CHAPTER


FIFTEEN

Logistics, Marine OTC, Arsenault

The academic standards required to graduate from OTC were strict. If any candidate fell below 75 on any written examination in any course, remedial coaching was required; to miss that mark twice meant going on probation; a third failure resulted in the candidate’s immediate expulsion.

The most difficult course for Jak Daly was called “Logistical Support in the Company and Battalion Area of Operations.” It was taught by a civilian, a Dr. Honsue Mitzikawa. Dr. Mitzikawa always dressed in a rumpled suit, squinted at the class as if he suffered from uncorrected nearsightedness, and spoke in a high, reedy voice that from the first moment of the class got on everyone’s nerves. Plus, the subjects he taught were excruciatingly boring. They included, as he told them on that first day, but were not at all limited to, such arcane endeavors as rationing, water purification methods and procedures, transportation requirements, ammunition resupply—Daly looked forward to that—energy resourcing, and something Mitzikawa called “Hand Receipts and Statements of Charges: Conducting Inventories in a Hostile Environment.”

But by the end of that first day of class, Daly had begun to form a somewhat more positive view of the skinny civilian instructor. At one point during Mitzikawa’s introduction he asked Daly a question. Referring to his class roster and seating arrangement, he ran a bony finger down the chart and, as luck would have it, rested the digit right smack on Daly’s name.

“Candidate Daly.” Mitzikawa squinted in Daly’s general direction. “Can you give us the formula for calculating the time gap in a convoy of two serials with two march units each with the gap between units as five minutes and the gap between serials as ten minutes? Quickly, quickly now, we’re all waiting.”

Daly thought quickly. “I don’t know, sir.”

“Don’t call me ‘sir,’ Candidate Daly!” Mitzikawa screeched. “I work for a living!” Total silence enveloped the class as they stared back at Dr. Mitzikawa in unbelieving horror, as if he had just uttered an unforgivable blasphemy. Feigning utter amazement, he asked, “You never heard that expression before?” Sure, they’d all heard the expression before, but no one ever expected to hear it from the lips of a faculty member, in Officer Training College! Then someone laughed. “I learned that in the army,” Mitzikawa admitted. “I was a professional private first-class. Then I got tired of hauling boxes and became an officer, a logistician, so I could kick the boxes instead. You’ve heard the expression, haven’t you? ‘Yesterday I could not even spell logistician. Today I are one’? Well, that’s me, ladies and gentlemen! Then I got a real job: teaching at this charm school. Okay.

“Mr. Daly, we’ll get back to figuring time gaps in convoys later in this course, and believe me, by the time we’re done, you’ll all be figuring them in your sleep—that is, when you aren’t having nightmares of old Rumple Stiltskein making you do push-ups all over the grinder.” He smiled, revealing crooked teeth, and the entire class burst into raucous laughter.

Mitzikawa stood grinning idiotically for a few seconds, then held up his hands for silence. “Keep it down, keep it down! If the commandant thinks you’re actually enjoying this course, he’ll have you all committed.” Another big grin. “But, children, let me tell you at the beginning here, there are only four rules of military logistics that you should know. Know them and you can run any logistical operation. Are you ready? Write these down if you can’t remember them.

“One. Fair Wear and Tear. You can write off almost anything due to FWT. Well, don’t try it with a Dragon, but anything you can wear or carry can be turned in or junked due to Fair Wear and Tear. Got that?

“Two. Combat Loss. Ah”—he held up a bony forefinger—“that’s how you write off a Dragon, an artillery tube, even your convoy of two serials, whatever in the hell they are!

“Three! Oh, you’ll love this one, my children.” Mitzikawa virtually beamed with pleasure. “RFM for short: Read the Fucking Manual! Yes! Nobody can remember all the crap he’s going to learn in this course, but remember, everything is in the Marine Corps Orders, the manuals, the regulations, the instructions, the whatevers. You want distance, rate, and time calculations—are you listening Candidate Daly?—turn to Field Manual 55-15, SSIC 04000, ‘Transportation Reference Data,’ Chapter One, and voilà! There you have it!”

“But, Dr. Mitzikawa!” One of the students raised his hand. He’d been taking notes on his data pad and had just used it to access the library’s online catalog. “That’s an army publication!”

“What?” Mitzikawa came back to earth suddenly. He glared at the student and puffed out his cheeks. “Of course it’s an army field manual, you cretin! The army figured all this business out years and years ago, back about the time Napoléon was hauling his guns around behind horses! The army writes, the Marine Corps fights! You don’t expect the Navy Department to waste its money writing its own goddamned manuals when the army’s already done that, do you?” He shook his head as if dealing with a recalcitrant idiot. “Silence in this classroom!” he shrieked. “Not one more syllable from anyone. We are now going to have a logistician’s epiphany!”

Then Dr. Mitzikawa began to dance behind the podium, hyping himself up to reveal “Honsue’s Fourth Secret of the Logistician’s Code.” He extended both arms over his head, revealing big sweat stains under his armpits. “Ah, ah, ah!” he intoned, as if he were reciting a mantra, looking at the ceiling, asking God Himself for guidance. “Here it is! Remember this rule, the Golden Rule of Box Kickers, and you can forget the other three! This rule is the definitive solution to any problem an S4 staff officer may encounter in a long career!” There now ensued a long, long pause as Mitzikawa stood there, arms raised, eyes closed tight, a beatific smile on his face. And then:

“FOURRRRRRR! When in doubt, ASK YOUR SERGEANT!” Dr. Honsue Mitzikawa shrieked. “Class dismissed!”

Later, as they were leaving class, Ubrik sidled up to Daly and asked, “Well, what do you think of this guy, Jak?”

Daly shrugged. “He’s frigging crazy as a kwangduk on a hot mess kit, Manny. But what the hell, nobody’s perfect.”

Candidate Quarters, Marine OTC

Daly and Ubrik sat in their room going over the day’s logistics class lesson, the dreaded distance, rate, and time calculations.

“Jak, let’s take a break, go down to the gedunk, and get us some junk food, the kind of crap that’ll make us into fatassed staff officers,” Ubrik said, laughing.

“Ah, I don’t know, Manny. I’ve got to get this stuff figured out. Besides”—he shrugged—“I was just thinking about that lance corporal, you remember, Beverly Nasaw. For some reason all this, this”—he gestured at his computer screen, which was displaying chapter 1 of FM 55-15, “put me in mind of an early death.”

Ubrik laughed. “Oh, Beverly, yes, yes, tragic accident.” something in the way Ubrik spoke made Daly wince. He had the ridiculous impression that Ubrik, of all people, had been a bit jealous of Daly’s budding relationship with the woman.

“I mean, Manny,” Daly went on, “hell, I can sight in a maser rifle at a hundred meters in the dark! Do a forced march over the mountains with a whole army after my ass—”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” Ubrik responded with feeling. “Hadn’t been for you, Jak, and I’d never have made it through zero month!” He patted his friend gently on the shoulder.

“But this stuff, Manny…” Daly gestured helplessly at his console.

“All right, Jak, here’s how it’s done. You have a column of two serials with two march units each and the gap between march units is five minutes and the gap between serials is ten minutes. Then: [(number of march units minus one) times march unit time gap] plus [(number of serials minus one) times (serial time gap minus march unit time gap)]. There it is, or expressed like this:

“Time gaps = [(4-1) × 5] + [(2-1) × 5] = [3 × 5] + [1 × 5] = 15 + 5 = 20 minutes!”

“But what the hell does it all mean?”

“Hey, Jak, who gives a damn? This isn’t a course in teleology! This is the Marine Corps, we’re only interested in getting from point A to point B so we can blow up point B! Remember the formulas! That’s all you need to do to pass the exam. If this ever comes up again in real life, do what old Mitzikawa said, look it up or ask your S4 sergeant.”

“Manny, you’re a frigging genius when it comes to this stuff,” Daly said.

“Naw, formulas just come naturally to me, Jak-O. All right, let’s move on to calculating road space for a convoy of eighty-seven vehicles. You divide the number of vehicles by their density plus time gaps and time rate divided by sixty minutes. Density is 8.5 vehicles per kilometer; the rate is fifty kilometers in an hour; and the time gaps are equal to twenty, so:

“Road space per klick…”

“Ah, the hell with it, Manny, let’s go to the gedunk!”

Logistics, Marine OTC

On the final exam in transportation reference data, Daly scored an impressive 76. In fact, much to his amazement, he passed all the exams, even the pop quizzes used to surprise the students at the beginning of classes. Months later, just before graduation, Daly approached Dr. Mitzikawa, who had by then become almost a friend of the beleaguered candidates, and asked:

“Dr. Mitzikawa, on the first day of class you told us you’d be giving us a lecture on something you called ‘Hand Receipts and Statements of Charges: Conducting Inventories in a Hostile Environment,’ but we have never had this lecture and the course is almost over now.”

Mitzikawa gave Daly a lopsided grin. “Jak, nobody ever fails my course. You and I both know half to three-quarters of the stuff I teach you in this course you will never need to use again. But the Marine Corps figures all its officers should be exposed to this material, so you have some idea of what the experts have to deal with. ‘Hand Receipts and Statements of Charges’? Jak, were I to load you up with nonsense like that, they’d commit me! I just threw that in there to screw over your minds. Like I told you on the first day of class, Read the—”

“—Fucking Manual.”

“Or?”

“Ask your sergeant.”

“Candidate Daly, you ever read Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter?”

“Can’t say as I have, Doctor.”

“Pity. Well, with those answers you just gave me, by the time this course is over, you may just have earned your own ‘scarlet letter,’ a great big ‘A.’”