by Robert Adams
He also was given an expert's badge in the art of the bayonet. The grizzled but still-vital and powerful old sergeant who conducted the bayonet classes averred that Private Moray was one of the best that he ever had seen— fast, sure and strong in the attack, cunning and wary in the defense and so well coordinated as to be able to take instant advantage of an error made by an opponent. He added that he was convinced that the man was no stranger to the use of the bayoneted rifle, but he added that his personal style was unorthodox—not American, not French, not British, not classic Prussian, either. If Milo had told the training sergeant the unvarnished truth, that he too did not know just where and how he had learned bayonet work, that it only came to him as instinctively as breathing, the man would have been no more believing than had the range personnel confronted with the deadly marksmanship of this supposedly green recruit.
Sergeant Jethro "Judo" Stiles was. the field first sergeant of Milo's training company, and he also doubled as the battalion instructor in hand-to-hand combat. Unlike most of the cadremen, he was neither loud nor arrogant nor a brutal, sadistic bully. When he was not demonstrating the best means of garroting an enemy sentry quickly and in silence, the most efficient ways of dislocating joints and shattering bones or how to take a pistol away from an enemy, breaking his trigger finger and wrist in one process, he was quiet almost to the point of introversion, kindly, gentle, polite, well spoken and well read. He neither chewed tobacco, used snuff nor smoked cigarettes, only a pipe, and then rarely; he drank little beer, but was a connoisseur of fine wines and a real authority on cognacs and armagnacs. He lived well in rented housing off post, owned an automobile and wore beautifully tailored uniforms. It was believed that he was a remittance man, paid by his family to stay in the Army as a way of avoiding a scandal of some sort.
After he had called a number of the biggest recruits before an open-air class beneath a towering stand of Georgia pines and demonstrated fully just how powerless was even the largest, strongest man against scientific methods of self-defense, he chanced to choose Milo as his opponent for the next lesson. Tossing him a Model 1920 bayonet which had been securely wired into its issue case, the sides and point of which then had been padded with cotton and wrapped with friction tape, the training sergeant beckoned.
"All right. Moray, is it? All right, Moray, try to stab me with that bayonet. Okay, if you want to do it underhand, that's fine too. Come on."
Without conscious thought of what he was doing or why he was doing it just that way, Milo advanced in short but fast and sure steps which to the watchers looked almost akin to dance steps.
With all his training and practice, natural skills and experience, the sergeant had only seconds to wonder if he was going to be able to stop this recruit who moved as quickly and lightly as an Olympic fencer. "Oh, shit," he thought, "I chose a wrongo this time!"
From the crouch at which he had advanced, the bayonet held a little below his hip, pointing forward, his free hand held up and out and ready to either attack or defend, to stab fingers at eyes, ward off blows or grab a wrist, he suddenly sank even farther down upon deeply flexed knees, then used his legs to drive his body forward with the speed and force of a arrow shot from a bow. The point of that arrow was his hand and the weapon it held, his hand at about the waist level of his target, but the weapon itself angling upward.
All that Stiles saw was a blur of motion. Then there was suddenly an agonizing contact and he was doubled over, retching up his breakfast, fighting to draw breath and wondering just how the mule that had kicked him in the belly had gotten into his class area. Then he lost all consciousness.
The class was immediately called to attention, then marched into the adjacent field to unstack their rifles and fall into formation. They were marched back to camp and spent the rest of the morning at the wearily repetitive close-order drill with arms.
Sergeant Stiles was retained by the training company because of his unquestionable skills and his ability to impart those skills to trainees, but his solitary nature and off-duty habits, plus his erudition and cultivated tastes, alienated him from most of the noncoms and many of the officers of the company and battalion. He had few friends among his peers, but one of those few was the first sergeant of Milo's training company, James Lewis.
That afternoon, after recall, as he sat with the others in the barrack cleaning rifles under the critical eyes of their platoon sergeant, the company clerk came in with the message that Private Moray was to report to the first sergeant on the double.
Taking Milo aside and speaking fast in low, hushed tones, Platoon Sergeant Cassidy said, "You gotta unner-stan', Moray, with all the damn Bolsheviks and Wobblies and all we get's in, we jest cain't let reecroots git away with bestin' sergeants, is all. The first and some others is gonna have to take you out and beat the piss outen you— they has to, see. It'll hurt, sure, but you jest take it like a man and it won't las' long, 'cause they don't aim fer to do no real damage to you, jest give the resta the guys what saw whatall you did to Judo Stiles a coupla blacked eyes and a split lip and swoled-up jaw to look at fer a few days."
Milo headed for the office of the first sergeant, but was met by the noncom himself before he reached the orderly room. Ready for shouts, obscene abuse and manhandling from the senior sergeant, Milo was surprised and made very wary by being treated almost civilly, instead.
"Moray? Yes, you're Moray. Come on with me, Moray."
At the small parking area behind the orderly room, Sergeant Lewis stopped beside a three-quarter-ton recon-naisance truck. "Can you drive, Moray?"
"No, first sergeant."
"Okay, I'll drive. But you oughta learn to. Comes in damn handy to be able to drive a veehicle in the fuckin' Army. Get in."
In the post gym, after they had divested themselves of shirts and undershirts, after Lewis had laced Milo's hands into a pair of six-ounce boxing gloves, as they walked in sock feet from the locker room to the gym proper, the first sergeant said, "Moray, years ago, I was boxing champeen of the old Twenty-third for some years. I'm some older now, of course, but I ain't got soft and slow and fat, like a lot of the guys has let themselfs get."
"Now I heered what you done to Judo Stiles Today. It's all over the fuckin' battalion, and somebody's got to make a example of you for it, see."
"First sergeant," said Milo, "Sergeant Stiles ordered me to attack him, to try to stab him. All that I did was to follow those orders. I've tried to be a good soldier."
Lewis nodded, looking a little sad. "I knows, son, and if you sticks to it you gonna be a damn fine soljer, too. Hell, you'll have stripes, real stripes, in no time a-tall, 'specially whenever the nextest war fin'ly gets around to startin' up and the Army gets bigger. And that's part of why I'm sorry to have to beat up on you thisaway; but it's a whole fuckin' hell of a lot better for me to mess your face up then for three, four of the pl'toon sergeants to get you off in a latrine somewhere and work you over, son. I knows what I'm doin', see—I can give you just a few good ones in the right places for to make it look like you been dragged th'ough a fuckin' wringer by the cock."
At the raised boxing ring, Lewis held the ropes apart so Milo could step through them. Joining his victim, the gray-haired boxer went to a corner of the ring and waved Milo to the opposite corner. The few other men in the high, vaulted room of the sometime riding hall drifted over to watch, for Sergeant James Lewis was always worth watching.
"Move around on the balls of your feet, son," the noncom advised Milo. "And keep your knees bent some to help you take the force of a punch, see. I promise, after I's messed you up some, I'll stop. You ready?"
Milo sighed. "As ready as I guess I'll ever be." And then he advanced to the center of the ring.
Immediately he absorbed the first jarring jab to his face, Milo's body and limbs rearranged themselves without his conscious volition.
"Oh, ho, Moray," puffed Lewis. "Done had some time with a old-fashion bare-knuckle fighter, have you? Okay, I can fight that way, too, but I
warn you, it'll prob'ly hurt you more in the end."
Lewis was good, skilled, experienced and had stayed in practice if not in unremitting training over the years, so he did land a few more blows here and there. But so, too, did Milo, once more letting his instincts guide his body and reflexes. His final blow put Lewis flat on his back on the canvas, and the watchers entered the ring to pound him on the back and heap flattering praise upon him before picking up First Sergeant Lewis and bearing his inert body back to the locker room.
When the noncom came around and pushed away the hand waving the ammonia ampoule under his blood-crusted nostrils, he just drew himself up on his elbows and stared at Milo for long minutes in silence. Then, slowly shaking his head, he swung his legs off the side of the massage table and sat up. He swayed then, and Milo quickly took a step to the older man's side and gripped a biceps, lest his recent opponent pitch onto the floor.
Lewis said precious little as they dressed and drove back to the company area. When he had parked nose-in and turned off the engine of the reconnaissance car, he said, "Moray, my boy, you punch like the kick of a fuckin' mule, I swear to God you do! You learn you modern boxin' and all, you'll be champeen of whatever division you winds up in, I don't doubt it one bit. I'm just thankin' God you had them fuckin' gloves on—you might of kilt me dead without them."
"When you gits back to your barracks, you tell Sergeant Cassidy I said to round up all the other platoon sergeants and bring them to my office, pronto. What you ain't to tell him or anybody elst is why I wants to see them."
"I didn' do hardly any damage can be seen easily on you, see, and I don't want none them takin' it inta their heads to try workin' you over, son, 'cause you just might kill one or two of them or they might kill you, and I don't want anyway to have to work out no L.O.D.s determinations on how a bunch of my cadre got themselfs beat half to fuckin' death; no man what hadn't fought you would believe it."
"A'right, Moray. You can go now. But you take care of yourself, hear? I'm gonna be keepin' my eye on you."
Milo never knew exactly how Lewis had phrased or explained his hands-off-Moray order to his cadremen, but from then on, Cassidy and the other noncoms treated him almost as an equal, and a few days prior to the completion of their basic training cycle, First Sergeant Lewis once more summoned him. This time, however, the senior noncom met him formally, in his office just off the orderly room.
When Milo had completed the required reporting ritual, he was told to close the door and stand at ease. "Moray, after you graduates Tuesday, you ain't gonna have far to travel. You're gonna go just down the road a ways to the advanced infantry basic battalion, and you do as good there as you done done here, your next stop is gonna be acrost the post to the NCO Academy. You're prime, Moray, and I ain't just flatterin' you when I says it, neither, and so lotsa the other units is gonna want to grab you up for to fill out their cadres, but you tell any as talks about it or tries it that they'll do 'er over the dead body of First Sergeant James Evans Lewis. You hear me, son?"
Lewis smiled the first smile that Milo had ever seen on his lined, scarred face. "I wants you back here, boy, to be one of my platoon sergeants, see. You got you more brains nor the resta the bunch I has now put together, 'ceptin' my field first. You play your cards right and you'll wind up as field first afore too fuckin' long, under Stiles, as first. See, my thirty's gonna be up in only 'bout four years, come the thirteenth day of January, nineteen and forty-three, my hitch is up and I'm long gone. I means to leave thishere trainin' company in good hands, though, and you and Stiles is the plumb best I seen sincet the last war. It's damn fuckin' seldom the Army gets men like you two, see, and I ain't gonna let a prize like you get out of my hands. I ain't that big of a fuckin' fool, nosiree-bob, I ain't!"
The Sergeant Moray, Milo (n.m.i.), who stood before Lewis' desk after graduation with honors from both advanced infantry basic and the NCO Academy still could recall no single incident prior to his awakening in a Chicago hospital room, but he knew by then that Dr. Sam Osterreich and old Pat O'Shea had likely been accurate in their suppositions about him. The most of the business of soldiering just came far too easily to him for him not to have been one, somewhere, sometime, in some army, and probably for some little time, too.
Lewis had been obliged several times over to pull strings, call in IOUs for past favors, beg, wheedle, cajole and do everything except physically fight to retain his dibs on Moray. But he had done all of these gladly, partly for the joy of winning, of course, but also because the attempted shanghaüngs of his peers reinforced his own statements and views as to the potential and value of the man.
He smiled up at the new-made buck sergeant. "Welcome home, son. Close the door and sit down." With the door shut, Lewis arose and stepped over to his filing cabinet, opened the bottom drawer and drew from its rearmost recesses two canteen cups and a quart of bourbon, still better than half full.
Immediately after work call the next morning, Lewis drove Milo down to the motor pool and introduced him to Master Sergeant O'Connor, the NCO-in-charge. "Teach him to drive, Harry. He missed learnin' how, see, and I can't spare him long enough to send him off to no fuckin' school. I'll be owin' you one, if you do."
A week under the motor sergeant's often impatient tutelage gave Milo the rudiments of properly handling the smaller wheeled transport vehicles. This was followed by a week on the deuce-and-a-half, the general-purpose two-and-a-half-ton truck. Then, of a day toward the end of that second week, O'Connor drove one of the brand-new general-purpose one-quarter-ton vehicles (which very soon were to be nicknamed "jeeps") up to Lewis' training company and closeted with the first sergeant in his office.
When they were seated and O'Connor had had a swallow or two of the bourbon, Lewis asked, "You ain't havin' no fuckin' trouble with my boy, Moray, are you, Harry?"
His hands seemingly absently occupied with a cigarette paper and his sack of Bull Durham tobacco, O'Connor replied, "Aw, naw, top, not him. He's a'ready a right fair driver, for all he's got him a kinda heavy foot now and then. I done got him famil'arized with alla the smaller stuff, four-wheel and two- and three-wheel, last week. This week I grounded him on the deuce-and-a-half, both the six-wheelers and the ten-wheelers, and he ain't half bad in them, neither. Man learns quick and remembers good."
The cigarette rolled to his careful satisfaction, the white-haired noncom cracked a wooden match alight with his thumbnail, lit up, took a puff and went on. "Thing is, top, I'd like to keep Moray down there at least another week, see. Right now, it's too fuckin' many drivers on thishere post don't know how to do nuthin' with a fuckin' vehicle but drive the cocksucker. I wants to make damn fuckin' sure this Moray knows at fuckin' least how to do basic maint'nence, see. Can you spare him that much longer, top?"
Lewis, just then sipping at his whiskey, nodded as he took the canteen cup down from his lips. "Sure, Harry, take a week or even two, if you can make him better for it… but I'm servin' a fuckin' warnin', too, Harry O'Connor. Don't you and Mr. Cobb get you the fuckin' idea you gonna make no OJT mechanic or suthin' out'n him, neither. I done fought and beat bigger fish nor you and Warrant Officer Cobb to keep Moray for this comp'ny and I'll fuckin' well beat your fuckin' asses, too, come to that."
Lewis could see that this jab had connected good and proper. O'Connor and Cobb had been up to something, but he also knew that now they would both back off rather than tangle with him and his web of connections in the battalion and regiment.
"So give Moray all the training you think he needs, Harry. It'll be three weeks afore the new bunch gets to us, and I'll be needin' him then. He's gonna be takin' over a trainin' platoon, then. More bourbon, Harry?"
While Lewis splashed more of the whiskey into his steel cup, O'Connor queried, "But, top, I'd heard you was full up, cadre-wise."
Lewis smiled. "The comp'ny is—we got all the Table'll let us have, now, but I done found a way 'round that, too. I'm shippin' Sergeant Carbone out, transferrin' him in grade."
"
Queer Guinea Guido?" asked O'Connor in patent amazement. "Who the hell did you find was dumb enough to take on that dago gut-butcher, top?"
Lewis smiled lazily, obviously enjoying deep satisfaction at reciting his triumph for a properly appreciative listener. "Regimental Head and Head, that's who, Harry. If you go to old Martin, real quick-like, maybe he'll let you two room together."
Ignoring the last jibe, O'Connor looked pained, "Aw hell, top, ain't we got enough trouble in regiment a'ready? I was jus' talkin' to Mr. Cobb 'bout it the other day. Seems like we winds up with ever' fuckin' loony and loopleg, not to mention ever' damn asshole goldbrick and moron comes along. We a'ready got us all the friggin' cornholers and pegboys we can take in Head 'n Head, top. For the lova God, what'd you go and do that to old Homer Martin for? What'd he ever do to you?"
Lewis' smile evaporated. "Wished the wop carrot-grabber off on men this comp'ny to start off, that's what. But he agreed to thishere, once't I explained all to him, he did, Harry. I checked Carbone's 201 file real close, see, and I come to find he useta give classes in wire-layin' and stringin', see. So Martin, he ain't gonna keep the shit-stirrin' bastard around hardly long enough to cut a fuckin' fart. He's gonna cut orders, if he ain't done it a'ready, to ship Carbone over to Signal Comp'ny. Martin agrees with me that whatall happens when Sergeant Call, the first faggot of Signal Comp'ny, gets the fuckin' Prussian Eyetie in his claws after all this time and all, what happens over to Signal'll be a pure, fuckin' joy to watch, Harry, a pure, fuckin' joy to watch!"
Harry O'Connor set down his cup and just stared at Lewis, cigarette ashes dribbling unnoticed down the front of his blue denim fatigue uniform. "Top," he said finally, "that is the evilest, viciousest, rottenest scheme I ever heard tell of. Ever'body knows Guido's done stole away or leastways got into three, four, maybe five or six or more of Plugger Call's angelinas, and it ain't nothin' but bad blood between them two sods. Hey, 'member, Call damn near got hisself busted when he broke a bottle and went at Carbone with it at the regimental beer garden, two years ago."