Chapter One
I woke with a start, and I looked around. That was all impossible. Flying machines that dropped exploding cannonballs? If it ever could happen, it would make war so much...easier? Is that the word? War, easy? I pondered these things as I looked around. I saw my buddies asleep. "Hey! Johnson!" I looked around, hearing the gravely voice of our regiment commader. The commander was a priveleged man, but he didn't let it show. He was entitled to sit and sleep with the rest of the commanders, but he preferred to sleep and eat in the much with his soldiers. Us. Captain Bartlett's nuggets. I looked at the sun, and figured my body woke be up at just about the time I needed it to. "Allright nuggets, time to get moving and lock and load!!" I heard assorted grunts and graons from he sleeping men around me. I noticed my friend Andy beside me, still snoring. I gave him a solid thwack over the top of his head. He barely moved, so I shove him onto the wet pudding of what was the "floor" of our five-man tent. He awoke with a start, spraying the rest of us with water. "Oy, you!" Another member of our tent walked over and kicked him in the ribs. "Get up, you!" He grunted a response and got up. I beamed at him. "Good morning!" He looked at me trough sleepy eyes, not really hearing me and I gave him a good backhand to the face. "Oui! What was that for?" He said, now fully awake. "Getting you awake, you big lug." I said, dodging a smack meant for me. "Play nice laides! Now. I want all of you fed and ready for combat in three hours! The fight is waiting!" We all gurnted at this. While we supported the war effort, we all walked out of our tents and towards the glorious smell of food and victory.
Chapter 2
"March, march march. That's all we do!" I looked to the man on my left, who's name I could not recall. The man behind him gave him a solid thunk on the back of the head and said, "It builds character." He was smiling, and that smile quickly turned into something else as he snarled. "Now keep marching!" There was no dicipline in our march, it was just a colum of us, about five hundred total, marching towards the battlefeld. He took us, his personal command level, aside as we grunted towards the battlefield. "Alrght, nuggets. This is our chance to shine. We're being sent in first, as part of the speahead against the South. If we win this, then we win the war!" I heard the quaint, ragged cheer come up from our bunch. We all loaded our muskets and walked into the tree line as we saw the enemy approach, and we readied our guns. It was dark, and the enemy approached through and through, just as they were supposed to. I grinned as I looked down the barrel of my musket, feeling the power behind the weapon. My hands were sweating. This was what I had joined to do, and I had done plenty of it.. I searched my soul, trying to root out the one feeling that kept evading me. Guilt? No...pity? Compassion? I kept thinking about it, and I just couldn't find the answer. I had been able to find and quash feelings before, but only after realizing what they were. This one, however, was...just out of my grasp. I stored it, and I fingered the trigger. I had a brach break, followed by two others. That was the signal. The finger that that next to the trigger moved, almost as of it own. I heard the resound crack of musket fire and felt the stinging cloud of gunpowder in my eyes. I heard a man scream in pain. I pressed the rigger on my gun, not realizing it had already fired. I heard the cracks annoncing the fire of the other men among me. "CHARRRGE!" I screamed the word as me and my fellow Union soldiers went beserk, leaping forward out of our trees and holes onto or completely bewildered enemy. We had set up the ambush well, coming at them from all directions. I leapt down on one man, and I could see the fear and pain in his eyes. I pointed my rifle at him, and jabbed the short knife into his heart. I heard him scream and saw the life slowly ebb from his eyes. I flipped my gun around and used it like a baseball bat, swinging it as hard as I could towards the man in front of me. He never saw it coming. The butt of the rifle was sheathed in copper, and I winced as I heard the resounding craaccccck of wood as the rifle connected with the back of the mans head. The man went down, and I kicked another in the groin as I ran out of the direct field of fire as I hastilly inspected my gun. The furnitiure was cracked, the actual firing means were undmaged. I realized how close that came to be as I scanned the mob. I found the enemy's commander , and I picked the rifle off a dead man and I checked the iron sights on it. They were still there. I fired my gun, and raised my head in triumph as the man went down. Then, I felt this jar run throughout my body. I saw my arm go limp as I dropped the gun and I heard an inhuman screech as I felt the immense wave of pain blossom into my shoulder. I kept trying to figure out who was screaming, and I dropped to my knees as I realized I was the one screaming. With my good arm, I picked up a carbine that was next to me and spun my body around as it collided with the man who shot me
Then, my entire world went black.
** *
"Sonny? Wake up. Wakey wakey!" I felt a hand gently patting my shoulder and I couldn't respond. "He's dead." I tried to say something as hard as I could, but all I could make out was a small whimper. "He's alive! I heard im! I heard im!" I managed to grasp the mans hand in mine and he winced. "And he's strong to!" I blearily opened my eyes and through the fog I could make out my commander. "Wellcome, son, to the land of the living." He laughed, and I did my best to roll my eyes before I closed them and drifted off to a blissful, dreamless sleep. I woke up some hours later, and looked around. "Did we win?" I croaked. "Yeah, we did. But only for one reason." was never as happy as then to hear my commanders gravely voice. I pondered this, as it was in books that there were one or two people who won battles. "Why's that?" I asked, reaching for the water glass next to me. "Some sonufabitch took a Confed rifle and shot im' in the head, that's why." He picked up a bottle of what looked like bourbon and downed it. "Is that a bad thing?" I asked, wary of his suspicions. The commander looked at me, then burst out laughing. "Boy, you make it obvious to see who shot im'. Ah course it's not a bad thing! We won, you dumbass!" He laughed again. I groaned meekly. "And we know you done it, to. We had a couple of captured Feds tell is they saw your, and even couple of our own men saw it. In fact, they want you to go to Washington for an award." I blinked, and choked on the water I was eagerly drinking. "Ww-what?" I asked, for this was completely unexpected. "Yep." He said simply. "That commander you shot was no ordinary commander, he was a messenger. We now have the entire confederate battle plan in Union hands!" I blinked again, and I almost swooned.
looked up in time to see the bomber on our wing explode. It all happened in slow motion, as if everything was happening through the water. I saw this single fighter swirl up and out of the black cloud that marked the death of the aircraft, like a swan would fly through a splash of water. I saw him do a loop, and I hoped dearly he would loop in front of our -29'. He did, and I took nolittle satisfaction in the way that the aircraft hummed, almost as if in satisfaction as the chin gunner fired his twin cannons and spit fire and death twoards the enemy fighter. I heard a cheer coming from forward as he nailed the enemy fighter. I looked out at the sky, ad felt a small pang of...what was it? I couldn't be sure. Fear. That's what it was. All around our sqaudren there was heavy flak, bracketing us into a narrow flight corridor where thier fighters could swoop in and dive upon us. The one thing they didn't count on was that our new bombers had teeth. The ones we were flying were the new B-29 bombers, with double piston engines on each wing each in it's own naccele. One shot of flak came close. To close. I was the pilot's "back-up", there wasa fancy name for it but we never used it. The flak was a very lucky shot, as it came right up next to the cockpit and sent shrapnel both into the cockpit itself and wrecked engine No. 3. THere were screams from the cockpit, then nothing. I raced up there as fast as I could on the swaying bomber. Acting almost on instcint, I moved what was left of the two men that used to be sitting there. I used the edge of my flight jacket to wipe the gore off of the insrument panels. It was a nasty job, sure, but somebody had to do it. I had to be sure that I could hold the bomber level, for if I couldn't, the orders where to shoot us down for two reasons. If we lost control and started swaying, there was a high chance of colliding with the other bombrers. ALso, we didn't want the Japs to get these. They were to valuble.