Hubbard, L. Ron (3 page)

Food supplies had diminished to a vanishing point when a power, rumored to have been Russia, had spread plant insects over Europe. Starvation had done its best to surpass the death lists of battle. And, as an ally, another thing had come.

The disease known as soldier's sickness had wiped a clammy hand across the slate of Europe, taking ten times as many as the fighting of the war itself. Death crept silently over the wastes of grass-grown shell holes and gutted cities, slipping bony fingers into the cogs of what organization had survived. From the Mediterranean to the Baltic, no wheel turned for the illness was not one disease germ grossly mutated into a killer which defied penicillin, sulfa, pantomecin, and stereo-rays, it was at least nine illnesses, each one superior to yellow fever or the bubonic plague. The nine had combined amongst themselves to create an infinite variety of manifestations. In far countries, South America, South Africa, Scandinavia, where smoke might have belched from busy chimneys, nearly annihilated nations which had never been combatants had closed their ports and turned to wooden sticks for plows. Their libraries might still bulge with knowhow but who could go there to read them? Nations entirely innocent of any single belligerent move in this war, or these many wars, had become, capitals and hamlets alike, weed-grown and tumbled ruins to be quarantined a half century or more from even their own people.

But the lieutenant was not unhappy about it. He had no comparisons. When lack of credit and metal and workmen had decreed the abandonment of the last factory, he had received these tidings in the light that artillery had never accomplished anything in tactics, anyway, Napoleon to the contrary. When the last rattling wreck of a plane had become a rusting pile of charred metal, he had smiled his relief. What had planes done but attack objectives they could not hold.

From the records which remain of him, it is difficult to get an accurate description of the man himself, as difficult as it is easy to obtain minute accounts of his victories and defeats. His enemies represent him as having an upsetting and even ghoulish way of smiling, an expression of cheerfulness which never left him even when he meted death personally. But enemies have a way of distorting those they fear, and the oft-repeated statement that he took no pleasure in anything but death is probably false.

Such a view seems to be belied by the fact that he took no pleasure in a victory unless it was bloodless so far as his own troops were concerned.

This may be accounted as a natural revulsion toward the school of warfare which measured the greatness of a victory in terms of its largeness of casualty lists. Incredible as it may seem, even at the time of his birth, the mass of humanity paid no attention to strategic conquests if they were not attended by many thousands of deaths. But men, alas, had long since ceased to be cheap, and the field officer or staff officer that still held them so generally died of a quiet night with a bayonet in his ribs. And so the question may be argued on both sides. He might or might not be credited with mercy on the score that he conserved his men.

Physically, he seems to have been a little over medium height, blue-gray of eye and blond. Too, he was probably very handsome, though we only touch upon his conquests in another field. The one picture of him is a rather bad thing, done by a soldier of his command after his death with possibly more enthusiasm than accuracy.

He may have had nerves so high-strung that he was half mad in times of stress-and not unlikely, for he was intelligent. He might have educated himself completely out of nerves. As for England herself, he might have loved her passionately and have done those things he did all for her. And, again, it might have been a cold-blooded problem in strategy which it amused him to solve.

These things, just as his name, are not known. He was the lieutenant. But whether he was madman and sadist or gentleman and patriot-this must be solved by another.

Fourth brigade huddled about two fires in the half dawn, slowly finishing off a moldy breakfast, washing down crumbs of rotted bread with drafts of watery, synthetic tea. About them stood the stark skeletons of a forest, through the broken branches of which crept wraiths of mist, quiet as the ghosts of thirty million fighting men.

Half-hidden by the persistent underbrush were several dark holes; down awry steps lay the abandoned depths of a once-great fortress, garrisoned now by skeletons which mildewed at their rusty guns.

Though not yet wholly awake, the attitudes of the men were alert through long practice. Each man with half himself was intent upon each slightest sound, not trusting the sentries who lay in foxholes round about. Much of this tautness was habit. But more of it, today, had direction. A night patrol had brought word that several hundred Russians occupied the ridges surrounding this place. And the brigade which had once been six thousand strong now numbered but a hundred and sixty-eighth.

They were a motley command: Englishmen, Poles, Spaniards, Frenchmen, Finns and Italians, uniformed in the rags of twenty nations, friend and foe alike. They were armed with a catalogue of weapons, the cartridges of one seldom serving the rifle of another. They were clothed and armed, then, by the whim and experience of each.

In common they had endless years of war behind them. In common they had the habit of war. Long since the peasants of the armies had slid over the hill, back to devastated farms and fields, leaving only those who had but one talent.

The English could not, because of the quarantine against soldier's sickness, go home. Once they had had sweethearts, wives and families. But no one had heard for so long.

They had survived whole divisions of replacements. They had been commanded by more officers than they could count. They had been governed by more creeds than they could ever understand.

Here was their world, a shattered wood, an, empty fortress, a breakfast of crumbs and hot water, each man hard by his rifle, each existing for the instant and expecting the next to bring danger and death.

These were the unkillables, immune to bullets, bombs and bugs, schooled in war to perfection, kept alive by a seventh and an eighth sense of danger which could interpret the slightest change in their surroundings and preserve themselves from it.

Having lost all causes and connections, having forgotten their religions, they still had one god, their lieutenant. He was, after all, a highly satisfactory god. He fed them, clothed them and conserved their lives-which was more than any other god could have done.

Now and then eyes wandered to the lieutenant and were quieted by the sight of him. For, despite all danger, the lieutenant was sitting upon the half-submerged wheel of a caisson, shaving himself with the help of a mirror stuck in the crotch of a forked stick.

The cook came up with a kettle of hot water which he emptied into the old helmet which served the lieutenant as a washbasin. The cook was a corpulent fellow of rather murderous aspect, wholly unwashed and hairy and carrying a naked bayonet thrust through his belt.

"Can I get the leftenant anythin' else, sir?"

"Why, yes. A fresh shirt, an overcoat, a new pistol and some caviar."

"I would if them Russians had any, sir."

"I've no doubt of it, Bulger," smiled the lieutenant. "But, really, haven't you something a bit special for breakfast? This is an anniversary, you know.

My fifth year at the front was done yesterday."

"Congratulations, leftenant, sir. If you don't mind my mentioning it, are you goin' to start the sixth year with a fight?"

"Ho!" said a rough voice nearby. "You'll be advising us on tactics next.

Stick to your foraging, Bulger." And Pollard, the sergeant major, gave the cook a shove back toward the fire. "Sir, I just toured the outposts and they been hearin' troops movin' on the high ground. Weasel is out there and he claims he heard gun wheels groanin' about four."

"Gun wheels!" said the lieutenant.

"That's what he said."

The lieutenant grinned and rinsed off his face. "Someday a high wind is going to catch hold of his ears and carry him off."

"About them Russians, sir," said Pollard, soberly, "are we just going to stay here until they close in on us? They know we're down here. I feel it.

And them fires
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"

Pollard was stopped by the lieutenant's grin. He was a conscientious sergeant, often pretending to a sense of humor which he did not possess.

No matter how many men he had killed or how terrible he was in action, his rugged face white with battle lust, he shivered away from ridicule at the hands of the lieutenant. In his own way he respected the boy, never giving a thought that his officer was some twenty-three years his junior.

The lieutenant slid into his shirt and was about to speak when the smallest whisper of a challenge sounded two hundred yards away. Instantly the clearing was deserted, all men instinctively taking cover from which they could shoot with the smallest loss of life and the greatest damage to the foe. There had been a note of anxiety in that challenge.

The lieutenant, pistol in hand, stood with widespread boots, playing intelligent eyes through the misty woods. A bird call sounded and the camp began to relax, men coming back to their fires and again addressing their synthetic tea.

After a little, as the call had indicated, an English officer strode through the underbrush, looked about and then approached the lieutenant.

Although a captain, he was dressed in no manner to indicate his outfit.

Like the lieutenant, he had amalgamated the uniforms of some four services into an outfit which was at least capable of keeping out the wet.

"Fourth Brigade?" he questioned.

"Right," said the lieutenant.

"Hello, Malcolm."

The captain looked more closely and then smiled and shook the extended hand. "Well, well! I never expected to find you, much less get to you. By the guns, fellow, did you know these ridges are alive with Russians?"

"I suspected so," said the lieutenant. "We've been here three days for them."

He started. "But ... but here you are, in a death trap!" He covered his astonishment. "Well!

I can't presume to advise a brigade commander in the field."

"You've come from G.H.Q.?"

"From General Victor, yes. I had the devil's own time getting to you and then finding you. I say, old boy, those Russians
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"

"How is General Victor?"

"Between us, he's in a funk. Ever since the British Communist Party took over London and executed Carlson, Victor hasn't slept very well."

"Bulger," said the lieutenant, "bring the captain some breakfast' "

Bulger lumbered up with a whole piece of bread and a dixie of tea which the staff officer seized upon avidly.

"Not much," said the lieutenant, "but it's the last of the supplies we found cached here in this fortress. Eat slowly, for the next, if any, will have to be Russian. Now. Any orders?"

"You're recalled to G.H.Q. for reorganization."

The lieutenant gave a slight quiver of surprise. "Does this have anything to do-with my failure to comply with the B.C.R Military Committee's orders to appoint soldiers' councils?"

Malcolm shrugged and spoke through a full mouth and without truth. "Oh, no.

Who'd bother about that? I think they wish to give you a wider command.

They think well of you, you know."

"Then-" said the lieutenant, knowing full well that a recalled officer was generally a deposed officer.

"It's the general's idea. But, see here, those Russians
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"

"I'll engage them shortly," said the lieutenant. "They're fresh and they ought to have boots and bread and maybe something to drink. My favorite listening post, a chap named Weasel, said he heard wheels last night."

"Right. I was going to tell you. I saw a trench mortar and an antitank rocket
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"

"No!"

"Truth," said Malcolm.

"Artillery!"

"No less."

"Well, I'll
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Why, there hasn't been a field piece on this front since the storming of Paris two years ago. Though mortars and bazookas could hardly be called field pieces. Have they got shells, do you suppose?"

"They had caissons"

"And
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say! Horses!'

"I saw two!"

The lieutenant beamed happily. "Ah, you've come just in time. Roast horse.

Think of it! Brown, sizzling, dripping, juicy horse!"

"Horse?" said Bulger, instantly alert although he had been a hundred feet and more away.

The brigade itself looked hopeful; they moved about through the naked starkness of the trees and tried to catch sight of the Russians on the heights.

The event was, to say the least, unusual. And the thought of food momentarily clogged Malcolm's wits. In light of what he was trying to do, he would never have made such a statement. "It's been a long time since I've had a decent meal of anything. Much less horse!'

The lieutenant caught at the remark. There was no sympathy between field officers and staff officers, for, while the former fought and starved, the latter skulked in the protection of impregnable G.H.Q. and received occasional rations from England, existing between times on condensed food stored in times past for many more men than were now left alive. That a staff officer had risked this trek in the first place struck the lieutenant as being very odd.