Blood Lily Company - Afghanistan, year 1

III

The first night, she gathered us around her in the mess hall.  There she made some fine tuning, on various subjects.

The first thing she did was hand us oval badges, fresh blood lily of dried blood background, to sew onto our uniforms.  We also had to remove everything else, apart from our blood types: names, ranks, decorations (pff, as if we had had any...).  In short, anything that could identify us personally.

She wanted the outside world to know which Company we belonged to, but not who was who within.

Then, she ordered us to call her "Lin" and never Captain.  The Viking was called Erik Hellason, he was nicknamed "Erk" or the Viking.  The little one was called Kristleifur Hellason, we all found "Kris" so much easier to remember

Our two sergeants, like the four corporals, kept their rank and their post until further notice, we nicknamed them "Curly" for the bald one (of course), and "Shorn" for the other one, since he wasn't.  Has to make sense, right?

Each of the brothers had under him one sergeant, two corporals and troops.  The doctor (who became "Doc", of course), the nurse (who became "Nanny" despite his beard and muscles), the cook (guess his nickname...) and his helpers (Ketchup and Mustard), were directly under the Cap... Lin.

When, the next day we continued moving earth with the Viking, Kris was given the chore of inventory.

And when the first ditch was finished, a helicopter surprised us all by delivering us a lot of stuff we needed, and food.

The doctor was completely stunned when she opened the packages: essential oils, herbal teas, silk threads for sutures, hydrogen peroxide, honey in quantities.  Opium.  Well, there was also normal stuff but still...

Lin explained that her two Icelanders were allergic to anything artificial or synthetic.  "Hell of a problem," she said, Doc.  Lin confirmed that this was mostly a problem for Erk.  The Doc didn't get it right away.

Yeah, forgot to tell you, the doctor is a petite woman, about 1.55m high, with a hell of a grip and who takes absolutely no shit from anyone.  She also has that doctor's attitude that makes you obey no matter what.  Even the Viking is more than tractable with her.

The first time she tried to force him to obey her (his brother had dislocated one of his shoulders in a workout, she had put it back in place and wanted him to keep his arm in a sling), he lifted her up, kissed her deeply and, with a smirk and a saucy eyebrow aimed at his audience (all of us), threw her over his shoulder, pretending to take her to his bed.

Lin just shook her head, as if she was used to his shenanigans.  I'm sure she was.

Doc was not an expert yet in our very vicious martial art, but she wasn't a doctor for naught.  She knew where to hit to hurt.  Hitting the giant in the kidneys with closed fists, she knocked him to the ground.  Should have seen his face!

We all had a good laugh, him not the last, but at the time he looked more surprised than a rooster that had laid eggs!  After that, he obeyed.  Especially when she prescribed him a little "warrior's rest", if you get my drift...  And if you don't, well, too bad.

Cook, ex US citizen, was also surprised to receive organic foods, but he is a quiet man, so he turned some of the fresh stuff into a... well, almost a feast and, damn, it was delicious!

Part of the load from the bird were weapons, state-of-the-art communications gear, fatigues, jungle boots, bush hats, sunglasses, etc.  In short, some stuff to restuff ourselves somewhat.

There were seeds, too.  Potting soil, true garden soil and organic fertilizers.

With help from Ketchup, Lin chose the best place in the caravanserai and, all together, we created a fucking vegetable garden in the middle of the desert (or quasi desert, doesn't rain often here).

A little clarification: the well of the caravanserai is an artesian well down to the aquifer.   It's pretty darn deep and we'll never run out of water, unless, of course, the climate here changes drastically.  So we got ourselves a vegetable garden.

Cook was too happy to have fresh vegetables every day, Ketchup loved gardening, and Mustard took to home preserving.

As for the rest of us poor souls, we went on digging holes and carrying gravel.  And then, when the ditches were dug, we planted the pointed metal spikes at the bottom, delivered by helicopter, we stretched canvases over our ditches, covered them with loose earth and we understood why and we came to pity the poor son of a gun who would try and cross without knowing the safe passage.   I can just tell you it's not in front of the door.

So, between the two ditches, we built a sort of barbican, a thing from the Middle-ages, an advanced fortification to defend the gate.  Actually, I think that if we had had a river close by, we would have had moats, around the base, not camouflaged ditches.  The Captain was applying medieval military principles to the defense of our compound.

When we were done with moving earth, we relearned the job of soldier.  Running with 30kg on your back, shooting, learning local languages (Dari, Pashto, Turkmen...), and all that jazz.   French became the secret language of the Company, simply because it had not been spoken in the region for at least a century.  Those who spoke French, your humble servant included, had the task of teaching others the basics.  With the Blood Lily, we developed a vocabulary laced with slang, to further complicate decryption.

In the afternoons, awake for almost eight hours, we would meet in the mess hall to discuss strategy, tactics, local politics.  All of us.

She wanted all of us to know as much as she because, as she put it, an army is only as good as its lowest foot soldier is.  So, we learned a lot.  And when the first mission came, we all discussed it and only volunteers went.

But that's another chapter.