I moved my company up to a shoddy embankment at the river's western edge. Kook Company, positioned at the river's lowest point, had the dubious honor of being the battalion's vanguard. The men had proven themselves in these scant few weeks I'd been their commander. They were steady; when the enemy came my lads would stand their ground. My lads would fight and some of them would inevitably die— on my orders.
The burden of command was a dreadful thing. Every scenario I thought up, every contingency I conceptualized, every realistic outcome I foresaw, everything boiled down to that cold hard truth. Unless I abandoned my position and forsook my oaths of duty, the men of my company would die. Perhaps only a few, perhaps whole squads but inevitably some would die and that thought was a dark cloud pouring a very personal misery down on me.
I hadn't anticipated sleep, yet I must have drifted off because I found myself walking in my nightmares. I'd never been a superstitious man but these terrors seemed so impossibly real that they might have been premonitions. I heard the roar of cannon muffled under a blanket of cicada buzz. Everywhere I saw my men maimed and crying out. Their fellows came to their aid, dragging them to safety but there was no safety! A black hail was falling and I could not make my words heard no matter how loudly I screamed! 'Get away!' 'Save yourselves you damned noble fools!' All the while, cicadas the size of plump hawks rained bombs upon us and when their shadow descended upon me, there was nothing I could do but watch my own death diving down to embrace me. It grabbed me! Thrashing me about in the dark hail!
"Sir! SIR!" A heavy slap met my face. "Captain Adams! You need to shut the fuck up, sir!"
I stilled myself as best I could, surrendering to the meaty hands holding my shoulders and covering my mouth. Three men were upon me. My men, because if the enemy was inside my hide I'd had never awoke from my nightmare. There was no part of me that wasn't shaking, my very being trembled like a drowning man thrown ashore. I slowly nodded that I was myself again. The hand over my mouth withdrew an inch.
"Steady on lads. My flask. Pass me my flask." One of the men obliged and I sank a long draught of whiskey. "The time?"
"Near dawn, Sir." One answered.
"No more time for sleep then." I said, sluggishly rolling to my feet once the hands restraining me fell away.
"You was screaming Sir. You was saying- Did you mean it, Cap'in?"
I was sorely tempted for another pour of drink, yet I refrained by offering up the flask to the men instead. None accepted. In the dim pre-dawn gloom I could barely make out their features. I saw enough to know they needed an answer before they left, else morale would suffer and that could not be allowed.
"That's the thing about dreams, Son." I said. "They are like an animal wandering outside its cage. In the dark, as one lays in the cold by themselves, dreams seem a fearsome thing. One could be forgiven for thinking there's a savage beast looming beside them. In the light of day however, that same beast returns to its cage and it becomes nothing more that a trick of the mind. The monsters we see in the mind's eye aren't any more real than gremlins."
"'Cepting that those assholes cross the wet is real, Sir."
"Exactly!" I said using the tone I often did with promising students. "They're as real as that gun on your shoulder and the brothers at you side. That means you can kill them dead. Not much sense in being afraid of something so mundane as the average man, is there?"
The three soldiers, all lowly privates I saw as the light of day slowly graced my hide, seemed contented by my words and returned to their fellows without further query. Those boys conducted themselves well. As their leader, I could do no less. I groomed myself to a presentable standard, stilled that trembling dread in my limbs by sheer force of will and joined the men on the lines.
It seemed—for a time anyhow—that the waiting would be the worst of it. I held that belief right up until the first shot snapped in the distance and then I realized these final seconds of waiting might be the last moments of peace I ever knew. The waiting remained disquieting while somehow being precious all the same.
The first probe came just as unfiltered sunlight crested the mountains and cut into the lingering mists. Some fifty men wearing fatigues better suited to flatlands shrubbery than wooded hills slunk around the river's far bank, scouting for the best place to ford the torrent. We held our fire until they had found a path and committed themselves waist deep and then we held back no more. It was a brief engagement, perhaps five or six of them managed to scamper back to their lines with their lives and report their losses.
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Within the hour, they came again, now supported by rifles and machine guns concealed in the far wood. Private Roddie was the first man to die under my command. He'd left cover to cut the slack ropes some determined swimmers had managed for their allies, and as he was running back to safety Private Roddie of 1st Platoon, 3rd squad, had caught four rounds in the back. He died quickly, in a manner of seconds that were heavy laggardly moments to the men. Once the enemy was repelled once more, I rotated 1st Platoon back for a brief respite. The deaths of my men became easier after that first, a fact I cursed as much as I blessed. The men needed me! To remain strong I had to numb myself to their pain.
At noon they came again and my losses mounted. The enemy cannon and mortars had our measure now and the embankments that had provided good protection against small arms were now being blown apart. Loyal and Joker Companies reported similar engagements— though such reports were hardly for my benefit as I could see the flashes of gunfire in the woods on my flanks. I pulled 1st Platoon back out of reserve, committing my entire company towards holding the enemy at the river and for three bloody hours we did just that. The sun was two fingers from disappearing over the mountains by the time I received word that a major beachhead had been lost in the crux between Igor Company and our Kobryn allies some ways on our left. I coordinated with my neighboring companies and we withdrew in good order, under heavy fire the whole time. Some men fell and it seemed a piece of my soul stayed there with them as we left the dead where they lie during our retreat. Perhaps when the battle was over, I might return to retrieve them. God willing, I'd survive long enough to see it done.
The forest within 200-meters of the riverbanks had been devastated by the exchanged steel and lead. It was the strangest thought at the time yet I looked at that desolation of nature, this blasted scar on my homeland and I vacantly considered how ugly this place would look on a map. This singular stretch of 3600-meters along our borders, the whole run from Dervish Falls to Portage Point, would be any ugly stain in our history books. We gave the bastards six kilometers of wooded swamp and I wondered if this entire valley would be a blasted wasteland or if there would be stripes of untouched green and blasted grey running its width by the time we were done here. It didn't much matter, but it was a curious thought that occupied my mind from realities of the day…
The reality that I'd began this day with 126 men under my command and now had only 99 left, most of whom were wounded to various degrees. The reality that over six hours of combat, I felt as though I'd aged years. The reality that throughout this day I'd heard the cicada buzz of the mercenary's small helicopters over the roar of cannon and mortar, the barrage of small arms, and the cries of those already dead who would be a long time dying. My men and I slogged out of the swampland past the Hanover Ferrous Guard manning the second line of defense. Those zealots seemed unchanged by the horror of the day, the fires of righteousness still blazing in their eyes while my own force verged on collapse.
One of the zealots in his grey uniform more suited to a parade square than the battlefield stopped me when I tried to pass. From his pocket he pulled a small box wrapped in a pink silk ribbon; from this box he offered me a fat cigarette and a small square of chocolate. All along the second line the stately grey troopers were offering up what comforts they could to my men. That a few squares of chocolate could move so many to tears would have seemed impossible to me just yesterday. No man was judged as he wept among his brothers and what few that could thanked our allies as though they had delivered us from this place.
In a way perhaps, they had. I myself could not trust that my words wouldn't betray me and so meekly nodded my gratitude to this lowly corporal who had done more for me with a tiny square of chocolate and a single cigarette than words could ever express.
He too nodded because he too understood that no matter how well it was carried, a soldier's burden was still a damned heavy thing.
Exhausted as we were and regrettable as it was, Kook Company moved on. The second line of defense was in good hands. A further seven kilometers away, we arrived at the third line of defense and collapsed into the hides on the reverse of the low rise (which only a very generous man might call a hill) overlooking the burnt clearing. I ordered the men to eat as much as they could manage and drink a full canteen of water before they collapsed into fitful slumber. Squads from logistics and medical prowled among my men, doing all they could for them and evacuating those who would fight no more.
Some part of me prayed they would take me. As if being removed from this place of death and the rape of my sovereign lands would absolve me of my duty. Would that I could turn a blind eye to my own weakness but what is a man without some weakness to overcome? Would that I could leave this place because I was not needed here any more. Would that my men could return to their peaceful lives knowing that they had sacrificed enough and no more would be asked of them. Would that such good and fine men need never be forced to curl cowered in the mud, flinching as our own cannon delayed the coming horde with awesome thundering salvos. Would that those politicians who fervently brayed for blood could see the things I saw this day. If they had, then such horrors would be put to death and never again rear their repugnant heads in civilized lands. Yet I knew such things were not so. More often than not, those who called the loudest for violence kept the farthest from it, making well and sure to have others pay its grisly toll.
My body was battered but sound. The medics would not take me from this horrid place. I had my duty and I had my honor, I would not abandon my men to face this hell alone. I too curled in the mud amongst them, willing to face the coming dawn I would never be ready for.