Young Writers Society

This is my contest entry for Sam and co.'s Historical Fiction contest. I need all the help I can get on this! Thanks!

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-"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value."

Outside of Avignon, France

November 18, 1916

Big band music echoed scratchily out of the the phonograph positioned at the corner of the barroom table, like the voice of an ancient smoker, and deteriorated into the late-evening dissonance. The air was curtained in cigarette smoke – familiarly so – which marinated the lungs of the fighter pilots in a cocktail of tar and tobacco who would laugh and sing and drink for the entire night if they could. No one was without a shot glass. It was drinks-all-around! and forget-until-tomorrow for everyone. Inside the makeshift airfield bar, there was no war. There were no dying soldiers. There were no explosions of anti-aircraft flak. There were no groans, gasps, there was no blood. The political bozos who had started the war were all nonexistent.

It was all love and peace in their blissful inebriation.

Jack Holiday sat at the counter, his feet propped on the rungs of the barstool, staring at his glass of cheap scotch The noise in the room was drowned out for Jack by the lingering rat-a-tat-tats of the on board Vicker's gun and explosions of flak and the screams of the men who had died that day. Jensen, Wright, Orr, Fulbright. Four casualties. The most of any mission. The sour beer bastards had gone for the jugular this time and held on with every fiber of their being. There had been no mercy. No fair play. They had been fast and fierce and efficient. Airborn grim reapers.

“Forget while you still can, Holiday,” Terry Dubois had said to him earlier, “What's done is done. Moping about the dead is a waste of time, you know that? You got weeks to live, maybe months if you're lucky, and it's not worth it to be down the entire time. This is France, baby. Get drunk, find a whore, do something.” He had raised his glass to Jack and smiled. “Tomorrow comes way too soon, bud.”

But Jack was sick and tired of the apathy. He was sick and tired of the drinking and the singing and the god-awful phonograph on the counter. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, pushed his receding black hair out of his eyes, and rubbed his chin. He had to get out this war and he had to get out fast. It was utterly and completely pointless. And it was just plain unhealthy to see the blood and the corpses and hear the screams during the day and then dream about it incessantly at night.

What the hell am I doing here?

Jack heard the stool next to him scrape across the plywood flooring as Sam Nicholson pulled himself up to the counter. Wordlessly, the man swirled the amber colored beer in his mug and stared at the French and American flags which hung reverently above the cooler, sagging into each other. Jack followed his gaze.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

That was what the whole war was about anyway: intertwining alliances and wars that were fought only on the basis of contract friendship bracelets. That was another thing Jack was tired of. The politicians deciding whether or a man went to war or not. Whether he died or lived. Life and death weren't supposed to be controlled in a congress hall or in cavernous parliament buildings by fat old men who could care the hell less about enlisted men in the first place.

Jack shook his head and gulped down the last of his scotch.

Sam glanced at him sideways. “Heard you took two down today, Holiday.”

“Yeah, I guess I did.”

“That puts you ahead of everybody,” Sam said with a smile and pointed up to a chalk board mounted on one of the barroom's support beams where tally marks were scratched each day beside the names of the pilots who shot down one or more German fighters. “Twenty-two dead bastards. You're a regular killer.”

“Well, I'm sick of killing.”

Sam studied him for a moment. “They're Germans, Holiday. The enemy. The whole point is to kill them.”

Jack laughed and pulled a limp cigarette out of his breast pocket. “You don't get it, Sam. Don't you see that they're just the same as us? They have homes and families. They have opinions and dreams and hopes.”

“So you wouldn't mind if the Germans won the war?”

“Of course I'd mind. But killing someone just for another mark on a chalkboard isn't the way to go about a war, see? You've got to know what you're fighting for.” Jack lit the cigarette and took a long drag on it. Back home, his wife had been pressuring him to stop. Those cigarettes will kill you, she had said, They'll take the breath right out of you. And now every time he smoked, he thought of her.

Now that's what you fight for.

Jack pointed to the American flag above the cooler and shook his finger at it. “What's that mean to you, Sam?”

“The flag?”

“The flag.”

“It means the freedom to do whatever you want, whenever you want.”

“Do you think we have to kill to get that?”

Sam shrugged and grinned. “Yes. Why else would we be fighting our asses off in this war?”

Jack took another drag on the cigarette and watched the embers flare and then subside. He exhaled heavily. “I don't know. But I'm still sick and tired of it. As soon as I get the chance, I'm out of here. Out of France, out of Europe, out this war.”

Sam laughed. “If Uncle Sam has his way, that'll be when the rest of us leave.”

Jack couldn't keep a smile from tugging at the edges of his lips. He turned around on his stool and propped his elbows back against the counter, watching the pilots and infantry blue-blood staggering and roaring drunkenly, alcohol slopping down uniform fronts. These were the men that would be back in the air tomorrow – hangover or not – and fight the war. And they were each fighting for something. Family, friends, freedoms, homes, their life. They were either in the war for a purpose or they were stupid kids who were seeking thrills. The kids who saw glory in waving a banner and then getting shot so many times their shirt fronts were died red.

But what was Jack fighting for?

He stared at his cigarette and then stubbed it out on the counter. His wife, he decided. He was fighting for his wife. Jack reached over the counter, wrapped his hand around the squarish bottle of scotch, and poured another glass. He hoped she knew. He hoped that he knew he wasn't just another adolescent bastard seeking thrills on the wrong side of the machine gun. He lifted the glass of scotch.

Here's to you, darling.

As Jack took a sip, an alarm started up outside, drowning out the phonograph, howling urgently. It was an approaching aircraft alarm. The sounds in the barroom ceased immediately – Jack holding his breath and Sam on his feet already – all except for the big band music which continued on, serenading love and happiness. Several enlisted men began shouting and a lieutenant general bulled into through the doorway shouting for them to evacuate.

The Germans are coming, the Germans are coming!

At night?

Jack swore, shoved himself away from the table, and jumped to the floor running. The airfield was frozen Jack noticed as he squeezed through the open door and ran out onto a strip – puddles of mud-oil blends had iced over and grass shattered beneath every footstep – but he ignored the cold. His head was spinning and lights prickled at the back of his eyes. Gasping for air, his ears filled with the blaring sound of the alarm, Jack turned around and scanned the horizon.

Where were the bastards?

He squinted. False alarm, false alarm, it had to be a false alarm!

Over the treetops, moonlit wings appeared. Followed by the buzzing hum of the precision engines mounted on the new German airplanes. Shaking his head compulsively, Jack turned around and sprinted for the hangars fifty feet away. Several other pilots were doing the same. Why in God's name were the German's doing a nightflight? Behind him, men had opened fire on the approaching airplanes with harsh, staccato chattering that made Jack's head hurt. He heard the planes return it and a chorus of screams sang through the air like the sound of dying choir girls. Jack reached his airplane, wrapped his fingers around the propeller, heaved down, and stepped back. The engine coughed and then sputtered to life. Coughs echoed all the way down the hangar line.

Run, run as fast as you can. Can't catch me I'm –

From above his head, Jack heard the German guns chatter loudly. An airplane erupted in flames nearby and Jack felt ice puncture his shoulder, chest, and groin. Blood blossomed across his uniform like rose corsages and he frowned as his arm went dead; the December air nothing now compared to his internal cold. The tears that trickled off the bridge of his nose and into his mouth – salty – were scalding hot. Somewhere behind him he heard Sam talking, talking about nothing, maybe about the war, and he turned around, stumbling to his knees. His airplane's propeller scythed the air in front of him in place of Sam. He blinked.

Those things will kill you. They'll take the breath right out of you.

Jack was back home. His wife was there at the table and she looked over her shoulder as he stood in the doorway. Despite the biting draft he knew she had to be feeling, she smiled and waved. Jack began backing away, away from the door, away from the airplanes, and away from the airfield.

He fell to his face, blood trickling out of his mouth – rich and coppery.

Here's to you, darling.