Chapter 1

The base was really not one of those isolated military posts that most soldiers described as “the pits of hell”. In fact, other than the occasional alert for random probes by mountain bandits or anti-government elements, the place was fairly habitable and for that reason, the defense department in its infinite wisdom decided it was suitable for dependent assignment in the status of “accompanied” for all officers and a few selected high-ranking non-coms with nubile spouses.

Since I was only a “wet behind the ears” raw recruit, I was informed I was with all the other unlucky slobs denied female companionship for the next eighteen months. It was that period of time that still had virtually no female members in the military ranks and those that were there were kept in rear areas like hospitals or headquarters for jobs that were distinctly better suited to the feminine gender. Nobody seemed to question that easily accepted fact especially not any female with enough common sense to appreciate the wisdom of making trigger-pulling man’s work.

I cannot say with precise accuracy the exact figures on the base make-up of assigned personnel, but it seems safe to say that we had about three hundred enlisted swine and about two dozen officers of various ranks with the highest being the Colonel. The Colonel stayed mostly inside his quarters because he was rumored to have some sort of allergy to the air in the foothills where the all but forgotten base had been established after a short war that placed the United States in a position of “nation-building” temporary responsibility.

I hadn’t been involved in the actual fighting in the combat era.

Most of the older enlisted men had been in-country for that brief period of time and they didn’t talk about it much because the consensus of opinion was that it was a chaotic muck-up of gigantic disaster. The civilian populace had suffered huge losses mostly from poorly selected targeting planning and the rebels had simply melted away into the hills with no stomach for conventional warfare that put them at a distinct disadvantage against our overwhelming force.

Roughly half of the officers had elected to bring their spouses and minor dependents with them on the assignment because the extended length of assignment was only two years in an “accompanied” role. The added perks of compensation were an inducement to have their female partners available for nocturnal duty for the entire period of seven hundred and thirty nights.

Those dozen spouses along with a handful of teenaged female dependent offspring and about ten senior enlisted men’s spouses made up the full contingent of the other gender on the almost all male base. With a disparity of gender that registered 329 males and 27 females assigned to the base, it made the assigned females a bit nervous with the uneven playing field. One could say that the situation was mitigated by the fifty-fifty split of native population demographics, but the simple fact was that “fraternization” was specifically forbidden by penalty of court martial and the culture of the local populace was such that even the thought of such contact was a basis for a severe beating that would include a public flogging of a half nude female. Needless to say, none of the indignant female populace had any inclination to test the resolve of the village elders just to get their ashes hauled in the middle of the night.

I had been assigned the collateral duty of transporting the minor children to the improvised base school located outside the walls of the fortified position. The “school” was approved by the inspector general as appropriate for all dependents and even one or two of the younger enlisted members went there to study for their high school GED testing determined to be the new standard for any enlistee. A number of recruits had been accepted into service without benefit of minimal education because it was woefully hard to find warm bodies willing to risk getting their heads blown off and precious little thanks for their sacrifice.

The little mini-bus barely held the students and I as the “guard” and it was extremely fortunate that the journey was only a matter of a few kilometers and not a longer distance over the rough road. I was forced to sit on the stair with a poncho as my padding and found the position most rewarding because I had unfettered viewing of more than one pair of female legs that generally ended in youthful cotton panties of various colors and designs.

A pair of yellow and black “smiley face” panties stared me in the face only inches from my inquiring nose and I looked up into the eyes of Heidi, the Major’s daughter. She was truly the “apple” of his eye and they were particularly close despite the generational gap in their ages. The Major’s wife was also quite the looker with her long blonde hair and her heart-shaped backside that she had no sense of shyness about displaying for male visual delight at all times. I suspected she had a fetish for assuming poses that accentuated her posterior excellence and would often wear skimpy attire just to reveal her curves.

His wife’s name was Renata and she came from some small town in Germany that specialized in the making of clocks. Her husband had a fine collection of clocks and he insisted she keep them all fine-tuned to the exact time and looked after their accuracy with dedicated sense of duty.

I had spoken to the daughter on almost a daily basis now for the past two months and she had confided in me that the Major took a dim view of any discrepancy with his clocks and that when his wife Renata failed in her duties to keep the clocks ticking perfectly, he would administer a “correction” to her right in front of the daughter to teach her how important it was to follow all orders. The girl would hold my arm with both hands as she described how her poor mother had to bare her bottom for the correction and count each stroke with precise intelligible words and the proper sense of contrition for her shameful faults.

Heidi’s tightly clenched fingers around my arm caused me to wonder if she would grasp my shaft in the same manner with that firm control that German girl’s seemed to have with regard to handling private parts when there were no witnesses to their guilty behavior.