March to the Sea

It is cold.

When I inhale, the mucus in my nose freezes, only to thaw again when I exhale, the vapor crystalizing on my beard.

The numbing cold invites me to rest while the gentle pain of inhalation reminds me of the consequences of breaking stride and resting.

The snow gently slopes to the frozen river, and I cross, ears piqued for the telltale sounds of the death that waits below my snowshoes. It is only thirty meters or so to the other side.

Half way across. I smirk as I remember, "To Build a Fire." It is not quite so cold as it was in that story, but it is cold.

Death is the natural result of life, and it gives me great pleasure to deny Death while placing myself just outside his cold grasp. One day, it will be over; there will be a mistake: an unheeded warning, an unheard silence, an unseen emptiness. I only hope to die quickly rather have the gnawing beast within slowly suck the flesh from my bones and leave me sunken eyed in a hospital bed gasping for air while tubes push fluids in and suck fluids out. No, rather the ice should collapse beneath my feet!

The mixture of bravado and stoicism keep my mind focused, and the river is now behind me. Two more hours of daylight. Three more hours before I reach the coast where I will rendezvous with Marshall, who will have our assignment. The isolation of Arctic Norway has been good. Twelve months at a listening post intercepting messages and sending coded messages to Ottawa. Now, someone else will take on this task. I am glad that our Philosopher Kings have seen fit for me to move on; happy that my old tracks have faded; rejoicing that Corporal will once again rise from the dead to strike Canada's enemies.

Ranger - Le Blaireau

Dear Corporal,

The missives from Sarge trouble me. Though I cannot remain troubled for long in my current surroundings. Brittany is beautiful this time of year. Operation Vercingetorix indeed. I am on a fool’s errand. I am assigned to monitor French separatist groups and their activities.

I understand the Commandos have operatives in Provence, Alsace-Lorraine and with the Euskadi. They have sent Thomas to Savoy. I have stayed in touch with her and she feels her mission is as hopeless as mine. I sit in Gitanes-smoke filled bars and my ears ache from the unrestrained political polemics of angry youth emerging strangely from the mouths of men who otherwise look beaten by this world. And the young here likewise play at wisdom, but it is just a ruse. They jockey to listen to their elders, and talk extravagantly of revolution, trying to extol their bona fides. They direct too much of their focus to organization. The whole thing has the feeling of a town planners meeting, where everyone is passionate about the direction the future must take, but nothing real is accomplished.

I sit here adding a comment from time to time, pointing out some historical fact, praising the Celtic language speakers, eating galettes and drinking cider (my one indulgence). At least the food has been excellent. This is the first time I have been to the safe house in Brittany. I will say I appreciate the Citroen 2CV you left for me here, it is wonderful fun. I have resorted to taking long drives through the French countryside on weekends when no meeting is called, trying to trace the route of the last Tour de France. Hinault is like a god here. Occasionally, I get out and bike through the rolling countryside, allowing myself for a moment to forget the events of the past year.

It has been quite some time since I have been so immersed in the French language. I am starting to remember even the songs about Le Lapin and the Champs Elysees which I learned in grade school in Quebec.

I gentlemen named Maurice from Gwened has made a passable companion. He was a high school classics teacher and is more than happy to speak at length about Aristotle and criticize his existential compatriots. “Jump off a bridge,” he tells them taking a long draw from his cigarette, “if nothing has innate meaning for you.” He criticizes St. Thomas’ interpretation of Aristotle noting that it was the clerics who controlled the texts through the years and that Aquinas’ position is selective at best. Aristotle’s position, he notes, was that each man has his own reference point for moderation. It does not comport with the moral objectivist position taken by Aquinas. Though he cautions, no greater good can come from small evils. Whereas he is opposed to violent revolution he notes that murder at the hands of the Free French was normative and may have been a moral imperative in the face of great evil. I need to believe that is what we do.

His other points, like criticizing Plato’s world of forms may be to esoteric for me to follow.

Jakarta? Indeed. I am in purgatory here. I have stopped believing that my reports to Ottawa serve any significance or are even reviewed by anyone other than some bureaucratic hire. I will meet you there.

Au revoir,

Ranger

In Which Sarge Examines the Spring within the Spring...

Cpl.,

Is love simply ambition? An idea of what life should be when in fact we are fighting the familiar night sweats and mundanities of our true lives? Unexpectedly I must call off my return to Tallinn though I know there she remains. Perhaps the words we never speak are the thoughts we use when we have nothing else left: the things that remind us to live so that we may tell one more story.

Nwargo has been in contact and the red schoolhouse has a broken window. It looks like hell to pay but the chase is everything. I think Plato was wrong and that meaning and reality don't come from The Ideal but rather, simply, from time and the inability of anything to retain form and structure infinately. Flux is meaning. Our desire to create permanance is philosophy. The idea of perfection is, of course, pure philosophy.

I remember that in Commando school, when we took the philosophy class, Wilmot complained about the utility of the thing and the instructor just smiled. I understand that smile now, the smile of a man who has had to kill without meaning and must find solace in the weak light of tomorrow. You were particularly skilled in that class and it has always impressed me, so forgive me these broken thoughts; here, in Moscow, the sun has been down for a long time now.

I must leave questions of loyalty, betrayal and double-cross to you and Ranger for the moment. It's a twin-prop plane and a hydrofoil to my first destination, then it's another plane. At my first stop, there are famous hot springs I have read about. I have discovered that the elders found in towns with hot springs are usually kind and welcoming souls.

with best wishes to you and Berlin,

Sarge