After a long day of drill and practice, I was about ready to kill the whole lot of them myself. The ranks, sargents and junior officers, the whole bloody lot of them to the man! In fact, they were hardly men, more like a lot of stupid animals! I'd known dogs better trained than these soldiers. Discipline was nothing more than a word to them. I was no stranger to the soldiering pastime of bitching yet the so-called 'men' of Kook Company excelled in that field at the detriment of all others. The unending complaints and general half-assedness were driving me up the wall! Extreme measures were in order and I made use of the full power of my new rank to administer the most draconian punishments I could in hopes of restoring said order. I had the sargents carry whips, issued every corporal a nightstick with unlimited authority to use it and upon the junior ranks I repeated a single word like a mantra. Obey. Obey the chain of command. Obey the orders you receive. Obey the coalition charter of civilized warfare. Obey the conventions of surrender and dignities of prisoners. Obey. Obey. Obey! These men were the dumbest, most weak-willed examples of the species I'd ever encountered and I was expected to turn them into useful soldiers while danger lurked just over the horizon.

After a week, I was forced to retract my earlier statement. I now knew with absolute certainty that there could be good leaders irrespective of the quality of their men. The soldiers of Kook Company were unworthy of the uniform. I could not fathom why such pathetic men would ever volunteer for service in the first place, let alone keep up this pathetic pretense of honoring their duties. No amount of punishment or remedial drill or inspiring rhetoric was going to transform this armed mob into a company of soldiers. I tried everything and to my despair, nothing worked.

To a man they hated my guts but it wasn't enough for them to spite me. I pushed them to their limits and still they remained a laggardly bumbling lot, stumbling like zombies at all hours of the day. I had to have the corporals take up sentry during the nights, as much to watch for anyone slipping a grenade into my tent as to watch for deserters vanishing with the night. Much to my surprise, neither were even attempted. The men of Kook Company wouldn't take any action of their own and it boggled the mind why. The discipline within the company was abysmal, morale untenable and with every passing day I felt the wedge between my command and I growing deeper.

It was around the point when I was considering summary executions or meekly surrendering my command altogether that I discovered what I suspected to be the heart of the cancer. Within Captain Brunell's standing orders, there was a persistent resupply of whiskey rations for 'troop morale' and flats of beer listed as 'religious dietary supplements'. I tabulated the figures in short order and discovered that my new company could have been drinking an entire pub dry every other day. I had assumed the men were imbeciles only to discover they were all drunks! Though the two were not mutually exclusive…

I struck out the resupply request and personally ran my new orders to the brigade's logistics center— I couldn't trust one of the company men not to 'lose' the orders in transit. I couldn't for the life of me fathom how any sane commander would authorize three liters of beer per troop per day as a 'dietary supplement' while expecting his men to proficiently handle their various arms. In that sense, these men were practically victims to the dangerous ineptitude of their former commanding officer. Soldiers could not afford the luxury of being pampered! It took hard conditions to forge hardened men; men who could brave the crucible of combat and emerge not as charred slag but as heroes. If these men couldn't pretend to be soldiers without being blind stinking drunk to do it, how could anyone expect them to protect their homes or even themselves in the coming days?

With the supply cut off, all that remained was to ensure my insubordinate troops didn't have a stockpile held in reserve. I was going to excise this cancer tonight! I snuck back into the company lines, observing the posted sentries long enough to see several take a nip from flasks. In hindsight, addressing such drunkenness on duty should have been remedied by squad sargents long before it had become endemic. It seemed probable that the company's sargents were part of the problem and so I steered myself towards their tent, moving undetected and unchallenged through our camp. Had I been an enemy agent, these men would have went to sleep drunk and never woke again. How had none of them seen the danger in such reckless behavior?

I slipped into the sargent's tent and felt a gnawing unease upon learning I'd been correct. Of the company's twenty sargents, there were seventeen treating their tent as if it were their personal drinking lounge. I saw bottles of whiskey and rum padded between wads of clothing in open footlockers. A thick tower of crates stamped with [DIETARY - RELIGIOUS] dominated the tent's far wall and I could see the wide-necked bottles within arranged by platoon allotment.

"Gentlemen!" I barked, announcing myself. Some had the decency to try hiding their drinks, but not many. "Anyone care to explain their current state?"

"And what state might that be, sir?" One of the bottle-hiders asked.

"Drunkenness."

"We's ain't drunks sir. This is how we always is."

"Exactly my point!" I snapped. "I had mistakenly assumed this company was failing because of a weakness of character— and to an extent I may still be correct on such theory. I have tried to be compassionate for-"

"Compassionate! The fuck you have you Tosser!"

"Who just said that?" I demanded.

Sargent Blot stood from his cot, pointing an accusing bottle at me. He was a beefy man and quite unsightly at present, disheveled in nearly all manners of the word, and it was made so much the worse given his appointment as the senior sargent of the 1st Platoon. He should have been a shining example to his fellow sargents and the ranks beneath them; instead, he was a idol of decadence showing just how far our military had sunk.

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"The fuck you know 'bout compassion? You gave us whips and orders to use them. You gave the 'corps clubs and told 'em to beat on their buddies. You treat us like were fucking mutts! Where's the compassion in that!?"

"Sargent Blot, you are addressing your commanding officer." I stated in a warning growl.

"Right then. Piss off, sir." He sneered before taking a swig from his bottle.

"As it stands right now, I would be well within my rights to have you arrested and brought up on charges for insubordination, among other things."

"You might, you might just at that. Why don't you try that. See how it goes. You arrest me, you'd be 'resting every man in this tent and half the company besides. You arrest every man who's broke your precious rules, and there won't be a soldier left in this camp come dawn."

I was sorely tempted to do just that. These men had swore an oath to defend their home and state only to muddle out the days blind stinking drunk. It was disgraceful and by rights I should have the lot of them shot to make an example of such cretinous behavior. Yet there was more truth behind Sgt Blot's words than I cared for. Punishing a single bad apple might steer the remainder in a more righteous direction but this was the lion's share of a company, nearly a hundred men! If they could avoid the coming battle with a light punishment, others would seek to emulate the feat; if a more severe punishment was issued it would devastate the brigade's already tenuous morale. Would that I could pass the decision to someone else, but like it or not these were my men now and if they were damned then I would be the one to sentence them.

"I won't arrest you," I stated tersely. "But I took an oath when I enlisted and I try to stand by the solemn vow I gave. I'd ask every man here to think on their own reasons. To think on why you became a soldier. For those of you who can't remember or don't care and for those of you who have no intention of living up to the solemn vows they swore, I will accept your resignations right now. For those of you too weak to bear a soldier's burden, I could have you back home with your families in two days. You all volunteered to be here, if you don't want to be a soldier in this militia, a man in my company, then you can leave."

A low round of grumbling considered my offer. All I could do was silently pray that only a few would take me up on it.

"Don't be stupid!" Sargent Blot roared. "This beer might be cheap piss, but there's no shortage of it and it's free. That makes it taste like gold to me. You're not gonna arrest anyone and we're not gonna do your dirty work for you. We're bigger men than you think, sir. So why don't you just turn around, walk on out of here and pretend you ain't seen nothing. If you don't like our company, then you can leave. You can leave, or you can lighten the fuck up! Have a quart with us, that is… unless you're too good to share a drink with your men."

A roar of laughter filled the tent. At first it seemed a joke in poor taste but the stares lingered. They were waiting for my answer. By God, they were serious! They honestly expected my to turn heel and walk away. I would do no such thing!

I strode across the tent, practically marching as I would on parade, and snatched the half-empty bottle from Sgt Blot's fist. He thundered to his feet, fists raised and glaring daggers at me.

I upended the bottle and drained it in five long gulps.

"Ye gods!" I cried. "This is cheap swill. This beer, what is it? Four percent at most? Sargent Blot, you underestimate a gentleman's resilience. Compared to my evening brandy back home, a few hours drinking you all into the dirt is nothing."

A chorus of ooohhhhs and hoots sounded from the tipsy sargents around us. Sgt Blot looked from me to the bottle then back to me. I shook the empty quart.

"Alright, Sir." Blot said at length. "But when you black out, we'll throw you out of this tent to sleep in the mud."

"I accept your terms if you'll match my own." I gracefully riposted. "If there is a single man among you who can out-drink me tonight, then I won't raise a word over this incident. However, should I win this little wager of ours I will tolerate no more drunkenness within the company until we've met the enemy and turned them back."

I slowly spun on the spot, locking eyes with each man around me as I spoke. For the first time since I'd joined this company, I saw the smoldering sparks of pride in their eyes. This was a battle they would fight. They were finally of one mind, unified in purpose. A troop of soldier standing together against their foe. Perhaps there was hope for these men yet.

"You heard the Captain, lads. We'll need some more drinks!"

We battled into the wee hours when dawn was considering the horizon. It was an epic contest of fortitude, willpower and sheer doggedness. None outside the tent knew of the grueling trial underway inside, there would be no heroic retellings of this night, no history book would mention how Kook Company was beleaguered to the brink of collapse. As with all great battles, men began to fall sooner than they hoped yet far beyond the limits of a reasonable man. They were fighting for their convictions and that lent them a fighting spirit that let them push further than they had ever before. In the end it was only those with the fiercest will, those men with a touch of madness that kept them going after their bodies began failing them.

There was four of us left when the beer ran dry. We were beyond words. There was no hope of any of us walking from that tent. I saw in their eyes a kind of respect, the brief compliments paid to ones enemy in the moment before the killing blow falls. Regardless of how our contest ended, I had won these men. Come the dawn, Kook Company would accept me as their own.

The beer was finished yet the liquor remained. Blot poured out some whiskey and raised a toast. I sipped down what I could…

A bugle sounded the morning call directly into my throbbing brain. It was the most grating sound I'd ever heard! The blaring horn wouldn't shut up! I stumbled out to meet the morning muster. The company sargents and I were in much the same state— stumbling and staggering like the freshly dead post-revival. The battalion major gave me a sly wink as he passed in review but said nothing about the deportment of me and my men. Instead, he informed the battalion we would be running ten kilometers for our daily physical training.

To a man, my sargents looked like they would have rather died on the spot. It would be hell. A grueling, uphill battle. I was of much the same opinion however, defeat was not an option. We would fight, and I would lead by example.

As the battalion formed up I made my way to the side of our column and profusely vomited.