Free Princes of War by Claude Schmid Page B

Wynn thoughtfully, like a baseball manager watching a new pitcher. With his lieutenant he needed to strike a careful three-way balance between being a teacher, a confidant, and a subordinate. He had to both mentor and assist this young officer. There was more to the answer he’d given, and Wynn wanted more. He tried to explain further.
    “Kale is the softer sort. He takes reinforcement to keep him strong. He took Ramirez death even worse than the rest of us. His buddies and I are watching him, Sir. Best reinforcement is the other men, not me or you. Not yet.”
    Cooke didn’t want Wynn to talk to Kale. This was his business. As the senior NCO in the platoon, he ran the enlisted world. If he did his job well he could keep it like that. Let the officers stay in theirs. No foolproof way existed to help a man deal with combat stress. Nothing was simple about the minds of men.
    Wynn remembered Ramirez, then pushed him out of his mind. He glanced around the room. Cooke’s trailer was as Spartan as everyone else’s. Metal bed. Metal folding table as a desk. Brushed aluminum desk lamp. Thin yellow curtains made in Turkey. Cheap Asian blankets. No unique furnishings. Little to highlight a man’s individuality.
    “You know the impact the stress here can have. We need everyone operating at full capacity,” Wynn said.
    “I sure do, Sir. But we also need every man we got. It ain’t like there’s a bench we can pull from. We need all playing the full game.”
    Wynn noticed the family picture on Cooke’s desk. Cooke seated with his two boys, one on each knee and their mother—Cooke’s gregarious and ample wife of nine years—standing behind him with both her hands on his shoulders. A nice family. The pride on Cooke’s face radiated from the picture. Also on the desk stood the bottom half of a cylindrical cardboard smoke grenade canister, now used as a pen and pencil holder. The canister held a pair of scissors and a small American flag. Wynn knew that Cooke cut articles out of the Stars and Stripes newspaper to mark events that occurred during this tour. The hard-gut platoon sergeant was making a scrapbook. The men knew nothing about it. Didn’t fit the image Cooke wanted to project. Cooke had a green and yellow colored nerf football with Green Bay Packers markings on the table next to another small white ball. The smaller ball looked like a ping pong ball, a little larger and not quite round.
    “What’s that other ball there?” Wynn asked, tilting his head in that direction to point it out.
    “That ain’t no ball, Sir. It’s an egg.”
    “An egg?” Wynn asked, incredulous.
    “Yes, Sir. An empty egg shell. Keeping it as a souvenir.”
    Wynn looked perplexed.
    “From those Iraqi Egg Ladies. The ones we got the chickens for,” Cooke explained.
    Wynn smiled. A few months ago the Wolfhounds had helped two middle-aged Iraqi sisters, both widows, obtain six chickens and a rooster. One sister’s only son had been killed serving in the new Iraqi Army. The idea was to help them turn the chickens into a business. It worked. Now these ladies had an egg stall in the marketplace. Somebody heard they were up to about 20 birds.
    “That an intact egg shell?”
    “Yes, Sir.”
    “How did you get the egg to bleed out?”
    “There’s a secret to that, young man.” Cooke beamed widely, as if he’d pocketed the last piece of candy in the store.
    “I think I remember something about water and heat, but I’m not sure.”
    “Attention to detail, Sir. That’s the only way.”
    Wynn leaned forward and twisted his back left and right. Sixty pounds of body armor each day did not go unnoticed, even for a young man.
    “I know Kale has family,” Wynn said. “He’s got a gal and a little boy. He’s not their dad, though. Not sure if she was married previously. I wonder if they’re sensing anything about him.”
    “He ain’t married now, Sir. Didn’t marry her yet. But they might as well be. They living together. Two years