The endless historical battlefield that began with World War I

The reception room is on the second floor. It used to be the attic of the granary, but now a window has been added and a table has been placed there.

Brigadier General Hill stood by the window. When Joseph came in, he didn't turn around, but looked out for a few more seconds before turning away.

Sergeant Lindbergh.

"General."

"sit."

Joseph sat down in the chair opposite the table.

Brigadier General Hill sat down on the other side of the table. On the table was a medal box and a stack of documents. The top document was open, and Joseph could see his name on it, followed by a dense record of his achievements.

"I looked at your file again, three times. Do you know why I looked at it three times?"

"have no idea."

"Because I couldn't understand it the first time," Brigadier General Hill said. "A sergeant from an ordinary infantry background, without military academy or officer experience, did all this. The first time I watched it, I thought it was luck; the second time, I thought someone was manipulating things behind the scenes; and the third time, I realized—it was one person's ability."

He turned to a page in the file, pushed it towards Joseph, and pointed at it with his finger: "I also looked at your file before you enlisted. A manservant at Exeter Manor, no military family members, and no record of attending university," he paused, a genuine sense of confusion in his voice, "manservant. That was your previous profession."

"Yes, General."

"A male servant," Brigadier General Hill repeated slowly, as if helping himself to accept the fact, "fought for a year on the battlefield using tactics I'd never seen before, fooled the German artillery in German, wrote a tactics manual that's already being used by junior officers in four battalions, and even predicted the gas wind direction in the Battle of Los." He closed the file, then looked at Joseph, "Linden, you were a male servant, tell me, where did you learn all this?"

"Read, General."

Brigadier General Hill paused for a moment. Then he spoke:

“I’ve met many intelligent people. Some are intelligent because of talent, some because of education, and some because of experience. Lyndon, you are the only one I can’t figure out—I don’t know where your intelligence comes from, but I know one thing,” he picked up the medal box and pushed it toward Joseph, “you deserve this medal.”

Joseph opened the box, glanced at it, then closed it and placed it on his lap.

"Thank you, General."

"Now I have a second question for you," Brigadier General Hill said, leaning forward. "I want to send you to military academy for formal officer training, and you'll come back directly as a lieutenant. What do you say?"

"General, my soldiers need me."

Brigadier General Hill sized him up.

"You know the average promotion rate for officers. If you stay on the front lines and climb the ranks step by step based on military merit, how long will it take?"

“Time doesn’t matter,” Joseph said. “My class has survived to this day because they trusted me. If I leave and someone else takes over, that trust will be broken.”

Brigadier General Hill placed his hand on the table, stared at him for several seconds, and then spoke:

"Lydon, you are the most incredible soldier I have ever met."

Joseph didn't say anything.

"I won't force you. I'll reserve a spot for you at the military academy. You can come find me anytime you want to go."

"Yes, General."

"Go."

Joseph stood up, stood at attention, turned around, and walked towards the door, clutching the medal box in his hand.

Outside the barn, the late autumn wind blew in, carrying the smell of rotten leaves and distant cannon fire.

*********************

Inside the bunker, O'Connor saw him come in, glanced at his chest, and fixed his gaze on the medal box that was protruding from his pocket.

"show me?"

Joseph took the medal box out of his pocket and tossed it to him.

O'Connor took the box, opened it, glanced at it, turned it over, rubbed the medal with her thumb, and said:

"Bright."

Give it back to me.

"Wait a minute, let me look a little longer."

"O'Connor".

"Alright, alright, here you go," O'Connor closed the box, shoved it into his hand, then leaned against the moat wall and said something not so casual, in a very casual tone, "You're worth it, Joseph, really, you're worth it."

Inside the bunker, candles burned, and the wind outside blew through the barbed wire, carrying the last bit of coolness of late autumn 1915.

**********************

January 1916, Somme River basin, northern France.

The sound of artillery fire coming from Belgium was unusually sparse today, with a few shots every now and then followed by silence.

The battlefront fell silent.

This silence was extremely rare in the trenches, so rare that it was unsettling—not because the danger had diminished, but because the soldiers had forgotten what "quiet" felt like.

O'Connor sat by the trench, disassembling and reassembling his rifle twenty times. Tom squatted beside him, munching on a hard biscuit, his jaw agape. McDonald pulled out a half-burnt candle from somewhere and frowned as he examined something closely.

No one spoke. The trench was as silent as a coffin.

Suddenly, a crisp metallic clang came from the other end of the bunker, followed by Joseph's voice:

"It's two millimeters off."

O'Connor looked up and gestured towards the bunker with her chin: "What's he up to now?"

Tom swallowed a biscuit, his face expressionless. "I don't know. Yesterday it was the periscope, the day before it was that pile of rags, and the day before that it was..." He frowned and thought for a moment, "The day before that it seemed to be a copper pipe."

"That copper pipe later became a mortar sight," McDonald added casually without looking up.

O'Connor looked at the rifle in his hand and said thoughtfully, "Do you think he might one day manage to build an airplane?"

"That's nonsense," Tom said. "He doesn't have that ability."

Another hammer blow rang out from the bunker, followed by Joseph's cheerful whistling of "Tipperelli the Distant," the tune off-key, carefree and utterly nonchalant.

The three of them exchanged a glance and silently reached a consensus: there was no need to go in and see; he would come out and show off himself later.

*********************

Joseph did indeed come out.

He held a pair of scissors in his hand—no, calling them "scissors" would be too unfair. The object was a full meter long, its entire body polished from scrap steel from discarded artillery shells, gleaming coldly. Unlike ordinary scissors, its two handles did not have only one pivot, but rather three or four hinge points riveted together, with copper fulcrums arranged along the handles, resembling an open crab claw.

Instead of rushing people to try it, he asked a question first.

"Do you guys remember what happened with B Company in Newcherpel?"

No one answered. But everyone remembered.

Before the attack, B Company was responsible for cutting through the barbed wire. They used standard short-handled shears, like those used by tailors, less than a foot long. When cutting the barbed wire, a person had to kneel or lie prone and reach forward. As the whole movement was performed, the person's buttocks and back would arch out of the grass, rising forty centimeters above the ground in the open. German machine gunners could see the bulge from three hundred meters away.

Four of the men who cut the network tunnel in B company died on the spot, and seven were injured.

The passage was eventually cut open, but only half of it was wide enough. The charging infantrymen were squeezed into the gap and were mowed down by German machine guns.

That happened last year, but no one in the trenches will forget that sound.

"Here, Tom," Joseph shoved the strange pair of scissors into Tom's arms, "Take this, lie down on your side, and cut that one."