THE LITTLEST SPARTAN

 

Mark Twain wrote that no good deed goes unpunished. Major Blaine finds it is still true.

THE LITTLEST SPARTAN

“One child, one teacher, one look can change the world."

— Major Richard Blaine

 

Men stumble over pebbles, never over mountains. The shingles on Omaha Beach taught me that.

Looking at the twitching, unconscious bodies of generals and colonels strewn all over the floor of this large auditorium, I thought that this one time I might stumble over this mountain … or be crushed by it.

I bent by General Eisenhower who appeared to be coming out of his grand mal seizure … from the French phrase meaning “great illness.”

I took his neck pulse. It was steady. Recovery from such a seizure took about 30 minutes. He would have a devil of a headache and would be weak and disoriented.

Sentient mocked, ‘You care?’

‘He is a fellow human being.’

Churchill said in his sonorous voice. “He will hate you for this when he awakens.”

“He hated me before this, Prime Minister.”

Lady Churchill sighed, “For as much reason as King Saul hated the young David.”

‘I don’t know how I am going to get out of this one, Sentient.’

‘I have taken care of everything.’

My stomach knotted as she explained “everything.”

Bradley grunted, rubbing a forehead that obviously throbbed. “Ike and I entered West Point in 1911 and graduated in 1915. I know him well, Blaine. He will never forget or forgive this.”

“He won’t remember this, sir. None of those still unconscious will.”

“I won’t lie for you, soldier,” grunted Patton.

“Not asking you to, sir. Agent Cloverfield is, at this moment, leading a medical team here to treat the poison given to you gentlemen, courtesy of a dastardly Nazi plot to eliminate the very heart of the leadership for the Allied Expeditionary Forces.”

I smiled dourly. “Luckily, I heard of it from my contacts in the French Resistance and managed to keep the worst of the poisons from being put into your lunches today.”

Montgomery sneered, “For which I guess you expect the George Cross, of course.”

I smiled broader. “At the very least. My pillow is looking empty of late.”

King George shook his head at me with a dour smile of his own.

“And since I had it created, and I know how very little medals mean to you, I will nominate you for one myself.”

Patton stuck out his lower lip. “And if I tell the medical staff the truth?”

I sighed, “General George Marshall has been looking for a reason to sideline you ever since that slapping incident in August of 1943, sir. Do you really want to give it to him?”

And that was how my pillow received its George Cross.

 

General George Marshall, the new Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces --

(Eisenhower’s suicide note was found in his left blouse pocket when the medical team arrived to pump all  those high-ranking stomachs.

Sadly, President Roosevelt had to accept uneasy sleep by not having General Marshall in Washington, and the general received the position for which he long coveted.)

Oh, as I was saying … General Marshall had set D-Day for June 5. Loading for the assault began on May 31, running from west to east—

Those coming from a distance rode to the quays by bus or truck. Those whose sausages were close to the harbors formed up into their squads, platoons, and companies and marched.

Which was why I and my Spartan 3oo were unhappily marching down village streets. We had done our fair share of marching in Sicily.

I didn’t remember it.

But the others did.

Two rows behind me, Pvt. Johnny Knight groaned, “Major, have I ever told you how much I hate marching?”

Beside him, Ted “Kit” Carson snorted, “If he’s like me, he stopped counting after the hundredth time.”

“That’s easy for you to say, Kit, what with those clodhoppers of yours. But I gots me some delicate feet. Ma always said I should have taken up dancing.”

Pvt. Dee Stevens smiled big, and Cpl.. Sam Wilson fought a snort and lost.

Sgt. Savalas, marching beside our ranks, sniped, “How about the two of you taking up a vow of silence for the rest of this march?”

Everything was on the move, jeeps, trucks, big artillery pieces, tanks, half-tracks, motorcycles, and bicycles.

Crowds gathered on the streets to watch our apparently never-ending procession. The adults were cheering and giving us the V-for-Victory sign.

As Rabbi Stein and I passed a mother and her ten-year-old boy, he called out to me, “You won’t come back.”

Cpl. Reese drawled, “Cute little bugger, isn’t he? Major, can I kill him?”

“No,” I smiled. “I don’t think our new Supreme Commander would approve.”

Marching beside Reese, Pvt. Porkins laughed, “And it might prove embarrassing if he killed you.”

The two of them had gotten closer ever since it seemed like Porkins had been killed during Operation Tiger.

You never know how much someone meant to you until the moment when you think you’ve lost them.

I turned to see the boy’s mother give a gasp, pick up the boy, and run to the front of the column.

As I passed her, the boy sobbed through his tears, “You will come back! You will!”

Instinctively. I raised my right hand which tingled oddly. “Halt!”

The whole procession froze as if it had become a still photograph. The only humans who still breathed were my Spartan 300 and the mother and her boy --- whose eyes had become as round as hitching rings.

I bent to one knee and smiled. “It’s a kind of magic, Richard.”

“Like with Merlin,” he said weakly.

“Yes, a bit. You know my name is Richard, too. Do the other boys call you ‘Rick’?”

His face clouded. “No, Butch calls me ….”

I almost tousled his hair, but I stopped. Why do adults do that to boys? It always made me feel condescended to when I was his age.

I took his shoulder gently with my artificial fingers. “It does not matter what they call you. It’s what you answer to that counts.”

My left blouse pocket swelled with an object suddenly forming in it. Sentient told me what it was. I took it out and showed it to … Richard.

A gleaming gold Spartan Helmet pin.

His eyes grew larger as he took in my Spartan 3oo patch on my left sleeve. “Y-You’re Major Blaine!”

I nodded. “And you’re my newest recruit.”

His mother and he both turned very pale. “Your first assignment ….”

He swallowed hard.

“Is to never make a statement until you have all the facts. Back there, you didn’t have enough facts to know we weren’t coming back. And now, you didn’t know for sure that we were coming back.”

Rabbi Stein kneeled next to me and smiled, “Son, hard times will be here for awhile yet. Your mother needs to know that your word can be taken to the bank, it’s so good.”

The boy smiled at that, and I said, “That pin will glow as long as the Spartan 300 unit lives.”

“Wh-What if one of you … is killed?”

Porkins kneeled on the other side of the Rabbi. “One or none, Richard. That is the Spartan 3oo way, right, Reese?”

“Damn, ah, darn straight, Franklin.”

Reese looked towards the mother. “He likes to be called Franklin not Frank. He has a degree in electronics if you’d believe it.”

That shocked me. Not that I did not know that, but that Reese did.

“Why, Franklin even told me where Pvt. Evans missed a circuit.”

Eric Evans grumbled, “Next time, Porkins. You tell me.”

The cold glint in Evans’ eyes told me that Porkins would be very wise not ever to take Eric up on the offer.

The mother must have seen that glint, too, for she shyly offered her hand to Porkins who rose to take it as if it were fine glass.

“My name is Betsy, Private Porkins. Betsy Widmark.”

“Franklin, ma’am. Call me Franklin.”

She hastily dug into her apron pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper and a stub of a pencil. “I don’t mean to be forward … Franklin. But we are hardly likely ever to meet again, so here is my address. Write to me and Richard … if you should want to.”

“I will, ma’am.”

Reese nudged him hard in the ribs. “Betsy, doofus. Betsy.”

To take the attention off Porkins’ blushing face, I squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “You know, Richard, I never knew my mother. I was placed as a baby in a blue blanket on the steps of an orphanage.”

His face beamed. “Just like baby Jesus.”

“Ah, I don’t have those job qualifications. Besides, I believe the position has already been taken.”

The boy smiled at that, and I said, “Watch over your mother as best you can.”

I felt a huge bag form in my right pant’s pocket. I twisted and pulled it out. I shook my head. It was huge. How had Sentient put in my pocket in the first place?

I listened to her for a heartbeat.

‘Look at them, Blaine. They are starved.’

“This bag is filled with American silver dollars minted on the year of my birth. It will never become empty … and you and your mother will never again be hungry.”

Like the average ten-year-old, he lost out to his curiosity and pulled one out. 

He frowned. “You were born this year? You look older than that.”

Betsy tapped the boy’s nose, causing his face to match Porkins’. “War ages you, Richard. It ages you.”

I sighed. War and Sentient.

I raised my right hand, and the world breathed a sigh of relief as it stirred around us again.

My Spartan 3oo began marching. I think with lighter steps.

I turned around for a last look and was startled to see a small Spartan Helmet shining atop the boy’s stunned head.