Razor Tin

We were in country now much different than our own, an open, rolling land with few trees. We crested hills and saw the earth extending in a sea of yellowed scrub to the horizon, and the great mountain ranges lay like sleeping giants to the east and south. It was beautiful, dead land, and the pallor of the sky gave one the impression of a perpetual sunset. It may have been farmed in those long past centuries of which so much is told and written, but when we were there we saw little human settlement. The mountains were a different matter of course, where we knew the enemy had defensive positions, but we were some days journey away.

Any house we found was to be scoured for presence of the enemy and then burned, whether the enemy was there or not. There were no strict orders one way or the other about what to do with the occupants, if we found any.

My platoon was a mixture of men, fourteen at the youngest and forty-five at the oldest. I was twenty-three at the time. It was a poor mixture. The young and old understood each other the best. The men in their mid-twenties without exception behaved the worst. My lieutenant was such a man, 25, named Burt. He was gifted with the lance and with the rifle and in the absence of the enemy he killed civilians if we found any. They were mostly elderly men or abandoned children. He killed dogs too. The only solace for me was that he did not express any anger at mine or others’ abstinence; all the more for him to take for himself, I suppose. But often others joined.

None of that is here or there. It was a long, horrible war in its later stages and I suppose that things like that have happened in all wars with men of all ages and all dispositions. I felt bad for the victims, but it was war and I might be killed too. Why not those foolish enough to stay? And our petty evils, really, petty in comparison to the evils of the enemy, were bound to happen with orders on the scale and shallowness we had. It was a war of attrition. We were all that was left. Platoons scattered one per two square miles along a front two hundred miles long for a great blocking operation that trapped the enemy at the mountains.

I was conscripted at a later time in the conflict only because of my distance from the capital, but my lieutenant, for instance, had been involved since he was 18. He’d seen the great battles, and it is another reason I pardon him. I’d only shot at the enemy once or twice and from a great distance with no risk to my life or theirs. But I did not itch for combat either. I put up with the drudgery of soldiering, sleeping in shacks of rotted wood, or on open ground beneath the stars, or under leaky tarps when it rained and I got so cold and wet that I could not rest my eyes for longer than half an hour at a time. On one occasion I killed a coyote, but I was beaten for wasting ammunition afterwards.

I don’t hold any ill will for the sergeant who administered the punishment; I only lament the sorry state of our military in those days. On those endless walks through that empty country, with only the bare minimum of provisions provided for each man, I hated the world and its dangers which I had in my boyhood restricted to women and the elements, but which now included armed men lying in wait. Morale was always low, and aside a few jokes made between our pairings, we talked little and resented each other more. It may have had something to do with the age difference.

The man I was paired with was 29 years old. He was taller than me by a few inches, soft spoken, and his face was thickly bearded. His name was Adam, and we were lucky enough to have been conscripted from the same county, which eased our hardship on the rolling plains. His rank was one above mine, which owed more to his age and his parentage than any greater skill or valiant action. Both of us had seen as much of the war as the other. His family belonged to the large landowning class in our part of the country, the ones that owned the great timberlands and the mills in them which generated power from the mountain streams. He was a good shot and a great builder and could construct huts and shacks and stools and benches very quickly, which was appreciated in our state of wartime poverty.

Within our two square miles, each pair in the platoon was to spread out at a distance of two hundred yards from their adjacent pair. We had signals and codewords to communicate with one another in case we saw anything, and these were passed up and down the line to the rest of the platoon. These words, nonsensical two syllable phrases, meant nothing to our enemy, which was the main reason for their use. They also allowed us to communicate over a large front.

About a week before we finally reached the mountains and fought that great final engagement with the enemy, which has been told and retold so many times by so many people it does not bear repeating by me, we broke camp on a hill one morning and looked out over an incredible yellow expanse over which we could see for miles. The sky was big, larger than big, and it seemed an object unto itself, heavy as the universe and miraculously held up by nothing.

 It was a clear, blue day, warm for September, or whichever autumn month it was. Through a special spotting scope about eight feet in length and requiring two men to assemble which was distributed to each platoon, and somewhat famous among historians of the conflict, our lieutenant spotted two houses which we would have to check and clear. Adam and I and four others were assigned to perform a standard combing march of the kind we had already been doing for several weeks, and then to clear the houses, taking whatever provisions they might hold, and neutralizing any civilian or enemy presence that might be in them. We were to pass a signal along to instruct the rest of the platoon to hold until it was cleared so as to prevent any salients along our line. The first house was maybe two miles away; we’d reach it before lunchtime, easily. The other was so far away it was a speck, even in the telescope, and I expected we wouldn’t reach it until the evening.

Adam and I hadn’t walked four hundred yards before we heard the unmistakable whistle and crack of a bullet. It didn’t land anywhere near us, but we were so unaccustomed to the noise we hit the ground anyways.

I waited a moment, but no next shot came.

Razor tin! I called out to the pair on my right flank.

Razor tin! Adam called out to the pair on his left flank.

Up and down the line we could hear the code called out faintly, and even when we couldn’t hear we could picture in our minds’ eyes each pair in the platoon behaving exactly as we did.

Razor in this case meant enemy fire. Tin meant indirect. Our code for sustained was Tulip. Razor Tulip. We never called Razor Tulip until we reached the mountains, but by that time the fighting was so heavy and concentrated that our combat width narrowed and our code words weren’t necessary any longer.

After two minutes or so the signal for all clear, Bridge Case, came ringing along to us and we passed it on down our flank. Adam and I stood up, nodded at one another and continued our patrol. After about an hour, when we had walked within one hundred yards of the first house, the next shot came.

This time we heard the crack only faintly, but we had walked far enough that we could hear its corresponding thump somewhere far ahead of us in the distant and all too open reach.

Razor tin! came the call again, across the line. We hit the ground for a few minutes. Then Bridge case. Adam and I stood up.

We looked to our right and left, searching for our accompanying pairs, but they had evidently lagged behind. I didn’t feel like waiting up.

I’m moving to the house, I told him.

He nodded and looked forward with his rifle in front of him and his lance dangling at his side. He looked like a pointing hound.

We two walked slowly to the house, which looked more like a shack from this distance. It didn’t seem to have been inhabited for the last two hundred years, let alone in the time the war had raged.

The front door swung open and shut slowly in the listing breeze. Adam and I stacked to the right of the exterior wall in front of the door, as we had been trained. I took point since I was younger, as was custom in our military. He shouldered his rifle and grabbed his lance and then put his hand on my shoulder. I held the wood grip of my rifle in my hands. I took one breath and burst through the door into the shack.

I pointed my rifle at a crumbling and dilapidated rocking chair. I pointed my rifle at what used to be a bed, or a sofa, but was now a pile of broken wood and frayed fabric and the straw which filled it evidently a home for mice whose droppings were everywhere. I pointed my rifle at the north window, which was cracked and a channel for the breeze.

We’re the first to set foot in here in decades, said Adam.

I nodded and we walked back outside.

Dome case! we called out. Dwelling clear.

The pair supposed to clear with us came running over after we finished the call. An older private named Rickhart and his partner Peter.

Don’t worry, Adam yelled. We cleared it for you.

You took all the provisions didn’t you, shouted Rickhart.

There wasn’t any, I yelled. Get back in line.

I’m searching your knapsacks when we camp, he shouted back.

Like hell, yelled Adam. I’ll kill you.

They stood a hundred yards from us, stock still and skinny for a few moments, before Peter shook his head, and turned. Rickhart, the taller of the two, followed after him, bending down with his rifle in one hand to mutter to Peter about us.

We continued our patrol, and we ate lunch prone in the grasses, because the man taking shots at us did not let up for longer than half an hour at any point throughout the day. The fire was ineffective in that none of us were shot, but it succeeded in slowing us down so much that our main objective, the distant house, was still miles away by the time the sun began to set. And to make matters worse, the shots seemed to come from different places. Either there were multiple shooters, which I doubted, or just one shooter dashing about from point to point to confuse us. To this end, he was successful and clever.

I suspected that my lieutenant fumed at our inability to communicate a new sweeping protocol in a manner which would not cost us valuable time we did not have. And I feared for the inhabitants of the house ahead, who would surely be dead by his hand before the day was over if we reached it in time.

We continued to walk, taking shorter and shorter breaks between fire, until we just walked regardless of the cracks and thumps. For a while I wondered if it was just Adam and I who adopted this procedure, but I could see the other pairs from time to time in relief against the hills walking in line not too far ahead or behind us.

Then the next shot came. The thump was closer than ever, and the crack rang out somewhere to the southeast of our line. Adam and I stopped and crouched.

Sounded like it came from there, I said. I pointed at a copse of trees on a hill about a mile from us.

That’s a long way to shoot, said Adam.

I don’t see where else he’d be. It’d be a longer shot from any other concealment.

I aimed my rifle.

Are you gonna shoot?

I want to, I said. I’m bored.

Then a call came down the line to us, from our southeast flank. Dirt Mound. Man down.

My muscles tensed and I fired my rifle into the copse, aiming ludicrously high to adjust for drop. Adam did the same. I doubt our shots landed anywhere near our target. We looked at one another and then ran in the direction of the call, calling it out ourselves: Dirt Mound, Dirt Mound.

We heard a few more shots behind us as we ran, and after we’d traversed a few hundred yards we heard screams and groaning and saw a huddle of our soldiers. A boy named Goon walked up to us, smoking a pipe.

It’s lieutenant, he said. His face was white and he sucked on his pipe hurriedly.

Is it bad? I asked.

Goon laughed and shook his head. The lieutenant screamed behind him.

Adam and I walked over to the huddle, and peered in.

Our lieutenant was laying on the ground rolling, back and forth. He clutched his stomach, which spewed blood, and blood came rolling in gobs from his lips too.

Spread, he gasped, wincing, as he noticed the new arrivals. Spread out.

And then we heard a crack just a few meters away from our huddle and cursed ourselves for being so foolish. We hit the dirt in an anxious, exhausted and confused pile, cursing, and looking around. A few of the soldiers let off haphazard shots.

Maybe we should move him, I said to Adam.

Adam nodded. He looked around to the two soldiers closest to us. Let’s move him.

The four of us stood up quickly. I grabbed one of his arms, Adam grabbed the other. Our comrades took his legs. Our lieutenant’s eyes bulged up at us.

Don’t, he said.

We lifted, and he let out a bloodcurdling cry. I watched an intestine fall snakily out of a hole in his back the size of my fist, and something like a small pail of blood come tumbling out with it.

God, I said. We dropped him, and he died a moment later, his eyes wide open and grotesque.

We did not bury our lieutenant, and instead bickered over who should assume command. One fight broke out and was quickly broken up. Guns were held uneasily and in the meantime shots fell all around us. We all knew lieutenant had been extraordinarily unlucky to be hit, and this only made us more tense. The sergeant of my squad, a man named Vicar and a careerist one year my senior, restored order after the fight and reprimanded us all. Vicar ordered us to close formation, which meant we would march in a tighter group, and to cease our communications. This exposed us to the indirect fire, but we could effect a swifter arrival at the far house in this way. We would not stop at the shots unless a man went down.

And then we left our position, marching at a quicker pace. Our lieutenant lay dead in the grass behind us. Someone would let his family know, whenever the war was over, when we began the slow march back home. Those sorts of thoughts were unbearable and I tried to push them out of my mind, let somebody else have the burden of notifying his loved ones, if he had any. If they still lived. After only an hour of walking I turned to look behind us, and I could already see buzzards circling on thermals above his body.

The indirect fire continued unabated until we closed within a little less than 500 yards of the house. This, we assumed, could only be because our assailant did not want us to suspect he lived there. Truth be told, if anybody lived there, we would treat them as the shooter, even if it was a little child. And if someone shot at us the next day? We’d find another house somewhere and repeat the procedure. This country had been rent and despoiled by our foe anyways. Anyone who stayed was a sympathizer. This is how war was then, and probably how it will always be. It is an ugly and cathartic thing to be in a gang like ours. I could endlessly digress, but I will stop here; our nerves and patience were worn thin, and we desired to avenge our lieutenant.

The man who lived at the house had the nerve to keep the stove running. The chimney smoked boldly in the open, and when we got closer, despite the urging of Sergeant Vicar to remain disciplined, we fired our rifles in the air, and whooped and screamed like imps. Some men immediately tried to open the door and found it locked. They cursed and thumped on the door with the butts of their rifles and lances. Some of our men circled around to see if he had any livestock in the back. There were a few chickens, which were slaughtered by us within a few minutes of our finding them.

The sun set rapidly and a glorious pastel pink glow had settled on the mountain range, and even though I had by now joined in the revel, stoving in the windows of the house and threatening whoever was inside to come out lest we set the house alight with them inside, I suffered an impulsive pause at the sight of that beautiful mountain range, seemingly alight with pink fire. The yellow hills rolled undulating right up to it, coated here and there in snow. In this environment it struck me that nothing was out of place, no stunning color, no sparsely inhabited plain with one or two houses, no shooter, no carrion-eating bird wheeling in the sky, no field rabbit pricking its ears at our carousing, and not even our gleeful and murderous habit either. We were an indelible part of this scene, and only now does it strike me that the job of man is to be somewhat separate and apart. It is not good for him to forget his curse and do acts in keeping with the terrible beauty of this world.

Eventually Adam kicked that stubborn door down and a few of the men swept the place. I stood outside and reloaded my rifle furiously. I heard shouts from inside the house. The smell of tobacco wafted around me and I noticed that Goon had come and stood nearby. His head was cocked at an angle and he looked detached. Not engaged. He looked at me out of the corner of his eyes and smiled.

Pretty evening, ain’t it, he said.

I was thinking the same just now.

By this time a couple of our soldiers had dragged the sole inhabitant of that house out in front. He was an old man, very old, in his late seventies or early eighties. He had white hair, long and clean which hung in curtains around his forehead. A long beard. Unfriendly eyes, which might have been expected in the circumstances.

When you find an old man in a war zone you are at once confronted with a tremendous zone of ambiguity. More than likely he’s just stubborn and lonely, wants to die where he lives, won’t leave no matter who asks him to. Or maybe he’s too weak and doesn’t know where he’d go even if he’d like to leave. Or he maybe cares a little too much for the land in which he lives and shouldered a rifle against invaders. Our platoon didn’t give much leeway to any stragglers no matter the loyalties, which is maybe a shame, but we did not think so at the time, and we were not wont to think so either.

You think he did it? Goon said. He puffed on his pipe, and he no longer smiled. His eyes narrowed and he leaned on the barrel of his gun.

I don’t know, I said. He’s the only one for miles. I finished ramming the ball down the barrel of my rifle, shouldered it and walked toward the old man.

He was obscured from my view by Adam, who was holding the old man’s hair in his left hand and slugging him with slow loping strikes in the face with his right. The old man groaned and cried out.

You like killin men? Adam yelled. You like rapin women? You a Goblin man?

The old man blubbered. I stood to the side and saw that his face was covered in blood. A great red snot bubble blew from one nostril.  

Nothing to do with the Goblins, he said. And I never touched a woman in my life.

Adam punched him again, and then let go of his hair. The old man fell sideways into the dirt, and he sobbed. Adam spit into the dirt in front of him, and Rickhart, who stood behind him, gave him a kick with his boot, and then another, and then another, until Vicar, who was stepping out of the house at that moment, stopped him.

Settle yourself instantly soldier.

I’m showing him what happens when you kill one of us.

He didn’t do it.

Groans from all around.

Goddam Sergeant who else could it be.

Are you kiddin?

Never stopped anything before.

And so on. I frowned and kicked at the dirt.

Why not Vicar? I asked.

There’s no rifle in the house.

Bullshit, said Adam.

You check out back? Bastard buried it likely, said Rickhart.

A short man named Brook came forward and threw his rifle in the dirt in front of the old man.

Oh my God, Brook said. Fucker’s got a gun.

We all looked at the rifle and the old man and at Brook and then at Vicar and then at each other. Rickhart started to laugh maniacally.

No, said the old man, it’s not mine, I didn’t do it. They’ve got men in the hills.

And how the hell would you know that? I yelled.

Brook unsheathed his lance.

Vicar frowned, shook his head and stormed away from the door to the back of the house where the chickens were kept.

The old man sighed and looked upward with tears in his eyes. He mumbled to himself and spat weakly.

 I guess we men and boys figured that gave us permission. Rickhart was the first shot, right into the old man’s back at point blank range. It was a horrifying wound. Brook stabbed him in the neck, and then picked up his gun and shot him in the torso. Adam took aim and shot his leg. He was dead by the time I shot him, but I shot him too, and so did about six others. Not much was left of him and we slept inside his house. We didn’t even bury him. We just stepped over his destroyed body on our guard shifts, and when we left in the morning.  

I don’t know if we got the right man. None of us ever found the rifle, but the pot shots ceased. Most of us had forgotten about the incident by the time we’d broken camp, burned the house to cinders and resumed our long march to the mountains. That day and other days you could look along the line where the other platoons marched forward and see smoke adorning the latitude of our thin front.  A week later we were at the base of the mountains and we finished the war for good, where worse deeds were done and worse still seen. But that story has been told many times and in many ways and I have nothing new to offer. I was a soldier.