Jake's Badass Army

He’d been standing in the rain, fidgeting with a lighter for almost ten minutes. With a smoke dangling from his mouth and his head down turned to shelter it from the storm, he knew the smoke wasn’t the problem, it was the lighter. He’d already shaken it next to his ear to verify that it had fluid in it. One of the other guys had been watching him with a blank stare.

“You about finished with your little tea party ladies?” Sergeant Pitts barked. In one fluid motion he struck a match against his combat boot, lit it, and held it to the nervous soldier’s smoke before the soldier could stop fidgeting with his wet bic. He wasn’t going to point out that shit like that on the battlefield would’ve gotten him killed, he could see in the younger soldiers eyes that he was nervous as fuck and that cigarette might be the only thing keeping him from curling into a fetal position in the mud.

This wasn’t the first platoon Sgt Pitts lead through a field exercise but it was the smallest. Larger platoons always seemed to keep each other in line, he didn’t have to work on camaraderie, formation or light their smokes. Usually when somebody fell out of line he barely had to furrow his brow and they’d all shape up. He never had to kick anybody’s ass to make them listen to him before. But this group was different; two other sergeants had given up on them. Sgt Pitts was known for building a team of leaders that would thrive well in combat after he was through with them. A few worked their way up to sergeant and lead their own field exercises alongside him.

The only guy that wasn’t grating his nerves was laid out in the grass staring down the sight of his gun as instructed, all the other three had to do was fall in line just behind him. Instead one was shaking like a leaf in the wind with a smoke hanging from his mouth, a gun somewhere on his back and huge doe like eyes desperately averting his glare. It’s like he knew Sgt Pitts was about to threaten to send him back to basic training. A guy who’d somehow avoided a buzz cut was watching the nervous one and smirking.

What was wrong with these soldiers? It was raining and he could handle that, not the first time he lead men through a live fire exercise in the rain. The guy that was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, he’d seen that before and gave him some space. The staring guy might have been high as balls, he’d deal with that later. Where the hell was the other guy? Who was the other guy? Had he even seen met his fourth soldier yet?

Notes

Comments welcome, thank you for reading
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Also, Lt Pitts is a Sergeant now. Thanks google.