Fritz Leiber - The Oldest Soldier

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From Fritz Leiber’s

The Mind Spider and Other Stories

THE OLDEST SOLDIER

Fritz Leiber

The one we called the Lieutenant took a long swallow of

his dark Lowensbrau. He'd just been describing a battle

of infantry rockets on the Eastern Front, the German

and Russian positions erupting bundles of flame.

Max swished his paler beer in its green bottle and his

eyes got a faraway look and he said, "When the rockets

lolled their thousands in Copenhagen, they laced the sky

with fire and lit up the steeples in the city and the masts

and bare spars of the British ships like a field of crosses."

"I didn't know there were any landings in Denmark,"

someone remarked with an expectant casualness.

“This was in the Napoleonic wars," Max explained.

"The British bombarded the city and captured the Danish

fleet. Back in 1807."

"Vas you dere, Maxie?" Woody asked, and the gang

around the counter chuckled and beamed. Drinking at a

liquor store is a pretty dull occupation and one is grateful

for small vaudeville acts.

"Why bare spars?" someone asked.

"So there'd be less chance of the rockets setting the

launching ships afire,'* Max came back at him. "Sails

burn fast and wooden ships are tinder anyway—that's

why ships firing red-hot shot never worked out. Rockets

and bare spars were bid enough. Yes, and it was Con-

greve rockets made the *red glare* at Fort McHenry,"

he continued unruffled, "while the 'bombs bursting in

air' were about the earliest precision artillery shells,

fired from mortars on bomb-ketches. There's a condensed

history, of arms in the American anthem." He looked

around smiling.

"Yes, I was there. Woody—Just as I was with me

South Martians when they stormed Copernicus in the

Second Colonial War. And just as I'll be in a foxhole

outside Copeybawa a billion years from now while the

blast waves from the battling Venusian spaceships shake

the soil and roil the mud and give me some more digging

to do."

This time the gang really snorted its happy laughter

and Woody was slowly shaking his head and repeating,

"Copenhagen and Copernicus and—what was the third?

Oh, what a mind he's got," and the Lieutenant was say-

ing, "Yah, you vas there—in books," and I was thinking,

Thank God for all the screwballs, especially the brave

ones who never flinch, who never lose their tempers w

drop the act, so that you never do quite find out whether

it's just a gag or their solemnest belief. There's only

one person here takes Max even one percent seriously^

but they all love him because he won't ever drop his

guard. ...

“The only point I was trying to make," Max continued

when he could easily make himself heard "was the way

styles in weapons keep moving in cycles."

"Did the Romans use rockets?" asked the same light

voice as had remarked about the landings in Denmark

and the bare spars. I saw now it was Sol from behind the

counter.

Max shook his head. "Not so you'd notice. Catapults

were their specialty." He squinted his eyes. "Though now

you mention it, I recall a dogfoot telling me Archimedes

faked up some rockets powdered with Greek fire to touch

off the sails of the Roman ships at Syracuse—and none

of this romance about a giant burning glass."

"You mean,*' said Woody, "that there are other gaze-

bos besides yourself in this fighting-all-over-the-universe-

and-to-the-end-of-time racket?" His deep whiskey voice

was at its solemnest and most wondering.

"Naturally," Max told him earnestly. "How else do

you suppose wars ever get really fought and refought?"

"Why should wars ever be refought?" Sol asked lightly.

"Once ought to be enough."

"Do you suppose anybody could time-travel and keep

his 'hands off wars?" Max countered.

X put in my two cents' worth. *Then that would make

Archimedes* rockets the earliest liquid-fuel rockets by a

long shot."

Max looked straight at me, a special quirk in his smile.

"Yes, I guess so," he said after a couple of seconds.

"On this planet, that is."

The Daughter had been falling off, but that brought it

back and while Woody was saying loudly to himself, "I

like that refighting part—that's what we're all so good

fit," the Lieutenant asked Max with only a moderate accent

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Fritz Leiber - The Oldest Soldier

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