A Hymn Before Battle

15 Camp McCall, NC Sol III 1123 May 6th, 2002 ad

“Move it! Move it! Get out! Off the bus! Move it!”

The young men in gray piled off the Greyhound bus, some in their haste tumbling to the ground. These unfortunates were unceremoniously yanked to their feet and hurled towards the group now milling into a half-assed formation. The three brawny young men and one brawny young woman doing the shouting had, four months before, gotten off the same kind of bus. Despite the corporal’s chevrons on their sleeves they were recently graduated privates chosen for their size, strength or fierceness as much as their motivated attitude. They broke the formation into four ragged groups and moved them, overloaded with duffel bags, to their respective assembly areas. The new recruits were chivvied into rough lines comprising three sides of a quad and then they got their first experience of a real drill sergeant. In second platoon’s unfortunate case it was Gunnery Sergeant Pappas. He was standing at parade rest in the center of the formation, apparently doing nothing but rocking backwards and forwards contemplating the pleasant spring day. What he was actually doing was applying his personal philosophy of life to a situation he found totally out of control.

He and the group recalled with him had been told that, thank you, we have all the senior NCOs we need for the Line and Strike formations. They were instead parceled out to Guard and training units as a leavening of experienced personnel. This was intended to “stiffen up” the units to which they were assigned. Gunny Pappas often considered the old adage that you cannot stiffen a bucket of spit with a handful of buckshot.

But he was a Marine (or whatever they wanted to call him this week) and when given an order said “aye, aye, sir,” or “yes, sir,” or whatever, and performed it to the best of his ability. So when told he was going to be a DI, he naturally requested Pendleton, since that was right by his home of record. Ground Force Personnel naturally sent him to Camp McCall, North Carolina, three thousand miles away.

Being in McCall might have been for the best. The Galactics had started to come through on one of their promises and he was one of the first group offered rejuvenation. The rejuv program was being run on a matrix of age, rank and seniority. Since the military ran on a framework of both an officer Corp and an equivalent NCO Corp, senior NCOs were prioritized with “equivalent” officers. As one of the oldest NCOs in the second layer of enlisted rank, he had received rejuvenation ahead of many sergeant majors that were younger. Thus, after a month of truly unpleasant reaction and growth, he found himself a physical twenty-year-old with a sixty-year-old’s mind. He had forgotten what it was really like, the physical feeling of invincibility and energy, a coursing drive to do something, anything, all the time. Regular heavy-duty workouts were returning the musculature of his prime. They also served to occupy his other energies.

He had been a Marine for thirty years, twenty-seven of those married. During those twenty-seven years he had never strayed from the marriage bed. Not for him the phrase “I’m not divorced, just TDY.” He never thought less of the other NCOs, or officers, who took advantage of deployments to pick up some action; as long as it did not affect their performance he could care less. But he had made a wedding vow to “cleave unto no other” and he believed in keeping a promise. It was the same as “ ’til death do us part.” Now, however, he had a twenty-year-old’s body, and drives, and was married to a fifty-something wife. He was experiencing some difficulties with the situation. Fortunately or unfortunately, the pace of training the recalls and then using the recalls to train the new enlistees was so fierce he had not been able to get back to San Diego. The rejuv program was eventually supposed to be distributed to dependents of the military but he would believe it when he saw it. There were already rumors that the rejuv materials were running low, so who knew what to expect long term. He was really sweating his first meeting with Prissy.

Heaping insult on injury, since the most senior NCOs, like himself, were recalled first, there was currently a glut of E-8s and E-9s, the two most senior enlisted ranks. In the Navy they were referring to it as “too many Chiefs.” In addition, because the emphasis was on training, most of the senior NCOs and officers were being assigned to basic and advanced training facilities. Therefore, instead of being assigned as the senior NCO in a company, he was assigned a mere platoon of recruits.

Thus he was not in the best of moods when he greeted the group of forty-five young men he was to make into Marines (or Strike troopers or soldiers or hoplites or whatever the FUCK you wanted to call them). Characteristically this made him smile at them. The less perceptive, seeing that the drill sergeant was not the sadistic cretin they had been warned of but a kindly smiling fellow, tentatively smiled back. The more perceptive suspected, correctly, that they were in serious trouble.

“Good morning, ladies,” he said in a low, friendly tone. “My name is Gunnery Sergeant Pappas.” The tone forced them to strain to hear. “For the next four months I will, I am sorry to say, be your drill sergeant. This fine, fit young fellow,” he gestured at the attending drill corporal, “is Drill Corporal Adams. Think of us as your personal Marquis de Sade. Sort of an aerobics instructor gone horribly wrong.

“To begin learning that thing called military courtesy you will refer to me as if I were an officer. You will call me ‘sir’ and salute when greeting me. Is that clear?”

“Yeah.” “Okay.” “No problem.” “Yes, sir!”

“Oh, I am sorry. I didn’t hear that. The correct response is ‘Clear, sir.’ ”

“Clear, sir.”

He inserted a finger in one ear and dug around. “Sorry. I’m a bit hard of hearing. All the screams of dying recruits. A bit louder if you please.”

“Clear, sir!” they yelled.

“I am apparently not making myself clear,” he said very slowly and distinctly. “Front leaning rest position, move. For those cretins, meaning all of you of course that are unfamiliar with the term, that command means turn slightly to the right and assume the pushup position.” A few of the recruits quickly dropped, some began, hesitantly, to follow the quietly given order but most continued to stand uncomprehending.

“Get down! On your face! Move it! Move it!” he boomed, much louder and more forcefully than the corporal, louder than their whole group. “Bend your elbows! You! Off the ground! Get yer butts down you pansies! Hold that! Look directly forward, heads up, eyes focused in the distance. Now, when I give an instruction that you understand the response is ‘Clear, sir.’ I expect it to be readily audible on Mars! Clear?”

“Clear, sir!”

“Now, I have found this position to be remarkably centering of attention. But, I can see that at least one of you is a body builder.” He walked over to this unfortunate, a hulking youth with a build like Hercules and lank black hair and squatted down so that he could look him in the eye. “I suspect that this is little strain for you, big boy. Is it?”

“No, sir!”

“Ah, truth, very good.” Sergeant Pappas stood up and then stepped carefully on the recruit’s back, centered on the shoulder blades. The burly youth grunted when the two hundred fifty pound drill instructor stepped on, but he held. “In the next sixteen weeks, Get yer head up asshole! it will be my duty to turn you pussies into Strike troopers. Get yer butts down, faggots! Strike units will be deployed from their home bases as formed units Get yer butts up! You pussies! If this asshole can hold me up, you can stay up yourselves! as formed units to engage the Posleen whenever and wherever they are badly needed. That means that while Guard and Line units may see combat, You! I said get up off your belly, cocksucker! Corporal Adams!”

“Yessir!”

“That fat cocksucker in the second row! See how far he can run before he throws up and passes out!”

“Yessir! On yer feet, asshole! Move it!” The drill corporal yanked the unfortunate recruit to his feet and trotted him off into the distance.

“Where was I, oh yes… While Guard units may see combat, you will see combat. My mission is to make you pussies hard enough and fast enough that some of you may survive.” He stepped off the recruit. “On your feet! I am about to fall you out into the barracks. There is no bunk assignment or shakedown. Inside the barracks there are two red boxes. If you have any contraband, drugs, personal weapons, knives, anything you suspect you shouldn’t have, put them in the box. If you keep them I will find them. Then I will send you to a place that makes boot camp seem friendly and homelike. Everybody but this asshole,” he indicated his erstwhile soapbox, “Fallout!”

As the recruits grabbed their gear and pounded into the barracks he looked the remaining recruit up and down, noting the high wide cheekbones.

“What’s yer name, asshole?”

“Private Michael Ampele, sir!”

“Hawaiian?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Daddy a marine, howlee?”

The recruit blanched at that insult, where the expected “asshole” had little effect. “Sir, yes, sir!”

“Think that’s gonna make me easier on you, howlee?”

“Sir, no, sir!”

“Why not?”

“Sir, the strongest steel comes from the hottest fire, sir!”

“Horse shit. The strongest steel comes from a precise combination of temperature, materials and conditions including a nitrogen fuckin’ atmosphere. I’m gonna kick yer ass for two reasons. One, nobody’s gonna accuse me of favoritism and two, these mainland wahines need an example.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Okay, yer the platoon guide,” he decided. “You know what that means.”

“Yes, sir,” said the private, his face slightly green. “They fuck up, I get my ass kicked, sir.”

“Yerright,” said Pappas with a smile. He puffed his lips out and grinned. “We got no time to fuck around with training, you little yardbirds are gonna be driven harder and faster than any group in history. Comprende? You think you can handle that and the responsibility of a platoon guide?”

“Si, sir,” agreed the private.

“I’ll take it on faith, howlee. I think you’re full of shit. Fall out.”

Pappas shook his head in resignation as the private followed the others into the barracks. They kept dropping the training time, pushing the pipeline to deliver the recruits no matter what. Well, he would train them, as well as anyone could expect in the time allowed. But he was glad he was not going to war with them. It was too chancy a business.