal firearm – the AK-47. The heavier staccato sound of the AK would have given them away a lot quicker. I shouted to those around me and pulled their gazes downward. We found some cover and began to lay some suppressive fire back at them. It was like they didn’t care or something, it was their single mission in life to return back to the country they had just evacuated as they came running right back into the stinging teeth of the bullets we fired.
I remember distinctly my heart hammering so hard I thought for sure it was going to jump out of my throat. I couldn’t control my breathing enough to get off a well-aimed shot. Bullets were whining by, some striking the Quonset hut I was using as a shield. Above everything that was going on, the machineguns, the small-arms fire, and the grenades, I heard men…just the men. Some in deep-throated war cries, others merely crying for help and the most disturbing were the ones that were wound
ed and crying out for their mothers. I learned the North Korean and Chinese words for ‘mother’ that night. Uhm-ma and mu-qing, respectively. Seems no matter how different we think we are from each other, we’re pretty much hard-wired the same.
I made more than one man cry out for his uhm-ma, but only so that I wouldn’t have to, not because I hated them. The first, well, he’s the one that haunts me some hundred and seventy years later. I had emptied my magazine; ducked back down around the corner of the hut and reached into my cargo pocket, grabbing my last remaining magazine. At the time, we were told to carry only one extra. Going forward, I would make sure to carry five times what was authorized, but right now I had to make it through the night. My bayonet was by my bunk which right now might as well have been in Boston. I had my knife strapped to my side. I truly hoped it didn’t come down to that, hell, the only reason I wore the thing was because I thought it looked cool. I was eighteen, tell me you didn’t do shit because it was cool, or at least you perceived it that way. I can bet that girl Henna didn’t think peeling rubber in her folks’ driveway was cool. Or that crap-tastic tattoo your buddy did on your arm…bet you thought that thing was AWESOME! Let’s face it, as young men, we do a lot of stupid stuff we think is cool. But, when I strapped that knife on, it was never with the intention of getting close enough to the enemy to actually use it. I was thinking it was a much better deterrent.
I heard footsteps approaching even as I shoved the magazine in its well. The words they spoke might as well have been from another planet they were so foreign. My heart, which I figured was already getting ready to explode, might just stop. I can’t imagine any muscle being able to work that hard and not just up and fail. I wondered, for a flash, if it would feel like a charley horse when it quit. I stood so quickly with adrenaline-fueled legs that I nearly hopped. I poked my head around the curved corner of the hut. Three men were coming my way, they were looking around wildly, and I would imagine just as scared as I was, but I didn’t see it that way at the time. I brought my rifle around and pulled the trigger…nothing.