Wars to End All Wars: Alternate Tales from the Trenches Read online

  Table of Contents

  Introduction, by N. E. White

  The Girl with the Flaxen Hair, by Igor Ljubuncic

  Wormhole, by Lee Swift

  Jawohl, by Wilson Geiger

  Tradition, by Elizabeth Moon

  On the Cheap, by Dan Bieger

  One Man’s War, by G.L. Lathian

  The Foundation, by Andrew Leon Hudson

  Copyright Notices

  Editor’s Note

  Wars to End All Wars

  Alternate Tales from the Trenches

  Anthology, Edited by N.E. White

  WARS TO END ALL WARS

  Copyright © 2014, N.E. White

  Compiled and edited by N. E. White & Rob H. Bedford

  Cover design by Joe Bailey

  Interior Design by JW Manus

  All rights reserved. This story collection remains the copyrighted property of the individual authors, and no material in this book may be copied or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage-and-retrieval systems, without the express written consent of the author, except for brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.

  These are works of fiction. All people, places, events, and organizations are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to any places, events or organizations is purely coincidental.

  Introduction

  * * *

  N.E. White

  World War One was once touted as the war that would end all wars. It was even called the Great War, because until that time, in Europe, known history had not recorded a conflagration that spanned so many borders.

  In the summer of 1914, war was declared between Germany and Russia, between Belgium and Italy, and between the Ottoman Empire and England.

  With the current unrest in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, it is not hard to imagine the tensions escalating to the level needed for a ‘great war’. What is hard to believe is that one hundred years have gone by without permanent resolutions to conflicts that seem destined to continue with each new generation.

  When my fellow SFFWorld.com members and I decided on the theme for this collection of stories, we thought the 100-year anniversary of World War One would be fitting, even though our aim was to write alternate tales or add speculative-fictional elements to historic events. And I had the naïve assumption to expect uplifting stories.

  It is often said that historical fiction reflects the issues plaguing a writer in their current generation, not the generation written about. At the beginning of this year, I thought the future was relatively bright and imagined our fictional World War One stories would highlight the good things that happened in that war, or, at the very least, could have happened. But this was before the escalated civil war in Syria, the unrest and fighting in Crimea and the Ukraine, as well as the battle between Palestine and Israel.

  My fellow writers proved more attuned to world events than I, as well as the events that spawned the Great War. In this collection, you’ll find tales reflecting the realities of war; the horror, triumph, despair, quirky humor, and tradition. We’ve held the war to end all wars up to a speculative light, and come away with our own stories. Stories that I hope will inform and cause reflection. Each tale is followed by a link to a Wikipedia site detailing the events that inspired the story or an explanation of what real event on which the author based their story.

  Many thanks to this year’s story selection committee, consisting of myself, Rob H. Bedford, senior reviewer at SFFWorld.com, and Dag Rambraut, owner of SFFWorld.com, without which this collection would not exist. Also, I would like to extend a special thanks to Elizabeth Moon, award winning Science Fiction and Fantasy author, for agreeing to participate in this project by contributing a re-print of her story, “Tradition”.

  Before I leave you, one quick note: SFFWorld.com supports an international community. We have authors from the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and even Spain! British and U.S. spelling has been preserved (for the most part) in each story according to its author’s origin.

  Thanks for reading,

  N. E. White

  The Girl with the Flaxen Hair

  * * *

  Igor Ljubuncic

  Coward, coward, coward, the girls cried. He remembered standing in the field, crying. He remembered the tall grass fluttering in the wind, slapping his thighs. He remembered the girls pointing, jeering, laughing. Most of all, he remembered the willowy girl with the flaxen hair, Anka. She had promised him a kiss if he walked into the field. Now, his pants were wet, and the shaggy brown billy, with its wedge-shaped head and curled horns, looked like it was about to charge again.

  Gavrilo shut his eyes hard, and the memory of mockery faded. I’m no coward, he told himself.

  The real world returned, the sounds, the excitement, the anticipation. People were lined down the side of the road, all in their best clothes, awaiting the motorcade. It should arrive any moment, Gavrilo reminded himself, trying to steel his nerves. His eyes scanned the crowd, looking for his accomplices, but all he could see was a mess of colors. His fingers tightened on the grip of the semi-automatic hidden in his coat pocket, running a thumb over the manufacturer’s logo.

  Someone bumped into him.

  Slowly, in order not to raise suspicion, Gavrilo looked at the offender.

  A slim shape, a woman, with a brown woolen coat too hot for a warm June morning thrown over her shoulders. She sensed his gaze and turned, a beautiful mane of pale gold hair wreathed around her face.

  His heart froze.

  It was Anka.

  No, it was just a woman with long, flaxen hair and a happy smile. She was looking at him, a beautiful smile dancing on her lips, and he swore she mouthed the word coward as she moved on into the crowd and vanished. He blinked. The girl was gone.

  Gavrilo swallowed a lump. His stomach roiled. How could it be? He had not seen Anka in thirteen years. What was she doing here? There was no way she could have known he would be in the city. Only a handful of people knew about his plan. It couldn’t be her. He was just too nervous.

  A collective sigh rose in the audience, and he heard the crackly rumble of an automotive engine to his left. His thoughts scattered like frightened pigeons, and in their place, a cold purpose settled. Not a coward, he told himself and moved closer.

  Seconds stretched like treacle as he waited and waited, and the Phaeton came into view. The archduke was seated on the left, his wife on the right, neither looking left nor right. Gavrilo licked his lips. It wasn’t his turn just yet. There were three other operatives ahead of him. He had been chosen to be last, and he could not escape the smidgen of doubt that even his superiors questioned his prowess.

  The motorcade crawled forward.

  Nothing happened.

  His heartbeat quickened, and he pushed down a heave of panic. Maybe they had been exposed? Maybe his friends had lost their nerve. Suddenly, a loud noise rocked the street. A cloud of shocked silence descended on the crowd as people tried to understand what had just happened. Then, there was chaos. The city folk in the front were pushing back, those in the back were trying to edge forward, to see. Gavrilo saw the fourth car, the one behind the archduke’s, stopped in the middle of the road, its doors mangled, a veil of dust settling around it, gasoline leaking from its shredded metal skin. Someone was running down the Latin Bridge. It was Nedeljko. P
olice officers were chasing him.

  Gavrilo did not wait to see what was going to happen. He bunched his shoulders, and with his hand still firmly on the pistol grip, he walked up the street, toward Moritz’s Delicatessen. Just meters away, the calm returned, and only a few curious bystanders were craning their necks down the river, trying to figure out the reason for the commotion.

  His feet took him down Franz Joseph’s street, and he found himself leaning against a poplar, thinking. What now? Was their mission foiled? Should he wait? Or devise his own plan how to assassinate the Austrian heir?

  He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but then he saw the black Graf & Stift take a left turn into the street, rolling straight toward him. No guards, no police officers. It was the archduke and his wife, and a confused driver looking at the houses, trying to get his bearings. Gavrilo pushed himself off the bark and stepped onto the cobbled road. He felt light and fluttery.

  He pulled the pistol from his pocket and leveled it at the enemy, squinting down the iron markers. Then, they saw him. Rather than speeding away, the frightened driver slammed on the brakes and halted the car. The engine rattled its steady cadence, like drums of death. No one was around. It was the perfect moment. Gavrilo stepped closer still.

  The heir to the Austrian throne was unnervingly calm, his wife, a dainty, pale figurine at his side. Ferdinand did not even blink. He just stared back, looking at the black weapon in Gavrilo’s fist, daring him to fire the shots. Coward, his royal eyes proclaimed. Coward!

  Why was his aim wavering, Gavrilo wondered. His hand should be steady. He heard Anka laughing behind him. Distracted, he looked away. No one was there. He could do it. He could end the Austrian oppression over his people. He could be the hero of his nation.

  Kill both of them. Right there.

  Coward.

  Maybe he was.

  He lowered the pistol and ran away.

  Gavrilo wiped the drops of muddy clay from his face. That last shell had exploded really close to the trench. But no one worried about the cannonade any more. There was nothing you could do. You could not run away from the mortars. After a while, the whine of a bomb arcing toward you was almost a promise of salvation.

  He looked at the carbine in his hands. Three years back, he had toted a different weapon, aimed at the enemy of his nation. Now, he was fighting alongside his enemy, in the ranks of its army, all because he was a coward. He could have ended it all right then. By killing the heir, he would have made the Austrians realize the cost of their occupation, and they would have ceded control of the lands to his people. They would have retreated, and there would have been peace in the Balkans.

  Now, because of his hesitation, there was war again.

  Not long after their encounter, Ferdinand had ascended the throne and immediately declared war against Russia. Hapsburg troops had been sent to fight the Tzar and ever since, he and his fellow soldiers were entrenched at the outskirts of Chelm, trying to fend off the Tzar’s men.

  They shared the smelly trench with the Hungarians, a rowdy and loud bunch, who did not seem worried that the Russians were lobbing death above their heads. Instead, they spent most of the time gambling with rat tails and eating carrot compote. Their erratic language racked on his nerves.

  A whistle blew a long, thin note. Time to charge out of the trenches.

  The Serbian Regiment was going to be first. Gavrilo stole a dark look at the Hungarians. With all the leisure and fearlessness he did not have, they were stowing away their food, checking the clasps on their harnesses, fastening their gear, getting ready for the second wave. All around him, thin and terrified men of his ilk were making their last prayers and nudging toward the ladders.

  Gavrilo cinched the rifle and climbed into a world of death.

  Thin rain and fog veiled the field, and his old boots sank into the wet earth. He was tired after the third step, and there were three hundred more until the Russian line. Crying senseless defiance, breathless soldiers rushed forward in a ragged line, officers following just behind, making sure no one lagged. You could dally and be shot for treason, or brave your luck against the Russian machine guns and snipers.

  Gavrilo wasn’t coward enough to fall down just yet.

  The distant noise of battle became close and personal. Bullets whirred all around him, but you couldn’t see them. Shells fell, and the mist stirred, and men toppled like torn dolls, but still you could not see the enemy, the smoking barrels of their guns, the hatred on their faces. There was just an endless field and mud and death.

  Gavrilo could hear his heart pumping hard, the combat gear pressing into his narrow shoulders. His feet dragged, their manacles of clay sticky and heavy. Blood thumped in his temples, and his vision blurred with each blow. Screams rose and faded around him, senseless, sharp, sudden, long and protracted, everywhere and yet so close and so intimate. From the corner of his eye, he glimpsed fellow Serbian soldiers falling on their faces, the tautness of life snuffed out of their bodies. Others sat down and gripped their innards, wailing for their mothers and wives and their god.

  He was fighting to prove them wrong. And because he was too afraid to disobey.

  The Hapsburg army recruiters had snatched him off the street near Tuzla, before he could have mustered the courage to resist, to try to flee, to hide in the villages until the storm of war had passed. Later, he could have fled the training camp, or jumped off the train along any stretch of pasture encircling the railway, near Belgrade, Moravice or Krakow. He could have. But he had not.

  He marched forward, closer and closer to the Russians, but the stretch of no-man’s land would not end. Something splashed in a pond of mire next to him, and cold mud washed him. Moments later, he realized his ears were ringing with painful silence, and ghosts of voices past were cackling their tune. Coward, coward, coward.

  More noise, more bullets, more death. Their regiment was just a few men now, marching forward, long gaps in their broken formation. Gavrilo looked behind and swore. The Hungarians were coming too, but their line held tight and true. He tasted blood in his mouth and realized he had bitten his cheek. He spun around. There was that mist, the yellowish pall everywhere. He lost his sense of direction. Where were the Russians? Which way was forward?

  Men walked or limped past him, unseeing, focused on some target only they saw. Running everywhere. He saw Lieutenant Milosav, plodding through the brown soup, walking away from him. Maybe that was where the enemy troops lurked. Or maybe the officer was chasing down a deserter, who had turned away from the fight.

  The fog thickened. Men became avatars, shapes without details. Sounds wrapped him, and he could swear there was someone just behind him, breathing hard and raspy, phlegm tittering in their throat. No, that was him. That was his own weak chest. His legs gave way and he stumbled, sinking in the mud. No, he had to get up. They would gun him down if they thought he had lost courage and would not fight the Russians anymore. He would not be a coward.

  Wiping the mud off his rifle, Gavrilo rose on leaden feet and trudged on into a shiny patch of jaundice mist. That must be the morning sunlight, that must be east, where the Tzar’s troops were. Now, there was no one left around. He was all alone in the eerie world. Sounds came and went, curses and wails, dull thunder of cannon rounds, the sputter of rifle shots, the smack of shredded human bodies landing in the wet, trampled grass. He could not see any of those, but he saw them all right, in his mind.

  Still no sign of the Russian trenches. Was he going in the wrong direction? More to the right. Yes. He veered. He stepped over a dead man. Looked like an enemy soldier, so that must be a good sign. He was close to their ranks. Then, there it was, the wall of metal stakes and rusty barbed wire, with patches of uniforms and eaten flesh hanging from the hooks, suspended like a tailor’s mannequins. You could no longer tell who they might have been, all color and humanity long washed away from their mangled forms. Just wrinkled muddy brown death in lurid poses.

  Gavrilo made an attempt to step over
the nearby stretch of concertina. His trouser leg snagged, he lost balance and fell on his face. Instinctively, he raised his weak, tired arms still holding the unused carbine, and landed flat on a thin line, wire cutting deep into his skin. The rifle tangled, and he lost his grip, flipping over like a worm, the barbs raking his arms, his neck.

  Something resembling a scream tried to whelp its way to his swollen, bloody lips. He thrashed, fire lancing up and down his legs and hands, wire slicing ever deeper into his forearms, into the back of his hands. Dark blood leaked onto the mud. Panting, wailing, Gavrilo managed to lower himself onto the ground, back pressed into bits and pieces of dead men’s gear, with legs turned at an odd angle and still hanging from the concertina.

  Then he heard someone taunting.

  In Russian.

  He tried to make himself very still, very much dead. Tears running down the side of his cheeks into his ears, he focused on freeing his right hand first. Carefully, he worked the wire hook between his thumb and finger out, and then pulled until the sleeve tore. Not much, but he could at least reach down into his harness and grab the cutter. His fist closed. Arm trembling with agony, he unbuttoned the old leather pouch and grabbed the ancient metal tool. With a slow, deliberate motion, he worked the wire braced round his left hand. There wasn’t much strength in his ruined right palm, but the wire was old and rusty, and he cut through. More jeering, more words in Russian.

  He reached behind him, touching his wet neck, trying to understand how badly he was wounded. Just scratches. Ugly, deep scratches, but his muscles weren’t torn. He sat up as best as he could.

  Gavrilo saw a shape looming above him. Stepping out of the mist like a folklore monster, a Russian infantryman approached him, wearing a rather clean dark green uniform and long boots. Gavrilo realized the man had not seen him. The enemy was looking ahead, staring into the fog, unconcerned about the display of the dead hanging from the wires. The Russian was frowning, because he could not see anyone. Gavrilo breathed through his half-clogged nostrils, and inched his hand toward the rifle. His right fingers grazed the stock. He touched the strap.