by Tom Kratman
“In time, as we recruit and train more women, the platoons will expand to maniples, then the maniples to cohorts. Shortly after that point I—or more likely my successor—will pick the tercio commander and some of her key staff. That’s when you all will see the last of Gorgidas, except maybe on parade or in the field. Your tercio will owe a great debt to Gorgidas when you are finally able to pay it.”
One of my sisters raised a hand and stood to attention. “How long will that be, sir?”
“About ten years, I think. Though you here in this classroom can expect to assume the rank and duties of centurions in a much shorter time. If recruiting and training keeps up as it has been, there should be enough Amazons for you to take over platoon centurion and platoon leader positions within, maybe, two years; at least for full mobilizations. Most of you can expect to be first centurions or cohort sergeants major within five years or so.
“For whatever it’s worth, no man could expect such rapid promotion. Then again, after you fill the big positions, things will slow down radically for the women who follow behind you.
“There’s one other thing before I go. Even though you won’t be able to wear your rank for a while, and even though we’ll pay you at the rank you wear, the benefits you were promised for coming as far as you have already will be yours, for schooling and such. What the hell, there’s a little extra money in the budget.” His face took on a contemplative look. “For that, and some other things.”
He turned to go, but turned back suddenly. “I guess there is one other thing. I’m damned proud of all of you.” Then he left.
* * *
We had a lot of combat leadership training and under circumstances where we were a lot more conscious than in Cazador School. We had, as mentioned, some lectures. The gist of one of those has stayed with me through the years, possibly because it was very near graduation. We were talking about motivators that affect a soldier at different times and levels.
Though it was billed on the training schedule as a lecture, it fact it was a discussion. Martinez led it. We were far enough along that it really was a discussion, too. Martinez and the others had accepted that we really were going to be equal. It made a difference in how they acted towards us. The level of formality dropped quite a bit. One measure of that is that he held the discussion not in a classroom, but at the club, over drinks.
Martinez passed me a beer; I went to find a seat. He grabbed his own drink, a dark amber sipping rum of some kind, then walked to the table he’d had set up for us. It was actually two big tables, placed long ends against each other, and covered with a white tablecloth. It didn’t have any flowers, but then we weren’t all that flowery a force.
At the table he took a seat. “Why are you all here?” he asked, then added, “No, don’t answer. It was rhetorical. A lot of you probably think you’re here for reasons of patriotism. Some may think you’re here for narrow self-interest or family interest.”
I thought that last pretty much described me but Martinez shook his head, doubtfully.
“You know,” he said, “it really doesn’t work that way. Altruistic patriotism, or even factors of narrow self-interest, may get a civilian to volunteer to become a soldier. When the going gets tough, however, as it does in war—or basic training in preparation for war—patriotism and self-interest become very, very weak motivators. What do you suppose keeps them at it then, Candidate Zamora?”
“Fear of punishment, Sergeant Major?” she answered, uncertainly, one finger twirling a short lock of her pretty red hair. “That certainly helped me get through Basic; at least initially.”
Martinez gave a rare chuckle. “Not if they’re worth a shit, it doesn’t. Oh, sure, sometimes, early on, we apply a little bit of the stick to help someone over a hurdle. But if they haven’t acquired the ability—better say, the character—to go on, all on their own, by the time they finish Basic, they’re pretty useless. There’s nothing too awful that we can do to them that the enemy can’t do more of, and worse. If they’re that afraid of what little we do, how can they ever have the strength to resist what the enemy can do?”
Another candidate asked, “Pride, Sergeant Major?”
“Close,” he said. “Pride helps, but there’s something more powerful.”
I was willing to give it a shot, and I thought I knew the answer. “Shame, Sergeant Major.”
Now he really did smile. “Precisely. The young soldier in Basic is ashamed to go home a failure. If it wasn’t for that, our failure rate would be intolerable. There are some differences between men and women in this, however.
“One: A prospective Amazon is doing something no one expects of her, and which most people will feel is beyond her. So what shame is in it for her if she quits? Two: For the immediately foreseeable future your new recruits will have to be trained by men. I have read a report from your training cadre which suggests very strongly that you are relatively immune to being shamed by men, though you are quite good at shaming each other. This is something that probably can’t be fixed until there are enough of you with enough experience to take over running basic combat training for your own tercio. That’s one reason, the main one, actually, that more fear was used for a longer time in your basic training. I suspect strongly that when you all can run your own Basic, you’ll actually be able to lighten it up, and produce a better soldier because of it.
“In any case, shame—maybe with a little admixture of fear and pride—gets the soldier through Basic. What keeps him in the line under fire?”
Someone answered, “Love, Sergeant Major.”
“Yes. But not just any old love. It has to be love of the group. If it’s not, if it’s the love of just one, then the only logical thing to do is hit the one you love over the head and drag them away from danger.”
“Sergeant Major,” I said, “the Tercio Gorgidas is made of what you just said couldn’t work in battle, pairs of lovers. They are some tough hombres.”
He nodded his head. “I know. That bugs me a little, too. It might work, if they can figure out how to have both loves. I’ll tell you, too, that I think Duque Carrera made a mistake turning them into infantry.”
I asked why.
“Because if they fight as infantry their casualties are going to be pretty random. That’s how battle is these days. Nearly every dead Gorgidas trooper is also going to mean another one who’s just lost everything he cares about. Some are going to be morally crushed by that. Others are going to go wild. Carrera should have made them tankers, or—better—light tankers, in Ocelots crewed by pairs of pairs. That way the poor bastards could live or die together. Now? If we changed them to tanks I think they’d be insulted. And they’re adults. If they’re willing to take the risk, who am I to complain?”
Getting back to the subject, he continued, “So love of comrades keeps soldiers on the battle line. All the sociologists seem to agree. And patriotism counts for little or nothing in battle. What’s the trap? I gave you a small hint.”
Zamora answered, “I…suspect, Sergeant Major, that after a while you get tired of seeing your friends die.”
He answered as if he knew. “Yes…yes, you do. This is especially true when you can’t understand why they have to die…”
I had a sudden blinding flash of the obvious. “It has to be worth it, doesn’t it, Sergeant Major?”
He nodded very seriously. “Yes. The cause has to justify the expense. And that brings us right back to…patriotism. Maybe no one really fights for their country. But if they really don’t believe in or care about their country, the time will come when they won’t fight at all.”
* * *
We saw Carrera one last time at Camp Spurius Ligustinus. He came to present us our regimental eagle at graduation.
Of course, the eagle really belonged to the entire tercio—commissioned officers, centurions, warrant officers, sergeants, corporals, privates and discharged veterans alike. But it exists in a special relationship with a tercio’s centurions. Officers come and
go. They spend more time away from the eagle on higher level staffs and in school. They also have to think more about those higher units and sister tercios. Sometimes they even get sent to a different regiment, if it comes from an area that has trouble producing officer material.
Centurions almost never leave their tercio, certainly never more than a few years in a career. We may go run basic training, or do recruiting, but even those are just different parts of the unit.
You can get very attached to the symbols of your home, tribe or country, when you never really leave those symbols. Most armies seem to have forgotten this. We haven’t.
You’ve seen a tercio eagle, of course: metal plated bird of prey—a stylized harpy eagle, if you didn’t know—with wings upstretched as if for takeoff, the bird itself on a carved wooden perch and the perch attached to a spiral-carved seven-foot pole, with the pole decorated with awards and honors. Pretty, no? I don’t think you can imagine how beautiful it is to one of us, as long as it’s our own. The silver cohort eagles are nice, too, of course, but they’re not quite the same.
Carrera and Martinez both made speeches. Carrera spoke of the eagle and the nation; Martinez of the role and sacred duty of the centurion. Then we marched, single file, across the stage. As we did, Carrera and Martinez shook each sister’s hand and passed us our batons.
I took mine and stepped off the stage. Once at floor level I looked it it, held in both my hands and felt something course through me I don’t think I’d ever felt before and still don’t have words for. It was more than just pride, though.
Interlude
On the surface the governments of the Tauran Union and Balboa were really quite alike. Both were apparently federal democracies, though Federalism was waxing in Balboa even as it waned in Taurus under the continuous assault of semi-aristocratic bureaucrats who were beyond the rules and beyond control. Both had three branches of government with the legislature being bicameral; which is to say, split into two. Balboa also had a sort of popular assembly which had the power to nullify any legislative acts and reviewed most of them. Both had written constitutions and both were ruled in accordance with law, though since the bureaucrats of the Tauran Union made most of the law to suit themselves, this was a marginal similarity.
In theory, the Taurans could use military conscription. In practice they didn’t. In theory, Balboa did use it, though still not in practice.
An election in Balboa was probably more dignified. An election in the Taurus certainly involved more citizens. This was unsurprising as, since the Revolution, relatively few Balboans were allowed to vote. Most of them could have, of course, had they just complied with their draft notices and the law. It was their choice, whether or not to assume all the responsibilities of citizenship.
The centuriate assembly began with a parade, of sorts, on a flat area of mowed grass not far from the Mar Furioso. Second Tercio, including its cadets and discharged and retired veterans, marched onto the parade field to the regimental pipes and drums. The tune was “Boinas Azules Cruzan la Frontera.” The oldsters came first, in centuries, followed by the still serving men and women, in their maniples, then the cadets. The mass formed up in blocks in three lines; the retired and discharged in front, their centuries well spaced out, then the main tercio behind. The cadets formed up to the rear.
At the last note of the pipes, the drums flourished. That was the signal for the former troops of the first line to sound off with, “We once were young and brave and strong.” Immediately after, the main tercio shouted, much, much louder, “And we’re so now, come on and try.” The thousand or so junior cadets, half their voices breaking, answered, “But we’ll be strongest, bye and bye.” Witnesses tried very hard not to smile at the boys’ breaking voices.
After some ceremonial legerdemain the colonel-in-chief of the tercio, a seventy-three year old retired tribune with a seat in the Senate, ordered, “Bring your units to open ranks. Stand by for inspection.”
While the serving regular cadre inspected the second line, the political leaders inspected the oldsters. This was more symbolic than real. All they checked for were that each voting member of a century present had his or her personally engraved, government issue pistol, rifle, light machine gun, or submachine gun, that they were serviceable and clean, and that the oldsters carried a full load of ammunition. The firearms weren’t needed, of course, at the election; the Tercio Amazona was pulling security for the affair. (It didn’t have any voters, yet.) If the inspection had a purpose, it was to reaffirm the truth that political power grew from the barrel of a gun.
They stacked all arms prior to beginning the vote, in any case. It was enough to know and to show that arms were there, to legitimize the vote if necessary.
Following the inspection, the few hundred officers and centurions were ordered out of the formation to form smaller blocks of their own. The troops and cadets were marched away under their sergeants. The centurions and officers remained mainly to answer questions and see to the care of the honorably discharged or retired.
The first order of business was a plebiscite on some few laws enacted by the legislature. This came in three parts, the first being on whether the bill was in understandably plain and unambiguous Spanish. If not, it was automatically rejected if enough centuries across the country agreed it was incomprehensible. The second was to identify which acts had annoyed someone enough to want to have them voted on, and the third the actual vote for any laws which had failed the second criteria. Laws which could not garner sufficient support of a majority of the nation’s political centuries were automatically overturned.
This was done by open roll call and voice vote; no secret ballot. There was a disadvantage to this, of course. It was a way for someone to ensure a bought vote stayed bought. It was felt, however, that there were some things a person ought to be ashamed to vote for.
Despite the name, the centuries had fewer than one hundred living members each. They had one hundred names, but that included the dead who had been accessed into the centuries early. Some of those dead hadn’t even graduated Basic but had been killed in training. Still, their names were there and the living voted, in effect, on their behalf. It hadn’t happened yet, but the day would surely come when one old man or woman, the last of his or her century, cast, in effect, one hundred votes.
Once the plebiscite was completed, the results were sent to the colonel-in-chief. It was his duty to report the votes by centuries to the national government.
Next there was an election for the “at-large” seats in the two legislative houses. These were reserved for discharged members of the legion who had earned certain awards for valor in battle. What that kind of courage had to do with good government may have been debated. Nonetheless, in forming their new constitution, Carrera and Parilla, and the legion’s chief ideologues, Jorge and Marqueli Mendoza, had thought that it was precisely the lack of courage that has made so many societies rotten from the top down.
After the at-large seats were voted on, the centuriate assembly voted on the local, which was to say, regimental seats. There were the usual speeches, none allowed to last longer than five minutes. Everybody who was voting knew everybody who was running, so it wasn’t obvious why they should waste much time.
Afterwards they had a great party, the leaders of the tercio and its voters.
Chapter Eleven
Cried all, “Before such things can come,
You idiotic child,
You must alter human nature!”
And they all sat back and smiled.
—Charlotte P. S. Gilman, “Similar Cases”
The problem is, Maria thought, sitting in the counselor’s office in a blank office building not far from the center of the City, that I really don’t know what I want to be when I grow up.
The legion was willing to help the Amazons to do or to learn to do almost anything for which they were qualified. A low interest loan to start a business? No problem. A beca, or scholarship, for higher education? Easy.
Any one of a number of jobs in the defense industry or government? Absolutely.
They could have anything, that is, if the needs of the country indicated an opening. Towards that end the counselor had given Maria and some others a battery of tests. The first set had been more concerned with what they might like to do than what they might be good at. These were followed by others designed to measure raw talent. Between the results of those two, the counselor and Maria finally decided that she could be a good teacher of elementary or high school children. For that she needed college.
Scribbling some notes on a pad, the counselor said, “Time won’t be that much of a problem. You spend what?…one full weekend a month, Friday night through Sunday night; a bit over two weeks annually training the militia…”
“Actually, sir,” Maria told him, “we aren’t big enough yet for a militia echelon. So we spend five to six weeks at year at the Centro de Entrenamiento Nacional; the big training facility, generally by maniples attached to one of the male infantry regiments.”
“Well then, no real change. That leaves a lot of time for education.”
“I suppose,” Maria answered doubtfully.
The counselor sighed, the sigh composed of equal parts of frustration and exasperation. “Others have done it,” he said. “You can, too.”
“It’s not what you think,” she said. Then she confessed, shamefaced, “But I didn’t even finish high school.”
“Ohhh,” he said. “So that’s it. You did, actually.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t you remember taking an equivalency test when you joined?”
“I remember a lot of tests,” she answered. “I don’t remember that.”
“Never mind,” the counselor said. “Trust me; you did. It says so right here in your record. Decent scores, too. And you already have some college credit from your military training; about two and a half semesters’ worth.”