Memoirs of My War

by Antiquarian

Before His Time

Interview Excerpt: Captain Spike Draconis, Equestrian Army

Did you ever do something really stupid as a kid. Like, really, really stupid?

…

Hah! Yeah, okay, that’s pretty stupid. I’ll give you that.

But I got you beat hooves down. You see, I went to the Great War as a baby.

Stupid, right?

What’s that?

Oh heck no, Twilight didn’t want me to go to war! You kidding me? I might have been an adult in pony years by then, a point which I argued quite strenuously, but I was still a baby dragon. And no baby dragon of hers was going to war!

And I get that. I do. I think I even got it at the time. Twilight’s and my relationship has always been… complicated. Sometimes she’s like my mother. Sometimes my sister. Sometimes my boss. But we’ve always been family, and that day she defaulted to mother. There was no way I was gonna fight.

Again, she was right. A baby dragon had no place on the front lines. Even in those early days of the war, before the machineguns; before the SAW rigs; before the tanks and the house-sized artillery; even then it was no place for a child.

But, like most children, I didn’t see that. All I saw was that I was as emotionally mature as many adults, and, if I still had my childish moments, so what? It’s not like plenty of fresh-faced young privates couldn’t say the same.

So, like a child, I lied. I told her I wouldn’t follow her to war. Then I called in some favors with guards I know from back in Canterlot to put me through my own personal boot camp. They thought that I was just trying to emulate my ‘big sister’ I guess. Hehe. I still haven’t told Twilight their names for fear of what she’d do to the poor naïve suckers.

No, I’m not gonna tell you! She’s gonna read this! I’ll wait until they’re good and buried!

Like I was saying, I trained myself up, especially with regards to dispatches, codes, telegraph maintenance, that sort of thing. I told myself that Twilight would be less likely to send me home if I made myself useful as her aide-de-camp. Then, when the Third Army got its marching orders, I followed.

I made good time. After all, I once did the Dragon Migration on foot, and I wasn’t even in shape at the time. So I caught up with them.

Just in time for First Clearwater.

I can see you recognize the name. Good. I’d be depressed if you didn’t know the name of one of the biggest Charlie Foxtrots in Equestrian military history. If having your first battle is like getting your feet wet, this was me getting tossed headlong into a lake. I saw more death in five minutes than I had in the previous twenty-five years. It was like watching the end of the world.

I’ll spare you the full history lesson. Suffice it to say, General Steel Pommel and his crack divisions threw us back with catastrophic losses. If his superiors hadn’t tied his hooves together, he probably would have destroyed the Third Army outright. As it was, some units suffered 50% KIA, and the rest weren’t much better off. Most of the Army was driven off the battlefield within a matter of hours.

Not all, though. No, there was one unlucky battalion and its support elements that got cut off from the rest of the IX Division and was forced to hole up in a forested bluff. Their only support was the artillery they’d managed to drag with them, stragglers from other units who’d stumbled into camp, and the couple squadrons of Air Corps giving them cover. This battalion was the 12th Infantry, and it just so happened to include a quintet of young officer mares.

Yeah. Them. I suppose you could even say that Dash was there too, since the Wonderbolts were flying CAP for us.

When the whole battle started to go sideways, we hadn’t gotten the withdraw order. The telegraph lines had been destroyed by the shelling and the courier had been killed by a sniper. Captain Helm realized the battalion was trapped behind enemy lines and ordered us into the trees, but he was killed during the withdrawal, which dumped the command on the withers of a certain First Lieutenant Twilight Sparkle.

Fortunately for us, Twilight kept her head. She held the lines in order and forced us to fall back slow enough to take our few artillery pieces with us, then had Pinkie and her earth-pounders keep the infantry covered while Applejack organized the most rapid build of an earth-and-wood fortification that I’ve ever seen in my life.

Whenever somepony tells me earth ponies aren’t magic, I smack ‘em.

The first waves of Equalists that came at us were overconfident; Pommel was busy with the rest of the Third Army, so his subordinates had the job of killing us.

They weren’t ready for what Twilight and the girls had waiting for ‘em. It was a massacre.

We bought ourselves some breathing room with that, but we were still in bad shape. The Third Army was too ravaged to come to our rescue and the next closest friendly force, Celestia’s First Army, was a week’s march away. True, Rarity had managed to save most of the supplies, and the Wonderbolts did a great job of keeping the skies clear, but we were still trapped behind enemy lines with no means of communication. Even with the majority of the enemy tied up fighting the Third Army, there were still five times as many bad guys around our makeshift fort as there were friendlies inside.

Or, to put it more bluntly, we were hosed.

It was about then that Twilight found me.

To say that she was furious would be like saying that the sun is kind of important to Celestia. Twilight quite literally burst into flames. And, no, I’m not joking.

Once she’d cooled down (both literally and figuratively), she realized that my being there wasn’t all bad news. For one, it let her update Celestia with my dragonfire. For two, it let her update the Third Army.

How, you ask? Well, I can tell you now that it’s no longer classified. It wasn’t exactly a secret that Twilight could use my dragonfire to reach the princesses, but what wasn’t public knowledge until well after the War ended was that she figured out a way to send messages with my dragonfire to any of the girls, on account of my close bonds with them. This was the battle where she figured that one out.

It wasn’t perfect; Rainbow could get our messages and pass them along to Third Army HQ, but the only way for them to respond was to air drop the letters. Risky, but not impossible in those early days before Triple-A (sorry, Anti-Air Artillery) got fully refined.

Between Twilight, Celestia, and Major General Crasher, we were able to cook up a plan to counter-attack with the two armies simultaneously and rescue the 12^th. Only problem was, we had to survive until Celestia could get to us. And this is where the other stupid thing I did comes into play.

What, you didn’t think I was just going to handle dispatches all day, did you? We needed every warm body we had, and it wasn’t like the Equalist artillery was checking for non-combatants anyway.

I helped with Pinkie’s arty, crawling into the guns to clear jams that the ponies were too big to reach. I helped Fluttershy and the other medics clear wounded from the line. I helped run ammo, food, and messages back and forth since I was such a small target. But that’s not the stupid thing.

No, the stupid thing came when the Equalists actually managed to make a hole in the southwest redoubt. Instead of running away like a smart creature, I ran to the hole. I didn’t really have a plan in mind. I wasn’t even armed. Mostly I was just thinking, “Hey, I can breathe fire.”

It was then that we learned an interesting lesson in dragon biology. Stick with me, this is going somewhere.

See, there’s a genetic quirk that dragons have wherein they get what’s called “Growth-Induced Bigness” when their greed is left unchecked. I once grew to the size of a full-grown dragon in the course of a day because my greed got out of control. But this isn’t really growth in the sense of the body maturing; it’s just a temporary size jump.

Turns out there is a way for dragons to permanently grow and age prematurely, though. You know that saying, “War makes us old before our time?” Well, in our case, that’s just literal. Twilight gave it a long, scientific name, but dragons just call it “Warspite.” When a dragon whelp is alone in a field of war for a prolonged time and has to fight to survive, a defense mechanism kicks into its biology and triggers magically accelerated aging.

Long story short, fire is a really awful way to kill somepony, I still have nightmares about that day, and by the end of that battle I was a teenager.

Twilight’s two objections to my following her to war had been that I was a baby and that she didn’t want me to see the violence. Once the dust settled after First Clearwater, neither of those applied. I wasn’t a child anymore. In any sense of the word. So the freshly minted Captain Sparkle allowed me to enlist.

She then promptly put me on KP for six months.

I didn’t care. As long as she didn’t send me home, I didn’t care. I would never have forgiven myself if I’d stayed safely at home while she and the girls fought and killed and risked their lives for me.

…

There are consequences to aging so rapidly. And not just unpleasant ones like Late-Onset Molting (it was gross; don’t ask). Practically speaking, I aged about one hundred and twenty years in less than a tenth the time. That’s the equivalent of me jumping from five to thirty-five. It’s long since stabilized; Warspite slows down once you hit adulthood and eventually just stops entirely, but I’ll still never get those years back.

Ponies sometimes ask me if I feel cheated by this. The answer is no. I never have. And the reason is quite simple.

Because I went to War with them, I grew closer to those mares than I ever thought possible. And not just them, but everypony I shared a trench with. I served my country, my princesses, my kin, in the war that decided the future of everypony I cared about.

That’s worth sacrificing a few years of my life. In fact, it would have been worth sacrificing all of them.

Author's Note:

“No other dragon in history has ever suffered from Warspite as dramatically as Spike. He put it all on the line for the ponies who raised him. Dragons respect that kind of guts. And, since he displayed those guts for ponies, for his friends, it kicked off some changes to our common values once word got around. Suddenly, we started asking what was really worth having in life. What was worth fighting to protect. We’re stubborn beasts, so it’s slow going, but changes are happening. Without even being a citizen of my kingdom, he’s done more to help me reform our culture than any other dragon alive, myself included. If it weren’t for the fact that I know he’s incapable of abandoning his ponies, I’d happily offer him half the jewels in my horde to make him my chief adviser. Assuming we’re both still kicking in a hundred years, I might just try.”

—Dragon Lord Ember

Comments

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

There are consequences to aging so rapidly. And not just unpleasant ones like Late-Onset Molting (it was gross; don’t ask). Practically speaking, I aged about one hundred and twenty years in less than a tenth the time. That’s the equivalent of me jumping from five to thirty-five. It’s long since stabilized; Warspite slows down once you hit adulthood and eventually just stops entirely, but I’ll still never get those years back.

That's still 12 years .
According to my calculator, that's 43,830 days.
So !0% = 4,383 days (about 12 years)
1 thousandth = about 44 days, so assuming about half during the battle & the rest since, that's about right

[Antiquarian]

9299342
He didn't jump to 35 (equivalent) in that one battle. He jumped rapidly in the battle (5/8 ish, the show is unclear, to about 15/18 ish). After that it was a slower grind to 35.

[Yutah123]

Obviously this chapter is for those who faked their age to enlist in the army, to protect their country and their friends.

Let's see what this has in store for us.

---

No, I’m not gonna tell you! She’s gonna read this! I’ll wait until they’re good and buried!

Not all, though. No, there was one unlucky battalion and its support elements that got cut off from the rest of the IX Division and was forced to hole up in a forested bluff. Their only support was the artillery they’d managed to drag with them, stragglers from other units who’d stumbled into camp, and the couple squadrons of Air Corps giving them cover. This battalion was the 12th Infantry, and it just so happened to include a quintet of young officer mares.

You know, unless they're not the Bearers in this AU, that's putting all your eggs in one basket. But even if they were, perhaps it's worth it: they have always worked better together.

When the whole battle started to go sideways, we hadn’t gotten the withdraw order. The telegraph lines had been destroyed by the shelling and the courier had been killed by a sniper. Captain Helm realized the battalion was trapped behind enemy lines and ordered us into the trees, but he was killed during the withdrawal, which dumped the command on the withers of a certain First Lieutenant Twilight Sparkle.

The enemy never stood a chance. If Twilight is good at anything, it'll be tactics and strategy.

To say that she was furious would be like saying that the sun is kind of important to Celestia. Twilight quite literally burst into flames. And, no, I’m not joking.

Yes, we all know that.

Fortunately for us, Twilight kept her head. She held the lines in order and forced us to fall back slow enough to take our few artillery pieces with us, then had Pinkie and her earth-pounders keep the infantry covered while Applejack organized the most rapid build of an earth-and-wood fortification that I’ve ever seen in my life.

Promotions for everyone!

Because I went to War with them, I grew closer to those mares than I ever thought possible. And not just them, but everypony I shared a trench with. I served my country, my princesses, my kin, in the war that decided the future of everypony I cared about.

That’s worth sacrificing a few years of my life. In fact, it would have been worth sacrificing all of them.

*Trying to do my best to salute Spike*

[Venerable Ro]

Could have been worse, could have been Wilderness.

Still reminds me of something though...

[Antiquarian]

9300172
There was definitely some inspiration from the tale of the actual Lost Battalion, yes.

[Antiquarian]

9299342
That is some intimidating math. Have mercy on me, sir! I am merely a historian!

I might change it when I have time (assuming I don't forget)

[Antiquarian]

9300086
They are still Bearers in this AU but, as you pointed out, they work best together. It's a gamble, but it's a gamble that historically has paid off. Plus, since they aren't siblings, there's technically no regulation against it.

[Draco Dei]

<SNIP> while Applejack organized the most rapid build of an earth-and-wood fortification that I’ve ever seen in my life.

Build this fort, Build this fort
Build this fort 1, 2, 3, 4!
Plus A.J. has speeds sprouted plants twice (Heart's Warming play could be dismissed as special effects... "Castle, Sweet Castle" not so much). Not to mention the Pie's ability to chew rock, Maud boulder-tossing, Maud's jackhammer impression, AJ's boulder-catch, or Rock hood's trench-digging, Big Macintosh towing a house off its foundations.
Pinkie Sense, Maud Sense, Cheesy Sense.... Okay, so Twilight was skeptical at first, which might indicate a.reluctance.in the scientific community to acknowledge these.
What bizarre alternate universe is this occurring in that Earth Pony magic is in question?
Twilight:Dr.Strange::Applejack:Hulk

we were still trapped behind enemy lines with no means of communication.

Spike IS a means of communication.. Granted it routes to Celestia, but unless something happened to change that...? In which case narratively my you should probably establish that. (One option:Analysis indicated a possibility it could be hacked to drop a bomb in front of Celestia,.so she turned it off.)

Once she’d cooled down (both literally and figuratively), she realized that my being there wasn’t all bad news. For one, it let her update Celestia with my dragonfire. For two, it let her update the Third Army.

Objection withdrawn!

“Warspite.”

This is an AMAZING TERM. Very dragon (I should know). Since Sabaton has been linked it occurs.to me to say that this would be a fitting title for a song and/or album by them.
(Posting now.lest this message get eaten).

[Draco Dei]

Practically speaking, I aged about one hundred and twenty years in less than a tenth the time. That’s the equivalent of me jumping from five to thirty-five. It’s long since stabilized; Warspite slows down once you hit adulthood and eventually just stops entirely, but I’ll still never get those years back.

If one assumes that Granny Smith being centuries old is just a hiccup in the writing of background details of two episodes that weren't intended to relate that way, then, from a certain very specific perspective he gave up more than a soldier who jumped on a grenade.