Bright promise - Valentine
Winner of the May 2011 Band of Brothers Creative Writing Contest
750 Word Minimum
Start date: 05/8/11
End date: 6/8/11 midnight GMT
I think a Military History theme is in order since Memorial Day is this month and, being from a military family, I think we should
celebrate Memorial Day and honor the men and women of the Armed Forces in our own little way. There are, however, a few
general provisos:
1. The story must deal with an armed conflict that America was involved in (or the Thirteen Colonies if you prefer the Colonial
Era). Examples include, but are not limited to: The French-Indian War, The American Revolution, The Barbary War, The Civil
War, The Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, The Cold War, The Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf
War, the conflicts in Kosovo, The War on Terror, Operation Iraqi Freedom, etc.
2. The story does NOT necessarily have to deal with frontline fighting. Dealing with military hospitals, political dealing, etc is fine
as long as the military history requirement is still met.
3. A Historical figure must make an appearance, it can be as simple as seeing General Washington ride by, hearing a snippet of
the Gettysburg Address, or receiving orders from General Patton. The Historical Figure does NOT have to be the focus of the
story, they just have to make an appearance.
I've already got several ideas that I can run with, I imagine Lupe does as well. So, have at it. Wee!
Smoke, acrid and hot, drifting across his already stinging eyes; thunder roaring nearby that came from no sky and the dreadful
roll of drums, stamping of feet and the fearful cry of the enemy; his mouth dry his gut churning and his feet aching. Against this
Tom had only the weight of the wood and metal in his arms, the press of the shoulders of his comrades and the symbol of the
proud jacket he wore.
A westcountryman, born and raised he had never left the area around Harebridge where he had been ‘prenticed to a miller, not
until the bright ribbons and rousing words of the recruiterman had come through and fired up his imaginings of the glory to be
found in service. The bright buttons the ebullient self-assurance, the way that Nancy had looked at the sergeant; there had been
nothing else to do.
It had been a very long road between Harebridge and this field here now, a low rise not so very far from the looming shadows of
Sally-manky. He had seen the hustle and bustle of Plymouth, learned a few things from the ‘girls’ who looked after men down at
the Barbican, had sailed in one of the great oaken bulwarks of the nation’s proud navy and thrown up more than any man had a
gut to do, and after a diversionto the east because of some truly foul weather, he had sailed south and seen the wild frenzy of
Porto, it’s frenetic pace barely hiding the nervousness of a nation that knew itself besieged. From there it had been out into the
alien and scorched countryside, baking in the day and shivering in the night under a shared balcnket; foraging for food when
allowed and all too often going hungry when not.
Truth be told he had seen little of the alleged terror of Army discipline, and knew for a fact that others had it far worse. Not for all
the shillings in the sovereign’s chest would he have willingly submitted himself to the rule he saw their Prussian allies under in
the KGL, and even less the barbarism of the enemy to their own. Instead it had been the work of the partisans, those local ‘little’
peoples fighting the ‘little war’ that had terrified him, when he had seen the mutilated bodies of those they caught, saw the hurts
that had been inflicted on enemy and ‘collaborator’ alike. That and the terror of the physic’s tent, where ‘wings and limbs’ were
hacked off and stacked like fire-logs and the dying were left to shiver their last in puddles of their own fetid filth.
Today though he was determined not to think of such, aided by the liberal issue of blackstrap before the stand, and the rousing
unity of his brothers in arms. They were afraid, hell he knew they were afraid, you just ahd to see the shake in their hands to
know that, but they had come even so, come to stand shoulder to shoulder with him, with each other. And they hadn’t come for
fear of the lash, or for the pittance they drank almost as soon as they were issued it, they had come because here in this army
they had made new families for all of themselves, bands of brothers that might not share blood but shared a bond that rivalled if
not surpassed it. They shared a pot every evening, blankets clothes, coin as they knew it, all else they had without reserve and
they shared a duty to the regiment, to the crown and to one another.
Five minutes ago the Portagee regiment to the right of them had forgotten all this, after firring a single out of range volley they
had turned their tails and run, making a lie of all their claims to parity and comradeship, wasting the money time and effort that
had been forked over by England into training and equipping them to oppose the monster of Imperial France.
The shame was little else could be expected of them, it might be their country that they were here to save but the downtrodden
peasants of the peninsular were nothing like the free-men of England. Passionate and fiery as they, and their women, were they
simply did not truly know what it was to be a free man in a great society like that born in England, where by industry any man
could be a gentleman and through service any man could rise from humble origins to the governance of the land, as many had.
They might not labour under the hypocrisy of the new tyrant classes of the rebel colonies in America, a subject on which Tom’s
friend Jethro the Loyalist could wax poetic, but these folks might have still been serfs for all the difference there was in their lives,
even the paddy’s from occupied Ireland were better off than some here.
Maybe that would change, maybe in the example of the productivity and resilience of free men the notables here would help, but
frankly Tom didn’t care too much, only those who wore the red coat were really his brothers and even then not all.
To his right Jethro edged a little closer, his Dutch accent muttering through some rutterkin version of the Lord’s prayer
presumably taught to him by the same mother who had given him the tone and been so brutally killed by the rebels when they
burned out his family home. For a moment Tom was tempted to join him, but instead he glanced beyond him and then left
looking to see if there was a sergeant was watching, thinking perhaps that he might snaffle a sipper of his canteen. The orders
on that were pretty clear, no drinking without an explicit command, but his mouth was murderously dry from the cheap wine, the
powder of the bitten cartridge and well the fear.
The sergeant was watching though, his guidion clenched in a hand that had last night cradled his son with such tenderness, but
now was to be more feared than even the bayonets of the frogs. They offered only the possibility of death, needing that hand to
beat you would mean losing your manhood too, mean you had broken that bond.
When the wind blew though and Tom saw through the fresh gap, saw the mass of the marching column headed right for them,
he would however have been lying rotten if he claimed not to have thought about it.
In roughspun woollen coats whose material had been woven on Lancashire mills, and under glittering eagles whose idea had
been stolen from far more ancient invaders the column of frogs stamped their way forward to the rattle of their drums, bayonets
aglitter in the sudden sunlight, fiece unshaven faces set into ruinous resolve. Their force might even now be being nipped at by
the fierce flies of the regiment’s skirmishers, their banner holed and it’s pole bloodied, but they came on as resolute as the most
dreadful storm wind and with far more murderous intent.
“Ready, Present!” the sergeant cried and without thinking Tom seated the brassplated butt of his Bess into the groove of his
shoulder God gave him for such, working his lips one last time as if by soem miracle they might have been moist once more.
The next order wasn’t heard, nor honestly needed to be, instead Tom’s finger clenched by reaction alone as the roaring crash
report of the hundreds of muskets about him did the same. Even then he didn’t so much hear the noise as feel it, experience the
sudden pressure on his chest and his ears, the flare so near his cheek and the bruising hammer of the butt into his shoulder.
Smoke covered all again, removing any chance of seeing the fusillade’s effect, but Tom wasn’t watching anyway, instead his now
steady hands were moving through the evolutions, grounding the butt reaching into cartridge case, loading and ramming,
returning the butt to his shoulder even as he got a fresh taste of the sulphur and charcoal that had pressed against the lead
bullet he had just spat into the muzzle.
A second crash, a second tumultuous wave of pressure and another round of fast, sure loading.
A third and an order that was heard, a fierce exultant cry that turned into an unhuman roar as it was echoed without words by the
throats of all around him, Tom’s own raw, dry, throat joining in; proclaiming defiance, rage and unbridled red fury.
His heart thundering in his ears, his sore feet in their ill-fitting shoes tore the ground under him, dirt splattering onto his once
white gaiters unheeded as he, white-knuckled, readying his bayonet tipped musket and became one with the charge.
Right though the smoke they broke, out into the clear air beyond, leaping shrub and stone, hurling themselves with wild furious
abandon over the small distance to the red ruin that had been the front of the column, that place where living flesh had become
maimed meat and where proud resolution had become shocked confusion.
Wide eyed he saw them back up, saw them try to turn even into the face of their own moustachioed sergeantry. But it was too
late, the redcoats were among them, and Tom among them.
Right through the line they broke
A thrust, a brief resistance of all too yielding flesh and the jarring scrape of bone, a cry lost into his own and fading away even as
the young Frenchman slid to the ground, then another target another man who stood in the way of the band’s design.
This one turned presented his own weapon, the wood clashing like its own fierce echo of the volley that had deafened before,
warm breath blasted onto powder stained faces, rage matching over a desperate press of arms. Sudden unsurety of strength,
worry over purpose and concern for life. Then one set of eyes flinched, pressed wide and glazed, the man in front falling away
even as Jethro pulled his bayonet from his back and the wildness returned.
An echoed shout from two mouths and the charge went on.
Recoats in front now, scatterings of kilts among them, roaring in a tongue as alien as ever there was, and suddenly raised in
another sound altogether, a victorious exhultation that rose unto the heavens themselves.
Hurrahs and Huzzahs, proud cries of the victorious among the whimpering of the defeated, and an Imperial Eagle raised in the
hands of a man from Lothian, shining bright in a day all the warmer for the offer of another day beyond it.
But no more welcome was it than the smiles of brothers, their bonds proven on a red-green field.