This next section firmly puts the action of the story into the ”R” Rated category.  I feel that if you’ve followed it this far, you deserve a word of warning about the content.  I’ve put all of this section of the story in the “Read More” tab just to keep it off the front page.

Let me also say that just because I portray a drill Sergeant to the best of my ability based on real-life accounts of modern day and past events, it does not mean that I share or condone the slurs used in the story.  This is a work of fiction, and should be treated as such.  The words are dialogue (and carefully studied and crafted dialogue, at that).  Nothing more, nothing less.

The commandant of the NCO school was a Sergeant Major who looked old enough to be my Father.  He was old enough to have served the first half of his career in the ground-based United States Marine Corp, probably making a transfer shortly after first contact with the Rak’Lan.  He was an old-guard Marine.  The creases in his uniform were razor sharp; the black, steel-toed boots were a gleaming, mirror bright with their polish.  His cheeks were shaved blue, their square-jawed shape almost a parody of the stereotypical picture of a jarhead.  His head was as smooth as a billiard ball.  If I didn’t know better, I would have almost said that he had waxed it that morning.  He had a long, beak-like nose that rested between piercing green eyes.  He wielded a deep, gravelly voice as though it were a broken bottle.  We were treated like we were in boot camp, cursed at for our shortcomings, but never given extra duty.  We simply didn’t have time for it.

We assembled in the mornings for most of our physical activity, with the afternoons being reserved for classroom and laboratory work.  We were given four hours between dinner and sack time to study, although this was never enough time, even for the quickest of us.  Many of my fellow “students” would join me in study far into the night using a flash light, only sleeping when they could cram no further information into their weary brains.

We were pushed to be smarter, faster, and more deadly than I would have thought humanly possible.  We trained to be killing machines, whether we were fighting with something as simple as piano wire, or as complicated as a crew-served minigun. Any mistakes we made were met with a dressing down that left us quivering with rage and shame.  What made it worse is that there were no punishments for our screw-ups.  We simply had to absorb the mistake and go on.  I lost more sleep to replaying my mistakes than I ever did to studying for exams.

Perhaps the most psychologically difficult thing to endure was the notion that we could quit at any time.  Every morning when we assembled for our morning exercises, Master Sergeant Abrams would tell us the benefits of being a private for the duration of our hitch as he strode up and down in front of us.   “You eat the same rations!  You go the same places!  Why do you miserable, pitiful excuses for Marines think you can advance in the ranks?” 

Here’s a typical situation:  We would be doing a close combat drill. Fighting instructors with multiple certifications in martial arts would humble us over and over again, and we’d look up from the mat to see Sergeant Abrams leering at us.  He’d smile, the twist of his lips almost a sneer, and he’d whisper in our faces.  “Why don’t you just quit?  Go see the duty officer and you can go back to your permanent billet.  No one needs to know you washed out.  Wouldn’t it be so much easier to quit?”

Somehow we kept going.

I think the real turning point of the training was about three weeks into it.  We were in our morning formation, having just completed a grueling three mile run in full unarmored kit through the Marine base, the gravity thoughtfully increased to 1.25 gees.  My arches and calves were screaming as we stood at attention.  Sergeant Abrams paced in front of us.  He had made the entire run without breaking a sweat, something I would have said was impossible in a man nearly twenty years older than me.  He looked almost embarrassingly fresh, as if he had just awakened from a ten hour sleep.

His face contorted with anger as he saw us standing at attention in front of him.  We were bone weary.  Most of us were getting about three or four hours of sleep per night.  The need to pass our afternoon classes made being fresh for morning exercises a low priority. 

“Maybe I should just send all of you home to your mommas,” he said.  “To think, a little three mile run through one and quarter gee could make modern-day marines into a bunch of tired, whiny, little pussies.”  He looked at us and spat in disgust.  “Which one of you maggots wants to whine a little bit?  Hmm?”  His eyes swept our formation.  “How about you, Collins?  I hear you got that extra stripe for being an orator.  You want to be President some day?”

“Sir!  No, sir!”

“You don’t?  I hear your words can be purely inspirational!  Do you have anything inspirational you’d like to say to me right now?”

“Sir!  No, sir!”

“Bullshit, Collins.”  He turned his back on me and walked out in front of the formation.  “Front and center, Collins.”  He pointed to the ground in front of him.

I moved in front of him and stood at attention.

“About, face!” Abrams snapped.  I turned to face my fellow soldiers.

“Now give us a little speech, Collins.  If I am pleased with your words, the company won’t have to re-run the three miles at one and third gee.  You get me?”

“Sir!  Yes, sir!”

He gestured broadly, before crossing his arms.  “Anytime, Collins.”

I though furiously.  What could I say that would possibly sway him?  Was I being set up?  Was I being picked on since I had received a decoration in combat?

“Fellow soldiers,” I began, and swallowed.  My mouth was dry, but I didn’t dare unhitch my canteen and take a sip.  “We are the tip of the spear.  We are the sword that protects humanity.  If you have the courage…if you have the fortitude, then please, stay the course.  The race needs men and women of our quality to lead in the fight against the Rak’Lan.”  I turned and saluted Sergeant Abrams smartly, waiting for his blast of disapproval.

“Are you a poet, Collins?” He asked.

“Sir!  No, sir!”

“You could have fooled me!  It is my experience that people who talk pretty are either queer or pussies.  Are you going to be the exception, Collins?”

“Sir!  I hope so, sir!”

“You hope so, eh?”  He grinned at me, but somehow, I wasn’t comforted.  “Get back in the ranks, Collins.  It looks like you’ve saved your mates from another little jog.”

He began pacing again, before stopping in front of the woman on O’Leary’s left.  “You handle a grenade like it was your girlfriend’s tit.  You want to be that cozy with a kilogram of high explosive?  You want to put a grenade in your mouth and see if the pin stands at attention?”  Her expression never wavered as Abrams paused.  “I asked you a question, you lousy excuse for a soon-to-be-corporal.”

“Sir!  No, sir.”

“We’re going to do some exercises on the grenade range today.  You’ll grip that grenade like it was one of those candy bars your potentially fat ass is so fond of!  You’ll pull the pin on that fucker like it was a wrapper surrounding the best fucking candy bar in the galaxy.  And then you’ll see that your candy bar is nothing but a steaming turd.”  He turned to walk away, then whirled, his face inches from hers.  “You have shit on your hands, you miserable excuse for a marine.  What are you going to do?”

“Sir!  I’m going to throw that piece of shit as far as I can, sir!”

“Bullshit!”  He snarled.  “You’re such a god-damned waste of human potential that I would bet my left testicle you would smear it all over your face and laugh at your comrades.  You’re so fucking moronic that you might even take a bite out of it, just to make sure that it was a turd.  Am I right?”

“Sir!  No, sir!”

“Then when we do our exercises today, little miss bull-dyke-corporal-to-be, I want you to make me believe that you can handle a grenade well enough to inspire confidence in your squad.  I want you to be better than your platoon’s designated grenadiers.  I want you to crawl into your rug-munching-lesbian-bunk-club tonight and tell all your little tongue buddies how you made Sergeant Abrams happy.  Can you do that, marine?”

“Sir!  Yes, sir!”

“To the grenade range!  Fall out!”

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 15th, 2006 at 8:05 pm and is filed under Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.