by Ian McDuff

Cheers and jeers - and suggestions I may or may not take - gladly accepted at armylad@gay.com. A kudos apiece to all who have written already. Warm fuzzy feelings and all that. Seriously, thanks for the egoboo, guys.

NOTE: This series was long and kindly mirrored in its infancy at the Nifty Archive and by the lovely Gabriella at http://railwayshoes.net/hosted/index.html. Bless ’em both.

Standard Disclaimer: If descriptions of same-sex acts, feelings, &c are held to be - by any governmental entity asserting jurisdiction over you, or by your religion or moral framework - illegal, immoral, unethical, or fattening, read no further. If you are underage according to your local laws, read no further. If you have somehow managed not to notice until now that this is a slash site, read no further (and look into either corrective lenses or remedial English classes, because you've managed to miss about a dozen different warnings to get here at all). I need hardly say that the events and personalities depicted in this story are wholly figments of the author’s rabid imagination, and in no wise should be taken to imply that any actual member of any boyband, or any celebrity known to mankind, or any real person, is or conceivably could be gay – least of all the members of ’N Sync and of the Backstreet Boys, all of whom are of course straight, well-dressed, intelligent, articulate, cultured, sweet-natured, and kind to their mommies.

Equally, it should be evident that I have no contact with or knowledge of any of such musicians, pop stars, their agents, associates, staff, or families. Nor am I turning one red cent off this. Obviously, intellectual property rights – to the fiction, people: not any real persons, bands, logos, &c – are held by me, and no cross-posting to any site that charges any fee for entrance or activity is allowed without prior written consent from the author. The other warning is that this series is not going to move urgently into hot monkey sex – though, yes, we’re getting there: patience; it will build, and it will I hope be something more than quick stroke-lit. Now enough prologue: let’s get to the tale....

Sore, stretched, appalled by his body’s post-coital spate of flatulence, then soothed and gentled by D’s unflagging lovingness; tired, sated, spent, sweaty, tangled in the sheets; pushed to the furthest reaches of incoherence by successive orgasms and by Howie’s incredible talent for slow, soulful blowjobs: Nick looked over at the man he loved, now curled against him, still with a sheen of sweat from their lovemaking, and drifted off himself, knowing that, yes, whatever ludicrous things had happened on this journey, he was Home, safe, and it had been so worth it that no one who hadn’t experienced it could imagine. He closed his eyes, and slept.

New York, and the VMAs. The boys weren’t perfect, but they were serious: serious enough to recognize that they owed it to their fans, their craft, and their own self-respect to be there for rehearsals and not just to blow off everything until the red carpet was rolled out and the cameras on. Serious enough not to take their successes for granted and not to half-ass it. The Major approved.

In consequence, they were set to be leaving Ithaca in good time and due in to the City with a couple of days set aside to work. As matters turned out, it was just as well. The unforeseeable awaited them.

The night before they were due to leave for the City, a trim, spruce young captain in the New York Army National Guard presented himself at their hotel and asked for the Major. (There were a few discreet snickers and a joke or two about the Major’s having a date at last, but the guys kept that strictly within the circle.) The captain was shown to the lounge on the floor reserved for the bands, where almost everyone had been watching the Major play some murderous poker against Chris, AJ, and D.

‘Major Lee?’

The Major raised an astonished eyebrow. ‘Saddam’s invaded Myrtle Beach during a Beach Music Festival? Because short of that –’

The captain gave a brief, regulation smile. ‘Sir, I have here a communication from First Army. Sign here, please.’

The Major, his face increasingly grim – and annoyed – receipted for the document and read it rapidly. He looked over at Lance. ‘Fetch Colonel Keyes,’ he snapped.

‘And, sir,’ the young captain persisted, ‘please sign for these.’

Dr Keyes entered the lounge warily, unsure whether he was required in his medical or his retired-military capacity.

It was both.

The Major was on the phone, curt and evidently furious. Hanging over the back of a chair were suit-bags containing his Class As, Class Bs, and BDUs: evidently his own, or at least made to his measure and accompanied by the appropriate nameplates, nametapes, flashes, patches, decorations, and insignia. Boots and low-quarters were on the floor beside the chair, polished to a blinding, mirrored gloss. And stacked on the next chair over was a set of web-gear, including a holster, a 9mm personal sidearm, and several clips.

Lenore, Dimi, Luke, and the boys – all the boys, remarkably: even the most Southern-conservative – were huddled against the far wall, looking stunned, having clearly backed away from the military impedimenta as if from a dangerous enchanted grail, and looking at it and at the Major as upon alien and dreadful things. Everything had suddenly changed.

Only Big John and Jake were comfortable, standing easy, unperturbed.

The Major was speaking through his teeth in a taut, quiet, icy tone. ‘If the distinguished gentleman will yield for a question – what the hell, Senator, do you think you are doing?’

My devious cousin found this funny. I did not ‘Look on the bright side, Custis,’ he chuckled. ‘At least this gives you the right to be armed amidst the damnyankees. Dangerous place, New York.’

‘By God –’

‘Calm down. Let’s be serious a moment. You inveigled the Department of the Army into co-sponsoring this-all situation. As a rule, cuz, you are much more foresighted. You ought to have foreseen you’d be roped in as liaison. This is just an extension of that, giving a material and visible Army presence to the immaterial and invisible grace of Army-and-Amtrak sponsorship. Yes, yes, don’t say it, I know you retired. And you know, or would if you’d think about it – I realize this must not be fun for you, putting up with these pop-singing, puling puppies, but I had not thought you’d be so distracted you’d stop thinking – you know damned good and well you’re still in a reserve status that provided for you to be recalled. And yes, I pushed it and pulled every string in the book. Deal with it.’

And the Senatorial son of a bitch hung up on me.

‘Custis?’

‘Colonel. This –’

‘Don’t say it. I see all the same angles you see.’

‘My honor is involved.’

‘So abide by the policy. Duty –’

‘Hunter, do not quote Uncle Robert at me.’

‘What else did you call me in for?’

The Major gestured to the civilians, still edgy and sundered from him, still looking at him as if he were someone they no longer knew.

The Major had gathered his equipage and left. Dr Keyes blandly surveyed the band members, Luke, Lenore, and Dimi.

‘Oh, for the Lord’s sake, y’all set yourselves down,’ he said. ‘Custis is the same tetchy but admirable bastard you’ve known all along. Clothes, even uniform, do not make the man.’

Damn the Senator and his unshakeable faith in his own cleverness. God damn the man.

I had never approved of the new policy, ‘don’t-ask-don’t-tell.’ No matter my own orientation – the occasion, after all, of my choosing to retire, pursuant to my own view of my own honor – it was a matter of intellectual conviction. And now I’d been put in this position. God damn the man.

The train ride into New York City was tense. The Major was in DBDUs, the old six-color desert model he had worn in combat, the Gulf-era ‘chocolate chips’ – ‘camo,’ to civilians – but they were DBDUs more fit for a press conference than for battle, pressed and starched to within an inch of their thread-count. He looked crisp – and remote, cut off from the rest of them who did not share in his mysteries. He was like a priest vested for the Mass, and only his acolytes and men of his own order could approach him with familiarity: Colonel Keyes of course, and Jake Johnston, his old sergeant, and Big John Sullivan the former Marine.

He was also, though icily controlled and refusing to show his irritation, in some perturbation of mind. Take the whole question of uniform, for example. DBDUs were not precisely proper. They weren’t authorized; then again, they weren’t unauthorized: as best he could determine, this was more like a unit move than anything else, and the train was now in some sense, thanks to underwriting by the Army, an official transport. (The Major, naturally and quite properly, worried about such things.) While these Class Cs were intended for field, combat, and utility use, rather than as an all-purpose uniform, the Senator would not have had the Department of the Army send him a uniform he had no call to don; and whatever it was he was to be doing, it wasn’t carrying out off-installation social, official or purely ceremonial functions for which, in the words of the applicable AR (670-1), ‘other uniforms are more appropriate.’

He had no orders and no immediate commander that he’d yet been advised of. So it had been his call; and the Major had recoiled from wearing Class Bs amongst his charges: he felt, obscurely, that BDUs, being not wholly alien nor wholly dissimilar to outdoor sporting wear with which the young men might be familiar in their own world, might be a little less threatening; that subdued grade, branch, and shoulder sleeve insignia might also subdue the tension that filled the rail car. He was feeling, keenly, the width of the sundering gulf that had so suddenly and unexpectedly rifted and spread between them all.

Class As, of course, were wholly out of the question. The Major had an utter horror of appearing to boast, but regulations were regulations, and if he wore his Class As, he could not properly avoid wearing his ribbons and decorations as prescribed: Silver Star, Army Commendation Medal, Reserve Component Achievement Medal, National Defense Medal, Southwest Asia Service Medal with all three campaign bronze stars, the Saudis’s Liberation of Kuwait Medal, the Kuwaitis’s own Liberation Medal, on through the Presidential Unit Citation and Meritorious Unit Commendations, down to the very Expert Marksman: Tank Weapons badge (the Major was not a man to command others to do anything he himself could not just as well, or better).

Class As and a chest-full of pride? He simply could not do that, could not indulge in that mandatory ostentation if he could by any means avoid it: just as his most famous relative had never worn grade insignia higher than that of a full colonel, even as General in Chief of all the shattered but unyielding armies of the entire Confederacy.

I was still damning the Senator and all his works. Only one thing had he said that seemed to me apt. There was every chance Louis J. Pearlman would be sniffing around at the VMAs. Evidently, my confrontation with the man – in which I had used the Army underwriting connection for the tour to put the scare in him – had gotten back to my sly Capitol kinsman, and had Given Him Ideas. I shuddered: that was never a good thing, giving the twisty old bastard ideas.

Still. Pearlman’s possible presence was the best justification I could find to underline the Army’s commitment to this junket by recalling me to the colors and parading me about in uniform.

It must never be forgotten that Amtrak was engaged in burnishing an image that badly needed the polishing: the PR hoopla of having the bands ride the rails was being undertaken precisely to obscure such shortcomings as the error that had put the Major on the train with them to begin.

It should have surprised no one that – despite Eileen Maginnis’s best efforts – the incompetence of a rail system that combined the worst aspects of Federal bureaucracy and union feather-bedding would once again slip a joker into the deck. Instead of being directed to a secured and remote platform as planned, the bands’s train was shunted carelessly to a regular commuter platform at Penn Station.

At that point, the odds aligned against everyone.

The bandmembers were expecting, as a matter of course, Press upon arrival. Before the train rolled into the exurbs, they had all dutifully changed into the sort of clothes popstars arriving in NYC for an awards show are expected to wear. If anything, this increased their discomfort vis-à-vis the Major: it further emphasized the fundamental division between their worlds.

It also was guaranteed and intended, after all, to draw attention.

The three were your average bottom-rung urban predators. They didn’t have the necessary smoothness to defraud tourists by ‘offering to hail a cab’ or ‘watch your luggage.’ They didn’t have the skills to be dips, the remarkably dexterous pickpockets who even now still crop up at Penn Station: operators so smooth at sleight of hand it’s almost a pleasure to be ripped off by them. They hadn’t the moves for purse- and briefcase-snatching. They certainly had not the talent to run three-card monte games or similar urban japes.

And they were too stupid to realize that armed robbery at Penn Station was a suicidally bad idea these days at the best of times, much less when the Fates had arranged to shear off their threads of life in the most dramatic way possible.

Had I not been brooding dire vengeance upon the Senator, I might perhaps have spotted the clusterfuck with the arrival when first it happened. But I doubt it: I had left these matters to Amtrak, a mistake I would not make a second time.

As far as anyone was able to determine later, it was the merest coincidence that the three youths bent on robbing-and-running were where they were, when they were. It was not precisely coincidence, but it was certainly without any conception of who it was they were targeting, that their first foray into armed robbery focused on the bands. They had been wandering about without any real plan, unable to decide on a victim (their motives for robbery, as for prior petty thefts and assaults, being after all to support their various drug habits, it is no surprise that they were not the most clearheaded of criminals) … when their attention was caught by the quantity of sheer bling that inevitably went into a public ’N Sync / Backstreet appearance.

No blame attaches to George Haddad, or Brigham Taylor, or Jake or Big John: they had been caught and immobilized by the commuter surge that should never have been on the platform, would never have been on the platform had the train been at the right platform to begin with.

There was a milling and a commotion, and a strangled yelp in Justin’s instantly recognizable voice, and then suddenly, the whole swirling pattern coalesced and held.

An irregular cleared space, a ring, an arena, a killing ground. The three criminal youths – still so far unknown, anonymous, unexplained, an irruptive and irrational force – had struck, and within seconds the crowd consciousness of the metropolis had grasped the nature of the all too familiar occurrence. Immediately around the scene of action, everywhere within the robbers’s line of sight, people had frozen, eyes averted, determined not to trip any wires. Away from the ringside seats, some citizens backed away, others pretended to have seen nothing and hurried past, and others ran to find help. The robbers themselves, panicky, jumpy, as volatile and unstable as nitroglycerine, cast wild eyes upon the crowd, half-hoping for a challenge or a threat.

Hotly furious with the fate that had separated them from their charges at the height of danger, George, Brigham, Jake, and Big John were performing what duty remained to them, restraining the others. Dimi and Colonel Keyes had split up to seek out the nearest policeman; Lenore had frozen, concentrating on not setting the robbers off. Luke was speaking softly and urgently into a cell-phone, calling up whatever reinforcements his position and the Senator’s name could conjure.

It took but a single glance to see that Lance, Justin, and AJ had gotten separated from the others in some jostle on the platform, and to see also that the robbers had seized upon the chance to cut them out from the herd, as a pack of hyenas would work a herd of gazelles: Lance’s cross, and the sheer misfortune of having been separated from the main body, had apparently included him in the choice of victims, and AJ and Justin were of course the most laden of all with jewelry that practically incited theft. It was now for Jake and Big John, George and Brigham, to shield their remaining charges, and prevent them from doing anything gallantly stupid.

Jake could see, from his vantage point, the law enforcement personnel of several jurisdictions trying to ease in through the crowd, without causing a ripple that would cause the robbers to react unpredictably. But the white-hot focus bore down upon the little knot of people locked in a macabre embrace, there in the open space in the crowd’s midst. One of the robbers, whose back was to the tracks and the bands’s train, had a knife settled against Lance’s throat. His co-principals displayed no visible weapons, but had pinioned Justin and AJ, who remained stilled by the threat to Lance.

‘Yeah, okay,’ the knife-wielder said hoarsely, his voice unsteady. It was incredibly still there on the platform: the entire station had hushed, as everyone, even far from the incident, realized that something was dreadfully wrong. ‘Yeah. Here’s how it is, right? Everybuh copperates or cross-boy here gets it, ’keh? So. Real slow. You: the one wit’ d’ curls. You start. The jools, man, piece by piece wit’ d’ bling.’

In dead silence, his breath heaving, Justin moved a slow and shaky hand towards his jTr necklace. Lance exchanged a look words cannot convey with JC, who stood quivering in the crowd, barely restrained by his remnant good sense and Jake’s massive hand.

At that point, the silence was broken by a small metallic snick. From the doorway of the train (a point of honor: the highest-grade officer is the last to leave), behind and slightly above the armed robber, the Major spoke, conversationally and clinically.

‘The sound you have just heard is the safety catch on a 9mm US Army personal sidearm, officers, for the use of. I am Major Custis Lee of the United States Army. You will immediately and slowly withdraw your blade to arm’s length and drop it. You and your companions will then immediately assume a prone position on the floor with your hands locked behind your necks.’ The Major’s tone was like granite sheathed in ice: it forced all who heard him to hear and dwell sickeningly upon the images he next evoked. ‘If you do not do so, then the next sound that you will not hear – the final sound of your life – will be that of a 9mm round fired into the base of your skull. You will not hear that sound because by the time it reaches your ears, the round will have outraced it, and alloy-sheathed metal will have shattered your skull as if it were an eggshell and begun to spiral and spin, pulping what brains you have, only to blow an exit through your skull and skin immediately over your left eye and blast out of that exit with a jet of liquid sludge, of brains, blood and bone, headed for the chest area of the little punk who is currently standing next to Mr McLean. Your hand is not possibly quick enough to do any damage to Mr Bass’s throat with that pansy-ass knife before I fire and the round hits you and takes you clear off your feet, and if you try to move you will lose your grip on him.’ Those words were for Lance, and Lance caught them immediately.

‘Drop. Your. Goddamned weapon NOW.’

The youth did not listen, but spun around to face this new threat, the edge of his knife just breaking the skin of Lance’s throat. A single drop of red welled out. Lance threw himself back, into his assailant, away from the knife and the hand that gripped it, and down to his left, clearing the Major’s shot and further driving his captor off-balance. The robber hesitated, confused, then started to turn back towards Lance, knife raised. The Major fired, everyone else (including the accomplices) hitting the deck, and the Major’s round took the robber at the point of the right jaw, knocking him off his feet and imparting a grotesque arabesque of spin to his dying body. The shot rang like the crack of doom in the acoustics of the station, and its erratic path as it exited the robber’s body redoubled the echoes as it rang on the floor and rebounded eccentrically to lodge in a trash-bin yards away.

Even before the echoes died out, the frozen horror of the botched robbery attempt and hostage-taking was succeeded by frenzied movement. JC launched himself towards Lance, slipping through Jake’s grip, and law enforcement converged on the scene with drawn weapons as a din of screaming hysteria arose in reaction to the past, interminable moments of silent fear.

The other two would-be robbers had not tried to flee, having dived for the floor like everyone else when the Major had started to fire; since then, they had been unable to move for fear, and one of them had lost control of his bladder and bowels at once.

‘You in the camo! DROP THE WEAPON!’ one NYC policeman bellowed.

‘McCarthy, you idiot,’ shouted Big John, and the policeman turned and gaped, gasping out, ‘Lieutenant Sullivan?’ at the same instant the Major, annoyed, barked back, ‘You call me “SIR,” God damn you!’

Meanwhile, other policemen were trying to calm and control the crowd; Dr Keyes had tossed people aside like rag dolls to get to Lance; and the band members had wavered, irresolute, stunned, long enough for George, Brig, Jake, and Big John to hustle them into a protective cordon of police and for George and Brig to start making their way towards where AJ and Justin had collapsed bonelessly beside a wincing Lance and a trembling JC.

Big John, who knew several of New York’s gathered Finest from his own days on the force, was hurriedly explaining matters to them, joined by Lenore and by Luke, who was clutching his Capitol Hill ID on its lanyard as if it were a talisman: explanations mostly concerned with the Major’s status and role. Jake, for his part, had joined the Major in the doorway of the rail car.

‘Sir?’ It was the most natural thing in the world for Jake to revert to type, and the Major was beyond correcting him. ‘Sir, the Press is going to be here in two shakes, staring at all this-here like a tree full of owls. Sir, with respect, let’s get you inside and changed before they get here.’

‘Fuck ’em.’

Jake answered his unspoken priority. ‘Sir, the boys are fine and Colonel Keyes is dealing with the situation. With respect, your job right now is to fend off the Press.’

The Major nodded, sharply, and about-faced.

‘We’ll need to call DoD, Sergeant. And get these boys back aboard this train and move it to where it was supposed to Goddamned be to begin with, police or no damned police.’

‘I’ll put that call through now, sir, and see to the boys. Your Class As, sir. I’ll alert you when I have a competent superior on the line, sir.’

‘Carry on, Sergeant.’

Sergeant Johnston was being shuttled to a different switchboard when he heard the Major swear, insubordinately.

‘God damn it, the sons of bitches have given me a staff aide insignia!’ It had unaccountably been missing, in subdued spice-brown, from his DBDUs, which is why it surprised him now. ‘I’ll look like a damned REMF!’

Sergeant Johnston winced. Given that he was now about to be put through to the Undersecretary of the Army – an aide’s insignia for whom, sure enough, the Major had been sent – he did not need the Major to be audible in the background, cursing the appointment as being one for ‘Rear Echelon Mother-Fucker’ pukes.

Two things the Army had reinforced in the Major, though, were a natural discretion – he wisely shut up before the Undersecretary came on the line – and an innate gift for haste. He had managed to change into his Class A Army greens with great rapidity, laid out for him as they had been, and he was equally expeditious in explaining the situation to the Undersecretary.

Within five minutes, he was back on the platform, squared away and with the light of battle in his eye.

A rather confused Assistant DA and a precinct captain who was on the verge of boiling over with barely suppressed rage were there before him.

The Major, whose temper had been somewhat improved by his conversation with the Undersecretary, and by a quick determination that other than the aide’s insignia, he had not been insulted by any further detailing away from the Cavalry (he had been briefly afraid that he’d have to wear staff, rather than line, branch insignia), was discreetly amused, in a grim sort of way. The New York media were clamoring for explanations the Assistant DA could not provide, and not a few were asking whether he, the Major, was to be arrested or indicted for having a sidearm and using it wantonly to slaughter the poor, defenseless armed robber.

The Assistant DA, who had neither confronted nor imagined such a situation in all her days, was floundering.

The Major stepped calmly forward and faced the onslaught, the Press immediately forgetting the Assistant DA’s very existence in order to close upon the Major.

‘At ease,’ he snapped. ‘I will not address matters in the midst of this uproar.’

‘What are you gonna do,’ one reporter asked, ‘shoot us?’

The Major merely looked at him, and he quailed, and a reasonable amount of order was swiftly restored.

‘Very well, then. I am Major Custis Parke Lee, currently detailed to the staff of the Undersecretary of the Army. As you will be aware, there was an attempted armed robbery and hostage situation here a few moments ago.’

‘“Alleged,”’ the Assistant DA was heard faintly to moan. ‘An alleged robbery.’ The Major ignored her.

‘As you will further be aware, the crowd situation was such that civil law enforcement elements were not able to reach the scene timely, and there was imminent danger to one, at least, of the crime victims. I disposed of that danger, being in a position to do so.

‘As you may not have been aware, the Amtrak train in question and the personnel on that train were operating in accordance, in part, with a sponsorship by the United States Army. Amtrak itself is of course a quasi-Federal entity. An error that has not yet been explained to me – but which assuredly shall be – led to that train’s stopping at this platform, rather than at its reserved platform. The fact remains that at all pertinent times, operations partially underwritten by the Department of the Army were ongoing.

‘This in turn relates to a question I heard posed earlier, regarding my possession and discharge of my sidearm. Although a line officer, I am a member of the Bar, admitted before several Federal courts. I can assure you that no State or political subdivision has or can legislate prohibitions regulating the bearing of arms by military personnel on active duty in the course of those duties … as of course the District Attorney’s Office is well aware.

‘I of course regret that there was a loss of life stemming from the crime committed here earlier today. We can however be duly thankful that no innocent person was seriously injured, or killed.

‘That concludes my briefing statement. I shall take a very few questions before I leave.’

That took everyone aback for a moment, but the Press is nothing if not resilient. The first question that could be distinguished in the ensuing clamor was asked as nastily as possible: ‘So, how does it feel to kill a young man, anyway?’

The Major looked coolly at the reporter who’d asked it. ‘It’s certainly unfortunate, and one always regrets being forced to do so. The –’

‘You sound pretty blasé about it.’

‘Not at all. I repeat, it is regrettable. I –’

‘Have you gunned down many people?’

‘The term “gunned down” is rubbish.’

‘Have you ever shot anyone else, then?’

‘Not with a personal weapon, no.’

‘You mean you have killed people before.’

‘Yes.’

‘Jesus,’ someone spat. And another asked, ‘How many?’

The Major’s tone indicated his distaste. ‘Keeping score is a punk’s game. I don’t have any precise count on casualties.’

That caused a further uproar. One reporter shouted, ‘You can’t even be bothered to know how many people you’ve killed?’

The Major’s glance grew, if anything, still more steely. He turned slightly so the cameras could pick up the shoulder sleeve insignia on his right sleeve: his former wartime service patch (his left sleeve bore the torch-on-shield of his last assignment, the Army War College): a black disc bordered in cavalry yellow, containing an eight-pointed yellow star outlining a green, stylized palmetto leaf, surmounted by a white fleur de lis. The motto underneath the star, yellow letters on a green scroll, read Toujours Pret, ‘Always Ready.’

‘On 26 February, 1991, the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment – my regiment, the old “Second Dragoons” – as the spearhead of VII Corps’s attack on the Iraqi right flank in Operation Desert Storm, engaged elements of four Iraqi divisions, three of which were armored or mechanized. At the Battle of 73 Easting, G Troop, E Troop, and I Troop destroyed an entire enemy brigade. We broke the Republican Guard and by the end of one hundred hours of ground warfare, the Second Dragoons had crossed 250 kilometers of enemy territory, capturing over 2000 prisoners and destroying 159 enemy tanks and 260 other fighting vehicles. In the course of that mission, the entire Dragoon Battle Group of which the Second had the lead suffered casualties of seven soldiers killed in action and nineteen wounded.

‘So, no, ma’am, I do not know precisely how many of the enemy were killed or wounded, by my direct orders or otherwise, by the men whom I had the honor of leading. I know only the result and the final victory. But what occurred there is different only in degree from what occurred here today, just as my personal weapon differs only in degree, not in kind, from the weapons at my disposal in the course of the Gulf War. There was unlawful aggression undertaken, for motives of greed, against persons whom it is my duty to defend, and that aggression met the fate such actions always invoke.

‘And that concludes my remarks.’

And the Major about-faced smartly and marched back to the rail car, ignoring the Press, the police, and the distraught Assistant DA.

Join us next time for another thrilling installment of Sentimental Journey. What else can possibly go to hell in a handbasket? Will the Major be indicted? Who knows what evil lurks - um, never mind. This exciting drama is brought to you by your friends at Burma-Shave. We now return you to our studios for the USO Stage Door Canteen.