Grafenwöhr
US Army Training Area
Training Site 22
2/19th Company Area
West Germany
30 October, 1987
0530 Hours

The two canvas doorways closed over each other, blocking out the light, blocking out my view of Bomber and Henley. Closing me out.

The snow drifted down in the still air, floating softly down to rest on the snow already on the ground with a slight whisper. The sound made goosebumps rise on my skin, despite the fact it was a natural sound.

For too long that sound had been a harbinger of death, of bloodshed.

Of children dying.

I sat on the bumper of Henley's CUC-V, put my face in my hands, and wept.

Now Johnny was gone, just like Ant. He had walked away from me, walked away from what we once were, and joined Henley in figuring out a way to help Stillwater kill everything living on that blood soaked mountaintop.

If it wasn't for Jerry, I'd have nothing left. Nothing in my life beyond memories of bloodshed and death, or screaming in the dark and cold. Nothing to show for it but scars and nightmares.

I couldn't do it any more.

No more.

God, last winter. Oakes, Kebble, and all the rest. Children. Some of the ones we killed weren't even twenty years old. Some of them not even through the first year of their enlistment. And we'd slaughtered them. Shot them. Stabbed them. Bayoneted them. Thrown grenades in their faces and shot the still screaming bodies.

It hadn't been till Stillwater had come up missing that I'd stared at it, looked at it, seen it for what it was.

Slaughter.

I'd laid there, that night, staring at my ceiling, reliving those shattered moments of time that masqueraded as memories, and realized just how far we had all fallen. What Alfenwehr had finished creating from the mold Special Weapons had poured.

I'd gotten up, gotten the keys to Stillwater's car, and driven to Fulda, going to a club. Not the Green Goose, not where Bomber, Stillwater and I had spent so many nights drinking. To a different club. The one where I'd meet Jerry.

I'd stopped at a roadside Kasern and phoned him.

He was waiting for me when I got there.

Later, when he was asleep, and I was lying in the warm darkness next to him, feeling his cum ooze out of my well fucked pussy and down the crack of my ass, was when I'd come to the realization.

I couldn't marry Ant. I couldn't bear him children.

I'd seen his family. Seen what they did to boys, how they forged them into weapons starting before they could even walk. Family legends, family tales, lullabies designed to instill bravery and to strip away the fear of the death.

And girls... They twisted girls, changed them, made them into weapons in and of themselves.

If I married him, I'd become his girl sooner or later. No, not a simple girl, but a girl by his family's yardstick. A kelly, with absolute power over him, over my children, over other women's boy children.

And any children we had would be forged into weapons. Into more soldiers.

Feeling Jerry's cum slicken up the crack of my ass, I saw the futility, there, in the warm darkness, laying next to him under the heavy blankets.

The Stillwater family created weapons. If I married Stillwater, married into that family, my children and Stillwater would never become anything but weapons. All their potential wiped away, everything they might have done, everything they might have accomplished in the world. All of it disappearing as first the family, then the military, twisted and warped them into weapons.

I'd cried, in the darkness, laying next to Jerry.

He woke up, ask me what was wrong, and sobbing, I told him all of it. Holding tight in the darkness, he'd let me be something besides the Nagle everyone else was used to. Let me be the person I'd held back, suppressed, kept locked down.

He'd let me cry for myself.

We'd married the next day.

Now, it was all gone but Jerry.

PFC Marshall walked by, the crunching squeak of his boots alerting me. I looked up in time to see him enter the tent with Henley and Bomber.

I wiped away the tears and picked up a handful of snow to scrub my face with. Then lit a cigarette and wrapped myself as best as I could in calm.

It was hard.

Just seeing the churned up snow brought back memories.

...KILL THEM! KILL THEM ALL! PUSH THEM INTO THE SNOW!...

Stillwater's voice rang in my mind from that fateful winter. I could feel the whisper of where shrapnel had kissed my arms and legs outside of my Kevlar vest. The ache of an old bullet wound where one of the Russians had shot me in the leg before Stillwater had torn him apart with his M-203 fired 40mm APERS round.

...it's dark, and I lost my hat...

The scar down my face burned with the cold fire of damaged nerves.

Tears burned, but didn't spill down my face as the memories of that fight in the destroyed CQ Area flashed through my brain.

I couldn't do it any more. I couldn't watch kids, high school kids, kids who should be worried about whether or not they could sneak their next piece of pussy into the college dorms, being killed all in the name of holding the Soviet Union back from a war we all knew was coming.

PFC Marshall left the tent, looking around real quick and then heading toward me. I could that he was holding a dispatch in his hand and bouncing the keys in the other one. Bomber walked out after him, carrying my Kevlar, my LBE, and my helmet.

Marshall walked by me, moving past the front of the vehicle. Johnny, no, Corporal Bomber stopped in front of me, dropping my gear into the snow.

"Here's your shit. We'll turn in your weapon, mask, and NVG's. Go back to the female tent and get the rest of your shit," he said. His voice was cold, dead, not even a trace of his Texas accent. "You're no good to us any more."

He turned away, his back stiff, and walked back to his tent.

"Drop from the fucking program. Turn in your Zulu Identifier," he said, not even looking back. "You can't hack it any more, we don't need you getting good soldier's killed."

I bent down and picked up my Kevlar vest with my LBE attached. I straightened up when Bomber started talking again.

He was standing next to the door of the tent, holding it open, and staring at me, his face hard and cold.

"Nicely done, by the way, Nagle," He said.

"What?" I asked him, wanting to look away. His eyes bored into my soul, and the disdain on his face cut even deeper.

"You proved to Ant and me something that we'd told each other wasn't true when you threw us away like so much fucking garbage," He said. He lit a cigarette, putting away the pack and and lighter. "Taught us that they were right all along."

"What?" I asked him. I couldn't see where he was going with it.

"You taught him the same thing he's heard all his fucking life, you selfish bitch," Bomber said. "Taught me the same fucking lesson."

Something inside of me, something deep inside, twisted, and I flushed with shame at what came next.

"That we're nothing but goddamn boys, and boys don't fucking matter. Just like his Matrons said," he snarled, then turned and went into the tent.

I wanted to deny it, scream at him, wanted to grab him and shake him, maybe even hug him and hold him close, tell him that it wasn't true, that the reasons I couldn't do it any more had nothing to do with him or Stillwater.

Except he was right. I'd thrown them away.

To save myself.

I picked up my weapon, brushing the snow off of it, and bodyslung it before grabbing my helmet and standing up. The walk to the female enlisted tent was a long one.

Time gone by, I would have had Stillwater or Bomber walking next to me. Sharing a smoke, sharing a joke, maybe even a candybar one of us had bought and stuffed into our pocket to take out to the field.

Now I missed Jerry. The way he smelled. The way he moved. The sound of his voice.

When I went into the tent several of the enlisted females saw me and turned away.

Marshall was standing by my bunk. He'd already rolled my sleeping bag and stowing it in the wet weather bag before tying it to the bottom of my ruck. When I walked toward the cot PFC Carter, one of the female soldiers from Perseus, stood up in her underwear, grabbed my ruck, and threw it at me.

"Get the fuck out," She snarled. I looked at her in confusion. "You aren't Special Weapons, you don't  belong in here. Get out, bitch."

"Let's go," Marshall said, moving by me. "Chief Henley said we're going to drop you at 11th ACR, where you can sign in."

I moved past the others, following Marshall.

"DOR whore," Specialist Langston snarled as I went by her.

DOR. Drop On Request.

"I hope they remove your picture from Blackbriar, you chickenshit bitch," Pv2 Peters said, throwing her boot at me. I blocked it with my rucksack.

"Traitor!" someone else yelled, and this time a flashlight hit me in the back.

"TRAITOR!" someone else yelled. An MRE bounced off my helmet.

"GUTLESS SLUT!" PV2 Tacker yelled from behind me. A canteen hit me in the ass right as I pushed through the overlapping canvas flaps and into the snowy morning.

"AND DON'T COME BACK!" Several female troops yelled together as the canvas shut behind me.

"You told them?" I asked Marshall as we walked through the snow toward the CUC-V.

"Henley's orders," he told me. He waved at the CUC-V. "Get in. It's a long drive to Fulda."

Part of me wanted to turn around, go back into the tent, and start punching those faithless bitches in the face. Who the fuck were they to judge me? Where the fuck had they been when...

Pv2 Tacker's face appeared in my mind's eye. She was young. Eighteen. Curly blonde hair, pug nose, Cupid's bow mouth, freckles. Innocent blue eyes with long lashes.

Then I could see her so vividly I stumbled to a stop, staring at the snow in front of me.

She was laying in the snow. Her limbs twisted. Blood steaming in the cold air, melting the snow, flowing from wounds hidden by her uniform. She writhed, tried to sit up, rolled on her side.

"Help me," she rasped, reaching for me.

Before I could move she vomited up blood, contorted, and went still.

My stomach twisted.

"PUSH 'EM INTO THE SNOW!" Stillwater's voice rang out all around me.

"Come on, Nagle, let's get going," Marshall said, pulling my attention to him.

When I looked back Tacker was gone. The snow was unmarred. Unblemished.

Her death throes hadn't been real.

But Stillwater's voice had been, all those years ago.

The shiver had nothing to do with the cold.

Marshall and I slammed the doors of the CUC-V at the same time. It seemed to take forever until the glow-plugs warmed up and Marshall fired up the engine. We were silent as we navigated out of the exercise area and onto the dirt roads that led out of Graf.

The road was slush, salt dumped by the Germans melting the snow and ice on the road. The water, the slush, hissed under the tires, splashed against the undercarriage of the truck, as we drove through the morning. The radio chattered now and then, fragments of conversations as reception came and went.

I was hoping he'd talk, hoping he'd say something to break the silence.

Except he had a Special Weapons tab above the III COSCOM patch on his left shoulder.

I didn't exist to him now.

The gate guards in Fulda checked our ID, checked our dispatch, and waved us through.

"Which barracks is your husband's unit?" Marshall asked me.

I told him, and we drove in silence the rest of the way.

When we stopped in front of the barracks he threw it in park and got out, moving around to open the door on the Blazer. I got out, grabbing my ruck.

"Any sensitive items?" Marshall asked me.

"No."

"Give me your wallet," He told me. I dug in my back pocket and handed it over. "And your dogtags." I pulled those out too. He removed my blue tinted dogtag and handed the others back. While I put my dogtags back on he went through my wallet, removing things. My Geneva Convention card. My weapons cards. My Special Weapons ID card.

"Keys," He told me.

I was numb. I handed him my keyring and he removed every key but the brass ones that would fit the locks on my dufflebags at Atlas and my wall lockers back at the barracks.

He handed my wallet and my keys back to me and I took them, a singing emptiness filling me.

He opened the dispatch and handed me a piece of paper.

"These are orders putting you TDY to 11th ACR for the next 90 days," He told me. He handed me another one. "This one orders you to undergo a full psychiatric examination for suitability for Special Weapons Duty," He handed me another one. "This one is notification that you will be undergoing a full security clearance investigation," He handed me another one, "This one officially revokes your site access, your access to all 2/19th areas of operation including Group Area," He handed me one more. "This one is notification that you have 30 days to decide if you will be dropping from the program and turning in your Zulu Identifier, in which case you will be reclassified according to needs of the United States Army."

He closed the dispatch with a snap, moving around beside me. He pulled his knife free of the sheath that he carried upside down on the shoulder strap of his LBE. He reached up and cut away the Special Weapons tab above the interlocked triangles inside the circle that made up my III COSCOM patch.

That done he moved around in front of me.

"Specialist Nancy Nagle," he snapped, coming to attention. I found myself copying him. He saluted me and my heart sank, "of Two-nineteenth Special Weapons Group, you are hereby relieved."

...hold until relieved...

The historical reference made my stomach drop as I returned his salute.

Echoes of Private Ellis in 1972 after the entire Group had held the ASP for over five days with no reinforcement, no resupply, and limited support. He had held until relieved. In the end, only he and three other privates had survived that disastrous defense. But they had accomplished their mission.

...hold until relieved...

...you are relieved...

"I am relieved," I stated, dropping the salute. He dropped his.

He turned and walked away, and I stared at the lit doorway leading into 11th ACR's barracks.

Behind me Marshall threw the vehicle in gear and drove away, leaving me standing alone in the cold hard light of false dawn, standing in the snow, out front of a unit that I only knew through my husband.

...I am relieved...