The Crap Hat

A Short Story by S.D. Price

The earthy richness of the freshly hued soil surrounded him, offering a modest balm that filled his nostrils. Yet, it provided scant relief from the foul odour of old death and the new that lay across the tree line. The stench flowed over the churned-up ground and hung as nauseating shrouds of putrefaction in the shattered remnants of the sparse blasted foliage—which he was desperately trying to blend into.

Gingerly, he peeled back his loosened body-armour, each movement infused with pain. His fingers pressed against the dressing he had managed to apply to his most serious wound. Unsettlingly, he could feel rubbery bits beneath the blood-soaked compress, parts of himself that he really should not be able to. He replaced the Kevlar flap, now void of its plate, over the bloody mess, careful not to engage the Velcro straps.

What a shit show. The attack had gone in as planned—sudden, violent, devastating to the enemy. They had overrun the Russian position, killing most with ruthless efficiency. Some of the troops had escaped; let them run. There were still a few remnants left, to be taken for the exchange fund.

All seemed well until, just as they were about to pull out, the bastards had dropped glide bombs on their own positions. They struck where the prisoners and many of his comrades had taken cover. The spot was now a steaming, festering crater. He had been far enough away from the blast to be blown clear, yet a piece of shrapnel had somehow ricocheted under his body-armour and sliced through his guts.

The sudden adrenaline spike had temporarily blinded the pain and given him the strength to crawl into cover. Lying in the blasted remains of a semi-collapsed foxhole, he patched himself up as best he could—but he knew he was fucked. The invaders had then followed up with a sustained artillery barrage, driving his remaining comrades back. If anything was left of the squad, they would have pulled back completely, thinking he had been vaporized like the others. If they had any sense, they would realize there was no point in wasting lives on a forlorn hope to look for survivors.

There were two old Para NCOs who ran the team. Vic and Ron were a pair of gnarly bastards who stood out among a corps of gnarly bastards. He hoped they would make the rational decision and not risk others’ lives on the chance any of the MIA’s would still be alive. However, Paras are Paras for a reason; he, being an ex-Royal Marine, knew from experience they were all a bit fucked in the head. He looked across at his shot up radio, if it was working, he would have told the pair of wankers to stay the fuck away.

He could feel the morphine wearing off. He had jabbed himself with all he held. It dulled the pain but left him feeling woozy. If he didn’t move too much, it was bearable. Narcotics and firearms were a bad mix, but if he got any unwanted visitors, he would put the combo to good use. He reached for his assault rifle, with pain pierced movements he checked it over for the umpteenth time, insuring he had a round up the spout.

How had it come to this? Bleeding out, with his guts like a bowl of steaming tripe, held marginally in place by a bloody, faeces-soaked dressing. He checked the safety of his weapon was off and laying it within easy reach of his right hand. Staring at the uncovered red dot below the lever, he allowed thoughts of the old melancholy to intrude on his misery. There was a righteous inevitability to it, an accounting he always knew he deserved. Landing here, in this godforsaken spot, after years of swirling down what he saw as the drainpipe of his life.

The mistakes of his youth still held sway over the man he had become. “What’s done is done,” his Mam often said, “no point crying over spilt milk, boy.”  No, he could not put that tainted and squandered milk of his adolescences back in the bottle, any more than one could draw back up the richness of his precious blood, now oozing through his battle dress into the soil around him, to re-infuse him with the vitality of its life force

It took until his early twenties for him to start reflecting on the scale of the sickening evidence of his juvenile immorality.  Too late, his mind had finally baked into maturity, to illustrate to him the awfulness of his deeds. The adult realisation of his acts had set upon him a self-inflicted revulsion, one he would use as a rack to torture his soul on.

At first, he sought solace in drink and drugs, desperately seeking amnesiac relief or penance for his suffering. It was not to be; his genes had decreed him as a formidable physical specimen. It would take more than cheap booze and poor gear to smother his torment.

Although a little on the short side, he had matured into a powerful physical specimen, merely looking at weights seemed to build muscle on his frame, a trait additionally complemented by a latent  natural intelligence. This evolving  intellect would prove to be a double-edged sword, as a growing self-awareness became a greater burden.

He realized he needed to hone and direct his traits. When he disembarked at Lympstone station, dressed in an unfashionable suit and tie, with an ironing board and suitcase in hand, feeling a juxtaposition of being out of place and yet at the same time a sense of coming home. Stepping onto the platform, he was met by the diamond-hard gaze of Royal Marine Commando instructors and understood he had found a challenging calling— that would be a respite, at least for a while.

He embraced this new institution, even as they began to break him. The instructors, unaware that the beastings offered no chance to think old thoughts, became the distraction he sought. They broke him a thousand times, but each time rebuilt him, faster, stronger, smarter—eventually creating a meticulous fighting machine. The problem was he now needed ever greater challenges. After 15 years of service, he found himself a sergeant major with many deployments under his belt, but with little prospect of any further true fighting on the horizon, old demons began to return.

Then the conflict in Ukraine started—a proper shooting war that he saw as a new escape. He decided to leave the service and join the International Brigade on the frontline. The reality of combat and the retuning possibility of sudden violent death became his distraction once again from the psychosis of his self-loathing acidic soul.

It was a relief of sorts that it had come to this, but not out of self-pity. It was a summation of what he truly deserved. Gut shot, lying in the stinking mud, awaiting the bitterest of ends seemed fair, if he was honest.

Yet, he had no intention of going out easy. If the enemy returned, he would fight as best he could. If he felt he was losing consciousness, he would pull the pin on a frag and hold it next to his head. He would not be taken alive.

He sensed rather than heard the movement above his trench. Slavic whispers began filtering through—he couldn’t tell if they were Russian or Ukrainian, but they were getting closer. Then he heard a snarled, “Tikhaya suka.” Above him.

Ruskis! Keeping coming Boyo, I will quieten you, you Russian twat, he thought as he raised his rifle to point straight up. He saw the man’s head begin to appear above him. The Russian gave a short gasp as he locked eyes on the manically grinning soldier below him and the point of a barrel held directly into his face.

Before he could fire, his radio burst to life. “Crap Hat, Crap Hat, come in, Crap Hat, over.” The distraction allowed the enemy to dart back out of sight.

“Fuck,” he hissed. He had always hated that callsign those tossers’ Vic and Ron had given him, now more than ever.

“Crap Hat, this is Sundial. Are you receiving? Over.” 

Apparently, his radio could still receive… Great! His position was now blown. He could hear them flanking him, moving around his position on both sides. Wild automatic fire started to erupt all around him, accompanied by small explosions. He drew a grenade under his chin, a finger through the pin. He felt heavy thumps as someone  jumped into the trench and the firing around him became more intense, accompanied by the terror infused shouts and screams of men about to engage in close quarter combat. This was it, he thought, squeezing in the striker lever with his other hand and starting to draw out the thin metal rod.

“Hey, you fucking Welsh midget, I wouldn’t do that if I were you, buddy.”

He looked down the muddy gully to see two large framed, heavily armed Paras, bent almost double, rushing toward him. 

He pushed the pin back in and smiled. “You buggers took your sweet time,” he said.