The Moon Kills

Long ago and far away—a good lead-in phrase for a story too long to tell here in detail—some way-too-young and very simple country boys needed rudimentary training with small arms, basic tactics, and how to move stealthily in their thickly forested and jungled environment. They needed the weapons and training because their government, armed by “progressive” nation-states, was enthusiastically—if incompetently—exterminating them. They were too young because most of the older males, their fathers and big brothers, had already been killed.

In the UN, the usual pontificating about “human rights” dragged on, with the usual result: zero. But a couple of governments sent unofficial and plausibly deniable support in the form of ordnance and “friends.” There was not much hope of turning the tide, but some chance of staunching the slaughter—perhaps making extermination inconvenient and prohibitively expensive. To that point it had been ridiculously easy.

It was no simple task. The boys spoke a dialect even the best available interpreter hardly understood, and we hardly understood him. The tribe was not industrialized. They had no real mechanical background. There was no warrior caste in the tribe, no conflict history in recent times other than being the recipients of “float-by shootings” on the banks of two rivers by the dominant tribe’s Soviet-made gunboats. Most of the boys had hardly ever been outside their family huts between sunset and dawn—it was too dangerous, and might disturb the spirits of angry ancestors—but now they had to move, evade, and fight at night.

Getting to the point, it was really difficult to teach these kids how to move through densely-foliaged terrain at night undetected by troops waiting in ambush—troops with just enough experience to spot movement and put fire on it. Lacking night vision gear, all they had to do was observe where moonlight and starlight filtered down through the canopy, see it strike “moving targets,” and open up with barrages from their AK’s and RPD’s.

The boys were stupefied and morose from all that had happened to their people—dulled by the complexity of learning the operation of AK’s, confused by the language problem and fearful with all this talk of killing or being killed. The interpreter, a former boys-school sports coach, personally knew nothing of tactics, and the importance of this “night movement” stuff eluded him. There was a bright gibbous moon and a billion stars overhead. Taking him by the arm he was moved through and under slashes and dapples of light, and every time one touched him the spot was poked and he was told “Bang-bang! You are shot! You die!” A clumsy but productive discussion ensued—and he had an epiphany.

Let’s Play!

It was the boys themselves who first pointed out that close to the rivers and, to a lesser degree, to clearings, where foliage thinned, ambient glow could backlight humans to make them targets. They learned that in the dark, shape is more telling than detail; that the shape of a man with a rifle was obvious, while the shape of a boy crouching low with rifle tucked in tight was just another dark lump.

They learned to stay low, to “become snakes,” and that when you moved slender saplings or tall reeds only slightly at their base, that movement was multiplied by the length of the growth. If vegetation movement could not be avoided, to do it excruciatingly slowly and purposefully, with great care, never letting it rebound freely. They learned to freeze for long minutes if they accidentally made a noise; that a single noise not repeated or accompanied by movement, or a single movement without noise or further movement, is usually focused on briefly—and then dismissed; just human nature at work. Conversely, make a noise twice, or movement twice, or either accompanied by the other, and humans lock on it and go to “high alert,” and it is then when you must become another lump; a rock, a bush.

The boys learned that in darkness, people instinctively gravitate to even marginally better-lit spaces, and that even in darkness, people will typically walk on paths or in areas which would be illuminated in daylight. They were taught this is natural, but in war, darkness is your friend; a demanding one requiring great discipline and practice to please, and not even their supposedly superior enemies had this strength. Scouting patrols proved it to them.

School Of Light & Dark

Hidden and silent, they repeatedly observed their “unbeatable” enemies at riverside camps and interior outposts. At night they huddled in the pools of light from gas pressure lamps and generator-powered lights. Even then they stumbled, made noise, tripped on rocks and roots. Setting up night ambushes, the government troops would take their positions in daylight, never altering their trodden routes, and stay there, afraid to venture out into the dark. Sometimes they accidentally shot each other when a man would clumsily, fearfully go to relieve himself. The boys smiled. These men were not good snakes! They feared the dark! Had they never played the game?

The boys learned these soldiers came from shantytowns and big villages. They had guns and machines and lights, but no great skills, no special magic, no knowledge of how to move and see. They did not like the forest and jungle; it was not their home. And they killed because they were told to, and if they enjoyed it, it was only because it had been easy. That would change. And the most important thing: They were not fighting for their families, their home, or their survival. They could be beaten.

Teams of “friends” were rotated and replaced. The interpreter stayed voluntarily. He had missed teaching and being surrounded by schoolboys. He worked hard at making games of deadly serious skills, and keeping the boys’ spirits up. The boys embraced silence and darkness, and the tide not only turned, but ran against their enemies.

You can fill in the blanks, I’m sure. The government wearied of this increasingly expensive and embarrassing conflict. “International pressure”—bribes to fatcats, called “foreign aid”—brought it to an end as soldiers defected in waves.

A story came back from the last engagement, a nighttime ambush of government troops by “the snakes.” A boy stood over a fallen enemy and said, “You are cruel but you are stupid. Did you not know that the moon kills?” Connor OUT