Free The Chaplain's War by Brad R. Torgersen Page B

RECRUIT, YOU’VE BEEN HERE LESS THAN ONE EARTH HOUR AND YOU’RE ALREADY EFFED UP BEYOND BELIEF!”
    “Yes, ma—errr, yes, Corporal. I mean, no, Corporal! ”
    “I’M WAITING, RECRUIT! PICK UP YOUR BAGS AND GET BACK IN FORMATION!”
    I quickly retrieved my bags—happy to not receive a fourth whack on the back of the head, and got back in line while others did likewise. In two minutes the entire mass formation was once again standing at attention, facing the first sergeant, who no longer seemed to be smiling.
    “Wow,” he said. “That was just effin’ ugly. Y’all act like you just got out of the nursery. Am I gonna have to come around every day and wipe ass on y’all? Am I?”
    “NO, FIRST SERGEANT!”
    “I hope not, because from what I’ve seen in the last five minutes none of you has what it takes to ship out on Pickup Day. To be Fleet you have to think. And right now I can tell that not a gawtdamned single one of you is doing any thinking. You’re all just going along and pretending to do whatever the eff it seems like you’re supposed to do, and hoping nobody gets up in your ass about it. Listen, Fleet doesn’t want dummies in its ranks. I’m not a dummy, and none of these other NCOs is a dummy. Dummies get people killed, even in training. Or should I say, especially in training. We don’t need dummies. So I might as well just outprocess the whole effin’ five hundred of yah and put your butts back on the runway, right?”
    “NO, FIRST SERGEANT!”
    “Prove it. Someone raise their gawtdamned hand and tell me what was the first thing you all did wrong just now.”
    A hand went up meekly, fifty down and third rank.
    “You,” said the first sergeant.
    “We didn’t follow the command correctly?”
    A corporal stepped up to the recruit with the raised hand and began bawling the recruit out for not beginning and ending his sentence with “First Sergeant.”
    “Wrong,” said Klauski. “Someone else?”
    Another hand went up. “First Sergeant, we ran into each other, First Sergeant.”
    “Wrong.”
    “First Sergeant, the people up front didn’t know what to do, First Sergeant.”
    “Wrong.”
    “. . . not in unison!”
    “Wrong . . . wrong . . . wrong.”
    The first sergeant put a palm up to his face and wiped it across his mouth in exasperation.
    I finally raised my hand high.
    “You,” said the first sergeant.
    “First Sergeant, we didn’t ask for an explanation of the command, First Sergeant,” I said as loudly and with as much gusto as I could muster.
    He snapped his finger and stepped forward.
    “Abso-effin-lutely correct, Recruit. Did everyone hear that? Finally, someone is paying attention to what I first told you. You never follow a command that you don’t understand first. Two times I stood up here and gave a command that more than half of you didn’t know what the eff to do with. At least one of you should have stuck a paw in the air and respectfully requested clarification on ‘right-face’ and ‘file from the left column left,’ but you didn’t do it. Maybe ’cause you’re scared, or maybe ’cause you’re just stupid, I don’t know. But get it through your skulls, recruits. Whether you’re stupid or scared. You have to understand what the eff it is that you’re doing, or you’re going to fail. And when people in uniform fail, it usually means people in uniform die.
    “Now, I hope this little object lesson has sunk in. Ready to try it again?”
    “YES, FIRST SERGEANT,” shouted the formation.
    “Are you sure?”
    “YES, FIRST SERGEANT!”
    A hand went up. This time, not mine.
    “What is it, Recruit?”
    “First Sergeant, uhhhh, respectfully request—”
    “ Who respectfully requests?”
    “Uhh, First Sergeant, I respectfully—”
    An NCO jumped into the speaking recruit’s face and barked about the proper way to self-reference during IST.
    “One more time, Recruit,” Klauski said.
    “First Sergeant, Recruit Trucco requests clarification on