An Inspiring Display
Rotating back to our week Off the Line, we pass the company headed down and say "Good luck, troopers! Make Kimball proud!" as they curse us on march to their week in the Heck below.
Back up at the camp, every trooper from the Trench line is covered in dust and sand, then ordered to strip down for a company wide shower. In the center of Forlorn Hope, and surrounded by camp trash, there's a previously clean pool of water. I say "Previously" because around the time the women were removed, a logistics trooper was carrying a barrel of radioactive waste from when they kick started the power generator for the command tent's equipment, accidentally tripped, and dropped it in. From then on, the thing leaked nuclear waste into the spring, and command caved. The spring became an outlet for the camp's generator runoff/company shower.
Command was well aware of this issue, but water was scarce at Forlorn Hope, and we had the supplies to adapt and overcome. So, the company from the Trench Line is given a plastic bucket, and five minutes to wash up. Dunking the bucket into the contaminated water, the trooper fills it up, and waits for the corporal to show up with a box of Abraxo Cleaner "The miracle detergent." The corporal then sprinkles the powder into the trooper's bucket of murky radioactive water, and then the trooper sloshes it around until they feel they won't mutate. For some reason I never learned, the shower buckets were nicknamed "The Vats." Anyway, after using your boot brush to get your vital areas, you poured the bucket all over yourself before drying off in the Mojave sun. You are then given three more minutes to get dressed, and form up with your platoon for a muster. As bizarre and dangerous as the "Shower" may sound, your near-monthly shower was something most troopers looked forward to all the time. Of course, there were other period to clean yourself up off the line, but nothing quite like bathing in refreshing recently decontaminated water.
The on the line, off the line procedure was common for much of that time, but part of it was changed after about two or three months (Probably) post departure of the women. This big event was when the Trench line was discarded. I remember it so clearly because that event was when I heard the most fantastic and inspiring part of probably anyone's Mojave tour. Forlorn Hope was an incredibly depressing place, but if any event there brought out some glory, it was when the Trench Line fell.
Our company was on the Observation line at the time when a dust storm rolled in from the west. All guns on the line were pointing out at Nelson even after visibility was almost gone. The Legion had skipped out on any big attacks the past few dust storms, instead using those storms to "give us our guys back." But, when the dust came in harder, and we lost sight of the guys below, that was when the singing started.
I don't know who created the song, or when it was created, but it was more of a chant, or something sounding more like a platoon's running cadence. So, just as we lost sight of the Trench line, we heard the song "Caesar's Ballad" coming through the winds.
I believe "Caesar's Ballad" was named as such because it related to an old world dish called a "Caesar Salad." I guess the immature trooper who made the song thought if you say "Caesar's Ballad" fast enough, it'd sound like that vegetable dish… Anyway, we couldn't see the Trench line, but we heard them singing the words through the storm. The words went:
"Way out east of the Rah-do (Colorado)
There's a small bald man with an E-go
He got real tired of washing out
So he took some tribes to prove his clout
Little lord Caesar was hurt as a kid
Enslaved the tribes to do as he bid
Never was good with the Lay-Dies (Ladies)
So he made them slaves for the Ba-Bies (Babies)
His fave old pup was sent to the pound
Making up for that with the Denver hound
He's real smart with the His-Tor-Y
But forgot about all of Rome's En-Em-Ies
Don't say 'Graham' or he'll get real mad
Or Monster of the East will prove he's bad
His best boys from Ari-Zo-Na
Lost round one to Private Fi-O-Na ("Fiona": Female trooper posthumously awarded for courage at Hoover Dam)
…"
About two verses in, everyone on the Observation line joined the choir, still unable to see our lads below. I happily but nervously joined in the chorus as the ominous air of the situation rose. There were more verses to the song/chant, but the fast tempo taunt always ended the same way with:
"We're here Caesar, so don't you pout
Standing in the way of your western route
We showed you once, didn't cost us a buck
So try it again, you old bald *Profanity*!"
As soon as the last profane rhyme was shouted by us and those below, gunshots erupted through the winds. It continued for seconds and then minutes. The rangers in the towers couldn't see anything or assist, and the fighting below continued longer than a usual raid. The sputtering of machineguns and rifles continued on and on for far too long. Our LT was given orders to move 2nd platoon down for assistance, and we threw on our kits to head below. Just as we started the march down the winding trail, the first figures broke through the dust. Thank God nobody fired because it was our guys. The troopers staggered up the cliffs and half of us were designated to help them up while the other half was sent below. I spent the next hour or two helping our limping boys up the hill and escorting them to the doc. The gunfire died out, but the storm continued, and I had no idea what the other half of our platoon was doing below.
After another hour, the storm was gone, and an alert trooper ordered our company's second platoon to muster at the Observation line. The other half of our platoon came up as the storm subsided, and we learned that half of the company on the Trench Line was devastated. Our guys who went below helped mop up, but a little over 30 troopers from the Trench Line were killed or captured, and the rest were put under the doctor's care.
If there was any time for that song to be relevant, it was in that moment. All those troopers went to their end with the last words they willingly said being a curse to that crazy Caesar guy and his army of psychos.
As inspiring as that moment was, the losses there made command deem the Trench Line as too dangerous to hold. No more troopers were to be sent down below, which was a relief to us on the Observation line, and new troops were being mustered from across the Mojave to bolster our ranks. There'd still be three companies at Forlorn Hope, and none of the old Trench Line jobs were going away, but we were consolidating everyone at the camp or Observation line.