A Man of War

Thayne had heard France's snicker.

Thayne looked up in time to see a pair of hands disappear from the top of the wall. He stomped himself around to the other side and confronted the Englishman. "Exactly what is it about my face that you find so humorous, Cadet?" I pulled myself to the top of the wall and observed that it was now France's turn to have his nose stuck in the megaphone. "You will finish this obstacle course in record breaking time, or you will repeat the entire course again. Both of you. Do you understand?"

"Yes sir!" we both shouted as I dropped to stand beside France.

"Then why are you still here?" Thayne shouted. We ran.

"Guide it onto the road," Bushel said. That was a bad move. Training Sergeant Murphy immediately spun on him and got right up in his face.

"What kind of an imprecise order is that?" he shouted. "You expect this whole column to somehow simply follow the winding of this twisted trail without constant guidance from its leader?"

Bushel should have known better by now. Every cadet that had led a formation march thus far in camp had been chewed up for the exact same mistake. Now he was just glancing nervously over Murphy's shoulder as the formation continued its march, totally bereft of his guidance, straight across the trail and headed for a fence. I was far enough back in formation to have a clear view of the dressing down and the imminent collision of bodies and prefab fencing.

"Do you realize that I am talking to you, Cadet?" Murphy asked. "Why are you looking over there?"

Bushel snapped his eyes back to the sergeant. "Yes, sir. Nothing sir." He was trying to play the game perfectly to get away from Murphy before disaster struck. Murphy knew that of course, and was not about to be beaten so easily.

"Nothing? So you think that's more important than paying attention to the words coming out of my mouth? Do you?"

"No, sir." Bushel knew what was going to happen.

I saw the formation ahead begin to buckle and fall apart as the front ranks ran out of room to march and the ones behind plowed into them. Bushel closed his eyes momentarily, knowing what was going to come next.

"Cadet Bushel!" Thayne's bullhorn shouted close behind me. The drill sergeant strode past me to put his megaphone right in Bushel's face. "Exactly what kind of ate up mess is this you are running? Is this how you think you'll impress a review board sufficiently to be made an officer? This is the stupidest thing I've seen in my entire career of dealing with stupid cadets!"

Murphy was also shouting at the poor guy. "Quit, Bushel, quit! If you can't even hack this simple a task, get out right now. Go home where it' s safe and you don't have any responsibilities!"

Bushel was quivering. "No, sir! I will not quit, I will not give up!"

The formation continued to fall apart as we, in the absence of orders to the contrary, continued to march into the fence, rank upon rank. It was a horrible snarl that Bushel was going to have to disentangle.

"Then why are you standing here talking to us when you should be fixing the problem you created in the first place?" Murphy bellowed while Thayne glared.