The Portrait Of Jessica

Like the other guys, he had to allow his photo to be passed around the train car. Like the most studious students, each one studied her breasts intently and tried to commit the photo to memory to be recalled again. They demanded to know her name: Anna. One guy bowed in front of the photo and called out: "I pledge my life to you, Anna! You may never know me, but I will gladly die for you!" They all agreed with a song to dedicate every enemy kill to Anna.

Karl spilled five cards of the deck to each player. Everyone showed the first three cards. You could fold and keep your photo. Or you could trade a card for a new card. When the first person asked to see, no further round could start. Karl showed three disjointed cards. People speculated that he had nothing or that he was trying to full people to having a street. One of the guys had two aces. Everyone thought that he was showing the best part of his hand. He also folded. The guy with the Greek statue like girl asked for another card and smiled. They thought that he had gotten three of a kind. The next guy had three of the same suit. It seemed like he was going to go for a flush, but everyone agreed that the chance of trading in the card successfully was low, but he did it anyway. His disappointed face gave away that he had failed. The guy with the topless girl felt the most pressure because he had the most prized photo of them all. He folded right away. The last guy called it believing that his three of a kind of would win. But Karl had indeed had a street. Karl took all the photos. They believed that Karl had a golden hand at poker.

The topless girl was the big prize that pulled in the next round of players. Michael was one of them. Karl was able to lose the next round because he had enough photos to buy back in and take them all back. Michael was a sucker. He didn't even know the precedence of the cards. He was simply eager to get the topless girl. When Michael lost, he pushed Hans to play even though Hans really only loved his girl and didn't want to lose her. And so Hans lost the photo. Karl's stack of photos kept growing. It seemed if you called Karl, he had the better cards. If you doubted yourself, Karl had only bluffed you.

Eventually, the excitement of the day and the shaking and banging of the train exhausted the young men and they fell asleep. However, in the darkness, they quietly whacked off. They recalled Anna, her face and boobs, and imagined the rest, her belly, her embrace, and her voice. Quietly, the carload of young men worshipped femininity and muffled their moans when feminity responded with her blessing. In their minds imagination, Anna was passed between the men, and they all equally shared her. Such beauty, such love, and such sensuality - that was everything the men hoped to attain in their lives, those humble village boys that were a dime of dozen in the big world.

When the first morning light woke Hans, he glanced out the open train door. The wind coming in was no longer a cold gust but a hot blowing. The train car felt humid, hot, sweaty, and suffocating. The fields and trees were gone. The landscape was barren, lifeless, and hard. He imagined that they must have gone southeast into a desert. The inside of his mouth felt parched. The climate made his body struggle. He went back to sleep. He hadn't imagined victorious fighting to be this strenuous. Looking at the photos, he had always only pictured him delivering the last blow to an enemy and then walking through the home streets with banners flying down on him. This wasn't quite what he had been excited about.

Karl was restless. He wanted to gain more, but he had already collected most of the photos, and guys weren't willing to gamble their rifles to him. Michael was pissed that he had lost his woman's photo. A brave soul climbed out of the train car. Holding onto tiny foot holds and hand holds, he climbed to the car ahead and then the car ahead. When he returned an hour later, he bare news. The first car held lots of water and food. The officers were supposed to stop the train every six hours to distribute food and water, but they were afraid of missing their deadline and had the train go non-stop. Also each train car had their own version of Karl, who had claimed most of the resources. If they wanted food, they'd need to bring things to bargain for. And each car they'd pass would want to have their own cut. There was a guy in car nine, who didn't get a rifle. His train car agreed to let anyone pass with any amount of stuff if they gave him a rifle. Karl sprang to action. This was his forte.

Hans learned that the main focus of war was to deprive your fellow man of resources that you needed for yourself. Jessica's photo ended up in train car eight. Anna went to train car five. Their train car lost five rifles. Karl went on a speculative gambit to create a boot monopoly and when boots were sparse to sell them at exorbitant trade-in prices. However, all that happened was that they had more boots than they could carry, and one train car was full of peasants who had walked their whole life barefoot and didn't mind not having boots. Michael got the photo of a southern girl with olive skin. She was an acquired taste because she didn't have the familiar beauty ideals of white whites, but he fell in love with her as the hours of staring at her photo passed by. Leah was her name. He promised her to look her up when the war was over.

The thuds of artillery shells exploding were muffled at first but turned louder and more frequent until it became a constant popping sound like popcorn kernels exploding. The train stopped in a field surrounded by tents. In big makeshift tents, women were dehydrating food and pressed it into pouches that they were handed. Many of the tents had a big red cross and were full of groaning. A couple warplanes flew overhead onto their reconnaissance flight. The feel of misery among the people in the tent village was heavy. The officers didn't want to give them time to reflect on what they saw or to get too many glimpses of the hospital tent. They routed the new recruits organized into companies on a field path and told them: "The front is over there. Bring us victory and you'll be home in now time." The promise rung hollow, but they wouldn't tolerate any dispute.

Hans thought it odd that they didn't march in lines and sing. That's what he had expected. They marched in an unorganized bunch. Their assigned team leader didn't lead in front either. He walked behind with his sidearm leather guard already loosened. "I'll shoot anyone who falls behind or doesn't follow orders," he had declared. When after ten miles, Michael stopped to bend over, the officer lifted the weapon and barked, "Walk or die!" That settled it that the team leader was for real. Hans felt that he was in an alien world.

The ground was hard and dry, some kind of reddish dust baked together. For as far as he looked, he couldn't see anything green or water. The hills looked rugged and jagged, like nothing that he could climb well. He couldn't see himself ducking away into a bush or creeping down a gully of a creek to get away. Following officer's orders and fitting into the war machinery was his only path. He got that feeling of a mouse put into the cage of a venomous snake. He grabbed the side of Michael to help him walk better. Michael, he was a guy whom Hans could trust to make plans for an escape.

They arrived at a trench in the ground. They stepped down into the trench and entered a bunker, a widened trench square with a wooden roof and two feet of dirt packed on top of the roof to buffer against mortar shells hitting. They were given a rest break while the officer conferred over the wired communication for updated orders. This was the first time that Hans could hear the whistling sound that mortar shells made raining down before they hit the ground and exploded. This was all getting real.

A wide-mouthed guy stood guard with a rifle. Peter was his name. He talked and breathed in between words with his mouth open. "Don't ever close your mouth," he told them. "That's how you lose your hearing. The open mouth lets your ear drums depressurize when the shells explode over your head." His eyes couldn't focus on you when he talked. He explained, "I haven't been able to sleep in five days. Those damn shells rain down day and night." He turned around and shot a rabbit twenty yards out. Nobody knew how he could sense the rabbit moving behind his head. "Gotta shoot everything that moves before you start thinking," he explained.

"C'mon guys, let me teach you how to shoot," said their team leader. He had a more congenial tone of voice now, like he actually cared for them and wanted to get them ready for fighting.

Karl pointed out that they hadn't been given ammunition yet. The team leader cursed. They were supposed to have picked that up together with the food. Then he cursed them out to not tell anybody or he'd kill the snitch. Then he argued with the wide-mouthed guy to hand each comrade a cartridge. The wide-mouthed guy conceded in exchange for a couple medals from the officer's chest. The team leader pointed out that as they would go along, they'd pass plenty of corpses that could be stripped for ammunition.

When Hans got his chance to take a shot at a rock at a twenty-yard distance, he lifted his head over the edge of the trench. He placed his elbows on the ground. He lined up the crosshairs, but his hands were shaking, and the kept shifting. When he finally shot, the recoil made the rifle slip out of his hands. The officer said, "Good enough! As long as you point in the right direction and pull the trigger, you are good enough."

After mealtime, they packed up again to go further in the trench. They quickly came to a four-way intersection. The officer pulled out a map and decided to proceed straight ahead. A couple yards in, they encountered the first corpse. He had been lying there a while. The skin had turned black. The clothes were pulled apart as others had searched him. The most desperate in the group quickly kneeled down next to him to search his pockets for bullets.

The frequency of ghastly corpses increased. The bodies looked fresher and more alive. When Michael and Hans got their chance to scavenge for bullets, they came face to face with the skull, the bullet hole, the pieces of brain, dried hair, and buzzing flies. Checking the uniform pockets was easy. They found a photo of a young woman. She looked more Russian and had fuller breasts. They kept it for trading later. Michael suggested to search his underwear because that's where Michael kept his money. Pulling the pants down the dead man's body to feel inside his underwear was ghastly but rewarded with a couple of bills of money. The heroism of war that they had nursed in class was gone.

The team leader led them through the maze of intersections in the trenches. Hans could hear the machine gun fire now. He could feel the trembling of the ground when the mortar shells hit. The trenches were in poor shape - made in a rush, sometimes collapsed, sometimes hit by a mortar shell. The shouts of fighting rung from a distance. Hans questioned his ability to be victorious in this war. He was tired, lost, and unprepared. He could sense the randomness that awaited him in the battle where any moment might kill him without hint or meaningful defense option.

Karl offered the team leader to lead the group so that the team leader could stay in the back. The team leader liked staying in the back and handed Karl his map and showed him the path he needed to lead. Hans realized that moment that Karl had gained an advantage by becoming the second in command as well as having access to the map. Karl was the only one who had the means to successfully run away because he knew in which direction to run.

Around nightfall, they arrived at a bunker built of a wood roof and dirt. This was going to be their station. They relieved the team, which at this point, had been decimated down to three men. One was heavily bandaged and lying in the corner, partially passed out from the injuries. The other two happily received the relief and carried their friend away.

Karl told everyone where to lie down. Guys didn't like being told by one of their own, but the team leader happily blessed Karl's bossing around because Karl was taking care of bullying the company to do stuff. Karl assigned two guys as the first-night watch. Hans learned from Karl how power is acquired. Hans went to sleep, wishing that he had been as dominant as Karl.

In the middle of the night, close machine gun fire and shouting woke up Hans. Karl kicked him in the ribs shortly after. The whole company was roused. The enemy had breached their trenches. They were ordered towards the machine gun fire. The trenches were dug so poorly hear that they couldn't stand upright without exposing their heads. So they had to run in a crouched stance. The team leader led them to a higher-level officer. The higher-level officer beat another team leader, who cowardly curled up and received the beating without fighting back.

"Lead your men with more enthusiasm!" yelled the higher-level officer. "Charge the machine gun!"

Ahead was a T-intersection in the tunnel. The bottom of the T bent to the left. Corpses were lying on the floor with the bodies heavily mangled. The other team leader walked to the edge of the T-intersection and held onto the wall. He had three men left in his company. He yelled at them, "Charge! Charge!" The three men were terrified and didn't move. The higher-level officer walked up to the other team leader and placed his sidearm to the temple of the shaking team leader. The higher-level team leader yelled, "Charge or die!" The team leader ran forward. His three men after them. The machine gun sounded. Flickering light lit up the night. A line of bullets tore through the torso of the other team leader. The torso snapped into two pieces.

Our own team leader crept forward to the edge of the T-intersection. He used a scope to look around the corner. He told Karl, "There is one machine gun. It's fortified behind a metal plate. There is no way to hit the gunner through the plate. The gunner is one hundred yards away. It's too far to throw a grenade. He's going to cut down anyone going in there."

The higher-level officer walked up to the conversation, "Stop your coward words! Didn't you learn in officer training that enthusiasm overcomes any resistance? Instill enthusiasm in your troupe!"

Our team leader looked on the ground. He knew that he had to agree that enthusiasm would overcome the defense, yet it would kill everyone in a pointless charge. The higher-level officer seemed to have lost his marbles. He kept lecturing about enthusiasm being the cure for everything. He got lost in a side story about Napoleon's enthusiasm. Then the higher-level officer pointed his gun at our team leader. Our team leam leader pointed his gun at Hans, "You lead the charge. You look enthusiastic to me!"

Hans froze and then on a crazy whim told his team leader that he needed to back up a bit to run at the machine gunner with more momentum. The higher-level officer got excited, "I like that thinking!" Then Hans backed up ten yeards, ran as hard as he could, and ran right past the T-intersection without going left into the trench towards the machine gunner. The team leader was stunned at first, but quickly started shooting at Hans. There was a left turn coming up. Hans through himself to the left. The trench dead-ended here. A mortar shell had hit the trench diggers directly. Their body parts were partially buried by the collapsed trench.

They were going to come for sure after him. His only way was forward. He climbed up the slope of the mortar bomb hole to the surface. For the first time, he saw the world outside of the fence. It was a barren desert with barbed wire and corpses. He crawled forward and away from his pursuers. He could hear the machine gun fire pausing for the gunner to reload. His comrades were probably using that moment to cross the T-intersection and come after him. He saw a corpse up ahead. That corpse could provide shelter against the bullets from them. He crawled fast and hid behind the body. He heard a few exploratory bullets whistling in his direction, but they didn't come outside of the trench after him.

The world up here was terrible. He lost his hope and will to leave. He crawled a bit forward. He found a pair of teeth on the ground and shuddered. He was left in a noman's land to die. He had heard rumors that the war was feeding millions and millions into the trenches to die, but he had believed the men who had told him that those things were rumors spread by traitors. Out here exhausted, he saw with his own eyes, smelled with his nose, and felt from the vibrations of the ground that all there was desperation and death. He crawled a little more and found himself crawling down into a mortar explosion ditch. That little shelter felt comforting.

He thought about Jessica. He recalled her face. He recalled her kiss. He recalled her deep care to meet him on her face when she tried to reach him in the crowd. He imagined what it would be like to be held in her arms while he cried out all the terribleness while she calmly caressed his hair and told him that everything would be okay. He cried a little. He felt exhausted. He didn't feel like the hero who deserved everything and everyone. He felt lost like he needed to be loved and protected. He whispered her name: Jessica! She was somewhere out there, waiting for him. He had to find her. If he could only make it into her embrace, everything would be okay. And he pushed forward.

He pictured what their kids would look like: her eyes and his hair. They'd, of course, have their combined intelligence. He pushed forward on his belly. He imagined what it would feel like feel her breasts in his hands. He pushed forward. He painted out the moment that she'd stand in front of him and slowly peeled out of her clothes to let him see her secret, her naked body. He pushed forward. He gazed into her eyes that so patiently and lovingly longed for him. He pushed forward.

He vowed his life to her should he survive this. He would be a good husband. He would never cheat. He would work hard to provide for the family. He would say nice things to his mother-in-law. He would impress his father-in-law any way he needed to impress. Over and over, he vowed to utterly and completely commit himself to a life with Jessica if he survived this because facing his own end, he realized that all that mattered in his life was to be with her.

Unbelievable to himself, he reached the point in the trench behind the machine gunner. Hans peered down on the machine gunner. He was a lone soldier who had overrun the trench. He had turned around one of their own machine guns to point back at them. The machine gunner was tensely focused on the tiny lookout hole in the steel plate. He burst off rounds of shots randomly. With the noise and focus, the machine gunner couldn't hear Hans slipping into the trench behind the machine gunner. With the knife mounted on his rifle as a bayonet, Hans charged into the machine gunner and charged again. He felt disgusted at himself for killing another human being. He felt desperate. He felt like he had lost all innocence in life. The machine gunner slumped down.

The next trick was not to get shot by his own people. Hans picked up the steal plate and slowly carried the heavy thing towards the T-interesection. He yelled out to his comrades. They didn't respond at first. But the team leader peered at him with the scope. The team leader yelled at Hans to drop the metal plate flat on the ground. The team leader sent a comrade in front of Hans to check. When the comrade yelled back, they all cheered. They celebrated him, but the team leader looked bitter. He hated Hans for having failed to follow orders.