Shipman and Pint were called onto the carpet. The brass fell hard upon them, and as promised, they were both punished with legal terms that I knew were bad because I didn't understand any of the charges.
In rows on the barracks floor, a platoon meeting took place, with the purpose of addressing the event that had occurred. Even the company commander and First Sergeant attended. The gravity in the open space increased when Pint made a confession and apology, and announced that he would not be with us for graduation, that his transfer notice to another platoon took effect immediately, and that he wanted us all to defeat the other platoons in the final week during the Field Training exercise.
Sitting next to Major, Shipman, and West, I felt a shared taint between us all, now that each of us carried an Article 15 on our record. The four of us, in ten weeks, had been corrupted and changed and melted and hardened. Even Private Major's jokes diminished with each week.
The kissing incident made Echo Company the laughing-stock of Fort Leonard Wood for the remainder of Basic Training. The Lieutenant Colonel, who I had once saluted with my left hand, ordered a new Drill Sergeant to our platoon, a young woman, fresh out of Drill Sergeant school, who treated us like it was Day Zero all over again.
I had only a few days to right things with Shipman. West, too - I could not bear to meet her eyes, since she knew that I had organized the kiss.
Shipman ignored me when he returned to his locker after the meeting. He had become the new whipping boy for the company Drill Sergeants, mocked mercilessly wherever he set foot.
The only thing I could do to redeem Shipman and our platoon was to dominate the other platoons in the Field Training Exercise. The time had come for the true Sprungli to emerge, and the true Sprungli was Leon Kennedy of Resident Evil. Praise God and pass the ammunition: I laced up my boots and set fire to my soft-shoe profile.
Our final tasks included a two night camping trip in the woods. I dug a hole in the ground, then I dug Shipman's hole, since he lacked motivation after being chased around for days. I woke up to pull all night guard duty under the stars, taking on Shipman's shift after my own. If I found one of the enemy sleeping on guard duty, I took his rifle away and, if he laid still, I handcuffed the sleeping beauty with plastic zip-ties.
At night I laid in my hasty fighting position gazing out from my cover in the trees. The stars overhead twinkled on my boots and on the steel barrel of my rifle. I began to doze off until the prairie grass in a clearing moved and the outline of a Kevlar appeared, then another, and another. A stalking enemy approached our line. I fired my blanks at them and when I ran out of blanks, I resorted to insults.
The next day, I led the road march, the final road march, carrying all the things in my rucksack that I was supposed to carry. At the end of the march, I entered the grand finale of Basic Training, where I crawled underneath a barbed wire obstacle while bullets buzzed overhead. Actually, the bullets could not have hit me if I stood up and leaped in the air, but still, this nearness to bullets came closest to reminding me of playing HALO. At the end of a long sand-pit, I crawled next to Shipman and said, "We did it, battle buddy. It's all over."
"We did," he said. "But I still hate you."
And the floodlights came on. Basic Training had ended.
From there the Drill Sergeants funneled us into a formation, congratulated us, and marched everyone to an awards ceremony, one that was clearly modeled on the TV show Survivor. The officers lit candles and sang the Army Song in a Rights of Passage ceremony.
The battalion commander and the company commander faced our aging First Sergeant. The three of them marched around each other in a circle and pinned medals on each other. The company commander was awarded a medal by the other two men, then they rotated, with lots of square turns and salutes, to arrive at a new position. Now the colonel received a medal and a plaque, followed by another series of square circles and salutes and another pinning, this time on the First Sergeant. As it turned out, the company commander was also getting promoted, so they had to march in a circle again, salute, and pin additional medals onto each other. During all of this, some of the Privates started to wobble and pass out, because they were tired from the long road march and from crawling in the sand-pit. I couldn't help but pity Private Ganger, who fell onto her face and was dragged out of the formation by Drill Sergeant Pfeffer.
"Don't lock your knees, Privates. Drink water!"
If I learned one thing in Basic, it was that drinking water cured everything.
Chapter 26. Go, No-Go