Molotov Heights II: Into the Valley

11:30 AM
BASE OF MOLOTOV HEIGHTS

It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm, but lacking in the usual sweltering humidity of the Palacian clime. And certainly, Groggy’s regiment might have appreciated this fact under most circumstances. But a rain of metal and fire supplanted the water, making such a fact moot; and no one making an infantry assault on foot could truly enjoy even the nicest day.

After about half an hour or so of desultory American shelling, the big Russian guns thundered in response, sending hundreds of shots splashing into Groggy’s hapless infantry. It seemed the extensive pre-battle preparations had all been for naught; the infantry, placed with utmost ridiculousness in their current position, could do little more than hug the ground and try to shield themselves. And even then, too many shells landed amongst his men, inevitably stacking up the casualties.

Groggy watched all this from the midst of his trenches. Without orders, he and his men were helpless, waiting for either an order to an advance, or for Russian bombs and shells to kill them all. He was angry and frustrated, and yet there wasn’t much he could do about it.

To his incredulity, he saw as several wounded men appeared, including Teacher Tom, who saluted with awkward grandeur, and Matt, who reported and then rushed over to Elizabeth, who squealed with delight at the sight of her boyfriend.

“What hell are you doing here, Tom?” Dundee asked.

Tom held out his arms in a stiff theatrical gesture. “Playing the mouse to your Pied Piper, Colonel,” he said, bowing. “At your service, sir.”

“Hell, you were shot in both shoulders,” Dundee replied. “You’re unfit for duty.”

“Not even foulest sepsis and gangrene could hope to keep me from my Destiny,” Tom replied.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Groggy remarked.

“Most of us are,” Tom shouted back before rushing back into line.

Groggy watched him rush into line with admiration, then turned to Captain Harriman.

“Captain, get all of my battalion commanders here right now!” he ordered. Anna saluted and rushed off.

* * *

Further down the line, Sergeant Adnan sat in a trench with his squad, peering over the top of the trench, struggling to do so with getting his head blown off. How the hell did I get myself into this mess? He wondered, unable to come up with a good answer.

He then heard someone rushing up to him and the crack of a salute. He looked up and saw –

It was Beck.

“What the hell are you doing here at a time like this?” Adnan hissed contemptuously.

“Thought I’d come to wish you good luck, old man,” Beck said, smiling. Adnan spit.

“I’m still going to have to kill you, you son of a bitch,” Adnan growled.

Beck shrugged. “We’ll have to survive first,” he replied impassively.

Adnan stared at him with a hard face. “We have to,” Adnan replied. “God demands a reckoning between us.”

A shell burst just at the top of the trench. Adnan instinctively reached over and pulled his foe to the ground, shielding him from the blast.

“And no Russkie’s gonna put either of us down until this thing is properly settled,” Adnan uttered as he rose himself off of Beck.

Beck smiled. “When this thing is over, I’ll buy you a Labatt’s and a big juicy steak at Applebees in Crescent Heights,” he said.

Adnan’s face remained hard. “When this thing’s over, I’m going to shoot you down in the middle of the Government District with a thousand witnesses who won’t dare touch me,” he replied, his cold eyes burning into Beck’s.

Beck could only smile as he departed. There’s nothing this bastard couldn’t do to me that’s any worse than this, Beck reasoned. I can only hope the Russians don’t make his job easier.

* * *

Miles Truelove stood in the middle of camp, stoically indifferent to the pre-battle chaos around him. He realized that today was the day, the Judgment Day, everything this campaign had been building towards. Already a great many of his men, and he had no illusions about what awaited them further up the hill. And while he was all but susceptible to jingoism, he couldn’t but help finding himself swept up – and becoming one of the regiment’s finest rallying points.

A well-remembered verse, beaten into him by a cruel school mistress long ago, began to echo through Corporal Truelove’s brain. He just now realized its appropriateness, not only for the enemy he and the poem’s protagonists shared, but for the situation in general, the stupidity of the officers and their plans, the seeming hopelessness before – and the ridiculous heroism they would need to harness.

“Half a league, half a league, half a league onward,” he began, more to himself than any of his colleagues at first. But gradually his voice gained momentum, even as his colleagues fell killed and maimed around him, frantically trying to reach cover.

“All in the valley of Death, road the six hundred,” he said, watching as an explosion landed in front of a line of entrenchment. He saw his new friends Elizabeth and Matt ducking for cover and the debris and shrapnel pattered down over their heads. He saw Angel praying as she knelt in the trench, her rifle beside her. Dan was flinching nervously, eagerly awaiting the call to action. Truelove watched as a wounded Corporal tried to crawl away, then saw to his horror that he was lacking feet.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!” Truelove continued, his voice drowned out by two simultaneous explosions.

“My God, what a nuisance!” Teacher Tom said loudly to his colleagues, coolly taking a swig from a flask of rum as the shot and shell sprayed the earth around him.

“Where’d you get that liquor, soldier?” a Sergeant barked.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Tom said coolly, downing the whole flask in one go.

“Yes, I would,” the Sergeant remarked, watching with disappointment as Tom threw the empty flask at his feet, histrionically wiped his mouth, and staggered back to the trenches.

“Charge for the guns, he said,” Truelove intoned, just as a shell landed in a trench beside him, kicking up dirt, grass, steel, blood, bones and muffled screams. As the dust cleared away, he saw that among the dead and maimed was poor Suzie, who had so recently been traumatized by the loss of her beloved Kyle; she would now join him in eternal slumber.

“INTO THE VALLEY OF DEATH RODE THE SIX HUNDRED!”

Now Truelove’s voice rose to a fever pitch, to the point where the soldiers, though disconcerted by the continued shelling, turned and looked at him. Truelove felt a twinge of self-consciousness, but quickly overcame it. Jim Tate struggled to turn on his iPhone and began recording his speech on video.

“Forward, the Light Brigade!” he shouted, now grandstanding with gross irony before his men. “Was there a man dismayed?” Not tho’ the soldier knew, someone had blundered,” he said, pointedly looking at Colonel Dundee, then staring impassively with Captain Harriman and Colonel Starbuck, surveying the field before them, saying these last three words with hateful deliberation.

After several moments, Teacher Tom rejoindered with the next verse. “Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die,” he thundered histrionically.

Then he and Truelove finished the verse in unison: “Into the Valley of Death rode the six hundred!”

The poem spread among the lines – at least, those articulate enough to know it – as a sort of battle cry. College students, soldiers, poetic dilettantes – anyone and everyone Groggy couldn’t help but smile at their eloquence, and prided himself on the fact that while other regiments might ride into battle singing songs, his men would do so reciting poetry. And he couldn’t help joining in himself.

The less educated could only watch with confusion and dismay. “What the hell are they talking about?” Steven asked as he shoved a clip into his rifle.

Ulysses Bunsher shrugged and spat on the ground. “They’re educated men.”

Jim Tate was trying desperately to capture the high drama of the moment, but it was difficult with an iPhone. While filming the whole spectacle, he struggled to Tweet at the same time. His last message was “Heroism at Palacios! Groggy’s men prepare to take Molotov”

Then his message was cut off. A shell exploded right under him, obliterating Tate into a red mist. Only parts of him were left after the smoke faded – included his right hand, still clinching his iPhone in a disgustingly macabre image. The journalist had longed for glory and excitement, but he didn’t even get a chance to savor his own death.

* * *

While Truelove wreaked his hullabaloo, Groggy called his officers together for a conference. He planned the line of advance up Molotov Hill – they would be divided into three wings as before, and sweep up all sides of the hill at once.
“Goddammit, we need to send someone back to General Slurry and get orders for an advance.

At this moment, there was a loud uproar on the far end of the line. Groggy looked over and saw Captain Elliot, the tough, burly, picturesque commander of H Company, on the ground, a sniper’s bullet having struck him just below the neck and killed him. A group of his soldiers were gathered around his body, some almost in tears.
Groggy registered concern and pity for a good man and a great officer, but he turned back to his officers with an impassive face.

“Now, how in the hell are we going to take this?” Groggy said, suddenly exploding

“Did you ever need orders before, sir?” Harriman asked.

“This is no time for wry and half-witty observations, Captain,” Groggy barked. “I’m at wit’s end.”

“Anna’s right,” Joe said, albeit somewhat reluctantly. “Since when have you taken orders from anyone, sir?”

“Hear hear,” Martinez muttered under his breath.

Groggy was somewhat taken aback by this, which bordered on insulting, but he couldn’t help but acknowledge the truth behind his officers’ statements.

“If one regiment starts moving, Colonel, the others will follow,” Harriman argued, more gently.

“Not even that fool Slurry could stop an army once it’s in motion,” Joe added.

This thought changed Groggy’s mind. He looked around him, at the dead and wounded men strewn amidst the trenches, the shells bursting above the ground and the machine gun rounds spattering into the dirt. He did know that his men couldn’t take much more of this. And just because the Generals were damned fools who didn’t care about the lives of his soldiers, didn’t mean that he was.

He turned back to his officers, and a sly smile slowly overtook his face.

“All right, you sons of bitches,” he shouted over the din of cannon fire. “Do it!”