'Get up! Get up, you shitty little maggots. Move your nasty, lazy, chingada asses out of my tent. Put on your sneakers and shorts and move! You, chico! Do you think you're being paid to sleep all day? Out! Out! OUT!'
The infantry corporal-his nametag read 'del Valle'-strode quickly down the tent between two rows of cots. As he did so he overturned each one, spilling its occupant out onto the muddy tent floor. Cruz, who had been sleeping on his back, landed on his face, driving mud into his mouth and up his nostrils.
From somewhere off in the distance a loudspeaker was blaring out some sort of martial music at an indecent volume. Dimly heard by the tent's occupants, other new recruits in adjacent tents were being subjected to the same treatment. The corporal no sooner reached the last cot than he began herding, sometimes with punches and kicks, the stunned and bewildered recruits outside into the street that fronted the tent.
Disoriented, tired, confused… and sneezing; Ricardo Cruz followed the rest of his tent mates, sheeplike, into the night.
Cruz had arrived at Cameron only about five hours before. He and seventy-nine other volunteers had been bussed from the police station in Las Mesas starting at seven PM the previous evening. A long and deliberately slow drive to the Centro de Instruccion Militar had brought them through Fort Cameron's front gate just after nine. The bus dropped the new recruits off in front of a mess hall. Met there by a friendly-faced sergeant, they were fed a light snack, and then issued running shoes and shorts, ponchos and poncho liners-thin nylon quilts-and smallish, inadequate pillows. This had taken until just before midnight.
Then that deceptively friendly, warmly smiling sergeant had guided them-they didn't yet know how to march- to their tents. Cruz had gone to sleep shortly after midnight.
So it was that an extremely tired Ricardo Cruz was hustled out into the street at three-thirty in the morning to face the wrath of his new squad leader. On either side of Cruz's tent's group, more of the new volunteers were also spilling out into the street. None had on anything more than their shorts, T-shirt, socks and running shoes. A couple still seemed to be pulling on shorts. One of these went down face first into the mud, a corporal's kick to his fundament providing the motive power.
Cruz had a moment to look around before one of the omnipresent corporals shoved him into the formation that was building in the dirt street. Opposite from where Cruz stood was a line of grim-visaged soldiers wearing running shoes and shorts, black T-shirts and hostile glares. Behind the line of men there was a square podium. From the podium two men oversaw the scene. One of these was short and stocky. He looked to be a rather medium olive color, though in the dark Cruz couldn't be sure. Next to him stood a very tall and slender, graying but not balding black man. The black looked somewhat elderly in the face as well, his skin deeply seamed by what must have been years of exposure to the elements. Still, he carried himself like a young man, a very proud young man. Over the shouting of the corporals and the murmuring of his fellow volunteers, Cruz could not hear what the black man was saying.
Sergeant Major McNamara, standing to the right of First Centurion Epolito Martinez, gave a few last minute words of advice before moving on to look over the next company of new trainees. When speaking Spanish, the sergeant major sounded very like a native of Cristobal, in the Republic, with only rare conversion of the English 'th' sound into 't.' That was no surprise to those who knew him; his wife was a native of that place.
'There's no moment more critical than this one, Martinez,' the sergeant major said. 'Too forceful and you'll frighten them silly for months. Too little and they'll stop paying attention in a few days. What becomes of your company in the next several months all depends on what you do here in the next few minutes. You have shocked them. That's good. The shock will keep them in line until you have time to build some discipline in them, especially self-discipline. Remember, though, it is a tricky job, creating self-discipline. The more you impose discipline from the outside, the less they will build on the inside. Tricky.'
Martinez, although a soldier for more than fifteen years, was unused to the task of training new troops. He listened attentively to what the big gringo sergeant major had to say. As McNamara stepped off the podium, Martinez stepped up to its edge and began to address the company.
'Welcome, volunteers, to Fort Cameron. I am First Centurion Martinez. You will address me as 'Centurion.' Together with your centurions of centuries, section leaders, and team leaders, we will, I am sure, turn most of you into soldiers the country can be proud of.' Martinez shook his head in seeming regret, his face looking sad, even mournful. 'Unfortunately, we will probably have to kill some of you first.'
In the ranks, the men around Cruz-Cruz, himself, for that matter-gulped. The way Martinez had said it, there could be no doubt but that some of the new boys would be killed in training.
'Today marks your first day as soldiers of the Legio del Cid. It will be a day you will never forget. It will not be the hardest day you will ever face. Each day here will be worse than the day that preceded it. We will make it so, I promise. I promise you also hunger and fatigue, thirst and forced marches, hardship and pain. I promise misery. In the end, your only release will be when you yourselves are too tough to notice anymore. That… or when you die. To me it makes no practical difference which happens first.
'Centurions, take charge of your centuries.' Martinez returned the salutes of his subordinates.
It was just ten o'clock at night, as Cruz lay on his cot waiting for sleep to overtake him. Outside a bugle played a soft call.
Oh, God, I hurt. First Bastard Martinez was right. To lie on this cot and not be in pain is the best thing I've ever felt, even though everything still hurts.
The day, too, had been as miserable as the first centurion had promised. From about a quarter to four to six in the morning, the company had learned the basics of marching. Then, from six to seven thirty, had come physical training. Given the number of push-ups awarded during the close order drill instruction, PT was agony. Cruz had lain on his back with his body twisted and his legs to one side until he thought his abdomen would rip apart from the stress. God, it had hurt! Push-ups had been interspersed with other exercises until Cruz's arms would no longer support him.
Sure, his previous life had been hard, as was to be expected on a cattle ranch and farm that occasionally dabbled in pigs and kept a coop of trixies, megalapteryx fowl, for their olive-green eggs. Even so, it was nothing like as bad as his first day in the legion.
A year on the farm wouldn't be as bad as today was.
Arms quivering, Cruz had flopped onto the ground, head held high to keep his face from the muck. Pain lessened immediately, though the horrible burning in his arms did not abate at all. I can't do this anymore, he'd thought. No fucking way. These guys are insane.
He was sadly mistaken, of course, except about the insanity part. Two instructor corporals had come up on either side of Cruz and convinced him he was underestimating his own strength; seriously underestimating it. A sneakered foot slammed into Cruz's left side, by his stomach so as not to break any ribs. Even as he writhed, arms crossing to protect himself, another foot rather more than nudged his kidney. Cruz barely held in a scream. More kicks followed. 'Get back to your position, you fucking maggot,' said a corporal.
Cruz strained to do so, arms quivering like jelly as he tried to hold himself off the ground.
The corporals waited until he had both his trembling arms beneath him. A shared nod and the feet moved together to kick his arms out from underneath him. Uncontrolled, Cruz flopped belly down to the mud. After his torso stopped descending, his face continued on. Mud filled his mouth and nose. More kicks followed. 'Get up, shithead.'
Strangely, from somewhere inside, Cruz found the strength to get his body back off the ground. Assholes.
After Physical Training, the corporals had turned hoses on the dripping volunteers. Since no other showers had been made available, Cruz guessed-correctly-that the hoses were all the showering he was going to get anytime soon.
Breakfast had been served, though 'served' may not have been precisely the right word, immediately after the hosing. Cruz had taken a full plate before discovering that he was too exhausted to be hungry. Yet another corporal had disabused him of the notion that food could be taken and not eaten. That, too, had been a painful lesson.
Issue of initial equipment had gone very quickly. There hadn't been much to issue: a plastic foot locker with a lock and key, several pair each of underwear and socks, a black baseball cap, a two-quart canteen, another set of running shorts, a toilet kit with toothbrush and paste, soap, shampoo and a razor with blades. First Centurion Martinez had told the troops that, until they had proven they were worth the expense, there was no reason to waste money on uniforms for them. In fact, uniforms were for the time being unavailable, but there was no reason
