--
June 22nd, 1941
–
“So, Harry,” FDR said while lighting a Marlboro cigarette with his signature Zippo lighter, “the bastard Doriot has finally gone and done it! We are at war. These reports don’t bode well.” As he spoke, he held up several of the reports, blowing smoke. “British and Canadian troops are deep inside our country, pushing towards this very capital, while Japan has attacked our fleet at Pearl Harbor, taking over vast swaths of the Pacific with hardly a response from our remaining forces.”
“Harry,” he said to the People’s Secretary of Commerce and his most trusted advisor Harry Hopkins, “I am going to ask Congress for a declaration of war tomorrow. Remember: God is with us.” Despite being a staunch Communist, FDR had never given up on his belief in the Almighty. Divine Providence, he knew, would guide them to ultimate victory.
On the mainland, entire cities, towns, and hamlets had fallen to the combined British and Canadian invasion force. They’d broken the USSA in half, in fact, using masses of fast-moving tanks backed by infantry in the rear to do so.
“Lightening war.” President of the Council of People’s Secretaries FDR said aloud, taking a drag on his cigarette. “Send them to Hell and gone!”
“Mr. President, we will make it through this great ordeal.”
“Yes Harry, we will. Send for my wife, please. I’d like to talk with her. God speed, Harry, God speed.” With those words, he put out the cigarette in the ashtray situated on his desk opposite the reports that had been piling up all day.
Eleanor Roosevelt came in shortly to the Oval Office. “My dear, how lovely you look! Granted, honey, as things are we are at war.”
“Yes, my beloved Eleanor, we are at war! Thanks for the compliment, as always! Now, if you don’t mind, could you help me into my wheelchair and take me over to the bedroom?”
“Yes, absolutely my dear!” With those words she helped her husband into his wheelchair before wheeling him into the presidential bedroom just outside the Oval Office.
Struggling up onto his ornate bed, he propped up two pillows and, reaching for Ovid’s Metamorphoses on the bedstand, he began to read just above line 260, his favorite line from the ancient Roman classic:
[placeholder]
O, sleep just then had come to his weary eyes.
And the dream. Nightmare. Getting up, scared, his wife consoling him, she asked what the nightmare was about.
“Just ... that after great hardship will come ease, my darling.”
With those words, he managed to put himself right back to sleep beside his loving wife in no time at all.
(With great hardship can, must, and will come ease.)
--
June 24th, 1941
–
The war, Helen Keller knew from Polly and their friends gathered in her Easton, Connecticut home, was only a few days old. They told her about the ever-closer roar of artillery and heavy machinegun fire, and about how it wasn’t safe for them to stay in Easton anymore.
Polly had also told her that the local Government was setting up a refugee camp far to the south of Helen’s beloved home, and that they would need to go there soon after gathering up the necessary provisions and any very few personal belongings that they could carry with them.
Helen Keller moved a shaky hand down across the opening of Herodotus’s Histories; it gave her solace to read it.
And Herodotus of Halicarnassus published this historical narrative, and as it was prudent that the knowledge of the time period under discussion must go forth to both the six races and mankind and that it was also born of prudence to draw the conclusion that the time period under discussion is something to marvel at, and if we can only yet further understand the inglorious reasons that the Greeks and barbarians had been to war between one another.
And It made her think.
What were the French Nacis’, the Japanese’s, and British Fascists’ reasons for going to war with her beloved USSA and the other Socialist camp nations? Why attack now?
Because, she knew, the USSA and the rest of the Socialist camp nations had finally and fully abolished markets and therefore all surviving traces of Capitalism.
France, Japan, and Great Britain had to open up these Red countries to foreign markets, their markets, to simply survive as Capitalist States.
As long as the American, Chinese, Soviet Russian, German, Italian, and Hungarian markets still existed, Capitalism could continue to live.
But no longer.
Hence why the main imperialist, Fascist Capitalist Governments had started the Second Great War.
She looked once again at the beginning of Herodotus’s Histories, anxiously reading the next several paragraphs:
On the one hand the reports shed light on the fact that the cause for war between the Greeks and barbarians originated from the abduction of the wife of a Greek king, the abduction being the source of their disagreements.
Furthermore, the Greeks also say that the war began because the barbarians traveled across the sea by our own Erythraean Sea yonder carrying numerous goods including wine and slaves in their cargo and traveling across a large area now at this time, moreover sailing for many days before arriving both at Egypt and Argos and not paying the necessary toll money.
She stopped reading, for Polly just then spelled into her hand the words “we have to go now, Helen.”
Still holding the Histories of Herodotus, she had Polly take with them a collection of Latin poems along with the needed food and water all carried in a small brown rucksack.
Traveling on foot, Polly and their friends led Helen to the refugee camp. Now, safely there, she continued reading from the Histories:
[placeholder]
Camp. They’d stay in a tent, the boom of artillery gone, but men and women-soldiers-ventured forth past the refugee camp to fight the Fascist invaders.
The Latin poems would, she knew, flow freely like water.
She wasn’t “disabled;” she’d made royalties off of her numerous books, especially The Story of My Life, she’d met John Albert Macy and then she’d become a Socialist and then the revolution broke out and then ...
Having graduated at Harvard’s women’s section with full honors, passing advanced Germany with ease and, despite not doing as well during her second semester, she had gotten her degree.
O, how long it took Teacher to spell her non-braille books into her hand, sometimes this took four to five hours a day, o, how hard it was to take notes when she couldn’t hardly “hear” the words fast enough spelt into her hands to take the notes, but o, how she wound up regardless abundantly victorious!
Now, trying to get some sleep, she dreamed a nightmare.
What did it have to say, she thought to herself the next morning in the tent she shared with many more refugees?
That the Red Army would be abundantly triumphant!
–
July 3rd, 1941
--
Ink spots. Playing on an old record player. “Maybe.”
Maybe the French, British, and Canadian invasion force could take the United Capital City, but Sergeant Brian Reynolds thought that was a big “maybe.”
The Big Red One was digging in, here in Reynold’s House, named after himself, for he and his platoon were the first to occupy and then fortify the three-story house overlooking the Mall. From a third story window, he could see the entire Mall.
The community garden had been burned. All first stories of tall buildings had been boarded up, while the only approach into the capital was narrowed by barriers and tank traps and lines of Debs and Sherman tanks along with infantry in trenches and foxholes and anti-tank gun emplacements; no one would get in without taking massive casualties.
He just then, as he continued surveying the Mall, thought about everything, his life.
Growing up in Atlanta, he’d been born in the 1920’s after the Red rebellion had resulted in a Socialist United States into a middle-class, not working-class family of four.
His older brother was also in the army, an infantryman like him.
His childhood ... had been great.
He’d have fond memories of staying in a proletarian resort with his parents and brother ... now, war would soon come his way.
He was shaken from his deep thoughts by the radio crackling to life: “Diego-2, how copy?”
“Roger Diego-1, the Big Red One is awaiting the enemy’s big push, over.” He said into the mouthpiece.
“Copy that Diego-2, Godspeed. Diego-1 out.”
Given just who Diego-1 was ... General Eisenhower had chosen to march back to the capital in a headlong retreat, digging in and preparing for ... the inevitable clash of titans.
Patton. The man he marched with had told them to hate their enemies.
“Alright, Private Sinatra, everyone, once we hear shooting, get ready to fight.
“Yes sir!” Private Sinatra said; the man could sing. If he lived ...
Gunfire from afar could be clearly heard, artillery booming and tanks firing their shells and infantry shooting at the Anglo-French force.
So, the big push had begun. It would be a long while before they reached the Mall.
“I’m scared, Seargeant.” Sinatra said, visibly shaking.
“Everyone is.” He said to console him.
“Frankie,” the squad’s corporal said, “sing us a tune, why don’t you?”
And he did sing, a little ditty called Maybe, the same song playing on the record player.
After he finished singing, his squad mates clapped their hands in great appreciation.
“Well, damn fine singing private.” Reynold’s said, “damn fine singing. After you won on that little major’s show, well, you became quite the successful singer!”
“I sure did, sergeant.” Sinatra said with a smile.
“You sure did, private, you sure did.” He simply said.
The gunfire was getting closer.
When battle came to their squad and the rest of the platoon in the building and ultimately the whole Big Red One, would they succeed in holding the United Capital City?
Only time itself would answer that question.
--
July 28th, 1941
--
Long ago thirty days sober and counting ... long ago back in the Red Army, the Mormon Aaronic priesthood holder and Private-First-Class Richard Peel would soon meet his destiny, his fate.
“Everyone out!” Their NCO Sergeant Vens ordered, and come out of the flatbed truck they did, armed with M1 Garands and Thomspon submachine guns. “Salt Lake City, the Capitol building, is to be fortified at once!”
The whole city had been turned into an armed camp.
Even a Zion’s Camp, as the Mormon soldiers among them had come to call it.
Zion’s Camp ... had Joseph Smith and the other early Mormons redeemed Zion, Jackson County, Missouri with blood, who knows what America and the world would have looked like? What alternate reality would have come about was anybody’s guess.
But orders were orders, so ... Dig in he did, stationed on South Main Street’s railway line ... if it fell, supplies could not get in from the rest of the nation ... North and South Socialist Dakota overrun, the enemy was fighting for the small, rural farming town known as Farmington and, once it fell, SLC would be next without a doubt in his mind.
Farmington was to be held at all costs.
The troops up north, as it were, had taken thus far appalling casualties but still they fought on he had heard from his sergeant.
Now, sitting near one of the stations on fifth East, he cracked open a well-worn Book of Mormon.
O, how all of the book’s ancient history came alive!
He read through the latter half of Alma with relish, especially the parts wherein Captain Moroni dealt severe blows to his Lamanite enemies on behalf of their liberties, their freedoms.
Freedom from fear itself, freedom from need, freedom from want, all of it was summed up nicely in FDR’s Second Socialist Economic Bill of Rights which had been proposed at the start of his second term but which had yet to be realized ... but would inevitably be realized after they won this blasted, final Second Great War!
Eating gross cooked fish, he thought he saw God surrounded by hosts as he lay in his army cot.
And the Christ could be seen, telling him that victory in Utah would be theirs.
Did he trust God enough to believe that?
The short answer: He did trust the great Jehovah enough to know they’d win in the end, if only in Utah.
Then he simply fell back asleep upon reveling in the revelation which he’d both seen and heard.
It was personal only to him and him alone.
(Father God, I say in the name of Your Son, humbly, amen!)
--
August 14th, 1941
Enemies all around them, on their left, on their right.
Situation perfect.
PFC Rebecca Victoria’s unit had been sent to the United Capital City, which was under siege.
She was to gather facts, about just how to retrieve Mina Harker’s heart.
As such, she was a spy.
She’d secretly embed herself with a British unit, the 34th Hampshire Division.
“What resistance is left, sir?” The Red Coat said, a major, an officer.
Nominally, she was a male reporter from Canada ... in reality, she was ...
“Not much. Your unit has made great strides here. Much of this capital has already fallen.”
“Yes, about eighty percent of it belongs to us. Still, the American Red Army fights on. And, we’re winning in Chicago, in Pittsburgh.”
Chicago. Pittsburgh. The cities had been largely destroyed, whole population centers wiped out all in the name of the white “master race.”
But still, the Red Army fought on.
Genocide. Against African-Americans, Jews, Socialists, Communists, labor unionists, Christians, liberals, and conservatives, just mass killing.
Gleaning all that she could glean from this certain major, she had managed to retrieve some documents that might have been useful in the hands of the right people.
And no one suspected a thing.
And by the time she was long gone, would troops in their intelligence unit start looking for the culprit.
“These documents,” Her sergeant said aloud, “I’ll pass them on to the right, higher-ranking people PFC Victoria. Thank you. Hm, Manchester?”
“I don’t believe Mina’s heart is there, I think this is where they did the science to make the vampire soldiers.”
Just then, Count Dracula appeared.
“I believe I could make use of these documents, as also my master Sir Robert Hellsing and the rest of the Hellsing Organization’s top brass.”
With those words the documents would be given to him, then, he was gone without a trace, simply disappearing.
She’d met Dracula, was introduced to him by Comrade-President FDR himself just after leaving the fighting in San Francisco for the capital.
Given what FDR’s daring plan was ...
They’d had to have vampire soldiers of their own, he’d said, and that he intended to get them.
Why her, a lowly private first class?
Because, soon just before seeing the president of the beleaguered United Socialist States, Dracula would turn her into a vampire ... the rest would follow, all that she had to do to help win this final global conflict.
--
September 19th, 1941
--
PFC Jacob Sun just knew Spain would be liberated.
Espanola estaban libre ...
Instead of being shipped out to fight in the Pacific, he wound up serving in the United Capital City.
“Okay, just keep moving!” Move they did as he said those words, some got hit, some fell to the ground clutching at their wounds, as for he himself ...
Reynolds House was being blown open from below by Fascist engineers, who’d just set off a ton of explosives. And now they were fighting in close-quarters combat, fighting, trying to live, dying. Jacques Doriot had seen his engineers as the key to the taking of Reynold’s House. As it stood ...
He popped off a burst of bullets from his Tommy gun, spearing several Naci soldiers through the chest; they screamed as they fell to the ground, ripped to bloody shreds.
“Come on!” He said to his fellow troopers, “We are going to retreat from this place! It can’t be held, goddammit! Given that all their NCOs and a green CO lieutenant were dead and gone, blown away by “racial warriors’” bullets, he’d taken up charge of the entire force.
Lamanite blood. The Great Spirit had led his great-grand father to the Book of Mormon, to Joesph Smith, he himself didn’t see himself as a Lamanite, but his great-grand father had been keen when growing up to pray for divine protection for he, his wife, his children and his grand-children.
Now ...
“Great Spirit, protect me!” He said quietly through the din of battle, then, soon, he was out of that house where the sergeant it was named after had been mortally wounded.
(Breathe. The Great Spirit said softly to him.) Breathe he did, in through his nose and out through his mouth.
That calmed him down immensely, just three short breaths had brought himself back to his senses.
He was here, in the now, alive.
“How many are left? I need a damage report.”
“Not sure, sir! Fuck, we barely got out alive. And look, those bastards are after us!”
“Keep running!” Run they did, their pursuers not of far behind, shouting in French and accented British English.
Silver bullets killed a handful, but ...
Bullets felled a soldier next to him, the Spaniard Pablo Rayiz, his friend and comrade.
He didn’t stop to see if he was alive, just running, shooting, and smoking. How many cigs did he have left? Less then half a pack. God Damit
Then, something happened: he died, cut down by a Sten Mark II submachine gun burst of bullets.
Out of body, a spirit guide, an Angel, whom he could hardly see, led him to SLC.
“Watch. Listen. You will go back into your body, do you understand, alive ye begotten son of God made in the image of His only Begotten Son.”
“Why SLC?”
“Because, Imago Dei-you'll discover the truth, you who was made in the image of the Gods.”
“Created them in His image, even the image of the Gods?”
“There are more Gods then just the One God, you know this, as one who worships the Great Spirit.”
“Yes, I guess I do.”
“Now, just sit down, just listen.”
Temple Square.
(Go to the Temple.) A man at a strange train station.
It was ...
“Who am I seeing?”
“You will know him once you one day experience no-death.”
But it wasn’t him he was seeing suddenly, it was ... Helen Keller!
There, in Red Germany.
O, how the German flowed freely like water!
[Placeholder]
Factory committee meeting she couldn’t see or hear. In Berlin. In ‘36.
“We are doing things a bit differently here, Polly.” A German Communist worker said aloud, smiling while Polly spelled his words into her hands.
That Vuadville stage she and Teacher had been in prior to the successful Red Summer Insurrection had occurred on May 1st 1919, right alongside the race riots, the assassination by letter bomb of A. Mitchell Palmer at the height of his “Palmer Raids.”
Yes, everyone knew that she’d thrown herself into politics in that Red Summer Rebellion, that prior to that she’d joined the Wobblies; the Socialist Party was just too reformist for her left-wing, Red Socialist beliefs.
“Why am I seeing this?”
“Because God wants you to see and hear this.”
“What of the Great Spirit?”
“It is God.”
“Really? And who do I think was the greatest person who’d ever lived? Lenin, right?”
“Yep, you know. Your Spaniard comrade-in-arms will be okay too, will live to fight again unto a new day.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“Now, you have a choice as does he: Do you want to stay in Paradise, Heavan, or go back into your tabernacle of clay?”
He wanted to stay.
Heaven! Gardens beneath which flowed endless streams of crystal clear water, milk, honey, wine, and even beer! Cigarettes too!
Something tugged at his soul; empathy. He’d to go back to Earth, back to his own body, to fight this great evil.
Helen Keller had always “seen” reality as a very black-and-white struggle between good and evil.
When Good gave up the fight the Persians joined the victorious Opposition.
“What makes us human, PFC Sun? Our empathy. It’s a line from a movie in an alternate Earth you know not of.”
“What is the film called?”
“Dark City.”
And Helen Keller was in that movie, just before the Reds seized power under Eugene Victor Debs, the USSA’s first president, Defiance.
Did it tell the whole story, her story?
Did it matter?
“I want ... to go back into my body.”
“You will gain victory from broken, forlorn hopes.”
Then, he was back, back to his beloved war, his favorite battlefield!
By now, those Fascist engineers were in full, headlong, abasing retreat.
The Red Army was on the march!
“You still alive, PFC Sun?” Private Rayiz said, smiling. “Yeah.”
Just then, both men lit a cigarette, the gunfire no longer coming at them, but at the running away, enemy. (Cowards. He thought to himself.)
Taking a drag, he sat down in the middle of the street.
And just chain smoked his remaining mini-pack of cigs.
It was what it was, the way it was meant to be.
--
December 5th, 1941
--
Baritone voice. Rich baritone voice. Private Frank “Frankie” Sinatra bellowed out the Inkspots song I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire in front of his sergeant and corporal. “Wow, Private ‘Frankie’ Sinatra ... just fucking wow!’ You can really, and I mean really, fucking sing! You’ll go far if you make it out of this damn war alive!” His sergeant, Sergeant Richard Wright said before smiling and patting him on the back.
“Yeah, I was in a church choir growing up, I’m nothing special”
“Jesus H. Christ- you are something special!” Corporal William West said out loud, likewise smiling just then.
At 0600 hours ... the attack on the last enemy stronghold-a large estate owned by a wealthy Capitalist before the Red Summer Rebellion-would be stormed and then inevitably seized.
General Eisenhower and the boy captain Terry Allen wanted it taken soon rather than later ... so, here he was, in the Big Red One, in 2nd Company.
The house ... had been bombed and shot up by heavy artillery, howitzers, as for resistance ...Sitting down before the final assault, he read some Latin. Catullus:
Farewell, my girl-how tough he Catullus is. The wicked, woe to you! To you what kind of mode of life does he contrive? Now, who will you visit? Whose beauty will you observe? Now, in what way will you love twice? Whose food will you be said to be eating? And with to kiss twice whose lips will you bite twice? But, mind you, Catullus firm-you are firm.
(Racy, but powerful stuff!) Now ... they’d attack. The order given ... he and other soldiers ran forth, some got hit by machine-gun bullets, he knelt down by a wall from a blown-up building beside one of his fellow troopers.
“Just enjoy the cigarette, okay?” He said, popping one just then in his mouth; the bullet had went through his chest and out his back ... he’d bleed out quickly.
Chaotic as it was, he himself firing off some rounds from his BAR, soon they were in the estate.
“We surrender!” The Fascists said, fearful, and just then their unit’s sergeant blew their brains out one by one.
“These cunts killed our buddies ... besides, they were too dangerous, too evil to be kept alive.”
The sergeant didn’t have to do that ... now, sitting down against a shot up hallway wall, he lit a cig and just enjoyed it.
--
January 2nd. 1942
--
O, what hath God wrought?
Helen Keller knew what He’d wrought: Victory in sight!
Now, back in their Easton home, torn up by bullets and shrapnel, it had served briefly as a field hospital for wounded Red Army soldiers, the house now being far from the frontlines after the successful defense of the formerly named Washington, D.C.
Blood was everywhere, although she could not see it, she felt how sticky the floors were, carpeted as they were, and could smell the stench of death.
Doctors had wanted to know if she had a superior sense of smell ... she did not, but still the smell was intense.
“Remember: John Macy has a place for us to stay up in New York, okay Helen.” Polly spelled swiftly into her hand.
John Albert Macy.
That man ...
He’d marry Teacher and stay with Teacher until her death in ‘36, their marriage was a happy one, despite heated disagreements and arguments that had almost tanked it just before the First Great War had broken out.
Then both had needed ...
Spelling into her hand. “Do you want to head down south to New York, Helen?”
Helen Keller spelled back into Polly’s hand, simply, “yes.”
Getting there, though ... Then the man came, John Macy himself, Polly had just then told her.
“My beloved Helen!” He spelt into Helen Keller’s hand, “Here,” he said through the manual alphabet, “I’ve a copy of FDR”s speech he made just after the collapse of the Nacis’ ‘Castle’, in the United Capital City.” Just then, he’d spell it into her hand, every single word, but the last part really resonated with her:
... We must be ... the arsenal of Socialist Democracy!
The president of the Council of People’s Secretaries had said triumphantly.
(The arsenal of Socialist Democracy! And what of me, what is my role? To speak, to write, to fight!)
For now, though, the two women’s meager belongings having been loaded into John’s automobile, they’d drive off back to New York.
Hours later, they would arrive. His house was ... nice, from what Polly had said of it. Not grand like Mark Twain’s, that great friend of hers, but nice, a fruit of the Red rebellion, one which he shared with three more families.
“This used to be the home of ... you won’t believe this ... Carnegie.”
“That man had tried to humiliate me! He absolutely hated my Socialism, John!”
John would just then smile, spelling back “And, well, look at how his lot in life ended up!”
That brought warmth to Helen Keller’s soul.
She’d finally gotten her sweet revenge.
But, now, just then she thought of the war, all the lives lost ... and how sweet the revenge, the inevitable victory, of the Socialist Red Army of Workers and Farmers would soon, she knew in her soul, would finally, one day, be.
--
March 10th, 1942
General Dwight D. Eisenhower just couldn’t keep his cigarettes dry.
Count Dracula knew, also, that he’d just never had the pleasure of smoking ... perchance, he’d read the Word of Wisdom a long time ago, and had decided to not smoke tobacco.
Here, now, with the general in his United Capital City command post, it wouldn't be long before the amphibious assault began on Spain.
With General Macarthur having long ago vowed to return to Hawaii, he himself operating on the west coast, this left Eisenhower to contend with Red America’s European, Fascist Capitalist foes.
Some in the USS camp had wanted to exclusively focus on the Pacific, but FDR would hear nothing of it. First Spain, France, and Britan, then Japan could be contended with. Island hopping aside, most of the Red Army was thus concentrated here.
“General Eisenhower,” “my good friend, sir, the specifics of the Hellsing Organization’s plans now worked out ... soon we’ll be in London!”
“Yes, you will be across the pond soon Count Dracula, here, I have the orders authorizing this little ... excursion.”
“Excellent,” he said upon reading through the order, signed off by Comrade-President FDR. “Bloody excellent!”
They’d travel by ... or, rather, with the main invasion force, but would take a detour.
Later, there they were, in a DC-3 transport plane full of Hellsing Organization soldiers, flanked by Spitfires and P-51 Mustangs, some ships down below too ... The attack would be full of great sound and fury ... And, already there, OSS people were already waiting for the signal to bring Mina’s heart to them ... for, this little “excursion,” in reality, was a distraction.
Shells and bombs slammed into the Thames’ riverside London buildings, with more shells and bombs sent forth by German ships and airplanes.
The two navies and air forces, combined, were no match for the Royal Navy combined with the French navy, but ... the raid had the element of both surprise and great speed. Before long, they’d had it, at long last ... Mina Harker’s red, beating heart.
They’d had to drop down below, parachute down below, fight down below.
The enemy ... was no match for him!
His powers unleashed ... Bullets tore into some Red Coats, as wolves ripped and tore at them and while Hellsing Organization soldiers laid down withering suppressive fire.
Soon, now, in a ship, an American light cruiser named the USS Big Bill Haywood, they’d gotten out in one piece okay.
The combat, however brief, was so chaotic, so wonderfully violent and bloody!
Then, soon, D.C. beckoned. Subs not withstanding, which could very well sink them, they arrived safely back after a long while out at sea.
Seeing FDR again, he simply said, “We have it: Mina Harker’s heart and, with it, victory!”
“Excellent!” The aged patrician Red president said with the swift flourish of a cig. Now, the count just needed some rest in his coffin.
--
April 4th, 1944
(It was the case that the Word and Reason was God.)
A last cigarette.
Charles Gustav was smoking in the Sanitarium courtyard.
The smoke, going down his throat, felt so good.
Other patients also smoking.
“Here,” a female patient said aloud, smiling, “smoke it without the filter!” Just then she ripped the filter of his cigarette off.
(O, how so very human!)
The night before ... they’d only been given eight hours to live; Vivir.
Aber, tu vive, nicht, yo vivo!
The Naci doctors had said that their iron levels were low.
That’s how the poison was administered, through deception.
And why was he here?
Yes, he’d heard voices, but he’d also seen a vision, that he’d be France’s next president, vive un libre France!
“Like Paul before King Agrippa, I have seen a vision!”
“Your delusions are getting worse. And your iron levels are really low, so I’m going to keep you on the iron medication.”
“It’s poison, doctor!”
“Are you paranoid, Charles?”
“No, I know what I saw! You’ll lose; God is on my side!”
“Yeah, well, whatever God.”
Seeing him off, the good doctor saw to another patient.
After breakfast in the cafeteria, he sat in one of the rooms on the western wing of the sanitarium, just reading.
Premonition. (The mind is like a computer.)
What was a “computer?”
Here he was, reading the Tragedy of Julius Caesar.
When would his fight end?
Would he end up victorious like Antony, or vanquished like Brutus?
Groups, which he’d had to go to, o, how he just wanted to sleep forever, but God had simply brought him and the other patients back to life despite the poison that would repeatedly course through their veins before ... freedom’s cry.
And what of the Second Great War?
It was ...
Doriot’s armies ... smashed.
Moseley’s armies, retreating across the Channel.
Nuclear devices ... leveling entire cities, two in France and three in “Greater Britannia.” Soon would come D-day for England, not unlike the conquest of the nation by the Romans, back when the English had consisted of primitive, free tribes.
O, he just knew that Allied forces would liberate him and all the others!
“I’m winning.”
“O, I don’t think you will win, Charles” the doctor the following day said, smiling thinly.
Evil smile.
“The gunfire is getting closer. The Allies will-”
“I’ll be increasing your iron medication. You still have anemia really bad.”
“Well, doctor, cast your staffs, and I shall cast mine own staff.”
He’d cast his staffs, all the doctors and techs, but he’d cast his, Moses like, simply resurrected yet again by God the following day.
The gunfire and artillery was ever still closer ... Out a window, he could see ...
--
April 19th, 1942
--
“Alright you lazy cunt bastards, we lift up at 0400 hours!”
The airplane pilots’ CO Lt-Colonel Richard Barnes said aloud in the packed briefing room, a lit cigarette in his mouth, smoke wafting up into the stale air above them. “Let’s go on the offensive, boys! Today, we fly into Fascist Spain!” He said, blowing smoke.
“Yeah, let’s fly into Fascist Spain!” The assembled pilots said, some smiling, others frowning, and most smoking their chosen brand of cigarettes.
Sergeant Kyle Best made damn sure in his pack were twenty cartons of Marlboros, his brand of choice. Corporal Jason East, his co-pilot for the mission ahead, sitting next to him puffed happily on a Pall Mall cigarette and, after being dismissed while they sat in the Douglas DC-3 transport plane, said, “Looks like we are going, really going now on the offensive. Why don’t just fly us flyboys into Naci France or National-Socialist Britain?”
“You fucking wish, corporal! What did that British fellow Winston Churchill call Spain, ‘the soft underbelly of Europe?’” Winston Churchill, a Tory in exile, had said as much. If it was actually true ...
Just then the radio crackled to life, breaking him from his thoughts. “All pilots of the 2nd Air Brigade, we’re lifting up now!” The Lt-Colonel said.
“Well corporal, let’s get ready to lift up!”
“Yes, sergeant!”
Sergeant Best pulled the plane’s throttle forwards, pushing them forwards off the tarmac built on the Azores Island given to them by Portugal, their ally in the Great Crusade. 10 MPH, 15 MPH, 20 MPH, 25 MPH, 35 MPH …
“Well corporal, we’re in the air!” He said just as the plane lifted up and started to gain in altitude.
“It’ll take us what, about an hour to reach the drop zone?”
“Yeah, about an hour corporal.”
Before long, it seemed, they were flying high over Fascist, imperialist Capitalist Spain. Sergeant Best could see tracer fire from Spanish anti-aircraft guns, Mark IV Codesa turrets, out of the window.
Heading towards them … just then, he could see smoke and fire shoot forth from the left-hand wing. Not good!
“Alright you lazy cunt bastards, fucking jump!” He said over the intercom to the paratroopers of the 101st Red Airborne Division. “Well corporal, looks like she will be going down. Let’s just hope it doesn’t get ripped in two or something.”
“Amen to that, sarge!”
“Jumping!” The paratrooper’s NCO said aloud through the intercom.
“God speed!” Sergeant Best said.
Now, now they’d have to land their little bird.
“We’re decreasing in altitude, God dammit!” Corporal East said, no doubt feeling great fear along with his superior officer. There is nothing to fear but fear itself. FDR’s words in his ’36 inauguration day address to We the People of the USSA …
Before he knew it, the plane was so low that he could clearly see the ground below. Steady. He managed to pilot it into the ground without killing them both.
Glass went every which way though, miraculously not hitting him … as for his best friend and corporal …
“Am I gonna be okay, sarge?” Glass was in his eyes, both of them, his uniform all ripped up and bloodied.
“Yeah, you’ll be okay, corporal.”
Shouting. Here in Spanish, and there in French.
Just then enemy soldiers burst into the plane, their shouting closer now, who promptly opened the large, heavy cockpit door.
A soldier, an Armed-Protection Squadron man as evidenced by the French Popular Party’s “armée-EP” insignia on his uniform collars, simply blew his friend’s brains out, splattering blood and bits of bone and brain over the cockpit, over Sergeant Best.
“He was going to die anyway.” The armée-EP soldier said, his voice cold and detached, a frown on his face as if to accentuate that he just didn’t care. “Come, we are going to send you to a POW camp.” With those words, the mixed assortment of Spanish and French “racial warriors” seized him, hauling him off through the darkness to the POW camp.
–
Apri 20th, 1942
–
“Alright,” Lieutenant Louis Young said to his men aboard the Higgins boat as it quickly sped ever closer to Fascist Spain’s “Omaha Beach,” “when we finally land, we need to make a quick dash to the seaway. Once there, we’ll need to blow a hole in their barbwire with Bangalores! We also need to clear the enemy’s mortar holes.”
“Thirty seconds!” the boatswain yelled, holding up three fingers.
A soldier puked behind him. He also felt like puking, but managed to hold it in. One, two, three, four …
Before long, the boatswain yelled “alright, we’re here! Everyone, go over the sides, go over the goddamned sides!”
The men of F Company did just that, falling into the ocean. Lieutenant Young struggled to get up, having landed face down into the sandy, salty water. Thick sand smeared his clean-shaven face and stung his blue eyes. Getting back up, he tried running forwards but found himself unable to do so due to all the weight he was carrying on his back.
So, I’ll walk fast.
Ahead, he could see the Spanish bunkers shooting forth hot, deadly lead. Suddenly, a machine-gun bullet struck him squarely in his left leg.
“Fuck, I’ve been hit! Medic!”
“The LT’s been hit! We need a medic over here!” Staff Sergeant Carl West said, seawater pouring out of his helmet as bullets hit the sand all around him while he knelt down next to Young.
Soon, a medic came. Thank Christ!
“You’re going to be okay. I’ll carry you to the seaway, then give you a shot of morphine.” The medic lifted him up onto his back before walking quickly past unexploded mines, bullets ripping past and all around them. Luckily, they made it safely to the seaway.
“Here’s some morphine lieutenant.” The medic said calmly before injecting the stuff into his ass.
Sedated, he soon blacked out.
Next thing he knew, he was in a large olive-green tent and lying on a makeshift bed, not below the enemy bunkers but near them above; he could see the bunkers through the open tent flap.
“Lieutenant Young,” a beautiful blond-haired nurse said, “I’m nurse Jacklyn. You lost a lot of blood, hence why you’d passed out. You’re lucky to be alive. You should be in fighting shape in a handful of weeks.”
“Good. Can’t wait to join the fight again. I’m just going to get some rest.” The nurse let him be, walking away to help another wounded soldier. In no time it seemed, after closing his eyes, he fell asleep.