Battle Dress Read Online Free PDF Page A

me to do? “N-no, sir. I—”
    “No, you’re not having a brain cramp? Or no, you’re not stupid?”
    I felt trapped. “S-s-sir, I—”
    The Troll shook his head with disgust. “Just get your sorry, unmilitary mass out of my AO. POST!”
    “Yes, sir!” I yelled. I didn’t want to catch any more of the kind of abuse he was dishing out.
    He stepped aside to let me pass. I charged up the stairs and made it to the third floor unscathed. On the landing I hesitated. Now what? Oh—what did the Cadet in the Red Sash say? I chanced a quick look to my left, then right. Thank God. No cadets were around right then. But the stairwell was anything but quiet. Come on—left or right? The door to my left was wide open, so I hurried through it and was confronted with a long hallway. Closed doors lined one side. The other side, the side I was on, was bare. Loud voices filled the hall, coming from a mob at its far end. On instinct, I moved along the wall in the direction of the noise until the mob—a long line of stuttering new cadets—blocked my way. Shouting upperclass cadets swarmed around them like bargain hunters at an after-Christmas sale.
    “Stay on that wall!”
    “Do not speak unless spoken to!”
    “No gazing around! You thinking of buying this place?”
    The reason for the traffic jam became clear as the loudest cadet of them all shouted, “Get your beady eyes offa me and memorize that sign, Smacks! Gawk at it like it’s your best friend’s girlfriend!”
    I had a sudden urge to run, to escape this nightmarish place. But where would I go? So I just looked over the heads in front of me at the white sign hanging down from the ceiling in the middle of the hall and mouthed the words spelled out in black letters: “(Salute) Sir, New Cadet _ reports to the First Sergeant of Hotel Company, Cadet Basic Training, for the first time as ordered.”
    And then I remembered what the Cadet in the Red Sash had said my next task would be—to report to the First Sergeant of H Company.
    A cadet yanked me from my spot on the wall as I was memorizing the sign and shoved me toward a closed door. “Did you understand the sign, Smack?”
    “Yes, sir!”
    “Good. Knock three times. Wait until the First Sergeant tells you to enter, and report. And leave your bag outside. Got that, Smack?”
    “Yes, sir!” Knock three times. Leave the bag.
    I knocked three times. Knock. Knock. Knock.
    “ENTER!” boomed a voice from behind the door.
    I opened the door and peeked inside.
    “WHO ARE YOU?” screamed the red-faced cadet, with hair the color of peach fuzz, sitting behind a desk. “LITTLE BO-PEEP?” He glared at me from behind gold, wire-framed glasses and hissed, “When I say, ‘Enter,’ you will walk into the room with a sense of purpose, stop three paces from my desk, and report. NOW GET OUT OF HERE AND TRY IT AGAIN!”
    I fled through the door, pulling it shut behind me, and knocked three times again, louder this time.
    “ENTER!”
    I marched up to his desk, saluted, and yelled, “Sir, New Cadet Davis reports to the First Sergeant of Hotel Company, Cadet Basic Training, for the first time as ordered!” Whew!
    He stared at me for what seemed like two and a half days. A clock ticked somewhere in the room. My grand-parents collected clocks, and when I slept at their house, the clocks all over the house joined together to lull me to sleep with their gentle ticking. The sound didn’t fit in this sweltering, inhospitable place.
    The First Sergeant finally saluted in slow motion and whispered, “Are you scared , New Cadet?”
    Am I scared? My stomach was trying to pass for a pretzel and my mouth for a desert. But no way would I tell him that. “No, sir!”
    He slowly lifted himself up, slammed his chair against the wall behind him, leaned over the desk, and whispered, “Oh yeah? You sure look scared, New Cadet.” I felt my lip tremble and bit it quick to make it quit. His eyes narrowed. “Your momma’s waiting for you