Army

Chapter 47: You’re In The Army Now!

We had packed everything imaginable in the van Saturday after getting back to the frat, leaving only some clothing in some bags we could carry into the motels with us. I figured to take three days driving, which would put us near Sill Tuesday afternoon. The plan was to take 90 and 71 to Columbus the first day, then 70 to St. Louis, and finish in Lawton the third day. If we could push further each day than planned, it would make our last day the easiest. This was long before anybody invented the cell phone, so we were stopping every couple of hours for pit stops and meals and map breaks. Marilyn can barely figure out how to hold a map upright, but even she couldn’t lose me following the panel van! I didn’t report for school until the following Monday, but I wanted to look around ahead of time.

We made it to Columbus in about twelve hours, at which point we were both exhausted. If I wanted to be a truck driver, I would have gone to truck driving school! We crapped out in a Best Western and slept the night away. The next morning we got an early start and made it to Springfield, several hours past St. Louis. We were still tired, but it felt like we were getting ahead of the curve. Tuesday we made it to Lawton just after lunch.

Fort Sill is one of the old time Army bases dating back to the days when Oklahoma was the frontier and the Army was fighting the Indians. Now it’s a sprawling and flat place owned by the artillery. It’s big and wide and flat and open, the perfect place to shoot things that go a long way and go boom when they get there, even though the Wichita Mountains are visible from everywhere on the post. Lawton is a cow town if there ever was one. It’s flat and dusty and the wind blew constantly. Dust was everywhere, including on us when we got out of the car and truck. It was already blistering hot in the early afternoon. We were in the parking lot of a Best Western that we had reservations for the next week at.

Marilyn looked around and said, “And you think Utica’s a hick town!”

I looked around and shrugged. “Honey, they don’t put the motels in the residential neighborhoods, do they?”

“Do they have one here?”

“I’m sure they do. It’s probably very nice,” I said, putting a hopeful spin on things. Looking around I had to wonder. I was expecting a tumbleweed to blow by any second, followed by a cattle drive.

“Have fun! I think I’m going to stay in New York!” she replied.

I wrapped her in my arms and laughed. “I’m only here for six months. After that, I go somewhere else, a regular duty station. Probably a nice, dry lab building in Aberdeen, Maryland. It’s very nice there. You’ll see.” I was shading the truth slightly. If I were to stay in the Army, in Artillery, sooner or later I’d be spending time here as an officer. Pretty much every artillery officer does, sooner or later. Who knew, maybe it was really nice, once I got to know the place. It had to be better than Utica!

We checked in and cleaned up. For the first time since we had left New York, we had enough energy to fool around in the shower together. Afterwards we dried off and got dressed, and went out for lunch. The restaurant in the Best Western featured — guess what? — steaks. I wasn’t surprised.

We spent the rest of the day at the motel, resting up and goofing off. Over the next few days we drove around and saw what there was to see of Lawton, which looked bigger than Utica. I think if the Army decided to shoot cannons someplace else, the place would dry up and blow away quickly. Still, there were some nice areas, and some decent restaurants and schools and such. It was better than it had been back when the Indians were protesting the presence of the white man by using bows and arrows, of that I was sure. We found a storage locker place and unloaded everything I wouldn’t be taking into the BOQ with me, and then sorted out what I would keep available. After that we dumped the panel van back on the rental company. Otherwise, we just took a vacation for a few days and played hide the salami in our room. I needed to store up some memories, because it was going to be a few months before I saw Marilyn again.

Monday morning I had to go and rejoin the Army. I wasn’t entirely sure of the procedure, but based on my (limited) experience with the system, there was going to be an awful lot of hurry-up-and-wait. Report in time was 0900, so at 0800 I kissed Marilyn goodbye and headed over to the base. She would hang out around the swimming pool until I came back. Once I got the schedule straightened out, we would get her to the nearest airport, probably on Tuesday, and fly her back to Albany.

At the gate I was sent to the Staff and Facilities Battalion, where I was sent on to the Artillery School. I would go through check in there. It felt strange to just drive onto a base like this. By the time Parker joined the service, after 9/11, everything was tighter than a gnat’s ass. Nobody could get on any base anywhere without an elaborate pass and check in procedure. A lot of bases they even inspected under your car and made you open the trunk up. I parked in a pretty fair sized parking lot and made my way inside, where I found I was just one of many freshly minted butterbars looking for their new home. But I also saw something else, my old buddy Harlan Buckminster! I had no idea he was going Artillery like me! Time for a little fun!

I slipped around the room and came up behind him while he was talking to another second john standing in front of him. The other fellow noticed me and his eyes flicked in my direction, but I held an index finger to my lips. Smiling, I muttered lowly, “Christ, what the hell is this man’s army coming to when they let the coloreds become officers?”

Only a few people heard me, and there was some instant consternation. Of course Harlan heard me as clear as a bell, and he whipped around to face me. I just stood there grinning at him. He broke out into a grin of his own and replied, “Hell, I never knew you crackers had figured out how to stand shit six feet tall!”

Harlan lifted me up in a bear hug while I pounded on his back, and then he said, “Damn, it’s good to see you! I never knew you were going Artillery!”

“Same to you. It is good to see you! When did you get in?”

“Just a couple of days ago. I’ve been staying at the Best Western. You?” he answered.

“Same here! How’d we miss each other? My fiancée and I drove out here right after graduation. Once I get out of here, I’ll have to figure out how to get her back home,” I told him.

“No shit! At least Anna Lee drove her car. She can get home on her own.”

“Anna Lee?” I asked.

“My fiancée. Hey, maybe we can get together after this and have dinner together, the four of us,” he said.

“I’d like that. What’s the check-in procedure, anyway? My colonel didn’t tell us much,” I told him.

Haran shrugged. “Probably pretty routine. Check us in, get us rooms at the BOQ, meet and greet with the school Commandant, maybe a quick physical. I doubt anything course related will happen until tomorrow.”

I nodded. That made sense. “Think we might end up rooming together again?”

“Want to try?”

“Let’s ask. What’s the worst they can do? Say no?”

Harlan shrugged again. “Sure, why not. Maybe we can go out and find some Orange Army artillery to capture and bring back home.”

I laughed at that. “We’ll have to tell Marilyn and Anna Lee that story. I don’t think they’ll believe it unless we both tell it!”

Harlan started laughing at that, too. “So what made you choose Artillery?”

“It was either learn how to rain death and destruction down on the godless hordes while defending our fair nation, or get stuck in the motor pool. I went with option one. I figure I can kill more people that way than with my driving. You?”

“Same thing.”

“You ever learn how to drive a standard?”

Harlan just laughed at that. Then things started to happen and we had to quit fucking off and pay attention. The rest of the morning went pretty much like Harlan had expected. Today was check-in day. We were called forward to a counter by a bunch of Spec 4s, had our orders and ID cards checked, assigned BOQ rooms, two to a room, and given a list of do’s and don’ts for the BOQ. Buckman comes before Buckminster, so I ended up asking for Harlan as my roommate. The Spec 4s consulted their sheets and shuffled some things and I had a roommate. Then we stood around until we were sent to a large lecture style classroom, where we were seated and our teachers and cadre lined the room. In front was a lectern and a light bird welcomed us and gave us some more rules and regs. After that we did some more paperwork, had our security clearances checked, and went to the Officer’s Club for lunch. A captain escorted us and gave us some more instruction on how the club worked, as well as other details on food and lodging. After lunch we were sent off to draw an absolutely outrageous load of textbooks, firing tables, and other essentials before being dismissed to sort things out at the BOQ. Harlan and I swapped room numbers at the Best Western so we could call each other and make dinner plans.

By mid-afternoon I was able to head back to the Best Western, where Marilyn and I loaded most of my gear into the Impala. It seemed pretty simple to get her onto the base, so we drove over and put my stuff in my room. Once we got to the BOQ, we found Harlan and his fiancée moving his stuff in as well, so we did the introductions. Anna Lee was much lighter skinned than Harlan, who was almost pitch black, but she had the same southern accent he did. She was tall and slim, and looked classy. We helped each other move, and then helped our fellow classmates get moved in. Unsurprisingly, I wasn’t the only guy with too much stuff to pack in our rooms, so I led a small convoy over to the storage lockers and allowed Harlan to share mine while some of the other guys rented one and split it up between themselves.

Dinner was at the Best Western at 1900. I wore civvies rather than a uniform, and was pleased to note that Harlan had changed also. My first question was to Anna Lee. “So how’d you ever meet this reprobate?”

Anna Lee and Harlan laughed. “We met at school,” she said. “I was walking across the quad and he ran into me!”

“She was wearing these shorts — oh my God! — and…” interrupted Harlan.

“Watch your mouth!” squawked Anna Lee, at which both Marilyn and I laughed. “No need to tell anybody that!”

I glanced at Anna Lee’s legs, which were pretty good, and nodded to Harlan and gave him a thumbs up. “No need to explain.” That earned me punches from both Marilyn and Anna Lee. I just turned to Marilyn. “You’d better behave or I’ll tell them the truth about how we met.”

As expected, Marilyn turned red and said, “Don’t you dare!” which made the others all the more curious.

I simply smiled at her and said, “You can tell them the romantic version, or my more truthful version.”

“You are an evil person,” Marilyn answered. She gave a somewhat limited romantic version, and the other two had me expand on it. The romantic version was the duel. Then Harlan asked for the true version, and I told how she had picked up the bartender at a party, which earned a few squawks from my fiancée. I just shrugged and said I was an officer and a gentleman.

“You may be an officer, but you are no gentleman!” argued Marilyn.

“Well, it was fifty-fifty odds.” I looked at my friend. “When’s the big day?”

“March 11,” announced Anna Lee. “I finish school in December and we’re getting married after that.”

“Good for you.”

Harlan continued, “It’s at the chapel at Ole Miss, in Oxford. You should come. I’m inviting you. Both of you. Come on down.” Anna Lee nodded in agreement.

I glanced at Marilyn, who gave me a shrug. “Fine by us. It all depends on where we end up, I suppose. If we can make it, we’ll be there. You’re invited to our wedding, too, but that’s next summer and we don’t have a date yet. Want to be one of my ushers?” I asked. “My college roommate is my best man, and you’ve been my army roommate for a couple of years. Why not?”

He laughed. “Love to. Are there going to be any other brothers at the wedding?” he asked.

I just grinned. “Oh, man, it’s going to be whiter than a Klan meeting!”

Harlan just laughed loudly at that, and Anna Lee giggled. Predictably, Marilyn was horrified at my statement. “I can’t believe you said that! You’re such a… a…”

I just shook my head at her. “I am many things, babe, but that ain’t one of them.” Harlan and his lady were looking at me in confusion. I turned to them and said, “Marilyn is convinced that since I am a Caucasian male born south of the Mason-Dixon Line, I am by birth and definition a racist, and that only Yankees have no prejudices.”

“Oh, Lord!” groaned Harlan humorously. “What kind of a Yankee?”

“A New York Yankee!”

“They’re the worst!” he laughed. He looked over at Marilyn and smiled. “You are aware that slavery was legal in New York until the 1820s, right?”

Marilyn looked like she had been slapped in the face with a dead fish. “No, that’s not true!”

The rest of us just smiled and nodded. “1827, I believe. They weren’t the last of the Yankee states, either. That was Connecticut, I think, and not for another twenty years or so, either,” I said. Marilyn looked at me and I said, “They teach this stuff in schools.”

Harlan looked at me and grinned. “So, how many slaves did your family own, Carl?”

“None, as far as I know. Wrong type of land for that anyway,” I answered.

It was his turn to look surprised. “Shit, man, I was just joking. You mean your family might have been slave-owners?”

I shrugged. “Well, we got here in the 1750s, and Maryland was a slave state, so I suppose it’s possible, but the land we owned wasn’t suitable for that sort of farming. I have never heard of any branch of the family that ever owned any slaves, but I suppose it is theoretically possible. Hampton House is near where I grew up and it was a plantation with slaves, but the farming we did wasn’t conducive to slavery.”

“I’m not following you.” Anna Lee looked at me curiously, too. Marilyn just couldn’t believe the entire conversation.

“There’s really only two crops that do well with slaves, cotton and tobacco, both of them high value and labor intensive. Most of the slaves at Hampton House worked in the barns and the main house. Nobody ever grew cotton or tobacco there, that’s for sure.” Harlan still looked confused, so he must not have that farmer gene in him. “Nobody’s ever grown cotton in Maryland that I ever heard of. I suppose you could do it, but the big crops were always sweet corn and tobacco. Lots of tobacco was grown, still is, in fact, but it’s all down in the southern part of the state, the flat and wet coastal piece. My family settled in the northern and western part of the state. It’s all rolling hills there. Prime for corn and cows, lousy for tobacco,” I told him.

“You learn something every day, I suppose,” commented Harlan. “It’s not just cotton and tobacco, though. In Mississippi they also raised rice and sugar, and both used slaves.”

I gave my friend a funny look. “Okay, rice I can understand, but sugar? They grew sugar down there?”

He nodded. “Not any longer, but yeah. Now it’s all grown overseas or Hawaii or some damn place. We raise sugar beets, though.”

“Huh! I’d have never figured on that. I guess I learned something new, too. Makes sense, though, both crops are labor intensive, and sugar is certainly high value. Anyway, like I said, I don’t think my family ever owned any slaves, but I can’t honestly say it’s because we’re so morally superior. More like it just didn’t make any sense.” I just gave a wry shrug.

“There are times I can’t believe you,” exclaimed Marilyn. “How can you be so, so, normal about this?”

I just shrugged. “I never said I approved of it. These are just historical facts, honey. Just like the fact that I had a relative on the southern side of the Civil War, as well as one on the northern side. It wasn’t like all the southerners in the war owned slaves. I’d be willing to bet that the majority didn’t.” I held my hands up in a helpless gesture. “It is what it is. It’s our generation that has to make it right.”

Anna Lee nodded. “It’s getting better already. Ten years ago, we probably couldn’t have been in the same restaurant with you. Certainly not back home in Mississippi!”

“Wait and see,” I told my fiancée. “In my father’s time that was normal. In our generation we know better. Our children and our grandchildren simply won’t understand what the fuss was all about.” I grinned at them. “They’ll have found some other reason to hate people by then!”

That earned me a few rolled eyes and groans, but nobody disagreed with me either.

“Your family happy to see you in the army?” I asked.

Harlan shrugged. “They’re okay with it. What they’re happy with is that I went to college, even if I do have to go into the army because of it. I’m the first Buckminster to ever go to college, let alone graduate. The idea of becoming an officer is almost like a fairy tale to them.”

“Farmers?” It almost sounded like my father’s story.

He shrugged again. “Used to be, but there’s a new mill outside of Buckminster and Daddy works there.”

“The town is named after you?”

Harlan grinned at that. “Not precisely. Buckminster is the county seat of Buckminster County.”

I stared at him. “The county is named after you?”

“The county is named after Colonel Rufus J. Buckminster, who was the richest man in that part of Mississippi about 150 years ago or so. One of the reasons the Colonel was so wealthy was the large number of slaves he owned.”

It took me a second to figure out what Harlan was saying, and he laughed at the shock on my face. “Don’t tell me…”

“You got it, cracker! The Colonel was known to like the dark meat at Thanksgiving.”

“Holy shit!” I thought about it for a second. I’d heard of that sort of thing happening, slaves taking the last names of their masters and/or parents. “Does it ever make you feel funny, knowing you’re named after this guy?”

“They’re long, long gone. I never give it no nevermind. Give us another hundred years and we’ll be owning them.”

“Holy shit!”

We got off the topic, which had certainly made Marilyn think, and started discussing wedding plans. That was much safer, although incredibly boring to both Harlan and me.

It was Anna Lee who solved my biggest problem. Harlan asked Marilyn, “How are you getting home? We both drove, but Carl said you only had his car.”

“I don’t know yet. I have to find an airport. Is there one here?” she asked.

I looked at her blankly. “Probably the nearest is Oklahoma City. I think I’ll have to drive you there tomorrow after class, but I don’t know when. You may have to stay the night there and get a cab to the airport.”

Harlan answered, “Lawton has one, with service to Dallas, supposed to be pretty good, too. At least that’s what I was told back at school.”

Anna Lee piped up. “Why don’t I take you there, tomorrow? I’m leaving anyway. I’ll just drive home from there.”

I looked at Marilyn and nodded to her. “I can call there after dinner and see about getting you a flight home.”

“If it isn’t any trouble…” said Marilyn.

Anna Lee waved it off. “We’ll spend the time talking about our jerk boyfriends and the Army. Christ, we’ll probably spend another two days doing that!”

Harlan looked at me and said, “We’re in trouble now!”

I gave him a wry smile in return and said, “No shit!” I leaned forward and said to him conspiratorially, “Speaking of civil rights, our mistake wasn’t giving women the vote. It was teaching them to speak!” Harlan laughed while Marilyn and Anna Lee squawked and pelted me with rolls.

After dinner I spent some time showing Marilyn just how much I’d be missing her. Then, the next morning, I rolled out of bed, put on the uniform of the day (starched and pressed fatigues), and packed my remaining stuff into my B4. I kissed Marilyn goodbye and took off. I paid the bill but told the clerk Marilyn was leaving later in the morning. Harlan showed up at the desk just as I was leaving, so I waited for him and then we took our two car convoy over to the base. It was time to become an artilleryman.

Artillery school was interesting, and it really meshed with my love for math. Artillery is killing by the numbers, in so many ways. Artillery is called the King of Battle; about 60+% of all casualties come from the big guns throwing the big shells. It’s very demoralizing, too. You can shoot back at tanks and infantry and airplanes, but when you’re being shelled, you just dig in and pray.

It’s all numbers in the way it operates. You are shooting at targets you never see, being called on the radio by people you never know, and doing it all with maps and trigonometry. Do it right and the bad guys die. Do it wrong, screw up the math, fuck up the numbers, and the good guys die. Very, very bad. Even the actual process is by the numbers. You set up the gun, and then it’s an intricate dance, a ballet of death, to load the gun, fire the gun, and clean out the gun. One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, all done to a metronome of destruction. You do this until the bad guys die, and then you get a new target, change the settings, and it’s back to one, two, three.

The shells we fired did all sorts of things. Some were just big steel tubs full of explosives that blew up when they got somewhere. Some shells laid out smoke or started fires. There was something called a canister shell, which was very much like a shotgun shell, in case the bad guys were coming over the hill towards you and you needed a really big shotgun blast. (After that, pull your pistol and run away — you’re fucked!) They had chemical shells (we didn’t use them, but they exist) that put out nerve gas and equally awful things. There were even nuclear shells for the biggest guns, which fired an atomic bomb! (I do not want to be around when they start firing those things off, because you will be on the receiving end of something similar before you ever get a chance to unass the position and move out.) We learned about different levels of fire and different types of fuses and how it all worked.

Nobody calls on the artillery to do happy things. We don’t do reconnaissance, we don’t patrol, we don’t spy, we don’t hand out presents and food. If somebody calls for us, it means somebody else is about to die very messily, generally by our throwing something very big and very nasty a very long way at them.

At Artillery Officer School, junior officers like myself learn the math involved, learn the techniques to call in arty strikes, shoot the cannons, and act as forward observers. We have medium-size guns like 105s, big guns like 155s, and monstrously big guns like 8 inchers. You don’t want me pissed at you! I will fuck up your whole damn day! We also learned about trucks, which surprised me until I thought about it. You have to haul the suckers around, along with all the gear and ammo and gun bunnies running them. The motor pool in a typical battery is larger than the gun section. Some of the guns come mounted on tracks, as armored versions. We were reminded of the importance of the care and feeding of our guns, though, even when they were motorized, with the admonition, “If the gun don’t work, gentlemen, all you’ll have is a 53 ton portable radio.”

Lots of math and lots of trigonometry are involved. In 1977 they were getting away from using slide rules and some books of tables to do the work. We also had a TI-59 calculator just like I had at RPI my senior year, with some extra ROM chips and slide cards, but they could be temperamental outside of the classroom. The programming for them was actually a version of Assembly language. With my background in math and computers, I was actually spending a lot of time tutoring my fellow students after class. Still, I was definitely happy with my intended field. Armies like cannon-cockers. Some of the great generals had very extensive artillery backgrounds, like Napoleon. Another famous artillery general was Anthony ‘Nuts’ McAuliffe. He was the guy commanding the 101^st at Bastogne, and was the division’s artillery boss. When summoned by the Germans to surrender after being surrounded, he replied “Nuts!” and then went on to win the battle.

Most of the great military academies of the world, like Sandhurst and West Point, were created to teach military engineering. They taught one of two things: One, how to attack a fort using cannons or, Two, how to design and defend a fort against a cannon attack.

The other thing we learned at Fort Sill was what was quaintly called ‘Customs of the Service.’ In other words, all the things somebody decided that 22 year old Second Lieutenants needed to know. This was important stuff, like:

Don’t get drunk in the officer’s club and piss in the potted palms.

Don’t get drunk in the officer’s club and puke on your commanding officer’s shoes.

Don’t get drunk in the officer’s club and hit on your commanding officer’s wife.

Don’t get drunk in the officer’s club and hit on your commanding officer’s teenage daughter.

With some of my classmates, this stuff needed to be explicitly laid out and explained. I knew better, and Harlan was pretty much an upright citizen, but some of these guys had just been released from a zoo.

Harlan and I were good boys, and for the next six months we studied hard, partied little, and made numerous phone calls home to our sweethearts. Marilyn came out for a short visit before she had to go back to school in the fall, and so did Anna Lee. Mostly, though, we studied. The theory was that if you did well in school, when it came time to hand out assignments, the Army would be good to the people at the top of the standings. Most of the students had already received their eventual assignments, but not all, and if you fucked up in class the Army would be happy to reassign you. The guy at the bottom was probably about to guard an ammo dump in Antarctica. Harlan and I hadn’t received our assignments prior to the start of school, and they weren’t announced until graduation. I ended up Number One and Harlan ended up Number Two. Harlan got a nice dream assignment for himself, assignment to a mechanized 155 battery at Fort Hood in Texas with the First Cavalry, a top notch armored division. I figured as the winner, and with a doctorate in applied mathematics, I would be assigned to my dream assignment, a lab slot at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland, back in my old stomping grounds.

The ways of the Army are mighty and mysterious. I was going to Fort Bragg, the 319^th Airborne Field Artillery with the 82^nd Airborne. Maybe that stint at jump school hadn’t been my smartest move!

Somehow I didn’t think Marilyn was going to approve.

Chapter 48: Fort Bragg Redux

There was one other guy in the class, Clarence Bodecker, going to Fort Bragg, assigned to the 321^st Field Artillery, and thankfully, he didn’t have a car. I dug him up and made a deal, I would rent the cargo van and carry both our gear, if he would drive my car. He didn’t have all that much crap, but he had no way to get it there, and I needed to move and drive a car. This way Marilyn wouldn’t have to fly out and do the cross country trip again. We were to report in on Monday, December 5^th, so we had about a week after graduation to drive there.

It’s a fairly simple drive, although it takes fucking forever. Oklahoma City to Little Rock to Memphis to Birmingham to Atlanta to Columbia toFayetteville. Interstates most of the way, although we had to take US-78 between Memphis and Birmingham (which really sucked — terrible road!) We could do it in two long days of driving; instead it took us five! We drove the first day to Little Rock, at which point Clarence decided we needed to stop, and he got drunk in the motel bar. We spent the day in Little Rock while Clarence got over his hangover, and then on Day Three drove to Atlanta. We had an encore performance of Clarence’s drinking problems that evening and ended up spending Day Four in Atlanta while he recuperated. Day Five we made it to Fayetteville, and by then I had decided that if I ever was in an airplane with Clarence, I would unhook his static line!

That Saturday I found a storage locker and moved most of my stuff in there, while retaining what I wanted for the BOQ in the back of the Impala. I kept my mouth shut with Clarence while we moved our gear and got rid of the panel van, and then we made our way back to the motel. He had me drop him off at a used car lot on the way back. At that point I politely cut him loose, in the fervent but silent hope we would never run across each other again.

Since I wasn’t really an impressionable young kid who couldn’t figure out how to scratch his ass, I knew a lot more about airborne operations than the average second john. What I knew did not fill me with confidence. I wondered just how much of a hole I had dug for myself by earning my jump wings.

The 82^nd Airborne Division is probably the most famous and exclusive division in the US Army. Most of the time it is called an ‘elite’ division. When there is an article in the paper or on the news, it’s not referred to as ‘the 82^nd Airborne Division’, it’s referred to as ‘the elite 82^nd Airborne Division.’ They should have trademarked the name and charged to use the phrase. You can’t even apply to join unless you’ve graduated from jump school, and a lot of the time, the feeling is given out that if they want you, they’ll let you know. I’m not quite sure what I was doing there, other than the fact that I had jump school under my belt. Maybe they needed another cannon cocker. Otherwise I was just another very young and very junior officer.

It was certainly very flattering to be honored with entry into this famed institution, but I knew too much about airborne operations to be totally comfortable with it. The fact of the matter is that paratroop operations are very questionable at best. The 82^nd and the 101^st brag about how they helped win D-Day by dropping into France ahead of everybody else, and tying up German operations, but the history of the Normandy invasion shows quite a different result. Yes, they tied up the Germans, but they suffered horrible losses and casualties, and the Germans they allegedly tied up were actually held back by the orders of Hitler. Throughout the war, airborne operations were plagued by high casualties and questionable results. D-Day, Sicily, Market-Garden, Crete, Finland — they all had the same mixed results.

Looked at from a cost-benefit analysis viewpoint, paratroop operations were remarkably inefficient! If the entire idea is to deliver infantry troops in an organized and effective manner capable of quickly commencing combat operations, the airborne fails in almost every regard. When guys jump out of a lot of airplanes, their groups get mixed up, they land all over creation, there’s a lot of injuries, and the troops that land are predominately light infantry troops without a lot of armor or artillery support.

On the other hand, there are those who argue that some of those same operations were saved by airborne troops, and that some of the other operations failed because of other reasons. That’s why other people then me wear stars and get paid the big bucks. No matter who’s right, the paratroopers take a beating, no matter what!

Consider instead that rather than invest the hundreds of millions of dollars it cost to develop airborne capability during World War II, perhaps a better investment would have been heavy armor (a better tank than the Sherman would have been a Godsend!) or increased numbers of fighter-bombers. The same argument could also be made of long range heavy bombers like the Flying Fortress, which took horrendous losses and could barely hit a target the size of a city.

On the plus side, airborne capability is a must for special operations troops. Special Forces, the Rangers, and Delta Force all draw heavily on troopers who learned their trade in the 82^nd. Likewise the techniques learned at Bragg and Benning’s jump school influence the Navy SEALs and Marine Force Recon. As infantry, paratroopers are superb, the best in the world. Further, the 82^nd was set up so that at least part of the division could be airborne inside of two hours and anywhere on the planet inside of 24. When the President decided that some jackass somewhere was acting too big for his britches, he had the ability to send them directly to his Presidential Palace at a moment’s notice and stick a lot of very nasty and heavily armed people up said jackass’ rectum.

To compensate for the fact that once they’re on the ground the troopers are basically leg infantry, the Army has figured out how to also parachute in a variety of heavy support for them. They can drop artillery, trucks, jeeps, and even tanks. Well, tanks don’t airdrop so well, they tend to be too heavy to parachute and tend to fall straight to the ground and make a huge mess when they crash. The Army even developed a special lightweight tank, the Sheridan, with aluminum armor that didn’t work all that great, and even it was a touch too heavy to drop from a parachute. What they developed instead was a LAPES system, a Low Altitude Parachute Extraction System, where they strapped a tank to a pallet in the back of a cargo plane, and then flew that plane down a runway or a road inches off the ground. At the proper moment, they toss a chute out the back of the bird and it drags the pallet with the tank on it out the ass of the airplane. It’s still damn exciting, but it’s a lot safer than trying to drop it from a parachute.

Still, the absolute last thing the airborne actually wants to do is to actually have to jump out of an airplane! The perfect operation would have just a small detachment of pure paratroopers, like Rangers or a parachute infantry company, drop onto an enemy airport and seize control before the bad guys know what’s going on. Then the rest of us swoop in fifteen minutes later, before the bad guys have a chance to have an argument with our guys, and drop off everybody else, in perfect working order and no injuries. They walk off the airplanes just like they walked on, organized, safe, and combat ready. AIRBORNE!

I was to report for duty at 0900, so I drove in at 0830 and followed the road signs to In-Processing. As an artilleryman, I was being assigned to Division Artillery, a brigade- level command including the 1^st Battalion, 319^th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment, ‘1^st of the 319^th’ as it was called and two other battalions with different numbers. I had been to Bragg twice before, during ROTC training, but they don’t bring you near the real army, so I got a bit lost and almost ended up in the wrong building. Bragg is huge, with headquarters for the 82^nd, the XVIII^th Airborne Corps, 1^st Corps Support Command, and several HQ elements for units stationed elsewhere. I found the right place and parked in a visitor’s spot and went inside.

Back when I got my orders for the 319^th, I also got a packet from my future owners. It had a variety of letters, mostly form letters welcoming me to the 82^nd and the 319^th, but there was one I needed to read for sure. When I got to the Replacement Company at DivArty, I was to dig up my ‘sponsor’. It was a lot like visiting any big company, in that you go up to a counter and ask where to go, although in this case most of the people are wearing fatigues and jump boots. At the Replacement Company a phone call was made to my ‘sponsor’, a first lieutenant already in the 319^th. He came along and greeted me. “Welcome, my name is Stinson. I’ll help run you through and get you where you’re going.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

He smiled and nodded. “You can cut the sir’s down to one every hour or so. My first name is Jack. Welcome to the Replacement Company. You belong to them for a few days. They will process you into the system.” He then handed me a garrison cap with an Airborne flash and a butterbar on it. “Lose the bus driver’s hat. We wear cunt caps in the Airborne.” The fore-and-aft, or garrison, cap is known to one and all as the cunt cap, basically because that’s what it looks like from a certain angle. I settled it on my head, and he smiled. “Airborne!”

I laughed and gave the proper return — “All the way!”

I was then turned me over to a Spec 4, along with a very thorough check-in list. I really was going to belong to him for the next week! There was a lot of paperwork, I had to get a BOQ assignment, get a medical check (healthy), a dental check (one cavity), finance department (payroll details), and legal (up-to-date will). I also saw the MP office, got an orientation lecture with a few other butterbars, was taught about Fayetteville and the history of the area and the Airborne. Surprisingly I never saw Clarence Bodecker; he was either at a different Replacement Company, or he was nursing another hangover.

I think the worst part was the shot line. The 82^nd is ready to deploy at a moment’s notice anywhere in the world. Because of that, everybody needs to be inoculated against every disease known to mankind! Said diseases included, but were not limited to, cholera, typhoid fever, yellow fever, dengue fever, and bubonic plague! Personally, I think the theory is that if they don’t make you sick, then you can become a paratrooper. I spent the next day as sick as a dog, but still had to go through with my orientation procedure. For real fun, I was informed that this was a requirement once a quarter. I was pretty sure that Harlan, at Fort Hood, had a better deal going on! This would become a recurring event.

One week later, Stinson grabbed me as I finished with the Replacement Company and it was time to join the 319^th. First we reported to DivArty, and processed me in there, and then from DivArty we went to the 319^th, where we repeated the process. Then a captain found us, and looked us over, then turned to me. “Reporting in, Lieutenant?” he asked pleasantly.

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, follow me. You can make your manners to the colonel.” He came around the counter and we followed him down the hallway to a closed door. He knocked on the door, and at the muffled, ‘Come!’, from the other side, he turned the knob. “You’re on!” he said with a smile.

We marched into the office and I saw a lieutenant colonel sitting at a desk. On the desk was a small sign saying, ‘Lieutenant Colonel Marchlight.’ Both Stinson and I marched and came to attention, and saluted, and then I said, “SECOND LIEUTENANT BUCKMAN, CARLING P., REPORTING FOR DUTY, SIR!”

The colonel smiled at the captain for a moment and then looked back at me. He waved a hand sketchily in the direction of his forehead and said, “As you were, Lieutenant.” Then he pointed at some chairs and said, “Have a seat, gentlemen.”

Both the captain, Stinson, and I grabbed a chair and brought it to the desk, and then sat down. The captain spoke first, “Lieutenant Buckman is reporting in, sir.”

Lieutenant Colonel Marchlight grunted, and said, “Welcome to the 1^st of the 319^th. Just finished at Sill, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, sir, just over two weeks ago, sir.”

“You his sponsor, Stinson?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Stinson. That was the only time Stinson was asked anything or responded in the meeting.

Marchlight nodded again. He looked over at the captain, named Hudson by the nametag on his uniform. “What’s the plan for Lieutenant Buckman?”

Captain Hudson replied, “Bravo Battery, sir.”

Marchlight grunted and gave a touch of a distasteful look, and said, “Well, they need you, that’s for sure. Battery B is Captain Harris’ outfit. What was your ranking at Sill?”

“Top of my class, sir.” The colonel glanced over at Hudson, who shuffled through some papers in a file and just nodded.

“Well, you’ll do well, then. Captain Hudson will sort you out and take you over there. Just learn your job and do it well, and we’ll never have a problem.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very good. Now, I know they teach you that after checking in, at some point you’re supposed to visit my home and be social. You may consider that done.”

“Yes, sir. Airborne!”

He nodded at Hudson again, who stood up and signaled for me to do the same. Stinson popped up as well. We put our chairs back where they were, and the colonel shook my hand before dismissing us.

Once we were back out in the hallway, Captain Hudson said, “Okay, that’s done. I’m the S-1, by the way. What’s going to happen next is that I will introduce you to your new boss.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Come along.”

We left the building and walked two buildings back, to another building. I followed Hudson inside and into an office. He immediately said, “As you were,” and nobody got up. “Captain Harris available?” he asked, to nobody in particular.

A Spec 4 answered, “Let me check, sir.” He went to an office and knocked, and then opened the door without waiting for an answer. He mumbled something, and then stepped back. “Go on in, Captain.”

“Thank you.” He motioned me after him and I repeated my reporting-in salute with Captain Harris. We went through the same rigmarole, in which Harris welcomed me to the battery. After the last week I was looking forward to actually being in my battery. So far I had simply been shuffling paper.

If I thought I was going to start working in Battery B immediately, I was promptly disabused of this notion. It was back to school for me! I was to go to Jumpmaster School almost immediately, which I had never even heard of until now. Jumpmaster School was supposed to teach me everything I needed to know to be an expert in jumping out of an airplane. I thought that was what Jump School was supposed to do, but what did I know; I was a just a dumbass second john. It seemed that all officers and noncoms (at least at the sergeant on up levels) must qualify as a jumpmaster to be considered qualified. Captain Harris turned me over to Lieutenant Brimley, who in turn dumped me onto the battalion’s S-3. I did five jumps by the end of the week, and that qualified me for the two week Jumpmaster School.

In order to be current as a paratrooper, you need to make at least one jump every three months. What surprised the hell out of me was how they did it — by chopper! The first time it happened I was trucked out to a drop zone, where I was handed a chute and loaded into a Chinook. The CH-47 is a heavy lift helicopter powerful enough to carry howitzers in a belly sling, and large enough to carry several dozen fully equipped paratroopers. This was my first jump from a chopper, and the first time I did it, I asked why. I was told that it was quite common. For one thing, when the Air Force dropped Army paratroopers, the Army had to pay the Air Force for the privilege, and the accounting was a nightmare. If the Army drops the guys, it’s a whole lot simpler. Furthermore, since the chopper is moving at a much slower speed, and can pick and hover over good drop zones, it’s a whole lot safer for the troops. Operationally, it’s a lot like jumping from a Herky-Bird — they drop the back ramp and you take a short walk with a really big last step.

Jumpmaster School teaches you how to send other people out the door. You learn to give jump commands and run a jump. The big thing is to be able to inspect a jumper visually in about a minute and make sure they can jump safely, without killing themselves and everybody else in the process. I passed, which most don’t, at least not on the first go, and was sent back to the battery the third week in January.

That next Monday morning I returned to Battery B. Once there, the same Spec 4 who had showed Hudson and me into Captain Harris’ office, greeted me and told me to take a seat. Captain Harris was in a meeting and would be out in a few minutes. He pointed at a sidebar and said, “Coffee, sir?”

The curse of the modern military is coffee. It runs on it even more than fuel! If we ever invade Colombia, it won’t be because of drugs, it will because Juan Valdez decided to fuck with the coffee! Unfortunately, I can’t stand coffee! Tea is fine, but rather rare on an army base. Coffee is everything! “No thank you, Specialist.” I sat down on an empty plastic office chair and picked up a week old copy of the Paraglide, the base newspaper, and started reading.

About forty minutes later the door to the office at the side opened up, and a first lieutenant, a second lieutenant, and a couple of sergeants came out, none of whom looked overly happy. Needless to say, I immediately rose to my feet. Captain Harris looked out his door and saw me, and then glanced over at the clerk, Specialist 4 Jones by the name sewn on his fatigues. He said, “The Lieutenant is back with us, sir.”

“Yeah? Well, about time. Come on in.” He yelled out, “Lieutenant Brimley, come on back in here!” The first lieutenant I had seen leave Captain Harris’ office came out of his office and followed me into the battery commander’s office.

Originally, artillery regiments were made up of three artillery battalions and a headquarters ‘battalion’, except that the Army had pretty much abandoned formal regimental structure in the Fifties. Now we had an artillery brigade made up of battalions from three different regiments, none of which actually existed anymore. Furthermore, each of those battalions was actually assigned directly to a parachute infantry brigade. Why they change these things every few years is beyond me.

Likewise, every artillery battalion is made up of three artillery batteries and a headquarters and support ‘battery’. Each Airborne artillery battery is made up of a firing element of six guns, depending on usage and caliber, and a support element of everything else. In our case, Battery B, we had the requisition number of six M102 105 mm towed howitzers as the firing element. The support element is actually larger, manpower wise, than the firing element. You had the fire direction control center (who shoots what, and when, and at whom) as well as the motor pool and ammo supplies.

Equipment wise, Battery B pretty much had the regulation gear, although some of it was old. In fact, a lot of it had seen service in Vietnam. Also, according to the book we had about 125 enlisted personnel to fire the guns, drive the trucks, hump the ammo around, and tell us where and when to fire. Again, personnel wise, we had pretty much what we were supposed to have.

Again, according to the book, we had a proper command structure. DivArty was commanded by a full colonel, with a lieutenant colonel as his exec. His staff officers were all majors, although the S-3 was a light bird, too. This pattern continued down a layer, where the battalion was commanded by a light bird and had a major as an exec, with captains as the staff.

There are a lot of reasons for it, some good and some bad, for the fact that there are a lot more staff officers and positions than line officers. Whether you think it’s a good thing or not, that’s the way it works. They break down as follow:

S-1: Personnel and Administration — This is the equivalent of the Human Resources department at a corporation. The ultimate bureaucrats.

S-2: Intelligence — These guys are responsible for knowing what the bad guys are doing, what the bad guys think the good guys are doing, what the good guys are doing to hide what they are doing from the bad guys, what the bad guys are doing to hide what they are doing from the good guys — after awhile you have a major headache. Their motto — ‘We bet your life!’

S-3: Operations and Training — If you’ve got to be a staff officer, be the S-3! These guys are responsible for actually giving the orders when the commander makes a decision. A good turn as the S-3 is critical to becoming an exec or commander somewhere down the pike. During combat ops, the position is often held by a top subordinate unit commander or the exec. Career line officers want to be the S-3. Remember the line from Orwell about all pigs being equal, but some being more equal than others? The S-3 is more equal than the others!

S-4: Logistics and Supply — Very boring, very critical. Everything you will ever need comes from the supply department. Almost every major military disaster in recorded history has resulted from a general who ignored supply problems. Another popular saying is that amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics.

Lastly, according to the book, a light artillery battery like Battery B was supposed to have five officers, a commanding officer, an executive officer, a fire direction officer, and two platoon leaders. In practice, a captain was the CO, a first lieutenant was the XO, and three second lieutenants split up the other jobs. (Batteries don’t have staff officers.) For instance, the six howitzers might be split up into three two-gun platoons, each under the command of a second john, while the exec runs the other stuff. Also possible, two of the second johns might control three-gun platoons, leaving the third second lieutenant to control the motor pool, etc.

What we had didn’t quite match the book. We had Captain Harris as the commander, First Lieutenant Brimley as the exec, and Second Lieutenant Goldstein.

Oh, yeah, and me.

In the most amazing division of labor, I was assigned to control all six howitzers, while Goldstein was assigned to control our motor pool, with the exec running the fire direction center. After only a few days it became obvious why this was being done in this fashion — Second Lieutenant Goldstein was hopelessly incompetent! Despite frequent (and frequently loud!) counseling from First Lieutenant Brimley and Captain Harris, Second Lieutenant Goldstein could be counted on to fuck up anything assigned to him. At least in the motor pool he couldn’t shoot a truck at the good guys!

Battery B had had a year of simply terrible luck with their second lieutenants. They had three a year ago, all straight out of AOC, all with high hopes. One had managed to land in the trees and break a leg, and after getting out of the hospital, had transferred to a motorized artillery regiment. One had been caught driving drunk and been cashiered. The third was Second Lieutenant Goldstein, who was well on his way to an OER (Officer’s Efficiency Report) that would see him assigned to a mess kit repair company in Duluth, Minnesota, if he was lucky. I was to be the first, hopefully, of a string of new second lieutenants who would bring Battery B back to the path of righteousness.

Nothing like a little pressure on the new job!

Anyway, by the middle of January I was learning my job in a real battery. I also had my list of jobs, which was daunting indeed. I was the junior officer in the battery, so in addition to my ‘real’ job as platoon leader of six howitzers, I also had what Robert A. Heinlein called the ‘George’ jobs, all the shit jobs that get dumped on somebody. I was morale officer, welfare officer, pay officer, recreation officer, public relations officer, community liaison officer… you get the idea. Some of these items took up very little time (public relations officer) and some were major league pains in the balls (pay officer), but they all had to be done. I was glad Marilyn wasn’t around, since I wasn’t sure if 24 hours in a day would be sufficient.

On the plus side, well, I wasn’t some dumb shit kid barely old enough to shave. While I might look like just another junior officer, I had been running small outfits most of my life. It wasn’t that I didn’t make mistakes, but that I had made every conceivable mistake in another lifetime! I didn’t make the same mistake twice, and while I hadn’t been in the military before, I had been a foreman and sales manager and most other forms of manager over the years. If there was a way to fuck up, I had done it over the years. Now I could learn from my own mistakes. I also knew the men would be looking for a way to test me. I wasn’t too terribly worried. I had been in similar jobs before, I had a thick skin, and a decent sense of humor.

One of the major mistakes made by junior officers is that they think that since they’re officers, they must be smarter than the enlisted men. So, you get a 22 year old Second Lieutenant trying to tell an E-7 Sergeant First Class who might be old enough to be his father how to do things. I knew better. You tell the SFC what you want to do — politely — and then ask his opinion of how to do it. If you’re really smart, you keep your own fucking mouth shut in the meantime! Another big mistake is that they ignore the chain of command and start directly telling the enlisted men what to do. The chain of command is there for a reason — use it! Like I said, I had fucked up by the numbers 50 years ago; I didn’t need to repeat the experience.

The Army, was transitioning between a mostly conscript army to an all volunteer army. The 82^nd was a volunteer outfit even during the draft era, simply because all paratroopers are volunteers. We had generally higher quality troops compared to the rest of the Army. Still, pay was low and standards were low. The big changes wouldn’t come for a few more years. One of the big changes in the Eighties was the rise in pay and standards. A few years before, I remember being told, the pay officer needed to do his job while wearing his.45, locked and cocked! I never had to do that. We had gone to direct deposit a few years before I got there.

Towards the end of January, that Thursday morning, I came into the battery office at 0700 and found the Captain already there drinking coffee with the battery sergeant, Sergeant First Class Hammersmith, and Spec 4 Jones, one of the clerks. I glanced at the wall clock and then looked at the Captain. “Am I late sir?” He normally didn’t show for another fifteen minutes or more.

“Just got out of the house early. You have no idea how much racket a baby can make in the morning,” he said with a smile. The Captain had just become a father for the second time that spring.

I smiled at that. Oh, if you only knew! “And if I’m very careful, I won’t for a very long time.”

That got an amused snort out of the Captain. I made some tea and set it on my desk, which was in the back corner of the battery office. Only the commanding officer, the exec, and the battery sergeant got their own offices. The captain followed me over. He pointed at a big envelope on my desk with a return label on it from RPI. “What’s that?” he asked.

“Not quite sure. It must be from my school, I didn’t have an address, so I simply gave them the 319^th’s name here at Bragg. I’ll make sure they get a proper address, sir.”

He just nodded. “No biggie. They’re probably already asking you to contribute to the alumni fund.”

I picked it up and starting opening it with a mini-Gerber combat knife I used as a letter opener. “When do they start hitting up the graduates of Hudson High for that sort of thing?” I asked. Captain Harris was a graduate of West Point, also known as ‘Hudson High.’ He just laughed at that. I slit open the large packet and then eyed it curiously. “It’s what I thought, sir,” I commented with a nod. “My faculty adviser and I were putting together a paper and these are the final edits.”

“What is it!?”

“Well, this is my dissertation,” I said, dropping a thick packet onto my desk, and then set a separate packet next to it, along with a number of loose sheets with formulas and graphs on them. “And this is a paper my professor and I wrote based on the work, with both our names on it, for publication later next month. We’ve been working on it all summer and fall.” I was talking to myself as much as the captain as I looked the pages over. Then I remembered he was still standing there. “My apologies, Captain. I’ll work on this at home this evening.” I started collecting up the papers.

He looked at me funny. “Your dissertation? You mean, like a doctoral dissertation?” He picked up my dissertation and looked at it.

“Yes, sir.” I was curious about his reaction. This stuff must have been in my personnel file, but maybe he hadn’t read it. (Did a CO actually get to see his subordinates’ 201 files? I had no idea.) Maybe I was just another ROTC second john to him.

“You’re a doctor?” he asked incredulously.

“PhD, applied mathematics, sir. That was my thesis.”

He looked at my thesis and read the title. “Entropic Considerations in Network Topologies? What the hell is that? No, don’t tell me, I hated math.” I gave him a wry look at that. By now most of the others in the office, including Lieutenant Brimley and SFC Hammersmith, were listening in as well. “How old are you, Lieutenant?”

“Twenty-two, sir.”

“You’re telling me that you’re only 22 and you already have a PhD? What the hell are you doing here?”

I just grinned at him. “Defending North Carolina from the Red Menace, sir!”

That earned me some laughs from the noncoms, and Captain Harris replied, “The only Red Menace around here, Lieutenant, is the mud you keep tracking in here.” He handed me back the packet. “And your teacher wants you to present a paper on this?”

“Well, actually, Professor Rhineburg will be presenting it, but my name is on it since I did the research.”

“Huh. Did you get clearance for this?” he asked.

“Excuse me? Clearance, sir?” What was he talking about?

“All publications need to be cleared ahead of time, at least at the battalion level and usually at the division level,” he told me.

“Sir? This is my dissertation! I did this back when I was in college. I wasn’t even commissioned when I did this work!” I protested.

He just shrugged. “What’s in there, the nuclear launch codes?”

“No, sir, it’s about designing a computer network.”

“Well, I’ll make a call or two. Don’t sweat it. I doubt they’ll stand you against a wall because of this. It will probably only be time at Leavenworth.” The enlisted guys and Brimley chuckled at this, and the captain topped off his coffee and headed into his office.

Spec 4 Jones immediately chimed in. “So, Ell-Tee, you’re a doctor?”

“Of mathematics.”

“Does that mean we get to call you Doc?” he asked with a laugh.

I should have known this was going to happen, and I needed to nip it in the bud. You can’t have the men calling you by a nickname; it degrades their respect for the rank. I moved back around my desk and stepped right up to him. “No, Specialist Jones, it does not. You may call me Lieutenant or Sir, is that understood?”

He was surprised to find me in his face like that, and he stammered out, “Uh, yeah, sure.”

“What did you say?”

“Yes, sir, Lieutenant, understood, sir,” he answered, coming to attention.

“Much better.” I stepped back and glanced at his desk, and noted that he had the PT, or physical training, schedule on his desk, ready for posting. “What’s on the schedule for tomorrow?” I asked rhetorically.

“Conditioning Drill 1, followed by a five mile run, sir,” he answered.

That was indeed what was written. “I think there’s a misprint, here, Specialist. I think it says an All American mile.” An ‘All American mile’ is 8.2 miles, so named for the 82^nd’s nickname as the ‘All American’ division.

Jones looked confused, and took the schedule from my hands. “Uh, no sir…”

“I love to run, don’t you, Specialist. I’m sure it was supposed to be an All American run. I’ll let you tell everyone to make sure they know, and that you’ve volunteered to lead the run. I think that shows great spirit. Don’t you agree, Sergeant Hammersmith?”

Sergeant First Class Hammersmith simply grinned. “Great spirit, sir!”

“I look forward to it, Specialist!”

I sat down at my desk and bundled up my dissertation, and I heard the sergeant tell the Spec 4, with a laugh, “Nice work, Jonesy, the guys are going to love you!”

Lieutenant Brimley had been watching this from his open doorway, but he didn’t say anything to them or to me, and I think if he thought I was out of line, he would have called me into his office and chewed on me a bit. The next morning more than a few jokes were made at Spec 4 Jones’ expense about the longer run. Then again, we were young and tough paratroopers; it wasn’t something we couldn’t do in our sleep.

You run at a pace called double time, but you would break up the run on occasion at a march pace called quick time. During quick time you can sing a cadence, usually named a jody call. At that point, with Jones leading, he sang the cadence, and used this as his chance to get back at me in a novel way, by calling me ‘Doc’ in the cadence. A cadence is a rhythmic song that the leader sings and then the troops sing back as they run. It keeps time and keeps them amused.

Leader

Runners

“Hey! Hey! All the way,”

“Hey! Hey! All the way,”

“Doc loves to run every day.”

“Doc loves to run every day.”

“If he was President and had his way,”

“If he was President and had his way,”

“There wouldn’t be a fat man in the Army today.”

“There wouldn’t be a fat man in the Army today.”

“Sound off!”

“One, Two!”

“Sound off!”

“Three, Four!”

“Sound off!”

“One, Two — Three, Four!”

The ‘Sound Off’ lines serve as the chorus after every four line stanza. There are any number of lyrics and songs and verses, most being insulting to someone, especially other services or branches of the Army, and many are hilarious. Jonesy had to add me to the mix, so I returned the favor.

“Airborne arty’s here to stay!”

“Airborne arty’s here to stay!”

“Private Jones will lead the way!”

“Private Jones will lead the way!”

“He’d rather type than have some fun.”

“He’d rather type than have some fun.”

“But Private Jones just loves to run!”

“But Private Jones just loves to run!”

That cracked all of them up, especially since I was calling Spec 4 Jones Private Jones! Thereafter, however, my nickname around the battery, and ultimately the regiment, was ‘Doc’ or ‘the Doc’, although none of the men said it to my face. I could live with that.

Chapter 49: Bachelor Life

The 82^nd is unique in its structure, which is organized around its equally unique readiness system. Alone among all the divisions in the Army, the 82^nd is tasked with being able to send troops anywhere on the planet within 24 hours. The average division can take weeks to get ready to move. We do it in hours.

The heart of the division consists of three brigade combat teams; each brigade basically consists of three battalions of parachute infantry plus an Airborne field artillery battalion. Each battalion has three parachute infantry companies plus a battery assigned from the artillery battalion. There are also a variety of other outfits attached, such as engineers, medics, transport, and even a few chaplains who jump in with us. Technically most of these assets, including the artillery, belonged to the division and not the brigade, but that was the way it worked.

The division operates on an 18 week cycle, with each of the three brigades somewhere on a six week element of the cycle. When I arrived, 3^rd Brigade was in the six weeks of ready cycle, which was unusual. Normally people transfer in and out during the support cycle. Support is the goof off time, when things are relaxed. People take leaves, officers and men transfer in and out, it’s low pressure. It’s like being in the regular army, with regular hours and duties.

After support, you go into a six week training cycle. This becomes a lot tougher. You are shooting the guns, maybe doing a jump or two, getting stuff ready to go, and working a lot longer hours. Forget about taking leave, but you’ll probably still be able to sleep at home, and you might have to work some weekends.

After training you go to the six week ready cycle. You are ready to go to war. Forget about leave. Kiss the wife or girlfriend good-bye. Within the brigade, it gets even tougher. During the ready cycle of six weeks, each infantry battalion and its artillery battery are on two week cycles of readiness. You can go home, but you can’t leave the area, and a lot of the guys stay on the base anyway. During that period, you can’t be more than two hours away from going to war. In theory, when the shit hits the fan, they just want to issue you the ammo and load you on the airplane. You have two hours to get assembled and ready to go. All the equipment, ammo, rations, and whatever are pre-packaged and pre-positioned out at the ramps at all times. The other two battalions aren’t much better, with four and six hour readiness periods. There are usually readiness drills and exercises to check to see if we are ready to go.

If the President decides that Lower Slobbovia needs to be taught a lesson, the ready battalion will load their planes and be airborne in two hours. No excuses. The rest of the brigade will be airborne in either four or six hours, and most likely the support elements will be gone inside a day. The training brigade gets moved up to the ready brigade; the support brigade supports this and gets ready to move out itself. Leaves are cancelled and all hell breaks loose. Lower Slobbovia is about to be visited by a shitload of teenagers with guns who just had their weekend plans trashed. Lower Slobbovia will wish they hadn’t been visited!

You can make the cycle your friend, but don’t ever try to buck the cycle. The cycle will always win.

On the other hand, it was very easy to make plans for anything short of war. We had calendars with six week blocks drawn on them, and you could make plans. For instance, my first week in the battery I discussed my impending nuptials with the captain, and was able to tell Marilyn when we could get married. I figured I would need two weeks leave, starting in the middle of the week. The wedding would be on a Saturday, so if I got off duty on a Wednesday before that, I could travel to Utica, do whatever I needed to do on Thursday or Friday, get married, have a week of honeymoon, and then be able to get Marilyn down to Fayetteville by Tuesday after getting back. Since I needed to do this during a support cycle that limited us to a wedding between July 2 and July 30 of this year. If we missed that window, we would have to wait 18 weeks for the cycle to repeat, putting us into November.

I wasn’t all that hopeful. This all relied on Marilyn being organized enough to be able to get this taken care of in six months. Marilyn couldn’t organize a church cake sale, let alone a wedding. The last time we did this, she postponed the wedding from June to September. Furthermore, she had to get used to the idea that the Army wasn’t just going to let me take a weekend off to help. When Maggie got married, Marilyn tried to help and managed to lose, within 24 hours, all the lists and spreadsheets she had asked me to print out. Maggie ended up having me run the wedding. I didn’t think it was all that difficult. Pick a date, find a church, find a reception hall, pick a budget. After that, it’s just a matter of money. There are lots of banquet halls around Utica, lots of places to buy a dress, lots of limo companies. Just make a list and get it done!

Marilyn wasn’t too pleased by my attitude, nor by the fact that I wouldn’t be able to come up and help. How was I supposed to participate in pre-wedding counseling? I flat out told her I was a thousand miles away, and the last guy on the planet I was going to listen to about getting married was a guy who wasn’t allowed to get married. If her priest required it, she could find another priest. She wanted to know if I was having any of her brothers be in my wedding party; I said I wasn’t even having my own brother in it, so I didn’t see any need to balance things out. She didn’t push that one. I did promise to take some leave during the cycle before the wedding and visit, and we could see the priest then for some of the details.

I did manage to get her to set a date of July 9. The night after I got the schedule from the Captain, I had her call her priest and reserve the date. That date, and most of the others in the window were already taken, but not July 2. That was the date we selected.

After running that last Friday morning of January, Captain Harris got a phone call and summoned me into his office. “Buckman, I told battalion about your paper yesterday afternoon, and they booted it to division. You’re to report to the G-2 at division at 1400.”

I stared at the captain for a second. “Sir, it’s just a report on mathematical techniques!”

“Well, I don’t think that you’re in trouble, but you need to go over there and find out. I won’t let them shoot you without a few last words and a cigarette. My word on it!”

“Yes, sir.” Oh, shit, now what! It was just a paper on math! The paper had already been accepted into the Journal of the American Mathematical Society, which I had joined, and which the professor was a long time member of. Furthermore, they were having their Eastern Seaboard Regional Meeting in February, and the professor was scheduled to deliver the lecture during a session on discrete mathematics.

At 1400 I found myself standing at attention in a colonel’s office, while he and some captain quizzed me about the paper. How the hell do you explain discrete mathematics, information loss and entropy, and computer networking to people who never learned what a derivative or an integral was? (Okay, that’s a bit extreme. They all had to take Calculus I, but by now they had all forgotten it.)

“Excuse me, sir, permission to ask a question?”

“Granted.”

“What’s going on, sir? Am I in some sort of trouble? This was my thesis, from before I took the oath,” I asked.

The colonel smiled at this. “You’re not in any trouble, Lieutenant, far from it in fact.”

“Sir?”

“Captain Summers here is from the Public Information Office. We don’t get too many mathematical doctors around here and he wants to talk to you. This comes down from on high, too, so it would behoove you to cooperate.”

“Cooperate, sir? With what?”

“Captain Summers will explain. Dismissed.”

Both the PIO captain and I snapped to attention and saluted, and then left. Captain Summers dragged me back to his office and explained. Nobody seemed to mind the paper, and nobody in G-2, Intelligence, had flagged the paper because it was letting loose the nuclear secrets. Instead, it was a human interest piece for the post newspaper and probably the Army newspaper, the Army Times, the 22 year old PhD mathematician in the Airborne artillery.

My first thought was, “You’re kidding me, right?”

No, it got better. Somebody got the bright idea that it was a really good idea for me, in my uniform, to attend the conference in February, in Washington no less, and have pictures of me being mathematical.

“Please, God, tell me you’re kidding!” I reiterated. “I’m just a soldier, for God’s sake!”

My attitude didn’t impress the PIO officer. Astonishingly enough, this joker had actually gone through jump school, just like everybody else in the division. I guess if we ever needed a press release from inside a hot LZ, he would be there to write it for us. In fact, he picked up a phone, and used his authorization code to order up a long distance phone call, and had me call Professor Rhineburg. These guys really wanted this done! I don’t know if they had somebody sitting in the professor’s office, but he was actually there and not only gave me permission to attend, he wanted me to give the lecture, with him in the audience, and not the other way around. As the Navy says, somebody had greased the ways!

I went back to the battery is a state of shock. I sat down with Captain Harris and explained what had happened. Surprisingly, he wasn’t all that surprised.

“Carl, you’re pretty unusual. You’re a 22 year old kid who has three degrees in math and jumps out of airplanes. That ain’t exactly normal. Don’t be surprised when somebody notices.”

“Sir, I am about the most boring guy on the planet. I’m just trying to do my job.”

“Well, the Army seems to think your job is going to include doing something with these scientists, so don’t try to fight it. You should have some fun with it.”

“Sir?” Fun? This sounded like a monumental pain in the ass!

“When is this thing?” I gave him the dates of the conference, the last week in February. “And who’s going? Besides you, I mean.”

I shrugged. “No idea. I guess this publicity guy, Captain Summers. Know anything about him?”

“Not a lick. So, you’re going to DC, have some fun. It’s not going against your leave, so take a few days. They want you there, have them lay on a plane or fly you there. Get separate rooms, and have some fun. There’s no lectures at night, are there?”

“I wouldn’t imagine so.”

“Lots of time after hours for some wine, women, and song,” he replied.

“Sir, I’m engaged!”

“So, I won’t tell her if you don’t. You’re a paratrooper. Just act like you’re behind enemy lines and stay out of sight. Hell, if you have to, invite her along,” he said with a grin.

I opened my mouth to protest, and then shut it. I hadn’t seen Marilyn very much since graduation, and the juices, so to speak, were backing up. She had flown out to Sill right before going back to school in the fall and that was it. I wasn’t sure where we would be, but I’d spring for the room service! “You think we could?”

“L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace! Now, get lost, I have work to do!”

I thought about what he said. Before the day was over, I contacted the publicity guy and asked him some details about where we would stay (two separate rooms, the Hilton near Dupont Circle) and transportation (he’d see about laying on a flight) and Marilyn (yes, she can come; no, I don’t want to know about her rooming arrangements). That night I called Marilyn to see if she could attend. It would be in the middle of the semester, but a few days in a luxury hotel might sway her mind, especially if I paid for the ticket.

And so it was that on the third Monday in February, after getting laughed at by Captain Harris and Lieutenant Brimley, and ignored by Lieutenant Goldstein, and being joked at in the cadence during our morning run, I found myself in an Air Force turboprop flying out of Pope Airfield at Bragg to Andrews in DC, along with my dress uniforms and Captain Summers. He was in the process of writing my acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Mathematics already, and I had to gently let him know that Alfred Nobel’s wife had cheated on him with a mathematician, and as a result Nobel hated mathematicians, and thus there was no Nobel Prize in Mathematics. I’ve heard that this is somewhat apocryphal, but it was considered common knowledge in the math business.

Marilyn was flying down at the end of classes, and would take a fair bit longer to get to Washington than I did. She would fly to New York and then catch the hourly Eastern shuttle to DC. Fortunately that landed at National, which is downtown, and not out at Dulles, at least a half hour further away. When she landed she was to call me and then take a cab in. I would meet her at the door and pay off the cabbie. It was still almost eight in the evening before she got there, looking somewhat bedraggled.

I gave her a big, long kiss, and said, “God, you look great!”

She looked in a mirror in the lobby and ran a hand through her hair. “I most certainly do not!”

“Are you hungry? Want some dinner?”

“Yes, but not until after I clean up. I think that was the dirtiest airplane I’ve ever been on!”

“You should try a Herky Bird flying out of a dirt strip,” I replied.

“I don’t know what that means and I don’t care. I want a shower.”

“Might I suggest something from room service?” I asked, waggling my eyebrows.

“That sounds delightful, but I’ll probably fall asleep.” I didn’t know if this was a yes or no, so I grabbed her two suitcases (we were only going to be there three nights, but she packed two large suitcases) and carried them to the elevator bank. Once in our room, I asked her about room service again, and showed her the menu, and she picked out a small steak. I insisted she unpack, and then called in our orders (two small steaks, medium rare, asparagus with Hollandaise sauce, bottle of champagne, chilled.) I then cleaned up the bedroom, put her empty suitcases in the back of the closet, and laid out something for her to wear to dinner.

I had the lights dimmed appropriately when Marilyn came back out. She had taken her time, too. I had heard the water shut off, but it had been at least ten or fifteen minutes since then before she appeared. She came out of the bedroom with a demure smile and asked, “I assume you wanted me to wear this?”

My heart pretty much stopped when I saw what she had on. I had managed to buy, through a catalog, a couple of nightgowns from Fredericks of Hollywood, and had packed them along. I had seen that she had a pair of white high heeled pumps in the closet, so I had placed them on the bed along with the white gown I had bought her. It was lacy and completely transparent and held together with only a single tie at the waist. She had on the gown and her white pumps and had taken the time to brush out her hair and put on some jewelry and a spray of perfume. She could have given a eunuch an erection!

I swallowed and nodded, not trusting my voice not to crack. “Wow!” I breathed out. I twiddled my fingers in a motion to make her turn around, and Marilyn slowly turned around, modeling the outfit, and more importantly, what was underneath. “The hell with dinner!” I told her, and came closer.

“I’m hungry!” she protested, backing up.

“I’ve got an appetizer for you!” I replied, slowly following her.

She laughed and kept moving backwards leading me around the room. I finally had her cornered in the bedroom, and had wrapped my arms around her, feeling that deliciously warm body under that almost nonexistent nightgown, when there was a knock on the door. “Room service!”

“Saved by the bell!” laughed Marilyn, pushing me away.

“Why don’t you let him in?”

“In your dreams!” She pushed me back and scampered off into the bathroom.

I let the waiter in and moved my briefcase and stuff off the table. I had sprung for the upgrade to a small suite, and the waiter set up our dinner out in the front room. After he left, I called Marilyn back in. She peeked around the corner first before coming out completely. “You thought he might still be here?” I asked with a laugh.

“Knowing you?”

“That would have made his day, that’s for sure!”

She giggled and came in and sat down at the table. Her nipples were completely visible through the thin lace, and looked quite stiff. “You look gorgeous!” I told her.

“Why do I think I know what’s for dessert?” she replied, smiling at me.

“Do you like the gown?” I asked.

“It’s very pretty. Not very practical,” she answered.

“Would you rather dig out your flannel bunny pajamas?”

“No.” She smiled as she cut a piece of steak off and bit into it. Mine was from a happy cow, so I assumed hers was, too. “Umm, that is so much better than airline food!” She savored the taste and then sipped some champagne. “I brought down a nighty, too,” she admitted.

“Well, you can wear that tomorrow night, then.”

“What if I had brought down my black shoes?” she asked.

“I also bought you a black nightgown, too,” I admitted.

“Well, don’t you have everything planned out!? Is it the same as this one, just in black?” Marilyn asked.

I skewered a spear of asparagus and cut it in half, and then ate it. It was from a happy asparagus plant. “You’ll just have to wait and find out. Three nights, three different outfits.”

“You are just too damn efficient! It must be the mathematician in you.”

“Just as long as we aren’t being fruitful and multiplying,” I replied. I raised an eyebrow at that. I had packed a box of condoms just in case Marilyn had gone off the Pill since I had been away. I had warned her not to, since unexpected visits, like this one, might happen. The first time we had been away from each other for months and months, and when we finally got together again on our honeymoon, the Pill hadn’t fully kicked in yet, and Alison came along ten months later.

Marilyn blushed. “No, we won’t be fruitful. I’ve stayed on the Pill. I was debating it, but stayed on.”

I grinned at her. “Excellent. I told you there might be surprise visits. I sure never figured on this!”

After dinner, while Marilyn waited at the table, I cleaned off the table onto a tray and set it outside our door. I had dessert right there at the table, with Marilyn sitting on it, her rump pulled forward and her legs pulled up and over my shoulders. It was an excellent finish to our dinner — certainly Marilyn seemed quite enthusiastic about it! — and when I was finished, I had my pants already undone and I simply lifted her down onto my lap and my cock. Marilyn humped her pussy up and down on me, moaning and whining as I fucked up into her, her tits in my face and smacking my cheeks. I pumped several months’ worth up into her tight little pussy when we came together.

We sat there, my semi-stiff cock still inside her come filled cunt, as our breathing returned to normal. The tie holding her gown together was still tied, but it had slipped enough that both her tits were on display. I kept my arms around her and we kissed and necked until I stared hardening up enough for another round, but Marilyn said, “Let’s go in there and get comfortable.”

“Fine by me.” I helped her to her feet, and stripped off my sport shirt and chinos. I had checked in still wearing my fatigues and jump boots from this afternoon, which had raised a few eyebrows. The Hilton gets its fair share of military officers, I was sure, but I was also sure they usually didn’t check in wearing combat boots either. I had changed after arrival.

Now, naked, I crawled onto the bed next to Marilyn. She had kicked off her shoes, but still had on her gown. I took my time with her, kissing her on the lips and then working my way down her neck and throat, then along her shoulders, and down to her chest and her breasts. By that time, I had untied the tie on her gown and Marilyn was panting and demanding I make love to her again. Maybe my fingers working her scummy slit had something to do with that. Anyway, I took that moment to crawl onto her and slip inside, and we made love until I pumped out another load. Later, after cuddling some, Marilyn slipped off the gown completely and we had another go, quietly and softly. It was so good to see her again.

Tuesday morning my body clock kicked in and I was up long before Marilyn. I slipped into a sweat suit and running shoes and stuffed my key into a pocket, and I was off. I don’t know Washington at all, no more than the average American tourist, anyway, and really had no idea where I was headed. You don’t just run anywhere you like in DC, either. There are some damn nasty neighborhoods in that town. I ran down towards Dupont Circle and then back, and continued up Connecticut before turning back. I figured I had gotten somewhere between two and three miles total in. The weather in February was cold, wet, and miserable, but you run a few miles, you warm up. The Hilton had a gym with some Nautilus machines that I pumped some weight on after that. It was almost 0700 when I got back up to our room.

Marilyn was out of bed and in the shower, so I peeled off my sweaty clothes and jumped in with her. My body got clean but my mind got dirty, so we fooled around for awhile in the shower. At one point, as I was slipping into her from behind, Marilyn said, “Is that the phone ringing?”

“Do you really want me to go find out?”

She groaned, and then whispered, “No!” We finished that way under the hot water.

Eventually we left the bathroom, and I saw the phone had a red light lit on it. “I guess there was a call,” I told her. I sat down on the bed and picked up the phone. I ended up calling the main desk and asking for the message; voice mail systems didn’t exist yet in 1978. I got a room number and was told to call Captain Summers there. I hung up the phone, and then picked it back up again, and dialed the room direct.

“Captain Summers.”

“Captain, this is Lieutenant Buckman. You called for me, sir?”

“Yes, Lieutenant. I was wondering when you were getting up. I wanted to get a few shots of you exercising and running around. You know, even on vacation, our winged warriors are staying in shape, that sort of thing.”

I stared at the phone for a moment. ‘Our winged warriors?’ Give me a fucking break! This guy wasn’t just writing an article for the base newspaper, he was making a recruitment ad for all the geeks at MIT! I rolled my eyes and answered, “Captain, reveille was at 0600. I’ve already run three miles and worked out. I was in the shower when you called.”

“Oh. Well, sometime before we go home, we’ll need to get a few shots of you running past some of the monuments on the Mall, that sort of thing.”

I slapped my head in disbelief. “Yes, sir, understood, sir.”

“Breakfast at 0800 in the dining room?”

“Sir, we were about to head there now. 0730 at the latest, I would think.”

“Well, all right then. I’ll meet you there. Wear your Class As.”

“Yes, sir.” I hung up. Jump wings or not, this guy was not what I would call a ‘winged warrior’. More like a body bag waiting to be filled!

Marilyn was standing in the doorway watching me, still in her Hilton robe. She started saluting me. “Yes sir, no sir, thank you sir…” I jumped up and chased her until I caught her and then gave her butt a smack.

“We need to get dressed and go downstairs. This press guy wants to meet us for breakfast,” I told her.

Marilyn pulled out some nice slacks and a blouse. “Good?”

“Good. I don’t know what this guy wants, not completely yet, but I know he wants me looking like a recruiting poster,” I replied.

“Well, you recruited me.”

“I still haven’t finished recruiting you yet. We can talk about that this week, too.”

“You bet!”

We got down to the restaurant by 0735. Nobody else in a uniform was present, certainly not Captain Summers. We waited about five minutes and then ordered some breakfast. The captain showed up closer to 0750. “Oh, good, you didn’t wait for me. Sorry about that. I had to clean a spare pair of boots. Mine aren’t back from the concierge yet. I needed them polished.” I looked sideways at Marilyn, and found her laughing eyes. He sent his boots out?

“Yes, sir. May I introduce my fiancée, Miss Marilyn Lefleur.”

“Pleased to meet you. We’ll have to work you into our story, too.” I rolled my eyes at her, but he never noticed.

“Yes, sir.”

Our waiter returned and took the captain’s order, and then the captain turned back to me; he wanted to go over the agenda for our trip, and his plans for the story. By the time our breakfast actually arrived, I had to make the time-out sign.

“Sir, let’s see if we can’t simplify things. This is a scientific conference. I’m here to present a paper tomorrow.” I sorted through the schedule for the conference I had with me. “That will be tomorrow morning at 1100. I’ll need to be there all morning. After that, I will be having lunch with Professor Rhineburg. I’ll need to coordinate things with him, but expect me to be tied up all day tomorrow with the conference and the professor.”

Captain Summers didn’t look happy, but he seemed to understand. His plans were for pictures of me doing something both military and scientific for the next two days. He actually wanted to see if I could give a lecture at the Pentagon, for Christ’s sake! To whom, it wasn’t clear. “All right.”

“Tonight, the professor comes into town. I’ll need to be here to greet him, and at least offer to take him to dinner. If he accepts, that ties up this evening. He’s the only reason I’m here, Captain, so we have to offer and do this. He could be difficult otherwise.” Okay, professor, I’m throwing you under the bus a bit, but what you don’t know won’t hurt you. Anything to keep me away from this publicity idiot.

“Okay.”

“And there are several lectures this afternoon that I would certainly like to attend. Some of them may even have application to future artillery and military computer needs.” In a pig’s eye, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Well, when will we be able to shoot you running and lecturing? This is the reason we’re here!”

“Captain, I’ll be up at 0600 tomorrow morning. If you want me running along the Mall in front of a monument tomorrow, that’s fine. Just meet me in the lobby and have a taxi ready to take me wherever you need to. I’ll even have an official Army tee shirt on for you and the camera.”

“0600?” he asked, protesting.

“Excellent, sir,” I agreed, even though he didn’t like the idea at all. “Also, I’m sure you’ll be able to hang around the rear of the lecture hall with your camera while I’m delivering the paper. I’ll be in uniform and looking good, sir.”

“Well, certainly we’ll be doing that.”

“I was figuring to just keep things simple, sir. This morning, I can explain to you my paper and we can talk about computers and the military. That will fill in that blank in the schedule. Okay?”

“Then you don’t plan to talk to the appropriate people in the Pentagon about your paper?”

“Sir, I know I’m pretty junior and all, but it’s been my experience that if the Pentagon wanted to speak to me, they’d let me know. In the meantime, let ‘s stay out of their hair and they can stay out of ours.”

He gave me a smile that was a touch condescending. “It sounds like you don’t approve of the Pentagon, Lieutenant.”

“Not at all, sir. It’s just that my work is with the troops at Bragg, not at a headquarters.”

“Really? I’ve been hoping to get transferred here, to the head Public Information Office.” His eyes were practically gleaming at the thought.

Wow, that would be the last thing I would want! Washington DC is one of the most expensive cities in the country to live and work in, and PIO captains must be a dime a dozen here. “Line over staff, sir, line over staff.” He just laughed at that, and then we both had to explain to Marilyn what line and staff meant.

After breakfast we moved out into the lobby and found a corner to sit in. The Hilton, like most high end Washington hotels, had a significant amount of conference room space. There were quite a few mid-sized rooms for individual math disciplines (Discrete Math, Number Theory, Topology, Graph Theory, etc.), a few larger rooms for group discussions and dinners, and even a small press room for all those great math related press releases. The professor and I would be in the Discrete Math room, although we could have justified speaking in the Applied Math division as well.

Already, the morning conferences were starting to fill, as mathematicians gathered and moved from the lobby into conference space. “All these people are mathematicians?” commented Captain Summers.

“We’re just like everybody else, Captain.” Marilyn started giggling at that.

The captain looked over at her. “Are you a mathematician, too?”

“God, no! I’m going to school for elementary ed. I want to teach kindergarten.”

The captain nodded. That he could understand. First he set a small tape recorder on the table in front of us and switched it on. Turning back to me, he asked, “So, explain this paper to me.”

I nodded at him. I had given this some thought, since the captain probably hadn’t had any mathematics beyond a semester of calculus that he forgot five minutes after the final. “Well, the paper is actually about providing the tools to network computers together. Professor Rhineburg and I developed a system of equations that will allow future system designers to design computer networks.”

“So it’s not about computers?”

“It’s about how to link computers together, into grids and networks of computers. Within a few years they will be cheap enough that most middle and upper class people will be able to afford a computer of their own. The real power will come when people start linking them together.”

“People will own computers?” he asked, a look of astonishment on his face.

“You probably already do and don’t even know it.”

“Impossible!”

I reached into my briefcase and pulled out a Texas Instruments calculator, one of the more expensive programmable models. “This is a calculator. Do you have one?” The captain nodded and said he did, for balancing his checkbook. “Seven years ago these didn’t exist. Five years ago, when I started college, they were phenomenally expensive, and the school banned them in tests because they were an unfair advantage to rich people. Three years ago the price had dropped so that this wasn’t a problem. Now, every college student in the country has one. This is a computer.”

He stared. “That’s a computer?”

I pulled out one of the little magnetic memory sticks you could feed it. “I can write programs on here in a language called Assembler, and it can do things quicker than I would ever be able to calculate by hand or look up in a book.” I put it down on the table between us. “Do you have any video games at home?”

“What are those?”

“You know, like Pong or an Atari game system.”

Captain Summers smiled at that. “I bought a Pong for Christmas. We have it hooked up to an old TV in the den.” Suddenly he looked curious. “Are you saying that’s a computer?”

“Input, output, memory, processing — you bet, Captain, those are computers. Now, imagine sometime in the future. You have a Pong, and you want to play somebody else with a Pong. You have to combine them somehow, in a network of computers. That’s computer networking, and that’s the sort of thing our paper will help with.”

“Networks of Pong playing teenagers?” he commented, derisively.

“Think about it, Captain. How much do kids spend now on arcade games? How much would that be worth to the first guy who can figure out how to let them do it at home?”

“So what does this have to do with the Army?” he asked.

I pulled my calculator out again. “Do you know how artillery works, sir? We don’t actually see the target, so somebody has to give us some map coordinates, and we have to be able to calculate, using geometry and trigonometry, where to aim the howitzer. Right now, every battery and section chief and officer has to have books of tables and a slide rule to figure it out, along with a calculator to do it faster.” I waved my calculator at him. “In a few years, every howitzer will come with a calculator even more powerful than this. A few years after that, those calculators will be able to talk to each other. We’ll be able to move faster, set up faster, start firing faster, and scoot away faster. It will be safer for us and more dangerous for the bad guys.”

I think that actually stunned him for a second. He may have been a publicity asshole, but he knew enough about the military to know that being on the receiving end of an artillery barrage was a really bad thing, and that speed was critical.

“You’re serious?”

“Ask me again in ten years, sir. You won’t even recognize what we’ll be doing then.”

“What do you mean by that? What else will computers do for the Army?”

I smiled. Holding up the calculator again, I answered, “Imagine if we put a computer into a radio. You’ll end up with a radio that can’t be jammed and can’t be intercepted by the enemy. Imagine putting a computer into a tank, and getting a targeting system that never misses. Never, ever! One shot, one kill! What if you can give a computer like this to a sniper, who can then pick off targets a mile away and never worry about calculating for wind or drift? What happens when we can have computerized maps? Imagine if soldiers didn’t get lost anymore.”

“And you’re saying computers will be able to do these things?” For once he seemed to respect the idea of mathematics.

“Captain, I can guarantee you that in labs all across the country, these things are being developed. Computers will change America even more than electricity did a century ago. I will make a couple of final predictions. Ten years from now, 1988, the Army won’t even seem to be the same, we’ll have changed so much. Twenty years from now, in 1998, we will be the most lethal and most feared military on the planet. Technology and soldiers able to use it will change it all.”

“Unbelievable. You make it sound like Star Wars.”

I laughed at that. “Well, I don’t think we’ll have spaceships by then.”

In many ways, what I had just told Captain Summers was the unvarnished truth. In 1978 we were just on the verge of one of the greatest transformations in human history, the digitalization of the world. Computers ended up in everything.

In 1978, we were still fighting with weapons and equipment that would have been recognizable to a soldier in World War II, Korea, or Viet Nam. Not much had changed. We wore the same uniforms, the same helmets and armor, had pretty much the same weapons, and the same commo and recon gear. Transistors had replaced tubes, but it was the same basic gear.

The army that ripped through Saddam Hussein’s army in 1991 was basically invented in the 1980s, with computers in everything. The M1 Abrams tank, the Humvee, the MLRS rockets, the night vision gear that everybody carried, and the GPS units that even privates had — all of these had been invented in the late Seventies and early Eighties with computers. The other thing that changed drastically in the Eighties was the type of training we received. Training ranges became giant laboratories, with computers and lasers and the ability to watch people do it right and do it wrong and figure out how to do it for real.

Another big change was in the personnel who enlisted. During World War II, most armies had mechanized units, outfits with tanks and trucks and armored personnel carriers. One of America’s big secrets was that almost all of the boys who got drafted were familiar with motors and vehicles, at a far higher rate than elsewhere in the world. They could keep things running a lot easier. Likewise now, most of the guys we would be recruiting over the next ten years had at least seen calculators and computers and such, at a much higher rate than the rest of the world, and would be able to adapt and train with it quicker.

“What made you join the Army, Lieutenant?” he asked.

I gave him the two minute family-in-the-service-since-the-War-of-1812 speech, and then said, “Besides, I went to college on an ROTC scholarship, so it’s payback time. My father had a Navy ROTC scholarship during World War II, and it was the only way for a farmboy to end up in the Ivy League. It worked for him, too.”

“So why’d you join the Army and not the Navy?”

I laughed at that. “I get seasick!”

That got the other two to laughing, and then the captain turned his attention to Marilyn. “Let me ask you a few questions. Marilyn, right?”

“Who? Me?” she squeaked, suddenly in the spotlight. I chuckled at this.

“How did you meet the Lieutenant here?”

I just started laughing at that, which got Marilyn stewing at me. Finally she just elbowed me and answered, “We met at a party in college our freshman year.”

I laughed some more. “Do you want me to tell the real story behind that night?”

“Not if you want me to marry you this summer!” she answered. I laughed at that and she said, “Asshole!”

I pointed at the tape recorder and her eyes widened. “Please, God, I want a transcript!” To the captain I laughed, “If I tell you the real story, promise to send me a copy! I’ll be able to use it for blackmail for years to come!”

The captain laughed at this as well, especially when Marilyn gave me another elbow to the ribs. This was pretty much the end of the interview, especially when he asked her why she put up with me, and I answered for her that, “Artillerymen have bigger guns.”

That got her squawking even louder. “You want to get punched?” she asked, waving a balled up fist at me.

I shrugged and smiled. “You hit like a girl.”

“Oooh! You are going to get it for that!”

We broke apart at that point. Captain Summers took his tape recorder and headed to his room to start writing his article, and I took Marilyn’s hand and we walked through DC for a bit until lunchtime. After lunch, I grabbed my agenda for the meeting and led the way to a symposium on asymmetric key cryptography, which had only been developed the year before, and was about to become a major breakthrough in code making and breaking. I found it all quite fascinating and especially useful to someone like myself with an interest in information theory.

Unfortunately, after about half an hour, Marilyn’s eyes started glazing over, and she headed back to our room to take a nap. I promised to try and get up there before dinner. It felt surreal to be listening to the experts discussing one of the hottest topics in math theory and now have a sufficient background to be able to fully understand and appreciate it. Even more, I knew just how important encryption and key systems were about to become. It was quite heady.

About four o’clock or so I was mathed out, so I packed up my stuff and headed up to the suite. I found Marilyn snoring lightly while laying on our bed, still in her blouse and slacks, though she had kicked off her flats. I tossed my jacket on the couch and kicked off my shoes. I sat down on the bed next to her and undid my tie. In doing so, Marilyn woke up and looked over at me. “All done playing with your numbers?” she teased.

“I seem to be stuck on the number 34 and the letter B,” I said with a smile.

“You’re such a pig!” she answered, also with a smile.

I leaned over her and pushed her onto her back. “Oink, oink, oink!” Then I put my lips to hers and started kissing her. I kept on kissing her as I brought my hands up and starting playing with her 34Bs, unbuttoning her blouse and slipping her bra up and over them. Marilyn didn’t seem to mind my porcine attributes, since she was returning the favor, hurriedly unbuttoning my shirt and trying to peel it off me while it was still tucked into my trousers. After another minute or two, we gave in to practicality, and I sat up. We both quickly stripped naked and then stretched out besides each other.

“I need you, Carl!” Marilyn breathed as I probed her greasy little pussy with my fingers. “Fuck me, honey!”

“Ummmm, not yet,” I whispered to her. I kept fingerfucking her and lowered my lips to her tiny little nipples, now standing up at attention.

Marilyn was stroking my cock madly. “Please, I need it! Don’t tease me!”

“Nope!” I twisted around, so that my face was at her glistening shaved pussy, and dove in. Marilyn shrieked happily as I started eating her. “Sit on my face, baby!” I ordered her, rolling onto my back and manhandling her into a 69 position. I thrust my hips upwards, waggling my cock in her face, and Marilyn got the idea. Moments later I felt her hot and wet lips circling my cockhead.

Marilyn had gotten pretty good at giving me blowjobs, now that I knew what worked and what didn’t work, and simply told her rather than relying on natural ability. Now, as I lapped at her pussy and clit, she lay there on me, sucking my cockhead and stroking me with her fingers, rather than trying to go for deep throat. It felt wonderful, and I lay back some. “Oh, baby, that’s so good, just like that, don’t stop, just like that…” Then I raised my head and started eating her again as she continued. It got so good that my hips started pushing upwards, and Marilyn let me start fucking my cock up into her mouth.

“Don’t stop… I need to come, honey, keep sucking me… oh, I want to come in your mouth! Suck me, suck me…” Marilyn started pumping my cock and suctioning the head of my cock, and I just lay back and reveled in it, my hips pumping skyward. “That’s it, that’s it… don’t stop, don’t stop…” I felt it coming and cried out, weakly, “Yes, yes!” as the come raced up from my balls and landed in Marilyn’s mouth. She kept pumping me as she sucked and swallowed. What a great way to spend an afternoon!

Marilyn rolled off me and padded into the bathroom, where I heard her running the water and drinking. Okay, it’s probably not champagne, so that’s fair. She came back in and climbed back onto the bed with me. God, but she looked so good! I glanced at the clock on the nightstand. “The professor’s flight isn’t supposed to land for another 45 minutes, and then he’ll probably be a good half hour getting his luggage and getting a cab over here,” I commented.

Marilyn was in the center of the bed, with me on her right side, and she grabbed my cock with her right hand and started toying with it. “Whatever will we do to pass the time?”

“Well, I’m thinking we should start practicing for the honeymoon, don’t you?”

“You mean, working on my wifely tasks? What about your husbandly tasks?” she laughed.

“Unh unh, that’s not important. Remember, your job is to love, honor, and obey. So you need to make sure you’re performing those wifely tasks properly.”

“Oh?” she commented, still stroking my erect cock.

“I’m going to be a very demanding husband!” I was on my side facing her and laid a hand on her right breast, cupping it and flicking my thumb across the nipple. “I think you know what that means.”

“What?”

“Nope, you tell me, and let’s see if you get it right.”

Marilyn shuddered slightly as I toyed with her tits. “You’ll want me to suck your cock, won’t you,” she answered lowly. “And fuck you.”

“I plan to be a very demanding husband.”

“So I’ll have to suck you and fuck you every day, won’t I?”

“Maybe more than once.” Marilyn’s eyes were half closed and there was a smile on her face as I said this.

“Well, I’ve already sucked you, so maybe you should fuck me now.”

“Not yet.” Marilyn’s eyes opened at that and she looked at me, but I slid my right leg across hers and trapped her there on the bed, legs apart. “You’ll need to be ready for me to take you when I want to. You’ll need to always be prepared.” I reached across and pulled her left hand down to her pussy, and pressed her fingers into her slit. “How will I be able to tell if you’re ready?”

She moaned lowly. “I’ll be wet and juicy.” I kept her hand in place, and moved to prevent her from letting go of my cock with her right hand. “Oh, please, I’m so wet and juicy right now! Fuck me!”

“Not yet. We have to talk about your other wifely requirements.”

“Oh?” she asked weakly.

I whispered in her ear, “Whenever we’re together, you have to be ready for me. No pants, no panties, no bras. No matter where we are, I might need to bend you over and fuck your pussy.”

Marilyn whimpered at the thought and her back arched as she orgasmed. I pulled my leg away from her and rolled her onto her side, facing away from me, and then lifted her right leg up. Moments later I had slipped up behind her and pushed myself in from the back. I began rubbing her back and her shoulders, which was a major erogenous zone for her. “Fuck me!” she begged.

“I’ll use you for sex constantly. You’ll have to be ready all the time. When I come home I’ll want you in tiny little skirts and tops, and you’ll need to have your pussy wet for me.”

“Yes, yes!”

This was turning me on as much as it was turning her on. I pushed Marilyn forward and followed, rolling her over onto her belly as I began fucking her doggy style. “In fact, as soon as I get home, you’ll probably need to show me if your pussy is ready for me.”

“Fuck me! Fuck me!”

I slipped a hand between us and began toying with her asshole. Then I whispered into her ear, “All of you will be mine! It will be your wifely duty to satisfy me however I want it!”

This mention of the unmentionable was driving Marilyn crazy. She was bucking back at me, driving my cock ever deeper into her, and the loud slapping sounds of my hips smacking her ass were like an aphrodisiac to me. I hammered her from behind. I think she had lost track of her orgasms by the time it became too much, and I spewed out another load into her. We collapsed onto the bed, me on top, kissing and caressing her back and shoulders, and then ultimately rolled apart.

Afterwards, as I looked over at her, laying face down, disheveled and bedraggled, she gave me a shy smile. “You weren’t really serious about, you know, back there, were you?” Her eyes flicked back over her shoulder at those sweet, buns.

I smiled and replied, “You never know. Still, if you ever get nervous, a quick blowjob will probably distract me.”

That got Marilyn to laughing. “You’re so full of shit!”

“Just so you aren’t!” I replied, waggling my eyebrows lewdly.

It took her a second to figure it out, and then she cried, “Gross!”

I snuggled up next to her and ran a hand down and began rubbing her ass. I whispered to her, “I’ll make you a bet. When the time comes, by the time I get done with you, you’ll be begging for it, and you’ll come like you’d never come before.”

Her eyes widened at the thought, but then she smiled. “Never going to happen.”

I just rolled on my back and smiled. “We’ll see.”

Any further discussion was saved by the bell, or in this case, by the ringing of the telephone. I sat up and grabbed it, to find Professor Rhineburg on the other line. “Lieutenant Buckman,” I answered.

“Carl, how are you? It’s John Rhineburg.”

“Professor, it’s good to hear from you. Where are you? Do I need to pick you up?”

“I’m here in my room. I just got up here. The switchboard put me through. How are you? You obviously made it.”

“Yes, sir. I’ve actually been waiting for your call.”

“I hope that wasn’t an imposition.”

I glanced over at my fiancée lying naked and seductive on the bed. “No imposition at all, sir. I’m looking forward to seeing you again. What are your plans for tonight?”

“Dinner. I’m hungry. Would you care to join me?”

“Yes, sir, I’d love to. Professor, Marilyn, my fiancée, is with me. Would it be all right if she came along?”

“Certainly. I’d love to meet her. Any choice for dinner?” he asked.

“I can’t say as I know that much about DC, Professor. The restaurant here is nice, but if you’ve got any preferences, I’m game. Be expensive. We’ll figure a way to charge it to the Army!” He laughed at that and he said he would unpack and clean up and make a few calls, and then call me back. Whether I could charge it to the Army, I had no idea, but I wasn’t worried. I owed the man a lot, so I would cover it no matter what.

Marilyn and I got out of bed and decided to clean up. I knew that I needed some food and drink before discussing any husbandly duties my fiancée might have wanted me to perform. Fortunately, the worst husbandly duty of all involves a lawn mower, and I don’t think she had that figured out yet! I let Marilyn have the first shower, and then when she got out, I got in. Needless to say, the professor called me back while I was in the shower. I never even heard the phone ring, but Marilyn stuck her head back in the bathroom and said, “Your professor is on the line again.”

“What’s he want?”

“He mentioned a seafood restaurant and wanted to know if we were interested.”

“Fine by me. Okay with you?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, ask him what the dress code is and find out when he wants us to meet him in the lobby.”

Marilyn left and I finished my shower. When I came out, she said, “Half past in the lobby, and it’s supposed to be casual.”

I always hate that description. Casual means what, exactly? Casual to the Rockefellers is a blazer and ascot; casual to the Lefleurs means a clean pair of beer goggles. “Did he say what he was wearing?”

She grinned at me. “I knew you would ask that. He says slacks and a sport shirt.”

I smiled back. “That we can handle. Why don’t you put on a sundress and I’ll put on slacks and a sport shirt, too.”

On the way down to the lobby, I asked Marilyn, “Did you pack that blue dress I got you in Vegas?” Marilyn blushed but nodded. It had been a few years, but there weren’t that many places in Utica to wear a dress like that. I had told her before she came down that at least one night I would take her someplace nice. “I thought so. I noticed the matching shoes. Let’s see what we can do about that.” I stopped on the way to the lobby and spoke to the concierge about a ‘nice’ place. He recommended a steak house called Mortons, which at the time I had never heard of but since then have learned was one of the more expensive places in an expensive city. It’s where the powerful go to see and be seen. Since it was the middle of the week, he was sure he could get me reservations for tomorrow, and he was extra sure after I slipped him a couple of twenties as I shook his hand. How he knew what I was slipping him without looking at it is one of those concierge superpowers, like flying and X-ray vision are for Superman.

Dinner was at a seafood restaurant down on the Potomac, casual but expensive. Everything on the Potomac in Washington is expensive. Well, that’s why I had an American Express card. I had made a solemn vow to never have a credit card on this trip through. I had never had one before until I started working for the Lefleurs. They insisted I get one so I could use one for company expenses and then get reimbursed. Wow, what a disaster that turned out to be! Interest charges ate us out of house and home!

The Amex card is different. You pay it off, in full, every month. End of story. You don’t pay, you lose the card. There is no carry over and no interest. So much simpler, and in the long run, so much cheaper. Marilyn hated the charge they made every year, without thinking about the interest charges you weren’t paying.

It was good seeing Professor Rhineburg again. He’s not one of the television caricatures, tweedy and absent-minded, but was of an average size and height, middle aged and getting a few pounds around the middle, and starting to go bald. He wasn’t one of those professors who has his grad students over to his house on weekends, but you got to know him fairly well regardless. I made sure to let him know that he and Janet were invited to our wedding.

Most of the evening’s conversation surrounded three topics — the conference the next day, Marilyn’s and my wedding plans, and what I was doing in the Army. He was simply astonished that the co-developer of the Rhineburg-Buckman Equations (his phrase, not mine!) had left math behind and was now jumping out of airplanes. I shrugged and smiled. “I like the sense of purpose, like I’m accomplishing something. I need a sense that I’m doing something important with my life.”

He looked at me sharply. “And you couldn’t get that teaching and doing research. You’d be a natural at that. Hell, you’d make full professor by the time you were thirty!”

I just laughed. “Maybe someday, professor, but for the next four years Uncle Sam owns me. Who knows after that?”

We ended up talking about the upcoming wedding, and Marilyn was complaining that she’d never be able to get it done by July. She gave me a list of problems, and it all came down to the fact that she was completely unorganized. Originally she ended up waiting until after graduation to even try and do anything, which is why we delayed to Labor Day for the actual wedding.

“Where are you going for your honeymoon?” asked Professor Rhineburg.

Marilyn and I looked at each other. She said, “We haven’t really discussed it yet. Have you thought about it?”

“Actually, I have. I wanted to talk to you about it this week. You didn’t have any ideas?” She shook her head, so I continued, “Ever thought of a cruise?”

Marilyn’s eyes lit up at that. “You mean, on the ocean?”

“Exactly.”

“My parents took one last year and they loved it! They went to the Caribbean, a bunch of islands down there!”

I glanced over at the professor. “Any ideas? Ever been on a cruise?”

“Janet and I did one a couple of years ago. We enjoyed it. Don’t miss the boat, though, or they’ll sail without you!”

“A cruise, then?” I asked Marilyn. She nodded excitedly. “So, it’s a cruise. I’ll take care of it.”

“How?”

“By calling a travel agent.”

“Oh,” she said.

“See, another thing off the list. I fail to see why this is so difficult,” I replied.

That got Marilyn going again. There was the dress and the bridesmaid’s dresses and the tuxedos and limos and the reception and all sorts of things.

I waved her to silence again. “You live in Utica. You don’t have to do this by yourself. Your father sells millions of dollars of trailers…”

“Homes!”

“… every year. There are plenty of limo companies he can hire. There must be a dozen banquet halls around the city to hire. Harlan, Joe and I will be wearing mess dress, not tuxedos. The only tuxes will be your father and Tusker. We’ll tell them basic black.”

“What’s mess dress?” asked Professor Rhineburg.

I turned to him. “It’s nothing but an Army tuxedo. Very formal.” Marilyn had decided on a relatively small bridal party. Tammy was her maid of honor, and she had two bridesmaids, my sister Suzie and her brother Mark’s fiancée, Lauren. On my part, Joe Bradley had agreed to be my best man, and Harlan and Tusker were going to be my ushers.

“As for the dresses, just get Suzie to have Dad send her up there spring break, and you girls go shopping. There has to be a bridal shop or two in Utica.” Marilyn has a habit of making things way too complicated. When Maggie got married, she and I ran it, and we had all the details ironed out inside of three months, even including custom tailoring on a third generation wedding dress that both my mother and Suzie had worn.

“I don’t know. You make it sound too easy! I don’t trust you!”

I laughed loudly at that, and kissed her hand. “Trust me! Would I lie? By the way, I have this delightful little bridge in Brooklyn…”

She turned to the professor. “See what I have to put up with!?”

“I am not about to get involved in this,” he replied, laughing. “Have fun on the cruise!”

After dinner, we all took a cab back to the Hilton and separated until the morning. I told the professor we would meet him for breakfast at eight, the same time I had told Captain Summers. The captain had postponed our jogging down the Mall until the last day, which simply meant more time with Marilyn for me.

Back upstairs, Marilyn and I sat down and watched a little television, with me in an armchair and her on my lap. Not much was on, so we ended up fooling around instead, and then headed into the bedroom to finish what we had started. Afterwards, we went to sleep.

The morning of the presentation I woke up at my usual 0600 time and did my normal morning workout. I ran up and down Connecticut Avenue for a few miles and then pumped some iron in the Nautilus room. Afterwards, Marilyn and I fooled around for a bit and then cleaned up. I was in uniform, and Marilyn was in a nice dress, and we were down in the lobby at 0800 exactly. Captain Summers joined us on the elevator, and we found Professor Rhineburg waiting for us at the entrance to the restaurant.

The captain immediately tried to organize how the conference would be run. I just rolled my eyes as I looked over at my old boss. Fortunately he knew how to handle overambitious underlings, and he basically told the captain (in a polite way) he was just to keep his mouth shut and stand in the back and take a few pictures. The presentation would go the way he and I had planned and written it. We discussed a few last minute technical details, such as how the slides were prepared and hoped the technical staff had loaded them properly. It was 1978 and years away from the wonders of PowerPoint. When we said slides, we meant real photographic slides! You would draw or use various graphic arts tapes and ribbons on paper to create the graphs or formulas, and then send them out to be photographed and turned into slides. You could easily spend hundreds of dollars in 1978 money on each slideshow.

We dawdled over coffee until 0900 and the start of the conference, and then proceeded in. The symposium we were involved in had been moved to one of the larger conference rooms, and there seemed to be a fair sized audience in attendance. We were towards the back. The professor and I sat there with our copies of the presentation, and also with the schedule of speakers and abstracts of the other presentations. We enjoyed ourselves, Marilyn not so much, since this was incredibly boring to her, but she was there to see me speak. Captain Summers very quickly found himself lost, but he was more worried about getting a picture of me in action in any case.

It was about 1100, or maybe a few minutes before that, when it was time for me to present our paper. I stood and walked to the front of the room and moved behind the podium. From the back of the room I could hear the clicking as Captain Summers took my picture. As directed I was in my Class As. I noticed a few members of the audience looking at me curiously, but after I introduced myself and put the first slide up on the screen, they concentrated on the presentation.

The beginning of the presentation simply introduced a few basic concepts in information theory and the calculations of entropy and information loss. Then I went into some basics of network topologies and the effects the specific topology would have on entropy. After that I introduced the formulas and algorithms that the professor and I had developed to calculate and then minimize the effects of the topology on the entropy.

In general, I thought the presentation was well received. There were a few questions asked, especially about second and third order effects, so I flipped back through the slides to one that listed the most common ones and discussed them some more, including ways they cancelled each other out, which I had thought was a mathematically elegant solution. The only odd part was towards the end of the questions, when this round little man in the front row disdainfully asked, “Just how much of the taxpayer’s money was spent on this research?”

Well, that was certainly out of the blue! I glanced back at Professor Rhineburg, but he looked as mystified as me. He just shrugged and held up in hands in a look of confusion. It was all up to me. “Excuse me? I don’t understand.”

“It’s a perfectly straightforward question. How much has the military invested in this research, and for what purpose?”

I glanced back at the professor, who now looked really confused. He just shook his head. “None that I know of. Why?” Okay, that second part was really stupid on my part. Never let an asshole get a free question. I should have known better.

“That is patently false! Why else would the military be presenting this topic?!” He was now standing there and pointing a finger at me.

“The military? You mean — me? This had nothing to do with the Army. This was my doctoral thesis.” I knew it, but every time I answered I was digging my hole deeper. I should have just ended this whole thing. If I had been looking to the back of the room, I would have seen Captain Summers trying to wave me down and cut me off.

“You mean to say the Army paid for you to do research at taxpayer expense? This is outrageous!”

“No sir. I went to college on an ROTC scholarship. This was all done before I was sworn in. I’m sorry, sir, I don’t understand what the problem is. This work was done while I was still a civilian.”

“Then why are you here in uniform?”

“Sir, you’re here in a suit. I’m in the Army. This is my suit.”

“And your job in the Army? Is it to develop computers to kill people?” There were a few gasps around the room.

I was too pissed to think straight. “No, sir, I do my own killing. My job is to keep your children and grandchildren from having to grow up learning Russian!”

“THAT WILL BE ENOUGH, LIEUTENANT!” barked Captain Summers from the rear.

It was automatic on my part. I snapped to attention and replied, “YES, SIR! UNDERSTOOD, SIR! MY APOLOGIES, SIR!”

“DISMISSED, LIEUTENANT!”

Shit! I grabbed my stuff and moved off down the side aisle, past Marilyn and Professor Rhineburg and out through the door, followed closely by the captain. There was quite a stir around us as the audience turned and murmured as I left. The captain pointed me towards a corner and started chewing my ass ragged. Okay, I should have just kept my mouth shut. I knew that. Still, that asshole, whoever he was, pissed me off. I stayed silent and at attention while Captain Summers worked me over. If it was up to him, I don’t think I was going to make First Lieutenant in this century.

I was still standing rigidly at attention, which involves keeping your eyes pointed straight ahead, but there’s still a trick to using your peripheral vision, and my eyes popped wide open when I saw what was coming. From over the captain’s right shoulder I saw Professor Rhineburg and Marilyn coming, along with a small woman in a white Navy uniform. As soon as I saw the eagles on her shoulder, I interrupted the captain by barking out, “ATTEN-HUT!” as loudly as I could.

The captain was as startled as I was, and stopped in mid-harangue and after turning to see what I was up to, snapped to attention himself. The Naval captain, who seriously outranked an Army captain, softly said, “As you were,” and both Captain Summers and I went to parade rest. “That was a very interesting response you gave in there, Lieutenant,” she commented.

“My apologies, ma’am. No excuse.”

“Oh, don’t worry about it. At ease, the both of you.”

Once I went to an ease position, I had a chance to look at the captain more closely, and my eyes bugged out again. The naval captain was Grace Hopper, ‘Amazing Grace’, one of the founding fathers of computer science and programming, and damn near the only woman to ever have a warship named after her! An Arleigh Burke class destroyer was named after her after her death. Right now she was still only a captain; in the Eighties she would be promoted to rear admiral and end up the longest serving naval officer in history.

I just stared at her, my mouth open. She saw this and said, “What’s on your mind, son?”

“You’re Grace Hopper!”

“Captain Grace Hopper, if you don’t mind,” she replied dryly, glancing over at my professor, who was chuckling.

“Yes, ma’am, sorry, ma’am.”

“As I said a moment ago, you made a nice presentation. Don’t worry about that jackass, Carnsword. He still thinks Joe Stalin was seriously misunderstood and that communism is the wave of the future.”

I glanced at my captain, and muttered, “Good Lord!”

She shook my hand and said, “I just wanted to say it was a nice job there, especially at the end. I loved it!” She turned to Professor Rhineburg and said, “John, it was good to see you again. You did well with him.” She turned to go.

I had to do it. “Excuse me, ma’am, can I ask you a favor?”

“Eh, what?”

“Can I get a picture with you? Please?” Christ, a picture with Grace Hopper! I’d plead for this on my knees! “Captain? Can you take a picture for me? I’ll pay for the film!”

I towered over the woman, who must have already been in her seventies, but she smiled and stood next to me, and Captain Summers took two pictures, one of her and me, and one adding in Professor Rhineburg. Marilyn declined to get in the shot.

Afterwards, his anger at me forgotten, Captain Summers asked me, “Just who is that captain? She’s older than God, for Christ’s sake!”

I tried to explain, but fell back on, “Captain, she’s one of the people who invented computers. Imagine if we were living a hundred years ago and you had a chance to get your photo taken with Thomas Edison. Wouldn’t you do it?”

“Her? You’re kidding me!”

“Captain, someday they’re going to name a ship after her. No disrespect sir, but I don’t think they’re going to name any regiments after you or me.”

He laughed. “Name a ship after a woman? Get serious!”

“Why not? They named a Polaris submarine after Edison, and he wasn’t even in the Navy or the Army!”

Captain Summers laughed at this, and excused himself from lunch, which was just fine with me. After chewing me out, I knew Marilyn well enough that she wouldn’t want to eat with him. The remaining three of us, Marilyn, Professor Rhineburg, and myself, went into the restaurant for lunch. Once there, Marilyn, who I could tell was still stewing, said, “Who was that… that… that jerk!?” I smiled to myself. If it hadn’t been for the professor, she would have said asshole.

The professor smiled and said, “Arnold Carnsword. He teaches applied mathematics at Harvard or Yale, one of the Ivies, anyway. He won a Fields Medal a few years ago.”

Marilyn looked confused at that, so I explained. “It’s sort of like the Nobel Prize in math, but they only give it out every four years.”

Professor Rhineburg nodded in agreement. “He’s really quite good. I suspect that if you hadn’t worn your uniform, he would have been quite congratulatory. As it stands, I am sure the American Mathematical Society will get a scurrilous letter about the Army’s infiltration of the pristine halls of science. Forget about him. He’s a left wing kook.”

That only slightly mollified Marilyn, but the saying about not beating a dead horse was not invented with her in mind. “Still, he’s a jerk! And how come that captain was all over you? You were right!”

I smiled at that. “It doesn’t matter how right I was. I was wrong and the captain knew it. Hell, I knew it, too.”

“What do you mean, you were wrong?”

“When I wear this uniform, I represent the Army and the 82^nd Airborne. We answer to civilians, even civilian jerks. I was out of line.”

“No you weren’t!” she said, defending me.

I shrugged. I didn’t think we would ever see eye to eye on some things. “If it had been one of my men who got into a beef with a civilian, I’d be all over him, and the standard for officers is even higher. I screwed up. You’ll probably be married to the world’s oldest second lieutenant by the time I’m out of the Army.”

“I don’t think it was that serious,” commented the professor. “This will blow over.”

“Not when Captain Summers finishes writing me up for insubordination, which is entirely possible. Then again, he could just let my captain know, which will hitch a lousy OER on me.” The looks of confusion made me explain, “Officer Efficiency Report, my yearly grade, so to speak.”

“Well, he was still a jerk!” said Marilyn.

I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Next time I get in an argument, I’ll turn you loose instead.”

Being an American soldier or sailor can involve a strange dichotomy between ideals and reality at times. We fight, and sometimes die, to uphold our country’s freedoms and rights, but often have to legally give up those rights in order to do so. With the exception of the Viet Nam War, most of our fellow citizens accord us a tremendous level of respect, but hold us to ludicrously high standards and mix that respect with a certain level of disdain. They love having us around in wartime, and want to keep us out of sight and out of mind the rest of the time. As the saying goes, we catch bullets so civilians don’t have to. It’s probably always been like that.

After lunch, I decided to head back upstairs and change out of my uniform. I was sick and tired of math and the Army for the day. Maybe I could change into some civvies and we could do the tourist thing on the Mall. I would have loved to have seen the Wall, otherwise known as the Viet Nam War Memorial, but it hadn’t been even thought of yet. I remember the first time I did see it, I cried at the waste of it all.

I sank down into the armchair in the sitting room and stared out the window. Marilyn asked what I was thinking about. I turned back to her, where she was sitting on the couch, looking worried at me, and I smiled. “I was just feeling depressed about this morning,” I told her.

“Carling, forget about it. Nobody will care.”

“I don’t know, honey. I’m just feeling so depressed. Can you think of anything that might cheer me up?” I tried to act innocently.

“Cheer you up?” Suddenly her eyes widened. “Cheer you up! Did you have anything particular in mind?”

“I don’t know, Marilyn, but I’m pretty depressed. I’m going to need a lot of cheering up.” I slumped back in the armchair and spread my legs out on the floor in front of me.

She snorted. “Is that what they call it these days?” I just hooked my finger towards her and motioned her closer. “And what if I needed cheering up?”

“I’d return the favor.”

She stood up and stuck her tongue out at me. “Maybe some other time.”

I laughed at her. “There was this newlywed couple and they wanted to have some silent signals about when they wanted to have sex. So she said that if he wanted sex to touch her left breast, and if he didn’t want sex, to touch her right breast. Then she asked him what he wanted as signals. The answer was, that if she wanted sex, to tug on his cock. Then she asked what if she didn’t want sex. The answer was, tug on it another hundred times.”

“You’re so gross!” she said, fighting back the laughter.

At that, I jumped up from the chair and chased her around the room before trapping her in the bedroom. That led to the inevitable, and an hour later we were both cured of our depressions and taking a well deserved nap. After waking up, I decided the tourist thing could wait for another day. I preferred snuggling up to Marilyn, and we tore off another piece before the afternoon was finished.

“Well, my depression is certainly cleared up now. How’s yours?” I asked.

“Fine for now, but I might need another treatment later,” she teased.

“I’ll see what I can do tonight. Considering how long it’s going to be before I see you again, it’s almost like I’m trying to store things up.”

“When do you think that will be? Are you going to be able to visit before we get married?”

“Not sure. Let me find my schedule.” I crawled out of bed and rooted around in my briefcase. I found my schedule and shook my head, carrying it back into the bedroom. “Next month we have Harlan’s wedding, and then I can probably finagle a three day weekend. After that, though, nothing.”

“Oh my God! We’ll never get it done!” she said, back on that kick.

“Marilyn, you’ll get it done, because you’ll have to get it done!” I said with a smile. “As Doctor Johnson once said, ‘When a man knows he is to be hanged in the morning, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.’”

“Ha ha! Is that what you think marriage is? A hanging?” she harrumphed at me.

“I think you need another cure for depression!”

Marilyn squawked at that, and threw a pillow at me. I chased her down and tickled her until she almost cried, and then we cured our depression again. Thank God I was still a young man!

The concierge had come through with reservations at eight. I had packed a nice charcoal suit and looked distinctly un-military. Marilyn had the blue silk halter wrap dress I had bought her in Vegas a few years before, and slipped into some hose and the matching heels she had bought back then. I wasn’t sure if she was wearing stockings or pantyhose, or panties, and I tried to find out, but Marilyn made me behave. She did have a wicked smile on her face, though, so I thought I’d enjoy finding out later.

Mortons was very nice, and very expensive. We both had the surf and turf, consisting of a filet mignon and a lobster tail, along with a very nice bottle of Pouilly Fusse. While we were there I glanced around the restaurant in search of anybody famous, and smiled when I recognized Congressman Clarence Long of Maryland. He was the representative for the district my family lived in, and I had grown up knowing his nephew. I mentioned this to Marilyn.

“Really? That’s your Congressman? And you grew up with his nephew? Wow! What was he like?”

I grinned. “He was as big a crook as his uncle!”

“What!?”

“He was a real punk. Always getting in trouble and his uncle was always pulling strings to get him out again.”

“That’s not right!” she protested.

I shrugged and smiled. “Uncle Clarence knows how to get things done. My father used to say that he’s so crooked that when he dies they’ll have to screw his coffin into the ground.”

She smiled at that. “You sound like you approve.”

“Maryland may be a small state, but we’re just as dirty as those big states. We bow to no one in our graft and corruption!” That got her to laughing, and for the rest of the meal I talked about how we had two governors in a row, Spiro Agnew and now Marvin Mandel, go to prison for corruption.

Later on I got to find out what was under that dress. Marilyn wasn’t wearing any panties, and she had stockings, not pantyhose. It was… inspirational!

The next day was the end of our little vacation. The captain met me down in the lobby that morning at 0600 with a cab and we drove over to the Lincoln Memorial and he took photos of me running around. Then we went back to the Hilton and cleaned up and left after breakfast. Marilyn had a flight right after ours, so I got her on a cab to the airport, and then the captain and I headed over to Andrews for our return flight.

I reported in to the battery office the next morning. Captain Harris immediately ordered me into his office and shut the door behind me, so I figured it was his turn to chew my ass ragged about my argument with that jerk mathematician. I figured wrong. He didn’t say anything to me about it, but just asked what I had done and if I had fun. The he reminded me I was back in the Army and to get my ass in gear and my head in the game and get back to work, pronto! Maybe Captain Summers hadn’t had time to turn me in yet.

Still, nothing came up over the next few days either, not from Captain Harris or the colonel, so I guess Captain Summers hadn’t decided to burn my career. Maybe hearing an O-6 like Captain Hopper say it wasn’t a problem changed his mind. Either way, I wasn’t going to bring it to anybody’s attention.

About a month after the trip, a photo of me delivering the presentation showed up on the cover of the Paraglide, below the fold, with a few paragraphs. Deep inside there was a photo of me jogging and a few more paragraphs. Nothing ever showed up in the Army Times. Strangely enough, I wasn’t heartbroken. It was bad enough putting up with Jonesy’s jokes after hitting the Paraglide. I didn’t need to be any more famous.

Chapter 50: Get Me To The Church On Time

June 1978

Wedding preparations proceeded slowly on Marilyn’s end, but they did proceed. Along the way she cried, threatened, screamed, protested, and told me more than once that the wedding was off. I would let her vent over the phone and then calmly move her forward. Suzie visited over the spring break and she was much calmer than Marilyn, despite being a teenager going to her first wedding. The reception would be at Trinkaus Manor, a local landmark and banquet hall in Oriskany, just a few miles from the Lefleur place. It had been there before, too.

I bought an Army mess dress uniform, and made sure that Harlan and Joe got theirs, too. They are really quite expensive, but Harlan was going career, and he might use it again. Joe found a place he could rent one. Tusker promised to get a basic black tuxedo, although basic black for Tusker might involve flashing lights. He might be the most flamboyant of any of us, including the bride and bridesmaids! Tessa promised to rein him in if necessary.

I traveled to Plattsburgh during the support cycle in April. It was just a long weekend, and didn’t chew up too much leave time, but it kept Marilyn calm, or at least calmer.

I also made a number of phone calls to Tusker, Harlan and Joe, sorting out the details with them. We decided to skip out on any stag party, since the only chance we would have to be together was the night before in any case, and that was when the rehearsal dinner would be.

Upstate New York in the winter is a miserable place. One thing I knew for sure. Even if I didn’t make a career of the Army, no way was I moving back to New York! I shoveled snow for 50 years before, and I was not about to repeat the process. No matter what Marilyn screamed at me, I was going to live some place a lot warmer!

Eventually we got to our summer support cycle, and I was going on leave. I flew out of Fayetteville on Wednesday morning, June 28, with a flight into Syracuse that connected through Washington. The Syracuse airport was a hell of a lot closer to Utica than the Albany airport, and was larger as well, with more flights. Now, in addition to my two trusty B4 bags, I had purchased a new hanging bag, and had in it a suit, my mess dress uniform, and a blazer. It had enough room that Marilyn could put in any formal evening gowns or dresses she was packing. Then again, Marilyn might have so much crap I’d have to go out and buy her a bag of her own, and she’d still use most of mine!

I got into the airport mid-afternoon, just a bit after two, and found a wonderful sight — Marilyn standing there at the baggage claim area! I went right up to her and wrapped her in my arms. “You have no idea how good you look to me!” I told her.

“Just hold me!” she replied, somewhat miserably.

I gave her a big hug and then asked, “What’s wrong now?”

“Can’t we just elope? Why can’t we just elope?”

“Fine by me. We’re at the airport. Want to fly out to Vegas?”

“Seriously?” she asked.

“Sure, why not? Of course your parents will never talk to you again, and it will cost us all of our friends, but it’s up to you,” I commented.

“You’re no help!”

“You worry way too much. It’s too late to change anything anyway. Come on, let’s get my stuff and go. Where did you park?”

Marilyn said she was in the parking garage, so I sent her back to get her car and bring it around to the baggage claim area. I would collect my stuff and meet her outside. Just then the luggage carousel started moving, so off she went and I waited for my luggage.

Thankfully, none of my luggage went on its own separate vacation. I collected my stuff and hauled it out the door to the sidewalk just in time to see Marilyn waved away by a security guard and be made to circle around a second time. When she came back I just tossed my gear into the backseat of the car. She stayed behind the wheel and I climbed into the passenger seat.

“You see? Nothing is working out! I can’t even park and wait for you!” she complained.

“Rule One — Don’t sweat the small stuff. Rule Two — It’s all small stuff,” I replied. “What happened to the Challenger?” Marilyn had picked me up in a very nondescript Chevy Malibu.

She shrugged. “It’s sort of in the shop. I was in sort of an accident.”

I looked over at her curiously. Marilyn is not the world’s greatest driver. One time she and Tammy managed to drive the Challenger up a dirt road and get it stuck on a rock with all four tires off the ground. Another time, in high school, she managed to roll a car onto its roof. “What’s a sort of accident?”

She had the good grace to look a little embarrassed. “Well, a train hit it.”

I stared at her in utter astonishment. “You hit a train!?”

“No, the train hit me,” she explained.

“What, it jumped off the track and drove into you?”

“Well, no. I was at a crossing and I was a little too far forward and when the train came through it just nudged me over. That’s all!”

I stared some more. “You drove onto the railroad tracks while a train was coming through and then stayed in the car?”

She gave me a peevish look. “That’s exactly what my father said! I don’t need to hear it from you, too!”

“You’re lucky to be alive! Just how bad is the Challenger?” She turned to face the road again and mumbled something. “What was that? I missed it.”

“I said it’s totaled.”

“Well, as long as it’s nothing major.” I got a raspberry for that. I rubbed my hands over my face. “I think I understand your father a little better now. He’s not just giving you away, he’s reducing his liability!” That earned me a second raspberry.

Leaving aside Marilyn’s driving history, I enjoyed the drive back. Marilyn had on a dark blue tank top that showed some interesting cleavage, and a short denim skirt. I enjoyed watching her.

I had gotten a room at the Sheraton in downtown Utica. It was on Genesee Street, which was the main north-south business street through the city, just south of 5S. It was maybe a couple miles south of St. Peter’s, where the wedding was to be held, and maybe five miles east of the Lefleur’s and Trinkaus Manor on 5S and 69. I had gotten a block of rooms reserved for family members and any of the guests who wanted to stay over. Harlan and Anna Lee, Tusker and Tessa, and Joe would be arriving tomorrow, and my entire family, including aunts and uncles and cousins would be coming in Friday. The rehearsal was at 1700 on Friday, the wedding was at 1100 Saturday, and the reception was at 1400.

Marilyn thought my use of military time was hilarious.

We drove the Thruway back to Utica and got off at Exit 31, and drove down Genesee Street to the Sheraton. When we got there, Marilyn pulled up to the door and she got out with me. I pulled my bags from the back seat and she opened the trunk up. She handed me a suitcase. “I told my parents I was staying with Tammy. She’ll cover for me.”

“Oh?” I asked.

“You sound like you don’t want me to stay?”

I wrapped her in another hug. “Go park the car and come in, and I’ll show you just how much I want you to stay!” I lowered my face and kissed her. At the break, she closed her trunk and got back into the car, while I scrounged up a bellman for the luggage and went inside to check in.

Marilyn returned while I was still registering at the front desk. She was quiet and held my hand and leaned against me while I finished signing in, and then held my hand as we rode the elevator to the third floor. The bellman delivered our luggage and I slipped him a few bucks, and then Marilyn just came up to me and wrapped her arms around me.

“It’s all right,” I told her softly.

“I just wish this was all over!”

I rubbed her back. “Thirty years from now, our children will be getting married, and we’ll be able to laugh at them and tell them just how awful it was for us and how we survived it all.”

“Thirty years! I don’t think I’m going to last thirty minutes!”

“In sixty years you’ll be able to laugh at your grandchildren,” I answered.

Marilyn gave a small and manic laugh at that. I let go of her and pulled her by the hand over to the bed. Since I hadn’t planned on Marilyn staying with me, I hadn’t gotten a suite. The room still had a king sized bed, though. I sat down on the bed and pulled her down beside me. She simply leaned against me with her head on my shoulder.

“I think you need to relax,” I told her. I moved backwards on the bed until I was comfortably in the center of it, and pulled Marilyn along with me. I lay down and she lay down on top of me. I reached up and cupped her face in my hands and kissed her softly. She slipped her tongue between my lips and made a gentle moaning sound as I rubbed my hands across her back. She had a thin bra under the tank top, and as she squirmed around on top of me, I responded with an erection.

“I love you so much,” I whispered to her. “I love you, I love you, I love you. I can never say it enough. Every day we will be married, I want you to know that I love you.” I felt something warm and wet touch my cheek, and pulled back enough to see that my fiancée was crying. I continued to hold her and comfort her, telling her how much I loved her and how I would love her everyday and forever and ever, and anything else I could think of until she calmed down.

I knew it was just a bad case of nerves. I slowly moved from rubbing her back to slipping my hands under her tank top, and then slid it up her body and off of her. Next went her miniskirt, which I unzipped and pushed down off her hips, to leave her there in her simple cotton bra and panties. I shucked them off her as well, and then I undressed myself as she silently watched me. Once I was naked I climbed on top of her. She was already aroused, and I slid inside her easily. Marilyn wrapped her arms and legs around me tightly, as if to hold onto me no matter what happened, but I simply made slow and gentle love to her, even as I continued to whisper my love into her ear.

I was able to time my orgasm to match hers, and afterwards I lay there on top of her, supporting my weight on my arms while I kissed her face. Marilyn finally smiled at me. “Better now?” I asked.

“Better,” she replied, smiling up at me.

“It’s just nerves. Any time over the next few days, if you get a case of nerves, just ask me and I’ll help you work through it.”

That got her to giggling. “That’s mighty generous of you.”

I gave her my most innocent look, or at least as innocent a look as I could give while laying on top of her naked. “I am a kind and generous sort of guy, and want nothing more than to know that I am able to help those feeling down.”

Marilyn wiggled her ass from side to side underneath me. “Well, I’m starting to feel depressed again. Think you can help with that?”

“It’s a burden, but I always try to help.” I rolled off of her onto the bed, and took her hand and moved it down to my slimy and come-covered cock. “With a little help from you, I’m sure I’ll be up for it.”

“I’ll help if you will.” Marilyn began to slowly fondle and pump my cock back to life, and I took a more active role as well, lowering my face to her tits and licking them and the nipples while I diddled her clit. Marilyn had another orgasm, loudly this time, before rolling on top of me and fucking that tight and hungry little pussy down onto my cock. She had a second, bigger orgasm when she felt me coming up into her greasy cunt.

Afterwards, Marilyn rolled off of me, and I was breathing hard. “I don’t know about you,” I told her, “but I certainly feel more relaxed.”

“Me, too,” she admitted. She rolled onto the bed beside me and threw a leg over mine. “What about later? I might need some more relaxation then.”

“Well, you just let me know, and I’ll see what I can do for you. Of course, you’ll probably need to make sure it’s easy for me to relax you, and you’ll have to make sure I know when you start getting nervous.”

She smirked at that. “And just how do I make sure you’ll be able to relax me?”

“Well, I think that bras and panties just get in the way,” I answered her.

“You really are an oinker!” she laughed.

“I’m hurt that you would think ill of me like that.”

“And let me guess. When I need to be relaxed, I should just grab your pants?”

“Communications are the key to a strong marriage,” I piously intoned.

“What would it be communicating if I squeezed your balls?”

I grinned at her. “Probably that you needed a good spanking!” That prompted her to try and grab me, but I managed to escape, and then had her trapped face down on the bed while I swatted her bottom a few times. I kept her in that position until I climbed on top of her for a third round, doggy style.

We were so damned relaxed we fell asleep at that point!

We woke up again early in the evening. It would be nice to say that I spent the rest of the evening madly screwing my fiancée, in every imaginable position, multiple times, without letup. Nice, but not quite true. Marilyn seemed much calmer, and we were both pretty hungry, so we washed up and dressed and went downstairs to the Sheraton’s restaurant for dinner. I did manage to hide her bra and panties while she was in the shower, and not just the ones she had worn, but the ones in her suitcase as well. I also hid the sneakers she had been wearing, and set out her high heeled sandals.

After I came out of the shower, I heard her rummaging through the drawers and her suitcase. I came out of the bathroom to find her wearing a Sheraton robe and saying, “You think you’re so clever!”

“Is that a question or an accusation?”

“Both!”

“I always thought being clever was a good thing. During the Trojan War, Odysseus was the hero, and he was the clever one.”

“Whatever!” She stripped off her robe and pulled the tank top and denim skirt on without her underwear. “Happy?”

“Very! I’m so happy, I’ll even return the favor.” I grabbed my slacks and slid them on commando style, and then pulled on a brightly colored Hawaiian shirt.

Marilyn snorted and laughed at that, then slipped on her sandals. She stood up and turned around in front of me. “Is this what you wanted?”

“Like you have no idea!” I replied, nodding my head and licking my lips. Suddenly room service sounded like a very good idea!

Marilyn put the kibosh on that. “I’m hungry. Grab the key.” I grabbed my wallet and key and followed her into the hallway. We held hands down the hallway and down the elevator.

It wasn’t a long wait at all to get a table. Once seated, I asked Marilyn what she wanted to do that night. Movie? Go out to a club? Go bar hopping? “I’m too tired for any of that. I just want to get dinner, have a couple of drinks, and go back to the room. Is that all right?”

“Whatever you say, babe. I just want you to stay relaxed.”

She gave me a lewd grin at that. “We’ll do some relaxing later on, too. There’s something else I need you to help me with, too.”

I smiled at her. “What’s that?”

She leaned in towards me and lowered her voice to a whisper. “I plan to shave my legs and all again before Saturday. Could you help with that? You know, like before?”

Suddenly my mouth felt dry, and I wished the waiter would show up to take our drink orders. “Whatever you want, honey, whatever you want!” I finally managed to croak out.

If Marilyn was trying to unsettle me, she succeeded. Helping her with her intimate hygiene needs stayed in the back of my mind all through our drinks and dinner. I was even prepared to skip dessert and head back upstairs, but she dragged the evening out, giggling at me as she did so. Now I was the one who needed relaxation!

After dinner I hustled Marilyn back upstairs as quickly as I could. She tried to drag out the torment, by saying she felt like taking a walk or going into the bar, but I all but pulled her along and threw her over my shoulder. It wasn’t a long ride up the elevator, but I let my fingers do the walking as soon as the door shut. I had her moaning by the time the door opened again.

Marilyn scampered down the hall to our room, but had to wait until I got there. I unlocked it and we slipped inside, and were in each other’s arms before it even shut. “I can’t wait! I have to take you! Now!” I told her. Marilyn simply moaned and grabbed my cock through my pants. I was so hard I’m surprised I didn’t rip right through them.

We never made it to the bed. I pulled her skirt up to her waist and lifted her up and sat her plump little bottom on the dresser. Her tank top I pushed down off her shoulders, exposing those delicious tits and then I pushed her hands between her legs. Marilyn spread her legs wide, and I unzipped my pants and let them fall around my knees. She grabbed my cock and guided me inside, and I slammed my cock into her pussy as she shrieked happily. She tried to move her hands away, to grab me and pull me closer, but I forced them back down between us. “Make me come!” I demanded, and I forced her fingers to play with both herself and my cock, humping madly into her.

“Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!” she moaned. Her pussy was making squishy farting noises and I rammed into it. Between her fingers on her clit and my cock sawing back and forth into her, Marilyn was shivering and shuddering in an almost continuous orgasm. I was the one holding us tightly together as I slamfucked that tight little pussy. I had my arms around her and my hands cupping her bottom gripping it feverishly as I pumped into her. Maybe I had rejuvenated some during dinner, but when I came, it felt like I was pumping a river of jism into her. Marilyn squealed happily when she felt me unload, and she wrapped her arms around me when I cut loose.

We were both panting at that point, and I stepped back and Marilyn climbed down off the dresser unsteadily. “That was pretty good,” she commented. “For our second time, maybe you can do better now that you’ve warmed up.”

“I’ll warm you up! I’ll warm up your bottom!” I replied with a growl. I grabbed her and gave her a couple of swats on the rear.

Marilyn laughed and headed into the bathroom. I pulled my pants back up and grabbed the TV remote, and crawled onto the bed, propping myself up with some pillows. When she came back, she was barefoot, but still wearing the denim skirt and tank top, though now worn normally, and not around her waist. She crawled onto the bed next to me and propped herself up on her own pillows. We watched television for a bit, until I noticed she had fallen asleep. I rearranged her on the bed, and kissed her on the forehead, and then covered her with the bedspread.

I woke up the next morning to an interesting feeling of warmth and wetness in my crotch, and when I cracked my eyes open and looked down my body, I found Marilyn looking back at me, with my cock in her mouth. “What a great way to wake up!” I commented.

“Come in my mouth, honey,” she replied, while jacking my cockshaft and licking me like a lollipop.

What a wonderful idea! I rearranged the pillows to I could watch, and lay back and luxuriated in the feel. Marilyn was naked, so she must have woken up before me, cleaned up and stripped down, and then managed to get my pants down without waking me. I must have really been sleeping! She concentrated on sucking my cockhead while jacking my shaft, and I happily filled her mouth about ten minutes later.

She slipped off into the bathroom, probably to brush her teeth, and I fell back asleep. I must have dozed another twenty minutes before waking up again. Marilyn now had on a bathrobe, and was sipping some coffee made from the mini-coffeemaker in the bathroom. “Morning, sleepyhead,” she said.

I stretched and said, “Good morning.” I glanced down and saw I was still naked from the waist down. “Boy, I bet I know what would be a great wake-up call!”

Her eyes twinkled and Marilyn answered, “You only get one wake-up call a day. Nobody gets two. Time to get up and face the world.”

I sat up and peeled off my shirt. “You sure about that? I missed that in the rules. Besides, I’m on vacation. I don’t have to face the world.” I lay back and spread my legs, exposing myself to her.

Marilyn wasn’t taking the bait. “Don’t you have people coming in?”

“Tusker and Tessa are coming from Baltimore, so figure an hour and a half to Harrisburg, another four hours to Binghamton, and two hours to get here. They won’t get here until late afternoon. Bradley is coming from Philly, so he’s not getting here until mid-afternoon, and Harlan and Anna Lee are flying into Syracuse at 1400. I haven’t got a thing to do until this afternoon.” I stroked my cock idly, willing it to life.

Marilyn noticed me, but kept teasing me. “Don’t you need to go run around and work out or something?”

“I have some better exercises in mind. Want to join me?”

“Yuck! I don’t want to get all sweaty!”

I jumped off the bed and grabbed her. As she giggled and laughed, I tossed her onto the bed and had my way with her, burning up quite a few calories in the process. We did manage to get sweaty, but I promised to help her clean up later. We took a shower together and didn’t get down to the restaurant until mid-morning.

After breakfast we walked around the hotel a bit, but the Sheraton isn’t actually in one of the prettier sections of the city, not that Utica is well known for its civic loveliness. There are some nice sections over on the Parkway, but the Sheraton is located smack dab in the heart of the business district, and there’s nothing around but office buildings and high rises and traffic too dangerous to cross even at the crosswalks. We just goofed off for a bit, did the shaving thing, talked about the wedding and the honeymoon, had lunch and a few beers, and simply waited around for our friends to show up. These were all on the groom’s side. Marilyn’s maid of honor and one of her bridesmaids were local girls, and Suzie was coming in with my family Friday morning.

It was about four in the afternoon before people started showing up. Marilyn and I had gone down to the bar and were nursing a few beers, figuring we’d catch some people as they came in the front door. From the bar you can get a good view of the lobby. Harlan and Anna Lee actually showed up first. They landed about quarter after two, took thirty minutes to get their luggage and rent their car, an hour to drive from Syracuse, and ten minutes to get lost and unlost on Genesee Street. I noticed them coming in and we went into the lobby to say hello. They were going to check in and unload their gear, and then come back down for drinks with us.

Joe Bradley showed up while the Buckminsters were still upstairs. He was traveling stag, which didn’t surprise me. He never chased women back at RPI, although he occasionally claimed a girl back in New Jersey. I never saw any pictures, though. Regardless, if he was gay, he was so far in the closet as to be undetectable. For certain, after living with him for three years, my gay-dar had never gone off even once.

The five of us were having beers at a table in the bar when Marilyn looked out into the lobby and said, “Oh my God!” She turned back to me with a look of mixed shock and awe. “It’s Tusker and Tessa!”

“What’s with you? You know he’s a bit nuts.” I figured it was Tusker’s appearance which made Marilyn’s eyes pop out. I stood up and turned around to see my friends. Tusker looked fine. It was Tessa who surprised us. “Holy Christ!” I exclaimed.

They had seen us in the lobby and waved and walked over towards the bar. Or at least Tusker walked. Tessa was waddling! She looked to be somewhere around ten or eleven months pregnant. She was grinning like crazy as she saw our shocked expressions. “I told him you’d be surprised!”

“Astonished, is more like it!” I replied. “You know, they have a pill to prevent things like this.”

“I told him you’d say that, too. The heck with you. Where’s the bathroom!?” she answered.

Marilyn and Anna Lee rushed around and the trio headed off towards the bathroom off the lobby. I introduced Tusker to Joe and Harlan, and we carried his gear over to the registration desk. It was the first time any of them had met anybody else in the group, although I had mentioned who was doing what to each of them. Tusker checked in and then waited for the women to return, and he and Tessa promised to come back down and join us in the bar.

Once they had left, I asked Marilyn, “Did she mention anything about them getting married?”

She gave me a wicked grin. “Nope!”

“I think Tusker would have invited us if they had.”

Anna Lee commented, “I didn’t see any wedding bands or engagement rings.”

“Trust those two to be unconventional!” I told the other three. “Tusker and Tessa are two of my oldest friends from home, back in high school. They’re even more different from each other than Marilyn and I.”

Marilyn nodded in agreement. “He’s like a crazy biker type and she’s a sweet and innocent college girl like me.”

Joe commented, “From the looks of things, not all that sweet and innocent.” I had to grin at that. Compared to my buttoned down Army buddies, Tusker was a long haired hippie.

Anna Lee commented, “I’m amazed they were able to travel. She looks like she’s about to give birth any moment now!”

“At least you’re a nurse!” I said.

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that!” she returned.

Needless to say, topic number one when Tusker and Tessa came back downstairs was when the baby was due. She assured us that her doctor said it wasn’t happening for at least another month, but I was wondering about that. I just couldn’t believe that was correct. Topic number two was introducing everybody to everybody else. At least Harlan and Joe and I all had our Army background to join us, but Tusker was about as far from the Army as you could imagine.

At one point he asked Harlan, “Now, I’ve heard from him how the two of you were conquering heroes back in boot camp. Now I want to hear it from you!”

Joe weighed in, “Me too! I went through training the same year, and I just don’t believe it.”

“Were you Blue Army or Orange Army?” asked Harlan.

“Orange.”

Harlan just nodded and said to me, “Well, that explains it.”

“He’s one of those people,” I agreed.

Harlan turned back to Joe. “I’m not surprised. After the spanking Buckman and I gave you, the Orange Army probably shot the offenders and burned the files. I sure wouldn’t have wanted it known by anybody.”

“Harlan, I don’t know you, but if you’ve been hanging out with him, you must be full of shit, too!” replied Joe.

Anna Lee laughed, and Tessa giggled, especially when Marilyn commented, “So, you hung around with him for three years. What does that make you?”

We ordered another round of beers, and Harlan and I explained the drubbing that we had inflicted on the Orange Army. That got us into a discussion of what we were all currently doing, Harlan and me in the Army, Joe going to grad school at Wharton, and Tusker and Tessa, still working at the bar and finishing college. Tessa had finished a year ago, but Tusker was only going part-time and getting his Associates in business.

“What do you plan to do when that’s over?” asked Anna Lee.

Tusker looked at Tessa, and then over at me, which the others noticed, and then answered, “We’re saving our money. We’re going to open a repair shop, a motorcycle repair shop. I want to be a Harley dealer eventually.”

I gave him a thumbs up and Tessa took his hand and squeezed it. “Carl’s been helping us with that,” she said.

I just waved it off. “I just helped you get organized and focused. When’s your place going to open?” I asked.

“1980!” they both said loudly, and then laughed.

“Then it’s a goal and not a dream. Your next step is what?”

“I’m revising our business plan,” answered Tusker.

“Send it to me after the wedding but before somebody gets born. That’s going to take up a fair bit of time,” I said. I just hoped it wouldn’t take all their energy and time away from their dealership plans.

Tessa answered, “We already have that figured in. We’re staying in our current place instead of getting a bigger one, and saving that money. I’m going to make him keep pushing.”

“Then I’ll keep pushing, too.” That led into a discussion of their plans and Harlan’s and Joe’s plans as well. Harlan was stationed at Fort Hood, assigned to a self-propelled M109 155mm battery, and Anna Lee was working at a local hospital. Joe figured he had one more year at Wharton before he had to put the uniform on for real. Harlan was planning on going career; Joe was going to get out as soon as he could and go to work on Wall Street.

Me? I had no idea at the moment what I was going to end up doing. I liked what I was doing now, but I couldn’t imagine twenty years in the readiness cycle like this. Thank God I was still young. It didn’t matter, though, since I had another three years with Uncle Sam no matter what.

Friday we goofed off until my family arrived. Harlan, Joe, and Anna Lee spent a chunk of the day together talking about Army stuff, and Marilyn and I sat down with Tusker and Tessa to talk about their dealership plans. He had sent me a model business plan as part of one of his courses, and after reading his teacher’s comments, I offered a few of my own.

My family must have started out at the crack of dawn. They needed to be here mid-afternoon at the latest. The rehearsal was at five, and they needed to check in by four. On the other hand, the saying was that Dad flew low. He never met a speed limit he couldn’t break. This was the last day together for Marilyn and me. She would leave and stay the night with Tammy. Neither of us wanted to test the old bit about bad luck when seeing the bride before the wedding. I planned to lock myself in my room and get a decent night’s sleep.

This was in marked contrast to my first trip through. Much like this time, I had friends and a wedding party gathered together from all over the eastern seaboard. Then, however, I had agreed to a bachelor party the night before the wedding, and got totally trashed. I was impossibly hungover the next day, and Marilyn never let me forget it! I was sober, but looked and felt like low grade garbage. Not this time, no way, no how!

The rehearsal went smoothly. I had let Marilyn pick the flower girl and ring bearer from her family, since nobody on my side was that young, not even my cousins. Peter was going to be the ring bearer and one of her cousins was going to be the flower girl. Afterwards we had dinner over at a steak house in the Sangertown Square mall. The only awkward part, to me at least, was when I caught Mom explaining my brother couldn’t be there because he wasn’t feeling well. When Marilyn’s parents asked what was wrong they heard me mutter, “Clinical insanity.” Mom wasn’t amused and Marilyn’s parents looked mystified, and I just said he was tied up (“in a straight jacket!” I whispered to Marilyn) and wasn’t able to come. I vowed to keep quiet, especially after Marilyn poked me in the arm.

Otherwise things went smoothly. As soon as Suzie learned that Anna Lee was a nurse, she plopped herself down next to her new best friend and started peppering her with questions about nursing school and being a nurse. Suzie had just turned 17 and was a senior at Towson High, with plans to go to nursing school when she graduated. She was planning on getting both a degree in nursing and her RN certification, which always surprised me, since I never really understood they aren’t one and the same. Anna Lee took it all in with good grace, having a fresh and eager face to talk to about nursing.

Suzie would be a good nurse. She ended up going to Delaware the first trip through, and they threw them in the deep end right at the start. On her first ambulance ride-along, two weeks into her first semester, they went roaring off to the home of an elderly husband and wife. The husband had a heart attack and died while Suzie was watching. It only got worse. The wife, seeing her husband die, immediately stroked out, and dropped to the floor in front of my sister. They transported her but she never woke up. Two dead on her very first ambulance call! If that didn’t scare her off, nothing would. She ended up in orthopedics at Johns Hopkins, and used to tell us the funniest stories!

My father even paid for the rehearsal dinner. He grumbled slightly to Mom, but kept it quiet. Big Bob’s and Harriet’s family of 13 kids was more than he had originally budgeted for, which was practically nothing. He hadn’t even rented a tux for the wedding. I wondered what his wedding present to us would be. On the first trip around, it turned out that he had been keeping track of all the money he had given to me since I went to college, like the $20 he once slipped me, or the $50 he once let me have to make a year’s expenses. He totaled up the costs to $600 and told Marilyn and me he was cancelling my debt to him. That was our wedding present. At least this time I didn’t owe him any money.

Suzie, on the other hand, got a $25,000 wedding when she got married, complete to 300 guests at the Engineer’s Club in Baltimore and a nine piece band. We also got to see my mother lit up like a Christmas tree leading the conga line. I thought that kind of made it worthwhile. By then, of course, I had completely remade my life hundreds of miles away from my family, so I just didn’t care about the discrepancy in treatment. Marilyn, however, felt the snub terribly. Her parents gave us a honeymoon cruise as a wedding present, and mine cancelled a debt we didn’t even know we owed.

Big Bob and Harriet wanted to give us a cruise again, but since I had already arranged our honeymoon cruise, they switched it to a trip to Hawaii sometime within the next year. I told Marilyn and them that we would go sometime during the winter, when I had built up some more leave and we had another support cycle. They really didn’t understand about building up leave and the cycle and how it worked. To be fair neither did Marilyn, and I suspected she wasn’t going to enjoy parts of it.

After the rehearsal dinner, Marilyn and I snuck out to the parking lot with Tammy and I tossed her suitcase into Tammy’s car. I got a very nice hug and smooch from my sweetie. She also laughed and said, “Thanks for treating my nerves!”

I just grinned at her. “Hey, I’m a doctor! I specialize in treating women’s nervous conditions.”

Tammy laughed at that. “Does that mean you’d treat me if I got nervous?”

Marilyn tried to give her friend and maid of honor a playful push, but I still had her in my arms. “Forget about it! Besides, he’s not that type of doctor.”

“I don’t know, babe. A doctor is a doctor is a doctor…” I commented.

She wrapped herself around me possessively. “Yeah? Well, you’re my doctor now, so nobody else gets any treatments!”

“Okay, but you’d better be pretty nervous, ’cause I’d hate to let these talents go to waste.”

She shrieked in laughter at that, and then gave me a good-night kiss. She and Tammy roared out of the parking lot with a squeal to the tires. Tammy wasn’t any better a driver than Marilyn. Hopefully they would survive until the morning.

Tusker and Tessa drove back to the Sheraton in their car, and I rode with Harlan and Anna Lee and Joe. As we climbed in, I commented, “I wonder if we can run over to Toys R Us and pick up a car seat for the baby? She looks like Mount Vesuvius getting ready to blow!”

Harlan laughed, but Anna Lee agreed with me. “Hey, I work obstetrics, and I think the doctor got the dates wrong. There is no way she has another month to go. She looks like the baby has already dropped, and not just yesterday, either!”

We made a side trip over to Commercial Drive and bought a car seat and a big carton of newborn diapers. Even if she didn’t need them right away, she was going to need them soon enough! Joe picked up a few bibs and onesies for the baby. He and Harlan would make sure they got them after Marilyn and I took off. We also picked up some wrapping paper, and some tape and scissors. Back at the Sheraton, we took everything up to my room, had a wrapping party, and had a few beers.

But that was it for the excitement. I needed to get some sleep (Marilyn’s nervous condition had precluded much sleep for the last couple of days.) Saturday the wedding would be at 1100, so I needed to be at the church an hour before that. The limo was to pick up me and my groomsmen at the Sheraton by 0945 and drive us over. Anna Lee was going to drive over with Tessa about half an hour or so later.

Have you ever seen the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding? Remember the overhead shot of the Greek church, where the bride’s side of the church is filled to overflowing, and the groom’s side barely has a few pews seated? Marilyn and I used to call that our big fat upstate wedding. It was just about like that. We had about 150 people at the wedding. Roughly 120–130 were from her family. Every aunt and uncle and cousin from Plattsburgh and beyond showed up. It was the biggest collection of shitkickers and hillbillies since the movie Deliverance was filmed. I just whispered to Harlan, Joe, and Tusker that if anybody started asking if they could squeal like a pig, to just start running!

My side was a lot smaller. We just had my family, less Ham, and Suzie was in the wedding, so it was just my parents in the pew. Also, Aunt Nan and her family of five, total, and Aunt Peg and her family of three, total. My grandfather was now in a nursing home getting ready to die in the fall. Before he died just a few days after the wedding, and they didn’t tell us until we got home. Also on my side were about a dozen friends and their girlfriends or wives, mostly from college, along with Professor Rhineburg and his wife. Marilyn had a few friends from high school, as well.

The wedding went quite smoothly. Harlan and Tusker did a fine job of seating everybody, while Joe and I sat in a small room behind the altar and swapped lies until it was show time. Marilyn was late, of course, but not by more than fifteen minutes, so by Marilyn’s standards she was actually early. It was worth the wait. She had on this beautiful gown with a silk bottom half, and a brocaded corset type top half, though with straps. There was some interesting cleavage on display, along with her well tanned shoulders and arms, and about half her back was bare. No way did she have a bra on!

First came the flower girl, one of Marilyn’s cousins, Cindy. The bridesmaids and groomsmen came down the aisle next. Harlan was paired with Mark’s fiancée, Lauren, and Tusker was paired with Suzie. Peter came down the aisle looking very solemn and very small. He was only about four and a half years old. Next was Tammy. The three girls were all wearing pastel dresses and hats; Tammy in green, Suzie in yellow, and Lauren in pink. Finally, Big Bob, in a full morning coat tuxedo came down the aisle with Marilyn, looking very proud indeed. Marilyn had a veil held in place with a circlet of silk, and after lifting the veil up and over her head, he kissed her on the cheek and then shook my hand and then he left her with me.

My heart was beating wildly as I watched her. This was the culmination of what I had been working for since November 5, 1968. It was just a few months shy of ten years, and the price I had paid was beyond my imagining, and it was completely worth it. “You look amazing!” I whispered to her. “Every day for the rest of our lives, I want you to know I want to marry you again and again.”

Marilyn squealed and threw her arms around my neck, but the priest began clearing his throat and she stopped from kissing me. “Not just yet!” he said, loud enough for the church to hear. There was a lot of laughter at that.

At least this was the good priest, the regular family priest. St. Peter’s had several priests, and at least one of them would end up in trouble twenty years down the road for fooling around with the altar boys. Marilyn’s parents were furious when this came out. At least he hadn’t messed with their kids.

And then we got married. During the preparatory meeting with the priest, I suggested for one of the readings Ephesians 5:22, “Wives, submit yourself unto your husbands, as unto the Lord.” Marilyn hadn’t been all that amused, at least until the priest suggested adding Verses 23–33, a considerably lengthier passage about how the husband was supposed to take care of his wife. I shrugged and smiled and went along with it. I also made sure she knew later that night, when I got her alone, just what submission involved. That proved a very enjoyable evening! Now, when we got to that point in the ceremony, we started giggling to each other, and it took all our strength not to break out in laughter.

Since all of Marilyn’s family was Catholic, and even a few of my guests and bridal party, we had a full mass, including communion. As a result, the ceremony took longer than expected. It was not quite an hour before the priest said we were man and wife, and I could kiss the bride. Marilyn practically jumped into my arms and gave me a scorching hot kiss. Maybe it was because I whispered to her earlier on that I planned on making her submit that night.

We hung around the church for at least half an hour, and probably more, taking pictures in every conceivable combination. Then it was off to the reception. Marilyn and I had a limo of our own, and the wedding party had a larger model for them. Once we got into the limo, Marilyn threw herself into my arms again, and we kissed awhile. When I came up for air, I idly rubbed her half naked back, and asked if she had on stockings or pantyhose. She giggled and said I would have to find out for myself, but when I tried to, by tugging at her hem, she squealed and protested. Before I could find out, we were at Trinkaus Manor, and I had to behave myself.

I had already spoken to the limo driver. At the Sheraton, I had checked out and he had loaded all of my luggage into the trunk of the car, and had then gotten together with the limo driver that picked up Marilyn and now he had all of her luggage as well. After the reception, our driver was to hang around and eventually drive us to the airport in Syracuse. We were staying the night at one of the airport hotels and then flying out in the morning. I told the driver to feel free to have dinner, but no booze, and he just nodded and agreed.

I had been hoping for a drink at that point, but my hopes were crushed almost immediately. The entire wedding party was hustled through the reception to the back of the property, where there was an outdoor garden and arbor where more pictures were taken. I commented to Marilyn that I thought our guests were having more fun than we were, but she just shushed me. She looked radiant and was having the time of her life.

As for the reception, it went pretty much like most receptions. We started off with a receiving line, and then segued into a cocktail hour, where I was finally able to get a drink. Dinner was a plated event, to be followed by live music from the house band. It started at 1400 and would run four hours. Pretty routine. The entire wedding party was seated at a head table, and my parents sat with some of my aunts and uncles. Anna Lee and Tessa had a table with some of my friends from college.

The champagne toast was given by my best man, Joe Bradley, and I knew something was up when he took the microphone and stepped around the head table to be on the opposite side from Marilyn and me. He picked up the mike and started talking. “Hi, I’m Joe Bradley, and as the best man, I need to say something about these two that is both memorable and amusing. I had to give that quite a bit of thought, since they have provided me with an awful lot of stuff to talk about over the years.” That got a fair bit of laughter.

“I first met Carl our freshman year at RPI, when we started in ROTC at the same time. A few months later we joined the same fraternity, and a couple of months after that we both met Marilyn. So I probably know the two of them as a couple longer than anybody else in this room, and I thought to myself, the people here would really like to know how our newlyweds first met.”

At that point Marilyn’s head whipped towards me and she asked, “He’s not going to say what I think he’s going to say, is he?” I just laughed. “Stop him!” I laughed some more.

Marilyn’s concern was noted by several people, including Joe. There were a couple of calls for a full explanation, and Joe just grinned. “Yes, you two, payback really sucks, doesn’t it!?” he commented to us, all on the live mike. He turned back to the audience and continued, “Well, as I said, Carl and I both joined a fraternity, and a more drunken and degenerate group of guys you will never find. Carl fit in perfectly.” There was considerable laughter at this!

“Then we had a party, and invited all the wicked women we could find to the party, and guess who showed up? That’s right, our Marilyn here met Carl at a drunken frat party. Now, Marilyn was actually a shy and innocent girl who was dragged along by her wicked friends.” He turned back to us and asked, “That’s what you told your parents right, Marilyn?”

“That’s true!” she protested. I just kept laughing.

“You bet! Anyway, as soon as Carl saw her, he started drooling into his beer. Then he got up the nerve to ask her to dance. They have been together ever since. Now isn’t that a nice romantic story?” he asked. More than a few people applauded at this, but Joe wasn’t finished.

“Well, it got even more romantic. One of the upperclassmen also saw Marilyn, and he was pursuing her, too. He kept trying to butt in and dance with her, and ply her with alcohol, but Marilyn was afraid, and begged Carl for protection.”

“I did no such thing!” protested Marilyn loudly. I laughed and Joe waved her off.

“It got even worse. The other fellow was so incensed by this he actually challenged Carl to a duel! Can you imagine it? A duel!” He waved towards me. “Carl Buckman is one of the bravest men I have ever met. He actually accepted the challenge, and defended the honor of the woman he had fallen in love with. This is all true. I was there and I was Carl’s second. As the challenged, he was entitled to select weapons, and he chose shot glasses and Southern Comfort. He challenged the upperclassman to a drinking contest, and he won! Now, let’s give Carl a big round of applause!”

I just rolled my eyes, and it was Marilyn’s turn to laugh, as more applause came up from the reception hall. “You’re dead, Joe, you’re dead!” called out Marilyn.

“That’s right, Carl won Marilyn in a fraternity drinking contest! I mean, who could invent a story like that? That was how they met. So let’s raise our glasses high and toast them, because things can only get better than that first night!”

We got a rousing round of applause and cheers, and Marilyn and I drank our champagne and kissed as well. It was time for my response, so I stood and took the mike from Joe. “Thanks, Joe. What I say now I mean from the bottom of my heart. You need to stay on that side of the table for awhile, because if you come over to this side, Marilyn is going to kill you!”

He laughed at that, as did the others. Marilyn I wasn’t so sure about.

“Now let me explain what really happened that night, and not what Joe says happened.” I thought about it for a few moments, and then continued, “Okay, what he said was actually pretty accurate. I remember telling Marilyn afterwards that someday she would be able to tell her grandchildren how men had fought duels over her. What I didn’t tell her was that it would be our grandchildren she would tell that story to. As soon as I saw Marilyn and looked into those eyes, I knew it was my life’s destiny to be with her and protect her and care for her, no matter what the cost would be. That’s a promise I made earlier today, and a promise I will make her every day for the rest of our lives!”

I raised my champagne glass again. “So, let me make another toast, to Marilyn Buckman, the woman I love.” I turned to her and added, “I like the sound of that name!” We kissed again, also to much applause, and Marilyn even kissed Joe on the cheek, right after she punched him in the arm.

Everybody settled down after that, and dinner was served. I went with the Chicken Francaise. The other choice was prime rib, and while I like a good steak, I’m not a big fan of prime rib. Marilyn liked the prime rib though. Just one of those differences in life. After dinner, we milled about for a bit, until the band started up. There were about a million kids running around the place, all of them Marilyn’s brothers and sisters or cousins. This was a total contrast to a Buckman wedding, where children aren’t allowed. Marilyn was irate that her kids couldn’t come to Suzie’s wedding.

It was at this point that things started to go sideways.

Chapter 51: An Unplanned Guest

Marilyn and Suzie were over at one of the guest tables, talking to Anna Lee and Tessa. I am sure that Suzie was pestering Anna Lee about nursing stuff, and Anna Lee, the obstetrics nurse, was talking to Tessa about her pregnancy. I was over on the other side of the room, talking to Joe and a few of my frat brothers. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Marilyn, Anna Lee, Tessa, and Suzie all stand up and head out of the room. I commented to Bruno Cowling, one of my frat brothers, a fellow soldier (2^nd Lieutenant, Fort Lewis, 9^th Infantry Division), and the only Dreg I invited, “What do you think they’re doing in there all together? Having a union meeting?”

“It’s one of the mysteries of life,” he replied. “Sort of like how you can put two socks in a dryer, and only get one out.”

I drank some more of my gin and tonic, and we discussed other mysteries, such as how come you always end up with extra coat hangers in a closet, when one of the waitresses came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder. “Excuse me, sir, but they need you in the back room.”

I looked at the others and shrugged, and then followed the waitress across the dance floor and into a side room. I looked around. This room looked like a small lounge, with a bar along one wall, and a bunch of tables and chairs in storage. Over to the side, the four women were in a gaggle. “What’s up?” I asked, walking closer.

It was then that I noticed that Tessa was actually sitting down on a chair, and looked awful. She was starting to sweat, and Anna Lee was sitting next to her and obviously tending to her. Suzie was standing on the other side, and Marilyn looked stricken. “Tessa’s having the baby!” she exclaimed.

“What!?”

“She’s having the baby!” she repeated. I looked at Tessa, who just then groaned loudly.

“You’re shitting me, right!?”

Anna Lee answered, “Her water just broke, and this baby is getting ready to join the party!”

“Holy shit!”

Marilyn asked, “What do we do?”

Both Anna Lee and Suzie tried to answer, and Tessa groaned some more. Well, thank God I actually knew the answer to this one. Maggie was damn near born in our bedroom. “Has anybody called an ambulance yet?” The women all stared at each other. Even Anna Lee, the nurse, had missed that one. “Well, unless you want to deliver the baby here, let’s do that. You all stay here, I’ll take care of this.”

I turned on my heel and left Marilyn to join Anna Lee and Suzie caring for Tessa. The first thing I did was barge into the kitchen and find the banquet hall manager. “We need to call an ambulance,” I told him.

He looked alarmed. “What? Why?” he stammered out.

“One of the guests is having a baby.”

“She can’t do that here!”

“I agree, so call an ambulance.” The manager continued to sputter, so I pulled a telephone off the wall and punched a 9 in. Like most such systems, this got me an outside line, so I called 911. I gave them the information, and then hung up.

I turned back and faced the manager. “Where’s the clean linens?”

“You can’t use our clean linens!” he protested.

“Okay, fine, when the baby dies, you can tell the cops that we couldn’t use the clean linens! WHERE ARE THEY?!” I hustled him to the linen storage and grabbed an armful of clean napkins and a few tablecloths.

I took the linens back into the side room, and delivered them to Marilyn, and then went back to the dance floor. By now, a few people knew something was going on, but not what. Tusker came up to me after noticing Tessa had disappeared. “Where’s Tessa? What’s happening?” he asked.

I grabbed Tusker by the elbow and steered him into the side lounge. “Guess what!? You’re about to be a daddy!”

He looked over at Tessa, now laying flat on the floor on top of a clean tablecloth. She noticed him there, but then grimaced and groaned. Tessa and Suzie were in the process of helping her out of her party dress, a very nice, if gargantuan, outfit. This was more than I needed to see, so I flipped around, even though Tusker continued to stare in disbelief. Marilyn came over to join us. “I have an ambulance on the way. Give them five minutes or so, I guess.”

“What happened?” asked Tusker, although it wasn’t clear to whom he was asking the question.

I tapped him on the shoulder and he turned to face Marilyn and me. “Focus, Tusker, focus!”

Marilyn said, “From what Tessa says, Anna Lee thinks she started going into labor this morning, even before the wedding. She’s been having contractions for a few hours. Her water just broke, though.”

“What do we do? Do I need to boil water? They always do that on TV?” he said, dumbfounded.

“Only if you’re making soup, Tusker!” I answered. “What you need to do is go over there and hold her hand. She’s scared.”

“Uh, yeah, right.” He moved over to the women on the floor and Anna Lee directed him to sit down next to Tessa’s head.

Tessa immediately grabbed his hand and clamped down on it, causing it to whiten. “You sonofabitch! You’re never touching me again!” By now the girls had Tessa undressed and covered with another tablecloth.

I grinned at Marilyn. “Ah, the miracle of childbirth. Warms the cockles of your heart, doesn’t it”

Tessa gave another groan, and Marilyn’s face got even paler. “You better not be so happy when this happens to us!”

“I hope you’re not trying to tell me something.”

That got a smile from her. “No, not that!”

“Good. You stay here and play traffic cop. Nobody comes in but me and the ambulance guys, got it?”

Marilyn gave me a salute, and I saluted her back and headed back out to the reception. By now several other people were milling about wondering what was going on. I just kept saying everything was fine and under control, not that anybody believed me. A few minutes later, although it seemed like hours at the time, a siren sounded in the distance and you could hear the Doppler Effect raise the pitch as it got closer. I went out the front door to flag them down and direct them inside. By now, everybody in the room knew something was happening.

I followed the ambulance crew into the lounge. Tessa was moaning and groaning, and cursing Tusker to boot, but she didn’t look like she was about to have the baby on the spot. The ambulance crew brought in their gurney and dropped it down to the floor and took over from Anna Lee and Suzie. I grabbed Tusker and pulled him aside. “Listen, everything is going to be just fine. You ride with Tessa to the hospital. You can catch a cab from there back to the Sheraton later. You going to be okay?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess. This wasn’t supposed to happen, you know?” For such a big and tough biker, Tusker was totally bewildered by what was happening to Tessa.

If I was calm and cool, it was because this had happened to Marilyn and me, sort of. Maggie, who managed to do her own thing her entire life, even before that life started, decided she wanted to see the sights early. At eight in the evening, Marilyn announced we needed to call her parents to come and watch over the kids, because she was starting her contractions. Fifteen minutes later she announced, “Carl, call the emergency squad, we’re having this baby NOW!”

So I called the emergency squad, and then I called some friends in town and got somebody to watch Alison and Parker. The first three people to show up were the postmistress, the garbageman, and the bartender. After that, about another dozen people showed up to look up Marilyn’s skirt. Still, I was holding it together fairly well, right up to the point where one of the eager young EMT types said, “Don’t worry, Mister Buckman. We’ve never done this before, but we’ve all seen the movies!”

That was when I started worrying!

That was then. Now I smiled. “Hey, shit happens. You’re going to do fine. Listen, Joe and Harlan and Anna Lee and I went over to Toys R Us last night and picked you up a few things for the baby. Make sure you get them from us.”

He looked a little stunned. “Wow! Really? Thanks, thanks a lot!”

I shooed him back over to Tessa, now loaded on the gurney, with a blood pressure collar on her arm. He hovered around while they worked on her, with Anna Lee helping and Suzie watching. She came over and stood next to Marilyn and me, and I put my arm around her shoulder. “Still want to be a nurse?” I asked.

“You bet!” she gushed. I just laughed and kissed my baby sister on her cheek.

When they were ready to transport her, I led the way out the door and we simply asked everybody to clear the way. We followed them out the door, and waved farewell as Tusker and Tessa were loaded in the back. I stood there with my arm around Marilyn, as Anna Lee and Suzie came up, with Harlan and Joe right behind them. “You two did great,” I told Anna Lee and her assistant. “I don’t know how to thank you enough!”

“That was so cool!” exclaimed Suzie.

Anna Lee laughed at that, as Harlan hugged her from behind. “You still want to be a nurse?” she asked.

“Absolutely!”

I gave her another kiss on the cheek. “Go tell Mom and Dad about it. They’re going to be very proud of you, just like me.”

Suzie scampered off, looking just like the little girl she really was. I turned to Marilyn. “Well, this makes for a wedding we’ll never forget.”

“Oh my God! I can’t believe it!”

“At some point, we’re going to have to change and go over to the hospital and check on them before we go,” I mentioned.

That sort of surprised her. “What! Now?”

I wrapped my arms around her and said, “Maybe in a little while, but you know we should do this. They’re our friends. We’ll just leave early and go to the hospital before heading out to Syracuse. Did anybody find out where they were taking her?”

Anna Lee commented, “I think it was the driver, he said St. Luke’s. Where’s that? Is it any good?”

I just nodded, as Marilyn answered the question. Utica has two hospitals, St. Luke’s and Faxton, while Rome, to the west of us, has Rome Memorial. We were probably still closer to Utica. Any of them should be able to handle what seemed, at least to my eyes, to be a fairly normal birth.

“Let’s go in and make an announcement,” I said.

Marilyn’s eyes opened wide at that. “You can make the announcement! I have had more than enough excitement for one day!” I laughed at that and we walked back inside with an arm around each other.

The band had finished setting up, but had delayed getting into gear while all the hubbub was going on. Now I walked over to them and asked if they had a live mike. The band leader, the keyboard player, and I talked for a moment about the plans, and then he handed me a mike and flipped a switch on his mixing board. “You’re live,” he said.

I tapped the mike a couple of times and heard the thump through the speakers, and then walked out into the middle of the dance floor. “Hello, hello, can everybody hear me?” I asked.

“A little louder please?” came a voice from the back. I looked over at the keyboardist and he turned a knob.

“Is this better?” I could tell it was decidedly louder now, and got approval from the rear of the room. I motioned Marilyn over, and she came cautiously. I simply put my arm around her shoulder before talking.

“Okay, let me make the official announcement, then. In case anybody doesn’t know already, today is going to be a double celebration. Jim Tusk, the big red headed guy who was one of my ushers, and his girlfriend Tessa Harper, are having a baby. Tusker and Tessa are some of my oldest friends in the world, and this is their first. They hadn’t expected this to happen so suddenly, but hey, life happens. They’re going over to St. Luke’s right now. That’s what the ambulance was for.”

There was a murmur among the crowd, as much over the fact that Tusker and Tessa didn’t seem married as about anything else. I ignored it and moved along, “Now, I need to thank, again, the staff here at Trinkaus Manor for helping us get the ambulance in and letting us use the lounge.” That was total bullshit, but it couldn’t hurt. Maybe they wouldn’t charge Big Bob for the linen. “I also need to thank Anna Lee Buckminster. She’s the wife of my other usher, Harlan. Raise your hands, Anna Lee, Harlan.” Again, this was pretty much a waste, since they were the only black people in the entire crowd. “Anna Lee is an obstetrical nurse, so Tessa couldn’t have been in any better hands.”

“Finally I want to thank my little sister, Suzie Buckman…”

“Woohoo!” she called out, hopping up and waving her arms like the little extrovert she is.

I kept on, though I was laughing, “… for helping Anna Lee. Suzie’s planning on becoming a nurse someday herself. Great job, Suzie!”

There was a lot of applause from the Buckman side of the family.

“Now, it’s time to get back to the reception. The band is getting ready to start up, so everybody should be dancing and having some fun. At some point here, Marilyn and I are going to take off and go see our friends in the hospital, but even after we leave, keep the party going, use up all the booze, and make Big Bob go out and buy some more. I don’t want anybody to forget this wedding!” I motioned the keyboardist to kill the mike and then handed it back to him.

Big Bob and Harriet were two of the first people to come up to us. “You throw a hell of a party, Bob!” I told him.

“I guess so!” he answered with a grin. “Remind me not to have you at any more parties!” He turned to his daughter. “Having fun, sweetheart?”

Marilyn hugged me. “Yes!”

I called over to the band. “Father-daughter dance, now!”

The band immediately started playing, and the band leader announced an immediate father-daughter dance, which wasn’t quite on the schedule, but that was all blown to hell anyway. After that, I danced with my mother, then I danced with Harriet (like dancing with a drunken heifer, she had already had a few Manhattans) while Marilyn danced with my old man. I even managed to sneak in a dance with my wife! Finally we worked our way through a dollar dance, with Anna Lee and Tammy holding the bags for the money. I made sure I danced with both of them, as well.

At that point, I had one last dance with Marilyn, and then I dragged her off to the side. “It’s time that we got going,” I told her.

Marilyn pouted. “It’s too early!”

“They’re your friends just the same as they’re my friends. We need to go see them and then head over to Syracuse.”

She sighed. “I know. I just wish we could stay longer. You’re right.”

“Go find Tammy and have her help you with that getup. Have I told you lately just how gorgeous you actually are?”

“Yes, but I love hearing you say it.”

I nuzzled her neck and whispered in her ear, “Maybe sometime you can wear it again, and I can find out if you’re wearing stockings or pantyhose.” That earned me a little shriek and an embarrassed swat from my wife. I headed off to the lounge, where we had already brought in a travel bag.

There was a dichotomy in our travel plans. We were taking a cruise, and at least one night was a formal night, where you were advised to bring a tuxedo if at all possible. My mess dress would certainly work for that. However, Marilyn’s wedding dress might never again see the light of day; it certainly wouldn’t be suitable for the cruise. Tammy had promised to get it back to the house. After we got back from the cruise, and Marilyn had moved into the apartment with me, her family would ship her stuff to us FedEx.

I stripped out of my uniform and folded that up in my travel bag. I would get it cleaned and pressed on the ship. I then changed into some chinos and a sport shirt, and some much more comfortable boat shoes. Marilyn and Tammy came in during this time, so I simply went behind the bar to finish dressing. I also watched Marilyn changing. She was a little embarrassed, and made me turn away, so I watched her by way of the mirror behind the bar, which she also caught me doing. That earned me a one way trip out the side door to the lawn.

Ten minutes later Tammy opened the door and summoned me back inside. Marilyn had on a nice and simple sundress and some flat sandals, and Tammy was helping her fold the wedding dress up. I rearranged a few things in the travel bag and closed it up, and then went out and looked for the limo driver. He was in the kitchen eating a few pastries and drinking some coffee. I tossed him the bag, and he grinned and snagged it, and headed out to his limo. I then went back to the lounge and found Marilyn and we went back to the reception to make our final good-byes.

Predictably, my mother found the entire event quite disagreeable. Having a baby at a wedding reception like that, especially by people who weren’t even married! Shocking! And Marilyn’s family, well, really, couldn’t I have done better? Children shouldn’t be at a wedding reception, and Harriet had her latest baby, Miriam, in a baby seat, along with all the others running around the place. She didn’t say that in front of Marilyn, not quite, at least, but she certainly told me about it, both in a previous life and earlier today. I just kissed her on the cheek and ignored her. Dad, on the other hand, found it all quite amusing. “Nothing like a little excitement, huh?” he asked Marilyn.

“I don’t want any more excitement!” she replied, to which he and I both laughed. Mom just sniffed.

After that, Marilyn and I made a quick circuit of the room, thanking everybody for coming, and making sure to tell Joe and Harlan to get the baby presents to Tusker and Tessa. Then we scooted out the side door to the limo.

Chapter 52: Cruising

Before we climbed into the limo, I spoke to the driver about our plans. First I asked for his business card, and then I looked it over. “Tom Bouchet? That’s you?” I asked.

“That’s me,” he answered pleasantly.

“Nice to meet you, Tom. I’m Carl Buckman and this is my wife Marilyn.”

Tom laughed. “I sort of had that figured out Mr. Buckman.” He glanced at Marilyn, and nodded towards her, “Mrs. Buckman.”

Marilyn grinned. “I like the sound of that.”

I smiled too. “Well, Tom, here’s the deal. Before we head out to the airport, we need to go over to St. Luke’s to see our friends. You heard about that, right?”

Tom laughed again. “Oh, yeah!”

Marilyn and I had to laugh at this as well. Probably half the people in the Mohawk Valley would hear about this by the end of the weekend. “So anyway, we need to go over there and see how they’re doing before we run out to Syracuse. I know this wasn’t part of the deal, but if you can’t run it through the original bill, send it to me directly, all right?” I dug out one of my business cards, with my address in Fayetteville.

“We’ll figure it out at the office,” he assured me.

I thought for a second. “Are you busy tomorrow?” I asked.

Marilyn looked at me and asked, “Tomorrow?”

“Not for us, but for Tusker and Tessa. They’ll need to get back to the hotel.”

“Oooh, yes, and get their presents, too. They’ll need the car seat just to get there!” added my wife.

I got a few cards from Tom and told him that I’d give them to the proud parents. He could run over to the Sheraton on Sunday and get the presents from Joe and Harlan, and then bring them back, and then cart Tusker and his family as needed. If they couldn’t finagle it into Big Bob’s bill, send it to me.

Ten minutes later we were at the hospital. I told Tom we would try to keep it short, but we weren’t sure what was happening. I held my new bride’s hand as we went inside. Marilyn asked me, as we got inside, “You know, we’ve never talked about it. Do you want kids?”

I gave her a curious look. “Sure. I thought you knew that.”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“Don’t you remember that little bit about telling your grandchildren about my duel? You’ve got to have kids to have grandkids. It’s in the rules!”

“You and that duel!” she laughed, giving me a hip bump as we walked.

“Maybe I should have lost!”

“You’re awful!” The next question was, “Well, when did you want them?”

I shrugged. “Not right away.”

“Two years? Five years? Ten years? How many?”

I knew where Marilyn was going with this. She loved kids, and definitely wanted a houseful.

“We are not having 13 kids! I’ll have the damn thing cut off before that happens!” I protested.

That earned me a good laugh. “No way! How about three or four?”

“We’ll see. Tell you what. Let’s be newlyweds for a bit first. Wait until I either make captain or the Army wakes up and throws my ass out. How about that?”

“Deal!”

“Deal!” We sealed it with a quick kiss.

From the reception area, we were sent off to the delivery area, but I wasn’t sure how far that would get us. If the baby was already born, we might get to see him or her through the glass, or not. I hoped to get word to Tusker about the limo for tomorrow. At worst, I could write a note for them and get one of the nurses to slip it to them later.

We looked through the glass wall, but didn’t see any babies with a name tag, so we went up to the desk and asked. The nurse’s face lit up when she saw us. “Oh, yes, Mister Tusk was wondering when you might come by. He was just asking about you.”

“Really?! I wonder why?” I said, half to myself and half to Marilyn. My wife gave me an equally mystified shrug.

“Well, go on into 304.”

“We can go in? You mean, they’ve already had the baby?!”

She laughed. “Just go on in.”

Marilyn had already started up, so I followed her down the hall to the third door and pushed inside. Tessa was in bed, looking like she had been pulled through a knothole. Tusker was in a chair, not looking much better, and with a look of both wonder and terror on his face. And there on the bed with Tessa was a small wrapped up bundle with a powder blue skull cap on.

Marilyn scampered up to the bed. “Oh my God! You had the baby!”

“You came!” cried Tessa happily. Both Tusker and Tessa immediately tried to greet us, and with Marilyn they got into a three-way conversation that got increasingly loud, enough so that the baby woke up and let out a yell. We had been followed in by a nurse, who announced it was time to take the baby off to the nursery.

Marilyn immediately moved around and took a look at the baby. “He’s gorgeous!”

I looked at the baby, who was bald and red faced and wrinkly, sort of like Winston Churchill on a bad day. I smiled. “You’re right, he is good looking.” I looked over at my friend. “Who’s the father? This baby is way too good looking to be any son of yours!”

Both Tessa and Marilyn yelled at me, but Tusker just laughed. “Fuck you, Buckman!”

“Such language in front of your son!”

Another nurse came in and announced she had to examine Tessa. Tessa reached over and took Marilyn’s hand, and then pointed towards the door for Tusker and me. We boogied out the door and the nurse closed it behind us. We wandered down the hallway towards the nursery. “How you doing, man?” I asked.

He gave me a loopy sort of grin. “I don’t know. It’s like it wasn’t real before. Or isn’t real now. Or something. You understand that?”

I laughed at him. “No.”

“I mean, I thought I was ready, but now, I mean, I don’t know… What if I make a mistake or something? This is a human being?”

I maneuvered Tusker over to a chair and sat him down, and then sat down next to him. “Let me tell you something, Tusker. You’re going to make a mistake. You’re going to make a lot of mistakes. You ain’t going to be perfect. Don’t sweat it. You’re not going to make all that many mistakes.”

He stared at me for a second. “You’re not helping, buddy,” he said, smiling.

I smiled back. “Listen, was your father a good father?”

Tusker shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“And you’ve known other guys who have been good fathers, right?” He nodded, and I continued, “And you know some fathers who have been lousy fathers, right?” Tusker gave me a sharp look at that. I suspected I knew who he was thinking about. “Just behave like the good fathers and not like the bad fathers. How hard can it be?”

He grinned at me. “You really aren’t helping!”

“It sucks to be you. How’s that for some good advice?”

Now he was laughing. “Asshole!”

The door to 304 opened again. “You ever going to marry the mother of your son?” I asked.

He just shook his head and gave me a rueful smile. “I’ve already offered. It’s her old man, he doesn’t want anything to do with me…”

“Who would?”

That earned me a middle finger. “… and Tessa wants him to walk her down the aisle.”

“Hang in there. Being a grandfather might just change his mind. Name him after her father. Suck up to him.”

For some reason this made him laugh. “Too late for that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll let Tessa tell you.” He stood up and I followed him back to Tessa’s room. “Did you tell her the baby’s name yet?”

“I was waiting for you.”

Tusker looked at both of us a touch nervously. “He said we should name him after your father, to bring him around.”

“Too late for that.”

“What’d you name him?” asked Marilyn.

“Buckman James, after these two,” said Tessa.

Marilyn smiled at me. I just stared at my friends. “You have got to be kidding me!” Marilyn giggled at my reaction.

“Hey, we couldn’t have done this without you,” answered Tusker.

I rubbed my face. “I think my idea makes way more sense.” I looked over at Marilyn. “We can call him Bucky!”

“Good Lord!” she muttered.

“Listen, we have to be going. We have a honeymoon to get to!” I needed to get out of there. Buckman James? We probably had a serial killer on our hands! I gave Tusker the card for the limo company, and explained that there were some baby gifts coming, and then kissed Tessa and Tusker good-bye. Well, Marilyn kissed Tusker, I just shook his hand.

We headed back out and found the limo driver napping in the limo. “Ready to go?” he asked.

“Ready to go!”

He hopped out and let us into the back, and then climbed into the front. A minute later we were pulling out onto the road and heading for the Arterial, and then on towards the Thruway. “Buckman James Tusk! Poor bastard’s probably going to grow up to be a mass murderer,” I commented.

“He’s no such thing. Now you behave!” replied Marilyn.

I snorted. “You still want kids?” I asked.

“Of course!” She leaned over on the seat and kissed me quickly. “You still want to wait until you’re a captain?”

“I’m thinking maybe colonel or general now.”

“Too late, you made a deal!” She also stuck her tongue out at me.

I grabbed for her tongue, and we wrestled a bit in the back seat, and also started kissing. Then I got an idea, and leered at her. “You know, we’re on our honeymoon now.” There was a solid barrier between the driver and the rear of the vehicle.

“Yes.”

“You know what that means, don’t you?”

Marilyn eyed me askance. “What do you mean?”

I ran my hand along her back, and rubbed her bra buckle. “You agreed to a no undie honeymoon, remember?”

Marilyn’s eyes popped wide open. “Oh, no!”

“Oh, yes! You promised, remember?”

“I must have been lying.” Marilyn was so worried about her bra, she didn’t focus on my other hand, which I quickly pushed under her dress, all the way, until my fingers were at her panties. “That’s cheating!” she complained, and tried to push my hand away.

That simply opened up the back of her dress to my flanking assault. While I started to finger her pussy through her panties, and Marilyn squirmed around trying to make me behave, I quickly pulled the zipper on the back of her dress down. Marilyn squealed and tried to reach behind her, but that just let me slip my fingers inside her panties to the pussy I had shaved the other morning. When she tried to react to that, I flipped the catch on her bra. “It would be so much more fun if you didn’t fight,” I told her.

“Fun for you, maybe.”

I leaned in and whispered in her ear as I licked her earlobe. “Fun for you, too!” I flicked my finger across her clit, and Marilyn groaned and her legs slipped apart. “Do it!” I ordered.

Marilyn did it slowly, but probably more so because of the distraction I was providing than anything else. She pulled her dress down around her waist and then peeled off her bra. I tossed that to the side and then helped Marilyn lift up and I tugged her panties down. I left her with her sundress bunched around her waist and fingerfucked her and sucked on her tits for the next half hour, as we tooled along towards Syracuse.

Mind you, I wanted more, but we just didn’t have the time! I’d never done it in the back seat of a moving limo, and I kind of liked the idea. Eventually we had to stop, when I saw the signs for the exit off the Thruway. I allowed Marilyn to compose herself, and zip up her dress, but when she went to reach for her underwear, I grabbed them first and stuffed them in my pockets. This time she didn’t argue, but just gave me a wicked little smile. “Are you wearing your underwear?” she asked.

“You’ll just have to find out later!”

“I intend to!”

There was a Best Western near the airport that offered shuttle service and luggage storage. We unloaded the limo and I sent Marilyn in while I gave Tom a nice tip. He helped me carry things in, and then waited when we discovered Marilyn had simply gone up to the desk and not started the check-in process. After confirming we had a room for the night, I sent Tom on his way with our thanks.

I did the check-in process, putting everything on my trusty AmEx card. The last time I did this, Marilyn and I were as poor as church mice, and we raided our wedding gifts for any cash in the cards. That was how we paid for the honeymoon, or at least the stuff Big Bob and Harriet hadn’t covered. We snuck the gift card box into the back lounge at Trinkaus Manor and giggled as we went through the cards, and I tucked about $600 in cash into my pockets. That was quite a bit of cash in those days! Now I had about two grand in cash, and another couple of grand in traveler’s checks. Things were different.

We left almost all of our luggage in the hotel’s vault, and simply took a couple of travel bags up the elevator with us. We also left a wakeup call for 0500 the next day. Our flight to New York City was at 0700, and from there we were going to the dock to meet the ship. All of this had been coordinated by the travel agent, and we both had our tickets and tags and identification stashed in my carry-on bag. That I was protecting like my life depended on it, because if I lost it, Marilyn would kill me!

Once we got in the room, Marilyn tossed her bag on the floor and goosed my ass! “That’s for being so mean in the limo!” she said.

I tossed my bag over with hers, and started moving towards her. It was a small room and I backed her into a corner by the bed. “I don’t think I was all that mean. I think you actually liked it!”

“No, I didn’t! You’d better give me back my stuff!”

“That wasn’t what you agreed to!” I replied grabbing her and pulling her towards the bed.

“I lied!”

“Wives have to submit to their husbands, remember!” I teased her. I flopped on the bed and pulled her with me.

Marilyn sprawled on the bed next to me. “No, there was some other stuff, too.”

“Yes, but only after the submission part!” Marilyn giggled at that, and I started unzipping her dress, while she worked on unbuttoning my shirt and unzipping my pants. While it would be nice to say that our first lovemaking as husband and wife was with candles and champagne and beautiful lingerie, it wouldn’t quite be the truth. It was more hurried than that, with Marilyn’s dress around her waist, and my pants around my ankles. It was still very, very nice, and I told her we’d save some of the romance for later. Marilyn agreed, and then stripped her dress off while I pulled my remaining clothes off, too, and we went at it some more!

It was about nine or ten that night when we were laying there on the bed, breathing hard and cuddling, that I asked her, “Are you hungry?”

“Not really. Are you?”

“Not enough to go out and try to find a place open now. Maybe a Coke or something?”

“I’d like that.”

“You want to go with me?” I asked, grinning.

She looked down at her nudity and smiled. “In your dreams!” I just laughed and pulled on my pants and grabbed my wallet.

The vending machines were down at the end of the hallway. I grabbed a couple of cans of soda, and some pretzels from the snack machine. By the time I got back to the room, Marilyn was asleep. I just smiled. That sounded like a good idea, too. I drank my Coke and ate the pretzels, and then curled up next to my wife.

When the alarm went off the next morning I was not amused. I know I’d been getting up early for years, but sometimes that dedicated exercise and wakeup shit was a bit too much. I dearly wanted to go back to sleep. Then the phone rang with our wakeup call. I slapped Marilyn’s ass to rouse her, and she muttered nasty things and pulled the covers over her head. I paddled her bottom some more and she started swinging at me. “Is that any way for a wife to treat her husband?” I asked.

“Do you really want me to treat you the way I want to treat you right now?” she asked.

I steered her in the direction of the bathroom and sorted through the travel bag for my clothes and toilet kit. As soon as I heard the shower running, I went into the bathroom myself. “We don’t have time for that,” she told me.

I was already starting to brush my teeth. I mumbled out that I knew it and finished brushing my teeth. I also shaved quickly while she finished up, and then hopped into the shower as soon as she was out.

When I got out of the shower, Marilyn was in the room pulling some clothes on. She had on her bra and panties again, and I just smiled at her. She shook a finger at me. “If you think I’m traipsing halfway around the country without underwear, think again!”

I shrugged and grabbed my pants. “I’ll punish you later. I’m too tired to punish you now.”

“And just how were you planning on punishing me?” she asked, pulling a sport shirt on.

“I’ll have to give that a lot of thought. You’re just not submitting very well.”

She laughed at that. “You’re not going to let that go, are you?”

“Not for another forty or fifty years. Maybe longer!” I replied.

“Much longer,” she agreed, and then gave me a quick good morning kiss.

We packed and were down in the lobby by half past five, just in time to see the shuttle bus leave. We were assured they would be back in ten minutes, so we dug our luggage out of the vault, and lined it up outside the door. The weather had been lovely all weekend long, and looked like it was holding. The last time I did this, Marilyn delayed the wedding until hurricane season, and the weather on the cruise sucked! We went cruising to Bermuda and hit Hurricane Ella on the trip down and Hurricane Flossie on the way back. I fed the fish for the entire week! Now it looked like it should be good.

When the shuttle came back, we loaded up and headed over to the airport, about a five minute ride. Everything went fairly smoothly, much smoother than it would become after 9/11. I had my passport, in red like most military people, but Marilyn only had her driver’s license. She did pack our wedding license in her handbag though, since her license still said Lefleur. That was a project for when we got back. We got to the Eastern counter, and before we handed over our luggage, tied onto the handles the special luggage tags for the cruise ship. Once we landed at JFK, our luggage would be directly sent to the ship. We wouldn’t need to pick it up at baggage claim.

It wouldn’t be much different for us. There would be shuttle buses at the airport for arriving passengers to be driven to the dock. That was a good thing, because I hate driving in New York City, and Marilyn simply refused to even consider it. She’s just not much of a city girl. The flight to JFK took about an hour and a half, and was on a fully loaded 727 without any first class. We suffered like sardines, but at least we were together. Once back on the ground, we shouldered our carry-on bags — okay, I shouldered our carry-on bags — and made our way to baggage claim and the exit, to find our shuttle bus. We made it to the port by 1100.

From that point on, it was a matter of hurry up and wait, just like the Army. Our boat was on a seven day schedule. We were cruising to Bermuda. The boat left Sunday afternoon, and would arrive in port very early Tuesday morning. We would stay in Bermuda until Thursday night, at which point we would sail away, and fetch up back in New York Saturday morning. At that point they would off load us and restock the ship with food and booze, and give the crew a night in Sodom on the Hudson.

What Marilyn didn’t know yet, but I already knew, was just how much she loved a cruise ship vacation! No question about it, taking a cruise beat out any other type of vacation we ever took, as far as she was concerned. We probably went on at least a half dozen, maybe more, and she just loved them! She liked visiting new ports, and the meals and the shops and the ships themselves, and when they invented balcony rooms that just settled it for her. We never took another cruise after that that didn’t have a balcony! As far as Marilyn was concerned, heaven involved sitting on her cruise ship balcony while reading and knitting as we passed by the rest of the world.

We were sailing on the Sun Viking with Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines. We had been on a number of different lines over the years, but always seemed to enjoy Royal Caribbean the most. The Sun Viking was their newest cruise ship. Positively tiny by later standards, she seemed pretty damn large at the time. She carried about 725 passengers, and it seemed like just about as many crew to cater to them. Future ships would be many times larger, with atriums, multi-deck restaurants and theaters, ice skating rinks, rock climbing walls, and even sillier stuff.

My wife (God, I loved that word!) was practically jumping up and down with excitement by the time we finished processing on the dock and were able to board. Her eyes were glowing like a kid at Christmas underneath the tree. Then we started looking for our room. Cruise ships haven’t changed much since the days of the Titanic, at least in how they treat the passengers. The more money you have, the higher up in the ship you are. Rich people live on the upper decks. Poor people live at the bottom and row the boat. On our first honeymoon, we were so far down towards the bottom that we were handed oars as we walked on board!

Now we were a little higher. I think there were six decks on the ship, and we were now on the Promenade Deck, which was number two from the top. Maybe number three, but the absolute top deck actually was considered the Owner’s Deck, and only had four cabins, all oversized suites. They cost a ridiculous amount of money, something like $10,000 or $20,000 a week, for a room not much bigger than a decent suite in a hotel.

I wasn’t anywhere near that silly. We had a small suite, but it was about as much of a suite as a room in your average Holiday Inn. Still, we had a window we could open, not a porthole, a sitting area with couch and chairs, and a king size bed. Marilyn was entranced when we entered our room. I was a little more practical, looking for the bathroom and closet space. There wasn’t much, but they made use of every cubic inch of the room. We would survive once our luggage got there.

They promised our luggage would be in our rooms before dinner. They simply loaded it in giant containers straight from the airport into the belly of the ship, and then sorted it out. Marilyn came up to me and wrapped her arms around me. “We’re all alone in our honeymoon cabin. Whatever will we do to pass the time?”

I laughed and hugged her back. “Not as much as you’d like. I can guarantee that about two seconds after things get interesting somebody is going to barge through that door with our luggage! Are you that much of an exhibitionist?”

“Maybe not,” she answered ruefully. She looked over at the small built in desk and drawers, and noticed a bottle of champagne in an iced cooler, with a couple of flutes standing next to it. “Champagne?”

“Hmmm?” I turned and saw what she was pointing out. “Well, if we can’t fool around, let’s have a drink!” I opened the card next to the champagne and read it then passed it to Marilyn. It was from the travel agent. Next I pulled the bottle from the ice and twisted off the wire and popped the cork. Marilyn held the glasses up and I poured them.

We had barely sipped our champagne, when an intercom in the room loudly announced that the mandatory Coast Guard lifeboat practice would start at 2:15 in the afternoon, and that everybody needed to find their lifeboat station and show up there with their life jackets on. This had also been told us during the processing on the dock, and they were pretty serious about it. From past experience I knew they would check your names off a list and if you didn’t show up, they would track you down, and not too politely, either.

I found our life jackets in the closet, and found our lifeboat station on the back of the cabin door, and then we searched our map for where we were and how to get there. We finished off our champagne and I poured us some more from the bottle, just as a ship’s horn bellowed. It was almost two o’clock! I grabbed my life jacket and tossed it around my neck. “Let’s go!”

“Right now?” said Marilyn, startled.

“Sure, why not. We can go on deck, finish our champagne, and be at our life boat station.”

“Well, why don’t we leave our life jackets here?”

I smiled at her. “Because every other person on this boat is going to be doing that and getting lost and shuffling around with these idiot things on and clogging the passageways. You just watch and see if I’m wrong!”

Marilyn looked at me like I was nuts, but she grabbed her life jacket, too, although she carried it. Now, with me carrying my flute and the bottle, and leading the way, we went out into the hallway and towards the bow, to find an exit to the deck and our boat station. It was really just a lovely day. The ship had already started to pull away from the dock by the time we got there. It wasn’t at all like the Love Boat, but it never really was. By 2:15 we were already standing out into the seaways, and the swells around us were getting larger.

At 2:15 all sorts of horns and bells and alarms started going off, all over the ship. The intercom announced that the lifeboat drill was underway, and to get to your lifeboat station with your life jacket. No ifs, ands, or buts, it was mandatory! I poured the last of our champagne into our flutes and put the bottle on the deck, out of the way, and then handed Marilyn my glass while I did up my life jacket. Then I returned the favor. She got it wrong, but I showed her how to do it right. Around us was a barely controlled pandemonium, while passengers rushed around, generally lost, generally without their life jackets on or properly fixed, and generally at the wrong boat station. I just smiled at her. “What did I tell you?”

“You think you’re so smart!”

“Yes I do!” We traded raspberries at that. After about twenty minutes, during which time the crew practiced lowering a lifeboat and everybody else stood around and chattered, some more whistles and bells rang out and it was announced that we could leave. Cramming over 700 people back into the ship’s narrow hallways while everybody was wearing life jackets was silly. I spotted a bar along the way, and took Marilyn by the hand and led her in. We took off our life jackets and I ordered up another bottle of champagne. “We only live once, babe!”

Marilyn laughed at that, and we sipped our champagne, getting pleasantly, if lightly zonked, while the crowds passed by. Then it was our turn. I put my jacket back on over my head, since it was easier to carry that way, and we headed back to our cabin. Fortunately, our luggage had arrived! I immediately unpacked everything, and stuffed my mess dress into a dry cleaning bag, and then hit a button on the cabin telephone and called our room attendant. A little Filipino showed up about a minute later, and I gave him the bag, specifying it needed to be cleaned and pressed by Monday evening. He assured me it would be, and left.

I poured the last of our champagne into our glasses, and set the bottle aside. “Speaking of uniforms, you’re out of uniform,” I told Marilyn.

“Oh?”

“Well, we’re not flying now, are we? I think it’s time to get you into the spirit of things!” I set my glass down and wrapped my arms around her, and pointedly rubbed her bra catch through her top.

Marilyn laughed at that, and then grabbed my crotch. “The same goes for you, Mister!”

We laughed at that and fell onto the bed and wrestled our clothes off. Today, Marilyn got on top and rode me, while playing with her clit as I fondled her tits. Afterwards, she stretched out on top of me, and this time was a lot slower and sweeter. “I love you, Mrs. Buckman,” I told her afterwards.

Marilyn propped her face up on her hands, digging her elbows into my chest as she did so. “I like the way that sounds.”

I rolled over and relieved the pressure of her bony elbows to my chest. “I do, too.”

I rolled onto my back again, and raised my right arm and tucked it behind my head. That was when Marilyn noticed a Band-Aid under my arm. “What’s that?” she asked.

“Hmm? What?”

“That!” she replied, poking it with a finger.

“That’s my scopolamine patch. It’s for seasickness.”

“You jump out of airplanes and don’t get airsick, but you get seasick?” Marilyn has never gotten any form of motion sickness.

“Go figure,” I replied with a shrug.

“How’s it work?”

It was my turn to shrug. “It’s sort of a Band-Aid, soaked in a seasickness drug. I wear it and then change it once a day. The instructions say to wear them behind the ear, but you can wear them anywhere the skin is thin. Tomorrow I put on a different one, under the other arm.”

“And you have to do this every day?”

“Pretty much.”

“I guess you really wouldn’t do well in the Navy, would you?”

I had to laugh at that. “One time my father was teasing me about it, years ago, and then his father came in. He asked my dad if he wanted to tell me about his time on the PT boats during the war, and my dad shut up big time!”

“No! Your dad was in the Navy and got seasick? That’s too funny!”

“I agree!”

We snuggled a bit longer, and then got up and showered together. Not much happened though, since the showers on that barge were about the size of an airplane bathroom. I know you have to get really friendly to make it in the mile high club that way, but in this case you’d have to be REALLY friendly! Chubby people need not apply.

There were two seatings for dinner, 6:00 and 8:00, and we were in the second seating. It was still early for that, but it would be nice to walk around and see the sights. Marilyn pulled out a halter topped sundress from the closet and pulled that on, but when she went to grab some panties, I made a tsking sound and wagged my finger at her. She giggled and put the panties back in the drawer, and then slipped on some low sandals. When I opened my drawer, I picked up a pair of briefs, but she made the same sound and gesture to me, so I laughed and put them back. I wore my chinos and a flowered shirt, and slipped barefoot into a pair of boat shoes. Then we grabbed our keys and my wallet, and headed out of the room.

One thing I learned when Parker was in the Navy, and that’s no matter how small a ship might seem, they are still damn big places, with about a million miles of corridors and hallways. The bottom three decks were nothing but passenger rooms. The upper decks also had the bars and pools and restaurants and shops. We kept wandering about until we got to the stern, and found a sign pointing the way to the Viking Crown Lounge. This is a hallmark of the Royal Caribbean Line, and all their ships have one. It’s a wraparound bar mounted high up at the rear of the ship. On later vessels it would actually be motorized, and rotate around 360 degrees!

We settled into some very comfortable chairs and a waiter instantly popped up to take our drink orders. Marilyn tucked her dress in carefully, and when I noticed, she blushed. “Don’t mind me,” I told her. “I sort of like the view.”

That earned me another blush, and a “Behave!” comment.

I lowered my voice some. “Too bad you’re not wearing high heels. Imagine, later tonight, after it’s dark, all alone at a dark railing, with me behind you… ummm, wouldn’t that be naughty!”

“You’re so bad!”

“That’s what makes me so good!”

“Maybe later this week. It will have to be very, very dark, though, and very, very late!” she answered. Still, she was smiling at the thought, and that made me smile, too.

We were on our second drink, when it became time for dinner, so I stood, and Marilyn said, “What about our drinks?”

“Take them.”

“We can leave with the glasses?”

“Sure. Where are we going to go? When you’re done, somebody will take it back to the dishwasher, and it will eventually end up back in the bar, right?” I answered.

“I never thought of that.”

“Stick with me, kid, and see the world!”

“You’re full of shit, you know.”

“So I’ve been told. So I’ve been told.” I took Marilyn’s hand and we rode the elevator down to the restaurant deck, which was a little forward of where we were. We actually ended up going down a deck, moving forward, and then up a deck, in order to get there. We joined the crowd waiting at the doors.

The main restaurant on a cruise ship is a little odd. At breakfast and lunch, it’s just like a normal restaurant. You show up whenever you want to at the door and wait for somebody to seat you. Dinner is a lot more structured. There are two seatings, because nobody can build a restaurant big enough for everybody to eat together. On the newest boats, you can have well over 5,000 passengers on a cruise! So they split it in two, an early session for people with children or ancient people who might not last until later without falling asleep, and a late seating for the sophisticates. Well, that’s the theory anyway. I prefer the late seating and Marilyn prefers the early. However, she didn’t know that yet!

In order to make this all work, they run the evening meal with ruthless efficiency. Everybody crowds up to the doors to the restaurant and waits for them to be opened. Then you rush off to your assigned seating. We were at table 114, but beyond that, we weren’t sure. Tables could be two-person, four-person, or even larger groups, the theory being that they can mix people up and introduce them around. Sometimes that works better than others, but it had never been a problem for us the first time.

At 2000, the doors to the restaurant swung open (two sets of double fire doors all gilded to make them fancy — a lot of that sort of thing is on these ships) and we moved inside to find our table. After a bit of searching, we found ourselves at a four-person table, but the only ones there. “Pick a seat, hun,” I told Marilyn. She slid onto one that was facing the center of the room, and I held it for her, and then slid into the one next to her also facing the center.

“Do you think we’re by ourselves?” asked Marilyn.

“Not a clue. I guess we’ll find out, though.” There were probably a half dozen places to eat on board, so it wasn’t guaranteed that we would actually see our tablemates every night in any case. We hadn’t in my previous trip through.

We weren’t alone. About a minute later another couple came up to the table. He was a tall fellow, about my height and size, with a bronze tan, fashionably long curly brown hair, and absolutely perfect teeth. She was almost as tall as he was, at least in heels, slim and sleek, blonde and blue eyed, darkly tanned. They were both in their mid to late twenties, about five years older than Marilyn and me. They obviously worked out, but probably at a health club somewhere. Those tans were too even to be natural. “114?” he asked.

I stood up. “114. Welcome.” I held out my hand to him.

He shook it firmly. “Thank you. I’m Harrison Blakewell, and this is my wife.”

“Melissa Hockney-Blakewell,” she said, reaching out to shake my hand.

“Nice to meet you. I’m Carl Buckman and this is my wife Marilyn.” They both shook Marilyn’s hand as well, although she didn’t rise, and they settled themselves across from us, with Harrison facing me and Melissa facing my wife.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, too,” said Harrison. “We weren’t sure who we’d be seated with. Where are you folks from?”

“I’m from Utica,” answered Marilyn.

Melissa looked at her husband. “Utica, that’s upstate somewhere, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I think so.” He glanced at me. “Utica’s in New York, right?”

I nodded. “It’s about halfway between Albany and Syracuse, on the Mohawk River. I gather you must live downstate.”

“Oh, yes. We have a home in White Plains. We work in the city of course.” The way he said ‘the city’, you just knew he meant Manhattan.

“Sure.” I looked over at Marilyn and said, “They’re way downstate, in Westchester County.”

“And you work in New York? I could never live or work in a big city like that,” commented Marilyn. I smiled at that. Marilyn really would go nuts in any sort of urban setting. Hell, she wasn’t all that thrilled living downtown in Albany when she went to St. Rose!

“Oh, I’d never want to work anywhere else!” gushed Melissa. “Of course, in our jobs, if you’re not in the city, you’re really nowhere.”

I looked at them curiously. “Oh? What do you do?”

We were interrupted at that point by an Asian waiter asking for our drink orders. Marilyn ordered a whiskey sour while I ordered a gin and tonic; our tablemates both ordered vodka martinis. “Hmm, what was that?” asked Harrison.

“I was just curious what you do, if you have to do it in New York.”

“Oh, yes, certainly. Well, I’m a consultant with McKinsey and Company. Strategic planning, that sort of thing.”

“And I’m a stock analyst with Merrill Lynch!” announced Melissa. “Airlines mostly. What about you? What do you do?”

“Well, nothing yet. I just graduated with my teaching degree though, so I’m going to try and get a job teaching,” answered Marilyn.

“Oh, a school teacher! That’s wonderful. That’s such an important job!” Melissa said this with the sincerest smile and the most insincere tone, as if it was definitely an unimportant job. School teachers were nice, since the public schools needed them, to teach the less fortunate. When they had children, if they had children, they would be sent to private academies, where they would be instructed by educators.

Marilyn really didn’t pick up on it, but she was simply a nice girl who had never met anybody like this pair before. She asked, “What’s a stock… well, whatever… do?”

“I work on Wall Street, of course, determining what stocks are really worth and reporting to our investors and clients. Private clients, really,” she replied. As opposed to the regular clients.

We both glanced over at Harrison. “I advise corporations, you know, the Fortune 500 types, on five and ten year strategies and planning, that sort of thing.” He was very pleased with himself.

“Sounds interesting,” I agreed. Corporate consulting — if we can’t make money solving your problem, we can certainly make money prolonging it!

It was fascinating watching these two. They were some of the most self absorbed baby boomer yuppie pond scum you could imagine! Quite a bit of their attitude was going right over Marilyn’s head, but not all of it. I just sat there nodding and making encouraging remarks as they talked about themselves through dinner. They were Important People, moving up the ladder to become More Important People, and in the due course of time, they would become Very Important People. This went on all through the soup and salad courses, and almost through the end of the entrée.

They were on their honeymoon, too. They had been sharing a condo near Central Park, but had just bought a new home in White Plains. Their reception had been at Tavern on the Green in Manhattan. At one point Melissa commented that she had hyphenated her last name when they got married. This served as a symbol that they were equal partners in their marriage, and that neither one of them was above the other. I had simply commented that I needed to change my name to Lefleur, to reflect who was the real boss of the family. Marilyn laughed and agreed with me.

“What about you, Cal? What do you do?” he asked. It was still only the middle of the main course, and I was expecting these two to keep on yapping about themselves until at least dessert.

“It’s Carl.”

“Sorry about that.” No, he really wasn’t.

“Nothing quite that exciting. I jump out of airplanes and kill people,” I answered.

Melissa and Harrison stopped talking and stared at me like I had just taken a dump on the table. Marilyn giggled and punched me in the shoulder. “You’re awful!” She turned to them. “He’s not really that bad.”

Harrison looked very confused at that. “What do you mean?”

“I’m a paratrooper in the 82^nd Airborne at Fort Bragg,” I answered smiling.

“You’re a soldier?” asked Melissa. The look on her face was priceless, like she had just stepped in a pile of dogshit and couldn’t figure out how to wipe it off her shoe. ‘You’re a soldier?’ came out sounding like ‘You’re a child molester?’

“You bet. I’m a platoon leader in a battery of 105s, 1^st of the 319^th. Airborne all the way!” I said with a grin.

“Oh my!” She really didn’t know what to say to that.

Harrison did. “Oh, so you’re an officer then?”

I nodded. “Second Lieutenant.”

Well, an officer was at least somebody they might deign to converse with, although I was a junior officer. “So you must have gone to college then. Where was that? West Point?”

“Not quite. I was ROTC at Rensselaer, up in Troy. That’s where I met Marilyn, at a party there.”

“Oh, like a scholarship, then.” I nodded and smiled, curious how they could insult me next. “You couldn’t get any other scholarships?”

I damn near burst out laughing at that, but it was Marilyn who rescued me. My wife is not all that much in favor of the military, but she is very proud of me, military or not. She laid her hand on mine and squeezed it, probably because she thought I might punch this asshole. Then she said, “Oh, no, Carl could have gotten plenty of scholarships. He actually got his doctorate when he was 21.” I shrugged modestly.

They had both stopped eating and were staring at me like I had grown a second head. “You have a doctorate?” he asked.

“Applied mathematics.”

“Well, what in the world did you become a soldier for, then?”

I just smiled. “It’s a family tradition to serve and protect our country and her people. My father was Ivy League and served in the Navy. We even protect the yuppies and assholes.” Marilyn really squeezed my hand at that, but she had nothing to fear. I was having way too much fun with these two. I just started working on my dinner again. I had herb crusted lamb chops and they were simply outstanding!

Both Melissa and Harrison gave me weak smiles, and then excused themselves, stating they needed to get back to their cabin for a second. I smiled and stood and shook their hands again, and Marilyn waved good-bye, although there was a look of sheer hatred on her face.

I smiled at my wife and lifted her hand to my lips and kissed it. “What a lovely couple! So polite and friendly!” I commented to her.

Marilyn’s expression at that was priceless. “Are you kidding me? They’re, they’re… awful! I can’t even talk about them without getting mad!”

I grinned at her and nibbled my lamb chop. Marilyn hates lamb, so we never had it at home, but I just love it! “Really? Tell me more!” I teased.

“You think this is funny, don’t you?”

“No, I think it’s hilarious! Those two are the biggest pair of self-centered jackasses I’ve seen in years! Wait until tomorrow, when I show up in my dress uniform!”

“Well, I think they were just awful. Can we get a different table?”

I shrugged. “I’ll check for you. I thought they were funny.”

“Hmmpph!”

I smiled at my wife. “They’re you and me, you know.”

“What are you talking about?" she asked indignantly.

“If it was up to my mother, they would be us. I’d be a professional, married to a professional, and looking down on the lesser breeds like she does. Think about it.”

“You’re just awful!” she said, laughing.

“I don’t know. Have you ever considered dyeing your hair blonde? Like Melissa, you know? Maybe Mom would like you a little more.”

“When dessert comes, you’re going to be wearing it,” she laughed.

“Maybe my mother was right, after all,” I sighed.

That got her to splutter at me, but neither of us wasted our dessert, which was cheesecake. I commented to her, “I am definitely going to have to do some running tomorrow, or they’re going to have to wheel me off this barge!”

“Even on vacation?”

“Run with me.”

She gave me an interesting smile. “I can think of lots more interesting things to do in the morning.”

“That’s also a possibility. I have to say, that’s also a definite possibility. Did you have anything specific in mind? I mean, really, really specific?”

“You’re just a dirty old man,” Marilyn laughed.

“I’m a dirty young man. Totally different. My father, now he’s a dirty old man. He and Mom…” I just waggled my eyebrows at her.

“Gross! I don’t even want to think about that!”

After dinner, I stopped at the maitre de’s desk near the front of the restaurant and asked if it was possible to change tables. He looked at me curiously, and I explained that there was a little difference in personalities with our tablemates. He, in turn, said he already had a request from them for the same thing. I just smiled and said I would leave it in his hands, and I would remember it at the end of the week. You don’t tip on the boat at each meal, but at the end of the week, you give tips in envelopes, to the restaurant staff and the room staff.

Then we went down to the theater for the evening show. That first night, the show was more in the way of an orientation. The cruise director did a little show and tell about the Sun Viking, and gave us answers to all the usual questions, like when is the midnight buffet. (At midnight, that’s why they call it the midnight buffet!)

The Seventies is when cruising as a vacation really took off in America. The Love Boat had just started a year or two before, and it depicted a cruise ship off the Mexican and California coasts, where people fell in love, and the crew had all sorts of romantic and hilarious moments. It was incredibly popular at the time, and ran well into the Eighties. Real cruises have very little in common with The Love Boat, but that’s not to say they weren’t just as enjoyable. Still, the cruise director had to work to fix some misperceptions.

Some of them simply weren’t discussed. On the television show, the whole crew was white Americans, with a few blacks or foreigners thrown in for balance. Real cruise ships are totally different. Royal Caribbean was pretty typical. All the officers and bridge staff and engineering staff were Western European (the shipping line was Norwegian and they only hired ex-Norwegian Navy captains to run their ships). All the waiters and busboys and cleaning people were Asian, and if they only made peanuts, it still beat what they would make in a slum in Manila or Jakarta. Finally, all the entertainment and cruise staff were Americans, usually a bunch of Hollywood and Broadway wannabes. The cruise director was actually a standup comic.

After the show, we walked around some more, had a few drinks in one of the lounges, and waited until midnight to see the midnight buffet. You will never go hungry on one of these boats. You have breakfast, brunch, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, midnight buffet, and any number of other things to snack on in between. They also had about a dozen bars and lounges on board, and while that wasn’t covered under the all-in-one price, there were some guys who bellied up to the bar on Sunday and never left until we docked on Saturday!

Tonight was what they considered informal. Monday night, we were out to sea, and was formal, very formal, bring your tuxedo formal. Tuesday we would dock in Bermuda and until we left Thursday, everything was informal. Friday we were out to sea again, and we were formal (although not quite as formal as Monday) that last night. Saturday we would dock back in New York and go home.

No, I didn’t molest Marilyn on the deck that night, since we were both tired from a long day. I did let her try to keep me in bed the next morning, and boy, did she try hard! Afterwards, though, I got up and ran around the boat for a few miles, and then went back to the cabin and jumped back in bed with her. That seemed like a reasonable compromise. Afterwards, we cleaned up and went down to breakfast.

We were seated at a table with several other people. Breakfast and lunch seating they tried to minimize the number of tables used, to lighten the load on the staff. There is only a single seating, and you can come in whenever you like, and you don’t sit at your assigned table. Marilyn had picked up a copy of the daily schedule for the ship, along with the ship’s newspaper, printed somewhere down below. We were greeted by the people sitting next to us, a retired couple from Boca Raton. Marilyn loves this sort of thing, since she’s one of the world’s biggest gossips. She can sit and talk to anybody, for hours.

We decided on table service, rather than the breakfast buffet. The house specialty was suggested, Eggs Benedict, which Marilyn asked for, but I declined. I ordered two eggs over easy. “What are Eggs Benedict anyway?” she asked after the waiter left.

“You don’t know?! You ordered them!” I replied, incredulous.

“Well, I’ve heard of them.”

I just stared for a second. “Unbelievable. I’ve heard of the North Pole, too, but I don’t think I want to visit there.”

“Behave!”

“Eggs Benedict is a poached egg on an English muffin, with Hollandaise sauce on it, or something like that,” I explained.

“That sounds like something you’d enjoy,” she argued.

“Yeah, except for the fact that I can’t stand poached eggs!”

The waiter brought our juice, orange for Marilyn and tomato for me, and then I sent him back for some Tabasco sauce. When he returned I sprinkled some in my tomato juice, along with some salt and pepper. “You and your Tabasco sauce!” remarked my wife.

I sipped it and it was pleasantly spicy. “That’ll get your heart started in the morning. Put some hair on your chest.” Tabasco is probably the most popular condiment for soldiers; somebody always has a bottle, even out in the field on exercises.

“You need some more, then,” she commented, causing our tablemates to laugh.

“That is cold, lady! That is cold!” I said. “You weren’t complaining about my chest this morning,” I replied, winking at the others.

Marilyn squealed with indignation and swatted me, and then went back to gossiping with the neighbors. She’s world class. All of our children over the years would tell me something, like they were getting married or being deployed overseas, and would always warn me not to tell their mother, since it was a secret. (Well, don’t tell me then, either, but I can keep my mouth shut!) The typical phrasing used was, “Mom can keep a secret just as long as it takes her to find a telephone!” Eventually that was modified to “… as long as it takes her to log on to her email!” Invariably, after the kids would tell her, weeks or months later, she would squawk about being kept in the dark, especially after they would laugh and tell her I had been told weeks or months before!

Monday was a total goof-off day, just sailing around the middle of the Atlantic, with no land in sight and nothing to be seen but the occasional ship in the distance. It was clear and sunny and cloudless. I gave Marilyn a wedding present of sorts, a new string bikini, which she protested about when she saw how small it was, but then she put it on, along with a cover-up. I changed into my swim trunks (basic Army issue green) and a tee shirt, and we headed up to the pool deck. The Sun Viking had two pools on the same deck, as opposed to some of the later ships which had more than one pool deck. We found a spot, set out our stuff, and hopped in the pool briefly, then slathered on some lotion to get a tan. Thankfully, Marilyn had been to the tanning booth before the wedding, so she didn’t look white as a ghost. I also had some color, but it was mostly the redneck tan of a guy who’s out in the sun working. Chest and legs pale, face and neck and arms dark. Well, we don’t play with those howitzers indoors!

We spent pretty much the entire day swimming and sunning. At lunch we ate at the poolside café, and we sucked down some beers all day long. By mid-afternoon we had enough, so we headed back inside, to take a nap (eventually) and get ready for the evening. I must admit, I definitely enjoyed taking that swimsuit off her — it was so easy!

We dozed until about five or so, and then we had to clean up and get ready for the evening. Not only was it Formal Night in the HMS Pinafore Dining Room (everything on the ship was named after Broadway musicals — the theater/showroom was called the Annie Get Your Gun Show Lounge!), but before that, at 6:00, we and all the other newlyweds were cordially invited to the Captain’s Reception. We would have a formal receiving line and then champagne and caviar.

Marilyn isn’t big on dressing up fancy, but she can and will on occasion. I remember when we did this the first time, she had bought a powder blue evening gown with spaghetti straps at the shoulders that could be untied and a tube top so it could be worn strapless. It looked awfully nice and matched my blue tuxedo, which looked awful (not awfully nice) on me. I remember when Maggie commented, “Wow, Mom, you used to be hot!” that what I thought was how young she looked in the picture. Well, I guess we both looked young.

This time, no idea why, Marilyn had bought a black evening gown, sleeveless and mostly backless, with a criss-crossing of tiny straps over the shoulders and across the back, and a pair of long slits, one up each thigh, to mid-thigh. When she came out of the bathroom wearing that dress, my eyes popped out and my mouth got dry, and I asked, “Want to blow off this dinner? I have much different plans now!”

She smiled at this, broadly, and said, “Not on your life!” Then she giggled at me. “Besides, by the time you get out of your getup, I’ll be old and gray!”

That much was probably true. My uniform had come back from the shipboard cleaner, and was in our cabin by the time we got back from the pool. An Army mess dress uniform, like all tuxedos, is ridiculously complicated. You have these special high rise pants, with suspenders. Cummerbund (whatever that is for!) A short tuxedo like jacket. More braid than a Park Avenue doorman. You have to wear real medals, not just the little ribbons. Even your officer’s cap is different! Just to confuse everybody, the cuff bands and lapels on your jacket had to be in your combat arms colors — red, in my case, for the artillery (infantry is blue, armor is yellow, etc.) Finally, if you were feeling really rich and stupid, and wanted to look like the ultimate pansy, it came with an optional cape, also lined with your combat arms color, so that you could dress like a cavalryman from the Napoleonic Wars! On the plus side, I looked good in it, but that was only because I was in decent shape, and not reed thin like before.

At least I didn’t have to wear jump boots with it.

“I’d be willing to give it a try!” I told her.

“Behave! Now get your key and we can go,” she laughed at me.

As we left the cabin, I ran my hand across her ass. “I don’t think you’re wearing panties,” I whispered to her. She swatted my hand and told me to behave myself, but she also turned bright red, so I suspected I was right. I was going to enjoy the evening!

The various newlyweds in the group all ended up queuing up in a lobby area towards the stern of the boat, outside of a door to one of the larger lounges. Probably two-thirds of the men were in tuxedos, with the rest in dark suits, and all the ladies had on something in the way of fancy dresses. I did notice that I was the only person in uniform, which surprised me a touch, since I had figured more than one soldier or sailor had gotten married in uniform. Still, it’s not a requirement, and it’s perfectly legal to wear a civilian tux, at least off base and at non-military events. With three out of four in my wedding party in the service, it had seemed like a good idea to me.

As we stood in line to enter and meet the captain, Marilyn began talking to the people right before us. They looked familiar to me for some reason, and it quickly came out that they had been a couple of deck chairs down from us out at the pool this afternoon. John and Mary Smith were only a couple of years older than we were, and he was in a traditional black tux while she had on a dark grey evening gown. Marilyn introduced us. Mary smiled at me and said, “Very spiffy! Is that a uniform?”

John and Mary were much nicer than Harrison and Melissa the other night. She just didn’t know anything about the Army. I explained the types of uniforms as we slowly moved towards the front. John commented, “I thought you were in the service earlier, when I saw your dog tags.”

I nodded. “I’ve been wearing them so long, I forget I have them on,” I told him.

“What are they for?” asked Mary. “Some sort of identification?”

“Precisely.”

“In case something happens to you, right?” asked John.

“Precisely.”

The others contemplated this, Marilyn perhaps for the first time. Her only comments over the years had been that they tickled her sometimes when we were fooling around. Mary then asked, “So why do you have two?”

“Well, originally you only had one. The tradition started in the Civil War. At some of the battles, the men knew the casualties would be so bad, they wrote their names on pieces of paper and pinned them to their backs before attacking. At Cold Harbor and Petersburg, in fact, it was really gruesome.”

“You mean…” asked John.

I lowered my voice a touch. “I mean that you could walk across the battlefield from one end to the other without stepping on the ground.”

Marilyn looked a little green at that. Mary said, “Yuck!” I just shrugged. Hey, they asked. “So why do you have two, then?” she continued.

“That’s some more ‘yuck.’” She nodded in curiosity. “Okay, you asked. In the event somebody buys the farm, I take one of the tags with me back to base. Since I might have to leave the body on the battlefield, I take the other and jam it into the teeth so it won’t fall out.”

Now it was Mary’s turn to turn green and Marilyn went, “Yuck!”

“You asked.”

John commented, “Not going to be too good looking in the casket, I would guess.”

I smiled at that. “You buy it in combat, it’s a closed casket, no matter what!”

“Will you two change the subject!?” asked Marilyn.

I just smiled and shrugged. John grinned back. We started talking about his job as an insurance adjuster, which bored me to tears, but the only people who like insurance are other insurance people.

Eventually we got towards the front of the line. Your names were taken by a formally dressed woman from the cruise staff, and then when you got to where the captain was standing, she announced you to him. You would shake hands, perhaps make a little chit-chat, and then head into the lounge for the champagne and caviar. It was then that I had a sudden case of nerves. The captain was in his full dress whites!

So what? So, I was in uniform, too! My rank was a hell of a lot lower than his. Normally it wouldn’t matter, since if I was in civilian clothing, there is no requirement to salute or stand at attention. We could have shook hands and moved along. But I was in uniform.

I was moving on automatic. John and Mary were introduced as “Mr. and Mrs. John and Mary Smith.” I had automatically given my rank to the lady doing the introductions.

John and Mary moved along, and we stepped in front of the captain. Now what? “Lieutenant Carl Buckman and Mrs. Marilyn Buckman.”

It was automatic. I snapped to attention, and said, “Sir!”

Marilyn looked at me in amazement, but the captain smiled and promptly said, “As you were, Lieutenant,” the Navy version of ‘At ease.’

“Thank you, sir. I wasn’t sure of the protocol, being in uniform.”

He reached out and took my hand. “The protocol is that you are a guest in my home. Welcome aboard, Lieutenant Buckman, Mrs. Buckman.”

“Thank you very much, sir.” Marilyn also thanked him when he took her hand. At that point, to conclude things, I came to attention again, and saluted, and he returned the salute. Then we were off into the lounge.

I could feel several people staring at me, one of whom was my wife. “Do you have to salute everybody?” she asked.

“Let’s just say that as a lieutenant, I salute a lot more people than salute me.”

“Wow, I wasn’t expecting that,” commented John Smith, who rejoined us. A waiter brought around a tray of champagne flutes and we each took one. “You have to salute the captain?”

“I was just asking him that,” chimed in Marilyn.

“I’m not really sure, but I think so, at least when I’m in uniform. Hey, he’s a full naval captain, an O-6. In the Army he’d be a full bull colonel. My whole battalion only has a lieutenant colonel. You don’t get a full colonel until you get to the regimental or brigade level,” I replied.

“But he’s a civilian,” said John.

I shrugged at that. “I don’t know about that. For one thing, he might well be Norwegian Naval Reserve. He’s ex-Norwegian Navy, that’s for sure. For another thing, in America at least, the Merchant Marine Academy ranks right up there with the service academies, like West Point or Annapolis. Like I said, I’m not really sure. I never learned it in any of my lessons.”

“So, do you have to salute him all the time?” asked Mary.

I shook my head. “I think that’s it. I only have to salute or stand at attention when I’m in uniform, and this is it for me. Even for the next formal night, I have civvies.”

“And you have to jump around like that for your colonels in the Army, too?” Marilyn asked.

I grinned down at her. Even in her heels I was several inches taller than she was. “Only if I don’t want my next jump to be into a snow bank in Alaska!” Marilyn was going to need some acclimatization to the Army. “It’d be awfully difficult to wear that dress in the snow.”

We excused ourselves from John and Mary, and wandered around the lounge. We hadn’t been in here before, and the view was very nice, looking out over the stern as the sun dropped towards the horizon behind us. I introduced Marilyn to caviar, which she promptly told me she didn’t like. “That just means more for me!” I replied, and scarfed down one of the little hors d’oeuvres on her plate.

“You probably like snails, too.”

“Escargot? You bet!”

“Yuck!”

I licked my lips. “Yummmm!”

Tonight we were seated at a different table, with two other couples. We had learned this from a notice slipped under our door in the morning while we were at breakfast. I maneuvered Marilyn past our old table, though, and smiled at Harrison and Melissa, who both promptly looked away. Marilyn smiled at me and nudged me in the side. “I caught that.” I gave her my most innocent look, but she said, “You are bad!” We had a nice laugh at that.

Our tablemates for tonight were a young couple like ourselves, the Pulaskis, a pair of newlywed grad students at Ohio State, as well as a couple in their mid-thirties, the Martins, a plumber and a schoolteacher on their tenth anniversary second honeymoon. Very nice people. Tonight’s group went much better together. I didn’t say anything, but Marilyn told everybody about our evening with the Blakewells. I just shrugged and shook my head listening to her. Marilyn is like my mother in that sort of thing. She can keep a grudge alive forever! (Or as I’ve told her, there is no horse so dead she can’t be beat it some more!)

The funniest part of the night was when Janice Martin commented, “Tomorrow is the 4^th of July. I wonder if they do anything special in Bermuda for that?”

I looked around the table, and was pleased to notice I wasn’t the only one looking at her curiously. I answered, “If they do anything, it will probably be to have a bonfire and roast an American.”

“What? Why?” She really was kind of oblivious. Nice though.

“Well, Bermuda is a British colony or something. The 4^th is when we celebrate telling the British to go home and never come back. I know I’m not wearing my uniform tomorrow!”

Janice’s eyes opened wide at that and her mouth formed an O. “I never thought of that.”

Her husband laughed and commented, “Boy, some people just can’t take a joke!” He then teased his wife a little. “Maybe you should check with the visitor’s bureau tomorrow?”

I laughed along with everybody else. “I hear it’s even worse up in Halifax. That’s where all the Tories who got kicked out of the U.S. ended up landing. I’ve heard they really hold a grudge!”

After dinner was an evening of Broadway show tunes in the theater, and then we went back to the lounge in the aft of the ship, where we had met the captain. Now it was back in business as a lounge, with an oldies band playing songs from the Rat Pack and we did some dancing. We stayed there until late.

Finally, I was getting tired, so took Marilyn’s hand and we walked out onto the deck. The breeze, along with the wind generated by the ship’s passage was fairly stiff, and it was blowing Marilyn’s dress all over the place. “I have to say, honey, I really like the view!” I told her, after one gust proved that she was wearing stockings, and not pantyhose.

She laughed. “It’s not funny!”

“I so disagree!” I took her hand and led her somewhat forward, and we got out of the worst of the wind. We continued along the deck, which was dark, but not deserted, and at one point we watched the crew setting up for the midnight buffet. “You only live once,” I told her, pointing at the buffet.

“They really are going to wheel us off the ship!”

“Come running with me tomorrow,” I urged her.

“I’ll think about it.”

That was good enough for me. Marilyn didn’t exercise now, but kept her gorgeous figure because of a good metabolism for a twenty-three year old. Things would change, especially after she had children. If I could get her to start taking care of herself, it wouldn’t hurt! Maybe she would live longer and be healthier this time.

We went back inside for another drink, and then back to the deck for the midnight buffet. Tonight was dedicated to chocolate — cakes, fruits, candies, sundaes, anything and everything made with or covered by chocolate. I dipped some strawberries in chocolate and then we went wandering forward with our champagne glasses.

We finished the strawberries and I set the plate down on an empty chair, and then we continued on, slowly, just savoring the moment. When we got to the bow, we set our glasses down as well, and looked out over the dark ocean. Then we heard some giggling, forward and below us. It took us a second to realize there was a young couple a deck below us, in the darkness and shadow, fooling around on the bow. He kept looking around, but never realized he should have also looked up. We couldn’t really see all the details, but as we watched, his hands moved to the front of his pants, and then she giggled and knelt on the deck. That put her completely in the shadow, but the look on his face was ecstatic. Five minutes later she was standing up again, and then they giggled and ran off.

I looked at my wife and smiled. Her eyes widened and she said, “No way!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about!” Just to prove her point, another couple strolled through the area, arms around each other, doing a late night walk around the deck. “See!? Forget it!”

I just smiled and moved closer to her. Marilyn tried to back away, but I had her trapped, with a hand on her back. “Lift your leg. Put your foot up on the railing,” I told her. The railing around the deck had several horizontal rails. The breeze was blowing her dress back, and showing her legs nicely.

“What?” she asked, confused.

I was standing to her right, with my left hand at the small of her back. “Lift your right foot and set it on the railing,” I whispered to her.

Marilyn was nervous, but lifted her foot up about a foot and braced it on the railing. The breeze pushed her dress up even higher, clearly showing me that she was wearing stockings. However, with me close at her side, nobody who was behind us would notice. I placed my right hand on her thigh, eliciting a quiet gasp from her, and then I slid it upwards.

“I think you’re enjoying this,” I told her. My fingers were moving slowly, but not finding anything to get in the way.

“Take me back to the room, please,” she begged.

“Why?”

I could feel moist heat from her crotch now, but hadn’t moved in far enough to touch any panties or thong she might have on.

“Because I need you,” she pleaded.

“What? What do you need?” I teased her. I moved my fingers a touch more and found her naked and bald slit. I traced her lips, and felt warmth, and if we weren’t in a breeze, she would have reeked of her musk.

“I need you to make love to me. Oh, please, let’s go in!”

“Make love or fuck you?” I began to touch her slit now, sliding a finger into her greasy little gash.

“Oh, God! Either! Both! Let’s just go!” She tugged my arm slightly, but was getting weak kneed, and sagging against me.

I began to diddle her clit, and she gave a quiet whimper. “You forgot your panties. I think you wanted me to do this to you.”

Her hands were clutching my arm now. “Oh, please, stop teasing me!”

I held her close and flicked her clit and drove her to orgasm. Then I said, “Maybe it’s my turn now,” and slowly pulled my hand out from under her dress.

Marilyn sagged against me and sighed. “No, please, back in the cabin. I’ll do anything you want, just not out here…” She sounded exhausted and spent.

I grinned to myself and took her hand. “Anything?” I asked innocently. I led her inside the ship.

“What?” she asked, distractedly.

“You said you’d do anything if we went back to the cabin.” I waggled my eyebrows at her.

“Not that!”

I shrugged. “Your words, not mine.”

That earned me a laugh. “We’ll be back on deck before that happens!”

“You’ll never know what you could be missing.”

We continued on to our cabin, with Marilyn tugging my hand and giving me sly looks as we went. As soon as we got inside, she was in my arms and kissing me. “Hurry! I need you so bad!” she said lowly.

I tossed my jacket on the bed, and then reached behind her, and undid the catch and the zipper on the back of her dress. This I unzipped, and then I pulled it off of her to pool at her feet, leaving her standing there in nothing but her stockings and heels. I put my hands on her shoulders and smiled. “Just like out on deck,” I said.

Marilyn smiled at that, remembering the young couple we had watched earlier. She knelt at my feet and began working on my pants, while I began to undo my cuffs and bow tie. I reached behind my back to unfasten that ridiculous cummerbund, and tossed that away, and Marilyn giggled and said, “Thank you.” Then she had my pants open and was fishing me out. I pulled the suspenders down and that made it much easier for her, and she grinned and thanked me again.

“Stop talking!” I laughed back.

Marilyn licked my cock for a moment, and then opened her mouth and began sucking on my cockhead. Tonight I wanted something more. Placing my hands in her hair, I began thrusting into her mouth. “I’m going to come in your mouth! You keep sucking or it’s going to be in your face, but you are sucking me off first!” Marilyn began suctioning my cock, and jacking my shaft. I tried not to be too rough, or to choke her, but I really needed to get my rocks off. “Then, you need to keep sucking and make me hard enough to fuck your little cunt!” I kept telling her what was going to happen, and Marilyn began making little whimpering sounds as she sucked me. I looked down and found only one hand on my cock; the other was between her legs!

Seeing her so turned on just made me even more excited. The come in my balls felt like it was boiling, and I could feel myself getting closer. I tried in vain to prolong it, but Marilyn was suckling my cockhead too hard. “Take it!” I cried, and unloaded into her mouth. I began spurting as she swallowed. Enough came out that it dribbled down her lips to her chin, but she kept sucking. I must have had at least have a dozen heavy spurts before I was done.

She looked up at me happily while using her fingers to wipe her lips and chin. I looked down and ordered, “Don’t stop. Make me hard again!” Marilyn averted her eyes and took my still semi-hard cock in her mouth again. She also began using her hands to undo my shoes and socks and strip me totally naked. I peeled off my shirt and tossed it aside. By the time I was naked, I was stiff enough for another round.

I pulled my wife to her feet and over to the couch. I plopped down onto it, in the center, and then tugged on her hips to bring her closer. There was a sheen of excitement in the wetness on her pussy and thighs. “Get on top and make me come again!” Marilyn straddled my thighs and lowered herself onto my stiff cock. She gasped as I entered her, and then squealed when I pulled her tits to my face and began sucking her nipples. Her hands were on my shoulders as she began moving on me, not so much bouncing as writhing all over. I reached up and tugged her hands down so they were between us. “Now, make me come again!”

Marilyn couldn’t really reach down and touch me, but her fingers were all over her clit and scraping the topside of my cock when it was exposed. Occasionally it would become too much for her, and she would pull her hands away as she orgasmed, but I would push them back, forcing her into yet another orgasm. The feel of the nylons rubbing against my thighs was amazing. She looked and felt so slutty as she rode me desperately. I kept sucking her nipples and forcing her to pleasure herself. By the time I came again, spewing up into her, she was barely capable of talking.

Marilyn lay against me, breathing hard, as I wrapped my arms around her and nuzzled her neck. “I love you so much,” I whispered to her. “I don’t ever want to let you go.”

Marilyn roused herself enough to begin kissing and sucking on my neck, working on giving me a hickey. I laughed and sat upright, some, pulling away from her. “Oh no you don’t!”

“What?” she asked mischievously, a twinkle in her eye.

I smacked that beautiful round bottom now perched on my legs. “That’s the last thing I need around the gun bay!”

“Spoilsport.” She leaned forward and tried to lick my neck, and then I felt her trying to apply a little suction.

“Acckkk! Stop that!”

That simply caused Marilyn to throw her arms around me and try to imitate a vampire. I struggled against it, but I didn’t want to hurt her, so I ended up picking her up off my lap and carrying her over to the bed, where I dropped her unceremoniously. “You’d better not have been successful,” I warned her.

“Or what? What will you do?” she asked teasingly, and then leaned forward and tried to gnash her teeth at me.

I tossed the clothing off the bed and jumped on it next to her. We wrestled a bit and I had her facing down, and I threw a leg over hers and kept her there. She still had on her stockings and the ankles-trapped stilettos she had worn for me, and now she was beating them ineffectually on the bed. I lay next to her, half on top of her, and rubbed my hands over her backside and her butt. “I think you know exactly what I plan to do to you!”

She began squirming around and I smacked her on the ass again. “Behave yourself!” I rubbed her ass and reached down between her asscheeks to finger her asshole, and then below, to feel the warmth and wetness where our mixed juices had seeped from her. “It will be so much worse for you if you struggle!”

“No, not that!”

“What I’m going to do, you will enjoy!” I could feel myself slowly coming back to life. As soon as I was stiff enough, I crawled on top of her and straddled her legs. I could sense Marilyn’s nervousness, and I smiled to myself. Then I sat upright and reached down, and guided my cock into her pussy!

I could feel Marilyn’s surprise, and she whipped her head around to see me as best she could. I just grinned at her. “I had you going there, didn’t I?”

“You are so mean! You are going to get that hickey yet!” she sputtered. I just slammed my cock up into her scummy cunt and she squealed. “Oh, God, don’t stop fucking me!”

I leaned down on top of her, luxuriating in the feel of her warm skin on mine, as I slowly rammed my cock into her. “When it’s time, I’ll have your ass, but not tonight. Now, make me come again, and really work it. I think this is going to be a good long fuck!” Marilyn began bucking her ass back at me.

I think I was enjoying this honeymoon even more than the last one!

Chapter 53: Married Life

So the rest of our honeymoon went pretty much like our first honeymoon, as well as all the other little ‘practice honeymoons’ we had taken up to that point. To be specific, we goofed off and screwed our brains out! We hit the beach in Bermuda, did a few tourist type things, ate too much, drank too much — all the things young honeymooners are supposed to do.

On most cruises, for instance to the Caribbean, every night you sail to a different island, so there is no way to see the night life on land. You miss the boat and you are screwed. On a trip to Bermuda, however, it’s different. Bermuda is all alone in the middle of the ocean, with nothing else around for about 600 miles or so. Once they park the boat, you just use it as a very expensive and very small hotel room. If you want to hit the nightclubs, feel free. The boat will still be at the dock at 0300. Thursday we sailed home, we had another formal night on Friday (I wore a suit, not the mess dress), and Saturday we docked.

The fun and games all came to a halt on Saturday. New York and the entire east coast was getting hit with intermittent thunderstorms from the moment we docked. It takes just as long to leave the boat as it does to get on. It was back to hurry up and wait, as we went through debarkation, customs, luggage retrieval, and getting a shuttle bus back to JFK. Then we had a three hour wait to fly to Fayetteville, and the plane had to circle the field for an hour while a storm swept through. Then the airline managed to lose our hanging bag, so we had to wait about an hour for them to realize this and start the paperwork to find it.

I didn’t know how much money it was going to take, but I swore then and there to make enough money to be able to afford limousines and chartered jets!

It was very late by the time we got into the Impala and drove to our apartment, which Marilyn had never been to before. Shortly after going through the first full round of the cycle, I had gotten myself a two bedroom apartment in a nice garden apartment area frequented by company grade officers. I could have afforded a house, but second lieutenants couldn’t afford houses, and I didn’t want to stand out. Second lieutenants can, barely, afford two bedroom apartments. If anybody asked, I would say that Marilyn’s family had money.

That was technically true. Big Bob was by most standards quite well off. On the other hand, Big Bob also had thirteen kids and never met a dollar he couldn’t spend. His company was notoriously cash poor and generally survived on accounting miracles. Ultimately he would sell it to most of his kids, spend the money, mortgage his remaining assets to the hilt, spend that money, and then die broke. I actually had to admire him — he managed to take it with him! He left nothing but about $150,000 in life insurance to the kids, split 13 ways.

As I started to park, I immediately stopped and put it into Reverse, and pulled back out on the road. “What’s wrong?” asked Marilyn.

“We need some groceries,” I told her. “I’ve been gone two weeks and I threw everything out before I left.” We found an all night Stop-N-Rob and grabbed some milk and eggs and bread and such, and then went home. I dutifully carried her across the threshold, and then went back and unloaded the car. By the time I was back inside, Marilyn was asleep on the couch. I helped her to bed, put away the groceries, and then went to bed myself.

Sunday we got back to normal. We slept late, stayed home, washed our laundry, and played house. Using the excuse that all of her clothing was in the laundry I had Marilyn wear one of my dress shirts and a pair of stilettos. I kept interrupting her work efforts with a different sort of work. That worked until mid-afternoon, at which point she had enough clean clothes that we could go out. I walked her around the apartment complex, and then we went out for dinner.

Monday it was time to get things back to normal. We got up, and I dressed in fatigues and jump boots, and I got Marilyn alive, so that by 0830 we were out of the apartment and on the way to the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles. Marilyn needed a new license, in her new name. She had her New York license and her birth certificate and our marriage license, but still needed to take the tests. After lunch we drove over to the base, and we went about getting her an ID card, so that she could go to the PX, or Post Exchange, sort of a shopping center on the base. It was a long day, but nowhere near as bad as Saturday coming home. Technically, I was no longer on leave, but Captain Harris was, by prior agreement, turning a blind eye to my absence for a couple of days. If your commander cooperated, you could often get someone to sign you in and out with a telephone call so that the thirty days annual leave we accumulated could stretch to cover six weeks, or even more if there was a legal holiday or two in the right place. I had used up my leave during the year, going back and forth to Utica to take care of the wedding, and now I was just over the line.

Tuesday afternoon Marilyn’s oldest brother Matthew showed up out of the blue, driving a panel truck with all of her remaining clothes and possessions, and some giant bags and boxes holding wedding presents. She had called her family Sunday morning, and we had been expecting them to ship her stuff FedEx or UPS. Before she left home, she had packed everything still there into boxes ready for shipping. Instead, they simply loaded everything into a truck and sent their truck driver son on a trip south. We unloaded the truck and Matthew spent the night with us, in the second bedroom, and then took off again Wednesday morning.

Wednesday it was back to the battery for me. Marilyn was sort of nervous about this, since we only had the Impala, and this would leave her stuck at the apartment. I told her we would get a car for her. I showed her in the Paraglide a variety of listings for used cars, as well as the weekend swap meet in a parking lot off base. I promised to pick up some cash during the week, and we would go car shopping on Saturday.

I was trying to be careful with my money, careful in the sense that I didn’t want anybody to know I had any. It was why I lived in an apartment and drove an old Impala. Second lieutenants with a new wife can’t afford a house or new cars. A captain, with a wife who worked, might be able to do those things, but definitely not a lieutenant. It was bad enough being known as ‘Doc’ Buckman; tossing money into the mix would not be helpful. Fortunately, Marilyn had no idea that I was actually worth not quite three million bucks. Whenever I spent money on her I would always cover it up by saying that I had been saving my jump pay. Since she never knew what a lieutenant was actually paid, she never twigged to the fact that lieutenants can’t afford to fly first class or sail on the promenade deck.

After Matthew went back home, Marilyn and I sorted through our wedding presents. We had a disagreement of sorts over this, since she just wanted to rip and tear like a four year old, while I wanted to figure out who had sent what. When she asked why, I told her it was so we could send out thank you cards. I might as well have been speaking in tongues for that, since the Lefleurs never sent out thank you cards. “At our house, if you didn’t send out a thank you card, you never got another gift from that person,” I explained.

“Even from your family on birthdays or Chirstmas?”

“We weren’t that silly. Still, if you got something from your aunts or uncles or whatever, you had to.”

Marilyn simply rolled her eyes at that, and allowed me to make a list. At the minimum, we would send cards to my family.

The results were interesting. There was some cash, which we split in half and pocketed, and some checks, which we put aside to deposit in the bank. I was using the credit union on base, and I resolved to take Marilyn over and get her listed on the account. Only my Army paycheck went into that account; she didn’t have access to, or even knowledge of, my brokerage accounts.

We had a large pile of other gifts, too. We got two toasters and three blenders, both of which I already owned, and a pair of fondue sets. I told Marilyn I would put a note on both the battery and battalion bulletin boards, and unload them that way. Suzie gave us a very nice set of serving bowls, and my aunts and their families gave us some nice flatware and some extra Corelleware. Finally, after we went through everything, we couldn’t find anything from my parents. We looked all over the apartment, to see if we had left it in the spare bedroom, or if Matthew had put it down somewhere we couldn’t find it. There wasn’t anything to be seen. Mystified, Marilyn called her parents, and they checked with Matthew, to make sure we hadn’t left it in the van, or upstairs in her old bedroom.

Finally, I just shrugged. “Maybe my folks forgot it at home. They’ll probably mail it this week. I’ll check with Suzie tomorrow.”

That was a very strange phone call. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered, so I called Suzie on an outside line from the base the next day. Suzie told me that they hadn’t packed any presents other than hers, and that she hadn’t seen anything around, and that she would check with our parents when they got home from work. I called her later that night, getting hung up on by Ham in the process, and then calling back ten minutes later and getting Suzie. I could hear my brother on the line, so I told him to get off the phone, and then Suzie started yelling at him, and there was a click as he hung up.

Suzie’s voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s really weird, Carl,” she told me. “Nobody will tell me anything about the present.”

“What do you mean?” I lowered my voice, too. Marilyn was watching television in the living room, and I was on the phone in the bedroom.

“Well, I asked Dad, and he simply told me to talk to Mom. He was acting really strange, too. So I went and asked Mom, and she got real hyper about it, and started yelling about you two and how you had lost the present, but she wouldn’t tell me what it was or anything, and I swear, there was nothing in the car!” she answered.

I began to feel sick to my stomach. “She wouldn’t even tell you what we had lost?”

“No, and she wouldn’t answer any other questions either. I was sent to my room for asking.”

“Suzie, I don’t think they gave us anything,” I whispered.

“I don’t either, and now Dad’s embarrassed and Mom’s angry you found out,” she admitted.

I was silent for a minute, long enough that I could hear Suzie going, “Carl? Carl?” on the other end. Was my mother that unhappy with me? Or was Hamilton working on her somehow? Or had he destroyed the present?

“I’m here, I’m here. I was just thinking. Suzie, here’s a job for you. Go to the store and buy something, maybe a really nice and big CrockPot. Then take it over to Louise’s and wrap it and mail it to us. We’ll tell Marilyn that they found it at home, and must have forgotten to pack it.”

“This is so bizarre, Carl!” she told me. “I can’t believe they did this intentionally!”

“It is what it is, honey. You just take care of that and then send me a bill to my office. I’ll send you a check.” I waited for her to grab a pen and paper, and then gave her my office address.

We hung up and I went back into the living room and told Marilyn my Mom found the present in the living room behind the couch, where it had been kicked, and they were mailing it out. It was years before I ever told her the truth.

The next day, I called my father at his office. “Dad, you got a minute?” I asked.

“Uh, yes. Welcome back. How was the cruise?”

“Just fine, thank you. Listen, I have to ask you, what’s going on with the wedding present. Suzie says Mom wouldn’t say what it was, but that we’ve lost it. What’s going on?”

“Uhh…” Dad hemmed and hawed for a moment. I could almost hear the gears turning as he tried to think of something.

I pushed a little more. It certainly wasn’t the value of the present that I cared about, but I needed to know what was happening. “Did Hamilton destroy it? Suzie says nothing was packed in the car but her present, and we got that. Did Mom forget it? Or wasn’t there a present at all?”

“Carl, maybe you should be asking your mother this question,” he replied, ducking the answer.

“No way, I’m asking you. Was there even a present? Or does your answer already mean there wasn’t one.”

“I don’t know, Carl. Your mother said she would handle it, but I don’t remember packing anything,” he answered, lamely.

“Okay, well, that answers that question, I suppose. Just curious, Dad, is it me she hates, or Marilyn?”

“Carl, it’s not like that!” he protested.

“Yeah, whatever you say, Dad, whatever you say. Good-bye, Dad. Give Mom my love. I’ll leave you all alone.”

I could hear him protesting as I hung up the phone. There was a time when I would have cried about it, but I just didn’t care anymore. I had had it with the drama. I’d let Suzie know what had happened and mail her my old house key.

Within a few days of my being back, Marilyn got a letter at the apartment from the Fort Bragg Officers Wives Group, asking her to join. Marilyn’s not a big joiner on that sort of thing, but I pushed her to go to a meeting and meet the others. I knew that she would enjoy it, and I also knew that it would be helpful to her. She was far from home, without any friends, and in a place she didn’t know or understand. I also knew, in a mercenary sort of way, that a wife can make or break you. Marilyn would never hurt me intentionally, but what she didn’t understand could hurt me unintentionally. I was right, too; she came back babbling happily about some of the other wives she met, and talking about their next meeting. Also, a few of the wives would come and visit and give her an introduction to the Army and the post.

Marilyn adjusted to life in the cycle about as well as I expected her to. She didn’t like it, but Marilyn had never given me grief about my working hours before, and I didn’t expect her to now. The support cycle was the easiest, and we were still finishing up that. Training cycle was next, and while she didn’t see as much of me, I was always home at night, and usually had my weekends free. The six weeks of ready cycle were very unhappy for her. The days were very long, and often there were overnight readiness exercises and drills.

There were, however, a few things I could do to ease her through this. First, we bought a used car, a little red Toyota Tercel with a stick shift and a couple of hamsters under the hood that she loved. That let her get out and around. I also drove her up to Fayetteville State. If she wanted to be a teacher, she needed a master’s degree. Fayetteville State is pretty much a black college, but whites could go there, too, and it was part of the University of North Carolina system. There were a number of colleges in the area, but most were either community colleges or religious colleges or undergrad colleges only. If she didn’t want to go to a black college, she would need to drive up to Raleigh or Durham, at least an hour away.

Marilyn was nervous about this, simply because Utica and Plattsburgh are pretty much totally Caucasian. Oh, there’re some blacks around, but Marilyn had lived a very sheltered life. I don’t think she had ever actually talked to a black person until she got to college, and Harlan and Anna Lee were a real shock to her family at the wedding. Still, we picked up a copy of the catalog and some admissions paperwork.

Going back to college would keep her busy. Likewise, when I was on the ready cycle, and stuck on base, I offered to fly her back to Utica for a few weeks, or maybe back to Plattsburgh to visit her aunt. She could drive if she wanted, also. That actually made her eyes light up, although she felt like she was abandoning me. I just wrapped my arms around her and promised it would be all right. I then implied that the rest of the guys and I would head out to the strip clubs, but she tried to punch me at that point, so I just wrapped my arms tighter and gave her some kisses.

The dreaded Orange Army had snuck into Fort Polk in September and captured it, and we were needed to parachute in and send them all back to Orangeland. In point of fact, Army base security was pretty lax, and several times a year the Orange Army was able to capture a base somewhere in the country, requiring the training brigade to go and liberate them. Once a year, every brigade in the division would participate in a major league training exercise somewhere. It’s very expensive and very time consuming and very difficult, but it’s also very effective. There’s a saying in the military, going back to at least the days of Caesar and before then, that the more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in war. That level of training is what takes us from being just the 82^nd Airborne to the ‘elite’ 82^nd Airborne.

During this rotation, the entire brigade made a combat drop, including the 319^th. As I mentioned before, airdropping artillery is truly a major headache, and to be avoided at all costs if you can get away with it. We couldn’t. Battery B dropped rather than landed. Here’s a quick quiz for all you fans of the Airborne artillery:

What happens when you airdrop a 105mm howitzer from a C-130 Hercules?

a — The gun lands upside down.

b — The gun lands in a tree.

c — The gun lands in the swamp.

d — The gun lands in the river.

or everybody’s favorite:

e — All of the above! The gun lands upside down in a tree in the swamp and then falls into the river!

This assumes that everything is going perfectly. If something goes wrong, you get:

f — The chutes rip to shreds and the gun plummets to earth at terminal velocity and crashes into the General’s brand new Cadillac!

I’ve never actually seen Option F, but I’ve heard about it! The result is known as Satan’s Lawn Darts!

Amazingly enough, on our drop we actually had Option G, which was everything worked properly. When Captain Harris marveled at this, I just reminded him that God was saving up something more creative for us, like all four engines on the Herky Bird would fall off during takeoff, or the Air Force would forget to put a full load of fuel into it, or something even more enjoyable. Still we survived and got good marks doing so.

In January I discovered just how good that deployment was. Lieutenant Brimley was promoted up and out of his exec’s slot and sent off to the 321^st as a captain in a battery commander’s slot. I was being promoted to First Lieutenant and taking over the exec’s slot. This was a real surprise to me, since normally it takes at least 2 to 2½ years before you can be promoted to first lieutenant, and I had only been in for a 1½ years. On the other hand, there is something called a 5 % list, where a small percentage of officers are promoted earlier than usual; maybe I was on a list somewhere. I was sure I would end up paying for it somehow. I wondered about any future promotions for myself. I was under an obligation of four years as part of my ROTC contract, which left me with a around 2½ years to go. That’s normally the minimum length of time required at a first lieutenant’s rank before even being considered for promotion to captain. My understanding was that they often waved that promotion under your nose as an inducement to stick around beyond your obligation. If I didn’t stay in, I had another two years of inactive reserve obligation, but that was nothing. Short of total war, I would be out.

In any case, I was the new exec. Captain Harris told our other second johns what was going on, and we divvied up their responsibilities. (Goldstein was long gone by then, with an OER that had him watching an ammo dump in Greenland.) We had a nice little ceremony that Marilyn came to, where I got my silver bars, and I settled into Lieutenant Brimley’s old office. Almost immediately I began to ‘enjoy’ one of the responsibilities of the exec’s position. The captain is the commanding officer, the ‘Old Man’, the nice guy; the exec is the ‘Hammer’ and the designated prick. As a general rule, Captain Harris let the exec handle the Article 15s, the non-judicial punishments, when the troops got stupid. He just signed off on whatever his XO decided (technically only the CO can administer Article 15s.) Now that was me.

Most of the time, the troops were good kids, but the fact was that a lot of them were teenagers away from home for the first time. By the time they made non-com, they usually had matured they weren’t a problem, but it wasn’t unusual to have the MPs haul some kid in who got drunk and mouthy, or who took a piss on the mayor’s lawn, or something equally stupid. If they were lucky, one of the non-coms would grab them before they got into trouble, but occasionally I would hammer them with restrictions, loss of pay, extra duty, or even take a stripe from their sleeve, and reduce them in rank. I didn’t have to do it often, but it was necessary, and if I was a hard case, I didn’t care. This was still better than giving them a court martial, which would end their career, even if they beat it.

Marilyn decided to enroll in January at Fayetteville State, and that seemed to go well. We had another support cycle in March, by which time I had built up some more leave, so she skipped school for a week and we took the Hawaiian vacation that Big Bob and Harriet had given us. We went to Oahu, which was very nice. I made sure to pack a good uniform, and we drove out to the Punchbowl and to Pearl Harbor to see the Arizona, where I paid my respects. The rest of the time we just goofed off and screwed around.

Suzie visited us during the summer of ’79. She had turned 18 and conned my mother into loaning her the car for a week, and she drove down to see us. She told her mother that she was going to the shore with Louise; Louise went to the shore, but with her own family. She and Marilyn had a grand and glorious time. One day I took off and drove her and Marilyn over to one of the small civilian airstrips dotting the area. I had already signed her up, without her knowing it, for a tandem skydive. I had gotten my civilian free fall qualification over the last couple of years. It isn’t all that difficult — jump out of the plane, and we guarantee you’ll hit the ground somewhere!

Now, armed with a couple of disposable cameras, I introduced Suzie to the jump instructor. She was fascinated by it all. Marilyn didn’t mind watching, but wanted nothing to do with going up in a plane and coming down in a silk landing. She took some photos of us on the ground, and climbing on the airplane. Suzie went through the pre-flight and training, and then got on the little Twin Otter. She was hooked up to the instructor, and then I gave her one of the cameras on a lanyard around her wrist. I had the other, and we took a couple shots of each other. Then it was out the door, and I took some more shots of her. She was having way too much fun to take any more photos until we got to the ground.

The base had a family day that weekend, and I brought Marilyn and Suzie out to the base. That was pretty funny. First I had them change into fatigues (which fit them like tents, even in the smallest size) and helmets, which made them look like a pair of green mushrooms. Then I put them on the bus to ride over to one of the firing points and watch us shoot one of the 105s. I even got a few shots of Marilyn and Suzie loading a shell into a howitzer and firing it off, with Suzie ‘pulling the tail’, or lanyard. Next, we loaded them back on the bus and drove them off to the Sicily Drop Zone, while I went off and made a Hollywood jump. Since all the chutes have to be repacked every 90 days, regardless of whether they were used or not, these kind of jumps are useful to recycle the chutes, and I could build jumps towards getting my master jump wings. Afterwards I let them change back into their regular clothes and we had dinner at the O Club.

Also that summer, Marilyn and I took a long weekend trip back to Utica. Mark and Lauren were getting married, and we needed to attend. With 13 kids, there was always somebody getting married, or confirmed, or something. On my first trip through it got to the point where we had made a joke about it. I didn’t wear a suit at work, so I needed just one dark charcoal suit; we were good for one wedding, one burial, one confirmation, and one baptism a year, at least.

Captain Harris arranged for another second lieutenant to join our happy band, along with our other two second lieutenants, Fletcher and Kuzinski. My replacement as second lieutenant truly tested my yearning for command. There’s a story that Napoleon was considering promoting an officer to a general’s rank. The other generals were all telling him how brave the officer was, how smart he was, how good he was, and so forth. Finally, Napoleon simply said, ‘Yes, yes, I understand all that. But tell me, is he lucky?’ Second Lieutenant Louis Westerfield was not lucky.

‘Lucky Lou’, as he came to be called, showed up about two weeks later than originally promised. This was explained by the cast on his right foot and the crutches he was hobbling around on. The cast was the result of dropping a 155mm shell on his foot during the last week of training at Fort Sill. Since a 155 shell weighs over 90 pounds, he broke his foot. Okay, shit happens, and I’ve done some stupid stuff myself. I introduced him to the battery and showed him his desk, my old desk.

Two weeks after his foot was healed, Lucky broke his left pinky finger when he closed a car door on it. I had to give him credit, since he didn’t let that slow him down. The following month he sprained his left ankle during a jump. Six weeks later he dislocated a shoulder. After that he cracked a rib. Then he sprained his right ankle. Lucky spent more time in the hospital than he did in the battery!

After a year of this, in the summer of 1980 Lucky’s military career came to a spectacular finish. Just as he jumped, a sudden pocket of turbulence hit the Chinook and tangled his main chute. Lucky managed to cut away from his main chute and deploy his reserve and save his life, but he landed at a much higher than optimum speed. He basically shattered every bone in his left leg, from his thigh bone down to all five toes, and everything in between. He was like an orthopedic surgeon’s wet dream! Lucky was medicalled out of the Army.

And so went 1979 and 1980, mostly. The cycle turned, as did the seasons, and the battery improved from the slump it had been in when I first reported in. Captain Harris happily dumped more and more responsibility on me, and as they say, ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!’ We deployed to other bases for training occasionally, but otherwise we stayed stateside and didn’t invade anybody other than Orangeland.

Also, when possible, Marilyn and I visited her family at Christmas and in the summer, for various weddings and such. Sometimes I would simply send her up, if her school schedule allowed but mine didn’t. We were able to see our friends on occasion. Harlan and Tusker couldn’t visit, but we did make a quick trip up for a long weekend and dragged them over to the shore for a few days in Ocean City. Likewise, in ’79 we went down to Fort Hood and stayed with Harlan and Anna Lee, and the following year they returned the favor.

That proved to be a big event in 1980. Somehow, Harlan convinced his superiors that it was necessary for his professional development to learn about the Airborne. This isn’t all that big a deal. I would say that the majority of officers, even armored and artillery officers, end up going through jump school. It’s one of those items on the things-to-do checklist. What stood out was that afterwards, he was to do a 30 day TDY at Bragg to learn about airborne operations. When Marilyn learned about this, she got on the phone with Anna Lee and worked out the details. Harlan would stay with us, bank his meals and incidentals allowance, and Anna Lee would come out and stay when she could. Neither Harlan nor I were given any say in this, so I wasn’t allowed to take him out to the strip clubs like I threatened.

Chapter 54: Plans and Changes

Lieutenants don’t run batteries, just like lieutenants don’t run companies. Captains do those things. Or at least in peacetime, they do. Things change rapidly when the bullets start flying. If you survive, you can get promoted quickly. During the Napoleonic Wars, the British officer corps had a ghastly toast when drinking, ‘Here’s to bloody wars and sickly seasons!’, since combat and disease were the two guaranteed methods for openings in the chain of command above you! During World War II you had very young and junior officers running things, with second lieutenants running companies and captains running battalions. If you had talent, and didn’t fuck up or get killed, you could move up the ladder. The rank would catch up eventually. In fact, our brigade commander had graduated from West Point in 1964 on the eve of the big buildup in Vietnam, and had been promoted to first lieutenant after a year, captain after one more year, and to major after just two years as a captain.

War is planned by old guys and executed by young guys. It’s one of the ugly truths about the military.

In peacetime, things moved a lot slower. After the war was over, a lot of those quickie captains ended up waiting up to eight years to make up their time in grade. I had been a first lieutenant for about a couple of years by now. Realistically I wouldn’t expect to be promoted to captain for at least another year. It was probable that I would end my four year commitment as a first lieutenant executive officer of an artillery battery.

Things didn’t quite work out that way. In 1979, shortly after I became the exec, Captain Harris transferred to Fort Rucker for flight training! I have no idea where he had gotten the desire to fly choppers. In my heart of hearts I hoped he would be happier there than he had been at Bragg. Maybe he’d do better there. By Halloween we had a new commanding officer, Captain Waslow. We continued to improve in our rankings, but Captain Waslow resigned his commission in January 1980 and left the service to find a job in the private sector. His replacement, Captain Ozawa, had a lot of promise, but ended up in a very nasty divorce and left us in April.

Not only was the battery going through a lot of upheaval with the quick changes, but I was getting a lot of unrated time, since neither Captain Waslow nor Captain Ozawa were around long enough to qualify as my rater. You needed at least 60 days working for a new boss for him to rate you, and neither ended up doing the paperwork. Since I rated the other lieutenants and the battery commanders were the senior raters, it was only me that was affected.

I think at that point the battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Buller, simply decided to leave well enough alone. Bravo Battery had become, by any measure, the best battery in the division. We had fewer problems in our drops and landings, set up faster, fired faster, and were more accurate. We had a higher reenlistment rate and fewer problems with the civilian cops. We even had a lower incidence of social disease. This was not to say that the other two batteries were fuckups, far from it. We were simply the best battalion in the DivArty, and we were the best battery in the battalion. Buller simply left me in charge, as an exec without a commander, and gave me another second lieutenant to fill in. Buller would rate me.

Marilyn was happy for me, but didn’t really understand. There is simply something about a line command, having the authority, and the responsibility, that you just don’t get in staff positions. The closest I could remember was when I was a sales manager for Lefleur Homes, and bossed my own sales lot. This was even bigger and better. It’s not for everyone. My father only wanted a staff job; even when he had engineers reporting to him, he stayed away from line positions. He never understood my hankering for line jobs. He had a saying, “Management would be great, if it wasn’t for the people!”

In early January 1981 I was called over to battalion. Now that I was effectively in charge of the battery, this wasn’t an unusual occurrence. Once in the battalion office, one of the sergeants knocked on the commander’s door. At a shout of ‘Enter!’, I was ushered inside. Lieutenant Colonel Buller wasn’t too starchy, but I noticed another officer, another light bird in there with him, so I marched up to his desk and came to attention, and then saluted.

The colonel returned the salute and said, “At ease, Doc. Have a seat.”

“Yes, sir.” I sat down and looked over at the other lieutenant colonel. He had most of the same fruit salad that Lieutenant Colonel Buller had — some ribbons from Viet Nam, a Bronze Star, similar qualifications — but there were differences, too. He was Signal Corps, for one thing, was a straight leg (not jump trained), and had shoulder insignia indicating he worked in the Military District of Washington. He was from the Pentagon, in other words.

“This is Colonel Halliwell.”

“Sir.” I stuck out my hand and Colonel Halliwell shook it. I turned back to the battalion commander and gave him a curious look.

“Doc, what are your plans for the future? What was your commitment to the Army?” he asked.

I blinked at that. Whatever I had been expecting, this wasn’t it. “Four years, sir. I guess I haven’t thought about it. It will be four years this summer.”

“Were you planning on staying in after that?”

I opened my mouth, and then shut it again. After a few more seconds, I answered, “I just haven’t given it any thought, sir. I’ve enjoyed my time here, but I’ll have to talk it over with Marilyn. I just haven’t thought about it.” I gave him an embarrassed shrug. We should have talked about it before, but we just never got around to it.

Colonel Buller looked over at Colonel Halliwell, who swung around in his chair towards me. “Lieutenant, when your four years is up, you’ll have done four years with Battery B. Let me ask you a question. Is there anything in an Airborne battery you don’t already know how to do by now?”

I glanced over at Colonel Buller, but then said, “Honestly? No.”

Colonel Halliwell nodded. “Correct answer. You’ll have had the battery as an exec and de facto commander for three years by then. The Army is not going to leave you here to make major or colonel in the 319^th. It’s time for you to move on.”

Colonel Buller added, “Colonel Halliwell is right. Oh, don’t get me wrong. If we end up dropping into the Fulda Gap or some damn place, I’d want you here. You could probably handle the battalion without a problem. So could your counterparts, too. But since that probably isn’t going to happen, what are your plans for the future? Were you planning on making this a career?”

I was silent, and I could feel the eyes boring in on me. I shook my head. “I just haven’t thought that much about it. I like it, the Army I mean, and I think I could do it. I have to talk to Marilyn about it.” Colonel Halliwell gave me a curious look at that. “Sir, Marilyn knew I was going to be in for four years when we met, and when we married, but she didn’t sign up for a career. I have to talk to her about it.”

“Fair enough. Interested in hearing about why I came down from the Pentagon to talk to you?” he asked.

“Yes, sir, actually I would. No disrespect, sir, but what’s a Pentagon light bird doing coming down here and talking to a two-bit artillery lieutenant? There must be a hundred of us here on the base.”

Colonel Buller snorted and seemed to be suppressing a laugh. Colonel Halliwell simply smiled. “Probably. Here’s a few more questions for you. How many of those two-bit artillery lieutenants have doctorates in applied mathematics? — Yes, I know what the nickname is for — How many of them made battery commander in under four years? How many have had an unblemished series of OERs marked ‘Outstanding, Recommended for Promotion and early attendance at CGS’? Answer me those questions, will you. You know that answer.”

I hadn’t really given it any thought. My biggest concern at times was simply blending in, but it looked like I hadn’t been that successful. “I guess I never gave my career much thought, sir. I just wanted to do the best I could.”

“Why is that, Carl?” asked my commander. “Half of those other lieutenants don’t think of anything but their careers! Why don’t you?”

I looked at Lieutenant Colonel Buller. “It’s hard to say, sir. It’s just that… sir, you get out of life what you put into it. If I put a hundred percent into something, I generally get that and more back. I’ve tried to do that here. If it wasn’t working, somebody would have let me know, of that I’m sure.”

“Well, it’s time for you to give it some thought. Colonel Halliwell came down here to speak to you about that, so give it some thought.”

I turned back to Lieutenant Colonel Halliwell. “Sir?”

“There’s a job at Fort Sill, in what we call ‘The Board’, but which is more accurately named the Fire Support Test Directorate. It’s not precisely a lab job, but it works with the labs, which is where your PhD comes in handy. They do live fire testing of the various rounds they develop. You’d be working with different batteries assigned to III Corps Artillery — 105s, 155s, some 8 inchers, even a recoilless rifle or two — testing new rounds and explosives. For that we need somebody with active experience. Since we don’t have any captains with combat experience at the moment, we looked for top end men in the ready divisions, like the 82^nd. Your name is at the top of that list.”

“Huh! I’ll be honest, that’s sort of what I thought I’d be doing when I graduated. I figured I’d be in a lab somewhere. The ways of the Army are mighty and mysterious, I guess.”

“I think it was your jump training that landed you here instead,” he commented. “The timing probably worked out to be here instead of there.”

“I thought they did that sort of thing at Aberdeen,” I commented.

“They do, but not much. Most live fire testing goes on at either Sill or the Yuma Proving Grounds. It will involve some travel back and forth to both places, not much, but some. Figure once a month, maybe a bit more.” I nodded in understanding. He continued, “You know, the Army has been watching you for years now.”

“The Army has been watching me?” I asked, incredulous. Leaving aside the math doctorate, I was really just one more Airborne artillery lieutenant.

“Very much so. Remember that article in the Paraglide, back when you were still a green second john?” This confused me, but I nodded that I remembered it. “The PIO captain wanted to run a larger version in the Army Times. Did he ever tell you that?”

“Yes, sir, but it never ran. I figured it wasn’t newsworthy or something. I haven’t thought about that for years,” I told him.

Again, Colonel Buller snorted and rolled his eyes. Colonel Halliwell continued, “He submitted the article, but G-2 killed it. What you told him about, the use of computers in the Army of the future, and coming developments in weapons and training, that was so accurate that it was buried and classified. You were spot on with what the weapons and development labs are working on, and we want you to be part of it.”

“Wow! When would this happen?”

“This fall. I think you’ll be available to transfer in September or October.”

Colonel Buller said, “When you leave here you’ll be promoted to captain. This is a two year slot, after which you’ll be transferred out. The last guy who did it went to CGS. The current guy is going to do a tour as an instructor at West Point when he finishes up. I think you’ll do well at CGS when your tour is up.”

The Command and General Staff College was the Army’s grad school. It was a very prestigious one year course at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and its graduates ended up in senior staff positions. Battalion or regimental commands went to officers who had been to CGS; it was a requirement. I could even earn another master’s degree in something national security related. “Can captains go to CGS, sir?” I asked.

He smiled as he answered. “Senior captains, certainly. Junior captains like you would be, that would be unusual. Even more unusual would be making major by the time you got out of CGS that way.”

I blinked and sat back and stared at the two men. A two year R&D tour and I make major at the age of 28! Even more, I would probably enjoy the hell out of both the R&D tour and CGS. If I was thinking of going career, this was a no-brainer! I could retire after twenty as a full bull colonel!

After a few seconds, I said, “Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting this. Sir, I need to discuss this with my wife. If it was just up to me, I’d probably take you up on it, but it’s like I told you before. Marilyn knew she was getting in for four years, but I never talked to her about going career.”

“When can I have an answer?”

“This time tomorrow, sir.”

He handed me a card with a Washington prefix on the phone number. “Let the colonel know, and then call me either way.”

“Yes, sir.” I stood up. It was obvious I was being dismissed. “Sir, one thing. No matter what Marilyn says, thank you for considering me. It’s an honor. If I say yes, I won’t let you down.” I shook his hand and then came to attention and left.

I couldn’t concentrate that day. My mind was simply whirling with the possibilities. I had to get out of the office, and I went home early. The apartment was empty when I got home. It was about 1630, so I had about an hour before Marilyn got home. She had a late class today, and there had been a practicum in the morning, some sort of student teaching thing.

I changed into some old khakis and a Hawaiian shirt, and then went into the kitchen. Marilyn had left some pork chops thawing on the counter in their wrapper, so they were thawed out. If I left it up to her, we’d be doing something exotic like Shake-N-Bake and canned peas. I could do better.

I started scrounging up the ingredients, and smiled to myself remembering the first time Marilyn tried to make pork chops. It was about a month after the wedding, and Marilyn decided to cook dinner for me, and have it ready to serve when I got home. I drove into the apartment complex and found a fire engine and an Emergency Services truck parked in front of the apartment, lights flashing, with people outside milling around, and black smoke billowing from our apartment! Marilyn was standing outside looking very confused. I jumped out and ran over to her, to wrap an arm around her. “What happened?!” I asked.

Just then, one of the firemen came running out of the apartment, carrying a blackened pan, and he ran up to one of the EMTs. He loudly asked if they wanted to pronounce the victim dead on the scene, or if they needed to transport it to the hospital for an expert opinion. While the firemen laughed and the neighbors started heading home, I just buried my face in my hands and listened as my wife cried and tried to explain what had happened. She had put the chops into the oven and then fallen asleep, and was only woken up by the smoke detector.

Eventually I just gave the firemen and the EMTs my business card and told them to make sure I was on their mailing list the next time they were looking for donations. Then I took Marilyn back inside and we aired out the place and ordered a pizza.

That was even better than the time Marilyn set fire to the chemistry lab over at MVCC with a Bunsen burner. Marilyn has an awesome and unnatural ability in either a lab or a kitchen. For her, they are both places involving great danger and toxic substances.

There was the time she used hazelnut creamer to make scrambled eggs with (hey, it’s white, right?), the time she heated up the chili and served it over spaghetti (both are red, never mind those bean thingies), the pasta she decided didn’t really need to be stirred all that much and emerged from the hot water as a single giant lump, and so on. The list was endless! The only thing she ever really knew how to cook was Michigan Sauce, a sort of meat sauce popular in upstate New York on hot dogs and hamburgers, and very, very tasty. She could also bake pastries and breads just fine. Otherwise, you took your life in your hands with her cooking.

So today I split the pork chops in two by cutting a long and deep pocket in the sides. Then I diced up a little onion and celery and mixed it into some bread crumbs and made a stuffing, which I packed into the pockets. I took some gravy mix and doctored it up with some broth and diced mushrooms, and set that on the stove. I grabbed some broccoli and pulled out the eggs to make a Hollandaise sauce. Finally, I grabbed a tin of rolls and put them on a baking tray.

Marilyn came home as I was starting to prepare the broccoli. “You’re home early,” she commented, adding a hello kiss in the bargain.

“Worried I might find you getting into trouble?” I said with a smile.

“I’m not the one in this place likely to get in trouble! What’s for dinner?”

“Stuffed pork chops with mushroom gravy, broccoli with Hollandaise sauce, and hot biscuits and butter,” I announced proudly. “And if you’re especially nice to me, some chardonnay.”

“What do you mean by nice?” she asked. I simply waggled my eyebrows, and Marilyn laughed. “No, no, no! That’s only for the sake of procreation!”

“Are you trying to tell me your parents only did it thirteen times?”

“Exactly!”

“Well that explains it. Maybe if they had practiced a little more, they would have gotten some better results,” I remarked.

Marilyn gave me a raspberry and then said she was going to go change.

I turned on the oven to preheat and went back to cutting the head of broccoli apart. Timing is everything in cooking. Proper ingredients, too. Marilyn didn’t understand either concept. She was of the ‘just as good’ school of culinary delights. Ever read in a cookbook those emergency substitutions? If you don’t have butter you can use margarine, it’s just as good. If you don’t have cream you can use milk, it’s just as good. Well, if you do that a half dozen times in a meal, it’s just as good as cardboard!

Marilyn didn’t immediately return to the kitchen, so I figured she was taking a quick shower. With luck, she would return before dinner was ready, but not early enough to want to help.

I put the pork chops in the oven and started up a double boiler to steam the veggies in. Everything was under control by the time my wife returned. She must have decided some practice was in order, since she had changed into a very short button front denim skirt and had a sleeveless blouse on, but only tied together and not buttoned. She was barefoot, and looked very young and small.

I smiled at her. “I like the outfit.”

Marilyn grinned back. “I figured you might.”

I nodded and smiled. “I like how you wear the shirt.”

“Men! That’s all you ever think about!”

I moved over to her and backed her up against the kitchen table. I slipped my hands inside her open shirt and fondled her tits. “I was a bottle baby. I have issues!”

Marilyn moaned happily for a moment, and then pushed me away. “Issues!” She shrugged her shirt closed, but smiled at me.

I went back to cooking. “A businessman was hiring a secretary, and he had three choices. The first woman was a fantastic typist; she could type over a hundred words a minute! The second was incredibly organized, and could make a filing system sit up and beg. The third one was brilliant on the telephone and could talk anybody into anything. So, who did he hire?” I asked.

“Who?”

“The one with the big tits!”

Marilyn shrieked at that and threw a wet dishtowel at me. “You’re an awful person. I should never have married you!” Then she laughed and said, “I talked to your sister today. I bet she would agree with me.”

“Probably,” I nodded. “What’s the news from Lutherville?”

Marilyn told me as I opened the bottle of wine. Following the debacle with the wedding present, my mother had cut all ties with us. Only Suzie stayed in touch, and only when she was alone or off at college. She had even told us that in a bizarre touch, Mom had removed my pictures from the ‘Wall of Heroes’ and elsewhere in the house. It reminded me of the ancient Egyptian custom where a disgraced individual would have their name removed from everything public, although that’s a whole lot harder when the name is chiseled in stone! On the other hand, with Hamilton’s diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, it might make sense. If reminders of me set him off, removing those reminders might keep him under control. I wasn’t sure what to think of that.

We talked some more about Suzie’s nursing school experiences. Eventually all the timers went off and I served up the pork chops and the rolls and the broccoli. It only took me another few minutes to whip up the Hollandaise sauce, and then we sat down at the kitchen table together to eat.

“I was called over to battalion today. I got a job offer,” I said.

Marilyn looked over at me in confusion. “A job offer? But you already have a job in the Army?”

I nodded. “I was offered a new assignment. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Have you thought about this summer? My commitment was for four years, and that ends this summer.”

“And this new assignment would go past that?” she asked.

I nodded again. “It would be a different post, a different job, everything. I’d leave the division.” I told her about the assignment that had been offered to me at Fort Sill, and what would happen after that, at CGS.

“And you want to do this?” she asked.

“Yes, but not if you don’t want me to. I told both of the colonels that you knew I was going into the Army for four years, but you hadn’t signed on for a career, and I needed to talk to you about it.”

“Don’t make this all about me!” she said warningly.

“I’m not, but I do want your opinion. What do you think?”

“I don’t know. Where’s this place, Fort Sims…”

“Sill,” I corrected her.

“Sill. That’s where you went to artillery school, right?”

“Right.” Marilyn was chewing, but she nodded and I went on. “It’s fairly quiet. Without the base the place would probably dry up and blow away. Lawton’s bigger than Utica, but it seemed quieter.”

“And after that? You said we’d move to Kansas?”

“Fort Leavenworth. It’s right outside of Kansas City. If I do well at Sill, and I know I can hack that in my sleep, I go to the Command and General Staff school at Leavenworth. After that I make major.”

“Fort Leavenworth? Isn’t that where they have that prison?”

“Yeah, but I wouldn’t be there. The Army has their grad school there. I’ve never been there, but it’s supposed to be very nice.”

“Where would we live?”

I smiled at her and put down my fork and knife. “I’ll make you a promise. Whether we stay in or get out, after here, we’ll buy a house. Would you like that?”

Marilyn’s eyes lit up at the idea. She eagerly nodded. “Will we be able to afford a house?”

Marilyn if you only knew! I was worth a small fortune at that point. I had started 1979 with roughly $3.5 million in my brokerage accounts. Over the course of the spring I had invested it in silver, at an average price of around $7 per ounce. By the summer and the fall, the Hunt brothers in Texas tried to corner the market in silver. The price went to $50 per ounce before collapsing. The Hunts were bankrupted, and ended up going to convicted of market manipulation. I was a whole lot smarter and a lot less greedy. I rode it up and I rode it down, and now I was now worth about $34 million.

“We can afford it,” I assured her.

“Would you still be in the cycle?” she asked warily.

“No cycle. It will pretty much be nine to five, Monday to Friday. I’ll probably have to do some traveling, but nothing major.”

Marilyn let out a sigh of relief. The cycle could be very wearing on the wives. “Well, if you want to, I’m game. We can give it a few more years, right?”

I smiled at her and gave a sigh of relief, too. The idea of another promotion and advancement made me eager. I could leave the Army and live very well, but this was something I had earned all on my own, without any knowledge of the future. I had done this all on my own, and I found it very satisfying. I nodded, and said, “Thank you.”

“I don’t know why you like the Army so much, and I probably never will, but I want you to be happy,” she said, reaching across to me and taking my hand.

I leaned over and kissed her. “As long as you’re happy, I’m happy.”

I stood up from the table and set the dishes on the counter and in the sink. Marilyn helped, and then I grabbed the bottle of wine and my glass, and led her back to the living room. I sat down on the couch, and we started watching television, but not much was happening in the news, and not much seemed to be coming on later. To be fair about it, with Marilyn laying her head in my lap, and stretched out on the couch, she was practically laying naked there. Her tits were showing through the opening in her blouse, and her skirt had slid up around her waist. A nuclear alert on the television probably wasn’t going to make me concentrate on something else!

Once the bottle of chardonnay was empty, I got up off the couch, and took our empty glasses out to the kitchen. I refilled them from a wine box and came back out. “Let’s watch television in here?” I told Marilyn, nodding my head towards the bedroom.

She wagged her finger at me. “I know what kind of television you want to watch!”

I just gave her my most pious and innocent look. I went into the bedroom and set our glasses on the nightstand, and then turned on the small television we had on the dresser at the end of the bed. Then I went back to the dresser and pulled the drawer open, and pulled out a videotape.

The video cassette recorder was one of the biggest innovations in the pornography business since the original invention of sex. It dragged sex movies out of the sleazy downtown theaters it had been relegated to and brought them into people’s bedrooms. Suddenly what had been something that only men watched, alone and in the dark, became something to be shared with wives and girlfriends. I can remember back at Kegs, during the mid-Seventies, when VCRs were still very expensive, whenever the frat would have a smoker and show dirty movies, they would be actual movies. We had a Super 8 projector, and would buy movies from Cinema Arts (known to us as Skinema Arts) down in Troy.

The effect on the videotape business was astounding! By many accounts, by the late Seventies and early Eighties, porn videos, usually sold or rented from back rooms of Mom-and-Pop video stores, accounted for a huge percentage of the sales of the entire video industry, and the majority of the profits!

The VCR also had a democratizing effect on porn. Now, in combination with the new technology of video cameras, you could even make your own porn! Suddenly, all across America, adventurous couples were filming themselves getting nasty. No matter how prudish the local environment, or how stringent the local laws, the genie could not be put back in the bottle. As the saying went, ‘It’s a billion dollar a year business, but it’s not 10 guys spending $100 million each!’

Marilyn came in and saw me, and gave me a smile, and then went into the bathroom. I hit the rewind button and propped some pillows up at the head of the bed, and grabbed the remote control. I had sprung for the ‘fancy’ VCR! I settled back on the bed as the tape finished rewinding and then hit the play button. Marilyn came out of the bathroom as the credits began rolling. She crawled up on the bed next to me and lay back against the propped up pillows, and I handed her a wine glass. She sipped from it and then snuggled up against me.

Deep Throat was an amazing movie for the time. Extremely explicit, it showed oral sex, vaginal sex, and even a scene or two with anal sex, virtually unheard of at the time. As the movie started, I set my wine glass on my nightstand and put an arm around my wife’s shoulders. She drank some wine and then set it down, and cuddled up against me.

As the movie progressed, I quickly had a hand inside her open shirt, toying with her tits, as Marilyn squirmed around and got into position to return the favor. She unbuttoned my shirt and pulled it open, but then continued south, to undo my pants and lower my zipper. I had been hoping for some after dinner action, and had left my briefs in the hamper. She murmured happily and began gently stroking my cock. By the time the orgy scene had arrived, Marilyn had pulled my shirt and pants off, and I had stripped her naked, and she was laying with her head on my stomach, watching the movie as she softly sucked my cockhead.

I wanted more, tonight, lots more! I laid my hands on her head and bare back, keeping her in place, and began to hump my hips upwards, fucking my cock into her mouth. “Just like that,” I whispered to her. “Suck me off and make me come!” Marilyn didn’t respond, but her actions were response enough. She began jacking my shaft and suctioning my cock head. I groaned happily and kept her head in my lap, and five minutes later, I was filling her mouth with my jism.

We took a small breather at that point, sitting upright and drinking some more wine, but then we were back laying on the bed together and touching each other. We didn’t actually start fucking again until towards the end, during the threesome scene with Linda Lovelace, Harry Reems, and Carol Connors. At that point I shifted over on the bed, and Marilyn got on top in a reverse cowgirl position, so we could keep watching as we fucked.

Afterwards, Marilyn snuggled next to me naked on the bed, while I hit the remote and rewound the film. “Was that the kind of practice you were talking about earlier?”

“Absolutely! In fact, if we got a video camera, we could tape ourselves and improve our performance,” I teased.

Marilyn stiffened at the thought and looked at me suspiciously. “No way! No how! Never!”

“But honey, all the football teams tape their games to learn from. Think of it as taping our game!” I continued.

She twisted around to look at me, and saw the mocking expression on my face. That got me a punch in the ribs. “You can tape your own game! Leave me out of it!” I just laughed at the idea.

I got Marilyn another glass of wine, as she went into the bathroom and cleaned up. She came out wearing a tiny little silk robe I had bought her, and I pulled on my pants and we went out to the living room. It was still relatively early. I continued to top off her glass while I recovered my strength. After a bit, Marilyn saw through my ploy.

She drained her wine glass. “Are you trying to get me drunk?” she asked, smiling at me.

I poured from my glass into hers. “Honey, why would I do a thing like that?” I went into the kitchen and refilled my glass. Marilyn followed and I filled hers as well.

“You probably want me to do something naughty. Or you want to do something naughty.” Her eyes were twinkling as she said this, and she was grinning.

“Marilyn! How can you say that? What sort of naughty things could you imagine me doing?”

“You’ll probably want to have sex again! Probably more than once!”

I gave her an innocent shrug. “Is that such a bad thing?”

She came closer and rubbed herself against me. “Over and over! You’ll probably want to fuck me all night long!” Marilyn must have really gotten drunk! She never talked like that normally, but liquor had been known to bring her horniness to the surface. “You’ll probably want me to do things to you!”

“Like what?” I probed.

“Sex things! Things good girls don’t do!”

I refilled her glass some more. She was still drinking from it as we stood in the kitchen. “Maybe you’re not a good girl. Maybe you’re actually a bad girl. Maybe you want to do things that bad girls do! What do bad girls do?”

“They suck cocks!” Marilyn started groping me through my pants.

Well, I certainly didn’t have anything against that idea, but I started getting an even more wicked idea. “Well, then, come with me. I want to learn more about this.” I took my wife’s hand and led her out of the kitchen and back into the bedroom.

Once in the bedroom, I positioned her facing the mirror over the dresser, and stood behind her. Reaching around her from behind, I undid the tie holding the belt around her robe, and pulled it loose. In fact, I pulled it completely off her robe, slipping it from the loops on the robe. Then I peeled the robe from her shoulders and let it slip to the floor. “If you’re going to be a bad girl, I’m going to have to treat you as a bad girl,” I whispered into her ear. As I looked at her reflection, her nipples were clearly erect, and she gave a small whimper and shuddered in my arms. I pulled her arms behind her and then gently used the silk tie to her robe to bind her hands loosely behind her. It wasn’t tight, but it was secure, and Marilyn wasn’t going to be able to resist me.

“What? What are you going to do?” she whispered.

“Treat you like a bad girl!” I answered. I pulled her over and pushed her backwards onto the bed.

Marilyn was almost steaming with desire. Her pussy smelled like her hormones were on overload. She squirmed around on the bed and splayed her legs wide apart. “Fuck me! Please, fuck me!” she pleaded.

“No.”

Marilyn gave a quiet shriek of frustration and continued to beg. On the other hand, I had a more elaborate plan in mind. I opened the drawer to the nightstand and pulled out all the various toys I had bought her over the years. There was a regular 6" hard plastic vibrator, a much larger 9" soft model, and a small and thin vibrator that we occasionally used on her rear. I also pulled out the tube of KY I had picked up. Marilyn stared at everything wide eyed.

I turned on the mid-sized vibrator and lightly touched her nipples, first one and then the other. She gasped and arched her back, as the first orgasm swept through her. Then I pulled it away, and she begged me not to stop. I squirted a little KY on the tip and began rubbing it over her pussy, and that just drove her wild. Marilyn was thrashing around on the bed, orgasming like crazy, and begging me to stop and fuck her. “Not yet.” I told her.

She was quite distraught when I pulled the 6" vibrator from her cunt but then she noticed me with the larger model. I squirted some more KY on that and slid that inside before turning it on. Marilyn began crying out at that, and humping her pussy up at me, trying to drive it further inside. Then I turned it off. “You’re being mean!” she protested. I left it in place and stripped my own clothing off. I knelt at her head and fed her my cock, which she gobbled happily. Then, while she was sucking me, I leaned over and flipped the switch back on.

Marilyn went into overdrive again, and this time was moaning and trying to swallow me whole. I continued to torment her by turning the vibrator on and off. I wasn’t planning on coming in her mouth, though. After a few minutes of warm up, I pulled back and then rolled Marilyn onto her stomach. “Please, fuck me!” she begged.

I slipped the big vibrator back into place, and turned it on. Marilyn moaned, and then moaned even more when I dribbled a little KY in the crack of her ass, and slipped the thin little vibrator there. I let her get used to it, and then I slipped it inside. Marilyn began humping the bed, and I knelt there using both probes on her. After a few minutes, I slid the thin vibrator from her, and slowly and gently replaced it with the medium sized model.

This was the first time we had tried this, and Marilyn’s eyes opened wide as she felt her ass being expanded. Then they closed again with a blissful look, as I used it to ream her out. Now it was my turn. I straddled her thighs and squirted some KY on my hard cock and lubed it up, getting it greasy and slick. Then I turned off the vibrator in her ass, pulled it out, and very, very slowly pushed my cockhead inside her. Marilyn made a proforma protest, but didn’t have a screaming fit. Her fingers seemed to coax me even deeper, tied as her hands were behind her and between us.

“This is what happens to naughty girls who drink too much.” I whispered, leaning over and laying on her back. Below us the giant 9" vibrator continued its work inside her, and I could feel the vibrations inside her pussy. “You’re a slut,” I whispered, “an ass-slut. You like this, don’t you?” I began to slowly pump my cock into her, in and out of her no longer virgin tail. “Tell me!” I demanded.

“Yes, yes, I like it,” she admitted.

“Tell me to fuck your ass!” I ordered her.

Marilyn was going crazy underneath me. This was the hottest sex we had had in years! “Fuck my ass! Fuck my ass!” she pleaded.

I began to hammer her ass even harder. It felt very tight and very hot. She hadn’t had an enema earlier, and I didn’t want to look down between us and see what was happening, but I just kept pounding my cock into her ass, telling her how much I liked it, while she kept begging me to continue.

“I’m going to keep fucking your ass in the future. From now on, I’m going to fuck your little asshole. I like it!” Marilyn whimpered and thrashed, coming non-stop. “Take it, ass-slut, take it!” I slammed into her and unloaded, filling her rear with a heavy load. I collapsed on her back, only my hips moving as I pumped into her.

Once I was done, I began to kiss her shoulders. It was time to get back to normal. I knelt and undid the ties on her wrists, and then lay back down on her back. I continued to kiss her as she pulled her arms around and massaged her wrists. “That was so amazing. I love you so much!” Over and over I told her how much I loved her and wanted to be with her. Then I pulled her to her feet, and before she could say anything, I led her into the bathroom.

Marilyn’s eyes widened as she saw the remnants of our anal sex in my crotch. I simply hustled her into the bathtub and joined her, where we took a very quick and thorough shower together. Only afterwards did we talk about what had happened. It was obvious she was embarrassed; she couldn’t even look me in the eye! I laughed and we got back in bed, but I left the light on. She wanted to roll away from me, but I rolled her back towards me.

“Well, that was fun,” I commented.

Marilyn turned about three shades of red. “I can’t believe we did that!”

I laughed loudly. “There are two reasons you are so embarrassed. Want to hear them?”

“Do I have a choice?” Marilyn smiled at that, but I could see she was still embarrassed.

“First, because we just did something bad, something naughty, something taboo. Want to know the second reason?”

“What?”

I leaned over and whispered in her ear, “Because you secretly enjoyed it. You came hard, didn’t you?”

“Ooohh!” Marilyn shrieked at me, and then she punched me in the side.

I just laughed some more. “Now can we talk?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “How are you feeling, you know, back there?”

Marilyn blushed again, but she answered, “It’s a little sore, but not as bad as I thought it would be. It’s pretty damn messy, though!”

“That just means…”

“I know, I know! It means we’re doing it right. Still, it’s actually pretty gross, afterwards I mean.”

I nodded. “That’s true enough. Still, be honest, you had a big one, didn’t you?”

Marilyn looked up at me and I caught a little grin. “You really are bad!”

I laughed at that. Back on my first trip in life, I had talked Marilyn into trying an assfuck at about the same point in our marriage, but I hadn’t known what the hell I was doing, and had rushed it and hurt her. It was years before I ever got another chance, and she was always nervous about it. As a general rule, she needed to be a little drunk, very relaxed, and very horny, but if I took my time, used a lot of lube, and warmed her up with a toy or two, she lit off like a rocket! In fact, on some of our parents-only vacations, the ones where she only took skirts or dresses, and no panties or bras, it was not unknown for her to have a few drinks and then when we got back in the room, to let me know we could do ‘whatever I wanted to.’ That was her little code for me to bend her over and pull her skirt up around her waist and pound her ass.

“Maybe I am, but that just means you’re bad, too. Listen, this isn’t an every night sort of thing…”

“You have that right!” she interjected.

“… but it wasn’t a one time thing either. Was it?” I finished.

Marilyn shyly answered, “No.”

I chuckled and kissed Marilyn, and then flipped off the lamp. “Good night. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

The next morning I called Lieutenant Colonel Buller and told him I was interested in the position at Sill. He told me it would be a good fit for me, and then ordered me to call Halliwell. That would have been my next call anyway. Lieutenant Colonel Halliwell also told me I was making a smart move, and then told me to plan on visiting Sill in the near future to talk to the people out there already.

Chapter 55: Making Babies

A couple of times a year I would take my accumulated leave and take Marilyn away for a no-undie vacation. She began asking me about children again, and I just kept practicing. Finally, around Christmas in 1980, I gave in to her and said yes to a baby. She had argued that in nine months I’d at least be at Sill and a captain, so we should start now and not then. Mind you, she was giving me a blowjob at the time, so my brain wasn’t completely engaged, but I went along with her argument. She promised that we would start in a few days, since she was currently out of commission. I just nodded and put her back to work between my legs. And then I put it out of my mind.

About a week later, I came home to the apartment and found the shades were all drawn, so the room was dark, but about a dozen candles were lit, giving a soft glow to the room. Marilyn liked scented candles, but I could live without them. The smell is too powerful for me. I decided to hold my complaints. I wasn’t entirely sure what Marilyn had in mind, but I was really starting to think I was going to enjoy it. Occasionally, especially during the support cycle, when I got home at a normal time, she would greet me at the door in a nightie and heels. Maybe this evening was going to be… interesting. I sat down and glanced around the room.

I heard the click of high heels coming down the hall from the bedroom and suppressed my urge to jump up and look around. Marilyn had obviously been planning something. She said, “Welcome home, Lieutenant Buckman,” and then came around the corner into my view. She was carrying a glass of champagne in one hand and a bottle in the other. What really caught my eye, though, was what else she had on. Her outfit wasn’t a nightie, but something even more eye-catching. She had on my mess dress uniform!

Well, sort of. She had on my jacket, which is short, only coming down to her waist, and open, being held closed by a chain, and she had on my officer’s cap. That was about it for the uniform. Otherwise she was wearing a pair of completely transparent black panties with ties on the sides, a garter belt with black fishnet stockings, and black high heels. She had also brushed her hair out, put on a lot of the jewelry I had bought her, and spritzed on some perfume. My eyes were bulging out, along with my pants, and I felt like stammering. “Holy shit!” I whispered, as much to myself as to her.

“Lieutenant, your wine.” Marilyn handed me my glass, and set the bottle on the table beside me.

I glanced at it briefly. About half the bottle was missing, which meant that my wife had already been sampling it. I smiled at her. “Been into the champagne already, have you?”

She pouted and knelt down in front of me. “You don’t mind, do you? Should I make it up to you?” Marilyn reached out and began fiddling with my belt.

“Uh, yeah, yeah, that’s a good idea.” I was staring down at her. I must have seen her naked a thousand times before, but seeing her like this was like seeing her anew all over again.

“Drink up, darling,” she chided me, and as I sipped my champagne, she got my belt open and then opened the buttons on my fly slowly, taking her time as she slowly unbuttoned them — very slowly! She’d undo one button, and then rub me through my pants, and then do another, dragging it out. The only reason my cock didn’t spring out and give her a concussion was that it was trapped by my briefs.

Marilyn was really dragging the torment out! She stopped with my pants, and undid my shoes and pulled them and my socks off. Then she went back to rubbing my cock through my briefs, and even nibbling through the fabric along my shaft! After that she stood up and came around behind me, to remove my jacket and tie. Then she leaned over from the side and rubbed my cock some more. This caused the uniform jacket to gape open, showing me her tits and erect nipples, but when I moved to touch her, she chided me and said it was all about me, and I should just sit there and enjoy. I argued that playing with her tits would be very enjoyable, but she just smiled and said to behave myself. After that she unbuttoned my shirt and pulled that off, leaving me in only my briefs.

Finally, as if the agony she had been putting me through up until now wasn’t enough, Marilyn knelt back down at my feet and tugged my pants and tighty-whiteys off. I felt like my cock was going to explode and paint the ceiling at the same time. Marilyn simply smiled and lightly began to trace her fingers along the shaft, and then lowered her face. Her tongue extended and she began to delicately lick me, like a glass sculpture that might shatter at the slightest touch. She even went so far as to very carefully lick beneath it, around my balls, which I found both scary and exciting at the same time. Then it was back up top, to lick my cockshaft some more.

“Carling, am I doing this right?”

Huh? What? “Huh?”

“Am I doing this right?” she asked plaintively. “I know you like it when I suck your cock, and I want to make sure you’re enjoying this. I’d never forgive myself if I wasn’t sucking it as well as I could.” She flicked her tongue across my cockhead and I groaned.

“Uh, yeah, yeah, great, yeah, you’re doing just fine!” I babbled.

“Oh, good, I love to suck your cock and make you happy. I do make you happy, don’t I?”

“Yeah, sure, I’m the happiest guy on the planet!” I answered. Whatever, for the love of God, just keep sucking my cock!

“It makes me so horny to see you like this. My pussy gets so hot and wet. Feel how wet my pussy is!” Marilyn stood up and came around the side of my La-Z-Boy and took my hand and directed it between her legs, to rub her through her panties. Yep, she was pretty horny, all right! Drenched in fact, and her musky smell was mixing with her perfume in a way that a man shouldn’t be forced to endure for too long lest he die of terminal horniness!

Marilyn then left my hand where it was, and she reached down to stroke my cock some more. “Carling, were you serious about starting a family?”

My mind went blank. “Huh? What?”

Marilyn licked my ear as she stroked my cock and whispered to me. “Last week, when you said we could start a family, remember. When we moved, you said.”

“Uh, yeah. I guess so.”

“Yes, you said we could have a baby now, remember?”

“I did?”

“Uh, huh! Carling, darling, were you lying to me then?” she asked. She still kept tugging on my dick, though. “Carling, you’re not a liar, are you?”

“Uhhhhh…”

“Oh, please honey, I want to feel your cock in my pussy, spurting and making a baby. Please Carling, fuck my little pussy!”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever…” I wasn’t thinking anymore! I grabbed the ties on the sides of her panties and tore them loose, and then pulled my wife around so that she was in front of me. She straddled my thighs and lowered herself onto me, and I popped the mess chain on the jacket and began sucking on her tits. Marilyn screamed in orgasm and I joined her about thirty seconds later, spewing up and into her as she rocked and rode on me.

Marilyn sagged down against me and began smothering me with kisses, It took me a few minutes to realize what I had just agreed to. “Wait a minute! What?!”

Marilyn grinned from ear to ear as she sat back upright in my lap. “Thank you, honey. I was pretty sure I could convince you.”

“A baby? A BABY! Are you for real?” I shook my head in amazement. What had I gotten myself into now?

“You did promise,” she said accusingly, wagging a finger at me. “You said last week we could start a family.”

“But I thought we’d talk about it first.”

Marilyn tossed my cap on the floor, and then took off my jacket, so that she was now sitting on my lap naked. “We did, last week!” She cupped her tits and started fondling her nipples.

“That wasn’t talking! That doesn’t count! You were trying to trick me!”

Marilyn took my hands and lifted them to her breasts, where I began playing with them by automatic reflex. She sighed happily and slipped a hand down to our crotches, while the other went around my neck. She moved even closer, pressing against me and moaned into my ear. “You promised, Carl.”

“Holy Christ!”

We hadn’t really slipped apart, and my cock was still inside her, and now getting stiff again. Marilyn felt this and began bouncing on me, just enough to start the cycle again. In a few more minutes she was bouncing on me as I pawed her tits and she rubbed her clit, and then I gave her another dose.

At that point, my wife climbed off of me and took my hand and led me into the bedroom. I lay down on the bed, and she returned with the little plastic box of pills. She sat down on the bed next to me and laid them on my chest. She smiled at me but there was a look of worry in her eyes. “Is this all right, Carl?”

I smiled at her. “It’s a hell of a time to ask, isn’t it? Did we just… you, know!”

“No, not yet. I mean, it’s still early in the cycle. I could start taking them again, but I don’t want to, honey, I want a baby.” Marilyn looked like she was going to cry.

I just rolled my eyes. “That’s a very unfair technique, you know that, right?”

“Well?”

I shrugged. “Did I really say that? About starting a family last week?”

“Yes.”

“Was I dressed like this? And were you dressed like that? Any contracts made when both parties are naked are null and void!”

Marilyn grabbed my cock and began playing with me again. “Are you sure about that?”

“You fight dirty!”

“That just means we’re doing it right. Isn’t that what you taught me?” She kept stroking me back to life.

“How long before, well, you know…”

“We’ll just have to keep trying until it happens.”

“Okay, get on your back and get in position.” I tossed the pills onto the nightstand. “Let’s give it the first official shot!”

Marilyn squealed happily and plopped back onto the bed and spread her legs. This round took a long time, since I had already come twice, but Marilyn was very enthusiastic!

The only thing I hadn’t counted on was that Marilyn really wanted a baby, so she decided that until she caught, every drop of my seed was going to be used to try and fertilize an egg. No blow jobs until after she was pregnant. She told me this later that night, after dinner, while she was still wandering around the apartment half naked. I told her that once the test strip turned blue, or did whatever it was supposed to do, she needed to have some knee pads ready. Then I slapped her on the ass and told her to get that warmed up, too.

In March we got some interesting news. I should have expected it from the first time, but Marilyn caught during her first month without being on birth control. This had happened the first time also. Whether it’s her or me, together we’re incredibly fertile! She announced the fact by giving me a blowjob to completion, which she had said wouldn’t happen until she was knocked up. I wasn’t complaining, since this was a great way to find out! She was due sometime in October.

I told Marilyn that any house we bought would need a large yard, since a boy needed a place to run around in. She wanted to know why I thought it was going to be a boy. She was planning on a girl!

I snorted and laughed at this. “Three pregnant women go to the doctor’s office. The first one says she knows she’s going to have a boy, since her husband liked to be on top. The second girl nods and says she knows she’s going to have a girl, since she liked to be on top. Then the third girl started crying! When they asked her why, she said, „Because I’m going to have a puppy!“”

Marilyn sputtered out her wine and shook a finger at me. “You are an awful person!”

“Woof! Woof, woof, woof!”

We didn’t know what we were going to have. While ultrasound exams were in use by then, they weren’t common practice, not like twenty or thirty years later. With Alison and Parker, we learned what the kids were going to be by a calculation of the fetal heart rate; above 140 is a girl and below is a boy. Years later we discovered that this test was wholly inaccurate and a complete myth.

In early March I was sent to Sill to talk to the people there about my future job. The brigade was then in the support cycle, so I could spare the time. I took a three day TDY so it didn’t count against my leave, and left 2^nd Lieutenant Max Fletcher in charge of the battery for a few days. He was still pretty green, but how else was he going to learn? The colonel would keep him in line, and if he fucked up, it was better to learn now rather than later, when it might be more important. Like if the shells weren’t just outgoing, but were incoming!

We went through another round of the cycle, and in July Marilyn flew out with me to Lawton to look around. We met with a real estate agent and looked over houses. When she discussed financing options, I simply replied that I already had that under control. Lieutenants and captains don’t have the cash to buy houses outright, and I didn’t need any gossip. I’d worry about it when we moved, and even then I was only going to say something to my wife. We found a house, a nice rancher in a newer subdivision, a three bedroom on a corner lot, and made a small deposit on it, to hold it until it was closer to the time we would move.

It as an interesting trip, though. By then Marilyn was around six months along, and definitely showing. Still, she was a lusty wife, and didn’t argue all that much about leaving her underwear at home during the trip. As much as she might protest that she wasn’t ‘that type of girl’, empirical evidence indicated that she was exactly that type of girl! I certainly didn’t complain. If anything, pregnancy made her even hornier.

Marilyn was excited and happy about being pregnant. Me? I was very, very nervous. I had been a father before, and had at least been no worse than average at the job. Nobody ended up in jail at least, although Maggie seemed to push the envelope. No, I was nervous because of what I knew about Marilyn’s family.

Not to pretty it up, but when I married Marilyn, I went swimming in the shallow end of the gene pool! The Lefleur family suffers from much higher than average rates of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease, and obesity. There wasn’t a one of them that didn’t have something dreadful happening or about to happen. On the other hand, none of this happened to the Buckmans. We were amazingly healthy, right up to when we got to the mid-70s, at which point we all got Alzheimer’s and started drooling.

The worst part was that this genetic disaster passed on down to the next generation. Big Bob and Harriet had 40 grandchildren, which seems a lot but only works out to a touch over three per child. Out of those 40 grandchildren, two had Williams Syndrome, one was autistic, and one died three days after birth from a massive heart defect. Four children out of forty with serious genetic disorders, a 10 % rate! That’s horrendous, but it was even worse! Of the 40 grandchildren, six were adopted, and those six were all perfectly healthy. It wasn’t a 10 % rate of genetic disorder, it was almost 12 %! We had an almost one in eight chance that our unborn child would be massively disabled. The more Marilyn’s belly grew, the more worried I grew.

Back when I was doing all this the first time, we just didn’t know. Alison wasn’t diagnosed until she was over 18. The autistic grandchild and the dead baby didn’t happen until well into the end of the grandchildren boom. Every time it happened, it was a horrible event, but nobody drew any conclusions, certainly nobody from inside the Lefleur family.

Personally, I figured it was from all the inbreeding those shitkickers and hillbillies were doing up north of Plattsburgh. Remember Deliverance? At least two sets of Marilyn’s first cousins married each other! Welcome to the Lefleur family! Genetically, at least, my mother was right; I could have done better!

Chapter 56: International Relations

We dropped on Honduras at 0700 on Monday 7 September, 1981. At the time, it seemed as if a combat drop would be preferable to hanging around either the battalion or Marilyn.

I had made a mistake when I went into ROTC lo those many years ago. No, the Army wasn’t going into combat for quite a while. That didn’t mean I might not get deployed somewhere. The Sandinistas had taken over in Nicaragua, and were making themselves into a real pain in the rear for everybody in the region, and especially for Uncle Sam. It was decided that a show of strength would be a good idea. Operation Southern Shield ’81 was put into place, a joint training mission with the Honduran Army, and the 82^nd Airborne was tasked to participate. Specifically, a battalion task force would be sent down to Honduras to show the flag and participate in training missions and war games.

This isn’t all that unusual an event. The 82^nd is pretty much ready to go at any time, and paratroopers are a pretty flexible bunch. It’s almost part of the code that things will get mixed up and moved around, and you learn to live with it. In this case, a battalion of paratroopers would be sent, 1^st of the 505^th, along with their battery from the 319^th Airborne Artillery, and would form a battalion task force. In addition, we would have a platoon of combat engineers (Charlie Company, 307^th Engineers), a platoon of Stingers (Charlie Battery, 3^rd of the 4^th Air Defense Artillery), and even some MPs from the 82^nd MP Company. The local outfit in Panama, the 193^rd Infantry Brigade, was supplying a mobile field hospital, a squadron of Cobra attack choppers, and a squadron of Hueys. The brigade commander even deployed with us, since this was a big deal operation.

Guess which battery from the 319^th was spending three months in Latin America! Guess whose wife wasn’t happy! Marilyn was seven-plus months pregnant and ten-plus months bitchy. I was not going to Honduras! I was going to be at the hospital with her while she delivered my child! She was getting a divorce! She hated me, the battery, the battalion, the regiment, the brigade, the division, the army, and me all over again! (I guess she hated me twice as much.)

I wasn’t too worried about the divorce. She would never be able to get a lawyer in time and be able to serve me divorce papers on the base (Federal property) and I was pretty sure there was a World War II era ‘Dear John’ law that said she couldn’t divorce me until I got home, by which time I hoped she’d be over the mad.

Personally, I was there for all three of my children’s births on the first go-around, and the miracle of childbirth ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. I think my Dad had the better idea — smoke a pack of cigarettes in the waiting room while reading Field and Stream. We were informed of the deployment on Monday, August 31, and I spent most of the intervening week at the battery getting ready. It was quieter!

Life for me in the battalion had taken a decidedly worse turn that summer. Lieutenant Colonel Buller was now Colonel Buller and had been transferred to NATO in Brussels. His replacement, Lieutenant Colonel Morris, did not turn out to be a fan of mine. Far from it. I suspected that if my chute didn’t open over Honduras, he would not be sorry.

No, the problem was a personal one, and not one easily fixed. Lieutenant Colonel Morris brought with him a nickname, ‘Mighty Mouse’, and for good reason; he was only 5’7" tall. His three battery commanders were Captain Mikowski, 5’8", Captain Borisowsky, 5’10", and me, 5’11". He had issues with all of us, and in direct proportion to our height! Mighty Mouse was going to make us better, and fix our problems, whatever they might be, and it seemed that the taller we were, the more problems we had. Mikowski could slump a little and get away with it, and he escaped the easiest, but Borisowsky and I were up shit creek! I had three months to go before I transferred to Sill, and I was happy to be in a foreign country! Borisowsky was facing the brunt of it on his lonesome and would probably be a corporal by the next time I saw him. I was just pleased that Buller had given me a real ‘walks on water’ OER before he left.

Even worse, the division decided that it would be an insult to our Honduran allies for the artillery battery in the exercise to be commanded by a mere first lieutenant. No, only a captain would do, so my promotion was moved forward, over Lieutenant Colonel Morris’ vociferous objections. It was a damn good thing that immediately after this deployment was over, I would be moving to Fort Sill.

So Sunday we loaded the Hercs and Monday morning we dropped on La Paz Drop Zone in Honduras. If it wasn’t for the fact that my battalion commander was holding an axe for me, and Marilyn was sharpening it, it would have probably been somewhat enjoyable. We based out of a military airfield near Tegucigalpa. The CIA and some Special Forces types were nearby, doing things they probably shouldn’t be doing in nearby Nicaragua, but we had nothing to do with them. We did spend a lot of time training with and teaching the Honduran Army and working with their parachute battalion, but that wasn’t all. The field hospital was set up and treated civilians as well, earning some good will. The Hueys would be left behind, since the Army was transitioning to Blackhawks. The engineers were deployed to various places around the area to help build roads and bridges.

This whole shebang was under the command of a brigadier general named Hawkins from Fort Benning who saw Southern Shield ’81 as his ticket to the E-ring at the Pentagon. He was constantly climbing up the asses of the majors and colonels involved and making them do it harder and faster and tougher, etc. etc. etc. As a captain, though, I was so far down the food chain that I wasn’t worthy of notice. That suited me just fine.

There wasn’t a whole lot to do otherwise. My Spanish is limited to ‘Mas cerveza, por favor!’ and ‘Donde esta el baño?’ Max, now a first lieutenant and my exec, did a lot better, since his Spanish was quite fluent. Besides, it wasn’t like I was going out chasing skirts like some of my troops. Boys will be boys, so I laid in a generous supply of rubbers to keep them safe. Besides, it was the late summer in the tropics and you could melt even at night! You could find some local beer, but it generally tasted like weasel piss, so when possible I would stock up on Heineken, which was usually available and much more expensive. I even made a few jumps with the Hondos (from the C-130s) and picked up a set of Honduran jump wings. A lot of troopers on foreign training assignments do this. I heard of one master sergeant with seven different sets of jump wings from around the world!

I wrote Marilyn a couple of times a week, and she returned the favor. She was still pretty mad at me, and I was starting to wonder about making the Army a career. At some point later in the Eighties the military was going to be seeing a lot more action, and one way or another, I was probably going to catch a piece of it. She was no longer threatening me with divorce, but it did seem likely this would be our last child, and I wouldn’t be getting any more chances to start another!

On October 12th Lieutenant Colonel Wilcox tracked me down in the commo bunker. He was the battalion commander of the 1^st of the 505^th. He had a shit-eating grin as he handed me a radiogram that came in through another route. Charles Robert Buckman weighed 7 lb. 14 oz. and was born at 0305 that morning. Mother and son were doing just fine. The final line read, ‘Divorce cancelled. Justifiable homicide being planned.’ It took me another 48 hours with the MARS guys, the Military Auxiliary Radio System civilian auxiliaries, to get a call into her. I think I was grinning for two days!

Two weeks later I got a heavy package mailed to me. Marilyn had sent down a bunch of photos and a long letter. It turned out that her mother flew down to spend a week with her, and the following week Suzie did another ‘seashore’ trip and visited. It was the first I could see of my new son, and it was very disconcerting! All along I had been planning on Parker being born all over again. He was a good boy, a son any father could be proud of, and I certainly was. This child wasn’t Parker! He didn’t look at all like him. I had just figured on calling him Charlie and thinking of him as Parker, but that just wasn’t the case. It was actually very depressing to realize that Parker was gone, a piece of my past totally lost. Alison had died, and now Parker was gone, too. So was Maggie. I was rejoicing over my new son and distraught over the loss of my other children. Very disconcerting! Were they alive somewhere or somewhen in a different timeline or alternate universe? I just didn’t know.

A month later we had our last exercise. Hawkins decided that we would do a combat drop in conjunction with the Hondurans and utilize their assets as well. Okay, I suppose that made sense. Fortunately, we weren’t going to drop the battery, but would land them on an improvised runway after the company of the 505^th and the Hondurans secured a landing zone. Pretty routine stuff. The next day we would clean our gear and pack our bags and get ready to get the hell out of Dodge.

At least that was the way it started out.

The first inkling I had that things weren’t working out was when I got called into Lieutenant Colonel Wilcox’ office Monday morning, November 9. The brigade commander had flown to Washington the day before, and Wilcox had taken command. He was working out of a Quonset hut, and one of the parachute company captains was already in with him when I got there. It’s not as spit-and-polish in the field as it is back home, some I simply knocked on the colonel’s open door and said, “You called for me, sir?”

“Yeah, come on in, Doc.” He pointed at a chair next to the one occupied by Captain Bob Donovan, C Company, 1^st of the 505^th.

I sat down and said, “What’s up? You in on this, too, Bob?”

Donovan nodded, but it was Colonel Wilcox who answered. “You know Lieutenant Bulrush?”

It took me a second to think of who Bulrush was but it came to me. “FIST Chief with the 505^th?” He was artillery, but attached to the infantry as the team leader of the attached 10 man Fire Support Team (FIST). “Yeah, I suppose. I’ve met him in passing but that’s about it. Why?”

Donovan answered, “He’s my FIST, and was supposed to drop with us in the exercise, but he just went off to the hospital with a hot appendix.”

I nodded at that. “Well, he won’t be dropping any time soon.”

The colonel nodded and then asked, “I need another forward observer for the exercise. You’re the arty boss. Who’s available?”

“What about the guys with the other two companies”? I was a little curious, since the FIST Staff Sergeant was normally second in command and would take over.

The colonel shrugged. “Already committed. Besides, I want an officer to go along, since we are doing this with the Hondos.”

Well, that didn’t leave me with a lot of choices. Every infantry company has an artillery observer element either embedded or designated, and they’re regularly trained artillery officers. The only other ones deployed were me and my lieutenants. I shrugged. “That leaves me and my boys.”

“I thought so,” agreed the colonel. “Make a choice.”

I grinned over at Donovan. “What the hell, why not! I’ll do it. Let’s see how Max handles the battery while I’m away.” I’d act as the forward observer. It was a job for a second john, not a battery commander, but Max needed to be able to handle the battery himself. If it was real combat, I’d sacrifice a second lieutenant and keep the battery myself. “This will be my last jump before I leave the division. Time for a break!”

“HOO-AH!” replied Lieutenant Colonel Wilcox, and Bob and I both laughed. He looked over at Captain Donovan and asked, “Anything else?”

“Nope.”

“Then get the hell out of here.”

Bob and I stood up and left. I followed him over to where C Company was billeted and went into his office/bunk, where we discussed the planned deployment. It was for Tuesday morning, the next day, and we were jumping from Honduran airplanes, while the Hondurans would jump from the C-130s we had deployed with. “The Hondos have Hercs?” I asked Bob. I hadn’t seen any C-130 Hercules around without US Air Force markings, but maybe they had some at another base.

“I guess. I haven’t seen any, but they must. Maybe they’ve got some C-123 Providers. They’re similar to the 130s but about two thirds the size. Same operational characteristics, though.”

“I guess we’ll find out tomorrow,” I replied. I headed out to tell Max and the battery sergeant the news that they were on their own. I wasn’t even going to help. I would tell them that I just died after my chute failed and they had to run the show. The battery first sergeant was fairly new, too. It was time to see how both of them shaped.

Well, we sure found out the next day! Mid morning a string of donated deuce-and-a-halfs showed up at the Quonset huts C Company had been assigned to. I had already made my way over to the company with my gear. Donovan and I curiously looked at the trucks, since it didn’t seem likely that they would be sufficient for the men and the gear. They weren’t. We loaded everything and everybody up anyway, and headed towards the far side of the field, where the Honduran Air Force was set up.

The plan was that the American Air Force would drop the Honduran paratroopers, and the Honduran Air Force would drop C Company. It was supposed to be a drop in the early afternoon, but things were moving very slowly. Now it looked like the late afternoon at best.

It went from bad to worse just about as soon as the trucks stopped. We came around the corner of a row of hangars and found our airplanes. No, the Honduran Air Force wasn’t operating C-130s. No, they weren’t operating C-123s. The pride of the Honduran air transport fleet was four gleaming C-47s! We must have given them these things right after the Second World War.

“Are they what I think they are?” I asked, staring at the vintage airplanes.

“They can’t be!” replied Donovan.

The men were all climbing off the trucks, and they were staring as much as we were. The company sergeant, a first sergeant, came up to us, and asked, “Is this for real, sir?”

“I devoutly hope not!” replied his captain.

“My father probably jumped out of one of these things into Normandy!” said the sergeant. His name was Hightower, and he was the oldest guy in the company, at 32. He actually had seen service in Viet Nam, as had Bob Donovan.

“Are we sure we haven’t gotten lost in the old airplane museum?” I commented.

Just then a pair of Jeeps came racing up. The first was full of Honduran officers, all beaming at us, visibly proud of their antique airplanes. Following them was Lieutenant Colonel Wilcox, looking equally horrified. We ignored the gabbling Hondurans and I followed Donovan, along with Sergeant Hightower, as he went over to Lieutenant Colonel Wilcox. We sent the Jeep driver away, and the four of us talked. Okay, Hightower and I just listened, while Wilcox and Donovan talked.

“Are you kidding me?” asked Donovan.

“I just found out myself!” replied the horrified battalion commander.

“Colonel, my jumpmasters haven’t ever seen one of these things, let alone jumped from one of them. They don’t even know how to rig one of them!” There was a loud clatter from the flight line and we watched as a mechanic dropped a wrench, and a stream of black oil came from one of the engines on one of the Gooney Birds.

“I know!”

“Colonel, we’ve never ever trained on these things!” he protested. This was quite true. American paratroopers train on C-130 Hercules and C-141 Starlifter planes. I doubted any of us had even been alive when these things were still being used! Even the radio frequencies would be different.

“I know!”

“We can’t do it!”

A third Jeep came barreling up, with Brigadier General Hawkins, smiling and looking inordinately proud of himself. We stopped talking while he joined us. “Isn’t this great!?” he exclaimed. “What wonderful airplanes!”

The colonel stared at the man. Hawkins was what we called a ‘five jump chump’. He had been through jump training, probably back when he was a second john, did his three weeks of training and his five mandatory jumps, and then checked it off his list and never looked back. He knew as much about airborne operations as my son did. “General,”, he said, “my men have never trained on C-47s. They’re not qualified for this.”

“This will be the perfect opportunity for them, then, won’t it?”

“Sir, with all due respect, they aren’t trained for this. They could get hurt. We can’t use these planes,” he said.

General Hawkins did not want to hear this. In fact, for the next five minutes, he did all the talking. Screaming, actually. We were going to get on the planes. We were going to jump. He didn’t care that it was dangerous. He didn’t care that we weren’t trained. He didn’t care if we all crashed on takeoff! We were going! Anything less would be an insult to our hosts and a blemish on our (his) record and an international incident. If Lieutenant Colonel Wilcox didn’t like it, he could be replaced, as could any other officer who didn’t like it!

Lieutenant Colonel Wilcox then told Hawkins to put his orders in writing, which Hawkins refused to do. I had never seen this sort of behavior before. Why Wilcox didn’t simply refuse is beyond me, but he backed down at this point. Then General Hawkins got back in his Jeep, after giving us another batch of idiotic orders, and took off.

Lieutenant Colonel Wilcox gave Captain Donovan a nervous look and climbed into his own Jeep. “I’ll see what I can do, but start figuring it out. Make sure there is a place on the lead bird for me. If we’re doing this, I’m going first.” He took off.

Donovan turned to me. “Do you believe this shit?”

There was only one thing to say. “How can I help?”

Donovan motioned Hightower and me together and we headed over to the nearest Gooney Bird. We climbed in and looked it over. It was frighteningly primitive, although lovingly maintained. It was also blindingly obvious we were going to have to quickly learn how to jump out of the side of the airplane. Both the C-130 and the C-141 have both a tail exit system and side doors. Unlike the C-47, they have two side doors, and the tail elevators are high enough you don’t have to worry about hitting them when you jump out. We normally jumped from the doors.

The other big difference is in size. Gooney Birds can carry 18 paratroopers. The Herky Bird can carry over 60; the Starlifter can carry over 100. Once you’re inside a Gooney Bird, it feels like the inside of a tin shed. By comparison, a modern transport feels like a four car garage!

Hightower spoke up, “Pardon me, sir, but can I make a suggestion?”

“Please, Top, anything!”

“Well, my old man was a jumper back in World War II, with the Screaming Eagles, and he told me once that the real trick with jumping from a Goony was that you had to use both hands on the doorway, and almost dive out, to keep below the rear stabilizer on the plane.”

Donovan stared at him for a second and then looked at me. “Oh, joy!”

“Sir, let’s get a bunch of cushions or something and start practicing jumping from these things.”

Donovan nodded. “Let’s make it happen, Top!”

When we got back outside and onto the tarmac, Donovan called together his three platoon leaders and their platoon sergeants. “Here’s the scoop. We are jumping out of these C-47s. It will be just like dropping from a Herc. We’re just going to have to make a few changes.”

Donovan’s officers and noncoms stared as he outlined the changes. First and Third Platoons would drop; Second Platoon would stay behind and handle support and service. We would drop light — no heavy weapons, no mortars, no machine guns, no anti-tank or anti-air weapons. A dozen and a half jumpers in each plane. The change even affected the artillery element — me. Normally a FIST element consists of a junior officer, a radio operator, and a couple of security troops at a minimum. Now it was just me and the radio operator. Aside from a half dozen radio operators and medics, it was just a shitload of Eleven Bravos, infantry enlisted. We even cut down on the personal gear we were taking. Since the plan was to do live fire training at a range once we landed, we were issued live ammo, quite unusual. We went with three days rations. It was basically a Hollywood drop but with guns and food.

It was when we got to how the planes would be loaded that I started to wonder. We had four transports and five officers — the colonel, the captain, two platoon leaders, and me. Standard doctrine was that each bird gets an officer. This is combat loading, where everything gets split up, so that no single airplane that gets shot down loses all the officers or all of a single element. Instead, Donovan assigned Wilcox to the lead plane, his First Platoon leader to the next plane, and Third Platoon’s platoon sergeant to the third plane. Donovan and I would ride in the last Goony-Bird with Third Platoon, with 2^nd Lieutenant John Fairfax. Lieutenant Fairfax was the most junior platoon leader. The other two were both first lieutenants, and seemed quite competent. Fairfax, not so much.

If we were supposed to launch and drop by mid-afternoon, that was looking quite unlikely. The troops moved inside a hangar to get out of the sun and get access to a toilet. Lieutenant Hobart of the Second Platoon got everyone who wasn’t dropping back to their barracks, and then organized some food to get sent back to us. Meanwhile the mechanics kept working on the engine on the C-47. Maybe I would get lucky and that was the plane I was assigned to drop from, and it would get stuck on the ground! Maybe I could go out and shoot holes in the tires!

In the meantime First Sergeant Hightower rigged up some cushions and had the troops start practicing jumping out of the doorway of one of the C-47s. After a couple of tries, I really wanted to shoot holes in the tires! On the plus side, since we were dropping so light, we could put 20 men on a plane, not just 18.

According to the textbooks, the first stage of a nighttime aerial assault consists of small highly trained teams of men who act as pathfinders, who drop in early and figure out where they are and then set up flares or radio beacons to allow the follow-up flights to find their way in the dark. Then you’ll have several waves of paratroopers who drop in on the bad guys without asking permission. Finally, the rest of the heavy equipment will come in and land at the secured airhead. In general, however, this is so dangerous that it is only utilized for the most critical missions. Even in World War II, after the disaster that was the night drop during D-Day, the Army swore off mass night drops. We were going to do this in the afternoon, but that just didn’t work out.

It was late when we finally loaded into the Gooney Birds. The C-130s had already taken off and dropped the pathfinders, come back and dropped the mixed American and Honduran paratroopers, and then loaded up and brought in the heavy equipment! We were now Tail End Charlie, and going to drop in the middle of the night, after everybody else. Lieutenant Colonel Wilcox came back and told us the bad news. He spoke to Bob Donovan, but I was close enough to catch it. “I tried getting somebody at brigade, but I couldn’t reach the colonel. It’s up to you. I’ll back you up, but there will be hell to pay.”

Donovan sighed and looked back at his company. “Let’s get the show on the road. What the fuck can they do to us? Send us to Honduras?”

Colonel Wilcox left just as the Honduran pilots announced the broken C-47 was fixed. We all shrugged into our gear, and were driven to our planes. I followed behind Captain Donovan and 2^nd Lieutenant Fairfax. It was after midnight when we took off. It was Wednesday the 11^th by then.

It was a short flight, maybe 100 klicks or kilometers. A C-130 is fast enough you’d barely have time to get to altitude before you were over the drop zone. A C-47 was half the speed, if that. The interior of the plane was in night drop condition, with nothing but red lights on, to acclimate everybody’s eyes. Fairfax was looking very nervous. I grinned at him and yelled, loud enough he could hear me over the noise of the plane, “Smile, Lieutenant! We’re having fun!”

Fairfax looked very startled at that, and he looked over at his captain, who was grinning back at him through the camo paint. “Sing us a song, Johnny!”

Johnny stared. “Sir?”

I just shook my head and laughed. “Come on, Johnny, you know the words!”

“He was just a rookie trooper and he surely shook with fright,

He checked off his equipment and made sure his pack was tight;”

The rest of the troops heard me start the song, and it took off immediately! We were singing about that poor bastard right up until the ready light went on and the captain signaled for us to get to our feet.

Captain Donovan only had a few more words for us. “Make it fast. Get out the door as soon as you can. This won’t be much different than a 141, but slower. So let’s all have some fun and enjoy the scenery on the way down!” We all shuffled a little closer to the door, and then the light changed. The captain went out, Johnny went out, and then I went out. By the way, you know how in the movies they all yell ‘Geronimo’ when jumping out of the airplane? Nobody in the real world does that, it’s total bullshit!

There was no scenery to be seen. It was totally pitch black. Just by that alone I knew something was wrong. We were the last ones arriving at the party. The drop zone should have been lit up like a fucking Christmas tree! Instead, there was — nothing! It was total black, and then I heard a rustle as I got close to the ground, and then I felt a piercing pain in my right leg and I slammed into the ground and everything went black.

Chapter 57: The Anabasis of Xenophon

I don’t think I was out very long. My right knee made me want to scream, but I couldn’t feel anything broken. I dug out a chemlight stick and broke it, and in the green glow I looked around. I was on a slope, with my chute fouled in a tree above me and to the side. I hit the quick release and shucked off my chute, and then straightened my leg. I didn’t scream, quite, and I was able to move it and maneuver it a bit. I couldn’t feel anything broken, and I couldn’t see any blood. Whatever was wrong with me was in the knee joint itself. Very slowly, I hauled myself to my feet.

Once upright, something seemed to slip into place in my knee and I was able to put some weight on it. Maybe I could wrap it and get around that way. I had definitely fucked it up somehow. It still hurt like hell, though.

Around me, I could hear the rest of the company crashing about in the woods. From what I could see from the chemlight, we had landed on a slope in some trees, two things you never ever want to do. I also wasn’t the only one hurt, although I couldn’t hear any screams. Somebody seemed to be fumbling around to my left, so I twisted in that direction and yelled out, “Who’s there? Company C, that you?”

A moment later, a voice came back, “Who’s that?” and there was some rustling in the brush. I held up my light and five minutes later a corporal carrying his chute rolled up in his arms crashed through the brush. He looked at me and asked, “Who are you?”

“Captain Buckman. What’s your name?”

“Corporal Janos, sir. Third Platoon.”

I nodded to him. “You were a few seats down from me. How are you doing, Corporal?”

“Fine, sir. I just need some candy and I’m good to go.” Paratrooper candy — extra strength Tylenol!

“You and me both, but I think I’m going to need something more.” I turned back towards my chute but twisted my knee as I was doing so, and bit off a curse.

“Captain?”

“Bad landing, Corporal, bad landing. Give me a hand. Drop your chute here and help me gear up. You seen or heard anybody else? I don’t think we’re anywhere near the drop zone.”

Corporal Janos dropped his chute and came closer. He pointed in a vague direction left and downhill. “I think some of the guys landed down below.”

“Well, if we left the bird first, I’m guessing the stick is spread out in that direction. Help me on with my gear and let’s go find out.” The corporal helped me get my shit together, and then helped me down the hill. I thought it would take forever, but eventually we limped our way to a clearing where we found another four guys. Like Janos and me, they were dinged up and very unsure where they were.

I eased myself into a sitting position on a fallen tree and asked who everybody was and where they were in the stick, and where they landed. As I suspected, they were all downhill from where I had fetched up. “Well, take a load off. No sense in hiking around in the dark when we don’t even know where we are. I can guarantee we’re not anywhere near where the exercise is,” I told them.

At that point some rustling in the brush further up the hill made everyone turn in that direction. From what I could figure out, the only people in that direction should be Lieutenant Fairfax or Captain Donovan. Fairfax came stumbling into the circle of green light from my chemlight and a few others. He was carrying his chute, too.

“Welcome, Lieutenant. Join the party,” I said. “Take a load off.”

He looked confused, and came over towards me. “Sir?” I don’t think he really recognized me. We hadn’t spoken much back at the base.

“I’m Captain Buckman, remember? I jumped right after you and Captain Donovan. Have you seen him?”

“No sir.”

“How far back that way did you land?”

“Sir?”

I repeated my question and Fairfax gave me a vague indication of a few hundred yards. Another couple of guys drifted in from the downhill area, and I now had nine men total, including me, not quite half the plane load. It was also very obvious it was only our plane load. None of the other planes’ jumpers had been found, and the general rule is that everybody gets mixed up.

Fairfax immediately ordered search parties out into the darkness, without any plan that I could see. I promptly countermanded his orders. “Lieutenant, why don’t we wait on that until we get some better light?” I could see several of the men looking relieved as I said that.

“Sir, we have to begin moving towards the exercise area,” he protested.

“Lieutenant, do you know where the exercise area is? I certainly don’t, and neither do these men. We should be waiting until sunrise and figuring out where everybody is and where we are,” I answered.

“Sir, our orders were very specific. We need to move out!”

“And I’m countermanding those orders.” I took off my helmet and set it on the tree next to me, and rubbed my hands through my hair. My leg was throbbing and I needed an ice cold beer, and morphine!

“Captain, you can’t do that!” Rather than speak to me quietly, he had raised his voice and was speaking in front of the group.

I motioned him closer. “Lieutenant Fairfax,”, I said lowly, “You’re a second lieutenant and I’m a captain, and I’m a line officer in the combat arms, just like you. I hereby inform you that I am taking command. Do you understand?”

“You can’t do that, sir! This is my platoon!” The idiot couldn’t keep his voice down, and now everybody knew I had assumed command.

“I can and I have. Now, when Captain Donovan gets here I will be happy to relinquish command to him, but for the time being, my orders stand. Drop your gear and get comfortable. It will be dawn in a few hours. We’ll worry about things then,” I told him.

He gave me a dirty look, and moved to the edge of the clearing.

One of the men, a Private Martinez, glanced at his platoon leader, and then looked over at me. “Sir? Any idea where we actually are?”

I smiled and shrugged. “Not a clue, Private, not a clue. I wouldn’t worry about it though.”

“How come?”

“Well, that Gooney Bird dropped us somewhere in Latin America. Tomorrow morning, all we have to do is figure out where the sun comes up, turn left, and start marching north. Sooner or later, we’re bound to hit Texas!” Martinez grinned at that, and most of the others chuckled or laughed. The mood lightened considerably. “Listen, guys, we’re the Eighty-Second-Fucking-Airborne! We’re going home if we have to walk the entire distance! Is that understood!?” A chorus of loud grunts and HOO-AHs rang out in the woods, and I relaxed. “That’s more like it! For a second there I thought I’d been transferred to the One-Oh-Worst!” The One-Oh-Worst is the 82^nd’s favorite nickname for the 101^st Airborne, who now rode to battle in helos. That earned me a string of catcalls and insults.

I just smiled and relaxed. After a few minutes one of the guys dug out a big bottle of Tylenol and passed it around. I dry swallowed a half dozen myself, then dug out my canteen and took a swallow.

Just as I predicted, a few hours later, the sun rose in the east. The guys dug out some Lurps (LRRPs), Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol rations, and made what would pass for breakfast. The Army was just starting to issue MREs (’Meals Ready to Eat’, or ‘Meals Refused by Ethiopians’, take your pick) but we hadn’t brought any to Honduras. Lurps generally sucked, but they were better than nothing. The problem was that they were freeze-dried, so you needed lots of water, which was in short supply. If we couldn’t find potable water, we would need to start using the halazone tablets, which made the water taste lousy, but prevented diarrhea and all sorts of even worse diseases. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Welcome to the Army.

In the morning light I started to get very worried. I didn’t think we were anywhere near the drop zone. I wasn’t even sure what country we were in! The drop zone and the surrounding region was an upland plateau sort of place, but this was a lot more mountainous. It was entirely possible the Gooney Bird pilot had dropped us somewhere we weren’t supposed to be.

As soon as there was enough light, and the men had at least gotten something to eat, I sent a patrol of four men down the hill, in the direction the rest of the stick had landed. They returned in an hour, leading another eight men, including the senior sergeant in the plane, a Sergeant First Class Briscoe who was several years older than the rest of the men. He had organized his little group last night much like I had, and waited for sunlight before looking around. Most importantly, he had a Spec 4 radio operator with him, along with a radio! I could have kissed the pair of them!

“Greetings, gentlemen! Welcome to the party!” I said as a welcome.

The new group mingled with the group already there. Sergeant Briscoe came up to where I was sitting. Lieutenant Fairfax did not join us. He was sitting alone and pouting. Briscoe glanced at him curiously, but then turned to me. It was obvious he had figured out where things stood, or maybe the patrol that found them told them. “Captain Buckman?”

I held out my hand and shook his. “Welcome to the party, Sergeant. How are your men?”

“Good shape, sir.” He pointed down the hill, and said, “The ground levels off somewhat. I think this is the rough section. Who’s missing?”

“I was about to ask you that. Captain Donovan hasn’t shown up. He jumped before me, so he must still be up the hill. I don’t know your men well enough to say who else is missing.”

Briscoe looked at the group and started mentally counting off names. “We’re missing Privates Masurski and Smith.”

I nodded. “First things first. We need to find those men. We need to send out search parties.” I talked it over with him and it looked like the stick had landed in a pattern about two klicks long and half a klick wide. The two privates were in the first half of the stick to drop, so they were probably on either side of us or back up the hill. Captain Donovan was almost certainly up the hill.

“Sergeant, I am going to need you to organize the search. I’m not going to be moving much. I fucked my knee up. We aren’t leaving here without all our men. Understood!?”

“HOO-AH, sir!” He pointed at my leg. “How bad is it, sir?”

“I’ll live, but I won’t be doing any marathons for a bit.”

“DOC! FRONT AND CENTER!” he called out, and a trooper with medic’s insignia bounced over. He was armed just like the rest of the troops. According to the Geneva Convention, medical troops were to be unarmed and festooned with red and white crosses indicating their non-combat nature. Viet Nam had shown that those crosses were excellent aiming points for snipers. Since then most medical troops went about as heavily armed as their patients, and rarely wore any kind of insignia.

“Thank you, sergeant. Leave me the RTO, too. Maybe we can raise somebody on the net.”

“Yes, sir!”

Sergeant Briscoe organized a search pattern, with various noncoms and PFCs leading in different directions, and then led one of the groups up the hill in the direction where Captain Donovan should be. The medic, whose real name was Gerald and was called Doc, like every other medic in the Army, wanted to cut my pants from me, but I just stood and dropped my trousers. I wasn’t sure how long we were going to be like this, but I didn’t need shredded pants along with a shredded knee. Meanwhile, the RTO came over with his radio and tried to call home.

After a few minutes I learned two things. First, my leg wasn’t broken, but I had definitely screwed up my knee. Doc thought I had ripped a tendon or some cartilage, but without X-rays, we were guessing. I could walk, painfully, so I wouldn’t need to be carried. He cut up some parachute and wrapped my knee with it, along with some parachute cord. It wasn’t an Ace bandage, but it did feel better, and I could hobble around.

Second, ET couldn’t phone home. The radio seemed functional, but nobody was answering the phone call. This wasn’t surprising. The AN/PRC-77 ‘Prick 77’ radio had a range of about 8 klicks at best, ground to ground. We could reach further if there was an airborne antenna, to a plane for instance, but for now, we were at least 8 klicks away from the drop zone, and I was betting much further. He also had an AT-984 antenna which he rigged up, which doubled the range, and still couldn’t raise anybody. Then he rigged up his spool of WD-1 telephone wire as an antenna, and still didn’t get a signal.

Things started getting worse. Sergeant Briscoe returned with his little group relatively quickly, carrying a body on a makeshift stretcher. The body was covered with a torn parachute, and nobody looked happy. I looked at the men, and at the Sergeant. “Oh, shit!”

He just gave me a miserable nod. “Yes, sir.” I hobbled over and he pulled away the parachute, exposing Bob Donovan’s lifeless face. “We found him wedged against a rock. It looks like he landed wrong and snapped his neck.” He flipped the cover back over the captain.

About a half hour later the other two men came in. Private Masurski had crashed into a broken tree trunk, which had gutted him like a fish. He was dead, too. Private Smith, at least, was alive, if not exactly kicking. He had a multiple compound fracture of both the tibia and fibula in his left leg, and was barely able to hold in the screams as he was brought in. Doc took one look and shot him up with some morphine before examining him any further.

Well, we were all there, all 20 of us. Two dead, one a stretcher case, half a dozen more with strains and sprains, a sullen officer, no communications, not enough food and water, and no idea where we were. I closed my eyes for a second. Maybe I would wake up and find myself having a bad dream after a night at the Fort Bragg Officer’s Club!

I opened my eyes and found a bunch of paratroopers watching me. Time to get back to work. “Lieutenant, I want you to see to the Captain and Masurski. Briscoe, we need to do some recon.” I dug out the area maps I had been issued in regards to shooting howitzers at things, and quickly came to the conclusion we probably weren’t on the smallest scale maps. I found a larger map, showing most of Honduras and the surrounding countries. We were currently facing southward on the side of a large hill or small mountain, with a shallow valley in front of us. A small road ran through the valley below us, from left to right.

I also kept an eye on Fairfax. It was readily apparent he was clueless as to what to do. I wondered how he ended up in the 505^th and chalked it up to outstanding scores in his classes at West Point. (Yes, even Hudson High has its share of idiots!) I had no doubt that if asked, Lieutenant Fairfax could give me a textbook answer about “deploying his assets to maximum effect” and “utilizing personnel to accomplish the mission” but he couldn’t actually figure out how to order his men to do something. All he knew was how to order his ranking sergeant to get something done. Briscoe glanced over at Janos and silently ordered the corporal to take a couple of men and dig out some body bags.

Fairfax faltered at the point where he had to remove the men’s dog tags and jam one into each of their mouths. To be fair, so did Janos; I doubt any of the men had ever done this for real. I limped over and knelt next to Bob Donovan, and Sergeant Briscoe knelt down next to Private Masurski. He took Masurski’s dog tag and said, “Like this, sir,” and jammed it into the dead man’s teeth.

I suppose we didn’t have to do this. I had one of their dog tags in my pocket now, and almost all of us carried extras. Like probably every man in the group, except maybe Fairfax, I had two around my neck, a third sewed into my right boot laces, and a fourth in my left rear pocket. No matter what happened to me, they’d be able to identify the pieces. Still, I knew what I had to do.

“Yeah,” I sighed, and did the same to Donovan. Several of the men made the sign of the cross. Fairfax ran to the edge of the clearing and puked up breakfast. Well, it made me a bit queasy, too. I suspected he had never seen a dead body before, even in civilian life. Still, the rest of his performance was enough to get him shitcanned from the military! I was sure that Donovan, if he had lived, would have given Fairfax an OER that would have gotten him assigned to a Port-A-Potty repair depot for the rest of his career. In Viet Nam his men would have fragged him, simply to get him out of their hair!

I looked back at my wide area map. Assuming that the pilot of the C-47 had simply gotten lost and dropped us when he figured we had gone far enough, we could be practically anywhere in Central America. If he had flown north or east, we were probably still in Honduras, but if he had flown south or west, we might well be fucked! To the south was Nicaragua, then in the hands of the Sandinistas, communist and flagrantly anti-American. To the west was El Salvador, home to a nasty multipart civil war, with most of the parties not caring for gringos all that much, either. In addition, most of the two countries had fairly active drug trades going on in the hills, and the narcos were probably as heavily armed as we were. It was like being in a bad Tom Clancy novel! It was too bad I was the only guy here who knew who Tom Clancy was. He hadn’t even started writing yet. We had to know where we were.

“Sergeant, who are the men who speak Spanish the best? Not just mas cervezas, por favor either. Guys who can speak it and read it?” I asked.

Briscoe gave me a surprised look, and scratched his head, but a couple of the men came forward. They were swarthy under their grease paint, with Hispanic features. I recognized one of the men from earlier in the morning. “Private Martinez, right? You speak Spanish?”

“Si, mi capitan!” he said, and then rattled off something else too fast for me to follow.

I looked at the other guy. “You, too? What’d he say?”

The other private said something to the Martinez, generating a big laugh, and then replied, “Private Guillermo, sir. It was something about sending officers south of the border who can’t speak Spanish.”

I snorted and laughed at that myself. “I can’t argue with that. Anybody else?” Two more men came forward, another Hispanic private named Gonzalez and Corporal Janos. I looked at Janos and said, “You speak Spanish? With a name like Janos?”

He laughed. “My father might be Polish, but he moved to Texas and married a Mexican girl from Juarez.”

“A Texas Polock? Well, now I’ve heard of everything. What about you fellows? Where are you from?” I asked the other three.

Martinez and Guillermo were Mexican American, from Arizona and California respectively. Gonzalez was from Puerto Rico by way of New York City. “Okay, my life is in the hands of three wetbacks and a Polish Texan! My mother told me I’d come to a messy end!” That got me a few laughs and even more grins. “Seriously, all of our lives are in your hands right now. More than anything else, we need to know just where the hell we are. There is a very, very good chance we aren’t in Honduras anymore. If we aren’t, we are surrounded by bad guys, either commies who hate Americanos or drug dealers who hate everybody. Got the picture?”

Suddenly the entire group got serious and silent. I continued, “You four men are going to be our scouts. I want two of you to go east and two to go west along the road and try and figure out where we are. However, I don’t want you guys seen. Until we know where we are, we can’t take a chance.”

They all nodded at that, and then Janos asked, “What if we’re still in Honduras?”

“That’s different. If we’re still in Honduras, then find a phone and get us some help! This exercise is over! However, you aren’t to do that unless you are absolutely, positively sure this is Honduras! You know, like a sign saying Welcome to Honduras! That sort of thing, got it?”

“Got it!”

“I want you to only move out about five klicks and then come back. We’ll be expecting you in time for afternoon tea, 1600, is that clear?” I got their assents and said to Briscoe, “Sergeant, get these men on their way.”

“Yes, sir!” He took our designated scouts and led them aside. They checked gear and grabbed their weapons, and then Sergeant Briscoe led them back down the hillside towards the road.

I then had Specialist 4 Thompson try the radio again, but nobody was on the other end. I had him shut it down to save the battery. He asked, “Captain, what if we aren’t in Honduras?” Several of the other men were listening to us as well.

I just smiled and said, “I told you that answer this morning. We start walking north. I figure that if we aren’t in Honduras, we’re probably in either Nicaragua or El Salvador. Either way, Honduras is to the north. Let’s be clear on that, fellows. We all jumped in, we’re all going home. Are we clear on that?” I got some smiles back, and a variety of positive grunts and HOO-AHs.

I also added, “Don’t forget, I don’t care how inefficient the Army is, they aren’t going to just up and lose a platoon, are they? Sooner or later somebody is bound to notice we didn’t show up in the drop zone! They’ll come looking for us, just like we’re going to be looking for them.”

That got some excited nods and talk, as the men realized it wasn’t just them. They had people on the outside to help, as well. Thompson asked, “What do you think happened, sir?”

“No idea. The pilot probably just got lost and decided to drop us and try to find home. Unless he flew out to sea and never looked back, he’s probably home by now answering a whole bunch of very rude questions.”

“Serve the fucker right!” was a comment I heard from more than one voice. I agreed!

“What if he got lost and crashed? Won’t they think we’ll all have died in the wreckage?” I heard.

“Who asked that?” I said, looking around. A young private who looked nervous at being singled out raised his hand and gave me his name, Wilson. I nodded to him in acknowledgement. “That sort of thing only happens in the movies. You know, the plane crashes, giant fireball, everything is gone in an instant. What really happens when a plane goes down is that there is wreckage strewn all over the place. Even if the plane crashes, the rescuers won’t find our bodies, so somebody will figure out we dropped before the crash. All we have to do is figure out where we are, and then go home.” I shook my head and smiled at them. “We’re the Eighty-Second Airborne. We survived World War II. We’ll survive this, too.”

When Sergeant Briscoe returned, he got the men organized for the day, and then sat down next to me. “Excuse me sir, no disrespect, but you’re the guy called ‘Doc’, right?”

I smiled. “Only by captains and above, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir. Like I said, no disrespect, sir. I just wanted to be sure who you were.” I just nodded. “You’re actually a doctor, sir?”

“Mathematics, sergeant, although that seems like a very long time ago.”

“Sir, what the hell is a guy like you doing in the Army?”

I laughed. “You ever meet a recruiting sergeant that actually told the truth?” Briscoe laughed at that too, and then went and checked on the rest of the guys.

And that was the order of the day. Keep morale up. Take care of Private Smith and prepare him to be moved out. Rig stretchers for Smith and the body bags. Get food into the men and find some water in a stream down below to clean with halazone. Wait for the recon teams to return. We cleaned our weapons, and posted security so that nobody could sneak up on us, and instituted a sleep schedule. We even inventoried our ammo, since the Army really freaks out about issuing troops ammo (We had 5.56 NATO for the M-16s and a few frag grenades among the non-coms, along with some light demo gear.) It was all the shit that Fairfax was supposed to be doing, the fucking numbnuts!

The first team, of Martinez and Guillermo, came back after only a couple of hours. They had headed east along the road, but it petered out into a few logging trails after a couple of klicks. They high tailed it back and we all waited for Janos and Gonzalez. Their road must lead somewhere. They didn’t come back on time though, which made Fairfax say a few stupid things about punishment. I simply told him that we would give the men some time. Maybe they were chartering a bus.

They returned a little after 1800, on foot, and without a bus. Both men were grinning like little boys who’ve gotten away with something. Janos produced a road map for northern Nicaragua. “We stole it from a car in this little village down around the bend. We’re right… here,” he said, pointing with a grimy finger at the map.

Janos, Gonzalez, Briscoe, and I bent over the little map, and then I dragged out my wide area map. We were off my map completely, at least a hundred kilometers from where we were supposed to be. No wonder our radio was out of range! I looked around the little group. “Tell me about this town. What did you see?”

“It’s called Santa Maria de los Milagros, Saint Mary of the Miracles, and isn’t much more than an overgrown village. A few cars, some pickup trucks, probably a store in the center,” commented Janos. “Mostly empty farms around a crossroads.”

I looked up at that. “You didn’t go into the town did you?”

“No!” answered Private Gonzalez. “We’d have been spotted for sure. We just went down the road until we saw some signs of life, and then slipped up a hillside overseeing the town.”

“We also saw troops, sir, Nicaraguan troops, a convoy of them,” said Janos.

That got everybody’s attention. There was some hubbub that I waved back to silence. “Numbers and deployment,” I demanded.

“Two convoys, each a half dozen trucks loaded with troops. They looked like deuce-and-a-halfs, but funny, like foreign versions.”

“Probably GAZ trucks. They’re Russian, either from Russia or second hand through Cuba,” I answered.

The two men looked at each other. “I think you’re right sir,” continued Janos. “Anyway, six trucks and a Jeep, looked to be an officer. We had one convoy and then another about an hour later. That one stopped and everybody got out and had a piss call on the side of the road. I didn’t get a good count, but it looked like a short company, pure infantry. Lots of AKs, not much else.”

Great! I had two companies of Sandinista infantry in the area, and that meant at least a battalion around us.

I looked back down at the road map. The road we were on wasn’t even marked, although Santa Maria de los Milagros was a small dot on a larger road. That road ran north. If we skirted around the town tonight, we might be able to head north towards the Honduran border. I outlined my plan to the others. Both Janos and Gonzalez agreed it could be done. The two convoys were heading north, also, probably to reinforce the border in case the Yankees invaded.

Which we had done, by the way.

Lieutenant Fairfax had a contribution at that point. It was a really lousy idea, but at least he was thinking. “What if we steal some cars and pickup trucks, and use them to drive to the border? We could make it there in just a few hours.”

A few of the men actually looked hopeful at that idea, but I noticed the more senior troops, like Briscoe and Janos, were more thoughtful. I simply shook my head in the negative. “We need to do this in a way nobody knows about us. The perfect outcome is that we go home without the Nicaraguan Army ever figuring out that armed American troops have invaded the peace loving nation of Nicaragua. We start stealing cars and trucks, the cops and the Army will be all over us long before we ever hit the border. We’re going to have to sneak out of here.”

“We could capture everybody and tie them up, and cut the phone lines.”

“With a dozen and a half guys? And nobody is going to get away? You’ve been watching too much television, Lieutenant. I wouldn’t try it with the whole company. Besides, we are trying to do this without anybody knowing about us. No casualties, no kidnapping.”

Fairfax simply pouted. At some point I was going to be tempted to put him in a body bag, just like Donovan and Masurski.

He also protested when I ordered the men to dump their chutes and related gear at the edge of the clearing. He wanted us to carry everything out, just like we would if this was an exercise in the drop zone. Fairfax didn’t realize that this was combat conditions, or at least as close as we could get without getting shot at. I made the point by tossing my steel pot helmet on top of the collection of chutes and digging out a boonie hat. I also made a point of checking the clip on my.45, and slinging Captain Donovan’s over my shoulder. The other men noticed this and got very serious, and checked their own gear over as well.

We made ourselves comfortable until later that evening. At 2100 we moved out. I had my scouts out ahead of us. The center of the march was the three stretchers, each being carried by two men. Doc Gerald and I were with this group. I had a large stick I was using as a cane, and once I got down to the roadway, could make decent speed with it. Fairfax trailed behind us a little. Briscoe played tail-end Charlie, keeping an eye out for stragglers, and the rest of the men were used for flankers and to alternate with the stretcher bearers.

Our march that night sucked. The town was only a couple of klicks, maybe a mile and a half, down around the bend from where we had landed. If we could have kept going, we could have marched through it in ten minutes, with time to spare. Instead, we spent half the night crawling on hillsides and through the brush around the town, dragging stretchers and me half the time, just to go another two kilometers. Then we couldn’t make great time since we had to get off the road several times when traffic came through, once when a convoy of Nicaraguan Army trucks trundled through. Still we made about ten kilometers north of the town when it started to get light, and I called it quits. We holed up a couple of hundred meters off the road in a small notch in the hillside. It was now Thursday morning, 12 November.

I had Thompson rig up the radio again. “Let’s call home, see if anybody answers,” I told him. We were still way too far from home to reach anybody on the ground, but maybe they had a plane searching for us.

Thompson set the Prick 77 on a log and did what he did with it. “Whiskey Zulu calling Whiskey Home. Come in please. Whiskey Zulu calling Whiskey Home. Please respond.” He tried this a few more times, and told me, “Nothing, sir. I’m going to try an alternate frequency.” I just nodded to him. For all my math, I don’t really know how radio works. I’d be a fool telling the man his business. He fiddled with a dial, and then repeated, “Whiskey Zulu calling Whiskey Home. Come in please. Whiskey Zulu calling Whiskey Home. Come in please.” After several tries, he said, “Sorry, sir.”

We holed up for the day and moved again that night. During the day, I kept a couple of lookouts watching the road, and checking on traffic and Sandinista movements. We made a bit better time that night, but still couldn’t raise anybody on the Prick 77 before the march, although Thompson couldn’t find any faults with the radio. The next morning, the 13^th, a Friday, we had made another fifteen klicks. By my estimate we had covered about half the distance to the border.

As was our routine by now, as soon as we made our invisible camp, Briscoe deployed sentries and Thompson set up the radio and made a call home. “Whiskey Zulu calling Whiskey Home. Come in please. Whiskey Zulu calling Whiskey Home. Please respond.” He let go the button on the handset, hoping for a response, and there was a sudden burst of static from the earpiece, along with a scratchy voice. Thompson looked up at me in surprise. There were some more scratches coming from the handset. I pointed to it and said, “Well, answer the phone!”

“Whiskey Home, say again, transmission was garbled.”

Thompson’s face had a look of intense concentration as he tried to hear through the static. Whoever we were talking to was a long ways away, but at least we were talking to somebody. Finally he turned it off. He looked up at me and Briscoe and Fairfax, and said, “I wasn’t getting all that much, sir, but I’m to try and call back in another two hours. It wasn’t the Army, it was the Navy!”

“The Navy!” I exclaimed.

He nodded. “Yes, sir. I really couldn’t get much, but it was somebody called Foxtrot Charlie Niner, and they were an Echo Two Charlie. Any idea what that means, sir?”

Fairfax looked confused, and Briscoe just shook his head. The only thing I could figure was that Echo Two Charlie meant an E2C, a Navy version of an AWACS bird, which flew off carriers and supposedly had more electronic equipment than God. Was the Navy out looking for us, too? I didn’t care how we got home, but if the Navy rescued us, we’d never hear the end of it!

“The only E2C I’ve ever heard of is a Navy carrier plane. Maybe there’s a carrier somewhere that can hear us. They say to call again in two hours?”

“Yes, sir.”

“So, we call again. Let’s get comfortable.” I dug another Lurp out of my pack and had Briscoe get a camp organized. We were running a cold camp, so no fires were used for cooking, but we still needed to designate a latrine area, garbage pile, set watches, and so forth. I was beat. After my really awful meal, I napped. I wasn’t the only one.

I woke up with a sharp pain when Thompson nudged my right foot, the one on my bad leg. I grunted and gave him a dirty look, but he apologized. “It’s time, sir.”

I nodded and got to my feet. Briscoe joined up with me and we went to where Thompson was set up. He flipped his switches and spoke into the handset, “Whiskey Zulu calling Whiskey Home. Come in please.”

This time the response was immediate and much clearer. “Whiskey Zulu, this is Foxtrot Delta Four. How do you read me?”

“Foxtrot Delta Four, we read you five by five.”

“Whiskey Zulu, good to hear from you.”

“Foxtrot Delta Four, even better to hear from you!”

“Where are you guys? Say condition.”

Thompson looked up at me. “What should I say, sir?”

I nodded. “Let me have it.” Thompson handed me the handset. I keyed the transmitter and said, “Foxtrot Delta Four, this is Whiskey Zulu Actual, do you read?”

“Loud and clear, Whiskey Zulu Actual.”

I grabbed the map and said, “No map coordinates Foxtrot Delta Four. Best we can figure we’re about 50 kilometers south and thirty kilometers east of…” I looked at the map again, and then gave him the map number and coordinates of a village that was on the Honduran map. “We are requesting immediate extraction.”

“Whiskey Zulu, you guys decide to go for a walk?” asked the incredulous voice.

“We just land where they drop us, Foxtrot Delta Four. Repeat, we are requesting immediate extraction.”

The voice got serious again. “Say condition, Whiskey Zulu.”

“We have two dead and one needing immediate dustoff, and we are low on food and water.” A dustoff was a casualty evacuation, similar to a medevac flight.

“Whiskey Zulu, be advised, we’ll need to pass this along.”

“Understood, Foxtrot Delta Four. We’ll call again at 1200. Whiskey Zulu clear.” I handed the handset back to Thompson. There were a lot of anxious faces looking at me. “Well, I would say this is a good thing. They know we’re alive, even if we’re not where we’re supposed to be. Now we just need to organize a dustoff.”

For the next few hours morale was relatively upbeat. We now knew where we were, we had managed to make contact with headquarters, and an evacuation was in the works. The betting was that at 1200 we’d get the word that a dustoff would be made that night, as soon as it was dark and the Hueys could spool up. The reality was somewhat different.

At noon I had Thompson do his thing and took the handset from him. “Whiskey Zulu calling Whiskey Home. Whiskey Zulu calling Whiskey Home. Do you read?”

“Whiskey Zulu, this is Whiskey Home. How do you read?” This was a different voice and response. Foxtrot Delta Four, the E2C AWACS, must be simply relaying us back to Tegucigalpa.

“Reading you five by five, Whiskey Home.”

“Say condition, Whiskey Zulu, say condition.”

“Same as before, Whiskey Home. Two dead, multiple injured, low on food and water, locals not aware of our presence.”

A new voice came over the line. “Put Whiskey Zulu Actual on the line!” This was a request for the Actual, or commanding officer of the detachment.

I shrugged at Thompson, who was following along, and answered, “This is Whiskey Zulu Actual.”

“This isn’t Donovan!” was the angry response.

I gave Thompson a curious look. I triggered the mike. “Whiskey Home, be advised, this frequency is non-secure.”

“Who is this? Where’s Donovan!”

I rolled my eyes. This was a violation of every radio procedure in the book. “Captain Donovan is dead. This is Captain Buckman.”

“Who?”

Christ! “Bravo-Uniform-Charlie-Kilo-Mike-Alpha-November.”

“Where’s Lieutenant Fairfax? Who are you? Why isn’t Fairfax in command?”

“I assumed command.”

“Why?”

I glanced over at Fairfax, who was following this. “We can discuss this back at base, sir. When can we expect pickup?”

There were a few more minutes of blank air, and then the first voice returned. “Whiskey Zulu, at 1400 contact November Lima Four for recon check. We need to pinpoint your location.” He gave us a new radio frequency for November Lima Four, and then cleared the frequency.

I looked at Thompson and shrugged, which he returned to me. Two hours later we were on line with November Lima Four. Curiously, November Lima Four had us ignite a pencil flare and then douse it after fifteen seconds, and then repeat the process twice. Afterwards, we were told to call Whiskey Home on yet another frequency at 1600.

A couple of the men asked what was going on. I said, “What I think is that somebody is flying around in a recon bird that can read that flare, and they just found us on a map.” Most of the guys started looking up at the sky, but we were under some trees and nobody could see or hear anything. “Guys, I don’t think you’re going to see anything. It’s probably some sort of infrared sensing system. They might be miles away and miles high.”

At 1600 we called Whiskey Home again. Extraction would be tomorrow, Saturday the 14^th, but we needed to continue north, to a suitable landing zone. At 2100 we started north again. This march was tougher that the previous one. We had to go farther, and skirt around an even larger town, and military traffic was increasing. It looked like we were heading into a fortified area. By 0500 we were exhausted, and the injury list had grown longer. We were almost out of food, and running low on halazone tablets. Private Gonzalez had broken his ankle falling in the dark, and while he wasn’t being carried, he was now as slow as I was, and could no longer act as a scout.

I made the men keep moving. My knee was in agony by now, but I kept moving back and forth up and down the line, urging them on and telling them a pickup was ahead. Private Smith said that we should leave him on the road, and that somebody would be able to pick him up in the morning. At that point I gave him a good-natured chewing out. “Listen, we all jumped in and we’re all getting out. I don’t care if I have to cut the damn leg off and tie a stick to the stump and then kick your peg-legged ass back to Texas, but we are all going out together. You guys have been watching too many god-damned movies!”

Morale was dropping at this point. Our morning radio call was not telling us when we were to be picked up. I was getting the impression that Whiskey Home and General Hawkins wanted us to walk home. Hawkins was a political general, not a combat general, and we weren’t his men, but his problem. I had the sneaking suspicion that he would have preferred that we had crashed with the Gooney Bird (if that was what had happened to it) since then he could blame either the Hondurans or somebody else and forget about this mess.

The 1200 radio call confirmed that there was no pickup scheduled for that evening. We were to continue marching north. I had already reviewed our status with Briscoe and the other noncoms. Thompson told me that the batteries for the Prick 77 wouldn’t last much longer. We were out of food. When we ran out of halazone, we’d start dropping from dysentery and God knows what else. I’d had dysentery once, back on the first go. It’s not enjoyable. We needed a dustoff. Most importantly, our medic said that Smith needed immediate dustoff. He was running out of morphine, and by this time tomorrow would be screaming in agony. In two days time, gangrene would start to set in and he’d have to remove the leg.

After being told to keep marching, I replied, “Whiskey Home, negative on continuing the march. We need immediate pickup. Injuries are increasing and time is of the essence.”

Another voice came on the line, Hawkins again, ordering us to keep marching. I looked over at Doc, who glanced over at Smith and then shook his head. “Negative, Whiskey Home, we need immediate pickup. Unit condition insufficient for continued march without further loss.”

“Buckman, I am ordering you to keep marching!”

I had just about had it by that point. I knew I was throwing my career down the drain, but I needed to get these guys home. “Whiskey Home, that is a negative. Now pull your head out of your ass and whistle up some Hueys! If we have to make another march it’s going to be to the nearest town to find a hospital and a police station to surrender to! Now make it happen! Over!”

There was about five minutes of silence before the original voice came back on the air. “Whiskey Zulu, can you make it another four klicks north? There’s an abandoned airstrip north of you.”

Briscoe and Janos nodded at this, and I agreed with them; that we could do. Still, an abandoned airstrip? Here? Who the hell would build an airstrip in this neighborhood? There was nobody around. And how could they tell? No way was it on any maps. Who knew about it? DOD? CIA? DEA? Some other three letter agency?

“Can do, Whiskey Home. Four klicks north. We can make it by 2300. We’ll call when we get there.”

“Whiskey Zulu, this is Whiskey Home. Copy and out.”

I decided not to wait. I sent my three scouts out, to find this abandoned airfield, and detailed a few more men to follow them and station themselves along the way. It was slow going, but it was daylight and we wouldn’t be falling in the dark and breaking any more bones. We got there a little before 1800 and discovered our next problem.

The airfield wasn’t abandoned. The scouts reported that an ancient flatbed pickup truck had rolled in with a half dozen barrels loaded on the back. If I called home and said we had visitors, the pickup would be cancelled. I circled all the able bodied troops together.

“We need this airfield. It’s probably being used by drug runners or somebody like that. We need to capture this place, but not make it look like Americans. Only speak Spanish. If you can’t speak Spanish, keep quiet. Take prisoners. No killing. You guys are that good. Understood?”

There were enough grins to tell me that Company C was ready for some payback. They were so sick and tired of sneaking north that an assault on a narco airfield sounded enjoyable to them. We crept to the edge of the airfield and waited for darkness to give us cover.

The airstrip itself was maybe a couple thousand feet long, mostly grass and gravel. Whatever flew in and out of here wasn’t very big. There were a couple of ramshackle buildings, one of which looked like an empty hangar. The other had a light on in it. We could hear a generator running from somewhere over by the hangar. The pickup truck was sitting next to the lighted building. The barrels were stacked with several others off to the side. Security seemed nonexistent, but somebody must have turned on that light, maybe the truck driver.

As soon as it was dark enough to be hidden, I ordered Briscoe and a few men to the right and Janos with a couple of men to the left. I sent another group forward, towards the barrels, and I limped along after them. I couldn’t crawl very well, but the barrels gave us some cover. I tapped one of the barrels, and then twisted off one of the bung caps. “What is it, sir?” asked Private Guillermo.

I sniffed. It was some form of petroleum product, kerosene or diesel fuel or something like that. “Fuel or diesel, something along those lines. Let’s get away from here.” I didn’t want to be hiding in the fuel dump if a firefight started!

I motioned my men forward, towards the lighted building. We stopped at the flatbed truck. We found Sergeant Briscoe and his little group already there. “All clear, sir. Three men inside. Nobody else around. There’s a plane inside the hangar. Janos is over on the other side,” he whispered to us.

“What are they doing? Are they armed?”

“Yes, sir, AKs, but we haven’t seen anything else. They’re drinking, and at least one of them is smoking something and I don’t think it’s tobacco.”

“Narcos!”

“Most likely, Captain.”

I just nodded. That was both good and bad. Narcos, drug runners or guards, were very likely to have limited skills and discipline. That was also the bad part, since they were just as likely to get drunk or stoned and wander outside to shoot up the place for the sheer hell of it.

“Let’s get them out of there. Cut off the generator. That should stir the pot,” I said.

Briscoe smiled and nodded. He pointed to two of the men and ordered them over towards the hangar. Two minutes later the hum of the generator died and the light went off in the shack.

There was some immediate cursing inside the shack, and a moment later the door to the shack slammed open and one of the men inside stumbled out. There was just enough moonlight to find his way over to the other building and go towards the rear. The men who had turned off the generator would take him down. Guillermo was at my side and whispering a running translation of what was being said inside the shack. It was basically cursing about how stupid Morales was and what the fuck was he up to? Another light came on, from a lantern it looked like, and another man came out and headed towards the hangar.

That left one man inside the shack. We watched the hangar, and after another minute, the light went out. Two down, one to go. The last guy was going to start wondering what was happening, and getting nervous. Nervous people do stupid stuff. We didn’t have any flash-bang grenades to stun and disorient anybody. I ordered Guillermo to toss a frag grenade against the back wall from outside, and see if anybody bolted.

Guillermo nodded and moved away, Briscoe and a couple of privates slipped up to either side of the door. When the grenade blew, the shack shook like an earthquake had hit it, and the windows popped out and busted. Two men came flying out the door. One was grabbed by Briscoe, but the other struggled and got the butt of an M-16 to the back of his head for his troubles. He folded up and collapsed to the ground.

“Two men, sergeant?” I whispered to him.

He put his lips to my ear. “Sorry about that, sir. He must have been sleeping. We missed him.”

I waved it off. It was unimportant. We had captured or killed everybody and the airfield was in our hands, and nobody knew it was the Americans who had done it.

Well, not until Lieutenant Fairfax bounced up and loudly asked, “Now, what, sir?”

The wounded narco looked up at that, and said, “Americanos!”

“So much for secrecy, Lieutenant. Weren’t you there when we talked about the need to speak only in Spanish?” I asked him.

“Sir? I thought that was for the assault teams.” What an idiot!

I turned my back on the fool and ordered Briscoe to bring the other two prisoners up, and to get the generator going. Thompson and I went into the shack and found a table and set up the radio. The generator came on, but the lights had all been blown, so we used our remaining chemlights and reconned the area. There were a couple of bottles of something on the floor, along with some cases of beer in the corner. Some of the bottles had been broken, but there was still some beer and liquor. A couple of the men eyed the booze, and that was all I needed to worry about!

“Sergeant! Secure the booze and beer until further notice!”

“Yes, sir!” He pointed at a couple of the privates. “Sit on it. Even look funny at it and I’ll have your asses!” Then he turned back to me. “You need to see this, sir.”

I followed him out the door, towards the hangar. There was a light glowing inside the hangar. A small single engine plane was inside, and in the back was a load of white bricks of some sort, probably cocaine being transshipped through the airfield. “Abandoned airfield, my ass!” I commented.

“There’s some more over here in the corner,” said one of the privates.

“Sir, it’s time to call home,” commented Briscoe.

I hobbled back over to the shack and sat down in just about the only decent chair left. Thompson got the radio running and Whiskey Zulu called home. Three Hueys were scheduled to arrive at 0300 at five minute intervals, with a fourth in reserve in case something happened to one of the first three. That worked out to six or seven men per helo, which was about right for a Huey. I called Briscoe and Fairfax over.

“Three birds are coming in at 0300. Lieutenant, you go out in the first bird with Donovan, Masurski, Smith, Doc, and Gonzalez.” I glanced at Briscoe.

“You should go too, sir. Your leg.”

“My leg will still be there ten minutes later. Sergeant you go out on the second bird with another six men. I’ll take the last one with the rest. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Briscoe.

Fairfax simply nodded and looked sullen. He wanted to get the hell out of there, but he wanted to go last, heroically. If I left him behind, I’d never see him or the men again. He could screw up a Girl Scout cake bake!

I looked over at the two privates guarding the booze, and smiled. “Gentlemen, everybody gets one beer each.”

You’d have thought I was handing out diamonds. Everybody’s face lit up, and the two soldiers hopped up and grabbed some beers, and took them outside to the others. Briscoe set a couple down on the table for me and Thompson, and then handed one to Fairfax. Fairfax gave a disgusted look at the thought of drinking on a mission, but Briscoe just shrugged and drank it himself. “Now what, sir?”

I ignored him for a moment, as I poured about half the bottle down my throat. It was warm donkey piss, and it was the best tasting thing I had ever had! I belched loudly, smacked my lips, and smiled. “I needed that, sergeant!” I got a room full of laughs for that. “Sergeant, collect up whatever we have in the way of demo gear, explosives, detonators, whatever, anything you can find or finagle. I want to rig this whole fucking place to blow when we leave here.”

“And the prisoners? Sir?”

I looked hard over at Fairfax, who had let out the secret that it was the Americans who had fucked up this little way station on the drug road north. “Keep them tied up over by the fuel dump. I’ll sort them out later.”

Briscoe smiled at this and worked on his own beer. All soldiers like to make things go BOOM! He drained his beer at the same time as I drained mine, and then went outside to make it happen. He had a number of very enthusiastic helpers. When we lifted off, there was going to be a very loud BANG! When he returned, he came with a couple of helpers rolling one of the barrels of fuel with him. We moved out onto the grass while he rigged the shack to blow. In the faint light around us, I could see similar activity in the hangar and over at the fuel dump.

Once that was ready, I ordered a second beer for everybody, and announced that was it. I also quietly told Briscoe to pack up those two bottles of rum we had found on the floor. It was probably rotgut, but I intended to find out once we got home. Briscoe just grinned and nodded.

At 0250 I struggled to my feet and started over to the fuel dump. Briscoe and Janos hopped to their feet. “What’s up, Captain?”

“Nothing much. You stay here.”

“Where are you going, sir,” he pressed.

I gave him a hard look. “I’m going to release the prisoners. Now, stay here. That’s an order.”

His look back was as hard. “I can do that, sir.”

“My responsibility, Sergeant, now sit down.”

Sergeant Briscoe nodded and I hobbled over to the fuel dump. The four prisoners were tied hand and foot behind the remaining barrels. They were talking amongst themselves, and I heard the words “gringos” and “Americanos.” Yeah, they knew all about us. I pulled my 1911A1 and put a round into each of their heads. The sound was deafening in the still Nicaraguan night. When we blew the fuel dump, the bodies would be burned up. There would be no witnesses to talk about American paratroopers invading Nicaragua.

Lieutenant Fairfax intercepted me as I limped back. “Sir, what happened?”

“I released the prisoners, Lieutenant.” Released them from their earthly bonds.

“I heard shooting.”

“I cut them loose and then I fired into the air to hurry them along,” I told him.

“I want to check on them.” He turned to go.

I grabbed him with my left hand as I laid my right hand on my Colt. “Get back to your group, Lieutenant. The prisoners are gone. That’s an order!”

I was surprised when several of the men came over and positioned themselves between Fairfax and the fuel dump. He got the message, and went back to sit with his group.

At 0255 we turned on the radio and made contact with the Hueys. Janos had rigged up some piles of cocaine bricks soaked in fuel, and I let him set them on fire as landing lights. It wouldn’t do to breathe the fumes very long, but that was the least of my worries. Ten minutes later I heard the WHOOP, WHOOP, WHOOP of an approaching helo. I struggled to my feet. A moment later it flared out in the circle of light, and I ordered the group of dead and injured loaded on board. It was gone two minutes later.

Two minutes after the first bird lifted off, the second landed and Briscoe’s group took off. Finally it was time for the third Huey. Sergeant Briscoe magically appeared out of the gloom. “You were supposed to be on that bird,” I told him.

“Janos sprained a thumbnail. I sent him out instead.”

I smiled at him. I’d have never have gotten these guys home without his help. “Well, it’s a good thing. I forgot you had the remote detonators. Everything ready to blow?”

He held up a couple of radio igniters. “Just say the magic word!”

We were interrupted by the sound of the last helo arriving. “You got the booze?” I asked.

In response he patted his pack and grinned.

I grinned, too. “They say stolen kisses are the sweetest. I wonder if it’s the same about stolen booze?” I had to yell over the WHOOP, WHOOP of the Huey’s rotors. It landed and I pointed towards it. “LET’S GO!”

The other five men ran under the spinning blades and tossed their gear on board and scrambled in. Briscoe had to half carry me over, as my knee was screaming now. He wanted to toss me on first, but I insisted he get on first. I was more than happy to allow him and Spec 4 Thompson to pull me in. We strapped in, and the pilot lifted off. I ordered the crew chief to have the Huey hold in place a few hundred feet up, and then I pointed at Briscoe. “HIT IT!”

He grinned and punched first one detonator and then the other. The first exploded the hangar, in a whoosh of yellow as fuel, cocaine, and airplane lit off. The second exploded the shack, and then started a chain reaction going down through the flatbed truck and on to the fuel dump. Third Platoon cheered loudly, and I told the crew chief to get us the fuck out of there.

My knee throbbed the entire trip home, but I no longer cared. I had gotten my men home. Every once in a while one of the guys caught my eye and gave me a thumbs up. I would simply smile and return it. I was so tired, but I could carry on a little while longer. It wasn’t a long trip back to the base. Another cheer went up when the lights came into view. The other three helos were already there, along with a number of men around one of them. We flared out and there was another cheer, and then cheering men crowded around from the other Huey. It was the rest of the Third Platoon that had been on the plane, less Lieutenant Fairfax, Gerald, and the wounded and dead.

I hopped carefully off the bird and we all moved away from it while the pilot shut down the engines. Spirits were high, but I got the men calmed down somewhat. I confirmed that a group of ambulances had taken away the first helo’s load. “Okay, Sergeant, once we get some transport, I want you to get the men back to quarters and get them settled in. Get the men fed. I’m heading over to the hospital and checking on the men, then I’ll be back to check on you and these guys, and we’ll see about those two bottles.”

“You should stay at the hospital, sir,” he argued.

I smiled but shook my head. “Later, Sergeant, after we see to the men and those bottles. Priorities, Sergeant Briscoe, priorities!”

Several headlights were now apparent coming towards us. “Transport has found us,” I commented. It looked like we had a couple of deuce-and-a-halfs coming our way, along with a Jeep.

It was Sunday the 15^th and the mission was finally over. We stood there and watched as the convoy approached. The Jeep drove right up to us, and I could see that it had three men in it. They got out. The passenger was a very natty and neat major, the driver was an older staff sergeant, and a young corporal was sitting in the back. The major looked at me in considerable disgust. I guess that after a week of crawling through the Nicaraguan countryside I wasn’t ready to be presented at high tea. I was filthy, unshaven, and smelled like a goat, in fact. I didn’t care. I just stared at him. “Captain Buckman?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re under arrest, captain! The charges are mutiny and failure to obey orders.” He turned to his sergeant and corporal. “Take him!”

Chapter 58: More Hard Time

Here’s an important safety tip for all you new Provost Marshals — if at all possible, never arrest somebody in front of armed troops. On the one hand, they might disagree with your decision to haul away their friend or leader. On the other hand, they might be so overjoyed to be rid of the asshole they decide to help you take care of justice! It is better to get the offender away from the group and do it quietly and privately.

The major was the provost marshal, and the sergeant and corporal were military police. While I stood there in disbelief, the sergeant grabbed me roughly, and the corporal stripped me of the two pistols I was carrying. There was a loud murmur of disapproval from the Third Platoon, however, and several edged closer. I even heard a couple of their M-16s being charged, which made me very nervous. Somebody had to do something before this got out of hand!

I shrugged out of the sergeant’s grasp and marched over to the men I had just come back with. “STAND DOWN! STAND DOWN! YOU WILL STAND DOWN!” The men were visibly cowed by this, and backed up. “This is the 82^nd Fucking Airborne and you will act like it! Now I don’t know what’s going on, but you will not act like a fucking third world pisshole army. Is that understood?!”

There was some grumbling, and the sergeant was moving closer to me. I shrugged him away again. “IS THAT UNDERSTOOD!?”

Sergeant Briscoe answered, “YES, SIR!” and the moment was over. He turned to the rest of the men and shouted, “Third Platoon, PRESENT ARMS!” and the men came to attention. I returned their salute, and Briscoe ordered, “ORDER ARMS!”

I turned back to the sergeant and held my arms out to him to be cuffed. He had a furious look on his face, and my hands were grabbed and wrenched behind my back, where steel handcuffs were placed on them. Then he and the corporal frog-marched me over to the Jeep and put me in the back. The major got back in the passenger seat and the corporal was driving. As soon as I was out of sight of the troops, the sergeant gave me a vicious shot to the kidneys. “You’re going to be sorry, now, asshole,” he growled quietly.

I wasn’t sure what was going on, but this was not the way things were supposed to be run. As an officer I should never have been manhandled and cuffed by a non-com. It is presumed that as an officer and gentleman, I can be trusted not to attempt an escape. Even taking my pistols was unusual; as an officer I could be asked for my parole and then left armed. Something was going on, and I didn’t think I was going to like it.

We drove across the base to a permanent building that had been loaned to us by the Honduran Army. I wasn’t quite sure what century it had been built in, but it was old! The small Judge Advocate General detachment, the Provost Marshall, and the MPs were all using this building as their headquarters, probably because it was the least useful building available, and better buildings were being used by more important elements of the deployment. I was dragged downstairs and processed into the system, such as it was. The cuffs were removed and I was stripped down to my skin. The makeshift wrapping around my knee was cut off. My boots were taken from me, along with my watch (a Timex the sergeant took great delight in stomping on the floor; I had left my Rolex back in the States before the deployment), and the picture of Marilyn and little Charlie my wife had sent me. The MP sergeant enjoyed tearing that in two and tossing it in the garbage. I was then issued a bright orange jumpsuit with the word ‘PRISONER’ stenciled on it, and a pair of orange flip-flops. Then I was shoved into a cell, and given one last love tap to the kidneys by the MP sergeant. I noticed the corporal giving him a disapproving look behind his back, but that didn’t do me any good.

Again, this was just extraordinary conduct. If I was to be arrested, I should have been taken to the hospital where I would be treated for my injuries, and then be told I was restricted to my quarters or bed or something of the sort. I didn’t know what was going on. Somebody was obviously trying to send me a message, and not a very subtle one, either.

I looked around at my new home. The last time this place had been cleaned must have been before the World War, but I wasn’t sure which one. It was a basic 8’ by 8’ iron bar cage. The lock mechanism to the door was so rusty they had a chain looped around the door frame with a padlock on it. A toilet was at one side, without a seat, and a sink was mounted on the wall, with a single faucet over it. The bedframe was bolted to the floor and had steel springs with a moldy thin mattress laying on it.

The only thing going through my mind was, ‘What the fuck was going on?’ Mutiny? They hang people for mutiny! Brigadier General Hawkins must really have it in for me, I thought.

I limped over to the toilet and jiggled the handle, but either the water line was blocked, or the valve was shut off. It didn’t flush, and it was bone dry. The faucet and sink were better. The faucet handle worked, and a thin stream of water came out. Then the handle broke off completely. The water continued flowing. The sounds of splashing water on the concrete floor made me look under the sink, to where the rusted plumbing was allowing the water to run out into my cell. I watched as the trickle of water went across the floor of the cell and down into a drain in the corner. Great!

I had to pee, so I unzipped my jumpsuit and pissed directly into the drain. I was going to reserve the toilet for Number Two. After relieving myself, I went to the sink and looked at myself in the polished steel mirror, now somewhat rusted and scratched, that was over the sink. I was filthy, and buried under a layer of grime and grease paint. I was also hungry and thirsty. I lowered my face to the faucet and drank the warm and rusty water, and then spent the next hour washing my hands and face as best I could.

I was left alone until about noon or so, when the corporal stuck his head in to see if I was still alive. I asked for something to eat. He didn’t say anything, but he came back an hour later and tossed a couple of Lurps into the cell through the bars. You need a knife to open ration packs, which I didn’t have, so I spent the next half an hour working the plastic against a corner of the rusty bedframe until I could rip it open. It was better than nothing. You have to be very careful eating Lurps dry, since they are freeze dried and can swell in your stomach and you need to drink a lot of water with them.

I fell asleep on the moldy mattress and slept, exhausted, until the next morning. I almost forgot where I was, at least until I rolled upright and set my feet on the floor. The running water was starting to back up in the drain, and now was covering the floor and running into another drain on the other side of the room. My cell was now a half inch deep lake. I unzipped my jump suit and peed out through the bars in the general direction of the working drain.

I looked in the steel mirror and washed my face some more, and this time tried to get the grime and dirt out of my hair. I felt some gurgling in my stomach, so I figured that either I was hungry or that, more likely, the water wasn’t pure, and I was about to come down with the Hondo version of the runs. No more Lurps were forthcoming, but about noon or so, the sergeant and his helper returned to the basement and let me out of the cell. I was cuffed again, and the sergeant said, “I don’t care what your lawyer says. You’re going to sign the confession or you’re never going to come out of here alive.” Then I took another couple of shots to the kidneys. The last one made me stagger and drop to my knees, which made my right knee shriek with agony. I was dragged upright again, and then hauled upstairs.

I tried to remember anything about court martials, but the only thing I really knew about military justice was the Article 15s I had handled, non-judicial punishments that didn’t involve a court. I had never been involved in a real court martial before.

I found myself deposited on a chair in a small conference room, bolted to the floor, with a table also bolted to the floor. It reminded me a lot of that one morning in Towson all those years ago. Déjà vu all over again! This time the guard made sure to give me a couple of shots to the ribs after I sat down, with a warning to behave and confess, if I knew what was good for me. Ten minutes later the door opened and a teenager came in. As the door opened, I heard a voice say, “One hour, no more.”

Okay, he wasn’t a teenager. He was actually a first lieutenant with a JAG insignia on his lapels, the crossed sword and quill pen. I hoped this kid was good with the pen, because he didn’t look old enough to know what a sword was used for. He smiled at me and placed a folder and legal pad on the table and then sat down across from me. “Captain Buckman?”

“Yeah. Who are you?”

“I’m Lieutenant Dorne. I’m your attorney. I’m pleased to meet you!” He smiled like an eager young puppy.

“Uh, huh. Listen, what the hell is going on? What the hell am I supposed to have done?”

“Well, I have the list of charges here.” They had a list? Dorne fumbled through the file and then looked back at me. “Originally, the most serious was mutiny. Then there’s failure to obey a direct order, destruction or loss of military property, and failure to follow proper radio procedures. Oh, and insubordination, I almost forgot that one.”

“You said the most serious was mutiny. Does that mean that it is the most serious, or that there is something else now more serious?” I asked him.

“Well, this morning they added four counts of murder and a count of resisting arrest. Who’d you kill, anyway?”

“Nobody, Lieutenant. Nobody! What I did was piss off a general!”

Dorne started looking through his paperwork again. “That must be the insubordination and failure to obey a direct order.”

“Must be. Let me ask you a question. Who picked you as my lawyer?” I asked him.

Dorne gave me a broad smile. “The Provost Marshal himself! He requested me personally! This is really exciting. It’s my first case, and I get a capital case!”

“Oh, Christ!” I shook my head. This was just getting better and better. Almost every JAG ever commissioned comes in as a captain, an O-3, or better. The Provost Marshal, that major who arrested me, must have looked far and wide to find a JAG lawyer so green that he was still only a lieutenant, and had never tried a case before. I wondered if Dorne had actually gone to law school, or if he had done it all by correspondence course. He was so green he thought this was an honor, instead of what it really was, another nail in my coffin.

Dorne started talking about the particulars. “Mutiny is going to be very hard to prove. Case law is definitely on our side. Who were the witnesses to the murders?” I just stared at him as he rambled on.

Finally I said, “Shut up, Lieutenant. Let me ask you a question. Have you been approached about a plea deal already?”

He nodded and smiled. “The Provost Marshal wants twenty years at Leavenworth, but I know we can do better than that! I shouldn’t think more than four or five, total…”

“Shut up. Forget it. We’re going to trial if I have to. I’m not signing off on any plea deal.” This was all political nonsense in any case, with a pissy general trying to fuck me over. Screw him!

Just then the door opened and the corporal came inside. “Time’s up. Get lost,” he told Dorne.

Dorne looked shocked, but I barked out, “You will come to attention and address your superior officers correctly, prisoner or not. He’s a lieutenant and I’m a captain, and you are a corporal. You should know better. Now we are not through and nobody less than a major is to interrupt us, is that understood?” He stared at me, and I repeated, “IS THAT UNDERSTOOD!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dismissed.”

Dorne looked at me curiously, seeing me in a different light. I turned to him and said, “Okay, we need to make this quick. I buffaloed the corporal, but his sergeant isn’t going to be as cooperative. I’m going to talk, you’re going to listen, got it?”

Dorne simply nodded, so I just continued. “Okay, this is total bullshit. Brigadier General Hawkins has a bug up his ass and its name is Buckman. He wants to bury me and scare me into taking a plea deal. The last thing he wants is an actual court martial. Now, who do you report to?”

“Me?” I urged him to continue and he said, “The Provost Marshal.”

Even I knew this was wrong. The Provost Marshal is the senior military police officer on a base, and is in charge of the MP detachment. The JAG Corps are military lawyers, and provide the prosecuting and defense attorneys in a court martial. They had separate chains of command, just like in civilian life. The cops aren’t in charge of the prosecutors.

I shook my head. “No, he just houses you here. You actually report to the JAG HQ in DC, right?”

He shrugged. “Yes, sir.”

“Well, you get through to somebody higher up the food chain. Hawkins can bury me down here in as deep a hole as he can find, but sooner or later my wife is going to notice I haven’t come home or called. Now she doesn’t know shit about the Army, but she knows my father and her father, and they know several congressmen.” This was a stretch, since Big Bob considered me his daughter’s biggest mistake, and I hadn’t spoken to my father in three years, but Dorne didn’t need to know those pesky details. “Sooner or later, I am going to get a phone call, and the first words out of my mouth will be ‘Get me a civilian lawyer!’ Do you understand me?”

“You don’t want me as your lawyer?”

“Lieutenant, I am a rich man. I know, I know, what’s a rich man doing in the Army? Take my word for it, I am a multimillionaire. You don’t need to know the details, but the first thing I am going to tell my new civilian lawyer will be that I will pay him a million dollars to take my case, and another million when I walk away with somebody’s scalp on my belt. Follow me? Tell that to your boss in DC! Ask him if he knows how much full page ads in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal cost? You know, something about how the US Army invaded Nicaragua and killed two of their own men doing so. How do you think that will look when the Pentagon opens their morning papers? I bet William Kuntsler would love to defend me at a court martial! Now, you are going to find a phone and call your boss back at HQ and get this sorted out, is that understood?”

If I was really going to trial in a court martial, the last thing I wanted was a civilian lawyer. It was my right, but they rarely know what they are doing in a military court, and they are not looked upon kindly by the system. Still, whatever this was, it was political, not military, and that made it different!

The door to the room opened again, this time with a red-faced major, the Provost Marshal, and his staff sergeant sidekick who delighted in sucker punching me. The major glared at the hapless lieutenant and ordered him out. “You! Out!” he barked, and then he turned to me, and said, “And you! No more of your crap!”

Dorne scurried to leave, and I yelled after him, “No deal, Dorne, no deal!”

The major followed after Dorne, demanding to know what I had told him, but I doubted Dorne would tell him. That was privileged information, and Dorne would probably keep his mouth shut. The sergeant stayed behind, and I was released from the table and my hands were cuffed again, and I was hauled back down to the basement. The corporal joined him to assist. The water level had stabilized at about the half inch level; there must have been a few rat holes for the water to drain down through.

There was one difference this time. They had a hook tied to a rope that went to the ceiling, and after I was uncuffed from behind my back, they recuffed me from the front, and then strung me up from the hook. I don’t think the corporal was happy about this, but he didn’t stop it, and he kept me under control when I started to protest. The sergeant was smiling as he pulled out a pair of black leather gloves. “You haven’t been cooperating. The major wants you to cooperate.” He waved the corporal out.

I’d like to say that I took the next twenty minutes stoically, never uttering a whimper. That might not be totally true. I didn’t cry. I did curse several times. I managed to control my bodily functions. I was given a fairly thorough thumping, but only to my midsection. I think the idea was to soften me up without any damage to my face, so that I would be my usual boyish and charming self in any photos. After enough time lapsed I was just a mass of pain, but I was still quite conscious. Then the sergeant decided to kick my legs, and he connected with my right knee. I remember screaming, and then everything seemed to go black.

I came back to consciousness very slowly, and it was very dark and quiet outside when I did. The bitter taste in my mouth told me that I had thrown up at least once, and there was a wetness and a stench to my jumpsuit that told me I must have pissed and shit myself. I ached all over, even in places that hadn’t been hit. Even worse, whatever was living in the water was now living in me. Despite the tropical heat, I was shivering with chills, and I felt myself crap my prisoner’s jumpsuit again as I passed out a second time.

When I came to the second time, it was because there was some noise out in the stairwell that led down here to the dungeon, which is what I had taken to calling my home. I was half laying on the foul mattress, and half laying in the water on the floor of my cell, and I was starting to wonder if maybe I had been a mite hasty in my dismissal of a plea bargain. At least it would be drier in Fort Leavenworth.

I heard, “Open this door now, corporal. That’s an order!” being barked from the other side of the door. I turned my head in that direction, and that hurt. Still, it was a voice that was new to me, and I would be damned if I would be found laying in my own filth. I crawled over to the bars on my cage and tried to pull myself up.

“JESUS H. CHRIST! WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!” screamed the voice. I wasn’t focusing all that well, but I had managed to get my left leg under me and by holding onto the bars on the cage, had gotten to a semi-vertical position. My right leg seemed to be nonfunctional, although sheer agony radiated throughout it.

“GET THAT DOOR OPEN! NOW!” yelled the voice.

I focused in on the voice. It was a stocky colonel in a dress uniform, wading through the water towards me. He was accompanied by the MP corporal, but now the corporal looked very nervous. I vaguely heard him say, “Yes, sir,” and he came over and started playing with the padlock.

“Sweet suffering Jesus!” exclaimed the colonel.

I didn’t know what was happening, but I knew I was in very bad shape. Left alone, I could possibly die. I had seen dying people before. Still, I had had enough. If I was going out, I was going to go out in style. At least Marilyn and Charlie would be taken care of.

Holding onto the bars with my left hand, I drew myself into as vertical a condition as I could manage, and then brought my right hand up to my forehead. My ribs were screaming, and I knew something had to be cracked in there, maybe even broken. I didn’t care. I held the salute, and the colonel stared at me.

“What in the world are you doing, captain?” he asked me.

“My name is Carling Parker Buckman the Second, Captain, Battery B, 1^st Battalion, 319^th Airborne Field Artillery Regiment, 82^nd Airborne Division. I am a serving officer in the United States Army, having neither resigned my commission nor been relieved of it by competent authority. I don’t know who you are but you either return my salute or be damned to you!” I just no longer cared. He stared at me slack jawed, and then things went very dark again.

Chapter 59: Colonel Featherstone

When I woke again, everything seemed very bright. Not the bright at the end of the tunnel, just bright, like a bright room. By the time I got around to opening my eyes, I fell asleep again. It seemed like this went on a few more times before I managed to get my eyes open enough to see where I was. I could see a white ceiling of some sort, and I tried to move, but I couldn’t move. I could feel things, but I couldn’t move. I was able to turn my head, and rise up slightly, and it looked like I was in a hospital room.

I must be alive, I thought to myself. If I had died, I didn’t think Heaven was a hospital room, although the odds were very long that I would be anywhere near Heaven. No, the reverse was far more likely, and while Hell might indeed be a hospital room, it didn’t seem likely. Maybe Limbo is a hospital room, but I was Lutheran, sort of, and we don’t believe in Limbo or Purgatory or any of the other Catholic waiting rooms to eternity.

I tried to move some more, and managed to raise my head a little more. I was strapped to the bed. Well, at least my new prison cell was more comfortable than my last one. That wore me out a little, and I fell back asleep.

The next time I woke up was when a nurse was in the room. She must have been fiddling with something on me, because my eyes came open and she noticed. She smiled brightly at that, and said, “Oh, good! You’re coming awake! How are you feeling?”

I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t even croak out an answer. She brought over a small cup of water and a straw. “Try this.” It was very difficult to drink that way, but I got enough in me to make a response. “Would you like to be up some?”

This time I managed to croak out, “Yes.”

She went behind my head and cranked on the bed, and slowly my head raised up. When I was at about a thirty degree angle, she stopped and we tried again with the water. I drained the cup. It tasted like ambrosia. “Thank you,” I whispered. I cleared my throat, and tried again. “Thank you.” That sounded a little better, almost human.

“A little more?” she asked.

I sipped some more water, and worked it around and over my lips. I could feel with my tongue that somebody, probably a nurse, had rubbed some Vaseline or something on my lips to keep them from cracking. I cleared my throat some more, and said, “Thank you. What happened? Where am I?” Now I sounded almost myself again.

The nurse looked at me nervously. “Do you know your name?”

“Huh? I’m Carl Buckman, Captain Carl Buckman, 1^st of the 319^th. Why? Where am I? What is this place?” She looked relieved. Maybe she thought I had amnesia. “What’s going on? Am I still in prison?” I looked around the room. My hands were Velcroed to the sidebars of the bed, which was why I couldn’t move them. Another reason I couldn’t move was that my right leg seemed to be wrapped in bandage and elevated like it was in traction. I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

The nurse was still trying to answer the prison comment, when I rattled my arms against the bedrails briefly. “Any chance you can unstrap me? I don’t think I’m going anywhere.”

That at least got another smile. Pretty girl. “We did that while you were asleep, to keep you from messing with the IVs and lines. If you promise to leave them alone, I’ll let you loose.”

“I give you my word as an officer and a gentleman, or at least as an officer. The gentleman part is questionable at best.” I smiled and waggled my eyebrows at her.

“I think I’m safe enough for the moment,” she replied, and unstrapped my hands.

I promptly used them to scratch myself, moving slowly because of the intravenous lines. “You have no idea how good that feels!” She laughed as I scratched my body and arms. I wasn’t in very much pain, although my torso seemed very tender, and I could feel bandages all over my left side. That stopped me. That was new.

“You never said where I was, or what’s happening,” I told her.

The smile disappeared. “You’ll need to talk to the doctor. I’ll let him know you’re awake. I’ll bring you dinner in a few minutes,” she told me, glancing at her wristwatch.

I just nodded. I wasn’t going to get any answers from her. I could see a frosted glass window with wire mesh embedded in it, and when she left, I heard a distinctive click as she latched the door. I must be in a prison hospital ward of some sort. It still beat my last accommodations. Maybe I could call a lawyer from here.

Dinner proved to be some broth and juice. I was promised that if I was good, at my next meal I might get some Jell-O as a dessert. Wow, talk about your incentives! I could barely contain my excitement.

I think it was about an hour or two later when the nurse returned with a doctor. I wasn’t sure, since there wasn’t a clock in my cell, or whatever it was. Right after he said hello and introduced himself as Doctor Bancroft, I asked him, “Where am I? What’s happening?”

“We’ll get to that later,” he answered, dodging the question.

“Thanks, Colonel,” I said with a grimace. I knew I was still in a military prison, since he had eagles on his collars under his white coat.

He gave me an odd look at that, but started to examine me, while the nurse, who had first lieutenant’s bars on her collars, took notes and wrote things down. It was a fairly standard examination (“Does this hurt? Does that hurt?”) after which I learned a little about what was going on, at least regarding my condition.

The date was 24 November, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. I had been in the hospital for four days now. The first three I had been sedated and unconscious while I healed up. I had gotten an intestinal infection from drinking polluted water, which was why I had the shivers and the runs in the cell, but it wasn’t clear whether I drank the polluted water on the hike back to civilization or in my basement cell. In fact, when I asked directly, Doctor Bancroft refused to discuss it. I was on an antibiotic regimen currently.

The bandages and tape on my left side were both to help my ribs heal (three were cracked, but not broken) and to cover the stitches in my side and back. They had opened me up to stitch up some lacerations in my left kidney, which had been discovered when I was pissing blood. A tube was still in place to drain off fluid. That was the extent of my internal injuries. Most of my torso was still a rainbow of colors from the beating and bruising. I was now moving from the mundane black and blue into greens and yellows. The doctor didn’t comment on my beating, just on the effects of it. He seemed very impressed that I was able to stand up when I was found. Me, not so much; his clinical detachment was starting to piss me off.

The worst damage was to my right knee, which was why it was wrapped and immobilized. Again, the doctor refused to comment on whether the damage was the result of my bad landing, or my jailer kicking me. Either way, it was serious. He suspected major ligament damage and tearing, and surgery was necessary, at least after I was strong enough.

“Oh, good. That way I’ll be able to walk to my hanging,” I told him. He didn’t respond.

He also didn’t respond when I pressed him on where I was. After the examination he simply left, taking the nurse with him. He did tell me, however, that it was about 1600, and I was going to be eating soft foods for a while. Since I was conscious again, about half the tubes and IVs could be pulled, but I still had a catheter in, and solids wouldn’t be a good idea until we could do something where I could walk again, as in walk to the bathroom. At the prospect of using a bedpan for Number Two, suddenly broth and Jell-O looked like good choices!

I slept fitfully that night. My rest was not helped by a nurse taking my temperature every four hours. Breakfast was at 0700. I at least could get the nurses to tell me what time it was when they made their rounds.

At 0800, my delicious repast of juice and yogurt consumed, the latch on my door clicked and my nurse came in. She took my temperature and blood pressure, and then took my tray away. However, as she was leaving, another voice sounded, one that seemed vaguely familiar, saying he was entering, and we were to be left alone. I turned around to see who was coming in.

It was the colonel who I had saluted in the cell in basement. He must have been the one who got me out of there. He came over to the side of the bed and said, “Good morning, Captain Buckman. My name is Featherstone. How are you feeling?”

I eyed this man warily. “I’m feeling better now than I was in that basement.”

He nodded and smiled. “Yes, I expect you are. That’s really why I’m here, to talk to you about that. I’m from the JAG Corps in Washington.”

Well, that explained a few things. Dorne must have been able to contact somebody after all, although whether that was good or not, I didn’t know yet. Featherstone had the distinctive patch of the Military District of Washington on his sleeve, a naked sword superimposed over the Washington Monument. The standing joke was that whenever they forgot where they were, they were to look at their sleeves so they could look for the monument and find their way home. The sword was to make a bunch of pencil-pushers feel brave.

“Okay. Where am I?”

“You’re at the base hospital at Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba,” he replied calmly.

I wasn’t so calm. My most recent memories of Gitmo were from after 9/11, when it became a military prison for terrorists and anybody else the government could convince itself was a national security threat. Ultimately it would house more American citizens than Arab terrorists. “GITMO! You sent me to Gitmo!? Jesus, the Army wasn’t bad enough, you had to give me to the Navy!?” Featherstone laughed loudly at this. At least one of us was enjoying himself.

“What the hell am I doing in Gitmo?” I asked. “Doesn’t Leavenworth have a prison ward in the hospital?”

“Oh, this isn’t the prison ward. Actually it’s the NP ward, neuropsychiatric. That’s why it’s all locked up.”

Sweet Jesus! This just kept getting better and better! “The psych ward? You put me in the psych ward?! It’s not enough to put me in prison, you have to label me as a Section 8, too!? Why don’t you just shoot me with a silver bullet and drive a stake through my heart while you’re at it!” I looked away from him for a moment and contemplated my surroundings. I turned back and said, “You know, screw you! I want a lawyer. Get me a lawyer and get the fuck out of here. I don’t care who you are. I want a lawyer and I want one now.”

Surprisingly, Featherstone just stood there and smiled, and didn’t complain about my cursing a superior officer. “Captain, relax, you’re not under arrest, and you’re not in the NP ward.”

“Yeah? You just told me I was in the nut shack. If I’m not in jail, then get me a goddamned phone! I’m calling my wife!” Marilyn wouldn’t understand this, but she could call a lawyer for me.

He held his hands up in a placating gesture. “Relax, Captain Buckman. I simply had you stashed here while I sorted out this clusterfuck. As soon as we’re done talking, I’ll get you a telephone. Just relax and let’s talk first.”

I nodded warily, and he relaxed some. “Good. Now, just hold on a second, this is going to take some time.” He went back to the door and opened it, making me figure that he was leaving me and locking me back in jail. Instead he simply opened it and yelled out to a nurse for a stool. She brought it back and he thanked her, and then he carried it over by my bed. I was still sitting upright from breakfast, and now he could look me in the eye.

Featherstone reached into a pocket and pulled out a pack of Camels and a lighter. He searched around and scrounged up a plastic cup, which he poured some water into. Then he lit up a cigarette, right there in the hospital! I mean, yeah, it wasn’t like later years, when the health Nazis would have arrested him, but still! “You mind?” he asked, seeing the look on my face. “That was a rhetorical question. I’m a colonel, you’re a captain. I don’t care if you mind. Want one?”

“No thanks.”

“Okay, let’s talk. Lieutenant Dorne got in touch with somebody in JAG HQ. He’s pretty green, but he called somebody who called somebody else, and it landed way up at the top of the food chain. I’ve been assigned to sort it all out. That’s why it took a couple of days for us to find you, captain.”

“You were sent down by the Pentagon?” I asked.

“Not precisely. The Army JAG office is in Arlington, but not in the Pentagon itself. Nearby, though. That doesn’t matter, though. Just be glad Dorne was able to call home. He was under orders not to, but he knew enough to know those were illegal orders. I flew down on a C-11. That’s what I had you flown out on, too.”

What the fuck was a C-11? “What’s a C-11?” I asked.

“Military version of a Gulfstream II. Sweet little bird! They have a newer and bigger version called the Gulfstream III now, a C-20. Sort of like a Learjet. That’s not important. I had them load you and a doctor on it and had it fly you here, to Gitmo. That got you out of Hawkins’ reach and under the care of the Navy and the Marines,” Featherstone said. He dropped his cigarette butt in the cup of water and pulled another from the pack. He was a chain smoker.

“Huh.” That explained the funny looks when I called the doctor ‘Colonel’. He was actually a Navy Captain. I looked at the colonel. “So this was all Hawkins’ idea? He’s the one on my ass?”

Colonel Featherstone gave me a pained look. “Captain, how can you say such a thing! Brigadier General Hawkins knew nothing about your problems! Why he was shocked, shocked that there was gambling going on there!”

I rolled my eyes at the reference to Casablanca. Outstanding movie, although Marilyn never appreciated it all that much. Featherstone had just told me that Hawkins was in it up to his eyeballs.

Featherstone went on to explain, “The general was very disappointed in your improper radio procedures, but certainly didn’t consider that much of an offense. Instead, he ordered the Provost Marshal, Major Carmichael, to investigate. It was Carmichael who decided you had violated every precept of good military order and needed to be punished, not the general.”

“Uh, huh,” I muttered.

“Yes. Major Carmichael explained, however, that he never knew what was happening in the basement. He had told Staff Sergeant Walsley that he wanted you to confess, but not that you were to be harmed. He just wanted him to talk to you, and convince you of the error of your ways.”

“Shit flows downhill, huh, Colonel?”

“You seem to have a succinct grasp of the situation, Captain Buckman,” agreed Colonel Featherstone.

“Crap!”

“Needless to say, once I began investigating, General Hawkins allowed me to clear up all the confusion. I was able to interview all the men who dropped with you, your commanding officer, your regular troops, even the helo crew that pulled you out. That’s where I’ve been for the last few days, after I put you on the plane here. Chasing down everything. That’s why I couldn’t let you talk to anybody until I got things settled down.”

“Is that your job? Pentagon fixer?”

Featherstone gave me a ghostly smile. “Why? You need any tickets taken care of, Captain?”

I snorted at that. Featherstone was the Army JAG Corps hammer, sent out to fix problems. Every outfit has one. He’d never make general, but nobody, not even generals, wanted to piss him off. “So what happened to my men?” I asked.

“Which ones? Battery B or Company C?”

That made me start for a second. I had almost forgotten about Battery B, my regular outfit! “Both.”

“Lieutenant Fletcher took the battery back to Bragg a few days ago. They left their 105s behind as a gift to the Honduran Army. They’ll be getting new ones back at home.”

I nodded at that. I had heard that was under consideration. Now they would have new toys to play with, even if they were the same model as before. “And Company C?”

“They’ve gone home, too. Private Smith is probably medicalled out, but you saved his leg and his life. The doctors said another day and he’d have lost the leg for sure. The other guys just got some sprains and strains mostly.”

“Good. They’re damn fine troops, all of them,” I replied.

“They thought quite highly of you, too. By the time I talked to them, Company C was considering an assault on the headquarters building, and Battery B was going to provide artillery support. That idiot second john they had wasn’t very popular, that’s for sure. What’s your take on him?” asked Featherstone.

“I’m guessing that he’s the one who filed the complaint with the Provost Marshal.”

Featherstone nodded. “He was filing charges before he even made it to the hospital. He barely had a scratch on him.”

I just nodded, and then sighed. “Have you ever heard about the four types of officers? I think it was one of the German generals who named them, Von Manstein or Clausewitz, maybe one of the Von Moltkes.”

Featherstone looked puzzled for a second and then his eyes lit up. “Ah, yes, I take your meaning.”

The specific source is somewhat debatable. The basic truism, though, is that an officer can be either smart or stupid, and either lazy or energetic. Smart and lazy officers make the best combat commanders. Smart and energetic officers make the best staff officers. Stupid and lazy officers are harmless; you can always make them the regimental historian or something, but are otherwise incapable of doing any damage. The only ones you have to worry about are the stupid and energetic officers — like Second Lieutenant Fairfax!

“You said they had him?”

Featherstone nodded. “Second Lieutenant Fairfax has been transferred to a training post with the Rwandan Army,” he said drily.

When the military wants to get rid of an officer, without going through the process of a court martial, the usual technique is to give the officer a lousy OER and then assign him to the ass end of the world until he resigns or retires. Alaska and Greenland in the winter, Saudi Arabia in the summer, that was the perfect way to tell Fairfax his next promotion would be a long time coming. The middle of Africa was certainly an interesting dumping ground.

As would be mine. “Maybe I’ll say hello when I see him. Am I doing the Rwanda tour, too?”

“Hmmm?” commented Featherstone neutrally.

“Come on, Colonel, no matter what happens, my career is trashed. I was arrested in front of my men and taken away in handcuffs. The entire division knows I’m a mutineer and a murderer by now! How long before the rest of the Army knows?”

The colonel shrugged and dropped his cigarette butt into the makeshift ashtray. What was it, his fourth or fifth? He must have lungs that were as black as my soul! He pointed at my leg. “Captain, the reason your career is over is your leg. I talked to the doctor before I saw you. You’ll never jump again. Hell, you’re going to need two or three operations and three months of rehab just to be able to walk! You’re history no matter what!”

And just like that I was out of the Army. No major at 28, no Fort Sill and CGS, no battalion or regiment or brigade command. Medicalled out at 26, and don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.

I simply shook my head in disbelief. “So, Colonel, tell me what happened? How the hell did we end up in Nicaragua anyway?”

Featherstone gave me a very serious look. “You are mistaken, Captain Buckman. You were never in Nicaragua. Your Honduran pilot got lost and dropped you in Honduras, not in Nicaragua. Is that clearly understood?” I snorted and rolled my eyes. “I asked if you understood me!”

“Don’t push it, Colonel. I might understand it, but I don’t have to like it. What’s the rest of the fallout from this disaster? You know, the disaster that never happened?”

“It was a training accident, Captain. That’s what we’re calling it, and it’s classified.”

“And I was there, remember, so tell me everything if you want it to stay classified!” I pushed back.

Featherstone shrugged. “Well, like you said, shit flows downhill. Wilcox is taking early retirement…”

I must have gaped at that. “Lieutenant Colonel Wilcox? The battalion commander?!”

He nodded. “I can almost sympathize with him, but he should have never let Hawkins jump you from those planes. He should have stood his ground. Your brigade commander would have backed him up. He was absolutely furious when he heard about it.” I shrugged and Featherstone continued, “Carmichael is gone, too. I made it clear to him that the only way he was avoiding something even worse was if he testified against the MP sergeant, Walsley. I tossed the book at him. He pled out and is getting two years in Leavenworth and a Big Chicken Dinner.” That was a BCD or Bad Conduct Discharge. “He’d have gotten five years if he had fought it. The corporal took an Other Than Honorable discharge, and was damn glad to get it. Hell, the only reason the brigade commander didn’t get canned was that he was called to Washington before this happened.”

“And Hawkins?”

We were interrupted by a nurse coming in to take my temperature and ask me about lunch (“Chicken broth or beef?”) She gave Featherstone holy hell about his smoking in a hospital. As soon as she left, he lit up another cigarette.

“Hawkins?” I repeated.

“Brigadier General Hawkins is now Major General (Designate) Hawkins. He will get his second star effective January 1. Operation Southern Shield ’81 has been a rousing success,” he replied, deadpan.

My jaw dropped, and I gaped, my mouth flapping open and shut like a beached fish. After a minute or two, I got my wits together and cried out, “You’re kidding me, right? They give him a battalion on a routine training deployment, and he gets two men killed, two medicalled out, two more cashiered, and another man sent to Leavenworth — and they gave him another star! Jesus Christ! Why not just give him the entire fucking brigade! He could have killed us all and made Chief of fucking Staff!”

“That’s the way it works, Captain,” he replied. He shrugged. “Not that it matters much, but he had already been approved before this disaster. Maybe it will catch up to him before he gets his third star.”

I knew what it was. It was the WPPA, the West Point Protective Association, at work. This was the informal association of West Point graduates, or ‘ringknockers’, so named because of the heavy and distinctive class rings they wore. They were known to rap their rings on a desk or chair arm on occasion, to let people know that as graduates of Hudson High, their opinions counted more than others.

When I graduated ROTC at RPI, I ranked high enough to be Regular Army, not Reserve. All West Point graduates are Regular Army, even the village idiot. All pigs are equal, but some pigs are more equal than others. The WPPA usually makes itself known by making sure that various graduates of West Point move up the ladder of promotion at the correct pace, or by otherwise getting them an appropriate posting or assignment. Sometimes it can be harmless, like when my old CO, Captain Harris transferred to Fort Rucker for helo flight training. His record with Battery B hadn’t exactly been stellar, so the WPPA moved him somewhere else for a second chance.

Now it looked like the ringknockers were circling the wagons around Hawkins. I shook my head in disgust. “What’d they do with the pilot? Give him a medal?”

Featherstone shrugged. “Probably. You’re getting one, why not him?”

“Excuse me? What medal? Best behaved prisoner?”

“Try a Bronze Star,” he said drily.

“Right.” I stared at him, and he wasn’t smiling. “You’re serious?” He nodded. “For what?”

“The Bronze Star can be awarded for either bravery or merit, or both. You qualify, Captain, on both counts.”

“Forget it! I’ll never wear it! It’s an insult to the men I was with!”

“You don’t wear it for yourself, Captain, you wear it for the men you were with. It’s always that way, son, for any medal. Believe me. Wear it for the ones who can’t,” he replied. “Hell, if you want to, think of it as a payoff for keeping your mouth shut about this fucking nightmare. It doesn’t matter. Believe me, you earned it!”

I looked at Featherstone. He was in his Class As, and for the first time I looked at his chest. He had a Bronze Star with a V for Valor and an oak leaf cluster adorning it, signifying a second award, along with a Purple Heart and the red, yellow, and green Viet Nam Service Medal. Colonel Featherstone hadn’t always been a lawyer. I nodded in understanding to him.

“Technically you need to be in either a combat theater or serving with troops in a combat situation, but I convinced your brigade commander that Nicaragua qualified,” he commented. “By the way, what did you do to get your battalion commander so pissed off? He refused to recommend you for the award. I got the recommendation from the commander of the 505^th. You don’t get the V device, but so what.”

I laughed at that. “I kept growing! Mighty Mouse has a problem with officers of height. You’d do even worse!” Featherstone was even taller than I was, by an inch or so. “Unfortunately for me, but fortunately for the battalion, he’s disturbingly competent otherwise.”

“Well, they can’t all be bad, now can they?”

The nurse returned with my broth and gave Featherstone another ration of shit for smoking. He put away his smokes and conned her into getting him a sandwich while I slurped my broth and Jell-O. He made several disparaging remarks about my meal, so I gave him a Bronx salute, which he just laughed off.

After lunch, Colonel Featherstone said, “Take me through the mission, start to finish. I want to hear your side of it. You’re the only one I haven’t heard it from. Take it from the top.”

I spent the next half hour going over the drop, from the time we were trucked over to the Gooney Birds to the time we landed back at the base in the Hueys. “I can figure why Hawkins was pissed at me. What happened? Did he have the MPs waiting for me as soon as the first bird landed?”

“Pretty much. The Provost Marshal snapped up your Lieutenant Fairfax as soon as he landed. He’s the one who said you killed the four civilians.”

I stopped at that point, and eyed Featherstone for a moment. “I think you meant to say allegedly killed the four civilians, counselor.”

He shrugged. “Eh. Maybe so, maybe so. Tell me about them, Captain. Hypothetically, of course.”

I took a second to gather my thoughts. No way was I about to confess to jack shit with this guy! “Hmmm… hypothetically speaking of course. Well, remember, once we were all down, my mission was twofold. First, get all my men back home, no matter what. Second, not to let the Nicaraguans know that they had been invaded. No international incidents.”

Featherstone nodded. “International incidents are bad. If you guys had been captured by the Nicaraguans, they could have had you in the headlines for a year. Remember the Pueblo?”

“Quite. So anyway, we captured these four narcos, not soldiers or civilians, but drug traffickers. Unfortunately for us, our resident genius, Lieutenant Fairfax, disobeyed orders and spoke to these clowns in English, so they knew we were Americans. Hypothetically speaking, of course, anything that happened to those men was ultimately his responsibility.”

It was his turn to nod. “I heard that already, although not from him. I have to tell you, nobody else corroborated his allegations of murder.”

“Then I guess the murders never happened,” I replied.

“Yeah? So tell me, hypothetically speaking, what happened next.”

“Nothing, of course. Like all the others told you I went over to the prisoners, who were tied up next to the fuel dump, and released them, then fired four shots into the air to scare them away. It must have worked. Have we heard anything from the Nicaraguans?”

“Nothing. Of course, Lieutenant Fairfax says you simply shot the men and then burned them up in the fire.”

“Well, considering that Lieutenant Fairfax and all the men were in the LZ at the time, nobody would have seen me releasing the prisoners, would they?” I asked. “Which is what happened, of course.”

“So I was told.” He waited a few seconds, thinking about things. My answers must have satisfied his curiosity, or whatever, and he shrugged. “It’s over now. Care to make a phone call?”

“Yes, please.”

He nodded and stood to go to the door. “Captain, let me just say one last thing to you. I pulled your records before I ever came down here. I’ve read your fitness reports. I’ve seen your FBI and CIC background reports. I’ve even seen your IRS tax records…”

“The FBI and CIC? What are you talking about?” I said, interrupting him.

Featherstone nodded and looked serious. “You were being groomed for major command, Captain. Of course there were background checks.”

“Jesus!”

He continued. “I probably know more about you than anybody but your wife. You graduated from high school, for all intents and purposes, at 16. Your family threw you out then, too. I know about your psychotic brother. You burned through college and got a doctorate at 21. You made captain at 25 and were going to be a major at 28. You could have done the R&D stint and CGS blindfolded and standing on your head. Hell, you’d probably have picked up another grad degree there. After that, a nice tour as a battalion exec somewhere, followed by a tour at the Pentagon for seasoning. You’d have a brigade sometime in your thirties. Sound familiar?”

I nodded mutely. He was right. I’d have had a brigade just in time to take them into action against the Iraqis when they invaded Kuwait. Commanding a brigade in the most lopsided victory since the Franco-Prussian War would have been a guarantee of a star by the time I made twenty years. Featherstone kept going. “You’ve been on a high speed tear through life since you hit puberty. You’re already a multimillionaire.” He must have seen the surprise on my face, because he then said, “Yeah, I know. I had the IRS pull your tax returns, remember?”

I shrugged at that. “What’s your point, Colonel?”

“Just this. You’ve been on a high speed tear to general. You’d have made it, too. But it’s all over now. The thing to remember, Captain, is that this is just another job. Really, that’s all it is. It’s a good job, an honorable job, a dangerous and exciting job at times. It’s certainly a job that needs doing. Still, at the end of the day, it’s just a job. That job is now over for you. Your job is not who you are, it’s what you do. It’s time to go home now and be a father and a husband. That’s your job now,” answered Colonel Featherstone.

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. He was right in many ways. I was a fast burner. Like General Hawkins? Would I have been like him? Burning through people? I didn’t like that thought. I had nothing left to prove here. I opened my eyes and smiled. “Point taken, Colonel. Get me that phone and I’ll start on that.”

“The plan is that tomorrow you’ll be flown to Washington, to Walter Reed, for the work on your knee. If you’d like, I can help get your family to see you there.”

“I’d appreciate that, sir.”

Five minutes later the colonel returned with a telephone and a wire that he plugged into a phone jack behind the bed. Interestingly, it was still a high security area. The phone didn’t have a dial, but when you picked up the handle you immediately got a switchboard and had to give the number to be called. When I gave them my home number, Colonel Featherstone nodded and left the room.

“Hello?” answered Marilyn.

“Honey, it’s me, Carl.”

“CARLING! Where are you!? What’s happened to you!?”

“It’s all right, honey, it’s all right. I just had a bit of an accident and I’m in the hospital now. I’m being flown to Washington tomorrow, to Walter Reed Hospital. Maybe you could drive up. I want to see you and my son. God, you sound good!” I told her.

“Carl, what happened? What’s going on? I don’t understand! I heard you were in jail!”

“It’s all a misunderstanding, Marilyn. I’m not in jail. I’ve just got a problem with one of my knees. I’ll be fine. I’ll explain it all when I see you. Can you come up?”

“Yes! How… yes!”

“I’ll get somebody to come over and help.”

“I just don’t understand what’s happening, Carl! Somebody came over from the battery with all your personal stuff and told me you were being court martialed! What’s going on?”

I smiled to myself. “It was just a misunderstanding. It’s going to be all right, Marilyn. We’ll have a long, long talk.”

It was the day before Thanksgiving. I really had something to be thankful for this year.

Chapter 60: Starting Over

After our brief call, the phone was removed from my room. I guess Colonel Featherstone wasn’t a very trusting sort, or maybe he was just a careful sort. It wasn’t important to me. I had come to terms with what was happening.

I wasn’t going to hide my money anymore, either. I asked him to arrange a nice suite at a nearby hotel, a good one, like a Hilton or a Ritz, not some damn Super-8. He suggested the Hilton in Silver Spring, which was only a few miles away, across the line in Maryland, and less than a ten minute drive. I agreed to that. He would have somebody from the local JAG office in Fort Bragg call her tomorrow and give her directions, or meet with her on Friday before she drove up. Then somebody from the JAG office in DC would meet her and get her to Walter Reed on Saturday.

After that I said thank you and farewell to the colonel. He told me that he’d follow my case, but that he needed to fly to Fort Rucker in Alabama to sort out some other assholes. I got the impression that was his main job, solving problems that nobody wanted to go to trial or to be in public with.

I knew Marilyn. She would be lucky to get the car packed and on the road by noon. The family joke was to always tell her you had to leave half an hour before she really had to leave, that way she would be on time. It was about a six hour drive from Fayetteville to Washington, unless she got lost and detoured through San Francisco. Hopefully she would notice the Mississippi River before she crossed it.

That meant she would spend the night at the Hilton and see me in two days. That was probably fine by my schedule. That had me spending two more nights here, getting checked and prepped for the transfer, and then being flown in an old C-123 Provider to Andrews in Washington, to be transferred to Walter Reed. I probably wouldn’t get there before she did. I just hoped I would have a chance to see her before they started working on me at Walter Reed.

In two days time I was deemed healthy enough to travel. Whatever was wrong with my kidneys seemed okay, but they left the drain in my side. I lost a few more of the tubes in me, but they kept a couple of IVs in place, as well as the catheter. It was a wonderful flight. The Provider was even noisier and rougher than a Herc, and my not quite cute and bubbly flight attendant had a five o’clock shadow.

I was greeted at Walter Reed with a full physical. It was apparent that only Walter Reed’s eminent physicians could possibly diagnose me correctly. After all, the Navy ran the hospital at Guantanamo Bay, and it was well known that they still used leeches. (Surprisingly, I heard the same comment from the staff in Gitmo about Army hospitals.) This continued the next morning, until about lunch time, and nobody would tell me if Marilyn or my son were there yet.

They were. I was wheeled in my bed back to my private room around lunchtime. The private room was at Colonel Featherstone’s request, because I had told him that Classified or not, I was going to tell my wife what had happened. I wasn’t going to tell her what I had done with the four prisoners. Marilyn would never understand or accept that.

I had been giving those killings a lot of thought over the last few days. By some standards I had murdered those men, but not by all standards. According to both the Geneva Convention and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, I was prohibited from killing civilians under any circumstances, unless they were attacking me or my troops. Then again, if I had obeyed the Geneva Convention, I was to turn myself and my men over to civilian authorities and be interned or paroled and released. That was ludicrous.

During war time operations, I was actually justified in some cases in killing people in furtherance of my mission. Again, that didn’t apply. If I had been there legitimately on a drug related mission, I could turn my prisoners over to civilian authority for disposal, again, not a realistic alternative.

Or I could just put a bullet in each brain and decide the world was better off without four narcos in it.

Once, when I was working on my MBA, I had taken a class in Personnel Management and Human Relations, taught by a guy who was a vice-president at ATT and chain smoked in class worse than Featherstone. One day, totally out of the blue, he asked for a show of hands. ‘How many of you believe in capital punishment?’ About half of us, including myself, put our hands up. He nodded and then told us, ‘You’re the people who will be able to fire people.’ He then went on to explain how firing people was very similar to killing them, in terms of self esteem and the consequences, but that managers had to be able to do it.

I often wondered if that was why I always liked line jobs over staff. My father didn’t believe in capital punishment (strange in a hard core Republican, at least to me) and hated line positions, where that sort of thing happens. I never had any problems with firing people; it’s just part of the job, nothing personal, just do it.

It seemed as if I was the same when it came to actually killing people. I didn’t have to like it; I just had to do it. So far I hadn’t lost any sleep over it.

Curiously, my mother had no problems with capital punishment, either. She had a cold streak at times. I remember once when she sat on a death penalty jury, and voted to give the guy the needle. He sat on death row for eight years before the Innocence Project got his DNA tested and proved he was innocent, and got him released. As far as Mom was concerned, he was a scumbag anyway, so they should have fried him regardless. She didn’t bat an eye when she told me that. Mom wouldn’t have minded my killing four narcos, that’s for sure!

I saw Marilyn with a baby stroller in the hallway as they wheeled me into my room. I turned to call to her but the orderly was moving too fast. It didn’t matter; Marilyn had seen me, too. About thirty seconds later she came barreling into my room with that stroller, followed by a nurse. The nurse was smiling, and she didn’t interfere.

Marilyn’s face was lit up, but she was also crying, and she damn near threw herself on top of me. “Oh God, oh God, you’re home, you’re home!” Thankfully she was on my right side, since all the tubes and lines running into me were on my left side. I just smiled and rubbed her back. “You’re alive! You’re alive!”

I stopped her with a big kiss, and then pushed her upright. “I have missed you so much, but I think we need to let the nurse get in here.”

The nurse, named Hawthorne according to her name tag, simply checked my temperature and blood pressure, and then told us what the visiting hours were, and then she bent down over the baby stroller and cooed. “Well, aren’t you just darling! And so well behaved, too!”

Marilyn smiled at me, and then bent down to the stroller. “Would you like to meet your son?” she asked me.

Nurse Hawthorne gasped and said, “Is this the first chance you’ve had to see your baby?!” She raised my bed up so that I was sitting upright, as Marilyn extricated Charlie from his contraption.

“Charles Robert Buckman, this is your father!” Marilyn held our son up to me. He was in blue baby clothes, and had a summer weight blanket around him, and she placed him in my hands.

If I had been expecting Charlie to look like Parker, it wasn’t even close. Parker had taken after me and my mother; Charlie was more like Marilyn’s family, the men’s side, which tended to blond and stocky.

I sat my son in my lap and supported his back. He was about two months old now, and was able to hold himself upright, with some help. He didn’t make much noise, but he was looking at me and making the funniest expressions on his face, and then he gave me a big grin. Marilyn was ecstatic! “He knows he’s with his Daddy!”

“He’s probably got gas!” I replied.

That set the nurse to laughing and she took her leave. Marilyn scolded me, but I just sniffed the air, and told her I thought I was closer to the truth. I held my right thumb up in front of him and he latched onto it. He was still too young to do much more than that, but he seemed pretty normal to me. Certainly I didn’t see any signs of Williams Syndrome! You can tell in the facial structure long before any of the other symptoms show.

I counted aloud his fingers. “All ten! What about his toes?” I asked Marilyn.

“All ten there, too.” answered my wife.

I grinned at my son. “All ten piggies? I’ll check them later!” I glanced back at Marilyn. “What about, well, you know.”

“What?”

“Well, can he count to 21?”

It took her a second, but then she rolled her eyes and groaned. “Men! You all think that’s so important! Yes, he can count to 21!”

I turned back to Charlie. “I’ll take Mommy’s word for it. I’m not going to look. Daddy doesn’t do diapers!”

“Daddy’s a wimp!” Marilyn took him back and sniffed his diaper. “Here, you get to find out now.” She handed him back to me and then dug a diaper from the diaper bag on the back of the stroller. She found a flat spot at the end of the bed and expertly changed him. She had been changing her brothers and sisters since she was big enough to pick up a baby. Before she was done, though, she held him up for me to see. “See? Twenty-one!”

“Looks like he can get to 22 and 23 as well,” I commented.

“Men!” After changing him, it was feeding time. Marilyn gave him back to me, and then dug out a blanket from the bag and draped it over her shoulder and her chest. Then she unbuttoned her blouse and took Charlie back, and slid him under the blanket. She was breast feeding him!

“Well, I guess that beats a bottle,” I said. We had discussed this during Lamaze classes.

“He’s a little piglet is what he is!” Marilyn grimaced for a moment as he latched on fiercely. “Watch it buster!”

“Well, he’s a Buckman, that’s for sure!” Marilyn smiled at that. “God, you look so good. I have missed you so much!”

“I’ve missed you, too. You look terrible, though! You’ve lost a lot of weight.”

I shrugged. “It’s that delicious hospital food,” I told her. “It really cuts down on going back for seconds.”

“It’s more than that, and you know it.”

I shrugged again. “I’m home now, and with you guys. I’ll get back in shape. Hell of a diet plan, though, isn’t it?”

Marilyn turned serious. “Carl, what happened to you? You were just supposed to go to Honduras for a few months and come home. Then you were reported lost and dead, and then you were under arrest, and then you were in the hospital. I don’t understand! What happened to you?”

I sighed and told her. It took a good solid hour to explain things, since Marilyn didn’t have the military background that Featherstone did. I glossed over the part with the prisoners, simply repeating my story that I released them and fired some shots in the air to hurry them along. (Yeah, hurry them along on their way to perdition. I was sure they would be there to greet me at some point in the future.)

She was simply speechless at the end of it. Charlie had drunk his fill and was snoozing in his stroller. I finished by saying, “And that’s it. Now they have to operate on my leg and give me some rehab, and I’m out. I won’t be Captain Buckman much longer, honey.”

“After all that, they just throw you out? Like garbage? That’s terrible! Can’t you do something about it!?”

I was surprised by that, since Marilyn isn’t the real gung-ho type. She wasn’t real big on the Army to begin with. Maybe it was like when you are cleaning out a kid’s closet and find the toy in the back they haven’t played with in a year. You go to throw it away, and they toss a tantrum about it.

“It will be fine, Marilyn. We won’t have to move to Oklahoma now, will we?” I said, putting a good face on it. It still galled me, but I could live with it. “Seriously, I might never walk without a limp again. I’ll never have a command again.”

“And that’s important to you?” she asked.

And right then and there I knew it was. I didn’t know what I was going to do in the future, but I knew I would have to be the boss. I looked out the window for a moment and then turned back. “Yeah, it is. It’d be like working in an ice cream store and never getting to lick the scoop. I’d go crazy. Don’t worry about it, we’ll be all right.”

Marilyn gave me a very odd look as I said that. “Carl, we need to talk about that, too. I found your letter.”

“Huh? What letter?”

She reached into her purse and pulled out a big manila envelope and my jaw dropped and my eyes opened wide. Oh, shit! That letter!

“You weren’t supposed to read that, unless, well, you know!” The envelope had a label on it specifying, ‘Open only in the event of my demise.’, and had been in my dresser, under my briefs and underwear. I rubbed my hands over my face. Most soldiers have a letter like that, at least in the combat outfits. They either have one already made up, or write it just before they deploy, or sometimes they wait until the last minute and hand it to somebody back at the base before heading out on patrol or a jump. I had written mine back after we got married, and I updated it every few months after that.

“Dear Marilyn,

If you are reading this, then you’ll know that I finally managed to make that jump without my chute on properly. Mom always said I’d come to no good, so I guess she was right all along.

You were the best thing I ever had in my life. You are better than I ever deserved. If I was to live a hundred lives, I would want you in each of them. I love you more than you can imagine. Please forgive me for not being good enough for you.

I am sorry I wasn’t a better husband to you. You deserved a better man than me. Now, with you carrying our baby, I leave you alone with him (or her) and I wish I could have seen you with him. You will be a wonderful mother, and probably a much better father than I would have been. I am so sorry for that.

Someday you will meet somebody else, a man who will see in you all the wonderful things that I saw in you. He’ll be a better man than I was, that’s for sure. When it is time for you to move on, know that I want you to be happy. You deserve a good man.

As one last note, I want you to take the inner envelope to John Steiner, in Timonium, Maryland. His address is on the label. John has been my attorney for many years, and he wrote up my will, and will help you through all the probate and paperwork. Listen to him carefully. He’s a very smart man, and a good friend.

Again, I love you beyond words and writing. You have been the best thing in my life, and know that no matter what happened to me, my last thoughts were of you.

Love,

Carl”

The inner envelope contained a copy of my will and my most recent brokerage account statements, along with written instructions to John, Missy Talmadge, and my accountant about helping Marilyn manage her money. Marilyn had opened this envelope as well. Both letters were smudged and spotted and crinkled up, and it took me a few seconds to realize it was from tears. I felt even lower than before.

Marilyn was crying as she watched me read the letter I had written her. “How can you say things like that? I love you! I’ll never find a man better than you! You know I hate it when you run yourself down like that!”

Oh, shit! I opened my arms and she collapsed against my chest, crying. In doing so, she shifted on the bed and nudged my right leg, which made me want to scream, but I held it in. Better to lose the damn thing than piss her off any more. I just caressed her back and told her repeatedly that I loved her and was sorry for making her cry.

Eventually she relented and sat up again, once more hitting my leg, and I bit my tongue a second time. I also hit the button to call the nurse and get some morphine going! Marilyn picked up the second envelope and waved it at me. “I read through this, but I don’t understand. You have a brokerage account that’s worth millions of dollars? That can’t be right!”

I rubbed my face again, and smiled at my wife. “Actually, it is. Marilyn, I’m a millionaire. A multimillionaire, actually. I’m probably worth about thirty-five million by now, maybe a bit more. I’m not sure, actually.”

“You don’t know!” she asked, a look of astonishment on her face.

“Honey, it’s not like I’ve had a chance to look at the Wall Street Journal lately. It’s not just in cash, it’s in stocks, too.”

“When? How? Why didn’t you say something!?”

“I was going to tell you soon, anyway. I’ve been trading stocks since I was a kid. I’m very good at it. I made my first million before I ever met you. It’s how I could buy a car and have my own apartment back when I was a teenager living in Maryland.”

“You should have said something!”

“I was going to. I didn’t tell anyone. Can you imagine the nuttiness if they’d known about this at the frat house!? Or girls? How would I know if they loved me or my wallet!? You loved me for me! I was going to tell you when we moved to Fort Sill. I told you I would buy you a house, right?”

“Yes,” she agreed, nodding her head.

“I was going to pay cash, no mortgage. Captains don’t have that kind of money, Marilyn. I was going to tell you then.”

Marilyn just stared at me, stunned. Finally she just muttered, “Wow!”

“It wasn’t a lie, honey! I just didn’t tell you everything!” I pleaded with her.

She swatted me a few times with the letters, which got rid of whatever mad she had, which couldn’t have been much. “You and your sins of omission and commission! You’d have made a fine Jesuit!”

I smiled at her. “I’d never be able to handle the vows of celibacy!”

Marilyn blushed, and her eyes dropped down to my midsection. When I caught her doing that, she blushed even more. However, she recovered, and said, “Speaking of which…”

“Ah, yes, well, nothing is happening anytime soon. They’ve got a catheter in me. I have no idea when that’s coming out. Soon, I hope. What about you? Are you able to, well, you know…”

Marilyn smiled and nodded. “I’m all healed up.”

“What about the Pill? I’m guessing you’re off that still,” I asked.

“Yes. I wonder when I can start that again,” she admitted.

I grinned at her. “You’re at the U.S. Army’s premier hospital in the entire world. I bet you can find a doctor here to answer that question. In fact, I’ll bet you a million dollars that you can find a doctor here who can answer your questions!”

Marilyn’s face lit up. “But I don’t have a million dollars! What if I lose?”

I leered at her. “I’m sure we can find something else of value to wager. Maybe I’ll take it out in trade.”

Marilyn snorted and picked up Charlie who was fussing and waking up. A different nurse also came in, in response to my call for more pain meds. “You called?” she asked, pleasantly.

“My leg is bothering me. Any chance I can get something for it.”

She looked at my chart and nodded. “Give me a few minutes and I’ll bring something.”

“Thank you. Hey, can I ask a couple of questions?”

“Carl!” protested Marilyn.

“Sure,” answered the nurse, who eyed Marilyn.

I ignored Marilyn. “How long is this catheter going to be in?” I turned to my wife. “Honey, she’s a nurse. Trust me, we can ask her.”

Nurse Greghams laughed. “Very true. As to the catheter, I can’t really say. At least not until after your surgery, but you can ask the doctor tomorrow. Anything else?”

“My wife needs to go back on the Pill. Any chance you can help with that?”

Marilyn squealed in embarrassed outrage, but the nurse just laughed and asked Marilyn what brand she had used. “You’ll need to see one of the OB-GYNs, but I can call and see about getting you an appointment.”

Marilyn slugged my shoulder, and then sweetly said, “Thank you. Please.”

Nurse Greghams laughed some more and then left to get me some hospital quality meds.

It was also time for Marilyn and Charlie to leave. We had been talking the entire afternoon, and still had so much more to say. My son woke up enough to sit in my lap and play with my fingers some more, and then I kissed him and his mother good-bye. I was perhaps more enthusiastic with his mother. Marilyn promised to return early the next morning and we would talk some more. The surgeon was supposed to come along in the morning and go over things with me also, so if the timing was good, she could sit in on it.

The next day was a Sunday. Marilyn got there in time to watch me finishing my juice and toast. I was now eating normal meals, or at least as normal as hospital meals get. Part of the liquids only was that by the time I got to the hospital I had been without food for a number of days, and surviving on Lurps for most of the time before that. If I had managed to get a real meal, I’d have puked it up in no time.

Marilyn was nursing Charlie when the surgeon came in. He had good news and he had bad news. The good news was that he wouldn’t have to amputate, and I wouldn’t need a knee replacement yet. The bad news was that I had some surgery to repair ligaments coming, and I would need rehab for months. Ultimately I would need a new knee, and in the meantime, I would probably be able to predict the weather. He had a model of a knee and pictures of all the ligaments, and it was just gibberish to me. Worst of all, they wouldn’t know how bad it was until they cut me open.

In the early Eighties, most hospital imaging was still limited to old fashioned X-rays. While CT scans and PET scans and MRI scans had all been invented, the equipment involved was ludicrously expensive and very rare. Certainly the Army didn’t have this stuff. It would take the coming digital revolution to bring costs down to the point where they would be commonplace. The same applied to the surgery itself. Arthroscopic surgery was still experimental. They were going to have to cut me open the old fashioned way, with long zippers and extensive recovery time. Surgery was scheduled for Monday morning, and Marilyn was asked to stay away. I would be unconscious for hours, and there was nothing she could do; they would call her when I woke up.

Afterwards, Marilyn and I talked some more, for the rest of the day. She had a very good idea, too. “Maybe we can call Suzie and see if she can visit?”

I blinked at that. “It’s the end of November. She’s in school. You’ll have to call her and ask. Maybe she can take a bus? Or she can wait until Christmas, I’ll probably still be here then.”

“She needs a car,” Marilyn remarked in passing.

That got me to thinking. So did Marilyn and I! “You know, hold that thought. I need to dump the Impala, and you need something bigger for you and Buster. How about a station wagon for you?” Chrysler had not reinvented the minivan yet, not for a few more years.

Marilyn’s lips flapped for a moment. “Really? I can get a new car!?”

“Whatever you want, honey. Well, within reason. I don’t think Rolls Royce makes station wagons.”

“Very funny! What about you?”

I shrugged. “I’ll trade the Impala in on a Caddy or a Lincoln. Something nice and big. We can have a car, and a wagon.”

“What about my little Toyota?”

“Probably won’t get much for it. Why don’t we just give it to Suzie? It’d be perfect for a college kid. She could pay the gas and Dad would pay the insurance,” I said.

“What would your parents say if they knew where it came from?”

I shrugged again. “Suzie can lie to them. That would be her problem, not mine.”

“We should call Tusker and Tessa as well, invite them down. We haven’t seen them since last year!” she said.

That was true. We had kept in touch with Tusker and Tessa since that oh so memorable wedding! They were married now (grandchildren will melt a grandparent’s heart!) and were doing well. They had both graduated, Tessa with her Bachelors and Tusker with his Associates in Business, and last year, on schedule, he had opened a small motorcycle repair and sales shop in Timonium. “That’s a very good idea! Give them a call and ask them to come down. We can get them a room for the night. When Suzie comes, she can stay in the suite with you, I guess.”

She nodded, but then gave me a worried look. “Do you have their phone numbers? I left my address book at home!”

“And that is why the good Lord gave us telephone operators. When you get back to the hotel, get an outside line and call the operator. You can probably get a number for Tusker’s business, and if you call the University of Delaware, they can at least find a way to get a message to Suzie. It’s too late for either of them to come here this weekend.”

Like my last trip through time and space, Suzie had applied to the University of Delaware’s nursing school. She was just now starting her junior year. In a couple of years she would have both her BS in nursing and her RN credentials. She was about an hour’s drive from Lutherville. “Maybe Suzie can take a bus from Dover to Washington, and you can get her or she can take a cab,” I said.

We talked about future plans, now that I was no longer going to be going career in the Army. Wherever we ended up, I would buy or build Marilyn a house, and we’d get some new cars, and as soon as I could get loose from the hospital, we were going on a nice and long vacation! Beyond that, we didn’t make too many plans. We couldn’t agree on where we wanted to live. Marilyn wanted to leave the Fayetteville area (too hot, too muggy, too southern) and I refused to move to upstate New York (I spent fifty-plus years shoveling snow up there; screw that idea!)

A lot of time was simply spent getting acquainted with my son. Charlie was only about ten weeks old, but he certainly seemed to have a healthy curiosity about everything. He looked at everything! He couldn’t sit up by himself yet, but that little head and those little eyes kept turning around to watch everybody! Otherwise he was nothing but a food processing machine. Mom’s milk went in one end, and toxic chemical waste came out the other end. What that child produced was a violation of the Geneva Conventions against gas and germ warfare! Oh, and keep your fingers and car keys out of his reach, since it all went into his mouth!

Monday was not enjoyable. Since I was going to be under anesthesia most of the day, they cut my meals off the afternoon before. Marilyn kept Charlie at the hotel. I signed papers and listened to warnings and then I was asked to count back from 100. I got to 99 and was out like a light. By the time I woke up, it was almost dinner time, and Marilyn was sitting there with Charlie by the bed. I stayed awake long enough to say, “Hello,” and then fell back asleep. By the time I woke up again, it was the middle of the night and they were gone.

They came back first thing Tuesday morning, and we all met the surgeon. The good news was actually more than I could hope for. While there had been extensive damage to the joint and the ligaments, they decided to do the repairs in a single seven hour session rather than two or three smaller sessions. That meant less time in the body shop and more time on the highway, so to speak. The bad news was that there had been extensive damage. I was going to need a couple of weeks before I could try walking on it, and a full recovery was very doubtful. My career was shot.

Two more weeks like this was going to drive me batty. We could still make future plans, though. Marilyn decided to switch Charlie over to formula, and she spent a morning that week talking to a staff gynecologist about going on the Pill. Fortunately, although all of her medical records were still at the Fort Bragg clinic, Marilyn still qualified to see a doctor here. When I was able to get out of here, we’d both be able to do something about the horniness that had been attacking the both of us. We started planning my escape.

That weekend I had visitors. Suzie caught a bus back to Baltimore, but then Tusker and Tessa and little Bucky went down to pick her up, and they all drove down to Silver Springs to see us. Marilyn and I had been joking about Tusker and his family driving down on his bike, with Bucky in a sidecar, but they came down in an old Ford he owned.

That Saturday was the day my catheter came out. Suzie was there when the nurse came in. “Cool! Can I watch?”

I spluttered something incoherent. “Suzie! No!”

“Carl, don’t be so uptight. I’m a nursing student. I’ve seen penises before,” she replied.

“I don’t care how many penises you’ve seen! You’re not going to see mine!”

“You’re no fun at all.”

I shook a finger at her. “Why don’t you go home and tell Dad about all the penises you’ve seen? I’ll bet that will be a fun conversation!” She had the good grace to blush at that.

Tusker and Tessa were looking a little frazzled, but otherwise happy. Tessa was doing some part-time work at the biker bar, as well as doing the books for the bike shop and taking care of Bucky. Tusker was working all hours at the shop, and only had Sunday off. On the other hand, they seemed to be treading water with the money, and their little business was growing. They already had two full time employees, and were looking for a third. Bucky had his mother’s build and features, but his father’s bright red hair, and was a good kid. He was three now, and got into everything.

Suzie told us some unhappy news, also. Daisy had gone to the big puppy playpen in the sky. She had passed away in her sleep a couple of weeks before she had gone back to school. “I’m sorry, Suzie. She was a good dog.”

Suzie looked very sad, but didn’t cry. I knew she would have cried when it happened.

“How old was she?” asked Tessa.

Suzie looked over at me curiously. “I don’t know. How old was she?”

I had to think a bit. When I came back through in 1968, she was young, but not a new puppy. “I’m not absolutely sure, but I think we got her in ’65 or ’66. It was the summer, that I remember. That would make her 14 or 15. What’s that in dog years? Over a hundred, at least!”

“She hung in there!” commented Tusker.

I smiled at him. “That she did! She was a good dog.” Suzie and I told a few Daisy related tales. Finally I stuck my finger in front of Charlie, and he latched onto it. “Once we get settled, we’ll have to get a puppy for this guy to chase around.”

Marilyn’s eyes opened at that. “A puppy!” Her family is not a pet type family. They didn’t have dogs or cats, or even fish in the fish tank.

I grinned. “All boys need a dog!”

Tessa laughed at that. “My sisters and I all had cats.”

That made me laugh even harder. “That’d be even better. My mother is deathly afraid of cats! It’s the perfect anti-Mom defense!”

Tusker and Tessa took Suzie back to Baltimore and got her on the bus to Newark. It was a good visit, and after they left, I said to my wife, “I think we ought to move back home.”

Marilyn stared at me in disbelief. “Home? Your home? With your family?”

“No, no, nothing like that. I’m not that crazy! No, I mean, to Maryland. You want some place out in the country, and I don’t want to shovel snow. There’s still a lot of farm country in Maryland. It’s not all suburbs. Northern Baltimore County is still very rural. I’m sure we can do something up there.”

“I don’t know…” she said slowly.

“Listen, once I can get loose from here, we’ll drive up and look around. I’ll show you! I know there’s plenty of farmland and such up past Cockeysville and Hereford.”

Marilyn shrugged her shoulders. “Speaking of which, how are we going to do that? You can’t drive yet, and the Toyota is awfully small!”

“I have no idea.” The more I thought about it, the more I realized I was still at the mercy of the Army. Walter Reed was not about to turn me loose. In fact, once they had done what they could for me, they would ship my sorry ass posthaste back to Fayetteville.

I just nodded. “I can pretty much guarantee you that if you ask the concierge at the Hilton, you’ll get some help. They can also point you towards a shopping mall. Don’t buy much, but I’ll need some stuff. Get me a shaving kit, some sweats and underwear. That sort of stuff, something I can move around in without my ass hanging out the back side. I wear a size 12 shoe, by the way.”

Marilyn can be very passive-aggressive about this sort of thing, but finally agreed to pick some stuff up for me. She absolutely hates driving in a city, probably because she’s a lousy driver. It’s no big deal for me. Back when I was learning the first time through, I learned on the Baltimore Beltway, five lanes at 70 miles an hour!

Marilyn picked up a few things for me, although the sneakers she bought me were the wrong size. I was still stuck at Walter Reed, though. By the end of my second week, my bandages were removed and a much smaller bandage and wrap were put on my knee. I was then transferred to a rehab section, to get me back on my feet. I spent the next week learning to use crutches and starting a delightful regimen of torture, to get me moving my knee and learning how to walk again. I couldn’t believe how weak I was. When I wasn’t in rehab, I spent time in their gym doing bench presses. I had lost over twenty pounds, between the hike out of Nicaragua and my time in jail, and hadn’t come close to getting back in shape. My clothes hung on me loosely.

I spent Christmas in the hospital, with just a few presents, since it was so far from home and none of us had a chance to shop. Marilyn went out and picked up a few things for Charlie, and we promised each other we would do something when I was released. It still took almost four weeks after the operation before I was finally released. I sent Marilyn home with Charlie, back to our apartment. There was no way I could ride comfortably in the Toyota, at least not yet. Besides, it was the Army’s job to take me home. I got sent a day later, in a Herky Bird rigged for medical transport, and then an ambulance took me to the hospital at Bragg. I got another physical, had to stay the night, and was scheduled for more rehab. When I was released the day after, Marilyn came with my Impala, and Charlie loaded in the back seat.

As we drove off the base, back to the apartment, I said, “You know, I’m going to miss this, but I sure won’t miss not coming home to you. I haven’t got a clue what I’m going to do now, but whatever it is, I don’t want to travel too much.”

“Have you thought any more about that? I mean, what you want to do now?” she asked.

Charlie started fussing, and I twisted around a bit to make funny faces at him and try and distract him. “Not a frigging clue!”

“We’ll have to talk about that, I guess,” Marilyn said. I just nodded.

We were at the apartment soon enough and I could stop trying to amuse my son and turn the job over to the professional. Marilyn helped me out of the car, and I was able to use my crutches well enough to walk to the apartment. Marilyn had to unlock the place, since I had left my keys at home before the deployment. Thankfully we had a ground floor apartment, since I wasn’t all that great on negotiating stairs yet.

The fact the Army was cutting me loose smacked me in the face when I walked into the place. There on the dining room table were several boxes sent over from the battery. Mighty Mouse must have really wanted my ass gone! I balanced on my left leg while looking through them. One box had the photos from my ‘I Love Me’ wall, the pictures of me with the unit and the one from four years ago with Grace Hopper. The pictures from my desk, of Marilyn, were also packed up, along with anything personal from my desk. A larger box contained some uniforms and fatigue gear from my office. Surprisingly, there was a box with my gear that had been shipped back from Honduras, including some stuff I had despaired of every seeing again, like my Colt. They must have traced it by the serial number. There was also a note from Colonel Featherstone, rolled up and tucked into the barrel, that my 1911A1 seemed to be ‘combat lost’. That brought a smile to my face.

I made my way on through the apartment, looking at everything like it was the first time there. It all looked the same, but different. It was subtle things that were odd; a new shower curtain, the toaster moved in the kitchen, an Afghan on the couch instead of a comforter. I found Marilyn in the second bedroom, where she was sitting in a rocker, feeding Charlie from a bottle. I stood there in the doorway and just watched them, smiling. She looked up at me and said, “What?”

I smiled. “It’s nothing.”

“Tell me what.”

“It’s just good to be home. Seeing you two like this, that sort of thing.” Marilyn smiled and rolled her eyes. I backed up into the hallway again. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“Will you need help?”

She meant help maneuvering and getting undressed, not the kind of help I would have enjoyed. “I’ll be fine,” I told her.

I hobbled down to the master bedroom. The apartment only had one bathroom, but it had a door onto the hallway and a second into our bedroom. I leaned the crutches against the dresser, and then sat down on the bed. It took me almost ten minutes to get undressed, with most of the time being spent from the waist down. I no longer had the bandages on my knee, but it was very stiff and didn’t bend well or support much weight yet. Naked, I got back to my feet and hopped to the bathroom, supporting myself against the wall.

When I got back out of the shower, I found my wife in the bathroom with me, muttering. She also had a large stain on her shirt. “Your son missed the burp bib.”

“My son? Let me guess, he’s your son the other times.”

She gave me a raspberry and stripped off her shirt. I dried while she stripped and got into the shower. Watching her reminded me of something else that had been months awaiting! I sure hoped Charlie had figured out how to sleep through the night!

I hopped back to the bedroom, and pulled open a drawer to grab some briefs. In doing so, I knocked my crutches to the floor. Thankfully Charlie didn’t fuss, but Marilyn opened the shower door and asked, nervously, “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. The crutches fell to the floor.”

“Okay.”

It took me another couple of minutes to pick up my crutches, by kicking them one-legged towards the bed, and then sitting on the bed and reaching down to grab them and set them upright again. This was a monumental pain in the balls! Hopefully the rehab would at least get me to a point I could use a cane. Marilyn came out of the bathroom, cleaned up and wearing her bathrobe, and found me still sitting on the bed, naked, and trying to lean my crutches against the dresser again.

She came over and took them from me. “Let me get those.” She took them from me and leaned them against the dresser, back at the wall.

I just shook my head in disgust. “Jesus, I better get better soon. I’ve never felt so helpless in my life!” This was even worse than when I hit my 60s and started using a cane when I walked.

Marilyn sat down next to me on the bed. “You’ll be fine. You’re already moving ten times better than you were a week ago. You could barely stand with the crutches. In a few more weeks you’ll be off them completely. By the time Charlie starts walking, we’ll both be able to chase him around!”

I laughed at that. “That would be good. I’m supposed to carry him, not the other way around!”

Marilyn smiled at that, and then looked at me. I was still sitting there naked on the edge of the bed, with my shorts in one hand. She took them from me and tossed them on the dresser. “After he eats, he sleeps, and he’s a very good sleeper.”

BOING! Carl Junior suddenly woke up! I guess the beating in the basement, which gave me several shots to the groin, didn’t wipe me out completely. I looked at her and asked, “Just how long will he be out?”

Marilyn shrugged out of her robe. Boy, did she look good! I thought her tits had grown, too, which I also approved of! “Long enough!”

I pushed myself back on the bed, and propped myself up on a few of the pillows. I also took a pillow and put it under my right knee. Marilyn crawled around me on the bed until she was on my left side. I kissed her, long and hard, and immediately got some moaning and tongue. It was like back when we first started making out. She broke apart and then very carefully crawled on top of me, straddling my midsection. Moments later I was inside her.

It felt… amazing! It had been months since we had done this, and it felt just like we were back dating. Marilyn gasped and lay down on my chest, shaking in orgasm and humping her tight little pussy down on me. I came very fast. “It’s been too long,” I lamented.

“That just makes it better!” she whispered in return. She began squirming around on me, and I quickly hardened again. This time around she lifted herself up so that she was riding me, and I played with her tits while she diddled her clit. We both lasted longer, and Marilyn was on a second orgasm when I blasted off again.

We were gasping for breath, and Marilyn had slid off me to the side again, when Charlie started fussing. Marilyn and I looked at each other and laughed. “Well, better now than five minutes ago.”

“How long before he takes another nap?”

Marilyn giggled. “Too long!” She kissed me, and then went into the bathroom to clean up again. Charlie started crying, but I wasn’t going to be able to help for a bit. I sat upright and struggled into my shorts, and then hopped around and found some clothing. Marilyn came out of the bathroom and slipped a sundress on, and then went off to take care of Charlie.

I followed her down the hall. I watched from the doorway as she changed a diaper. “Keep it up, Buster! It’s only seventeen years and eight months to go before you’re out on your ass!”

Marilyn protested, “Carl! Don’t say that!” but then Charlie did the fountain trick before she had his diaper fixed properly. “Then again…”

“Ha! Just wait until he starts walking! You’ll see! We’ll spend the first year teaching him how to walk and talk, and the next seventeen telling him to sit down and shut up!”

Marilyn finished getting a clean diaper on him, and handed him to me. “Your turn, Dad! I’m going to clean up again, and then I’ll make dinner.”

I played with my son for a few minutes, until Marilyn came back in a different dress (pee-free) and took him back. I hobbled on my crutches behind her to the kitchen, and sat down at the table, with Charlie in his little seat in front of me. I kept him occupied while Marilyn made dinner. Yet another reason to hurry the healing process. The only way Marilyn knew how to cook involved a microwave oven. I was going to lose weight this way, not regain it!

After dinner, Charlie fell asleep again, so Marilyn and I played another round of hide-the salami out in the living room. Then later, he slept the entire night. We didn’t, but we didn’t complain, either. When Marilyn drove me over to the base hospital in the morning for rehab, we were both sleepy but smiling.

And so it went for almost a month. I was doing rehab every day, along with working on the weights and swimming, which is good exercise for bad joints, since it is low impact. When I was home, Marilyn and I made up for the three months I was away. My mobility and strength improved, and after a couple of weeks I graduated to a cane, and was able to put some weight on my right leg and walk. At that point I started cooking again. We also did some belated Christmas shopping together, since I wasn’t really up to driving yet. We spent some time up in Raleigh and I found a lingerie store and took her to it. She was embarrassed and nervous, but we bought a few items we would both like. I also bought her a few items of jewelry.

Then, out of the blue, I got a call at the apartment from Colonel Featherstone. I was actually still in the Army, even though I was assigned to the Detachment of Patients at the hospital, and my four year commitment was long over. I was still getting paid by the Department of Defense. The colonel told me to be in my Class As over at the HQ of the 505^th on Friday morning, 22 January at 0900. Marilyn was supposed to be there, too, in a nice dress, along with Charlie. I was being given my Bronze Star, and they would also process the paperwork to medically retire me.

I hadn’t worn a uniform since I had been back from Honduras. I had to dig one out and see if it still fit. It did, if a touch loosely in the waist, but not all that badly. I had Marilyn take it out to be cleaned. I might be going out, but I’d do it in style.

It felt weird that morning to put it on, for one last time. I even had my Honduran jump wings on my chest. Marilyn wore a nice blue knee length skirt and a white blouse, with some medium heels, and Charlie had on a little camouflage jumper she had picked up at the PX. I drove us over. I had just started driving again this week, although not for long distances. Colonel Featherstone was actually there waiting for us! That surprised me, since I figured he would be off in Washington or someplace torturing miscreants.

He led me inside to the office area, where he parked me at a table. He played peek-a-boo with my son while I signed off on an interminable pile of paperwork that a Spec 4 clerk put in front of me. They didn’t want me around anymore, but they sure seemed to take their time getting rid of me! Eventually I was done, and the colonel took over again. “Follow me. The colonel wanted to give this to you, but he’s tied up elsewhere.”

We followed Colonel Featherstone down a hallway towards the ready hangar for the 1^st Battalion, but didn’t go in. Instead, he sent the Spec 4 in, and then two minutes later, he held the door open, and motioned for me to go in first, to be followed by Marilyn and our baby. He came in last.

“ATTEN-HUT!” barked out from a loud baritone to the side of the bay. I stood there in disbelief as the entire battalion, almost a thousand soldiers, standing in ordered ranks and rows, came to attention. There was a small temporary stage at this end of the bay, with flags on it and a small podium.

I was roused by a tap on my shoulder. I whipped my head around to find Featherstone smiling at me. He pointed towards the stage and said, “March! And try to think up something brief to say.”

Thank Jesus I had spent the last four years (and a chunk of the four before that!) under military discipline, since I was moving on muscle memory and nothing else. I marched to the stage and went up the side steps, to find Colonel Longworth, the commander of the 505^th, and Lieutenant Colonel Small, the new commander of the First Battalion. There was a small X marked in masking tape on the floor of the stage. Lieutenant Colonel Small stopped me when I reached the X and whispered to me to stop and face towards the battalion. As I hit my mark, the loud voice, which I now recognized as belonging to the battalion sergeant major, barked out, “PUH-RADE… REST!” The battalion snapped into the position of parade rest.

From where I was standing I could see the battalion standing at attention. I think the brigade was on support cycle, but I wasn’t sure. Since I was on medical leave, I hadn’t been following the cycle. Everybody was in fatigues, except for a few of the officers, like Longworth and Small. Standing in the front rows, in the center, were some faces I recognized, 3^rd Platoon, Company C, including one man in civvies, but still standing at attention. There were also a small number of civilians on the side.

I turned my attention from outward to the stage, as Colonel Longworth went to the podium. “All of us here know why Captain Buckman is being honored today. We also all know why we can’t state that reason or discuss it. Captain Buckman, please step forward.”

At that point the adjutant loudly stated, “Attention to orders!”

I took two steps forward, to another X on the stage, and came to attention (not that I hadn’t been before.) Colonel Longworth opened a small folder on the podium and read:

“For courageous and meritorious service while assigned to elements of the 505^th Parachute Infantry Regiment. During training operations while attached to Company C, 1^st Battalion, 505^th Parachute Infantry Regiment, Captain Buckman took command and led his unit with courage and merit. His actions were in keeping with the highest traditions of the service, and reflect great credit upon himself, the 82^nd Airborne Division, and the United States Army.”

The colonel then opened a small jewelry case and pulled out the Bronze Star. It was the actual medal, a five pointed bronze star hanging from a red ribbon with blue and silver vertical stripes. I knew that inside the jewelry box was the ribbon device, a matching ribbon used when the medal wasn’t worn, and a miniature version of the medal to wear on the mess dress uniform. The colonel pinned the medal on my chest while a photographer took photos. Then he stood back and saluted me, and I could see through suddenly watery eyes the rest of the room snapping to attention and saluting as well.

I returned the salute. He dropped his arm and then said, “Captain, you may say something if you wish.”

“Stay right there, please,” I whispered. I sidled behind him, so that he was blocking the sight lines, and pulled out my handkerchief and wiped my eyes quickly. Then I nodded and whispered, “Thank you.” Colonel Longworth smiled at me and stepped aside, nodding.

I stepped to the podium. I looked out at the sea of green, and realized I would never again be part of something like this. “I’ll keep this brief. We are all members of the finest division in the entire United States Army. The 82^nd Airborne is respected by our nation’s friends, and feared by her enemies. You men are the reason for both that respect and that fear. Thank you for allowing me to serve with you. It has been an honor and a privilege. Thank you.” I stepped back from the podium and fought to keep my eyes dry again.

Lieutenant Colonel Small stepped forward carrying something small in his hand. He went to the podium and said, “Captain, I know you’re part of the 319^th. From now on, this patch says you’re part of the 505^th.” He held up a unit patch with four bendlets surmounted by a winged black panther and handed it to me, and the room erupted in cheers. I took the patch and held it upright, and then shook his hand.

I almost missed the sergeant major dismissing the parade. The colonels had me stick around for photos, and Marilyn and Charlie got in on it as well. Then I was cut loose and got off the stage. I was instantly surrounded by the men I had jumped into Nicaragua with. I also found myself with a few wives as well, although most of the men were single. The one I remember the most was Sergeant Briscoe’s (now Master Sergeant Briscoe’s) wife, who kissed me on the cheek and thanked me for bringing her husband back.

The civilian who had been standing with the men turned out to be Private Smith, now dressed in khakis and a dress shirt, and supporting himself on crutches. “I told you we all jumped in and we’d all get out, Private,” I said to him.

He smiled and nodded. “I hear you’re getting out, too.”

“As soon as I leave here, I’m history. How’s the leg?”

“Held together by three pins and a titanium plate, but otherwise okay,” he answered with a laugh.

“Maybe you should have let me cut it off and stick that peg leg on you after all!”

He reached out and shook my hand. “Thank you, sir.”

A much sadder moment was when I was introduced to an older man, about sixty years old, who had been standing to the side. Lieutenant Colonel Small brought him over, and said, “Captain, I’d like to introduce you to Colonel John Donovan. He was Captain Donovan’s father.”

I turned to face the father of the man I had jumped into Nicaragua with. He was wearing a civilian suit, but it didn’t matter. I came to attention and saluted. “I’m very sorry for your loss, sir. I got to know Bob in Honduras and he was a good man and an excellent officer.”

“Thank you, Captain, for bringing him home to us.”

“If it had been the other way around, sir, he’d have returned the favor,” I replied. “Sir, is Mrs. Donovan here? I should pay my respects.”

He shook his head. “Eleanor took the girls home to Kansas.”

“Well, please give her my condolences when you see her next.”

“I’ll do that, son. I just wanted to say thank you for bringing him home.”

I nodded. “We all went in, sir, we all came out. Bob believed in that just like the rest of us.”

Colonel Donovan moved off, and I turned to Sergeant Briscoe. “What about Private Masurski’s family?”

“He didn’t have any. He’s in Arlington now.”

It was a hell of an end to a young life. Would anybody notice when it was my turn to go? I just nodded, and turned back to Marilyn. “Let’s go, honey.”

“I’m very proud of you, Carl,” she replied.

I squeezed her hand in response. “Thank you.” I tilted my head towards the side door where we came in.

Colonel Featherstone opened the door for me. “So what’s in your future now, Captain?”

I looked at him for a second, and then turned to look at Marilyn. I had been avoiding this question for the last month. I turned back to the colonel. “I have no idea, Colonel. I have no idea.”