The Tale of Lieutenant Brumble

Look all over this wet circle / pond rock we call "the round map" and you'll be hard-pressed to find a steamier and more iron-sided eyeball gaze than that of Lieutenant Bip Brumble. Bip (known affectionately as "Bam-Bam" by friends and family) was a passionate machine gun lover, first and foremost. From the tender age of six months old, when he was first issued his "child's machine gun" onto age sixteen when he enlisted in the You-Ess Arm-Ee to fight the Globe War Sequel, his passion for rapid gunfire was as strong as the mighty oak trees he resembled. In fact, the only known record of romance involving Bip Brumble was a crudely carved blood-pumper containing the initials "B.B." and "AMMO" on the side of his family's barn.

During the Globe War Sequel, Bip was assigned to a non-combat "Potato Storage and Food Preparation Unit." This dismaying news sent Bip into a gargantuan crocodile pit of "mental toughies." We refer to that condition in current times as severe clinical depression. Bip was a single man and he wanted nothing more than to fire his personal GLOARK fifty-six caliber machine gun though the living flesh of his mortal enemies: "the other country boys," as he called them.

Sadly for Bip, his war assignment was to peel 'n' prep potatoes to be boiled to feed the warm army boys so they could slop them down to fuel their bodies for war battles. Bip hated peeling those brown 'n' downers so much he used to scream really nasty words at work in order to relieve his brain of all the pum-pum dunkers and hooters that floated around inside of his roundbone.

A colleague, Private Lingus Runger remembers Bip's unfortunate condition...

"Yeah, Bip and I were stationed together at POTATO BASE in France and he used to scream to himself while he peeled and sliced the brown circles. His eyes were constantly bloodshot and he always used to bare his teeth and hiss at us when we'd speak to him. He was really having a rough go of it there for a little while. That boy is a hero and should never have been separated from his GLOARK."

Unbeknownst to the men in Bip's unit, the You-Ess Arm-Ee haphazardly built their Potato Base over an old French graveyard that just so happened to be haunted by a lethal gang of "vegetable demons." **For the uninformed, vegetable demons are a specific breed of French demon that are attracted exclusively to vegetables as vessels for possession**

Midway though a late-night peeling shift, Bip noticed something strange. A large crate of potatoes near the east-facing window started to glow an eerie shade of red and snarl like a feral bone chomper. He knew right away that he and his men were in danger. Before he had time to hit the deck, potatoes started flying at lightning speed though the air in all directions. Bip could make out tiny red eyes and razor sharp teeth on each one. One of the potatoes whizzed by him, taking an enormous bite out of his left ear, spewing blood and bendy-bone all over his white shirt collar and paper chef's cap.

That's when things went red for Bip.

Private Lingus Runger recalls the events as follows...

"So, um, we heard a horrible commotion in the kitchen and when we went in, we saw thirty or forty potatoes hovering in mid-air. Each of them had little devil faces on them and they were snarling like Grizzly bears at a salmon buffet. We saw Bip jump out of a plate glass window and make a bee-line for the storage shed. That's when a few of the air potatoes flew at me and chewed my right arm clean off the bone. Some of the other boys in the kitchen weren't so lucky. All I could hear was screaming. In maybe ten or twenty seconds...we lost twelve men to deep bite wounds and another twenty-seven were injured and bleeding on the floor. That's when Bip kicked down the back door, GLOARK fifty-six in hand. All I remember was seeing a flurry of bullets and sparks and hearing blast after blast of gunfire. Before I knew it, all thirty or forty flying demon potatoes were gone as quickly as they appeared. Just like that...they were all turned to mash, lying in little hot white piles all over the room."

Earlier, when Bip was cutting down the potato demons with his powerful weapon and dead-eye aim, it escaped his mind that the ammunition in the GLOARK was heavily coated in canola oil and garlic salt to preserve its shelf-life. In a rather strange and fortuitous turn of events, the former demon potatoes had been instantly transformed into a delicious dinner for the boys. While medics removed the dead from the unit, the healthy war men helped themselves to the enormous feast at their feet. Even the injured men whooped and howled in joy, feasting on the hearty whitepiles all around them. Some injured were even seen pouring mash into their bite wounds, knowing the garlic would help them heal faster and give them goodflavor inside of their blood.