A Man of War

"Why are you allowing your formation to get even worse than it already was?"

Bushel turned away from them and quickly began the arduous task of sorting out the mess.

It was the middle of the night again, I had lost track of which week we were in. Instead of sleeping the normal four or five hours we were usually allowed, we were out heaving around huge logs and doing pushups by the squad. This was the fourth night in a row we'd done this. Again, we were being hosed down with cold water. Someone was lighting off landmine simulators at random, and occasionally firing flares into the air. I could hear other units doing similar things at locations not too distant from ours.

My vision blurred as my squad hoisted our log off the ground and up to rest on our right shoulders. My knees buckled somewhat as we pressed it over our heads yet again, but I forced myself to stabilize it. As we were lowering it to the left, someone slipped in the mud. The whole squad crashed down and I felt a good portion of the log's weight bounce off of my chest. The agony was intense, but the disorientation we were already suffering from actually helped me by making me unable to truly focus on the pain. I just laid in the mud, under the log, tempted to simply let myself go to sleep, despite the pain in my chest and the screams that I could hear nearby.

Then the log was gone and I was being hauled to my feet and flashlights were shining in at me from several directions. Thayne was nose to nose with me reading the life in my eyes. "Do you need a medic, Cadet?" he asked. His tone suggested that I should be dead before he would accept a positive response. "Answer me, Cadet!" he barked.

"Chest hurts bad, sir," I mumbled, then winced when he shook me. He ran his eyes down my frame then pulled my shirt open. His eyes narrowed and his brow tightened up at whatever he saw there.

"Aarons," he began in a tone quite different from his normal one. If I hadn't known better I might have called it caring. "You have a choice here. You can call a medic and get out of here right now, tonight, but you'll have to start E and P all over again, from day one. Most cadets who medivac this late in the program never come back to finish. But it looks to me like mostly bruising and maybe some sprained rib joints, nothing too serious. Pushups will hurt like a witch's hemorrhoids on her broomstick, but you'll be okay." Then he returned his voice to its more familiar cadence and tone, "So do you need a medic, Cadet?"

I couldn't think at that point, I was on autopilot. Perhaps if I had been able to think clearly, I would have called a medic just to be safe with my health. Likely, I too would not have returned to take my place at E and P, and would have ruined my career.

From where I sit now, that doesn't seem like such a bad alternative.

"No, sir," I tried to bark. It hurt, but I was adjusting to it like an overly hot bath. Maybe it wasn't as bad as it had felt at first.

"Then attend to your injured squad mates, Cadet!" Thayne shouted.

I turned to see who was injured and how badly. France had gone down at the very end of the log, and avoided all injury. Most of the others were generally unscathed, if perhaps scraped and bruised.