Missile Rats by Bevill C.L

Author:Bevill, C.L.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 1 us army, 2 the 80s, 3 missiles, 4 black humor
Publisher: C.L. Bevill

Chapter Eleven –

The first sergeant, Alvin Breedlove, was dead. Cold and dead. Stinky and cold and dead. I didn’t even have to tell Captain Roy because Private Plessy screamed when she went in to give some papers to Top to sign and apparently also discovered that he had croaked. Consequently, Captain Roy rushed out of his office and tripped over a buffer that Stone had left there, cracking his elbow on the bare floor. It was his belief, later imparted to Lieutenant Faircloth who imparted it to John Brown who imparted it to no less than ten other individuals including myself, that the Soviets had come to take the Det out and destroy the nukes, perhaps tying the American soldiers’ dead bodies onto the missiles before the actual destruction as an object lesson. Then he’d stuck his head into Top’s office and gazed dumbfounded at Plessy, who’d covered her mouth with one hand and pointed at the corpse sitting at the desk with the other.

Top had died of a heart attack brought on by complications stemming from an enlarged liver, bronchial asthma, shingles, jungle rot of the left foot, partial poliomyelitic paralysis of the right arm, lichen primus, chronic dyspepsia, morbid constipation, and pericarditic myocardial arrhythmia. At least those incorporated most of the rumors. There was another few that involved the physical effects of shock from finding Jimmy Hoffa’s body in a missile silo and something about a prostitute that I completely discounted. I think it was a simple heart attack brought on by the heart finally saying, “I have had enough of this!”

To a lesser degree of interest Chief Tommy Lacobee won the pot. He had all four weeks of February, and two in March. He got away with about $300. There were some pissed off feelings about it. I had the third week in March, two in July, and two in September.

We attended a memorial service, driving up to Group headquarters in Bremen to do so. We also had to put on our class ‘A’s with all the bells and whistles. Shined our brass, spit on our patent-leather, low quarters, tied our black ties carefully, combed our hair down the middles. Only a few lucky souls got to stay behind to tend to the farm and animals, ensuring that the Indians didn’t overrun the homestead. The rest of us convoyed up to Bremen, only a couple hundred miles away, and shuffled unanimatedly into an auditorium. In the front was a stand with a large wreath of flowers outlined in black ribbon. A large picture of Top Breedlove, as he looked in far better days and days many years previous, stood next to the flowers on an easel. In attendance were the oldest group of NCOs I’d ever seen assembled in one place. Sergeant majors, command sergeant majors, first sergeants, master sergeants, sergeants first class. Since I had never known Top Breedlove very well I assumed these people were his friends. Or people who he’d screwed on his way to being a first sergeant and who had come to figuratively dance on his grave.

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