Story by Nick Cole

“Ears,” murmured Sergeant Major Pepper, which was how the Sergeant Major pronounced ‘yes’ in the Queen’s proper English when acknowledging Private Potts’ question on whether the Sergeant Major had fought at Schweinhaven.  As in: “Ears, I was there.”

Amid the broken brick of what had once been picturesque Wienerfurt Marketplatz, a pyramid of melons remained the only display that had survived the market’s complete destruction.  They could still be purchased three for a Casper, the basic unit of Nationalist funny money.

Sergeant Major Pepper stabbed at the topmost melon with his bayonet and removed it neatly from the stack before continuing on with his story of the attack on Schweinhaven by The Fighting Beagles, an elite commando unit the Sergeant Major had once been attached to for a brief period.

     “We formed up near the river which ran south of the village,” began Sergeant Major Pepper as he recalled the battle for Schweinhaven.  “We were acting in support of a ‘command-o’ team called The Fighting Beagles.” Sergeant Major Pepper liked to denote Commando teams by accentuating the ‘o’ as he felt it paid verbal homage to the snap and crispness those commando teams carried in their swagger.

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