------------------------------------------ The Loire Valley - September 1960 ------------------------------------------ Gently, ever so gently, he probed the edge of the road with his bayonet. Sweat was rolling down his spine despite wearing little more than shorts, combat boots, a t-shirt, and a broad brimmed bush hat. It was hardly full uniform but regulations tended to be fairly lax when it came to mine clearance teams. You tended to want such people in a comfortable and positive frame of mind when they were doing their job. "Bayonets. Why is it bayonets? You'd think with all the fucking technology we have running around in the fucking desert right now they'd have some useless fucking way of finding fucking mines that don't involve us fucking poking them. Fuck!" The tirade came from further down the road and, though it was a common refrain, no one rose to the bait of once again debating the merits of other types of mine clearing tools. They were of course the heavily armoured tanks with chain flails on the front, but those blew the mines up, meaning the road would then have to be repaired. Metal detectors worked great for metal mines, but this region of France had been sown with plastic mines near the end of the war. Fucking great. The tip of his bayonet struck something solid and he froze. Nothing clicked or whirred. Stupid really, of course nothing did, but one always expected it to. The only sounds were the slow scrapping of other bayonets, the continued grumbling of a soldier here or there, the buzz of the cicadas in the heat. He breathed a small sigh of relief as nothing happened and then began to slowly dig out around the object. The roadway verge was all gravel and shot through with short spikey grass that had to be carefully dug away. If the mine was an anti-personnel one he would set a small charge, clear everyone away and blow it. They didn't make much of a hole and could quickly be repaired with a basket of gravel from a nearby dump truck. If it was an anti-tank mine... Well, they would have to dig it out by hand and then carefully move it off into the dith before blowing it up. Not a fun task, but one that should be perfectly safe for a man to do, unless of course there was an anti-personnel mine buried beneath that mine, in which case, you wouldn't even know you'd died, and probably killed a half dozen buddies as well. It was a thankless job, but it paid well enough and the French countryside was beautiful this time of year. There were worse places to die. Algeria for example. More scrapping revealed a curved plastic casing painted a drab green colour. He breathed a little easier when he saw a yellow tab appear. It was an anti-tank mine. At least it wouldn't just explode from him moving the dirt off it. He began to work a little faster, clearing away rubble before remembering to set his flag. He paused, pulling a small yellow flag from his rucksack where it sat nearby, a dragonfly zipping away as he disturbed its rest. He planted the flag next to the mine. "Anti-tank!" A chorus of acknowledgements came from around him. Already a small forest of flags were scattered along the roadway behind his platoon. Their job was to find the mines and mark them. The platoon coming behind would have to remove them. No one could agree on which job was worse. Nearby, boot heels propped on the flipped down windshield of his Viasa, the dishevelled looking company officer looked up from his lunch. He was as dirty and bearded as the rest of his company but none of them begrudged him taking a break. He was one of the "good ones". He worked hard, he dug for mines, and he never asked them to do something he would not. He was the last man to eat that day so they would save some good natured ribbing for another time. The sound of an approaching engine brought the hundred or so heads up quickly as hands reached for weapons. Nominally they were in Spanish territory but the Warlords who inhabited parts of France there days didn't necessarily see it that way. They relaxed as another Spanish Viasa roared into view, two men inside. The driver was clean shaven, his uniform neatly pressed, and his beret perfectly formed, but he was nothing compared to the vision who rode next to him in immaculate dress uniform and rakishly cocked hat. "Fuck..." They all heard the company commander swear as he swung his tired feet down from the hood of his vehicle to watch the new arrival. The young soldiers in his company had quickly learnt that there were two basic types of officers in the Spanish army. The first, and their favourite, were those who had worked their way up through the ranks and so been promoted since Delgado seized power. Men who knew their trade and were damn good at it. The second, and far less popular group, where the young men who had gone through the Military Academy under the King and thought they had a right to lead men. Some certainly made good officers, but enough of them were so useless as you'd notice. The Viasa came to a halt, a dust cloud drifting over the silently watching Engineers as they glowered at the newcomers. The newly arrived officer sprang from his vehicle and walked purposely toward the small cluster of vehicles that served as the companies moving headquarters. They could see from the silver on his cuffs that he was a Captain, and a very junior one judging by his age. Granted the men who watched him from the ditch were not much older, but they had seen combat and looked like it. "I'm looking for Captain Valentina." Even the mans tone was cultured. Probably from Madrid. Fuck. "That would be me." Valentina, still sitting on the edge of his Viasa raised a hand slightly without bothering to get up. "Captain Diego." The new arrival extended his hand and, after a pause, Valentina shook it. "My fellows will be coming up to relieve you in a day or two and I thought I ought to take a look around." "Hope in," Valentina jerked his head at the other side of his jeep. "I'll give you the grand tour." He didn't bother to issue any orders to his men as the Viasa rumbled to life. The Sergeants knew how to do their jobs and the men wouldn't begrudge him taking a drive. The immaculate Captain Diego didn't hesitate as he sat in the dust covered seat. He glanced at Valentina, eyeing his dishevelled appearance then a sly grin crossed his face. He quickly stripped off his cap and jacket, tossing them into the back of the vehicle before rolling up his sleeves. "Godamn I love the Engineers." Valentina laughed, shifted the Viasa into gear and turned the vehicle back down the road. [center]------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center] "Have you been to La Zona Roja before?" Valentina asked. He was sitting on the hood of the Viasa, a bottle of beer held loosely between two fingers as he stared out over the countryside. "Nope. Never been out of Spain before." Diego took a drink of his own beer. His shirt was soaked with sweat and he had lost his tie and rolled up his pant legs. "It's a weird damn place. Warlords, Communists, Anarchists, Republicans, Nationalists, Bonapartists, the Junta, and us. Everyone trying to carve out their piece. Language is an issue, Italian, Spanish, French obviously, German, English, and so on. What a cluster fuck." "And yet here we are..." "Yea, here we are. Slowly clearing years of unexploded ordnance, clearing mines, and getting into running gun battles with warlords and standard bandits because the Junta government are to fucked up to sort their own shit out. "Bandits?" "Yes, no shortage of them. We are well protected enough being an army unit. The main railway is running well into Bordeaux and Marseille at the moment. There are some smaller regional ones working as well but nothing north of the Loire River. At the moment, it's pure chaos. The Junta is useless. The old King set it up so it didn't look like he took over. French police, French uniforms, French government, etc. I don't see Delgado putting up with it very long, he seems short on patience for bullshit." Valentina drained his beer and reached for another. "Sounds promising..." Diego muttered. He too finished his beer and took the last from the case, looking at it ruefully for a moment before removing the cap with his knife. "It looks strange to me. The blue roofed houses, the very very French Chateaus." "Funny you mention that, we're billeted in that one down there." Valentina pointed down into a nearby valley where a pair of blue roofed turrets flew a Spanish flag. "It's comfortable, even with a hundred or so of us. You'll have your own room. I took a small one and the lads are sharing the larger rooms." "I like it." Diego was nodding slowly. It was vastly different than Spain. The heavy lush forest still rich with old growth trees was like nowhere in their homeland. "Well, make sure you watch your step when you wander into the woods. Much of the unexploded shit around here is ours from The Intervention back in the day." Diego nodded. His father had been serving with the Royal Dragoons when France collapsed and the Spanish government had been "invited" to send troops north of the Pyrenees to crush help Communist forces. It was like a reversal of the 18th Century. The Spanish found France weak and helpless, so they had stayed. A local saying was commonly heard, "The Spanish came for the Communists and stayed for the food." Intense fighting had taught the Spanish military some hard lessons already learnt by other nations who had a stake in the Great War. Several thousand war dead had been a bitter pill to swallow for a country that never officially went to war. "Reap what you sow eh?" Diego said with a sigh as he drained his beer. "Heh. Yes, exactly." The two men lapsed into silence again as the sun began to touch the distant horizon. The great tree's turned a deep green and the air took on that sharp cool smell that always came with the end of the day. It went unsaid, but both men were very glad they had not been shipped to Algeria. Down below them a long line of grey painted trucks rumbled toward the Chateau. The rest of the platoon was coming in for the night. The roadway they had cleared so far would be carefully watched by the Military Police to ensure no one snuck back in to rebury anything. A helicopter had even clattered its way overhead an hour before, forever looking like it was about to drop out of the sky. "Well, we'd best get in for the night. The locals hereabouts aren't always friendly. I would say we should be alright but believe me, when we're on our way, you don't trust the Frenchies at all. The local police are corrupt as all hell. They'll steal your Visasa themselves if you leave it unattended." Valentina sighed as he stood and stretched his arms above his head. "Sounds like a great place to work." Replied Diego with a trace of sarcasm. "Buddy, believe me, we both know there are far worse places to be."