Robert Adams - A Man Called Milo Morai

His abilities to get through to the members of his squad earned him a measure of grudging respect from his superiors, but what really impressed them was his unerring marksmanship and other proven combat qualifications.

When once he had mastered the mechanical functions of the U.S. Rifle, Caliber .30, Model 1903, and the Pistol, Caliber .45, Model-1911A1, he consistently racked up range scores in the high-expert classification, and no one afterward believed his quite truthful answers to the questions that he could not recall ever having handled or fired either pistols or rifles before. But their understandable disbelief was not confined to his statements only, for in the Army of that time, there was full many a man with a past to hide.

He also was given an expert’s badge in the art of the bayonet. The grizzled but still-vital and powerful old sergeant who conducted the bayonet classes averred that Private Moray was one of the best that he ever had seen— fast, sure and strong in the attack, cunning and wary in the defense and so well coordinated as to be able to take instant advantage of an error made by an opponent. He added that he was convinced that the man was no stranger to the use of the bayoneted rifle, but he added that his personal style was unorthodox—not American, not French, not British, not classic Prussian, either. If Milo had told the training sergeant the unvarnished truth, that he too did not know just where and how he had learned bayonet work, that it only came to him as instinctively as breathing, the man would have been no more believing than had the range personnel confronted with the deadly marksmanship of this supposedly green recruit.

Sergeant Jethro “Judo” Stiles was. the field first sergeant of Milo’s training company, and he also doubled as the battalion instructor in hand-to-hand combat. Unlike most of the cadremen, he was neither loud nor arrogant nor a brutal, sadistic bully. When he was not demonstrating the best means of garroting an enemy sentry quickly and in silence, the most efficient ways of dislocating joints and shattering bones or how to take a pistol away from an enemy, breaking his trigger finger and wrist in one process, he was quiet almost to the point of introversion, kindly, gentle, polite, well spoken and well read. He neither chewed tobacco, used snuff nor smoked cigarettes, only a pipe, and then rarely; he drank little beer, but was a connoisseur of fine wines and a real authority on cognacs and armagnacs. He lived well in rented housing off post, owned an automobile and wore beautifully tailored uniforms. It was believed that he was a remittance man, paid by his family to stay in the Army as a way of avoiding a scandal of some sort.

After he had called a number of the biggest recruits before an open-air class beneath a towering stand of Georgia pines and demonstrated fully just how powerless was even the largest, strongest man against scientific methods of self-defense, he chanced to choose Milo as his opponent for the next lesson. Tossing him a Model 1920 bayonet which had been securely wired into its issue case, the sides and point of which then had been padded with cotton and wrapped with friction tape, the training sergeant beckoned.

“All right. Moray, is it? All right, Moray, try to stab me with that bayonet. Okay, if you want to do it underhand, that’s fine too. Come on.”

Without conscious thought of what he was doing or why he was doing it just that way, Milo advanced in short but fast and sure steps which to the watchers looked almost akin to dance steps.

With all his training and practice, natural skills and experience, the sergeant had only seconds to wonder if he was going to be able to stop this recruit who moved as quickly and lightly as an Olympic fencer. “Oh, shit,” he thought, “I chose a wrongo this time!”

From the crouch at which he had advanced, the bayonet held a little below his hip, pointing forward, his free hand held up and out and ready to either attack or defend, to stab fingers at eyes, ward off blows or grab a wrist, he suddenly sank even farther down upon deeply flexed knees, then used his legs to drive his body forward with the speed and force of a arrow shot from a bow. The point of that arrow was his hand and the weapon it held, his hand at about the waist level of his target, but the weapon itself angling upward.

All that Stiles saw was a blur of motion. Then there was suddenly an agonizing contact and he was doubled over, retching up his breakfast, fighting to draw breath and wondering just how the mule that had kicked him in the belly had gotten into his class area. Then he lost all consciousness.

The class was immediately called to attention, then marched into the adjacent field to unstack their rifles and fall into formation. They were marched back to camp and spent the rest of the morning at the wearily repetitive close-order drill with arms.

Sergeant Stiles was retained by the training company because of his unquestionable skills and his ability to impart those skills to trainees, but his solitary nature and off-duty habits, plus his erudition and cultivated tastes, alienated him from most of the noncoms and many of the officers of the company and battalion. He had few friends among his peers, but one of those few was the first sergeant of Milo’s training company, James Lewis.

That afternoon, after recall, as he sat with the others in the barrack cleaning rifles under the critical eyes of their platoon sergeant, the company clerk came in with the message that Private Moray was to report to the first sergeant on the double.

Taking Milo aside and speaking fast in low, hushed tones, Platoon Sergeant Cassidy said, “You gotta unner-stan’, Moray, with all the damn Bolsheviks and Wobblies and all we get’s in, we jest cain’t let reecroots git away with bestin’ sergeants, is all. The first and some others is gonna have to take you out and beat the piss outen you— they has to, see. It’ll hurt, sure, but you jest take it like a man and it won’t las’ long, ‘cause they don’t aim fer to do no real damage to you, jest give the resta the guys what saw whatall you did to Judo Stiles a coupla blacked eyes and a split lip and swoled-up jaw to look at fer a few days.”

Milo headed for the office of the first sergeant, but was met by the noncom himself before he reached the orderly room. Ready for shouts, obscene abuse and manhandling from the senior sergeant, Milo was surprised and made very wary by being treated almost civilly, instead.

“Moray? Yes, you’re Moray. Come on with me, Moray.”

At the small parking area behind the orderly room, Sergeant Lewis stopped beside a three-quarter-ton reconnaisance truck. “Can you drive, Moray?”

“No, first sergeant.”

“Okay, I’ll drive. But you oughta^barn to. Comes in damn handy to be able to drive a veehicle in the fuckin’ Army. Get in.”

In the post gym, after they had divested themselves of shirts and undershirts, after Lewis had laced Milo’s hands into a pair of six-ounce boxing gloves, as they walked in sock feet from the locker room to the gym proper, the first sergeant said, “Moray, years ago, I was boxing champeen of the old Twenty-third for some years. I’m some older now, of course, but I ain’t got soft and slow and fat, like a lot of the guys has let themselfs get.

“Now I heered what you done to Judo Stiles Today. It’s all over the fuckin’ battalion, and somebody’s got to make a example of you for it, see.”

“First sergeant,” said Milo, “Sergeant Stiles ordered me to attack him, to try to stab him. All that I did was to follow those orders. I’ve tried to be a good soldier.”

Lewis nodded, looking a little sad. “I knows, son, and if you sticks to it you gonna be a damn fine soljer, too. Hell, you’ll have stripes, real stripes, in no time a-tall, ‘specially whenever the nextest war fin’ly gets around to startin’ up and the Army gets bigger. And that’s part of why I’m sorry to have to beat up on you thisaway; but it’s a whole fuckin’ hell of a lot better for me to mess your face up then for three, four of the pl’toon sergeants to get you off in a latrine somewhere and work you over, son. I knows what I’m doin’, see—I can give you just a few good ones in the right places for to make it look like you been dragged th’ough a fuckin’ wringer by the cock.”