The flag of the Iowa Socialist Republic flew high above Great Plains Military Academy’s campus, fluttering in the wind as Xachary Parker’s dad closed the door of their Kaiser-Frazier behind him. He heard the trunk pop open, breathing in deeply as he turned to see Dad struggling to lift Xachary’s suitcase out the back. “Ah, jeez, Dad, you don’t have to do that,” he said, quickly taking the heavy load off his father’s hands. “I got this, promise.”
Dad tilted his hat up, the lines on his face creasing as he let Xachary take the luggage. “Well, we drove all the way out here, buddy. I want to be useful for more than just a ride.”
“I’ve gotta make it on my own here, Dad,” Xachary said.
“I’m sure you’ll do just fine,” Dad said, nodding and smiling gently. “Just remember, keep your head up and don’t let them get to you.”
“New cadets!” a voice called, accompanied by the sound of boots stomping against the pavement. “Say goodbye to Mom and Dad, get your gear, and form up! Let’s go!”
Xachary gave Dad a final, firm handshake, watching a proud smile cross his face. This was it – no going back. He grabbed his suitcase, heading out to the point that the soldiers pointed out. Each one was in a light blue short-sleeved shirt, with black pants that had a gold trim on the legs to match their shining black shoes, another light blue cap on their head that was offset to the side. Everyone looked pretty serious, especially the other new cadets that stood as still as they could with their bags next to them or hanging off their backs. Another soldier directed him to stand in one part of the line, and not to move unless ordered to. He wasn’t sure what they were waiting for.
Another soldier moved up, standing in front of all of them. “Don’t eyeball me,” he yelled. “Alright, all of you, follow me. We will be depositing your things temporarily in one of our barracks. You will retrieve them when you have gotten your room assignments. Is that understood?”
“Yes sir,” they said, shakily and without any sort of confidence. Some started early, others late, truth be told it was just a mess.
“Don’t call me sir!” he shouted, frowning. “I’m a sergeant, I work for a living! Let’s go!”
Nobody dared to call him ‘sir’ again. Silently, and with no coordination, they followed him, bags in hand and backpacks strapped on. Their path took them up a hill, where a three-story building stood around a plaza that had some kind of gun on it. White stucco had been slathered on the building, with simple windows and glass doors the only clues that this building was intended to host people and not some sort of fancy warehouse. The sergeant shuffled them in one by one, directing them to put their bags and suitcases into corners where they could find them later, observing the proceedings with indifference.
Once they had finished this, he moved them outside, this time to move them to another building. This one was partially built into the hill, not far from the barracks that they had just left. He directed them to split off into two lines and join the back. When they reached the front, he said, they were to shout their name and say “Reporting as ordered.” Here, everyone stood the exact same, legs apart with their hands clasped behind their backs, eyes forward. Xachary did his best to replicate it, as another soldier – maybe a sergeant? He could tell – prowled the line as if he was sniffing out fear. The soldier paused right next to Xachary, staring at him.
“Did you shave this morning, Cadet?” he asked.
“N-no, we were-”
“I don’t care about any excuses, and call me sergeant, Cadet. Fix it tomorrow morning first thing, do you understand?”
“Yes, sergeant!”
The sergeant stalked off, and the line began to move forward. He could hear people yelling words, but couldn’t find himself focusing on what those words were. Anxiety had built up in him, the curious sense of “what the hell am I doing?” that he always got when he had gotten himself involved in something crazy. Back home in New York, it had been harebrained schemes with his friends. Today, it was the reality that he was running head-first into signing away no less than 4 years of his life to the Socialist Republics of America. Eventually, his turn at the front of the line came up. He stood next to another cadet, tiptoeing up to a line drawn on the floor with blue masking tape. In front of him was a table, where two bored-looking sergeants sat, a list in front of them.
“Xachary Parker, reporting as ordered!”
“Johnathan Sullivan, reporting as ordered!”
The sergeants moved down their lists, tapping at them with pencils. “Cadet Parker,” the one in front of him said. “Your company assignment is Charlie. Your dorm assignment is Patton Hall, room 247. Repeat that back.”
“My company assignment is Charlie, and my dorm assignment is Patton Hall, room 247, sergeant!”
“Good, go down those stairs.”
Xachary moved as fast as his legs could take him down the stairs, as sergeants shouted in his ears to go faster. He wasn’t sure if they knew he was already doing that. Someone wrote something on the back of his white shirt, after which somebody gave him a sign to hold up and took his picture. An officer – this one told Xachary to call him sir – handed him a sheet of paper and the Cadet Handbook, and then they were organized into some sort of ad-hoc formation, marched to the infirmary by a different sergeant. There were a few people who hadn’t had their Army-mandated medical exams in preparation for the draft, and thus they were to wait while they were examined by doctors. Life turned into a blur for Xachary. They were marched out to a field, saluted the flag as someone played a trumpet, and then shuffled into a theater where they were told to sit quietly and wait.
After what felt like ages, a man clad in a Socialist Republics Army uniform walked on stage, looking out among the new cadets. “Welcome to Great Plains Military Academy,” he said. “I am Lieutenant Colonel Bradley Wilkinson, the Commandant of Cadets at this fine facility. Ladies and gentlemen, you have chosen to embark on a new path to become officers of the Socialist Republics Army, a path which will not be easy. You will face many challenges, all of which are designed to test your mettle and show us that you are worthy of joining the ranks of the Army. There are nearly 300 new cadets like you, organized into our five companies, and I am sad to say not all of you will be offered a commission. However, this should inspire and motivate you to be the strongest, most disciplined and knowledgeable Cadet regardless.”
He paused, scanning the crowd as if looking for something. “To the women here, I would like to say this. You all have the honor of being the first women to graduate from an American senior military academy. All of you who have taken the choice to become a leader of soldiers represent a new generation of American officers. Class of 1969, this is a new school, as fresh as you are. You will set the standards and traditions for years to come. When new cadets arrive in 1966, 1967, you will be the leaders they look up to, and eventually the soldiers under your command will look up to you much as officers from any other school are looked up to. Here at Great Plains, we will hone you into the finest of officers. Look forward, and act with the honor and integrity expected of an American soldier. You are dismissed.”
With these words, Xachary returned to the chaos of the sergeants. They assembled each cadet into the companies – Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta and Echo, as he quickly figured out – and then it was a forced run around the campus’s drill field and up its hill to their destined barracks, Patton Hall. The sergeants harassed them all the way into the building, screaming and yelling at them to run faster, grab their things more quickly, and keep moving until they stood hastily assembled in a room called “The Pit.” The sergeants looked down on them, clearly pissed off and without even a hint of joy in their faces.
“Listen up!” someone yelled. He stood at the front of the sloppy formation, hands clasped behind his back and with a hollow, dead look in his eyes. “I am First Sergeant Killip. You will address me as First Sergeant and it will be loud, do you understand that?”
“Yes, First Sergeant!” they said, though far less confidently than the sergeants clearly wanted.
“Bullshit, I can’t hear you!”
“Yes, First Sergeant!”
“I don’t buy it,” he growled. “We’ll work on that. Understand this, maggots, I am not a cruel, unjust man. It may appear that way at times, but you will find very quickly that my cruelty is dealt in the most fair of ways. I do not discriminate between man or woman, black or white. Here in Charlie company, each and every one of you has an equal chance to succeed. I do not want any soldier under my command to fail, because if you fail, then it means I have failed, and failure is unacceptable! Do you understand that?”
“Yes, First Sergeant!”
“Goddammit, that’s more like it!” First Sergeant Killip shouted. “The good news, maggots, I will not force you to perform PT for thirty minutes before bed as I had planned.”
Xachary felt himself release a sigh of relief, alongside many others. The run had knocked a hell of a lot out of him. If he had to do more PT, he thought he’d die right then and there.
“Instead, you will perform PT for fifteen minutes! Lead the way in the butterfly kick, Sergeant Deacon!”
Thus began the longest fifteen minutes of Xachary’s life. He thought by the time they finished the butterfly kicks, pushups, and jumping jacks that every limb he had would fall off. The sergeants constantly belittled them, screaming about their form being wrong or that they didn’t go high or low enough on the various exercises. When their punishment was over, they were told to run as fast as possible to their rooms, verbally assaulted the entire way.
Xachary stumbled into his room, his suitcase falling on the floor with a clatter as the door slammed shut behind him. A guy about his height stood doubled over, his brown hair falling down across his eyes, while next to him stood a girl with long black hair and a black girl who looked like she had already been to hell and back. They stared at one another, trying to figure out what to say first.
“Well, guess we survived day one,” Xachary said weakly. “So, uh, who are you guys? I’m Xachary Parker.”
“Nikolas Xanthopoulos,” the brown-haired guy said. “You can call me Nik.”
“Karolina Ingersleben.”
“Helen Nichols,” the black girl said. “Uh, where are y’all from?”
Just like before, they rattled off their hometowns. Xachary relayed that he was from New York, while Nik came from Chicago. Helen hailed from Birmingham, and Karolina lived in Cleveland. So far, they all seemed pretty decent people. Xachary wondered if all of them were in the same squad or not.
A banging came at the door. “Lights out!” a voice shouted. “Go to sleep!”
Papa India November X-Ray
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Markus Wilding
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Markus Wilding
- Site Admin
- Posts: 1148
- Joined: 18 Nov 2018, 14:40
Re: Papa India November X-Ray
A banging came at their door, followed quickly by a sergeant yelling at them to get up and to be in the Pit in 10 minutes. Xachary threw himself off his bunk, scrambling to get changed into the same jeans and white shirt he had worn yesterday. Nik was rushing to do the same thing, and it was that exact moment Xachary remembered he still had to shave. He rushed to get his shaving kit out, hurrying to eliminate the rogue hair that sprang up from his face as Nik, Nichols and Ingersleben gathered up near the door, mentally preparing themselves for whatever the next day was going to bring.
“Hey! Parker!” Nik said. “You done yet?!”
He hastily wiped his face, not quite happy with the job he had done, but some effort was better than none, right? A sharp nod and quick step-off later, and they were rushing down the hallway with dozens of other fresh cadets, heading for The Pit where First Sergeant Killip stood with his hands behind his back, staring them down. They assembled in hasty lines, mostly by chance, and Xachary found himself standing in a line with Nik, Ingersleben and Nichols all on his left, standing as haphazardly straight as they could.
“Good morning, Charlie!” First Sergeant Killip called. His lockjaw look was not softened by a night of sleep apparently, and his soulless eyes looked out among them, expecting an answer.
“Good morning, First Sergeant!” they called, weakly. Behind the First Sergeant, Xachary saw a series of large windows that showed it was still pitch-black outside. What time had they been woken up? He hadn’t gotten a chance to look, and dreaded the idea of trying to peek at a clock to find out.
First Sergeant Killip did not look upon their answer kindly. “I can’t hear you! Sound off like you’ve got a pair!”
“Good morning, First Sergeant!”
“That’s better,” he growled, still eyeing them suspiciously. “Alright Charlie, listen up! Today, you men will be getting proper haircuts. I will have none of these hippie hairstyles in my beloved Corps! Ladies, you will be taught how to wear your hair in the appropriate military manner. After that, we will conduct various exercises to acclimatize you to our program here at Great Plains. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, First Sergeant!”
“Bullshit, I can’t hear you!”
“Yes, First Sergeant!”
He nodded, a smile cracking across his face. Xachary got the sense he did not often smile, and if he did, it was never for a good reason. “One more thing before I dismiss you, Charlie. Take a good look at the cadets around you.”
Xachary refused to even breathe, lest he draw a sergeant’s ire. He wasn’t smart by any means, but he knew the consequences for moving when not specifically ordered to. When nobody dared to move, First Sergeant Killip scowled. “I mean it! Look to your left and right, maggots!”
Slowly, and with more than some trepidation, Xachary did as ordered, He watched equally uneasy eyes, especially that of Nik and Ingersleben, staring back at him.
“The rank you stand in now is your squad for the rest of this year,” First Sergeant Killip said, piercing into their sols as they returned to proper position. “You will do everything together. You will eat together. You will exercise together. You will learn together. Hell, you will shit together! You will succeed as a team or you will fail as a team and it is up to you, cadets, to hold each other accountable for one another!”
The grim reality dawned on him. Was anyone else suddenly feeling overwhelmed, or was it just him? The same nervousness and panic that he had yesterday upon first getting here slammed into him like a pile of bricks. The First Sergeant, however, just stared at them with a look halfway between intense, grim bitterness and muted excitement, as if he was just waiting for someone to mess up.
“Do you understand that, cadets?!” he shouted, loud enough to snap Xachary out of whatever funk had caught him unable to respond.
“Yes, First Sergeant!” they yelled back. Apparently, this was satisfactory enough, and he dismissed Charlie without further incident. The sergeants harassed them on their way outside, shouting and screaming at them, hurling insults their way. The night air was cool, in stark contrast to the inside of their barracks that quickly got hot with all the running and shouting they did. Their day began with exercises conducted on the drill field, where the other companies had also been assembled after they had all saluted the flag of the Socialist Republics. Today, they were all being punished through physical exercises. They seemed endless – starting with pushups, then quickly moving on to other forms of torture like butterfly kicks and jumping jacks. A run was ordered when dawn broke, all the while the sergeants yelled at them to drink water.
After they had performed a lap around the drill field, Charlie company was marched to the campus library. It stood tall at the head of campus, three floors of tomes and literature with massive glass windows stretching from the very bottom of the foundation up to the roof itself, with simple red brick dominating the other walls. Charlie was ordered to wait outside the library while Alpha was marched past them. As Xachary looked over his Knowledge sheet, doing everything he could to learn about the M14, rank structure, and General Orders before a sergeant called on him and demanded information out of him like some Fascist interrogator.
Twenty minutes later, or so Xachary figured by his roughshod estimation, Alpha marched back, this time with all the men with their heads shaved. This was definitely the fate Xachary’s golden locks were held to – to be shaved off and left at the bottom of a barber’s floor. A sergeant ordered him to keep his eyes on his Knowledge unless spoken to, and that killed any ideas Xachary had of trying to guess what was ahead. He was asked questions at random times about his General Orders, the ranks, traditions of the Socialist Republic Army, the M14, anything and everything the sergeants could dream up. Part of him believed that they made up a few questions to screw with him.
Before he knew it, Charlie was ordered to march. They marched silently to the barber’s office where one squad at a time, they were shuffled in and given haircuts. Xachary could do nothing but watch as his hair began to disappear, falling off his head and collecting in a pile on the floor. Two barbers worked at once, one on him and another on Nik, while a helper swept up the growing piles of hair. When they were done, Xachary and Nik were violently ejected from the barbershop, ordered to wait outside while the rest of the company got their haircuts. Before they could even process the change in haircuts, they marched back to the library. Here, the sergeants guided them through opening a new bank account that would serve as payment for their services in the Socialist Republic Armed Forces, since as students of one of the senior military academies they would be given a stipend each month to spend on books and supplies to further their education.
The process of opening the account was as simple as just providing their name and Social Security number, and from there the rest was more or less taken care of. A local bank served to collect and dole out funds as needed, while also providing access to their regular accounts if necessary. Lunch followed after, a silent affair of noodles with meat and vegetables. Just as soon as they had gotten this break, it was back to another tour of duty in hell. They returned to the barracks to be subjected to punishment for an unnamed crime.
Once this chaos had ended, they divided the company up into their squads. Xachary followed Nik, Ingersleben and Nichols down a hallway, where their new squad leader Sergeant Marks instructed them on how to fold and roll their clothes the “Army way.” To Xachary, it seemed like a lot more effort than it was worth. He showed them how to do something called Ranger Rolls, a way to supposedly save space in a pack and in drawers that worked equally well on shirts and socks. Sergeant Marks watched over them as they did and undid their Ranger Rolls, correcting them and providing tips when necessary.
Soon, this instruction ended and they were ordered to run to the Pit, where First Sergeant Killip showed them the proper way to make their beds. He reminded them that at the end of the week, there would be a company-wide room inspection, and he wanted every single bed done exactly as he had shown them, with unspecified consequences should anyone fail. Finally, their instruction ended with Sergeant O’Neil teaching them about proper uniform wear (of which none of them had) and how to correctly address superior officers. Dinner followed after this, which was a pile of roasted ham, scalloped potatoes, and enough green beans to drown the entire company.
Upon returning to the barracks, they exercised even more. Xachary began to think that the sergeants actually took pleasure out of this, in some sick, cruel, twisted way. He lost track of how many repetitions they actually did, only calling out random numbers when they finished a set. Eventually, the sergeants grew tired of punishing them, and sent them to bed for the night.
“Look on the bright side,” Xachary said as they collapsed back in their room. “It can’t get any worse, right?”
Nik, Ingersleben and Nichols all stared back at him like he had lost his mind, panting heavily. “Parker,” Nik muttered, shaking his head. “That positive attitude of yours is gonna get you smoked one of these days.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been on my feet as long as that in my life,” Nichols said, taking her shoes off and rubbing her feet. “When do you think we’ll rest?”
Ingersleben shrugged, letting her black hair fall down as she took it out of the ponytail she had been wearing it in. “I heard the sergeants talking about tomorrow being a ‘fun day.’ What do you think that means?”
Nik scoffed, standing up and heading to his bed. “Nothing good for us.”
“Hey! Parker!” Nik said. “You done yet?!”
He hastily wiped his face, not quite happy with the job he had done, but some effort was better than none, right? A sharp nod and quick step-off later, and they were rushing down the hallway with dozens of other fresh cadets, heading for The Pit where First Sergeant Killip stood with his hands behind his back, staring them down. They assembled in hasty lines, mostly by chance, and Xachary found himself standing in a line with Nik, Ingersleben and Nichols all on his left, standing as haphazardly straight as they could.
“Good morning, Charlie!” First Sergeant Killip called. His lockjaw look was not softened by a night of sleep apparently, and his soulless eyes looked out among them, expecting an answer.
“Good morning, First Sergeant!” they called, weakly. Behind the First Sergeant, Xachary saw a series of large windows that showed it was still pitch-black outside. What time had they been woken up? He hadn’t gotten a chance to look, and dreaded the idea of trying to peek at a clock to find out.
First Sergeant Killip did not look upon their answer kindly. “I can’t hear you! Sound off like you’ve got a pair!”
“Good morning, First Sergeant!”
“That’s better,” he growled, still eyeing them suspiciously. “Alright Charlie, listen up! Today, you men will be getting proper haircuts. I will have none of these hippie hairstyles in my beloved Corps! Ladies, you will be taught how to wear your hair in the appropriate military manner. After that, we will conduct various exercises to acclimatize you to our program here at Great Plains. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, First Sergeant!”
“Bullshit, I can’t hear you!”
“Yes, First Sergeant!”
He nodded, a smile cracking across his face. Xachary got the sense he did not often smile, and if he did, it was never for a good reason. “One more thing before I dismiss you, Charlie. Take a good look at the cadets around you.”
Xachary refused to even breathe, lest he draw a sergeant’s ire. He wasn’t smart by any means, but he knew the consequences for moving when not specifically ordered to. When nobody dared to move, First Sergeant Killip scowled. “I mean it! Look to your left and right, maggots!”
Slowly, and with more than some trepidation, Xachary did as ordered, He watched equally uneasy eyes, especially that of Nik and Ingersleben, staring back at him.
“The rank you stand in now is your squad for the rest of this year,” First Sergeant Killip said, piercing into their sols as they returned to proper position. “You will do everything together. You will eat together. You will exercise together. You will learn together. Hell, you will shit together! You will succeed as a team or you will fail as a team and it is up to you, cadets, to hold each other accountable for one another!”
The grim reality dawned on him. Was anyone else suddenly feeling overwhelmed, or was it just him? The same nervousness and panic that he had yesterday upon first getting here slammed into him like a pile of bricks. The First Sergeant, however, just stared at them with a look halfway between intense, grim bitterness and muted excitement, as if he was just waiting for someone to mess up.
“Do you understand that, cadets?!” he shouted, loud enough to snap Xachary out of whatever funk had caught him unable to respond.
“Yes, First Sergeant!” they yelled back. Apparently, this was satisfactory enough, and he dismissed Charlie without further incident. The sergeants harassed them on their way outside, shouting and screaming at them, hurling insults their way. The night air was cool, in stark contrast to the inside of their barracks that quickly got hot with all the running and shouting they did. Their day began with exercises conducted on the drill field, where the other companies had also been assembled after they had all saluted the flag of the Socialist Republics. Today, they were all being punished through physical exercises. They seemed endless – starting with pushups, then quickly moving on to other forms of torture like butterfly kicks and jumping jacks. A run was ordered when dawn broke, all the while the sergeants yelled at them to drink water.
After they had performed a lap around the drill field, Charlie company was marched to the campus library. It stood tall at the head of campus, three floors of tomes and literature with massive glass windows stretching from the very bottom of the foundation up to the roof itself, with simple red brick dominating the other walls. Charlie was ordered to wait outside the library while Alpha was marched past them. As Xachary looked over his Knowledge sheet, doing everything he could to learn about the M14, rank structure, and General Orders before a sergeant called on him and demanded information out of him like some Fascist interrogator.
Twenty minutes later, or so Xachary figured by his roughshod estimation, Alpha marched back, this time with all the men with their heads shaved. This was definitely the fate Xachary’s golden locks were held to – to be shaved off and left at the bottom of a barber’s floor. A sergeant ordered him to keep his eyes on his Knowledge unless spoken to, and that killed any ideas Xachary had of trying to guess what was ahead. He was asked questions at random times about his General Orders, the ranks, traditions of the Socialist Republic Army, the M14, anything and everything the sergeants could dream up. Part of him believed that they made up a few questions to screw with him.
Before he knew it, Charlie was ordered to march. They marched silently to the barber’s office where one squad at a time, they were shuffled in and given haircuts. Xachary could do nothing but watch as his hair began to disappear, falling off his head and collecting in a pile on the floor. Two barbers worked at once, one on him and another on Nik, while a helper swept up the growing piles of hair. When they were done, Xachary and Nik were violently ejected from the barbershop, ordered to wait outside while the rest of the company got their haircuts. Before they could even process the change in haircuts, they marched back to the library. Here, the sergeants guided them through opening a new bank account that would serve as payment for their services in the Socialist Republic Armed Forces, since as students of one of the senior military academies they would be given a stipend each month to spend on books and supplies to further their education.
The process of opening the account was as simple as just providing their name and Social Security number, and from there the rest was more or less taken care of. A local bank served to collect and dole out funds as needed, while also providing access to their regular accounts if necessary. Lunch followed after, a silent affair of noodles with meat and vegetables. Just as soon as they had gotten this break, it was back to another tour of duty in hell. They returned to the barracks to be subjected to punishment for an unnamed crime.
Once this chaos had ended, they divided the company up into their squads. Xachary followed Nik, Ingersleben and Nichols down a hallway, where their new squad leader Sergeant Marks instructed them on how to fold and roll their clothes the “Army way.” To Xachary, it seemed like a lot more effort than it was worth. He showed them how to do something called Ranger Rolls, a way to supposedly save space in a pack and in drawers that worked equally well on shirts and socks. Sergeant Marks watched over them as they did and undid their Ranger Rolls, correcting them and providing tips when necessary.
Soon, this instruction ended and they were ordered to run to the Pit, where First Sergeant Killip showed them the proper way to make their beds. He reminded them that at the end of the week, there would be a company-wide room inspection, and he wanted every single bed done exactly as he had shown them, with unspecified consequences should anyone fail. Finally, their instruction ended with Sergeant O’Neil teaching them about proper uniform wear (of which none of them had) and how to correctly address superior officers. Dinner followed after this, which was a pile of roasted ham, scalloped potatoes, and enough green beans to drown the entire company.
Upon returning to the barracks, they exercised even more. Xachary began to think that the sergeants actually took pleasure out of this, in some sick, cruel, twisted way. He lost track of how many repetitions they actually did, only calling out random numbers when they finished a set. Eventually, the sergeants grew tired of punishing them, and sent them to bed for the night.
“Look on the bright side,” Xachary said as they collapsed back in their room. “It can’t get any worse, right?”
Nik, Ingersleben and Nichols all stared back at him like he had lost his mind, panting heavily. “Parker,” Nik muttered, shaking his head. “That positive attitude of yours is gonna get you smoked one of these days.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been on my feet as long as that in my life,” Nichols said, taking her shoes off and rubbing her feet. “When do you think we’ll rest?”
Ingersleben shrugged, letting her black hair fall down as she took it out of the ponytail she had been wearing it in. “I heard the sergeants talking about tomorrow being a ‘fun day.’ What do you think that means?”
Nik scoffed, standing up and heading to his bed. “Nothing good for us.”
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Markus Wilding
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Re: Papa India November X-Ray
The fun day was anything but.
It had started early in the morning, well before the sun had risen and with a cacophony of noise. The sergeants shouted at them to keep moving, and in some sort of cruel joke they had placed boxes of tape all across the floor, separated by mere inches or several feet. These were “safe zones,” the sergeants declared, and they were never to step outside of them. They screamed if even a toe was outside the tape that they were dead, constantly yelling at cadets to run faster and stay inside the zones. This proved difficult under the best of circumstances, but Xachary soon found that being half-asleep didn’t much help with balance.
First Sergeant Killip informed them at formation that they were to conduct several team-building exercises today, followed by formal instruction from the officers regarding several subjects of “vital importance” to them. He did not explain this any further, instead ordering them to march outside and salute the flag. The morning exercises began with carrying a simulated casualty, in this case a dummy on a stretcher. Each squad carried their fallen comrade across the drill field and back, the midpoint to turn around marked by a traffic cone. As the sun began to rise, they finished this and set to work on carrying jerry cans full of water around the drill field as well, swapping out with Bravo Company to do this task. When they had done this enough to satisfy the sergeants, task number three was rolling a massive tire over and over, effectively flipping it across the drill field. Apparently, moving things back and forth across the field was the best use of their time.
They were released to breakfast, and this time by the graciousness of the sergeants, they were allowed to actually talk to one another, and were not subject to only studying their Knowledge. Today’s breakfast consisted of biscuits that, to Xachary’s surprise, were actually somewhat fresh and not hard at all, along with bacon, fried potatoes, and scrambled eggs. The sergeants were strict – one scoop of food, one biscuit, two strips of bacon, and move on. If there was anything left after each cadet had gotten food, they would consider allowing seconds. As one, Xachary, Nik, Ingersleben and Nichols sat down at a table, poking at the various piles of food they all had and adding salt and pepper to taste after testing it. Glasses of orange juice sat at the tables, set out to perfectly align with forks, knives and their chairs.
Nik glanced up at Xachary, having taken the first bite of his biscuit. “Can’t get worse, huh?” he asked, smirking as he chewed.
“In my defense,” Xachary said, savoring each bit of egg he could scrape off his place. “I didn’t think they’d have us rolling that tire around.”
“My arms feel like they’re gonna fall off,” Ingersleben complained, her eyelids heavy as she lazily stabbed at her breakfast.
Nichols tore into a piece of bacon, apparently extra-crispy given how it crunched with each movement of her jaw. “Hey, the sergeants said we could talk to each other, yeah? What do you guys want to do?”
“What d’you mean?” Nik asked. “I figured they’d put us anywhere they wanted. It’s their army, isn’t it?”
“The people’s army,” Xachary corrected. “We serve the Socialist Republics, that’s the oath we’re swearing to. For me, though? I’d like to join the Airborne.”
Ingersleben laughed, apparently forgetting about how tired her arms were. “Jump out of airplanes? Okay, you do that. I’m going armor. Dad said I could do anything I wanted, as long as it wasn’t infantry.”
“What’s his deal with the infantry?” Nik asked, having finished off his biscuit and moving on to the eggs.
“Dad was infantry in World War II,” Ingersleben explained. “He fought in Africa and France. He told me never to join up with the infantry if I could avoid it.”
Nik thought this answer over, before nodding and returning to his food. Nichols mentioned she had given thought to the artillery, or perhaps the nascent combat aviation corps before admitting that she didn’t much care where she ended up, as long as she wasn’t a Marine.
“Well, come on then, Nik,” Ingersleben said, shuffling potatoes around on her plate. She stared at Nik with intense curiosity, waiting for him to reply. “You’ve got a choice. What do you wanna do?”
“I guess infantry,” he answered. “Not, like, regular kinda guys, but the guys that go around in those vehicles, you know? The boxy wheeled ones.”
“Yeah, that’d be cool,” Xachary said.
The sergeants went around, ordering them to leave their plates. Breakfast was over, time for them to get back to exercising. Particularly devious this time around was pushing a sergeant’s pickup truck, put in neutral, around a parking lot. This required a herculean effort out of the company, shoving the vehicle around and around until the sergeants were satisfied. They moved on now to a new form of torture, an exercise that Xachary hated so much he didn’t dare recall the name unless he invoked it to return like some crappy horror novel antagonist. The only break came when the sergeants broke them up into their squads, to teach them how to properly march and perform basic drill maneuvers such as about-faces, how to properly space themselves, and other claptrap that he found increasingly ritualistic.
As punishment for not being able to march properly, Charlie company specifically was banned from talking during lunch. Their food this time consisted of mixed roasted vegetables, chicken that to Xachary was far too dry, and creamed corn that alternated between being too cold and hotter than any Victorian Judgment. When they had finished and assembled outside, the sergeants forced them to run up the hill towards their next objective, a lecture hall.
First Sergeant Killip assembled them outside the building, looking down on them with a severe, critical eye. “Listen up, maggots!” he shouted, his hands drawn behind his back. “You are about to receive instructions from our senior cadre. You will pay attention to their lectures and speeches, you will retain any and all information they give you, and you will give them the proper respect that they deserve! Is that understood?”
“Yes, First Sergeant!”
“Good,” he said, nodding sharply. “Furthermore! This will be an incredibly nice time for you, cadets, because you are about to walk into a nice, air-conditioned room with comfortable seats. There will be no men like me yelling at you. Officers are gentlemen, mind, and they are the sort of fellows who speak softly. You will want to sleep, for you have been deprived of that glorious wonder of life. I do not want to see a single cadet falling asleep in their chair! If anyone falls asleep, I will PT you all until you die! I will PT you until your skin falls off your horrific little bones! Do you understand that?!”
“Yes, First Sergeant!”
The First Sergeant nodded again, smiling wide. If he didn’t know any better, Xachary would almost say he took pride in being this cruel and imaginatively inventive in his threats. “Cadets, I order this. If you feel you are falling asleep, I want you to get out of your chair, step out to the aisle, and stand at attention until you feel you can return to your seat! Do you understand that?”
“Yes, First Sergeant!”
With the other given, they slowly filed into the lecture halls, filling into seats as ordered. The officers gave them lectures concerning how to avoid heatstroke, warning them that the Army did not take heat casualties under any circumstances, as well as various advice sets on survival in the field to combat ticks, lice and other maladies of nature that led to the downfall of potential recruits. Another lecture dived into the honor code for cadets, prompting them to agree that so long as they were alive, they would not cheat, steal, lie or tolerate those who do. Another rather tacked-on warning advised them against “inappropriate relationships” and specifically banned intimacy in the barracks. Xachary alternated between sitting down and standing in the aisles, trying to keep his focus.
Like all good breaks, this had to come to an end as well. They were shuffled out of the lecture hall, reformed into their companies, and then ran back to barracks, shuffling them in to a waiting First Sergeant Killip, who looked… proud? Was that right? Was this a setup to some sort of cruel prank? Xachary feared what was about to happen as they slotted back into their squads in the Pit, waiting for the inevitable hailstorm of hell and fury.
“Good evening, Charlie,” First Sergeant Killip said. “I have good news for you tonight!”
A chill of fear and anxiety passed over the cadets. What possible new form of torture did he have in store for them now?
“I hear reports that while lesser companies had cadets fall asleep and were forced to be roused from their slumber, not a single Charlie company cadet fell asleep! My sergeants watched you fine soldiers stand like true American men out in the field! That’s something to be proud of, goddammit! Tonight, I will grant you cadets a reprieve from the evening’s physical education.”
Just as quickly as that wave of horror washed over them, it faded as First Sergeant Killip allowed them to actually smile in formation. They were released to head to their rooms and talk, in order to bond as squadmates and with the promise of hard work in the morning. Thus, with even more explicit orders to stay in the safe zones, they rushed back to their rooms, another day nearly done and over with.
“Obvious question coming in,” Nichols announced, stretching her back out. “Why’d you all join up?”
Xachary chuckled. “I mean, why not? Draft would have gotten me anyway.”
“Can’t beat them,” Nik muttered, leaning back on his chair without a care in the world. To Xachary, he sounded dejected, like this was always to be his fate or something. “May as well join them.”
“Wait, yeah, you’re from Chicago, right?” Ingersleben asked. “I heard about the fighting there on the news.”
At the mere mention of that, Nik’s face darkened. His eyes got an almost hollow look to them, as if with a mere sentence alone Ingersleben had accidentally churned up a million memories. Xachary watched him slowly let a breath out, before turning his gaze to the ground. “Yeah. It was shitty.”
Awkward silence enveloped them. Xachary found himself caught in the middle, with Nik brooding on his left while Nichols and Ingersleben stared at him, confused. The tension was there, but nobody knew quite what to do about it. Was there anything to be done?
“So, uh, anyway,” Ingersleben said quietly, rubbing the back of her head. “I… I joined because I figured I may as well do something. My parents don’t have the money to go to college even if I wanted to, so… this was the best option.”
Xachary cleared his throat, looking to Nichols. “Well, you asked, but you didn’t answer. Why’d you join?”
“Y’all hear about that fighting over in Romania?” she asked, apparently as a total non-sequitur. “My brother is – was in the Marines. He died over there, and the Marines told us he took down at least forty Fascists with him. So… I dunno, I felt like I ought to follow him, you know?”
Their dorm room fell quiet. Xachary didn’t know many folk who had lost friends and neighbors personally when the SRA came to New York, but he knew it could be hard on people. Hell, Nichols came from Alabama, the one place in the SRA that hadn’t seen fighting in a hell of a long time. New York had been spared a lot of the brutal fighting that characterized Washington and Chicago, and for that Xachary was somewhat grateful – the worst he ever had to deal with when he was 12 was local Victorian and SRA military police, enforcing quarantines and handing out food.
“That’s pretty noble of you,” Nik said after a long silence. “Let’s hope we all get that commission, am I right?”
Someone started banging on the door. Time to head to dinner. Pork chops, fries, and veggies were tonight’s far, with the company allowed to talk again. Their evening remained easy until the sergeants rounded them up to go to bed once more. Tomorrow, it was warned, they would be getting their proper uniforms and would be taught how to wear them.
It had started early in the morning, well before the sun had risen and with a cacophony of noise. The sergeants shouted at them to keep moving, and in some sort of cruel joke they had placed boxes of tape all across the floor, separated by mere inches or several feet. These were “safe zones,” the sergeants declared, and they were never to step outside of them. They screamed if even a toe was outside the tape that they were dead, constantly yelling at cadets to run faster and stay inside the zones. This proved difficult under the best of circumstances, but Xachary soon found that being half-asleep didn’t much help with balance.
First Sergeant Killip informed them at formation that they were to conduct several team-building exercises today, followed by formal instruction from the officers regarding several subjects of “vital importance” to them. He did not explain this any further, instead ordering them to march outside and salute the flag. The morning exercises began with carrying a simulated casualty, in this case a dummy on a stretcher. Each squad carried their fallen comrade across the drill field and back, the midpoint to turn around marked by a traffic cone. As the sun began to rise, they finished this and set to work on carrying jerry cans full of water around the drill field as well, swapping out with Bravo Company to do this task. When they had done this enough to satisfy the sergeants, task number three was rolling a massive tire over and over, effectively flipping it across the drill field. Apparently, moving things back and forth across the field was the best use of their time.
They were released to breakfast, and this time by the graciousness of the sergeants, they were allowed to actually talk to one another, and were not subject to only studying their Knowledge. Today’s breakfast consisted of biscuits that, to Xachary’s surprise, were actually somewhat fresh and not hard at all, along with bacon, fried potatoes, and scrambled eggs. The sergeants were strict – one scoop of food, one biscuit, two strips of bacon, and move on. If there was anything left after each cadet had gotten food, they would consider allowing seconds. As one, Xachary, Nik, Ingersleben and Nichols sat down at a table, poking at the various piles of food they all had and adding salt and pepper to taste after testing it. Glasses of orange juice sat at the tables, set out to perfectly align with forks, knives and their chairs.
Nik glanced up at Xachary, having taken the first bite of his biscuit. “Can’t get worse, huh?” he asked, smirking as he chewed.
“In my defense,” Xachary said, savoring each bit of egg he could scrape off his place. “I didn’t think they’d have us rolling that tire around.”
“My arms feel like they’re gonna fall off,” Ingersleben complained, her eyelids heavy as she lazily stabbed at her breakfast.
Nichols tore into a piece of bacon, apparently extra-crispy given how it crunched with each movement of her jaw. “Hey, the sergeants said we could talk to each other, yeah? What do you guys want to do?”
“What d’you mean?” Nik asked. “I figured they’d put us anywhere they wanted. It’s their army, isn’t it?”
“The people’s army,” Xachary corrected. “We serve the Socialist Republics, that’s the oath we’re swearing to. For me, though? I’d like to join the Airborne.”
Ingersleben laughed, apparently forgetting about how tired her arms were. “Jump out of airplanes? Okay, you do that. I’m going armor. Dad said I could do anything I wanted, as long as it wasn’t infantry.”
“What’s his deal with the infantry?” Nik asked, having finished off his biscuit and moving on to the eggs.
“Dad was infantry in World War II,” Ingersleben explained. “He fought in Africa and France. He told me never to join up with the infantry if I could avoid it.”
Nik thought this answer over, before nodding and returning to his food. Nichols mentioned she had given thought to the artillery, or perhaps the nascent combat aviation corps before admitting that she didn’t much care where she ended up, as long as she wasn’t a Marine.
“Well, come on then, Nik,” Ingersleben said, shuffling potatoes around on her plate. She stared at Nik with intense curiosity, waiting for him to reply. “You’ve got a choice. What do you wanna do?”
“I guess infantry,” he answered. “Not, like, regular kinda guys, but the guys that go around in those vehicles, you know? The boxy wheeled ones.”
“Yeah, that’d be cool,” Xachary said.
The sergeants went around, ordering them to leave their plates. Breakfast was over, time for them to get back to exercising. Particularly devious this time around was pushing a sergeant’s pickup truck, put in neutral, around a parking lot. This required a herculean effort out of the company, shoving the vehicle around and around until the sergeants were satisfied. They moved on now to a new form of torture, an exercise that Xachary hated so much he didn’t dare recall the name unless he invoked it to return like some crappy horror novel antagonist. The only break came when the sergeants broke them up into their squads, to teach them how to properly march and perform basic drill maneuvers such as about-faces, how to properly space themselves, and other claptrap that he found increasingly ritualistic.
As punishment for not being able to march properly, Charlie company specifically was banned from talking during lunch. Their food this time consisted of mixed roasted vegetables, chicken that to Xachary was far too dry, and creamed corn that alternated between being too cold and hotter than any Victorian Judgment. When they had finished and assembled outside, the sergeants forced them to run up the hill towards their next objective, a lecture hall.
First Sergeant Killip assembled them outside the building, looking down on them with a severe, critical eye. “Listen up, maggots!” he shouted, his hands drawn behind his back. “You are about to receive instructions from our senior cadre. You will pay attention to their lectures and speeches, you will retain any and all information they give you, and you will give them the proper respect that they deserve! Is that understood?”
“Yes, First Sergeant!”
“Good,” he said, nodding sharply. “Furthermore! This will be an incredibly nice time for you, cadets, because you are about to walk into a nice, air-conditioned room with comfortable seats. There will be no men like me yelling at you. Officers are gentlemen, mind, and they are the sort of fellows who speak softly. You will want to sleep, for you have been deprived of that glorious wonder of life. I do not want to see a single cadet falling asleep in their chair! If anyone falls asleep, I will PT you all until you die! I will PT you until your skin falls off your horrific little bones! Do you understand that?!”
“Yes, First Sergeant!”
The First Sergeant nodded again, smiling wide. If he didn’t know any better, Xachary would almost say he took pride in being this cruel and imaginatively inventive in his threats. “Cadets, I order this. If you feel you are falling asleep, I want you to get out of your chair, step out to the aisle, and stand at attention until you feel you can return to your seat! Do you understand that?”
“Yes, First Sergeant!”
With the other given, they slowly filed into the lecture halls, filling into seats as ordered. The officers gave them lectures concerning how to avoid heatstroke, warning them that the Army did not take heat casualties under any circumstances, as well as various advice sets on survival in the field to combat ticks, lice and other maladies of nature that led to the downfall of potential recruits. Another lecture dived into the honor code for cadets, prompting them to agree that so long as they were alive, they would not cheat, steal, lie or tolerate those who do. Another rather tacked-on warning advised them against “inappropriate relationships” and specifically banned intimacy in the barracks. Xachary alternated between sitting down and standing in the aisles, trying to keep his focus.
Like all good breaks, this had to come to an end as well. They were shuffled out of the lecture hall, reformed into their companies, and then ran back to barracks, shuffling them in to a waiting First Sergeant Killip, who looked… proud? Was that right? Was this a setup to some sort of cruel prank? Xachary feared what was about to happen as they slotted back into their squads in the Pit, waiting for the inevitable hailstorm of hell and fury.
“Good evening, Charlie,” First Sergeant Killip said. “I have good news for you tonight!”
A chill of fear and anxiety passed over the cadets. What possible new form of torture did he have in store for them now?
“I hear reports that while lesser companies had cadets fall asleep and were forced to be roused from their slumber, not a single Charlie company cadet fell asleep! My sergeants watched you fine soldiers stand like true American men out in the field! That’s something to be proud of, goddammit! Tonight, I will grant you cadets a reprieve from the evening’s physical education.”
Just as quickly as that wave of horror washed over them, it faded as First Sergeant Killip allowed them to actually smile in formation. They were released to head to their rooms and talk, in order to bond as squadmates and with the promise of hard work in the morning. Thus, with even more explicit orders to stay in the safe zones, they rushed back to their rooms, another day nearly done and over with.
“Obvious question coming in,” Nichols announced, stretching her back out. “Why’d you all join up?”
Xachary chuckled. “I mean, why not? Draft would have gotten me anyway.”
“Can’t beat them,” Nik muttered, leaning back on his chair without a care in the world. To Xachary, he sounded dejected, like this was always to be his fate or something. “May as well join them.”
“Wait, yeah, you’re from Chicago, right?” Ingersleben asked. “I heard about the fighting there on the news.”
At the mere mention of that, Nik’s face darkened. His eyes got an almost hollow look to them, as if with a mere sentence alone Ingersleben had accidentally churned up a million memories. Xachary watched him slowly let a breath out, before turning his gaze to the ground. “Yeah. It was shitty.”
Awkward silence enveloped them. Xachary found himself caught in the middle, with Nik brooding on his left while Nichols and Ingersleben stared at him, confused. The tension was there, but nobody knew quite what to do about it. Was there anything to be done?
“So, uh, anyway,” Ingersleben said quietly, rubbing the back of her head. “I… I joined because I figured I may as well do something. My parents don’t have the money to go to college even if I wanted to, so… this was the best option.”
Xachary cleared his throat, looking to Nichols. “Well, you asked, but you didn’t answer. Why’d you join?”
“Y’all hear about that fighting over in Romania?” she asked, apparently as a total non-sequitur. “My brother is – was in the Marines. He died over there, and the Marines told us he took down at least forty Fascists with him. So… I dunno, I felt like I ought to follow him, you know?”
Their dorm room fell quiet. Xachary didn’t know many folk who had lost friends and neighbors personally when the SRA came to New York, but he knew it could be hard on people. Hell, Nichols came from Alabama, the one place in the SRA that hadn’t seen fighting in a hell of a long time. New York had been spared a lot of the brutal fighting that characterized Washington and Chicago, and for that Xachary was somewhat grateful – the worst he ever had to deal with when he was 12 was local Victorian and SRA military police, enforcing quarantines and handing out food.
“That’s pretty noble of you,” Nik said after a long silence. “Let’s hope we all get that commission, am I right?”
Someone started banging on the door. Time to head to dinner. Pork chops, fries, and veggies were tonight’s far, with the company allowed to talk again. Their evening remained easy until the sergeants rounded them up to go to bed once more. Tomorrow, it was warned, they would be getting their proper uniforms and would be taught how to wear them.
-
Markus Wilding
- Site Admin
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Re: Papa India November X-Ray
The olive drab uniform looked pretty much exactly like the one Xachary remembered seeing pictures of his grandpa in, with the main difference being grandpa didn’t have a distinct helmet that the sergeants called their “gumdrops.” They said these were reserved primarily for field maneuvers and special visits – for most duties and functions they had an olive drab sidecap that they were instructed on how to wear properly. Xachary, Nik, Nichols and Ingersleben stood in a warehouse near campus where sergeants picked up items like boots, belts, hats, and anything else they could think of and lobbed them at high speed towards them, guessing on sizes and telling them to check it and hand it back if it wasn’t right.
They tried on boots, with the sergeants constantly throwing new pairs at Ingersleben to find a pair that fit her, while trying to find tunics that fit Xachary proved difficult. The sergeants marveled at how “absurdly fucking massive” Nik’s head was, with none of the caps they had looking right on him. Another sergeant wondered aloud how it was possible that Nichols was the most normal-sized out of every single cadet in the entire company. By the end of it all, they had amassed a neat pile of stuff, ranging from extra uniforms, bits and bobs of fancy dress attire, no less than four combs in a variety of colors, socks for every conceivable condition, belts and suspenders, and various bags that Xachary wasn’t entirely sure served an actual purpose. More physical exercise – at this point he had gotten used to it all – consumed the rest of the day as the sergeants continued to show them how to properly act as a soldier in the Socialist Republics Army.
There was a method to the madness, though. The more they worked together and lived together, even after a full week of hellish training, they were slowly becoming serious soldiers, a change that Xachary could feel every time they woke up to salute the flag. The sergeant’s instruction became less demanding, more orders given almost like a reminder. They had stopped acting like individuals, working cohesively like an actual unit. All they were missing at this point were rifles and someone to fight.
“Alright, listen up,” First Sergeant Killip announced after they had returned to their barracks. “Tomorrow you will be conducting a field exercise. We will issue you rifles, but if I see any one of you mistreating the generous gifts of the American people, I will personally take that rifle and beat you until there is nothing left to beat! Is that absolutely clear?”
“Yes, First Sergeant!”
The rest of their day was filled primarily with instruction concerning proper weapon drill and handling, as well as a company-wide uniform inspection. Despite having just been issued them, many – including Xachary – were singled out for creases and specks of lint on their uniform, as well as unpolished boots and incorrectly tied laces. As punishment for their crimes, they were told, a company-wide barracks inspection was ordered at the end of the week. It had become a routine Xachary was familiar with, and began to expect. Rise up early in the morning to salute the flag, listen to First Sergeant tell them what they were to do, and then hope he stayed under the radar enough so that none of the other sergeants would yell at him.
Now that they had their uniforms, they were ordered to wear them everywhere. Now they began to more properly resemble soldiers of the Socialist Republics Army, with their cropped haircuts and sidecaps, marching as one to the various halls and drill locations. It was just after lunch that they again marched to the Military Learning Center, a building designed for the express purpose of teaching them strategic and tactical considerations that an officer faced, alongside everything they needed to know to be a proper officer.
By company, they were slotted through, shunted into rooms where rifles lay on tables, two chairs in front of each one. A stern-looking sergeant with a big red 1 on his sleeve stared at them as they came in, holding another rifle in his right hand and off to his side. The sergeants ordered them to take seats, pairing up with a buddy to learn disassembly procedures.
“Cadets, I am Sergeant Haber of the 1st Infantry Division. In front of you is an M1 Garand, the former standard service rifle of the Socialist Republics Army. Today, I will instruct you on its disassembly procedure. You will do what I tell you, when I tell you, and not a second earlier, is that understood?”
“Yes sergeant!”
He nodded, heading to the front of the room to begin demonstrating. All went well as he showed them how to clear and render the weapon safe, a clattering of ping noises accompanying them as they all worked through the same procedure. Xachary and Nik, sitting next to each other and working over the weapon, diligently listened and waited for each order to come in, following it exactly as prescribed. Honestly, Nik was a lot more interested in the rifle that Xachary was.
“Stop!” Sergeant Haber yelled, glowering at someone in the company. Was that Jackson or Brabant? Xachary wasn’t sure. “Did I or did I not order you only to proceed when I said you could?”
“Uh, we-”
“Shut up! Drop that fucking weapon and do not touch it until I order you! Listen to orders, Cadet, or you are going to have a bad fucking time here!”
Xachary and Nik looked at each other, before swallowing hard and making sure they followed exactly what was being said and only did it when told to. The last thing they wanted right now was to be yelled at by Sergeant Haber. Eventually, they managed to get through disassembling the M1 Garand without further incident, reassembling it for the next company.
More exercises, this time in full uniform, rounded out their day. As they headed back to their dorms for the night, they were cautioned to get plenty of sleep – they would be going out early for their field exercise tomorrow, and there would be harsh consequences for those who did not keep up. Just like usual, Xachary, Nik, Nichols and Ingersleben joined in their room, happy to finally have a break from their exercises and demanding routine.
“Y’all think they’re gonna give us ammo tomorrow?” Nichols asked, leaning against the wall.
Nik shook his head, already kicking his boots off to massage his feet. “No chance in hell. Hey, honest question. Do you guys figure we’ll all get commissions?”
“Why wouldn’t we?” Xachary asked. “This place is meant to make officers, isn’t it?”
“I heard some of the command staff say the expected commission rate was 5%,” Nik said. “Way I figure it, we’ve got what, six companies of four squads each? What, about a hundred people, not counting anyone else who joins up after us… those aren’t good odds.”
Xachary did some quick math in his head. Yeah, 1 in 5 odds really weren’t that great, especially if the rumors he had heard about limited commission slots were true. Still, had to believe in something to keep him going.
“I’m not gonna worry too much about it,” Ingersleben said, shrugging. “Either I get a commission here, or they’ll kick me up anyway because of my time here. Win-win for me.”
Nichols nodded, letting out a long yawn. “Yeah, same here. Either I get it, or it’s suddenly not my problem anymore.”
“I guess I’m sort of the same,” Xachary said. “Hey, I’m just happy to be here.”
Nik looked over each of them, tapping his finger on the desk like he wanted to say something. “Hm, alright then,” he finally said. Something was weird, but Xachary couldn’t much dwell on it. Time to hit the sack, and prepare for tomorrow.
---
More banging on the door. Another mad scramble to get themselves put together, this time accompanied by trying to fit their uniforms and boots on, as they rushed out the door. The killzones were as hard to avoid as ever, but they managed to head into The Pit on time regardless, with First Sergeant Killip looking down on them as he always did.
“Hey, listen up!” a sergeant said. “Any of you men who did not shave this morning, meet your squad leader now!”
Xachary and Nik broke off, with Ingersleben and Nichols right behind them. They had learned pretty early when the sergeants asked someone to see a sergeant, someone else in the squad better go with them. Shared punishment, shared responsibility, they said. Sergeant Marks looked over them, tutting in disappointment. “Didn’t shave this morning, huh guys?” He looked them over, before furrowing his brow. “Wait, what the hell, y’all look fine.”
“Uh, we shaved last night, Sergeant,” Xachary informed him.
Sergeant Marks sighed, shaking his head in exasperation. “Of course you idiots did. Get back in line, you four, come see me if you didn’t shave at all. Get out of here!”
With broad smiles on their faces – that quickly disappeared when they got back in formation – Xachary, Nik, Nichols and Ingersleben rejoined the company. A few had to do pushups as punishment for not shaving, but the orders from yesterday still stood – they were going out on a field exercise today. First Sergeant Killip escorted them out the barracks to a morning that was still pitch-black, stuffing them onto a bus. Silence was ordered during the trip, and after about fifteen minutes of driving they were shoved off the bus and into a field.
The road march was longer than Xachary expected, and by the time they arrived at the mustering location the sun had come out entirely. At a clearing deep in the woods, supply sergeants gave them gumdrop helmets, rigs for carrying a water canteen and invisible ammo, and a rifle. It wasn’t the M14 that they had been reading all about on their Knowledge sheets, or the M1 Garand that they had been disassembling yesterday, but instead an entirely different rifle that senior sergeants called the M54. One by one, they shuffled through the line and were shown how to wear their gear, given packs for incidental things that right now, they didn’t have. Ingersleben was given a radio to wear, designating her as the squad’s radio operator.
Slowly, the companies began to move out, and soon Xachary, Nik, Nichols and Ingersleben were marching with Sergeant Marks just ahead of them, who was smoking and joking with other squad leaders. Xachary and his squad, along with many others, were not allowed to talk. Eventually, they broke off on First Sergeant Killip’s orders, heading to an unknown point as Sergeant Marks tracked their movement with a map.
“Okay, listen up,” Sergeant Marks said as they progressed deeper and deeper into a forest. “Command wants you kids to take this thing seriously. I don’t give a shit about it, but you clowns better. So, from now on, you act like nothing is safe, do you understand me? Two meter spread from each other, eyes up, and fingers off the fucking trigger. Your weapons aren’t loaded, but you better act like they are and so help me God if one of you idiots aims that thing at me I will murder you. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Sergeant!” they replied, moving to give each other the proper distance. Occasionally, the radio on Ingersleben’s back fizzled, and he ordered her to stick closer to him so if something important came through, he could answer quickly.
They moved slowly and quietly through the forest, with Sergeant Marks ordering them to pause and kneel while he consulted the map occasionally. An hour of marching in random directions later, he ordered another halt, calling Ingersleben over to him. He grabbed the radio, punching buttons and turning knobs seemingly at random on it. “Charlie Actual, this is Charlie 4, how copy, over?”
“Charlie 4, Charlie Actual. We read you loud and clear, over.” First Sergeant Killip’s voice.
“Be advised, we have reached objective one. Interrogative, what’s our next objective, over?”
“Charlie 4, Charlie 2 reports unknown contact. Shift left about one klick and make contact, over.”
Sergeant Marks sighed, pausing as he looked at his map again, drawing a line on it. “Understood. Charlie 4 out.”
He ordered them to keep moving, this time going left as advised. The rifle was starting to get heavy in Xachary’s hands, but he just had to bear it for now. No sense in complaining – he signed up for this, after all. Nik and Nichols looked to be in decent spirits regardless, and Ingersleben he couldn’t quite see. Sergeant Marks ordered them to stop again, calling Ingersleben to his side.
“Charlie 2, this is Charlie 4. How copy, over.”
“Charlie 4, Charlie 2. Loud and clear. Where’re you guys at?”
“Uh, reference the ditch, we’re on the opposite side about ten meters out.”
Silence. “Yeah, I see you. First Sarge wanted us to play phantom rifles with them, there’s fuck-all here.”
Sergeant Marks scoffed, nodding. “Yeah, sounds about right. What’s he want me to tell him?”
“I don’t know, make it sound cool so the cadets have a fun story to tell their parents. Tell him we killed a bunch of Mountaineers, he loves that shit.”
“You guys hear that?” Sergeant Marks said to them. “When your parents come for graduation, let them know you personally shot up an entire Mountaineer patrol.” Shortly after, he began relaying to First Sergeant Killip what they had “done,” resulting in him congratulating them and recalling his company back to the rendezvous area.
Xachary wondered if all their field exercises here would be like this.
They tried on boots, with the sergeants constantly throwing new pairs at Ingersleben to find a pair that fit her, while trying to find tunics that fit Xachary proved difficult. The sergeants marveled at how “absurdly fucking massive” Nik’s head was, with none of the caps they had looking right on him. Another sergeant wondered aloud how it was possible that Nichols was the most normal-sized out of every single cadet in the entire company. By the end of it all, they had amassed a neat pile of stuff, ranging from extra uniforms, bits and bobs of fancy dress attire, no less than four combs in a variety of colors, socks for every conceivable condition, belts and suspenders, and various bags that Xachary wasn’t entirely sure served an actual purpose. More physical exercise – at this point he had gotten used to it all – consumed the rest of the day as the sergeants continued to show them how to properly act as a soldier in the Socialist Republics Army.
There was a method to the madness, though. The more they worked together and lived together, even after a full week of hellish training, they were slowly becoming serious soldiers, a change that Xachary could feel every time they woke up to salute the flag. The sergeant’s instruction became less demanding, more orders given almost like a reminder. They had stopped acting like individuals, working cohesively like an actual unit. All they were missing at this point were rifles and someone to fight.
“Alright, listen up,” First Sergeant Killip announced after they had returned to their barracks. “Tomorrow you will be conducting a field exercise. We will issue you rifles, but if I see any one of you mistreating the generous gifts of the American people, I will personally take that rifle and beat you until there is nothing left to beat! Is that absolutely clear?”
“Yes, First Sergeant!”
The rest of their day was filled primarily with instruction concerning proper weapon drill and handling, as well as a company-wide uniform inspection. Despite having just been issued them, many – including Xachary – were singled out for creases and specks of lint on their uniform, as well as unpolished boots and incorrectly tied laces. As punishment for their crimes, they were told, a company-wide barracks inspection was ordered at the end of the week. It had become a routine Xachary was familiar with, and began to expect. Rise up early in the morning to salute the flag, listen to First Sergeant tell them what they were to do, and then hope he stayed under the radar enough so that none of the other sergeants would yell at him.
Now that they had their uniforms, they were ordered to wear them everywhere. Now they began to more properly resemble soldiers of the Socialist Republics Army, with their cropped haircuts and sidecaps, marching as one to the various halls and drill locations. It was just after lunch that they again marched to the Military Learning Center, a building designed for the express purpose of teaching them strategic and tactical considerations that an officer faced, alongside everything they needed to know to be a proper officer.
By company, they were slotted through, shunted into rooms where rifles lay on tables, two chairs in front of each one. A stern-looking sergeant with a big red 1 on his sleeve stared at them as they came in, holding another rifle in his right hand and off to his side. The sergeants ordered them to take seats, pairing up with a buddy to learn disassembly procedures.
“Cadets, I am Sergeant Haber of the 1st Infantry Division. In front of you is an M1 Garand, the former standard service rifle of the Socialist Republics Army. Today, I will instruct you on its disassembly procedure. You will do what I tell you, when I tell you, and not a second earlier, is that understood?”
“Yes sergeant!”
He nodded, heading to the front of the room to begin demonstrating. All went well as he showed them how to clear and render the weapon safe, a clattering of ping noises accompanying them as they all worked through the same procedure. Xachary and Nik, sitting next to each other and working over the weapon, diligently listened and waited for each order to come in, following it exactly as prescribed. Honestly, Nik was a lot more interested in the rifle that Xachary was.
“Stop!” Sergeant Haber yelled, glowering at someone in the company. Was that Jackson or Brabant? Xachary wasn’t sure. “Did I or did I not order you only to proceed when I said you could?”
“Uh, we-”
“Shut up! Drop that fucking weapon and do not touch it until I order you! Listen to orders, Cadet, or you are going to have a bad fucking time here!”
Xachary and Nik looked at each other, before swallowing hard and making sure they followed exactly what was being said and only did it when told to. The last thing they wanted right now was to be yelled at by Sergeant Haber. Eventually, they managed to get through disassembling the M1 Garand without further incident, reassembling it for the next company.
More exercises, this time in full uniform, rounded out their day. As they headed back to their dorms for the night, they were cautioned to get plenty of sleep – they would be going out early for their field exercise tomorrow, and there would be harsh consequences for those who did not keep up. Just like usual, Xachary, Nik, Nichols and Ingersleben joined in their room, happy to finally have a break from their exercises and demanding routine.
“Y’all think they’re gonna give us ammo tomorrow?” Nichols asked, leaning against the wall.
Nik shook his head, already kicking his boots off to massage his feet. “No chance in hell. Hey, honest question. Do you guys figure we’ll all get commissions?”
“Why wouldn’t we?” Xachary asked. “This place is meant to make officers, isn’t it?”
“I heard some of the command staff say the expected commission rate was 5%,” Nik said. “Way I figure it, we’ve got what, six companies of four squads each? What, about a hundred people, not counting anyone else who joins up after us… those aren’t good odds.”
Xachary did some quick math in his head. Yeah, 1 in 5 odds really weren’t that great, especially if the rumors he had heard about limited commission slots were true. Still, had to believe in something to keep him going.
“I’m not gonna worry too much about it,” Ingersleben said, shrugging. “Either I get a commission here, or they’ll kick me up anyway because of my time here. Win-win for me.”
Nichols nodded, letting out a long yawn. “Yeah, same here. Either I get it, or it’s suddenly not my problem anymore.”
“I guess I’m sort of the same,” Xachary said. “Hey, I’m just happy to be here.”
Nik looked over each of them, tapping his finger on the desk like he wanted to say something. “Hm, alright then,” he finally said. Something was weird, but Xachary couldn’t much dwell on it. Time to hit the sack, and prepare for tomorrow.
---
More banging on the door. Another mad scramble to get themselves put together, this time accompanied by trying to fit their uniforms and boots on, as they rushed out the door. The killzones were as hard to avoid as ever, but they managed to head into The Pit on time regardless, with First Sergeant Killip looking down on them as he always did.
“Hey, listen up!” a sergeant said. “Any of you men who did not shave this morning, meet your squad leader now!”
Xachary and Nik broke off, with Ingersleben and Nichols right behind them. They had learned pretty early when the sergeants asked someone to see a sergeant, someone else in the squad better go with them. Shared punishment, shared responsibility, they said. Sergeant Marks looked over them, tutting in disappointment. “Didn’t shave this morning, huh guys?” He looked them over, before furrowing his brow. “Wait, what the hell, y’all look fine.”
“Uh, we shaved last night, Sergeant,” Xachary informed him.
Sergeant Marks sighed, shaking his head in exasperation. “Of course you idiots did. Get back in line, you four, come see me if you didn’t shave at all. Get out of here!”
With broad smiles on their faces – that quickly disappeared when they got back in formation – Xachary, Nik, Nichols and Ingersleben rejoined the company. A few had to do pushups as punishment for not shaving, but the orders from yesterday still stood – they were going out on a field exercise today. First Sergeant Killip escorted them out the barracks to a morning that was still pitch-black, stuffing them onto a bus. Silence was ordered during the trip, and after about fifteen minutes of driving they were shoved off the bus and into a field.
The road march was longer than Xachary expected, and by the time they arrived at the mustering location the sun had come out entirely. At a clearing deep in the woods, supply sergeants gave them gumdrop helmets, rigs for carrying a water canteen and invisible ammo, and a rifle. It wasn’t the M14 that they had been reading all about on their Knowledge sheets, or the M1 Garand that they had been disassembling yesterday, but instead an entirely different rifle that senior sergeants called the M54. One by one, they shuffled through the line and were shown how to wear their gear, given packs for incidental things that right now, they didn’t have. Ingersleben was given a radio to wear, designating her as the squad’s radio operator.
Slowly, the companies began to move out, and soon Xachary, Nik, Nichols and Ingersleben were marching with Sergeant Marks just ahead of them, who was smoking and joking with other squad leaders. Xachary and his squad, along with many others, were not allowed to talk. Eventually, they broke off on First Sergeant Killip’s orders, heading to an unknown point as Sergeant Marks tracked their movement with a map.
“Okay, listen up,” Sergeant Marks said as they progressed deeper and deeper into a forest. “Command wants you kids to take this thing seriously. I don’t give a shit about it, but you clowns better. So, from now on, you act like nothing is safe, do you understand me? Two meter spread from each other, eyes up, and fingers off the fucking trigger. Your weapons aren’t loaded, but you better act like they are and so help me God if one of you idiots aims that thing at me I will murder you. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Sergeant!” they replied, moving to give each other the proper distance. Occasionally, the radio on Ingersleben’s back fizzled, and he ordered her to stick closer to him so if something important came through, he could answer quickly.
They moved slowly and quietly through the forest, with Sergeant Marks ordering them to pause and kneel while he consulted the map occasionally. An hour of marching in random directions later, he ordered another halt, calling Ingersleben over to him. He grabbed the radio, punching buttons and turning knobs seemingly at random on it. “Charlie Actual, this is Charlie 4, how copy, over?”
“Charlie 4, Charlie Actual. We read you loud and clear, over.” First Sergeant Killip’s voice.
“Be advised, we have reached objective one. Interrogative, what’s our next objective, over?”
“Charlie 4, Charlie 2 reports unknown contact. Shift left about one klick and make contact, over.”
Sergeant Marks sighed, pausing as he looked at his map again, drawing a line on it. “Understood. Charlie 4 out.”
He ordered them to keep moving, this time going left as advised. The rifle was starting to get heavy in Xachary’s hands, but he just had to bear it for now. No sense in complaining – he signed up for this, after all. Nik and Nichols looked to be in decent spirits regardless, and Ingersleben he couldn’t quite see. Sergeant Marks ordered them to stop again, calling Ingersleben to his side.
“Charlie 2, this is Charlie 4. How copy, over.”
“Charlie 4, Charlie 2. Loud and clear. Where’re you guys at?”
“Uh, reference the ditch, we’re on the opposite side about ten meters out.”
Silence. “Yeah, I see you. First Sarge wanted us to play phantom rifles with them, there’s fuck-all here.”
Sergeant Marks scoffed, nodding. “Yeah, sounds about right. What’s he want me to tell him?”
“I don’t know, make it sound cool so the cadets have a fun story to tell their parents. Tell him we killed a bunch of Mountaineers, he loves that shit.”
“You guys hear that?” Sergeant Marks said to them. “When your parents come for graduation, let them know you personally shot up an entire Mountaineer patrol.” Shortly after, he began relaying to First Sergeant Killip what they had “done,” resulting in him congratulating them and recalling his company back to the rendezvous area.
Xachary wondered if all their field exercises here would be like this.
-
Markus Wilding
- Site Admin
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Re: Papa India November X-Ray
Another very familiar routine of waking up, saluting the flag, and being treated to a morning briefing from First Sergeant Killip. Today, though, today was different.
Today, they would be participating in the company run. This run would signify their entrance into the Hawkeye Brigade, and everyone in Charlie was anticipating it. Xachary himself could barely keep his enthusiasm contained. Why couldn’t they just let him run now? First Sergeant Killip stood before them as they wore their PT uniforms, his arms folded behind his back. He looked at them, not with the derision that he had two weeks ago, but with pride and honor, almost.
“Charlie Company, today you have the honor of becoming part of this celebrated brigade,” he announced, smiling wide. “Today, with your friends and family watching, you will run up the nearby Hamburger Hill, reach its apex, and then run back down to the drill field. This ritual will mark you as a member of the Hawkeye Brigade, and you will have the patch of this fine unit sewn onto your uniform. Cadets, listen well, not a single one of you is allowed to fall out! If you fall out now, you will throw away every single thing you have worked for! You will let down not just yourself, but each and every friend you have made! You will dishonor this entire unit! Do you understand that?”
“Yes, First Sergeant!”
First Sergeant Killip cackled, nodding his head. “Good! Alright cadets, go out there today and make me proud, goddammit! Show me that you deserve to be part of my beloved Brigade!”
They marched out to breakfast, a bountiful one full of eggs, ham, sausages, bacon, biscuits and anything else that could prepare them for the run ahead of them. Xachary, Nik, Ingersleben and Nichols practically gorged themselves, with many of the cadets even allowed to go back for seconds if they wanted. Talking was fully allowed by now, and even the sergeants seemed more relaxed than usual. A handful of cadets from another company were picked out to comb the drill field and police it of any trash or other debris before their parents arrived, and after breakfast was done and over, they were marched out of the mess hall and to just in front of their barracks, lined up company by company neatly.
They were told that their families and friends were already here, gathered and waiting on the drill field for them. Xachary stood waiting for the call to come in, with Ingersleben to his left. No doubt Nik and Nichols were in the same rank. They’d practiced this maneuver for days on end – time to put it to good use.
“Listen up, maggots!” Killip shouted. “We will be singing my favorite cadence when we pass your parents! Be loud, Charlie!”
“Yes, First Sergeant!”
Xachary took a deep breath, watching Alpha move out ahead of them. They stepped off with a resounding “Hooah!” as they ran, breaking into a cadence Xachary couldn’t hear. Bravo waited for two counts, and then they too headed off, breaking into what sounded like “Hi Hi Lock and Load” almost immediately.
The same two counts passed for Charlie. “Company, march!” Killip waited for one full count, shouting loudly so even Xachary back in the last rank could hear. “He was just a cherry trooper and he surely shook with fright, as he checked all his equipment and made sure his pack was tight. He had to sit and listen to the awful engines roar, and he ain’t gonna jump no more!”
“Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die,” Charlie shouted three times, with Xachary sounding off louder than he ever had before. “And he ain’t gonna jump no more!”
“Is everybody happy, cried the sergeant standing up, our hero feebly answered-”
“YES!”
“-and then they stood him up. He leaped right out into the blast, his static line unhooked. He ain’t gonna jump no more!”
Xachary wasn’t sure if anyone actually heard what they were saying. There was patriotic music playing as they neared the rows of family, and before they could reach the next verse, they arrived in their spots, assembling again straight as arrows for the formal presentation. The Commandant gave a long speech, most of which Xachary didn’t remember even if he tried. All he wanted to do was the run.
Eventually, the Commandant gave the signal, and one by one, the companies were dispatched to begin their run. He could hear people clapping and cheering – no doubt Mom and Dad were among them – as he faced forward with the company, waiting for the command to start running.
“Company, march!”
As expected, they started slow. First Sergeant Killip took them out of the drill field and onto the road, leading up to the eponymous Hamburger Hill. Didn’t look that tough.
“Company, double-time!”
Xachary broke into a run with the rest of the company, charging around the drill field to the applause and cheers of family members and close friends. Somewhere behind him, he heard Delta being ordered to double time. Hamburger Hill stood in front of him now, and as he ran, he couldn’t help but feel like his steps were energized, boosted by the cheering that was rapidly fading from his ears. The sergeants yelled at them to keep moving, but it wasn’t out of malice. No, Xachary understood it now – they wanted him to succeed, they wanted all of them to finish this run.
“Let’s go!” someone shouted. The slope began to increase, until running up Hamburger Hill felt more like pounding sand than actually running. Xachary’s breathing became rapid and stilted, and he felt his legs become almost like jelly as he started running up the hill. He glanced left – Ingersleben was running like she had prepared for this her whole life, shouting something incoherently as she ran lockstep with him. Nichols was just beyond her, her head down as she plodded along.
And then he looked farther, and saw Nik.
For a guy that looked and acted like he could tackle any challenge, he was having an awful rough go of it on the run. Xachary broke off, sliding up next to Nik only to be met with a glare. “The fuck you doing?” Nik snapped, panting heavily.
“Come on,” Xachary said, grabbing Nik’s arm and putting it over his shoulders. “Nobody falls out!”
Nik groaned, still struggling to keep up, but relented and allowed himself to be assisted, especially when a sergeant ran over and took turns carrying him with Xachary. The three of them, followed by Delta and led by Charlie, ran up Hamburger Hill before performing a quick hairpin turn around a traffic cone, heading down the hill. From up here, Xachary could see almost every part of the campus, from their barracks to the drill field, packed with people. All around them, the sergeants shouted for them to keep going, keep running.
As they neared the bottom of the hill, just a few meters from the finish line, Xachary saw sergeants that hadn’t participated in the run standing in rows. Officers with cameras took their pictures as they ran across a banner proclaiming the end of the run. Somebody shouted for them to form a single-file line, and as they filtered out from a confused mass of people to a neat military line, sergeants congratulated them and handed them lime green and orange-colored drinks, a glass bottle for each hand. Slowly, they returned to their company formations, filling back the spots they had vacated not too long ago.
Xachary was exhausted. His legs felt like they’d snap and break off him at any second. Sweat covered his face, and he could fell what little hair he had left sticking to him like crazy glue. His shirt was drenched in sweat. But, he had done it. He’d taken every challenge thrown at him and came back for more. The Commandant gave another speech, which again Xachary didn’t pay attention to, as sergeants went around, handing them pins that signified their membership in the Great Plains Corps of Cadets.
Before he knew it, the families had been released and Mom and Dad were smothering him with hugs, telling him how proud they were of him. For him, he felt good to just know they were there. He hadn’t talked to them since his one phone call at the end of week 1, when the cadre allowed them to call home to let everybody know they were safe and sound. Xachary looked around, giving flyby introductions to his friends, trying to find Ingersleben in the mess. She and her dad were holding each other tightly, speaking German the closer he got to them.
“Hey, Ingersleben!” Xachary said. “These are my parents.”
“Oh, hey,” she said, smiling wide. “Yeah, uh, this is my dad.”
Mr. Ingersleben nodded. Xachary noticed he was wearing an old dress green uniform, still with old US military insignia on it. “It’s good to meet you,” he said. “You seen Nik around, Ingersleben?”
Ingersleben shook her head, frowning. “No, not since the run. Why?”
“CADETS!” First Sergeant Killip bellowed. His voice caused Ingersleben and Xachary to immediately freeze up as he approached, staring them down. “Listen up! You guys get two hours with your families. There will be a barracks inspection at 1700 hours, and I want every single room to pass! Do you understand that?”
“Yes, First Sergeant!”
“Good,” he growled, before whipping his head around to look at their parents. “Sergeant, thank you for your service. Ma’am, sir.”
“I’m glad it was you as her first sarge and not someone else,” Mr. Ingersleben said, prompting a flurry of confused German from Ingersleben herself. First Sergeant Killip took this as his cue to head off, terrorizing other Charlie cadets with grave warnings of the upcoming inspection.
Dad chuckled, smacking Xachary on the back. “Well, we got two hours son, anywhere good to eat around here?”
“Oh, well, I don’t know, dad, I didn’t-”
Waving his hands like nothing mattered, Dad scoffed. “Ah, that’s fine. There’s a nice Mexican place around here, we’ll go there. Your mom and I scouted it out.”
Xachary smirked, nodding. “Yeah, Mexican sounds good, dad. Let’s go, I’ll tell you guys all about it.”
---
Two hours later, Xachary had returned to his room. Ingersleben and Nichols were already here, cleaning their side of the dorm in a rush. “Oh, good, you’re here,” Nichols said as he walked in, tossing a broom to him. “Take this and get to sweeping!”
Xachary nodded, taking the broom and sweeping the tile floor in between their rooms. He finished in record time, heading into his dorm with a push vacuum to clean off the carpet in there. Was everything in his closet in line and right? He took the time to make sure, aligning everything perfectly so. Compared to Nik’s side, which had been untouched since their departure to the drill field that morning, Xachary was fairly certain that he’d pass if the sergeant happened to come around now.
Instead of the sergeants, though, Nik came through the door. A cigarette was in his mouth, with the same scornful look he had kept locked on his face all week long. He glanced at them scurrying around, putting things in the exact right place as he lazily wandered in, taking a long drag on his cigarette.
“Where have you been, Nik?” Xachary asked. “Your parents keep you too long or something?”
Nik shook his head, kicking his feet back as he leaned back on his chair. “They didn’t show up.”
“Long flight?” Ingersleben asked from the next room.
“Sure, let’s go with that,” Nik replied, apparently enjoying his cigarette. Must have been one of the ones in their MREs.
“Yo, dude, come on,” Nichols said, peeking around the corner. “We gotta get this place squared away before the sergeants get here. Five minutes to inspection, at least.”
Five minutes? Damn, Xachary really didn’t have much time. Nik didn’t even make an effort to move, simply smoking and occasionally glancing over at his side of the room. By the time the five minutes was up, Xachary heard the sound of stomping boots and fists on doors. This compelled Nik to move, shifting things just slightly until it seemed he was satisfied and the ominous sound of boots approached their door. Ingersleben headed to it as if she was afraid there was a wild, rabid animal behind it, slowly opening the door as a sergeant came in.
He looked around the room, inspecting how they had arranged their caps, boots, and other various pieces of uniform and kit. He checked their drawers, and other than a minor note for Nichols about keeping her laundry bag only half-full, he gave them a pass, leaving just as quickly as he had come in. A wave of relief washed over them, and even if Nik didn’t show it as overtly as Nichols, Ingersleben and Xachary had, their first real test as members of the Corps had come and gone without a hassle.
Until another knock came at their door. Another sergeant prowled in, as if searching for a dissident. He stared at the room, checking every corner.
“Uh, Sergeant,” Xachary said, standing by. “This room has already-”
“I don’t care,” he shot back. “I’m doing my inspection.”
The sergeant looked over every facet of the room with a grim look on his face, checking Xachary and Nik’s room first. He seemed to have no problem with it, until he got to the common area and paused, staring at the floor. “Cadets, this floor is dirty. Fix it.” Without even waiting to give them clarification, he left, warning them he’d be back in 10 minutes.
Xachary looked up, staring at Nichols and Ingersleben. They had to have cleaned that floor three times. What did he mean it was dirty?
“Fuck it,” Nik muttered. “Let’s clean this stupid thing again.”
Once more, they cleaned the floor and waited for the sergeant to return. Despite the fact that Xachary really didn’t think they had done anything, the sergeant congratulated them on a job well done and passed them again. Guess this is it, Xachary thought. This just might be how things were done in the Socialist Republics Army.
Today, they would be participating in the company run. This run would signify their entrance into the Hawkeye Brigade, and everyone in Charlie was anticipating it. Xachary himself could barely keep his enthusiasm contained. Why couldn’t they just let him run now? First Sergeant Killip stood before them as they wore their PT uniforms, his arms folded behind his back. He looked at them, not with the derision that he had two weeks ago, but with pride and honor, almost.
“Charlie Company, today you have the honor of becoming part of this celebrated brigade,” he announced, smiling wide. “Today, with your friends and family watching, you will run up the nearby Hamburger Hill, reach its apex, and then run back down to the drill field. This ritual will mark you as a member of the Hawkeye Brigade, and you will have the patch of this fine unit sewn onto your uniform. Cadets, listen well, not a single one of you is allowed to fall out! If you fall out now, you will throw away every single thing you have worked for! You will let down not just yourself, but each and every friend you have made! You will dishonor this entire unit! Do you understand that?”
“Yes, First Sergeant!”
First Sergeant Killip cackled, nodding his head. “Good! Alright cadets, go out there today and make me proud, goddammit! Show me that you deserve to be part of my beloved Brigade!”
They marched out to breakfast, a bountiful one full of eggs, ham, sausages, bacon, biscuits and anything else that could prepare them for the run ahead of them. Xachary, Nik, Ingersleben and Nichols practically gorged themselves, with many of the cadets even allowed to go back for seconds if they wanted. Talking was fully allowed by now, and even the sergeants seemed more relaxed than usual. A handful of cadets from another company were picked out to comb the drill field and police it of any trash or other debris before their parents arrived, and after breakfast was done and over, they were marched out of the mess hall and to just in front of their barracks, lined up company by company neatly.
They were told that their families and friends were already here, gathered and waiting on the drill field for them. Xachary stood waiting for the call to come in, with Ingersleben to his left. No doubt Nik and Nichols were in the same rank. They’d practiced this maneuver for days on end – time to put it to good use.
“Listen up, maggots!” Killip shouted. “We will be singing my favorite cadence when we pass your parents! Be loud, Charlie!”
“Yes, First Sergeant!”
Xachary took a deep breath, watching Alpha move out ahead of them. They stepped off with a resounding “Hooah!” as they ran, breaking into a cadence Xachary couldn’t hear. Bravo waited for two counts, and then they too headed off, breaking into what sounded like “Hi Hi Lock and Load” almost immediately.
The same two counts passed for Charlie. “Company, march!” Killip waited for one full count, shouting loudly so even Xachary back in the last rank could hear. “He was just a cherry trooper and he surely shook with fright, as he checked all his equipment and made sure his pack was tight. He had to sit and listen to the awful engines roar, and he ain’t gonna jump no more!”
“Gory, gory, what a helluva way to die,” Charlie shouted three times, with Xachary sounding off louder than he ever had before. “And he ain’t gonna jump no more!”
“Is everybody happy, cried the sergeant standing up, our hero feebly answered-”
“YES!”
“-and then they stood him up. He leaped right out into the blast, his static line unhooked. He ain’t gonna jump no more!”
Xachary wasn’t sure if anyone actually heard what they were saying. There was patriotic music playing as they neared the rows of family, and before they could reach the next verse, they arrived in their spots, assembling again straight as arrows for the formal presentation. The Commandant gave a long speech, most of which Xachary didn’t remember even if he tried. All he wanted to do was the run.
Eventually, the Commandant gave the signal, and one by one, the companies were dispatched to begin their run. He could hear people clapping and cheering – no doubt Mom and Dad were among them – as he faced forward with the company, waiting for the command to start running.
“Company, march!”
As expected, they started slow. First Sergeant Killip took them out of the drill field and onto the road, leading up to the eponymous Hamburger Hill. Didn’t look that tough.
“Company, double-time!”
Xachary broke into a run with the rest of the company, charging around the drill field to the applause and cheers of family members and close friends. Somewhere behind him, he heard Delta being ordered to double time. Hamburger Hill stood in front of him now, and as he ran, he couldn’t help but feel like his steps were energized, boosted by the cheering that was rapidly fading from his ears. The sergeants yelled at them to keep moving, but it wasn’t out of malice. No, Xachary understood it now – they wanted him to succeed, they wanted all of them to finish this run.
“Let’s go!” someone shouted. The slope began to increase, until running up Hamburger Hill felt more like pounding sand than actually running. Xachary’s breathing became rapid and stilted, and he felt his legs become almost like jelly as he started running up the hill. He glanced left – Ingersleben was running like she had prepared for this her whole life, shouting something incoherently as she ran lockstep with him. Nichols was just beyond her, her head down as she plodded along.
And then he looked farther, and saw Nik.
For a guy that looked and acted like he could tackle any challenge, he was having an awful rough go of it on the run. Xachary broke off, sliding up next to Nik only to be met with a glare. “The fuck you doing?” Nik snapped, panting heavily.
“Come on,” Xachary said, grabbing Nik’s arm and putting it over his shoulders. “Nobody falls out!”
Nik groaned, still struggling to keep up, but relented and allowed himself to be assisted, especially when a sergeant ran over and took turns carrying him with Xachary. The three of them, followed by Delta and led by Charlie, ran up Hamburger Hill before performing a quick hairpin turn around a traffic cone, heading down the hill. From up here, Xachary could see almost every part of the campus, from their barracks to the drill field, packed with people. All around them, the sergeants shouted for them to keep going, keep running.
As they neared the bottom of the hill, just a few meters from the finish line, Xachary saw sergeants that hadn’t participated in the run standing in rows. Officers with cameras took their pictures as they ran across a banner proclaiming the end of the run. Somebody shouted for them to form a single-file line, and as they filtered out from a confused mass of people to a neat military line, sergeants congratulated them and handed them lime green and orange-colored drinks, a glass bottle for each hand. Slowly, they returned to their company formations, filling back the spots they had vacated not too long ago.
Xachary was exhausted. His legs felt like they’d snap and break off him at any second. Sweat covered his face, and he could fell what little hair he had left sticking to him like crazy glue. His shirt was drenched in sweat. But, he had done it. He’d taken every challenge thrown at him and came back for more. The Commandant gave another speech, which again Xachary didn’t pay attention to, as sergeants went around, handing them pins that signified their membership in the Great Plains Corps of Cadets.
Before he knew it, the families had been released and Mom and Dad were smothering him with hugs, telling him how proud they were of him. For him, he felt good to just know they were there. He hadn’t talked to them since his one phone call at the end of week 1, when the cadre allowed them to call home to let everybody know they were safe and sound. Xachary looked around, giving flyby introductions to his friends, trying to find Ingersleben in the mess. She and her dad were holding each other tightly, speaking German the closer he got to them.
“Hey, Ingersleben!” Xachary said. “These are my parents.”
“Oh, hey,” she said, smiling wide. “Yeah, uh, this is my dad.”
Mr. Ingersleben nodded. Xachary noticed he was wearing an old dress green uniform, still with old US military insignia on it. “It’s good to meet you,” he said. “You seen Nik around, Ingersleben?”
Ingersleben shook her head, frowning. “No, not since the run. Why?”
“CADETS!” First Sergeant Killip bellowed. His voice caused Ingersleben and Xachary to immediately freeze up as he approached, staring them down. “Listen up! You guys get two hours with your families. There will be a barracks inspection at 1700 hours, and I want every single room to pass! Do you understand that?”
“Yes, First Sergeant!”
“Good,” he growled, before whipping his head around to look at their parents. “Sergeant, thank you for your service. Ma’am, sir.”
“I’m glad it was you as her first sarge and not someone else,” Mr. Ingersleben said, prompting a flurry of confused German from Ingersleben herself. First Sergeant Killip took this as his cue to head off, terrorizing other Charlie cadets with grave warnings of the upcoming inspection.
Dad chuckled, smacking Xachary on the back. “Well, we got two hours son, anywhere good to eat around here?”
“Oh, well, I don’t know, dad, I didn’t-”
Waving his hands like nothing mattered, Dad scoffed. “Ah, that’s fine. There’s a nice Mexican place around here, we’ll go there. Your mom and I scouted it out.”
Xachary smirked, nodding. “Yeah, Mexican sounds good, dad. Let’s go, I’ll tell you guys all about it.”
---
Two hours later, Xachary had returned to his room. Ingersleben and Nichols were already here, cleaning their side of the dorm in a rush. “Oh, good, you’re here,” Nichols said as he walked in, tossing a broom to him. “Take this and get to sweeping!”
Xachary nodded, taking the broom and sweeping the tile floor in between their rooms. He finished in record time, heading into his dorm with a push vacuum to clean off the carpet in there. Was everything in his closet in line and right? He took the time to make sure, aligning everything perfectly so. Compared to Nik’s side, which had been untouched since their departure to the drill field that morning, Xachary was fairly certain that he’d pass if the sergeant happened to come around now.
Instead of the sergeants, though, Nik came through the door. A cigarette was in his mouth, with the same scornful look he had kept locked on his face all week long. He glanced at them scurrying around, putting things in the exact right place as he lazily wandered in, taking a long drag on his cigarette.
“Where have you been, Nik?” Xachary asked. “Your parents keep you too long or something?”
Nik shook his head, kicking his feet back as he leaned back on his chair. “They didn’t show up.”
“Long flight?” Ingersleben asked from the next room.
“Sure, let’s go with that,” Nik replied, apparently enjoying his cigarette. Must have been one of the ones in their MREs.
“Yo, dude, come on,” Nichols said, peeking around the corner. “We gotta get this place squared away before the sergeants get here. Five minutes to inspection, at least.”
Five minutes? Damn, Xachary really didn’t have much time. Nik didn’t even make an effort to move, simply smoking and occasionally glancing over at his side of the room. By the time the five minutes was up, Xachary heard the sound of stomping boots and fists on doors. This compelled Nik to move, shifting things just slightly until it seemed he was satisfied and the ominous sound of boots approached their door. Ingersleben headed to it as if she was afraid there was a wild, rabid animal behind it, slowly opening the door as a sergeant came in.
He looked around the room, inspecting how they had arranged their caps, boots, and other various pieces of uniform and kit. He checked their drawers, and other than a minor note for Nichols about keeping her laundry bag only half-full, he gave them a pass, leaving just as quickly as he had come in. A wave of relief washed over them, and even if Nik didn’t show it as overtly as Nichols, Ingersleben and Xachary had, their first real test as members of the Corps had come and gone without a hassle.
Until another knock came at their door. Another sergeant prowled in, as if searching for a dissident. He stared at the room, checking every corner.
“Uh, Sergeant,” Xachary said, standing by. “This room has already-”
“I don’t care,” he shot back. “I’m doing my inspection.”
The sergeant looked over every facet of the room with a grim look on his face, checking Xachary and Nik’s room first. He seemed to have no problem with it, until he got to the common area and paused, staring at the floor. “Cadets, this floor is dirty. Fix it.” Without even waiting to give them clarification, he left, warning them he’d be back in 10 minutes.
Xachary looked up, staring at Nichols and Ingersleben. They had to have cleaned that floor three times. What did he mean it was dirty?
“Fuck it,” Nik muttered. “Let’s clean this stupid thing again.”
Once more, they cleaned the floor and waited for the sergeant to return. Despite the fact that Xachary really didn’t think they had done anything, the sergeant congratulated them on a job well done and passed them again. Guess this is it, Xachary thought. This just might be how things were done in the Socialist Republics Army.