OR1-EP5: Hymn of the Bridge (14)

The last time McNeil arrived near this town, all he remembered was that it was a desolate town. A victim of the aftermath of the recession, the towns began to dwindle and become dead, with residents constantly moving from them. In some towns there were only old people and children left, in others there were only elderly people. For more than two decades, successive South African Governor-generals have turned a blind eye to this fact, considering the decline of these townships to be normal, and they have been even more reluctant to spend any money on investing in the said townships that were heading towards destruction. Whites left, blacks came and went, and no one wanted to live here. Eventually, when the last of the old people in a town leave or fall ill, the city's lifespan comes to an end and it becomes a relic of human activity. Perhaps a hundred years or so from now, some eager explorer will come to examine these deserted towns and get a glimpse of how society functioned in the past.

Today, the town is occupied by rebels, with lion flags flying from their flagpoles and flailing soldiers patrolling the outskirts. These proud rebels don't think the defense forces will attack the place, and they believe that the pattern of the war isn't going to change much. The air force frequently bombed important cities in the north of Rhodesia, but never bothered with these tiny strongholds. This gave the rebels an opportunity to take advantage of the situation, and a few shrewd commanders volunteered to fortify the seemingly vital but unattended municipalities, lest they be thrown into the front line to become under the guns of the South African hordes.

Michael McNeil was walking into the tent with a couple of soldiers, saluting Smilas with regularity.

"Sir, we found a large pit with a large number of corpses on the east side." McNeil's tone was heavy, "It is speculated that the rebels killed the entire population when they entered the town and dumped the bodies in the pit. If you deem it necessary to take evidence or conduct an investigation, please follow me."

Seeing this, Smilas curtly instructed his subordinates to continue deploying the soldiers as planned, and then left the tent with McNeil. The watch on his hand pointed to six-thirty in the morning, and most of the soldiers were in the process of unfurling a siege net in preparation for the siege of the town as per the new orders. Just a few dozen meters out, Smilas saw a headless body by the side of the road, with no coverings on the body, and the rebels seemed to have taken all the items they could. He paused and made a pretense of drawing a cross on his chest before continuing forward with McNeil.

"How did they die?"

"There are many different ways to die." McNeil replied without looking back, "Some were shot, some were burned to a crisp, and others had their heads chopped off with a machete used to strip bark from trees. You will know when you see the scene ... These African Britannians are simply devils."

Smilas smelled a foul odor from a distance. He stopped and shouted at McNeil, who was still advancing:

"Well, well, McNeil, we have more important things to accomplish. I understand where you're coming from, but our priority is to destroy the enemy in front of us."

Last night, Colonel Karl Duttmann finally made contact with Smilas. Colonel Duttmann was surprised to learn that Smilas had arrived near the town in the valley. It seemed as if the Colonel was not very willing to see Smilas come to the rescue of him and his troops. When Smilas asked about the recent battle, the colonel kept his mouth shut and simply asked Smilas to prioritize the destruction of the enemy forces below. In addition, he claimed that he would send a commando team down to assist Smilas in understanding the situation. Upon receiving the colonel's reply, Smilas immediately asked his soldiers to prepare for an attack, as he hoped to eliminate all the rebels in the town at once. Though he didn't know what had happened to the Colonel, at least the enemy hadn't had time to break through the encirclement or pin them down, so it seemed that fortune had favored them after all.

Michael McNeil, seeing that Smilas wasn't even willing to visit the site, said helplessly:

"Then please, at least have the soldiers take photos and videos to prove that this was done by the African Britannians. Otherwise, perhaps some people will be quite willing to throw the charge on our heads."

Smilas took McNeil's advice, and he scrambled back to his tent, ignoring the lingering odor. McNeil, on the other hand, made his way to the vicinity of the large pit, where the soldiers were still struggling to dig out and sort the bodies from the pit. Most of the soldiers were reluctant to take part in this work, fearing that the corpses would cause a plague and then they would be hopeless - factors that sometimes affected the army more than the enemy on the front lines of battle.

"Did you find anything?"

"It looks like the rebels used a neat and tidy method to slaughter these civilians." A soldier who was looking at the corpses on the side said, "Most of the civilians were shot, while the dozen or so children's bodies over here ... were observed to have probably been dropped to their deaths."

"Any conclusive evidence?"

"No." The soldier shrugged, "Frankly, we can't use injuries or other evidence on these bodies to prove that the rebels are the killers, but hopefully the media back here knows how to talk, or we'll be the real culprits in the public eye ..."

The town was flanked on both sides by steep cliffs, and in the rear by the vital transportation railroad that sustained Rhodesia to the north and south, which crossed the bridge above and snaked its way to Matabeleland. The rebels had sent most of their light infantry to the front in pieces, but those heavy armaments could not be transported in the same way, and they must have chosen to pass either through the towns below or on the railroad above. The straight-line distance between the two points was about a dozen kilometers, and Colonel Duttmann's force was presently to the northeast of Smilas.

After ten minutes or so, several friendly soldiers suddenly appeared in front of the defense soldiers who were gathering up the bodies. Before they could organize the ropes on their bodies, they were surrounded by a group of nearby soldiers. McNeil saw Dumiso Tutu at a glance, and he stepped forward and told the others to put down their weapons while asking the other man how he came to be here. After hearing that they had descended by rope from the top of a cliff, the crowd was amazed. There was no doubt that the rebels could probably have lowered their soldiers down the mountain or sent commandos up it, and the fundamental reason they had not done so was that the lines of communication were still firmly in the hands of the defense forces. Both Colonel Duttmann and Smilas had access to railroad lines and roads to move equipment and supplies, and with the rebels not yet in control of nearby routes, they had no choice but to play it safe.

"What's this?" Dumiso Tutu was quick to spot the bodies, and his eyes widened in surprise as he asked McNeil about the cause and effect.

"As you can see, the rebels killed all the civilians in the town." McNeil coughed a few times and told the other soldiers to move the corpses away as soon as possible, "... Don't get mad, it's not worth it."

Dumiso Tutu didn't listen to McNeil's advice at all. He clenched his teeth and his face turned red, and even the other white soldiers, who had never been able to tell the difference between black people's looks, were surprised to find that the young soldier of Native descent was as manic as a wind-up machine. Just as he tried to vent, McNeil grabbed him by the collar and yanked him back, which brought the young soldier to his senses slightly.

"Don't delay the big event, you are to see Major Smilas immediately." McNeil sighed, "Don't worry, the crimes they committed must be cleared."

Gene Smilas quickly learned the true story from the soldiers. It turned out that Colonel Duttmann, who had made early preparations and led his troops up the mountain, had accidentally discovered that the enemy was secretly sending light infantry to the front line, and as the two sides were in the middle of a negotiation, Colonel Duttmann had decided to send out a handful of stragglers to hunt down the fallen enemy, which had led to his own early exposure. As a result, Duttmann's troops were almost immediately besieged from all sides when the firefight resumed, and were now waiting to be trapped and immobilized in the hills.

"The colonel says that the rebels may think it safer to advance through the valley ... so he has been hoping that you will destroy the rebels occupying the town in time." Dumiso Tutu summarized, while standing back and waiting for Smilas' orders.

"You guys have been fighting in the mountains for so long, it's reasonable to say that you're almost out of ammunition." Smilas looked suspiciously at the soldiers who had come with Dumiso Tutu, "What has the colonel done?"

"There is a suspected station on the hill for railroad workers where we have recently resisted an enemy attack." Dumiso Tutu hastened to answer the officer's questions meticulously, "Also, the colonel seems to have privately brought in a train from the rear to provide supplies, and the wagons are now piled up on the other side ..."

"It's a wonder you weren't attacked from behind by the rebels then." Smilas said in a nonchalant manner, "Never mind, it's a good thing the colonel still has the advantage at the moment ... You guys follow us and go back when the battle is over."

These few soldiers were originally in the same platoon as McNeil, they then decided to fight alongside McNeil. However, McNeil, who had been carrying corpses near the large pit just a moment ago, suddenly disappeared, and the group searched for a long time before finding McNeil on a nearby hillside, studying how to climb up the cliff face. He took out some tools and tried to climb straight up without protection, but fell off after just a few meters and fell to the ground and rolled around a few times before stopping. In a sorry state, McNeil quickly climbed up, and he quickly saw the soldiers who were watching him, and couldn't help but feel ashamed.

"I guess this is the fastest way." McNeil retrieved his tools back into his backpack, "Other than that, trying to get back up the mountain would be a detour, and we'd be wasting a lot of time ..."

He looked at the soldiers carefully, noticing some strange changes in them. War could reshape a person quickly, and that worked better than any school, and better than all the correctional centers that were scamming people under all sorts of names. These young men, who had been slightly naïve and gullible, now had a vaguely murderous look on their brows. People who had long survived vendettas were probably like this.

The sound of gunshots was faintly heard in the distance, the horn that signaled an advance.

"Action." McNeil said succinctly.

The direction they were heading was on the east side of the town, an area where the rebel defenses were relatively empty, and McNeil's reconnaissance yesterday had revealed only a pitifully small number of fire points. Now the soldiers, ignorant of McNeil's intentions, would follow his commands to the letter, moving through a corridor vulnerable to enemy fire, using the abandoned buildings at the edge of the town as cover for a slow infiltration into the enemy lines. McNeil took the lead, selecting a nearly collapsed house and smoothly entering through the broken back door, while the other soldiers fished their way in, the group cautiously observing the outside at the windows to confirm the enemy's presence.

"Clear." McNeil pointed forward as he brought up his rifle and crept forward. Unexpectedly, the fire point set up on top of a three-story building to his right suddenly responded, and the machine gunner quickly fired in the direction McNeil was heading, the bullets circling around and hitting the ground beside him, and thanks to his comrades behind him dragging him back into the house, he was able to make his way back unharmed. The enemy had already recognized their position, and as long as they dared to show their heads, the machine gunner didn't mind sending them a few dozen more rounds. There were already a few rebel soldiers in the alley directly ahead of them coming toward the hut, and the situation was a little bleak.

McNeil quietly took a few steps back and stood by the window at the rear to watch where the street was going.

"You guys hold this place ... Who's coming with me?"

The two black soldiers answered, and the three withdrew from the hut in a triangle like formation and circled into another house. Unluckily, the rebel soldiers who were patrolling spotted them and immediately fired in the direction of where the three were and rushed toward the door of the house. McNeil kicked the door shut and told the other two soldiers to go ahead while he hid behind it and waited for the enemy to break through. The rebel soldier seemed cautious as he threw a grenade into the gaping hole in the door, which scared McNeil so much that he quickly retreated to the corner of the house to save himself from shrapnel. Seeing no screams in the house, the rebel soldier thought all was safe and advanced with confidence, only to be stabbed in the chest with his bayonet by McNeil, who had returned to the door, and fell down the stairs in front of the door on his back, with the submachine gun in his hand thrown aside. The badly wounded rebel soldier struggled to crawl toward the submachine gun, and stopped breathing forever after crawling less than a meter. Seeing this, the other rebels, who had caught wind of the incident, rushed into the house and searched, but came up empty, and by then McNeil had already left the scene.

The trio circled several houses in succession before reaching the bottom of the three-story building. The lead black soldier had just entered the door when, unexpectedly, a rebel soldier armed with a machete of the type McNeil had described pounced on him and sliced off his head. Blood spurted onto the soldier behind him, and his companion's head rolled away from his feet like a watermelon as he stood frozen in place, seemingly stunned by the scene unfolding before him. McNeil shot down the enemy soldier, who was perhaps confident in his skill with a blade, with a quick eye, and looking at his stunned comrade, rushed forward and shook him vigorously.

"He's dead! ... Let's get outta here."

The equally young black soldier nodded woodenly and followed close behind McNeil. There were two paths leading to the second floor, a spiral shaped wooden staircase and a more open space concrete staircase. McNeil briefly judged the risk and abandoned the spiral staircase, coming to the second floor from the back side. An enemy soldier was watching the street intently from a window, his back to the two men, and McNeil easily threw him out, the man falling onto a pile of broken glass and looking like he was not going to survive. McNeil then told his comrades to stand guard where they were, as he planned to roll through a window to the third floor and mash the enemy's fire point directly. It took him several tries, but he barely managed to make it out and climb down the drainpipe to the third floor, before jumping toward a side balcony. Fortunately, there were no rebel soldiers here, or he wouldn't have managed to reach it anyway.

"I can't believe they didn't arrange a sniper in this place, what a waste." McNeil thought this in his heart, and he was secretly glad that the enemy forgot or didn't even consider the importance of a sniper. Soon, McNeil approached the enemy's fire point from the balcony and came behind the machine gunner. From this angle, he was able to easily see the situation below, where Dumiso Tutu and the others were pinned down in the room, surrounded by a dozen or so enemy soldiers who were closing in. Michael McNeil drew his short knife and, without a word, stabbed the machine gunner in the neck from the rear. Blood flowed down his windpipe and into his lungs, the machine gunner couldn't scream if he tried, and after struggling for a moment he followed his other companions to God. McNeil reached the machine gun and took the opportunity to fire on the enemy while the enemy soldiers were gathering below. Caught off guard by the sudden attack, the rebel soldiers at first thought that the armored car carrying the machine gunner had appeared nearby, not even considering the possibility that their fire point had been wiped out and taken by the other side. Many of the soldiers had their arms and thighs broken, and lay groaning on the road dragging their shattered bodies, while the black soldiers, who had been on tenterhooks only moments before, finally gained a respite. Needless to say, they knew that it was McNeil who had succeeded in his goal, and it looked as if they could leave.

Half an hour later, the men assembled in the cleared high-rise to discuss the next battle plan.

"The Major's aim is to wipe out the rebels, and they may escape down the road behind the town ... where we are needed more." McNeil made the decision, "As soon as any rebel tries to escape, we'll send him a bullet or use these bark stripping machetes to cut off their heads as well and play them as soccer balls."

Toward evening, the battle gradually became white-hot. Near the complex of buildings in the center of town, Smilas organized death squads to repeatedly storm the rebel stronghold, and three times in a row the rebels drove them out. Fired up, Smilas ordered an artillery attack on the houses, which was stopped by other officers. The men argued that they would have to use the town's buildings to fend off the enemy when they captured it - if they leveled the town now, the defense would be difficult afterward.

"Trap them here, don't let any of them go." Smilas gritted his teeth in fury, "And the rest of the place must be carefully blocked off as well ... Where's McNeil? What is he doing?"

Smilas was overjoyed when he learned that McNeil had already led some soldiers to the rear to block the enemy's retreat, and he hurriedly ordered the other troops to step up their attacks on other strongholds within the town. Although the rebels were outnumbered, they lacked weapons and ammunition, and since the rebels thought they could escape at any time, each commander was calculating his own retreat, so perhaps no one intended to hold out to the end. By nightfall, Smilas ordered a temporary halt to the attack, using only artillery as a deterrent. When the rebels saw that the attack had stopped, they thought they had a chance to take advantage of it and retreated backward, making the defense line even more empty. The next morning, Smilas compressed the rebel remnants in less than a kilometer or so in a radius, and concentrated his forces to attack. The rebels were constantly sniped at on their way out, and the soldiers nearly collapsed, with many of them flying white flags and announcing their own surrender. By about 4:00 p.m., the battle was essentially declared over, and Smilas was victorious at a heavy cost. When counting afterwards staff officers confirmed about 200 or so Defense Force battle deaths, about 500 rebels killed or otherwise dead, and dozens surrendered, but they were killed by angry Defense Force soldiers to the tune of a dozen or so. Had Smilas not stopped them in time, perhaps none of the prisoners would have survived.

Smilas had managed to defeat a rebel force similar in size to his own, and the heavy toll forced him to decide to rest in place and await the Colonel's latest instructions. With a sad face, he explained to the others, "A win is a win, but we can't afford to go to the next battle ... Colonel would probably be furious if he knew."

A bloodied McNeil wearily returned to his makeshift home dragging a captive with him. He intended to go up the hill with Dumiso Tutu and the others to meet with the Colonel, since Colonel Duttmann had held back the main body of enemy light infantry, McNeil needed to find an effective way to relieve the pressure Smilas was facing.

"You have one hour to pack your gear and leave immediately." McNeil dropped his pack at the door and sat paralyzed on the stairs, holding out his left and right to his comrades on the side, gesturing for them to hand over their canteens.

"No way!?" The crowd exclaimed, "It's almost dark, we're supposed to leave tomorrow."

"Who knows what happens at night? We'll have plenty of opportunity to rest when the war is over ..." McNeil finished his water and realized that his captors were gone. He ran out of the house just in time to see Dumiso Tutu punching and kicking his captive on the ground. When McNeil saw the young Negro soldier draw his pistol, he finally relented and stepped forward to stop his further actions.

"The war is over for him, don't be hard on him." McNeil motioned for the others to take the prisoners away, and himself turned to leave the scene.

"It won't be over!" Dumiso Tutu shouted, "The Governor-general is right, this war will not end. They still have parents, and children, and friends, and other loved ones ... They have to be slaughtered, all of them, not one of them shall survive!"

McNeil looked back staggering back a few steps as if he had seen some horrible monster. There was nothing but fanaticism and bloodlust in the eyes of this young teenage soldier now, half because of the war and half because of the propaganda slogans. Did Jacob Herzog really unleash the monster? Did he think about what these slogans meant when he called on the EU citizens of South Africa for this near crusade?

"In the name of God ... may He truly bless us." McNeil returned to the house lost in thought.

TBC

Chapter Notes：

If the Rhodesian rebellion had been successful, perhaps South Africa would have been brought under the control of the Britannian Empire.

After this war, the EU won't be able to so simply continue to treat blacks as second class citizens.