“I jest don’t unnerstand it none, Milo,” attested Captain John Saxon, as they sat in the adjutant’s office of a wintery day, drinking from canteen cups of hot coffee laced with whiskey and waiting for the office space heater to build up sufficient warmth to at least partially disperse the enervating, bone-chilling, damp cold. “Thesehere folks should oughta be in our debt, after all we’ve done and is doin’ right now for to pull their sad asses outen the fuckin’ fire for ‘em. More’n that, they’s s’posed to be our kinfolks, for all that they all talks damn funny, like damnyankees, kind of. But shitfire, man, you’d think the fuckin’ shoe was on the other fuckin’ foot, the way thesehere fuckers act. I allus was sorry I dint get to England back in the Great War—jest to France and then back—but I guess I plumb lucked out after all. I wouldn’ of put up with being treated like a fuckin’ mangy stray dog, the way thesehere fuekin’ limejuice bugtits treats our boys.
“Take thishere Hulbert bizness, fer instance. Did you talk to the man after they brung him back? Yeah, well, so did I. He’s allus been a good ‘un, draftee or not, and I’m damn sure that that Limey cooze is tryin’ to get the poor horny fucker railroaded, is what I think. She let him buy her drinks, the first night, see, leadin’ him on, sweet-talkin’ him inta gettin’ a cook to give him butter and powdered eggs and Spam for her, plus three fuckin’ cartons of cigarettes. She kept up smoochin’ the fella and a-squeezin’ his cock in dark places and promisin’ him ever’thing. Then when he had give her a whole passel of stuff and tried to get her to put out like she’d been promising him, the cowcunted candlebasher broke a fuckin’ bottle over his head and yelled ‘Rape!’ Did you see what them damn fuckin’ Limey cops done to the poor bastard’s face?
“But even so, he just may’ve been lucky, luckier thin some I could name what did get into a few Limey cunts and was too drunk or too fuckin’ lazy or too damn dumb to use the fuckin’ pro-kits like they been told to. Don’t you look for that fuckin’ Jacquot back anytime soon—the fuckin’ cardshark has done got hisself clapped up twenny fuckin’ ways from Sunday from all the Limey codfish he bought and slammed his wang into right after we got here. And he’s just one, too. You wouldn’t believe how many men and fuckin’ of sers, too, in the division has done gone and got theyselfs done up brown with syph, shank, clap, crabs and ever-fuckin’-thing elst the damn fuckin’ Limeys is got for sale.
“I tell you, Milo, till we gets to France or wherever, I’m stickin’ my prick into nuthin’ but Madam Friggley” —he held up one big hand and waggled the fingers— “and you’ll be smart to, too.”
Milo himself had been lucky, he decided. None of the women,-either in England or in the States, whom he had swived had apparently been diseased, or if they had been, at least, he had failed to contract any of their afflictions. It was just as well, too, for with the accelerated training and the normal day-to-day minutiae of running the oversized company, he would not have had time to undergo treatments for venereal disease or any-. thing else, and he could only again thank his lucky stars that he obviously was immune to such other annoying discomforts as flu and bronchial infections, scabies, boils, sore throats, intestinal problems and even hangovers. For all that in the perpetually wet and cold climate some of the men around him always were sniffling, sneezing, and hacking, he seldom caught a cold, and then only a mild, short-lived one. The outbreak of crab lice soon after the battalion came ashore which had necessitated the shaving of everyone’s head and body hair had pointed out the amazing fact that the tiny creatures apparently found his body fluids distasteful, as not a one was ever found upon him.
In the near future years, Milo was often to remember the crab lice episode and wonder about himself, about his decidedly unusual physiology. He was to wonder especially when those about him were suffering from the attentions of body lice, fleas, ticks, bedbugs, the various parasitic worms and leeches, while his flesh and blood and organs remained whole and inviolate. It was to be long, long into that then-unguessed future that he was to add together a myriad of assorted facts—his patent immunity to all of mankind’s diseases, his ability to survive clearly fatal wounds by way of unbelievably rapid regeneration of tissues, his complete freedom from parasites, and many another notable curiosity—and begin first to question and then to believe himself to be, as mad Major Jarvis’ intuition had told him, either superhuman or not truly human at all.
The training went on and on, becoming more and more realistic and dangerous for the trainees, which now included almost every one of the nine hundred and seventeen officers and men in the battalion. Simply for the hard exercise, Milo joined them whenever he could find or make the time to do so. He soon found that it heartened the men to find an officer or a senior noncom wriggling among them in the cold, sticky mud under the fanged wire, while the .30 caliber machine guns fired ball ammunition bare inches overhead, so he not only made more time to join the training exercises himself, but encouraged others to do so in the interests of heightened morale.
Early in February 1944, Jethrq and the officers of his staff were summoned to a series of meetings at regimental headquarters. A week later, the division engineers arrived with trucks and tools and boards and plywood with which they quickly built on the frozen ground full-size mockups of landing craft, each one complete with a hinged front ramp of corrugated steel. The experienced, hardworking men had the mockups completed before the day was out, then moved on to the next battalion on their list.
On the following morning—fortunately, one of the rare, bright, sunny days—this newest phase of their training was commenced. And the training continued despite the very .worst of weather conditions—weary officers and men burdened down with full packs, personal weapons, heavy weapons, steel boxes and wooden cases of munitions and explosives, cartons of field rations, spools of commo wire and field telephones and all of the other impedimenta of modern, mid-twentieth-century warfare. They trooped into the wooden boxes and arranged themselves as ordered, sitting or squatting or kneeling on the slick, wet, muddy boards in the damp fog or cold drizzle until the command came to arise and exit down the dirty, slippery ramp, then trudge back into the roofless structure to do it all over again. Milo participated in this training, too, and was soon to be very glad that he had done so.
In early May, Jethro suddenly appeared. Framed in the doorway of Milo’s private cubicle of the Quonset hut that housed Headquarters Company, Battalion, he beckoned, saying, “Get your jacket and come with me. We need to talk … privately.”