David Drake - Hammer's Slammers 11 - The Butchers Bill

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The Butcher's Bill

David Drake

WHOOPS....

General Radescu straightened abruptly, glaring at the Slammers. "But I

don't care what they say, gentlemen. I didn't come here to preside

over an army sinking into a morass of lethargy and failure. I will

remove any officer who seems likely to give only lip service to my

commands.

"And--" he paused, for effect but also because the next words proved

unexpectedly hard to get out his throat "--and if I give the signal,

gentlemen, I expect you to kill everyone else in the room without

question or hesitation. I will give the signal--" he twirled the band

of his hat on his index finger "--by dropping my hat."

Glittering like a fairy crown in a shaft of sunlight, Radescu's hat

spun to the forest floor. The only sound in the copse for the next ten

seconds was the shrieking of the animal in the foliage above them.

Hawker walked over to the gilded cap and picked it up with his left

hand, the hand which did not hold a submachine gun.

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"Here, sir," he said as he handed the hat back to General Radescu. "You

may be needing it soon."

--from At Any Price

BAEN BOOKS by DAVID DRAKE

Hammer's Slammers The Belisarian series:

The Tank Lords with Eric Flint> Caught in the Crossfire An Oblique

Approach The Butcher's Bill in the Heart of Darkness The Sharp End

Independent Novels The General series:

and Collections with s- M- Stirling> With the Lightnings The For8e

The Dragon Lord The Hammer

Redliners The Anvil

Startiner The Steel

Ranks of Bronze The Sword

Lacey and His Friends TheChosen Old Nathan

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Mark II: The Military Dimension

All the Way to the Callows

The Undesired Princess and The Enchanted Bunny

(with L. Sprague de Camp)

Lest Darkness Fall and To Bring the Light

(with L. Sprague de Camp)

An Honorable Defense

(with Thomas T. Thomas)

Enemy of My Enemy (with Ben Ohlander)

the butcher's bill

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in

this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or

incidents is purely coincidental.

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"But Loyal to His Own," "The Butcher's Bill," "Hangman," "Cultural

portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing EnterprisesP.O. Box 1403Riverdale,NY10471

ISBN: 0-671-57773-5

Cover art by Charles Keegan First printing, November 1998

Distributed by Simon & Schuster 1230 Avenue of theAmericasNew York ,

NY 10020

Typeset by Windhaven Press,Auburn ,NH Printed in theUnited States of

America

Contents

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Introduction .......................................................

But Loyal to His Own .....................................5

At Any Price....................................................32

The Butcher's Bill .........................................175

Hangman........................................................ 198

The Irresistible Force ....................................258

Cultural Conflict............................................ 306

LibertyPort.................................................... 324

Standing Down.............................................. 393

Becoming a Professional Writer by Way ifSoutheast Asia

Some years ago my son took an undergraduate history course in the

VietnamEra. He mentioned that his father had been drafted out of law

school in 1969. The other students and their 27-year-old professor

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were amazed; they "knew" that college students weren't drafted.

I was in the Duke Law School Class of 1970 when LBJ removed the

graduate student deferment in 1968 and I was drafted along with nine

more of its hundred and two guys. There were only two women in our

class, a sign of the times that changed abruptly afterwards.

I'd been a history and Latin major as an undergraduate. I'd been

against the war in a vague sort of way but I'd never protested or done

anything else political except vote once, since the voting age was 21.

There was never any real question about me refusing to serve, though

believe me I wasn't happy about it.

While a student I'd sold two fantasy short stories for a total of $85.

I used what I knew about: historical settings and monsters based on H.

P. Love craft's creepiecrawlies. I was proud of the sales, but writing

was just a hobby.

Because I scored high on an army language aptitude test I was sent to

Vietnamese language school atFortBliss , then for interrogation

training atFortMeade . Finally toNam , where I was assigned to the

Military Intelligence detachment

of a unit I'd never heard of: the 11th ACR, the Blackhorse Regiment.

My service wasn't in any fashion remarkable, and nothing particularly

bad happened to me. I was in the field for a while with 2nd Squadron

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just after the capture of Snuol; then with 1st squadron; and for the

last half of the tour I was back in Di An, probably the safest place in

Viet Nam, as unit armorer and mail clerk. The Inspector General was

due, and apparently I was the only person in the 541st MID who knew how

to strip a .45 down to the frame. (Military Intelligence doesn't seem

to get many people who shot in pistol competitions in civilian life.)

And then I went back to the World. 72 hours after I leftViet Nam I

was sitting in the lounge ofDukeUniversityLawSchool , preparing to

start my fourth semester. Because nothing awful had happened to me, I

was honestly convinced that I hadn't changed from when I went over.

As I sat there, two guys I didn't know (my class had already graduated)

were talking how they were going to avoidViet Nam . One of them had

joined the National Guard, while the other was getting into the Six and

Six program that would give him six months army in theUS , followed by

five and a half years in the active reserves.

These were perfectly rational plans; I knew better than they did how

muchNam was to be avoided. But for a moment, listening to them, I

wanted to kill them both.

That gave me an inkling of the notion that maybe I wasn't quite as

normal as I'd told myself I was.

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I finished law school and got a job lawyering. I kept on writing,

which after the fact I think was therapy. I didn't have anybody to

talk to who would understand, and I'm not the sort to go to a shrink. I

don't drink, either (which I think was a really good thing).

I had much more vivid horrors than Love craft's nameless ickinesses to

write about now. I wrote stories about war in the future, assuming

that the important things wouldn't change. The stories weren't like

earlier military S-F. Instead of brilliant generals or bulletproof

heroes, I wrote about troopers doing their jobs the best way they could

with tanks

introduction 3

that broke down, guns that jammed--and no clue about the Big Picture,

whatever the hell that might be. I kept the tone unemotional: I didn't

tell the reader that something was horrible, because nobody had had to

tell me.

It was very hard to sell those stories because they were different.

They didn't fit either of the available molds: "Soldiers are spotless

heroes," or the (then-more-popular) "Soldiers are evil monsters." Those

seemed to be the only images that civilians had.

But the funny thing is, when the stories were published they gained a

following. Part of it was guys who'd been there, "there" being WW II,

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Korea, and later the Gulf as well asViet Nam . Some of the fans,

though, were civilians who could nonetheless tell the difference

between the usual fictions and stories by somebody who was trying to

tell the truth he'd seen in the best way he could.

Some civilians really wanted to understand. I guess that as much as

anything helped me get my own head straighter over the years.

After I got back to the World I'd just done what was in front of me. I

didn't think about the future, because I suppose I'd gotten out of the

habit of believing there was one. When I raised my head enough to look

around-almost to the day ten years after I rode a tank back from

Cambodia--I quit lawyering and got a part-time job driving a city bus

while continuing to write. I didn't quit lawyering "to write" (though

I'd already had two books published) but because I realized the work

was making me sick.

At this point something unexpected happened. Publishers were setting

up new S-F lines. Editors already knew that I would write them a story

that people wanted to read; my first book, Hammer's Slammers, had

succeeded beyond the editor's wildest dreams. (/ didn't realize that

for some years afterwards.) I got literally all the work I could do.

The only limitation on how many books I could sell was the number of

books I could write.

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I've told you thatNam gave me a need to write and also gave me

something real to write about. It gave me a third thing: service with

that unit I'd never heard of; the

11th ACR. I'd been part of a professional outfit whose people did

their jobs with no excuses, no matter what the circumstances.

There are writers who spend more time making excuses for why they can't

write than they do writing. I could've become one of them, but that

attitude wouldn't have cut any ice in the Blackhorse. Instead I just

got on with my job, and since 1981 I've supported my family as a

full-time freelance writer.

I'm successful now because I learned professionalism in the Blackhorse

and carried that lesson over to the work I do in civilian life--which

happens to be writing S-F. The lessons people learned inNam probably

cost more than they were worth--even to the folks like me who got back

with nothing worse than a couple boil scars from the time I was in the

field. They were valuable lessons nonetheless.

If any of the folks reading this were with Blackhorse, thank you for

what you taught me. I'm proud to have been one of you.

Dave Drake Chatham County,NC

BUT LOYAL TO HIS OWN

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TheButcher'sBillbyDavidDrake WHOOPS.... GeneralRadescustraightenedabruptly,glaringattheSlammers. "ButIdon'tcarewhattheysay,gentlemen. Ididn'tcomeheretopresideoveranarmysinkingintoamorassoflethargyandfailure. Iwillremoveanyofficerwhoseemslikelytogiveonlylipservicetomycommands. "And--"hepaused,foreff...

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David Drake - Hammer's Slammers 11 - The Butchers Bill

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