The Hearts of Courage

#1: First Day

Day of enlistment

21st June 2012

"Malcolm Hunter, please step forward" my Commanding Officer (CO) ordered. I followed his command and did so.

"You have successfully passed the tryout, therefore you are now one of the crew. Welcome to the team."

He stood tall and saluted and I saluted him back in respect. I feel like I just made a few new friends and reliable crewmates. We then were told to face our CO for a training announcement.

"Alright guys so now that Malcolm has succeeded in our tryout, we will be giving him an alias before we proceed with training. From this day forth in the battlefields his alias will be known as Bridge."

I just looked at him with confusion but then thought it was a cool alias so I thought "Fuck it, might as well." The other units seemed to be confused just as much as me but snapped out of it when the CO made the tall order to face him for the training announcement.

"Alright fellas we are heading out to the firing range to do some trigger discipline and squad tactics. Sgt. Redburn will be supervised by me as I will be assisting him. Lt. Crossfix will also be supervising so single column on me and we'll march out."

We lined up in ranking order in a single column and marched out the barracks to the firing range where we were set to learn our tactics. Our CO claimed the firing range to avoid any trouble with other factions.

"Alright, Bridge and Pvt. Goldberg, you will be
Alpha Team for this covering fire exercise while  Cpl. Frankfurt and Pvt. Pinkerton are Bravo Team. Each of you will provide covering fire for each other one at a time. You will shoot at the target behind me, if you wish to shoot at multiple targets to make it easier for you, then that's fine. So the team being covered can advance without having to worry about getting shot too much. Then when that certain team reach a certain spot, they provide covering fire for the team that provided covering fire for them. Basically a pattern which you'll get used to after many tries. Bridge and Goldberg, you're providing cover fire first."

Me and Goldberg provided cover fire for the advancing team whilst they moved up a certain distance then we swapped and they did the same for us as we moved up and vice versa.

Afterwards we did some trigger discipline. To cover: We shot targets as fast as we could while switching between them. Whilst an automated poorly painted hostage target with a label: "Don't shoot me!" Which kinda made me smile a bit knowing that this bunch had a bit of banter in them. After we finished with trigger discipline, we marched back to the barracks. The CO had an announcement so we stood tall to listen:

"I am very pleased with you all from today's training. You handled the covering fire and trigger disciplines really well. In fact, I think some of you, especially Bridge deserve a promotion so Bridge, Goldberg and Pinkerton please take two steps forward. Congratulations Bridge you have been promoted to Private, as for Pinkerton and Goldberg who are both Lance Corporals and Frankfurt, with all respect is now a Sgt. so everyone salute your new crew members!"

The rest saluted us with all due respect and we did the same back. Our CO continued:

"Right, get some rest fellas! We have a mission with RAC at 0300 hours so rest up well! At ease soldiers!"

He saluted us all as we did the same back before walking out the door.