A Hymn Before Battle

8 Ft. Bragg, NC Sol III 1648 November 19th, 2001 ad

Staff Sergeant Bob Duncan, Chief Fire Direction Controller for the 2^nd Battalion 325^th Infantry Heavy Mortar section, was occasionally a problem for his chain of command, what is euphemistically called a leadership challenge. For his entire career in the Army he never quite fit in. He had all the merit badges expected of a ten-year veteran of the 82^nd Airborne, the Ranger tab, the jumpmaster’s wings, staff sergeant’s stripes, but despite these he was never quite trusted by his first sergeants and platoon sergeants. Part of this was the nature of his career. For whatever reasons, and they had varied, he had never been cycled to another unit. He’d arrived fresh from Infantry Individual Training and Airborne school as a private, was promptly assigned to D company (then CSC Company) of the 2^nd Battalion 325^th PIR and there he stayed. Not for him the rotations to Korea, or Germany. No tours to the Airborne units in Italy, Alaska and Panama. Instead, during his term it seemed he had done every job in the company. Need a scout to round out the platoon? Sergeant Duncan’s been a scout. Need a TOW HUMVEE commander? Sergeant Duncan. Need a head for your Fire Direction Center? A mortar squad leader? Call Sergeant Duncan. Operations sergeant? He was a fixture of D company more immutable than the barracks, far more fixed than the command groups, the constantly cycling first sergeants, lieutenants and commanders. Whenever the new first sergeants, lieutenants and commanders had a question, the finger was inevitably pointed at Sergeant Duncan.

It would seem that, in any fair world, such omnipotence about the function of the company, from the supply room (supply clerk, nine months, year three) to the function of the antitank platoon (acting platoon sergeant, nearly a year, gunner, jeep commander, motor pool sergeant) would lead to steady acclaim and rapid promotion. Any job dangerous and dirty, any job difficult, dusty and dry give it to Sergeant Duncan.

But that led to another problem with Sergeant Duncan. How could anyone give the same lecture, teach the same lessons over and over, not to subordinates but to superiors, and not develop a faint aura of scorn? When the company commander constantly had to ask you questions, it inevitably led to invidious comparisons. When twice in your career you ended up leading the (notional) remnants of the company in graded field maneuvers, once getting a far higher grade than the current commander, when the most trying task became routine, when you were always chosen first for any difficult and tedious job because you were just so blamed good at it and coincidentally it got you out of the first sergeant’s remaining hair, an ennui exceeding all normal course begins to wear away at the soul. This ennui, in the case of the Sergeant Duncans of the world, leads to tinkering. Would it be better if the wires went this way? What would happen if we did it that way? Could we use these civilian fireworks for booby traps? The repercussions from that particular experiment were still occurring.

It would have been far better for Sergeant Duncan, for the Army, if not for D company, were he cycled out to fresh pastures and new challenges. But, nonetheless, for many reasons he stayed a fixture of the company, of the battalion, and, in an exceedingly Airborne way, festered.

As fate would have it, the change came to him instead of the other way around. He twisted the black box around as he sat on his bunk across from his current detested roommate. He had noted the phenomenon that he apparently had three roommates he detested for every one he got along with. This one was about due for a refund; a scout sergeant, he thought scouts shit gold. Well, Duncan had been a scout when this little turd was in middle school and had already outshot him on the Known Distance range, so as far as Bob Duncan was concerned this scout could just pack his ego back in his fuckin’ duffel bag and march on out any time. The stupid bastard was carefully stropping a dagger about as long as his forearm on a diamond sharpener, as if he was going to be using it on Posleen the next day. As far as Sergeant Duncan had been able to ascertain, the Posleen had, like, nowhere you could plant a knife and do vital damage. Furthermore, how did he think he was going to use it in a combat suit? The constant stropping was beginning to be more irritating than the scratch of the wool blanket on his bed. Jeez Louise! For godsakes Top get this guy out of my room!

To take his mind off of the stupid bastard as he waited for last formation to be called, Duncan studied the latest black box they had been issued. It was about the size of the pack of Marlboros in his left breast pocket and flat, absorbent black, very similar in appearance to their AIDs. Black as an ace of spades. And, somehow, it projected a field you could not put a .308 round through. He’d already tried. Several times, just to be sure. And it didn’t even move the box when the shells ricocheted off; that was freaky. Mind you, the guys around him moved prrrretty damned fast when those .308 rounds came back up range at the Fort Bragg Rod and Gun club. Fortunately there weren’t any jerks around. The other shooters just laughed and went back to jacking rounds downrange from an amazing variety of weapons.

Okay, so it stopped bullets. But the field only extended out about seven feet in either direction and it stopped when it touched an obstacle. Stopped. It didn’t wrap around the obstacle. Just stopped, which sucked if you thought about it. And you should be able to brace it into something, not just depend on whatever it was that kept it in place. He’d had a little talk with his AID and it turned out the damn thing had some sort of safety lock. So he’d talked with his AID a little more and convinced it that since they were an experimental battalion, with experimental equipment, they had the responsibility to experiment. The AID checked its protocols and apparently agreed because it had just released the safety interlocks on the device. Ensuring that it was at arm’s length, Duncan activated the unit.

The Personal Force Field unit functioned by generating a focused reversal plane of weak force energy as analogous to a laser beam as a line is to a plane, meaning not. The unit was designed to produce a circle 12 meters in area for 45 minutes. Given the option of maximum generation, it generated a circle 1250 meters square for 3 milliseconds before failing. The plane was effectively two-dimensional. It extended outwards 20 meters in every direction, sliding through the interstices between atoms and occasionally disrupting the odd proton or electron.

The plane sliced as effectively as a katana in air through all the surrounding material, severing I-beams, bed structures, wall lockers and, in the unfortunate case of Sergeant Duncan’s roommate, limbs. The slice, thinner than a hair, reached from the basement supply room, where it, among other things, sliced through an entire box of Bic pens causing a tremendous mess, to the roof, where it created a leak that was never completely fixed. However, once the entire base was overrun by the Posleen the leak became moot. In addition, the throughput on the unit exceeded the parameters of the superconductive circuitry, and waste heat raised the case temperature to over two hundred degrees Celsius.

“Jesus!” screamed Sergeant Duncan and dropped the suddenly red-hot case as his bunk dropped to the floor. As the floor began to settle, he slid forward as did his roommate on the other bunk. His roommate let out a bloodcurdling scream as his legs, from just below the knees, suddenly slid sideways away from his descending body and arterial blood spurted bright red to blacken the army blanket.

In his time Sergeant Duncan had seen more than any man’s share of ugly accidents and he reacted without thought. He rapidly wound parachute cord around the stumps. The knife made an effective tightener for the first tourniquet; placed right it did not even cut the cord. The second tourniquet slowed the blood loss through the simple expedient of using a self-tightening hitch, very common when preparing vehicles for heavy drop or certain kinds of girls for bed. The unfortunate roommate screamed imprecations and began to cry; to such a man the loss of his legs might as well be death.

“Forget it,” Sergeant Duncan snarled as he slid a screwdriver under the second tourniquet and tightened it until the blood flow stopped. “They can regrow them now.” The soon-to-be ex-roommate was going glassy eyed as the blood loss began to affect him, but he caught the central idea and nodded as he passed out. “I’m the one who’s fucked,” Duncan whispered at last and cradled his burned hand to his chest as he crawled up the incline to the door. “Medic!” He yelled into the hallway and slumped back against the doorframe staring blank-eyed at the floor sloping towards the mirror-bright cut.

Sergeant First Class Black entered the battalion commander’s office, did a precise right-face and rendered a hand salute. Staff Sergeant Duncan followed him in lock step and stood at attention.

“Sergeant First Class Black, reporting as ordered with a party of one,” said Sergeant Black crisply, but with a hush to his voice.

“Stand at ease, Sergeant Black,” Lieutenant Colonel Youngman said. He stared at Sergeant Duncan for a full minute. Sergeant Duncan stood at attention and sweated, reading the officer’s commissioning document on the opposite wall; his mind had otherwise retreated to a safe place that did not include the probability of a court-martial. He had the intense feeling that the recent events had to be a dream, a nightmare. Nothing this awful could be real.

“Sergeant Duncan, and this question is purely rhetorical, what am I to do with you? You are tremendously competent, except when you fuck up, and you apparently do that by the numbers. I have had a chat with the sergeant major, your company commander, your platoon sergeant and, ignoring protocol, your former first sergeant. I have already officially heard several opinions of you from your current first sergeant.”

Youngman paused and his face worked. “I will admit to being at a loss. We are certainly expecting combat in the very near future, and we need every damn trained NCO we can put our hands on, so a trip to Leavenworth,” at that word both NCOs flinched, “which is the least you damn well deserve, is nearly out of the question. However, if I put you before a court, that’s where you’re going. Do you realize that?”

“Yes, sir,” Sergeant Duncan answered quietly.

“You caused fifty-three thousand dollars worth of structural damage and cut your roommate’s legs off. If it weren’t for this new Galactic,” the term was practically spit, “medical technology he would be a cripple for the rest of his life and as it is I’m out a superior NCO. He is being detached to patient’s status and then to general replacement. They tell me it will take at least ninety days to grow him new legs which means we likely as not will not get him back. So, as I said, what am I to do with you? This is an official question, do you wish administrative or judicial punishment? That is, do you want to take whatever I order as your punishment or do you want to face a court-martial?”

“Administrative, sir.” Duncan breathed an internal sigh of relief at being given the opportunity.

“Very smart of you, Sergeant, but it’s well known that you’re smart. Very well, sixty days’ restriction, forty-five days’ extra duty, one month’s pay over sixty days and one stripe.” The colonel had effectively thrown the book at him. “Oh, and Sergeant, I understand you were up for sergeant first class.” The officer paused. “It will be a cold day in hell. Dismissed.”

Sergeant Black snapped to attention, barked “Right face!” and marched Sergeant Duncan out of the office.

“Sergeant Major!”

The sergeant major entered the office after escorting the NCOs from the building. “Yes, sir.”

“Get with the first sergeants and the S-4. We don’t understand this equipment and we don’t have time to mess with the booby traps in it right now. With Expert Infantry Boards coming up we need to concentrate on basic infantry skills; the scores on the latest round of core training processes were abysmal.

“I want every bit of GalTech equipment locked down, right now. Put all that will fit in the armories and the rest under lock and key in the supply rooms, especially those damn helmets and AIDs. And as for Duncan, I think he’s been in the battalion too long, but we’re critically short on NCOs so I can’t rotate him out. What do you think?”

The stocky blond sergeant major worked his protuberant lips in and out as he thought. “Bravo could use a good squad leader in their third platoon. The platoon sergeant is experienced but he’s spent most of his career in leg units. I think Duncan would be a real asset and Sergeant Green should know how to handle problem children.”

“Do it. Do it today,” the officer snapped, washing his hands of the matter.

“Yes, sir.”

“And get that crap under lock and key.”

“Yes, sir. Sir, when do you anticipate an ACS training cycle? I’ll be asked.” He had been asked already and repeatedly by the company first sergeants. Bravo company’s first sergeant, in particular, was crawling all over his ass on a daily basis.

“We’ve got ninety days after EIB before we’re scheduled to lift for Diess,” Youngman said, sharply. “We’ll do an intensive training cycle then. I’ve already submitted for the budget.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dismissed.” The colonel picked up a report and started to annotate it as the senior NCO in the battalion marched out.