They say that the world will end not with a bang but with a whimper. Or at least this had been a truth of society since the advent of humanity and had remained a truth long past its fall. Legend has it that humanity had originally created life beyond it, some mystical historical fact that meant nothing.

There was dirt in the blood that caked the walls, left over from some ill fated soldier’s attempt to spy over the much lamented remains of a windowsill. It had been a glorious stained glass window once, long before the last of the mortar shells had been used up. This was a church of peace and worship of the now deified human race, but now it was devoted to the art of war. Someone had bothered to scratch off enough of the blood to leave the much aged plaque on the wall free to be read.

If the huddled soldiers had enough time to read a plaque, they had enough time to reload a pistol. Or at least that was how their commander had phrased it, his greasy mustache wobbling above his lip as he deliberately ignored the sentiments left behind by humanity.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

It is sweet and right to die for your country.

Laughable thought when the only thing that the soldiers wanted more than life itself was to be free of this living hell on Earth. All they could see on the horizon was the distant bursts of light, twinkling and sputtering out like clockwork, those terrible sounds that meant someone out there in the night had shuffled off the mortal coil.

Where was the honor and righteous goodness to be found in dying in the dirt, drowning in your own blood while you prayed to Man that someone would come by and slit your throat? Where was any of it when the most pressing concern any of them had was for a night to pass where the little rabble wouldn’t be reduced to a bloody smear on the much abused chapel floor?

Someone said they should feed the commander to the damn dogs.

Quietly, the murmur went around the little group. Their ears twitched and eyes gleamed with just enough life to spark the idea into fruition.

Damn this bloody war. Damn it all to hell.

They shoved him over the wall with his trousers around his ankles and his tail before his ears, poked him out into the dusky gloom with a tiny match stuck to his lapel. One of the privates saluted, his ears long since shot off and unable to rise to a respectable degree of attention. No one else bothered to show the much bemoaned commander a single shred of respect. Their chaplain had gone the way of the dogs early into the whole affair, ripped to pieces at the first attempt at a holiday truce.

Private First Class Lapman had been the dubious recipient of the chaplain’s head on a spike, the only Manmas Eve present the poor little dear had gotten from a dog and the only one that he had ever had to bury in a ditch.

No one had tried a holiday truce in their battalion again.

And it was Private First Class Lapman who had set up the grand idea to mutiny. “Eulalia, tis death,” he cried, rifle butt slamming against the desperate grip of one soon to be former First Squadron Commander. “Dolce et decorum est,” murmured his squadmate as he held back the pile of rubble they had been using to block the brisk chill of early September from whistling through the remains of that marvel of a window.

It was the Commander who had told the chaplain to seek a truce. It had been the Commander who had held the door against the other rabbit’s frantic scrabbling claws and screams. Worse still, it had been the Commander who had told his miserable and exhausted soldiers that their deaths were good and right.

And it was straight to the dogs with him by way of Man’s Democratic Philosophy. They put it to vote, and they had decided that the honor of the day was to be awarded to Commandant Markman. Such a shame, such a waste of absolutely nothing of value.

Commandant Markman did not think much of this most honorable award, if his desperate shrieks were anything to go by. But it was just good sense to obey the result of a vote, lest Man rise up from their collective graves and strike them all dead where they stood. (Private Second Class Lapman, of no significant relation to the aforementioned Private First Class Lapman, was of the opinion that this would be a marked improvement in their current collective existence. His vote was deemed an outlier and was thus not counted.)

All of Commandant Markman’s screams did nothing to assuage the sheer hatred his now former squadron held for him. No mercy for the bastard would be granted, no quarter to the enemies of rabbit-kind. Eulalia, tis death on the wind. And oh how death came, fleet of foot and with a cacophony of bays and howls that sent the fur rising on the tender ears of those who had enough energy to still obey the demands of genetics and primeval urges. The frenzy of sound merely caused Commandant Markman to attempt all the harder to appeal to the softer side of his squadron’s souls.

Mrs. Iram, once the squad’s much loved dorm mother and now the pitied widow of their much missed chaplain, was the one to cast the first stone. Her aim was remarkably true considering the sheer amount of effort a doe so late in her pregnancy needed to even get to her feet, let alone find a rock appropriately paw sized and hurl it. Private Second Class Lapman would deny to his dying day that he had entertained such a thought.

The stone struck true, a trickle of blood blooming on Commandant Markman’s forehead. In his shock, he let the windowsill go with his paw clapped to his head as if to staunch the bleeding.

And there were the dogs, mouths open and frothing white. Their fangs gleamed in the light of the tiny match, bright white against the sudden churning of blood and fur. Later, hours after the dogs had trotted on their merry way, someone would put it to vote on exactly how to describe the unfortunate demise of Commandant Markman to the higher ups. Private Second Class Lapman, again the statistical outlier of the Vote, was of the opinion that the higher ups deserved to know exactly what kind of awful rabbit they had placed in command of their squadron fresh out of the academy with the gilt still shiny on his officer pins.

Again, Private Second Class Lapman was outvoted.

What they tell the brass is this:

Commandant Markman heroically opted to take the first patrol of the evening. Sadly, Commandant Markman had stopped to have himself a smoke of the last rolled fag the squadron had hoarded over the past month. This was his right as their commander, as he had magnanimously abstained from the previous instances. (Private Second Class Lapman thought this was a load of rubbish, but he was again outvoted.) Sadly, Commandant Markman had failed to judge the light of the day appropriately and had thus attracted the attention of the pack of dogs outside the ruined churchyard.

Private Second Class Lapman was allowed, after much conference with his insignificant relation Private First Class Lapman, to personally write the report on the exact happenings of Commandant Markman’s demise. The squadron had voted along the line of the rational rubbernecking clause, wherein if the outlier buck decided to hunker down atop the windowsill and watch a pack of ravenous dogs rip their former commander to pieces then he was allowed some artistic liberty with the official report.

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Commandant Markman had been driven to his knees by the first of the dogs, a burly fellow that nobody would allow him to call ‘Bruiser’ no matter how much he pleaded, and buried under the weight of said massive beast. This dog, not to be called anything other than Dog Number One, accomplished this task via the swift expedient method of simply crushing Commandant Markman’s throat between his jaws and ripping out the entirety of Commandant Markman’s esophagus with a most spectacular display of primal skill and vigor. Dog Number Two, taking advantage of the bulk of Dog Number One, set to the task of removing Commandant Markman’s left arm with a gusto whilst Dog Number Three set about removing the questionable parts of Commandant Markman’s nether regions.

It was agreed unanimously that no one would mention the cheer of righteous indignation Mrs. Iram let out upon that part of the report, because no self-respecting buck needed to know that does really felt that a buck’s family making parts amounted to nothing so much as ‘flabby and useless little sausages that no doe with a lick of sense would go near with a magnifying glass and tweezers, lest they get a splinter under their nail’.

Dogs Number Four and Five were quite content to gnaw upon Commandant Markman’s legs, cleanly stripping the flesh from knee to ankle and apparently leaving his boots on for a later moment. Mrs. Iram’s savage commentary was from thenceforth agreed to bring nothing of value to the report, and Private Second Class Lapman was allowed free reign to exercise his artistic talent. He set to with a aplomb, graciously allowing Mrs. Iram the privilege of reading his commentary laden report in private.

Dog Number Six crushed Commandant Markman’s skull between its jaws after tearing away his formerly pristine white ears and tossing them to the side like the useless things they were. The description of how the internal components of Commandant Markman’s head turned out to, quite ironically and not pleasantly, have quite a bit of substance to them was not stricken from the record. Thus did the first and last instance of ‘and his brain turned out to be something between cottage cheese and badly jarred cherry jam’ occur within the official records of the Grand Lapin Empire Armed Forces.

Private Second Class Lapman would receive a commendation for his excellent use of descriptive skills under fire, and would thusly be promoted to the Grand Lapin Empire Armed Forces infamous rank of Scrub. Private First Class Lapman quite savagely would inform his mother and thusly former Private Second Class Lapman’s aunt thrice removed of this marked improvement in the overall quality of the squadron.

When the dogs were finished mauling and devouring the corpse of Commandant Markman, the actual last fag made the rounds of the squadron as they held an impromptu memorial ceremony for their former commander. Or, as Private Second Class Lapman called it, the grand celebration of the removal of nothing of value whatsoever. The celebration-cum-eulogy was marked with the sharp crack of bone and barks of the hounds outside the walls as they devoured the corpse of a rabbit no one would truly lament.

The voice coughed once, gargled as it cleared out its throat. When it finally came time for the esteemed patronage to speak, the microphone apparatus clicked far too loudly for him to be heard. He cleared his throat a few more times, jowls quivering as he tilted his head to glare imperiously across the device at the poor technician who manned the lines. The doe’s ears flattened against her head as she hurriedly crossed and uncrossed an impossible tangle of lines, feet pattering against the lush carpet as she frantically tried to correct the lines. After a long moment of static, the lines miraculously cleared and she raised her paw in triumph.

The buck made a sound somewhere between a dignified ‘harrumph’ and the flatulence of a whale, twitching his immaculately combed mustache as he leaned in to the microphone again. With his paws tucked into the pockets of his waistcoat, the buck looked every inch the magnificent politician he was.

“Friends, gentlebucks and does everywhere, lend me your ears,” his voice had the sort of rich grandfatherly tone that politicians since time immemorial had cultivated. “In this, our greatest time of need, let us not turn against ourselves but instead open our hearts and homes to aid and welcome our fellow lapin-kind.”

The technician buried her scoff under her hand. Staff Sergeant Technician Lapman, of a much maligned relation to certain Privates First and Second Class Lapman, knew damn well that the contents of the speech in question were full of useless platitudes. ‘Embrace thine neighbor’, ‘the war will be won soon’, ‘our good rabbits are beating back the odds’, or even the much trotted out ‘we are Mankind’s chosen children’. That one was her favorite.

And lo, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil for Mankind is beside me.

And yet, in this solemn hour it is a consolation to recall and dwell upon our repeated victories both home and far afield. Such is the brave lot of the good bucks and does of the Grand Lapin Empire Armed Forces as they fight against the scourge of the wicked forces of the Canine Republic. It is of the utmost import, for we of the good species that have been left to carry on the will of Mankind, that we extend our hands in allegiance with those like minded species to stem the tide of bloodshed that rages across these hallowed lands.

We must not underrate the gravity of the task which lies before us or the temerity of the ordeal, to which we lapin shall not be found unequal. Our government has thus decreed that each and every rabbit of suitable breeding age, yet not those who have found themselves in the family way or disqualified by means of disability, have thus been entered into a mandatory draft. It is with a great and deep feeling, and that is a feeling of thankfulness that, if these great trials were to come upon our barrows, there is a generation of lapin here now ready to prove itself not unworthy of the days of yore and not unworthy of those great paragons of Mankind, the fathers of our peoples, who laid the foundations of our laws and shaped the greatness of our country.

Perhaps it might seem a paradox that a war undertaken in the name of liberty and right should require, as a necessary part of its processes, the surrender for the time being of so many of the dearly valued liberties and rights. But remember, gentle lapin, good rabbits one and all. Remember that we were made in Mankind’s image, and theirs was an image of war. We rabbits once made sport of war, but now in these desperate times we must put aside our desire for peace.

We must crush this canine scourge into dust in our barrows. Drive them from our fields and homes and send them back to the depths of the Mankind forsaken wilderness they came from!