Blood Lily Company - Afghanistan, year 1

II

That day, and the following days, we moved earth.  We started by digging two graves, a little far from the camp.  Obviously, with the heat, our two stiffs would start to stink.

The Captain, the Blood Lily this time, sent eight soldiers on sentry and the rest of us to dig, men and women.  With foldable spade shovels.  That's all we had.

And the ground, in our little corner of this world, is super hard and we have had a fucking hard time.  As it was taking a little too long, the Viking stepped in.  He took his jacket off and then, a few minutes later, as the sun began to beat hard on us, he took his T-shirt off.

Oddly, we all stopped digging.  Don't know why.  Maybe we bugged.   Like: « Soldier.exe has stopped functioning »...

No, actually, I know why.  Because only on Mr. Universe posters have I seen that kind of ripped body.  Or in gay magazines.  I don't read them, but you see their covers each time at the newspapers stand.

As a note, what is also striking are his scars.  At the small of the back, four parallel lines across his entire back.  And a sort of star on the right shoulder.  In the front, under the ribs, two oval ones, one under the other, on the right.  Round scars on the left arm and shoulder.  We found out later he had some on his legs, too.  Seriously, I've rarely seen a guy with such a collection.  And, over the next ten years, he would get more.

On the left side, just under his pec, he has a tattoo the like of which I have never seen before. It's not the design, OK? The design is that of a bird with wide open wings, a hawkbill and a long tail. Beautiful. It's the colour of the ink: it is light. As in made of light. Bioluminescent, it seems. Weird. But the result is magnificent.

In short, he made us bug. And when he saw that we stopped working, he gave us one of his smirks with a raised eyebrow, the kind we were going to get to know. But never to really understand. Only the other one and the Captain understand them.

Then Windows found the solution to the problem and we restarted.

And at 1130, two graves had been dug, as deep as necessary.  We were not used to working like this anymore, our T-shirts were sweat stained down to our navels in the front, to the small of our backs, to the belt under our arms and we were as dust covered as the ground we were standing on.

The Viking whistled shrilly and with one look from him we all lined up, at attention.  Yep, he just needed one look.

When the Blood Lily appeared around the corner of the building, with the other Lieutenant and the sentries, he put his T-shirt and jacket back on.  He looked spotless, that motherfucker!  And we were grimy as fuck.

The sentries were carrying two gurneys with our departed officers.  Sans shroud but in full dress.

We put them into the ground without much ado.
- Fine.  I will not have the hypocrisy to tell the eulogy of these two scumbags.  They have been sentenced to death in absentia.  I have pleaded their case and got life sentence for the Captain.  But your lieutenant would have been executed anyway.  Why?  Because, if your orders came from your Captain, it was the Lieutenant who let you commit the crimes you are accused of.  Now go to lunch, no need to change.

No tombstone, no wooden cross.  Not even that small heap that indicates a grave.  We had to disperse the extra earth on the way back.  The two "scumbags" were sentenced to oblivion.

After chow, we moved earth.  Again.

Now, so you understand a little, I need to take a virtual step back and describe where our base is.

First, some history.  A quick one, don't worry.  After the epidemic of 2020, the geopolitics of the whole place changed.  During the post 9/11 war (it happened in 2001), there were, around here, guys, with AK-47 in one hand and Coran in the other, established themselves as warlords to push the Americans and their allies back.