Jason Morningstar, La Bassee.pdf

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La Bassée
June, 1935.
You’ve all returned to the place you’ve avoided
for two decades. You are here to wander the countryside
and walk the old front line and remember and perhaps put
the horror to rest. Your walk starts in La Bassée, #12.
1. The Béthune road.
You are marching toward the sound
of the guns for the first time. Spirits are high. Only half of
you will march back up this road to Béthune in five days.
2. Le Plantin.
On the high street a fat man is selling ice
cream from his rainbow-colored cart, surrounded by an
unruly mob of children. He’s laughing,
un à la fois, veuillez.
3. The Loop.
Your Company’s position on the line is a wet
hell stinking of unreachable corpses and alive with the rats
that are feasting on them. Your officer drowns his terror in
gin. Lucky John Nesbit is spreading a rumor about some
suicidal assault on the Duck’s Bill and you are breaking
up signs to make a little fire. TRENCH A-31, into the fire.
4. St. Roch.
The church was on high ground and changed
hands many times and is now a grassy pile of rubble. A
handful of German veterans are wandering the ruins.
5. Strong Farm.
You can see where No Man’s Land should
be and there are women drying hay there. One looks like a
woman you all knew, although of course that’s impossible.
6. Violanes.
A farmer comes over to shake your hands. The
deep German artillery trenches are all filled in. Everything
is green. You’ve lost your way in the fertile fields.
7. Frog Marsh.
It was here you did some dirty business.
It has haunted you and now you are all back before that
gnarled tree and each wondering how you can be forgiven.
8. Windy Corner.
It’s some silly ball game well back from
the front and for one perfect afternoon you are free and
alive with potential and filled with love for one another.
9. Red Dragon Crater.
A German patrol finds its way in
and all is chaos in the pissing rain and it is kill or die and all
you have are guns that won’t fire and broken boards.
10. The Duck’s Bill.
God stamps his boot; engineers have
blown a giant mine here and there’s the whistle and you are
over the top and krak krak krak krak krak
11. Canteleux.
An engine backfires and you are all back in
the mud of trench A-31 standing over Lucky John Nesbit,
his head half missing, sniped all the way from St. Roch.
12. La Bassée.
Stalls here sell war memorabilia; rusted
oddments plowed up in farmer’s fields, things your friends
and enemies left behind in haste or in death.
©2013 Jason Morningstar, released under Creative Common Attribu-
tion-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by-sa/3.0/). Map courtesy of the McMaster University Lloyd
Reeds collection.

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