When I Was In The War: An Illustrated Memoir

(Editor’s note: This is what we assume to be the earliest point in the chronology that is legible and intact. The year in which my grandfather joined the war effort is unknown, as no records of his training or deployment can be found. I believe that I can pinpoint the following events described to have taken place during the latter period of his career.)

…was telling us how important it was to land on the right side of the front line, but admitted that he didn’t know which side was ours and which side was the domain of the enemy. He blamed it on a telegraph pole that had been felled during a particularly rowdy game of volleyball at the officer’s club the previous night. He gestured guiltily at the beach balls that rolled across the floor of the helicopter. I was not pleased with those beach balls - it was because the pilot insisted on bringing them on board with us that we had to leave Bzerk Bojovhn back at base. He had been complaining of a gammy knee and had jumped at the opportunity to get some serious healing in and to catch up on his letters home. The healing did him no good on that tricky suicide mission I assigned him to the following Sunday. The healing did not help and old Bzerkie was shot in the head three times before being captured and killed.

It was Wednesday. We were just about to jump out of the transport helicopter and begin our mission. I continued to express my doubts to the pilot over the din of the rotors and the explosions of flak all around us. The Board of Governors had told me in the briefing that our drop would be quiet and peaceable, and that enemy action would be scarce and reluctant to attack us. Since flying machines all around us were collapsing amidst storms of flak and explosions were blossoming on the ground as far as I could see, I quickly deduced that the briefing had been a total lie. The pilot attempted a flying man’s version of an explanation, assuring me with skillful optimism that the Board had assured him that all warring sides in this area had exhausted their ammunition supplies and that reinforcements and equipment had been delayed indefinitely by the downed telegraph pole. At this stage in the war, in order to avoid all the bother of the whole encryption/decoding/misinformation business, our side and the enemy just used the same communications routes for all battlefield coordination. It saved a lot of time and manpower and everyone seemed to be much happier that way, except for the fellows who got shot in the head because the opposing force knew exactly when the order to charge from the trenches was going to come, but that never really happened to me.

My team was equally cautious about the discrepancy between our briefing and the situation as seen through the helicopter’s door. Though discrepancies of this nature were commonplace, they were always unpleasant to deal with. Just the Sunday before, we had been told that we were to destroy a munitions factory out in the country and by the time we had arrived there it had ceased to be a munitions factory in favour of being a pleasant little cottage with a quaint bucket well outside. The occupants still had a few shells in the larder, which we destroyed, but after that we joined them for tea and then the evil Dr. Cartilage talked the lady of the house into a few rounds of sodomy in the bathroom and we had to leave. Studio Monkey stole a clock from the living room and declared in monkey hand chatter that it would become a family heirloom. I told him that I had read his medical records and that he was sterile so he relinquished the clock to me to give to my children.
In fact, Studio wasn’t sterile at all, but he was inclined to believe me on such matters because I have a much bigger brain than he had and because he couldn’t read his medical records even if he had been allowed to. I recently auctioned the clock off and was able to buy a big house by the sea and a racehorse.

Lynjet was frantically trying to suggest to me that I order the pilot to turn the helicopter around and return to base. I could have if I had wanted to, but the tempers of flying men were not to be tested, and it could have caused a scene. She was hampered in her effort by all the flak exploding around us and by the evil Dr. Cartilage nibbling at her ear lobe. The good Dr. Cartilage looked on, glumly. The evil Cartilage didn’t really even like Lynjet, though it amused him to constantly engage her in animal sex while in full view of his good counterpart - who did really like her - just so he could make him feel bad. According to my records, the evil Dr. Cartilage didn’t really even like girls at all. He was actually more inclined towards large carnivorous animals, particularly tigers. He is also fussy about them being soaked in the blood of a fresh kill, confined within a circle of elaborate occult runes and with their orifices stuffed full of razor blades. He was a contrarian by nature.

I was about to come to a decision when the helicopter’s rotors suffered a direct hit from a flaming corpse. That clinched it. We would have to jump. I made my excuses, grabbed a parachute, led the way out of the wildly oscillating chopper and spent the next few seconds whistling towards the ground followed by a rubbery rain of beach balls. On my way down my doubts about the ammunition situation were resolved. The war down on the ground and in the air was in full swing, and more than one person was shooting at or near me, which I found irritating. I wasn’t falling for very long and so didn’t have much time to make up my mind about which side of the line to fall on. One side was packing catapults, tanks, fighting-mad Stegosaurs and at least one gigantic death-spitting clown head. That didn’t tell me much. Everyone used all that stuff in those days. The other side boasted similar equipment, only they had a really, really gigantic, mechanical Tyrannosaur stomping around. I decided that no matter what my current allegiance, I like to be on the same side as that flame-tongued behemoth. But then I landed on the other side of the barbed wire anyway, which I felt was a shame.

I landed just behind the front line and dodged a few beach balls that were coming down as deadly plastic hail and bouncing several dozens of feet back up into the air. I soon discovered that my team had landed safely but ungently all over the place. After some shouted roll-calling, I located a Cartilage and Lynjet, so it came down to us to go and round up those who had crashed in inconvenient places. While Lynjet and the Dr. Cartilage ran through the crossfire and homed in on me, I dropped into the nearest trench and introduced myself. The soldiers in the trench understood my language, but that was no surprise since our side was, at that juncture, subletting troops from our reserve army to many of our enemies. The income that our side made from this little deal enabled them to start fighting on three whole new fronts, which everyone seemed very excited about. I wasn’t so enthusiastic - I’d been to all the fronts and they all looked very much the same to me. I asked the soldiers in the trench if they were part of the enemy and they said they weren’t, and that, I felt, was good enough. I felt a slight pang in my heart, though, when I remembered that I wasn’t on the same side of the huge robotic Tyrannosaurus. I stuck my head up over the trench to look for it, but it was obscured by smoke, so I instead waved at Lynjet and the nearest Cartilage, who then scurried over with heads low and guns out. While I waited for them I turned my attention to the rats. There were a lot of rats about in the trench - big fat cute ones. The soldiers blankly explained that they were fat on corpses and – what do you know – they were chewing on a few decomposing wretches right outside the trench, not worried one bit about the giant laser obelisk on the other side of the line that was incinerating their fat little bodies one by one, leaving little patches of scorched rat everywhere. It struck me that there were far more effective uses for a giant laser obelisk on the battlefield, especially seeing as the controller was such a mean shot. He must be bored, I thought. Later on, in Kirikof, I would see just how deadly those laser obelisks could be when properly operated, but that was many months away there’s a lot to cover before that happens. I then tried to divine where the hell the rest of my team had landed. They were all on the other side of the line, which may or may not have been the side I was supposed to be fighting on. It would be a difficult thing indeed to make any headway over the line with that laser obelisk and that Tyrannosaur hanging around. I decided to sit down in the trench and wait for a solution to arrive. The bottom of the trench was wet and muddy and full of rats, and the people in the trench kept on shooting at people in other trenches and it wasn’t really very relaxing so I stood up again. All I had gained was mud.

I did what I normally did in such situations, which is the thing that makes up ninety percent of wartime – I waited for something to happen. I had brought a book with me, but the atmosphere wasn’t conducive to reading. I couldn’t strike up a conversation with Lynjet or the Cartilage as it was too noisy. I couldn’t talk to the troops in the trench as they were too busy shooting at nothing and shouting and such. I tried out different ways of sighing. It is a skill like any other and demands practice. Presently, the fast-approaching sound of a revving engine heralded a bright red hoodless convertible car with fins and everything, which dropped out of the sky, detached its parachute, ploughed through the barbed wire of the line and pulled up just outside my muddy, rat-filled trench. My waiting done, I stood up to meet the driver. The driver was a bendy teenage girl in cycling shorts and pilot goggles that got out the car, hopped into the trench and snapped a smart salute. The soldiers complained that there were now too many people in their trench. I ignored them and they got on with their ducking, firing and shouting routine. The girl explained that she was our driver and was ready to assist us in our mission to assassinate the Calm Man. I told her that our team numbered six and that she was driving a car with only two seats. Lynjet was politely asking the Cartilage which Cartilage he happened to be – the good or the evil? The good Cartilage blushed and stared at his boots, which was answer enough for Lynjet and she turned away in disinterest and stared at some mud with her arms wrapped around her chest. Our driver said that we’d have to make do and also quietly told me that I was on the wrong side of the line. I nodded, apologised to the soldiers for crowding up their trench and realised midway through my apology that I had gone to high school with one of them. I then climbed out of the trench and into the car, taking the time to dimly admire the upholstery and be glad that my rank demanded that I ride shotgun. Our driver suggested that Lynjet and Cartilage get in the boot together then made a loud and obvious comment about being very close together. Lynjet and Dr. Cartilage grimaced in entirely different ways then, sighing, arranged themselves into the boot. They had to spoon together so they could fit. I saw Lynjet rolling her eyes as she pulled the top down. Our driver grinned at me with more teeth than young girls should surely be allotted and then gunned the car into life and we sped back over the line to pick up the rest of the team.

End of Chapter One