Of course, bad things happened to everybody right after breakfast. Violent calisthenics and a three-mile run weren't the way Armstrong would have used to settle his stomach. The drill sergeants didn't care about his opinion. They had their own goals. His conscription class, like any other, had had some fat guys, some weak guys. He remembered who they'd been. But the fat guys weren't fat any more, and the weak guys weren't weak any more. Oh, a few had washed out, simply unable to stand the strain. People said one fellow had died trying, but Armstrong didn't know if he believed that. Most of the recruits, no matter what kind of shape they'd been in to start with, had toughened up since.
After the run, the conscripts "relaxed" with close-order drill. "Left…! Left…! Left, right, left!" the drill sergeant bawled. "To the rear… haarch!" He screamed at somebody who couldn't keep the rhythm if his life depended on it. Armstrong's company had a couple of those unfortunates, who drew more than their fair share of abuse. He'd never figured out why the Army still needed close-order drill. Doing it where the enemy could see you was a recipe for getting massacred. But he didn't have any trouble telling one foot from the other, or turning right and not left when he heard, "To the right flank… haarch!"
Lunch that day was creamed chipped beef on toast, otherwise creamed chipped beast or, more often, shit on a shingle. Armstrong didn't care what people called it. He didn't care what he got, either, as long as there was plenty of it. He would have eaten a horse and chased the driver-and, considering how fast he could pound out the three miles, he probably would have caught him.
After lunch came dirty fighting and rifle practice. Like any reasonably tough kid who got out of high school, Armstrong had thought he knew something about dirty fighting. The drill sergeant who'd mercilessly thumped him in the first day's lesson taught him otherwise. He'd been amazed to discover what all you could do with elbows, knees, feet, and bent fingers. If you happened to have a knife…
"Any civilian who fucks with me better have his funeral paid for," he said.
The drill sergeant shook his head. "He may have been through the mill, too. Or he may have a gun. You can't kick a gun in the nuts. Remember that, or you'll end up dead."
That struck Armstrong as good advice. A lot of what the drill sergeants said struck him as good advice. Whether he would take it was another question. He was no more interested than any other male his age in getting answers from someone else. He thought he had everything figured out for himself.
After the fighting drill, he and his company marched off to the rifle range. That did help reinforce what the sergeant had said. If you had a Springfield in your hand, you could put a hole in a man-or a man-shaped target-from a hell of a lot farther away than a man could put a boot in your belly. And Armstrong was a good shot.
"A lot of you guys think you're hot stuff," another drill sergeant said. This one had a fine collection of Sharpshooter and Expert medals jingling on his chest. "Listen to me, though. There's one big difference between doing it on the range here and doing it in the field. In the field, the other son of a bitch shoots back. And if you think that doesn't matter, you're dreaming."
Armstrong only grunted. He was sure it didn't matter. He could do it here. As far as he was concerned, that meant he could do it, period.
The drill sergeant said, "Some of you think I'm kidding. Some of you think I'm talking with my head up my ass. Well, you'll find out. It's different in the field. A hell of a lot of guys get out there and they don't shoot at all. There's plenty of others who don't aim first. They just point their piece somewhere-in the air, probably-and start banging away."
"What a bunch of fools," Armstrong whispered to the recruit next to him. He wanted to laugh out loud, but he didn't. That would have drawn the drill sergeant's eye to him, which he didn't want at all.
As things were, the sergeant sent a scowl in his general direction, but it didn't light on him personally. The veteran noncom went on, "There's just one thing you're lucky about. The other side will have as many fuckups as we do. That may keep some of you alive longer than you deserve. On the other hand, it may not, too. A machine gun isn't awful goddamn choosy about who it picks out." His face clouded. "I ought to know." He wore the ribbon for a Purple Heart, too.
"Question, Sergeant?" somebody called.
"Yeah, go ahead."
"Is it true the Confederates are giving their soldiers lots and lots of submachine guns?" the youngster asked.
"Yeah, that's supposed to be true," the sergeant said. "I don't think all that much of the idea myself. Submachine gun only fires a pistol round. It doesn't have a lot of stopping power, and the effective range is pretty short." He stopped and rubbed his chin. It was blue with stubble, though he'd surely scraped it smooth that morning. "Of course, submachine guns do put a hell of a lot of lead in the air. And the goddamn Confederates can hold their breath till they turn blue, but they're never gonna have as many men as we do. I expect that's why they're trying it."
Another recruit piped up: "Why hasn't somebody made an automatic rifle, if a submachine gun isn't good enough?"
"The Confederates are supposed to be trying that, too, but there are problems," the sergeant said. "Recoil, wear on the mechanism, overheating, having the weapon pull up when you fire it on full automatic, keeping it clean in the field-those are some of the things you've got to worry about. I wouldn't fall over dead with surprise if we start using something like that, too, one of these days, but don't hold your breath, either. And the Springfield is a goddamn good weapon. We won a war with it. We can win another one if we have to."
He waited. Sure enough, that drew another question: "Are we going to fight another war with the Confederate States?"
"Beats me," the drill sergeant answered. "I've done my share of fighting, and I am plumb satisfied. But if that Featherston son of a bitch isn't… You need two for peace, but one can start a war. If he does start it, it's up to us- it'll be up to you-to finish it."
Armstrong Grimes had no complaints. If he had to be in the Army, he wanted to be there while it was in action. What point to it otherwise? He didn't think about getting hurt. He especially didn't think about getting killed. That kind of stuff happened to other people. It couldn't possibly happen to him. He was going to live forever.
The sergeant said, "And if he does start another war, you will finish it, right? You'll kick the CSA's mangy ass around the block, right?"
"Yes, Sergeant!" the young men shouted. They were all as convinced of their own immortality as Armstrong Grimes.
"I can't hear you." The sergeant cupped a hand behind one ear.
"Yes, Sergeant!" The recruits might have been at a football game. Armstrong yelled as loud as anybody else.
"That's better," the drill sergeant allowed. "Not good, but better." Hardly anything anybody did in basic training was good. You might be perfect, but you still weren't good enough. They wanted you to try till you keeled over. People did, too.
Supper was fried chicken and canned corn and spinach, with apple pie a la mode for dessert. It wasn't great fried chicken, but you could eat as much as you wanted, which made up for a lot. Armstrong used food to pay his body back for the sleep it wasn't getting.
After supper, he had a couple of hours to himself-the only time during the day when he wasn't either unconscious or being run ragged. He could write home-which he didn't do often enough to suit his mother-or read a book or get into a poker game or shoot the breeze with other recruits winding down from an exhausting day or do what he usually did: lie on his cot smoking cigarette after cigarette. People said they were bad for your wind. He didn't care. He got through his three miles without any trouble, and the smokes helped him relax.