One to Count Cadence Read Online Free PDF

me in to meet the company commander, Capt. Harry Saunders, and the executive officer, Lt. Dottlinger. The lieutenant merely grunted and squeezed my hand, giving me the impression that he didn’t care for me before he met me. It took longer to meet Capt. Saunders.
    Capt. Harry, as he liked to be called, came from Brunswick, Georgia, and his lifetime ambition was to win a medal of some, of any, sort, then retire to home and become a Republican. All this, and the additional “u” in his name, was to prove that he was more than a redneck kid who had gone to college on a football scholarship, arriving with only a single pair of shoes, tennis shoes at that. In spite of all his posturing, he was a happy, shambling bear of a man whose only real fault lay in the unsophisticated nature of his dreams. He had a tendency to say “men” in all capital letters, but he had an easy, open-armed way and a smile which said he truly loved everyone in the world. Except his wife. And Lt. Dottlinger. Capt. Harry seemed pleased with me, mainly because I was both a Southerner and a “collegeman.”
    “A master’s degree, huh?” he said several times. “How about that, Sgt. Tetrick? How about that? We damn well need more NCOs with a college background in this outfit. They seem to get along better with the men. What’s it in?”
    “Sir?”
    “Your degree.”
    “Soviet Studies, sir.”
    “Well, how about that? I’ll bet you’re the only sergeant in the whole Army with a master’s degree in Russian… what was that? History?
    “Yes, sir.”
    Capt. Harry went on and on about the degree until I wished that I had not listed the thing on my 201 file. There was a painful irony in being faced with my own vanity, in being asked why, with the degree, I had reenlisted. “A man’s wife leaves him for the civil-rights movement, for an ideal not another man, then it is certainly no wonder whatever he does,” I often told myself. But no one else. No, nor Capt. Harry when he asked that day.
    I accepted their good luck wishes, and left, again asking “Why?” as I had for the two months of basic and the six months at Fort Carlton. But I had no answer, and perhaps wanted no answer. I had the rain and the random barracks noise and time… time clicking past like a pale young whore popping her gum behind too bright lips, endlessly unconcerned and unsatisfying, hopelessly desirable.
    * * *
    The 721st resided in a single two-story concrete building. The mess hall, the day room, orderly and supply rooms, and quarters for the First, Supply and Mess Sergeants filled the first floor. The second contained fifty two-man rooms divided by a long hallway. Each room had an outside wall of adjustable aluminum louvers and an inside wall of wooden ones. The rooms were quite large and, except for the usual bareness, were not too military in effect. No metal foot- or wall-lockers knifed the space. Instead there were two large closets, a gray metal table with two office chairs, and a three-quarter-bed-size bunk.
    My cot sat next to the adjustable louvers, lengthwise to catch any breeze. I had never seen one of the new, larger bunks before. Ordinarily only the Air Force used them. I dropped my gear on the floor, kicked off my shoes, stripped out of the heavy green wool uniform I had been shrouded in for two miserable days on the MATS flight from California, and then stretched out on the bunk. None of those thin, cotton-lumpy racks the Army called a mattress, but a thick, foam rubber one to hold my weary bones. Yep, Sgt. Tetrick, I thought, scratching one foot with the other, This is a strange outfit. All I need now is a swimming pool and a spot of sunshine to be a real recruiting-poster ground pounder. Hoping for some sign of the sun (it had been raining since my flight arrived), I cranked open one set of louvers. The rain still fell heavily, but across the street a small building was visible. I hadn’t noticed it when I ran from the jeep to the barracks, but there it