The run was light from the point of view of the U.S. military: only going on three miles and no more than a seven- or eight-minute mile. Of course, the Keldara weren’t trained runners. They did, however, have the basic soldierly trait of being able to handle pain and fatigue. What he wasn’t sure was that they had the right “drive on” mentality that had to accompany those.
“Not… used… to… running… Kildar,” the team leader gasped.
“You can fall out, you know,” Mike purred suggestively. A few, not many, of the Keldara had done so. Most of them puking by the side of the road and then trying to catch up. “Of course, I’ll have to find someone else that can actually lead your team…”
“I will stay, Kildar,” Oleg said, firmly.
“But you don’t even know how far we’re going,” Mike pointed out. “I can keep going, faster than this, for kilometers and kilometers. You Keldara watch me, you’ve seen it. We could be running all day.”
“I’ll… run all… day… Kildar,” Oleg said, weaving a bit.
“Okay,” Mike said. “We’ll just run all day. Nothing important on the training schedule, anyway.” He trotted back to the side of the formation, which was turning off the road and down the slope to the Keldara compound, then sped up and headed to the front where Adams was leading the formation.
“I’ve got it,” Mike said. The formation area for the militia was down on the flats near the houses and Mike turned the Keldara towards it. He headed into the formation area, where most of the Keldara expected the, to them brutal, run would end, then continued through it to one of the graveled roads that led to the training areas.
He didn’t look back as he passed through the formation area but he heard Adams grunt.
“How many’d we lose?” Mike asked as they crossed the nearest bridge.
“ ’Bout a third,” Adams growled.
“Go back and round ’em up,” Mike said, chuckling. “And there’d better not be any team leaders.”
“Doesn’t look like it,” Adams said, peeling away.
Mike led the group about fifty meters past the bridge, enough room to turn around, then trotted in a curve onto the verge and back. The trainers chivvied the group into the turn and headed back to the barracks.
Mike passed the barracks again, though, heading back towards the road and turning around again. The Keldara were fixated on the run ending and expected it to end at the barracks. He wanted them to get their hopes up and then lose them as the expected stopping point didn’t occur.
Finally he brought them to a “quick-time” march up on the road and walked them back to the barracks for a cool-down. When they were back in formation in front of the barracks, he brought them to at-ease and faced them.
“You’re used to looking forward to the end of work,” Mike said, looking over the formation of blowing Keldara. “For the beer at the end of the day of picking rocks. For the sun to fall on the harvesting or the last stand of wheat cut and the party to follow. But a soldier cannot be looking for the end of work, for the end of pain. Your mind starts to focus on that and it will betray you. As you return from a mission, anticipating a beer and rest, you could be ambushed. You might be sent on to another mission, and another and another. You cannot focus on rest, on peace, until you are at peace. You have to exist in a state of mind without a goal of the end of pain. You must learn to accept the pain, to revel in it, to make a brother of pain. To be a soldier is pain! It is suffering and loss and sacrifice. You must learn to pray for chaos and pain! This is one of the many things you’re going to have to learn if you want to be soldiers. And if you turn out to be lousy soldiers, which it looks like this morning, then I’ll just get some people that know how to do the damned job, to revel in the pain, and you can till the damned fields if that’s all you’re good for! Sergeant Major! Post!”
“They’re looking pretty good,” Mike said, walking past one of the barracks as a footlocker sailed out the window. He spoke quietly, his face stern and contemptuous of the nervous troopers standing at attention outside the barracks.
“Gotta agree,” Adams said, raising his voice slightly to overcome McKenzie’s trained bellow as an armful of uniforms followed the footlocker. “The trainers say they’re having to look God damned hard to find defects. Much better than standard recruit material. These guys are neat, thoughtful, strong and they’ve got stamina from hell. It’s scary.”
“I think I should have gotten some Gurkha trainers,” Mike mused. “They’re used to top-notch entry material.”
“Well, we’re not being as choosy as they are,” Adams pointed out. “There are a few that aren’t quite up to standard. One of ’em’s Gurun. You know, the guy who got the bean or whatever. Killjoy says it’s not that he’s not trying, it’s that the rest don’t want to have a damned thing to do with him.”
“In some societies, the guy who’s in his position gets referred to as dead,” Mike replied. “We might have to pull him out. It’d be hell on him, though.”
“Does that mean we lose one guy per year?” Adams asked, frowning. “That’s going to play hell with manning. We don’t have all that many guys as it is.”
“Think of it as a casualty,” Mike said. “We also need to be looking for replacements for the team leaders. We are going to be engaging in combat at some point and the guy with the shortest life expectancy is the team leader. So make damned sure we have the right guys in the assistant team leader slots.”
“Will do,” Adams said, frowning. “What are you going to do if they won’t accept Gurun?”
“Find another job for him,” Mike said, musingly. “I don’t know him from Adam. If he can’t fit in, though, send him to me and I’ll look him over.”
Mike spent most of the day watching the “training.” It really was training, but what it seemed to be was purest abuse. The trainees weren’t being taught to shoot or blow things up or even kill people, although many of them probably wanted to kill the trainers. They were being taught a series of skills, all of which could be lumped under the heading “soldierly conduct.” The idea was to break their normal methods of doing things, of thinking, of living, and teach them new ones.
The way this was being done was the “abuse.” The troops were made to fall into the square in front of the barracks while the instructors went through and inspected their gear. They’d been given a class in how it was to be prepared, how it was to be laid out, how it was to be cleaned. Most of it was brand new, but “military” clean was different from “civilian” clean. If there was lint or a bit of thread in the crease of an ammunition pouch, it wasn’t “clean.” The point here was attention to detail, absolutely zero defect. There were many tasks that soldiers performed where the slightest mistake would lead to death. Learning to do things perfectly was the point. If they could learn to make their beds perfectly, to clean their gear perfectly, to lay out their gear perfectly, then when they had to lay in a charge of explosives perfectly or clear a mine perfectly they might actually survive.
Furthermore, the conditions were designed to be stressful. It might actually work to have gunfire and explosions going off, randomly, while they were going through this stage of training and Mike had considered it. Hell, he could do the training any way he wanted. But the instructors screaming at them and having them do the same tasks over and over again, never willing to accept even true perfection, was stressful enough. And they’d be doing it well into the night. By the end of the week the recruits would be so mind numb, they’d be doing the tasks in a haze of unreality. And they’d eventually be doing them perfectly in that state of mind. Which was the point.