“Yup.”
“What?”
“Mobile Infantry.”
“The Infantry? Oh, you poor stupid clown! I feel sorry for you, I really do.”
I straightened up and said angrily, “Shut up! The Mobile Infantry is the best outfit in the Army — it is the Army! The rest of you jerks are just along to hand us the saw — we do the work.”
He laughed. “You’ll find out!”
“You want a mouthful of knuckles?”
CHAPTER 3
He shall rule them with a rod of iron.
— Revelations II:25
I did Basic at Camp Arthur Currie on the northern prairies, along with a couple of thousand other victims — and I do mean “Camp,” as the only permanent buildings there were to shelter equipment. We slept and ate in tents; we lived outdoors — if you call that “living,” which I didn’t, at the time. I was used to a warm climate; it seemed to me that the North Pole was just five miles north of camp and getting closer. Ice Age returning, no doubt.
But exercise will keep you warm and they saw to it that we got plenty of that.
The first morning we were there they woke us up before daybreak. I had had trouble adjusting to the change in time zones and it seemed to me that I had just got to sleep; I couldn’t believe that anyone seriously intended that I should get up in the middle of the night.
But they did mean it. A speaker somewhere was blaring out a military march, fit to wake the dead, and a hairy nuisance who had come charging down the company street yelling, “Everybody out! Show a leg! On the bounce!” came
marauding back again just as I had pulled the covers over my head, tipped over my cot and dumped me on the cold hard ground.
It was an impersonal attention; he didn’t even wait to see if I hit.
Ten minutes later, dressed in trousers, undershirt, and shoes, I was lined up with the others in ragged ranks for setting-up exercises just as the Sun looked over the eastern horizon. Facing us was a big broad-shouldered, mean-looking man, dressed just as we were — except that while I looked and felt like a poor job of embalming, his chin was shaved blue, his trousers were sharply creased, you could have used his shoes for mirrors, and his manner was alert, wide-awake, relaxed, and rested. You got the impression that he never needed to sleep — just ten-thousand-mile checkups and dust him off occasionally.
He bellowed, “C’pnee! Attenshut! I am Career Ship’s Sergeant Zim, your company commander. When you speak to me, you will salute and say, ‘Sir’ — you will salute and ‘sir’ anyone who carries an instructor’s baton — “ He was carrying a swagger cane and now made a quick reverse moulinet with it to show what he meant by an instructor’s baton; I had noticed men carrying them when we had arrived the night before and had intended to get one myself — they looked smart. Now I changed my mind. “ — because we don’t have enough officers around here for you to practice on. You’ll practice on us. Who sneezed?”
No answer —
“WHO SNEEZED?”
“I did,” a voice answered.
“ ‘I did’ what?”
“I sneezed.”
“ ‘I sneezed,’ SIR!”
“I sneezed, sir. I’m cold, sir.”
“Oho!” Zim strode up to the man who had sneezed, shoved the ferrule of the swagger cane an inch under his nose and demanded, “Name?”
“Jenkinssir.”
“Jenkins…” Zim repeated as if the word were somehow distasteful, even shameful. “I suppose some night on patrol you’re going to sneeze just because you’ve got a runny nose. Eh?”
“I hope not, sir.”
“So do I. But you’re cold. Hmmwe’ll fix that.” He pointed with his stick. “See that armory over there?” I looked and could see nothing but prairie except for one building that seemed to be almost on the skyline.
“Fall out. Run around it. Run, I said. Fast! Bronski! Pace him.”
“Right, Sarge.” One of the five or six other baton carriers took out after Jenkins, caught up with him easily, cracked him across the tight of his pants with the baton. Zim turned back to the rest of us, still shivering at attention. He walked up and down, looked us over, and seemed awfully unhappy. At last he stepped out in front of us, shook his head, and said, apparently to himself but he had a voice that carried: “To think that this had to happen to me!”