Re: Brushfire - Combat in 1960's Africa - Still recruiting!

[Guest]

Route Coloniale 17, Catholic Mission, East of Charleville, Republique de Gwunfa, February 13th, Night

Bergfalk had the enemy carrying their dead and the civilians from the mission stacking their arms. The Venda soldiers were a sorry lot, most of them sporting minor wounds, and all of them stripped down to nothing in the night air by torchlight as Bergfalk’s typical precaution against some sort of guerrilla attack with a grenade, as he’d seen the Viet Minh do in la guerre en Indonchine. It seemed a savage sort of humiliation from the outside, and even Father Michael commented on it to the hard-eyed German.

The pile of filthy rag uniforms, soiled and bloodied, didn’t look that much more befouled than the sweat, grime and powder-residue did on the olive drab uniforms of Bergfalk’s own squad. The whole place had the harsh stink of cordite smoke, acrid and sharp in the nostrils and unmistakable. There were other smells to complement it; of feces and urine, of blood, of singed flesh and hair.

The enemies, once stripped, were forced to kneel or lay still, and kept under the guns of the soldiers, who also kept the refugees of the mission away from the prisoners; it was a confusing order of Bergfalk’s, but it was explained to the troops that these men knew things and had to be pumped for that information before anything else. But it was half a lie; Bergfalk just didn’t want their blood on their hands.

“Why naked? Is there no end to the indignity, feldwebel?”

“It isn’t a matter of dignity, Father,” replied the German in a patient tone, “stripping them is the best and fastest way to be sure they aren’t concealing a weapon they could kill us with. I saw it happen many times in Indochina and Algeria, you see.”

“Ah, I never thought of it that way. I thought it was some sort of…well, I’m not sure what I thought, except the worst. Forgive me, you are right.”

“No offense is taken, Father. It is dehumanizing and it does take away dignity, but it is necessary. But it is as far as we go with this. I won’t let the usual happen.”

One of the prisoners spoke up, the South African; “Ey, you, kraut, yeah, I recognize your type, I’m Jeffre DuPrez. How much does it take to let me off, soldier to soldier? You aren’t going to actually let me be taken prisoner with the rest of these kaffirs and fed to these fucking cannibals, right? White man to white man, eh?”

Bergfalk merely stared impassively at the man, “You fought with them.” he pointed out, in a tone of arctic temperature, lashing him with the emotional detachment he felt. He lunged and grabbed the man’s hand, holding it up and noting the bloodstains all over them; Jeffre was unwounded, “You helped them rape the nuns. You chopped off her tits.” The accusation was relentless, and Bergfalk’s gaze of a certain intensity; he saw himself, and he saw his own guilt reflected back in the savage counterpart.

He gave Jeffre a hard shove back, causing the man to stumble and fall in the grass.

The unfortunate matter was that others weren’t so finicky in their reasoning. Once he turned DuPrez over, odds were that he’d be able to pay his way out of any such situation that he got into or simply appeal ‘white man to white man,’ as it were. The Gwunfi wouldn’t have such a luxury. It almost felt wrong to let the likes of him go, even though he’d worked so hard to keep him from getting killed outright by outraged refugees.

Indeed, bringing the prisoners in, he’d had to yell at the Gwunfi refugees to stop where they stood as many of them got ready to take out their fears and frustrations on the prisoners; finally, a single shot in the air from his M1911, a booming thing that made them all stop and actually listen in the midst of their bloodlust, was what it took to actually get them to stop and get ahold of themselves.

Bergfalk had little taste to be a party to the savage brutality of it, but also had to wonder if it really mattered, if he wasn’t damned already for what he did. Might as well hang for the chicken if you’re going to hang for the egg, some might argue, but Bergfalk just couldn’t bring himself to such a wanton mentality.

“Not that stopping it makes much of a difference does it?” he asked, plaintively, to no one in particular.

[Rittermeister]

The little man sitting across the table from Charlie Armstrong was a well-dressed man. He wore a two-button glen plaid suit, with two darts in each side so that it fit close to his body, as was the style. His shirt was fine white cotton, and starched until it was like a piece of cardboard. His tie was a black gossamer thread; his black oxford shoes were mirrors. There was a Rolex Submariner watch with a face the size of a tennis ball on his wrist, and a college ring the size of a quail egg on one of his fingers. His dark hair was perfectly cut and groomed with half a tube of bryllcreme; his face was smooth as a sheet of glass, clean-shaven, and without scars or other marks of character. There was a vodka martini in his right hand, a Cuban cigar between the fingers of the other. All that finery couldn't disguise what he was: a schemer, a country-club man, a spook: a yellow little shit who hired his killing done. Charlie, God help him, needed him. Only he couldn't let him know.

"You've got quite a resume," the little man from the Agency said. "Gliders in Normandy and Holland, P51s over Korea. Are you qualified on the B-26?"

"A, B, and C," Charlie said.

"But I have to admit to being curious why you want this. According to our records, you're making quite the nice living flying musicians and movie stars around the country."

“Mr. Sharp,” Charlie said, for that was the man’s name, “I’m thirty-seven years old. I’ve killed Krauts, Gooks, Chinks, and Cubanos by the bushel fuckin’ barrel. I do it real good. Now, I’d like to get to kill me some jungle bunnies before I get too old to fly. So why don’t we cut through all this bullshit? You need pilots and I want to fly. Where’s the job?”

********************

Three weeks later. A run-down bush strip somewhere in shit-ass Africa. Pre-flight check.

“Guns okay?” Johnny Bryce, his navigator/bombardier asked. Bryce was a small, wiry fellow, the kind with more energy than a nuclear power plant.

Charlie depressed the trigger for a half-second. The eight .50-caliber machineguns mounted in the nose stuttered. A ramshackle hut seventy-five yards away shuddered and collapsed. Some niggers loafing a few yards away fled in panic. Charlie laughed.

“Reckon they are,” Charlie said.

“Engines okay?”

He turned the ignition. The props came on with a roar like an out-of-control buzz saw.

“Well, shit, that’s everything I guess,” Bryce grinned.

“Strap in and enjoy the ride, boy,” Charlie said.

Charlie turned the B-26 and guided it down the dirt strip. It was picking up speed, the props churning the air. He could feel it trembling, like an old plane that’s barely being held together with duct tape and baling wire will. He loved the feeling. Shiny new planes bored him. There was nothing to puzzle out, nothing to uncover. This was where it was at, just you and the old war-bitch.

The dirt strip was running out. There was dense jungle foliage ahead. If they hit that, they were royally fucked. Speed was at 200. He began to pull up on the yoke. The nose of the plane rose, sluggishly, then came down hard. He pulled up again. The plane rose up, and stayed up. They climbed, climbed, climbed, up to three thousand feet, where Charlie leveled it off. It was not quite cruising altitude, but he wanted to be low enough to spot targets of opportunity. That was their mission: look for shit to blow up, then blow it up.