After we had finished loading all the stuff we could into our bags, we started marching back to base. But before we left, we had woken our prisoner and ensured he was carrying some heavy shit. The march back sucked; we had our bags laden down with stuff. When we finally got back to camp, all of us were tired as shit. Even our prisoner didn’t seem like escaping after a trek like that.
The sky had turned shades of orange, red, and pink with the coming dusk. Walter came out of the cave to help us and look at the prisoner. Walter took one look at the prisoner and said,
“We must have spawned in the hard area because that goblin doesn’t look like it could fight off the bear.”
The prisoner didn’t say anything in return, so I responded for him.
“It’s getting late, and I am tired. So let’s just rest for tonight.”
It took us a few minutes to unpack our loot. Alexei excitedly grabbed his new rifle, a scope, mags, and a box of ammo. Alexei told Kazamir to come over to the campfire. When they were both settled in, Alexei presented his old rifle to Kazamir, unloaded, of course, and started teaching him how to use it.
When I took the L85A3 out of its case to hand off to Bunden, I saw Walter cringe away from it as if it was going to bite him. I gave him a quizzical look, and he responded with,
“You haven’t heard about how bad that rifle is? I heard it was so bad they had to call us Germans to help the brits.”
I shrugged at this, “well, I remembered that the brits used this. So I thought that he would like a rifle that he is familiar with.”
When I brought Bunden his rifle, he didn’t seem excited or anything else. And when I asked him if he wanted a new gun, he just shrugged. Since it appeared that he didn’t care, I am not going to care either. I grabbed his new uniform out of my ruck. It wasn't anything special, just an unmarked US standard Multicam combat uniform. I chucked the uniform over to Bunden along with his boots.
I got a few muffled complaints from Bunden when I threw his boots over to him. But I ignored them in favor of looking for the small speaker in the rucksack. I grabbed the box the speaker came in and walked outside while fiddling with it. Alexei glanced up, saw what I had in my hands, then went back to cleaning his new rifle.
Kazamir and the prisoner seemed a lot more interested than in the cardboard box Alexei that contained the musical device. So I continued walking over to the campfire. As I reached the campfire, I took a seat on one of the logs, stretched my legs, and put one booted foot onto another. once I had gotten settled in, I grabbed my knife and started doing some “unboxing” grunt style.
When I was done doing a little unboxing, I had gotten my speaker, the fire had a few more things in it, and the prisoner seemed a little bit more uncomfortable. I connected my iPod to the BlueTooth speaker but now was the real conundrum. What song should I play? After thinking about it for a few seconds, I thought, ‘well, I have had a long day. I think I should just relax’ I hit a few buttons, and then ‘Take It Easy’ by the Eagles started jointly playing over the speaker.
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I propped my boots up on a rock and enjoyed the sunset to the sound of good music. Interestingly Kazamir and the prisoner had both perked up when the music had started playing. Kazamir was giving me a questioning look, but I was too tired to explain everything. So I didn’t. But it made me wonder what kinda conspiracy theories he was coming up with in that 10-year-old brain of his. Walter had come out of the cave when he heard the music.
When Alexei spotted the German, he waved him over. When Walter sat down, the Russian launched into full-on storytelling mode. Walter was enjoying it enough to turn down my music to hear Alexei better. After a while of looking at the sunset, telling stories, and chilling to music, the sun had gone down, and it was time to sleep.
Walter took the first watch because we all talked shit about him getting to sit around all day. Of course, Walter didn’t just sit around all day, but he knew we were just fucken with him. We quickly established shifts for night watch. Unfortunately for me, Alexei, and Walter. Kazamir and Bunden were unfit for the job, Kazamir because he would probably fall asleep, and Bunden because he needed his rest to get combat effective.
Well, it looks like I am not going to get a lot of sleep tonight.
____________________________________________________________________________
As it turns out, I was right. I managed to get the middle watch on the watch ‘roster’. Which sucked, but whatever, it needed to be done, and I am not going to complain… ok, just a little complaining. It’s every soldier’s pastime, after all.
After Alexei poked everyone awake with his boot, I asked everyone to stay in the cave for a second. They all gave me a confused look, so I started to explain.
“We need to figure out what our chain of command is going to be for the future.”
Everyone looked around like, ‘I don’t want to be in command. That seems like hard work.’ then Bunden spoke up,
“It seems like you, Harly, are the de facto leader around here, and I am fine with that.”
Alexei chimed in, “I am fine with that, less paperwork for the rest of us.”
Walter threw in, “he needs the proper grooming of an officer, though.”
He was referring to my scruffy beard, which resulted from being out here for a couple of weeks.
“Look at you with your fresh faces and soft hands.” I light-heartedly jabbed back.
We continued our light-hearted banter back and forth for a few minutes. Then, when there was a pause in the banter, I spoke up.
“Alright, enough fucken around. I got a mission for us.”
Everyone stopped talking and looked at me expectantly.
“Those green bastards had to have come from somewhere, and I doubt that a whole village could be burned with four guys. And unless anyone here can speak goblin,” I jabbed a finger at the goblin prisoner. “We have to do this the old fashion way.”
The plan was simple:
Gather the remaining supplies, conduct recon to find the enemy, and “clean up and retrieval” in the burnt village. Walter, Alexei, Me, and Kazamir would go to the airdrop and stock up on supplies there so we wouldn’t have to lug that stuff through forest-covered hills. Walter would RTB (return to base) with all the stuff he could fit into his bag. The rest of us would scout around to see what we could find.
We ate a quick breakfast consisting of cold MREs and got ready for the mission both physically and mentally. Then with a glance over my shoulder back at the small camp that was slowly becoming home, I turned away and started marching, never knowing if I’d return.