Countdown: M Day

by Tom Kratman

  I suppose I could catch up on my reading. Bah. I’d rather be doing than reading.

  On the other hand, would it be just as bad here, being surrounded by the best regiment I’ve ever been in, and me restricted to pushing papers? And if I stay here, what are the odds I get first class therapy? Best available in country? No doubt. But how good is that going to be on the ass end of nowhere?

  Goddamn bad luck, that shell. On the other hand …

  The thought was interrupted by the entrance of a pretty nurse, a young blond girl. Kemp wasn’t quite sure where he’d seen her before, though he was certain he had.

  “Weren’t you …?” he began.

  “I helped unload you from the dustoff bird,” she answered, in an accent he couldn’t quite place. She made a little mock bow, not deep enough to expose any cleavage in the prim nurse’s uniform. It wasn’t a terribly feminine gesture, though she was plainly female enough, prim clothing or not. “Elena Constantinescu, at your service.”

  “Ohhh …you’re the angel,” he said, in dawning, if fuzzy, recognition.

  “And you’re neither dead nor in Heaven,” she replied. “You were very lucky.”

  “Interesting subject, luck,” he answered noncommittally. Then, changing the subject, he asked, “Where are you from? I can’t quite place your accent.”

  The nurse’s eyes flashed. “My English is as good as yours,” she said huffily. “As good as anyone’s. And I am from the regiment. No place else is home.”

  Kemp, suddenly realizing, if not quite why, that the question of origins was a touchy one with the girl, apologized hastily. “Your English is probably better than mine, Elena. I think your accent is really nice, lovely even. I was just making talk.”

  “Okay,” she replied, relenting. She turned her attention from him then, as she puttered about, checking the readings on several machines and making notes on a chart. Satisfied for the moment, she added, “I was born in Romania. The regiment saved me from …well …from something really bad. Now it is home.”

  “Legio Patria Nostra,” Kemp muttered.

  The words sounded very familiar to the nurse. “What was that?” she asked. “What language?”

  “Latin, I think,” Kemp answered. “It means …”

  “It means, ‘The Legion is our fatherland,’” she supplied. Romanian was yet another of Latin’s many daughters. “Exactly so. The regiment is my home …now …forever …as long as it and I exist.”

  “Well …that I can understand.” Kemp’s face fell, where it had brightened considerably upon her arrival, at once again facing the prospect of being homeless and rootless.

  “Are you in pain?” she asked, her face suddenly full of concern. She hustled over to check the “pain machine.”

  “No,” he answered, waving her away. “It’s just that I don’t know what to do or where I should go.”

  “Ohhh,” she said. “You should go to Baylor, in Houston. No question about it. At least for long enough to be sure that there’s nothing wrong with you that we haven’t caught and to get a start on your therapy.”

  “But I thought this place was …”

  “We’re a good hospital of our type,” she interrupted. “But we have our limits. Our doctors are good, very good even. But we don’t have a specialist in spinal injuries. Baylor,” she finished.

  “Baylor?”

  “Baylor.” She was quite definite on the point. “For a while, at least. It’s your best chance for having a normal life.”

  Kemp blew air between rattling lips. “Okay,” he agreed, “you’ve sold me.”

  Elena smiled then. “Of course, I did. That’s why Doc Joseph told me to come see you. Full disclosure: There’s something in it for me, too.”

  Officers’ Club, Camp Fulton, Guyana

  From the main bar came the sound of a mix of American, British, German, Russian, and Chinese voices singing, “Always look on the bright side of life …” The singing was not precisely good, though perhaps the alcohol had something to do with that. Reilly and Doc Joseph both winced at one particularly off key singer, who, sadly, was also one of the louder ones.

  Reilly had many flaws, a point with which he would readily have agreed. Among these, however, was not lack of consideration for his troops. He might kill them in training them, to be sure, but if they didn’t outright die, he’d take care of them.

  “I don’t want my man to be alone up there, Doc,” Reilly said.

  “He won’t be,” the Egon-of-Ghostbusters’-fame look-alike assured him. “I’m killing two birds with one stone.”

  “Eh?”

  “I’ve got some nurses we sent to school in the States for their degrees—”

  “The Romanian girls?” Reilly interrupted. “I knew about them.”

  “Them, plus two of the girls we liberated in Africa, both of whom have now married into the regiment and can’t be sent elsewhere. Anyway, we only had time to send them to a two year RN program and none of them are specialized yet. I want to send one of them—Elena—to a specialist course for physical and occupational therapy–”

  “Why her?”

  Sighing with exasperation, Joseph said, “Would you please stop interrupting?”

  “Sorry,” Reilly answered, looking down. “I have many flaws—”

  “Among which is impatience. Fine. Anyway, both of those require a certain hardness, not exactly lack of sympathy with pain but ruthlessness when dealing with it. They also require something highly analogous to combat leadership. I think she has all of that. My opinion, of course, is questionable, but Coffee agrees and his is not. So she goes to Baylor with Kemp, becomes an assistant under a certification and training program in their rehabilitation section, with Kemp as her training dummy, and, at the end of some months, you get back a trooper who is as fit as he’s going to be, while I get back a therapist.”

  “Clever,” Reilly said, admiringly.

  “Isn’t it just?”

  Reilly swirled his drink in his glass, contemplatively, making ice cubes tinkle. “I wish everything had that clever a solution.”

  “Eh?” queried Joseph.

  “My wife. She’s having to give up her company—sooner or later …and the sooner, the better, as far as I’m concerned—because she just can’t stay in the field with us while carrying a baby. Or, even if she could, past some point—”

  “About five months.”

  “Now who’s interrupting?”

  “Sorry.”

  Reilly shrugged it off. “Anyway, it might be unhealthy for her. And I don’t have a place to send her. And, knowing her, sitting around doing make work would drive her insane. And the baby’s going to make her insane enough. But there’s no really good slot for her.”

  Joseph shook his head. “You’re a dumb ass, you know that?”

  “Huh?”

  “If a slot doesn’t exist, make one. Jeez …”

  “I’m kind of skidding on thin ice with Stauer as is,” Reilly said, putting his hand out, palm down and fingers spread, wriggling it.

  Joseph smiled. “I’m not. How’s this sound? Right now, I’m ‘commander’ of the medical company. I don’t know how to be a commander. To quote a certain fictional character: ‘I’m a doctor, Jim, not a miracle worker.’ Master Sergeant Coffee, who is a miracle worker, has his hands full playing first sergeant, and I’m not a lot of help to him. So we create a new slot for Lana, and make her the medical company commander.”

  “I dunno,” Reilly said, doubtfully. “She despises REMFs, in general, though she’ll make personal exceptions.” The unambiguously gay duo, for example. “If you knew the trouble I had getting her to take over Headquarters Company, rather than the tank company she wanted …”

  “Coffee’s no REMF,” Joseph insisted.

  Reilly snorted. “No. Oh, no, he’s not. We went to Ranger School together, you know.”

  The doctor’s eyebrows raised of their own accord. “I didn’t. Isn’t that a hoot?”

  “Yeah. Also serv
ed a few years in the same infantry battalion. He’s pretty stout. And I don’t mean fat.” Reilly laughed, for no obvious reason. “Someday, remind me to tell you the story of when he was my platoon sergeant for a while. That was back in Panama …”

  As if at mention of the name, “Panama,” the clouds above poured forth a deluge onto the camp. This was no gentle pitter-patter, but loud enough hitting the roof to make hearing difficult.

  Joseph signaled the barmaid for a couple more drinks. “You’re not going anywhere in this shit. Tell me now,” he insisted, his voice raised over the pounding rain.

  The afternoon rain had come and gone, leaving behind it a simmering stew of oppressive heat and cloying moisture. With a curse—“Motherfucker!”—a very young Lieutenant Reilly used his folding shovel to lever a rock out from the floor of the fighting position he, along with his radio telephone operator, were digging. Bending over and picking the thing up, he tossed it outside.

  “Save that one for the burster layer,” he told the RTO, who was prone with his rifle pointed down range toward where the rest of headquarters company was setting up targets for the coming live fire exercise.

  Muttering, “Son of a bitch had probably been down there since they dug out the Gaillard Cut,” he went back to his digging. Sweat pouring off him, he continued until he was standing about waist deep.

  “Your turn, Ramirez,” he said, exiting the rectangular excavation.

  “Roger, sir. You need a break?”

  “Not that so much. I need to troop the line.”

  Ramirez snorted as he jumped into the hole, saying, “Lotsa luck, sir.” The RTO was the only man from Reilly’s usual platoon. For the rest, he’d been stuck with an odd collection of cooks, medics, truck drivers, wire layers, mechanics, and clerks.

  Pulling on his load-carrying equipment and taking rifle in hand, Reilly walked the line of troops busily digging fighting position. That is, they were all busily digging, until he came to the shallow scraping of one Private Gilbert, a cook. Gilbert, himself, was asleep, though he’d propped his face on his rifle in an attempt to look alert.

  Reilly’s mud-encrusted boot connected with the private’s midsection, hard enough to sting if not to raise a bruise.

  “Wake up, asshole!”

  “I wasn’t sleeping, sir,” Gilbert lied.

  “Bullshit,” Reilly said, squatting down. Grabbing both sides of Gilbert’s helmet, he forces the private’s eyes generally forward and asked, “Do you see that copse of trees over there, Gilbert?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s the OP. Get your ass out there and relieve the man on duty. Do you know what you do on an OP, Private?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. Go. Now.”

  Reilly saw the cook off then, shaking his head, turned to walk the rest of the line. Things were basically okay further on, and the medics manning the fifty caliber machine gun were doing a fine job. That, he attributed to his platoon sergeant for the exercise, Sergeant First Class Coffee, now down in a hole, covered with mud, while slinging spoil out of the hole onto a poncho laying next to it.

  “Oh, Ranger Buddy!” Reilly said.

  Coffee picked up the litany without batting an eyelash or taking his attention from his work. “Please, please forgive me. I did not mean to run away and leave you all alone. I still love you, Ranger Buddy.”

  “How’s it going, sir?” Coffee asked, more seriously. Looking up, he let the shovel rest for the moment.

  Smiling benignly, the lieutenant answered, “My ticks are well fed and fattening up nicely, thank you. The chiggers are dug in to standard, with overhead cover. My ringworm garden overfloweth. My athletes, foot is coming along, though I think I need to wrap my feet in plastic bags for a while to get a really world class case. And then there’s some kind of rot on my crotch that I can’t quite identify but which definitely shows promise, character development-wise …Oh, you mean besides those?”

  Coffee kept his face serious, for all he thought the litany funny. “Yes, sir; besides those.”

  Reilly sighed, then squatted down. “Well …I haven’t shot Gilbert yet. That’s got to be a good thing, no?”

  “Caught him sleeping, too, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you do with him? Ass chewings just don’t work. And I need a good excuse for my methods.”

  “Sent him out to the OP. I figure, if we forget about him, he can be down range when we open fire.”

  Coffee did a double take. He didn’t think Reilly would actually leave Gilbert out there, but you never really knew.

  “Oh, stop worrying I’ll get him before we shoot the miserable son of a bitch.”

  Coffee breathed a little easier. Sure, Gilbert would be no great loss, but Reilly actually showed considerable promise and it would be a shame for the Army to lose such a fine officer. Indeed, most of the senior non-coms in the battalion felt the same way and informally took turns watching out for the boy.

  “Speaking of which,” Reilly said, looking up, “the fucker is dead asleep again. Goddamn, miserable, useless … .”

  Reilly strode off, in the direction of the private.

  The next kick was not gentle. “Get up, shitbird!”

  Gilbert writhed from the blow. “I can’t, sir; I’m sick.”

  Reilly’s voice grew very gentle then. He squatted beside the private and, voice full of seeming sympathy and concern, said, “Oh, you’re sick are you? Well then, we’ll just have to take care of you.”

  Standing once again, Reilly shouted out. “Sergeant Coffee!”

  Back at the machine gun position, Coffee stood to attention. “Sir!”

  “Private Gilbert here says he’s sick. See to him, would you?”

  Coffee’s voice was full of anticipation as he answered, “Sirrr!”

  Grabbing two big medics, his aid bag, and a poncho, Coffee and party began to trot for the “sick” private. About the time they were halfway there, Gilbert suddenly remembered the Sergeant Coffee Method of dealing with malingerers.

  “Sir, “um”, I’m feeling better.”

  “Nonsense, Private. You’re ill. SERGEANT COFFEE!”

  “SIRRR!”

  “Hurry, Sergeant. I think Gilbert’s delirious.”

  “Sirrr …”

  “I’m not sick!” the private insisted. “I’m not sick!”

  And then Coffee and his two assistants were there. The medics picked Gilbert up bodily, one hand on each of his wrists and ankles. Meanwhile, Coffee flapped the poncho out onto the ground. The medics slammed the cook down. Hard.

  Then they sat on him while Coffee withdrew from his aid bag an intravenous needle so big and so crude that rumor was he’d been bequeathed a special supply of the things by his great-grandfather, presumably a medic in the First World War.

  He made sure Gilbert could see the needle.

  “I’M NOT SICK! Please …oh, please, I’m not sick,” the private begged.

  “Damn, this is serious, Sergeant Coffee,” the lieutenant said. “Better hurry.”

  “Sirrr …”

  To Gilbert, Coffee whispered, “This is really going to hurt you a lot more than me.”

  Then he stuck him. The private shrieked. “Oh, God, no …please …I’m not SICK!”

  “Dammit, sir, I missed,” said Coffee.

  Reilly smiled broadly. “Dammit, Sergeant Coffee, you missed. Well …train to standard, not to time. Stick the malingering son of a bitch again.”

  “YeeaARRRGHGH! I’m not sick!”

  “Dammit, sir, I missed again.”

  “Train to standard …”

  “ …not to time.”

  “Aiaiaiaiai!”

  Fourteen stickings later, with blood flowing across the poncho’s plastic surface and gathering in the low spots, a weeping, quivering private begging to be allowed to go back to duty, Coffee looked up at Reilly as much as to ask, “You think he’s had enough?”

  Reilly nodded, then squatted yet again. “Are
you sure, Private, that you’re not so sick you can’t do you duty?”

  “Between sobs, Gilbert answered, “I’m”—sniff—“sure”—sniff—“sir …” sniff …“Please …Puhleeze don’t stick me anymore.”

  Reilly lifted his chin at the sergeant, who gave one last—this time properly done—jab, raising a final howl of pain.

  * * *

  Joseph had tears rolling down his face. “Dammit, Sergeant Coffee, you missed. Well …train to standard, not to time. Stick the malingering son of a bitch again.’ Oh, God, that’s funny.”

  “Absolutely true, Scott, every bit of it.”

  “And neither you nor Coffee got court-martialed?”

  “Scott, with the ignorant or the stupid you can get away with anything you act like you can get away with. Since we acted like we could, Gilbert just assumed.”

  “Shit …you were a bastard.”

  “Eh?” Reilly shrugged. “I’m a lot more even tempered than I used to be, but I’m still a bastard.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind

  That from the nunnery

  Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind

  To war and arms I fly.

  —Richard Lovelace,

  “To Lucasta, On Going to the Wars”

  Quarters 212, Glen Fiddich Housing Area, Guyana

  “Ayanna, honey, I’m home,” Terry Welch called from the front door to the one story bungalow.

  From the kitchen, carrying a mixing spoon and voicing a delighted squeal, pattered a very tall, very slender, very dark woman with amazingly large and liquid brown eyes. Ayanna hadn’t seen her husband in the three weeks he’d been in the jungle with 1/5 Marines. This, she considered, was all too long a separation. And the occasional flights she served on the regiment’s “executive” aircraft didn’t do much to relieve the boredom.

  She didn’t mind the stink. And the grease paint on his face didn’t deter her for a moment in covering it with kisses as she melted against him. If Terry wasn’t her god, he had been—in a very real sense—her savior. What was a little stink compared to that? Less still some faded camouflage paint.