Chapter 1

Brian Thackery was a normal kid who graduated High School in about the middle of his class. He wasn't a sports star, he didn't have a magnificent singing voice, he couldn't bring himself to speak in public and he looked as normal as any other boy in his late teens.

But, Brian Thackery had just done something momentous. And what he'd done would change not only his own life, but the lives of a large number of other people, some of whom he didn't even know yet.

It was May of 1990, and Brian Thackery was so excited he was about to pee his pants. He left the Military Examination and Processing Station (MEPS), having just joined the United States Army. He'd passed the physical and taken the oath of enlistment, along with sixty-five other young men and women. He was due to report to Basic Training in only a month, and after that he'd go to something called Advanced Individual Training, which they called A.I.T.

All that was exciting, but the MOST exciting part was when he'd gone into the big computer room to find out what job he'd be trained in. The guy at the computer asked him some questions, typed in a query, turned around and said: "Ever thought about being an MP?"

Not only had Brian never thought about it, the only image he could come up with in his mind of an MP was a big scary looking bruiser he'd seen in an episode of MASH one time. Everybody had been afraid of that guy.

Hmmmmmmm.

Now, as he walked out of the building, on his way back home, in his shirt pocket was a piece of paper that said he'd be trained in MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) 95B, which meant ... Military Police. He was still numb. He was going to be a cop!

And not only was he going to be an MP, the school for that was right down the road from his house in good old Anniston, Alabama! He couldn't wait to get home and tell his family.

Brian's family consisted of his two sisters, Liz and Patty, who were twins and a year younger than he was, his mother, Nancy, and his father, Tom. His family may as well have included his Aunt Jill, who lived two houses away, and her daughter Beth, who was his age, but was still a Senior. She should have graduated with him, but had missed a year of school because she'd had mono, and there had been complications. She'd almost died. But she was healthy now and had regained that special healthy glow he'd always thought made her good looking.

His Uncle Bob, who he'd never actually known, had died just before Beth was born. Aunt Jill blamed his death on Agent Orange, from when Uncle Bob was a Navy SEAL in Vietnam. He was a lot older than Aunt Jill when they got married. Brian didn't know much more than that. They didn't talk about Uncle Bob much because it was too sad.

When he got home supper was in full swing. Aunt Jill and Beth were there, which was pretty much normal.

Supper at the Thackery house was a fairly noisy proposition any time, and with two additional "talkity wimmen" as his father liked to say, it was downright loud.

It got positively quiet though, when he slammed the screen door and swaggered into the kitchen. They all knew where he had been.

That he was joining the Army was a favorite topic of "conversation" in the house. Aunt Jill ranted and railed that he had no business going off on a "dang fool adventure" when he was the "last remaining seed of the Thackery line". She was his mother's sister, but she had adopted the Thackery clan as if born into it.

Everybody knew that talk about Brian joining the Army brought back painful memories of Jill's husband.

Brian's sisters, having been warned throughout their early teens to "keep shy of those Fort McClellan boys", meaning the soldiers who trained at the post not far from their house, thought the idea that their brother was going to be a soldier was just gross.

But his parents were just about busting with pride. And, really, that was all that mattered to him.

His father was the first to speak. "Well? How'd it go? What did you get? Infantry? Armor?" Tom had a few friends who worked at Ft McClellan and had learned some of the language over the years.

"You", drawled Brian, "are looking at a brand new 95 Bravo!"

His father knew what that meant. Most of Ft McClellan was reserved for the training of the MP Corps. "You have GOT to be shitting me." he grumbled. Like most Annistonians, he loved the money that those soldiers brought to town, but he shuddered at the thought of all those horny seventeen and eighteen year old boys out on the streets ... the same streets as his two virginal - and lovely - daughters.

"What's a ninety-five bravo?" asked Beth, who'd had a crush on her cousin for years.

Brian pushed out his chest. "MP" he said proudly.

"What's an MP?" said Beth, not realizing she was staring cow-eyed at her handsome cousin.

Everybody at the table turned and stared at her. Everybody in Anniston knew what an MP was. The whole town was flooded with them. Beth, however, was the stereotypical blond, beautiful, fun to be around, and just a little ditzy. She knew there was an Army post in town, but that's about all.

Patty piped up. "It means Military Penis, Beth" she said in a completely normal voice.

Bedlam ensued, and it almost fractured supper. Nancy, ever the southern matriarch, sent Patty to her room saying "and you can leave that plate right where it is little missy". Then, even though Beth was bright red in the face, supper went on. Brian sat down at his sister's now empty place and began to finish her supper.

Nancy watched her handsome son eating and sighed. An MP! Of all things ... a skirt chasing MP!

Every female in town had been hit on by a soldier from the fort at one time or another. Jill was approached with great regularity, as she had decided not to wear her ring any more because it caused her to "remember". She worked at the "Super Trooper" which was a place that sold uniform items, accessories and accouterments aimed at soldiers in general and MPs in particular.

Of course the reason Jill was the object of so many advances MIGHT have been that, at thirty-four, she was a stone fox. Bob had come back from Nam and had commenced to make up for lost time. He did so with his next door neighbor's daughter, Jill, who was only 16 at the time. When it became obvious, based on her swelling belly, that more than just kisses had been exchanged, he married her, only to fall deathly ill a few months later and waste away in a most horrible fashion.

So, at age seventeen, she had been left alone with a baby girl, thankfully quite normal, and Bob's life insurance and some other benefits. She worked because she didn't want to sit home bored. She ran to keep in shape, and it worked. She was a bouncy, vivacious woman, with somewhat smallish breasts, but loads of thick honey blond hair and a classic look about her that some men might have characterized as "Ripe Southern Woman."

Nancy was five years older than her sister, and had already been gone and married when Jill met Bob. And Nancy had been pregnant with Brian. She sometimes wondered if that was why Jill had been so careless as to get with child ... out of envy. Now, almost forty, even Nancy got regular slow, up and down stares from the uniformed men she saw on the streets, or at the market. Until now it had been flattering. But now her own SON was going to be one of those men!

Still, she was tickled, knowing that even though he wouldn't be allowed to come home much at first, she'd get to see him a whole lot more than if he'd shipped off to some other state for his training.

It being a more or less celebratory atmosphere, they had an impromptu party. Beth asked for and received permission to spend the night with the twins and the three girls disappeared into their room while the adults sat and talked about things in general.

Brian, for the first time, was included in the adult ritual of sipping whiskey (Rebel Yell brand, of course) and shooting the bull.

In the girls bedroom, there was a different ritual going on. The talk there was about boys, and what boys liked to do, especially with girls, and just how far you should allow a boy to go, and what that felt like. Soon the room smelled faintly of pussy, as three teenage girls got excited dreaming about what they'd LIKE to do with a boy.

The first sixteen weeks flew by for Brian. He was in pretty good shape when he got to Basic, and though they pushed him physically, his body adapted. His chest thickened from pushups, his stomach flattened from sit-ups, and his wind improved from running. He found he was an expert shot with a rifle, and he won top honors in his company for marksmanship, able to shoot as well as his Drill Sergeants. He was even better with the 9mm Beretta pistol they handed him when he went to the pistol range. Though the weapon was loose from having been shot ten or fifteen thousand times already, he had an unerring sense of when to squeeze the trigger, and where the bullet would hit. When they used man sized silhouettes he shot the center of the target to pieces.

There began to be rumors. Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait, and the Commander in Chief was PISSED about it. The Army was going to be sending troops, and they'd need a lot of MPs.

In their 14th week Brian got a pass and went home.

All the talk there was of Kuwait.

"Do you think you'll have to go?" asked his mother worriedly.

"Nobody knows, mom" he said. There are rumors that they'll leave us together as a Company and go that way. There are rumors we'll all be sent wherever, and some of those units will go and some won't. There are rumors that, by the time we get out of AIT it will all be over. Nobody knows."

Two weeks later, they all attended graduation. It was the first time the women in the family had actually seen any soldiers doing anything other than shopping in stores, or getting something to eat. As they watched the handsome young men marching and standing at attention and going through the rituals associated with graduation, every one of them felt a tingle somewhere behind her belly button. Beth in particular knew she'd have to change her panties when she got home, as she watched Brian walk across the stage to receive his certificate and new orders. He was so handsome, and tall, and his shoulders were so broad. She daydreamed about running her hands over his chest muscles as an officer announced his name and that he was going to be assigned to the 501st MP Company in some town in Germany.

His mother turned to her husband. "Germany! That's good, isn't it? I mean that's not Kuwait."