An inside joke!

First day at my Basic Training company, 10th MP BN, Charlie Company.

We’d just arrived on a big bus. We’re wearing uniforms that reek of mothballs. Everything we own is in an enormous duffel bag on our laps.

Through the bus windows, we can see the Drill Sgts waiting to get a crack at us.

We were a sorry-looking lot. Our uniforms wrinkled, our boots still needing polish.

They’re squared away with uniforms that look tailor-made for them.

The Senior Drill comes aboard.

He looks squared away and is sweet as apple pie with ice cream on it.

He smiles and welcomes us to Charlie 10. He goes on for about another minute, but he’s nice as can be.

And then, in a scene straight out of The Exorcist, the man changed.

His voice deepened several octaves, and where a nice guy had looked out his eyes a second before, something demonic looked out.

“Now,” he said. “You’ve got thirty seconds to get your asses off my bus, and I just took twenty of them back.”

We got off the bus, and the drills herded us up into the bay. The drills are circling us like hawks, screaming and yelling at us.

And I’m looking at the company’s sign. It tells us who the Company Commander and the 1Sgt are.

I read the names.

Captain Douglas Bonebrake.

I couldn’t make up a better name for someone who presided over what some would consider a taste of hell.

Who wrote this movie? I thought. I smiled to myself, realizing it was a scripted joke from the Author of all things.

Well played, God!