The San Sebastian Chronicles, Part II
Wherein an American volunteer is introduced; and, the customs and horrors of balloon warfare are discoursed and lamented.
Tomasso squatted to put his amalgamated bugle into a battered felt-lined case. A blunk of sod then popped up about a foot from him. An instant later, we heard the report. Tomasso startled, cursed, and then ran off, one hand on the handle of his bugle bag and the other on his helmet. Don’t make any assumptions; as much as we surreptitiously mocked Tomasso, we wouldn’t have shot at him — he was a Sebastiano, after all, as were we. Well, most of us. (It was perhaps a strange notion to have Tomasso bugle the San Sebastian national anthem from a small dais above the trench, I will admit. I am not sure whence that protocol originated, but I will make a note to ask about it when next I am at regimental headquarters. I would hate to see him shot (for his own sake, as well as for the sake of the entertainment of me and the men)).
(Continued from…)
“Ah, so there is some shooting around here,” the American next to me in the trench said in his accent, which I think he exaggerated, and which made it nearly impossible for me to consistently understand him, though I knew English more than passably myself, “I’ve been here for two days and I think that was the first shot I think I’ve seen comefromtheotherside.”
He talked like that, emphasizing some word about two-thirds of the way through a sentence and then finishing the rest in a jumbled dash, as if he were in a hurry to get to the latrine.
“The what?” I said, focused on opening my pipe’s box to retrieve it. I had inherited my pipe from my grandfather. I did not intend to lose it in this war. It was time for evening’s smoking.
“The other side,” he said, slower.
“Ah, yes. Hard to say why. I think they have to shoot once every day or so. To keep us honest, you would say. Remember, yesterday we were bombed.”
“That was the enemy? I thought it was your balloon corps practicing. I mean, why would you blow up ahaybale?” he thumbed to a slightly disheveled pile of straw a hundred or so longsteps off the back side of the trench, “and they blew a long whistle before they did it.”
The American stood holding the barrel of his rifle near its business end, with the butt of it on the wooden floor of the trench. He rocked back and forth, smiling, legs apart. We had heard Americans carried themselves like bemused youngsters when in foreign countries. It had proven true.
“Yes, well, they were being polite, to warn us. We fight like gentlemen here. Not like you in your Civil War, slaughtering each other like animals.”
He didn’t have much of a retort for that one. Like most Americans, he had only the palest grasp of history and geopolitics, even as to his own country, but especially with regard to the major players in the Dolomitic Front of this war, the Grand War.
“Yeah, well I was just worried there was a ceasefire on,” the American lolled, sidestepping the point about the U.S. Civil War, “Who was it that bombed thehaybale? An’ why a bale?”
I took a puff of my bone pipe, now lit, and sat on the sitting bench, across the trench from the shooting step. We were proud of our trench. It was clean and dry and deep. Us Sebastianos prided ourselves on our cleanliness and engineering prowess. Just look at Les Loisesturmen in Barnatz — such intricate moating. Or Il Pallazzo dem Hochstadt in Lucho — what an engineering marvel it was! The parapets alone took a generation to gild and adorn. And the ministers’ offices, carefully built to various interior heights according to the rank of their respective ministerial occupants. The roofing took a decade, and as soon as they were done, they had to start over to maintain the roof. And once they finished, back again. That was on hold these days, the roof maintenance, pressed for manpower as we were.
But as for trenches, what kind of barbarian would dig a trench so shallow that you had to always be ducking your head lest it be shot off? And what kind of heathen monster would leave the bottom of a trench to be dirt and mud, inviting all manner of disease and stink? Judging from the news we’d heard, these were the conditions in the trenches on the Western Front, leaving most of us in in doubt and despair as to the intelligence and fate of the souls of the French and Germans. (I omit the English because what are English besides a hybrid of the Germans, French, and Norse? Of course these days, you can add various Celtic peoples to the English bloodlines. Some Sebastianos maintained that we ourselves had descended from a Celtic tribe, not the Etruscans. Or that the Etruscans were proto-Celts. I subscribed to neither theory.)
I sniffed, enjoying my smoldering plug of fine Turkish tobacco. We were at war with the Ottomen too, of course, but San Sebastian having no direct access to the sea we didn’t pay them much mind. And it was a simple matter for a shrewd trader to get from San Sebastian to some neutral Balkan principality where Turkish tobacco could be had by the bushel. It could be bought by a letter of credit from one of the many trusted San Sebastian banks, brought back, sold, the bank repaid, and we were all in fine smoke, with the trader the better for it. Several such men lived in this very valley, in fact. They mostly hired gypsies to do the legwork, or just bought the stuff in Switzerland and marked it up. Come to think of it, my last bunch of tobacco was quite dear.
“Let’s see. Yesterday. Oh, yes. The balloon attack. I think it was the Austrians. Although it is possible it was the Liechtensteiners. I believe they have a few balloons. Possibly some Bavarians. Could even have been a Solevnian expeditionary force. As far the hay bale, I don’t want to shock you, Johnny, but this is a new, modern war, a total war. Destruction is being visited not only on the soldiers, but on the civilians and their industrial and agrarian systems that support the soldiers. It is very modern. The work of Satan to be sure.”
A clutch of cows munched on the bombed bale’s hay debris, which had been made much easier for them to get to by the bombing, as it has broken the twine holding the bale together and scattered hay over several feet around. One cow let a bit of shrapnel drop out of its mouth in a saliva string.
The American nodded. I went on.
“I thought you said this was a gentlemanly war, there, sargento.” The American was proud of his retort.
“Hauptergente,” I corrected him. “Yes well, there is no light without dark. Warning whistles or no, it is most ungentlemanly and un-Christian, the bombing of hay bales. Certainly un-Catholic. I’m sure the tactic was invented by a Calvinist, a Hussite, or a Lutheran Prussian more likely. What do they care what happens to anyone? To them, we are already in Hell. And they can do nothing to save themselves, so why not.”
The American popped his head back, recognizing at least one word I had said.
“Hey, there, herr, I’m Presbyterian myself. And I for sure am tryin’ to get to Heaven.”
I puffed. “You’re a what?”
Continued…
