Robert Adams - A Man Called Milo Morai

Stiles frowned through most of the monologue. “Well, Milo, I can do nothing about the shower facilities. Ours are no better up here, you know; the ship simply does not —could not—ship aboard sufficient fresh water to give fresh-water showers every day to so many men. For your information, I did lodge a strenuous objection to all these fucking trucks and jeeps being jammed onto the deck of this ship, but my objections were overridden by higher authorities. If these vehicles were not here^ taking up space, we could have organized physical training classes up here in the air and the light … but then if a bullfrog had wings, he’d not have a sore ass most of the time, either.

“You and the other NCOs and the men will just have to put up with the latrines and the sleeping accommodations until we get where we’re going. There’s nothing anyone aboard can now do to change or ameliorate those conditons, unfortunately. But what’s this about the food?”

“These cooks of ours,” said Milo, “are virtually without effective supervision. The head cook, Sergeant Tedley, has been ill since the day we set sail, so much so that off and on, the medics have thought he might die of dehydration. His second-in-command is so inefficient, so weak in leadership, that most of the cooks do absolutely nothing to speak of except stay drunk on lemon extract and the like and keep well out of the reach of the men.”

“Well, Jesus Christ, Milo,” snapped Stiles, “why hasn’t Lieutenant Jaquot either set this matter straight or reported it to me or John Saxon?”

Milo shrugged grimly. “Probably because he’s unaware of it, Jethro. I don’t know of anybody who’s seen the mess officer below decks since we left New York Harbor. Although the scuttlebutt is that he’s won himself a fucking pisspotful of money in some high-stakes poker game up in officer country.”

Stiles nodded, a hint of anger smoldering in his eyes. “So he has, Milo, so he has, some of it from me, too. He’s won so consistently, the Belgian bastard, that some of us are beginning to wonder just what he did for a living before the war. Of course, the fucking money doesn’t matter to me, I don’t have to try to live on what the Army pays me, after all, but, by God, I’ll have that fucker’s hide for neglecting his duties to have more time for his precious fucking cards.

“I’ll also talk to the ship’s captain and see if there’s some way we can get more ventilation down into those spaces you inhabit, particularly at night. As regards all of the rest of your many tribulations, old pal, all you and any of us can do is to just keep on keeping on until we get landed, wherever. Then if we’re lucky we’ll have the time and space and the opportunity to whip the company back into shape before we have to fight.”

The battalion landed in England one cold, wet, blustery day, and that weather remained with them for months, so that many a man and officer was soon looking back to warm and often bone-dry South Carolina with fondness and real longing. So easily did the heavy soil on which their camp was set retain water that most of those who knew anything about such matters were dead certain that the area had been a swamp in the not-too-distant past; moreover, though not within sight of the sea, the land lay sufficiently close to the coast to be buffeted by every storm or gale that chanced to come boiling in from off the North Atlantic Ocean as well as to be pervaded by each and every one of the incredibly damp and icy-cold sea fogs of that season. Nor, in the flat and almost treeless countryside, was there any natural break against the frigid winds and storms that winter brought lashing down from the Highlands of Scotland, Iceland and the arctic wastes of Ultima Thule, far to the north. But in the rare good weather or in the usual foul, the hard training had to continue, day in, day out, night in, night out, week after week, month succeeding month. Big and bloody operations were now afoot, aimed at Fortress Europe, and everyone, from generals down to lowliest privates, knew it for fact.

“I jest don’t unnerstand it none, Milo,” attested Captain John Saxon, as they sat in the adjutant’s office of a wintery day, drinking from canteen cups of hot coffee laced with whiskey and waiting for the office space heater to build up sufficient warmth to at least partially disperse the enervating, bone-chilling, damp cold. “Thesehere folks should oughta be in our debt, after all we’ve done and is doin’ right now for to pull their sad asses outen the fuckin’ fire for ‘em. More’n that, they’s s’posed to be our kinfolks, for all that they all talks damn funny, like damnyankees, kind of. But shitfire, man, you’d think the fuckin’ shoe was on the other fuckin’ foot, the way thesehere fuckers act. I allus was sorry I dint get to England back in the Great War—jest to France and then back—but I guess I plumb lucked out after all. I wouldn’ of put up with being treated like a fuckin’ mangy stray dog, the way thesehere fuekin’ limejuice bugtits treats our boys.

“Take thishere Hulbert bizness, fer instance. Did you talk to the man after they brung him back? Yeah, well, so did I. He’s allus been a good ‘un, draftee or not, and I’m damn sure that that Limey cooze is tryin’ to get the poor horny fucker railroaded, is what I think. She let him buy her drinks, the first night, see, leadin’ him on, sweet-talkin’ him inta gettin’ a cook to give him butter and powdered eggs and Spam for her, plus three fuckin’ cartons of cigarettes. She kept up smoochin’ the fella and a-squeezin’ his cock in dark places and promisin’ him ever’thing. Then when he had give her a whole passel of stuff and tried to get her to put out like she’d been promising him, the cowcunted candlebasher broke a fuckin’ bottle over his head and yelled ‘Rape!’ Did you see what them damn fuckin’ Limey cops done to the poor bastard’s face?

“But even so, he just may’ve been lucky, luckier thin some I could name what did get into a few Limey cunts and was too drunk or too fuckin’ lazy or too damn dumb to use the fuckin’ pro-kits like they been told to. Don’t you look for that fuckin’ Jacquot back anytime soon—the fuckin’ cardshark has done got hisself clapped up twenny fuckin’ ways from Sunday from all the Limey codfish he bought and slammed his wang into right after we got here. And he’s just one, too. You wouldn’t believe how many men and fuckin’ of sers, too, in the division has done gone and got theyselfs done up brown with syph, shank, clap, crabs and ever-fuckin’-thing elst the damn fuckin’ Limeys is got for sale.

“I tell you, Milo, till we gets to France or wherever, I’m stickin’ my prick into nuthin’ but Madam Friggley” —he held up one big hand and waggled the fingers— “and you’ll be smart to, too.”

Milo himself had been lucky, he decided. None of the women,-either in England or in the States, whom he had swived had apparently been diseased, or if they had been, at least, he had failed to contract any of their afflictions. It was just as well, too, for with the accelerated training and the normal day-to-day minutiae of running the oversized company, he would not have had time to undergo treatments for venereal disease or any-. thing else, and he could only again thank his lucky stars that he obviously was immune to such other annoying discomforts as flu and bronchial infections, scabies, boils, sore throats, intestinal problems and even hangovers. For all that in the perpetually wet and cold climate some of the men around him always were sniffling, sneezing, and hacking, he seldom caught a cold, and then only a mild, short-lived one. The outbreak of crab lice soon after the battalion came ashore which had necessitated the shaving of everyone’s head and body hair had pointed out the amazing fact that the tiny creatures apparently found his body fluids distasteful, as not a one was ever found upon him.