by Tom Kratman
Do I seem unsympathetic? Look, I was a woman serving in a combat organization where there were no men to take up the slack left by a pregnant woman. And I couldn’t.
* * *
Garcia was sometimes almost human to us. I don’t mean just to an individual; I mean to us as a group.
We had movies, some nights, when we were out on one of the ranges. No, we never got to see a movie we really wanted to see. As a matter of fact, if they showed us one, it was almost a sure thing that it would be something we really, really didn’t want to see.
One I remember, in particular, began with a horrifying landing on a hostile beach. They didn’t even show us the entire thing; just the first thirty minutes or so. It made me sick; and I wasn’t the only one.
Garcia had the projector shut off about the time that someone began to throw up noisily. I didn’t blame her; the sight of a man carrying his own ripped off arm in one hand while he tried to continue attacking was just too much.
Garcia stood in front. Of us he asked, “What do you suppose it takes; to do something like those men did?”
Marta stood to attention and answered, “Being dropped on a hostile beach with no way back and no choice, Centurion.”
“Bullshit. Sit down, Bugatti.” She sat.
“Women are supposed to be more emotional, less logical and rational, than men. Is it true, Trujillo?”
Inez stood and answered, “Centurion, I don’t know how we’ve managed to pull off that little piece of propaganda for so long. It’s a bald-faced lie. Oh, sure, we can get away with showing our emotions more readily than men do, as readily as we feel like, as a matter of fact, without anyone thinking worse of us for it. Proves nothing. Truth is, we can be, and usually are, damned coldhearted bitches, very logical and very rational.”
I thought that was kind of funny, coming from Inez. If there was anybody in the platoon you could count on not to be a coldhearted bitch, it was generally her…or Cat.
“ ‘Very logical, very rational,’ ” Garcia parroted. “Shouldn’t a soldier be rational, Trujillo? Better yet, you…Fuentes. Shouldn’t you be rational?”
“I…I don’t know, Centurion.”
“Fair enough. A soldier should be rational, some would say. Up to a point, sure. But ‘a rational army would run away.’ ” He paused, meditatively. “Okay, that’s not quite right. A rational ‘army’ might not run away. An army entirely composed of completely rational soldiers, however, surely would. Go back to that movie. Did it make sense for those men to get off those boats under fire, then stay in the line of battle, with death or mutilation staring them in the face every second, when there was a perfectly rational alternative, namely surrendering as fast as they could; hiding, at least? Maybe refusing to even get on the boats?”
“It must have, Centurion, to them, at the time.”
Gloria added, “Centurion, a few days ago you told us that an army that runs suffers more loss than an army that stands and fights.”
“Yes, Santiago. And it’s true. If an army does run its losses will probably be greater than if it had stood fast. But they’ll be greater among those who were slower in deciding to run, and slower in running. A really rational soldier, in a really rational army, knowing his or her comrades are also more or less rational, knowing they’ll run at some point—and probably sooner rather than later—is left with only one choice, to run first and let the enemy kill the others so he or she will have time to get away.”
Inez stood up again. “But they usually don’t, Centurion. Why not?”
“Men usually don’t,” he corrected, “because being relatively irrational and knowing their comrades are as well, they can afford to wait a little. Almost any man or woman might make the decision to run. Normal men will wait longer, irrationally long. Often they’ll stick it out long enough to win over the soldiers of an army that are just that much more rational than they are.”
He sent us to bed then.
* * *
How were they going to make us usefully irrational? Garcia and Franco took care of it in three ways. First, they ran out anybody who was notably selfish, or even notably less than selfless. We had twice monthly peer evaluations. The cadre actually took into account our views on each other. If enough of us marked another woman down as deficient, she generally didn’t have long left in the unit. Getting “knocked up” more than once, and then only with really good reason, usually meant a ticket home…out of the tercio, anyway.
The other way was subtle. That it was also fairly vicious goes without saying. It revolved around food.
Sometimes Garcia would issue the food for the next day—maybe one hundred and fifty pounds worth—to four or five of us. He would forbid anyone else to so much as touch the rations, it all belonged to the ones selected. We weren’t allowed to break it down or help carry it. So if the rest of us were going to eat, a few girls had to put themselves through hell, lugging our food…selflessly.
Garcia gave those girls an exemption from the peer evaluations for a while so they could throw the food away, some of it or all of it, if they weren’t willing to carry it.
The other way was meaner still. He would occasionally chop off food for a day or two, then issue double or triple rations to those who had performed well, none to those who had done poorly. He did not make us share. In fact, he told us not to, making the point stick once by withdrawing the rations from a girl he caught sharing.
Well, we shared our food anyway, on the sly, and he smirked behind our backs, I strongly suspect.
The point? When someone who is famished will still, irrationally, share food with you or carry it for you, there is a better reason to believe that same someone won’t run out on you when the bullets start flying.
It was really rather clever, all things considered. Still, we figured out how to deal with it until Garcia made resort to an even nastier variant on the trick.
We were standing in formation one morning (you might be surprised how much time you can spend just standing around, in the military), all of us ready to head for the horizon. We really weren’t looking forward to it, especially as some nasty brand of influenza had been making the rounds of the island and many of us were sick.
Franco called the platoon to attention, then turned around to make the morning report to Garcia. “Centurion, all present or accounted for.”
Garcia ordered, “Post!” Franco marched to a place behind the platoon. ( My eyes were locked dead ahead. It wasn’t until some months later that I discovered where, precisely, it was that a junior marched to when the leader called, “Post.”)
Garcia then ordered the platoon to open ranks. Once we had, he sauntered along each rank, never saying a word but looking at each of us intently. Sometimes, as with me, he’d feel a forehead for temperature. After he had finished with the last rank he ordered us to close up again.
“Ladies,” he began. He usually called us “twats,” or “cunts,” or “bitches.” I had a feeling that “ladies” was going to turn out a lot worse. “Ladies, I have here six cases of rations. This is, as I’m sure you’re aware, your entire ration for the next two days.” He stopped, somewhat melodramatically. “Privates Nuñez, Galindo, and Miranda, you are to carry two cases each…unless some other should volunteer to carry those two cases in your stead. Without any help from anyone else.”
He had named the three weakest and sickest among us, the bastard.
“Fall in prepared to march in five minutes. Fall out.”
We fell into a sort of gaggle. Isabel Galindo said weakly, “I’ll carry my own. Take care of Lara and Edi.” Little Trujillo looked Galindo up and down carefully, then nodded and said, “I’ll carry Edi’s. Who’ll take care of Lara’s?”
Marta spoke just before Cat did. “I will.”
Cat said, “Dear, I’m in better shape than you. Let me.”
“Maybe so, Catarina. But I’m still stronger. It’s mine.”
I think my faith that these were women I could count on in a pinch went up
a notch right about then.
* * *
We discovered some other interesting things about ourselves, too. There’s an old saying: Women have no friends, only rivals. It ranks, for truthfulness, right up there with an equivalent man’s saying: Never introduce your girlfriend and your best friend. Truth, but maybe not the whole and universal truth.
Because there on the island, with no men to compete over, we did develop into real friends, some of us.
Have you never noticed how women of merely moderate attractiveness will often gravitate around the leadership of the really beautiful ones? (Maybe that’s not true in every country, but it’s true enough in mine.) And the beautiful ones will be glad to have the merely pretty ones around, because it makes them look even more beautiful by comparison. You might wonder what’s in it for the merely pretty. Simplicity itself: They get a little glamour and if they want they can have the cast-offs. I wonder if men will ever realize that the human race is just one big experiment in selective breeding run, since inception, entirely by us.
We didn’t work that way, though. Who’s beautiful when her head is shaved, she’s covered with mud, wearing rags, and stinks? Who’s beautiful without men to admire her? Nobody. So who takes charge? Those who have an ability that’s based on more than looks.
Not everybody got the message right away. I only did, myself, after getting some help from a friend.
* * *
“Centurion. Private Fuentes, Maria; reporting as ordered.”
“At ease. Private.” Garcia stood in front of me and looked me up and down, carefully, like a surgeon inspecting a diseased organ. Then, without any warning at all he slapped me, right across the face, hard enough to knock me to the floor.
“On your feet. At ease… Why do you suppose I did that, Fuentes?”
Though I’d managed to get to my feet, and automatically back to attention, I was literally speechless. I didn’t answer.
“I asked a question, Private.”
I started to blubber, “I don’t know, Centurion.”
“All right…maybe you really are dense. Your file says no but…you could be. I’ll help you. What did I just do?”
“You hit me.” For no reason, you bastard. Piedras, at least, had reasons.
“Did it hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Does it still hurt?”
I had to answer, “No, it doesn’t…not as much anyway.”
“Good…good. Now think back a bit. This morning, Santiago dumped a handful of sand and rocks down your drawers. Almost everybody laughed at you. I saw it. Did that hurt then?”
“A little…Centurion.”
“Does it still hurt?”
“Yes…Centurion.”
“What hurts more; your face from my slapping you, or your insides from Santiago’s being shitty to you?”
I took too long about my answer; he knocked me down again, then picked me up, one handed, and set me on my feet.
“Do you recall when…what was that cunt’s name…oh, yes, Ramirez. Do you recall when Ramirez made fun of you for being such a midget?”
I remembered…too well. Again, almost the whole platoon had laughed at me. That still hurt.
He let me stand for a bit, then asked, “What hurts you more now?”
He was raising a hand already when I blurted out the answer, “That does! Ramirez and Santiago.”
“Very good, Fuentes. You can make value judgments.”
Then he grew quiet, contemplative for a while. “What I’m trying to show you, Fuentes…to drive into your little recruit pea brain…is that physical pain goes away fairly quickly. It isn’t always something to be avoided. But pains of the heart? They last and last. I want you to leave now and think about this: If you cannot stand up for yourself, you do not have what it takes to stand up for your regiment or your country. Dismissed.”
I thought, still think, that I was about to be booted. I left there feeling absolutely miserable. It wasn’t enough, it seemed, just to follow orders. I wasn’t good enough. I was going to be washed out. Too weak. Too accommodating. Too…cowardly. No good. Worthless. A poor woman and a poor mother. A failure…failure…failure.
I can’t even find the words to tell you how much that hurt.
* * *
There are six leadership positions for the recruits in a training platoon, recruit platoon leader, recruit platoon optio, and four squad leaders. The cadre rotated them every few days to a week, or—more typically—until you screwed up badly enough to be relieved.
Gloria was the seventh or eighth one to fill the platoon leader’s slot in my platoon. When Centurion Garcia announced her name I would almost swear she had an orgasm. Power does that to some women; some men, too, I understand.
I didn’t pay a lot of attention to Gloria, though. I was getting ready to pack my bags, emotionally if not in fact. I was sitting on Marta’s bunk, the lower one, contemplating my misery while looking at a picture of the child I was failing.
“Fuentes, go clean the latrine,” she said to me one day after we had been allowed to move back to the Quonset huts.
I didn’t answer her, just kept staring at my one picture of Alma.
“Fuentes, you nasty little puke, go clean the latrine.”
I’d had that duty the day before. Curiously, none of Gloria’s favorites had pulled anything nasty since she’d taken over. Without thinking, I said, “Stuff it up your ass, bitch.”
Now if Marta had told me, or Inez Trujillo, I’d have done it, even in the mental state I was in. For one thing, neither of them—nor probably any of the other girls—would have spared her special friends.
She walked up to me as if she wanted to paste me. I ignored her. But then she pulled my picture of Alma from my hands, tearing it.
I tell you, I saw red. It must have shown on my face because Gloria started to back up. She never got far enough away. I sprang to my feet and punched her first, right in the solar plexus. Good training tells. She went ass-down to the floor, gasping like a beached fish. But I didn’t stop. I kicked her with booted feet five or six more times. As she fell back completely onto the floor and tried to twist away, I kicked her in the kidneys, just as I’d been trained. She didn’t have enough air in her lungs to scream, though her face contorted as if she were trying. Another kick rolled her onto her belly. Then I jumped on her back.
Marta and Inez pulled me off of her after about the fifth time I smashed her face onto the concrete floor.
When Garcia came in he took one look, gave Gloria and myself both three days bread and water, then relieved her and appointed me the next platoon leader.
I cannot tell you precisely why, not even now, but I felt good. I mean really, really good after that. It felt so great that I laughed for long enough that the others began to look at me strangely.
I lasted as platoon leader for five days, which was about average. I might have done better if I hadn’t been so damned hungry.
* * *
We marched or ran pretty much everywhere we went. The only time we rode trucks or buses was when there wasn’t time to walk. You may think that was hard on us. Sometimes it was.
Other times, though, times when we didn’t have to carry anyone else’s gear, or had time enough that the pace was more like a regular walk, it was positively enjoyable. We sang: “…If I can’t get a man then I’ll surely get a parrot, and it’s oh, dear me, how would it be, if I died an old maid…” Or maybe “John Henry” or “Todo por la Patria.” Sometimes more warlike songs, too: “…In the streets of the City, the enemy’s falling, and trixies are crying out, ‘arriba Patria’.” We had a bunch of really dirty songs, too, but I won’t repeat them.
Another song we were very fond of was an old, old one. I understand it came here from Old Earth and somehow managed to survive and stay in currency over the centuries, maybe with some changes here and there. It was “Apoyate,” to the extent that these songs even have titles. Sometimes, when our tails were really dragging on a long run,
Marta, Cristina or one of the other, stronger, girls would jump out of the formation and begin to sing, “Call for the tercio, we’ll give you a hand…”
It can really pick you up, when you hear a couple of hundred other human voices crying out, “Apoyate, when you’re not stro-ong, mi hermanita, I’ll help you carry on…”
It makes you wonder, sometimes, about how much of physical strength is really mental attitude. Anyway, that was a private song. We never sang it where men, outside of our instructors, could hear us. It was only for each girl to strengthen every other…because we never knew just when anyone of us might need a little help.
Still, for me, my greatest help was the thought of a little girl back in the city who needed me to succeed.
* * *
The singing was fun. But if you didn’t want to join in, usually nobody made you. You could be together on a march, but you could also be alone if you wanted, even in the company of a couple of hundred sisters. And the cadre generally didn’t harass us on the march, so long as we kept up. I think—no, I know—that that was so we would learn to like to march.
And, once your feet, shoulders and back toughened up, there was so much to see and hear on a march.
Once, about halfway through a twenty kilometer hump, I heard a sort of…buzzing from the ranks in front of me. I didn’t know what it was until I turned a curve and saw it: A waterfall landing in a grove so green I may never see its like again, the water laughing as it splashed on the rocks at its base. A pair of green, gray, and red trixies—gorgeous things—sat on a rock next to the pool, preening themselves.
You know, it’s easier to love your country when your country really is beautiful.
One time, I remember too, we marched past a group of young men who were probably about halfway through their own training cycle. Hairless, smelly, and dirty as we were, they still watched us march by with the expressions of a group of starving tigers, looking in a butcher shop window.