Welcome to the Marines (Corporate Marines Book 2) by Tom Germann

have no homework or studying to do. It’s a magical night.
    I head off to bed, and while I slept all day, I’m out as soon as I lie down.
    The next day we are up at four a.m. We run eight kilometres in the same time as we had been doing five before. Then, when we get back we are taken through a short, brutal round of circuit training. We have to get cleaned up fast and then we are off to breakfast, which is high protein and carb and tastes so good. Our classes are different now. We sit in history lectures and discuss what is important. We finish that and have a forty-minute workout in one of the gyms, and we push our bodies to what feels like the breaking point. Then lunch, more classes, more working out before dinner, dinner and then study time after we do a physical fitness test.
    The test every night is to show us what we have accomplished and how we are developing through the fitness routine. It consists of number of push-ups, sit-ups, and full-arm-extension pull-ups, all done in a minute. We also lift weights and do a grip test.
    Seeing how I’m improving every day helps keep me focused on getting through this.
    The daily testing and quizzes continue. We have a final test for the last day of this phase that is nasty. Instead of sitting in a classroom or the auditorium and writing some sort of test on a topic, we are told to pick a historical event, explain what happened, and discuss how this affected the course of the following events. We then are to suggest how to be more effective with the event and explain the changes that this would have had.
    Finally, we are to present this to some of our peers, who will then ask questions and attempt to poke holes in the scenario unless we can answer them.
    I throw up a bit. I really hate high-end schoolwork. A lot of others throw up as well for whatever reason—stress, fear, and I don’t doubt some from paranoia.
    But when I think back, I can easily remember a good number of those classes and the alternate way of thinking that they promoted. What had happened was accepted as the best decision of the time. A lot of classes felt like we were armchair generals.
    I don’t like that. We don’t have the information that they did at the time. We don’t have all the past experiences that those leaders and the other side had either. When I brought this up once in class, I was surprised that the instructor agreed with me.
    She said, “Thinking. That is what we want to get you to do here. One day when a similar event happens, the belief is that if you are trained, you will recognize the similarities and react in a better way than those did in past. No, we are not trying to brainwash you. But certain similarities do pop up in military operations regularly. Now, should you advance or retreat? Fortify or blow in place?”
    She looked at us. She wasn’t smiling and I could feel how serious she was. “You will not have hours to make decisions. As technology does advance, then we shorten timeframes down. You may have seconds or less to make a tactical decision today that can lose the battle and war tomorrow or next year. Moving from a tactical decision to something that is strategic is so fast, it’s done before you fully realize what you have done. Thinking will kill you. Automatically reacting and doing? That may save your life, and the lives of your section mates.”
    She had stopped at that point and walked out and we headed off to the next class. By the end of this section we had lost more people than previously, and at the time I had no clue why.

THE RUSSIANS IN AFGHANISTAN
    W e sat in a lecture on the Russian invasion of Afghanistan. The professor was a kindly-looking older man who smiled a lot, but he was probably the most bloodthirsty individual that I had ever heard speak. His specialties were on force projection and he carried out research for both North and South American political organizations. His work was recognized around the world—or so he told us. Before he started