But Jelly didn't have to maintain discipline among privates because he maintained discipline among his non-coms and expected them to do likewise. My squad leader, when I first joined, was "Red" Greene. After a couple of drops, when I knew how good it was to be a Roughneck, I got to feeling gay and a bit too big for my clothes—and talked back to Red. He didn't report me to Jelly; he just took me back to the washroom and gave me a medium set of lumps, and we got to be pretty good friends. In fact, he recommended me for lance, later on.
Actually we didn't know whether the crew members slept in their clothes or not; we kept to our part of the ship and the Navy men kept to theirs, because they were made to feel unwelcome if they showed up in our country other than on duty—after all, one has social standards one must maintain, mustn't one? The Lieutenant had his stateroom in male officers' country, a Navy part of the ship, but we never went there, either, except on duty and rarely. We did go forward for guard duty, because the Rodger Young was a mixed ship, female captain and pilot officers, some female Navy ratings; forward of bulkhead thirty was ladies' country -- and two armed M. I. day and night stood guard at the one door cutting it. (At battle stations that door, like all other gastight doors, was secured; nobody missed a drop.)
Officers were privileged to go forward of bulkhead thirty on duty and all officers, including the Lieutenant, ate in a mixed mess just beyond it. But they didn't tarry there; they ate and got out. Maybe other corvette transports were run differently, but that was the way the Rodger Young was run—both the Lieutenant and Captain Deladrier wanted a taut ship and got it.
Nevertheless guard duty was a privilege. It was a rest to stand beside that door, arms folded, feet spread, doping off and thinking about nothing... but always warmly aware that any moment you might see a feminine creature even though you were not privileged to speak to her other than on duty. Once I was called all the way into the Skipper's office and she spoke to me—she looked right at me and said, "Take this to the Chief Engineer, please."
My daily shipside job, aside from cleaning, was servicing electronic equipment under the close supervision of "Padre" Migliaccio, the section leader of the first section, exactly as I used to work under Carl's eye. Drops didn't happen too often and everybody worked every day. If a man didn't have any other talent he could always scrub bulkheads; nothing was ever quite clean enough to suit Sergeant Jelal. We followed the M. I. rule; everybody fights, everybody works. Our first cook was Johnson, the second section's sergeant, a big friendly boy from Georgia (the one in the western hemisphere, not the other one) and a very talented chef. He wheedled pretty well, too; he liked to eat between meals himself and saw no reason why other people shouldn't.
With the Padre leading one section and the cook leading the other, we were well taken care of, body and soul—but suppose one of them bought it? Which one would you pick? A nice point that we never tried to settle but could always discuss.
The Rodger Young kept busy and we made a number of drops, all different. Every drop has to be different so that they never can figure out a pattern on you. But no more pitched battles; we operated alone, patrolling, harrying, and raiding. The truth was that the Terran Federation was not then able to mount a large battle; the foul-up with Operation Bughouse had cost too many ships, ‘way too many trained men. It was necessary to take time to heal up, train more men.
In the meantime, small fast ships, among them the Rodger Young and other corvette transports, tried to be everywhere at once, keeping the enemy off balance, hurting him and running. We suffered casualties and filled our holes when we returned to Sanctuary for more capsules. I still got the shakes every drop, but actual drops didn't happen too often nor were we ever down long—and between times there were days and days of shipboard life among the Roughnecks.
It was the happiest period of my life although I was never quite consciously aware of it—I did my full share of beefing just as everybody else did, and enjoyed that, too.
We weren't really hurt until the Lieutenant bought it.
I guess that was the worst time in all my life. I was already in bad shape for a personal reason: My mother had been in Buenos Aires when the Bugs smeared it.
