Starship Troopers

“I understood you.”

“Well … you see, sir? If we can use an H-bomb — and, as you said, it’s no checker game; it’s real, it’s war and nobody is fooling around — isn’t it sort of ridiculous to go crawling around in the weeds, throwing knives and maybe getting yourself killed … and even losing the war … when you’ve got a real weapon you can use to win? What’s the point in a whole lot of men risking their lives with obsolete weapons when one professor type can do so much more just by pushing a button?”

Zim didn’t answer at once, which wasn’t like him at all. Then he said softly, “Are you happy in the Infantry, Hendrick? You can resign, you know.”

Hendrick muttered something; Zim said, “Speak up!”

“I’m not itching to resign, sir. I’m going to sweat out my term.”

“I see. Well, the question you asked is one that a sergeant isn’t really qualified to answer … and one that you shouldn’t ask me. You’re supposed to know the answer before you join up. Or you should. Did your school have a course in History and Moral Philosophy?”

“What? Sure — yes, sir.”

“Then you’ve heard the answer. But I’ll give you my own — unofficial — views on it. If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off?”

“Why … no, sir!”

“Of course not. You’d paddle it. There can be circumstances when it’s just as foolish to hit an enemy city with an H-bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an ax. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government’s decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him … but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing … but controlled and purposeful violence. But it’s not your business or mine to decide the purpose of the control. It’s never a soldier’s business to decide when or where or how — or why—he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much; the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence; other people—‘older and wiser heads,’ as they say — supply the control. Which is as it should be. That’s the best answer I can give you. If it doesn’t satisfy you, I’ll get you a chit to go talk to the regimental commander. If he can’t convince you — then go home and be a civilian! Because in that case you will certainly never make a soldier.”

Zim bounced to his feet. “I think you’ve kept me talking just to goldbrick. Up you come, soldiers! On the bounce! Man stations, on target — Hendrick, you first. This time I want you to throw that knife south of you. South, get it? Not north. The target is due south of you and I want that knife to go in a general southerly direction, at least. I know you won’t hit the target but see if you can’t scare it a little. Don’t slice your ear off, don’t let go of it and cut somebody behind you — just keep what tiny mind you have fixed on the idea of ‘south’! Ready — on target! Let fly!”

Hendrick missed it again.

We trained with sticks and we trained with wire (lots of nasty things you can improvise with a piece of wire) and we learned what can be done with really modern weapons and how to do it and how to service and maintain the equipment — simulated nuclear weapons and infantry rockets and various sorts of gas and poison and incendiary and demolition. As well as other things maybe best not discussed. But we learned a lot of “obsolete” weapons, too. Bayonets on dummy guns for example, and guns that weren’t dummies, too, but were almost identical with the infantry rifle of the XXth century — much like the sporting rifles used in hunting game, except that we fired nothing but solid slugs, alloy-jacketed lead bullets, both at targets on measured ranges and at surprise targets on booby-trapped skirmish runs. This was supposed to prepare us to learn to use any armed weapon and to train us to be on the bounce, alert, ready for anything. Well, I suppose it did. I’m pretty sure it did.

We used these rifles in field exercises to simulate a lot of deadlier and nastier aimed weapons, too. We used a lot of simulation; we had to. An “explosive” bomb or grenade, against materiel or personnel, would explode just enough to put out a lot of black smoke; another sort of gave off a gas that would make you sneeze and weep — that told you that you were dead or paralyzed … and was nasty enough to make you careful about anti-gas precautions, to say nothing of the chewing-out you got if you were caught by it.

We got still less sleep; more than half the exercises were held at night, with snoopers and radar and audio gear and such.

The rifles used to simulate aimed weapons were loaded with blanks except one in five hundred rounds at random, which was a real bullet. Dangerous? Yes and no. It’s dangerous just to be alive … and a nonexplosive bullet probably won’t kill you unless it hits you in the head or the heart and maybe not then. What that one-in-five- hundred “for real” did was to give us a deep interest in taking cover, especially as we knew that some of the rifles were being fired by instructors who were crack shots and actually trying their best to hit you — if the round happened not to be a blank. They assured us that they would not intentionally shoot a man in the head … but accidents do happen.

This friendly assurance wasn’t very reassuring. That 500th bullet turned tedious exercises into large-scale Russian roulette; you stop being bored the very first time you hear a slug go wheet! past your ear before you hear the crack of the rifle.

But we did slack down anyhow and word came down from the top that if we didn’t get on the bounce, the incidence of real ones would be changed to one in a hundred … and if that didn’t work, to one in fifty. I don’t know whether a change was made or not — no way to tell — but I do know we tightened up again, because a boy in the next company got creased across his buttocks with a live one, producing an amazing scar and a lot of half-witty comments and a renewed interest by all hands in taking cover. We laughed at this kid for getting shot where he did … but we all knew it could have been his head — or our own heads.

The instructors who were not firing rifles did not take cover. They put on white shirts and walked around upright with their silly canes, apparently calmly certain that even a recruit would not intentionally shoot an instructor — which may have been overconfidence on the part of some of them. Still, the chances were five hundred to one that even a shot aimed with murderous intent would not be live and the safety factor increased still higher because the recruit probably couldn’t shoot that well anyhow. A rifle is not an easy weapon; it’s got no target-seeking qualities at all — I understand that even back in the days when wars were fought and decided with just such rifles it used to take several thousand fired shots to average killing one man. This seems impossible but the military histories agree that it is true — apparently most shots weren’t really aimed but simply acted to force the enemy to keep his head down and interfere with his shooting.

In any case we had no instructors wounded or killed by rifle fire. No trainees were killed, either, by rifle bullets; the deaths were all from other weapons or things — some of which could turn around and bite you if you didn’t do things by the book. Well, one boy did manage to break his neck taking cover too enthusiastically when they first started shooting at him — but no bullet touched him.

However, by a chain reaction, this matter of rifle bullets and taking cover brought me to my lowest ebb at Camp Currie. In the first place I had been busted out of my boot chevrons, not over what I did but over something one of my squad did when I wasn’t even around … which I pointed out. Bronski told me to button my lip. So I went to see Zim about it. He told me coldly that I was responsible for what my men did, regardless … and tacked on six hours of extra duty besides busting me for having spoken to him about it without Bronski’s permission. Then I got a letter that upset me a lot; my mother finally wrote to me. Then I sprained a shoulder in my first drill with powered armor (they’ve got those practice suits rigged so that the instructor can cause casualties in the suit at will, by radio control; I got dumped and hurt my shoulder) and this put me on light duty with too much time to think at a time when I had many reasons, it seemed to me, to feel sorry for myself.

Because of “light duty” I was orderly that day in the battalion commander’s office. I was eager at first, for I had never been there before and wanted to make a good impression. I discovered that Captain Frankel didn’t want zeal; he wanted me to sit still, say nothing, and not bother him. This left me time to sympathize with myself, for I didn’t dare go to sleep.

Then suddenly, shortly after lunch, I wasn’t a bit sleepy; Sergeant Zim came in, followed by three men. Zim was smart and neat as usual but the expression on his face made him look like Death on a pale horse and he had a mark on his right eye that looked as if it might be shaping up into a shiner — which was impossible, of course. Of the other three, the one in the middle was Ted Hendrick. He was dirty — well, the company had been on a field exercise; they don’t scrub those prairies and you spend a lot of your time snuggling up to the dirt. But his lip was