“Yes, s — Yes, I do.”
“Okay, get on it. As you pass through the cardroom, please give my compliments to Rusty and tell him to drag his lazy carcass in here.”
For the next two weeks I was never so busy — not even in boot camp. Working as an ordnance & armor mech about ten hours a day was not all that I did. Math, of course — and no way to duck it with the Skipper tutoring me. Meals — say an hour and a half a day. Plus the mechanics of staying alive — shaving, showering, putting buttons in uniforms and trying to chase down the Navy master-at-arms, get him to unlock the laundry to locate clean uniforms ten minutes before inspection. (It is an unwritten law of the Navy that facilities must always be locked when they are most needed. )
Guard mount, parade, inspections, a minimum of platoon routine, took another hour a day. But besides, I was “George.” Every outfit has a “George.” He’s the most junior officer and has the extra jobs — athletics officer, mail censor, referee for competitions, school officer, correspondence courses officer, prosecutor courts-martial, treasurer of the welfare mutual loan fund, custodian of registered publications, stores officer, troopers’ mess officer, et cetera ad endless nauseam.
Rusty Graham had been “George” until he happily turned it over to me. He wasn’t so happy when I insisted on a sight inventory on everything for which I had to sign. He suggested that if I didn’t have sense enough to accept a commissioned officer’s signed inventory then perhaps a direct order would change my tune. So I got sullen and told him to put his orders in writing — with a certified copy so that I could keep the original and endorse the copy over to the team commander.
Rusty angrily backed down — even a second lieutenant isn’t stupid enough to put such orders in writing. I wasn’t happy either as Rusty was my roommate and was then still my tutor in math, but we held the sight inventory. I got chewed out by Lieutenant Warren for being stupidly officious but he opened his safe and let me check his registered publications. Captain Blackstone opened his with no comment and I couldn’t tell whether he approved of my sight inventory or not.
Publications were okay but accountable property was not. Poor Rusty! He had accepted his predecessor’s count and now the count was short — and the other officer was not merely gone, he was dead. Rusty spent a restless night (and so did I!), then went to Blackie and told him the truth.
Blackie chewed him out, then went over the missing items, found ways to expend most of them as “lost in combat.” It reduced Rusty’s shortages to a few days’ pay — but Blackie had him keep the job, thereby postponing the cash reckoning indefinitely.
Not all “George” jobs caused that much headache. There were no courts-martial; good combat teams don’t have them. There was no mail to censor as the ship was in Cherenkov drive. Same for welfare loans for similar reasons. Athletics I delegated to Brumby; referee was “if and when.” The troopers’ mess was excellent; I initialed menus and sometimes inspected the galley, i.e., I scrounged a sandwich without getting out of dungarees when working late in the armory. Correspondence courses meant a lot of paperwork since quite a few were continuing their educations, war or no war — but I delegated my platoon sergeant and the records were kept by the PFC who was his clerk.
Nevertheless “George” jobs soaked up about two hours every day — there were so many.
You see where this left me — ten hours O&A, three hours math, meals an hour and a half, personal one hour, military fiddlework one hour, “George” two hours, sleep eight hours; total, twenty-six and a half hours. The ship wasn’t even on the twenty-five-hour Sanctuary day; once we left we went on Greenwich standard and the universal calendar.
The only slack was in my sleeping time.
I was sitting in the cardroom about one o’clock one morning, plugging away at math, when Captain Blackstone came in. I said, “Good evening, Captain.”
“Morning, you mean. What the deuce ails you, son? Insomnia?”
“Uh, not exactly.”
He picked up a stack of sheets, remarking, “Can’t your sergeant handle your paperwork? Oh, I see. Go to bed.”
“But, Captain—”
“Sit back down. Johnnie, I’ve been meaning to talk to you. I never see you here in the cardroom, evenings. I walk past your room, you’re at your desk. When your bunkie goes to bed, you move out here. What’s the trouble?”
“Well … I just never seem to get caught up.”
“Nobody ever does. How’s the work going in the armory?”
“Pretty well. I think we’ll make it.”
“I think so, too. Look, son, you’ve got to keep a sense of proportion. You have two prime duties. First is to see that your platoon’s equipment is ready — you’re doing that. You don’t have to worry about the platoon itself, I told you that. The second — and just as important — you’ve got to be ready to fight. You’re muffing that.”
“I’ll be ready, Captain.”
“Nonsense and other comments. You’re getting no exercise and losing sleep. Is that how to train for a drop? When you lead a platoon, son, you’ve got to be on the bounce. From here on you will exercise from sixteen-thirty to eighteen hundred each day. You will be in your sack with lights out at twenty-three hundred — and if you lie awake fifteen minutes two nights in a row, you will report to the Surgeon for treatment. Orders.”
“Yes, sir.” I felt the bulkheads closing in on me and added desperately, “Captain, I don’t see how I can get to bed by twenty-three — and still get everything done.”
“Then you won’t. As I said, son, you must have a sense of proportion. Tell me how you spend your time.”
So I did. He nodded. “Just as I thought.” He picked up my math “homework,” tossed it in front of me. “Take this. Sure, you want to work on it. But why work so hard before we go into action?”
“Well, I thought—”
“‘Think’ is what you didn’t do. There are four possibilities, and only one calls for finishing these assignments. First, you might buy a farm. Second, you might buy a small piece and be retired with an honorary commission. Third, you might come through all right … but get a downcheck on your Form Thirty-One from your examiner, namely me. Which is just what you’re aching for at the present time — why, son, I won’t even let you drop if you show up with eyes red from no sleep and muscles flabby from too much chair parade. The fourth possibility is that you take a grip on yourself … in which case I might let you take a swing at leading a platoon. So let’s assume that you do and put on the finest show since Achilles slew Hector and I pass you. In that case only — you’ll need to finish these math assignments. So do them on the trip back.
“That takes care of that — I’ll tell the Skipper. The rest of those jobs you are relieved of, right now. On our way home you can spend your time on math. If we get home. But you’ll never get anywhere if you don’t learn to keep first things first. Go to bed!”