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The Dyslectic Spec Five
Then when we got through policing the area, we fell back in to ranks. Policing
the area means picking up any trash or litter a group of soldiers sent out to do
so can find.
"Okay, the lieutenant said (he was new). "...let's have someone march the men to the mess hall.
Speck five Hall, you march the squad today..."
A simultaneous groan went up from the ten or so guys that comprised our meager ranks. "No, no! Not Hall!!"
The lieutenant gave a puzzled look as he wheeled round and walked away, too busy to say anything.
There wasn't supposed to be talking in ranks, but he just blew it off.
It was something I had been dreading for a long time. None of us knew about dyslexia,
especially my hit-and-run kind. But the men had experienced my unknown disability before. It was our dirty little secret. As soon as the lieutenant was gone, we
agreed between us.
I started to bark my commands. "Detail, ten-huttt. Right face." Groans proceeded
from ranks as some curse words began to waft over the morning air. They thought I was playing jokes on
them by turning the ranks in the opposite direction. "...about face. Foreword march. Rough march, march." At that point we all broke ranks and formality and
proceeded to amble to the mess hall. Rough march had saved the day. --
Unlike the other times, especially one a couple of months earlier when I was the
highest ranking guy on the post police detail.
The only other command I was sure of that my dyslexia wouldn't get me on was "to the rear, march". That was my old stand by when the men were headed straight to the side of a barracks. The first time they actually marched into a wall, at least the first three or so.
That fateful day was a bizarre one. I made many enemies among the boys in our little barracks on the south
base in the little measly twenty-five-or-so minutes it took to march what should
have been a ten-minute distance. Everyone at our destination wondered what took us so long and nobody said a thing. It was our little secret.
To this day I'll never know what they thought. Maybe, since they knew I was an artist, they thought I was being creative. Others must have thought me some sort of
low-ranking fuehrer enjoying his five minutes of dictatorship. I'll never figure out why they stayed so disciplined and
there wasn't a justifiable minor rebellion, after all most of them back in the sixties were draftees.
You could see the panic in their faces as they were headed straight for a hedge
only to do the inevitable about face of the "rip march" command inches
before toppling over it.
It got worse when I burst out laughing. Mostly at myself. I was sort of okay if I could use the
to-the-rear-march command to sort of ease them out into open territory where I could
keep them going back and forth for a while so I could double check my directional commands.
Most of them only remembered their right angle commands from their basic and advanced training so they got really suspicious when I tried to use the oblique commands
(sort of like "half left and half right) which were great ones for finessing a large group of marching men out of a tight
squeeze.
Needless to say, after they got to the destination, I had ruined a goodly number of peoples' day and none of them ever spoke to me again.
Copyright (c) 2005 by Paul A. L. Hall. All rights reserved.
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