Air Cavalry Open House

by **Fatatatutti** » Sun Jan 11, 2015 12:03 pm

To: Friendly Nations
From: General Marie-Louise Castro-Stalina, CO 99th Air Cavalry Brigade

The Air Cavalry would like to invite soldiers and journalists from friendly nations to spend a week with us at our headquarters, at our training school and on maneuvers in the field.

Tentative Itinerary:

The bus leaves Fat City International Airport on Sunday evening for an overnight trip to Air Cavalry Headquarters.
On Monday we have a staff meeting, a tour of the Air Cavalry School (ACS) and free time with the trainees and instructors at the ACS.
On Tuesday we fly up into the hills to spend the day with one of our regiments on a training exercise.
On Wednesday we hike farther back into the bush to visit the Guerrilla Warfare School, if we can find it. (Bring civilian clothing; the guerrillas shoot at uniforms.)
On Thursday we are airlifted out, refueling at a location yet to be determined, and return to base.
On Friday we participate in a raid on the capital, Fat City.
On Saturday we have a meeting with the Council of Generals and, hopefully, a tour of the Takeapenny Arsenal.
Sunday you return home. Alternately, you can stay for an extra day with the General doing public appearances.

Leave your weapons at home. Bring your cameras. Anybody with small feet gets a pair of socks.

OOC: Just jump right in. The bus is waiting.

by **Fatatatutti** » Mon Jan 12, 2015 8:57 am

Monday 0600

The headquarters building was a low wooden structure, built in the Fatatatutian style on stilts a meter or so above the ground. The sign in front read:

Welcome to Alpha Charlie
Headquarters of the 99th Air Cavalry Brigade
General Marie-Louise Castro-Stalina commanding
"They choose to fly where eagles dare."
Home of the Air Cavalry School

The General ran up the steps. Her long blonde hair was loose on her shoulders instead of in the braids that she usually wore in the field and she was wearing her qualification badges.

On one wall of the Operations Room was the Big Map which showed all of Fatatatutti and next to it was the Big Board which showed personnel strength down to the platoon level. Next to that was the Air Board which showed aircraft strength. Unfortunately, aircraft strength was low in the area of long-range transport until the Council of Generals could be made to see reason.

Major Folkestone was looking up at the Big Map with his hands behind his back, tapping the back of his head with his swagger stick. He was the only officer in the brigade who carried one, except for the General, and hers was mostly a joke. His was not.

He told people to pronounce his name "Folks-tun" but he himself pronounced it more like "Fox". He was known in the Army as "the fox", which was appropriate to his job. He was the Brigade Intelligence Officer.

"Any sign of our visitors?" the General asked, standing beside him and mimicking his stance.

"Some reports say the bus is on time. Some say it's late."

"Any luck with finding Andre?"

"The trick is not to find him," the Major replied. "It's when we find him. If it's too soon he'll be gone again like a puff of smoke." He reached up with his swagger stick and inscribed a circle around a red pin representing the MacGregor Highlanders.

The General nodded thoughtfully.

The room was dominated by an enormous coffee urn on what looked for all the world like a buffet table. In fact, that was what it was often used for. The mess staff began bringing in breakfast.

The General poured herself a coffee in a mug labelled "Property of Alphonse" and made herself a sandwich out of bacon and scrambled eggs on toast. As she sat down at the small desk near the map table that was "hers" when she was at headquarters, the company clerk came in and dropped another stack of paperwork on top of what was already there.

"Morning, Penny."

"Good morning, General." Corporal Penelope Day was known as "Payday" to her friends.

The General glanced at the folders on the desk. One of her colonels wanted a mortar squad in every platoon, not a bad idea notwithstanding the fact that the Brigade was a light infantry unit, but there was no money for it. There were proposals for training exercises at various locations throughout the island under various conditions. There was a proposal for landings on aircraft carriers which sounded interesting. "Who do we have here for the meeting?" she asked without looking up.

"Colonel Cho is still busy raiding North Beach," the Corporal said. "Air Ops is on family-related leave." She had a habit of starting with who was not there. "Colonel DeVries is here." She pronounced his name "De-freeze" as he did. He was the one who wanted to turn the light infantry into heavy infantry. "Colonel MacGregor sends his regrets. Colonel Piper sends his regrets." Colonel Piper could have saved his regrets. A tank battalion couldn't have induced him to come to a meeting. "Major Dunn is representing the Dragoons. He'll be late. Major Folkestone is here. Assistant Air Ops is here...."

Eight thousand troops in the brigade and only a handful of top-level officers to attend a regular staff meeting - such was the nature of the Fatatatutian Army. The real control was at the regimental level and the colonels cooperated at the brigade level only at their pleasure. It took a special kind of leader to inspire the colonels and General Castro-Stalina was recognized as one of the best in the nation - but even she couldn't work miracles on a Monday morning.

"We'll start the meeting at the usual time," she said. If our visitors aren't here by noon, we'll send out a Stork to look for them." Her Intelligence Officer didn't seem concerned that they couldn't find a busload of foreigners even though they were supposed to be the first line of defense. Admittedly, the likelihood of being invaded by buses was fairly low.

by **Belhorizon** » Mon Jan 12, 2015 10:21 am

Fat City International Airpoirt, Fatatutti
0800 hours, Sunday

The engines of the airbus revved down as it reached its final resting spot on the tarmac. The Belhorizonian Intelligence Service logo painted on the aircraft's tail glimmered in the morning sun as a crack widened in the plane's sky blue fuselage. In the doorway stood a soldier dressed in green khaki, who mechanically stomped down the stairs the ground crew hastily parked, before standing at attention at the bottom.

Inside, two men dressed as formally as can be rested in their taxpayer funded leather seats, sipping on some gin, apparently oblivious to the fact that they arrived to their destination.

'I guess we're here', sighed the first while puffing on his cigar.
'Do you think the bus would've left without us?'
'I surely hope so. We've got better things to do than those visits. Why doesn't the Foreign Affairs ministry send its own scouts to hunt for potential allies?'
'We both know why. Now put off that cigar and get the bags. I can see the bus there on the tarmac.'

With a sigh, they both stood up, tapping themselves down to ensure they have all they need, carried their briefcases, and briskly stepped out from the aircraft into the bus under the rigid salute of their unarmed escort.

It was going to be a long week.

by **Nivok Baves** » Mon Jan 12, 2015 1:04 pm

General Kesach stepped off of the bus and was greeted with a breeze of fresh air, a luxury the cramped bus couldn't afford. Standing in his field grey No.1 dress jacket with his 'exceptional service award' white lanyard stretching from his right breast to under his arm. He wore a dark grey peaked cap with the cap badge of his division in the centre. Emblazoned on his sleeve was the white bull insignia of his division, 23rd Panzer division, and the crown topped five stars signifying his rank of general.

'Cadre' his said in Nivokian with a clear Germanic sound to his voice 'bring the bags up front.' A young soldier in flecktarn camouflage stood to attention and rushed off to collect them. Walking into the group of representatives, Kesach couldn't help but be amazed at how differently everyone was dressed and spoke, picking out clear voices in the crowd.

Kesach took off his cap, revealing closely kept black hair, wiping away the sweat that had gathered on his brow, the heat was something he was not used to, straighting his jacket he looked around, hoping to find a Fatatatutian person, as to speak to unaware of where he was supposed to go. He only knew that he was suppose to attempt to open diplomatic relations between the two nations and any others. Kasech sighed, the Kaiser didn't seem to think this whole thing through.

by **Fatatatutti** » Tue Jan 13, 2015 9:00 am

The General was sitting at the head of the long conference table which was littered with papers, maps and plates. The transition from breakfast to coffee break had been almost unnoticeable and several of the officers were still eating as if it was their last meal. On an ordinary day, the General might have had her feet on the table but with company coming, today was semi-formal.

Colonel DeVries of the Oranje Regiment was a wiry little Boer with a bristling grayish beard. His camouflage fatigues contrasted with his wide-brimmed hat, looped up on one side. There was some controversy around the brigade as to whether he ever took it off. He had a large-scale map spread out in front of him on which he was outlining the upcoming week's exercise for his regiment, though nobody could actually see where he was pointing.

The "bad guys" in the scenario were to be the General's old regiment, the 69th Lesbian Light Infantry, posing as an enmey force that the Oranjes would have to root out from some mountaintop or other. It was a tough regiment that had produced a tough General and they would give DeVries a run for his money.

"Are you coming up to see us then?" the Colonel asked in a tone that was friendlier than his rough appearance suggested.

"I'm not sure," the General said tentatively. She was cleaning her fingernails with the tip of a large kukri that had been presented to her by the Gurkha Regiment. "We have our way in pretty much mapped but we're not so sure about the way out." It would depend on exactly where the elusive Andre and his guerrillas were hiding.

"Well, we won't be hard to find." The Colonel folded up his map and sat down.

The General smiled, wondering if that was a shot at the brigade's recent difficulty in finding things. "I see Corporal Day is doing charades at the back. Does that mean the building is on fire, Penny? Or maybe our guests have arrived?"

"The bus is here," the Corporal's voice carried across the room.

The General got up and went to the door. The bus, which like most Fatatatutian buses was purple with the word "Bus" on the side to avoid confusion, had stopped halfway between the headquarters building and the mess hall. Several people were piling out, looking as disoriented as you might expect them to be after an all-night bus trip. Some of them were in fancy uniforms.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the General said, though she hadn't seen any ladies yet. "Welcome to Alpha Charlie. In spite of what you might be thinking, we're not in the middle of nowhere. We're on the edge of nowhere. There's a lot more nowhere out there.

"I hope you don't mind, we started without you. Have you eaten? There's plenty of food." There was plenty of food on the bus too but who knew about the eating habits of foreigners? Apparently there were some cultures in the world with less than seven traditional meals per day. "Come right in and make yourselves at home. We're not very formal here." Formality and shooting people had never gone together in the Fatatatutian mind.

by **Nivok Baves** » Tue Jan 13, 2015 2:31 pm

General Kesach wasn't surprised at the Fatatatuttian lack of food, especially because of the large amount of representatives that appeared and that appetites were different. The gender of the General surprised him, as in Nivok Baves it was uncommon, although not impossible, for a woman to achieve such a high rank.

The seemingly welcoming attitude of Fatatatutti also surprised him, but that was most likely down to the isolationist attitude that Nivok Baves had held until only a few months ago. The crowd began moving as a large huddle towards the complex, with Kesach holding behind the group to get a better view of the place without being interrupted by the chatter of the group. Kesach began wondering if this week was going to be as bad as he thought.

by **Belhorizon** » Wed Jan 14, 2015 7:46 am

As their two guards encumbered themselves with the equipment and briefcases, the agents hopped off the bus and set their sights immediately on the woman apparently addressing them in the funny accent.

'The Aide?' the first whispered.
'No..Looks like the damn CO!'
'Well fu--- Good Morning!', went the first as his frown transformed into a broad and friendly smile, 'I'm Captain Roberts, from the Belhorizonian Intelligence Service. You must be General Castro-Stalina! I assume you have an interesting program set up for men of our background?'

by **Fatatatutti** » Wed Jan 14, 2015 8:48 am

The mess staff were bringing in more food.

"You're just in time for coffee break", the General smiled. "If you don't see what you want, feel free to ask the staff. We don't promise to have everything but we do try to keep a well-stocked kitchen."

Several of the officers at the table got up to offer their chairs to the guests.

"This is our regular Monday morning staff meeting," the General continued. "We don't quote unquote command the brigade from here. It's more like we coordinate the activities of the regiments. So far today we've been discussing some of the fiendishly clever scenarios that we're putting our troops through to keep them on their toes. You'll get to see some of that first hand tomorrow.

"If you have any questions, just ask. We're here to exchange information. If you care to introduce yourselves as you speak up, we'll do the same. To start off, I'm General Marie-Louise Castro-Stalina. Most people here call me 'General' but you can call me 'Marie-Louise' if you prefer. I'm the head zoo-keeper here."

by **Fatatatutti** » Fri Jan 16, 2015 9:42 am

Fatatatutians are fond of saying that the pig is the perfect food: bacon for breakfast, ham for lunch and barbecued ribs for supper. And so, breakfast transitioned almost imperceptibly into lunch. As the mess staff brought in ham, cheese and rye bread, those in the know might have predicted that the General was planning a walkabout lunch.

Colonel Pomerantz, the Commandant of the Air Cavalry School, was an unassuming man with a goatee who looked more like a schoolteacher than a soldier. Nobody would have been surprised to see leather patches on his elbows. He was just finishing a summary of the school's scheduled activities for the week. "So it's a quiet week," he said. "The timing isn't great for our visitors." The two platoons of trainees were just starting ground school, so they would have little to demonstrate. "However, we have arranged for some of our instructors to put on a squad demonstration, abseiling and so on. We normally only drop in squad strength anyway. Most of the landing zones in Fatatatutti aren't big enough for more than one helicopter at a time. So it will be fairly realistic."

There was some controversy in the Air Cavalry about the word "drop". Some called abseiling and fast-roping a "drop" while others preferred to lump both in with touch-and-go and call all of them a "landing". The disagreement was more-or-less along regimental lines so the General had taken the diplomatic position of not taking a position either way.

Without further ado, Colonel Pomerantz sat down and the General looked around the table. "Does anybody have anything else?" The agenda was always informal and the meeting had already strayed significantly from it. "Visitors, feel free to speak up. Is everybody getting enough to eat?" She felt like a mother hen sometimes but an army marches on its stomach and she was responsible for keeping them marching.

"Since we're running a little long, I move that we sort of blend the end of the meeting with lunch and this afternoon's tour." Because of the unusual command structure in the Fatatatutian military, she really had no authority to do anything but make a motion. However, she treated it as a formality and didn't wait for assent. "Take what you can carry," she smiled, getting up from the table, "and I'll arrange for some camp-followers to keep us resupplied on the way."

by **Belhorizon** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 3:34 am

Captain Roberts and his colleague sat in the corner, as their aide ferried plate after plate filled with food.
'Ugh! This tastes horrible as well! Get something else!'
'How can they even eat this drovel?' fumed Roberts,
'I don't have the slightest, but I hope this starts soon. We need to get actual work done' said his colleague as he chocked on another spoonful of what looked like soup but tasted like anything but.

by **Fatatatutti** » Sat Jan 17, 2015 9:33 am

Some of the classrooms had just a roof and no walls. "It mostly rains at night in Fatatatutti," the General explained as she finished her ham-and-cheese-on-rye. "The buildings with electronic equipment are closed in but otherwise we try to save money where we can. Walls cost money."

She reached into the side pocket of her bush jacket for another sandwich. "We bake our own bread," you know, she had told one of the visitors while she was spreading the mayo. The Air Cavalry School prided itself on having one of the best kitchens in the Army, though that was a small enough claim since most active units lived in the field. Some of the visitors didn't seem to be impressed with the food but there was no accounting for foreign tastes.

"We have two platoons of Marines here this week," she continued, "and some police taking an abseiling course." She pointed vaguely at one of the classrooms where a group in blue berets were sitting on the ground listening to a lecture on tactics.

The base was dominated by the abseiling tower. "Thirty meters high," the General was saying, "give or take. A hundred and forty-seven steps, anyway." She knew. She counted them every time. "As you can see, at the top we have four simulated helicopters, so we can theoretically drop a whole platoon at once - but it's more realistic to do it one squad at a time."

As they watched, a figure leaned out of one of the doors on top and gave a thumbs-up, which the General returned. Almost immediately, eight ropes dropped and eight men swung out of the doors on both sides and descended quickly to the ground.

The General was impressed by their precision. A group of trainees would have descended at different speeds but the instructors had obviously practiced their coordination. She smiled and shook hands with several of them. "All right," she turned to her tour group. "If you're ready to climb, we'll have a look up top."

Except for the immediate surroundings there was little to see from the tower but the tops of trees. "Over there is the mess hall," the General pointed at trees. "Hopefully, we'll get you there for supper. Over there is the dormitory." She pointed at more trees. "We have a lower abseiling wall for the rookies to practice at a safer height. It's only about three meters."

She was standing in the open doorway, surrounded by the visitors and a few of the instructors. Suddenly, she let go of the bracket she had been holding on to and fell forward into space.

Instantly, hands shot out and grabbed her by the web gear and pulled her back into the safety of the tower.

Visibly shaken but smiling she said, "I just wanted to demonstrate the bond of trust that we have in the Army. Some of you might have seen a similar exercise done on the ground. Fatatatutians are notoriously leery of heights but we trust each other implicitly. Nobody will ever fall out of a helicopter as long as her squad-mates have fast hands." She patted one of the instructors on the arm. "Our ancestors have been doing the same thing in boats for centuries. That's why we're completely fearless on the water even though most of us can't swim.

"Now, I'm afraid we'll have to go down the hard way," she said, indicating the stairs.

by **Fatatatutti** » Mon Jan 19, 2015 10:37 am

It was a quiet week so the mess wasn't he madhouse it often was in the evenings. The General sat near the middle of one of the long tables with a glass of reddish rum in front of her. Next to her Sergeant Lawrence "Elmo" Morrison, her aide-de-camp, had a glass of rum that was almost black. The difference in colours was something of a mystery since by tradition Fatatatutian rum was aged "all the way from the bar to the table".

Several of the visitors were nearby. A group of instructors and trainees were over in the corner playing cards.

Since Alpha Charlie, the Air Cavalry base, was situated at a fairly important transport hub, there were often troops in transit who found their way to the mess. Tonight there was a rowdy group of infantrymen, identifiable by their green berets. From somewhere in that group there went up a shout, "Do your trick!"

The General looked up as the call was repeated. She smiled. "All right, who's going to lend me a weapon?" It took a brave soul to turn over their weapon to the General, who was a notorious stickler for cleanliness. "My firearms instructor used to tell me that there's no guarantee that a clean weapon will perform more reliably in the field but all things being equal it will give you an edge. I was a mediocre shot, so I needed all the edge I could get." One of the transients passed her an R-101 and she sniffed the chamber. "Okay, who's going against me?"

There was some hesitation but one of the transients finally stood up and shuffled over with his own R-101. "I guess I'm elected," he said.

"In the field you have the rest of your life to field-strip your weapon," the General smiled. "Here it's just for fun but we'll try to do it a little faster. Sergeant, if you'll do the honours?"

Sergeant Morrison tied a blindfold over her eyes while the challenger sat down across from her.

The General held her hands up. "Ready when you are."

"Ready," the trooper said. He had the advantage of no blindfold but he didn't seem over-confident.

"Go," the Sergeant said.

The General locked the bolt and removed the disassembly pins one at a time. "What's your name, soldier?"

"Taylor, General. Byron"

The General separated the receiver halves and removed the handgrips. "Been in long?"

"Two years."

The General removed the bolt carrier and charging handle and then the buffer assembly. "Ever think of trying the air cav?"

"I don't know. I don't like heights much."

The General removed the bolt and the cam pin. "We can leave the extractor, if that's all right with you."

"Okay."

"I don't like heights either. At least the air cav flies lower than the paratroops." The paratroops usually jumped from a hundred and sixty meters. She opened the compartment in the butt-stock and slapped both hands on the table.

"I'll concede now," Taylor said. "You're already twenty seconds ahead of me."

The General smiled. She didn't claim to be undefeated but nobody seemed to remember any defeats. She began to reassemble the borrowed weapon at a more leisurely pace. "What are you drinking, Byron?"

"Loser pays," he protested.

The General finished reassembling, removed her blindfold and returned the weapon to its owner. "When are you shipping out?" she asked as Taylor set another red rum in front of her.

"Tonight, if all goes well."

"Thanks for the game."

"My pleasure," he said. In fact, it wasn't every trooper who could say he had gone toe-to-toe with the General herself.

by **Fatatatutti** » Tue Jan 20, 2015 10:32 am

The Operations Room was dark except for a few desk lights in the back where the communications orderlies were standing by. The General was looking over some of the paper work on her desk, initialling here and there. Sergeant Morrison was making up the cot beside the desk. "Beggin' the General's pardon...."

"What is it, Elmo?"

"I was wonderin' why people would come halfway around the world to see us an' then not say nothin'."

"Maybe they're just here to take pictures and steal secret documents."

The Sergeant nodded thoughtfully as he fluffed the pillow. "Maybe we should make up a media package for them. You know, true enough so that it seems true but not true enough to do us any harm."

The General laughed. "You should be in Intelligence, Elmo."

"I'm just an Army sergeant. I have nothing to do with intelligence."

"Well, it's a good idea. Do you want to mention it to Major Fox or should I?"

"I'd be surprised if the Major hadn't thought of it already his own self."

"You're probably right." The General made a mental note to have a look at the materials that were being given to the visitors.

"What time do we lift off in the mornin'?"

"Not very early, I'm afraid. The only helicopter that Air Ops will give us needs a maintenance checkout first."

"Will there be anything else tonight?"

"No, you can go when you're ready." The General knew little about her aide's personal life. He seemed to have something to do yet tonight but she didn't pry.

"Good night, then, General."

"Good night, Elmo. Pleasant dreams."

by **Fatatatutti** » Sat Jan 24, 2015 9:48 am

Tuesday 0845

The foreign guests were standing around on the tarmac in small disoriented groups when the General came out of the Air Ops hut with a clipboard under her arm. She paused briefly to speak to the helicopter's crew chief and then did a quick walk-around, tossing the clipboard into the cockpit.

She walked over to the largest group, smiling. "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Time to mount up. I'll be your pilot for today. We couldn't afford a real one." She hoped the joke would go over as intended. "Don't worry. I'm fully qualified, more than eleven hours in helicopters without a single fatality."

As the crew chief shepherded the passengers aboard, the General climbed into the cockpit and flipped several switches, then on second thought flipped some of them back. She settled the headset over her beret and touched the microphone buttom on the joystick. "Alpha Charlie, this is Goldilocks. Do you copy?"

There was some static and then, "Goldilocks, this is Alpha Charlie. We copy. You are clear to take off. Your vector is two-five-zero. Try to stay clear of two-seven. We have a transport coming in."

"Copy that, Alpha Charlie. Two-five-zero." She set what was called the "compass" though it was really controlled by GPS. She flipped the intercom switch. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have clearnace for take-off. We will be flying at an altitude of approximately one meter above the treetops, so you will get some leaves in the cabin. Don't be alarmed. It's perfectly normal." Air cavalry helicopters typically stayed low to avoid radar and flew with the doors off to save fuel. "You might want to hold on to something." The turbine began to whine up to speed. Now, let's see if this baby will fly.

by **Fatatatutti** » Sun Jan 25, 2015 11:42 am

The helicopter struggled up the side of the ridge, then suddenly there was nothing but blue sky in front of it and its nose dropped and it coasted down the other side. The whole trip had been like a roller-coaster ride - in the Air Cavalry they called it "mountain surfing".

"Papa Mike, Papa Mike, this is Goldilocks. Do you copy?"

Immediately there was a response. "Goldilocks, this is Papa Mike. We copy."

"Where are you, Papa Mike? All I see is trees."

"We hear you, Goldilocks. You're coming right at us. We'll pop yellow for you."

"Thank you, Papa Mike." Soon she saw the plume of yellow smoke rising from what was supposedly a clearing.

The hardest part about flying a helicopter - or any flying, for that matter - was getting back on the ground in one piece. She eased up on the throttle and collective pitch and pulled back on the joystick. Still too fast, pull back a little more.... Dropping too fast, pull back a little more.... Don't overshoot the clearing, pull back a little more, back up a little, now gently straight down.... The helicopter touched down with a fairly gently bump and she cut the throttle to make sure it stayed down.

"Ladies and gentlemen," she said over the intercom, "We have arrived. You may now leave the aircraft."

There was a tall soldier waiting at the edge of the trees, wearing a Glengarry cap that distinguished him as a member of the MacGregor Highlanders.

"Captain Prevost, isn't it?" the General extended her hand.

"Welcome to Papa Mike, General." He shook her hand and then glanced over her shoulder at her guests and nodded curtly. "The Laird is up the hill."

Sergeant Morrison came up carrying two knapsacks and two haversacks in one hand as if they weighed nothing. He reluctantly handed the General hers though he would gladly have carried them for her.

"Thank you, Elmo. Our guests may want to get their bearings for a minute. Some of them are looking a little green. If you don't mind, I'll go on ahead and you can bring them up when they're ready."

"Whatever you say, General." He watched her start up the side of the mountain in what was almost a sprint, with Captain Prevost following. "It's the short legs, you know," he said to whomever was nearest. "Better leverage."

by **Fatatatutti** » Wed Jan 28, 2015 9:08 am

The field headquarters of the MacGregor Highlanders Regiment consisted of Colonel MacGregor, also known as "the MacGregor" or "the Laird", and a few of his staff officers. The Colonel was squatting with a map on one knee and the General was looking over his shoulder.

From somewhere down in the valley, the sound of bagpipes seemed to waft up toward them. Captain Prevost listened and then said, "That'll be Charlie Company." He paused. "It's Mull of Kintyre, no opposition."

"Then where the hell is the bloody opposition?" the Colonel muttered. "Any ideas, General? You used to be in the walking infantry."

The General looked at the map and pointed. "If I was the opposition, I'd walk up the mountain and dig in... up there."

"Mmm... and no doubt you'd haul a couple of howitzers up there with you."

The General laughed. It was common knowledge that one of her first assignments as a new Lieutenant had been to escort a half-battery of mountain howitzers. Some said she had misinterpreted an order but in any case, she and her platoon had manhandled the howitzers across a flooded river and up the side of a mountain to a position where they commanded the only road up which the opposition's reinforcements could advance. It was a running joke in the Army that she was the only one who didn't know it was impossible, so she did it anyway.

"Who do we have in reserve?" the Colonel asked.

"Echo Company," somebody responded.

"Let's abseil a platoon onto the top of that mountain; put them right on the peak if you have to. Have them find out where the damned opposition are. If they are up there, like the General predicts, we'll land the whole bloody company behind them and turn their flank."

An hour later there was the sound of bagpipes again, this time from above. The General wondered for a moment how many pipers the MacGregors had.

"It's Glencoe," Captain Prevost announced. "Found 'em."

"That's why you're the General," the Colonel said without looking up. There was a common feeling in the Army that few Colonels wanted to be Generals because a Colonel was more-or-less autonomous in commanding his regiment while a General was little more than a cheerleader whose role was to inspire the Colonels to work together. "All right, let's get the Charlies up there."

"How many helicopters do you have?" the General asked.

"Seven, including the one you brought."

"Seven? That'll mean three lifts."

"I make it four lifts. I mean to use two helicopters as a diversion." The Colonel was one of the Brigade's most experienced heliborne tacticians, so the General Was content to defer to his plan. "The Charlies are only in the next valley anyway. We can shuttle them over as fast as they can abseil."

The General's guests were watching, a little confused, it seemed. "It may be quieter than you expected," she explained. "For one thing, we can't afford to use live ammunition on an exercise. But in the bush it's mostly a matter of maneuvering anyway. We get the drop on the enemy and they have to withdraw. It makes for a longer war but it's cheaper in the end." She smiled.

by **Fatatatutti** » Thu Jan 29, 2015 9:22 am

The General looked up at the few stars that were still visible. A light drizzle was beginning to fall and it promised to be a wet night. She was wrapped in a blanket under her rain poncho. A black shadow blotted out the stars and a large tin mug of coffee appeared in front of her face. "Thank you, Elmo," she said.

He sat down beside her and leaned up against her with a familiarity that would have horrified many foreigners but Fatatatutian soldiers were used to sleeping in a dog-pile to conserve heat. Although the popular wisdom was that it was always twenty-six degrees Celsius in Fatatatutti, in fact it could get as cold as the low twenties in the mountains at night.

Colonel MacGregor's radio operator appeared as another black shadow. He sported a luxuriant beard but it was not visible in the dark. "Nothing yet, General. I'm going on standby now for the night."

"Thank you, Sergeant." They were due to rendezvous with the Guerrilla Warfare School the next day and they still had no clarification on where it was.

As she closed her eyes she reflected that she had slept as much sitting up as lying down during her military career, either in the cargo hold of some military aircraft or propped up against a tree. Her mother used to say that she could sleep hanging on the clothesline and that was the last thing she remembered thinking.

by **Fatatatutti** » Fri Jan 30, 2015 9:52 am

Wednesday 0500

"Rise and shine, you beauties. Daylight's a-comin'." It was traditional in the Army for a sergeant to wake up his squaddies with a gentle nudge of the boot-tip. This sergeant was apparently from a more modern school.

The General opened her eyes. It was still dark, though the sky was a deep blue rather than black. She could smell coffee and bacon. The MacGregors did set a good table, though she was glad enough it wasn't haggis day.

The mist was slowly burning off, revealing the valley floors. The General watched through her binoculars as a line of soldiers marched down the shoulder of the ridge. The MacGregors were moving out.

"General? Message for you." The radio operator had stayed behind as a favour to her.

She looked at the GPS coordinates. "You'd better get going, Sergeant, if you're going to catch up with the Colonel."

"No worries, General. It's all downhill." And he was gone.

The General located the coordinates on the map and noted with satisfaction that it was only a few kilometers away, though on the other side of a mountain. Major Fox had come through and located her within striking distance of the rendezvous. Or was it Andre who had been stalking her all along?

She turned to her visitors, who were still very quiet and still rather bewildered. "We're heading into guerrilla territory today, so we'll have to change into civilian clothes. The guerrillas shoot at uniforms." Then she added, "They don't shoot to kill, of course, but it's still no fun." By the looks on their faces, she wasn't sure if they understood that the guerrillas they would be contacting were on their side. "I'll have to ask you to turn off all of your mobile devices. The guerrillas monitor radio transmissions. I know we're trying to rendezvous with them but they'll try to intercept us before the rendezvous and we'll try to avoid that. It's a game we play - keeps all of us on our toes."

The General was wearing jeans and a pink-and-purple tie-dyed T-shirt. Sergeant Morrison looked awkward in khaki pants and a sport shirt that were either borrowed or at least seldom worn. The visitors looked like a bunch of ineptly-disguised spies.

"What do you think, "Elmo?" The General looked even more like a teenager than usual.

"I'd be tempted to suggest the Castro-Stalina way, if our guests were up to it."

The General smiled. The "Castro-Stalina way", the direct route over the mountain to the other side, was what her reputation demanded of her, a no-nonsense approach, ignoring all obstacles. "But will Andre expect me to do the expected?"

"I expect he'll let his students decide that."

The General nodded. "You should have been an officer, Elmo."

"I like it when I say, 'Jump,' and the squaddies are airborne before they ask, 'How high?' Nobody listens to officers."

The General laughed.

"Nobody but sergeants, of course."

"Of course." She looked at the map again and then folded it and stuffed it into her knapsack. From there on, she'd navigate from memory. "It's a nice day for a stroll," she said. "I think we'll take the civilian route," meaning the easiest, flattest route around the mountain.

"It's civilians we are today, General." he agreed.

"Then you'd better stop calling me 'General', in case Andre's close enough to hear us."

"Whatever you say, darlin'."

The General laughed again.

by **Fatatatutti** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 9:25 am

A flock of wild parakeets flew over, making enough noise to wake the dead. "You see why it's difficult to sneak up on anybody in the jungle," the General explained. "Of course, we could be listening to any sounds nearby and tracking anybody who was following us too." She had, in fact, been listening and she had heard noises but she didn't have enough data yet to decide whether or not there was anybody else in the vicinity.

The "jungle" was relatively free of undergrowth, since only a limited amount of rain and sunlight filtered down through the canopy. The going had been fairly easy and the General was setting a leisurely pace. "We're coming up to a pig trail," she said. "That'll make the going a little easier but if you hear a crashing sound in front of us or behind us, jump off the trail as fast as you can. The pigs can be dangerous and we're not equipped to confront them." She would have added the old joke, No spears and no loincloths but her guests didn't seem very receptive to old jokes. "We don't stalk pigs," she continued. "We confront them, face to face. It seems like more of a fair fight that way. Of course, in warfare we're a little more flexible."

Earlier she had pointed out the number of birds that were predominantly red and had tried to explain why red berets were not particularly dangerous in the bush, but it seemed to go over the heads of the foreigners. Conventional wisdom is often difficult to counter with common sense.

"What do you think, Elmo? Hear anything?"

He shook his head.

She knew he was listening but apparently he hadn't arrived at a conclusion yet either. It's important to know your enemy but it can be dangerous to assume he's there when he isn't. It was possible that the guerrillas had been following them all the way from the MacGregors' camp but it was equally possible that they would intercept them near the rendezvous.

The pig trail ended in a small clearing where a pool was fed by a trickle of water down the rocky mountainside. The pigs probably wouldn't come to drink until evening but to be on the cautious side the General led her party to the side of the clearing farthest from the trail. "We have time for a break," she smiled.

Without needing any instructions, Sergeant Morrison got out the little stove to brew coffee.

by **Fatatatutti** » Sun Feb 01, 2015 12:28 pm

The civilian clothes were comfortable enough but the General was a soldier by habit and she was still looking for an enemy behind every tree. She had started on a more-or-less sensible path toward the rendezvous but half an hour ago she had made an abrupt turn to the right and ducked down into a little valley. Now she was leading her party back up the shoulder of the mountain, trying to gain back the altitude. She was trying to keep the pace easy without letting the visitors think she was babying them.

"Pretty close now," Sergeant Morrison said beside her. He was more aware of the situation than he let on.

"So... should we risk a sprint to the finish? Or should we try to fake them out again?"

"My guess is they're watchin' us right now," he said. "Whatever we do, they'll catch us before we get there."

The General knew that Andre thought highly of her and would be disappointed if she didn't give him a hard time. "The third option is to stop right here and make him come to us."

"You're the... senior civilian," he said.

She smiled.

They had doubled back the way they came and gained a little more altitude, the idea being to come down on the rendezvous from above.

Then they stepped into a small clearing and there was a young girl sitting on a rock that they could have sworn wasn't there a minute ago. She was smiling and cradling a submachine gun in her arms. "This territory is controlled by the People's Revolutionary Army," she said. The name of the guerrilla "army" was only for show and, having no official significance, it was changed frequently at the whim of the speaker. "I'll have to ask you not to make any sudden moves. My men get a little nervous."

There were movements in a dozen directions and a dozen young people stepped out of the trees, all armed with submachine guns. "Men" was a bit of an exaggeration and in several cases downright inaccurate, since about half of the guerrillas were female.

"Good morning, General." the leader continued. "We've been expecting you. We almost lost you for a while there."

"If you say so."

"If you'll follow me, our camp isn't far."

The General suspected they were going in circles and had only come a hundred meters or so when they stepped into a larger clearing, There were another dozen people, all very young. It must have been a high-school outing rather than a regular Army training session.

A medium-sized man who was nondescript except for a large black beard came toward them.

The General turned to her guests. "Allow me to introduce Colonel Andrew Timson, the Commandant of the Guerrilla Warfare School."

He too looked more like a school teacher than a soldier. He extended his hand. "Call me Andre. Welcome to Free Fatatatutti."

He showed them around the "camp", which consisted of little more than a couple of open fires. The General was surprised that they made no attempt at concealment but she realized that there were multiple layers of sentries and Andre would know about anything that moved for kilometers around.

"We get no support from the Army except for arms and ammunition," he was saying. "We eat whatever we can catch. You're in luck today. We have fish."

by **Fatatatutti** » Mon Feb 02, 2015 9:23 am

The fish was baked in banana leaves and accompanied by fresh fruit and the ubiquitous coffee. When everybody had finished eating, which took a surprisingly long time for people who were supposedly "hiding" in the bush, Andre got up. "Our guest today needs no introduction." In fact she was probably the best-known non-duck on the island. "General Castro-Stalina was first in line for Commandant of the Guerrilla Warfare School and I only got the job because she turned it down. She was intrumental in the development of the ETA submachine gun, so it's appropriate that she's here to lecture us about the weapon today. General...."

The General got up and took the ETA that somebody handed to her. "I'm afraid Andre's memory fails him," she smiled, pulling back the cocking handle and sniffing the breech, as was her habit. "I was never offered the job of Commandant. Andre was the only choice." The truth was that her name had been bandied about but not in an official way. "And the ETA was developed long before I was born." It had, in fact, been developed in the 1940s, before her parents were born. "However, I was seconded for a while to the Takeapenny Arsenal and I did participate in an evaluation of the ETA. We decided that there wasn't much we could do to improve it."

"Stand up," somebody in the back called out.

"Quiet you," she smiled. "I'm armed." She held up the weapon. "This is the ETA submachine gun," she began, "Developed at the Takeapenny Arsenal by somebody whose name began with the letter "E" but escapes me at the moment. Hence, E-T-A.

"The legend that it has only three moving parts is an exaggeration. Depending on how you do the math, it has at least five: the bolt, the extractor, the sear, the trigger and the magazine catch. If you count springs, there's the bolt spring, the extractor spring, the sear and trigger share a spring, and the magazine catch spring, for a total of nine. If you count the magazine, there's the slider and the magazine spring, for a grand total of eleven.

"Some deluxe models have a fire selector switch and/or a safety catch, which have more moving parts. However, this model, which we use for guerrilla warfare, has neither.

"Now, the lack of a safety catch doesn't necessarily make it dangerous. But if you carry it cocked, don't drop it unless you want to give the fellow in front of you a nasty surprise.

"And it can only be fired full-auto but you'll learn to fire bursts of two or three rounds.

"The legend that it can be made in any garage is also an exaggeration. The barrel is a fairly precise piece of engineering, so we've stockpiled several million of them at various places throughout the island. The rest of the parts can be made by any competent metal-worker with a decent set of tools. I've heard of high school shop classes making them." She looked over her audience and there were smiles of acknowledgement here and there.

"The ammunition has also been stockpiled, several billion rounds of it. We keep rotating it so it doesn't get stale.

"Effective range, up to a hundred meters for the first round. Please aim. Don't fire from the hip like you see in the movies. After that, it jumps a bit.

"Thirty rounds in the magazine. You can actually jam in thirty-two but it isn't recommended. Gone in less than a tenth of a second, so use short bursts.

"And keep it clean. I know they say you can bury it in the ground and it will still fire but that's probably an exaggeration too. A clean weapon is always more reliable than a dirty one...."

by **Fatatatutti** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 9:22 am

A shadow appeared out of the gathering darkness. "General? Can I have your autograph?"

Leafing through the book for a blank page, the General noticed Alphonse's duck-foot signature and several other famous names. "What's your name?" she asked.

"Carrie."

The General printed, "To Carrie, Good hunting. Marie-Louise Castro-Stalina." Below that she wrote her real signature, which was just a scrawled "MLCS".

"Thank you, General."

"Are you all from the same school?"

"Yes. We've known each other since we were kids."

"Are you thinking of a career in the military?"

"Not really. I might go into the Reserves." The Fatatatutian Army was pledged to train everybody who volunteered. However, there was a limited demand for replacements so the ones who were not selected for the regular Army had two choices: the Ready Reserve where they might be called up at any moment by a regiment that needed them, or the Stand-by Reserve where they could take further training in the hope of being called up some day. "We're getting extra credit for Social Studies. I'm writing a paper called Guerrilla Warfare, the Last Resort of Democracy."

The General nodded.

There was a low whistle in the dark.

"I have to go, General. We're moving out before it gets light." The guerrillas were the only soldiers in Fatatatutti who moved in the dark in the mountains.

"Good night, Carrie."

"Good night, General. Thanks again."

If Fatatatutti was ever overrun by foreign invaders, the General reflected, it was little girls like that one who would be ambushing every outpost and supply column. It would be little old ladies like her grandmother who would be sticking a knitting needle in the eye of every enemy. She was glad they were on her side.

by **Fatatatutti** » Thu Feb 05, 2015 9:10 am

Thursday 0600

They say there's no twilight in the tropics but it was still only half light. The trees were still dripping from the night's rain.

The guerrillas had, indeed, disappeared into the night. There was no sign that they had ever been there except for the memory, like a dream.

Some of the visitors looked on in horror as the General took two grenades out of her knapsack and clipped them to her web-gear. She had been tossing that knapsack around as if it contained nothing but spare socks. "Don't worry," she smiled. "They're only smoke." She was used to being "Grenade Boy", that is, carrying the squad's bag of extra grenades. As the saying went, if a stray bullet catches you, you're just as dead; only Grenade Boy is in smaller pieces.

"You can turn on your mobile devices now if you want. The guerrillas already know where we are. Elmo, you can try to scrounge up some transport for us."

"Papa Bear, this is Tango Echo Bravo. Do you Copy? Papa Bear, this is Tango Echo Bravo. Do you Copy?"

"Tango Echo Bravo, this is Papa Bear." The code Papa was usually used for a predetermined point on the map but Sergeant Morrison used the call sign Papa Bear because he took care of Goldilocks.

"Where are you, Papa Bear? All I see is trees."

"Poppin' red now."

The General pulled the pin on one of her grenades and waited until red smoke billowed out of it before tossing it on the ground. Popping smoke was a bit of an art form, judging the wind at ground level and at treetop height so that the smoke wasn't lost in the trees and didn't blind the pilot either.

"I have visual, Papa Bear. Coming down."

by **Fatatatutti** » Sat Feb 07, 2015 9:26 am

This time the General was in the left-hand seat. To her right was Lieutenant April "Ape" Dancer, a "real" helicopter pilot. It was said that she could land a helicopter on a dinner table without spilling the soup but there were few opportunities to test that claim. "We're sucking fumes, General," she said.

The General assumed she meant it as pilot-to-pilot. A pilot might casually mention to passengers that they were low on fuel, as a precaution; in case something unfortunate did happen, they would be fore-warned. But to another pilot he might not mention it until they were down to the last three molecules. She touched the microphone button. "Papa Foxtrot, Papa Foxtrot, this is Goldilocks. Do you Copy?"

"Goldilocks, this is Red Knight. We copy you. We can hear you but we have no visual."

She recognized the German accent immediately. The helicopter slid over the ridge and it seemed to her more stomach-churning than if she was flying herself, though it was in fact much smoother. Below, in the valley there was a winding line which, if it had been shiny would have been a river. Since it was not, it was a road.

"We have visual now, Goldilocks," the familiar voice said. "Popping yellow smoke."

A yellow plume rose from the road and Lieutenant Dancer turned toward it. As they approached, they could see on the road a long line of mud-coloured tanks.

by **Fatatatutti** » Sun Feb 08, 2015 11:39 am

The Lieutenant had set the helicopter down in a clearing that seemed barely as large as the rotors, and so gently that it was hard to tell exactly when they were on the ground. She shut down the fuel pumps immediately; if the fuel lines were sucked dry, it would be difficult to restart the engine. The turbine gave a little murmur of surprise and began to wind down.

A halftrack came roaring up and a medium-sized man jumped down. He was wearing gray fatigues and a squarish fatigue cap with his goggles perched on the peak. He had iron-gray hair and steel-gray eyes. He strode over to the General, took her in a bear hug and lifted her right off the ground.

When he set her down she was laughing and she turned to her guests. "Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce our host, the legendary Colonel Praetorius, commander of the PanzerRegiment Fatatatutti and Fatatatutti's foremost expert on armoured warfare. Several times he has refused promotion to General because he prefers the hands-on control of his own regiment. He was a Colonel when I was just a shave-tail. There are rumours that he fought with Rommel but I think that's almost certainly an exaggeration."

"If the General says it, who am I to say it isn't so?" he asked with a big smile. Turning to the visitors, he said, "Welcome to Fatatatutti."

"You're a long way from civilization," the General said.

"Yes, it's a bit of an experiment, not exactly a successful one. Only one road, you know, a little bit dangerous."

"You're farther inland than we expected. We almost ran out of fuel trying to find you."

"Well, the good news is we have your fuel. It arrived last night. The bad news is it's at the back of the column. Two of my panzers fell in the river this morning and we've spent most of the day getting them out, so by the time we can get your fuel up to the front, it will be too dark to fly.

"So, you will be our guests for the night, like it or not."

The General shrugged. As another General had once said, planning is essential but plans are worthless. They would adapt.

"For supper we have cabbage rolls and perogies and German sausage... and for dessert, Black Forest cake."

The General wondered not so much how they managed to bake a cake on the engine-manifold of a tank but where they got the ingredients.

"And now, if you'll find a seat in my half-track, I'll show you to our field kitchen."

As the half-track roared down the road past the rows of tanks, their crews stood up and waved and chanted, "Blon-die! Blon-die! Blon-die! Blon-die!"