by Tom Kratman
“And because that is important to us, indeed the most important thing to many of us, it is extremely important to each of us that we do everything in our power, every day we may do so, to make this thing which legitimizes our lives, this wonderful family home, our regiment, a shining pillar of military virtue. We simply want our family, our home, to be the best.
“By the way, deep down, most of us consider you others to be somewhat perverse. Certainly distasteful.
“Other regiments have other bases. For the Tercio Santa Cecilia the base is composed, partly, of their handicaps but, more importantly, of their overcoming of those handicaps.
“For you, your base will probably come partly from your sex; probably more importantly from overcoming what many consider the traditional limitations of your sex. Also, in a way that neither a geographically based regiment like the Second, nor a regiment like mine, can hope to be, yours is to be a truly elite regiment, excluding not merely those who might someday fail, but taking in only those who are certain to be great.
“It is possible to mix and match, to put people into any regiment or any position in any regiment that some bureaucrat or social engineer thinks is a good idea. From a strictly military point of view, however, to do so is not preferable, at least when one’s army is composed of other than long service professionals.”
Franco paused here, contemplatively. “Social engineering can work, of course. The problem is the social engineers. Compared to any decent maniple commander—or especially a good first centurion!—they are, wherever in the world you find them, utterly arrogant and contemptibly incompetent. To say that they are also mindlessly doctrinaire would be an excess of praise.
“We, too, could use the legion for that kind of social engineering. We could mix up you women, the men of Gorgidas, straight men, the handicapped, women less capable than you…ad infinitum.”
He gestured at one of us, Isabel as I recall. “What would happen then?”
Snapping to a rigid attention, Isabel answered, “Why, I imagine we’d all get along and work together, eventually.” She ventured a query. “Wouldn’t it be a good thing, Centurion, if all people, everywhere, looked past superficial differences and just learned to accept people as they are? Wouldn’t mixing us up do that?”
“Sit down, girl,” he said, not unkindly. “Do you know anything of the history of social engineering in this century?”
From her seat, Isabel shook her head “No.”
“Whenever you throw two different types of people together, and the difference can be amazingly tiny, you tend to get a ruin. People who have lived and worked side by side for decades will rob, burn, rape, and butcher each other with gleeful abandon. Look at the former Volgan Empire where, despite powers of coercion to change people beyond even Centurion Garcia’s wildest dreams, people are recognizing their differences, throwing off ties decades and centuries old, and often butchering each other.”
Isabel raised her hand and, recognized, stood up again. “Centurion, what about the Gallic Foreign Legion? They’re as racially and culturally mixed a group as you could find, anywhere. And they are, I’ve read, very good soldiers.”
Franco smiled. “In the second place, there have traditionally been no majorities in the Foreign Legion. Even the Gallic members, and they are not usually—quite—a majority, are often forced to hide their citizenship. Therefore, there is no group with which a legionnaire can identify with so well as the Gallic Legion as a whole.
“But in the first place, what the Gallic Legionnaire identifies with—and probably in most cases has since childhood—is not any cultural or ethnic group, but the identity of ‘soldier,’ in this case expressed as ‘Legionnaire.’ To him, this is what makes a human being. And all who cannot claim that title are not even people, unless they’re closely related by blood or marriage. The Legionnaire accepts the men of the legion, primarily because he has rejected the human race.
“Moreover, having now had some time to study integration, the sociologists are leaning towards the view that integration does not always increase tolerance, acceptance, and understanding, but often just the opposite. Which shows that even a monkey—or a sociologist—can learn. Why, some of them are even beginning to realize that racial intolerance exists in all races. That’s one of the major reasons integration fails. People who haven’t a shred of prejudice to begin with will soon learn some if they’re put next to people of different races who reek of it.”
Isabel, still standing, gave it one last try. “The Federated States seems to have done well with integrating their military and using their integrated military to better race and gender relations in their entire society.”
Franco smiled coldly. “Have they? Why then does their army still need a large and intrusive bureaucracy to continually preach for better race and gender relations? Why special days, weeks, and months for every little group? Why do those who most fervently believe in social engineering insist that their society is as racial strife torn—and gender strife torn—as it ever was after fifty years of tearing it apart and rebuilding it, or trying to, in accordance with the social engineers’ prejudices?
“Oh, I’ll agree with you that, among their real military professionals, race is a non-factor. But that’s because, like the Gallic Legionnaire, the real military professional down south has accepted other soldiers as brothers—whatever their race—only because he has rejected the human race!”
Franco raised a quizzical and cynical eyebrow, matching it with an even more cynical smile. He looked over us with something approaching amusement, and what I think was contempt directed at the Federated States.
“Be it noted, however, that our Federated States Army professional has not really accepted most of his female peers as sisters, also quite irrespective of their race. This is reasonable, because, unlike you, they are not being turned into equivalent professionals.
“Of course, under the stress of actual war, it is by no means uncommon for people of different backgrounds and beliefs to become as one. This is especially so because the soldiers are faced with an enemy who is always, always felt to be something other than quite human. The problem, however, is that armies exist in peace and prepare in peace for war. Without that other-than-human enemy to focus attention away from their internal differences, the soldiers cannot entirely bond as they should if there are real, however trivial, differences between them. This may well get fixed after the first overly bloody battle, but I wonder how many more of them die than have to because their regiments were subject to principles of social aesthetics rather than sound military ones.”
Franco chuckled. “You know, if a research doctor of medicine tried to do with research subjects what the social engineers want to do with soldiers, fair minded people would be protesting in the streets. They would demand—at a bare minimum—informed consent on the part of the subjects before those subjects took part in health- and life-threatening experiments. By God, a doctor who did something like that without consent would be vilified, called a Fascist, hounded from office!
“But let a social scientist—and isn’t that an oxymoron?—conduct experiments with the lives of mere soldiers and no one cares. Except in our country, of course. We really do care.”
Franco smiled slightly. “Let’s go back to the social scientists, shall we. In fact, let’s just consider their impact on an armed force. Better still, let’s contrast them with Duque Carrera.
“The social scientists love people like me. Duque Carrera does not, especially. The social scientists dislike soldiers. Duque Carrera loves soldiers. The social scientists have done precisely nothing enduring for people like me, except to make people who otherwise wouldn’t give me a second thought actively despise me. Duque Carrera has set things up so I can be married, with all the benefits that go with marriage. Duque Carrera has put me in a position where I needn’t hide a thing. Indeed, I can be proud of it because it is the mark, the stigmata, if you will, of a very proud regiment. Duque Carrera has made a military o
rganization of my people that will, I am certain, if we’re ever called on to fight, prove our worth to our people in a dramatic, memorable way. Social scientists would have us scattered, irrelevant, powerless, unremarkable.
“So who’s done more for me? For you?”
* * *
So, no, while we could have been mixed up with others, we could never have been as effective as individuals, and the groups—the tercios—we formed could never have been as effective as we were on our own, or they were on their own. It was a simple fact: as Amazonas we could be proud of ourselves and of each other. As mere sexless numbers filling a space in the table of organization, we could hope, at best, to be proud of ourselves individually, and then only if the fact that we were the physically weakest members of our units didn’t rob us of that pride.
Maybe it is true that integration makes a better civil society. I wouldn’t know. Our society is really pretty homogenous, compared to some others. But I have wondered, from time to time, why it is that those who most insist on the celebration of diversity are also those who seem to most wish to make everybody as alike as two peas in a pod. And fail to do so. Miserably.
Interlude
The legion’s Escuela de Cazadores had moved around a bit over the years. Currently, it was split between four locations, for the four phases of the school. Two of these, headquarters at Camp Gutierrez and Camp “Greasy” Gomez, had been relocated to be not far from the legionary base at Lago Sombrero. The mountain camp, Camp Bernardo O’Higgins, was up in the mountains, between Hephaestus and Boquerón, in Valle de las Lunas Province, not all that far from Camp Spurius Ligustinus. The last, once simply called, “Jungle Camp,” and now known as “Camp Mitchell” was far to the west, deep in the jungles of La Palma.
The base at Lago Sombrero was bisected by the east-west running highway. The highway, itself, was bisected by an airstrip that ran approximately north to south, with the northern end hard by the cantonment area. It was at that end that Carrera’s Cricket came to a halt and it was at that end that a tribune, Thomas Broughton, met him.
Broughton was of average height or slightly above that, compared to the Balboans. For a retired veteran of the Federated States Army, he would have been considered a bit on the short side. He was also a prick, though that didn’t derive from his stature, but just came naturally. Carrera had hired him more than a decade before, to run the legion’s leadership selection course, “Cazador School.”
Carrera dismounted from his Cricket, a high-winged, single-engine, monoplane with amazing short-take-off-and-landing abilities. He pointed the pilot to a spot where he’d meet the plane when his business was done. The spot was just a little grass plot, a few hundred meters away and pretty much out of anyone else’s way. The pilot nodded, but waited for Carrera to get well away from the plane before beginning to taxi over.
Broughton met the Dux Bellorum at the edge of the strip and led him to his vehicle, parked on the other side of a dividing barrier.
“How far is it to this briefing?” Carrera asked.
“Mile, maybe,” the tribune answered.
“Let’s walk then; fucking Crickets are cramped. We can talk while we walk and, who knows, maybe we can skip the fucking slides. Besides, you sent my aide the packet and I’ve already been through them.”
“Your call,” Broughton agreed, then stepped off to lead the way. The driver of the vehicle pulled in behind them and followed up the road at a walking pace.
Carrera spoke as he walked. “The key question, Thomas, is how you are going to make this thing possible for some of them, while not making it so easy that any of the not-quite-good-enough get through.”
Broughton shook his head doubtfully, then answered, “It’s going to be tough. It’s going to be very fucking tough. Ever since you laid this thing on us we’ve been wracking our brains. And we don’t have a perfect solution. I’m not sure there even is a perfect solution.”
After a brief hesitation, Broughton continued, “We don’t want this to be like what the FSC has done; sending policewomen to a short, nearly stress-free patrolling course run by the Ranger Department at Fort Henry, then letting those women live with the illusion that they’ve somehow gone to Ranger School.”
Carrera scowled. “No; it’s got to be real. It may not be the same as what the men do, but it has to be real. And the problem is that we really don’t know what these ladies are capable of. No one knows. We expect you to find out, actually.”
Broughton nodded again, saying, “Yeah, but we might find out it can’t be done. Or not very well.
“We apply four stresses here: Starvation, sleep deprivation, hard physical work, and fear, both of injury or death and of failure.”
Carrera rolled his hand to indicate, Yeah, yeah, I knew that. Get to the point.
Broughton understood the gesture. “Right. We believe that sleep deprivation will affect the women about the same as the men.
“Starvation is trickier. The women will be smaller, with less need for food and greater fat reserves to begin. We are either going to have to starve them more, or starve them longer for the same effect. Or load them more to make the starvation come quicker, though I strongly recommend against that. Right now we’re leaning towards starving them longer, giving them a longer course.
“That, by the way, sir, is going to play hell with our schedule.
“The physical work? We know they won’t be able to do as much; it’s silly to expect they could. Their basic training cadre was very clear to us that these women are great…but they cannot do what even an average group of men can do in the strength department. And this school is for men who are far above average.”
“Mules,” Carrera answered.
“Sir?”
“Let them use mules, one per squad, to help carry the load.”
“If we do that, sir, we are going to be getting very close to what they do up north, creating an illusion of equality that will shatter as soon as people find out the difference.”
“Then crank up the other stresses. You can make the course longer; tough luck for the schedule; work your cadre harder, task the Fourteenth Tercio for some bodies. Cut the girls’ food even more. Cut their sleep even more. Make the live fire exercise at the end worse. Grade them harder… Kill a few.
“And don’t forget this. The purpose is to select the best women. If you can chop their numbers by more than half on more food and sleep, you can give them more. If you have to shoot at them, starve them, or deprive them of sleep more to get rid of half we don’t need, then do that.
“This is an art, not a science,” Carrera concluded. “Or maybe not even an art but a crap shoot. Some people make a decent living throwing dice around.”
Chapter Nine
Bent double like old beggars, under sacks
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge
’Til on the haunting flares we turned our back
And toward our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep…
—Wilfred Owen (KIA, 1918), “Dulce et Decorum”
The hovercraft to take sixty-three of the women to their next phase of training, Cazador School, had come hours early. Why not? Today’s schedule wasn’t that tight, the girls were reputed to be rather attractive, to hold really great beach parties, and—what the hell?—the hovercraft crew was male. Straight male, as a matter of fact.
With a whine and a lot of foam-churned surf and flying sand, it settled down between a short, straight line of piled duffle bags and other individual equipment, on one side, and a life-sized bronze, nicknamed “Hippolyta,” with a freshly cut red flower stuck in behind her ear, on the other. As the engines growled down, a different sort of whine announced the lowering of the boarding ramp. A few minutes later, five men emerged, the apparently oldest of whom asked, brightly, “Did you ladies call for a taxi?”
Marta, not wanting to be pulled from her friends a moment early, started to shout, “Fu—” when Inez Trujillo stopped
her.
“Two of them are wearing Cazador tabs,” Trujillo said. “Intelligence is always worth gathering.”
“Ah…right,” Marta agreed, then called out, “We can toss a few more kebabs and some lobster on the grill. Come on over, boys. Grab a couple of plots of sand.”
Catarina took the hint and, grabbing one of the other girls, walked briskly in the direction of the kitchen.
* * *
“I thought most warrant officers didn’t go to Cazador School,” Inez said.
The chief pilot of the hovercraft stopped gnawing on the kebab he’d been given, tore his eyes off Marta’s ample chest, and answered, “We don’t, most of us. The procedures for warrant officers—doctors, lawyers, chaplains, some pilots and other technical specialists—are a little different. People with special skills—lawyers, doctors, nurses, chefs—just need to have their professional certifications and complete Basic, and a not-so-very-hard warrant officer candidate course, and they’re in. Some, though, people who have both the technical skills and independent command of a combat force, which, as a matter of fact”—the warrant waved his kebab in the direction of the hovercraft—“that is, do have to do Cazador first. Us, pilots, submarine crews. Also doctors, lawyers, nurses, and chefs that want to be in charge of groupings of their specialty do, as a prelude to OCS or CCS. A few others.”
His attention reverted to kebab and kabosom.
His copilot, a younger sort, left off picking at the lobster tail he had on a paper plate balanced on his lap, and added, “The road to authority takes a sharp uphill bend with Cazador School. That’s true whether you end up leading infantry, overseeing trucks, or driving a boat.”
