Читать книгу Rage. The Legend of "Baseball Bill" Denehy онлайн

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Our company went on bivouac again. On the last day, everyone got up at six o’clock in the morning. At eight o’clock in the morning, trucks arrived to take the men back to their barracks. But our company commander had other ideas.

“My company will run home,” he said.

The barracks were twenty miles away. He told me, “You’re in charge, and I expect everyone to make it.”

We were a National Guard unit. We had lots of snotty-nosed lawyers. These weren’t the type of guys you wanted to bivouac with, never mind go to war with. Halfway home, several of the men informed me that they wouldn’t be able to go the distance.

“We have to make it,” I told them.

“I can’t walk,” one guy whined.

“If I have to beat the living shit out of you, or have another guy drag you along, you’re going to make it,” I told him.

“Yeah, let’s see you make me,” one of the other men said to me.

That really pissed me off, and I hit him alongside his head with the butt of my rifle. The man rolled down a small embankment, and I faced the rest of the men and snarled, “Next.”