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Praetorium Honoris

Wednesday, October 11, 2023

Counter March

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"Nah Sir, I ain't going back in there."

The commander looked at the man for a long moment, then said, "I can have you shot for refusing an order."

Another man stepped closer to the man refusing to proceed, "I don't f**king think so. Sir. We're militia, none of us signed no damned contract or nuthin', we got rights."

The commander had been a professional soldier for most of his life, after missing two promotions, he swore it was because of his politics, though his wife didn't agree, he'd retired at 20 years. (She said it was because he was an asshole, he couldn't argue that point, he was, but he'd seen lots of assholes promoted in his day.)

When things had started going south in the public square, he'd been convinced to join the militia. The reserves had told him, quite frankly, that he was "too old." (For f**k's sake, he was only forty-seven years old!) At least in the militia they appreciated his experience, and his politics for that matter.

"Look Ezekiel, we gotta go in. Orders, man."

The man called Ezekiel shook his head, "Do you know the farmer out on Mill Road, the guy you wanted to join our merry little band of part-time soldiers?"

"Yes, what about him?"

"He was out hunting yesterday, you know he likes to stalk, he don't have the patience to sit in a blind all day, anyway, he saw the regulars out there in the woods. Setting up to surprise anybody trying to take the Old Post Road he figured."

"How would he know that?"

"They were setting up a checkpoint, sure as shit he says. He was in the army, when he was younger. He'd recognize the signs, ain't that much changed over time."

The commander rubbed his chin, after the donnybrook two weeks ago, he figured the regulars would be looking for payback. Especially with their political masters getting desperate, people were waking up, the tide was starting to turn.

"He say where he saw this?"

"Lemme see your map, Boss."

The commander grinned as he pulled his map out, these fellows were pretty damned informal, it had bothered him at first, but he got used to it. They would obey orders, unless they felt the orders were stupid, which apparently Ezekiel thought these were.

"Right here, see this little pond, other side of the road is a rocky outcrop, it's a natural bottleneck. It's where I'd set up if I wanted to stop people going down that road."

"Okay, this changes things. Runner, I need you to take a message back to the general." He pulled out his notepad and began to scribble a message.


The Captain was late getting to the checkpoint, he'd been up very late doing paperwork for some mindless government initiative which his boss had passed down to him.

"You're better at this shit than I am, you seem to have a head for which way the wind is blowing. I'm more of a just tell me what you want and I'll do it, sort of guy."

Truth be told, the Lieutenant Colonel commanding the regiment was a well-known sycophant, he wouldn't touch anything where a "wrong" answer could cost him his position.

As he'd gone through the paperwork, he realized it was just a statistical questionnaire from some junior officer at headquarters. He'd answered the questions, added his observations, and sent it back to the Lieutenant-Colonel. No doubt it would sit on that man's desk for a week. But it wasn't the Captain's problem, not at all.

The checkpoint was set up, the men had rigged a gate across the road and had put up abatis to either side of the road. Anyone wanting to use the road would have to go through here.

"We seem a little short-handed today, Sergeant." he remarked as he looked around. "Have you got men on patrol?"

"No Sir, when we fell in this morning, we were already a few men short, I think a few more straggled on the march. Can I talk to you, Sir, privately?"

The Captain had a feeling that he knew where this was going, it was something he'd given some thought to,  especially after news had reached the camp that rioting was spreading across the country.

The two men moved around the the side of a rocky outcrop next to the road, the Sergeant left his Corporal in charge. The Captain remembered her from the fiasco a couple of weeks back, she had handled herself well.

"What is it, Sergeant?"

"Sir, the troops aren't happy, not at all. We've got thirty-five bodies out here, should be more like eighty, that's two platoons that we can't even make one full-strength platoon out of. There's twenty-seven more back at camp, either sick or excused duty for various reasons. Even with the casualties we've taken we should have a hundred people in the company, we don't."

"And?"

"The troops want to know what the heck we're doing out here, Sir. It feels wrong, even to me and you know me, I don't overthink things."

"People are deserting, aren't they?"

The Captain's question was simple, the answer wasn't.

"Sir, the troops feel like they're fighting their own people. My Corporal asked me a very good question this morning, she's probably right. She asked me, 'Isn't this a legal matter?' She's got a point."

"Well sure, but what happens when the people refuse to obey the law?"

The Sergeant looked down at the ground, then back at his officer, "I know you for a straight shooter, Sir, you're not inclined to bullshit folks, so I'm going to ask the question - what if the law is wrong?"

"Well, the government decided ..."

"What if they're wrong, Sir? Seems to me the folks in the capital stopped listening to the people a long time ago."

The Captain looked around, then tried to answer the Sergeant's question. "Sarge, you and me, we're soldiers, we're supposed to leave the thinking to the guys above us. What if everyone started questioning their orders? Where would we be?"

The Sergeant looked his officer right in the eye, "We might not be out here waylaying citizens. We might not have lost people killed and missing two weeks ago. We might not be shedding deserters and stragglers like we are now. The troops are voting with their feet. I wonder how many are actively joining the resistance even as we speak? Things are going to Hell in a handbasket. What are we going to do, follow orders until we're at war with our own people? Until we're all dead?"

The Captain noticed that his sergeant had not used the word "Sir" at all in his little speech. He also realized that the Sergeant made some good points.

"Have the guys fall in, Sergeant. Tear down that stupid road barrier first, we're going back to camp."


Two militia scouts had been watching the regulars most of the morning. As they watched them tear down the barrier across the road, then form up and move off, back the way they came, the older man turned to his partner ...

"Well, don't that beat all?"





44 comments:

  1. More people seeing the light only AFTER there's been bloodshed........huh. Too many times common sense isn't common.

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    1. Over my time on this Earth I've learned that "common" sense is anything but, sad, but there it is.

      People seeing the light only after blood has been shed. Many folks need that "significant emotional event," like bloodshed, to wake up and smell the cordite.

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  2. Common sense is the ultimate oxymoron.
    As for "...the folks in the capitol stopped listening to the people a long time ago." Uh...yeah. Fraid they're gonna have to listen to those snapping noises as supersonic things go by and the kugelschlags as they go through before they get "sensible" instead of "xensitive" like they are now.
    Boat Guy

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    1. And hopefully the last thing They hear is the snap of their necks as they do the long drop. Though most deserve a short drop.

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    2. Good word choice BG. I use that term, too. And the dummkopfs just roll their eyes.....

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    3. The Captain was a wise man. With significant desertions and the rest of his troops disgruntled, the best he had to hope for was they would just not obey any unpopular orders - the worst was that he would just go MIA.

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  3. Desertion has always been dealt with severely. The regular army can't just let people go home because they "want to", not and be an actual army.
    Then again this story is going in a direction that I have no experience with... and it is a good story!

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    1. When multiple people start deserting, something is going very wrong.

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    2. One could always use lead to read their minds. Or one could even go green!

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  4. I sense your Muse, Cassandra, read a lot of Heinlein in her formative years.

    Human nature, for the most part, is to go along to get along. But there comes a time when a godly portion will individually,all within a short time span say, "ENOUGH! Enough and more than enough. This male bovine excrement has gone too far!" With a lot of luck there will be real leaders will be able to rally people to the cause and make the changes with little or no blood on the ground. The other 99 44/100% of the time there will be enough to deep soak the roots of the Tree of Liberty.

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    1. Goodly, not godly.

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    2. You can only push people so far.

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    3. Godly works as well as goodly in this context.

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    4. In some literary circles, goodly is Godly. to do good is to do God's work.

      I think you, OAFS, is doing God's work here.

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  5. While probably not completely true, as a general rule many times the excuse for really bad things performed by militaries is that they were simply "following orders". Which does make one wonder if perhaps orders, or at least the policies underlying those orders, should be questioned from time to time - after all, the policies like ultimately originate from politicians with little or no connection to events on the ground.

    A questionnaire from a junior officer during a period of civil war. That is a completely accurate detail.

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    1. When I was on active duty there was some training directed at us regarding not having to follow illegal orders. Tough call for a junior enlisted to try and make, "Gee, Sergeant Major, I can't do that, that's an illegal order." In wartime, that can get you shot out of hand.

      It's really incumbent upon the officers and senior noncoms to make that call, if they don't, and I've seen it, things can get out of hand, quickly.

      After all, the people who hid Anne Frank were breaking the law, those who turned her in were obeying the law.

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    2. It IS incumbent on officers particularly. IIRC Bundeswehr officers especially are all schooled in such; guess a lesson from Nuremberg
      BG

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    3. Absolutely correct. A large part of Officer School is spent discussing evaluating such situations: when is an order illegal, when can you chose not to obey an order and when is it your duty to not obey an order. What makes an order illegal? And so on and so forth .... at that time it was quite boring but now I understand that I have been given a great tool which made me a better leader.

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    4. Spent two days in hell because some of the senior staff just... messed up bad. So bad the powers-that-be brought in a consultant to pound it into our heads about the concept of 'illegal orders' and 'illegal actions.'

      Even lowly enlisted have to, supposedly, recognize what an illegal order or action is.

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    5. It's especially bad when senior staff curry favor with their political masters by trying to enforce illegal orders. Yeah, BATFE, I'm looking at you.

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    6. BATFE, EPA, FCC, FBI, DEA, CDCs, NIH, DEA, IRS, Postal Police, BLM (land management people), BIA, and so on and so forth.

      And thank you for remembering the 'E' on the BATFE.

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    7. All creatures of the Deep State. (I almost forgot the "E.")

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    8. I would only note that an officer was court-martialed under pResident Obama for refusing to obey one of his orders!

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    9. Interesting. Do you have a name, a link, I'd be interested in reading that. How dare someone disobey the "Light Bringer." (Hack, p-tooie.)

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  6. While you have written many a good story in the past, this tale beats everything which came from your pen so far.
    Truly, this is really your best story ever: it is absolutely realistic, it leaves lots of room for expansion and it fires up the imagination.
    I keep playing through different outcomes in my mind because your story keeps growing into several directions in my mind.
    This is a very realistic, splendidly written and very probable phantasy of the way current affairs could turn out.
    Thank you for this marvelous brain food!

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    1. Glad to have you back in these spaces and thanks for the praise.

      The story keeps going in different directions in my mind as well, which keeps it interesting for me.

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  7. Following illegal orders can get you shot after the war ends. Not following illegal orders can get you shot by your superiors. However, only one of those will keep your soul intact.

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    1. Maybe not if you shoot the illegal orderer first. A good leader will accept the illegal orders and then act to not act upon them.

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    2. Awfully hard to do if one's own ass is on the line.

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    3. And therein lies the rub behind the "I'm just following orders / Must act against illegal orders" issue. Who decides what is appropriate? Like the anti-whistleblower laws that are there to protect whistleblowers, unless the WBs are in the government, then, no..

      Usually it is whomever survives is who decides. But then again, so can a single disgruntled person with a gun, a chunk of explosive, a wristrocket, a car...

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  8. Learned a new word today: abatis Thanks Sarge. ;)

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    1. Ain't that the Chinese algebra calculator thing? Or the Frog hog slaughter place? Dang, man, just talk English so we don't get confused.
      JB

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    2. Pointy sticks, think pointy sticks. (It is English)

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