CaptHaggard
Posts: 191
Joined: 3/8/2016
From: Sonoma, CA
Status: offline
|
**Field Report Forwarded to HQ SPECOP Haggard Group**
5 November 1943
Commander Haggard,
I intercepted Lt. Bloomquist-Rose at the roadblock as he transited the main route in Siangtan, not far from the old YMCA building. His driver produced her credentials, which looked (among other things) to be in order. Both the Lieutenant and the driver appeared uncertain of the direction they wished to go.
I handed him the orders to proceed to Kweilin, as instructed, with your personal note attached.
During our exchange, Bloomquist-Rose (with the driver translating) inquired upon road guard the nature of the Dragon Boat Festival, but these were CPC boys and not inclined to respond to such bourgeois inquiries.
(Of the Chinese units in the region, the CPC units are more disciplined fighters than KMT, but they won’t go easy on the bankers when the fight is done. Most are local peasants and since this Mao character was born here, they tend to be insufferably arrogant. Every day the Japs retreat, things become more tense. A civil war is coming, and from what I’ve seen, smart money gives Chiang and the KMT little chance.)
After consulting with his driver, Bloomquist-Rose drove off, in compliance with your orders south toward Hengyang, presumably there to catch the road to Kweilin.
Three hours later, a bristling Marine Raider arrived at the checkpoint to inform me that the jeep carrying Bloomquist-Rose eluded the road-check at the entrance to Hengyang and had instead veered on the secondary route north to Shaoyang.
A brief chase by the MPs ensued but the driver of Bloomquist-Rose’s vehicle managed to lose her pursuers in a crowded market.
As a precaution, we considered stationing men on the river in Siangtan, but the Dragon Boat Festival is not until next October.
Signed,
Harold Jackson, Lt., USMC
115th Military Police Detachment
**********************
**Special Report**
Overcast and muggy as hell. Rice field after rice field punctuated by incessant roadblocks. If manned by KMT, I’m doling out cigarettes; manned by CPC, I’m doling out my cheese-eating grin and I’m beginning to lose patience.
Marines wouldn’t venture along these routes without tanks—and what weapon do we have to boast of? There is a danger in these backwoods as electric as the alleys of the South Side, in the days when Reagan’s Colts decided to prowl the slums of Nitti’s mob.
As soon as we clear every roadblock, Bella steers with her left knee and unbuttons her tunic down to her navel. Both hands back on the wheel, she splays her elbows wide for maximum ventilation from the meager turbulence thirty bumpy miles-per-hour can produce.
“Damn!” hisses Bella.
All of a sudden the dirt bed sharps us into a copse of purpleblow maples, where yet another set of roadblock guards await, these two with lowered bayonets.
Like all the young communist soldiers we’ve encountered, these boys exhibit expressions glowering with fanaticism. Now we endure the moment when these menacing expressions twist into ugly snarls—they sense their noble calling mocked by decadent excesses of a fully-gassed vehicle packed with cases of wine—and driven by a beautiful woman... with her ripe, white breasts fully exposed—?
Aw, crap. Bella had no chance to button-up.
“All this for a meal.” I gripe at Bella’s plans under my breath, as I sidelong a glance into the woods for a possible run—
But then, a miracle of nature. The tall boy-guard scratches his neck in hypnotic rhythm, jaw dropping like his comrade, agog at Bella’s exposure—
Mao’s hard-line short-circuited in the presence of those sumptuous breasts, the boy guards have transformed into any schoolboy from Muncie, Indiana. With gap-toothed guffaws they wave us by...
“Just so you know,” Bella snaps as she accelerates, “Francie’s red-pot duck with quail eggs is not just a meal!”
***
Shaoyang wobbles under a thick yellow dust. The loft we enter in the foreign quarter has a long room with canvas rolls in corners and on every flat surface, sketches and tubes of paint.
Instructed to sit on an enormous cushion, my senses pummeled by spicy scents of simmering duck, I marvel at our host Francie. Her sensual mouth is wildly exaggerated—but so are her giant, glistening, almond-shaped eyes—
Where on earth do such exotic humans exist?
“Almaty.”
Almaty—Lost Horizon stuff. The reason Genghis Khan pressed ever westward: the never-ending quest to find more Francies...
A half-dozen large painted canvases face us, hanging on wide planks of rough-cut cedar that divide this room from the next. Erotic in the Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock tradition, these canvases are singularly explicit, and here confined to orgy scenes—
“I paint them in oils. Do you like them?” asks Francie, twisting a lock of auburn hair as she studies my expression.
I can literally hear her eyelids bat. I clear my throat. “In my limited experience, I believe that orgies of the Shunga school feature a single male with multiple females, but these on the other hand—”
I suddenly realize that the gorgeous red kimono Francie now wears is reproduced in every painting. It is represented in patches, overlapped by arms and legs, male heads (one or two wearing pony-tails) and exaggerated genitalia, in the tradition of the school. Patches of other kimonos—in various states of discard by dog-piling males (who appear distinctly Japanese)—combine with flattened perspective and lack of shading to produce a kaleidoscope of form. The result is so bewildering that one instinctively begins to untangle lovers, until determining that a precise assignment of exactly which limb belongs to whom is a futile task...
On the other side of the cedar planks someone moves about... a scratchy old wax plays a mandolin ensemble... ‘Kalamazoo Swag’...
“‘But on the other hand...’” repeats Francie.
“I think he’s calculating how many figures populate that canvas,” teases Bella.
“Only two,” says Francie quickly, shooting a reprimanding look at Bella and then staring me as she nibbles her lip. “I have chosen to paint the actions of my male paramour over a single session of lovemaking. I am still developing the technique as to how I can have his partner—that is to say me—participate in the time-flow as well.”
Bella giggles: “Francie is so avant garde.”
“Brilliant idea,” I say, playing along. “I find it fascinating that he wears so many different kimonos during a single session—and is the gentlemen in question able to change his hairstyle that rapidly?”
“Aha!” Bella laughs, as embarrassed Francie giggles into her palms, before gazing at me with a swollen and frank blush.
No sooner did I join in the merriment, however, that I detected, on the far canvas where footsteps now pad in the shadows, that the female depicted thereon is different from the others—different, yes—but very familiar to me: dark-hair, full-breasted and long-legged, with exquisite bluish-white flesh—entwined with a regiment of ardent male lovers... in many kimonos and many hairstyles—
“Your Rosy seems absorbed, darling,” says Francie breathlessly, moving now to snuggle tightly against Bella. “Perhaps he is considering his own artistic calling?”
“I think,” Bella feigns a whisper, “he desires only to be painted.”
“Say, buster—” Francie cries, propping herself from Bella’s embrace to stare at my champagne glass, “—why aren’t you celebrating the attack on Kweilin? How do we say, ‘Drink up!’”
She pops to her pretty feet and, with Bella patting her glorious behind, glides rapidly into the back room—
Kweilin—! A sense of guilt descends upon me. I close my eyes in shame. Our Marines fight day and night, while I fritter away my existence with wine and women and ‘Kalamazoo Swag’...
I am in the process of vowing to apply myself to my duty more rigorously—just as Francie reappears with an armful of kimonos, which she drapes over a low table after swiping it clear of sketches.
“Darling, I want you to wear this exquisite green pattern,” Francie says to Bella, handing her the chosen garment. “And as for you—” she gushes, skipping to me and parting her kimono as she straddles my cushion—“Lots and lots of kimonos...”
Submitted,
7 November 1943
F.W. Bloomquist-Rose, Lt., USNR
SPECOP Haggard Group
< Message edited by CaptHaggard -- 1/30/2018 3:48:27 PM >
|
Printable Version
RE: THE WAR COLLEGE-Rio Bravo (A) v. El Lobo (J) - 
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread