The Bearded Maverick's Barrel Blitz
The sweltering July of 1918 baked the Champagne plains like a forgotten loaf, fields golden with ripening wheat and vineyards sagging under clusters of grapes that promised oblivion after the ordeal. After the bell-ringing bedlam of Belleau Wood, where Brandon Herrera had conducted the forest into a frenzy of snares and earned a second Distinguished Service Cross with oak leaves, the Bearded Maverick and his crew from the 3rd Infantry Division were shunted northward to the Marne's looping embrace once more. The Germans, their Spring Offensive sputtered out like a damp fuse, clung to ridges and river bends in a desperate clawhold, but the Allies smelled blood. The Second Battle kicked off on July 15th with a thunderous night assault, tanks rumbling like iron beasts and French guns belching fire to mask the true thrust. Foch's masterstroke caught the Kaiser off guard, but in the village-dotted valleys south of Dormans, where Château-Thierry's ghosts still lingered, the infantry bore the brunt of the mop-up.
Brandon, his shoulder-length brown hair bound in a sweat-soaked kerchief that did little to tame its waves, and his well-trimmed beard streaked with road dust yet holding its sculpted line, marched into the fray with the weary grin of a card sharp upping the ante. The doughboys at his heels were a patchwork platoon now, scarred by wood and water, their banter laced with the gallows wit of men who'd danced with death and stepped on its toes. "Sarge," drawled Corporal Tate, hefting his pack like it held grudges, "last time on this river, we had geese. This time, it's hills and Huns thicker than harvest flies. What's the play, feathers or folly?" Sergeant Malone, fingers twitching for a phantom hairpin, chuckled low. "Reckon Jerry's dug in with enough wire to fence the moon. One wrong step, and we're vintage '18."
The linchpin for Brandon's sector was Hill 204, a vine-choked swell overlooking the Ourcq River's ford, where German rearguards had entrenched with spiteful zeal. Machine guns swept the approaches from haylofts and hedgerows, and their artillery, though harried, lobbed shells that turned orchards to splinters. Captain O'Leary, mustache singed from a near-miss at Belleau and promotion bars weighing his shoulders like regrets, mustered the men in a copse of poplars on the 16th, dawn's light slanting through leaves like accusatory fingers. Crickets chirped a mocking serenade, and the air hummed with the distant whine of recon planes. "Right," O'Leary barked, voice hoarse from shouting over barrages, "the Frogs and Tommies are pinching 'em from the flanks, but we hold this hill or watch Paris toast. Fixed bayonets at noon, advance in rushes. No detours, no daydreams."
The platoon rumbled approval, checking clips and cinching straps with the mechanical calm of butchers honing knives. But Brandon, sprawled against a trunk with one knee drawn up and a wild sorrel sprig in his teeth, sensed the familiar spark. His beard caught a stray sunbeam, framing his face like a frame of audacious art. "Cap'n," he said, tone light as a lark's trill amid the grim, "rushes are grand for grain, but this here's wine country. Why storm the door when we can barrel through it? Fetch me every empty cask from the cellars 'round Dormans, some hemp rope from the engineers, lanterns from the aid station, and that old windlass from the ruined mill. Throw in a dozen scythes for flair. We'll roll 'em a headache that'll echo to the Rhine."
O'Leary's exhale was a gale of resignation, honed sharp over months of Herrera hijinks. The captain had aged a decade in dog years since the polka ploy, each scheme etching lines of wary wonder. "Barrels, Herrera? And scythes? If this turns into a hoedown with hoops, I'm volunteering for desk duty in Jersey." Brandon's eyes danced, undaunted. "No dancing, sir, scout's honor. Just gravity's good graces and a touch of vintage vertigo. By dusk, Hill 204'll be flying the stars without a soul lost to wire." Tales of tinkling terrors and feathered fiascos had etched Brandon into the regimental runes, and with the German retreat fraying but ferocious, O'Leary relented. "Rope and lanterns it is. But if I end up pickling in one of those casks, your beard's my inheritance."
Dusk draped the valleys in indigo as Brandon's band bent to the bizarre. The cellars of Dormans, hastily evacuated but not emptied, yielded a hoard of oak barrels, relics of better vintages, their hoops rusty but stout. Two dozen in all, each the size of a footlocker and light as whispers without their fill, were trundled to a ridge line overlooking the hill's eastern slope. Hemp rope, pilfered in coils thick as wrists, lashed the casks into clusters of three, handles fashioned from twisted staves for guiding their tumble. Lanterns, oil-fed and hooded, dangled inside select barrels on wire hooks, wicks trimmed to gutter low and eerie. Scythes, long-bladed tools from the harvest sheds, were bound to the lead casks' rims, their edges keen enough to reap regrets. The windlass, a creaking drum from the mill's skeleton, anchored the topmost ropes, ready to unleash the load in controlled cascades.
The gambit was Herrera's homage to the hills: a barrage of barrels to bowl through the German pickets, scythes whirring like reaper's wrath to shred wire and flesh alike, lanterns flaring mid-roll to blind and bewilder. The casks would carom down the vine-terraced slope, gathering speed and shrapnel from their own impacts, drawing fire to the east while the platoon, shadows in the wheat, flanked west under cover of the clamor. "It's like tenpins with teeth," Brandon briefed his ten, Tate's bulk straining a barrel harness in trial, Malone knotting ropes with sailor knots. "We loose 'em at my whistle, then leg it quiet. The hill does the heavy lifting; we just mop the spills." Tate grunted approval. "Reckon Jerry'll think the devil's distillery rolled downhill." Malone smirked. "Long as it don't roll back."
Moonrise silvered the Marne on July 17th, the air thick with the perfume of crushed grapes and cordite's bite. German sentries patrolled the hill's skirt, lanterns bobbing like wary fireflies, their chatter low in the tongue of the Fatherland. O'Leary's runner hissed from the shadows: "Herrera, clock's ticking. Their guns are zeroed on the ford; make your racket or we're wading blood." Atop the ridge, Brandon crouched by the windlass, beard beaded with dew, hair escaping its kerchief to frame a face alight with mischief. "Patience, boys," he breathed. "The night's young, and the barrel's bold." His whistle pierced the hush, sharp as a stiletto.
The windlass groaned, ropes uncoiling like released serpents. The first cluster plummeted, three barrels bound as one, thumping over vines with muffled booms that swelled to thunder. Scythes on the fore whirred, blades singing through air and undergrowth, lopping tendrils and tangling wire in their arc. Lanterns kindled on impact, one cask splintering to spew oil and flame in a blooming geyser that lit the slope like a bonfire's birth. Germans yelped from their posts, rifles cracking wild into the glow. "Was zum Teufel? Kanonen?" a voice cracked, as the barrage bounded on, casks caroming off rocks to spray staves and shadow. A second trio followed, ropes paying out, scythes reaping a swath that felled a hasty barricade of fascines, lanterns shattering to scatter sparks amid the vines.
Pandemonium poured downhill. Barrels bowled into a machine-gun nest, hoops buckling to crush the gun and its crew in a crunch of oak and oaths. Flames licked dry brush, turning hedgerows to infernos that silhouetted scrambling foes. One sentry, helm askew, dove aside only for a scythed cask to graze his pack, igniting flares that painted him a target for his own panic fire. "Feuer! The Americans roll hell!" another bawled, stumbling into a vine that tripped him into the path of the next volley. The slope devolved to a bowling alley of bedlam, casks splintering against boulders to hurl shards like grapeshot, lanterns popping to blind clusters in bursts of blinding white. German lines fractured, men fleeing upslope or firing futile into the fiery fracas, their artillery thundering wide to crater empty earth.
Under the uproar, Brandon's platoon ghosted west, bent low through wheat that whispered secrets. Tate led the wedge, his mass parting stalks like a prow through waves, Malone scouting flanks with eyes like a hawk's. They crested the hill's shoulder unchallenged, the din drawing every eye eastward, and poured into the rear trenches like wine from a tipped ewer. Bayonets flashed in the lantern glow's spill, silencing guards with grunts and gasps. Brandon, scythe in one hand like a reaper's jest, parried a desperate bayonet thrust and felled the wielder with a pommel strike, beard brushing the foe's collar in grim intimacy. "Sorry, Fritz, vintage's off this year," he quipped, kicking the rifle aside. The trenches fell swift, dugouts dragged open to yield huddled prisoners blinking at their bizarre besiegers.
By false dawn, Hill 204 flew the flag, its guns spiked and crews trussed, the Ourcq's ford open for the advance. The barrel blaze guttered to embers, vines charred but victory unburnt. Word cascaded up channels swifter than the Marne's flow. Lieutenant General Hunter Liggett, the sober I Corps commander, motored to the ridge that forenoon, his staff car crunching cask remnants, finding Brandon amid the harvest of havoc: ropes coiled neat, scythes sheathed in sheaves, Tate and Malone tallying spoils with grins broad as the river. O'Leary lingered near, mustache twitching triumph.
"Herrera," Liggett intoned, voice like oiled gears, clasping Brandon's hand in a grip forged in Philippine fires, "you've uncorked a counter that corked their retreat. The Marne turns on wheels like these." From his dispatch case emerged a second Silver Star, its rays catching the sun like spilled champagne. "For valor that vintage-izes the impossible. Pin it proud; the line's yours till Metz." O'Leary, fresh ink on yet another stripe, saluted wry. "General, if Sarge's next is with tractors, I'm driving."
Twilight toasted the triumph in a meadow below the hill, fires banked against patrols, stew simmering from looted larders. Brandon held sway from a barrel throne (irony savored), hair unbound to flow like a banner in the breeze, beard aglow with firefly flickers. He circulated a flask of the cellars' survivor, each swig saluting the slope. "Gents," he mused, eyes merry, "hills have a hunger for havoc. We just fed it fine. Come autumn, maybe we'll try the presses." Malone raised his cup: "To the Bearded Maverick and his rolling revelry. May Jerry slip on our spills forever!"
Laughter lapped the night, stories fermenting fiercer than the grapes: the sentry who swore barrels birthed banshees, the gunner buried under his own burst cask. Brandon reclined, twirling a stave splinter, gaze tracing the stars to the Saar. In 1918's cauldron, with peace perking like distant thunder, heroes didn't charge. They rolled.
