by Bryan Young
I would have burned down a whole forest if that’s what it took to finish and get out of the fight.
All I had to do was empty my flamer and I could go back without fear of being shot for cowardice. I had to hold the line long enough for the poilus streaming across the Marne by boat.
With nothing to lose, I stepped forward into the gunfire, hoping if I just opened up with the flames from my rifle, it would melt the bullets before they reached me. Maybe that is what happened, or maybe the charm LeBeau had given me really had protected me. In either case, I took no hits as I marched.
I simply lit fire to everything in my path.
Men screamed in agony and the world around me burned. I kept moving my flamer in a wide arc, back and forth, painting the landscape with licking flames.
The minute’s worth of fuel I had in my weapon felt like it lasted for an eternity. I was still holding the trigger down when the fuel ran out, but since so much in front of me had been set ablaze, I almost didn’t realize.
Looking to my left and right, the situation was much the same along the bank. My fellow Aeronauts had landed and attacked with as much fervor as I had, sending hundreds of Germans to hell in a flaming inferno.
Glancing backward, the first boats of infantry were reaching the shore and getting ready to make the run forward, taking over the fight from the jumpers.
It came as little relief.
A splinter of wood hit me in the face, jolting me from my haze. A stray bullet had smashed the tree just ahead of me. I flinched and looked around, scanning the carnage for the German shooting in my general direction.
Letting my flame rifle fall slack to my side, I pulled the pistol tied to my hip and raised it with both hands.
There he was, twenty yards away. A frightened boy who had lost his helmet. His face, too young for combat, was smeared with dirt and terror.
He fired twice more before I got a good aim with my pistol. I pulled the trigger over and over and over again, unloading all six shots in the cylinder.
The terror on his face was replaced by a placid look of death. His blood flecked across the dirt.
I couldn’t be sure if my shots had hit him or if he’d been killed by the advancing troops behind me, since they had reached the shore and opened fire.
That might have helped the battle, sure, but all I cared about was the fact that the boy was dead and no longer shooting at me. That itself was an odd thought to have for one who thought he had a death wish, but war made me a confused idiot.
It probably made for a lot of confused idiots.
With my flame rifle out of ammunition and my pistol emptied, the only job I had left was to retreat back to our shore and protect my aeropack.
The lone advantage of being the first Aeronaut to make contact with the enemy was that you were also the first Aeronaut to leave.
Not wanting to turn my back to the enemy, I backed up until I passed through the line of advancing poilus. Then, before I reached the shore, I turned around and took in the sight of the river. The one that had consumed LeBeau.
It was red in places, adding a darkness to the already dark water. The current was strong, though it looked almost lazy. I’d seen what it could do when it carried off LeBeau and didn’t want to experience it myself.
When I jumped over, I was almost sad I didn’t have to follow him.
We’d jumped over the river in hopes of gaining an advantage against the advancing Germans. We won the advantage, but we lost LeBeau and a hundred thousand others besides.
I wasn’t as lucky for him as he thought I was.
4
We won that offensive, driving the Germans back up to the northwest. They fell back where they could, and we were moved to another line, somewhere to the north of Paris.
I fought in half a dozen more battles, counting down my time until I’d no longer have to fly across a trench again. A few of those battles were so difficult and important that they had us fly back, refuel our packs and rifles, and then go back over the wire a second or third time.
I’d made so many jumps by then I’d lost count. My comrades dwindled; LeBeau was just the first of many that hit me. I’d fought so much that my taste for death, mine or anyone else’s, had faded into ambivalence for the whole concept of the damn war.
As much as the Aeronautic Corps helped the battles, we didn’t win them all. A major loss is what brings me to the next milestone in my troubled story.
My first order of business was retreat, rumbling along in a transport, from one line, lost to the Germans, to another, which we hoped wouldn’t be lost by the time we got there or anytime soon.
Of the grim and dirty faces traveling with me, I was the only jumper left and the only American in the bunch. The fight to keep the trench had lasted through the night, and I couldn’t be sure how I made it out alive.
Thumbing the cog around my neck, I was sure it was a miracle I’d lived to that point and the others hadn’t.
“Preston’s like a four leaf clover,” the other jumpers had said, no doubt echoing things they’d heard LeBeau say. He’d started it. They all wanted me to jump in formation near them, but it hadn’t mattered. None of them made it through, near me or otherwise.
I had assumed losing LeBeau would have taught them that lesson.
No one in a trench was lucky.
After the battle, those of us not in need of the ambulances were loaded up onto as many trucks, steam carts, and horse-drawn wagons as they had. We had no airships left for retreating, the German aces had brought them all down. We’d be driven like cattle to the next skirmish, hoping to make a difference somewhere else and to keep the war going and the meat grinder fed.
“Where we heading, do you think?” one of the others in the truck asked to me. I’m not sure how he knew I spoke English, but his accent wasn’t bad.
“Where else?” I said. “The Front.”
Unamused, the boy folded his arms and looked out the back of the truck. The canvas covering the back flapped loose in the night wind, showing us a glimpse of the gravel road and the dim, pulsing lights from the truck behind.
The sound of the thin, steel and wood tires treading through the pebbled terrain made a crackling noise over the throttle of the combustion engine. Somewhere ahead of us, perhaps passing by on the side, we’d frequently hear the regular clip-clopping of horses. Other times we’d be passed by the steam carts, chugging along on belted treads pushed along arrays of wheels.
The irregular jostles of the road made sleep seem impossible, but it must have happened. The last few battles of the war had cured me of my waking nightmares of Lucy’s abandonment, but that didn’t stop my sleeping dreams from coming to me.
She was always there, on the deck of the airship.
“We can’t be together. I have to go and it’s your fault.” Those were the words she’d always say to me in my dreams, but those weren’t the words she’d used.
I could never reconcile in my heart why she had to go. Her parents were leaving, but she could have stayed with me. If I were better. If she loved me more. If her parents hadn’t gotten in the way.
Before I knew it, I woke up with a shake, my hand over my breast, over Lucy’s final letter.
“Nous sommes ici,” someone said.
We’d arrived.
The moon was down and the sun had not yet crested over the distant hills, washing everything in a cold, pallid gray, like a tintype photograph. The rest of the boys, a handful of French trenchers, shuffled out and made their way up the ridge toward their new ant-colony of a home.
Since I had more specialized gear than anyone else, I was left on my own to collect it.
Exhausted.
I hefted the straps of the damaged pack up over my shoulders, slung the armored pants over my arm and lifted the vest, getting ready to trudge lonesomely up the hill to find the sergent.
After reporting in, I hoped I’d be able to find a supply officer to help me replace my tool kit so I could get my jump pack back
in working order. Over the battles I’d fought, I learned it was better to do the work on your own pack rather than let the wrench crews do it. No one knew your gear like you did.
After that was done, I wanted to replace the rest of my kit, as well. A change of clothes, a cigarette, and a round with some nice, minty tooth powder sounded like the seventh layer of heaven.
“You there,” a voice called out from behind me in English. “Where’s the rest of your group?”
I turned, shrugging. “I’m all that’s left.”
The man, a short and thick tree-trunk of a French soldier came closer. He wore the standard horizon blue uniform of the French Army, minus the red hat. His face was scarred lightly on one side, cutting into his pencil thin mustache. “You are American. I knew it.”
I shrugged again.
He came closer to me, walking up the incline toward the truck. “I could tell because of the way you stood there. By yourself and with something to prove. Typical American.”
He didn’t know what he was talking about, but I let him keep his assumptions. There was no sense in offending anybody. It was never wise to make enemies without a reason.
“So, you are all that’s left?” he asked.
“Oui.” I lifted the armoured piece of my uniform with my left arm to show him who I was. “We go too fast.”
“We were told a jumper was coming, but we wondered why just one. There are not many of those around here anymore.” He took a drag on his cigarette, letting smoke curl slowly out of his mouth with each word. He tucked his left hand under his right elbow, letting the cigarette burn slowly in his raised hand. “We had a squad of jumpers, not for the last offensive, but the one before. They helped.”
“That’s what we do.”
“But how will you help if it’s just you?”
“I’m sure I’ll think of something.”
He seemed to scoff, then he gestured to me with his smoldering cigarette and an open palm. “Where are my manners? Une cigarette?”
“I’d love one.”
“As we walk.”
“Good. I need to report in.”
“The sergent is this way.”
We moved up the hill, on our way to enter the network of trenches that comprised the French position. The entrance was made of a wooden frame cut into the hill that gave it all the appearance of a train tunnel. The walls leading in were made of sandbags.
Nailed above the entry was a sign that read, “Enfer.”
He pulled a smoke from a tattered pack, a French brand that tasted like dirt, put it in my mouth for me, and lit it.
“Thank you.”
“De rien.”
“How are things here?” I asked him, curious about my new home, no matter how temporary it might be.
“It’s beautiful in the mornings as long as there’s no gas. And the sunset is magnifique, even through the gas.”
“Gassed a lot here?”
“Not so much as others, actually. Or so I hear.”
“I bet you hear lots of things.”
The man smiled. “Oui.”
“Is there a steam shop here?”
“Oui. In the support trench. I can take you there after we see the sergent. Is your gear...amiss?”
“I think so. My jump pack has seen better days. It took a bit of a hit in the last assault.”
“You were lucky to make it out, then.”
I wanted to laugh. “Maybe luck has nothing to do with it.”
The sergent’s office was nothing more than a room dug from the earth with a door that looked suspiciously like a blanket tacked at the top corners. Plywood and thin beams offered the appearance of real walls and it gave him something to pin his maps to. There at the table he sat, a sour little man who didn’t want to be there or anywhere else, for that matter. As we talked, I realized the sergent was the sort of man who couldn’t care less who I was or where I’d come from. I was merely one more layer of shield to stand between him and a German bullet.
“You’ll be assigned to Renault, here,” he told me. He didn’t care that I was a jumper nor did he care if I fixed my pack. “Assume Renault’s orders are yours until I receive word you’ve been reassigned, if at all. Fight and march like the rest and, above all, cause me no problems.”
“Of course, sir.”
“I do not like troublemakers. If you are, I’ll deal with you myself.”
“Of course, sir.”
Maybe he wasn’t surly, just tired like the rest of us. His eyes burned as red as mine with lack of sleep. Every time I blinked, I could feel the grit of exhaustion there, welled in my eyes.
How I was still awake after our sleepless retreat I didn’t know, but I had to keep going somehow.
We left the sergent to soak in his ambivalence, and Renault led me through a criss-cross of trenches. The duckboards added a spring to our step, which I needed because I felt weary, ready to fall over at any moment. The baggage I’d carried, Lucy, LeBeau, and everyone else I’d lost, felt as heavy on my chest as my pack did on my shoulders. But walk we did, and did not stop until we came to an impressive dugout. Concrete steps led down to a majestic, if dirty, workshop, blustering with heat from the steam engine tucked away inside.
The back of the room was consumed by the coal-fired furnace. It turned steam into motion that sparked against wheels that harnessed an electric spark. The spark fed into the wires running through the trenches and provided an irregular flow of power to the sparsely spaced incandescent bulbs tied to them. They gave a dim, white pallor to the whole network.
After a single step into the workshop, my body was covered instantly in a layer of sweat and my chest constricted, requiring extra effort to breathe normally.
At the worktable was a monster of a man in a rubber apron with gloves to match. His thick mustache hung down over his lips like black twists of frayed rope. If it was as covered in soot as his face, there was no telling its original color. Strapped to his forehead was a seeing eye contraption with half a dozen different lenses on each side of varying thicknesses and opacities, each on an arm that could swivel in front of his beady eyes.
More than anything, he was the biggest Frenchman I’d ever seen.
The moment he saw me, his eyes widened and a grin drew across his face. When he came out from behind his littered workbench with outstretched arms, I thought he might have known me from somewhere.
Grasping firmly each of my shoulders, he shook me as he released a torrent of French so quick I couldn’t hope to understand, punctuated by two quick pecks on my cheeks. When he finally dropped me, it was only to take the jump pack from me and set it down on his workbench.
“Can you fix it?”
The master of the steam shop let out a deep moan of a breath that told me he had no idea.
Before I could ask him if he’d ever seen one, I found I’d somehow lost my footing. My center of balance bolted, bobbing to the top of my body like air for the water’s surface.
My eyes closed.
A hand grabbed me, steadying me.
More hands, and then...
…nothing.
5
My eyes fluttered open, trying hard to understand my surroundings. The ceiling above me was made of a moist, brown earth, so too were the walls and floor. I was on my back, lying in a bunk atop a thin mattress and a wool blanket. A kit and a pair of bayoneted rifles stood propped on a wooden apple crate in the corner.
A wire on the ceiling led from the back corner of the room, sagged toward an incandescent bulb, then sagged back out the opposite corner. The bulb flickered with the irregular power output from the steam engine, casting harsh shadows against the walls.
“You must have been exhausted.”
The thickly accented voice belonged to the same thin-mustached fellow who’d led me to the steam shop. Renault. I’d had a hard time remembering his name in that moment, though now I’ll never be able to forget him. He sat on a bunk of his own, sipping from a tin cup of steaming coffee. He clutched
the cup and a cigarette in the same hand. The tarred smoke mixed with the steam of the beverage, filling the room with a white fog.
“I hadn’t... slept. We went over the wire the day before last, were called back, then the Germans came. We’d fought until they called a retreat and I hadn’t slept.”
“It’s to be expected. No one faults you.”
“Where’s my pack?”
“Jean-Louis has it. He’s doing his best with it. Care for a cigarette?”
“Yes, please,” I said, pulling myself up into a sitting position to accept the smoke.
“I did some checking while you were out. And you were right. You’re all that’s left. You can stick with me, though,” he said, indicating himself with his thumb. “You’ll be fine. I’m lucky.”
“They always told me I was the lucky one. I’ll be glad to use your luck instead.”
I never understood why Renault gravitated to me like he did. Maybe it was an accident. Fate showed me to him, getting off that transport, and he thought I could use a friend.
I was grateful, sure. But with what happened after my first time over, I had made that vow to stay away from everyone. I didn’t want to make connections. I didn’t want to be close to anyone. Especially not after losing LeBeau.
That’s what I told myself, anyway.
I didn’t believe I was the last one from the 5th on the way here. I wanted to think I’d made that part up, that the others were just in a different truck. Lying to myself helped me rationalize the pain. Hearing it confirmed from Renault brought back all the sorrow I’d worked so hard to hide.
But I wouldn’t go shell-shocked.
That wasn’t me.
Perhaps the cause of all my problems stemmed from lying to myself. Thinking back, maybe Lucy’s departure had been a shell-shock of a kind. And maybe that’s what I’m coping with now, writing all this down.
I remember thinking to myself what a big mistake coming over and joining up was when Renault stood, put his cup down, his cigarette out, and grabbed his rifle.
