Isolation & Fear (Damned of the 2/19th Book Seven)

The Hammer Blow

Tactical Operation and Command Tent
Grafenwöhr
US Army Training Area
Training Site 22
2/19th Company Area
West Germany
01 December, 1988
0650 Hours

The tent was pretty much empty when I first pushed my way inside. Only Major Miner standing next to a table, a set of three covered map-boards behind him. Chairs were set out in a row, giving a reason for the TOC being moved from the small GP Small to a GP Medium that the enlisted had set up just after lunch, run electricity for the handful of hanging red lightbulbs, and put up the camo net in case we got strafed for some reason.

I sat down, unsnapping and pulling off my helmet before hanging it from the mouth of my canteen, supported by my LBE above my right hip. I shifted my .45 then set my M-16 next to me. SPC Brubaker stood behind me, folders in one hand, holding several cardboard tubes under her arm with the other.

The tent was full of officers. From butterbar retards to ass kissing majors, all of them grumbling to each other that enlisted scumbags had come by their cots and told them to leave their underage whores behind and report to the TOC at 0700. That Major, Miner, stood up by a table with a covered map-board behind him.

1LT Guelling went to sit next to me, but I glared at her and he fucked off somewhere else. I hated her with a fiery passion. She was stupid, lazy, selfish, and self-indulgent.

And I knew she was sleeping with an E-2 from that knuckle-dragging mob of gibbering howler monkeys that made up the mechanics of Motor Pool Platoon. She thought she was fucking clever, taking him after work to a cheap German motel so he could plow her ever widening ass, but if those unhung sodomites in S-2 could find out, then anyone could.

Everyone went silent when the stocky Sergeant Major pushed his was through the flaps of the tent, stopping just inside and staring at everyone. Part of me wanted to laugh at the image. Mud smeared battle rattle, a half-finished cigarette in his mouth, glaring with blue eyes under shaggy eyebrows. If it hadn't have been for the man's personal presence, I would have laughed.

Instead, I just stayed silent and watched.

"On your feet!" he snapped as the Colonel pushed his way into the tent.

Everyone for the most part, kept sitting down.

The Colonel stared, his eyes sweeping over everyone.

"It is customary to stand on your feet when your commanding officer enters the tent, regardless of whether or not you are in the field," Colonel Henry said slowly, his voice a bass rumble.

Everyone got to their feet. I could feel the acid seeping into my guts as I stood there.

It was customary for him to have us take our seats immediately after we got to our feet, but instead he moved over to the table, standing behind it. The Sergeant Major moved behind all of us and went to parade rest.

"Before we begin, you will all sit according to rank," The Colonel said.

I could feel the sullen, angry silence as everyone moved around. Strangely enough, it put me in the front row. It didn't matter I was a CW-3, I was still outranked by pube-chinned acne popping snot eating butterbar 2LT's.

"Take your seats," The Colonel said. "Smoke them if you've got them."

I lit a Camel and glared at him through the cloud of bluish smoke that was tinged red by the bulbs.

He waited a few moments, and I knew he was letting the tension build. I'd give him one thing, he had a sense of timing. He waited until I was almost sure one of those window licking ass fucking grape smuggling pedophiles behind me would be forced to say something before he spoke.