Defense of Hill 781 (3 page)

For a second Always thought of overriding the sergeant major’s suggestion, but there seemed to be an essential wisdom in the thought. For the moment he had absorbed about all that he could. Besides, he was tired of standing and, having always been an aggressive individual, he was eager to plunge ahead and see for himself just what was in store for him.

“Very well, Sergeant Major. Do you have a means of getting me there?”

“Certainly, sir. Even in Purgatory a lieutenant colonel is still a lieutenant colonel. I’ve brought a jeep. If you’ll follow me I’ll take us on in.”

As the two men left the shade of the overpass, the hot desert air seemed to thicken. A dust devil ominously swirled up before them, and a fiery blast of heat and sand burned their faces.

Always hesitated only for a moment, then squared his shoulders and walked over to the jeep. Protesting at every bump, the vehicle slowly made its way across the sand-covered trail that wove through the mountain ranges ringing the vast, bleak expanses of Purgatory. He stole one last glance at the deserted Manix railhead as a Las Vegas-bound mortal sped his way across the overpass, rushing to sample the vices that lay before him.

The drive through the high desert was hot and uncomfortable, but it gave the two men a chance to talk. Lieutenant Colonel Always learned that, in recognition of his stature in life, he was to be given command of a battalion-level task force. Although it would be fundamentally a mechanized infantry battalion, he would have attached to it two tank companies to give him an armor punch, and would detach two of his own infantry companies so that they could be sent elsewhere to round out an armor battalion as a similarly tailored task force. Moreover, he would be given the most modern of equipment to work with, the M1 Abrams tank and the M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicle.

That concerned Always a bit since he had made a career out of avoiding what was known as “heavy” forces. Showing a studied disdain for any soldiers who depended on machines to transport themselves, he had thus avoided the headaches that come with meshing men and machines in the business of soldiering. He once had been the executive officer of an airborne company, and the organizational procedures it had taken to keep the two jeeps operating had been maddening. With that experience under his belt, he had become convinced that there was no way he wanted to deal with the more than 200 tracked and wheeled vehicles found in a mechanized battalion. He would now be commanding two mechanized infantry companies, two armor companies, a mechanized antitank company, a reconnaissance platoon, and a mechanized heavy mortar platoon, as well as a maintenance element of more than 100 mechanics and heavy
equipment operators, all supported by yet another platoon with a myriad of supply and fuel trucks. To make matters worse, all kinds of attachments would further stretch his span of control—engineers, artillery coordination teams, air defense soldiers, and air force liaison—each of them with their own particular items of equipment that needed to be supplied, repaired, fueled, and operated. If this wasn’t hell, then it certainly was a nightmare.

“Command Sergeant Major, what kind of soldiers will I have?”

“Sir, let me assure you that you will have the normal type of soldiers you are used to, which means very good ones.” The American army had always been blessed with capable soldiers, making a mockery of the claim—that so many of her foes delighted in rendering—that they were products of a soft and undisciplined society and could only crumble under the trials and sufferings of combat. “But like in any unit, sir, they will only be as good as you can let them be. Your staff knows the essentials of its job; your men are physically fit, dedicated, and technically competent; and none of them is reluctant to work hard. I assure you that the raw material is there, and I might add that the equipment, all of which postdate my own time on earth, is pretty good. Like always, though, how you put them all together will be the critical determinant in the overall fitness of the unit.”

“Sergeant Major, what is their status? I mean, are they alive, or are they like me?”

“Colonel, they are just like you, here for a while until they can prove themselves and move on to a higher reward. As soldiers they haven’t exactly been saints during their time on earth, but then again they have been a pretty decent bunch of guys. The Chief keeps a high set of standards, and although He’s got a real soft spot for soldiers, He does have to let them work off their little faults. That’s where you come in. You can help them,
and they will help you. When you both get it right, you can expect to move on.”

“You mean that how long I, rather we, stay here in Purgatory is dependent on what we do?”

“Yes, sir, exactly. The plan is really quite simple. You are to take command of the task force, commit it to battle against a well-trained enemy, and when you and your soldiers have defeated them you can turn in your equipment and move on.”

Always turned the thought over in his mind. Things were not so bad after all. He was a professional soldier, and he had often been put to the test, both in actual combat and in years of peacetime training. Surely he could figure it all out pretty quickly and be on his way. He had done it before, and he would do it again.

As if anticipating his thoughts, the sergeant added, “There are a couple of hitches though, and it could be a little tougher than you think. First of all, the enemy plays by a different set of rules. You see, they’ve been here a while, the little devils. This is their turf, so to speak, and they know every nook and cranny out there. Furthermore, they get a break on resupply, rest, recovery, and reconstitution. They also don’t get the visibility that you do.”

“What do you mean by ‘visibility’?” Always asked.

“Well, sir, since they aren’t working toward the immediate goal of getting out of this place and on to better things, there’s really no need to scrutinize their way of doing things beyond whether or not they’ve roughed you up in a fight. So none of the evaluators spend any time criticizing their techniques, double guessing their methods of operations, or otherwise adding torment to their condition.”

“Evaluators?
You mean I get evaluators? I thought that was what you were, Command Sergeant Major.” Always was perplexed.

“Oh no, sir, I’m your task force sergeant major, like I said before, the only volunteer down here, and your guide through this ordeal. It’s not my place to evaluate you. It never was in life, and I’m certainly too old to start doing that sort of thing now. But I can give you advice every now and then, when you care to hear it. That’s why I volunteered for this job. Heaven’s a nice place and all, but they never have any crises up there ever since Luther and the fallen angels got kicked out, and us sergeants major, well we kind of thrive on crises. So here I am.”

“And the evaluators?”

“Well, perhaps I shouldn’t call them evaluators. They are officially known as ‘observers.’ They kind of watch you and help to point out the error of your ways. You’ll meet them soon enough. Nasty bunch, if I do say so myself. Must have been particularly rotten in life. They’ll show up en masse as soon as you get your operations orders, follow you everywhere you go, say disparaging things to you, talk badly about you over their radios, and render a report as to how you did. The only saving grace is that they’re being evaluated too, and if you don’t show any improvement, well then it gets sticky for them. Some have even been bounced out of here to a lower level, like recruiting duty. But one thing is for sure, their time down here is much longer than yours, so don’t expect much sympathy from them. As to their ‘observations,’ well, think of them as hometown judges in an away fight. If you don’t knock out your opponent, don’t expect anything better than a draw, and that only if you creamed the other guy.”

Always began to feel a little ill.

“One other thing while I’m telling you all the bad news. They have a superb electronic setup down here. Everything you say over the radio will be recorded so you can’t deny you said it later, and everything you do will be filmed so that your most ridiculous moments can be played back for all to see. At any
time you can expect everybody and his brother to be eavesdropping on you, offering their views as to how incompetent you are, spreading disparaging rumors, and unequivocally stating they could do it better.”

“Sergeant Major, that doesn’t even sound decent. It sounds like the only escape I’ll get from all this misery is when I’m sleeping.”

“That’s the hell of it, sir. You won’t be sleeping down here. Oh, you will be told to get some sleep, in fact you will be seriously chastised for not developing a ‘sleep plan.’ But if you should ever get some sleep, the observers will devise a scheme to wake you up so they can point out how things fell apart while you were sleeping. After that they will point out how things fell apart because you didn’t get any sleep.”

Always groaned and the conversation drifted off as they made the last leg of the journey up from Langford Lake (dry as a bone) to the outer ring of Purgatory known as the Dust Bowl.

The scene was utter bedlam. Thousands of troops were hurrying to and fro, jumbled up amidst countless vehicles, their diesel engines making horrendous noises, filling the already hot, stifling air with ever more hot and noxious fumes. Dust and sand blew every which way, pelting the soldiers’ faces, covering them with a gray mask from which protruded sun-blistered noses and chapped and peeling lips. Red-rimmed eyes revealed an intensity of purpose forlornly trapped in hopeless frustration.

“What’s going on here, Sergeant Major?”

“This is the equipment draw, sir. The battalions reporting in are being issued their vehicles. For several days the troops are indoctrinated to the hellishness of this place. They bivouac here in this flat, open expanse where there’s no shelter from sun, wind, sand, or dust and spend their waking moments at the mercy of the ghouls who issue the equipment. The latter
are a particularly nasty lot who cajole the men into drawing badly worn equipment, telling them that it’s really in good condition. The catch, though, is that they make them sign for it with terms that they can never leave this place unless it’s returned in the good order in which it is drawn. Of course, the condition when drawn is overstated, so that the possibility of ever getting it to the stated condition is remote.”

“If that’s so, why do the men ever sign for it? Surely they are experienced enough to recognize worn-out equipment when they see it.”

“Yes, sir, they know it. But they really don’t have any choice in the matter. They’ve got to draw the equipment so that the battalion can go into battle, so it can be tested, so it can defeat the enemy, so they can get out of Purgatory and on to heaven. If they don’t accept the equipment, then none of the rest of it can happen, so they’re under tremendous pressure. But when they go to turn it in, they are obligated to restore it to near-impossible condition. Until they do that, they can’t leave here.”

“Why that’s fiendish, Sergeant Major. I guess at least some good comes of that—when the next battalion of lost souls reports in, they have good equipment to work with.”

“Oh no, sir. Part of the contract the ghouls have with the managers here is to sabotage the equipment between turn-in and issue. That way the next battalion gets the same rotten stuff the preceding one did. That has a twofold impact. First of all, it adds to the reputational damage of the latest battalion through. Second, it almost ensures breakdown of key equipment at critical points in the battle, giving the local enemy the edge.”

Always made a mental note to go easy on the mechanics. If they were the good soldiers that Hope said they were, they would be nearly killing themselves to keep the vehicles in running order, all the time bearing the brunt of the blame for operational failures. Despite his career with foot mobile forces, Always had
been around the army enough to come across many of these poor overworked grease monkeys, as they were called, sodden with diesel fuel, lying under a multiton steel machine in a puddle of grime and filth, turning a wrench with sore and scraped hands, while officers admonished them to hurry up and get the cursed vehicle back into operation and to get busy on the next five broken machines that were waiting for repair somewhere down the road. Theirs was a particularly hallowed commitment, and to punish them further in a place like this just didn’t seem right. He resolved to support them as best he could. After all, given his limited experience with heavy equipment, he would be dependent upon their knowledge and dedication to pull him through this trial.

The jeep pulled up to a cluster of tracked vehicles with canvas extensions protruding from their rears, all joined with a series of snaps and supported with a few poles so that a temporary shelter was formed at their confluence. The side flaps were rolled up to let some of the desert air flow through the shaded area beneath, and inside Always could see an intense group of officers bent over maps and talking on radios.

“This is your task force headquarters, sir. The executive officer is out with the supply and maintenance people right now, but the operations officer should be here. They’ve been expecting you. I’ll be leaving you here for a bit, sir. I’ve got a few duties to attend to while the staff briefs you. I’ll be back after the briefing to take your instructions. Good morning, sir.” The colonel and the sergeant exchanged salutes.

As Hope pulled away it occurred to Always how much he liked the man. As bad as things might be, with a command sergeant major like that on his side he could not go too far astray. He would have to be careful to ask for and to adhere to his advice, Always reminded himself.

“Good morning, sir. Welcome to the Dust Bowl. I’m Major Rogers.” Always turned away from the departing jeep to face
his operations officer, a solid, open-faced man of medium height.

“Good morning, Major. Pleased to meet you. I’m LTC A. Tack Always, your task force commander.”

“Yes, sir, we’ve been expecting you,” Rogers answered cheerily. And on that note the two men proceeded into the tactical operations center (TOC), where Lieutenant Colonel Always was introduced to his staff and given a series of briefings on the state of the command and the missions before them.