Free Some of Your Blood by Theodore Sturgeon Page B

and wait, it is this lousy army, this goddamn army. Well I am here to tell you there is lots of guys get a better deal in the army they ever got before, there is a lot of them griping the worst never had a word to say before they got the wrinkles out of their belly the first time in their whole lives. There is better grub than army grub but army grub is a whole lot better than a lot of these guys ever saw before at least that regular. And you would be surprised how many guys never in their whole life got enough sleep week in week out and kept themselves clean before. You do what they tell you and never volunteer, and you find you got a life. You want to worry, go ahead, but it will be all peanuts and chicken spit you are worrying about, the big things is all thought out for you, you do not have to worry yourself. I said this before and I will have to say it again, when you come right down to it there is not a thing a man needs than a way to fill his belly and let somebody take care of all his thinking, he don’t have to if he don’t want to. And if that is not the army through and through I do not know what is.
    For once in his life George figured he done the right thing. He was sorry sometimes he could not see Anna but whatever happened to her she was not alone in the world and she would be all right unless she died and then what can you do. Anyway for the two-year hitch and training and motor mechanic school George had everything he wanted and for once some money besides. It was the state school all over again for him only bigger and easier too. When he come to the school he had to spend a long time learning what to do and what not, but in the army he already knew, he knew better than a lot of guys who never lived in a dormitory or a barracks before. He did not bother with nobody and nobody bothered with him, he was still a big guy who kept his mouth shut which is the recipe for getting left alone if you want to.
    Time come to re-enlist he did, you know he did not even take his furlough but just hung around the base, it was in California. And it could be he fell in this slot people are always falling in, getting the idea that things are going to go on like they are for ever. Well they ain’t.
    First a lot of rumors and you know how to shuck off rumors, but what really happened was one of the rumors you shucked off. The whole outfit shipped overseas. Some said it was a war and some a police action and I guess it was a big joke to some of them.
    For George it was bad, there was nobody to talk to about it and he would not know what to say if he did. He moved around a lot in the army, Louisiana, New Jersey, Michigan, California, but no move was like this move. And that old hot place come back to him in his gut, and there was not much he could do about it. Overseas it was not so easy to go off hunting and there was not much to hunt if you did. And there was none of this trading passes and easy coming and going. Every thing was laced up a notch, tight.
    Then there was drilling and that never bothered George, but this one day it was on the airstrip and these three C-119s came in with casualties and they told off infantrymen for stretcher-bearers. They took out one hundred and sixty-three stretcher cases altogether and you see this and you hear this and you are never the same again.
    All you can say about the way George felt is he was a little kid again he was going to get for something he did or for nothing. The father would do it but the father coming home, even coming home drunk, did not mean he would get hit just then. The only thing you could be sure of was getting hit, that was going to happen and no fooling. You just never knew when, that is all. And George with the school and the farm, but especially the army, George had like grown away from all that, it was dead and gone and past so forget it. And then these casualties, they were for real. So getting hit for sure, but you don’t know just when—here it was again. And