THE TAIL OF THE SNAKE

He’d filled the cup from the small puddle that had formed due to their digging .The water was a brackish colour. He’d often heard the term used to describe rotten water in books and of film. Now he had a chance to experience it at first hand. It did not look appealing to him. He had made brew’s from iffy water in the jungle and had even used water from the Nile. There possibly crocodiles had pissed in it. You never knew for sure.  What he did know was there was more than a 90% chance that a sheep had pissed in this puddle.

He didn’t know exactly what colour brackish water was supposed to be. But the stuff in his cup was a greeny black, with bits floating in it. No matter how hard he had tried .He just didn’t seem to be able to get all the little bits out. Maybe it would add a bit of flavour to the brew? He’d soon find out the water was boiling. Well the Boss would find out first actually, he’d let him taste it first and if the boss said it was okay he’d make another. One just couldn’t be too careful, could one?

It had been one nightmare of a move to their present position. After struggling ashore on a thankfully enemy free beach the chilling winds had near froze them to death. The cold waters of the South Atlantic reluctant to let go their hold of the webbing and bergans, that had been immersed during the wade ashore. As for the sedate little trek that had been initially described to them. Well, they should have known it was all going to be a bitch when every body went arse over tit crossing the small wooden bridge.

Which I might add was a bloody joke (it was on a gully that was actually free from any water what’s so ever). It had as we approached initially looked like it had been painted white, but it wasn’t. It was just the frost and ice that had formed on it during the night. I tried to slowly and very purpose like place my feet with precision and accuracy on the prints left by the previous group.

I was winning but came a cropper just a few steps from the end of the wooden structure. The bloke behind me brought me down. He’d lost his footing and grabbed at me to stop his fall. Never mind your south-eastern Asia and the domino theory, this was the Falklands Islands in South Atlantic. About five of us all went down like skittles. Luckily I landed straight on my arse. Some of the others had the delight of their Bergen frames smacking them in the backs and knocking the wind out of them.

I sat on my arse and was dragged off the bridge to the relative safety of the grassy muddy track. It had only been 20 minutes since leaving the beachhead. I was fucking knackered and thoroughly pissed off. If this was how it started you could only expect it to get fucking worse. (And it did). Most of the area we’d been walking had been visited by the sheep and was relatively free from, well just about everything really (flat as a billiard table, eaten clean by the sheep).

The tracked continued to the left, we were going right, the start of and introduction to the infamous grass hummocks. What a pain they turned out to be. The track meandered up the reentrants and gently wound off into the distance. Meanwhile our route was, well, straight up is the only way to properly describe it .The foothill of the Sussex mountains. Our objective was on the top.

We passed countless guys and piles of ammunition. Oh I forgot to mention that probably because I was one of the lucky ones. Everybody was given 2 mortar rounds to carry in an effort to get all the ammo centralised on the mortar line as fast as possible. As we were all going in that general direction it was decided we could help out and drop the rounds off on the way past. Due to me having the radio and all the other ancillaries already they decided I had enough to carry. So wasn’t given any mortar bombs to carry.
Oh lucky old me!

Well the trip to the top was just one complete nightmare, but there was one other little gem that scared the shit out of me. We had stopped for a rest on the side of the sheep track we were currently following. Which is an experience that no sane man would ordinarily do. But this as we know, was different. Any way back to the sheep track. Sheep do not walk in straight lines.

They do not even contour up the side’s of hills or mountains in a logical manner. They zigzagged which is a sensible way to get to the top of steep obstacles, Helping save energy and being the most sensible way to conquer the feature. But it was the way the sheep went about it. After a while we noticed that the path meandered that close together at some points, if you just turned to face the top, you were confronted by a set of steps in affect.

This however fucked up the order of march caused a few near punch ups. People started throwing speed wobblies trying to just get to the top and end the whole ordeal as quickly as possible. Anyway we halted for a rest and to try and get sorted out again. We’d only been sitting there a few minutes, but long enough for the snake to be virtually silent. The irritating squeaking of bergans and the rustling swish of webbing and waterproofs no more. The snake slept. Well for a few moments anyway.

The roaring of thunder rushed up from the black void below us. Waking up the few who had managed to nod off. Like the whisper the wind makes as it rattles the leaves on the trees, getting louder by the second, voices passed it on from the tail of the snake, it hissed ”Tanks”.

Well we weren’t going anywhere that was for sure. After the initial flap everybody calmed down a bit. Realising that they wouldn’t’ be seeing any tanks coming up the way we’d just come. But it did leave the rest of the guys that were still coming ashore down there in the blackness. Even in the middle of Salisbury plain you get bits of ambient light, which helps you see. Here there was fuck all and when I say the blackness below I mean just that, outer space. We sat and waited.

We heard the thunder move down the reentrants we’d come from earlier. Then the roar and clatter as the bridge was being crossed. We all theorised on which type of tank or vehicle it was from the noise it was making. But it had us beat, nobody knew. Then the whispering wind brought back a new message from the tail of the snake “Fucking wild Horses, not tanks”. We all relaxed and laughter carried off into the night.

I looked into the cup once again, maybe horses had pissed in too. I wondered. Fuck it, he binned the water and got out some clean stuff from one of the bottles on his webbing. He’d try the local stuff when he was really desperate.   The way this fucked water table worked on these islands, he’d probably be making a brew with water he’d pissed in himself by the end of the week.

He’d just got the brew going again, when came the cry he would hear several times each day during the next few weeks.

“Aircraft Warning Red “

It would seem they had visitors.
 

Jim Love