The end of the world

For Holly

Like a whisper she disappears…

In this realm she surrenders

To the Beauty at the end of the world.

(Soft world, (c) Holly Rene Hunter)

The end of the world, dibenn ar bend in Breton. I haven’t thought about those words in years. I look outside the high-speed train window. At close to 200 kms an hour, the immediate landscape becomes a bit of a blur. At a distance? The same old fields I’ve seen dozens of times before. In trains of old.

*

“Chartres. Le Mans. Laval. La Flêche… Terminus Rennes.”

I was taking the last -slow- train back to Rennes in Brittany, where my regiment was stationed. The 53^rd R.I. 53^rd Regiment of Infantry. Renamed during the Revolution. Ci-devant (before) King’s Regiment. Dissolved several times, re-constituted every time war loomed. That is: often. A very Breton regiment. Its motto: “En avant Bretagne”, “Forward Brittany!”.

Mine was a true combat regiment. Not a city regiment, where your biggest risk of injury is a paper cut. This particular regiment was part of a Marine Infantry division. Serious shit. Even when you were just doing your military service. (I like the word service.)

Boot camp was all right. The first 6 weeks designed to turn a mixed lot into soldiers of the Republic. A mix of Normand and Breton working class all the way to Parisian College graduates. Not to mention another odd mix of commissioned and non-commissioned officers. Some were all right. Others were convinced that the Russians would attack any minute and the troop had to be prepared. (That was a good while ago. Perspectives change with time.)

Lots of exercise, getting us in shape for whatever war would be coming. Walking for miles, with or without heavy loads. Running every morning. I was all right. I’d done a fortnight’s mountain hike with a friend just before joining the regiment. Two weeks of hiking up and down mountain passes of 3,000ft. Keeps you fit.

Of course, one understood early enough the rigidity of military procedures. How to recognize ranks. How many stripes is a major. Always salute first if you’re a private. Just to be on the safe side. Then there were silly things like “Hompdei, Hompdei!”

“What’s that, Sergeant?”

“It means one-two, one-two when you’re marching in.”

“Then why don’t you just say one-two? Easier, no, Sergeant?”

“Because that’s the way it’s always been done. Stop asking stupid questions, Kerlatoux, go back in the ranks. NOW!”

I went back to the ranks. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Erwan de Kerlatoux. Erwan is pronounced Ayrwahn in English. More or less. If you like labels, I can be referred to as small Breton nobility. Technically, I’m a Count or something, though a cousin of mine twice removed claims he is the true Count of Kerlatoux. I couldn’t care less. There is a family castle half in ruins somewhere in Brittany. Near the Point of Plouha, halfway between Paimpol and Saint-Brieuc. The family lost it during the Revolution anyway. Being Bretons, they participated in the civil war between the new Republic and the Royalistes. That war was called the Chouannerie. Hard to explain the name. (What you can read in Kikipedia, is… just not quite what I’ve heard all my life.)

Chouan is a contraction of chat-huant, which in English would be howling-cat, the name given to the small owls that nest in the hedges. The Chouans, the Royalists, imitated the owl’s howl as a rallying call.

Anyway, as oft happens, half my family fought for the King, the other half – mine – fought for the new Republic. A bloody mess.

Going back to boot camp, it was all right. More or less. Like going back to boarding school, been there, done that, with the usual number of morons. Only older. The proportion of morons was roughly the same across rank. Humanity you know.

Basically, Boot camp was about learning how to get out of trouble. Stay out of the way. I’ve never been too good at that. Anyway, all went reasonably well until the end of Boot Camp when we were all transferred to our final companies. Mine was 3rd Company, what Americans would call Company C. Under the command of the dreaded Captain MacDonald.

*

“Chartres. Le Mans. Laval. La Flêche… Terminus Rennes.” I still remember the names so vividly. The station names called out on the platform, when one took the very last train from Paris at the end of a permission. The catch with the last train? It could stop almost everywhere. The direct train took about 4 hours from Paris to Rennes. The “all-stops” could take 6 hours. Not steam trains, but almost. Some still had wooden benches in the compartments.

Now? At 200+ kms an hour, one reaches Rennes in an hour and half. I’m not stopping in Rennes though. Not this time. My final destination? The end of the world. Dibenn ar bed.

*

My first meeting with Captain MacDonald was actually not unpleasant. He pinned my corporal stripes on my fatigues.

“Kerlatoux!” he said, “congratulations. I’m sure we’ll pin sergeant stripes on you soon.”

“Yes, Captain, Sir.” Said I. I wasn’t too sure about the sergeant thing though. I had a feeling corporal was as high as I would get… Premonition? The Captain had a bad, very bad reputation in the regiment. But that day he looked straight into my eyes. Which is unusual for me. Many people tend to evade my eyes. Why? My eyes are what we call des yeux pers in French. Hell if I know how to say it in English. My left eye is blue, my right eye is green. Some don’t even notice. Others don’t quite know which eye to look at. In primary school, some would make fun of my eyes. Generally, both of us ended up with black eyes, and in the Principal’s office. After a while, nobody made fun of my eyes. Now? Many people avoid my eyes… It’s all right. I’m used to it.

*

“We have now reached the speed of 250kms per hour,” the conductor says over the sound system.

We must have passed Chartres and le Mans already. Amazing. We should be in Brest in a short while. Brest is the furthermost city of France to the West. Pure Brittany. The capital of the Finistère department. Finistère comes from Finis terræ in Latin, the end of the world, as it was known to the Romans. Not the Gauls. The end of their world was a bit further West. Out at sea.

*

3^rd Company. A French regiment is similar to an Anglo-Saxon Battalion. 4 combat companies, 2 support companies handling lorries, equipment, food, cooks. Overall, a thousand men. No women in those days. Under the command of a Lieutenant-Colonel. A few commandants (Majors) below, each company under the orders of a Captain, with a Lieutenant or an Adjudant-Chef, the highest non-commissioned rank, a few sergeants, and at the very end of the chain of command, the corporal. Me.

Just imagine, an order comes down from the Ministry of Defence, through the joint Chiefs to the General in command of the Division, then to the Colonel in command of the Regiment, down to the Captain of Charlie Company, all the way to the corporal who’s supposed to make the privates execute the order… Fun.

I remember a night shooting exercise in maneuvers right in the middle of nowhere. As corporal, I was in charge of the shooting exercise. All men aligned a few yards away from each other, shooting at targets placed a safe distance away, different weapons, rifles, machine guns, pistols, whatever. One of my men was missing. I’d covered his absence, knowing he was probably at a nearby bar, getting drunk. Not my problem.

The exercise was going well. Real ammo of course. Following all safety procedure. Then the missing guy came around. Staggering. Drunk to his ears. I stopped him.

“What the F… are you doing here? You’re drunk!”

“I c-c-came for the sh-sh-shooting”, he stammered.

“Man! You can’t shoot! You’re drunk. I’m not giving you a weapon with real ammo. You’ll turn around and kill somebody. Get out. Don’t let the Captain see you.”

In the next fraction of second I had a knife to my throat.

“Whadda ya mean I c-c-can’t shoot?” He said.

A knife on your throat is an interesting sensation. Heightens your senses. It was probably an Opinel #9. We all carried knives. Practical. To cut Army rations open, slices of saucisson, cut strings or ropes to tie stuff up. Or stick on your corporal’s throat.

The challenging thing about having a knife on your throat is that you can do absolutely nothing. Not-a-thing. Apply commando-training-against-an-opponent-with-a-knife? No dice. The training supposes the guy with a knife is one or two yards away, not – yet – touching you. On the throat? Any movement you make, you’re dead. So, without batting an eye-lash I said:

“Sure. No prob. You wanna shoot? Be my guest. Go grab yourself a gun. Over there. On the right.”

Once the knife was out of my throat and the guy was stumbling towards the piled guns, I ran the other way calling:

“Captain! Over here!”

His job after all, wasn’t it? He gave me a week’s arrest for not keeping discipline.

*

“We have now reached the speed of 300kms per hour.”

300kms an hour is always impressive. I’ll arrive in no time.

I think about the telegram in my jacket pocket. A telegram! Who sends a telegram now? I actually thought they’d been… erased. Stopped. Cancelled. Well, no. This is France… They probably still use pigeons somewhere.

I pull the telegram out of my pocket.

“THEY GONNA MOVE THE WHISPERERS. STOP. PLEASE COME QUICKLY. STOP. SOLEN.“

How did she find me? I have moved a few times in all those years though we still send Christmas cards. Well, she found me. I cabled back. From my phone. I found an app where you can send a telegram the old-fashioned way. I sh.t you not.

“TAKING THE HIGH-SPEED TO BREST TOMORROW. STOP. WILL ARRIVE FOLLOWING DAY. STOP. ERWAN.“

*

“I’ll break you, Kerlatoux”, Captain MacDonald said. “Do you hear me?!”

“Yes, Sir.” I said. (Yes, I hear you. No, you won’t break me.)

This was one of my weekly thrashings by Captain MacDonald. Why a Scottish name for a French officer? His ancestors were Scot knights who sold their sword to a French King or the other, at the time when Scotland was still more or less independent. Better the French than the English then I guess? Captain once told me:

“Who do you think you are, Kerlatoux? My ancestors fought under King Henry II!”

(Mine went to the crusades, dummy, said I not.) Henry II, (1519-1559), our Henry II, not the English Henry II, was accidentally killed in tournament by Montgomery, the Captain of his Scottish guard. My Captain’s ancestor probably came from that Scottish guard. I thought they’d all run away after the King’s demise. Apparently one had not. Damn.

Why the mutual dislike, borderline hatred with the Captain? I’m not quite sure, we’d started reasonably well. Even having a few intelligent discussions after the workday. He had a B.A. in French Lit. in addition to Saint-Cyr-Coëtquidan (our West Point). It should have gone all right. We probably did not read the same authors.

Maybe I asked too many questions? Or questioned too much? My personal point was that I was a soldier of the Republic, therefore entitled to ask questions, or to question, while strictly obeying orders. Captain didn’t like questions.

Or was it my reading? I used to read the “War of Algeria” by Yves Courrière. Paperback. One volume fitted nicely in the pockets of my Army fatigues. I’d read when we had a break. Officers frowned at the cover. My captain disliked my reading tremendously. Or perhaps he disliked the fact that he could not forbid me to read. Or he just disliked me, period. Mutual feeling.

Whatever the reason, he was always on my back. He thought he could break me. He almost did. But what he did not realise was that I was in the Army for a strictly limited time: 12 months, 52 weeks, 365 days… After that he could not touch me. All I had to do was take his daily crap and say “Yes, Sir.”

*

Then the tanker crashed. Didn’t see the light house. Crashed straight into the westernmost French island. The island at the end of the world. Enez penn ar bed in Breton. It has another name on the maps, but Bretons call it that way. Some call it Dibenn ar bed, the end of the world. I call it Ar Dibenn.The end.

The tanker split in two. Started spilling oil on the shore of the small island and into the sea. It had happened before on other parts of the French coast. Far easier on the coast to send personnel to clean the beaches, the birds… Not on Ar Dibenn.

As it happened, the glorious 3^rd Company, aka Charlie Company was on alert that day. Regiments then rotated on alert in case of a major disaster. Our regiment was on alert that month. Our company was in the rotation… third week of the month. Count your luck.

Off we went in open military lorries, in the middle of November. Equipped with boots, shovels and brooms to fight the black tide. A few hours ride to Audierne, the closest port to the island. Then off we’d sail.

A good third of the company hit the local bars while the Captain looked for the boat that would take us all to the island. I did tell the men to go easy on the booze. They had no idea what the sea would be like…

To be continued…

“Softworld” extract (c) Holly Rene Hunter. All rights reserved. This story is for you, Holly.

This is a work of fiction, lalala… (For Legalese, go to “The Senator and the Machine”)