TRAPPED

 

Betrayed by Major Laska into the hands of Rommel's men, Richard Blaine finds himself brought to the headquarters of the infamous Field Marshall.

BEATEN

“If you kick me when I’m down, you best pray I don’t get up.”

 – Major Richard Blaine

 

They brought me, with a minimum of beatings (I had much worse back at St. Marok’s), to Rommel’s headquarters at La Roche-Guyon.

Very impressive architecture and location, and you don't see too many chateau’s built into the cliff face itself. La Roche was originally hollowed out of the cliff in the 12th century and was added onto over the centuries. There were a lot of stairs, so a certain level of fitness was required.

Fear does a lot for my fitness, so I jogged up them … much to the disgruntled curses from the bow-legged sailors behind me.  Hey, they should complain. I had my hands bound behind me. You try jogging up stairs like that.

 I noticed as I walked down a long hall that one of the rooms had four excellent tapestries. Helen would love to look at them I told myself. Rommel’s office was behind the three windows above the lamp post to the right of the main road.

The chateau entrance was to the right of where the road trailed off. The lower buildings to the left were the horse stalls and carriage house.

Sentient finally got over her anger at me and began speaking to me again, ‘Rommel will rush back on June 6, the night of the invasion, from his wife’s birthday party arriving late that evening. He will be returning from the battlefield south of Caen July 17 when his Horsch car is said to be strafed, and he wounded.’

It was disconcerting to hear Sentient speak so calmly and confidently of things yet to be.

‘What I am allows me to be certain. Of course, that “accident” will be but a ruse. Hitler will soon discover that Field Marshall Rommel has allowed himself to be ensnared into the plot to assassinate him. Hitler will give Rommel a choice: persecution of his family or a cyanide pill for himself.’

Just as if what she had been saying hadn’t been horrendous, Sentient bubbled on as if a tour guide, ‘The pigeonnier is quite stunning, is it not?  And the keep has the most beautiful view across the Seine. The present Château de La Roche-Guyon was built in the 12th century, controlling a river crossing of the Seine, itself one of the routes to and from Normandy.’

Sentient either did not pick up on my horror, or she flat did not care. Either frame of mind would be within her nature.

‘The Abbé Suger described its bleak aspect: "At the summit of a steep promontory, dominating the bank of the great river Seine, rises a frightful castle without title to nobility, called La Roche. Invisible on the surface, it is hollowed out of a high cliff. The able hand of the builder has established in the mountainside, digging into the rock, an ample dwelling provided with a few miserable openings. donjon (keep) on the hill behind.’

By that time, we had reached the “interrogation room.” Once there, the brown shirts stripped me naked. Then, they went to work on me. It was almost a relief, for at least, Sentient stopped speaking within my head.

 Sentient did move my chin twice or thrice to shatter the bones in one brute’s hand, numb another’s with a stab of my chin into a nerve (I reminded myself to remember that one,) and cause excruciating pain that wouldn’t stop in another bully boy.

With that, one brown shirt had had enough and pulled his luger. I sighed. At least I had drawn blood before I died. Too bad it wasn’t Laska’s.

You couldn’t have everything. I mean, where would you put it all?

I whispered, “Helen, I am sorry I couldn’t make it back to you. My last thought will be of you.”

‘Oh, please!’

The door to the stone room burst open, and an elegant officer in a neatly pressed uniform snapped in German, “Are we the Gestapo that we beat a bound, naked man?”

He turned to me and said in proper English. “And you an officer, no?

I said in proper German, “An officer, yes. A major actually. And quite clever of you this ploy to get my rank. It will do you no good. I was betrayed to you by another major with more seniority but less class.”

He laughed at that, then noting the goons holding their hands and groaning. “Obviously, they have sown to the wind and reaped the whirlwind.”

He gestured to the open door. “The Field Marshall is awaiting you, Major. Too bad you could not have postponed your visit until late May. My British wife says the weather in London is beautiful then. Alas, you will be long dead by  that time.”

“No!” cried the brute who as of yet had not holstered his Lugar. “He dies now!”

He pointed it at me.

The scent of pineapple and cherry blossoms filled my head. No copper snowflakes, but my vision blurred. Not again! Could I at least die as myself?

When Sentient controlled me, she must boost my strength. It was as good a guess as any. Sentient was hardly a blabber, ah, mind.

Not-Me snapped the thick cords around my wrists behind my back as if they had been strings. She must make me fast as Mercury, too, for I snatched the Lugar from his meaty hand faster than my fogged over eyes could follow.

And then, she did what she so often did: she left me in full control again without a single smart thing to say.

Head spinning from her coming and going, I came up with the brilliant rejoinder, “Your breath stinks.”

I ejected both the clip and the bullet in the chamber that I luckily knew how to do. Muscle memory maybe. I flipped the Lugar and handed it to the dumbfounded elegant officer.

“Tell the Field Marshall that his men don’t properly maintain their weapons.”

His face pale and drawn, he said, “I believe that was one of the few things an enemy could say that would sting him.”

I snorted, snatched my swimming trunks off the floor, and put them on with a grunt of bruised muscles. “And a hearty ‘Heil Hitler’ to you, too.”

No longer quite so cheery, he led me out the door, pointing his own Luger at me the whole way to Rommel’s office.

The stone floor was cold to the soles of my naked feet, but not as cold as the blood in my veins.

How was I going to get out of this one?

BETRAYAL

 

Major Richard Blaine has been ordered on a suicidal solo mission to the deadly nighttime shores of Normandy.

BETRAYED

“Men are basically smart or dumb; lazy or ambitious. The dumb and ambitious ones are the most dangerous.”

— Erwin Rommel

 

Not again.

Copper snowflakes swirled slowly in front of my eyes. An eerie ballet of which I was growing greatly tired obscured my vision. Sentient had taken full control of me once more. I wondered if this was how drunks who blacked out and awakened in strange surroundings felt. I would never find out.

I got into too much trouble sober.

Like now.

The strong odor of diesel made me gag. Amine was buried under that stench but still there in the musty air. Merde. I was back in a midget submarine. But a poorly maintained one for the air to be musty and filled with diesel fumes.

Sentient broke into my musings as she pulled back the veils to show me the rusty interior of the decrepit submarine.

 ‘You were meant to die as it sank in the middle of the English Channel.’

“Laska hates me that much?”

‘Little men hate big as the illiterate Davy Crockett said of his enemies in Congress.’

“So Laska arranged for my own little Alamo?”

‘More than you know. Still, I have not endured millennia of mental isolation for you to drown. I folded space around this mockery of a vessel, bringing you to the site that fool insisted you dock to gather the mine he hoped would explode in your face.’

“What?”

‘The Teller mine you were to collect was never intended to be an underwater device. It would not be water-proofed. The subsequent corrosion would have played havoc with its mechanism, and it might have gone off any minute … hopefully when you were directly in front of it.’

“Merde. He really wants me dead, and don’t say ‘More than I know.’ Hey, what you told me just now: you can take things from place to place by … ah, folding space?”

‘I am ….  What I am will be for another time. suffice it to say I can do that … even take you to the side of that Hitler lunatic to kill him … if I wanted to prolong the war.’

I shook my head. “I will not kill in cold blood.”

‘Yet.’

“All right. Yet. But my blood might be hot enough to kill Laska once I see him again.”

‘If you live long enough. Two U-Boats are to our rear and front as we speak.’

I groaned, “That’s stern and bow. How did they find us so fast?”

‘Three guesses, and if you need more than one, you have not been paying attention.’

“Laska let them know! Why that traitor.”

‘I guess you have not been paying attention to me after all. It is time to be Ulysses again. Climb the ladder. I have already opened the latch.’

“That is hatch.”

‘No matter. After your inane fashion, I threw away the automatic and knife when we became the Allied version of The Trojan Horse.’

“The Greeks won.”

‘As will we if you can keep a civil tongue in your head. Oh, I forget to whom I speak. Then, I will mourn you.’

I climbed the ladder and stuck out my head and was welcomed with a MG-42 in my face. It was a bulky thing with a belt of bullets hanging from its body. GI’s nicknamed the German weapons that killed them.

Incoming rockets were “Screaming Mimis,” “Potato Mashers” were a type of German grenade, and the antipersonnel mines that leapt up from under the earth and then exploded at crotch level were “Bouncing Betties.”

 Not so for the MG-42 machine gun, which received a more ominous nickname that left little doubt about the capabilities of the weapon. German troops called it the “Knochensäge.”  “Bone saw” in English. GIs altered the translation and began calling it “Buzz Saw” or “Hitler’s Buzz Saw.”

I was hardly in a joking mood when the MG-42 jabbed me under the chin. A bear of a sailor held it. And despite his bulk, the barrel trembled from the effort it took to hold it.

Obviously, my legend preceded me. Super.

I knew that particular German gun spat out 1,550 rounds of high-velocity, 7.92 millimeter ammunition per minute, a rate of fire that roughly worked out to 25 rounds per second.

He pulled the trigger, and nothing would be left of my head.

I flashed my best “New Orleans mayor running for reelection" smile” and said in my best German, “Have you come to surrender, then?”

‘Dolt!’

But it made the bear of a sailor laugh and grunt, “Field Marshall Rommel will enjoy your visit. Your visit to the Gestapo you will not enjoy. Come. We will begin your last moments now. I am afraid your sense of humor will not survive for long.”

I hoped Rommel’s reputed motto of “War without hate” would prove true for me.

YOUR OPINION IS NOT MY REALITY

Major Richard Blaine and Sergeant-Major Savalas have been ordered to COSSAC headquarters at Norfolk House, St. James’s Square to report what they found along the Normandy coast.

YOUR OPINION IS NOT MY REALITY

“The more knowledge, the less ego. The less knowledge, the more ego.”

– Albert Einstein

 

I looked at the assembled greatness arrayed before Sgt. Savalas and myself. There was more egg salad on those puffed chests than modest men would have been comfortable in wearing. The key word there was “modest.”

I smiled drily.

Theo husked, “What are you smiling about?”

“What a trusted advisor, Sister Ameal, told me when she feared that I would be drafted.”

“Which was? I could use a smile right now.”

“Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.”

“She was a nun?”

“And a professional assassin before entering the convent.”

“She was your advisor?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that explains a lot.”

Sentient chided me. ‘Behave yourself. You stand in COSSAC headquarters at Norfolk House, St. James’s Square. In front of you are Admiral Sir Bertram Home Ramsay, General Bradley, General Smith, four other generals, and five more admirals, plus Rear Adm. George Creasy, Ramsay’s chief of staff.’

Rear Admiral Ramsey looked as if something smelled rank … me. Too bad. I thought all military rank smelled foul. He was about to become even unhappier with me.

He flashed a phony smile. I reminded myself that he was responsible for the Dunkirk evacuation, codenamed Operation Dynamo. Working from the tunnels beneath Dover Castle, he and his staff worked for nine days straight to rescue troops trapped in France by the German forces.

I figured those troops had a harder time on that French beach than he and his staff had safe in those tunnels.

 For his success in bringing home 338,226 British and allied soldiers from the beaches of Dunkirk, he was asked to personally report on the operation to King George VI and was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath.

“Ah,” he sneered, “the enigmatic Major Richard Blaine. You do know that you will not be keeping that rank for any length of time?”

“And I had such hopes.”

Montgomery poked an angry Bradley in the ribs. “That Cloverfield chap was right about his not genuflecting in front of superior officers, eh?”

Sir Ramsey gruffed, “Describe your reconnaissance.”

“I will bottom line it for you, sir. You are going to hurl 133,000 trusting men into a meat grinder needlessly.”

“What?” he roared.

“You have command of the skies over most of Europe, sir. You could fly hundreds of demoralizing raids on crucial targets until all the German oil reserves were destroyed, and the Nazi army a shambles.”

“You have the utter gall to talk strategy to your superiors?”

Montgomery seemed to be enjoying himself. “A 4oo I.Q., remember, Rear Admiral?”

“To Blazes with his damn I.Q! I know my plan is solid.”

I sighed, “Sir, shortly before World War I, the German Kaiser was the guest of the Swiss government to observe military maneuvers. The Kaiser asked a Swiss militiaman: “You are 500,000 and you shoot well, but if we attack with 1,000,000 men what will you do?” The soldier replied: “Shoot twice and go home.”

I thought Admiral Ramsey was about to strangle me. “Your point, private?”

I counseled myself with Al Capone’s words: “I’m a kind person, I’m kind to everyone, but if you are unkind to me, then kindness is not what you’ll remember me for.”

But Helen Mayfair would think less of me.

I drew a deep breath. “You want to know what Sergeant-Major Savalas and I found?”

“Yes, damn you!”

Theo muttered under his breath. “This is going well.”

The map on the offered desk was too broad as was the Normandy map on the wall. I dug into my left blouse pocket, taking out a stick of charcoal. I started to draw on the white wall beside the map.

“’ere now!” came a shout from one of the generals.

I quickly sketched in the style of Leonardo da Vinci as  Montgomery chuckled, “Now, mate, that is just showing off.”

Sir Ramsey growled something that nobility should not have known, much less said. I turned to the man. I pointed as I talked.

“The tidal-flat obstacles began with so-called Belgian gates, which are gate-like structures built of iron frames ten feet high. These sat in belts running parallel to the coastline, about 150 meters out from the high-water line. Teller mines (antitank mines carrying twelve pounds of TNT) ….

“I know what they are,” snapped Sir Ramsey.

I kept on as if I had not been interrupted, “ … were attached to the structures, or old French artillery shells, brought in from the Maginot Line, pointed out to sea and primed to fire.”

As Sgt. Savalas paled, I continued, “I hear that Nazi Admiral Ruge had no faith in land mines and artillery shells stuck underwater, as they had no waterproofing, but the marine mines he preferred were not available in sufficient quantity. Next, at about 100 meters out from the high-water mark, a band of heavy logs were driven into the water at an angle pointed seaward, with Teller mines lashed to the tips of some of the logs.”

By this point even Sir Ramsey began to look a little wilted, but I kept on ---

“At about seventy meters from shore, the main belt of obstacles featured hedgehogs (three or four steel rails cut in two-meter lengths and welded together at their centers) that could rip out the bottom of any landing craft.”

Admiral Ramsey by this time looked paler than an ancient leper. I heard a staccato of footfalls. I turned and sighed.

Major Laska was smartly saluting the admiral.

“About those Teller mines and artillery shells strapped to the fortifications, sir. I think we need to personally inspect one of each for ourselves. Surely, the redoubtable Major Blaine could succeed obtaining them for us. Alone, of course, to better slip past the Nazi defenses.”

Sgt. Savalas snapped, “It would be suicide.”

Admiral Ramsey flashed the kind of smile I figured Vlad the Impaler became famous for. “Excellent idea. Excellent.”

 

COURTING A COURT MARSHALL

 

COURTING COURT MARSHAL

‘They are angry because the truth you speak contradicts the lie they live.’

- Sentient

 

A terrible lurching sensation swept through me. Everything was still obscured with swirls of dancing coppery snowflakes. Yet, I had the disturbing sensation of walking on legs that I didn’t control or even fully feel. This continually waking up blind was downright frightening.

How far into the future had Sentient taken me this time … and to what crisis to which I had no clue how to handle?

‘Hush! I have saved your life countless times and you whine about going into the unknown? You are a thankless child … though I do admit that this time my inability to mesh efficiently with human flaws and  foibles may have led you to a firing squad.’

‘Again?’

‘Which is why I am now yielding full control of your body back to you. At least you are human … more or less. Perhaps you can Ulysses your way out of this present predicament.’

‘There are no words that can adequately express my gratitude.’

‘Sarcasm is the resort of little minds. Now, if I cede control back to you, will you stumble?’

‘Metaphorically or physically? ‘Cause the answer to both questions is yes.’

‘Dolt!’

‘I like it when you talk dirty to me.’

‘Mūrkha!’

‘What?’

‘It is Sanskrit for” an unlearned; foolish, stupid human” efficiently encapsulated in one word.’

‘Oh, I knew that.’

I flinched as it seemed an ice pick dived deep into my brain. ‘Now, you do … along with the rest of the Sanskrit language.’

I stiffened as the world blossomed around me like the lights coming back on in a dark movie theater.

Footsteps echoed hollowly all around me. I was walking down a long corridor, drearily painted in gray. Even the marble underfoot was gray.  Obviously, the architect had been in the Army or in some military branch.

Officer Hansan was heel-stepping in anger in front of me. Sgt. Savalas walked beside me. Someone unused to stealth was trying to walk up unnoticed behind me. Fat chance. St. Marok’s taught me early to not let that happen.

Sgt. Savalas was speaking low, “Rick ….”

When had he started calling me ‘Rick?’ But then, Sentient had been in full control for some time now. All sorts of merriment had come and gone probably … for which I was now about to be called upon to pay the tab.

“Rick, are you ever going to forgive me for what I said out in the channel?”

“What are you going on about?” I whispered.

“You’re human again!”

Remembering what Sentient had just told me, I said “More or less.”

“Man, you’ve been so cold … like some robot. I figured that you washed your hands of me, that you would never forgive me.”

“Forgive? Friends don’t forgive. We overlook.”

Hansan spun around having fully lost it. “Would you two stop whispering like lovers! Officers do not fraternize with the enlisted troops under them.”

A flurry of steamy images that I would have a hard time unseeing filled my mind, and not for the last time, Sentient broke her word and took back control, and Not-Me spoke.

“Tell that to Eisenhower. Though of course, his driver, Kay Summersby is a captain. Once a model I believe.”

Hansan totally lost it. lunging and seizing me by the front of my blouse. “You take back that filthy inuendo!”

He yelped in shock and sprang away from me. I watched in amazement as his left blouse pocket bulged out as quite a bit of something filled it. Hansan plucked printed pages and one photo from it.

“Bloody Hell!” came from behind  me as I supposed the inept creeper got the same treatment.

The photo and pages dropped from Hansan’s fingers to flutter to the marble floor. Sentient turned to Sgt. Savalas in an uncharacteristic display of consideration.

“No doubt you are wondering what those pages and photo are, Sergeant-Major. One is a personal letter from General Eisenhower to General of the Army George C. Marshall, saying that he wanted to return from Europe to the United States to get a divorce from his wife, Mamie, and marry Miss Summersby.”

Hansen backed slowly away from me as if I were contagious with some foul disease as Sentient continued through me, “The other page is the response from General Marshall who threatened to run General Eisenhower "out of the Army" and prevent him from ever drawing a peaceful breath."

I shivered as control of my body was restored after Sentient had made a fine mess of things.

Sgt. Savalas croaked, “And the photo?”

“Good God, man!” came from the person behind me. “Don’t tell him.”

I shook my head. “I know Sanskrit, Sergeant, and even so, words fail me. Just use your imagination.”

I was roughly spun around. Oh, why the hell not? Bernard Law Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein.

I forced a smile. “Love the beret.”

His eyebrow shot up, and I added, “General.”

He flung photo and letters to the floor. “What is this bum fodder? Captain Summersby is no Officer’s Mattress. How the bloody hell did you do this?”

“It’s a kind of magic, General.”

He nodded so hard that the black beret almost slipped off. “I read Cloverfield’s report. Some kind of voodoo, is it?”

“You’re not that lucky, sir. Voodoo depends on belief. This kind doesn’t care if you believe or not. Reality is like that.”

He stabbed a long forefinger at the door some paces ahead. I noted with dry amusement that Hansan was just going through it.

“If you show this … filth to the generals in there, you ….”

“What filth, general? I see none.”

Montgomery looked down at the marble tiles. His face went tight. The pages and photo were gone … even the ones Hansan threw on the tiles. He grew pale.

“I clean up after myself, General.”

Montgomery husked, “I am considered somewhat unorthodox among those inside. But even so, if you pull your ‘kind of magic’ with the men waiting for you in there, I promise you that you will be shot.”

I forced a calm I didn’t feel. “How exciting.”

I turned to a very pale Sgt. Savalas. “Don’t worry, Theo. You’ll find generals behave just like Boy Scouts …but without the adult supervision.”

Montgomery shoved past us and huffed his way to the door and followed Hansan to where the great and mighty awaited us. I smiled drily. I failed to ask Sentient what they wanted from me.

‘I added to those samples you took a detailed report on their suitability for sustaining the weight of tanks and transports. Those reports were more accurate than those supplied by their so-called experts. The generals in charge of Overlord wish to know how you could do that ‘on the run’ as it were. I believe your mantra of “It’s a kind of magic” will not suffice.’

As the sergeant and I walked through the door, he looked first at Montgomery and Hansen talking to an increasingly angrier Bradley, then up at me. “Our goose is fully and truly cooked.”

I looked at an angry Montgomery filling in General Bradley and felt a little sad. I had liked the man though he had earned his reputation of being unbeatable and unbearable.

What had I read he once said?

“The frightful casualties appall me. The so-called ‘good fighting generals’ of this war appear to me to be those who have a complete disregard for human life.”

Besides, he named his fox terrier “Hitler.”

 

“The more knowledge, the less ego. The less knowledge, the more ego.”

– Albert Einstein

DEATH HIDES BEHIND EVERY MAN'S EYELIDS

 

From one suicide mission to another. 

Major Richard Blaine and Sergeant-Major Savalas must swim along heavily guarded shores to collect sand samples.

DEATH HIDES BEHIND EVERY MAN’S EYELIDS

“If you win, you need not have to explain. If you lose, you should not be alive to explain!”

—  Adolf Hitler

 

Abruptly, brilliant copper snowflakes fuzzed over my vision. My heart sank. It was happening again.

Sentient had fully taken over my body. This time it was me that wanted to bay at the moon. No scent of pineapple mixed with cherry blossoms this time.

Strange luck, remember?

The stench of diesel and Amine filled my nose, making me want to gag. I fought the impulse. Amine, you ask?

Since Submarines remain submerged with a sealed atmosphere, they rely on a chemical called Amine to remove carbon dioxide. This chemical makes everything stink with a fishy odor.

It remains in your pores for weeks after having been underwater on the ship.

 It was not the smell that really bothered me. It was the numb feeling in my mouth and the burning in my eyes that did. No smell of fried food, thankfully. This was a midget submarine after all.

No room for a galley.

The environment overall was pretty chilly from the air conditioning trying to keep the electronics cooled, which helped keep the odors from overwhelming me.

So, I was aboard the midget submarine heading towards the Normandy coast. I did a fast mental calculation. An hour and a half to get there. The same amount of time to get back. Add in an extra hour for my strange luck to screw things up.

All total, I should be in this damn thing no more than four hours. And in between I would be doing a good bit of swimming in cold ocean water along the coast collecting samples …

Unless I was riddled by Nazi bullets … then stinking to high heaven would be the least of my worries.

I would start worrying if I passed the minimum requirements to enter Heaven.

My eyes began to slowly clear as I heard Sgt. Savalas mutter beside me, “I’ll forgive you going all remote and spooky again if you just know what all these dials and gauges mean, Captain.”

“For most of them, Sergeant, I haven’t a clue.”

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

“That’s the fun of being me. The Voice flings me into one situation after another with me only knowing the bare minimum … if that much.”

“Why?”

“I think the Voice gets bored, and I’m the comic relief.”

‘Very not funny, Blaine. The ladder to your left. Climb it. The sergeant and you are dressed for a midnight swim.’

I almost jerked in shock. Theo and I were in our shorts in the middle of this chamber of blinking lights so small that if I sneezed, I would bruise the front and back of my head.

We were carrying pistols, daggers, wrist compasses, watches, waterproof flashlights, and a dozen twelve-inch tubes. I ditched the pistol. It was needless added weight. If we let the Nazi’s get that close, we would have to swim as fast as we could back to the midget submarine.

I flashed a weak smile at the sergeant. “Time to be swimming, sitting ducks.”

“I don’t think we’ll do much sitting, Captain … unless the Germans capture us.”

“We can’t let that happen. It will be like writing Hitler a personal letter telling him exactly where the Allies plan to invade.”

We scaled the ladder like nervous monkeys. I began to miss my pistol. Down below it seemed smart to leave it behind. Now, not so smart. What did Einstein write? ‘It’s not that I am so smart. It’s just that I stay with the problem longer.’

I was beginning to think I should have stayed with that pistol longer.

As we slipped into the icy water, Sergeant Savalas whispered so low I almost missed it,

“The little poets sing of little things:

Hope, cheer, and faith, small queens and puppet kings.”

“Don’t look so surprised, Captain. I read, too.”

“I’m unfamiliar with that poet.’

“Oh, ye of little breeding. Robert E. Howard.”

In my head, Sentient sang softly,

‘The mighty poets write in blood and tears,

And agony that, flame-like, bites and sears.

They reach their mad blind hands into the night,

To plumb abysses dead to human sight.’

I thought back to her. ‘I didn’t know you read our books.’

‘I get bored and slum through them. You two remind me of Brule and his King Kull. Of course, your majestic nature comes from me.’

‘Of course.’

We came in on a rising tide at the seaside village of Lucsur-Mer on the beach, later given the code name Sword. We could hear singing from the German garrison. I definitely was in no mood to join in with them. But they were making enough of a ruckus to mask our movements.

We crawled ashore, walked inland a bit, and went flat when the beam from the lighthouse swept over the beach. I hit the beach so hard and fast that I filled my mouth with wet sand.

I felt every orifice in my body become as tiny as a pepper seed. I heard Theo let out a low breath of relief when it passed our bodies without stopping to spotlight us. That had been too close.

I'm not what you would call a fatalist. Sister Ameal would not call me a religious person … though she probably calls me a few other colorful terms.

I'm sure there are close calls that we're not even aware of hundreds of times a year. You cross the street, and if you'd crossed the street two minutes later, you'd have been hit by a car, but you'd never know it. I'm sure those kinds of things happen all the time.

I told myself that over and over. My body still goose-pimpled and shivered though. I lie to myself so often that I could do it for a living.

We walked some more. I made sure to have us stay below the high-water mark so that our tracks would be wiped out by the tide before morning. We quickly stuck our tubes into the sand, gathering samples as fast as we could.

From beach site to beach site, we swam and repeated the whole process again and again, noting the location of each on underwater writing tablets we wore on our arms.

Having gathered all the samples, we started back to the midget submarine. Of course, that is when my strange luck hit.

The breakers were quite heavy, and we were positively swamped and cluttered with all our tube-filled kits. We made a stab at getting out to sea. No good. We were flung back.

We took a gasping, burning lungs breather, tried again, but were flung back a second time.

So, we went as far out in the water as we could. Smaller waves kept washing over us.  We watched the rhythm of those breakers until we could time it.

The third attempt, having timed it just right, we got out, but we got separated a bit, and we swam like hell to make sure we weren’t going to be pitched back in again. I felt like I had swallowed a third of the water in the English channel.

We didn’t quite lose contact.

Suddenly, Sgt. Savalas started yelling.

I froze. Had he gotten a cramp or something worse. A shark?

Sentient chided me. ‘No, Blaine. There are no sharks, but there are jellyfish. There is a multitude of jellyfish out in these waters.’

“Great! We evaded a small army of Nazis only to have him stung by who knows how many jellyfish.”

But when I got close enough to him, all he was yelling was ‘Happy New Year!’

I was about to call him a moron when I caught the tremor of a sob in his voice.

“What’s wrong, Theo?”

“You! That’s what wrong, Captain. No, Major Got-It-All-Together. Nothing fazes you. Nazi search beams, swimming the channel, the Still Small Voice guiding you past Laska’s deathtraps. Nothing.”

He sobbed, “You saw those fortifications, those barriers, those clusters of machine guns, all that damn barbwire. The rest of us are going to die on this damn beach. But not Major Got It All Together.”

I floated back a bit. “You’re wrong, Sergeant-Major. No one has all the stars in his sky.”

“What are you going on about?”

“The stars you see above us right now? The people swimming at night off South America’s Cape Horn? They look up and see completely different stars. The different ends of the earth face different constellations.”

“So?”

“So, each of us have different thorns in our sides.”

I took a deep breath. ‘I will never see Helen Mayfair again.”

His eyes sank into his face as I went on, “I have too many enemies. Too many. They will end up killing me. Or worse …."

My voice broke, “My enemies will kill … Helen and let me live, to gut me, for I will know she is dead because … of me.”

Sgt. Savalas nodded as if suddenly understanding and whispered low, “No one has all the stars in his sky.”

Icy copper snowflakes slowly fuzzed away my vision and consciousness. For once, I did not mind.

 

“We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.”

― Rudyard Kipling, The Light That Failed

FATE IS FLUENT IN IRONY

 

Captain Richard Blaine and Sgt. Theo Savalas have narrowly escaped a firing squad only to be given a suicide mission.

Now, what does New Year's Eve, 1944, have in store for them?

FATE IS FLUENT IN IRONY

“Sometimes you lose a battle. But mischief always wins the war.”

- Ulysses

 

General Bradley fixed me with an eagle’s glare. “You’re Army. How did you come to be trained to operate a midget submarine?”

Again, Sentient was silent so, I gave what seemed to be a reasonable explanation. “There were orders.”

“Oh, so those orders you followed?”

“They got me away from Major Laska and that was more than enough incentive for me.”

“I can believe that,” the general snorted.

As if sensing that I was winging it with my answers, he asked, “Are you telling me the truth?”

I was getting weary of Sentient leaving me to fend off questions whose answers only She could know. “Adolph Hitler wrote that the victor will never be asked if he told the truth.”

Bradley looked taken aback. “You read the writings of Hitler?”

I shrugged. “Sun Tzu wrote ‘knowing your enemy is the first step in defeating him’.”

“I forgot. According to that MI6 report, you taught for a year at West Point.”

Now, it was me that was taken aback, I tried for a blank face and drawled, “I sometimes forget that myself.”

Sentient mocked inside my mind, ‘Records are so easily forged in your primitive society. I needed an explanation for your rank and for your fluency in German, Russian, French, and Japanese.’

Bradley shook his head. “With your credentials, why aren’t you still teaching there?”

Sgt. Savalas snorted, “He probably had the same winning way with his superiors there that he has with Major Laska here.”

Bradley fixed him with a hard look and the sergeant cleared his throat and added, “Ah, sir.”

The general tapped a folder on his leg absently. “Well, your superiors and instructors in the Navy were quite taken with you, Major Blaine.”

“Ah, that’s Captain, sir,” I said confused.

“No, Major Blaine. I said what I intended. Battlefield promotion is within my discretion. I want to see the look on Laska’s face when I tell him of your new rank.”

He growled low, “Presume to order me, will he?”

Bradley turned to Savalas. “And you are promoted to Sergeant Major.”

Now, it was Savalas’ turn to be shocked … and with good reason: Sergeants Major made up less than 1% of the Army and generally consisted of the most experienced leaders in the enlisted corps. There were nine enlisted ranks in the Army, and you must be selected over your peers across the entire Army through comprehensive promotion panels to reach this prestigious rank.

Bradley gruffed, “These stars of mine do come with some privileges along with the migraines. If I say you are a Sergeant-Major, Savalas, then, by God, you are one. Let Laska chew on that and choke.”

I thought that Bradley promoted the man to Sergeant-Major instead of First Sergeant because the “Major” to the rank would be a mockery of Laska’s own  … and would gall the man to call Savalas by his new rank.

He turned to me and said softly, “I’m just sorry that I can’t retrieve the letters from that girl of yours that Laska has confiscated.”

“W-What? Helen, ah, Miss Mayfair has been writing me?”

Bradley nodded sadly. “Without fail. Mails them every Wednesday according to agent Cloverfield’s MI6 report.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. “The day of the week we first met.”

Sgt. Savalas looked odd. “I never knew you had a girl.”

“Thanks to Major Laska neither did I until just now.”

Bradley sighed. “Cloverfield managed to get a peek at one her letters. I think that gal of yours has a bad memory.”

He brought up the paper he’d been tapping against his leg.  “Where was that paragraph? Oh, here: “Your hair seems all colors, a grove of trees in autumn, deep brown, and wine-red.”

Bradley chucked softly, ”An untrimmed tangle across the top of your head. Your cheeks pale without being anemic. Full lips eternally in an amused smile at some jest only you hear. You look like a friend; like someone you have known all your life.”

He shook his head bemused. “You look like Jimmy Stewart to me.”

Sgt. Savalas said, ’The Captain looks like Tyrone Powers to me right now.”

He ran long fingers over his bald head. “Funny thing. No one can seem to remember what his face looks like after he leaves them.”

Bradley snorted, “This girl of his seems to.”

Savalas’ face flinched as if slapped as he murmured, “Maybe only true love remembers.”

The gut-sick look to his face suggested his love had proven not so true. Or maybe there were holes in his life in the shapes of a sweetheart or a friend who gave a damn which had never been filled.

Bradley shook his head. “Now, look what you two have done. You’ve made me hope you come back alive.”

He sighed, “Well, Major Blaine, do you have one last quote for me before I send you both off to your deaths?”

Sentient, of course, was silent, so once again I had to wing it.

It was a good thing I had spent so much time with a lovely librarian. “War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that the enemy too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.”

Sgt. Savalas scoffed, “Who the hell said that?”

“Karl Kraus, an Austrian writer, journalist, and poet. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature three times.”

Bradley looked over our heads into the distance, seemingly seeing things I did not want to know but figured I soon would. “He should have won. He was right.”