Before Their Time: A Memoir Read Online Free Page B

marriages). Bern’s flatulence turned out to be another problem, although, to be absolutely fair, he was later to make the same charge against me, with some accuracy.
    We also watched anxiously as the others, the National Guardsmen and the old draftees—Paul Willis and Rocky Hubbell, as well as Roger Johnson, who turned out to be superbly skilled in the art of living in the wild—stayed reasonably dry, ate well, and actually seemed to be enjoying themselves at moments. Of course, it was a class thing. I—and Bern, too—was soft from birth and from training. Neither of us had been exactly used to receiving hard knocks in our other lives, although we were fast developing a stoic mode to help us face them in the Army. And while we were learning, our wounds were being rubbed sore by the fact that Doug Kelleher, who was also soft, was sharing Roger Johnson’s tent, a model of basic engineering achievement that stood high and dry only a couple of yards from ours.
    Another day passed like this, filled with lighter rain and considerably thicker fog, through which we wandered ectoplasmically and tried to stay warm. On the fourth day, we awoke to a sun finally streaming down from the east, over the hills we were eventually supposed to occupy. A sudden golden warmth descended from a cloudless sky—spring at last. We greeted it by taking off our shirts andbasking in the morning air for a few minutes, Doug Kelleher scratching his ribs and making gorilla noises, which were his specialty. It was a couple of moments of unexpected joy, but almost immediately the order came through to strike tents and pack up—on the double, Rocky added. Within an hour, after a sloppy breakfast eaten on the run, we began to move out, full-field packs bouncing on our shoulders. Even for us, who were specialists in speed, this was quick-time.
    Arch’s thin voice piped out full-strength from up front of the company column. Hup-tup, hup-tup, his usual barking sound. Michael Antonovich and Francis Gallagher and a couple of other officers stood at the side of the road, watching us dogstep off. As we marched along, Antonovich thrust out his chin and jabbed his right fist into the palm of his left hand, which was always a sign of excitement in him. I think he was trying to give us the eager eye for the battle that lay ahead, as he had been taught to do by his OCS instructors, hoping, by his look and stance, to generate a kind of fierce energy in his troops at the idea of meeting the enemy. (A lost cause in the first squad, as he should have known.) Gallagher, on the other hand, was nattering out of the side of his mouth to one of his fellow officers from the second platoon, paying little attention to his troops.
    Hup! cried Arch, placing himself between Antonovich and Gallagher. As we passed them, Rocky, leading our stunted column, offered a good-humored mock salute that Gallagher instantly returned in kind. They were clearly in high spirits. Meanwhile our scouts marched ahead and we brought up the tail of the squad. Doug Kelleher was carryingthe BAR for the first couple of miles and the rifle, slung from his shoulder, barrel down, seemed almost as tall as he was. Bern and I shared the ammo with him, heavy clips of fat rounds looped around our skinny waists like metal corsets, bandoleers draped dramatically across our thin shoulders and over our chests, with a few grenades hanging from our belts. Armed to the teeth, thanks to the machinations of Master Sergeant Rene Archambault. We looked ludicrous.
    Before we were a mile out, I heard the leader of the second squad, a couple of yards behind us, call out, “Close it up, Fedderman. Close it up, goddammit.” I knew that refrain. I had been hearing it ever since we had trained together at Fort Benning. Fat, clever Ira Fedderman, who never moved fast enough, wherever he was—Benning, Maine, or Tennessee—and was always shat on for it. But I had to watch my sympathies. Fedderman, an expert at many unexpected