Saint Crispin's Day
Disclaimer: Same as before. William Shakespeare wrote the St. Crispin's Day speech that inspires a majority of this writing.
~ ~ ~ ~
October 25, 2142: Months of fighting from crater to crater are taking their toll. They pushed us steadily westward and we now hold a section of the Old King's Highway in the center of Libya.
Wiersbowski fell today on this day, St. Crispin's Day. A Gollum shot him in the stomach with a Verey light. He lived for over an hour in terrible pain as Pierce tried to vainly staunch the flow of blood. Alas he could only spend a few minutes on Wiersbowski as more casualties were flooding in.
It was at that moment where Kat and I knew that Wiersbowski was going to die. With bloodied and trembling lips Wiersbowski spat out a quote I never shall forget, "He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named, And rouse him at the name of Crispian."
"Henry V, my friend." I say to him as I move closer with my canteen, to give him water even though he will be dead shortly.
"Funny, all those Shakespeare quotes you used to throw around, the ones only Andi really understood." Wiersbowski says, he is becoming lucid from shock and trauma, "Take my canteen, there's still some water in there."
I do so, handing it off to Kat. "You write my girlfriend, tell her I died like a man."
"No one's gonna have to write her, you'll make it out of this." I reply, even as I form the words I know that they are untrue and that Specialist Wiersbowski is doomed.
"Don't you bullshit me!!!" He shouts.
He carries on for a few more moments and we see his eyes roll back into his head, his breathing become labored, and finally he dies with his last breath. In a rage I throw several grenades at an attacking crowd of zombies even though our machinegun would have killed them before they were even a threat.
Will I even live to the next day of St. Crispin? I do not know, the odds are slim with the savage fighting going on all around me. Our seven man group that left No. 4 Barracks a year ago is reduced to two. Of the batch of ACME detectives that joined the service alongside me, I am the only one still living.
The desert in front of my eyes shimmers as the midday sun reflects off of it. The tarp covering our foxhole is barely suitable shade and certainly useless if an energy orb were to fall on top of it. We have beaten back yet another attack but at the cost of another death. I take Wiersbowski's dog tag and put it inside my pocket in company with several more that I had removed from friends throughout my years in Africa.
The shooting stops for a short time and the guns are silent for now. But for how long? The silence is eerie on the front line whenever the shooting ceases. It only means a temporary lull in the fighting. From experience I quickly reload both my weapons and check my ammunition in my squad. I give the Wraith cannon to a soldier whose rifle was broken by an ogre's sword. He hands me his rifle ammunition and I give him Wiersbowski's ammunition and grenades.
Every day on the Old King's Highway is marked by nearly constant shooting, for somewhere on our rearguard positions are engaged by enemy forces. The shooting on the frontline rarely ceases altogether and this means that a very large assault is to be expected.
The assault in question suddenly materializes as a phalanx of zombies shamble into our position. Our machinegun mows them down like grass and it becomes apparent that the zombies were merely expendable pawns to draw our fire; suddenly a massive ogre charge ensues. I put our Wraith gunner on that threat and add my own rifle fire and the firepower of two more riflemen on it. Soon I can no longer hold this crater and carrying Wiersbowski's body, we fall back to another crater further to the rear while another group of soldiers in a ditch add their own gunfire to the attacking mob. Grenades are thrown to cover our retreat.
Always we are engaging and retreating, entangled in a bitter struggle from crater to crater. And always we are retreating, forced back in the end not by better soldiers, but by the sheer numbers of our enemies. As soldiers we are of far higher quality, but we are merely overwhelmed by the great numbers that the attacking horde can bring to bear.
If we ever return home, we will be a generation shorn of hope, weary, broken, and forever scarred by our experiences of seeing friends and loved ones dying anywhere. Should I still be alive at the end of this war and return to ACME, I will find that a lot of the places I had seen around the world are all but destroyed, ravaged by the terror of the Biohazard. Paris, Rome, Bucharest, and Berlin are four cities that I visited on my first assignments as an ACME detective. They are all ravaged by the terror of the Biohazard.
Andi, whom I loved so deeply, was violently taken away from me in this conflict as well as my youngest brother. I fight on to avenge them, but even that fails to lift my spirits. The war has broken me. I will fight on because my superiors will see to that.
Our newest soldiers are anemic young boys who should be slapped on the wrist and lead away from this insanity. Our veterans are little older, we are cynical, lethargic, burned out men that resist only to survive and because we are ordered to fight. We once marched under proud and valiant standards of our respective units. Now we are weary and numb. The 15th Light Infantry Division is almost bled completely white. Any delays we inflict or attacks we drive off are Pyrrhic victories. Not a day goes by where I don't see or hear a name of someone I know, or someone I served with either being carted off to hospitals further to the rear or buried in shallow graves that form our cemeteries. One could easily mark the rout of the 15th Light Infantry Division by the dozens of unit cemeteries along the Old King's Highway.
Saint Crispin's feast day is marked by little more than bombardment and attack. "Then he will strip his sleeve and show his scars." It was a famous line from my favorite Shakespearean play though Andi preferred Much Ado About Nothing. I bear too many scars of this desert war. My scars are many, old battle wounds some minor but including scars from wounds that nearly took my life months ago, emotional scars, the loss of my loved ones.
Will I ever survive to the next St. Crispin's Day or will Crispin Crispian find me buried in a shallow grave in the North African desert or shambling about the dunes as a zombie? I know should I survive I will, "Remember with advantages of what feats I did that day."
What feats I did that day? I held the hand of a dying friend whose blood spilled like water upon the desert sands. I dodged death in its many guises and led yet another retreat, giving ground on this shell cratered and corpse strewn stretch of road. Even if King Henry V himself were in this crater, would he be so brash as to tell we few, we remaining men, we band of desperate survivors that, "He who sheds his blood with me today shall be my brother."
I must be hallucinating, for in the mirage I see a solitary figure. As it draws closer, I see that it is a woman, her light brown hair teased by the hot desert breeze. I see her gray eyes as she draws closer. She is standing at her full height, as if this great and bloody siege upon Crispin Crispian is not occurring.
I know that she doesn't exist, for she died a long time ago. She was from another world that I shall never again see. I have some faith that the landings in Algeria and Morocco will make it to the savagely beaten remnants of Army Corps Africa. It is only through the iron discipline, what remnant of pride we have, and sheer desperation that we are even able to hold the lines. We are too hungry, too wretched to carry out offensive action. I saw a young soldier keel over from sheer exhaustion on this day of Crispin Crispian. He died a few hours later in an overcrowded aid station to the rear.
What sane man would wish to be at this battle upon Saint Crispin's Day? We in Africa are lauded as valiant warriors, as the few, the happy few, the band of brothers. A battered copy of Henry V is in my field pack, read on many a desert night. It is a precious gift from someone beloved but dead.
I am too tired, too worn, too hungry, and defeated to cry but I feel pain after having lost Andi. My drive to avenge her death can only drive me so far. Every creature I kill, every bullet I fire, every grenade I throw I feel that much farther removed from the innocent boy that I was when I joined the Army. I am twenty years old. What little of life do I know but death, destruction, and valor?
"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.." My band of brothers is now reduced to myself and Kat. The other five of us are now gone, scattered across the desert in division cemeteries belonging to the 15th Light Infantry Division.
I kill these fiends, throwing grenades and firing bullets with reckless abandon at the large mass of creatures attacking us again. I fight with a valiant despair, wanting only to kill these abominations responsible for the deaths of my brother and my beloved.
The attack breaks by our grenades and shells. I see a wounded Gollum, its legs shot away by our machinegun, trying to crawl away. I shoot it in the stomach with my pistol, leaving it to die a slow and painful death on the dunes.
My emotions flow from wistfulness to sadness, from rage to mania. War does not ennoble men. It turns them into dogs, poisons the soul. I know nothing can bring Andi and David back into my arms but killing those creatures provides a form of release.
Will I live to old age? I doubt that. A zombie shambles into view. I can tell by the fatigues he was an old hand of Army Corps Africa. He comes forth towards me as I lead my men to yet another crater, as our position has become untenable yet again. It comes so close I can smell the scent of death. He hasn't decayed yet, but he is stiff after many hours of death.
A large hole and lacerated viscera marks where his stomach once had been. I know that shell of a man, was once Specialist Wiersbowski. This creature that had been a dying young man that was among my close friends even before I enlisted. Sadly I know my duty, raise my rifle, aim and fire two shots into his head.
Wiersbowski's zombified corpse collapses on the dunes, once again a sack of dead and dying cells. The brain of the creature is now dead and it no longer can threaten us. I shall remember with far too many advantages what I did on this day of Crispin.
Disclaimer: Same as before. William Shakespeare wrote the St. Crispin's Day speech that inspires a majority of this writing.
~ ~ ~ ~
October 25, 2142: Months of fighting from crater to crater are taking their toll. They pushed us steadily westward and we now hold a section of the Old King's Highway in the center of Libya.
Wiersbowski fell today on this day, St. Crispin's Day. A Gollum shot him in the stomach with a Verey light. He lived for over an hour in terrible pain as Pierce tried to vainly staunch the flow of blood. Alas he could only spend a few minutes on Wiersbowski as more casualties were flooding in.
It was at that moment where Kat and I knew that Wiersbowski was going to die. With bloodied and trembling lips Wiersbowski spat out a quote I never shall forget, "He that outlives this day, and comes safe home, Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named, And rouse him at the name of Crispian."
"Henry V, my friend." I say to him as I move closer with my canteen, to give him water even though he will be dead shortly.
"Funny, all those Shakespeare quotes you used to throw around, the ones only Andi really understood." Wiersbowski says, he is becoming lucid from shock and trauma, "Take my canteen, there's still some water in there."
I do so, handing it off to Kat. "You write my girlfriend, tell her I died like a man."
"No one's gonna have to write her, you'll make it out of this." I reply, even as I form the words I know that they are untrue and that Specialist Wiersbowski is doomed.
"Don't you bullshit me!!!" He shouts.
He carries on for a few more moments and we see his eyes roll back into his head, his breathing become labored, and finally he dies with his last breath. In a rage I throw several grenades at an attacking crowd of zombies even though our machinegun would have killed them before they were even a threat.
Will I even live to the next day of St. Crispin? I do not know, the odds are slim with the savage fighting going on all around me. Our seven man group that left No. 4 Barracks a year ago is reduced to two. Of the batch of ACME detectives that joined the service alongside me, I am the only one still living.
The desert in front of my eyes shimmers as the midday sun reflects off of it. The tarp covering our foxhole is barely suitable shade and certainly useless if an energy orb were to fall on top of it. We have beaten back yet another attack but at the cost of another death. I take Wiersbowski's dog tag and put it inside my pocket in company with several more that I had removed from friends throughout my years in Africa.
The shooting stops for a short time and the guns are silent for now. But for how long? The silence is eerie on the front line whenever the shooting ceases. It only means a temporary lull in the fighting. From experience I quickly reload both my weapons and check my ammunition in my squad. I give the Wraith cannon to a soldier whose rifle was broken by an ogre's sword. He hands me his rifle ammunition and I give him Wiersbowski's ammunition and grenades.
Every day on the Old King's Highway is marked by nearly constant shooting, for somewhere on our rearguard positions are engaged by enemy forces. The shooting on the frontline rarely ceases altogether and this means that a very large assault is to be expected.
The assault in question suddenly materializes as a phalanx of zombies shamble into our position. Our machinegun mows them down like grass and it becomes apparent that the zombies were merely expendable pawns to draw our fire; suddenly a massive ogre charge ensues. I put our Wraith gunner on that threat and add my own rifle fire and the firepower of two more riflemen on it. Soon I can no longer hold this crater and carrying Wiersbowski's body, we fall back to another crater further to the rear while another group of soldiers in a ditch add their own gunfire to the attacking mob. Grenades are thrown to cover our retreat.
Always we are engaging and retreating, entangled in a bitter struggle from crater to crater. And always we are retreating, forced back in the end not by better soldiers, but by the sheer numbers of our enemies. As soldiers we are of far higher quality, but we are merely overwhelmed by the great numbers that the attacking horde can bring to bear.
If we ever return home, we will be a generation shorn of hope, weary, broken, and forever scarred by our experiences of seeing friends and loved ones dying anywhere. Should I still be alive at the end of this war and return to ACME, I will find that a lot of the places I had seen around the world are all but destroyed, ravaged by the terror of the Biohazard. Paris, Rome, Bucharest, and Berlin are four cities that I visited on my first assignments as an ACME detective. They are all ravaged by the terror of the Biohazard.
Andi, whom I loved so deeply, was violently taken away from me in this conflict as well as my youngest brother. I fight on to avenge them, but even that fails to lift my spirits. The war has broken me. I will fight on because my superiors will see to that.
Our newest soldiers are anemic young boys who should be slapped on the wrist and lead away from this insanity. Our veterans are little older, we are cynical, lethargic, burned out men that resist only to survive and because we are ordered to fight. We once marched under proud and valiant standards of our respective units. Now we are weary and numb. The 15th Light Infantry Division is almost bled completely white. Any delays we inflict or attacks we drive off are Pyrrhic victories. Not a day goes by where I don't see or hear a name of someone I know, or someone I served with either being carted off to hospitals further to the rear or buried in shallow graves that form our cemeteries. One could easily mark the rout of the 15th Light Infantry Division by the dozens of unit cemeteries along the Old King's Highway.
Saint Crispin's feast day is marked by little more than bombardment and attack. "Then he will strip his sleeve and show his scars." It was a famous line from my favorite Shakespearean play though Andi preferred Much Ado About Nothing. I bear too many scars of this desert war. My scars are many, old battle wounds some minor but including scars from wounds that nearly took my life months ago, emotional scars, the loss of my loved ones.
Will I ever survive to the next St. Crispin's Day or will Crispin Crispian find me buried in a shallow grave in the North African desert or shambling about the dunes as a zombie? I know should I survive I will, "Remember with advantages of what feats I did that day."
What feats I did that day? I held the hand of a dying friend whose blood spilled like water upon the desert sands. I dodged death in its many guises and led yet another retreat, giving ground on this shell cratered and corpse strewn stretch of road. Even if King Henry V himself were in this crater, would he be so brash as to tell we few, we remaining men, we band of desperate survivors that, "He who sheds his blood with me today shall be my brother."
I must be hallucinating, for in the mirage I see a solitary figure. As it draws closer, I see that it is a woman, her light brown hair teased by the hot desert breeze. I see her gray eyes as she draws closer. She is standing at her full height, as if this great and bloody siege upon Crispin Crispian is not occurring.
I know that she doesn't exist, for she died a long time ago. She was from another world that I shall never again see. I have some faith that the landings in Algeria and Morocco will make it to the savagely beaten remnants of Army Corps Africa. It is only through the iron discipline, what remnant of pride we have, and sheer desperation that we are even able to hold the lines. We are too hungry, too wretched to carry out offensive action. I saw a young soldier keel over from sheer exhaustion on this day of Crispin Crispian. He died a few hours later in an overcrowded aid station to the rear.
What sane man would wish to be at this battle upon Saint Crispin's Day? We in Africa are lauded as valiant warriors, as the few, the happy few, the band of brothers. A battered copy of Henry V is in my field pack, read on many a desert night. It is a precious gift from someone beloved but dead.
I am too tired, too worn, too hungry, and defeated to cry but I feel pain after having lost Andi. My drive to avenge her death can only drive me so far. Every creature I kill, every bullet I fire, every grenade I throw I feel that much farther removed from the innocent boy that I was when I joined the Army. I am twenty years old. What little of life do I know but death, destruction, and valor?
"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.." My band of brothers is now reduced to myself and Kat. The other five of us are now gone, scattered across the desert in division cemeteries belonging to the 15th Light Infantry Division.
I kill these fiends, throwing grenades and firing bullets with reckless abandon at the large mass of creatures attacking us again. I fight with a valiant despair, wanting only to kill these abominations responsible for the deaths of my brother and my beloved.
The attack breaks by our grenades and shells. I see a wounded Gollum, its legs shot away by our machinegun, trying to crawl away. I shoot it in the stomach with my pistol, leaving it to die a slow and painful death on the dunes.
My emotions flow from wistfulness to sadness, from rage to mania. War does not ennoble men. It turns them into dogs, poisons the soul. I know nothing can bring Andi and David back into my arms but killing those creatures provides a form of release.
Will I live to old age? I doubt that. A zombie shambles into view. I can tell by the fatigues he was an old hand of Army Corps Africa. He comes forth towards me as I lead my men to yet another crater, as our position has become untenable yet again. It comes so close I can smell the scent of death. He hasn't decayed yet, but he is stiff after many hours of death.
A large hole and lacerated viscera marks where his stomach once had been. I know that shell of a man, was once Specialist Wiersbowski. This creature that had been a dying young man that was among my close friends even before I enlisted. Sadly I know my duty, raise my rifle, aim and fire two shots into his head.
Wiersbowski's zombified corpse collapses on the dunes, once again a sack of dead and dying cells. The brain of the creature is now dead and it no longer can threaten us. I shall remember with far too many advantages what I did on this day of Crispin.