Semper Fi

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Authors: Keira Andrews
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squeeze?”
    “You have to pull down as well. Gently, though. Or else they get testy.”
    “Yeah, I heard a rumor.” Cal reached toward the cookies and plucked one from the plate when Jim lifted it. “But like Mrs. O’Brien said, I’ve got a hard head.”
    “I’m just glad she was able to flag down her husband on his way to work. If she’d missed him, we’d have had to wait at least another hour, and if the kick had been harder, or you’d lost more blood, or—”
    “But it wasn’t, and I didn’t. Jim, if the Japs couldn’t get me, I’ll be damned if Mabel will take me down.”
    Jim smiled. “It would make for a heck of an obituary, Cal.”
    “That it would.” Cal took another cookie, grinning.
    A few days later, a man from the telephone company arrived to install a line.

 

     
1942
     
    Blinking away the sweat dripping into his eyes, Jim swiped his arm across his face. Grains of sand insinuated themselves into every pore and orifice, even burrowing into his ears. It was coarse and unrelenting on his tongue. For once he was glad of his shorn hair, since it was easier to brush the sand free.
    “How the hell can it be so cold at night and this goddamn hot in the day?” Cal muttered. They were on their stomachs, practicing the prone position for shooting. He spit and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Christ, I’ve swallowed enough sand to vomit up my own desert.”
    A sergeant suddenly loomed overhead. “Just be fucking careful you don’t get any of that fucking sand in your rifle, recruit!”
    As the sergeant moved on, barking his way down the line of men, Jim couldn’t help but wince at the foul language. At the rifle range, the supervisors had taken obscenity to a whole new level, with every other word starting with “f.” Jim felt more of a bumpkin than ever, but had never heard such an unending string of curses in his life.
    “If they don’t want sand in our rifles, why did they put the range on a sand dune?” Cal whispered, shaking his head.
    “Shh. You know how they feel about questions of logic.”
    They shared a fleeting smile before going back to their practice. Soon the sergeant’s shout filled the air as he berated an unfortunate man down the line. “When will you get live ammunition? Is that what you’re fucking asking me?”
    They couldn’t hear the recruit’s undoubtedly cowed response.
    “I bet you all want to jump right to fucking live ammunition and skip snapping-in, don’t you? You fucking boots think you know better than the United States Marine Corps?” The sergeant’s face was beet red, his hands in fists as he screamed. “You think you’re good enough? Because you’re not fucking good enough, so shut your fucking goddamn mouths and get back to it!”
    Heads down, they worked on proper sighting and squeezing the trigger as they’d been taught. Tyrell surveyed the proceedings, but for the most part let the range sergeants do the hollering. It was unnerving to see him so quiet.
    As the sun beat down, Jim found himself looking forward to the evening and the plunge of the mercury. All the men in their tent had taken to huddling up in pairs to get through the freezing nights. With Cal, it had become an unspoken routine, taking turns pressed up against each other. When Cal was behind him, his warm breath on Jim’s neck was strangely reassuring.
    Of course it was a matter of practicality, nothing more. To function in the surprising heat of the day, they needed to get a good night’s sleep and not let their body temperatures drop too much.
    Jim’s father had taught him how to shoot as a matter of course when he was a boy, but he soon learned the Marine Corps—as with everything it did—had its own way. The thin leather sling they’d been using to tote their rifles around were now instruments of torture. Jim found he was fairly comfortable in the standing and prone positions for shooting, but the sitting position was something else entirely.
    As the day wore on,

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