Let Us Gather at the (Raisin) River
Early April.
Monroe, Michigan
Corporal Ida Graham hadn't seen anything
quite like the set up that some fellow Commonwealth soldiers were setting up near her foxhole. For all the world, it looked like nothing more than a set of speakers that had been spray-painted olive drab at some point. Cables ran back out of sightto where a similarly painted truck was hidden in a copse of trees and camoflauge netting. It was almost dark--she could barely see them, but her curiosity got the best of her and she wriggled down the narrow trench line to get closer to the pair of uniformed men. As she got closer, she recognized the subdued insignia of a lieutenant on one, a sergeant for the other. She stared at them as they worked, then half-whispered.
"What's this shit, sir?" The voice of someone who has been in combat long enough to not
really care about unidentified officers, but enough respect that she's taking him seriously. The man, who is young, younger than her she thinks, looks up and smiles.
"Psychological warfare, corporal." He is far, far too chipper for Ida's liking, but she'll deal.
"Psychological warfare?"
"Just wait." The pair make a few more adjustments, fuss with their equipment, and then the speakers crackle into life. There is static, then the speakers begin to blast music across the river towards the lightly held line on the other side of the Raisin. She recognizes the tune--an old hymn that's no doubt meant to evince sentimental feelings in the men on the other side.
Yes, we'll gather at the river,
The beautiful, the beautiful river;
Gather with the saints at the river
That flows by the throne of God.
She'd sung it herself more than a few times back home and Ida caught herself humming with the melody once or twice. As the last strains of the music died away, the lieutenant cleared his throat and spoke into a microphone. His voice was calm, soothing, and commanding all at once. He sounded almost like the guys from old radio broadcasts.
"Soldiers of Victoria! There is no need for you to continue fighting! Your navy has been defeated and your air force chased from the skies--you have no further support coming from Victoria! We don't want you to have to die here, in the mud, far away from your homes and your families. We want to live in peace, just as we are sure you wish to do! Continuing the fighting now, when you have no hope of retreat and no hope of resupply is hopeless!"
Ida glanced sidelong at the sergeant.
"Does this stuff really work on those assholes?"
"Sometimes," the man said. Shrugged. "Not as often as we'd like, but we have to try."
"Huh. Don't they mortar you guys?"
"They used to, but then they found out that mortaring us was a good way to get counter-batteried by heavy artillery, so they've left us alone." As the sergeant spoke, the lieutenant was continuing.
"If you surrender yourself to the soldiers of the Commonwealth, we promise you fair treatment according to the rules of the Geneva Convention! You will be given hot food, clean clothes, and a warm bunk. Isn't that better than sleeping in the mud? Then scavenging for food in a landscape already picked clean by your armies? We in the Commonwealth do not hold grudges--once you have surrendered, you are safe!" It went on like that for what seemed like hours. Alternating between achingly beautiful hymns and other sentimental music, perfectly primed to make scared, cold, young men think of home and the script that the officer was reading from, laying out the case for surrender.
Ida got used to it, though. She even dozed during one of the musical interludes, helmeted head draped forward against her chest and her rifle cradled in her lap. She was awoken by a soft hiss--one of the other soldiers in her section.
"Hey, Ida. Stand to. Sarge says someone's trying to come over the river." The lieutenant and his music were gone. How long had she slept? Ida hurriedly scrambled up to the lip of the narrow trench, leveling her rifle and staring down into the darkness, towards the river. She strained her ears, and then she could just hear it beneath the sound of the propaganda--the sloshing, splashing sound of someone trying to wade out of the river. Or several someones. She tightened her grip on her rifle--she'd shot enough of the Vicks trying to come up the riverbank that this wasn't new to her.
Off to the right, someone let off a burst with a machine gun, a line of tracers whipping down towards the river before the gun went silent and a hissing, whispered order passed down the line.
"Sergeant says hold your fucking fire, goddamn it," the soldier down the line from her said with a wry smile. Then another voice, shaky and young, from somewhere out in front.
"For God's sake, don't shoot! We surrender!" Tension immediately flared in her stomach. Her sergeant's voice, a deep baritone.
"Come forward! Slowly! Keep your fucking hands where we can see them!" Ida waited and then, out of the gloom, three young men materialized in Victorian uniform. They had ditched weaponry and accoutrements, except for helmets, and held their hands high over their heads. They were all soaked from the waist down, usually higher, and caked in river mud. All of them looked miserable. Ida hissed, beckoned them forward.
"One at a time!" The first one, with corporal's stripes on his arm, dropped into the trench and someone grabbed him. He was young, eighteen or nineteen with a pale, narrow face smeared in mud. Someone roughly shoved him over to one side so he could be searched while the other two were kept waiting, standing in front of what must have felt like a firing squad. The private murmured.
"He's clean." The other two came in and were likewise searched, both looking just as miserable as they were patted down for hidden weapons.
"Why wouldn't we be?" One of them muttered. He had no helmet, only a soft cap which curly red hair poked out from under. It made him look even more like a kid.
"We have to be careful," Ida said before she could stop herself. You weren't supposed to talk to prisoners. The man half-glared at her, but it was more of a sullen sulk. The other Victorian private spoke up, stammering.
"Y-you're really not going to shoot us? Or anything like that?"
"No. We don't shoot prisoners." The sergeant. "Ida, take someone and get them back to the company CP so they can be processed, then get back up here. And if you can find some coffee back there, don't fucking hog it this time."
"Yes sarge," Ida said, then nodded at the closest of her section-mates. "Romero, come on." The two of them prodded the Vicks out of the trench and started the slog back towards the company CP. The walk was silent for a long few minutes, then the nervous Vick spoke again.
"...Are we really gonna get hot food?"
"Shut up," said the Vick corporal.
"Yes, and you shut up," said Ida, annoyed. "Can't say you're gonna get Chicago's best steaks or a deep-dish pie or something, but it'll be hot and filling."
"...Wow." Said the Vick private. "...The lieutenant said if we listened to the Commie agitators, we'd just get lined up and shot. Or worse."
"Well, we don't shoot prisoners. Or torture them. Don't worry about that." Ida replied.
"We were just sitting out there in that observation post and, well…" the boy sighed. "...Didn't seem like waiting for artillery to drop on our heads was a good idea. So, um. We fired off some rounds and left some blood so they'd think we got taken by a patrol or something. Ditched our rifles in the river…" Ida blinked. They must have been thinking about surrendering for a while if they'd had a plan like that.
"Well. You're safe here," she finally said. "Maybe there'll even be coffee."
As it turned out, there
was chickory coffee at the company CP, along with a very happy company intelligence officer.
