"Oh-nine-hundred. That's an order." He left.

Jenkins started his monotonous chant again. Finally he slowed down, took a bite of eggs and said somewhat more loudly, "I can't help wondering what kind of a mother produced that. I'd just like to have a look at her, that's all. Did he ever have a mother?"

It was a rhetorical question but it got answered. At the head of our table, several stools away, was one of the instructor-corporals. He had finished eating and was smoking and picking his teeth, simultaneously; he had evidently been listening. "Jenkins—"

"Uh—sir?"

"Don't you know about sergeants?"

"Well... I'm learning."

"They don't have mothers. Just ask any trained private." He blew smoke toward us. "They reproduce by fission... like all bacteria."

CHAPTER 4

And the LORD said unto Gideon, The people that are with thee are too many... Now therefore go to, proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return... And there returned of the people twenty and two thousand; and there remained ten thousand. And the LORD said unto Gideon, The people are yet too many; bring them down unto the water, and I will try them for thee there... so he brought down the people unto the water: and the LORD said unto Gideon, Every one that lappeth of the water with his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise everyone that boweth down upon his knees to drink. And the number of them that drank, putting their hand to their mouth, were three hundred men...

And the LORD said unto Gideon, By the three hundred... will I save you... let all the other people go...

Judges VII:2-7

Two weeks after we got there they took our cots away from us. That is to say that we had the dubious pleasure of folding them, carrying them four miles, and stowing them in a warehouse. By then it didn't matter; the ground seemed much warmer and quite soft -- especially when the alert sounded in the middle of the night and we had to scramble out and play soldier. Which it did about three times a week. But I could get back to sleep after one of those mock exercises at once; I had learned to sleep any place, any time— sitting up, standing up, even marching in ranks. Why, I could even sleep through evening parade standing at attention, enjoy the music without being waked by it—and wake instantly at the command to pass in review. I made a very important discovery at Camp Currie. Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more. All the wealthy, unhappy people you've ever met take sleeping pills; Mobile Infantrymen don't need them. Give a cap trooper a bunk and time to sack out in it and he's as happy as a worm in an apple—asleep.

Theoretically you were given eight full hours of sack time every night and about an hour and a half after evening chow for your own use. But in fact your night sack time was subject to alerts, to night duty, to field marches, and to acts of God and the whims of those over you, and your evenings, if not ruined by awkward squad or extra duty for minor offenses, were likely to be taken up by shining shoes, doing laundry, swapping haircuts (some of us got to be pretty fair barbers but a clean sweep like a billiard ball was acceptable and anybody can do that) -- not to mention a thousand other chores having to do with equipment, person, and the demands of sergeants. For example we learned to answer morning roll call with:

"Bathed!" meaning you had taken at least one bath since last reveille. A man might lie about it and get away with it (I did, a couple of times) but at least one in our company who pulled that dodge in the face of convincing evidence that he was not recently bathed got scrubbed with stiff brushes and floor soap by his squad mates while a corporal-instructor chaperoned and made helpful suggestions.

But if you didn't have more urgent things to do after supper, you could write a letter, loaf, gossip, discuss the myriad mental and moral shortcomings of sergeants and, dearest of all, talk about the female of the species (we became convinced that there were no such creatures, just mythology created by inflamed imaginations one boy in our company claimed to have seen a girl, over at regimental headquarters; he was unanimously judged a liar and a braggart). Or you could play cards. I learned, the hard way, not to draw to an inside straight and I've never done it since. In fact I haven't played cards since.

Or, if you actually did have twenty minutes of your very own, you could sleep. This was a choice very highly thought of; we were always several weeks minus on sleep.

I may have given the impression that boot camp was made harder than necessary. This is not correct.

It was made as hard as possible and on purpose.

It was the firm opinion of every recruit that this was sheer meanness, calculated sadism, fiendish delight of witless morons in making other people suffer.

It was not. It was too scheduled, too intellectual, too efficiently and impersonally organized to be cruelty for the sick pleasure of cruelty; it was planned like surgery for purposes as unimpassioned as those of a surgeon. Oh, I admit that some of the instructors may have enjoyed it but I don't know that they did—and I do know (now) that the psych officers tried to weed out any bullies in selecting instructors. They looked for skilled and dedicated craftsmen to follow the art of making things as tough as possible for a recruit; a bully is too stupid, himself too emotionally involved, and too likely to grow tired of his fun and slack off, to be efficient.

Still, there may have been bullies among them. But I've heard that some surgeons (and not necessarily bad ones) enjoy the cutting and the blood which accompanies the humane art of surgery.

That's what it was: surgery. Its immediate purpose was to get rid of, run right out of the outfit, those recruits who were too soft or too babyish ever to make Mobile Infantrymen. It accomplished that, in droves. (They darn near ran me out.) Our company shrank to platoon size in the first six weeks. Some of them were dropped without prejudice and allowed, if they wished, to sweat out their terms in the non-combatant services; others got Bad Conduct Discharges, or Unsatisfactory Performance Discharges, or Medical Discharges.

Usually you didn't know why a man left unless you saw him leave and he volunteered the information. But some of them got fed up, said so loudly, and resigned, forfeiting forever their chances of franchise. Some, especially the older men, simply couldn't stand the pace physically no matter how hard they tried. I remember one, a nice old geezer named Carruthers, must have been thirty-five; they carried him away in a stretcher while he was still shouting feebly that it wasn't fair! -- and that he would be back.

It was sort of sad, because we liked Carruthers and he did try—so we looked the other way and figured we would never see him again, that he was a cinch for a medical discharge and civilian clothes. Only I did see him again, long after. He had refused discharge (you don't have to accept a medical) and wound up as third cook in a troop transport. He remembered me and wanted to talk old times, as proud of being an alumnus of Camp Currie as Father is of his Harvard accent—he felt that he was a little bit better than the ordinary Navy man. Well, maybe he was.

But, much more important than the purpose of carving away the fat quickly and saving the government the training costs of those who would never cut it, was the prime purpose of making as sure as was humanly possible that no cap trooper ever climbed into a capsule for a combat drop unless he was prepared for it—fit, resolute, disciplined, and skilled. If he is not, it's not fair to the Federation, it's certainly not fair to his teammates, and worst of all it's not fair to him.