platoon, that is — a company), would shuttle down to the field north of Walla Walla, go aboard, space, make a drop, go through an exercise, and home on a beacon. A day’s work. With eight companies that gave us not quite a drop each week, and then it gave us a little more than a drop each week as attrition continued, whereupon the drops got tougher — over mountains, into the arctic ice, into the Australian desert, and, before we graduated, onto the face of the Moon, where your capsule is placed only a hundred feet up and explodes as it ejects — and you have to look sharp and land with only your suit (no air, no parachute) and a bad landing can spill your air and kill you.
Some of the attrition was from casualties, deaths or injuries, and some of it was just from refusing to enter the capsule — which some did, and that was that; they weren’t even chewed out; they were just motioned aside and that night they were paid off. Even a man who had made several drops might get the panic and refuse … and the instructors were just gentle with him, treated him the way you do a friend who is ill and won’t get well.
I never quite refused to enter the capsule — but I certainly learned about the shakes. I always got them, I was scared silly every time. I still am.
But you’re not a cap trooper unless you drop.
They tell a story, probably not true, about a cap trooper who was sight-seeing in Paris. He visited Les Invalides, looked down at Napoleon’s coffin and said to a French guard there: “Who’s he?”
The Frenchman was properly scandalized. “Monsieur does not
The cap trooper thought about it. Then he asked, “So? Where were his drops?”
It is almost certainly not true, because there is a big sign outside there that tells you exactly who Napoleon was. But that is how cap troopers feel about it.
Eventually we graduated.
I can see that I’ve left out almost everything. Not a word about most of our weapons, nothing about the time we dropped everything and fought a forest fire for three days, no mention of the practice alert that was a real one, only we didn’t know it until it was over, nor about the day the cook tent blew away — in fact not any mention of weather and, believe me, weather is important to a doughboy, rain and mud especially. But though weather is important while it happens it seems to me to be pretty dull to look back on. You can take descriptions of most any sort of weather out of an almanac and stick them in just anywhere; they’ll probably fit.
The regiment had started with 2009 men; we graduated 187 — of the others, fourteen were dead (one executed and his name struck) and the rest resigned, dropped, transferred, medical discharge, etc. Major Malloy made a short speech, we each got a certificate, we passed in review for the last time, and the regiment was disbanded, its colors to be cased until they would be needed (three weeks later) to tell another couple of thousand civilians that they were an outfit, not a mob.
I was a “trained soldier,” entitled to put “TP” in front of my serial number instead of “RP.” Big day.
The biggest I ever had.
10
The tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots …
That is, I thought I was a “trained soldier” until I reported to my ship. Any law against having a wrong opinion?
I see that I didn’t make any mention of how the Terran Federation moved from “peace” to a “state of emergency” and then on into “war.” I didn’t notice it too closely myself. When I enrolled, it was “peace,” the normal condition, at least so people think (who ever expects anything else?). Then, while I was at Currie, it became a “state of emergency” but I still didn’t notice it, as what Corporal Bronski thought about my haircut, uniform, combat drill, and kit was much more important — and what Sergeant Zim thought about such matters was overwhelmingly important. In any case, “emergency” is still “peace.”
“Peace” is a condition in which no civilian pays any attention to military casualties which do not achieve page-one, lead-story prominence — unless that civilian is a close relative of one of the casualties. But, if there ever was a time in history when “peace” meant that there was no fighting going on, I have been unable to find out about it. When I reported to my first outfit, “Willie’s Wildcats,” sometimes known as Company K, Third Regiment, First M.I. Division, and shipped with them in the
The historians can’t seem to settle whether to call this one “The Third Space War” (or the “Fourth”), or whether “The First Interstellar War” fits it better. We just call it “The Bug War” if we call it anything, which we usually don’t, and in any case the historians date the beginning of “war” after the time I joined my first outfit and ship. Everything up to then and still later were “incidents,” “patrols,” or “police actions.” However, you are just as dead if you buy a farm in an “incident” as you are if you buy it in a declared war.
But, to tell the truth, a soldier doesn’t notice a war much more than a civilian does, except his own tiny piece of it and that just on the days it is happening. The rest of the time he is much more concerned with sack time, the vagaries of sergeants, and the chances of wheedling the cook between meals. However, when Kitten Smith and Al Jenkins and I joined them at Luna Base, each of Willies’ Wildcats had made more than one combat drop; they were soldiers and we were not. We weren’t hazed for it — at least I was not — and the sergeants and corporals were amazingly easy to deal with after the calculated frightfulness of instructors.
It took a little while to discover that this comparatively gentle treatment simply meant that we were nobody, hardly worth chewing out, until we had proved in a drop — a real drop — that we might possibly replace real Wildcats who had fought and bought it and whose bunks we now occupied.
Let me tell you how green I was. While the
Back home, I had always worn earrings and other jewelry when I went out on a date — I had some beautiful ear clips, rubies as big as the end of my little finger which had belonged to my mother’s grandfather. I like jewelry and had rather resented being required to leave it all behind when I went to Basic … but here was a type of jewelry which was apparently okay to wear with uniform. My ears weren’t pierced — my mother didn’t approve of it, for boys — but I could have the jeweler mount it on a clip … and I still had some money left from pay call at graduation and was anxious to spend it before it mildewed. “Unh, Sergeant? Where do you get earrings like that one? Pretty neat.”
He didn’t look scornful, he didn’t even smile. He just said, “You like it?”
“I certainly do!” The plain raw gold pointed up the gold braid and piping of the uniform even better than gems would have done. I was thinking that a pair would be still handsomer, with just crossbones instead of all that confusion at the bottom. “Does the base PX carry them?”
“No, the PX here never sells them.” He added, “At least I don’t think you’ll ever be able to buy one here — I hope. But I tell you what — when we reach a place where you can buy one of your own, I’ll see to it you know about it. That’s a promise.”
“Uh, thanks!”
“Don’t mention it.”
I saw several of the tiny skulls thereafter, some with more “bones,” some with fewer; my guess had been correct, this was jewelry permitted with uniform, when on pass at least. Then I got my own chance to “buy” one almost immediately thereafter and discovered that the prices were unreasonably high, for such plain ornaments.
It was Operation Bughouse, the First Battle of Klendathu in the history books, soon after Buenos Aires was
