At Close Quarters Read Online Free PDF Page B

past, just as the cavalry had superseded the infantry and motored vehicles had superseded the cavalry.
    He had been among the first to understand and accept that premise, often disagreeing with nostalgic colleagues from the old school, which was already in decline. Those fanciful, outdated ideas about the honour of old military families; the allegiance to a crown or an empire; the clicking of spurs on the marble floor of palaces; the swords forming arches outside a church when a soldier was united in holy matrimony; hierarchy and words of honour; recruits who never lie, even when they keep silent – that was all very well in films and novels which, indeed, he found moving as much as the next guy, but they had no place in the third millennium.
    ‘All right, all right,’ he had half-conceded in more than one argument with his colleagues. ‘A laser-guided bomb will never confer on the person who releases it the same prestige earned by a soldier who’s always right on target with his rifle; the clunkyclumsiness of a tank unit on the move will never become as legendary or as romantic as a cavalry charge; the general who relies on a satellite for a plan of attack will never attain the glory of the old-time leaders; a lieutenant equipped with GPS and a night visor will never look as elegant as an imperial cadet with his sabre and tall polished boots … But we’ll have to give up all those points of aesthetics if we want to be more efficient. It’s not the beauty of a regiment that wins wars,’ he concluded.
    The report that he’d written in accordance with those convictions left no option but to close down the base in San Marcial. The city was not in a strategic location. Given that there was an airfield and a naval base a hundred kilometres to the south, and that a branch of the General Headquarters of the Third Military Region was situated a hundred kilometres to the north, its maintenance was superfluous as well as costly. The vast land it occupied on the outskirts of town would be very valuable on the real estate market, and its sale would bring considerable revenues to the coffers of the Ministry of Defence. It was neither strategically nor economically viable to preserve the place. It had to be closed down, and that was what he had written, citing numbers and arguments, for the eyes of his superiors in Madrid, who would ultimately take the decision.
    The hardest problem would be to relocate the staff, who would be professionally affected and perhaps even personally offended by the closure. Olmedo knew all too well that, faced with an unpleasant demand, the first impulse of an official is to oppose it and lodge a complaint with the Administration that pays him; but although army men were no different, their particular sense of obedience and discipline would trump their reservations. The majority, used to transfers, would accept this one without putting up much resistance. And some would even benefit from it, as it would allow them to reach their desired destination.
    But a certain sector was adamant against the closure. In the survey he had conducted, which was included in the report, two officers had strongly rejected it: Captain Bramante and CaptainUcha. The old colonel, too, had voiced his opposition, even if less radically, and almost for sentimental reasons. Colonel Castroviejo regarded the barracks as his own creation and often referred to it as ‘my home’. He’d kept it running and improved it during the four decades he’d served there, and he expected that they would reward his service with the courtesy of postponing the final liquidation. He would probably be more painfully affected than anyone else if the base was closed down.
    At times Olmedo suspected that the decision had already been taken in Madrid, and that his report was only a sheaf of papers they would barely read, a way to keep up appearances, to comply with administrative procedures while the certainty of the closure settled among the