Defense of Hill 781 Page 2

  Slowly, Lieutenant Colonel Always turned his head back to glance from whence he had walked and to his dismay saw that he had in fact left no depression, despite the softness of the sand.

  For the first time since he had found himself on the desert floor, a coldness swept over his body. So he was dead! The thought was heart-stopping, or would have been, he reflected.

  “Well, if that’s true, why are you here and where am I?” Always turned to Hope, afraid of what he might hear.

  “You are at Manix railhead,” said the sergeant major, indicating a lone cement ramp rising from the sand at the end of a rail siding. “This overpass we are standing beneath marks the entrance to what in life was known as the National Training Center. I am to be your guide in your sojourn here. We will be moving up the desert trail a couple of dozen miles. They’re expecting you there.”

  It was all coming too fast for Always. He had steeled himself to accept the fact that he was dead, but what did the National Training Center have to do with that, and who was waiting for him twenty some miles deeper into the desert? He had been a professional officer for most of his adult life, and not a bad one at that. For the most part he had lived a decent and respectable life. Yet if these were the gates to heaven, and the man standing in front of him was the gatekeeper, it was not exactly what he had been led to expect.

  “Sergeant Major, if you don’t mind, I would like to ask a kind of personal question.”

  “Not at all, sir.”

  “Are you dead too?”

  “Yes, sir, I am. Been dead quite some time as a matter of fact.”

  “And does that give you any insight into what this is all about?” Always was starting to regain some of his authoritative bearing.

  “Well, Colonel, it does and it doesn’t. I know this isn’all clear to you yet, so perhaps I should do a little explaining. The first thing I would like to make clear is that I asked to come down here, specifically to be your guide.”

  The word “down” gripped the officer in an icy vise, his breath escaped him, and for a moment he thought his knees would buckle. Could it be the worst had happened? What had he done to deserve it? Hadn’t he always made the morning run with his troops? Never once did he tamper with a readiness report. And the annual general inspections—he had always pulled those off pretty well without undue harassment of the soldiers; well, at least without extreme undue harassment of the soldiers. And all the social events. Sure, he never liked them, but he had gone, behaved himself reasonably well, complimented his hostess on something or other in every case, and always tried really hard to make that one brilliant statement that would indelibly imprint itself on the minds of his superiors for later recall.

  “Just what is it you mean by ‘down here,’ if I may ask?”

  “Yes, sir, you certainly may. This is kind of a touchy subject for an enlisted man to be telling an officer, but the fact is, Colonel, you didn’t quite make it into heaven.”

  As Always blanched at the words, the command sergeant major picked up his mood and quickly went on. “Now don’t go jumping to any hasty conclusions. It’s not as bad as you’re thinking. If you didn’t make it to heaven, you didn’t quite end up in hell either.” A sense of déjà vu hit the colonel as he remembered his last efficiency report. “The truth of the matter is that you’ve made it into Purgatory, which is what the National Training Center is used for. You see, sir, you didn’t quite have an unblemished record in the army, so the System has arranged this little stopover for you until you can make it up. Just how long that takes is up to you.”

  Although the news was disconcerting, Always felt it was futile to resist it, afraid he might be left behind in the rush should he fight the logic of the words. The sergeant major was not being harsh, just straightforward. In that, Always found solace. There was something comforting about the noncommissioned officer, so respectful, so knowing, seemingly so in charge. It occurred to him that that was the way it had always been for him with sergeants major. It was a marvel how they could show deference to an officer, yet at the same time be so much on top of things.

  Swallowing his pride, Always asked the burning question. “What did I do to deserve this? I mean Purgatory and all.”

  “Well, sir, I figured that would be one of the first things you might want to know, so I checked with the Chief before I came down here, and although many of these things are beyond me, I did get a feel for your particular situation. Again sir, meaning no disrespect, it had to do with believing your own propaganda, so to speak.”

  “Excuse me, Sergeant Major, did you say propaganda?” Always was clearly irritated at the pejorative term.

  “Yes, sir, I did, but of course that’s just my own word for it, and I can see it might not have been the best one. Maybe I can explain it like this. You know that army recruiting theme we adopted in the 1980s—‘Be all that you can be!’—well, you started really believing that you had a corner on that market. Not that being infantry, and airborne, and a ranger weren’t good things. In fact, that helped your ledger a great deal. But after a while you started thumping on that stuff a little too much, and, well, you kind of put a whole bunch of other people down while you were doing it, and when that happened, well, you just didn’t let them think that they were being all they could be, and if they were, it just wasn’t anything to write home about.”

  For all his faults, Lieutenant Colonel Always was an honest man, and even as the sergeant spoke he reflected on all of his disparaging comments about soft staff officers, “legs” (nonparatrooper qualified soldiers), support branch personnel (“remfs,” “wimps,” “pukes,” et cetera). It was true. How much he had coveted his senior parachutist wings! How heroic it had been to posture about his ability to walk unlimited distances, suffer sleepless nights in the cold and wet, thump his chest and bellow the guttural sounds so endearing to all real infantrymen and so offensive to those who wished they were. But he had not thought there was anything wrong with that. After all, he had been taught the very same things when he was a young officer—unless, and the thought was sobering—unless those who had taught him had also ended up in a mess like this. Maybe he had embellished some of those war stories a bit too much, but to consider that to be anything worse than minor exaggeration …, well, that seemed a little hard. He hadn’t meant to hurt anybody’s feelings, even if they were miserable pantywaists. Always’ head began to hurt from all this thinking.

  “Sergeant Major,” Always seized the initiative. “It seems to me that if this is Purgatory, and mind you I’m not convinced yet of anything I’ve heard, then I seem to recall that it’s only a kind of transitory post, sort of a temporary duty station, until I can complete my business and get on to my permanent assignment.”

  “Right, sir.”

  “Well then, just what are my terms of duty here?”

  “Do you mean how long are you here for and what do you have to do?”

  “Precisely.”

  “As I said, sir, I know a few things about what’s going on but not all of it. How long you’re here for is up to you. The purpose, as the Chief put it, is ‘to teach you the error of your ways.’”

  “You mean I’m to be punished for my, uh … well, my ‘arrogance’?”

  “No, sir, not really punished. That’s not the way the Chief works. It’s more like He wants you to appreciate what some of those other guys, those guys you made a habit of belittling, do. He feels that you never will really have a place amongst them in heaven unless you first learn what an important contribution they make.”

  “And can you tell me, Sergeant Major, just how do I gain that appreciation?”

  “Colonel, that remains to be seen. I’ve a general idea of the plan, but I really don’t know all the details. To be quite honest, sir, I think I’ve done my job of bringing you in on the problem, and probably the best thing we can do now is to proceed further on into Purgatory, the National Training Center that is, and you can see for yourself what’s in front of you.”

 
For a second Always thought of overriding the sergeant major’s suggestion, but there seemed to be an essential wisdom in the thought. For the moment he had absorbed about all that he could. Besides, he was tired of standing and, having always been an aggressive individual, he was eager to plunge ahead and see for himself just what was in store for him.

  “Very well, Sergeant Major. Do you have a means of getting me there?”

  “Certainly, sir. Even in Purgatory a lieutenant colonel is still a lieutenant colonel. I’ve brought a jeep. If you’ll follow me I’ll take us on in.”

  As the two men left the shade of the overpass, the hot desert air seemed to thicken. A dust devil ominously swirled up before them, and a fiery blast of heat and sand burned their faces.

  Always hesitated only for a moment, then squared his shoulders and walked over to the jeep. Protesting at every bump, the vehicle slowly made its way across the sand-covered trail that wove through the mountain ranges ringing the vast, bleak expanses of Purgatory. He stole one last glance at the deserted Manix railhead as a Las Vegas-bound mortal sped his way across the overpass, rushing to sample the vices that lay before him.

  The drive through the high desert was hot and uncomfortable, but it gave the two men a chance to talk. Lieutenant Colonel Always learned that, in recognition of his stature in life, he was to be given command of a battalion-level task force. Although it would be fundamentally a mechanized infantry battalion, he would have attached to it two tank companies to give him an armor punch, and would detach two of his own infantry companies so that they could be sent elsewhere to round out an armor battalion as a similarly tailored task force. Moreover, he would be given the most modern of equipment to work with, the M1 Abrams tank and the M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle.

  That concerned Always a bit since he had made a career out of avoiding what was known as “heavy” forces. Showing a studied disdain for any soldiers who depended on machines to transport themselves, he had thus avoided the headaches that come with meshing men and machines in the business of soldiering. He once had been the executive officer of an airborne company, and the organizational procedures it had taken to keep the two jeeps operating had been maddening. With that experience under his belt, he had become convinced that there was no way he wanted to deal with the more than 200 tracked and wheeled vehicles found in a mechanized battalion. He would now be commanding two mechanized infantry companies, two armor companies, a mechanized antitank company, a reconnaissance platoon, and a mechanized heavy mortar platoon, as well as a maintenance element of more than 100 mechanics and heavy equipment operators, all supported by yet another platoon with a myriad of supply and fuel trucks. To make matters worse, all kinds of attachments would further stretch his span of control—engineers, artillery coordination teams, air defense soldiers, and air force liaison—each of them with their own particular items of equipment that needed to be supplied, repaired, fueled, and operated. If this wasn’t hell, then it certainly was a nightmare.

  “Command Sergeant Major, what kind of soldiers will I have?”

  “Sir, let me assure you that you will have the normal type of soldiers you are used to, which means very good ones.” The American army had always been blessed with capable soldiers, making a mockery of the claim—that so many of her foes delighted in rendering—that they were products of a soft and undisciplined society and could only crumble under the trials and sufferings of combat. “But like in any unit, sir, they will only be as good as you can let them be. Your staff knows the essentials of its job; your men are physically fit, dedicated, and technically competent; and none of them is reluctant to work hard. I assure you that the raw material is there, and I might add that the equipment, all of which postdate my own time on earth, is pretty good. Like always, though, how you put them all together will be the critical determinant in the overall fitness of the unit.”

  “Sergeant Major, what is their status? I mean, are they alive, or are they like me?”

  “Colonel, they are just like you, here for a while until they can prove themselves and move on to a higher reward. As soldiers they haven’t exactly been saints during their time on earth, but then again they have been a pretty decent bunch of guys. The Chief keeps a high set of standards, and although He’s got a real soft spot for soldiers, He does have to let them work off their little faults. That’s where you come in. You can help them, and they will help you. When you both get it right, you can expect to move on.”

  “You mean that how long I, rather we, stay here in Purgatory is dependent on what we do?”

  “Yes, sir, exactly. The plan is really quite simple. You are to take command of the task force, commit it to battle against a well-trained enemy, and when you and your soldiers have defeated them you can turn in your equipment and move on.”

  Always turned the thought over in his mind. Things were not so bad after all. He was a professional soldier, and he had often been put to the test, both in actual combat and in years of peacetime training. Surely he could figure it all out pretty quickly and be on his way. He had done it before, and he would do it again.

  As if anticipating his thoughts, the sergeant added, “There are a couple of hitches though, and it could be a little tougher than you think. First of all, the enemy plays by a different set of rules. You see, they’ve been here a while, the little devils. This is their turf, so to speak, and they know every nook and cranny out there. Furthermore, they get a break on resupply, rest, recovery, and reconstitution. They also don’t get the visibility that you do.”

  “What do you mean by ‘visibility’?” Always asked.

  “Well, sir, since they aren’t working toward the immediate goal of getting out of this place and on to better things, there’s really no need to scrutinize their way of doing things beyond whether or not they’ve roughed you up in a fight. So none of the evaluators spend any time criticizing their techniques, double guessing their methods of operations, or otherwise adding torment to their condition.”

  “Evaluators? You mean I get evaluators? I thought that was what you were, Command Sergeant Major.” Always was perplexed.

  “Oh no, sir, I’m your task force sergeant major, like I said before, the only volunteer down here, and your guide through this ordeal. It’s not my place to evaluate you. It never was in life, and I’m certainly too old to start doing that sort of thing now. But I can give you advice every now and then, when you care to hear it. That’s why I volunteered for this job. Heaven’s a nice place and all, but they never have any crises up there ever since Luther and the fallen angels got kicked out, and us sergeants major, well we kind of thrive on crises. So here I am.”

  “And the evaluators?”

  “Well, perhaps I shouldn’t call them evaluators. They are officially known as ‘observers.’ They kind of watch you and help to point out the error of your ways. You’ll meet them soon enough. Nasty bunch, if I do say so myself. Must have been particularly rotten in life. They’ll show up en masse as soon as you get your operations orders, follow you everywhere you go, say disparaging things to you, talk badly about you over their radios, and render a report as to how you did. The only saving grace is that they’re being evaluated too, and if you don’t show any improvement, well then it gets sticky for them. Some have even been bounced out of here to a lower level, like recruiting duty. But one thing is for sure, their time down here is much longer than yours, so don’t expect much sympathy from them. As to their ‘observations,’ well, think of them as hometown judges in an away fight. If you don’t knock out your opponent, don’t expect anything better than a draw, and that only if you creamed the other guy.”

  Always began to feel a little ill.

  “One other thing while I’m telling you all the bad news. They have a superb electronic setup down here. Everything you say over the radio will be recorded so you can’t deny you said it later, and everything you do will be filmed so that your most ridiculous moments can be played back for all to see. At any time you can expect every
body and his brother to be eavesdropping on you, offering their views as to how incompetent you are, spreading disparaging rumors, and unequivocally stating they could do it better.”

  “Sergeant Major, that doesn’t even sound decent. It sounds like the only escape I’ll get from all this misery is when I’m sleeping.”

  “That’s the hell of it, sir. You won’t be sleeping down here. Oh, you will be told to get some sleep, in fact you will be seriously chastised for not developing a ‘sleep plan.’ But if you should ever get some sleep, the observers will devise a scheme to wake you up so they can point out how things fell apart while you were sleeping. After that they will point out how things fell apart because you didn’t get any sleep.”

  Always groaned and the conversation drifted off as they made the last leg of the journey up from Langford Lake (dry as a bone) to the outer ring of Purgatory known as the Dust Bowl.

  The scene was utter bedlam. Thousands of troops were hurrying to and fro, jumbled up amidst countless vehicles, their diesel engines making horrendous noises, filling the already hot, stifling air with ever more hot and noxious fumes. Dust and sand blew every which way, pelting the soldiers’ faces, covering them with a gray mask from which protruded sun-blistered noses and chapped and peeling lips. Red-rimmed eyes revealed an intensity of purpose forlornly trapped in hopeless frustration.

  “What’s going on here, Sergeant Major?”

  “This is the equipment draw, sir. The battalions reporting in are being issued their vehicles. For several days the troops are indoctrinated to the hellishness of this place. They bivouac here in this flat, open expanse where there’s no shelter from sun, wind, sand, or dust and spend their waking moments at the mercy of the ghouls who issue the equipment. The latter are a particularly nasty lot who cajole the men into drawing badly worn equipment, telling them that it’s really in good condition. The catch, though, is that they make them sign for it with terms that they can never leave this place unless it’s returned in the good order in which it is drawn. Of course, the condition when drawn is overstated, so that the possibility of ever getting it to the stated condition is remote.”