Grateful Bench-warming

1 year later- Age 25- 2076

You may think little of me for skipping an entire year, but there honestly was not much to say about the year of 2075.

I will mention a few of the notable "Events" if you can call them that, but much of what happened can be covered by my detailing of those first few months at LM-5. Just like the US government in general forgot about those of us in Annex cities, the command of the Alaskan Front forgot about us at LM-5. Though the world and war continued on outside, we were exempt from those things, which was completely fine by us.

Some of those "Events" mostly included new and dull ways of coping with that ongoing battle against boredom. We still kept up with celebrity news and other nonsense, but the big new thing in 2075 was getting into "Alternative information"

Again, there was literally nothing else to do on the day shifts, so I believe the coping means were inevitable. Like, a few months into 2075, one of the radio techs atop the processing or saw building crew was flipping through the stations on his long-range radio pack when he found a man ranting about craziness. Of course, it was interesting nonsense, but the intercepted transmission was to any and all "resistance members." Considering we were still technically in Canada territory, we thought the broadcast was to Canadian resistance fighters still in annex cities. Terrified of a new wave of violence in places like Montreal, and fearing a return to the old days of Annex world, it wasn't more than a minute into the broadcast that we learned that it was targeting resistance members against the "Global Maoist Government." Yes, we happened across a conspiracy man whom none of us would dare to turn off due to his essential aid in the war of LM-5 day shifts.

From the primary host, "Alejandro Jones", we spent countless hours learning about government officials and high society members across the world devising ways to survive an upcoming catastrophe by experimenting with different ways to achieve immortality. After the elites achieve immortality through every means from sacrificing children to Lucifer to uploading brains to mainframes, the elites would then try to kill each other one by one in the post-catastrophe world in a big event quoted as "The Great Game."

We also learned much about the "Zetan" aliens hovering above earth who'd been abducting people for thousands of years. That was funny to hear about because during that broadcast we actually learned we weren't the only military ones who were regular listeners. One time, Mr. Jones got a call in from some guys who were revealed as other AF boys in the Yukon. The troops were hysterical, claiming how their squad's medic, a PVT Elliot Ter-Something was abducted in the middle of a battle by a UFO. The host actually believed them! I mean, the troops were pretty convincing, but everyone knew that those troops were probably just passing time in the snowy trenches.

There was so much entertainment that we tuned in all the time. Even though we knew the host was just feeding his fellow nut cases, it was so enjoyable to hear about the secret "Big Mountain Research Center", and the "True" source of brains for those in development "Robobrain" robots we'd heard about back home. There was daily news about Chinese infiltrators smuggling weapons into DC for communist agents, and specials about nuclear war being started by those "ZAX" computer systems. The best episodes were about how the big Vault Project was actually a cover for mass social experiments to be run by the US's shadow-government-to-be codenamed "The Enclave." The host always backed up everything by shuffling likely-blank papers in front of the microphone and shouting something along the lines of "It's all in the documents right here!"

As much as we knew the host was full of shit or suffering from some severely overactive imagination, there was one special about the Sherman Doctrine that was pretty believable. For starters, we wondered how on earth he even knew what the Sherman Doctrine was, especially since not even troops on the Alaskan Front heard about that before we'd mention it. But, the ranting host explained how the Comms cut off in Annex cities and outlines in the procedure were intentionally done by the "New US Government" or his mythical "Enclave" to breed psycho soldiers and later engineer drugs to create super soldiers. Pondering the overall purpose of Sherman was something we did even as psychos, so the explanation from the host seemed as good as any other... At least until he tied that into the Order of Maoist Xi's propensity towards drinking the blood of children.

So, the only reason that Sherman bit was somewhat believable was because of the anti-psychotics we were taking. Those certainly didn't make us feel like "Super Soldiers", but the strangest thing happened at the end of the year when I was helping service a convoy on route to the front. Some of the AF soldiers were stretching their legs and talking to each other or thinking out loud about how or when to use the new "Psycho" syringe that was recently added to their first aid kits. Asking to see one of the syringes, I read the incredibly tiny label and saw almost the same compound I'd been taking for years in pill form... Nothing ever really came from that, but we'd been long-time listeners of Alejandro Jones. So, we felt high above the common sheep or AF troops who weren't even aware of the "Intel Conflicts."

Got a little sidetracked, but as I was saying, the entire year of 2075 was almost entirely eventless. As much as we focused on celebrities, conspiracies, and other such nonsense away from the front, that news of what was actually happening outside the LM-5 bubble did trickle in. I again wasn't too concerned with that, but I'll give the rundown of what transpired in the world immediately outside LM-5:

By March of 2076, the Army launched a series of operations in Northern Alaska to battle the Chinese focus at Fairbanks. The Yukon or Wilderness Campaign that had been going on since we got to LM-5 was nearing the end, with the front moving a few hundred miles further from us over the year of 75. Nothing except the seasons had changed at the mill. The sun shined down as it slowly melted the snows of the past winters which was the same as that first one. In a few more weeks the mill would open for business again, and we were slowly approaching our two-year mark at LM-5.

The weeks slowly drifted by and the workers returned to their usual jobs with the end of the holiday season. The war against boredom was still a continuous one sometimes more brutal than those days in Montreal, the memories of which were getting fuzzier by the days.

Around that time in early 76, the big new coping mechanism was whittling. I kept myself occupied on watch by learning to whittle, also while listening to the always interesting/idiotic Intel Conflicts. So, Mr. Tuck was the one who taught me and Savaren what to do with a block of wood and a knife, and that was great at keeping our brains inside of our heads. Mr. Tuck made impressive little musicians and instruments out of a discarded chunk from the saw building in his free time. He really liked music and was clearly very artistic, so he would carve an average block of wood into a man playing the saxophone or some shit in about a weeks' time.

Over the next few weeks and even months, I shaped wood for countless hours on my downtime or on shift. It was around that time that I wished we had a TV like in Montréal, but everyone still remembered The Square and had memorized the words to that looping series of porn movies. Some soldiers who'd been at The Square as long as me and my crew often quoted those movies in humorous ways and even considered hosting dramatic readings of the scripts. I turned that down at the thought of one of these guys reading the woman's lines, and focused more on the celebrity news and my new hobby.

Piece after piece I would discard after screwing up and had to start over in a cycle even more pointless than you reading about it. I mostly made weird-looking stick people, guns resembling something an 8-year-old boy would draw, or whatever came to mind, but then I'd give up out of frustration only to start the hobby again after enough boredom.

One day, I was working on my latest carving and screwed up the body of the actress I was trying to sculpt. I threw it aside, and when I looked at it again, I saw something else. The block looked sort of like a bear!... Or a fat deformed humanoid on all fours (Not the sexy actress I was trying to create from Montreal memory). I picked it up off the ground, and over the days I carved out a bearish head and ears. I made his paws a little more rounded and distinguished out his limbs. By week two, and after countless distractions, it actually looked at least somewhat like a bear. I smoothed it out with sandpaper, then made quick dashes with my knife to show fur.

I got better and better the more I did. Weeks after the bear, I tried working on people again, but I screwed up one too many times. Then the idea occurred to me, "I should make faces." Again, after countless trials and errors, and time better spent guarding the mill, I made a semi-good-looking head and face. The nose was a little big, and I made the smile too wide. Mr. Tuck passed by me while I was working on it. When he saw the chunk of wood, he said it looked like Louis Armstrong grinning. So, I gave it curly dashes of hair, and soon enough, the model of Louis Armstrong's head and face was done despite looking somewhat creepy.

So, those were the things I was still more focused on than the world outside, but little by little, the further the war progressed away from us, the closer it was getting.

The background news was getting more and more about the campaign up north by the time summer of 76 arrived. The last stage of the wilderness campaign was underway with the battle at Fairbanks beginning on the first day of summer. The battle was bloody and would actually be a series of battles that'd last almost the whole season. Fairbanks being probably the bloodiest and longest battle since the 67 defense of Juneau, China's HQ in the Yukon was preparing to fall while me and my fellas were having fun boating and fishing weekends. Once Fairbanks fell, the last holdout was the main force in Anchorage. The Chinese were about to lose almost all of their hold on Alaska, and then all American assets could relocate to General Chase's division which was simultaneously beginning a slow advance on Anchorage.

The northern Yukon and Alaskan wilderness were littered with Chinese bases, many of which had airfields for bombers and fighters that annihilated any previous advance on Anchorage from Juneau. The purpose of the Yukon or Wilderness Campaign that had been ongoing for years was to tame those threats. Who even knew how many lives had been sacrificed to reach the edge of Fairbanks, but during the whole thing, we were either going crazy in Montreal or having the time of our lives at the beautiful but largely boring LM-5.

The Chinese fought for every inch of Alaskan territory to keep that oil pipeline under their control. However, the combat on the ground was extremely brutal from the accounts I read and AF soldiers we met who'd been there during previous marches on Anchorage. Command at Juneau knew that the Chinese would sacrifice the pipeline if they had to, so eliminating those Yukon airbases was essential against any kind of desperate air raid. It was only June, but the intensity of combat was growing more and more as the Chinese were staring at potential defeat.

Months later- age 26- 2076

August 4th, 2076, we had reached our 2-year mark at LM-5 and the US succeeded in decimating the Chinese at Fairbanks a week before. The casualty rate steadily increased as the days went on, but the graph showed that when the final assault began, the rate spiked. The overall casualty number reached 8,000 dead or injured and jumped from 3,500 to 8,000 in a period of three days. The Americans captured nearly 5,000 Chinese army regulars and killed nearly doubled that. What happened to the prisoners is unknown, and despite our victory, something bad happened.

When the Army launched the final assault of the battle, a lot of Chinese troops fled in different directions, leaving whole platoons and even companies of them unaccounted for. With the hundreds of battle-hardened communist troops familiar with the Yukon disappearing into the wind, there were no front lines anymore. Those rigid lines were no longer there with the fall of Fairbanks, but those troops who scattered weren't under orders anymore. What also didn't help was the army's nearly immediate plans for Anchorage.

A week after the Battle for Fairbanks, on August 4th, the final push on Anchorage had begun. Before the Chinese or even troops who fought at Fairbanks could even catch their breaths, Chase's slow march was given the order of Double-Time. The US Army's main force was just over 100 miles outside of the Anchorage city limits but encountered the kind of resistance that demanded the Fairbanks troops immediately. The fighting became much more dramatic, but the Army pushed on with unstoppable motivation from the recent victories. So focused on the Anchorage prize and new line of advance, everyone forgot about the little details after previous victories, myself included.

I couldn't help but be excited for my country during that time, even going so far as putting down my newspaper covering Sinclair's "Sierra Madre Casino" that was already hemorrhaging money despite only beginning construction a few months prior. Excited for the progress of my team in the not too distant world outside, in the back of my mind I knew that my brothers in arms were facing nearly 350,000 Chinese Army troops ready to fight to the death for their stupid "Emperor" "Premier" "Chairman" or whateverthefuck they have.

Again despite it all, nothing changed for us.

I almost started missing misery. Everything went so fine and lovely. Despite the not-LM-5 world, the official news had taken the same position of those comic books and even the conspiracy garbage. The news was interesting, and something to cheer for, but might as well have been fiction considering how little we were affected by it. I had all but forgotten that LM-5 was still part of the world.

After 2 years of our unit being almost completely forgotten by the command of a front we were Sorta part of, it turns out I was wrong when I called Montreal Purgatory many chapters ago. I wasn't wrong when I said that the old us really did die when we left Montreal. Though we didn't die physically on the way to LM-5, I learned that the part of us that did die was only awaiting judgment at LM-5... It also turned out we did deserve LM-5 because almost everyone would experience what was long overdue.

*Special thanks to Xcom-Anders again for certain inspiration to better detail this chapter. Hope you enjoyed my adaptation to what we talked about Lol*

*To everyone: Don't worry. There's a reason for the lack of action in the past few chapters. Hopefully, you been enjoying them regardless :D*