Guts, Guns, Glory, Guts

“Everyone’s my enemy,” said Major Bernard Ballbuster of the British Army, loading his gun and sighting on an Afghan with a hat on. “You think, yes, that just because you wear the same uniform, Paddy O’Beefburger, that you and I are anything other than enemies? Well, let me disabuse you of that notion, you lousy Irish bastard, with this – my big knife wot I use for stabbing up folk!”

“Arrr, begorrah begorrah! Dere’s no need for dat dere, Major,” said Paddy O’Beefburger, putting up his hands and hoping not to be stabbed-up by his boss. “Oi wis merely saying, so Oi wis, dat dese Afghanistanis is our enemy ‘cos it says so on dis sheet o’ paper from de British government, so it does, so it does.”

“Well, that’s alright then,” murmured the Major, blowing off the Afghani’s head with his gun.

“AIEEEE!” shouted the Afghani, just before his head disappeared in a big shower of blood and stuff.

“Gotcha!” laughed the Major, sighting on another Afghan who was wearing a slightly bigger hat than the last one, “Let’s see how YOU like it, shall we?” He fired off another round, taking the Afghan’s head off. Major Ballbuster sighted on a third Afghan whose hat was ridiculously large. “And what do you have to say for yourself, hey Johnny?”

The Afghan was thinking:

“When I get home that missus o’ mine better watch out, and NO mistake. I’ve not had it in fucking months, I haven’t. First I’m going to take off my underpants and give ‘er a right good …”

He never got to finish that thought because he had his head blown off. By the Major.

“Killing’s all I know, Jock,” said the Major to his sergeant, Scotchman Jock McPortable-Telephone. “I have nightmares, yes? Nightmares where I start off giving my missus a good bloody seeing-to, but then I shoot her in the back of her head. It’s all very messy.”

“Och aye the noo, the noo,” thundered the red-bearded Scotchman, keeping his fingers wrapped tightly round his wallet, “Aye might be a humble Scotchman o’ humble origins, born in a tenement hoose in Scotchland in the olden days, Jimmy, but I know a cold-blooded killer when Aye sees one. Yer a killer, Major, plain ‘n’ simple, the noo, the noo.”

“I was born in a bath of pain, Jock. When I was five I was shitting snares and farting bullets. War’s all I know, Jock. War … and women’s great big tits.”

The Major pulled a ruddy-great knife out of his trousers and threw it at an approaching enemy.

“Oh f-f-f-f-fuck!” said the enemy, as the knife buried itself up to the hilt in his brain. Blood poured from the wound, down his nose and round his mouth. Some got in his mouth – and that’s never nice. “Oh, for the love of God! That REALLY fucking hurts!”

“There’s another volunteer for the body-bag boys,” grunted the Major, pulling the pin from a grenade and throwing it down the wounded enemy’s trousers. “War’s a brutal business, Pedro. If you play my game, you’re playing with General Pain. When the last gun’s fired and the smoke clears, I’ll be standing over your bullet-riddled corpse, San Fernando. And if I’m not … THEN I’LL SEE YOU IN HELL!”

“I don’t know what’s worsterest,” mumbled the wounded Afghan with the knife in his head and the grenade down his trousers, “This bloody knife buried in my brain, or that grenade down my pants wot’s going to go off and seriously ruin my chances of siring a family.”

“In war there’s plenty of ways to die,” said the Major.

The Afghan blew up, showering Ballbuster and his platoon in all blood and guts and stuff.

“Killing a man changes your perspective on life, Jock,” the Major muttered, “Once, I saw goodness in the human condition – now I only see suffering. When will the pain end?”

“Yer a dealer in death, sir,” Jock replied, “Yer a Laird o’ War. A human killin’ machine, bred to serve one master – the gun. Ye cannae cheat yer destiny, son.”

“But I’m so tired, Jock.”

It was then that the shit REALLY hit the fan.