A Man of War

Chapter Five

COTC Evaluation and Placement Camp

Fort Lundquist

Baja California, North America

Terra

Terran Dominion

Summer 2648

It's funny how quickly three years can pass. When every day something new is learned, and every weekend holds the promise of adventure, life passes by at a phenomenal rate, but it is a very satisfying life, one where you can say you made a difference, you lived the adventure, you were striving to be all that you could possibly be. That sent me off to Third Year Evaluation and Placement Encampment.

E and P Camp, now there's a disjointed memory. Ten weeks of hell in between a cadet's third and fourth years. It's a career breaker if not taken seriously enough; evaluations at camp determine if cadets get placed in the units of their choosing, if they go active duty or reserve, or if they even get commissioned at all.

The whole idea is to simulate ten weeks of the difficulties and stresses of combat duty. During those weeks a cadet can expect to be wet, tired, cold, hungry, scared, and, as often as not, bored stiff. Communication with the outside world is sporadic at best. Even in my precise memory the whole experience tends to blend together into one blurred whole. It has been compared, fairly accurately I'm assured, to having an extremely high fever, complete with hallucinations, physical privations, and only the occasional lucid moment, and that is how I remember it.

It was week one and we were moving into the barracks that would be home, more or less, for the duration of our stay. France, the guy from England, had the bunk above mine, and we were assigned as battle buddies. Luckily, we hit it off right from the start, and I knew we'd become fast friends.

The cadre assigned to work with us, teach us, and evaluate us had actually guided us here, introduced themselves, and helped us settle in a bit. I wasn't fooled, I knew not let my nervousness trick me into getting comfortable with the cadre. Williamson had warned me that they would try to get close to make the stress and trauma even more disturbing when the bad things started happening. Which was exactly 2 AM.

Drill Sergeant Thayne went through our rack of bunks with a machine gun and a full belt of blanks. He would randomly stop at the foot of some bunk and fire a dozen rounds toward the ceiling. Anyone who tried to ask what was going on was told to shut up and be quiet. When he left after fifteen minutes of raw fear, no one was certain whether this was part of camp or if Thayne had just gone insane. Not many went back to sleep afterward.

At five o'clock we were told to report to formation on the dirt quad in front of the barracks. As we were forming up, cadre members were soaking the ground with fire hoses. We all balked at lining up where the hoses were spraying, and received a complete dressing down from Thayne and his megaphone until we rushed forward, slipping and sliding on the mud. Half the formation was being sprayed with the cold water, but we began our physical training exercises anyway. We did pushups so that our chests splashed mud, we did sit-ups so that we were laying in the mud, and then we sat and stretched so that everyone was soaked thoroughly and covered in mud from head to toe.