Virgin Soldier

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=200 BGCOLOR="#003333" TEXT="#F7F7FF" background="12ad4c00dduajq.gif"> <div> <TABLE BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="2" CELLSPACING="0" WIDTH="95" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=TOP HEIGHT= 46 ><NOBR><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="46" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="91" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></NOBR></tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <A HREF="id61.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE=" selection of Short Stories"><U><B>More Stories</B></U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="stan hedges homepage"><U><B>Homepage</B></U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <div> email:</div> <div> sonoflawrence@yahoo.co.uk</div> <div> (Not live link. Cut & Paste)</div> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#FFFBF0" TEXT="#080000"> <bR> <div> <I><B>A Virgin Soldier at Dawn</B></I></div> <div> by S T Hedges</div> <bR> <div> 'On the flat, in the crowd, half blind with dust, </div> <div> we look back in envy at those happier warriors, </div> <div> whose battle is won.'</div> <div> (Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader,1928).</div> <bR> <bR> <div> THE lieutenant said he'd load the rifles himself.  For the warrant officer had his work cut out tying the man's hands and fixing the blindfold; fidgeting, repositioning the disk of white paper to signpost a heart that soon would be 'for ever England'.  He thought about blanks.  One must have a blank.  And why?  What on earth was the point of that?  The blighter drawing it always knew.  No kick.  Why not two, three, even four?  He'd seen men die from fear alone.  If she were here, he'd give Melissa one.  A girl who ought to learn how it feels to shoot a comrade.  </div> <div> Platoon ready.  Lime pit dug. Pine box white, white as bone, ready, bugler standing by.  And then, Lieutenant Clarence Dilloway, up before dawn, realized the final irony of it all.  For it really was a splendid morning. Clear blue sky, gentle breeze in the air, flag slowly undulating.  And the guns... <I>silent</I>!  The war over:  poppies hanging from the cannons' mouths... barbed wire rusting... shell canisters crusting with verdigris.  And in Hackney, Barking, or Bethnal Green, the Browns, the Smiths, the Joneses, starting another day, turning bully-beef tins into collecting boxes, wives laying in rolls of red rayon, sharpening the edges of poppy-petalled pastry moulds.  And see the sun now.  <I>Shining</I>!  Yes, much better to die here than over there.  None of this hush while the chaplain prays.  Not over there.  It was their third assault, the hubristic third, the one to challenge the gods.  And he thought yes, all in all, it wasn't a bad day to go.  And at least Higgins wasn't a virgin... </div> <bR> <bR> <div> With the smoke laid down, the whistles blew, and with squeaks of fear he could hear even now, they'd scrambled up the cosy wall of earth and stone and rotting bone...  up and over... ears pounding... waves of nausea churning the guts... warm excrement running down... then sticky and cold in the seat of the pants... each wearing his thick covering of khaki worsted against Achilles' impenitrable shield... up to the wire, stepping high, dancing over... each to his own... leave the fallen... some left hanging... hanging like dolls... arms dangling, waving goodbye.   Plunging into no-man's land... that insatiable maw... total dementia... screaming at unseen fathers, uncles, brothers, sons... squinting through the choking smoke, the smell of cordite tight in the throat... so acrid in the early morning... like the sting of cabbage stalk on the tip of the tongue... you need a good curl at the tip of the tongue if you're to cut down your enemy with a withering hail of fresh green peas.   Noisier than here of course.  No Chaplin's mumbo jumbo there.  Just the officers' whistles above the thunder and screaming whiz-bangs... the chattering machine-guns gathering a good crop... socking lead thudding into mud and flesh alike; dust to dust; mud to mud... slithering, legs splaying, like skaters running on ice... (no, that's silly; they couldn't carry the weight; too dangerous that, skating with forty pounds of equipment hanging from front, back and sides.  Just make mine a head-shot please, God... front, back or side.  And that sense of elation too.  Something momentous happening... he was about to die..... </div> <div> And that's when it happened; it was then love blew itself to pieces, and suddenly he hated her, hated the virgin Melissa and all the cant surrounding her...  </div> <bR> <div> The log fire blazed behind the coppering glory of her auburn hair, flame upon flame; fire upon fire; fingers working to hide within the superfluous beaver rug, burying themselves for shame; her look impenetrable, as though he'd asked her dying breath.  Something to weigh in the scale, he'd said.  If he could just have known it once.  Once would have been enough; could have died a man; replete, all knowing; life coming full circle, all that bollocks.  But those fingers made for pleasuring men's flesh, just as Penelope's before her, could only fiddle and fumble with a dead beaver rug.   </div> <div> It was then Fusilier Higgins, an ordinary man with wife and twin boys, and in that way of recalcitrant warriors, dropped suddenly to the ground to sit cross-legged in the mud. </div> <div> "That's it, sir. 'Ad enough. This is bloody dic'lous. When we was kids, we just used to cross fingers and say, Feignites!  And that was it! All over.  You know?  Well it's time someone here called feignites, I reckon."  </div> <div> Was that it?  No time to write it down... a puttee coming loose... what if he tripped, fell arse over tip into the face of a gonner... worse still, a bloated, stinking belly?   Those mocking bellies... God bless pregnant warriors, marching as to... he'd look a right chump in front of the men... not to mention Jerry.  </div> <div> But Higgins' rifle stood phallic between his muddy thighs, muzzle pointing at a sky where the eyes of Aries' and Apollo's blood-flecked horses showed white with fear as their masters raged against each other to possess Melissa.  And she, pious and resolute, her spinning wheel humming, sat twisting dead fur between those fingers soft and sensuous as mushroom labia in an early morning mist. </div> <div> And he ran on, cursing, drawn on by rage... dying a virgin...  over the fallen... the dying, the wounded... pulled on by a revolver aimed at Melissa's heart... while thinking how Higgins would catch it if he ever got back to the lines...  could easily catch a fine old chill too... sitting in wet mud like that... could add double pneumonia to dysentery and trench foot most likely.  And then they'd do him for cowardice, poor sod.   And all so unnecessary; so bloody unnecessary.  But, at least, with any luck, he wouldn't be there to see the poor bugger shot.  King's Regs very clear on that: no dead officers allowed to testify, etc..  </div> <bR> <bR> <div> It was anger that brought him through again.  And now he knew not which he hated most.  War, politicians, generals, or Melissa's life-saving, holy virginity.  In the cell, he and Higgins had laughed about that.  But now it was time.  </div> <div> "Please forgive us all, old chap," said the Lieutenant, softly.</div> <div> "Gawd bless yer, sir!  Gawd bless yer!" </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> End</div> <bR> <bR> <div>         </div> <div> <A HREF="id61.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE=" selection of Short Stories"><U><B>Return to index</B></U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id132.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Autobiography"><U>memoir</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id61.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE=" selection of Short Stories"><U>short stories</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id5.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE=" poetry collection"><U>selected poetry</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id54.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="some favourite poems"><U>some favourite poems</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id15.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="epitaphs Id die for! "><U>epitaphs I'd die for</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id16.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="miscellany"><U>literary miscellany</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id154.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Some Favourite Links"><U>some favourite links</U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id18.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="about me"><U>about the author</U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="stan hedges homepage"><U>HOME PAGE</U></A></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> Visitors are welcome to use anything on this site for their own personal use. However,  please note that personal copyright is reserved on my own creative material, which may not be copied for redistribution to third parties without prior written consent. </div> <div> ©<FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#9900CC" FACE="Times New Roman" > S. T. Hedges </FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#9933CC" FACE="Times New Roman" >2003</FONT></div> <div> <IMG SRC="130f4040.gif" border=0 width="500" height="4" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>