Private Warren lay all night in the freezing rain. There wasn’t much pain. The bullet had clipped something high up in his neck and now he couldn’t move or cry out. But he didn’t want to think about that, plus he was breathing normally, and no one seemed to be shooting anymore. He’d slid down the slope but, come dawn, someone from 4 or 5 Platoon would notice he was missing and get a team together to collect him. But his teeth were chattering and his fingers were blue.
         Eventually the rain stopped and the sky began to lighten. Everything was covered in mist. He couldn’t see two meters in front of him.
         Then from out of the murk came a flapping of wings. A swirl of mist, and Warren was face to face with a bird, maybe 25 centimeters tall, black with a white tail and an orange face. A sharp hooked beak. They stared at each other. The bird paced back and forth. They stared at each other. The bird paced, back and forth.
         The bird shrieked like a cat: wee-ooo! From all around, echoes and responses: we-ooo, weee-ooooo-ooooo.
         More birds arrived, some smaller, some bigger. They paced and watched him. They made clicking noises. There was a sense of careful deliberation.
         The first bird trotted over and pecked Warren on the scalp. He barely felt it, or the trickle of blood that ran down his forehead. The bird returned to its flock. More clicking. Then they advanced.
         Lieutenant Ascroft, alerted by the noise, emerged from the evaporating mist and fired his SLR into the air. The birds flew away furious.
         Onboard Mother Hen, the doctor said most of the wounds were superficial. He would eventually regain sight in his left eye, but the right one is a no-hoper, I’m afraid. As for the paralysis, we will have to wait and see. Entirely possible it’s only temporary.
         So Private Warren, sightless, his head and upper body cocooned in gauze, lay in his hospital bed in the windowless cabin on the hospital ship and dreamed of flapping wings and bloody beaks and the screams of the johnny rooks.
         Now, many years later, he is a menace to his neighbors, this half-blind old man who stalks the sidewalks and throws stones at every bird he sees and occasionally breaks a window. We honor him for his service, say the adults, but this is getting to be too much. The teenagers, for their part, have learned to imitate a variety of bird calls, and they amuse themselves by serenading him at night. No one knows that Private Warren still keeps his old Browning Hi-Power oiled and in easy reach by his bedside.
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