Boy Brigade Rank | [better]

“Captain.”

Their ranks were stitched, painted, or scratched onto their gear: Private, Private, Private, Private. And one Lance-Corporal. The difference between Eli and them was a single word on a stained piece of cloth. It felt like a crown of thorns. boy brigade rank

He laughed. It was a sound like breaking glass. “Captain

Eli’s own rank was a lie. He was a “Lance-Corporal” in the 17th River Ward Boy’s Brigade, a formation of orphaned, starved, and abandoned children pressed into service as message-runners, trench-diggers, and—when the adult soldiers were too drunk or too dead—trigger-pullers. The Brigade’s ranks were a cruel parody of the real army’s. A “Sergeant” was just the boy who had survived the longest. A “Private” was a fresh face with trembling hands. And a “Corporal” like Eli? He was a compromise between ambition and a lingering heartbeat. It felt like a crown of thorns

The rank on his arm burned. A Lance-Corporal’s duty was to give orders. But the manual—the one they’d been given with the pretty illustrations of clean-shaven boys saluting—didn’t cover this. No page on which boy to push into the blast.

Eli crawled to his knees. His Lance-Corporal’s stripe was gone—ripped away by the shrapnel. But the dented whistle was still in his hand.