Walker put his gun on his rack and, with a slow

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wisdom that had replaced his boyish innocence, looked at the water, then drank it all.

"This is my last sustenance, fellas. Ah've seen the buzzards in my dreams and they called my name. Ah take no more food or drink."

The other recruits thought this was pretty much craziness, since no one had seen a buzzard around these parts since coming to camp more than ten months ago, all of them thinking1 that basic training should have been a two-month affair and finding out, in an address by Colonel Bleech, that two months wasn't enough to teach a man to tie his shoes right, let alone become a soldier, a real soldier.

When Bleeeh said "soldier," his voice lowered, his spine stiffened, and a deep pride came to his entire bearing. His lead-weighted riding crop would always tap at his polished boots on that word.

On the morning that Walker Teasdale said he would die, the recruits were awakened as usual with drill sergeants screaming in their ears, for their usual semiclothed morning run, wearing just boots, shorts, and rifles with full packs of ammunition.

Long ago, they had stopped commenting on how none of them had ever heard of basic training like this, with a five-mile run every morning and at triple time. One of the recruits who had a brother in the Airborne once tried to chant as he ran and had to run punishment miles because this unit never made noise when it ran, when it fought, and when it marched.

"There'll be plenty of noise on the great day," Colonel Bleech had promised, but everyone was

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afraid to ask what that great day was, although they had heard a lieutenant mention it, too, but the lieutenant admitted he didn't know what that great day was. All he knew was that he owned two homes, an Alfa Romeo sports car, and sent his two daughters to private schools-all on a lieutenant's pay.