Part 9 (1/2)

But I wasn't talking about bar fights; I was talking about hazing. And my wedding.

We were in the Nevada mountains; it was cold-so cold that it was snowing. I had gotten a few days leave to get married; I was due to take off in the morning. The rest of the platoon still had some work to do.

We got back that night to our temporary base and went inside to the mission-planning room. The chief told everybody that we'd relax and have a few beers while we mapped out the next day's operation. Then he turned to me.

”Hey, new guy,” he told me. ”Go grab the beer and the booze out of the van and bring it in here.”

I hopped to.

When I came back in, everyone was sitting in chairs. There was only one left, and it was kind of in the middle of a circle of the others. I didn't think too much about it as I sat down.

”All right, this is what we're going to do,” my chief said, standing in front of dry-erase board at the front of the room. ”The operation will be an ambush. The target will be in the center. We will completely encircle it.”

That doesn't sound too smart, I thought. If we come in from every direction, we'll be shooting each other. Usually our ambushes are planned in an L-shape to avoid that.

I looked at the chief. The chief looked at me. Suddenly, his serious expression gave way to a s.h.i.+t-a.s.s grin.

With that, the rest of the platoon b.u.m-rushed me.

I hit the floor a second later. They cuffed me to a chair, and then began my kangaroo court.

There were a lot of charges against me. The first was the fact that I had let it be known that I wanted to become a sniper.

”This new guy is ungrateful!” thundered the prosecutor. ”He does not want to do his job. He thinks he is better than the rest of us.”

I tried to protest, but the judge-none other than the chief himself-quickly ruled me out of order. I turned to my defense attorney.

”What do you expect?” he said. ”He's only got a third-grade edu-Kay-shun.”

”Guilty!” declared the judge. ”Next charge!”

”Your Honor, the defendant is disrespectful,” said the prosecutor. ”He told the CO to f.u.c.k off.”

”Objection!” said my lawyer. ”He told the OIC to f.u.c.k off.”

The CO is the commanding officer of the Team; the OIC is the officer in charge of the platoon. A pretty big difference, except in this case.

”Guilty! Next charge!”

For every offense I was found guilty of-which meant anything and everything they could make up-I had to take a drink of Jack Daniels and c.o.ke, followed by a shooter of Jack.

They got me pretty wasted before we even got to the felonies. At some point, they stripped me down and put ice down my drawers. Finally I pa.s.sed out.

Then they spray-painted me, and for good measure, drew Playboy bunnies on my chest and back with a marker. Just the sort of body art you want for your honeymoon.

At some point, my friends apparently became concerned about my health. So they taped me to a spine board completely naked, took me outside, and stood me up in the snow. They left me for a while until I regained some amount of consciousness. By then I was jackhammering hard enough to put a hole through a bunker roof. They gave me an IV-the saline helps cut down the alcohol in your system-and finally took me back to the hotel, still taped to the spine board.

All I remember from the rest of the night is being lifted up a bunch of stairs, apparently to my motel room. There must have been a few spectators, because the boys were yelling, ”Nothing to see here, nothing to see!” as they carried me in.