wouldn’t be here!
Starboard gun FIRE!
Shooting’s too good for ‘im, kick
the louse out!
Port gun FIRE!
— Ancient chanty used to time saluting guns
But that was after we had left Camp Currie and a lot had happened in between. Combat training, mostly — combat drill and combat exercises and combat maneuvers, using everything from bare hands to simulated nuclear weapons. I hadn’t known there were so many different ways to fight. Hands and feet to start with — and if you think those aren’t weapons you haven’t seen Sergeant Zim and Captain Frankel, our battalion commander, demonstrate la savate, or had little Shujumi work you over with just his hands and a toothy grin — Zim made Shujumi an instructor for that purpose at once and required us to take his orders, although we didn’t have to salute him and say “sir.”
As our ranks thinned down Zim quit bothering with formations himself, except parade, and spent more and more time in personal instruction, supplementing the corporal-instructors. He was sudden death with anything but he loved knives, and made and balanced his own, instead of using the perfectly good general-issue ones. He mellowed quite a bit as a personal teacher, too, becoming merely unbearable instead of downright disgusting — he could be quite patient with silly questions.
Once, during one of the two-minute rest periods that were scattered sparsely through each day’s work, one of the boys — a kid named Ted Hendrick — asked, “Sergeant? I guess this knife throwing is funbut why do we have to learn it? What possible use is it?”
“Well,” answered Zim, “suppose all you have is a knife? Or maybe not even a knife? What do you do? Just say your prayers and die? Or wade in and make him buy it anyhow? Son, this is real — it’s not a checker game you can concede if you find yourself too far behind.”
“But that’s just what I mean, sir. Suppose you aren’t armed at all? Or just one of these toadstickers, say? And the man you’re up against has all sorts of dangerous weapons? There’s nothing you can do about it; he’s got you licked on showdown.”
Zim said almost gently, “You’ve got it all wrong, son. There’s no such thing as a ‘dangerous weapon.’ “
“Huh? Sir?”
“There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men. We’re trying to teach you to be dangerous — to the enemy. Dangerous even without a knife. Deadly as long as you still have one hand or one foot and are still alive. If you don’t know what I mean, go read ‘Horatius at the Bridge’ or ‘The Death of the Bon Homme Richard’; they’re both in the Camp library. But take the case you first mentioned; I’m you and all you have is a knife. That target behind me — the one you’ve been missing, number three — is a sentry, armed with everything but an H-bomb. You’ve got to get himquietly, at once, and without letting him call for help.” Zim turned slightly — thunk! — a knife he hadn’t even had in his hand was quivering in the center of target number three. “You see? Best to carry two knives — but get him you must, even barehanded.”
“Uh — “
“Something still troubling you? Speak up. That’s what I’m here for, to answer your questions.”
“Uh, yes, sir. You said the sentry didn’t have any H-bomb. But he does have an H-bomb; that’s just the point. Well, at least we have, if we’re the sentryand any sentry we’re up against is likely to have them, too. I don’t mean the sentry, I mean the side he’s on.”
“I understood you.”
“Wellyou see, sir? If we can use an H-bomb — and, as you said, it’s no checker game; it’s real, it’s war and nobody is fooling around — isn’t it sort of ridiculous to go crawling around in the weeds, throwing knives and maybe getting yourself killedand even losing the warwhen you’ve got a real weapon you can use to win? What’s the point in a whole lot of men risking their lives with obsolete weapons when one professor type can do so much more just by pushing a button?”