General Wellesley's Command X

“We’ve got to earn our money somehow,” Alice said, shrugging. I had to agree with her, I liked being in camp so long as there was something for me to do there but now that the conventional training wasn’t working I was ready to be on the move. Our recruits on the other hand showed even less enthusiasm then Jon.

“We’ve only been training for a week, sir,” protested Corporal Chester, in what could almost have been called a shocked squeal in anyone else. I started to wish that I hadn’t encouraged my men to be vocal about their feels with me. It meant that now that I was doing something they really weren’t happy with, I was being nearly deafened with protests.

“We trained for half a year of constant safe drills before we were sent here from England sir,” said another man. “You can’t send us into enemy territory after only a week.”

“We aren’t in England anymore, we’re already almost in enemy territory and as much as I would like to baby you it isn’t possible in the position we are in. We are right next to a battlefield. Our men repeatedly run out and fight and you want to stay safe and warm in camp while they do it?” I was starting to get angry but they had seen me angry often enough over the last few days that they knew they didn’t have to take it seriously. Not one of them backed down.

“We aren’t ready yet, sir. If you wanted us to march out against the enemy as common soldiers then we have already been trained for that, we could do that at a single order. This is all new to us though, we need to work at it more,” the man who said this worried me a little. He was another one of the privates of the army but he was a smart one, and seemed to have bookish tendencies and I didn’t trust either in a fellow soldier. I decided that I was going to have to change my tact to one that was more flattering.

“I would think that you would be honored that I think highly enough of you to think that you are up to this. I argued with General Wellesley himself that you were able to do this, he doubted you, but I told him you could do it. That means that if you can’t then my career is at an end, I am gambling on you men, don’t let me down.” It was an effective argument; I was appealing to their strongest emotion, other then greed, pride. They were proud to have even a fake officer telling them that he trusted them and thought that they did well.

It was through tactics like this that I finally got them deep into enemy territory, right outside of the enemy camp. I wanted to find the enemy General but I knew better then to think that he would walk alone and we could do anything about him so I didn’t look too hard. Instead I turned it into a contest between my recruits over who could spot him and then trail him, without getting caught of course, back to his tent. It was through turning these exercises into contests and games with rewards in them, that I made my men totally unafraid of what was in the enemy camps. It raised their confidence to new heights that even I hadn’t imagined. Corporal Chester was particularly daring and I started to bet with myself how long she would hold on to her life at this rate but she never failed to come back, usually with some wild story of what she had done this time.

This was stealth work, we were no longer working in a group, instead we were going out individually or at most with two people. The sergeant was joining in like he was one of the common soldiers, and had dispensed with being called sir by even the lowliest member of our group. It made me laugh sometimes but other times I worried about how any of these people would ever adjust back to army discipline when we got back.

To be continued...