There Will Be Walrus: First Volume V Read online

  Behold the Valiants

  By Camouflage Flappypants (ha ha, I changed his name!)

  There were only six of us left in the foxhole. Our mortar attack on the Citadel of Evil had gone rapidly pear-shaped when we were caught in RPG crossfire from the Citadel. The psychoactive deception shielding prevented us from perceiving the true structure of the Citadel - it shimmered in our vision, taking on the appearance of a normal office building.

  I could see my comrades were becoming disheartened. They had begun to doubt their vision, themselves, their trust in our leader and their faith in the mission. Was I strong enough? Did I have it in me to lead? Somebody would need to take charge and sarge had bought it back when the dropship had collided into a gun emplacement disguised as a florist.

  I closed my eyes and prayed. I prayed not for victory and not for salvation but for hope.

  I looked up and it was if God had sent us an angel.

  An angel framed in light and carrying forty pounds of XM312 heavy machine gun like a lesser man might carry a satchel of beatnik inspired poetry books. For this man the point five-oh Browning Machine Gun cartridge was his Ginsberg and forty rounds per minute in five to seven round bursts was his Kerouac.

  He looked down at us, his expression caught between pity and contempt.

  “You let the enemy double-down. Have you forgotten my teachings?” he asked but we could not answer because the weight of his disappointment fell on us like brooding thunder clouds approaching a desolate beach of moral betrayal. We knew we had failed him and we knew we would sacrifice anything to regain his esteem. But we also knew hope had come and salvation and the promise of victory - in the form of Field Marshal Vax Doy Phd, MBE, Grande Maitre Légion d'honneur and Nobel prize recipient three times over.

  His shirt had been torn away by the blast of the rocket propelled grenade attacks from the citadel of evil, exposing his rippling muscles, that rippled as he stretched his arms southwards pointing us to safety. The muscles in his arms rippled as he showed us the way - yes, a retreat but one with honour and one made knowing that we would be back to fight again. As we left he turned his head scowling at the citadel, the muscles at the back of his head also rippling as his mighty brow flexed in anger at his mortal and cowardly enemies.

  We headed south towards our extraction point. Behind Field Marshall Vax kept up covering fire, accurately picking off enemy snipers with his precision machine gun technique. With his spare hand he lit a cigar as the muscles in that little spot between his ear and his jaw rippled in the light of the setting sun

  Safely in the belly of the specially customised Boeing CH-47 Chinook, its twin engine tandem rotors purring like a benevolent but angry mother lioness that is pulling its cubs away from a pack of hyenas by their scrawny knocks, we sat shame faced as Field Marshal Vax looked out at the field of our defeat.

  “Now listen men, we are heading back east to take out a secondary target.” said Vax, his voice rippling with authority in the same manner as his thigh muscles rippled through his tight uniform.

  “East, sir?” queried the roookie recruit timorously, “By the position of the sun we appear to be heading South?”

  We all shook our head knowingly. Classic rookie error.

  “Are you going all gamma on me private?” glared Vax, his eyes pinning the rocky to his seat like iron pilling pressed home by a pile driver.

  Vas turned and addressed us all: “Platoon! What mistake did this here private make?”

  “Sir!” we all replied in unison “He treated your description of our direction as dialectic sir!”

  “And what should he have done?” asked Vax, his commanding voice booming out over the drone of the Chinook’s powerful motors.

  “Sir! He should have recognised that it was rhetoric sir!”

  “That’s right. Only a gamma confuses rhetoric with dialectic son.” He said turning to the rocky with a more conciliatory tone. “If you ever want to be anything more than a gamma then you’ve got to learn that damn quick.”

  The Chinook dropped into high-stealth mode as we descended to land into Sea Girt, Monmouth County, New Jersey. We spread out in a delta-N assault landing formation, as the helicopter lifted off behind us. Just ahead was a sign saying “Mitchelville, Iowa” but we knew that sign was just Rhetoric and not Dialectic. Vas had taught us well. He’d translated the works of Humbert Echo the noted Italian Signologist.

  We gathered around the Field Marshal.

  “Boys, we have one of the worst and most dangerous leaders of our enemy to face. This creature is too vile to describe. Her crimes are legion and her powers of deception are beyond compare.” he explained, fixing each one of us in turn with his steely gaze.

  We nodded in unison then we chanted the Code:

  “One!”

  “Rely on the three Rs! RECOGNISE! REMAIN CALM! REALISE NO ONE CARES!”

  “Two!”

  “Don’t try to reason with THEM!”

  “Three!”

  “Do NOT apologise!”

  “Four!”

  “ACCEPT-YOUR-FATE!”

  “Five!”

  “Document their every word and action!”

  “Other Five!”

  “Do NOT resign!”

  “Seven!”

  “Make the rubble bounce!”

  “Five!”

  “Start nothing, finish everything!”

  We were ready.

  Eight hours later we had penetrated the outer-perimeter of the enemy emplacement. The reality-perception distorters were on full rhetoric. An unenlightened gamma might think they were looking at innocuous rest home for the aged. Those of us who have taken the red pill and gazed at the lies and deception that surrounds us knew better. This was an enemy base, bristling with enemies. Their vigilant eyes constantly surveying the grounds for any violation of the narrative. Point-and-shriek drones were ready to identify us and then descend on us like the harpies of Greek myth.

  We burst through the front door - Vax had decided a frontal assault would confuse their sensors. My vision swam - in front of me was what looked to be a reception desk and sitting there a smiling nurse. I knew it was all lies. A deception. A false seeming built from my subconscious desire to give in and join the narrative. I could see the rest of the platoon, dazed and confused by the right lights, the relaxing music, the decor cunningly designed by a legion of elitist lesbian feminists hell bent on imposing on the virile male a castrating culture of indignity.

  One by one the platoon succumbed. Zombie like they staggered out the door. Without immediate medical care they would end their days driving a Prius and attending transgender awareness classes.

  I struggled to keep my focus. I was going under…

  A mighty manly hand grabbed my bicep. Vax! He alone was immune to the siren sounds of the music.

  I staggered after Vax as he searched for his target.

  We knew we had scant minutes before the full force of the enemy reached us.

  Finally we burst into the room that housed the target.

  “Oh my!” said the evil harridan cunningly disguised as a sweet little old lady “Is that little Theodore? Oh I haven’t seen you since you were in short pants!”

  “Theodore?” I asked, puzzled.

  “DON’T LISTEN TO HER” screamed Vax, “ITS A TRAP”

  “Oh little Teddy always liked to play at soldiers. Are you doing one of those ‘cosplay’ things? I hear all the cool kids do that these days.”

  Vax fixed her with his steely gaze. “I’ve come to make you pay for your crimes MRS POOTER!”

  “Oh there, there Theodore. You can’t be still mad about having to sit in the corner. Daisy’s picture deserved that gold star and I’m afraid yours wasn’t very good.”

  “Ypu made me sit in a GIRL chair! It was PINK! I got COOTIES!”

  “Woah, hold on.” I put up my hands and stepped between the little old lady and Vax’s gun. “Are you telling me that this nice old lady was your kindergarten teacher? And t
he terrible crime was that she made you sit in the corner one time?”

  “Stand down soldier. I came here to complete a mission and I’ll do that whether you live or die in the process.”

  “Yeah but seriously, you can’t actually wage a war against people on the basis of petty grudges.” I said.

  Vax stared at me. The muscles in his ever so masculine nose rippling as he flared his nostrils.

  “My trust fund says that I can.”

  We escaped with moments to spare. I had had my moment of doubt but I came through thanks to a substantial lecture on the difference between rhetoric and dialectic plus a book contract and the promise of a Hugo nomination.

  We never did kill Mrs Pooter. The enemy were too quick for us, and we barely escaped to fight another day.

  Only Vax and I survived intact from that mission. I heard that two of the platoon have since got married and run a erotic florist in Wisconsin. The horror of their fate haunts me, but I fight on while Vax’s words still resonate in my skull: “Start nothing, finish everything.”

  The Second Fifth Generation of Warfare

  Introduction by Timothy the Talking Cat: Flight Rear Admiral General Fortescue-Billinghman USMT, HTTP, MD Retd is both an accomplished soldier, a military historian and one of the world’s leading tacticians. His seminal work “Tactical Loin Cloths - the Spartan Secret Weapon and the Underpants of Thermopylae” is a unique work that spearheaded the modern military focus on superior firepower through superior undergarments. We are extraordinarily privileged to have the opportunity to republish his essay here in this book. Previously the only way of accessing this essay was via a few carefully mimeographed copies that were circulated at his local golf club. Sadly due to Squirrel convergence and the connivance of the liberal establishment General Fortescue-Billinghman’s unique vision was cruel censored by the golf club and in clear violation of its constitution (not to mention natural justice) he was expelled for the invented crime of ‘stealing items of clothing’ from the club locker room.

  The Second Fifth Generation of Warfare

  Flight Rear Admiral General Fortescue-Billinghman USMT, HTTP, MD Retd

  The history of warfare is a history of steps. Each step is a stride and each stride is a leap. Each leap brings us further into the future and those leaps represent a forward stride that brings us stepwise beyond the past and towards our destination. By such movement we progress but by ‘progress’ I do not mean what Teddy Roosevelt would call “progressive” but rather the forward march of mankind onward towards a martial future.

  To envision these strides, picture a ladder. Imagine that ladder reaching upwards, with each rung another leap forward into you human destiny. Now picture that ladder as a staircase. Can you imagine it? Can you picture a big, broad sweeping staircase, such as you might find in the ballroom of a fancy hotel. Perhaps some colonial hotel in some third world capital city. A hotel that was once beautiful and glorious but which is now shabby and dilapidated due to the folly of independence and the end of Empire. Have you pictured this staircase? If so then it has far too many steps to it. That is a staircase far greater than we need. No, we need just a few steps. A small staircase such as might join one part of a house to a slightly lower part. Perhaps a house built on a slightly sloping block of land such that the back garden is at higher altitude than that of the front.

  Now each of those steps is a stride beyond the past. Picture each of them.

  The first is what we call the first generation of warfare. On this step we find the brute who simply throws sticks (or perhaps his own fifth) at his fellow man. He is disorganised and without strategy. From here he can either descend down the staircase, taking him closer to the corridor to the front door and the small table on which we keep the phone. It has a rotary dial but it no longer works. We have a different phone in the kitchen but I can’t be bothered using it. My son put it there but I don’t approve of it.

  Our brute can ignore the phone and the temptations of the front door and the small garden beyond. Instead the brute can make a leap up the ladder of progress and reach the second rung. We call this rung the Second Level of Warfare.

  On the Second Level of Warfare (or 2LW as we call it the forces) the warrior is enabled by the use of crafted weapons, tactical knowledge and appropriate undergarments. These may be a simple loin cloth or some more sophisticated arrangements of straps to provide adequate support during the vigorous movements of battle.

  Our now proud and well supported warrior is ready to take a further jump upwards on the escalator of martial achievement. This lurch onwards we call War Three Footing (or WTF). In WTF our warrior is now the beneficiary of industrialisation. This includes cannon, tanks, and also mass produced cotton garments. WTF is characterised by supreme strategy and war on a global scale as both woven and knitted garments are shipped from one nation to another.

  Surely this then is the pinnacle of warfare?

  Not so. For there are yet more steps. 4G Warfare makes use of mobile phone technology and EMF shielded protection for the warrior procreative faculties. It is vital that stray radio waves do not interfere with the fundamental virility of the warrior. It is from this virility that the warrior derives his martial strength and drive to victory.

  Nor is our upward journey complete for we must face the false peak of the First Fifth Generation of Warfare. In the F5GW the warrior must fight against the oppression of the narrow minded and the gutless. For in this generation the warrior is no longer given their true place in society but is repressed by the feminising influences of soy-milk, mass media propaganda and liberal college professors.

  Finally we reach the true of Second Fifth Generation of Warfare. The warrior must still face the threat of the forces of so called ‘progressive’ society but he does so with undergarments suitably designed for the task.

  It is to enable this “S5GW” apex of military prowess that I have devoted my latter years of work. I can now say, despite the naysayers and dullards who tried to prevent me, that I have succeeded. In conjunction with Cattimothy House Publishing I can offer to the discerning military man access to my unique invention. The S5GW under-short is a miracle of technology - flame proof, water resistant and proof from invasive surveillance methods. The S5GW makes use of sophisticated ‘nano’ materials that utilise unpatentable technology to provide the God-fearing warrior for justice to face the trials and tribulations of the modern ‘cyber’ battlefield in the secure knowledge that his most precious treasure is protected.