Barstow kept at Milo up until almost the very moment that he shouldered his barracks bag and entrained for South Carolina. His final words were, “You’re a nut, Moray, but I guess that without your kind of nuts, no war would ever get won. I’ve put the very highest marks I can in your file; that’s all I can do, now. Here it is; it’s sealed, that’s GI regs. If you unseal it, for God’s sake, do it carefully so you can reseal it easily, huh? You do as good a job for the bastards where you’re going as you did for us here, you’ll be wearing three up and three down soon, don’t fret about it. Good luck, Moray. Try not to get your head or any other essential parts shot off.”
The entire unit, from division on down, was still in a state of flux, none of the components completely filled in. The grizzled master sergeant who checked Milo in still wore his Ninth Infantry Division patch. When once he had torn open the sealed records and seen that he was dealing with a Regular rather than another johnny-come-lately uniformed civilian, he unbent considerably and offered Milo a cigarette and a chair across the cluttered, battered desk from him.
“Thishere Colonel Stiles, he must know where some fuckin’ bodies is buried to git that bunch in Holabird to let you go, Moray. You know him? What kinda fella is he? West Pointer?”
“Not hardly,” Milo chuckled. “He’s a gentleman, but he was a tech when the war started, first sergeant of a training company. I was his field first … and his buddy.”
The master looked pleased at this news and nodded. “A Regular, huh, like us?”
“About thirteen, fourteen years service, sarge, all but the last two years of it in the ranks. He’s hard, but he’s fair, too, doesn’t play favorites. You give him what he wants, what he thinks you can do, and he’ll take good care of you. What else can you ask of an officer?”
The master shook his head. “Not a fuckin’ thing more, Moray. Sounds like I fin’ly lucked into a good spot for a fuckin’ change. And he’s sure stickin’ by you, too. All the fuckin’ comp’ny commanders yellin’ their friggin’ heads off for trained noncoms, and he’s got you down in a staff slot.” He leafed through the personnel file for a moment, then grunted. “Shitfire, manl You talk Krauthead, Frog, Eyetie, Swede and all thesehere others, too? Hell, no fuckin’ wonder they had you up to Holabird. The wonder —and it’s a pure wonder!—is just how thishere Colonel Stiles managed to pry you away from ‘em. He prob’ly has you lined up for S-2, but he better not let regiment or division hear too much about you or they’ll jerk you right out of this fuckin’ battalion afore you can say goose shit. But, say, how come you ain’t a fuckin’ of ser, Moray?”
Milo shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know, sarge, mostly probably because I never wanted to be one, I guess. Besides, I have no college degree, either.”
The master made a rude sound. “Hell, Moray, that eddicayshun crap don’t matter diddlysquat no more. Shit, piss and corruption, even I’s a of ser . . , for a while. Then me and a coupla good ole boys busted up a of sers” club, bashed the fuckin’ post snowdrops around purty good, too. We all got court-martialed, of course, and busted back . . . way back. The onlies’ fuckin’ way I could git my three and three back was to ‘volunteer’ for thishere fuckin’ new division. But hell, it don’t matter none, no way. I’m with you, Moray, I’m a lot happier as a master than I was as a damn, fuckin’ of ser anyhow!
“Okay, let’s us get you settled in, Moray.” He pulled a clipboard from beneath the mountain of papers on the desktop, precipitating a small avalanche, which he ignored. “I’m gonna put you in. a squadroom with two other techs and a staff in, lessee, in Buildin’ H-1907. Got that? The lockers and racks is a’ready in there, so you can lock up your stuff while you go over to Head and Head supply and draw your mattress and bedding and all. But you watch that fuckin’ crooked-ass Crockett, hear me? Make damn sure he gives you blankets and all out of brand-fuckin’-new bales, les’ you c’lects crotch pheasants for fun.
“Oh, by the way, Moray, I guess as how I’m the fuckin’ battalion sergeant major, leastways till we gets in another master or a warrant or somebody better for the job. You done been a first—you wanta take over Head and Head Comp’ny till things get shook down some? I could give you a two-man room, then.”
Milo shrugged. “Sure, sarge. Why not?”
The formation of the Sixtieth Infantry Division was best described as snafu—“situation normal, all fucked up”—all the way. Needed personnel and specialists slowly trickled in from every point of the compass, supplies and equipment came late or not at all or the wrong kind or in impossible quantities. For almost two weeks, the entire Head and Head—battalion headquarters and Headquarters Company—consisted of the cooks and mess steward, Sergeant Major/Master Sergeant John Saxon, Milo, four other first-three-graders—the battalion supply sergeant, Moffa, the battalion S-3 sergeant, Evans, the signal section sergeant, White, and a staff sergeant/specialist who was a clear case of misassignment, since his specialty was medical records keeping—and an agglomeration of eighteen drivers (with no vehicles to drive, as yet), one corporal and one pfc (the both of them fresh out of Graves Registration School), and two buck sergeants (one a tracked vehicle mechanic and the other a dog handler with his Alsation dog). But all of that began to change; the state of hopeless-looking disorder began to fall into order at about eleven on the morning of Milo’s tenth day of service as H&H first sergeant.
Even clear down in the battalion supply area where he stood arguing with the slick and slimy Sergeant Moffa, all could hear from the headquarters building the hoarse bellow of “Ten-HUT!” and recognize the voice of Master Sergeant Saxon.
Stepping out of the supply shack and looking up the row of T-buildings, Milo could recognize even at the distance and despite its thick covering of road dust the long, sleek shape and maroon color of a Lincoln V-12 coupe. Lieutenant Colonel Jethro Stiles, Infantry, USA, had arrived to take command of his battalion.
When once he had heard the reports of Saxon and Milo, the commanding officer sighed deeply and shook his head slowly. “John, Milo, it’s the same, sad fucking story from division on down, I’m here to attest to that much. The Powers That Be really broke it off in this division, and the general is so fucking mad that he’s chewing up twenty-penny nails and spitting out carpet tacks. It seems that we got every fucking goldbrick and fuck-off and miscreant and mother’s mistake that any other outfit wanted to unload somewhere.
“Howsomever”—he smiled lazily and tilted back his head to gaze at the resinous rafters above him—“I just may have helped the overall situation a bit. I made a few telephone calls and sent a few wires from division, earlier this morning, called in some markers and cadged a few favors here and there. If it all jells, I think that I can safely assure you that from now on, this battalion will be at the very tiptop of the general’s most-favored list.”
“In that case, colonel,” began Milo, only to be stopped.
“Milo, John, when we’re alone together, it’s no ‘colonel’ and ‘sergeant,’ hear me? This rank of mine is only a wartime expediency, every Regular knows that, and I feel one hell of a lot more at home and properly placed among you and men like you than I do among most of the officers, anyway.
“Now, that matter aside, you have a problem, Milo?”
“We have a problem, Jethro, two of them, in Head and Head. Supply sergeants are always out for the main chance, everybody knows that, but this precious pair we’ve got here—Moffa of battalion supply and Crockett of Headquarters Company supply—take the fucking shit-cake. Somehow, between the two of them, they’ve managed to convert a shipment of two thousand brand-spanking-new GI blankets that arrived just last week into less than half that number of ragged, motheaten, threadbare pieces of shit that it would be a fucking crime to issue to a fucking dog. And that’s just their most recent sleight-of-hand with our supplies.”