"He's going to be pissed, Sarge."
"Right, but he won't do anything because for one thing it'll be all over and there won't be much point. Mostly though, he'll be embarrassed over his own butt hitting the ground and won't want everybody to know he didn't know all about it."
The recruit company filed into the steeply banked wooden bleachers and sat waiting without interest. The bleachers were arranged in a three-sided pattern, much like a square without a fourth side. The instructor stood in the middle where all could see.
Troop walked swiftly to the small speaker's platform in the open end of the hollow square of bleachers. Gil followed him, carrying a box of grenades. He placed the grenades carefully to one side and moved back out of sight behind the stands.
Lieutenant Lewis perched himself on a stack of practice grenade boxes that would be used later in the program. He too watched dully. There were too many classes. He found it hard to remember just which one this was supposed to be. As Sergeant Troop was the instructor, it didn't matter if he knew anyway. He yawned behind his hand and tried to look interested for the recruits' sake.
Troop introduced himself to the company and reached gently into the box of grenades. "Men, this is a live grenade. It is a fragmentation grenade. If the pin is pulled and the handle released it will explode in four and a half seconds and spray metal chunks over a wide area. This is the grenade you will use in Korea.
"Now, because you have been good, dependable men, I will pass this grenade among you. Feel it, weigh it in your hand but, and I emphasize, men, do not, repeat, do not touch the pin!" He handed the grenade to a recruit who took it gingerly and rather quickly passed it on to the next, whose hands trembled just a trifle.
Lieutenant Lewis had come awake and he twisted nervously on his seat of ammo boxes. He didn't go much for passing live hand grenades out to recruits. It wasn't done, usually, but he didn't want to interfere and Troop seemed to know what he was doing. He settled back, but more watchfully, and kept an eye on the live grenade being passed through the recruit company.
Finally the grenade had made the rounds and Troop asked that it be brought forward. A self-conscious recruit rose and carried the ugly brown object to the instructor.
Thanking the recruit, Troop held the grenade up for all to see. To the side, Lieutenant Lewis felt a mild sense of relief.
"Men, you have now all handled a live combat-ready grenade. You found it safe as long as you did not fool with it.
"As you know, the pin can be safely pulled as long as the handle is held down. I can pull the pin." Sergeant Troop pulled the pin, Lieutenant Lewis came up standing, and the recruits felt a nervous tingle. "And the grenade is safe as long as I keep the handle down." He held the grenade in one hand, the pin in the other.
Lewis wanted desperately for Troop to stop. The sergeant should never have pulled the pin on a grenade. It was a dangerous and foolish thing to do, but he dared not disturb Troop with an armed grenade in his hand. Oh, Jesus, if that thing went off . . .
Troop held the grenade aloft, then added, "Now if this handle were to snap off you would see a thin trail of smoke and hear a small pop. That pop and smoke tell you that the grenade will explode in four and a half seconds. The fragments will fly a great distance. They have been known to kill at one hundred yards. However, this grenade is safe as long as I hold the handle down.
"I will now reinsert the pin, making the grenade perfectly harmless,"
Lieutenant Lewis experienced intense relief as Troop brought his hands together to slip the pin back into its hole. He started to turn away when he saw the grenade bounce from Sergeant Troop's hands, he distinctly saw the still loose pin fall to one side and heard the pop of the arming fuse and saw Troop scrambling madly to grab the grenade and throw it to a safe distance, he saw smoke jetting from the burning fuse and Troop's boot strike the grenade rolling it from his clutching fingers and, with horror, he saw Troop turn and run desperately away from the smoking bomb.
Dimly, he heard someone shout, "Run for it!" There were other confused yells and the recruit company exploded from the stands. Helmet liners flew in all directions. One trainee jerked another down between himself and the explosive, holding his squalling, kicking captive with arms of steel.
Lieutenant Lewis heaved himself behind the stack of boxes on which he had been sitting, burying his face into the ground, and hoping the boxes would stop the fragments. Recruits streamed over and around him and one dove for cover beside him.
The time had been too long! The lieutenant suddenly realized it. Then he heard laughter. Gingerly he raised his head and through a still turbulent dust cloud he saw Troop stepping over sprawled recruits to pick up the now passive metal ball. Other enlisted cadre rolled on the ground with laughter. Some were prodding trainees onto their feet and back into the stands. Recruits were dusting themselves off and joining in the laughter.
With rising anger Lieutenant Lewis realized it had all been a hoax. The grenade had never been live. It had contained only the harmless fuse. He, like the recruits, had been taken unawares. He should have known Troop wouldn't hand out a real grenade.
Corporal Gilquist came by, herding a dozen or so recruits. "Jesus, did you ever see anybody move so fast, lieutenant? Some of these guys broke the world's hundred yard record, sure as hell!" The lieutenant smiled weakly.
Troop waited until helmets regained correct owners and some order had again settled into the stands. He looked around at the recruit-filled stands, catching as many eyes as he could. Then he held up his hand for silence and said, "Welcome back, trackmen!"
The stands rocked with laughter and applause. The simple joke had allowed everyone inside. Their eyes danced, some ruefully rubbed bruises; others shook their heads in mock wonder. They felt part of it all.
Troop continued, mixing laughs with information, reinforcing the fact that the fastest soldier couldn't outrun a grenade fragment but had to take cover as close to the ground as his buttons permitted, and that he'd enjoyed introducing such a good group of soldiers to hand grenades. He suggested they remember how long it took them to get out of range and next time find a fast hole.
When Troop dismissed the company to fall in on their stacked arms, the recruits applauded until the training cadre hustled them away with appropriate snarls and yells that to the recruits sounded far less insulting than they had an hour before.
Lieutenant Lewis listened to Troop's closing remarks with mixed emotions. He still smarted at being excluded from the scheme and was embarrassed by his hasty retreat behind the grenade boxes. He knew also that the instruction had been uniquely effective. He did not doubt that the trainees had learned more during their hour with Troop than during the rest of the day.
He resolved, however, to tear a little bit of Sergeant Troop's butt just the same. Christ, somebody could have trampled another into bits and pieces. He grinned inwardly at the picture of the panicked trainees piling out of the stands. God, what a sight!
The spontaneous applause further weakened Lieutenant Lewis's determination to chew out Sergeant Troop. He had a feeling of working against the current and realized suddenly that probably the whole cadre was waiting to see how he'd react. Of course, he considered maybe most of them think I was in on it! That too was something to ponder.
When Troop had seen to the disposition of the training aids, he walked over to squat beneath the scraggly tree where Lieutenant Lewis now shaded himself. Troop muttered "Whew" and wiped vainly at the sweat across his forehead with a dusty sleeve.
Lewis spoke begrudgingly, irritation rasping his voice, still half a mind to make an issue of it, "Pretty fancy, Sergeant!"
"Yes, sir. I think it took hold good. They'll remember grenades after they forget a lot of other stuff."
"Ever occur to you that somebody could damned well get bad hurt in that stampede?" There was displeasure in the lieutenant's tone.
"Yes, sir, but I've seen this same thing down at Benning and over at Fort McClellan, and no one seems to
get hurt. You know, I've wondered if maybe when a guy gets that scared if his bones don't harden or something. A scared man can get awful strong sometimes."
"Well, listen, Sergeant. The next time you're planning to pull any wise-assed stunt, tell me first or I'll wrack you up good. That clear? I didn't look too good on this one!"
"Yes, sir, it's clear; and if you mean that fancy running dive you took behind those ammo boxes, I never even noticed . . . "
+++++
Newport high school, 1969
Three students bustled up to Ben Troop in the school library. They charged his table behind the partition in the "Professional library," Faces lit with enthusiasm, and almost in unison asked, "Mr. Troop, can we talk to you?"
He pushed away a copy of Sports Illustrated. "Sure, pull up a chair."
Chairs rattled and there was some scrunching and wriggling until a spokesman was selected. "Mr. Troop, would you talk to us about religion?"
"Sure, Mary, what do you want to know?"
"Oh, not right now, Mr. Troop." Mary was one of the breathless types. Involved in every school activity, she traveled constantly with groups of students and seemed always pinning a poster in one of the halls. She continued, "We're from the youth forum group and we have speakers come in on all sorts of subjects. We'd like you to talk to us about religion."
"Well, Mary, don't you think a group like yours would be better served by a regular pastor? Someone whose business is religion and who is right up to date on the subject? I'm no expert on religious matters and I haven't any serious religious training."
"That's just what we don't want, Mr. Troop!" A boy he failed to recognize took over the conversation. "We've already had ministers, a priest, and a rabbi and they told us a lot of things. Now we want someone like you that's been around a lot outside of Perry County that could give us some ideas that maybe the others wouldn't. You know, like an outsider sometimes sees things the insider doesn't, just because he isn't involved."
"You mean I'm outside religion somewhere in the awful darkness of unmentionable places?"
They laughed together and the boy continued, "You know what I mean, Mr. Troop. You're our only hope."
"Well, I think you may be judging some of my fellow educators a bit harshly. Really, some of them have worlds of experience; they just don't happen to teach history where they can babble about it all the time."
"But we want you, Mr. Troop."
"Ok, suppose I agree. What form does this meeting take? Do we discuss, am I supposed to lecture, or do we question each other? How many kids will be there? Where and when?"
Excited and expecting acceptance, Mary carried on. "You can run it any way you want, Mr. Troop. You can give us information and maybe we could ask you some questions too. It's Wednesday night at seven o'clock right here in the library and there'll be about thirty or maybe forty of us."
He considered his schedule for a moment and Mary interrupted, "Oh, say you'll come, Mr. Troop!" A volume of support was offered by other members of the committee.
"Ok, Mary, I'll be there. Oh, do I have to dress up?"
"Heck, no, Mr. Troop. Most of the kids'll be in jeans, you know."
"Gee, thanks, Mr. Troop. We'll see you then. Remember now, Wednesday night at seven. Oh yes, we usually run about an hour and a half."
They were gone in a swirl of skirts and books and Ben returned to his magazine. It was always like this. If you were visible, you got caught up in something. Some of the older teachers had become so skilled at hiding out that they were impossible to find during their free periods. One coach, continually harassed by his athletes, had a hideout arranged behind a stack of mats in a supply room. There he would sleep away his free time undisturbed and unlocatable.
Troop had no desire to divorce himself so completely from the students, but if not careful, a teacher could find all his evenings consumed by activity programs with no time left for himself.
He would enjoy talking to the students about religion. Surely was a broad enough subject. Might be a bit sensitive though. He decided to discuss the program with Boden before he went on. The people of Newport were conservative in their religion—if fundamentalism could be called conservative. Some sects even talked in tongue and shouted a few Hallelujah's from the floor, but that type of service sounded to Ben more radical than conservative,
He guessed there were a half dozen churches close by, quite a few for two thousand or so people. It was common to see the ladies dressed in their Sunday best trotting off to church services with their stair-step progeny following, and occasionally a father, uncomfortable in his best suit, wishing it was over so he could settle down to newspaper and television.
Religion in Newport was a Sunday service, perhaps two, and in some cases even three. Many residents belonged to a Christian organization of their choice, which usually met on Wednesday night in an appropriate church basement. Here they were regaled by visiting missionaries who were armed with movies showing poorly focused accomplishments perpetrated on primitive groups in faraway places. Later, all sat down to a mighty meal prepared by the dames of the organization and gourmandized with abandon.
Boden was pleased that his students sought opinions from laymen as well as professional clerics. That Ben Troop had been selected as a speaker surprised him not at all. Troop was of special interest to the students because his background differed so widely from that of most adults in the community, and anything Ben Troop spoke about was presented in an interesting and informative manner. He was never boring.
"It isn't often that young people can talk frankly with adults, Ben, so deal kindly with them. It's not going to be easy to simplify religious concepts and not appear to be talking down to them. That's where most of our ministers fail; attempting to explain difficult concepts in high school terminology they too often end up peddling stories that offend their listeners' sense of intellect."
"I can handle that part all right, Mr. Boden. Not having to defend a position is a great advantage whether in war or in a discussion of religion—which may not be too different at that," he joked. "My concern is the interpretation parents may put on my comments when their kids bring them home, you know how it is. If I mention Buddhism, I'm a communist or something. Some know nothing about religion beyond their own church and they resist learning more. Ignorance is bliss syndrome, I think."
"Oh, boy! Don't you dare hint that to those students, Ben, or I'll surely have calls." Boden grinned as he spoke but then became more serious. "My advice, Ben, would be to level with the kids but try to avoid voicing opinions as your own. When they ask what you do believe, maybe you'll have to tell them, but I'd stay away from that as best I could."
He paused reflectively, ‘"You know, Ben, you may have a lot of fun with this discussion. I remember Reverend Coulder after he had been their speaker. He came in here implying we must be offering a major in Satanism judging from the questions he got." He shook his head wonderingly. "Amazing, the things they come up with. And it's good, Ben! Thinking, questioning, studying, investigating; that's education. Maybe we should develop a new term for it all. How about 'inquisitive, critical reasoning?' Sound scientific enough?"
"Ok, Mr. Boden, great title, but you write the paper on it! I'll just go around and tell everybody how great it is."
The students straggled in murmuring together, greeting Mr. Troop, and settling themselves about the room. While Troop marveled at their various degrees of dishabille, they shoved furniture into chaos and developed groupings and lumpings to their own satisfaction. Some collapsed on the wall-to-wall carpeting that aided quiet in the library. He enjoyed the casual relaxation of the meeting and thought how often he had worried and chewed to develop the same atmosphere in his classes.
The assemblage of students continued to mount. Furniture was again adjusted to meet the increased demand and, as the moment of confrontation approached, it became obvious that far more than the expected thirty or forty students were present. He looked inquiringly at Mary as she sorted g
roups and exhorted others to move over and shove down her answering shrug of "Who knows" disclaimed any responsibility for the extra participants.
Finally satisfied with arrangements, the group quieted and a student Troop knew only as Chuck introduced the speaker of the evening. He described Mr. Troop as the well-known teacher, a man who had traveled a lot, a gentleman from whom he felt they could learn, and a member of the community. Troop suspected the announcer had spent little effort on researching his speaker.
He had been sitting on the librarian's counter, his sneaker clad feet dangling. He had chosen a worn pair of Levi's for the occasion, and in deference to chill fall weather, had thrown a leather motorcycle jacket over a dark blue t-shirt. The jacket now tossed aside, he slid from the counter top and examined his audience in some detail. He thought them a likely group. Those he recognized stood near the top of their classes. That they were voluntarily present assured their interest, and given interest, he could give them a profitable evening.
For a single instant he wondered if perhaps he should have prepared an outline. Instead, he had decided to follow his nose and talk about that in which they seemed interested.
He began, "Fellow seekers of enlightenment," and allowed a friendly smile to soften his message and increase the informality of the talk. "We are here to discuss religion, which means, we are going to talk, think, and worry over the greatest question facing the human race. For, if we examine the subject with logic rather than the too common emotion, we find ourselves faced with a simple question: Is there a God at all? Followed by increasingly detailed subjects, such as How should He be worshipped, if at all, What is His program for us, if any, and eventually into the very heart of our concepts of right and wrong."
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