by C. P. Boyko
“Listen up, troops. Let’s foreshorten the horseplay and the horseshit and look vigilant. Let’s drop the God-talk, too—whether for or against. The IP Infantry Corps is a secular organization; that means God doesn’t enter into it one way or the other.” —Boorq said, “I thought Field Marshal Renmit was God, sir.” —Laskantan said, “That’s right, and he doesn’t enter into this war one way or the other.” —Lieutenant Farl chuckled along with them, though the irreverence galled him. “Let’s also nip the insubordination, shall we? Let’s not forget that it’s the decisions of the CFL that are allowing us to win this war. And one more thing. Osini.” —“Yes, sir.” —“You know better than to talk like a fucking fatalist. The only soldiers who die in my platoon are the ones who fuck up. Don’t make any mistakes, and you’ll be going home to your loved ones in one piece. That goes for all of you. A dead infanteer was a bad infanteer. Understood?” —“Yes, sir.” —“Then keep your tuft down, eyes up, tongue in, and ears out.” —“Yes, sir.”
Air support, when at last it arrived, dropped its cloudburst of hundred-pounders short; the bombs came screaming down right into the midst of Forty-Third Company. Cursing infantry scrabbled for cover in every direction across the hard and barren landscape, crawling inside bare bushes, covering themselves with snow, or stretching out in depressions so slight they could only be detected with an eye to the ground. Sandstorm gusts of dirt and bomb fragments raked over them, sparking off their helmets. Kellek rolled indecisively from supine to prone and back again, her head under her pack. Laskantan crouched motionless, her hands protecting the back of her neck. Narran’s fear had an astringent effect: she felt herself shrivel into a rigid ball no bigger than her helmet. Burnok heard the screech of each plummeting bomb grow impossibly louder, till it was right on top of her; she could not understand why she was still alive. Culverson, to vent her terror, shouted angry gibberish into her handset. Tolb, curled around her rifle, reflected that it was surely better for a self-respecting soldier to be under this idiotic bombardment than to be the cause of it. Godbeer, skittering on hands and feet toward a fresh crater, was suddenly thrown breathless onto her back.
There was a pain in her leg stronger than any she’d experienced, and which seemed, like intense exertion, to involve her entire body. She was afraid that she would scream, and afraid that she would never get the breath back to scream. She could feel something pouring out of her and was astonished at the pool of warmth it created. She was slowly steeping in her entrails; she was turning inside out. At last she was able to draw some air into her lungs, and soon was wheezing effortfully. How stupid! She should have stayed put, or at the very least waited to see where the concentration was falling. She’d fled aimlessly after the first explosion, like a stupid recruit. And now, to make matters worse, she was dying. She had let everyone down. The lieutenant would be disappointed and derisive. Godbeer prayed for another bomb to come down and obliterate her error. Clinging to her shame as to an elusive resolution, she slipped out and in and out of consciousness.
Her body was retrieved by stretcher-bearers a day later, when the attack, so inauspiciously begun, was rebuffed, with heavy casualties.
Strongpoint. —Fourth Company were being shown a movie. Corporal Cobweb stood outside the theater tent, listening to the raucous enjoyment of the troops. She decided to wait till the movie had finished to fall her platoon in and brief them. She too was enjoying what she could hear of the film, and would have been as surprised as the privates, and indeed as the staff officers who had selected it, to learn that it was an anti-war film. Certainly, many of its suprapodean protagonists died, mired in filth, and for pointless or illusory objectives; but that was war. Its ugliness was its glory, for surely no one but heroes could abide it, let alone thrive in it. In fact, the troops seemed to feel that the battle scenes should have been even bloodier, and the setting even more squalid. Cobweb heard one infanteer complain, in a tone of offended pride, “There ought to be more shit and flies everywhere. How can you believe a war where there isn’t shit and flies everywhere?”
As if to prove the point, a fat fly alighted on the corporal’s lapel and began to rub its legs together thoughtfully. She reached slowly towards it with an index finger. The insect fell still, as if assessing her intentions. She had nearly succeeded in touching it, when at last, after a minute of genial communion, the fly shook itself and buzzed away.
Sawed-Off, on her way back from the latrines, smiled at Corp Cobweb in passing. She would have liked to invite her inside, but was daunted by her aura of authority. Besides, she was probably standing out here for some good reason.
On screen, a grizzled soldier injected heroin into her arm and slumped into a stupor. This incited among the audience many arguments about the relative merits of opiates, amphetamines, and psychedelics. Fidget, noticing Parade-Ground’s silence, began mocking her inexperience. Parade-Ground winced, as if a moral flaw had been exposed. She swore that she was no prig, and insisted that only lack of opportunity had prevented her from experimenting with drugs. Her friends decided to rectify this at once—but discovered that the only drugs in their possession at present were some dried leaves and snuff, sacred to the medipodean aboriginals but of doubtful recreational value. Nevertheless, Parade-Ground, for whom bravado served as bravery, declared that she would snort, swallow, or smoke any amount of anything anyone put before her. So, shortly before the movie ended, Christmas Tree fetched and Parade-Ground was given a quid of black leaves to suck and a pinch of green powder to sniff. The taste was vile, like mud and bitter cucumber. Her friends laughed and clapped her on the back and began to monitor her face for signs of intoxication, though these could not be expected to appear for an hour or two.
Everyone in First Platoon was surprised and appalled to learn that the corporal had volunteered them for a night patrol, but none more so than Parade-Ground. During the half hour that Cobweb gave them to get their gear together, Fidget and Christmas Tree took Parade-Ground to the next company’s medical dugout, where a doctor had her swallow two cotton balls with a spoonful of castor oil. This accomplished, Parade-Ground sputtered, “Okay, now I’ll be okay?” —“Now we send you to battalion, where an X-ray will confirm my suspicion of ulcers.” The doctor winked. “Always good for a week or two of bed-rest.” —When Parade-Ground explained that she was not interested in malingering but only in counteracting the drugs, the doctor shrugged and offered her a spoonful of baking soda.
During the transport ride to the MAC, the platoon was again in high spirits, roughhousing, boasting, and quoting, in character, lines of dialogue from the movie. Jaywalk, who was an actor back home, obscurely resented this trespass upon her domain. Unknown to the others, she had been these seventeen months playing a character of her own invention, compounded from several laconic and hard-bitten soldiers she’d seen in movies and in plays—and she did not like to think that this method of simulating courage or embodying valor was available to everyone. Now she closed her eyes and inhabited that character, Lance Corporal Jaywalk, more deeply, clenching her jaw and slowing her breath like one drawing strength from within. Then she opened her eyes, and with a cat’s negligent grace, lit a cigarette, took a puff, and passed it around.
In the distance, artillery shells exploded with a strange rumbling gulp, as if the earth were swallowing itself in gobbets.
Parade-Ground was nauseated, and felt a tingling tightness that extended from her jaw through her chest to her groin. Christmas Tree methodically wrapped in tape her zippers, chains, grenade pins, dog tags, and her lucky necklace made of ration can-openers, so that they would not clink or rattle. Jimjam, hidden by the dark, raked the serrated edge of her trench knife across the scarred flesh of her bicep; and although she managed not to flinch, she knew a bullet would hurt more. Shitjob wished she had cleaned her rifle.
The truck stopped and they climbed out, subdued now. While the corporal went to recruit stretcher-bearers, a parson, backlit by an enemy f
lare, led the platoon in prayer. Private Privates heard none of it, for she was engaged in her own pleading, wheedling dialogue with God. God reassured her. “You’ll be fine, lady. Cram the whining and the worrying. Have I ever let you down before? Just stay alert, follow the woman in front of you, and I’ll take care of the rest. Okay?” Teacher’s Pet used the time to piously recollect the man at the fruit cart. Sawed-Off, head lolling, continued the important work of curtailing her thoughts, banishing from awareness everything but her immediate surroundings and the present minute; she contracted her body likewise, hardening it to pain and insult. Parade-Ground, studying the intricate geometrical patterns on the back of her hand, tried in vain to decide whether her vision was more acute than usual, or whether she was hallucinating.
They spread out and lay or crouched waiting for the corporal to return. When at last she did, they waited another long half hour, no one knew why, for the time of departure. —“Fifteen minutes,” said Cobweb, peering at the luminous dial of her wristwatch. —“Ten minutes.” —“Seven minutes.” —Two Words wanted to kill her.
Sergeant Montazo beckoned Lieutenant Ryyss and handed him the field glasses. “There,” she said. “Right in that gully. At least a squad. They dropped to the ground when the flare went up.” There was smugness in her voice, for only an hour earlier the lieutenant had criticized her request for another artillery barrage—on this very spot. She had at that time only pretended to see movement, in order to check that the guns were still registered on one of the most likely approaches to the outpost. Ryyss had frowned at what he felt to be a waste of shells and of the radio’s battery. Now Montazo felt vindicated, and watched hungrily for signs of her officer’s approval. “Repeat the last concentration for effect,” she suggested, “and we’ll exterminate them.”
Ryyss adjusted the field glasses—his vision was much better than Montazo’s—but could not see any human shapes in the area indicated. —“They’re right there!” insisted Montazo, and grabbed the glasses; but by the time she restored them to focus, the flare had gone out. “Shit! Let’s hit them quick before they move.”
The urgency of the situation had the usual paralyzing effect on Ryyss. “What if that’s our people?” he muttered. “What if that’s our relief?” But their relief were not expected till dawn—if they came at dawn: they were already two days late. Ryyss observed more aptly that the flare had been white—an enemy flare. “They wouldn’t expose their own patrol like that.”
Montazo saw the logic of this, but wanted to shell the spot anyway, just in case; however, she let herself be persuaded to contact by wire Tolb and Boorq, who were lying out in a listening post a hundred yards nearer the gully.
Tolb and Boorq—who had been huffing into their fists and taking turns naming all the famous people, living, dead, or fictional, that they could think of—had noticed nothing, but promised to stay alert. Instantly, they began to hear the soft, intermittent sounds of soldiers creeping towards them. Tolb contacted the outpost again, and whispered inaudibly her alarm.
Ryyss ordered Tolb to challenge the patrol for the password; he reminded her what the challenge word and password were. Montazo was disappointed; but Ryyss would not be responsible for the death or injury of any more of his compatriots. Four nights ago, when first occupying the outpost, the platoon had fired on three patrols and a supply column—wasting half their ammunition. Two of the patrols had turned out to be friendly, and had suffered casualties.
At the time that he had been ordered to take and hold the two blockhouses on the little hill known as The Nubbin, a large-scale enemy attack had been imminently expected. Ryyss’s commanders had hoped that an outpost deep in the CFP—or contested forward positions, where the fringes of the two armies roiled indistinguishably—might check or distract the oncoming force. Though that force had not materialized, C Platoon’s position was still far from enviable. The entire area, which was less No Man’s Land than Everyman’s Land, was constantly being shelled and strafed and patrolled by both sides; and, as one of the few prominences in the valley, The Nubbin made an irresistible target. Its defenders had renamed it The Mailbox, for all the incoming ordnance it received, and referred to themselves as number eights, after the largest targets used on firing ranges. Their only good fortune was that they had yet to suffer a direct ground attack. Ryyss doubted they could fend off even another platoon. He had decided, in the event of a fight, to abandon the position as soon as the machine-gun ammo was spent. He was reasonably sure that his orders did not prohibit such an action; but he did not search his memory or his documents as carefully as he might have; and, except to inquire about their relief, he stayed off the radio. This uncharacteristic self-sufficiency of the lieutenant’s was noted with approval at the command post—and contributed to the delays in relief and resupply.
Tolb and Boorq were reluctant to draw attention to themselves, so decided that they had heard nothing. Tolb got on the wire again to say so; but Ryyss meanwhile had been called to the other side of the outpost by Alcott and Meck, who also thought they had seen something. Montazo, in a panic because the lieutenant had taken her field glasses, advised Tolb and Boorq to keep their heads down, then told Yomi, the new radio operator, to dial the field artillery net.
Now Boorq heard voices. Tolb, who was lying half under her in the double funk hole, felt her stiffen, and went rigid herself. Then she too heard the voices. With their heads pressed together, they argued, in breathless whispers and frantic gestures of the fingertips, whether the voices were speaking their own language, or another.
Then someone called out—in their language, but not their accent—this strange question: “Are you all right, sir?”
They did not know whether or how to reply. Then Boorq, who could distinguish the telltale whistle of an artillery shell falling a mile away from that of one coming directly down upon her, screamed heedlessly, “Incoming!” and covered her head with her hands.
“Keep it coming,” cried Montazo into the radio. “That’s beautiful.”
As soon as they were beyond the razor wire, Upsize felt all her brimming anxiety spill out into her bloodstream, where it was quickly engaged. A feeling of relief and recognition came over her, as if some forbidding doorway had led to an old familiar haunt. Already she recalled the anxiety of a minute ago with baffled condescension. Memories of previous patrols, ambushes, and charges came back to her indistinctly, but with a sensation of confidence. She knew how this was done.
She cursed with the others when the flare went up, but did not drop to the ground with the others. She remained motionless as a tree, and watchful as an owl. She was a tree; she was an owl. When darkness returned, she crept back to where H. Crap, her section leader, was lying, and told her what she had seen.
“You’re sure it was occupied?” —“One hundred percent. I saw two heads.”
Lance Corporal H. Crap resented the surprise, which seemed to her characteristic of this muddled and ill-advised patrol. But after a moment’s consideration, and with Upsize’s guidance, she saw that here might be a shortcut to their objective. If they could take a prisoner, there would be no need to draw fire from the outpost in order to determine the size and strength of the unit holding it; they could simply ask the prisoner. Corporal Cobweb would have to commend her initiative, if successful.
But first, it was necessary to make sure that the two soldiers in the listening post were in fact enemy; the Corp had warned them that the MAC was less No Man’s Land than Anyman’s Land. H. Crap was unwilling, however, to reveal her own identity by using the suprapodean challenge word; so she called out a phrase that she had heard an angry or injured invader cry out repeatedly, several days ago, while being mortared, and which she imagined meant something like, “Have mercy on us.”
At first there was no reply. Then one of the soldiers in the listening post shouted some gibberish, and H. Crap gave Upsize the thumbs-up. But before they could reach the funk hole, shells be
gan to fall exploding around them.
The only nearby cover was the funk hole. Upsize scrambled towards it, dropped a grenade in, then another, clutched her helmet, counted to five, then crawled in atop the warm, wet bodies.
Shitjob winced afresh at each audible step. She was straining every muscle, even those in her neck and face, to lighten her tread, but the frozen earth was as crunchy as coral. The Colonel and the others seemed not to be even trying to minimize the noise they were making. The enemy must be able to hear them coming from miles away; and the rising moon was as bright as a spotlight. In these circumstances, she found that a continually renewed effort of will was necessary just to keep going, with the result that her movements felt sluggish and lumbering, like those of a giant. Her mind by comparison was dizzyingly swift and clear, pursuing a score of worries simultaneously.
It was a relief to drop to the ground at the sound of the artillery, and a sweeter relief to see the shells bursting on the southwest side of the outpost. Even after she realized that H section must be somewhere near that spot, she grimaced with spiteful satisfaction, glad only that it was someone else’s turn for a change. Let them get theirs.
In the blockhouse that served as kitchen, Laskantan and Sergeant Costitch were acting out a scene from the book of mythology that had been found among Winurhtry’s personal effects. Raof, disassembling her rifle by feel, watched with mingled admiration and distaste. She was amused by Laskantan’s clowning and impressed by Costitch’s perfect elocution; but she was puzzled and irritated by the story, which told of the interference of fickle, peevish gods in a war between humans. Also, she had not expected a famous classic to be so repetitious. The book was tainted for her too by its association with Winurhtry, who was believed to have committed suicide. Raof herself had once discovered her handling an unpinned grenade in a wistful manner. That was before she began dabbling with high explosives—in search, Raof now thought, of a more certain death than a hand grenade could offer. No doubt she had been miserable. But Raof felt no more pity for her than for any deserter.