Lieutenant Read Free Page B

regardless.
    So Graves Registration was easy duty, really. Many hard-working men in the fleet who were risking their lives every day would probably have envied me. Sergeant Keldron had spent most of the last several years trying to get transferred to an honor guard, and he’d only made it because two wars back he’d won a Royal Citation for almost single-handedly repulsing an Imperial attack during the legendary siege of Firebase Newton on Mattabon Three. That’d been almost thirty years ago, and it was difficult indeed to find even a trace of the brash young hero in the corpulent, alcoholic sergeant of today. “He’s coasted through his entire career on the strength of that one incident,” my new CO explained to me on the day I took over the squad. “No one’s dared dress him down since, because you just don’t do that to a bonafide hero.” He glanced at the little ribbon on my blouse that indicated I’d won the Sword of Orion, and looked away. “A lot of our best men go to seed in very similar ways, and most of them seem to end up here. Sergeant Keldron only has sixty days or so left to serve, Middy. He keeps his uniform neat and shows up on time. Don’t press him, for the sake of the great thing he did genuinely once achieve. That’s an order, son.”
    And so it was with the rest of the men of my little detail. Corporal Sam Geisler, the bugler, was mentally deficient. He’d just barely passed the Corps entry tests at a time when the marines had been so desperate for men they’d take practically anyone. He too was near retirement after a lifetime spent shining shoes and cleaning weapons and digging latrines for reasons that lay eternally just beyond his comprehension. The other men helped him along, as they always had, or he couldn’t have functioned at all. Nor could he play a bugle note to save his life; his instrument was equipped with a gadget that played a slightly-imperfect version of ‘Taps’ upon the push of a button, while he puffed his cheeks and pretended. To my knowledge none of the bereaved had ever tumbled to it. It was standard practice, real buglers being as scarce as they were.
    The rest of the honor guard was all the same—misfits and screwups one and all, though more of the to-be-pitied type than scoundrels. Private Madsen was continually in and out of the mental hospital, and had been ever since watching the rest of his platoon being burned alive by an Imperial flamethrower. Parts of Corporal Stuart’s brain had been so badly damaged in a training accident that sometimes he was unable to speak aloud for minutes at a time. No one suffering from such a handicap could ever be used in combat, but his father had died winning a Sword of Orion of his own and the corporal wanted to remain in the corps worse than anything, even though he was entitled to a pension equivalent to his full pay. He could march, present arms and salute satisfactorily, so why shouldn’t he serve on an honor guard? My men were all like that, every last one of them—has-beens or never-weres with nothing in their futures but a long slow decline and someday an honor-guard of their own to fire a few blanks as they were lowered into the ground.  It was downright depressing, it was.
    But then again, this was Graves Registration. Depression was our leading occupational hazard.
    Because there were so few officers in our training program at any one time, no attempt was made hold formal classes. Instead Commander Pollard handed me a boxful of databooks and told me to study them in my spare time—he’d be glad to help me if I had any questions. And I must admit that they were surprisingly interesting! I’d never really thought much about it, but Graves Registration units by their very nature did a lot more than just bury the dead, maintain cemeteries, and console the living. Someone had to police the battlefields once all the fighting was done, and the cleanup process involved far more than just removing the corpses. Fresh