“Huh? Of course it is! Everything about it is unfair! He hit me first! You heard ‘em! — he hit me first!”
“Anything more?”
“Huh? No, sir. Isn’t that enough?”
“The trial is completed. Recruit Private Theodore C. Hendrick, stand forth!” Lieutenant Spieksma had been standing at attention the whole time; now Captain Frankel stood up. The place suddenly felt chilly.
“Private Hendrick, you are found guilty as charged.”
My stomach did a flip-flop. They were going to do it to himthey were going to do the “Danny Deever” to Ted Hendrick. And I had eaten breakfast beside him just this morning.
“The Court sentences you,” he went on, while I felt sick, “to ten lashes and Bad Conduct Discharge.”
Hendrick gulped. “I want to resign!”
“The Court will not permit you to resign. The Court wishes to add that your punishment is light simply because this Court possesses no jurisdiction to assign greater punishment. The authority which remanded you specified a field court-martial — why it so chose, this Court will not speculate. But had you been remanded for general court-martial, it seems certain that the evidence before this Court would have caused a general court to sentence you to hang by the neck until dead. You are very lucky — and the remanding authority has been most merciful.” Lieutenant Spieksma paused, then went on, “The sentence will be carried out at the earliest hour after the convening authority has reviewed and approved the record, if it does so approve. Court is adjourned. Remove and confine him.”
The last was addressed to me, but I didn’t actually have to do anything about it, other than phone the guard tent and then get a receipt for him when they took him away.
At afternoon sick call Captain Frankel took me off orderly and sent me to see the doctor, who sent me back to duty. I got back to my company just in time to dress and fall in for parade — and to get gigged by Zim for “spots on uniform.” Well, he had a bigger spot over one eye but I didn’t mention it.
Somebody had set up a big post in the parade ground just back of where the adjutant stood. When it came time to publish the orders, instead of “routine order of the day” or other trivia, they published Hendrick’s court-martial.
Then they marched him out, between two armed guards, with his hands cuffed together in front of him.
I had never seen a flogging. Back home, while they do it in public of course, they do it back of the Federal Building — and Father had given me strict orders to stay away from there. I tried disobeying him on it once… but it was postponed and I never tried to see one again.
Once is too many.
The guards lifted his arms and hooked the manacles over a big hook high up on the post. Then they took his shirt off and it turned out that it was fixed so that it could come off and he didn’t have an undershirt. The adjutant said crisply, “Carry out the sentence of the Court.”
A corporal-instructor from some other battalion stepped forward with the whip. The Sergeant of the Guard made the count.
It’s a slow count, five seconds between each one and it seems much longer. Ted didn’t let out a peep until the third, then he sobbed.
The next thing I knew I was staring up at Corporal Bronski. He was slapping me and looking intently at me. He stopped and asked, “Okay now? All right, back in ranks. On the bounce; we’re about to pass in review.” We did so and marched back to our company areas. I didn’t eat much dinner but neither did a lot of them.
Nobody said a word to me about fainting. I found out later that I wasn’t the only one — a couple of dozen of us had passed out.
CHAPTER 6
What we obtain too cheap, we
esteem too lightlyit would be
strange indeed if so celestial an
article as FREEDOM should not be
highly rated.
— Thomas Paine
It was the night after Hendrick was kicked out that I reached my lowest slump at Camp Currie. I couldn’t sleep — and you have to have been through boot camp to understand just how far down a recruit has to sink before that can happen. But I hadn’t had any real exercise all day so I wasn’t physically tired, and my shoulder still hurt even though I had been marked “duty,” and I had that letter from my mother preying on my mind, and every time I closed my eyes I would hear that crack! and see Ted slump against the whipping post.