General Wellesley's Command IX

Neither Alice nor Jon chose to confront my sudden seniority that night to my relief. I knew better then to push them and they knew better then to push me so we all carefully stepped around one another for the rest of the night, with the sergeant a silent observant of our dance.

It was first thing in the morning when the soldiers Wellesley had promised us arrived. One saluted in front of me, making me feel extremely awkward. I had never been saluted in my life. The woman who had paid me the honor stood at attention as the rest of the men went into rank behind her.

“Corporal Chester reporting for duty, sir,” she announced, and even her voice was dripping with military discipline. She was everything that I and the others of my regiment were not, she was structure.

“Starting today I and my friends here,”I motioned to Alice and Jon, “Are going to be teaching you everything that we know about living behind enemy lines. You have all been specially chosen for this training so I expect you all to be the best of the best. I will not take it easy on you,” I announced. I hadn’t meant to give a speech but the only person who smirked even a little was Alice, and she was always laughing at me. The others looked totally serious and even stood maybe slightly straighter.

Within a week I decided that doing simple test runs around our own camp was useless. It was good for teaching the basics but there was no danger, and danger was the greatest tool for learning that I could think of. A real life situation where they had to succeed at what I was teaching them or die seemed a much better way of teaching them. I returned to Wellesley’s tent.

“What do you want?” he asked, I hadn’t expected a warm welcome so I wasn’t disappointed. I had already gotten Wellesley’s measure and knew that it would be a cold day in Hell before he showed any graciousness to anyone.

“I am looking for your permission to take the men you gave me into the enemy lines to train, sir. Drills are good for basic teaching but they are useless unless my men can then put them into use in the real situation,” I explained.

“Are they ready to be put to use already,” Wellesley asked doubtfully.

“Not on anything difficult but on easy missions they might be of use, at least some of them would be, sir. Mostly this will be a training exercise but if you can think of anything easy you would like to order, I would be happy for them to do it.”

“Can you make the occasional enemy soldier disappear? That isn’t too hard for your men is it? I know you did it when you were working behind enemy lines before.”

“I think we can manage that, sir,” I said smiling. When he had asked if they were ready for missions I had been worried he would think up something hard. There was no point for me to invest as much time as I had into my soldiers if they weren’t going to be put to use but there was also no point in training them if they were instantly going to be sent to their deaths. Wellesley had chosen just the right level of task for them though, the sort of task I would have chosen for them myself as a training exercise. It had a real taste of danger, a need for them to apply what I had taught them, but it didn’t send them into true danger yet. They wouldn’t have to sneak around an enemy camp to do it.

“We’re already being sent into enemy territory again?” Jon complained when I announced our new orders. “I had hoped we would be able to take it easy for a few more days. Taking it easy is such a rare event in our lives after all, I try to milk it for all it’s worth.”

To be continued...