Maggie's Farm

A good cadence caller is sublime, near the end, when everyone really hears, whether there is sound or not.

Forgive the story, please.

Last night at PI. After evening chow, dusky dark, platoons rotating through the chow hall. We had eaten and were heading back to barracks. Up the road coming toward us was the company that had earlier won the battalion drill competition.

SSgt Manning, the head DI, said a couple of words, I don't remember them, something like 'dig in'. Then he went silent. So did his compatriot of the other platoon. So for sixty seconds we marched toward each other.

So we relied on 'boots', and pride, and who knows what the hell else.

We fucking destroyed them, holding to our cadence, steady as a rock. Heels as one. They literally fell apart in their march, seventy-five men sounding like seventy-five sheep in a slaughterhouse.

It was a momentous moment... at least for a minute. Though I guess, as I still remember it, a lifetime of knowing what a team truly is, or some damn something.