Editing Billy's Letter To Josephine

<span style="color:#8B0000">'''''Billy is just delightful and has a wonderful storytelling style, as you'll see below. ––– Maer.'''''</span> <br> <br><br><br>

To:   Josephine Arsenaux <br>
From CSM Billy Butcher <br>
A Company, Sappers and Miners Battallian<br> 
Royal Engineers<br>
<s>Baklava</s>, <s>Balaklava</s>, Crimea Russia<br><br>

Miss Josephine,<br> 
I know you gave your addy to Pop rather than me, but he ain’t got his letters so I’m writing, asking if you could be nice enough to send a letter Pop’s way. He got his heart broke a bit ago and could use a cheerin up.  I already tolds him you wrote twice, but they were actually letters to soldiers that didn’t make it.  I’ve been readin to him making up stuff as I go along, so if he ever asks how’s the giraffe doing, just play along. Pop’s got a right fondness for giraffs  and I made that you had one.<br><br>  

My battalion command, Major Rogers (yeah, we do go on a bit about that) is a Baron or somesuch and he gets his mail sent special so when you send your letter back please send it “care of” the Major Sir Hubert Rogers 83rd Battalion Royal Engineers. It’ll reach Poppy quicker that way.<br><br>
 
I should probably tell you how we ended up in this boil on the backside of Russia rather than India. As you may remember, Pop and me was headed for East India Company offices pockets full of hobbit gold and heads full of dreams of easy life, adventure when we want it and plenny of native women to pay attention to Pop.<br><br>
 
We decided to head over to Ten Bells for a pint of Truman’s to celebrate our good fortune.  By the time we left 30£ had turned into more like 22, but we was still good, or so I figured, maybe I have to be a subaltern, rather than a Lieutenant, but the basic plan was still solid.<br><br>
  
It was about five in the morning when we leaves Ten Bells and make it over to the big  East India building on Leadenhall, and would you believe they ain’t even open yet?   So Pop and I grab a squat on their steps and waits nearly 2 hours before folks start showing up.  Heck, we even had a time for a quick toilette in the fountain in front of the building, so we could look clean and scrubbed for our new jobs and on account of we still smelled a bit of beer and sewer. <br><br>

Raygo shows up about Seven. He’s another Ten Bell’s regular so he knows me. Apparently, he got himself a job mopping floors here and thought that was what me and Pop were up for, but when I straighten him out he directs us to this big Church door affair marked “Enlistments” but it’s still locked. <br><br>

It’s nearly eight thirty by the time the army recruiter shows up (them’s hours I could get used to) and we was the first (only ones, really)folks to talk to the recruiter.  The recruiter was a older, skinny fellow, with a Northern accent; a bit fulla himself in one of those uniforms you only see in parades on the Queen’s birthday. He had the look of a guy who’d go on and on about the Battle of Wagram, but ain’t ever learned how to load a pistol or throw a proper punch. He opens the door real quick, and then steps inside locks it behind him like he was the doorman of some gentleman’s club. <br><br>

By this point I was starting to get right cross and was considering mayhem. Lucky for all involved Pop’s there to jolly me out of it. <br><br>

Just before nine a couple of proper soldiers march up, all spit and polish, and stand attention on either sides of the door. The one on the right’s starts barking out this speech to no one in particular about how everyone seeking employment  in the forces of the Hounourable Compny need to be on their P’s and Q’s then we walks inside<br><br>

The room’s huge with a tall ceiling and fancy wood on the walls and these lines set up like the ticket office at a train station. There’s a bunch of windows but only one of thems open with that guy in the uniform standing behind it. So me and Pop march up to across the room  and up to him, all stiff and proper  boots echoing on the ground like we was a herd of giants.  When I get up to the window, I throws him my best proper salute, even had my hand pointed more or less the right way, and announce my intention to buy a commission . <br><br>

Genral Nonesuch behind the counter looks about shrewdly for a tic, like his mates was tryin to put one over on him. Only there ain’t no mates here, just a big pile o’ empty with me and Pop. <br><br>

I won’t bore you with the rest of the conversation. Nonesuch claims that there ain’t no commissions for the likes of me, even with the pile of coin we got, which he says ain’t sufficient no how. I tries to grab him, the guards came in and Pop and I at least got the satisfaction of getting the better of the first bunch of them before the rest pile on  and throw us out. <br><br>

We dust ourselves off best we could and Pop’s starts whinging about brown women again.  He’s me mate and half the money is his so at first I’m thinking, maybe we just take a stroll down to Limehouse and get him fixed up there, but I was still cross about getting tossed by the likes of that crowd of tossers so I thinks maybe we go down to the Army barracks and see what it takes to get a commission there.<br><br>  

Army Enlistment tents are easy to find in The Mile so we heads over that way. It turns out that that Royal Engineers is paying 2/6 per day for likely fellows like us, no commissions, but at least that don’t insult folks what walk up, not to their faces anyhow. I figured, with that level of pay, it’d be a matter of a couple of months soldiering and we’re back on the original plan, no worries.  The enlistment man said getting posted to India was easy for engineers. <br><br>

Things went sideways a bit there, because the army fellows, they tricks you a bit. It turns out that you gotta pay for all your kit: uniform, rifle, tent and such, out of your salary.  And expensive stuff it is, so you end up owing them for 2 months salary before you’re even onboard. If I wanted to deal in scams like this I could’a stayed in Whitechapel and been on the dealing rather than receiving end. <br><br>

Anyway, we got a bit of training in guns, and fighting and marching after we joined.  I could’ve passed on that.  I already knew how to use a gun and after I put two of the trainers in hospital they stopped trying to teach me how to fight, and marching in lines is for the birds, but they makes you do it anyway. Maybe I’ll look good in a parade one day, but other than I can’t say that I learned much.  We got shipped out after a couple of weeks and Pop was so excited to get to India I swear he was gonna explode.  
‘Cept we weren’t going to India, well maybe the boat was, but all us soldiers got off at their first stop which was Crimea.<br><br>
 
Actually, Poppy and I weren’t proper soldiers, we was actually members of Her Majesty’s Corps of Sappers and Miners, which amounts to a fancy term for Navvy, ‘cept you get shot at, a lot. On the plus side, I already had my corporal’s stripe before we even made it to Russia on account I was the best of the recruits at yelling orders and didn’t mind cracking a head if they weren’t followed. 
Poppy, me and the other recruits got assigned to “A” company, which I later found out was where the put all the saps they were less worried about losing. The was mostly  folks like me and Pops, London guttersnipes and pettys, lots of beastmen and ogres. <br><br>

The officer in charge was a Scottish dwarf named Lt. Ross. We took an instant dislike for one another and he showed his ire by sending me and my crew out every night  to build gambion walls with Russky snipers shooting at us. That or sending us out in the day time burying explosives in the space between our fortifications and theirs. Every time I came back I got to see him glower just a little more at the fact that he hadn’t killed me yet. I always nodded and smiled as I walked past.<br><br>
  
It just seems the way of Nature that orcs and dwarves end up hating each other, but I am proud to say that it never came to blows on account of Ross getting himself blown up in an artillery barrage; that and Pop talking me out of it a couple of times. <br><br> 

I got my third stripe a couple of weeks later and me and Pop was moved over to tunnel duty. I owed my good fortune to being one of the folks to survive most of a month in “A” company and on account of most of the existing tunneling crew were deaf on account of the explosions. <br><br>
 
Most of the regular Navvies hated the tunnels, but I didn’t mind at all. I supposed some blokes would find it pretty awful, but it’s considerably warmer than the surface (they still had snow on the ground in bloody April) and it certainly smelled better than the sewers in London. Also the fighting was more my style; not hordes of red and green coated toy soldiers swarming this way and that, just me and my blades in the dark and silence.<br><br>

It was also in the tunnels where Pop got his heart broke.  See us and the Russkies both got a bunch of tunnels running in or around the fortifications and we both have big plans to use ‘em, though no one’s given me particulars other than to dig a tunnel this way or that, or collapse this or that tunnel so the other side can’t use it. There ain’t any real maps and things get changed every day, so you never know what you’ll find. <br><br>

A couple days ago we was down there digging towards this Russian fort when there was this huge explosion.  At first I thought it was our guys and so I sends Ben, a welsh rattie; the only welshy I ever met that ain’t never seen the inside of a coal mine, back to get a repair crew while me, Pop, Morrow (a stone deaf gnome who’d been a millworker from Leeds) and Orace (another Eastender) went up to see if we could help.<br><br>  

We head towards where we heard the blow and hit a collapse and start clearing stuff out when we start finding russkies, uniformed ones, too, not just the diggers in shirtsleeves, must’ve been some group of officers on a reconnoiter. <br><br>

None of them seems to’ve survived or maybe the survivors ran off, I dunno.  I was fixing to drag the  have Morrow and Orace drag the corpses back to the surface for burial when all of a sudden one of those Piyetra guards women jumps out of this pile of dirt like some kind of blonde explosion. <br><br>

So, quick as a flash she grabs Pop and before I can spin to help she falls to cooin’ and pettin’ over him like he was her prize bolshi hound all the while talking in russki and French. <br><br>

I get a quick look in her eyes and knew the story, and its end.  Left eye like the winter sky, right one’s got a shot pupil and the white’s all showing more veins than a liver. Blast must have concussed her head worse than an ogre club.  Delerim for an hour or so, then she passes out and dies, assuming she don’t bleed out first. <br><br>

My uncle Oswald was a bonesetter, amongst other things.  He believed you could fix bashes like this by drilling a hole in the head opposite the injury and letting, “the bad humours” out. I saw him try it a few times, but I ain’t seen it do anything other than cause a lot of pain and bleeding. None of them survived.  I also ain’t got an auger or a desire to drill into the side of a crazy Russki bint’s head. <br><br>

I look at the two of them.  She’s holding on to Pop like she’s a kid with her first pet. Pop’s acting like he’s Romeo finding his Juliet in a collapsed mine. Ain’t love grand? Hrmpf.<br><br>

I’m feeling the need for some mayhem and I gets an idea.  If the russkies were in this tunnel it must lead back to their position and if that’s true then there might be stuff worth stealing and things worth doing. <br><br>
 
I ain’t got the heart to break up Pop and his crazy, dead girlfriend, well, not technically dead, not for an hour or so yet, so I sent Orace back to find Ben and me and Morrow starts heading the other way into the Russki tunnels. As we head out I take a last look back at my pal and his chippie. If she was in her right mind, she’d probably be wearing my best mate’s pelt for a trophy, but as it stands I figure she’ll not be in her right mind this side of heaven. <br><br>

I kept expecting to see Russki soldiers or diggers, but we didn’t run into any. Eventually we find ourselves in the wine cellar of this old manor house.  Me and Orace stock up on the local vino and are just about to sneak back home when out comes Pop all blubbery and trying to carry the lady hellcat ‘cept his arm are too short so he’s mostly dragging her by the armpits ‘sez he ain’t leaving her in the hole.<br><br>
  
I look at him and for a moment, just for a moment, I’m like to smack the stupid out of ‘em but I can’t bring myself to do it, not with the a lost puppy look he’s got so instead I pick her up and we start sneaking around the house for a likely place to lay her down.  It takes a while, because up here there’s officers and soldiers, but we finally find a bedroom no one seems to be using and then we lay her out in bed like she had one too many vodkas rather than got her head bashed in by an explosion.  Pop even makes me leave a note, in French as best I can, explaining what happened. <br><br>

I grab some baubles for our trouble on the way out, but we get spotted and things get a dicey for a bit.  Luckily, Pop’s more or less back to normal by then so we make it back to the basement and out to the tunnels without severe injury.  We even got to blow a big stretch of Russkie tunnel using their own powder on the way out. <br><br>

Orace had made it back with a bunch of the vino we grabbed from the wine cellar and apparently those explosions brought down a bunch of fortifications on the enemy side, so we were heroes all around. <br><br>

But since then, Pop’s been in a bit of a funk.  We ain’t made it to India yet, may not at all at this rate and though he won’t say it, I think he’s still pining for a woman’s arms as it were.  So as I wrote earlier, if you could see fit, maybe you could send a letter his way?  We would both greatly appreciate it. <br><br>

Your Friend,<br> 
CSM Billy Butcher <br><br>

P.S. We found Ben yesterday. He got lost in the tunnels. <br>
P.P.S. If you hear any weird news that the British Army’s gone cannibal, it’s a bunch of crap.  Apparently, the Russkies don’t like me signature and have been spreading rumours. <br><br><br>



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