Astounding Science Fiction (British Edition) — page 6: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

4 ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION was when he took over this company. ‘A soldier is only as good as his ability to obey orders,’ he says. “You men are going to be soldiers,’ he says, ‘and there will be no questioning of any orders given you. I want, and I shall have, absolute obedience and disci- pline,’ he says—”’ Decoy. It would be senseless, needless slaughter of the Fourth Platoon. It would enable the rest of the company to take the hill but the premature attack was not necessary; the enemy had their backs to the Pacific and they could retreat no farther. They could retreat no farther and they certainly would not dare attack. Why had Cullin chosen the Fourth Platoon as the decoy? Was it because of the hatred between himself and Cullin? The Fourth was his platoon; by sending it on a suicide mission Cullin could add the savor of revenge to the sweet taste of glory. The Fourth was his platoon and, between himself and the men of the Fourth was the bond that months of common danger had welded ; the bond of brother-in-arms that is sometimes greater than that of brothers-by-blood. They did not give his gold second- lieutenant’s bars any parade-ground respectful salutes; instead, they re- spected him as a man, as Blacky who slogged through the mud and rain beside them, who ate the rations they ate, who knew their names and moods, who was one with the hard veterans of combat and the nervous young replacements. Not Lieutenant Knight; just Blacky, to whom someone would sometimes come on the eve of battle and say: “This address here—it’s Mary’s. If I’m not so lucky this time, I wish you would write her a few words. Just tell her I wanted to see her again but that I... well, just say that I said... that I said—Aw, hell, Blacky—youw’ll know what to say.”’ He would sit by the light of a gaso- line lantern in the nights following the - battle and write the letters; not alone for the one who had asked him to but for all who had been “not so lucky.” They were hard to write, those letters. Soon, now, if he, himself, were not among those not so lucky, he would have more of them to write—far more than ever before. “|. . What would you say caused it, Blacky?”’ the sergeant was asking. “What?” Knight brought his mind back to the present. ““How was that?” “I say, you take a man like Cullin —what do you reckon makes him act that way? You oughta know—you knowed him when you was.both kids, didn’t you?” “T’ve known him most of my life, from the time we were each six years old,” Knight answered. “He was al- ways a lot like he is now—even as a kid he wanted to boss the other kids and make them do things for him. I don’t know why he hasn’t matured emotionally as well as physically. A psychiatrist might be able to trace it back to something—I’m a com- puter engineer, misplaced in the infantry, and not a psychiatrist.” “Well, if I was one of these psychi- atrists, I’d sure ask him if he didn’t once have a set of wooden soldiers he liked to play with better than any- thing else. That’s the kind of soldiers he wants us all to be—wooden dum- mies that don’t dare move unless he says to.” They came to the mouth of the gulch and Knight stopped beside a splintered tree. “‘I have to go over to where he has his headquarters for a last-minute briefing,” he told the sergeant. “It’s a little over an hour, yet, so everybody might as well take it easy till then. Pll be along in a few minutes.” EComichooksnico im