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    Kepi Blanc
    Kepi Blanc
    Kepi Blanc
    Ebook48 pages34 minutes

    Kepi Blanc

    By Gilles Messier

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Gerhardt was born to be a soldier - to fight and die with honour for his country. But when a chance encounter in the North African desert finds him pitted against the legendary French Foreign Legion, Gerhardt embarks on a harrowing odyssey across the changing landscape of modern warfare, discovering what it truly means to be a soldier.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPetra Books
    Release dateNov 9, 2013
    ISBN9781927032152
    Kepi Blanc
    Author

    Gilles Messier

    Gilles Messier was born in Winnipeg in 1989 and studies aerospace engineering at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. As well as writing, he designs and develops mechanical devices and innovations. He enjoys painting 1930s-style travel posters, and studying history and philosophy.

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      Book preview

      Kepi Blanc - Gilles Messier

      Smashwords Edition

      ISBN 978-1-927032-15-2 (digital)

      2013

      Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication


      Messier, Gilles, 1989-
 [electronic resource] / Gilles Messier.


      First published in the collection Our Own Devices


      PS8626.E7573O97 2012 C813'.6 C2012-907084-X


      © 2012 by Gilles Messier. All rights reserved.

      Petra Books, petrabooks.ca, Ottawa Canada K1S 5P5

      Peter Geldart, designer, managing editor.

      Danielle Aubrey, consulting editor.

      Cover design: Gilles Messier

      petrabooks.ca

      Table of Contents

      Historical and Technical Notes

      Our Own Devices, the book

      About the author

      Képi Blanc

      Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.

      —Charles de Gaulle

      Bir Hakeim, Libya—May 25, 1942

      WHAT A PLACE to fight a war. A sea of sunbaked stone stretched unbroken from horizon to horizon, marred only by an endless speckled carpet of dark stones. The cruciform shadow of the Junkers sailed smoothly over the ground below, with not the slightest hillock to perturb its path. It was a wonder men could fight here, in this wasteland forsaken of cover, shade and water. Yet fight they did, and fought well. The desert bore witness to this feat: on the horizon a faint white cloud rose from the sand, easily dismissed as a dust devil. But that humble wisp betrayed a different storm: the rolling steel of the Afrika Korps, thundering across the scorched wastes.

      Always on the move, thought Gerhardt. The expanse beneath him was a vast chessboard, upon which the Feldmarshall played his deft, deadly gambits. He turned to face his brigade, lining the canvas jumpseats around him. They were in good spirits: well-rested and keen from a week's leave in Italy. Six months before they had pushed the British to the sea at Tobruk; they had returned to finish the job.

      Glancing back to the window, Gerhardt saw a new cloud staining the azure sky: a menacing black column of burning gasoline. Charred aircraft corpses littered the desert airfield, like cigarette burns in the sand. Ground crews scurried like ants amid the blackened hulks.

      The Junkers swooped down onto the airstrip, slamming onto the hard desert floor with a spine-jarring impact. Through every seam in the corrugated aluminium, their old friend the dust filtered in to greet them, igniting a paroxysm of coughing—their traditional salute. By taking to the air, they had momentarily escaped this, their constant companion. But every desert warrior must inevitably return to the dust. The dust was eternal and omnipresent. It crept into every radiator, every rifle, every corner and crease. They breathed the dust, ate the dust, were encrusted in it. And when they died, they became the dust.

      The Junkers ground to a halt, and the brigade filed with trained efficiency into the

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