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History Guy
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Reads too many books...
Oct 2001
time: 23:29
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THE SCENE - A Makeshift Headquarters some miles outside the Leon border...
(Into the building comes a bloodied officer dragging a long sword behind him...his face, red and smeared with blood, is hidden to most everyone except Gastronome Neecap, a servant of Lord Toledo, who is present reviewing battle plans near a table surrounded by marshals...Neecap recognizes him at once as his brother, Sergeant Pugdog Neecap...the Sergeant walks to a general in control of the Santiago withdrawal, and begins to weep...)
Your roads are cut, sir. Damn me if I see why we cut them roads, but cut they are all the same. The Arabs couldn't have used our roads, but we were ordered, sir, ordered to cut them anyway. So, sir, we overturned some wagons and broke some dams. The road washed itself away... Away it did, away down the hillside, fences and gravel and all...
Yes, sir, we cut the bloody roads. They'll never be used again by no man, never, sir. We cut them. Damn me if I know why. I did my job, sir, I obeyed my orders. It isn't my place to question them, just to obey them. That I did, and did it well.
But the Arabs were on us immediately afterward. Two regiments we had up on that hill, cutting roads, sir. Two of them. The price of your precious road, sir. Yes, sir, the Arabs bounded up on their white horses and cut them all to pieces. Everyone one. Not a man alive did walk from that. Yes, many of those Arabs, they felt, we crushed their heads with our pikes, but they had their horses to bear, and they had their numbers. Huge numbers. Waves...
Yes, sir, I fear that we lost many a brave boy there, cutting that road.
So, sir, never forget the value of a man, never forget it. And never forget the value of a road. Two thousand men cut a road for you and died to do so. To annoy the enemy, we let them slaughter our boys. Those filthy devils cut their throats like pigs, men good as you or I, sir, but there they died all the same. God'll smite them for it, smite them like insects.
But they killed two regiments of boys. Never forget that. Never forget that our boys never surrendered, not a single one. I watched from a distance at this baleful slaughter. I wanted to go back there, but I'd been ordered to withdraw with my company. We couldn't have saved them. We had to watch, just to watch. Those roads washed away, and then the hills washed away, washed in the blood of our boys...
Those boys up there, sir, they died for us, for Spain. But most of all, they died for you and your damned road.
Remember their sacrifice.
(Then, Neecap recedes into the gloom of battle...)
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26-07-2003 03:26
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