Chapter 49: Bachelor Life

The 82^nd is unique in its structure, which is organized around its equally unique readiness system. Alone among all the divisions in the Army, the 82^nd is tasked with being able to send troops anywhere on the planet within twenty-four hours. The average division can take weeks to get ready to move. We do it in hours.

The heart of the division consists of three brigade combat teams; each brigade basically consists of three battalions of parachute infantry plus an Airborne field artillery battalion. Each battalion has three parachute infantry companies plus a battery assigned from the artillery battalion. There are also a variety of other outfits attached, such as engineers, medics, transport, and even a few chaplains who jump in with us. Technically most of these assets, including the artillery, belonged to the division and not the brigade, but that was the way it worked.

The division operates on an eighteen-week cycle, with each of the three brigades somewhere on a six-week element of the cycle. When I arrived, 3 ^rd Brigade was in the six weeks of ready cycle, which was unusual. Normally people transfer in and out during the support cycle. Support is the goof off time when things are relaxed. People take leaves, officers and men transfer in and out, it’s low pressure. It’s like being in the regular army, with regular hours and duties.

After support, you go into a six-week training cycle. This becomes a lot tougher. You are shooting the guns, doing a jump or two, getting stuff ready to go, and working a lot longer hours. Forget about taking leave, but you’ll probably still be able to sleep at home, and you might have to work some weekends.

After training you go to the six-week ready cycle. You are ready to go to war. Forget about leave. Kiss the wife or girlfriend good-bye. Within the brigade, it gets even tougher. During the ready cycle of six weeks, each infantry battalion and its artillery battery are on two-week cycles of readiness. You can go home, but you can’t leave the area, and a lot of the guys stay on the base anyway. During that period, you can’t be more than two hours away from going to war. In theory, when the shit hits the fan, they just want to issue you the ammo and load you on the airplane. You have two hours to get assembled and ready to go. All the equipment, ammo, rations, and whatever are pre-packaged and pre-positioned out at the ramps at all times. The other two battalions aren’t much better, with four- and six-hour readiness periods. There are usually readiness drills and exercises to check to see if we are ready to go.

If the President decides that Lower Slobbovia needs to be taught a lesson, the ready battalion will load their planes and be airborne in two hours. No excuses. The rest of the brigade will be airborne in either four or six hours, and most likely the support elements will be gone inside a day. The training brigade gets moved up to the ready brigade; the support brigade supports this and gets ready to move out itself. Leaves are cancelled and all hell breaks loose. Lower Slobbovia is about to be visited by a shitload of teenagers with guns who just had their weekend plans trashed. Lower Slobbovia will wish they hadn’t been visited!

You can make the cycle your friend, but don’t ever try to buck the cycle. The cycle will always win.

On the other hand, it was very easy to make plans for anything short of war. We had calendars with six-week blocks drawn on them, and you could make plans. For instance, my first week in the battery I discussed my impending nuptials with the captain and was able to tell Marilyn when we could get married. I figured I would need two weeks leave, starting in the middle of the week. The wedding would be on a Saturday, so if I got off duty on a Wednesday before that, I could travel to Utica, do whatever I needed to do on Thursday or Friday, get married, have a week of honeymoon, and then be able to get Marilyn down to Fayetteville by Tuesday after getting back. Since I needed to do this during a support cycle that limited us to a wedding between July 2 and July 30 of this year. If we missed that window, we would have to wait 18 weeks for the cycle to repeat, putting us into November.

I wasn’t all that hopeful. This all relied on Marilyn being organized enough to be able to get this taken care of in six months. Marilyn couldn’t organize a church cake sale, let alone a wedding. The last time we did this, she postponed the wedding from June to September. Furthermore, she had to get used to the idea that the Army wasn’t just going to let me take a weekend off to help. When Maggie got married, Marilyn tried to help and managed to lose, within twenty-four hours, all the lists and spreadsheets she had asked me to print out. Maggie ended up having me run the wedding. I didn’t think it was all that difficult. Pick a date, find a church, find a reception hall, pick a budget. After that, it’s just a matter of money. There are lots of banquet halls around Utica, lots of places to buy a dress, lots of limo companies. Just make a list and get it done!

Marilyn wasn’t pleased by my attitude, nor by the fact that I wouldn’t be able to come up and help. How was I supposed to participate in pre-wedding counseling? I flat out told her I was a thousand miles away, and the last guy on the planet I was going to listen to about getting married was a guy who wasn’t allowed to get married. If her priest required it, she could find another priest. She wanted to know if I was having any of her brothers be in my wedding party; I said I wasn’t even having my own brother in it, so I didn’t see any need to balance things out. She didn’t push that one. I did promise to take some leave during the cycle before the wedding and visit, and we could see the priest then for some of the details.

I managed to get her to set a date of July 9. The night after I got the schedule from the Captain, I had her call her priest and reserve the date. That date, and most of the others in the window were already taken, but not July 2. That was the date we selected.

After running that last Friday morning of January, Captain Harris got a phone call and summoned me into his office. “Buckman, I told battalion about your paper yesterday afternoon, and they booted it to division. You’re to report to the G-2 at division at 1400.”

I stared at the captain for a second. “Sir, it’s just a report on mathematical techniques!”

“Well, I don’t think that you’re in trouble, but you need to go over there and find out. I won’t let them shoot you without a few last words and a cigarette. My word on it!”

“Yes, sir.” Oh, shit, now what! It was just a paper on math! The paper had already been accepted into the Journal of the American Mathematical Society, which I had joined, and which the professor was a long-time member of. Furthermore, they were having their Eastern Seaboard Regional Meeting in February, and the professor was to deliver the lecture during a session on discrete mathematics.

At 1400 I found myself standing at attention in a colonel’s office, while he and some captain quizzed me about the paper. How the hell do you explain discrete mathematics, information loss and entropy, and computer networking to people who never learned what a derivative or an integral was? (Okay, that’s a bit extreme. They all had to take Calculus I, but by now they had all forgotten it.)

“Excuse me, sir, permission to ask a question?”

“Granted.”

“What’s going on, sir? Am I in some sort of trouble? This was my thesis, from before I took the oath,” I asked.

The colonel smiled at this. “You’re not in any trouble, Lieutenant, far from it in fact.”

“Sir?”

“Captain Summers here is from the Public Information Office. We don’t get too many mathematical doctors around here and he wants to talk to you. This comes down from on high, too, so it would behoove you to cooperate.”

“Cooperate, sir? With what?”

“Captain Summers will explain. Dismissed.”

Both the PIO captain and I snapped to attention and saluted, and then left. Captain Summers dragged me back to his office and explained. Nobody minded the paper, and nobody in G-2, Intelligence, had flagged the paper because it was letting loose the nuclear secrets. Instead, it was a human-interest piece for the post newspaper and the Army newspaper, the Army Times, the twenty-two-year-old PhD mathematician in the Airborne artillery.

My first thought was, “You’re kidding me, right?”

No, it got better. Somebody got the bright idea that it was a really good idea for me, in my uniform, to attend the conference in February, in Washington no less, and have pictures of me being mathematical.

“Please, God, tell me you’re kidding!” I reiterated. “I’m just a soldier, for God’s sake!”

My attitude didn’t impress the PIO officer. Astonishingly enough, this joker had actually gone through jump school, just like everybody else in the division. I guess if we ever needed a press release from inside a hot LZ, he would be there to write it for us. He picked up a phone and used his authorization code to order up a long-distance phone call and had me call Professor Rhineburg. These guys really wanted this done! I don’t know if they had somebody sitting in the professor’s office, but he was actually there and not only gave me permission to attend, he wanted me to give the lecture, with him in the audience, and not the other way around. As the Navy says, somebody had greased the ways!

I went back to the battery is a state of shock. I sat down with Captain Harris and explained what had happened. Surprisingly, he wasn’t all that surprised.

“Carl, you’re pretty unusual. You’re a twenty-two-year-old kid who has three degrees in math and jumps out of airplanes. That ain’t exactly normal. Don’t be surprised when somebody notices.”

“Sir, I am about the most boring guy on the planet. I’m just trying to do my job.”

“Well, the Army seems to think your job is going to include doing something with these scientists, so don’t try to fight it. You should have some fun with it.”

“Sir?” Fun? This sounded like a monumental pain in the ass!

“When is this thing?” I gave him the dates of the conference, the last week in February. “And who’s going? Besides you, I mean.”

I shrugged. “No idea. I guess this publicity guy, Captain Summers. Know anything about him?”

“Not a lick. So, you’re going to DC, have some fun. It’s not going against your leave, so take a few days. They want you there, have them lay on a plane or fly you there. Get separate rooms and have some fun. There’s no lectures at night, are there?”

“I wouldn’t imagine so.”

“Lots of time after hours for some wine, women, and song,” he replied.

“Sir, I’m engaged!”

“So, I won’t tell her if you don’t. You’re a paratrooper. Just act like you’re behind enemy lines and stay out of sight. Hell, if you have to, invite her along,” he said with a grin.

I opened my mouth to protest, and then shut it. I hadn’t seen Marilyn very much since graduation, and the juices, so to speak, were backing up. She had flown out to Sill right before going back to school in the fall and that was it. I wasn’t sure where we would be, but I’d spring for the room service! “You think we could?”

“L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace! Now, get lost, I have work to do!”

I thought about what he said. Before the day was over, I contacted the publicity guy and asked him some details about where we would stay (two separate rooms, the Hilton near Dupont Circle) and transportation (he’d see about laying on a flight) and Marilyn (yes, she can come; no, I don’t want to know about her rooming arrangements). That night I called Marilyn to see if she could attend. It would be in the middle of the semester, but a few days in a luxury hotel might sway her mind, especially if I paid for the ticket.

And so it was that on the third Monday in February, after getting laughed at by Captain Harris and Lieutenant Brimley, ignored by Lieutenant Goldstein, and being joked at in the cadence during our morning run, I found myself in an Air Force turboprop flying out of Pope Airfield at Bragg to Andrews in DC, along with my dress uniforms and Captain Summers. He was in the process of writing my acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Mathematics already, and I had to gently let him know that Alfred Nobel’s wife had cheated on him with a mathematician, and as a result Nobel hated mathematicians, and thus there was no Nobel Prize in Mathematics. I’ve heard that this is apocryphal, but it was considered common knowledge in the math business.

Marilyn was flying down at the end of classes and would take a fair bit longer to get to Washington than I did. She would fly to New York and then catch the hourly Eastern shuttle to DC. Fortunately, that landed at National, which is downtown, and not out at Dulles, at least a half hour further away. When she landed, she was to call me and then take a cab in. I would meet her at the door and pay off the cabbie. It was still almost eight in the evening before she got there, looking somewhat bedraggled.

I gave her a big, long kiss, and said, “God, you look great!”

She looked in a mirror in the lobby and ran a hand through her hair. “I most certainly do not!”

“Are you hungry? Want some dinner?”

“Yes, but not until after I clean up. I think that was the dirtiest airplane I’ve ever been on!”

“You should try a Herky Bird flying out of a dirt strip,” I replied.

“I don’t know what that means, and I don’t care. I want a shower.”

“Might I suggest something from room service?” I asked, waggling my eyebrows.

“That sounds delightful, but I’ll probably fall asleep.” I didn’t know if this was a yes or no, so I grabbed her two suitcases (we were only going to be there three nights, but she packed two large suitcases) and carried them to the elevator bank. Once in our room, I asked her about room service again, and showed her the menu, and she picked out a small steak. I insisted she unpack, and then called in our orders (two small steaks, medium rare, asparagus with Hollandaise sauce, bottle of champagne, chilled.) I then cleaned up the bedroom, put her empty suitcases in the back of the closet, and laid out something for her to wear to dinner.

I had the lights dimmed appropriately when Marilyn came back out. She had taken her time, too. I had heard the water shut off, but it had been at least ten or fifteen minutes since then before she appeared. She came out of the bedroom with a demure smile and asked, “I assume you wanted me to wear this?”

My heart stopped when I saw what she had on. I had managed to buy, through a catalog, a couple of nightgowns from Fredericks of Hollywood, and had packed them along. I had seen that she had a pair of white high heeled pumps in the closet, so I had placed them on the bed along with the white gown I had bought her. It was lacy and completely transparent and held together with only a single tie at the waist. She had on the gown and her white pumps and had taken the time to brush out her hair and put on some jewelry and a spray of perfume. She could have given a eunuch an erection!

I swallowed and nodded, not trusting my voice not to crack. “Wow!” I breathed out. I twiddled my fingers in a motion to make her turn around, and Marilyn slowly turned around, modeling the outfit, and more importantly, what was underneath. “The hell with dinner!” I told her and came closer.

“I’m hungry!” she protested, backing up.

“I’ve got an appetizer for you!” I replied, slowly following her.

She laughed and kept moving backwards leading me around the room. I finally had her cornered in the bedroom, and had wrapped my arms around her, feeling that deliciously warm body under that almost nonexistent nightgown, when there was a knock on the door. “Room service!”

“Saved by the bell!” laughed Marilyn, pushing me away.

“Why don’t you let him in?”

“In your dreams!” She pushed me back and scampered off into the bathroom.

I let the waiter in and moved my briefcase and stuff off the table. I had sprung for the upgrade to a small suite, and the waiter set up our dinner out in the front room. After he left, I called Marilyn back in. She peeked around the corner first before coming out completely. “You thought he might still be here?” I asked with a laugh.

“Knowing you?”

“That would have made his day, that’s for sure!”

She giggled and came in and sat down at the table. Her nipples were completely visible through the thin lace and looked quite stiff. “You look gorgeous!” I told her.

“Why do I think I know what’s for dessert?” she replied, smiling at me.

“Do you like the gown?” I asked.

“It’s very pretty. Not very practical,” she answered.

“Would you rather dig out your flannel bunny pajamas?”

“No.” She smiled as she cut a piece of steak off and bit into it. Mine was from a happy cow, so I assumed hers was, too. “Umm, that is so much better than airline food!” She savored the taste and then sipped some champagne. “I brought down a nighty, too,” she admitted.

“Well, you can wear that tomorrow night, then.”

“What if I had brought down my black shoes?” she asked.

“I also bought you a black nightgown, too,” I admitted.

“Well, don’t you have everything planned out? Is it the same as this one, just in black?” Marilyn asked.

I skewered a spear of asparagus and cut it in half, and then ate it. It was from a happy asparagus plant. “You’ll just have to wait and find out. Three nights, three different outfits.”

“You are just too damn efficient! It must be the mathematician in you.”

“Just as long as we aren’t being fruitful and multiplying,” I replied. I raised an eyebrow at that. I had packed a box of condoms just in case Marilyn had gone off the Pill since I had been away. I had warned her not to, since unexpected visits, like this one, might happen. The first time we had been away from each other for months and months, and when we finally got together again on our honeymoon, the Pill hadn’t fully kicked in yet, and Alison came along ten months later.

Marilyn blushed. “No, we won’t be fruitful. I’ve stayed on the Pill. I was debating it but stayed on.”

I grinned at her. “Excellent. I told you there might be surprise visits. I sure never figured on this!”

After dinner, while Marilyn waited at the table, I cleaned off the table onto a tray and set it outside our door. I had dessert right there at the table, with Marilyn sitting on it, her rump pulled forward and her legs pulled up and over my shoulders. It was an excellent finish to our dinner - certainly, Marilyn seemed quite enthusiastic about it! - and when I finished, I had my pants already undone and I simply lifted her down onto my lap and my cock. Marilyn humped her pussy up and down on me, moaning and whining as I fucked up into her, her tits in my face and smacking my cheeks. I pumped several months’ worth up into her tight little pussy when we came together.

We sat there, my semi-stiff cock still inside her cum filled cunt, as our breathing returned to normal. The tie holding her gown together was still tied, but it had slipped enough that both her tits were on display. I kept my arms around her, and we kissed and necked until I started hardening up enough for another round, but Marilyn said, “Let’s go in there and get comfortable.”

“Fine by me.” I helped her to her feet and stripped off my sport shirt and chinos. I had checked in still wearing my fatigues and jump boots from this afternoon, which had raised a few eyebrows. The Hilton gets its fair share of military officers, I was sure, but I was also sure they usually didn’t check in wearing combat boots. I changed after arrival.

Now, naked, I crawled onto the bed next to Marilyn. She had kicked off her shoes, but still had on her gown. I took my time with her, kissing her on the lips and then working my way down her neck and throat, then along her shoulders, and down to her chest and her breasts. By that time, I had untied the tie on her gown and Marilyn was panting and demanding I make love to her again. Maybe my fingers working her scummy slit had something to do with that. Anyway, I took that moment to crawl onto her and slip inside, and we made love until I pumped out another load. Later, after cuddling some, Marilyn slipped off the gown completely and we had another go, quietly and softly. It was so good to see her again.

Tuesday morning my body clock kicked in and I was up long before Marilyn. I slipped into a sweat suit and running shoes, stuffed my key into a pocket, and I was off. I don’t know Washington at all, no more than the average American tourist, anyway, and really had no idea where I was headed. You don’t just run anywhere you like in DC, either. There are some damn nasty neighborhoods in that town. I ran down towards Dupont Circle and then back and continued up Connecticut before turning back. I figured I had gotten somewhere between two and three miles total in. The weather in February was cold, wet, and miserable, but you run a few miles, you warm up. The Hilton had a gym with some Nautilus machines that I pumped some weight on after that. It was almost 0700 when I got back up to our room.

Marilyn was out of bed and in the shower, so I peeled off my sweaty clothes and jumped in with her. My body got clean, but my mind got dirty, so we fooled around for a while in the shower. At one point, as I was slipping into her from behind, Marilyn said, “Is that the phone ringing?”

“Do you really want me to go find out?”

She groaned, and then whispered, “No!” We finished that way under the hot water.

Eventually we left the bathroom, and I saw the phone had a red light lit on it. “I guess there was a call,” I told her. I sat down on the bed and picked up the phone. I ended up calling the main desk and asking for the message; voice mail systems didn’t exist yet in 1978. I got a room number and was told to call Captain Summers there. I hung up the phone, and then picked it back up again, and dialed the room direct.

“Captain Summers.”

“Captain, this is Lieutenant Buckman. You called for me, sir?”

“Yes, Lieutenant. I was wondering when you were getting up. I wanted to get a few shots of you exercising and running around. You know, even on vacation, our winged warriors are staying in shape, that sort of thing.”

I stared at the phone for a moment. ‘Our winged warriors?’ Give me a fucking break! This guy wasn’t just writing an article for the base newspaper, he was making a recruitment ad for all the geeks at MIT! I rolled my eyes and answered, “Captain, reveille was at 0600. I’ve already run three miles and worked out. I was in the shower when you called.”

“Oh. Well, sometime before we go home, we’ll need to get a few shots of you running past some of the monuments on the Mall, that sort of thing.”

I slapped my head in disbelief. “Yes, sir, understood, sir.”

“Breakfast at 0800 in the dining room?”

“Sir, we were about to head there now. 0730 at the latest, I would think.”

“Well, all right then. I’ll meet you there. Wear your Class As.”

“Yes, sir.” I hung up. Jump wings or not, this guy was not what I would call a ‘winged warrior’. More like a body bag waiting to be filled!

Marilyn was standing in the doorway watching me, still in her Hilton robe. She started saluting me. “Yes sir, no sir, thank you sir...” I jumped up and chased her until I caught her and then gave her butt a smack.

“We need to dress and go downstairs. This press guy wants to meet us for breakfast,” I told her.

Marilyn pulled out some nice slacks and a blouse. “Good?”

“Good. I don’t know what this guy wants, not completely yet, but I know he wants me looking like a recruiting poster,” I replied.

“Well, you recruited me.”

“I still haven’t finished recruiting you yet. We can talk about that this week, too.”

“You bet!”

We got down to the restaurant by 0735. Nobody else in a uniform was present, certainly not Captain Summers. We waited about five minutes and then ordered some breakfast. The captain showed up closer to 0750. “Oh, good, you didn’t wait for me. Sorry about that. I had to clean a spare pair of boots. Mine aren’t back from the concierge yet. I needed them polished.” I looked sideways at Marilyn and found her laughing eyes. He sent his boots out?

“Yes, sir. May I introduce my fiancée, Miss Marilyn Lefleur.”

“Pleased to meet you. We’ll have to work you into our story, too.” I rolled my eyes at her, but he never noticed.

“Yes, sir.”

Our waiter returned and took the captain’s order, and then the captain turned back to me; he wanted to go over the agenda for our trip, and his plans for the story. By the time our breakfast arrived, I had to make the time-out sign.

“Sir, let’s see if we can’t simplify things. This is a scientific conference. I’m here to present a paper tomorrow.” I sorted through the schedule for the conference I had with me. “That will be tomorrow morning at 1100. I’ll need to be there all morning. After that, I will be having lunch with Professor Rhineburg. I’ll need to coordinate things with him but expect me to be tied up all day tomorrow with the conference and the professor.”

Captain Summers didn’t look happy, but he seemed to understand. His plans were for pictures of me doing something both military and scientific for the next two days. He wanted to see if I could give a lecture at the Pentagon, for Christ’s sake! To whom, it wasn’t clear. “All right.”

“Tonight, the professor comes into town. I’ll need to be here to greet him, and at least offer to take him to dinner. If he accepts, that ties up this evening. He’s the only reason I’m here, Captain, so we have to offer and do this. He could be difficult otherwise.” Okay, professor, I’m throwing you under the bus a bit, but what you don’t know won’t hurt you. Anything to keep me away from this publicity idiot.

“Okay.”

“And there are several lectures this afternoon that I would certainly like to attend. Some of them may even have application to future artillery and military computer needs.” In a pig’s eye, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Well, when will we be able to shoot you running and lecturing? This is the reason we’re here!”

“Captain, I’ll be up at 0600 tomorrow morning. If you want me running along the Mall in front of a monument tomorrow, that’s fine. Just meet me in the lobby and have a taxi ready to take me wherever you need to. I’ll even have an official Army t-shirt on for you and the camera.”

“0600?” he asked, protesting.

“Excellent, sir,” I agreed, even though he didn’t like the idea at all. “Also, I’m sure you’ll be able to hang around the rear of the lecture hall with your camera while I’m delivering the paper. I’ll be in uniform and looking good, sir.”

“Well, certainly we’ll be doing that.”

“I was figuring to just keep things simple, sir. This morning, I can explain to you my paper and we can talk about computers and the military. That will fill in that blank in the schedule. Okay?”

“Then you don’t plan to talk to the appropriate people in the Pentagon about your paper?”

“Sir, I know I’m pretty junior and all, but it’s been my experience that if the Pentagon wanted to speak to me, they’d let me know. In the meantime, let ‘s stay out of their hair, and they can stay out of ours.”

He gave me a smile that was a touch condescending. “It sounds like you don’t approve of the Pentagon, Lieutenant.”

“Not at all, sir. It’s just that my work is with the troops at Bragg, not at a headquarters.”

“Really? I’ve been hoping to get transferred here, to the head Public Information Office.” His eyes were practically gleaming at the thought.

Wow, that would be the last thing I would want! Washington DC is one of the most expensive cities in the country to live and work in, and PIO captains must be a dime a dozen here. “Line over staff, sir, line over staff.” He just laughed at that, and then we both had to explain to Marilyn what line and staff meant.

After breakfast we moved out into the lobby and found a corner to sit in. The Hilton, like most high-end Washington hotels, had a significant amount of conference room space. There were quite a few mid-sized rooms for individual math disciplines (Discrete Math, Number Theory, Topology, Graph Theory, etc.), a few larger rooms for group discussions and dinners, and even a small press room for all those great math related press releases. The professor and I would be in the Discrete Math room, although we could have justified speaking in the Applied Math division as well.

Already, the morning conferences were starting to fill, as mathematicians gathered and moved from the lobby into conference space. “All these people are mathematicians?” commented Captain Summers.

“We’re just like everybody else, Captain.” Marilyn started giggling at that.

The captain looked over at her. “Are you a mathematician, too?”

“God, no! I’m going to school for elementary ed. I want to teach kindergarten.”

The captain nodded. That he could understand. He set a small tape recorder on the table in front of us and switched it on. Turning back to me, he asked, “So, explain this paper to me.”