One King, One Soldier

LANCE The first thing the doctor said to Lance Porter was, "March fifth, is that right?" Lance didn't know what he was talking about. "When you were wounded." Wounded. So that was why he felt so shitty. Lance couldn't quite open his eyes all the way, but he tried to get a better look at himself. He was lying down, and his right leg hung from a pulley. Pain tolled like a distant bell in the leg, and in his hip. "What happened?" he asked the doc. "Mortar shell. The guys at the MASH saved a couple bits of shrapnel for you. Your leg was broken, and there are some pieces missing from your hipbone on that side, but you should be okay. Surgery went well. Your war is over, Corporal Porter." The MASH. That brought back some memories. Mostly lights, Lance trying to say something and a masked face snapping irritably at someone Lance couldn't see: he's not out yet, for Christ's sake, put him out. And before that, a muddy stream bank. Shaking his head, trying to figure out what had happened. "Reason I brought up the date is that it's the day Uncle Joe finally cashed in his chips," the doctor said. The words took a long time to soak through Lance's skull. Uncle Joe. "Stalin?" he said. "Stalin. Everybody's favorite despot. Had a cerebral hemorrhage, is what they're saying." The doctor flipped sheets of paper on Lance's chart, made notes. "A nurse will be in to see you in an hour or so. She'll top off your morphine if you need it." "Thanks, Doc," Lance mumbled automatically, and was asleep again before the doctor got to the door. He awoke to the whistle in his head of the falling shell, and remembered. Just after dawn, when even the mud and tree stumps of Korea were beautiful. He'd been awake much of the night with a toothache, and had finally given up and climbed to the top of the bunker stairs to watch the sun come up. Mornings looked different, smelled different, when you'd been awake waiting for them, and on this morning Lance felt his spirits lift a bit as the sky brightened. Luke the Gook hadn't sent them any mail overnight, and he never attacked in daylight. All Lance had to do was wait for the morning jitters to pass on both sides, and then he could walk back down the ridge to the CP and get a ride back to have his tooth worked on. Morning jitters: someone down the line to the east ripped off a long burst from a BAR, just on general principles. A few rifle shots cracked here and there. Across the valley that separated the 2/23rd Infantry from Hill 355, Luke greeted the dawn in his own fashion; Lance ducked back into the bunker as the clacking of a gook machine gun echoed from 355. The bullets didn't hit anything near him. After waiting five minutes for form's sake, Lance put on his helmet. "Sarge, I got a toothache," he said to the platoon sergeant, who was stirring in the corner of the bunker. "Better take care of it," the sergeant said. Lance climbed out of the bunker and walked down the back of the ridge, behind the line and away from Luke's Land. The trail switchbacked down the steep incline before following a stream to the CP, and Lance was just coming around a bend when he heard the whistle. Mortar, he had time to think, and then it hit him. The blast erased all thoughts from his head, and it surprised him to find that he wasn't on the trail anymore. He was lying on his left side on a muddy slope, with his feet in the shallows of the stream. Automatically his hands started looking for his rifle. Rocks, mud, helmet. No rifle. Pain rose in his leg like the brightening of dawn. He groaned, or thought he did, and realized he was deaf from the blast. And something was in his mouth; he worked it to the tip of his tongue and picked it out. His hand came away bloody, and between thumb and forefinIrvine, Alexander C. is the author of 'One King, One Soldier', published 2004 under ISBN 9780345466969 and ISBN 0345466969.