"You said that?" asked Walker Teasdale, unbelieving.

"Yessir," said the other recruit.

"Gollee," Walker Teasdale had said. "Ah thought it was against the law not to like nigras."

"Ah hate 'em," said the other recruit.

"Seems a waste of time to hate anybody," said Walker.

"Not niggers. Any time you spend hating them is time well spent."

"Well, ah don't hate nobody," said Walker. "There's good and bad in all kinds."

"Ceppin' niggers is mostly bad," laughed the other recruit, and training became so hard, with the constant repetition of tiring drills, that the strangeness of the unit became less a topic of discussion than survival in the following few days.

There were drills like silence. Five men would be told a secret by the commanding officer and then sent out into the field. This secret would not be mentioned again until two weeks later when the five were brought before the commanding officer, Lt. Colonel Wendell Bleech, a rotund, pink-faced ball of a man with a harsh crew cut and extra large epaulettes on his shoulders, which let the cloth of his military blouse hang fuller over his suet-bloated body.

Colonel Bleech liked to talk about mean and lean. Colonel Bleech liked toasted English muffins with peach jam and sweet butter.

4

Colonel Bleech also liked to punish in front of the assembled unit. He went beyond enlightened rehabilitation. He broke noses and arms and legs and threatened each time, "the next time I get rough."

Colonel Bleech had a riding crop with lead balls laced into the flattened pommel. Colonel Bleech pointed to two of the recruits.

"The secrets I told you are no longer secrets. They have come back to me. I swore you to secrecy. Do you know the most important thing in a man's makeup and character is his word? You have violated your word. You have raped your word. You have desecrated your word. Now what do you two have to say for it?"