Final Formation
By E. M. Furner II
Beep! Beep! Beep! The bedside alarm clock woke Captain Pete Robinson from a deep sleep and abruptly ended another nightmare. It brought him from the dusty streets of Baghdad to a dark hotel room. The content of this nightmare was the usual. Explosions. Smoke. Fire. Screams and blood in the streets. The usual.
Pete reached over and slapped the alarm clock on the nightstand beside the bed. It took a couple of slaps before the annoying beeping stopped. He squinted to read the blurry digits. 6:00 am. Pete had been waking up at zero-six-hundred nearly every day since graduating from West Point, which seemed like a lifetime ago.
Pete flipped on the lamp on the nightstand beside the alarm clock and an empty bourbon bottle. He laid there a few minutes looking up at the circle of lamplight cast against the ceiling above him. He thought about the day that awaited him. It was an important day. A day he knew would one day come. A day every commander dreads. Today he would bid farewell to his men.
Pete’s wristwatch began making a chirping sound. He immediately pressed the button on its side and ended the annoyance. The numbers on the illuminated watch face read 0610. Pete always used at least one backup alarm. Pete remembered his dad once warning him that early was on time and on time was late. Pete wasn’t going to be late today. Not today.
Pete threw back the covers and used the headboard to pull himself up into a sitting position. He located the remote and pointed it at the television. He pressed the power button, and the tv brightened. An infomercial appeared on the screen. Pete flipped through the channels until he came to a news station. A news anchor wearing a ballistic helmet and a ballistic vest spoke into a microphone as a convoy of armored vehicles rolled through the street behind him. Pete pressed the mute button. He didn’t need to hear what the reporter had to say. He already knew.
Pete rotated his legs out of bed. He sat on the edge of it for a few minutes as he mustered the strength to get out. The sheets were wet with sweat.
Once out of bed, Pete made his way to the closet to retrieve his uniform. It was enclosed in a black bag. He laid it on the bed and unzipped it. Inside was a green US Army uniform. He removed the jacket and laid it in his lap, and began preparing it. He took the preparation of his Army uniform seriously. Quite seriously. Especially today.
Pete attached his ribbons. He was careful to ensure proper spacing and alignment as he pushed the pins through the thick wool. Spacing and alignment, Pete thought, that’s what it was all about. Spacing and alignment. This is what he’d learned at the academy, and this is what he tried to practice in the jungle. Military decorations, like the men on whom they were pinned, were always positioned according to seniority. Six ribbons; two rows of three stacked. The last ribbon that Pete carefully attached to his uniform was purple with a thin white stripe at each end.
Pete held his uniform up in the lamplight and away from his face. He squinted at it for a moment, then adjusted a couple of ribbons, squinted, and adjusted some more, repeating this process again and again until they all were as perfectly spaced and aligned as he could make them. Pete topped the ribbons with a three-inch-long silver-colored metal badge consisting of a musket set in an infantry blue rectangle surrounded by a wide-open oak wreath. It also evenly spaced and aligned.
Pete showered, shaved, brushed his teeth, and combed his hair, each equally timed and by the numbers, just as he had done every morning since his first day at the Point. Routine, he used to tell his ex-wife. Disciplined routine. Compulsive, his ex-wife used to tell him. Excessive and compulsive. Pete simply couldn’t afford not to be organized or not to have a plan and a contingency plan for everything he did, every decision he made. When Pete made mistakes, young boys died. That’s all there was to it.
Today was the day, Pete thought as he buttoned his stiff shirt. Today was the day he would inspect his men. Pete slowly tied his black four-in-hand necktie, tightened it, and folded down his collar over it. Today was the day he would stand before them. Pete struggled to slide his trousers on over his legs. Today Pete was going to talk to each of them. Man-to-men, Pete thought as he pushed his feet into his patent leather shoes and tied them. Today he was really going to tell them how it was. Tell them how it was going to be. It had been too long since the men had all been assembled before Pete. Too long, indeed.
Pete pulled the green jacket on like a knight donning armor, the thick wool gabardine fitting snugly over his shoulders and draping slightly in front and back of him. The sleeves fell perfectly to the center of his wrist bones. In his uniform, Pete felt like he could take on the world like a comic book superhero. He slowly buttoned the coat, pushing the gold buttons through the tight slits, from one down to four, checking each to ensure the eagles were upright, and then shining them with his handkerchief. Whenever Pete wore the US Army uniform, he intended to leave no doubt that he lived by a common military standard. He was responsible for military order and discipline; that he was a soldier. Pete took one last look at himself in the broken mirror before donning his hat and exiting his room.
Throughout the hotel, people got out of Pete’s way. In the hallway. In the elevator. In the lobby and outside on the sidewalk. Some even held the door for him. They quickly stepped aside without making eye-contact with him, as though they had never seen a soldier before. But this was a hell of a lot better than getting spat upon, thought Pete. No respect was better than disrespect any day and a hell of a lot more sanitary. Pete made his way across town to the front gate of the base.
The air was cool and brisk, and intermittent. It pushed in from Virginia’s eastern shore, across Fairfax County, through Washington DC, and across the Potomac River. The red, yellow, and orange autumn leaves shook, and some of them let go of their branches and floated effortlessly to the ground like paratroopers.
A sentry standing next to his guardhouse popped to attention and rendered a quick sharp salute when he saw Pete roll up to the gate. The sentry was wearing camouflage fatigues with a black belt around his waist and a holster containing a pistol on his hip. He wore a black beret and sunglasses. The letters M P were sewn to the green brassard on his right arm. The flag behind the gatehouse flapped in the wind from halfway up its pole.
“Good morning, sir!” the gate sentry announced as he flattened his flat right hand and held it just above the corner of his right eye; his fingers extended and joined, and his thumb straight along his forefinger.
Pete returned the salute. “Good morning, sergeant.”
“Here to see the men, sir?” the sentry sounded as though he knew Pete or at least recognized him.
“Yes, sergeant,” said Pete. “I’m here to see the men.”
Pete made his way along the leaf-covered cobblestone that meandered through the green fields of the post to the fort’s northeast corner. He smiled when he spotted the men, sixteen members of third platoon, all formed up, evenly spaced and aligned. Pete’s platoon consisted of three rifle squads and a weapons squad. Each squad consisted of nine soldiers, a squad leader, two fire team leaders, two automatic riflemen, two riflemen, and two grenadiers. Each weapons squad consisted of two machine-gun teams consisting of a gunner and an assistant gunner.
Pete positioned himself in front of Sergeant First Class Edmond Brown, the platoon sergeant, and tightened to attention. He pushed out his chest and raised his chin a little Pete rendered a crisp salute, his hand flat, fingers extended and joined, and his thumb along his index finger.
“Hello, Ed. Good to see you again,” Pete said, his voice crackling a little as he spoke.
Sergeant Brown was not only the most senior enlisted man in the platoon, he was Pete’s right-hand-man and second in succession of command. He advised Pete on all matters pertaining to leadership and readiness within the platoon. Sergeant Brown was responsible for administration, logistics, maintenance, and individual training. Sergeant Brown’s nickname was platoon-daddy, a title affectionately assigned to him by the men because of the father-figure role he assumed within the platoon. Pete respected and admired Sergeant Brown for his toughness, and Pete often thought he would have been proud to have had such a man as his own father. “I hope your girls are well.”
As does any good officer, Pete inspected his troops. He trooped the line ... passing among the rank and file, stopping momentarily in front of each soldier.
The first soldier Pete stopped in front of was his first squad leader, Staff Sergeant Jonathan Barber, a Georgia farm boy with a neck as red as the earth he ploughed and an ethos just as tough. Sergeant Barber was responsible for all that his squad did or failed to do. Pete saluted and held it as he said, “Thank you, Sergeant Barber.” Pete lowered his hand back down to his side. “You did a fine job training your men,” Pete said, and then he moved right to halt in front of his weapons squad leader, Staff Sergeant Robert Pratt, a West Virginian, who was raised in a coal company town deep within a gorge in the Appalachian Mountains. Pete recalled how Sergeant Pratt would tell his men that the combat boots he was issued in basic training were the first pair of new shoes he’d ever had. Pete saluted him and whispered, “Montani Semper Liberi” before moving to the next soldier in the rank.
Beside Sergeant Pratt was Pete’s Radio Telephone Operator, Specialist Jason Frisbee, an eighteen-year-old Wisconsin boy who looked younger than his age. Pete would sometimes jokingly ask Specialist Frisbee if his mother knew he was in the Army. Specialist Frisbee was responsible for setting up, operating, and maintaining the platoon’s radios, including waterproofing the handset and battery and pre-setting frequencies while establishing and enforcing communication security procedures, and constructing field-expedient antennas. Pete saluted and thanked him too. “Thanks, Frisbee,” Pete said before shifting over to the next soldier.
The next two soldiers Pete stopped in front of were team leaders in Sergeant Barber’s squad, buck Sergeants Michael Tant and Richard Coe; two high school friends who joined on the buddy program, rather than taking their chances on being drafted into different services. The final soldier Pete stopped in front of was the platoon medic, Specialist Scott Busma, a young black kid from east Philadelphia. Specialist Busma was responsible for monitoring the health and hygiene of the platoon. Although Specialist Busma never told anyone, Pete knew that he could have avoided the draft if he’d taken the basketball scholarship he had been offered. Specialist Busma treated casualties and assisted in their evacuation under the control of Sergeant Brown. Pete saluted Specialist Busma and said, “Thank you. You did a fine job taking care of the men.” After completing the inspection of the third rank, Pete reassumed his position in front of the men, centering himself on the men.
“Listen up, men!” Pete announced. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.” Pete’s facial muscles tightened, and his eyes closed a little as they began to moisten a little. “As you know, to complete all assigned tasks, every soldier in this platoon must do his job.” Pete spoke his words slowly, and as precisely as he could. “Each soldier must accomplish his specific duties and responsibilities and be a part of the team, or else we fail ...” Pete forced a swallow. “We die.”
Pete’s lower lip began to quiver. “I just wanted you all to know there is a soldier present here today who has failed to do his duty.” Pete paused and swallowed again. The field around him was quiet, with only the intermittent rushing of wind and the rustling of leaves. “And that soldier is ... me. I failed you, and I’m sorry.” Pete’s men remained silent.
Pete’s facial muscles tightened some more, while more tears accumulated in his eyes, this time rolling down his face, and his lip stopped quivering and lifted above his teeth in an expression of anguish. “I am responsible for all this platoon does ... or fails to do. I am responsible for knowing each of you ... knowing how to employ you and your weapons.”
The autumn wind was cool on Pete’s tear-stained face. A yellowing oak leaf floated slowly down from a limb high above Pete and landed on his right shoulder, next to his lieutenant bar. “I am responsible for positioning and employing you and your weapons, and I ... I failed.” Pete began sobbing as he slid out of his wheelchair onto the thick, green grass. His empty wheelchair rolled back a few feet before coming to rest against a stone. Pete’s prosthetic legs turned on his stumps, and the right one nearly came off. On all fours, dragging his loose fiberglass and titanium limbs behind him, Pete crawled over to a simple white headstone into which was etched: EDMOND L. BROWN, SFC, US ARMY, TEXAS, JUNE 20, 1942 – MAY 28, 1968, SS, BSM, PH, VIETNAM.
The letters were deep and evenly spaced and aligned. Pete put his arms around the stone and pressed his contorted face against its smooth surface. He hugged the cold stone. Squeezed it as hard as he could and cried. Wept.
Pete flinched when rifle fire echoed in the distance, seven simultaneous shots, then seven more, then seven more. Pete looked over his shoulder across the field; over beneath a patch of swaying pines beneath which a team of six soldiers in dress uniform stretched an American flag over a shiny metal casket. Pete squeezed some more tears from his eyes and then pressed his face back against the stone and said, “I’m sorry.” He took in a deep breath and let it out with a louder, “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. I should have died with you!” Pete’s breathing was labored, and his words were barely intelligible. “If I’d only called for artillery. If I’d only given the order to break contact sooner. It was my fault. I was responsible for bringing you back home alive, and I failed. I failed you. Please forgive me.” Pete took in another deep breath and wept some more.
