Officer's Club
Fort Hood, Texas
CONUS
26 September, 1991
2000 Hours
The room was full of clinking of silverware, the chime of crystal and glass, and the low murmur of conversation. More than a few of the officers had stared at me when I entered, and I felt like I was an imposter, like I shouldn't be there, as the high and mighty, the precious metal of the military world, all stared at me. A one-star general, with his staff and their wives, were sitting at a large dining table, obviously having some kind of staff dinner, stared at me as Captain Jane, Major Cribbs, and I were shown to a small table.
I wondered how much of it was the awards I was still wearing on my chest.
Major Cribb had ordered skinless chicken breast and salad, Captain Jane had ordered something that I had missed, paying attention to the menu. Both stared at me when I ordered two 12 ounce steaks, two mashed potatoes, a salad with bacon bits for an appetizer, with a side of cheese covered broccoli.
They both ordered drinks, Cribb asking for a name brand expensive whiskey, Jane ordering white wine.
Both gave me an odd look when I ordered seltzer water with a lemon twist and ice.
The drinks arrived first, and we were silent until the waiter moved away.
"I took you for a drinker," Cribb said, sipping at his own drink.
"I used to drink pretty heavily," I told him bluntly, honestly. "I was enlisted, and a medic, so it was kind of expected. Plus, everyone around me drank, there was no age limit because we were in Europe. We all used to self-medicate away the side effects of our medication regimen with alcohol."
Cribb frowned. "Medication regimen?"
I shrugged. "At the time they were experimental drugs to give us increased resistance to nerve and blood agent, radiation exposure, and debilitating weapons. Not to mention the massive amount of inoculations and vaccinations we received," I sipped my drink, "Those little white pills were the fifth iteration of the primary medication we took."
Have a drink. Nobody will care. You haven't had told them you were a recovering alcoholic, you could be sitting here with a glass of Jim Beam and Coke. With two cherries. You could even tie the cherry stems in knots. Remember doing that? Remember how everyone would laugh? Remember the fizz on your tongue, the slight bite of the alcohol, the feel of the ice bumping your teeth and the slick feel of the glass against your lip?
It was good, wasn't it?
I pushed the voice away. It was my own voice.
Captain Jane shook her head, sipping at her wine.
"We used alcohol to mitigate the muscle cramps, the pounding headaches, the stomach cramps, and the muscle tremors," I said, shrugging. "It's kind of funny, right now the Army is pushing abstinence from alcohol, and I spent five years being encouraged to drink."
I gave them both a grin, "It wasn't considered alcoholic behavior at the time."
"No business, just dinner and conversation," Captain Jane said after a moment of awkward silence.
I nodded, and so did Major Cribb after frowning for a moment.
"Just remember, there's some things I can not answer or talk about," I said, shrugging.
I could tell that Major Cribb was just dying to ask me questions about my old unit, about where I had earned my awards, and get details that were redacted in the records he was privy too.
Captain Jane surprised me.
"Are you single, Heather?" She asked, sipping at her wine.
That made me laugh. "Yeah. Nobody wants to date the fat girl," I smiled. I curled my arm, flexing my biceps, which strained the cloth of the BDU's. "Plus, the fact I'm a power lifter seems to deflate a lot of egos," I smiled wickedly, "As well as other, more important things."
Major Cribb looked uncomfortable at that. Captain Jane just nodded.
"I know, right? A medic that isn't married or dating seems almost unreal, right?" I smiled.
They're going to know you're faking this, that your smile is little more than pasted on that shredded excuse for a face that keeps the front of your skull warm...
I shrugged, "How about you, Major?"
"Six years now," He said, casually tossing it off. "Got married when I was a Captain."
I nodded and looked at Jane.
"Divorced, when I got orders for deployment to Desert Storm. I didn't go, ended up sitting in a hospital at Europe on the maternity ward," she said.
"Which one?" I asked before I could stop myself.
"Landstuhl," She said, and goosebumps prickled my back, sweat suddenly popping out from my skin.
"You're in Landstuhl Air Force Medical Center, soldier," a nurse said, her face covered by a white surgical mask. I could barely see her in the bright white lights, "Easy, easy now. Are you in pain? It was a long flight. The doctor will be in soon to talk about how long it will be until you're moved to Walter Reed."
gurgling, trying to talk, nothing but pain from my shattered jaw.
"Don't try to speak, your jaw is still packed and wired," she looked at my chart, "Let's put pads on your eyes, honey, ease some of your pain. Then we'll sedate you again."
darkness
a cold feeling up my arm, spreading into my chest
"What happened to them?" a voice I didn't recognize. Male. Mid-30's. Clinical. Must be a doctor.
"Nobody is saying," the nurse said.
the urge to vomit
"How long were they at King Fahad?" same man
"A week just to stabilize them," the woman.
"Call plastics, let's see what we can do for what's left of her face," another man. Male. Indeterminate but middle age. Worried. Doctor?
fuzzy feeling.
"She'll need dental too," the nurse. Her voice was redecing.
my brain is disconnecting...
how could you?
dreams...
"Heather?" Captain Jane was saying my name, touching my wrist. When I looked at her, smiled. "Are you all right?"
"Just," I shivered, "I spent a week at there stabalizing before they moved me to Walter Reed."
She nodded slowly, and I knew she was trying to place me.
"Why aren't you moving off post? Or at least into the BAQ?" the Major asked.
"That's a complex story. Short version is; I've never really had a barracks room, which is an integral part of being a soldier," I sipped my drink. "The long story is much more complex."
Captain Jane nodded, setting her wine glass down. "I'd like to hear the long version."
"That goes all the way back to the beginning," I told them. "I enlisted at 17, went 91A because it was fairly recently opened to females, and was shipped off to what was then West Germany. The put me right on the 1K Zone for my worksite, and the company area literally looked over the Fulda Gap and was pressed against the 1K Zone," I thought for a moment, sipping my seltzer. "When I arrived, I was enlisted, a bare bones E-1. I was assigned to a work site off post. It was a over an hour via the autobahn, and for years our chain of command felt that we did not need to waste two hours of work time driving. If we waited too long, we'd be lucky to get three hours of sleep," I shrugged. "It was decided that we would be put on what was basically TDY, without the TDY pay or separate rations pay."
I took another sip. "The main work crew at that site was from Third Magazine Platoon. They'd lost their medic a few months prior in an international indecent between NATO and the USSR, and were operating with limited medical support. I finished orientation and the unit sent me and two other medics out to the site."
Both were silent, and I realized my voice was getting tight, but I kept speaking anyway.
"It was hell out there. We were under harassing fire for Soviet Union forces daily. The Maggots,"
"Maggots?" Major Cribbs asked.
"People from the Magazine Platoons. There was two platoons of them, seven squads of eight to twelve male and female soldiers. The name was a derogatory term coined by Headquarters Platoon before I got there," I took another sip, "I was assigned to Support Platoon, which was formed right about the time I got there, same time they added Third Magazine Platoon, bringing up company strength to 350 at 80% force levels," I sipped again, looking at them. "I was allowed to call them Maggots because I was one of them, even though I was in Support Platoon."
The waiter arrived with the salad, which I toyed with for a moment, "Anyway, the Maggots worked with damaged equipment, which put them in danger, and dangerous munitions. On the average we dealt with a broken bone every two weeks," I took a bite, chewed it, and continued after I swallowed, "I dealt with my first crush amputation the third day at the site."
They were silent while we ate for a little while. I finished my appetizer before them and continued, "Anyway, I spent months at a time living there, more so when my squad leader was killed in a bunker detonation," They both looked shocked and I nodded, "Faulty lightning protection resulted in four bunkers detonating, killing nearly forty people. Our of Support Squad, only three of us survived. As for the Maggots, well..." I let it hang. "Their radioman survived, as did a handful of them, somehow. They never did recover the body parts of three people."
"Once that incident occurred, I was put in charge of Support Squad, and the pressure got worse," I got a refill on my seltzer, sipped it, "So, my barracks room once went six months without me every seeing it."
We were silent for a moment, before Captain Jane pushed her plate away. "That sounds, very different from the Army I am familiar with, Heather," she said slowly, carefully choosing her words. I knew it was to avoid offending me.
I nodded, then reached up and tapped my right shoulder. "Right there," I said.
Major Cribbs frowned. "Special Weapons," He mused, "I know that Colonel Kriat called up as far as III Corps to find out if you were faking some kind of Special Forces patch."
The made me grin as he continued.
"He got a visit from some woman in suit who just walked into the office, showed him something in her billfold, told me to leave and to shut the door behind me," He said, shaking his head. "She left ten minutes later and the Colonel told me to drop all my inquiries regarding you."
I knew I was grinning from ear to ear.
"That was what my old crew leader, who was not an officer in any way, and when I met him was a Corporal, would call a 'bloodless Blackbriar bitch', if you'll pardon the language," I told him. Captain Jane opened her mouth so I answered her question before she could ask it. "I'm a NBC Warfare Field Medical Specialist, meaning I fall under a program called Special Weapons, which is completely controlled by a place called Blackbriar Ridge," I shook my head and took a sip, "When you get right down to it, my orders and SOP come from Blackbriar, which makes it odd to work in a non-Special Weapons unit like 15th FSB."
"So you were in a whole different Army," Captain Jane said, "Black ops kind of stuff, but not the Special Forces kind."
I nodded, "There's a lot of overlap. SOCOM taps Blackbriar for specialists if the mission involves any kind of NBC component. Blackbriar taps SOCOM for QRF (Quick Reaction Force) for sites like where I worked at. That means people like me get a lot of cross training."
Captain Jane shook her head, "I envy you, Heather."
That made me frown. "Envy me? Why? I've been shot, stabbed, blown up, raped, and exposed to exotic diseases and chemical weapons."
She smiled. "I joined the Army to do the kind of things you're talking about. Treating injuries, being right there, like Margaret Hoolihan from M*A*S*H."
I laughed, "Same here, Misty. I think she is why most female medics joined the military."
The waiter showed up with the meal at that point, stopping the deep conversation.
Part of me wondered if I'd said too much while I ate.