He looked at the garment, didn’t touch it. “Really?”
“Yeah. I want one that fits.”
He still didn’t stir. “Let me wise you up, sonny boy. There are just two sizes in this army — too large and too small.”
“But my company commander — “
“No doubt.”
“But what am I going to do?”
“Oh, it’s a choice you want! Well, I’ve got that in stock — new issue, just today. Mmmtell you what I’ll do. Here’s a needle and I’ll even give you a spool of thread. You won’t need a pair of scissors; a razor blade is better. Now you tight ‘em plenty across the hips but leave cloth to loose ‘em again across the shoulders; you’ll need it later.”
Sergeant Zim’s only comment on my tailoring was: “You can do better than that. Two hours extra duty.”
So I did better than that by next parade.
Those first six weeks were all hardening up and hazing, with lots of parade drill and lots of route march. Eventually, as files dropped out and went home or elsewhere, we reached the point where we could do fifty miles in ten hours on the level — which is good mileage for a good horse in case you’ve never used your legs. We rested, not by stopping, but by changing pace, slow march, quick march, and trot. Sometimes we went out the full distance, bivouacked and ate field rations, slept in sleeping bags and marched back the next day.
One day we started out on an ordinary day’s march, no bed bags on our shoulders, no rations. When we didn’t stop for lunch, I wasn’t surprised, as I had already learned to sneak sugar and hard bread and such out of the mess tent and conceal it about my person, but when we kept on marching away from camp in the afternoon I began to wonder. But I had learned not to ask silly questions.
We halted shortly before dark, three companies, now somewhat abbreviated. We formed a battalion parade and marched through it, without music, guards were mounted, and we were dismissed. I immediately looked up Corporal-Instructor Bronski because he was a little easier to deal with than the othersand because I felt a certain amount of responsibility; I happened to be, at the time, a recruit-corporal myself. These boot chevrons didn’t mean much — mostly the privilege of being chewed out for whatever your squad did as well as for what you did yourself — and they could vanish as quickly as they appeared. Zim had tried out all of the older men as temporary non-coms first and I had inherited a brassard with chevrons on it a couple of days before when our squad leader had folded up and gone to hospital.
I said, “Corporal Bronski, what’s the straight word? When is chow call?”
He grinned at me. “I’ve got a couple of crackers on me. Want me to split ‘em with you?”
“Huh? Oh, no, sir. Thank you.” (I had considerably more than a couple of crackers; I was learning.) “No chow call?”
“They didn’t tell me either, sonny. But I don’t see any copters approaching. Now if I was you, I’d round up my squad and figure things out. Maybe one of you can hit a jack rabbit with a rock.”
“Yes, sir. But — Well, are we staying here all night? We don’t have our bedrolls.”
His eye brows shot up. “No bedrolls? Well, I do declare!” He seemed to think it over. “Mmmever see sheep huddle together in a snowstorm?”
“Uh, no, sir.”
“Try it. They don’t freeze, maybe you won’t. Or, if you don’t care for company, you might walk around all night. Nobody’ll bother you, as long as you stay inside the posted guards. You won’t freeze if you keep moving. Of course you may be a little tired tomorrow.” He grinned again.
I saluted and went back to my squad. We divvied up, share and share alike — and I came out with less food than I had started; some of those idiots either hadn’t sneaked out anything to eat, or had eaten all they had while we marched. But a few crackers and a couple of prunes will do a lot to quiet your stomach’s sounding alert.