{UNDERGOING EDITING}
It's the year 1942. News of the Second World War can be found in every newspaper.
After you find yourself in a bad relationship and manage to get out of it, your father, a veteran of The Great War who suffers from shell shock...
Late March of 1944 Fort Devens Ayer, Massachusetts
We've recently started to get familiar with guns. They taught us how to take them apart and put them back together again which was pretty interesting. We've each been issued an M1 Garand. It's a pretty nice gun and I'm not too bad of a shot. Zussman was quite impressed with how quickly I was learning and I had to help him a few times. He was normally pretty good though, so I sometimes wondered if he would pretend to screw up, just so I would help him.
"Have you used a gun before this?" he asked curiously one day after shooting practice.
"Yeah, I have, but that's a story for another time," was all I told him. I noticed the concern in his face, but thankfully he didn't push the topic further.
We still have a lot of practice left with our guns, but I can tell our training is getting rushed. We seem to be moving much quicker through what they want us to know compared to how we were being taught at the beginning of training. I don't really like the idea of training us quickly because I feel it leaves us at a higher risk of not knowing what to do in real situations, but there's not much you can do but sit there and listen.
There have been new faces arriving at Fort Devens lately. We've gotten a few new men in our platoon. Aiello wasn't very fond of seeing new faces mainly because they were way behind on training. I couldn't help but feel bad for them. If our training was getting rushed, I could already see them being trained way worse than us since they were jumping in late.
The new men in our platoon were very quiet and kept to themselves. I still remember Zussman trying to get one of them to talk, but you could just tell the new soldier was annoyed. I managed to get him to speak and discovered that he was a 19-year-old boy named Ronald Daniels. He was from Texas, but it was no surprise to me because of his slight country accent.
I stopped talking to him and left him alone, but Zussman kept trying to continue the conversation by asking him lots of questions. I eventually had to nudge Zussman to try and get him to stop, but he didn't bother to take the hint.
"He needs to learn real quick that bein' sad all the time ain't gonna change shit. I'm just tryin' to be nice to him and help him get settled in. What's wrong with that?"
"Let him be. Just because you're used to being here doesn't mean it's easy for everyone," I told him.
"Yeah, well there ain't gonna be no more worrying about the farm. Get used to it, farmboy," Aiello teased. I frowned at Aiello and saw Stiles shake his head and roll his eyes at what Aiello had said. Aiello's comment caused the new soldier to immediately stand up and get in his face.
"Shut the hell up," Daniels said.
"Get a load of farmboy! I'd watch out if I were you though. You sure as hell don't want to see me blow a fuse," Aiello said aggressively.
Zussman immediately got in between them and got them out of each other's faces. We definitely didn't need our sergeant running in here and busting our chops* if they had fought.
That had happened two weeks ago and it hadn't been completely forgotten, but there was just too much focus on training to worry about it. Daniels has opened up more since then which is nice to see. Zussman and I do what we can to help him get a hang of things. I witnessed Zussman and him shaking hands a couple of days ago and since then they've seemed to be on better terms. I'm pretty happy about it because I feel it's important that we get along the best we can.
We're pretty much about two months away from either going to Europe or the Pacific. There are plenty of rumors going around about us going to Europe, but we wouldn't find out the truth until May when our training wraps up. If I was to place a bet, my money would be on Europe since we just need to keep heading east from here to get there. We're supposed to be leaving at the beginning of May and I've heard there's probably gonna be more training to get done once we reach our destination.
Nothing has really happened between Zussman and me since our leave to Boston. I haven't bothered to pursue anything since I'm not sure if I really want to. I value our friendship too much to let it get ruined if all we have is a little fling.
His birthday is coming up soon though and I'm quite excited about it. He's going to be turning 21 years old. I talked to Sergeant Miller about helping me get a cake for Zussman and he told me he would see what he could do. Since his next birthday might not be in the states depending on how long this war continues, I figured I'd give him a nice surprise. It was the least I could do since he had been so nice to me from the moment I met him.
~ ~ ~
* "busting our chops": to get scolded
In case you don't know what an M1 Garand looks like, here's the rifle that's issued to the soldiers:
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
