This is a work of fiction. Names of characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously; any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 by Dennis Milholland – All rights reserved. Other than for private, not-for-profit use, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any form or by any means, other than that intended by the author, without written permission from the copyright holder.

Careful! This is a work of fiction containing graphic descriptions of sex between males and critiques of religion and governments. And last but not least, Nifty would like your donations.

Farewell, Uncle Ho

by Dennis Milholland

questions and comments are welcome. www.milholland.eu / dennis@milholland.eu

Chapter 44 (Thurs., Jan. 19)

Sergeant Healy took control of our platoon and marched us over to the basic-training unit, carrying our duffle bags on our backs. This I knew, was a prelude to forced marches with full gear. I'd told the troops about this before they'd gone to bed the night before, so there was a minimum of grumbling. I got into formation behind Pierson and was glad to see that Moffett was at his side, just in case. But along the way, Pierson proved to be stronger than any of us had thought.

The green, three storey, cinder-block building, came into view and was apparently less than five years old. And as it turned out, the building was exceedingly more comfortable than the Reception Center. For one thing, it had central heating, which would cancel the need for fire guards to keep the old coal stove burning, or so I thought. Funny, how some ideas could take on the exact opposite meaning, and nobody laughed. Here, we were told, fire guards were necessary to keep fires from igniting.

I nearly shouted for joy when I saw the partitions between the toilets and the lockable doors. If Gerry and I couldn't fuck, I could at least jack off behind a locked door. And, to judge by facial expressions all around, I'm sure that not only I greeted the newly found privacy.

"Okay, listen up." Sergeant Healy addressed us from the center aisle. "The squad leaders are: Mancini, Morton, Loughery, and Helmstedter. Report with your gear to the two separate rooms across from the latrine. Morton and Mancini in room one. Loughery, and Helmstedter in room two."

We did, and this brought a new, yet unforeseen problem with it. I would have to sleep in the same room as Gerry and not touch him. Gerry must have been thinking the same, and just nodded his approval before the Drill Sergeant arrived. "Drill Sergeant, may I speak?"

"Go ahead." He looked a little surprised but patient.

"Would you consider replacing me with Pierson as squad leader?" I was looking right past him, and he waited until I looked directly into his eyes before responding.

"Why?" He seemed interested.

"Pierson is our weakest link." I kept his gaze. "And he's signed up for 11Bravo." I broke his stare, but returned to playing his game before I continued. "And you know as well as I do that he doesn't have the chance of a snowball in Hell of surviving a combat assignment, if he doesn't get some real training."

"And what makes you think that he won't get 'some real training', if he ain't a squad leader?" Now, he sounded slightly pissed off.

"Because he needs the added pressure of responsibility for it to sink in." By the look on his face, I knew that I'd overstepped some line, of which I was sure there were many.

"Drop and give me twenty for questioning my judgment, Trainee."

I assumed the front leaning rest position in two precise moves and counted out twenty. Awaiting further instructions, I remained in the push-up position.

"Give me ten more to convince me." And as I counted out ten more, he stood above me with his arms folded, grinning. "Now, get up," which I did in two exact moves, "get your shit together and tell Pierson to get his ass in here."

***

I waited a half an hour before starting to put my stuff away, since I didn't know whether Pierson would keep the job of squad leader. I was sitting on the bunk below Moffett's, when he jumped off and sat next to me. "You and Helmstedter break up?"

"Naw, feeling paternal about Pierson and just waiting to see if he quits and wants his bunk back." I chuckled and looked at Moffett's large brown eyes, which had a sadness to them that was hard to explain, since he was an easy-going, likeable, and pretty much happy fellow. "The little fucker signed up for infantry, and if he doesn't get the training he needs, he'll never turn twenty."

"Yeah, I know." He laughed and offered me a cigarette, which I lit along with his with my new Zippo. "So, you and Helmstedter are still together?"

I puffed out smoke rings and nodded. "Looking forward to having him as my training buddy."

"I actually meant something else." He blushed and looked away, not sure how I would react. He got off the bunk to fetch a butt can.

Of course, the first thing I asked myself was if I could trust Moffett. This could be an entrapment. And if it were, Gerry and I would get less-than-honorable discharges.

On the other hand, we were both foreigners and could return to Europe and… And what? I didn't speak German, and Gerry didn't speak French, so the only possibility of our making a living would be to work for an American company or the occupational forces in Germany, a possibility that no longer even existed in France. Of a sudden, that seemed to be a pipe dream.

I must have looked distant. "Don't worry, Loughery." Moffett brought me back to reality. "I'm one of the boys in the band, too."

Even though I'd never heard that turn of phrase before, I knew exactly what it meant. "You think Helmstedter and I are boyfriends?" My intonation was neither that of outrage nor of denial. It was monotone, absolutely lacking any emotion. The question was more for myself than for Moffett.

I was still in a daze; he laughed. "If you're not, you should give it some serious thought."

"Yeah," I nodded and pitched the cigarette into the butt can absentmindedly. "I guess, we are."

"You guess?" He laughed and threw himself back onto my bunk. "That's like saying: 'I guess, I'm in the Army.'"

"I guess, you are." Gerry's voice rose from behind the bunk. He squatted so he could see into the lower level. "This looks cozy." He laughed.

"How's it going with Pierson?" I wondered if they'd already had their first fight.

"He needs a pep-talk from someone else other than me." He pointed at Moffett.

"What do you want me to tell him?" Moffett sat up almost bumping his head on the upper bunk.

"You know, the usual moral support." Gerry said, offering us a cigarette and lighting them with dark-green, C-ration matches. "He owes us at least a good try. We're all here for him. And If we catch him slacking, his ass is grass." At that, Moffett chuckled but did leave to find Pierson.

Gerry took his place on my bunk. "Had the feeling that you wanted to get away from me." His facial expression was friendly, but his voice was shaky.

"Never wanted to, had to." I lowered my voice to a whisper. "If we'd been sleeping in the same room with just the two of us, it would have been just a question of time before we either got busted or the frustration would have grown so big that we could have started hating each other." I blew my smoke lightly across his cheek, a gesture no one could notice. I chuckled at my next thought. "I'd much rather have you hate Pierson."

Gerry burst out laughing. "Yeah, you'll probably get your wish."

I looked around quickly to see who was within earshot. "Oh, and by the way, Moffett has guessed that we're lovers."

"Did you tell him anything?" Gerry smiled, not looking terribly bothered.

My whisper increased in intensity. "No. He asked me if we'd broken up, when I switched with Pierson. Then he said that he was 'one of the boys in the band'."

"Okay, we can probably trust him." Gerry tried to blow smoke rings. "And he doesn't act like a snitch. I had enough of those in high school, who wanted to catch me at something, so I know what they act like. He isn't one. Anyway, it would be good to have someone to talk to."

"You sure?" I needed his verification, since it would implicate him.

He nodded and knocked his ash off into the butt can. "And by the way, you're not supposed to unhook the butt can so you can smoke in bed." He laughed again, as I quickly remounted onto the green pillar the red-lacquered, old, slightly-rusty-around-the-edges, five-pound coffee can full of murky water before anyone noticed.

***

Just before lights out on that first day of basic training, Moffett confided in me that his first and only boyfriend, who had been a forest ranger whom he'd known since high school, had been killed by the man's own family. They had taken the Bible literally and the law into their own hands when they'd stoned to death one of the perpetrators of the abomination in a convenience store's parking lot one night after having kneecapped him with a baseball bat, so he couldn't escape.

Not only did what he told me explain the sadness in his eyes, it also exposed extreme emotional exhaustion, caused by the murder of his friend, and which was possibly the reason why he'd joined the military. In the Army, he didn't have to think; he just had to follow orders. He seemed to suffer from some amount of stress on a continual basis, which he covered up by creating the country yokel persona.

In reality, he was a much more complex man who thought that he could take a break from having to make fundamental decisions of everyday life, like where to live and what to eat. At times at the Reception Center, I'd seen him gazing into nothingness, as if he were deep in thought, although it was possibly severe emotional shutdown, and he'd been contemplating, well, nothing.

"Were you there when he died?" I wondered and offered him another cigarette, which seemed to calm him.

He shook his head. "Wendell and my oldest brother, John, sent me back down to the City, where I stayed with some friends from college, because his folks were looking for me, too." He got up to get a butt can, since we were sitting on our footlockers with our backs against the warm radiator and not smoking in bed. "Never should have left. We could have faced it together." Moffett was shaking his head slowly, staring off into space.

"What about your folks?" I wondered, trying not to pry. "Didn't they try to help?"

"Like Fuck they did." He sneered. "They're in the same parish as Wendell's parents. I mean they've got this one old priest who still says mass in Latin, no matter what Pope Paul says." He dropped his half-smoked cigarette into the butt can and laughed sarcastically. "He told them that I'm possessed, and now they want me to undergo an exorcism." He looked at me kindly, the sadness lessened. "Are you religious?"

I chuckled and shook my head. "I'm an atheist."

Moffett looked shocked and slightly distressed. "Thought most Chinese were Buddhists."

I had to laugh at his surprise. "Yeah, and the Buddha taught us that believing in gods gets in the way of finding enlightenment."

***

Following PT and breakfast, the next morning, the company's four platoons were marched over to get some indoctrination as good American soldiers, no matter how loosely the term had to be applied to Gerry and me. Wearing ponchos and full gear, marching in a mix of rain and sleet, we returned to the same auditorium of the dental-hygiene lecture, this time to watch a movie, sadly without popcorn, but with gear strapped to us. We were, however, allowed to take off the wet ponchos, but the gear stayed.

The title of the movie was: 'The Sino-Soviet Threat". The intent of the film was to make everyone xenophobic and paranoid. It didn't really have its intended effect. Several times during the screening, many of my men looked at me and gave encouraging signs of solidarity.

But I really came to love my men, when, after 'The End' appeared, a Specialist 4th Class came running into the auditorium. He resembled the Ben Whitledge character from No Time for Sergeants. "Excuse me, Sir," He addressed the intelligence officer in charge. "but there's been a terrible accident and Walton Hospital needs blood donors."

"Okay," The Second Lieutenant spoke through the microphone. "this is totally voluntary, but if we have any blood donors, please, go with the Specialist."

As predictable as a bear shitting in the woods, the forty eight men of 3rd Platoon rose in unison and filed out. And to rub said bear shit onto the soiled repute of the other three platoons, we were the only ones.

This was the first time that I clearly recognized the competition amongst the Drill Sergeants. And Sergeant Healy was standing tall.