In the Summer of 1789 AE I was sixteen. I grew up in the small city of Rus, I guess it's not small anymore. Its location is on the southern shore of North Insula and right across from South Insula. Its strategic location and harbor made it a staging ground for the war. War was declared, on Mars 3rd and every single man and boy I knew signed up to go after the school year ended.
"All we have to do is say we're seventeen, and they will let us sign up, why wouldn't they?" My friend Felix tried to reassure us. Felix at this time was my best friend. A man, or rather boy with brown hair that I swore looked red at times, though he always vehemently denied it. He had a green pair of eyes to match mine, and a sharp chin with a round face. "They might believe us, but Luca has no chance". The brute Bruno chimed in. Bruno was only a couple of inches taller than me, but he was definitely more filled out than I was.
Bruno naturally seems to pack on muscle, I would believe it if you were to say he came out of the womb like that. He never seemed to do much work, at least not so much more than me that he would be so different, but as a lesson I would learn, life is not always fair. "I have no chance?" I responded as I hit him in his arm. "Your brother looks as if he would get blown away in a small gust, no way they would ever let him sign up". His brother, a nice boy named Carlo, was in fact slender, but he had height to complement. He was easily a head taller than the rest of us as he would often let us know. Carlo just seemed to ignore the quib as we walked to the recruitment center.
The vision of Rus at the time is still etched onto my mine. Every house a flag of the star was hanging, waving in the wind. Of course, the young impressionable boys we were, we jumped at the opportunity to play soldier and hero, saving the Fatherland from his enemies. As soon as war broke out we rushed to sign up. The minimum age at the time for service was seventeen, but that didn't stop the local boys from signing up anyway. The youngest lad I remember signing up was fourteen, don't know how he got in but apparently he went to every recruitment office in the city and eventually found one which would let him join. Being only one year away from the required age certainly was not going to stop us.
The four of us walked into a recruitment office and joined a group of some fifty other boys in the waiting room. I could recognize most of the other boys, most older than me, some were even younger than me. We sat in the holding room for around thirty minutes. I looked around the room. There were posters lining the walls. "Join the Air Corps, fly high" with a photo of a man in a biplane with the star on the two sides. "The first in, the last out, show the Gelts who's who". With a picture of a man dressed in Empire fatigues throwing a stick grenade towards a bunch of explosions.
On the bottom of the flier lies a message "Join the Legionnaires today". That is of course what we wanted. The legionnaires did not take any conscripts, they all went to the Auxiliary, all the real fighting men we thought would have joined the legionaries for that reason, and we thought we were right fighting men. After a bit of waiting a man entered the room. He looked proper. He was a tall and well built man, with short black hair and a pencil mustache. He was dressed in the khaki Auxiliary uniform, with a couple of medals on his right chest and a name tag on the left that I couldn't make out . He was holding a clipboard, and as soon as he walked in the room went silent.
"Welcome to the Rus east recruitment board, we are rather busy as you can see. If you would all line up in the service you would like to enroll in when I call, that would be much appreciated." The tall military man started the roll call. "The Auxiliaries, please walk through the door on the far left" A couple of the boys walked out and entered the door with some mumbling to each other. After the line of boys entered the building the man continued. The man went through every possible military branch that one could enroll in including the Air Corp, the Navy, the Engineers, the medic school and so on and so forth. The man finally got to the legionaries. With the name called the four of us, and a couple of other adventurous lads stood up and walked through the assigned door.