In Every Clime and Place by Patrick LeClerc Page B

She’s not a bad Marine. I’ll adjust.”
    “Good. ‘Cause you just made Lance Corporal.”
    He blinked twice. “How?”
    I shrugged. “Heroism. Duty. The usual song and dance. Oh, I had to lie my ass off to Sarge and the Old Man and tell ’em you were an asset to the Corps, but what are friends for?”
    “Thanks, Mick.”
    “Besides, it was getting embarrassing to see a fossil like you the same rank as a kid like Johnson.”
    “Just pour on the flattery.”
    “Hey, nothing’s too good for you, pal. How long the docs say you’d be here?”
    “Day or two. After that I’ll probably get some light duty.”
    “I’ll try to struggle on without you.”
    “Thanks for stopping in.”
    “Least I could do.” I patted his good arm. “Heal up and get your ass back to my team. You read me, Marine?”
    “Aye aye, Your Fucking Majesty!” he replied with a twisted grin.
    ****
    The party the next night was a brilliant success. CPO Kelly donated two bottles of champagne he had liberated from the embassy (I’m sure he held back some more for personal consumption) and some of his own homebrew beer. I was happy about that. The Powers That Be only authorized one liter of beer per Marine. That was hardly enough to get a buzz on. Besides, Kelly’s brew was real beer, not the watery swill the military buys. I would be able to trade my ration of pisswater to young Marines who didn’t know better for their share of the quartermaster’s amber elixir. And good old Terry was in sickbay, so both the beer and his promotion were safe. Just about a perfect setup.
    The chow hall was cleaned up and the tables pushed to one side to leave most of the deck clear for dancing. A collection of music was scrounged from among the platoon and played over the intercom. It was the usual horrible military mix: half country and western and half modern dance music. If you were a white Yankee city kid like me, you just suffered. The latest incarnation of the immortal American art form known as rock and roll didn’t lend itself to dancing.
    I spent the first half of the evening sampling Kelly’s finest and shooting the shit with Sabatini, Pilsudski and Cpl Chan. Chan, being of Chinese ancestry, was whiter than the rest of us white guys as far as dancing was concerned.
    Chan and Pilsudski spent about an hour discussing hand-to-hand combat, while Sabatini and I spent the hour mocking them. Cpl Chan was a black belt in some martial art or other, and Pilsudski was a fencer, so they both considered practice for murder a hobby.
    Don’t get me wrong, I’m not squeamish. It’s just that, to me, killing people is work. If I’m not on duty, I’d just as soon drink and flirt, thank you very much.
    “Ya know,” Sabatini said, “why the hell don’t you guys just learn to shoot? It’s a lot more efficient.”
    Chan looked offended. Pilsudski smirked and replied, “The art of the sabre has been passed down for generations in my family.”
    “Which is why Poland had an empire spanning the greater part of the known world?” I asked with a raised eyebrow. “Oh, no. Wait. I’m sorry. That was everybody else.”
    Sabatini laughed. Ski just glared at her. He could hardly take issue with her ancestors; they ran the Roman empire. He turned on me, instead.
    “I suppose you think the Irish have a great military tradition?”
    “We do. It just so happens that all our victories were against other Irishmen.”
    Pilsudski shook his head and returned to discussing the finer points of disemboweling or whatever the hell it was. I turned my chair around and looked out at the dance floor.
    “Will you look at Johnson?” I asked Sabatini.
    She laughed. The young Marine was struggling to impress the female social workers with the intensity possible only in a nineteen-year-old old male who hasn’t seen an available woman in six months. He was doing everything but snorting and pawing the ground.
    “Why are you so calm?” she asked. “You’re a guy. Why aren’t