We all had kills in the end, not one of us hadn’t killed our portion of the enemy, and not one of us had died. I could look over my group with pride in the knowledge that they could be left to their own devices and that they would survive, I also knew that I had taught them everything I could. You can only teach so much, you can never teach experience which was the only thing that I had left that they didn’t. I let them loose on the enemy then, we were no longer a class, we were a squad, which took out the enemy and its supplies just like we had been before.
That was how our captain found us, sitting around the fire swapping stories of the days exploits. None of us had told him where to find us but it was well known he could find anyone when he wanted to. No one had heard him approach but no one ever did. He was one of those rare captains who were captain truly because he was better then the people who he commanded at what they did. He walked into the firelight and instantly our hands found weapons but I called them off, Alice, Jon and I were the only ones who knew him fore what he was.
“A nice group you have here,” the captain said as I stood and saluted. Alice and Jon followed suite and the others, getting the hint, stood slowly and saluted as well.
“Thank you, sir,” I said. I realized that I was a little sad, if the captain was here that meant that my comfortable days were over and it was time to go back to my loner life style on the battle field. The captain seemed in no rush however.
“I here you have been promoted,” he commented.
“Only temporary, sir,” I protested, knowing that he had always been against there being a chain of command in his ranks.
“Not anymore, we’re making it permanent,” the captain said, sitting down. You’re all involved in this so I’m going to tell all of you. This was made to sound like it was going to be for a short time only but you all have been permanently attached to this regiment, we are now an official regiment with special privileges rather then one permitted only on tolerance. That means more members obviously, and real officers to order them. I couldn’t have thought of someone better then you,” he said speaking to me, congratulations.”
“What are we going to do,” asked Corporal Chester. She sounded panicked and I couldn’t blame her. It was one thing to join this regiment because you liked the lifestyle, which was what I had done. It was another thing to be ordered to live the way we did with no say in the matter. I felt sorry for her.
“We’ll do exactly what you have been doing now but we’re going to be more spread out. Some of you stay here, some of you spread out. This war is going to be going for a long time and we need fighters like you. Go out and give them hell.” Even though it was the middle of the night and we had no idea where we were going we all knew when we were being dismissed, so we stood up, packed up our things and left the captain sitting alone by the fire. He would find us when he needed us. We all agreed that we would travel together, at least for a little while; we were finally a true regiment in the army now after all. I felt a little warm thinking about that, I was a real officer, in a real regiment, and I had people around me.
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