As Though Before A Vengeful God: A Horror by Hugh Neill

Author:Hugh Neill [Neill, Hugh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Five Cat Press
Published: 2021-05-20T22:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER TWO: THE DEATH OF COTTON GREENE

Now I am aware that the name "The Dead Men" sounds a bit overdramatic, or at least fatalistic. There were a couple reasons for the name. First and most obvious was that we were under the command of Captain David Deadman, who, when asked about the provenance of his name, would answer either that it was a classic bit of Anglo irony around the naming rubric of your last name being your occupation, or simply that his father had an affinity for iambic rhythms involving the letter D. Sometimes he would simply say he was born that way, and didn't have much of a choice in the matter.

The other reason was because a lot of us didn't get any military training. Which is not to say they were inept in any regard. Hunter, Mason and Richter, part of my squad and part of our story, all made their way north to make their fortunes far from the restrictive grip of urban civilization and found themselves plucked directly from the wilderness they loved to serve in the scouts.

Now some superior officer had heard that the scouts being sent to reconnoiter the front, the boys right at the tip of the spear, hadn't been taught proper military procedure or received any combat training. Story goes he said something along the lines of, Sure they can hunt caribou but caribou don't have guns. If they ever accidentally get too close to the enemy they're as good as dead men. This coincided with our captain's reassuring name to lend us our collective nom de guerre.

It became a joke among us, that we were as good as dead men, like how you might wish an actor good luck by telling them to break a leg. Over time as our reputation grew to precede us, the saying changed so that "As good as a Dead Man" was a compliment to a soldier by evaluating them as worthy of having been part of our unit. Not to denigrate the recipients of that compliment but I doubt many would have passed muster with us.

Despite the name we earned if you look at the public historical record of events you will see that only one of us actually met our end in combat with the enemy. “Rotgut” Cotton Greene was a good man whose death was a matter of bad luck is all. We had bivouacked below a peak to stay out of the worst of the wind and when we woke the Japanese were above us. We were far enough away on rough enough terrain that they had no chance of catching us or getting within reasonable range to engage properly but they took shots at us as we made our escape.

Now normally at long range through fog and wind the odds of hitting a moving target are about as good as winning the lottery but sometimes your numbers do come up. We were just about at the boats when

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