Джон Ринго - The Last Centurion

Fucker stuck me in S-4. I nearly threw a shit-fit. I probably should have. It looked like I was a fuck-up. Nobody goes from company command to S-4 unless they've fucked up. He might as well have sent me over to Protocol Office at Corps. No matter what my fucking OERs looked like, it was going to hang over my head for the rest of my career.

So I deployed to the Fars op as an S-4 weanie. The actual S-4 was a major and a total luzer. I mean with a capital L. Even getting ready for deployment, even on deployment, doing his job wasn't hard. Trust me, I did it. He sure as hell couldn't and somebody had to make sure the battalion had beans and bullets. (Not to mention batteries, water, fuel . . . ) But it wasn't fucking hard.

That was sort of why I didn't throw a shit-fit. I threw myself on the grenade instead. The BC sweet talked me into the position. Manipulated me was more like it. "We're going over to Iran. The S-4, who I can't get rid of, is not going to do the job we need, the battalion needs. I need somebody there I can trust."

I hadn't realized what a back-stabbing prick the BC was at the time or I would have swallowed my care for the battalion, which was high, and told him to stick it. But I sucked it up and saluted and went to do the job.

Here's the thing. Remember what I said about that first OER. If your OERs don't make you seem like the reincarnation of Scipio Fucking Africanus it's a death knell to your career. Bad enough that I went from company commander to S-4. There are ways to write an OER for that position that make you seem like, at least, the Scipio Africanus of Supply Officers.

"During this period Bandit Six performed his duties in a manner which were fully acceptable . . . " is not one of them.

But what do you do? Go screaming about "fully acceptable"? The fact was, I'd done my duties in way that was "fucking outstanding." I was doing the job of my superior the whole fucking time. It wasn't a hard job, but it also was well above my paygrade and in a field that was radically different from mine.

I knew my fucking career was toast if I didn't get some sort of positive movement after the deployment. I reconsidered the Delta offer. They could smell bullshit in an OER and I knew I had to wait until I was Captain Promotable to go Over the Wall. Of course, Selection was maximum suckage and the training period took out almost everybody that made it through qual. But I figured I was the best fucking infantry captain in the Army. I could make it into Delta. Which would wipe out "commander to S-4" not to mention "fully acceptable."

Then I got an e-mail from my dad. When I'd been a Fobbit in the 3 shop I barely could keep up with home. I was working my ass off eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. As "assistant S-4" I'd considered starting a blog. God knew I had the time.

I don't know if you remember, I don't know if you realize it, but both bits of news hit the same week. Most people didn't notice the one my dad sent me for months. But it was reported the same week.

The article my dad sent me was from a British source. See, there was this solar physicist in Britain who had sort of gotten out of the solar physics field and entered the long-range forecasting field. Weather, that is. We all know, Lord God do we know, that all that baloney about "greenhouse gases" and "man-induced global warming" was so much horse shit. But back then it was all "global warming! CO 2will kill us all!" Man, we wished we'd had that sort of CO 2, didn't we?

But the thing about this guy, don't recall his name, was that he did long-range weather forecasts based on solar activity. He'd studied the sun until he should have been blind and had figured out that just about everything related to the sort of weather farmers cared about came down to solar output. Forget CO 2, it was all the sun. We all know that now. Most of you probably know who I'm talking about. Damn, why can't I remember his name?

Anyway, Dad sent me this article. It was complicated. I had to dredge up some long-stored memories from my "Weather and Agriculture" classes but I finally figured it out. Basically, the guy was being very cautious in saying that Our Friend the Sun had turned off.

Oh, not completely. But his predictions were way more cautious than normal and just fucking dismal for the next growing season. He even put a caveat in the end. I recall it to this day.

"Based upon these indicators, NYP (Next Year Predictions) indicate significant chance of severe cooling regimes."

Severe cooling regimes. That would be 2019. Nobody has to be reminded about 2019.

And then there was Dad's note at the end. "Investing heavily in triticale."

For all you non-farmers and non- Star Trek buffs, triticale is rye. See, there's a couple of things about rye. The first thing is that it's not exactly a big need crop. Wheat? Lots of markets for wheat. Ditto corn. (Maize to you Europeans and Canoe-Heads.) Soy? Always good markets for soy. Beans of various sorts. Peas. We grew it all, even seasonals like broccoli. All good markets.

Rye is a niche market. Not a bunch of people lining up for rye. (Didn't used to be back then. Less so now, too. Thank God we're past eating nothing but rye bread from the lines, huh?)

But the main thing about rye is that it grows fast and is cold hardy. Winter wheat's cold hardy but . . . Oh, it's complicated. There's also only so much winter wheat market and it's touchier than rye in certain cold and wet conditions. Look, I'm a professional. Do not try this at home.

Bottomline? Dad trusted this guy enough to be prepared to take a big hit economically on the basis that that was going to be the only way to survive.

Farmers are planners.

I looked at it and shrugged. "How bad could it be?"

Well, we all know that , don't we? I thought I was a grown-up. What a fucking maroon. You're about to find out how much of a fucking maroon I was in those days. (Still am I'll admit. But at least now I know it.)

The next day was the Battalion Weekly Reorientation Exercise. It says a lot about our battalion commander that he couldn't call it a Battalion Command and Staff Meeting or even a Battalion Weekly Meeting.

I'd been an assistant S-3 and a company CO under previous battalion commanders. I knew the weekly staff meeting like the inside of my mouth. That was until this dickbreath came along. Weekly staff meetings, are, by and large, ritual dick-beating exercises. Everyone stands up and presents their action items for the previous week, completion function thereof and action items for the upcoming week, schedule thereof. They're actually necessary but God damn they're a pain.

My previous COs had been big on maximal info, minimal dick-beating.

Not so the new guy. If the previous meetings had been, say, a Catholic High Mass of dick-beating, this guy was full up Aztec Sun Day ritual dick-beating with a cast of thousands and everyone has to give up their still beating heart. The best and the brightest were flayed and he wore their skin around for the next week. I thought when I was a CO I'd had a little micromanagement issue. I grew to understand a whole new term under this CO. One staff meeting the motherfucker took, I shit you not, four hours to "properly implement" issue of bottled fucking water . It was like he simply could not let it go. Look, you take the number of troops in a unit, add ten percent and send them that much fucking water. It's not rocket science.

At one point the Adjutant, the motherfucker who had my job and who had his office right outside the BC's so that he could slip in there from time to time and give the colonel a right nice sucking, suggested implementing issue based on individual body mass.