Zim said: “Sir, I request transfer to a combat team.”
Frankel answered: “I can’t hear you, Charlie. My tin ear is bothering me again.”
Zim: “I’m quite serious, sir. This isn’t my sort of duty.”
Frankel said testily, “Quit bellyaching your troubles to me, Sergeant. At least wait until we’ve disposed of duty matters. What in the world happened?”
Zim said stiffly, “Captain, that boy doesn’t rate ten lashes.”
Frankel answered, “Of course he doesn’t. You know who goofed—and so do I.”
“Yes, sir. I know.”
“Well? You know even better than I do that these kids are wild animals at this stage. You know when it’s safe to turn your back on them and when it isn’t. You know the doctrine and the standing orders about article nine-oh-eight-oh [the article forbidding officers from striking superiors]—you must never give them a chance to violate it. Of course some of them are going to try it—if they weren’t aggressive they wouldn’t be material for the M.I. They’re docile in ranks; it’s safe enough to turn your back when they’re eating, or sleeping, or sitting on their tails and being lectured. But get them out in the field in a combat exercise, or anything that gets them keyed up and full of adrenaline, and they’re as explosive as a hatful of mercury fulminate. You know that, all you instructors know that; you’re trained—trained to watch for it, trained to snuff it out before it happens. Explain to me how it was possible for an untrained recruit to hang a mouse on your eye? He should never have laid a hand on you; you should have knocked him cold when you saw what he was up to. So why weren’t you on the bounce? Are you slowing down?”
“I don’t know,” Zim answered slowly. “I guess I must be.”
“Hmm! If true, a combat team is the last place for you. But it’s not true. Or wasn’t true the last time you and I worked out together, three days ago. So what slipped?”
Zim was slow in answering. “I think I had him tagged in my mind as one of the safe ones.”
“There are no such.”
“Yes, sir. But he was so earnest, so doggedly determined to sweat it out—he didn’t have any aptitude but he kept on trying—that I must have done that, subconsciously.” Zim was silent, then added, “I guess it was because I liked him.”
Frankel snorted. “An instructor can’t afford to like a man.”
“I know it, sir. But I do. They’re a nice bunch of kids. We’ve dumped all the real twerps by now—Hendrick’s only shortcoming, aside from being clumsy, was that he thought he knew all the answers. I didn’t mind that; I knew it all at that age myself. The twerps have gone home and those that are left are eager, anxious to please, and on the bounce—as cute as a litter of collie pups. A lot of them will make soldiers.” “So that was the soft spot. You liked him . . . so you failed to clip him in time. So he winds up with a court and the whip and a B.C.D. (bad conduct discharge). Sweet.”
Zim said earnestly, “I wish to heaven there were some way for me to take that flogging myself, sir.”
“You’d have to take your turn, I outrank you. What do you think I’ve been wishing the past hour? What do you think I was afraid of from the moment I saw you come in here sporting a shiner? I did my best to brush it off with administrative punishment and the young fool wouldn’t let well enough alone. But I never thought he would be crazy enough to blurt it out that he’d hung one on you—he’s stupid; you should have eased him out of the outfit weeks ago . . . instead of nursing him along until he got into trouble.
....
“My fault, Captain. That’s why I want to be transferred. Uh, sir, I think it’s best for the outfit.”
“You do, eh? But I decide what’s best for my battalion, not you, Sergeant. Charlie, who do you think pulled your name out of the hat? And why? Think back twelve years. You were a corporal, remember? Where were you?”
“Here, as you know quite well, Captain. Right here on this same godforsaken prairie—and I wish I had never come back to it!”
“Don’t we all. But it happens to be the most important and the most delicate work in the Army—turning unspanked young cubs into soldiers. Who was the worst unspanked young cub in your section?”
“Mmm . . .” Zim answered slowly. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say you were the worst, Captain.”
“You wouldn’t, eh? But you’d have to think hard to name another candidate. I hated your guts, ‘Corporal’ Zim.”
Zim sounded surprised, and a little hurt. “You did, Captain? I didn’t hate you—I rather liked you.”
“So? Well, ‘hate’ is the other luxury an instructor can never afford. We must not hate them, we must not like them; we must teach them. But if you liked me then—mmm, it seemed to me that you had very strange ways of showing it. Do you still like me? Don’t answer that; I don’t care whether you do or not—or, rather, I don’t want to know, whichever it is. Never mind; I despised you then and I used to dream about ways to get you. But you were always on the bounce and never gave me a chance to buy a nine-oh-eight-oh court of my own. So here I am, thanks to you. Now to handle your request: You used to have one order that you gave to me over and over again when I was a boot. I got so I loathed it almost more than anything else you did or said. Do you remember it? I do and now I’ll give it back to you: ‘Soldier, shut up and soldier!’”
“Yes, sir.”
....
“I want [the instructors] to be eight times as cautious as they have been. I want them to keep their distance, I want them to have eyes in the backs of their heads. I want them to be as alert as a mouse at a cat show. Bronski—you have a special word with Bronski; he has a tendency to fraternize.”
“I’ll straighten Bronski out, sir.”
“See that you do. Because when the next kid starts swinging, it’s got to be stop-punched—not muffed, like today. The boy has got to be knocked cold and the instructor must do so without ever being touched himself—or I’ll damned well break him for incompetence. Let them know that. They’ve got to teach those kids that it’s not merely expensive but impossible to violate nine-oh-eight-oh . . . that even trying it wins a short nap, a bucket of water in the face, and a very sore jaw—and nothing else.”
“Yes, sir. It’ll be done.”
“It had better be done. I will not only break the instructor who slips, I will personally take him ’way out on the prairie and give him lumps . . . because I will not have another one of my boys strung up to that whipping post through sloppiness on the part of his teachers. Dismissed.”
