Tag: retreat
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DEAD ROSES
Dead roses in winter, withered and defeated. The Grand Armée reduced to an icy hell. The villages they entered had nothing to offer. They had stripped them bare of what little they had on their way to Moscow. Starving, frost-bitten and dog-tired, he stumbled on. To drop now meant certain death. No comrade would burden…
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BEYOND THE LIGHT
Beyond the trees the light shone. If they could just make it through the darkness of the forest they would survive. He rallied his men, ‘One last effort, push through!’ Bullets flew, splinters of wood stung, shells exploded, dirt and debris sprayed around them. Gradually they made the advance up the slope. Higgins fell, Young…
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THE PATH TO RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
They found him the next morning, tangled among the branches of the topiary tree. It appeared Father Reg had managed to stagger back from the local pub despite severe inebriation. However, on reaching the monastic retreat where he had been living in meditative isolation, Father Reg had confused the symbolic door of the religious installation…
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SUMMITS NOT RIGHT
‘Summits not right,’ he muttered in his mysterious way. I misunderstood his local dialect. ‘Something’s not right?’ ‘Yes,’ he pointed up to the top of the hill, where I could just make out the wall of a lookout tower. ‘There’s something wrong at the summit.’ ‘What’s wrong?’ I could see no sign of anything untoward.…
Iain Kelly 