D-Notice by Bill Walker (big ebook reader txt) 📗

was at that precise moment that Lillian realized she’d lost her own private war, that Michael would be leaving her to follow a destiny that might ultimately rob her of him forever.

Suddenly, she felt the irrational urge to tell him everything she’d hidden from him, the whole truth about her past...and about Paul. But she knew it would destroy him. And that she could never do, for employing that most secret of weapons would destroy her as well.

Swallowing her fears, she vowed to make the next three days the happiest they had ever known in their married life. And yet, even as she made this promise, she’d already begun to think of herself as a widow.

Chapter Eighteen

Rain fell in torrents out of a gunmetal sky while the squad stood braced at attention, the fifty-pound packs on their backs growing heavier by the second. The Sergeant Major, a stocky bantam rooster with an acne-scarred face and a penchant for smoking stinking cigars, paced back and forth in front of them, screaming out expletives in a gravelly tenor, the cords on his neck standing out like white stalks against the dark brown of his leathery skin. His beady black eyes glittered with a kind of mad glee that made Thorley wonder if the man wasn’t shy a marble or two. Certainly, the prospect of a five-mile double-time march through the woods—the second that day—was not the product of a balanced mind.

“...And I bloody swear to God in his bloody infinite wisdom, that I have never seen such a bunch of lazy tarts in all me life. For two fucking weeks we’ve made this goddamned march, and you’re still fagging out like a bunch of fucking infants before we’ve even gone halfway. Good bloody Christ, my own mother could make this march faster than you girlies! Well, let me tell you this, you worthless strings of piss, you will do this march twice a day until you make it, or so help me, I will rip off your bleeding heads and crap down your necks! Is that clear?”

“YES, SERGEANT MAJOR,” they all screamed in unison, their voices already showing the strains of having shouted this many times.

Thorley felt a wave of dizziness wash over him, and he fought to maintain his rigid stance as the rain beat a steady tattoo on his helmet.

He was so bloody tired.

It seemed that, aside from the routine workouts, part of the conditioning involved sleep deprivation. Up at the crack of dawn, they were kept running from one activity to another until they fell into their bunks at 9:00 p.m., exhausted.

There was the two hours of calisthenics every morning, followed by two hours of rifle practice. Thorley didn’t mind the weapons training so much; in fact, he rather liked the idea of trying to better his score every day. And after four weeks of intensive daily training, his skills had become considerable: he was one of the few in the squad who’d made Marksman.

But what he couldn’t stand was the constant verbal assault. He couldn’t see how this made a man tougher. All it did was wear him down, day after day after day. Then again, it made perfect sense. The army didn’t want someone with spirit and initiative, they wanted an automaton that followed orders.

Thorley pushed those thoughts from his mind when he realized the Sergeant Major had asked a question. Then he realized those tiny obsidian eyes were burning holes through him.

“So glad you could join us, you bloody git, sir!”

There it was, the “sir” spliced in before or after every choice piece of invective. Because Thorley was an officer, the Sergeant Major could not just spew his venom without paying obeisance to his rank. Somehow, the addition of that simple appellation made the rest all right in the eyes of the military. It was just one more bit of craziness in a maelstrom of insanity.

“See, Ladies,” the Sergeant Major continued, “we’ve got ourselves a dreamer, here. Fancies himself quite the soldier, he does.” The Sergeant Major stalked over to Thorley, placing his battered nose mere inches from his own, the pores of his skin looking like lunar craters.

“Sir, you are a lazy, good for nothing turd, who spends far too much of his time using his tiny brain to dream about pulling his pud instead of learning how to save his worthless life and the lives of his fellow turds! Am I getting through to you, sir?”

“Yes, Sergeant Major Bell!” Thorley shouted.

“Good! Then get down and give me thirty pushups, you scumsucking shit—sir!”

Without a second thought, Thorley threw himself down into the mud and began doing pushups, counting them off one by one. The pack on his back, now soaked with the rain, felt twice as heavy, making each pushup excruciating.

It was hard to believe he’d been at Sandhurst for almost a month. Somehow it seemed longer, as if he’d spent half his life there. He let his mind drift back to his goodbyes with Lillian at Victoria Station. He’d told her that he loved her, and when she began to sob even harder, that of course he would return. And that was why he didn’t protest when Sir Basil had told him that he’d be going to Sandhurst for a foreshortened course in basic training. He wanted to prove to himself that he could do it. He also wanted to learn as much as he possibly could about being a soldier. The Sergeant Major was wrong about him in that one respect. He didn’t dream, he watched...and learned.

In another week, he would leave for Egypt for a stint at Abbassia Barracks in Cairo, where he would learn desert survival techniques at the Officer Cadet Training Unit. From there, it was on to his assignment as Chief Translator attached to