Texas Nights - Book 13 of the Damned of the 2/19th

317 In Life & Death

1SG/WO1 Office
Charlie Company Area
15th Forward Support Battalion
Fort Hood,  Texas
CONUS
17 March, 1992
0845 Hours - Tuesday

Paperwork is the one thing in the military that never changes. I'd been working on paperwork since right after PT, even though formation was at 0900 nowadays. First Cavalry Division had changed the first formation after PT to 0900 to reflect "the goals of the peacetime Army", with a close of business of 1700.

So, basically, a 9-5 job.

I was working on fuel estimates and the last of the paperwork for us all to head out to NTC on the 23rd of March when a burbling bubbly voice interrupted my train of thought.

"Cromwell," The voice was soft, gentle and sad.

I looked up to see Westlin leaning against the office divider that separated me from the 1SG. She was wearing her battle rattle, helmet cocked back, LBE unbuckled, Kevlar vest undone.

And the bloodstain spreading across her abdomen.

I set down my pen and stared at her. "What?"

"You might want to go to formation. Something bad might happen if you don't," She burbled.

I was already moving as soon as she said formation, grabbing my softcap off my desk and hustling around the divider. I had it on my head and was out the door, her bubbling laughter chasing me as I looked around wildly.

People were gathered up in the quad, standing out in the light drizzle, waiting for morning formation. Alpha and Charlie. Almost everyone was there. I hurried to the back of the formation, catching Captain Jane.

"Is there anything going on?" I asked her.

She raised an eyebrow at me. "Are you all right, Chief? You look like you've seen a ghost."

I shook my head. "Just, something. I've got a bad feeling," I started.

The door crashed open and part of me flinched. I knew that slam.

I turned a looked at the door and like a lot of others in the two companies drawn up, I gasped.

Stillwater was staggering down the steps in BDU's with his softcap on, his eyepatch in place, and a bottle of whiskey in his left hand. He paused at the step and took a long drink off the open bottle, then lit a cigarette with a shaking hand. When he put the Zippo away he didn't bother to button the pocket, just took another long drink off the bottle.

It wasn't the booze that made everyone gasp. It wasn't the first time he'd shown up drunk. It wasn't the cigarette. It was his uniform.

To be precise, it was the fact he was covered in blood.

His arms were soaked in it. He'd left bloody handprints on the whiskey bottle. He had three lines across the blind side of his face that my brain automatically categorized as arterial spray. Tears had run down from his good eye, streaking the blood, but not cleaning it. He had arterial spray and just plain gore on his chest and legs. His boots were covered in it, and clotted blood fouled his boot laces. Blood was dripping from his right hand and I could see that his fingers were gashed and scraped, his middle finger missing most of the fingernail. The pinky on his right hand was broken, and from the look of the hand wrapped around the bottle, at least two of his fingers were broken on that hand.  I realized that the bloody handprints on the bottle weren't from the blood already soaking him when he took another drink and I saw blood run down from his hand and onto his mouth.

He looked like he had rolled around in a slaughterhouse.

He started staggering forward, heading for the back of Alpha Company's formation.