"Gustav Hasvord. The Short-Timers " - читать интересную книгу автора

Gerheim backhands Leonard across the face.
Blood.
Leonard grins, locks his heels. Leonard's lips are busted, pink and
purple, and his mouth is bloody, but Leonard only shrugs and grins as though
Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim has just given him a birthday present.


For the first four weeks of recruit training Leonard continues to grin,
even though he receives more than his share of the beatings. Beatings, we
learn, are a routine element of life on Parris Island. And not that
I'm-only-rough-on-'um-because-I-love-'um crap civilians have seen in Jack
Webb's Hollywood movie The D.I. and in Mr. John Wayne's The Sands of Iwo
Jima. Gunnery Sergeant Gerheim and his three junior drill instructors
administer brutal beatings to faces, chests, stomachs, and backs. With
fists. Or boots-they kick us in the ass, the kidneys, the ribs, any part of
our bodies upon which a black and purple bruise won't show.
But even having the shit beat out of him with calculated regularity
fails to educate Leonard the way it educates the other recruits in Platoon
30-92. In high school psychology they said that fish, cockroaches, and even
one-celled protozoa can be brainwashed. But not Leonard.
Leonard tries harder than any of us.
He can't do anything right.
During the day Leonard stumbles and falls, but never complains.
At night, as the platoon sleeps in double-tiered metal bunks, Leonard
cries. I whisper to him to be quiet. He stops crying.
No recruit is ever allowed to be alone.


On the first day of our fifth week, Sergeant Gerheim beats the hell out
of me.
I'm standing tall in Gerheim's palace, a small room at the far end of
the squad bay.
"Do you believe in the Virgin Mary?"
"NO, SIR!" I say. It's a trick question. Any answer will be wrong, and
Sergeant Gerheim will beat me harder if I reverse myself.
Sergeant Gerheim punches me in the solar plexus with his elbow. "You
little maggot," he says, and his fist punctuates the sentence. I stand to
attention, heels locked, eyes front, swallowing groans, trying not to
flinch. "You make me want to vomit, scumbag. You goddamn heathen. You better
sound off that you love the Virgin Mary or I'm going to stomp your guts
out." Sergeant Gerheim's face is about one inch from my left ear. "EYES
FRONT!" Spit sprinkles my cheek. "You do love the Virgin Mary, don't you,
Private Joker? Speak!"


"SIR, NEGATIVE, SIR!"

I wait. I know that he is going to order me into the head. The shower
stall is where he takes the recruits he wants to hurt. Almost every day
recruits march into the head with Sergeant Gerheim and, because the deck in