“Yes, sir,” Hamilton said. “Sergeant Major Barney. Manage that.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” the British sergeant major said.
“Get those to Mr. Walker, Sergeant Major,” Smith said. “Now let’s repair below. You lead, Colonel.”
CHAPTER 21
“The materials on the Achille are mostly what Fontana thought Walker would need for a recovering gunshot wound,” Captain Smith said as soon as they were seated in the colonel’s office. “Notably, Keflex. I’m not putting that on you, by the way, Colonel. I didn’t give you time to get trained before you went on the float and the short time your units had together was doing police call. In retrospect, I should have had the gunny run them through combat action training. My mistake. One I’m not prone to repeat.”
“Yes, sir,” Hamilton said. “My man, my failure, sir.”
“Not if you were under other orders, Colonel,” Smith said. “And it touches on one of the main issues I have, both upward and downward, with the current situation.”
“Sir?” Hamilton said.
“In the pre-Plague military, that sort of thing could have been a career killer,” Smith said, taking a sip of the scotch Hamilton had produced. “Just as this might be. It would depend mostly on politics, I suppose. But as with my decision to essentially not give out awards like so many Christmas presents, I’m trying to get both the newly inducted civilians and the professionals to grasp that this is not pre-Plague. The military culture can’t be, exactly, pre-Vietnam in nature. We don’t have the sort of personnel numbers to afford that degree of fatalism. We cannot afford a Somme or a Hamburger Hill. On the other hand, we also do not have an infinite supply of even vaguely trained officers and NCOs, so we can’t kill any career over any fault without it affecting our overall efficiency. That, as much as any reason, is why I’m here. I have already pointed out to the Joint Chiefs that the blue-on-blue was as much my fault as anyone’s and offered to retire in favor of Mr. Walker, whatever or whoever he is.”
“I… don’t see that working, sir,” Hamilton said, frowning. “There are cultural psychology issues…”
“Which is sort of the point, Colonel,” Smith said. “They said the same thing. Nor can I kill your career over it, demote you or something. It wouldn’t be honest and I need you just as the Joint Chiefs need me. In fact, we can’t even get all that down on PFC Curran. We’re that short on Marines. And it was a training failure which falls on us, not the PFC. Now, if he can’t seem to control his fire in the future…”
“He won’t stay a Marine, sir,” the gunnery sergeant growled.
“And where are we to get a replacement, Gunny?” Smith asked. “But that is probably the way to go. I leave it up to you two. The subject is closed except to say that you don’t continue the mission until the gunnery sergeant is satisfied with the small unit tactical training of the Marine Force. We’re going to have to be a bit more lenient with the Naval Landing Forces.”
“They are…honestly about as good as could be expected, sir,” Hamilton said. “Sergeant Major Barney has been taking their training in hand very well. And they’re not used for missions that are…”
“Difficult?” Smith said. “I think you and I both realize that daytime clearance of one of these islands is not difficult by pre-Plague standards, Colonel. Which is another philosophical issue I brought up with the JCS.”
“Sir?” Hamilton said.
“Does your career stretch back to Grenada, Colonel?” Smith said. “No, it wouldn’t, would it?”
“No, sir,” the colonel said. “Shortly before my time.”
“It was, from all reports, an absolute cluster fuck,” Smith said. “But the U.S. military learned from it. So was much of the Aussie response to the Indonesian quake, which I was in on. But we learned from it. The point is that the U.S. military got so good that it was expected to be able to perform any mission, anywhere, under any circumstances, and get it right, first time, every time. Which, surprisingly enough it was able to for some values of ‘right.’ An example is the essentially ‘green’ units in the first and second invasions of Iraq who performed like veterans. Do you know how historically insane that is, Colonel?”
“Yes, sir, I do,” Colonel Hamilton said. “I read a paper on it from CGSC and had to agree with the conclusions.”
“Which was the amount and reality of training,” Smith said. “I think we read the same paper. The problem being, we no longer have the luxury that the DOD did to do that amount and reality of training. We don’t even have blanks much less MILES gear, Simunitions, AirSoft, entire bases like Polk devoted solely to as realistic training as possible, et cetera. And we don’t have the months that it takes or the people to do the training. We may occasionally get the false impression that things are going well. One look at a satellite map tells a different story. The entire world is bleeding every moment of every day. We have word that there are some other groups, similar if less organized and still out of contact, doing something similar in other areas. But they are smaller and, as noted, disorganized and not in contact. They also don’t have our resources and aren’t close enough—they’re in the Pacific—to get to them to help. We cannot afford six months of training to get your Marines to the elite level of pre-Plague Marine infantry. Even if we could do so with a group that is mostly composed of ‘fobbit’ MOS’s. I don’t think anyone questions the ability, in this world and our missions, of my daughter in terms of lethality and ability…”
“No, sir,” Hamilton said.
“But she wouldn’t have stood a chance in Marine Infantry Officer Course,” Steve said. “I take it you agree with that as well?”
“Yes, sir,” Hamilton said, shrugging. “Sorry, sir, but as good as Lieutenant Smith is—”
“She is both thirteen and female,” Smith said. “She might have made it through entry qual, with some training and if she was fully grown. I doubt she’d make it all the way through the course. No woman had prior to the Plague. I know how tough it was. Nonetheless, she has shown her ability to lead and fight in this environment.”
“Agreed, sir,” Hamilton said. “She is even…flexible, sir. She reacted extremely well to the change of mission to a night attack and sweep. Her…methods raised some question of favoritism towards the Marines who were from the Iwo Jima…”
“Official questions?” Smith asked.
“Unofficial, sir,” Hamilton said. “And I stomped on them. The lieutenant’s methods were mostly proven by the results, sir. The Marines from Guantanamo were under-trained for this mission and it showed. I’m considering a change to the TOE based upon it.”