[h3]"Desperta Ferro!" - Part III[/h3]

The sound of pistols and rifles being reloaded was easily audible over the whimpering and soft cries of the two dozen men, women, and children, who knelt at the edge of the long ditch dug into the sand by a nearby halftrack mounted backhoe that waited with running engine to fill in the long grave. 

For not the first time, Sargento José Jiménez Lozano reflected on the irony of his position in life. In Spain he had been a murderer, a thief, a rapist, someone reviled and hated by his fellow countrymen. But here, in the desert, wearing the uniform of the Spanish Foreign Legion, he was encouraged to visit those same qualities upon the Muslim population and would undoubtedly receive medals for it.

He had waited, along with the rest of his unit, as a Priest had approached the townsfolk captured as they tried to flee Constantine. The city itself was low against the green coastal belt in the distance, a huge black plume of smoke boiling into the sky, the final funeral pyre for the garrison after they had chosen to blow themselves up rather than surrender.

The Priest, a young man, full of zealous energy had prayed over the townsfolk and invited them to forsake their heathen ways, to join the most Holy Church, and so save not only their souls, but their lives. Some had done so, mostly the younger ones who had been only children during the rebellion against France. The elders held their heads high and refused. The women who had refused had been raped, and now they would all be killed. 

"May God have mercy on your souls." Intoned the Priest as he stepped back from those still kneeling in the sand. He made the sign of the cross above them and then turned to the officer who commanded the platoon. "I leave them to you Capitán."

The officer shrugged and drew his pistol out of its holster. He nodded to his men and then stepped forward, his pistol inches away from a young girls head when he pulled the trigger. She jerked forward and her body slithered into the ditch, her already torn robes falling from lifeless hands so that her naked body twisted and thumped into the sandy bottom. Lazano raised his own rifle and shot a middle aged man between the eyes as he turned to try and plead one final time for his life. Gunshots sounded all down the line until not a single kneeling figure remained, the trench bloody and already filling with flies.

The backhoe engine roared and the driver set to work, piling the sand on the tangled corpses, burying them in the desert forever. The Priest had come forward again and made the sign of the cross once again, intoning a final prayer before turning back to the squad of hard bitten soldiers who accompanied him. He looked about at their faces and then offered a blessing to each of them, a briefly sketched cross and absolution.

"To kill an infidel is not murder, it is the path to heaven." The Priest muttered as he passed by Lazano. The Sargento would have rolled his eyes but checked himself. This was not the time or place to get into a pissing match with the Church. He was there because he had been given the choice between the gallows or military service. He had found he had a gift for soldiering and no qualms about killing anyone he was told to, Muslim or otherwise. The Priest moved away toward his own vehicle and, freed from the need to seem pious and humble, Lazano turned to his men.

Each face could have been a mirror of his own. Wind scarred, heavily tanned, with short cropped hair, helmet straps framing brutal faces that looked out at the world with dead eyes. Each one of them had done terrible things before coming to Africa and now their country was asking them to do such things again, and paying them for it. The Rif War had made the Legions reputation, and the Algerian campaign was only affirming it. Nor were they a uniquely Spanish unit. Everyone knew that the recruiters for the Legion asked no questions and so hundreds of wanted men from across Europe, Africa, and even the Americas, had come to fight beneath a flag not their own for a country many of them would never see. 

"Five minutes to get a drink, stuff some food in your gobs, and then mount up. Constantine is our next stop." He glanced at the every growing pyre of black smoke from the city. "If there is anyone left to fight." He added. Even from where they stood several kilometres away they could hear the crack of rifles, the rattle of machine guns, and the deep horrible "whoosh" that told him flame throwers were in action. 

Lazano returned to his own jeep, his driver was already turning the vehicle over, and Capitán Victor Alba was sitting in the back with a map over one knee, a canteen in the other hand, which he handed over to Lazano without even looking up. The heavyset soldier took a long swig of the lukewarm water and then poured a small portion across his face. It felt good, but he knew better than to waste to much. Even with the supply lines finally caught up and the port of Oran firmly in Spanish control, one did not waste precious resources. 

"Constantine?" Lazano asked as he thumped into his seat, the leather cushion barely concealing the hard steel beneath him. The windshield had been pushed down to make visibility better, the driving sand had scratched the glass so badly there was little point in using it. 

"No. It's fallen. The 11th and 23rd Regiments are going to finish the mop up, and then assist the Conversion Squads in saving as many souls as they can." Alba still hadn't looked up from his map. Lazano was curious about his commanding officer. The man was younger than most of his soldiers, certainly better educated, and yet he took to the tasks they were given with a dedication that had brought admiration from the men under his command. He had never asked them to do something he would not, nor did he baulk at getting his hands dirty.

"What's left?" Lazano asked after a few moments silence. The platoon had climbed back into their jeeps and halftracks, each driver giving him the thumbs up, and the backhoe had finished its work, the bucket was secure and they had no need to remain. Only the bloodied sand at the edge of the trench betrayed what had happened here and within a day or two the desert would wipe any trace of the site out.

"Looking like Algiers." A pause. "Yea, and some of the southern regions are still holding out but I suspect that they will end up like Morocco. High Command seems to have very little interest in vast expanse of open desert unless there is oil under it. Not that I think they're wrong. Plus, most of these "insurgents" down in the south can be chopped into smaller pieces by the airforce. About time the overpaid pricks did some work."

That brought a chuckle from Lazano and the jeep driver. The airforce had been mostly consigned to bombing and scouting missions during this invasion. The Algerians might have made fine horse soldiers once upon a time but they had been wholly unprepared for modern warfare. Not a single aircraft had made it off the ground as Spanish aircraft swept in during the early hours of the morning and smashed the only airfield Algeria possessed. 

The Navy was likewise resigned to blockading Algiers. A short thirty minute Naval battle had been decided with the destruction of the entire Algerian Navy and not a Spanish sailor wounded. It was a stark replay of the Spanish - American war, with the roles reversed. It was good to see that someone with gold on their shoulders had learned from history.

The radio set in the back crackled and the driver, who also doubled as the platoon radioman, quickly reached back to turn the squelch down so that the words could actually be heard.

Alba picked up his own microphone and waited a few seconds before diving into a quick conversation with the headquarters radioman. Lazano half listened as he looked about the desert. To his south lay the low line of mountains that separated the lush costal region from the harsh desert beyond. This group of refugees, trying to flee south, had been caught in one of the larger open areas of sand that still managed to make it north of the mountains. When he had first arrived in Morocco twenty years before he had hated the flat featureless terrain. As time had passed he had come to enjoy the immensity, the solitude, and the lack of cover it provided an enemy in this age of advanced aircraft.

"Si, entiendo. Fuera." Alba stuck the mic back onto its metal hook and then tapped the driver on the shoulder. "North it is, we're heading for Algiers."

The driver shifted the vehicle into gear and the big engine grumbled as it began to roll through the sand. One had to be careful in the desert, parking in the wrong type of sand might mean never getting out, or, in some cases, never finding your vehicle again. The desert, not unlike the ocean, was an unforgiving environment where the simplest of mistakes could spell certain death, or at least a slow agonizing collapse into insanity. 

They skirted the edge of Constantine, waved on their way by Military Policemen who had set up checkpoints at all roadways to and from the city. Smaller fires could distinguished from the larger one at the heart of the city now and Lazano noted that several portions of the city had been hard hit by air attacks. One pillar of smoke was curling around a minaret that survived the airstrike and he knew that the airforce had been targeting mosques. The Spanish had found it a convenient way to kill huge numbers of infidels without endangering ground troops. It had been a hard lesson learned when a platoon of the 2nd Mechanized Infantry had driven up to one such building on the outskirts of Oran and demanded those inside surrender. The platoon had been overrun by Muslim fanatics. The soldiers had been dragged from their vehicles and butchered, their testicles cut off and shoved into their mouths before they were blinded and left to die. Sine that moment High Command has dispensed with any sort of negotiation and simply bombed any large concentration of persons, sex and age not withstanding.

"What is the situation in Algiers?" Lazano had turned in his seat to speak with Alba who carefully folded his map before replying.

"The city is surrounded. The Algerians have built a series of considerable defensive lines around the landward side of the city and mined the beaches. I guess they learned their lesson at Oran." Algeria's second largest city had fallen to an amphibious landing in the early days of the campaign. No landing of that size had been attempted before and it had gone brilliantly, granted with some major snags. A number of Marines had died when their landing craft, to light for the heavy swells, had overturned in twenty feet of water, and dumped them and eighty pounds of kit into the surf. All had drowned. A number of amphibious tanks had likewise turned out to be less than a success and sank while trying to reach the beach killing their crews. Hard lessons learned. 

"Going to be a hard slog then?" Lazano asked, though he suspected the answer already. The Grand Viceroy was quite fond of historic buildings and orders had been given to mitigate damage to any major landmarks if possible. 

"Maybe. It sounds like Command has something else up their sleeve." Alba glanced skyward for a moment as a pair of fighter bombers skimmed by overhead, their wings waggling as they went. The soldiers in the trucks behind waved back.

"Gas?" Lazano guessed. He heard rumours of it being tested on villages in the southern part of the country but all real news had been strictly controlled. Even he shuddered slightly at the thought. To die coughing up blood, coughing so hard you broke your back, and then you hemorughaed to death through your ears, nose and mouth. It sounded horrifying. He had yet to see any sort of gas used but had read enough about the Great War to know it was no pretty way to die.

"I would think so. How else do we capture a city that large without destroying it, or killing a good number of our own soldiers in the battle." Alba looked back at the following trucks and the men who swayed with its every movement. "It's a new world my friend, fought with new weapons. We shall see."