WHAT DRIVES A SPARTAN?

 Major Richard Blaine is faced with the daunting task of saving the men who believe in him when he does not believe in himself.

WHAT DRIVES A SPARTAN?

“You have no control over how you are perceived. But you can make a damn good stab at it.”

– Major Richard Blaine

 

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

Like war and its resultant tragic waste of life.

Sadly, I didn’t see Mankind outgrowing them anytime soon.

I guess I would just have to work my damnedest to survive it … and if I could wrangle the survival of my Spartan 3oo at the same time that would be … well, more than seemed humanly possible.

‘Which is where I step in.’

‘That better be some stepping.’

‘It will not exactly be stepping.’

I looked down at Sgt. Savalas rousting my men out of their bunks and brooded.

Not many of them were in the Army by choice. Only a few of them had any patriotic passion that they would speak about.

To my Spartans, Churchill’s radio rhetoric sounded a bit embarrassing. They had no great faith in the new world, they had no belief in any great liberating mission.

 They knew it was going to be a charnel house. All they wanted was to put an end to it all.

In my mind, I went over what I knew of their personal lives.

Men who had only little of life, men with little education and less knowledge and with no philosophical supports.

 Men with ailing, estranged or poor or needy families. Men who had never been loved, men who had never had high ambitions or wanted a new world order.

Yet, here we were all going, as ordered into the meatgrinder that was named Omaha Beach.

But nearly all of them would rather have died than let down their buddies or look the coward in front of their bunkmates.

Of all the things that our bloody time in Sicily had accomplished, this sense of group solidarity was the most important.

If only I had been mentally with them at the time.

‘”If only” are the two most useless words in the human tongue.’

I spoke loud to get their attention, “General Bradley has called our invasion the greatest show on earth. And we are honored to have the grandstand seats.”

Pvt. Pablo Dimitri snorted, ““Hell! We’re not in the grandstand! We’re down on the damn gridiron!”

Chuckles echoed all through the Spartans, and Theo snapped, “The Major was talking, Dimitri. Drop and give me fifty.”

There were more than a few smiles, for Pablo could have easily done that many one-armed.

Pvt. Alfred Kent, a former student of archaeology, called up, “Major, we’re here on the Rocinante, but where does the Brass think we are?”

“Funny you should ask, Kent. Sentient has given them the illusion that we’re on LST 500, crammed alongside 2,727 other ships, ranging from battleships to transports and landing craft that will cross on their own steam.”

I laughed, “More vessels, as Admiral Morison has pointed out, than there were in all the world when Elizabeth I was Queen of England.”

I swept out both arms as if I were P.T. Barnum. “And we’re about to give them a show they will never forget.”

‘And to create myths while we are at it.’

‘Why is it so important for you to create a myth around me and the Spartans?’

‘To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control.’

‘Like this war?’

‘Like the war within and this war without.’

I saw Theo stiffen, and I realized that the strange helmets Sentient had given him and the other Spartans allowed him to hear her.

‘The paradox of the human condition is that while your capacity for vulnerability — and, by extension, your ability to trust others — may be what allows for tragedy to befall you.  The greatest tragedy of all is the attempt to guard against hurt by petrifying that essential softness of the soul, for that denies your basic humanity.’

I felt the hair brushed back from my eyes again. ‘I have seen entire civilizations retreat into the thought, “I’ll live for my own comfort, for my own revenge, for my own anger, and I just won’t be a member of any type of society anymore.” That really means, “I won’t be a human being anymore.”’

I nodded. ‘I see people doing that all around me where they feel that society has let them down, and they can’t ask anything of it, and they can’t put their hopes on anything outside themselves. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.’

Cloverfield scowled up at me. “You have these kinds of conversations with Sentient all the time?”

“Yes.”

“No wonder no one understands you.”

“Helen Mayfair did.”

Reese snorted, “Then, she must be a saint.”

I nodded in agreement. “As in St. Joan who killed for her God.”

Reese grunted, “I really have to meet this gal.”

A door silently slid open in the bulkhead to his left, and Nurse Reynolds stepped out in tailored combat fatigues and her own diminutive Spartan helmet.

“Me, too.”

Theo sputtered, “R-Rachel!?”

“Doc” Tennyson caught Theo’s eyes. “I asked her to join us, Sergeant. Her skill and unshakable calm saved lives with those Tiger survivors.”

“I outrank you, mister!”

I shook my head. “Not in medical matters, Sergeant. In medical matters, Tennyson outranks us all.”

“You still should have asked me.”

Rachel said, “I asked him not to.”

Theo glared at me. “You know that beach is suicide!”

“If I thought that, I’d be the only one going, Theo.”

His face was a sight. “Yeah, maybe. But everyone knows you’re crazy.”

‘Enough! We are done with lurking in the Outer Realms. It is time to birth Legend … Myth … Magic … Madness! Let the Führer beware! We are coming!’

Over our helmet speakers came Eisenhower’s Order of the Day:

“You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hope and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. . . .

“Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, well equipped and battle-hardened. He will fight savagely.

“But this is the year 1944! . . .

The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!

“I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full victory!”

Reese cat-called, “Tell that to your suicide note, Ike!”

“Corporal,” I said,  “it is easy to mock if you’re not carrying the burden yourself.”

Pvt. Stewart Taylor protested, “You forgive him? But he tried to kill you in your hospital bed!”

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. And we Spartans do not know how to be anything else, do we?”

The chorus of support was a bit on the anemic side, so I guess that is why Sentient pipped Axis Sally into our speakers:

“Come on over. We are waiting for you. Your spilled blood will grease the treads of our Panzer tanks.”

Even some of my men thought that the Nazi's named their tanks "Panzers" because of the black jungle cats.

But Panzer, in German, literally meant "armor."

Pvt. Evans laughed, “Sally, you come on over here. I got something for you that I know you will like.”

“Language, Private!” I snapped. “There’s a lady present.”

Theo glared at me and mouthed, “Whose fault is that?”

Rachel mouthed, “Mine” to Theo.

She and most of my Spartans yelped as all the bunks disappeared into the deck with a grinding of gears. Overfull backpacks thrust up into the spots vacated by the bunks.

Beside them arched glistening metal handles at the end of long metal rods that looked nothing so much as the steering handles of a child’s scooter.

“All right, gentlemen. Put on the backpacks and grab those handles tight. We’re about to put on a real show for the invasion fleet.”

“A show?” frowned our resident doubter, Stew Taylor.

“Oh, yeah,” I smiled. “Daredevil acts, music, and fireworks. The whole shebang.”

Theo grumbled, “General Marshall will court martial your ass for a stunt like this.”

I shrugged, “Better to be hung for a wolf than a sheep.”

Amos shook his head. “I’d rather not be hung at all.”

If I was being honest, that was my thinking as well.