Free Articles of War by Nick Arvin Page A

skirted scattered farms. The moon rose. Heck touched the silver of the music box in his pocket. On a dirt road through a wood they drove at high speed with only glimmers of moonlight to guide the way and ahead they could hear shouting and trucks.
    They burst from the woods into a clearing and a scene of pandemonium. The driver braked and said, “This is the medical post. Here we are.” He looked at his wounded passengers as if he expected them to get out, which, dazed, they did.
    A house was burning, casting everything in a quavering and uncertain light and sketching long black unsteady shadows over the ground. Someone was shouting about
a spy, a saboteur.
Trucks and jeeps roared away while others arrived. Men ran around, others limped, and some moved, supporting each other. More than a dozen men lay on the ground, on stretchers; several were screaming. The fire was rapidly consuming a corner of a large farmhouse, and it was spreading. Occasionally someone threw an ineffectual bucket of water at it. More men on stretchers were being passed hurriedly out a window of the house. The shadows of men and trucks and jeeps wobbled and leaped against the faint silver forms of the trees at the edge of the lawn. Smoke spilled upward from the flames, which were now moving over the roof. The heat pressed against Heck in waves. Someone yelled, “Grenade! Grenade!” and there was a general, frantic scattering away, then a muffled explosion. The frenzy renewed and an officer began shouting, “Who the fuck put a grenade in there? What the fuck are you people doing?” A pair of scrawny, bleating sheep wandered among the men lying on the lawn. The screams of the wounded were horrible. Much of the running around seemed to be without purpose, and even the ambulatory wounded hobbled around in senseless agitation, as though no one could bear to be stationary amid the excitement. But they were being slowly gathered into the trucks, and a part of what was going on, Heck now saw, was that a poorly organized bucket brigade was trying to carry water to the fire. People were running forward and back, handing empty and full buckets to one another—many of the buckets were actually upturned helmets. Meanwhile the trucks cut through the lawn, leaving long muddy gouges in the grass, and a stuck jeep spun its wheels, flinging mud over several of the wounded, who screamed invectives. A sudden wind fanned the flames to a roar and swirled a blanket of smoke around Heck that blinded him and set him coughing. When he had blinked his eyes clear, the jeep and the men he had arrived with had vanished.
    Within all the confusion he noticed one man, small and prim-looking, who seemed relatively calm. He was a medical officer, moving methodically between the men on the ground, talking with them, checking pulses, examining wounds. Heck limped over and caught his arm. The medical officer shook Heck away irritably and moved to another stretcher. “What’s happening?” Heck asked, trailing after him.
    The officer crouched over a man with his feet wrapped in so many bandages that he appeared to have volleyballs at the ends of his legs. Without looking up the officer said, “It wasn’t any Goddamn saboteur. I’ll tell you that. Overheated stove. I warned them.”
    â€œWhat should I do?”
    â€œYou’re wounded?”
    â€œI guess so. Yes.”
    â€œGet on that truck over there.” The medical officer gestured vaguely and turned back to the man with the bandaged feet.
    There were several trucks, arriving, leaving, parked. Heck started toward a pair of trucks stopped side by side that appeared to be taking on wounded soldiers. But before he got there a man with wild hair and smudges of soot on his face handed him a bucket and ran off. Heck, in surprise, looked into the bucket. It was empty. He trotted with it to the hand pump and gave it to someone there, who exchanged it for a helmet full of water, which