Which gave me an idea. I had once read an article on fire-walking in The Skeptical Inquirer, An American magazine organized for the purpose of debunking strange cult practices that abound in that country. Americans take their right to personal freedom to extremes, and permit all sorts of flying-saucer worshipers, Scientologists, and other crazies to abound.
The magazine explained quite carefully how it was possible to walk on a bed of glowing coals, and under what circumstances it was safe to do so.
If anything could convince an army that they were unbeatable, walking through fire should do it! Perhaps as part of the graduation exercises. Yes…
So we ran three miles in full armor, and I made sure that I stayed ahead of them even though my lungs were hurting and I could tell that my legs would be sore for a week. The muscles needed for riding on horseback are quite different from those needed for running! This was followed with an hour of calisthenics in the snow, and then some marching. The dinner bell rang, but I ignored it and kept them marching until they could at least stay in step.
"Your other left, Vladimir!"
We ate leftovers for lunch and were silent while doing it. Some of the workers noticed, but were smart enough to say nothing.
After lunch, we met again in my office.
"You may speak freely now, gentlemen," I said. "Part of the reason for these afternoon meetings will be to explain and to hash over what we did in the morning."
"Very well, my lord, since you invite it," Sir Gregor said. "I would like to know why you felt it necessary to speak so rudely to us. Had I not been sworn to you, I swear that I would have challenged you to a duel for some of the things you said."
"Well, I warned you that I was going to do it, but you didn't take me seriously enough. Was it necessary to talk to you in the manner that I did? The answer is no, it wasn't. You four have spent most of your lives training for combat. You are eager for it. Your whole system of self-worth depends on you following your liege lord into battle and fighting there honorably."
"But it will be necessary for you to know how to deal with people whose previous life aim was simply to get enough food to feed their families and to maybe lay a little money aside in case of bad times. That is to say, the great majority of people in this world. You must impress them with the importance of instant obedience to a direct order, even when the order makes absolutely no sense to them. I'm not sure why, but somehow shouting at people seems to accomplish this."
"Tell me, Sir Vladimir, what were your feelings when I shouted at you for defending Piotr this morning?"
Sir Vladimir thought for a moment. "Anger, at first, my lord. Then shame. Shame for myself for offending my liege and shame for you for so debasing yourself."
"Exactly," I said. "Anger and shame. But the anger goes more quickly than the shame. I think it would be very unlikely for you to speak up like that again in the same circumstances. Now you are no longer angry at me, in part because of this discussion and in part because we have known each other for a long time."
"The men you will be training will not have the benefit of your previous acquaintance with your drill instructor, nor will they have the benefit of these meetings. They will learn to hate you, and that is a necessary part of the training. Years after it's over, most of them will' look back and see you with a certain amount of respect, but that is a very hollow sort of reward. In fact, being a drill instructor is one of the roughest jobs I know of."
"It might help if you tell yourself that this is a necessary thing to save your country, because it is."
They were silent for a bit.
"This funny kind of walking' this marching. Does that have some reason for it?" Sir Wojciech said.
"There are two reasons, one practical and one psychological. Tomorrow, I'll be showing you a weapon called the pike. It's like a lance, but it's six yards long. With one, if it's used properly, foot soldiers can destroy cavalry. But carrying something that long, you must walk in step or your pike gets tangled up with everybody else's pike."
"There are two parts to the psychological side. From the standpoint of the soldier, it gives a strong feeling of group belonging. It gives a feeling of power, a feeling that your unit can't be stopped. And if enough of the men really believe that, they truly can't be stopped."
"From the standpoint of the enemy, it results in fear. Seeing a thousand men coming at you, all wearing the same clothes and all walking in exactly the same way, their feet hitting the ground at exactly the same time, makes you think that you are not fighting mere men who can be killed. You think that you are up against an unstoppable machine."
"Once our men and their men both believe that we are unstoppable, the battle is more than half won."
The grueling training went on all winter long. Besides the pike, I introduced the rapier, a footman's sword that has no edge to speak of but only a point.
At first we wore the rapiers in the normal way, but this got in the way of calisthenics. Sir Vladimir was the first one to wear one over his left shoulder. He had the tip of the blade stuck into a long dagger sheath at his belt and the rest of the sword covered with a thin leather tube attached to a strap that went over his left shoulder. He could get it out in a hurry, although getting it back in was a bother. Still, it was a lot more convenient wearing it his way than getting it tangled around your feet. Wearing the sword high became one of our trademarks. That, and our funny haircuts.
You see, I believe that every elite military organization known to man has had a funny haircut. The Normans who conquered England wore one that looked as though they put on a beret, cocked it a bit, and then shaved off everything that wasn't covered. The Cossacks shaved their heads except for a pony tail hanging on the left side. The Mongols shaved a big square on the top of their heads, leaving a curl in the middle of their foreheads, in front of their ears, and a thick fringe around the back.
I don't understand the psychology of this brand of nonsense, but obviously, we had to have a funny haircut too. For a while there, I was toying with going to a Mohawk, but then I decided that the modem military crew cut was as weird as any of them, and took a lot less maintenance to keep up.
We also spent a lot of time on unarmed combat, for a warrior must stay a warrior even if he's unarmed and naked.
But after two weeks, I had to leave and go the rounds of the other factories. There were always technical problems where a few words from me could save hundreds of man-hours, and managerial problems that only the boss could resolve.
I put Sir Vladimir in charge when I was gone, and I gave him a daily schedule of what was to be done. He followed it as best he could. For my own part, I tried to stay with the physical training program even when I was on the road, but it was hard to do.
I especially didn't want to stint the boys at Eagle Nest. Those kids were so earnest that I felt a moral commitment to give them all the help I could. It didn't faze them in the least that one of their members had already died in the air. They fully expected to take further casualties and, in typically Polish fashion, were willing to pay the price. It wasn't the ignorant feeling of 'it can't happen to me.' They knew that it could happen to them! They just felt that the prize was worth the price, and they went on. This from twelve- and thirteen-year old boys! If only NASA had such heroes!
What could I do but love them and help them in every way that I could? For now, I got them into sailplanes, and designed a launching device that would be built on top of the big conical hill near there. There was plenty of coal tar stockpiled at Coaltown, so we scheduled an asphalt runway on the plain below the hill. In time, other runways were added so that they could land no matter which way the wind was blowing, and eventually an entire half square mile was paved over. This not only permitted landing in any wind, but on sunny days it caused a lovely up-draft that went up for miles!