Robert Heinlein - Time Enough For Love

I have not looked up Captain Smith. I caught the hint in your letter-but, truly, I did not need it; I have been soldiering long enough to realize that an enlisted man does not presume in such fashion. I am almost as certain that the Captain will not look me up-for reasons I don't need to explain as you have soldiered far more than the Captain and I combined. It was most sweetly thoughtful of Mrs. Smith to suggest it-but can you make her understand I can't look up a captain socially? And why she should not urge her husband to look up a noncom?

If you can't make her understand this (possible, since the Army is a different world), perhaps this will suffice: Camp Funston is big-and no transportation for me other than shanks' mare. Call it an hour for the round trip if I swing out my heels. Add five minutes with the Captain when I find him-if I find him. You know our stepped-up routine, I sent you a copy. Show here that there just isn't time, all day long, for me to do this.

But I do appreciate her kind thoughts.

Please give Carol my heartiest thanks for the brownies. They are as good as her mother makes; higher praise I cannot give. "Were," I should say, as they disappeared into hollow legs, mine and others (my buddies are a greedy lot). If she wants to marry a long, lanky Kansas farm boy with a big appetite, I have one at hand who will marry her sight unseen on the basis of those brownies.

This place is no longer the Mexican fire drill I described in my earliest letters. In place of stovepipes we now have real trench mortars, the wooden guns have disappeared, and even the greenest conscripts are issued Springfields as soon as they've mastered squads east and west and have learned to halt more or less together.

But it remains hard as the mischief to teach them to use those rifles "by the Book." We have two types of recruit: boys who have never fired a rifle, and others who boast that their pappies used to send them out to shoot breakfast and never allowed them but one shot. I prefer the first sort, even if a lad is unconsciously afraid and has to be taught not to flinch. At least he hasn't practiced his mistakes, and I can teach him what the regular Army instructors taught me, and those three chevrons on my sleeve now insure that he listens.

But the country boy who is sure he knows it all (and sometimes is indeed a good shot) won't listen.

It's a chore to convince him that he is not going to do it his way; he is going to do it the Army way, and he had better learn to like it.

Sometimes these know-it-alreadys get so angry that they want to fight-me, not Huns. These are usually boys who haven't found out that I also teach unarmed combat. I've had to accommodate a couple of them, out behind the latrine after retreat. I won't box them; I have no wish to flatten my big nose against some cow-milking fist. But the idea of fighting rough-and-tumble, no rules, either makes their eyes glitter-or they decide to shake hands and forget it. If they go ahead with it, it doesn't last over two seconds as I don't want to get hurt.

I promised to tell you where and how I learned la savate and jujitsu. But it's a long story, not too nice in spots, one I should not put into a letter but wait until I have a pass that gives me time enough to visit Kansas City.

But I haven't had anyone offer to fight me for at least three months. One of the sergeant-instructors told me that he had heard that the recruits call me "Death" Bronson. I don't mind as long as it means peace and quiet when I'm off duty.

Camp Fun's-Town continues to have just two sorts of weather, too hot and dusty, too cold and muddy. I hear that the latter is good practice for France; the Tommies here claim that the worst hazard of this war is the danger of drowning in French mud. The poilus among us don't really argue it but blame the rain on artillery fire.

Bad as the weather may be in France, everyone wants to go there, and the second favorite topic of conversation is "When?" (No need to tell an old soldier the first.) Rumors of shipping out are endless-and always wrong.

But I'm beginning to wonder. Am I going to be stuck here, doing the same things month after month while the war goes on elsewhere? What will I tell my children someday? Where did you fight the Big War, Daddy? Funston, Billy. What part of France is that, Daddy? Near Topeka, Billy-shut up and eat your oatmeal!

I would have to change my name.

It gets tiresome telling one bunch after another to stack arms and grab shovels. We've dug enough trenches in this prairie to reach from here to the moon, and I now know four ways to do it: the French way, the British way, the American way-and the way each new bunch of recruits does it, in which the revetments collapse-and then they want to knew what difference it makes because General Pershing, once we get there, is going to break this trench-warfare stalemate and get those Huns on the run.

They may be right. But I have to teach what I'm told to teach. Till I'm white-haired, maybe.

I am pleased indeed to hear that you are in the Seventh Regiment; I know how much it means to you. But please don't disparage the Seventh Missouri by calling it the "Home Guard." Unless somebody gets a hammerlock on Hindenburg pretty soon, you may see a lot of action in this war.

But truthfully, sir, I hope you do not-and I think Captain Smith would agree with my reasoning. Someone does have to guard the home-and I mean a specific home on Benton Boulevard. Brian Junior isn't old enough to be the man of the family-I think Captain Smith would worry if you weren't there.

But I do understand how you feel. I hear that the only way for a sergeant-instructor to get off this treadmill is to lose his stripes. Would you feel ashamed of me if I went absent over leave just long enough to get busted back to corporal...then did something else to lose those chevrons, too? I feel sure it would get me on the first troop train headed east.

You'd better not, read that last to the rest of the family. An "Honorary Smith" had best find some other way.

My warmest respects to you and to Mrs. Smith, My love to all the youngsters,

Ted Bronson "Smith"

(And most happy to be "adopted")

"Come in!"

"Sir, Sergeant Bronson reports to Captain Smith as ordered!" (Pop, I wouldn't have recognized you. But durned if you don't look just as you ought to. Only younger.)

"At ease, Sergeant. Close that door. Then sit down."

"Yes, sir." Lazarus did so, still mystified. He had not only never expected Captain Smith to get in touch with him, but he had refrained from asking for a pass long enough to let him go to Kansas City for two reasons: One, his father might be there that weekend-or, two, his father might not be there that weekend. Lazarus was not sure which was worse; he had avoided both.

Now a dog-robber type on a motorcycle with a sidecar had suddenly picked him up with orders to "Report to Captain Smith"-and it was not until he had done so that he knew that this "Captain Smith" was Captain Brian Smith.

"Sergeant, my father-in-law has told me quite a bit about you. And so has my wife."

There seemed to be no answer to that, so Lazarus looked sheepish and said nothing.

Captain Smith went on, "Oh, come, Sergeant, don't look embarrassed; this is man to man. My family has 'adopted' you, so to speak, and it meets with my heartiest approval. In fact it fits in with something the War Department is starting, through the Red Cross and the Y.M.C.A. and the churches, a program to locate every man in uniform who does not get mail regularly and see to it that he does. Get a family to 'adopt him for the duration' in other words. Write to him, remember his birthday, send him little presents. What do you think of that?"

"Sir, it sounds good. What the Captain's family has done for me has certainly been good for my morale."