[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

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.