BATTLEFIELD

History Wins

Principal Gulfert was sitting in a chair with a heavy metal frame and light cushioning for the seat and backrest. The chair was a very light green color, just like his desk, which was also made of metal. He didn't like his office and today he really didn't like his job. It was 10:27 pm on Monday, October 10th, 1983 and the entire school was empty, everyone was gone, even the janitors. So, Gulfert thought it was time to get drunk! He sat there with a bottle of Johnnie Walker whisky, which he poured into a lead crystal whisky glass and continued to puff away on his Havana cigar, which he had gotten for Christmas from a old friend working now in Washington state for some small computer company called Microsoft. 

As Gulfert drank his whisky, smoked his cigar, and played with the Battlefield medallion in his left hand, he kept thinking about his job and all the things that happened today. He was  responsible for an entire junior-high school and so many people were on his back today about this small beautiful golden medallion.  The School Superintendent, the school board, the Mayor, the city council, the teacher's union, the bus company, the police, the park board, parents, students, and neighbors across the street from the school, were all yelling at him and expecting him to solve all their problems. After a day of destruction and almost dying twice, once with the samurai and ninjas from 16th Century Feudal Japan, then once with Custer's US Seventy Cavalry and Sioux Warriors at the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

He kept looking at the medallion and reflecting upon his life. He had been divorced for a little over one year, after twenty-five years of marriage. His five kids were all away at out of state colleges or working at jobs far away from the town of Greenfield. He had kept the five bedroom house, because his wife wanted to be free of Greenfield and to find herself in California, land of the fruits and the nuts, every fruit a little nutty and every nut a little fruity. The house was big and empty, the wife had taken most of the furniture, all the family photo albums, and all the family pets, a dog and a cat. He was lonely in the big house all by himself and he had no time to find a girlfriend with his hectic schedule. To make it worse, his house was less than one block away from the school, which made him feel tied down to a job that he felt was killing him. 

Gulfert kept staring at the medallion as he swung the medallion back and forth in his hands. He was feeling a little better now, not because of the booze or the stogie, but because the medallion told him he was going to be the greatest principal in the world, which will one day chant his name like a god. With these feelings, Gulfert stopped feeling sorry for himself and decided to put the medallion over his head and rested the medallion over his neck and chest. He decided he wasn't going to hang out here anymore and he was going straight home with his medallion, his medallion!

The Principal of Greenfield Junior-High School took one more drink, one more puff on his cigar, put away his Johnnie Walker Whisky bottle and box of Havanas into his bottom desk drawer making sure to lock it up. Just as he was closing up his office, he noticed it was starting to rain heavily and by the time he locked up the school office it was thundering and lightning outside. Gulfert didn't care, he was actually looking forward in getting wet walking home.

In the front entrance way of the school, Gulfert stood there thinking or really he was listening. He was listening to the medallion, which told him to put down medallion one more time on the floor for fun, nobody was around, and if he didn't like what he saw, then he could pick it right back up, no problem!

Gulfert took off the medallion held it in his right hand and dropped the medallion to the hard school main entrance floor. There the medallion clanged and wobbled loudly. The medallion soon stopped moving and laid still on the floor. 

He looked and listened in the school main entrance way and nothing happened! Quiet, very quiet , a stillness really, except for the pounding rain with thunder and lightning outside. Nothing inside was happening!

He decided he had wasted enough time playing and was going to lift up the medallion from the floor and go home. 

At that exact moment, he saw a mist of fog rolling into the main school entrance way and was happy. Gulfert started to laugh, which soon turned into a gleeful sensation that gave him goosebumps and he smiled like he hadn't smiled in over a year. 

The fog mist soon reached Gulfert where he was standing and his laughter stopped. His smiling happy face changed to a face of shock and pain. The mist of fog was really a cloud of poisoned gas, a chemical weapon or later known as a weapon of mass destruction(WMD). 

Gulfert was coughing and couldn't breath! His eyes and nose leaked with tears and snot. Gulfert collapsed on the floor leaning with his right hand to pick up the medallion, which would save his life. 

Unfortunately for Gulfert, as he put his right hand over the medallion and grasped part of the medallion into a partial fist, a muddy combat boot stomped hard on top of his hand and smashed flat his hand with cruel fierceness.

Gulfert screamed out in agonizing pain, but his throat was having difficulty vocalizing. He looked up and he saw a soldier in field grey trousers and uniform top, equipped with an ammunition belt, rifle with a bayonet, a gas mask, and a steel helmet, one of those German looking helmets from the first world war. 

The World War One German soldier with his long knife like bayonet fixed to his rifle, stabbed Gulfert with three jabs in the back. Gulfert laid motionless on the cold hard school floor. Gulfert was dead!

However, something far worse had happened! The medallion was still resting on the floor, but the medallion had been broken. It broke into three pieces with the German soldier stomping Gulfert's tightly clinched hand placed around the medallion. Even if the medallion could be picked up, nothing would send the world war one soldier disappearing back into history. The First World War was trapped at Greenfield Junior-High School in 1983, not where it should be, 1917 Europe.

The school main entrance way and main hallway began to fill up with more World War One gas masked German soldiers with bayonet fixed rifles. Then there was  the sound of rifle fire and in the far end of the main hallway there appeared more World War One soldiers, but these soldiers looked a little different, especially due to their frisbee shaped helmets. They looked like British World War One soldiers. 

Both sides, the Germans and the British kept firing at each other, until the mustard gas mist started to thin out and vanish. Then the two sides retreated from the school main entrance way, which became no man's land. The two sides each took over one half side of the school and started to fortify their positions. 

There were about 600 German soldiers and the British had about the same number.

The Germans had taken over the Cafeteria Lunchroom and many of them were sitting at the lunch tables taking off their gas masks trying to breath fresh air again. All the German soldiers sat together gabbing about how stubborn the British were and they were all questioning where they were, but two of the German Soldiers were talking about the weird foreigner who was caught in the mustard gas attack and stabbed to death by one of their fellow comrades. They both looked over at the lunch table behind them and there sat a lone German soldier taking off his helmet and gas mask, exposing a pale thin twenty something face with a long mustache, thick head of black hair needing a haircut, and spooky looking wolf blue eyes.

The two soldiers looking back at the lone soldier just kept staring at the loner, until one soldier asked the other soldier...

 "That's the one who stabbed the strange foreigner?"

"Ja, that's the one who stabbed the strange foreigner in the gas attack!"

"He looks odd. Do you know that weird looking crow?"

"Ja, he's in my unit!"

"What's his name?"

"Hitler, Adolf Hitler!"