THE LAST ENEMY
The Sebek Files - Item 2
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Band of Brothers: The Unused Interview

(with apologies to the men of Easy Company)

Malarkey's Monster? I was wondering when you'd ask me about that. The guys still rib me about it at reunions, although Shifty Powers was really the one who spotted it first. Who was it who told you about it? Yeah, Bill Guarnere, he was the one who came up with the name. Thought it was a great joke, even after he lost a leg during the pasting we took a few days later. I'm not saying he didn't believe me, but you know, things were hairy at Bastogne, and out in the front line people got pretty jumpy. You could see things that weren't there, in the dark, in the snow, with the Krauts God knows how close to your position. But this was in broad daylight, and I know what I saw. You can ask Shifty too. He was a woodsman, always had an eye for detail, and he could probably tell it better than I could. Well, like I say, it was during Bastogne, the morning of New Year's Eve, I think. We were dug in among the trees south of Foy, surrounded by what seemed to be the whole German army, but still holding on. We'd had some shelling the previous night, but that morning was pretty quiet, and Lieutenant Dike gets it into his head to send out a combat patrol, and volunteers me to lead it. So I took Shifty Powers and a few others and we set out to see if we could find some Krauts to pick a fight with. Off through the woods we go, snow nearly a foot deep in places, and most of it pretty fresh too. It's all kind of white and quiet, like a fairy-tale picture book or something, like there wasn't a war going on at all. I mean, you can hear guns in the distance, but right then it felt like you had the woods all to yourself. Of course, when you start thinking that way, that's when you run into a sniper or a machine gun nest. First German we came across though was dead. I thought he'd taken a direct hit from a mortar or something, because he was messed up pretty bad, with his insides hanging out and one arm lying half way across the clearing. But there's no sign of any blast, and there's these tracks all around the body, kind of weird, sort of V-shaped, not like human footprints at all. Shifty reckons the Kraut got ambushed by whatever made these tracks, and I'm wondering if there's any bears left in Europe, because I couldn't really think of anything that could do this to a man, although to tell you the truth these prints looked sort of bird-like more than anything else. It also looks like someone's been searching through the dead guy's kit, because his pack's been upended and his belt's gone. So we're standing there just looking at each other, going what the hell, when there's an explosion somewhere nearby and we all hit the deck. We stay like this for about a minute, but no-one opens up on us, and we can see some smoke rising through the trees, maybe fifty yards off. Then there's another bang from the same place, and the others are looking at me for some kind of decision: do we go back to our lines or do we go forwards and try and find out what the hell's going on? Now I'm in no particular hurry to end up like this Kraut whose blood I'm lying in, just because the Lieutenant finally decided to make a military decision for the first time in his life. But I don't relish the idea of reporting back that we got scared off by a bunch of funny-shaped footprints either. I mean, this whole thing is weird as hell, but somewhere along the line the honour of the 101st Airborne is at stake, right? So I motion the others forwards in pairs, and we start creeping up to where these bangs are coming from, trying to keep as quiet as we can. And while we're doing this, there's a third explosion, and this time I swear I can hear someone sniggering up ahead of us. Then we get to the edge of a second clearing, and on one side of it there's this small black crater where the snow's been blown away, and that's where the smoke's coming from, and on the other side there's this creature that's like nothing I've ever seen before. Only way I've ever been able to describe it is like some kind of lizard like a dinosaur, about the size of a man, walking about on two legs with a big long tail sticking out behind it. Except dinosaurs are extinct, right, and they don't wear clothes. This one's wearing something like long-johns, and it's got a Russian fur hat on its head tied under its chin, and it's also wearing one of those woolly scarves like your mother knits you, and I'm thinking we should have gone back while we had a chance, because there's no way I can ever report this. Then I notice that it's got one of those potato-masher hand grenades in its claws, and it's just pulling out the pin. So we duck down again, and I'm hoping that Shifty can get a clear shot at the creature before it throws it, but it's not aiming at us, it's aiming at the crater on the other side of the clearing. Its throwing technique wouldn't get it onto any baseball team, I mean, it just sort of lobs the thing, but the grenade lands in the crater and goes off, and then it jumps up and down and giggles to itself like a kid with a new toy. I suppose we're all thinking: are the others really seeing this or have I finally lost it? I think that's why we just lay there in the snow watching this, this lizard tossing grenades about and sniggering all the while. And there was something else. I mean, we knew it had just gutted a man, since it was fairly obvious where it had got the grenades, because we could see the dead Kraut's belt at its feet, but the other reason we didn't do anything was that we just didn't want to spoil its fun. Battle-hardened paratroopers, and we didn't want to spoil its fun. How crazy is that, huh? Anyway, it throws the last grenade, does its little dance again, and then picks up the German's belt and gives it a shake, like it's hoping more are going to fall out. It's got this lizardy face, so it doesn't have much in the way of expressions, but you could tell it was kind of disappointed. Then it seems to perk up again, because it picks up something else, which looks like a bottle of schnapps. Probably looted from the Kraut's backpack. It sort of clutches the bottle to itself and peers around furtively, like it's about to do something it shouldn't, and that's when it sees us. Shifty told me later that he had this sudden conviction that it was going to jump him and rip him apart so that it could steal his own grenades, and believe me, I was thinking the exact same thing. So up come our rifles, and we're about to start blazing away, when it waves at us. Yes, it waves. Like this. Raises its claws up and flaps them at us. That's where I lose most people when I try and tell them the story, that or the woolly scarf. You think I don't know how stupid it all sounds? But it gets worse, believe me. But anyway, I tell the others to hold their fire, since it's not making any threatening moves. Actually, it's clutching the schnapps bottle even more closely, like it's afraid we're going to take it away from it or something. So I stand up, slowly, and I'm not really sure if I should try talking to it or what, so I just wave back, which seems to reassure it a bit. But before I can do anything else, I hear this voice calling from the woods on the far side of the clearing, and the creature starts looking alarmed, and I decide that if there's someone or something out there that it's afraid of, I don't want to be out in the open when it turns up, so I get back under cover again, and motion to the others to do the same. And the creature bends down and hides the bottle in the snow just behind the tree it's standing beside of, and then it straightens up and looks at where we're hiding, and raises one of its claws to its mouth, like it's shushing us. Well, I'm thinking that I don't need to be told twice, but then this woman walks into the clearing, and that's when things got really bizarre. She looked Italian, maybe Greek, dressed in civvies, although I couldn't see much under the cloak, except that she seemed to be carrying a sword. She's kind of cute, too, probably about thirty, dark curly hair. Anyway, she just walks straight up to the creature and starts talking to it, scolding it for wandering off. And it starts talking back, and tells her that it just wanted to play in the snow. Yes, it spoke. "I wanted to play in the snow." That's what it said. Then she sees the crater, and asks it if it's been playing with grenades, and it says no, and she just looks at it, so it says yes, but it took them from a bad man who didn't want them any more. And the woman's obviously heard this kind of thing before, because she just sighs, and tells it that if it wanders off like that again it won't be allowed to go ice-skating, and when I first told anyone that, Buck Compton laughed so hard he fell into a foxhole and nearly concussed himself. Now I'm thinking, they're speaking what sounds like English, and the woman at least looks reasonably normal, and she seems to be the one in charge, so if I show myself again it'll probably be all right, and maybe we can find out who the hell they are and what they're doing in the middle of a war zone. I mean, there's four of us armed to the teeth, and they didn't even have any guns, and, yeah, the creature was out of grenades too. Then I think about the dead Kraut again, and I hesitate, and then it's too late, because she's leading it off into the woods, and it looks round kind of wistfully, and I swear to God that it looks straight at me and waves goodbye with its claws, and then she looks round, and I don't hear what they say, but she shakes her head, and they disappear behind some trees, and that's the last we see of them. Eventually I realise that Shifty's talking to me, asking what I want to do now, and I'm kind of embarrassed at having hid there all the while, so I say, right, let's follow them. Then it turns out that only Shifty and me got a good look at them, and the others are pretty much convinced we're pulling their legs when we tell them what we saw. But we advance around the clearing, and pick up their trail, but their tracks just vanish after about thirty yards. Just fade away without any trace, and not even Shifty can pick them up again. Now we're all freaked, because we can all see these footprints just getting fainter, and fainter, until they're not there any more, and if the rest of the patrol didn't believe us then, you can see them changing their minds now. And I just know someone's going to start talking about ghosts, so I call it a day and head back to our lines. I make sure to dig up the bottle of schnapps, though, because I reckon I'm going to need it. Anyway, we get back safely, and I make up something for the Lieutenant, nothing to report except one lone German who threw grenades at us until we took him down, that sort of thing. But some of the other members of the Company can tell that something's up, so I swear them to secrecy, and they're going, come on, out with it, and so I tell them, and Shifty swears blind that he saw exactly the same thing, and I bring out the schnapps, because it's the only proof I've got, and from then on, if a man in Easy Company was asked where he'd looted something from, he'd say "Malarkey's monster". That was it. Weirdest damn thing I saw in the entire war, and the only credit I'm getting is for spinning a yarn to embroider a bit of battlefield looting. Never saw any trace of them again, and the whole area got churned up pretty bad when the 88s started really plastering us a couple of days later, so even the tracks were gone. The schnapps kept us warm through New Year's Eve, though. The thing kind of bugs me, even fifty years on, not because no-one believed it, but because I'm never going to know what they were, or where they came from, or where they went. Or even if they were really there in the first place. Could have been just combat fatigue, I suppose, and maybe if I'd been the only one who saw it I could believe that. Sometimes, sometimes I think about those British troops during the First World War, you know, the ones who saw the angels, and they just turned around and stopped the whole damn German army dead in its tracks. Well, we took a hell of a hammering over the next few days, but we stopped the Germans pretty good too. You make do with what you've got, I reckon. The Limeys get angels. Me, I get a talking lizard in a fur hat. But you know, these days, these days I think there's maybe some things you're better off not questioning.