Interrupted Journey

Chapter 4 - Jimbo

It was a raid like dozens we had experienced before: James, Jimbo and me in the main trench; six attackers with two or three firearms; no chance of success. They didn't even try to be subtle. They just came charging across the bridge, firing blindly.

And at the end of it, five of them were not moving, one lay groaning... and Jimbo was lying dead next to us. A lucky... or unlucky... bullet had found the gap between the rim of the trench and his helmet.

James and I knelt next to him in the trench: frozen... immobile... nothing in our training prepared us for this. Laura appeared with the reserve company and they, too, froze.

Then Mike was there, or at least his body was. The mind seemed almost entirely absent, hidden behind those terrifying eyes. According to the standing orders that he, himself had written, he should have remained in the observation post on the other side of the junction until relieved but, instead, he was down on the bridge, out of control and unpredictable. He stared up at Jimbo for several seconds then viciously kicked out at the surviving attacker.

"Mike, control yourself!" Laura said.

"I'll fucking show you control myself!" he shouted, landing another firm kick in the prone man's ribs.

"Mike," Laura insisted, "you're setting a terrible example."

"I'll show you an example. I'm going to burn the bastard!"

I decided I had to step in. "We are not in a combat situation," I said so that everyone could hear me. "Mike, as a senior civilian authority, I'm temporarily relieving you of command. Laura, you have command."

"You can't do that!" Mike yelled at me.

"I just have," I told him. "We can discuss the rights and wrongs of it later."

Laura nodded to Samson and the two of them moved to stand next to Mike. "Mike, please would you go quietly with Samson," she said. "I need to get things sorted out here."

Mike held himself rigid for several seconds then collapsed, tears streaming down his face. "Let me carry Jimbo up to the house," he managed to sob at last.

"Of course," Laura said, "off you go." She reached behind the prone prisoner's neck and gave a sharp twist. We all heard a snap and he stopped moving.

I couldn't help but reflect on the fact that casually breaking a wounded prisoner's neck was deemed the humane thing to do.

"Second company relieved," Laura snapped, jerking us all back into action. "Third company on duty. Come on, moving, people. Standing around and staring isn't going to bring him back. Phil, can you stay and give us a hand with this lot?"

Fortunately, by now, tidy up had become so routine that no conscious thought was required. Strip the dead of anything that might be useful, including any usable clothing. Try to pretend that you hadn't noticed that one of them was a girl who looked about twelve. Chuck any detached, non identifiable body parts in the river. Drag the remaining bodies and body parts down to the communal grave we had dug a few weeks ago, a little way downstream and well back from the river. Chuck them in without ceremony. Feel your own humanity evaporating a little with every broken corpse. Throw a skim of soil over them, but not too much - just enough to stop the smell and discourage predators. And finally, walk the couple of hundred yards down the road to the lay-by where attackers always left their packs - inevitably a pointless undertaking. If these people had had anything, they wouldn't have been involved in such a hopeless attack. Fortunately, this time, no small children had been left behind.

We buried Jimbo up at the top of the garden then, after the kids had gone to bed, we gathered around the kitchen table. We'd have drunk tea but the tea was starting to run out so we made do with water.