Fodderman's Straight

A little something I came up with after a very vivid and profound dream I had a long time ago. Reposted and edited from when I was last here.

 

Fodderman’s Straight. The place where screams sounded forever. The place where blood stained the grass red. The place where faces looked into the sky. The faces were still. The faces were spattered in blood. A man would be covered in blood out there on Fodderman’s Straight; his blood, your blood, the blood of his comrades, of his enemies, of his friends, of his sins.

 

Those screams were inevitable. Some had nightmares about it as they approached the grassy knoll ridden stretch of land. They would see the blue bolts of energy searing through their friends. They would watch people they had known all their lives fall to their feet, yelling at their closest comrades to kill them, to kill them because it was too much. And it would be there, under the twin suns casting their dim orange glow across an all too alien landscape that bodies would lay rotten and forgotten until the next squad of cannon fodder came.

 

It didn’t matter how many screams rang out into the vast blue ocean of a sky. It didn’t matter how many times strangers gathered before ornate gates back home and yelled as loud as they could at the politicians to pull them back. The result would stay inevitably the same. Men would march out onto the grass and they would be shot down amidst a chaos in which they devolved from man to fodderman. That was how it had been christened.

 

Billy-Boy was his name, Billy-Boy Johnston. He hadn’t been there long. A few days at most. He’d come with the latest air drop of young know nothing cadets they called a relief force. They were just more feed for the lilac skinned b******s mowing them down all day every day.

 

Johnston had never been particularly worried about going to war. He had never been particularly bothered by the fact he’d most likely wind up dead. Death happened. Get over it. That’s his take on the whole thing. Or it was. It was until Fodderman’s Straight and a conversation he had there with an old veteran from Africa back home.

 

He must have been in his fifties. His dark skin had glistened in the blistering heat as he sat on his knoll, shining his gun. In his pack, a small stuffed bear sat. No one knew quite why he carried it with him. What was a toy in a war? His eyes had been bloodshot, a deep red; red like the blood of every guy sent to hell; red like the green grass they sat on. The rest of the company always avoided him. Johnston didn’t. He tried to start a conversation with the guy. It was the last time he’d try to start a conversation with somebody, that was for sure.

 

“Hey,” Johnston said as he had sat down opposite his darker skinned comrade. “The other guys said I shouldn’t talk to you, but to hell with what they think, right?” Johnston had that deep southern American accent. The African veteran had done nothing but clean his gun. “So I was wondering…”

 

“Why?” the veteran had replied, looking up. Johnston frowned.

 

“Sorry?”

 

“Why were you wondering?”

 

“Erm…well…”

 

“Dis is Fodderman’s Straight. We’ll be dead men by da time we reach da other side. Why were you wondering?”

 

“Death happens, right, get over it.”

 

The pearly white teeth shone even brighter in the blistering suns. The veteran shook his head and had gone back to cleaning his gun for a moment before gently placing it down on the ground. He faced Johnston again. “You are right,” he had said. “Death does happen. Dat is not a problem. Dat does not worry me. We sit on death every day. It is what happens to you after you are dead dat we do not see, and it is that which is the painful ting.” The man then removed his army cap and stroked his smooth bald head.

 

“What do you mean?” Johnston replied.

 

“When I lay here dead as I will so very soon, no one will come for me. When I lay here dead as I will so very soon, I will rot. My body will rot. And when dey send out someone to scavenge da remains for ammunition and other such tings, dey will not remember who I am.

 

“Dey will not look down at my body and say dat dere is a man. Dere is a man who fought and died for a purpose, for a cause, in a war he had no say in making. When dey find my body, dey will not say dat dere lies a man who went through hell to fight for people he had never met, to kill for faces he did not know. When dey find my body, dey will not say dere is a man. Dey will say dere is a name. Dere is a name for dem to take and put on a wall in a country I have never been to, in a place I do not know exists. Dey will say dere lies a name for us to take and mould and make into a hero, a hero witout a face.”

 

The veteran had then gone on to take the teddy bear from his bag.

 

“Dis belongs to my baby son. My wife gave it to me before I left and said to use it to remember dem with. I use it to remember dem and I cherish it, as it is a symbol of the son growing up, a son that I never knew. It is a reminder that I am missing a life I deserve, to be here and lose one dat I do not care for. It is a reminder of how suddenly my life means nothing to me, and how it means even less to dose dat will find my body.

 

“Because when dey find my body I will be clutching dis bear. And dis bear will not be brown with fur, but red with blood, my blood and your blood and the blood of everyone in dis company who came here to die. The same blood dat is on de grass upon which we sit. But when dey find it, dey will not see dat. Dey will not see it and say, dere is a man with a wife and a child he never knew. Dey will not see it and say dat the bear is a symbol of my life. Dey will not see it and think to tell my wife and child dat dey found the bear dey had lost.

 

“Instead, dey will look at the bear in red and say dat there is a body and a stuffed toy dat should be burned. What is a toy in war? We both think of the same answer. A toy in a war is a man, not a stuffed bear.

 

“When dey see my body lying here, clutching at the life I never knew, dey will say dat there lies an arrangement for them to capture on film, or in a photo frame for their next museum, for their next crypt.

 

“So instead of wondering, start accepting dat out here we are no longer men to be cherished or men to be loved. Out here we become a name, a statistic, an engraving on a wall not yet built. Out here we mean nothing. Dis bear means nothing and I mean nothing. And in a few hours, here, on a piece of their land we name Fodderman’s Straight, a piece of land not ours to name, out here we will die and dey will find us and say dat here lies a hundred names and more. And let us hope dat den dey will have enough names for their memorial. Because dat way, no more men will have to become names.”

 

****

 

Official Statement from His Lordship’s Terran Armed Forces.

 

At approximately thirteen hundred hours Greenwich Mean Time the Fifty Second B Company were ambushed by the enemy and slaughtered. No survivors. Condolences are extended.

 

****

 

And it was so that a hundred stuffed animals were discovered on Fodderman’s Straight and a hundred names were engraved on a wall not yet built. And five hundred people mourned for men they never knew and claimed to care about a slaughter that had happened every day for as long as everyone could remember.

 

And it was so that one veteran from Africa was discovered clutching a bear in a wilderness alien to all but the dead. A man whose name Billy-Boy Johnston never learned.

 

Out there, on Fodderman’s Straight.

Reviews

[JohnL]

I didn't enjoy this story at all and I am sure that you as the author did not intend that anyone should. It is a brilliantly written inditement on the evils, pain and futility of war. The dialogue is excellent and portrays the fatalistic attitude with which the fighters have come to regard the certain imminence of their death. Even the terror of such a situation has been subsumed in the terrible fatalism which causes men to accept inevitability. The futility and perspective of war are cleverly demonstrated by the cynical discussion of the War Memorial and the required name quota while as ever, HQ sit well away from the conflict issuing bulletins of startling terseness:
"Official Statement from His Lordship's Terran Armed Forces. At approximately thirteen hundred hours Greenwich Mean Time the Fifty Second B Company were ambushed by the enemy and slaughtered. No survivors. Condolences are extended."
Sadly, while such politicians as do, inhabit the world stage - on all sides, there is little likelihood of change. ther

[richard hurndall]

What a depressing little story! Excellent dialogue, cracking descriptions and narrations. I like that term 'Fodderman's Straight'- you have utilised it well.
I guess the only thing this piece lacks is tension or conflict between the characters- the overriding theme of 'war is hell' comes out but no-one learns anything, which as I said leaves me with a feeling of depression. But maybe this is what you were aiming for!