Crossing the Barrier
Disclaimer: Read and heed previous chapters.
I am called before my company commander and learn that I have a full twenty-five days of leave plus a week long refresher course at the end of my leave break. All together that makes thirty two days, practically a full month's leave. The refresher course will consist of soldierly routines which any graduate of Basic is already greatly familiar with and is for men returning from leave breaks to the front lines.
Tobruk has fallen before us, though we have suffered great losses. It is December 5, 2141. Bardia has been retaken and the Egyptian frontier is just ahead of us as well as our first target in the region, Sidi El Barrani. The Egyptian soldiers in the neighboring encampment are rapturous with joy with one overzealous man firing burst of energy from an electric gun into the night sky.
This provokes a massive firing up and down the lines from jittery sentries on the frontier of our territory. I sit on my cot, sewing a set of corporal's chevrons into my sleeves. These chevrons I earned because of Bronsky, killed when he stepped on a landmine in the no man's land, returning from a patrol. Fressan gets two of my shirts as I inherit two of Bronsky's shirts.
"That's great." Kat says, when I break the news to him, "That means you'll see your Andi again?"
I nod, for the first time in almost a year I dare to dream of coming home. I remember when I left home, me and three other boys from Nutwood. Almost the whole town turned out to see us off, we were kissed by pretty girls and weeping mothers and decked in flower garlands, it was almost as if we had already won.
I head out on a five ton truck the next morning with Wiersbowski, Fressan and Kat to see me off. Our company is being rotated to the rear for reinforcement and recuperation for a few weeks; I am being taken off to Gazala, where one of our nearest airstrips is located. I have two days of guard duty before I fly out on the next flight to Salerno and afterward I will hop onto a civilian flight to London the next morning.
Standing at the guard post located near the control tower I can hear the DC-4 Dakota transports, large twin prop driven aircraft, landing supplies and reinforcements. My relief comes up and takes his post as I gather my kit together and wait for the aircraft to be refueled and checked by the mechanics, a two hour wait. Sitting atop my field pack, my helmet on my web gear and my rifle across my knees, I pull a picture from my helmet. It is a creased and somewhat folded picture, having been subject to the stresses of everyday life for a soldier. I gaze longingly and lovingly at Andi's smiling face, frozen in time.
The boarding call sounds and since I am able bodied I help the loadmasters help the wounded aboard first. These are men destined for hospitals in Sicily and southern Italy to recover from severe wounds. Finally we come aboard. I sit, cramped between a wounded sergeant with a broken arm and bandaged head from the 15th Light Infantry and a gunner from the 17th Field Artillery Regiment.
The flight and the day I spend in Salerno are uneventful and I change from tan desert fatigues to my green service uniform, with a braid on the sleeve that has the seal of the United Systems Military and a palm tree, meaning I have served in Army Corps Africa and a telling sign in any military barracks of one of "the Africans" to the conscious observer.
As the aircraft cruises over Europe with a mixed passenger complement of civilians and a few soldiers I am lost in thought. When the pilot says we are landing in London I am an automaton when I board the maglev train to Nutwood. I slowly begin to awaken when I see signs that bear familiar names, the train stops at the Sussex station. Sussex, Dorset, Percival, towns that mark the boundaries of my childhood. The train stops at the station and grabbing my field pack I walk out and I see a sight for sore eyes. It is Andi, save for the shorter haircut which extends down to the middle of her neck instead of at her shoulders where it used to, she is just the same as she was in the creased old photograph I often gazed at whilst in Africa.
"You cut your hair." I say.
"You let yours grow." Andi replies, indicating my longish crew cut that was much shorter when I left for Africa.
I take her in my arms for the first time in months, feeling her slender, lithe frame against me. I am surprised to see her, I had planned to spend my first half of my leave with my family and the second half with Andi but now that she is here I won't have to do as much traveling.
As I reach the familiar streets of Nutwood Forest many aspects of my being, lying long dormant because of the strain of the battlefield begin to reassert themselves. I smile more easily now as I walk arm in arm with Andi. My parents are at home, as are my little brothers, Michael and David.
I go to my bedroom to change into my civilian clothes. They feel soft, wonderful, and light. My old leather jacket is a little bit tight across the shoulders; I have grown in the army. I walk back into the living room. My father asks me how things are going at the front.
"Things are going as usual." I reply, I cannot convey with words the terror of a barrage, the bone chilling shouts of ogres charging our position, the scents of death and rot as zombies lurch about nor the feel of being starred at by a telescopic sight of a Gollum.
Andi and I go for a walk. It is a long and lengthy one through the town. I see Mr. Cavendish and ex ACME detective and the local surveyor, an older fellow with a gray mustache and graying hair as well as a round shape, enjoying a smoke of his pipe outside of the Rose and Crown pub.
"Martin, how have you been old boy?" Cavendish asks.
"I've been better Mr. Cavendish." I reply.
"How've you been Andi?" Cavendish asks.
"I'm pleased to see you again." Andi replies.
"How are things at the front?" Cavendish asks, "Mr. Bevel's boy being drafted wasn't the only draft. Constable Gosling was also called up two months ago. Both he and Mr. Bevel's boy have been sent off to Dyson City."
I shudder inwardly; Dyson City is where the Biohazard first struck Earth and is where some of the most savage fighting of this war is taking place. North Africa would seem a picnic to the soldiers in Dyson. This I know because I saw a plane full of wounded from the battle as well as a very large stack of body bags at the airfield. The aircraft had come from Dyson City.
I go inside the pub with Andi and order our dinner. As we wait for our meal, I see the town shelter being built. It is supposedly a place where civilians can hide and the local militia or army units can make a stand to defend them if a Biohazard were to break out. I have come upon similar shelters on the front. At Derna I nearly vomited when we opened a shelter hoping to find survivors but only discovering that the creatures had been there before us and their shelter had turned into a tomb with zombies shambling about inside it.
Strange, I am now far away from the front or any fighting, yet I can see things in terms of how I saw them on the frontlines. The army has changed me and Andi can see it as she takes one of my trembling hands. The look in her gray eyed gaze says volumes to me, more than words can say. She is saying, "Martin, what has happened to you?"
I cannot bear to keep it within any longer. I tell her everything, about Rhett Garland's death, the terror of being trapped in the no man's land, the visceral fear of falling energy orbs, of Morerro's senseless death, and of Pilgrim being killed. She regards me with both deeper concern and love as she takes me in her arms. Just to hold on to Andi, to feel her slender frame through the material of her clothes, is what I spent countless desert nights dreaming of.
We spend much of the night walking and speaking in the town. Andi tells me how grateful she is for what I'm doing. I don't feel it is much to be grateful for, it is only by sheer chance I am alive after months of bitter fighting in the dunes.
"Martin, you've been through things no one deserves to go through." Andi replied, "I find that I love you even more for the fact that you're out there."
This is still more damning to me, I am unworthy of such love and praise, for I took part in a group beating of a coward. We are sitting on a grassy knoll just outside Nutwood, looking up at the stars.
"They're beautiful, aren't they?" Andi asks me.
I look up at the stars and say the first thing that comes to mind, something I often would think on quieter periods on the front, "When I was in Africa I would look up on nights like this, although there are usually shells flying about or flares going off I could still see stars on a clear desert night. I would stare out at the heavens. It would bring about a sense of wonder, despite the terror about me, wonder about God allowing such beauty to exist and that I was only able to appreciate it because there was so much ugliness and destruction all around me."
"When you were in Africa I looked at the stars every night and wondered if you were looking at those same stars every night." Andi replies, "I also made a wish every night for your safety."
I see tears in her eyes; Andi must have felt terrible worry reading casualty reports every morning, seeing the hundreds of wounded being shipped from the Dyson City to hospitals in Boston. I wipe them gently from her cheek and guide her closer. The embrace we share is almost pure bliss, lifting my soul from the depths that the horrors of the front have dragged it.
I am almost breathless when I pull away from her a bit, her left arm is still draped over my shoulder and my right arm is around her waist. She turns and looks at me, longingly, as if at any moment I might disappear back into the barren, gritty, and dusty hell that is the North African front.
She tenderly runs a hand down a scar behind my left ear as she faces me. That was from the terrible shelling we witnessed at Agedabla and was a minor wound from a shell fragment. The war has left physical and mental scars upon me. The sound of a diesel engine, of several diesel engines, startles us and we turn and see several five ton trucks and half tracks driving down the motorway, their distinctive silhouettes in the moonlight. Even at home the signs of the war are everywhere. I see the half tracks towing several quad barreled 20 mm anti-aircraft guns. It's the 117th Flak Division, setting out to reinforce us in Africa.
"Are they going to Africa?" Andi asks.
I nod silently; even in the night I can see that many of these troops are young boys like Morerro. I remember air attacks by large, mutated wasps. At first they were laughable, carrying single energy orbs and dropping them on our positions, a nuisance really but no severe threat. Then they started to adapt, attacking in swarms, picking off solitary men at their posts by snatching them into the dunes and injecting them with their toxic venom, dropping energy orbs on larger troop concentrations, and latching onto our aircraft and tearing them apart. Fighters are only somewhat effective in stopping them and our 90mm dual purpose anti-aircraft/anti-tank guns are too slow firing. These four barreled flak guns in large concentrations we call "flak circuses" could actually be quiet effective.
I see a baby faced gunner at his post behind the barrels at the gun mount, the other members of his crew stand ready with ammunition. The sight disturbs me, for it reminds me of things I'd best not think of.
Andi feels the same way and I lead her to a spot near Wallingford Creek, which runs right by Nutwood Forest. It is a place where picnickers dine and lovers caress. I of course opt for the latter. Andi realizes this as well and in the pale moonlight, nicely aided by starlight I can make out her pretty, olive face, the curve of her breast, her silhouette by the light of the moon. We share an intimate moment that lifts my soul to greater heights. This is not merely erotic, although there is plenty of that feeling; it seems to be also a deeper sort of love. As we lay, breathless beside each other staring into the vastness of the heavens I pull her closer, and just close my eyes, savoring the moment. Latent passion, long dormant on the frontlines, love that always existed but only dared raise it's head at a quiet moment, all are now unfettered as I open my eyes and smile at my beloved. We put our clothing back in place, trying not to look to disheveled, and walk back to my house.
Andi spends another week with us before she returns home to spend Christmas with her family. I bid her goodbye at the airport, feeling the small tendrils of a sense of dread creeping up on me, for it will soon be my turn to fly to Salerno and eventually Africa.
I cannot watch the news; it is too full of reports from the front. Those damned correspondents. What do they know about war? The night I took Andi to the airport I learned my lesson about the news, do not watch it while on leave. I see an aerial view of the devastation over Dyson City, the flash of exploding artillery, the scurrying of troop movements, the rising plumes of smoke. So for the duration of my leave I avoid watching news broadcasts.
My brothers continually ask me about the front; it is inevitable due to the inherent curiosity of youth. I only wish they knew enough to maintain their innocence. I give vague details, sparing them the graphic sights I have seen, such as the desiccated corpses I found in the shelter at Derna, or the pure terror of an air attack, or night patrols to gather information on the enemy. Innocence like theirs is fragile, delicate, like the wings of a butterfly, the slightest touch and it will shatter like glass. If I tell them the whole story of what I have seen they will age before their time. I am nineteen but the experience of the front leaves me feeling many times my age. My family cannot fully comprehend what has happened to me, my transformation into an old man trapped in a young man's body.
The days blur together and save for the occasional dream of the frontlines they are altogether pleasant. But as these days, these peaceful days, these islands of paradise in the turbulent seas of hell, pass I feel ever more uneasy. For that inevitable day dawns and I am to return to the front.
I watch, wistfully, sadly as London's airport grows ever smaller in the distance, returning to Salerno and eventually North Africa. I feel nothing but a mixture of numbness and that wistful longing that I felt inside me during months on the African front. It is a wistful longing for hearth, home, and love that is far removed from the dusty squalor of the desert.
Disclaimer: Read and heed previous chapters.
I am called before my company commander and learn that I have a full twenty-five days of leave plus a week long refresher course at the end of my leave break. All together that makes thirty two days, practically a full month's leave. The refresher course will consist of soldierly routines which any graduate of Basic is already greatly familiar with and is for men returning from leave breaks to the front lines.
Tobruk has fallen before us, though we have suffered great losses. It is December 5, 2141. Bardia has been retaken and the Egyptian frontier is just ahead of us as well as our first target in the region, Sidi El Barrani. The Egyptian soldiers in the neighboring encampment are rapturous with joy with one overzealous man firing burst of energy from an electric gun into the night sky.
This provokes a massive firing up and down the lines from jittery sentries on the frontier of our territory. I sit on my cot, sewing a set of corporal's chevrons into my sleeves. These chevrons I earned because of Bronsky, killed when he stepped on a landmine in the no man's land, returning from a patrol. Fressan gets two of my shirts as I inherit two of Bronsky's shirts.
"That's great." Kat says, when I break the news to him, "That means you'll see your Andi again?"
I nod, for the first time in almost a year I dare to dream of coming home. I remember when I left home, me and three other boys from Nutwood. Almost the whole town turned out to see us off, we were kissed by pretty girls and weeping mothers and decked in flower garlands, it was almost as if we had already won.
I head out on a five ton truck the next morning with Wiersbowski, Fressan and Kat to see me off. Our company is being rotated to the rear for reinforcement and recuperation for a few weeks; I am being taken off to Gazala, where one of our nearest airstrips is located. I have two days of guard duty before I fly out on the next flight to Salerno and afterward I will hop onto a civilian flight to London the next morning.
Standing at the guard post located near the control tower I can hear the DC-4 Dakota transports, large twin prop driven aircraft, landing supplies and reinforcements. My relief comes up and takes his post as I gather my kit together and wait for the aircraft to be refueled and checked by the mechanics, a two hour wait. Sitting atop my field pack, my helmet on my web gear and my rifle across my knees, I pull a picture from my helmet. It is a creased and somewhat folded picture, having been subject to the stresses of everyday life for a soldier. I gaze longingly and lovingly at Andi's smiling face, frozen in time.
The boarding call sounds and since I am able bodied I help the loadmasters help the wounded aboard first. These are men destined for hospitals in Sicily and southern Italy to recover from severe wounds. Finally we come aboard. I sit, cramped between a wounded sergeant with a broken arm and bandaged head from the 15th Light Infantry and a gunner from the 17th Field Artillery Regiment.
The flight and the day I spend in Salerno are uneventful and I change from tan desert fatigues to my green service uniform, with a braid on the sleeve that has the seal of the United Systems Military and a palm tree, meaning I have served in Army Corps Africa and a telling sign in any military barracks of one of "the Africans" to the conscious observer.
As the aircraft cruises over Europe with a mixed passenger complement of civilians and a few soldiers I am lost in thought. When the pilot says we are landing in London I am an automaton when I board the maglev train to Nutwood. I slowly begin to awaken when I see signs that bear familiar names, the train stops at the Sussex station. Sussex, Dorset, Percival, towns that mark the boundaries of my childhood. The train stops at the station and grabbing my field pack I walk out and I see a sight for sore eyes. It is Andi, save for the shorter haircut which extends down to the middle of her neck instead of at her shoulders where it used to, she is just the same as she was in the creased old photograph I often gazed at whilst in Africa.
"You cut your hair." I say.
"You let yours grow." Andi replies, indicating my longish crew cut that was much shorter when I left for Africa.
I take her in my arms for the first time in months, feeling her slender, lithe frame against me. I am surprised to see her, I had planned to spend my first half of my leave with my family and the second half with Andi but now that she is here I won't have to do as much traveling.
As I reach the familiar streets of Nutwood Forest many aspects of my being, lying long dormant because of the strain of the battlefield begin to reassert themselves. I smile more easily now as I walk arm in arm with Andi. My parents are at home, as are my little brothers, Michael and David.
I go to my bedroom to change into my civilian clothes. They feel soft, wonderful, and light. My old leather jacket is a little bit tight across the shoulders; I have grown in the army. I walk back into the living room. My father asks me how things are going at the front.
"Things are going as usual." I reply, I cannot convey with words the terror of a barrage, the bone chilling shouts of ogres charging our position, the scents of death and rot as zombies lurch about nor the feel of being starred at by a telescopic sight of a Gollum.
Andi and I go for a walk. It is a long and lengthy one through the town. I see Mr. Cavendish and ex ACME detective and the local surveyor, an older fellow with a gray mustache and graying hair as well as a round shape, enjoying a smoke of his pipe outside of the Rose and Crown pub.
"Martin, how have you been old boy?" Cavendish asks.
"I've been better Mr. Cavendish." I reply.
"How've you been Andi?" Cavendish asks.
"I'm pleased to see you again." Andi replies.
"How are things at the front?" Cavendish asks, "Mr. Bevel's boy being drafted wasn't the only draft. Constable Gosling was also called up two months ago. Both he and Mr. Bevel's boy have been sent off to Dyson City."
I shudder inwardly; Dyson City is where the Biohazard first struck Earth and is where some of the most savage fighting of this war is taking place. North Africa would seem a picnic to the soldiers in Dyson. This I know because I saw a plane full of wounded from the battle as well as a very large stack of body bags at the airfield. The aircraft had come from Dyson City.
I go inside the pub with Andi and order our dinner. As we wait for our meal, I see the town shelter being built. It is supposedly a place where civilians can hide and the local militia or army units can make a stand to defend them if a Biohazard were to break out. I have come upon similar shelters on the front. At Derna I nearly vomited when we opened a shelter hoping to find survivors but only discovering that the creatures had been there before us and their shelter had turned into a tomb with zombies shambling about inside it.
Strange, I am now far away from the front or any fighting, yet I can see things in terms of how I saw them on the frontlines. The army has changed me and Andi can see it as she takes one of my trembling hands. The look in her gray eyed gaze says volumes to me, more than words can say. She is saying, "Martin, what has happened to you?"
I cannot bear to keep it within any longer. I tell her everything, about Rhett Garland's death, the terror of being trapped in the no man's land, the visceral fear of falling energy orbs, of Morerro's senseless death, and of Pilgrim being killed. She regards me with both deeper concern and love as she takes me in her arms. Just to hold on to Andi, to feel her slender frame through the material of her clothes, is what I spent countless desert nights dreaming of.
We spend much of the night walking and speaking in the town. Andi tells me how grateful she is for what I'm doing. I don't feel it is much to be grateful for, it is only by sheer chance I am alive after months of bitter fighting in the dunes.
"Martin, you've been through things no one deserves to go through." Andi replied, "I find that I love you even more for the fact that you're out there."
This is still more damning to me, I am unworthy of such love and praise, for I took part in a group beating of a coward. We are sitting on a grassy knoll just outside Nutwood, looking up at the stars.
"They're beautiful, aren't they?" Andi asks me.
I look up at the stars and say the first thing that comes to mind, something I often would think on quieter periods on the front, "When I was in Africa I would look up on nights like this, although there are usually shells flying about or flares going off I could still see stars on a clear desert night. I would stare out at the heavens. It would bring about a sense of wonder, despite the terror about me, wonder about God allowing such beauty to exist and that I was only able to appreciate it because there was so much ugliness and destruction all around me."
"When you were in Africa I looked at the stars every night and wondered if you were looking at those same stars every night." Andi replies, "I also made a wish every night for your safety."
I see tears in her eyes; Andi must have felt terrible worry reading casualty reports every morning, seeing the hundreds of wounded being shipped from the Dyson City to hospitals in Boston. I wipe them gently from her cheek and guide her closer. The embrace we share is almost pure bliss, lifting my soul from the depths that the horrors of the front have dragged it.
I am almost breathless when I pull away from her a bit, her left arm is still draped over my shoulder and my right arm is around her waist. She turns and looks at me, longingly, as if at any moment I might disappear back into the barren, gritty, and dusty hell that is the North African front.
She tenderly runs a hand down a scar behind my left ear as she faces me. That was from the terrible shelling we witnessed at Agedabla and was a minor wound from a shell fragment. The war has left physical and mental scars upon me. The sound of a diesel engine, of several diesel engines, startles us and we turn and see several five ton trucks and half tracks driving down the motorway, their distinctive silhouettes in the moonlight. Even at home the signs of the war are everywhere. I see the half tracks towing several quad barreled 20 mm anti-aircraft guns. It's the 117th Flak Division, setting out to reinforce us in Africa.
"Are they going to Africa?" Andi asks.
I nod silently; even in the night I can see that many of these troops are young boys like Morerro. I remember air attacks by large, mutated wasps. At first they were laughable, carrying single energy orbs and dropping them on our positions, a nuisance really but no severe threat. Then they started to adapt, attacking in swarms, picking off solitary men at their posts by snatching them into the dunes and injecting them with their toxic venom, dropping energy orbs on larger troop concentrations, and latching onto our aircraft and tearing them apart. Fighters are only somewhat effective in stopping them and our 90mm dual purpose anti-aircraft/anti-tank guns are too slow firing. These four barreled flak guns in large concentrations we call "flak circuses" could actually be quiet effective.
I see a baby faced gunner at his post behind the barrels at the gun mount, the other members of his crew stand ready with ammunition. The sight disturbs me, for it reminds me of things I'd best not think of.
Andi feels the same way and I lead her to a spot near Wallingford Creek, which runs right by Nutwood Forest. It is a place where picnickers dine and lovers caress. I of course opt for the latter. Andi realizes this as well and in the pale moonlight, nicely aided by starlight I can make out her pretty, olive face, the curve of her breast, her silhouette by the light of the moon. We share an intimate moment that lifts my soul to greater heights. This is not merely erotic, although there is plenty of that feeling; it seems to be also a deeper sort of love. As we lay, breathless beside each other staring into the vastness of the heavens I pull her closer, and just close my eyes, savoring the moment. Latent passion, long dormant on the frontlines, love that always existed but only dared raise it's head at a quiet moment, all are now unfettered as I open my eyes and smile at my beloved. We put our clothing back in place, trying not to look to disheveled, and walk back to my house.
Andi spends another week with us before she returns home to spend Christmas with her family. I bid her goodbye at the airport, feeling the small tendrils of a sense of dread creeping up on me, for it will soon be my turn to fly to Salerno and eventually Africa.
I cannot watch the news; it is too full of reports from the front. Those damned correspondents. What do they know about war? The night I took Andi to the airport I learned my lesson about the news, do not watch it while on leave. I see an aerial view of the devastation over Dyson City, the flash of exploding artillery, the scurrying of troop movements, the rising plumes of smoke. So for the duration of my leave I avoid watching news broadcasts.
My brothers continually ask me about the front; it is inevitable due to the inherent curiosity of youth. I only wish they knew enough to maintain their innocence. I give vague details, sparing them the graphic sights I have seen, such as the desiccated corpses I found in the shelter at Derna, or the pure terror of an air attack, or night patrols to gather information on the enemy. Innocence like theirs is fragile, delicate, like the wings of a butterfly, the slightest touch and it will shatter like glass. If I tell them the whole story of what I have seen they will age before their time. I am nineteen but the experience of the front leaves me feeling many times my age. My family cannot fully comprehend what has happened to me, my transformation into an old man trapped in a young man's body.
The days blur together and save for the occasional dream of the frontlines they are altogether pleasant. But as these days, these peaceful days, these islands of paradise in the turbulent seas of hell, pass I feel ever more uneasy. For that inevitable day dawns and I am to return to the front.
I watch, wistfully, sadly as London's airport grows ever smaller in the distance, returning to Salerno and eventually North Africa. I feel nothing but a mixture of numbness and that wistful longing that I felt inside me during months on the African front. It is a wistful longing for hearth, home, and love that is far removed from the dusty squalor of the desert.