The Shelby Diaries: John Shelby.

5th of March, 1915. Richebourgh, France.

Arthur smiles at the thought of his youngest brother. "Ah, I've always had a soft spot for little Finn". John takes a good look at Arthur. Arthur always took care of everyone in the family when dad left. And even now in this war, he didn't show a single sign of struggle. There must be an enormous weight on his shoulders. 2 of his brothers, scattered through the trenches of French. A family back in Birmingham to worry about. "Arthur, Martha's pregnant". Arthur looks at his brother, and smiles. "Ah, and you're sure you are the father eh?". John laughs, and punches Arthur on the shoulder. "You cunt. Nah, I'm the father alright. I'm going to be a father". And so they sat there for a couple of hours, talking. Talking about their brother Thomas, who they hadn't seen for more than a year now. About the terrible food they were being fed down the trenches. About the adrenaline rush of shooting a Lewis Machine Gun. How many men they had killed. 

"John, you trust me, right?"

"Usually"

"Okay, walk with me". 

Arthur walked to one of the outer parts of town, where one of the other infirmaries was located. They peeked inside, to find a dark-skinned man in the bed with long dreadlocks, reading the bible. "Jeremiah, this is John". The Afro-American looked up from his Bible, and smiled at John. His deep voice gave John a warm feeling. "John, the youngest Shelby brother in France. I'm pleased to meet you. I'd get up if there wasn't a hole in my leg". "Jeremiah took some led in the leg, John. But he's going to Birmingham. I've got an idea for mom. Come closer all of you, I don't want no one hearing about this alright?". And so Arthur told John and Jeremiah about the idea of stealing the pocket watches of some of scumbag officers. "Stealing? And then what? We send the watches over to Birmingham, for them to be found by the post office that checks the packages every day?" "Hear me out, little brother. As I told you, Jeremiah is going to Birmingham". "John, you know why I've got two bibles?". Jeremiah reached for his table, and opened the drawer to grab another bible. "This one here, the one that I was reading, is for my faith. To ensure me that God will help me making the right decisions. Now your mother is ill, so I'm sure God will agree with me that we are doing this for the right reasons. Now the second bible...". Jeremiah opened the second bible. Inside, there was nothing. The pages had been hollowed out, making it a perfect cover for those who try to hide something. John looked at the bible, and gave him a big smile. "Alright, I'm in. For mom". "Good. Now, Jeremiah gets 20% of whatever price he can sell the watches for. The rest goes to Mom. Let's go little brother, we've got work to do". 

Half an hour later, at the other side of town, John was leaning against a wall, scanning the crowd. He knew that a few of these soldiers knew that the Shelby's are from a gypsy family. Most of them hated gypsies, but today that would work in his favour. He was looking for Jack, a man that had called him "Gypsy scum" on multiple occasions whenever John walked by. He was sitting at a table, playing cards, smoking cigarettes. The game had finished. John had ignored Jack every time he said something to John. John walked up to the table anyway. "Lads, can I join next game?". 

Jack looks up at John. "Go away, you Gypsy bastard. We don't accept horses as bets, we actually use money. You know what money is, Gypsy scum?". "I just want to join Jack. I need some cash this month". "You can join, if I can fuck your ugly gypsy whore mum. How about that, eh?". Jack's friends all joined him, exploding in laughter. John threw away his cigarette. "That's really fucking funny, Jack". John takes a huge leap, and grabs Jack by the coat, pulling him to the middle of the street. "Nah, this is between me and him, you just keep sitting there at your table" John shouts at Jack's friends. One thing most people don't know about John, is that he's a lot stronger than he looks. He grew up on the streets of Birmingham, and knew a thing or two about fighting. Still dragging Jack on the street, he pulled him up, and punched him in the face. Then he swings his head backwards, and launched the front of his head to the bridge of Jack's nose. Blood spurted out of his nose, covering both Jack and John. A crowd had gathered at this point, cheering, making bets on who would win. Jack recovered, and took a swing at John. John dodged, punched Jack once more in the stomach, and then tackled him to the ground. Pinning his arms down with his legs, he takes a few more punches at Jack's mouth, until blood trickled down his lip. Then John draws his dagger, bends forward, and holds the dagger at the corner of Jack's mouth. "Okay, you listen now, alright? One more word about my mom, and I swear to God, I'll cut yer tongue out. I'll cut yer tongue out, and force it down yer ugly mouth until you swallow it, understand?" In the distance, whistled were being blown. The crowd decided to disappear: nobody wanted any troubles with the officers. John quickly sheathed his dagger, and then felt hands pulling him off Jack. 4 officers looked angrily at him. "Alright, the two of you, you're going in the shit hole tonight! What the hell is wrong with the two of you? Move!" "Not so fast. You can take private Jack to the shit hole. I need John". The officers turned around, and noticed that the voice was in fact the field general of this operation. "Yes, general!". 

"John, take a walk with me. I need you in one piece for this operation, alright? You're one of the better men out here. If you keep it up, you will be rewarded"

"Yes, general". 

The general smiled. "Good, at ease now, private. The briefing of the operation is tonight at 20:00. We'll be leaving to trenches within this week. Make sure you're fit for duty". And with that, the general walked away. John made sure everyone had left, and then he rushed to the infirmary where Jeremiah was waiting for John and Arthur. 

"Arthur! Did it work?"

"That was one hell of a performance, little brother. Good job". 

Jeremiah opened his second bible, and showed the 4 pocket watches that Arthur had stolen when the officers had rushed to John and Jack's fight. "They just left their rooms without even locking the door. Couldn't have been easier. Now, Jeremiah will sell the goods in Birmingham, and then he'll have the doctor bringing mom the medicine whenever he checks in on Jeremiah". Arthur passed around 3 flasks. "I also stole these, I never say no to a drip of poison. Cheers, lads". 

8th of March. 03.00. Richebourgh, France.

The past 3 days with Arthur were amazing. 

Jeremiah won't be back for another 2 weeks, so we'll have to wait to see how mom is doing. But Jeremiah is the right man for the job. He can be trusted. 

Arthur and I managed to get a letter to Thomas. He's been assigned to tunnel graving in the trenches, in order to take out enemy artillery during assaults. He must been going through a hell right now. I wish he were here with us, so we could have a bit of crack all together. I hope he has friends there. Nobody should be lonely on the battlefield. 

These past 3 days made me forget about the war for a bit. Arthur is more than a brother. He is also one of my best friends. You should have seen him, marching through the base, talking about how his little brother is going to be a father, and that he is going to be an uncle. 

But the fun is over now. In a few hours, we'll start our march to the trenches of Neuve Capelle. There will be a huge artillery attack first, that should probably take out most of the German forces. And then there's us: the clean up crew. We'll have to storm the fronts. Almost a hundred metres in open field, with little to no cover. Arthur left about an hour ago. They are setting up the big guns when they get there, and will calibrate them. Arthur didn't talk much about manning the big guns. He told me a story about a man. Both his legs were torn off, because a shell dropped near their gun. Arthur didn't even have a scratch, but it changed him. That's all he said about it. I hope that he'll be safe tomorrow.

Time to get some sleep. The next week is going to be a long one. I wrote a letter, a long one, for Martha. I made my mates promise me that they would deliver it home, in case anything would happen to me. We made a pact, that whoever survived, would tell the other's families what happened. Let's just hope we don't all die.