Love on the Battlefield
written by:
Naughty Miranda

The local Historical Re-enactment Society had one major problem. There was nothing to re-enact. It was true that we lived in one of the oldest townships in the state; it was true, too, that the local militia once spent three long, winter nights guarding the fort against the British. But then they found out that the fort itself wasn't even shown on the British maps, and that they'd not passed within 20 miles of the place.

So, when it came to finding any concrete battles for the local enthusiasts to recreate every summer, the only "real" confrontation in the entire town's history was a tussle between a couple of local land-owners over the grazing rights on the hill, in 1863. Guns were fired (twice), blood was shed (but not because of the guns) and, when it turned out that a long dead ancestor of one of the families had moved up north from Georgia - why, for a couple of weeks that eventful summer, the town had its own Civil War.

So that, with a little embellishment of the facts and figures, is what the townsfolk elected to celebrate - the Most Northerly Engagement of the War Between the States. And every year, on July 4 weekend, the members of the Society would dust off their muskets, haul out the one cannon that had been purchased for the purpose (in case you're wondering, they took turns using it - this year, it was the Confederates' turn), and the whole town would turn out to watch. And, of course, participate.

From an historical perspective, the original "battle" was waged between no more than two families. By the time the first re-enactment was staged back in 1976, however, a neighbourly squabble had become a pitched battle, with forty, fifty, men a side, and the field hospitals choking with the wretched wounded warriors. Who said history was written by the winners? When there's tourism dollars at stake, it can be reritten by everyone.

My heart belonged to the Yankees - not through any political or even familial affiliation, mind you; that was just the side I'd been picked by. And, when the great day dawned, I put on my rented nurse's uniform, marched with the army through the town and, in the absence of any historical basis for anything we did, prepared to watch as the usual wild skirmishing began.

Which is when I was called to tend to the first of the wounded, less than 30 seconds after I arrived at the field hospital, and before half the tourists had even laid out their picnics. I'll spare you the gory details, but as the stretcher-bearers raced towards me, I heard one of them describe the wounded man as a goner, and the other one suggest they went and grabbed a beer. To toast his selfless sacrifice, no doubt.

The field hospital was exactly what it sounds like. It was in a field, and it had "hospital" painted on a sign outside. Actually, I shouldn't laugh. My fellow nurse, Miss Barnes, had gone to a lot of trouble to reconstruct what she imagined a Civil War era facility might look like - a bunch of surgical instruments from somebody's tool box, a mountain of brown-looking bandages and half a dozen shop window dummies, daubed in scarlet and missing sundry limbs. When she described our charge as the day's first "human" patient, I sincerely hoped she wouldn't try for a little extra realism in that department. As it turned out, he was going to get a lot more realism than I'd ever expected.

His torso spattered with crimson gore, Gavin Black gazed up at me. "Am I going to live?" he asked.

I smiled and, following Miss Barnes' directions, mopped his fevered brow with a rag liberally soaked in alcohol. "We'll do our best, soldier." I smiled as I said it, partially out of astonishment that I'd ever been press-ganged into this pantomime (I'd always managed to wriggle out of the annual invitation in the past), but also because I knew Gavin of old, and he was far from soldierly as you could imagine.

When I was in my early teens, he was the "hip dude" in the town's only record store, the only one who knew what you were talking about when you asked for Elvis Costello and Iggy Pop records. He was the manager there now. I'd not been inside the place for years now, but he was obviously doing well. I wondered if he was still considered hip by the latest wave of music-buying kids? Or whether he'd employed his own new dude to cater for the latest tastes?

I remembered other things. There'd been precious few interesting guys of my own age, and very few single ones, anywhere in town. Gavin, though he was probably six or seven years older than me, was one of the few who seemed even remotely attainable. For a time, I'd had quite the schoolgirl crush on him. I wondered if he ever realized?

The medics had already stripped off his uniform, leaving him clad in just an old vest and long-johns; I stepped back while Miss Barnes commenced encasing his entire lower torso in a spider's web of dirty bandages ("I soaked them in tea," she'd explained earlier. "It makes them look more authentically unsanitary").

I watched her working; then, when she announced that she was urgently required at another of the hospitals, I took over. The crafty cow was probably off to the refreshments tent for the rest of the day. You couldn't really blame her, either. She was one of the motivating forces behind the entire re-enactment committee. If anyone deserved the day off, it was her.

I turned my attention to Gavin, lying grinning on the workbench. "Dying soldiers should maybe look a little more like they're dying," I admonished him, drilling a finger into his abdomen. He gave an involuntary "ouch," and I smiled. "Ouch. Yes, I'm sure a lot of them say that. So, how did you get ‘injured'? Just so I know where to put the most blood."

"I was trying to reload my musket. I caught a couple of balls in the stomach."

Oh dear. What an unfortunate turn of phrase. But I resisted the temptation to deliver the first words that came to mind ("I usually catch them in my mouth"), and pressed on. "So, the abdomen. Messy. Very messy." I grabbed a bottle from under the counter and uncorked it. "This might be cold. But you're a brave soldier, you can handle it."

Upending the bottle, a torrent of dark red liquid splashed across his bandages. "Cheap red wine. Adds an antiseptic air to the surgery, and looks absolutely lifelike. Doesn't taste bad, either."

"I'll remember that," he laughed; and then, "you know, I was just remembering you as a kid. Do you still have all those records you used to buy?"

I nodded. "Of course I do! That's a vital slice of my childhood. Half the music I still listen to today came from you." I wondered whether I should tell him precisely why I spent so much time in the shop, just "hanging out" and listening while he rattled on about this band and that... the first time I ever heard Blondie was when he played it. Patti Smith as well. But I thought better of it.

He continued. "Do you remember how I was saving up to buy a keyboard? Then I was off to become a rock star? Never did get it, and then Duran Duran came along and that was all my best ideas down the toilet. I never imagined I'd still be here 20 years later."

"Who'd have thought any of us would be?" I, too, had expected to flee before I was out of my teens; first to college and then a glittering career in some far-away city - and, to be fair, I got that far.

But I was between jobs now, and I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do next. So I came back to the town I grew up in, and found it was just as dull as when I left it. Maybe that's why I was feeling so excited now. I didn't care that I was massaging wine-scented blood into a pile of tea-stained bandages. At least I was connecting with someone in a more meaningful way than saying "hello" at the post office. It was also the first time I'd touched someone else's bare skin all summer.

He spoke again. "I was just wondering; how much blood am I actually meant to be losing here?"

I looked down. The bottle was half empty. "Oh, just a couple of pints for now, but it'll keep coming. You'll probably be dead by the end of the day." I paused as my eyes travelled down his body. "Although, I'm wondering if your wound is the only thing that's draining it?"

I saw his eyes follow mine, and his face turned as scarlet as the blood. Straining against the fabric of his red-stained longjohns, a fat, one-eyed helmet peeking over the edge of the cotton waistband, he was nursing the biggest hard-on I'd seen in years - and certainly the biggest that I'd never even noticed.

He spluttered an apology, but I put my fingers to his lips. "Don't try to speak. You're dangerously weak and any unnecessary exertion could easily finish you off." I lay the palm of my hand an inch or so over the bulge, could feel the heat radiating out of it. "Massive blood loss. Dangerously overheated. I have to try and find a way of staunching the flow."

Gently, I pulled his underpants away, and his cock leaped to attention, as fat as that first glimpse had promised, and - as my friend Lisa sometimes liked to say, "long enough to tickle your tonsils." I looked around - the tent was still empty, and the only voices in earshot sounded some way away. "Everyone's off with the fighting. This tent's more for show," I mused. "All the other casualties will be down there, with Dr Ronstadt."

"Lucky for me," he smiled, and I grinned back. "Lucky for me, as well." I stroked his cock, and squeezed as it twitched in response. "Civil War medicine is usually so boring."

My hand was tight around him, squeezing and easing the pressure of my grip, but never doing more than that. The thought of somebody wandering past and seeing us was alive in my mind, but that was only a part of it. I just wanted to savor the moment... squeeze and release... squeeze and release... squeeze and release.

He reached a hand up to touch my breasts, but I stepped to one side, just out of reach. "Maybe when you're feeling better." Squeeze.

"I'm feeling pretty good right now."

Release. "So you say." Squeeze. "But I say there's still room for improvement." Release. My hand relaxed and, where once I had gripped him firmly in my fist, now the lightest of fingers cradled him. "Definitely room for improvement."

Squeeze... and the faintest bubble of moisture appeared from the slit at the tip. Release; and I pressed my thumb against the droplet, smeared it roughly over his helmet. I glanced over and saw his eyes fixed on mine, their expectant glitter begging me to lean forward, to take him in my mouth. I wanted to as well, but I resisted the temptation. For now. Rather, I watched him watching me, then heard him moan slightly as my hand jerked up suddenly, milking the pre-cum from deep within.

Then, with the end of his cock now glistening with moisture, I leaned forward, to blow gently onto the crest. He gasped, and I looked across at him. He really did have beautiful eyes.

"Is everything okay?" I asked. "Do you have everything you need?"

"I need to be inside you. I want to feel myself inside you... inside your mouth."

I adopted what I hoped was my most officious tone. "I thought that might be it. But I still don't think you're ready." I straightened up, but this time, as I enclosed his stiffness in a tight fist, there was none of the gentle tease of before. Instead, my hand was a blur, massaging his shaft, jerking him so hard that it seemed no more than a minute before I felt his balls begin to tense, and a low growl forming in his throat. "I'm coming! Oh fuck, I'm coming!"

I did my best to control my own excitement. "I know," I said calmly. "And now I want to..." - but before I'd even finished my sentence, before I had a chance to tell him how desperately I wanted to feel his hot cum on my face and lips, he erupted, a long, hard, boiling geyser of white erupting out of him, arching over the bandages to spatter his chest.

More hit my hand; more still splashed the stretcher beneath him. It felt as though it would never stop - even as my grip relaxed, I could still feel the frenzied jolts as his balls emptied themselves. But finally the flood subsided; his cock was softening already.

I bent down and raised it to my mouth, gently enclosing the head between my lips as I sucked the last drops of cum out of him, his salty softness so deep inside my mouth that my nose was pressing into his belly. But finally I released him, straightened up and adjusted my uniform.

"I really think you're on the road to recovery, soldier boy," I laughed, as I picked up the cum- and wine-soaked bandages, and balled them into the garbage. "So it's time to reload your musket again. But this time, let's find somewhere else to put the balls." Then my mouth closed over one-half of his scrotum, and I felt him beginning to stiffen again. And I knew that this was one re-enactment that I was really going to enjoy.