Blue Army

 Night came to Germany like a shroud of blackness. Long shadows of trees and hills slowly merged together then faded into the background of darkness as the last rays of sunlight dissipated from the face of the earth. In most circumstances, sleep would be appropriate. Private Riley certainly wanted to go to sleep. He would’ve given a lot to be back in his barracks room, asleep on his bunk, dreaming of home and girls who’s faces he would try to match to names. It would be much more preferable to spending another night in his sleeping bag, under an olive green tarp, hoping it would hold up against another night of rain and drizzle. This was not Riley’s first exercise in Germany, but it was the first one where it had rained nearly daily. He had thought he had left behind overcast and constant precipitation when he left England, but it seemed like the dark clouds had followed him to Germany.

He glanced up at the sky and noted with disappointment that he could once again not see the stars. The one nice thing about these exercises was being able to witness the majesty of the night sky without light pollution from the nearby cities and towns, but it seemed like he could not be afforded even this simple pleasure. He frowned; this entire experience had thus far been frustrating. He had spent much of the past three days exchanging his rifle for a shovel, and his days consisted of digging trenches and foxholes all across the battalion’s line of defense. As he adjusted his seat atop the personnel carrier, pain flared up in his palms.

The constant digging had rubbed his hands raw, his callouses slowly shredded until the skin underneath his fingers and on his thumb was red and tender to the touch. He had wrapped white bandages around each one, ignoring the snide comments from his squad mates about it. The last thing he needed was for his marksmanship to suffer because his hands hurt too much to hold his rifle steady. With that thought he absentmindedly touched the butt stock of his rifle, almost to make sure it was still there. He grasped the weapon and drew it onto his lap, feeling the weight against his damp uniform. He had cleaned it religiously while in garrison and was determined to not let the mud and dust foul it up like it had every previous exercise he had been on. He might actually need it this time.

That final thought stuck with him. Six days ago he had been roused from his barracks and informed that the entire brigade was taking part in an impromptu field exercise. That in itself wasn’t shocking. Riley was used to it by now. But after three days in the forest he had noted something had changed. He hadn’t picked up on it at first, he was too new and still learning the subtleties of the officers, but eventually even he had picked up on things. The rather quick pace all the seniors moved about with, the constant checks and re-checks of simple tasks, the insistence on silence unless absolutely necessary. The last one had been really hard to enforce, as with all soldiers, Riley’s comrades had been quick to turn to gossip and chatter when left to their own devices.

They had all heard the news after all, before they had departed their barracks, about the situation still developing. But when they had boarded their tracked vehicles and received their supply of live ammunition, it was under the assumption that it was just more saber rattling. In the woods of the training area they were virtually cut off from the rest of the world, save for the lost West German who occasionally stumbled onto their perimeter. It was more common than one expected; West Germany had a lot of people but was not a large country, and locals had on more than one occasion accidentally intruded into the exercise area, all the more often when the exercise was unannounced. But now they were more stern about it, roughly and quickly re-directing any civilian that came too close. Stories about spies were mentioned a bit too often for Riley’s comfort.

Riley realized for all his experience and willingness to join the armed services, he never really expected to see combat. It wasn’t that he was afraid of acknowledging that fact, nor was he ignorant. He had been too young to take part in the Falklands and even knowing that hundreds of thousands of Communist soldiers were stationed just a few hundred kilometers to the east, Riley never truly expected to fire his rifle in anger. There was too much at stake, wasn’t there? It was all too likely that if cooler heads didn’t prevail, the world would perish. Surely that was enough to dissuade any real chance of war. The Soviets may be the evil empire the American President called them out for, but they mustn't be suicidal. They must know that if they dared to cross the border, they would be met with nuclear fire.

The thought of being in the midst of such an event troubled Riley on a subconscious level. He didn’t fear the idea of dying in uniform, even if he had never truly considered it a likely possibility, but there was something about the idea of being wiped away in the after wind of a nuclear detonation that disturbed him. It was one thing to be shot by an enemy soldier, to be bested in a contest of skill at arms. It was another thing entirely to be dispatched by a technician thousands of kilometers away, pressing a button and sending a missile screaming into the sky, to descend on unsuspecting victims. There was some insane level of barbarity in that, wrapped behind the cloak of technological sophistication. The old phrase appeared in his head; you can’t say war never changes, because in each one they find new ways to kill you.

Could he kill? Unlike dying, Riley had pondered killing on more than one occasion. He had been trained to think of it as a matter of practicality. Kill or be killed, the instructors had drilled into him. Either shoot him or he’ll shoot you. He liked to frame it in such a manner, since it removed concepts like guilt from the equation. It was easy to kill if the other option was to lose your life. He could do that, even if he took no pleasure from it. It wasn’t fair, after all. Riley had volunteered, but he knew the vast majority of his potential enemies were conscripts. They had no choice in the matter. They were poorly trained, raised en mass, given a rifle and the basic how to on shooting and following orders. They were no match for a professionally trained rifleman. Or so Riley had been told.

In his mind the soldiers of the Warsaw Pact were largely formless. They were a mass, an onslaught of flesh backed up by steel and shells. Riley had been instructed throughout his military service the weaknesses of the Soviet and other communist forces. Their soldiers were individually unskilled, relying on numbers to swarm their opponents and waves of tanks to crush what was left. They were powerful to be sure, but they needed size on their side to win. That’s how we’ll beat them, Riley was told. We’ll funnel them until their so tightly packed by their own numbers they can’t escape.

It seemed like a sensible response. Riley was not a strategist or planner. He was just a single infantryman. But it made sense, and it seemed simple enough, which suited him just fine. He drummed his fingers against the chilled steel of his rifle. Would he have to use this soon? Take aim and then take lives? Perhaps. To Riley his rifle was everything; the sum total of his combat capability and his contribution to the army. But in the grand scale of things one rifle hardly mattered at all. That’s how the Soviets thought after all; the little bits and pieces didn’t matter, only the bigger picture. Was that a sound methodology?

A voice cut across the dim forest. “Evans, over here!”

Riley’s eyes leveled in the general direction of where the voice had come from. Wasting little time he grabbed his rifle and pushed himself off the hood of the truck he had been sitting on. His boots hit he ground and sank softly into the mud under the pressure of his weight. With slightly more effort than usual he pushed his legs forward and jogged his way over to where the voice was coming from. He was essentially running dark, but he had been in these woods long enough to get used to the terrain, knowing that even if he couldn’t see it in the darkness, trampled grass and boot prints guided him between the trees.

The rest of his fire team waited for him in a small clearing between two clusters of trees. His superior, Lance Corporal Booth, stood apart from the rest. Even though Riley couldn’t make out the features of his face clearly, he knew that his NCO was grinning. “Sorry to interrupt your nap there Evans, but the rest of the army needs to keep moving.”

“I wasn’t sleeping.” Riley said, knowing that the Lance Corporal was just teasing him. For some reason Booth liked poking fun at him, even if it was all light hearted humor. Maybe it was because Riley was from Southampton and Booth saw anyone who rooted for the Saints as somehow less than intelligent, but whatever the reason rarely did a convergence between them end without some joke being said at Riley’s expense. He knew it wasn’t malevolent, Booth was a good man all things considered, but it was an unusual dynamic from Riley’s perspective. Maybe Booth just felt like he needed someone to poke fun at to make the rest of the boys laugh. Riley by now had gotten used to it.

“Well I hope you got some shut eye, because we’re on watch tonight.” Booth said with another grin, already prepared for the cascade of groans that followed. “Talked with Corporal an hour ago and he said we have it again.”

“We just had it two nights ago!” Perry pointed out.

“And now it’s our turn again. Just embrace it lads. It’s happening one way or another.” Booth affirmed, the grin on his face not seeming to fade in the slightest. Booth had been in the army long enough to receive the short end of the stick more than once, and while others might have complained the man just seemed content to turn that frustration into pure energy. It was a resilience that Riley admired about him even if he didn’t admit it. Booth was a good man, and a good leader. Riley found himself on more than one occasion trying to impress his NCO, because despite his jokes, Riley got the sense that Booth really did care about him. All the playful jabs and gestures may have seemed humor at his own expense, but Riley couldn’t shake the feeling that Booth honestly liked him, and in turn Riley couldn’t help but feel himself drawn to the Lance Corporal. He wondered if Booth would be friends with him if they were in the civilian world. Riley liked to think so.

“So take a piss if you need it, then meet back here in 10 and we’ll start working out zones. Any questions?”

“When are we going home?” Lowe, a short and stout man from Newark-on-Trent, asked earnestly. Lowe was despite his stature something of a womanizer, always heading out to the local pubs for a chance to sweet talk some young German women. Riley was sure that Lowe more than anything wanted to get back to drinking German beer and watching in awe as pretty blonde German girls danced and laughed at the clubs, jamming out to American rock. Riley couldn’t stand the loud music and the crowds, but Lowe seemed at home at it.

“Well shite Lowe, since you asked so nicely, you can go right now.” Booth replied happily.

The rest of the soldiers assembled couldn’t hide the snicker that followed. Booth was good at making people laugh. He wasn’t the disciplinarian you sometimes needed, but Riley though his leadership method was still sound. You didn’t need to punish people for slacking off if they liked you so much they were always keen on making you happy.

After the laughs and chuckles had subsided Booth asked the group. “Any other questions?”

Riley couldn’t help but ask the question that had been swimming in his mind for the past few days. “Do you think something’s going to happen?”

The group fell quiet at that. The last of the rapid breathing ceased, and while Riley couldn’t see it, he could almost feel the smiles recede and reshape into grimaces. It was as if he had asked a question no one really knew, or wanted to know, the answer to. Booth himself was affected, shifting slightly where he was standing, though he quickly recovered.

“Actually just found out, Evans. S'viet Premier was kind enough to stop by earlier while you were sleeping to let us he know he plans on attacking in two days. Nice chap isn't he?”

There were a few more chuckles, but Riley noticed there was far less enthusiasm than the first joke. It wasn’t really an answer, and more than likely Booth had no more idea of what as going to happen than Riley did. But as a leader of soldiers Booth had people looking up to him, and just as Riley did, the other soldiers expected their leader to be more informed then they were. Booth to his credit rectified himself quickly and slapped Riley on the shoulder. “Don’t you worry a thing lad. Even if the balloon goes up, all that’s going to happen is Ivan’s gonna step one foot over that border and be blasted back to kingdom come.”

If that were true, then why were they digging trenches and foxholes so far behind the border, Riley thought. But he knew better than to press the issue. Booth was trying to keep their spirits up, despite the situation working so hard to make them miserable. Riley appreciated that about his leader, and he tried his best to smile back. “Then I feel sorry for the poor bastards if they try.” He tried to say it with a bit of gusto, but it surely must have sounded as hollow as Riley felt saying it. If it was, none of the other soldiers pointed it out.

“Now, let’s get ready. Everyone remember their positions?” Booth began moving them back into their zones, before a distant scream of a fighter jet rolled over the sky. The men stopped what they were doing to glance up at a sky that revealed no secrets behind it’s overcast shroud. Above the clouds, some pilot made his patrol pattern, watching the skies above the Federal Republic of Germany, scouring for possible intruders and invaders just as his associates on the ground did.

“How lucky to be a flyboy, huh?” Booth said.

“Until the SAMs start flying.” Perry pointed out. No one had a counter to that.