[GZG] RE: [GZG Fiction] Frontline Living

Front-line Living

New Guardian Times, Tokalau Coast, November 3rd, 2196.

>From now onward for a time indeterminate, life is utterly transformed
for the thousands involved in this new phase of the war against the
Kra'Vak. The jump from the relative calm and austere comfort of camp
life in the training areas into the worst of front-line living is so
great that only those who have served elsewhere in this conflict or the
last solar war can conceive of the life they have entered; the
makeshift, always urgent, always-moving and often deadly complexion of
an existence on the front line. And I chose the word existence
carefully, for that is exactly what it is and nothing more. 

No comforts remain. Sleep is in bedrolls in little silver lined tents
put up in ditches you've dug personally for protection from bullets and
chill winds. Your food is what you can carry, or what can reach you down
the potentially tenuous supply lines. Clothing is what is on your back,
with one spare thermsuit or an extra jacket if you're lucky. Washing is
only something you do opportunistically, whenever and wherever you can.
There are no more hot-water taps, or quarter-master stores or VRcinnies.
Knick-knacks are non existent, or the smallest of treasures you simply
can't bear to be parted with, your last connection with home and a
distant reality.

Like most inexperienced troops through history, they carried too much at
first, but gradually shed it once the reality of their situation
confronted them. Every one of them has lost or purposefully put aside
some of their equipment. They tossed out personal gear from their kit
bags, filling them with ammunition and rations instead. The countryside
for kilometre on kilometre around the path of the attack on all three
beachheads speckled with chutes, float vests, shovels, axes and other
flotsam. 

On the flip side there is a shortage of all things useful. A shortage of
bedrolls has meant that when the troops first hit the landing beaches on
Ariza and around Rosado and San Juan many went days without blankets and
bedrolls. They just bagged what sleep they could, a few hours here and
there, curled up on the ground. 

As of this moment our troops are bivouacked in Ariza and on the verge of
crossing for Orduna, in the north they're west of San Juan and east of
Rosado. In the south there have even been solid advances up the Arda
Valles. Everywhere they are consolidating, integrating replacements,
making repairs, preparing for whatever this war will throw at them next.

In Ariza, the only place they've made it into any of the target cities,
they are camped in every conceivable location. They are billeted in what
was once office buildings, hotels and garages. Many of them have been
heavily modified for Kra'Vak needs, but they're still liveable by
humans. Even then others are camping in parks and vacant lots of any
size through the body of the city. These tent camps look quite odd, the
little dome tents holding two men apiece and crammed into every space
available. Officers are usually lucky enough to nab a bed in a house or
apartment, but others chose to live in tents and sleep on the ground
with their men. 

You can see men washing mess kits and their clothing in big supply tins,
heated over flash burners and open fires made from pieces of packing
cases. They strip naked, even in the mixed sex units, and take sponge
baths as quickly as they can before they get too cold. Their bodies
first going red before they start to shiver involuntarily. In the even
deeper cold of the night they curl up tight in their bedrolls. 

The soldiers are showing their adaptability. They rig up lights from
spent tank batteries and insulate their tents as much as they can by
adding floors and sideboards to keep out the wind and sand. They drape
washing over their tent and painted names and witty slogans on their
tent flaps. In the mainly Italian quarter of the FSE sector of the city
I even saw a soldier sitting on his "stoop" playing spiritedly on a
viola. They all know they're not here forever, that they could move on
tomorrow, but they patch together a small piece of something they can
call home nevertheless. 

On the road to the front there is a spirit of haste - motor convoys
pushing for the front; fighters and VTOLS passing overhead. Troop
rotations waiting for orders to move on. Returning detachments telling
you stories of their battles on the front against the lead Krak units;
conjecturing about the next time they're up there. As soon as you're
recognised as media, rucks of troops heading up the road to the front,
dive over to mob you, passing you mem-sticks and saying, "Here, please,
you know, just in case..." 

Once at the front I joined an outfit that had been in combat, battling
ceaselessly, for 72 hours. In this terrain, down near the strait across
to Tokalau, its pretty much all on foot. It is all walking and climbing
and even crawling. The land across the strait is clear of trees, it
sadly looks easy to defend and bitter to take. But we are on the verge
of taking it anyway. 

The Krak line the far bank dug in along its length. Unless the ground is
prepared carefully, if we tried to cross now, we would be murdered,
wholesale; shredded in a maelstrom of machine-gun crossfire, mortars and
grenades. Consequently we bide our time. Trying to pulverize them before
we try a crossing. As I've written before the big guns spit and crack
and roar, sending whistling shells over the water almost constantly, 24
hours a day. By airburst and incendiaries our gunners are slowly
whittling down the Krak on the far shore. I can not stress how
sensational our artillery has been. What's more, for once we have enough
of something we need where we need it, when we need it. With all those
guns centred on one spot, they lay so many explosives and projectiles
down the ground just seems to erupt. It resembles a mammoth cauldron of
fire and smoke and dirt not heard of since ancient tales. 

Turning from the great guns to the infantry, they are my favourite
defence arm. They are the ones who have to live with the conditions, the
worst weather can throw at them, mud, rain, frost and frigid winds.
Ultimately though, even with no comforts, and starved of necessities,
they are the guys that wars can not be won without. Despite the leaps in
technology and the shifting form of warfare through the ages, the foot
soldier is the one constant. Their numbers and the details of the
methods used have changed, but through it all their presence has
remained.

It is one of my dearest wishes that I could upload live h-vids of the
images you see everyday around here. I am sitting amongst clumps of
dagger-grass over looking the strait, behind me a rocky slope leading
down to the drop off into the water. Across this landscape, a ribbon of
humanity snakes. These troops have been at it for three days. They have
been fighting hard the whole time, a long range fire-fight across the
shallow water, fast current and white peaked waves. They've eaten
little, slept less and have not washed. All their hours caught up in
violent attack and fear. The time spent oscillating between the comfort
of hearing our artillery roar overhead and the miserable terror of
listening to the incoming crash of Krak shells. 

These men are the lucky ones, they are the ones who get to walk out.
Instinctively spreading out, for dispersal, they walk slowly. They are
dead weary, their bodies sagging with their exhaustion. Their burden
made no easier by the heavy packs and tripods and machine-gun barrels
they are lugging back with them. Even the ground beneath them conspires
to sap their strength. Their feet sinking into the ground or sliding
over the rocks making them stumble. The terrible deliberation of their
steps, the dark pain on their faces spells out their appalling tiredness
in intimate detail. Their faces are russet with Martian dust. The young
faces aged immeasurably by fatigue and grime. 

Watching the antlike line forms a nucleus of agony in your heart, a pain
that grips your chest like a vice. Tears spring involuntarily to your
eyes and you are almost ashamed to continue watching them. These are
people that in a different life you may have passed on your way to the
store, but you would have passed them without a thought, they would have
gone unremembered. Now though they occupy a world that can never be
known to you. If you could see them just for an instant though it would
swell your heart to bursting, this is why mankind has hope. 

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