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Show Flying - 104 parachute on my left breast, wear the paratrooper boots with my good green uniform, go back home and jump off the schoolhouse roof to impress my old friends and former teachers. They'd make a man out of me. Sergeant Pierson of the 101st Airoorne. Even tougher than the marines. And spend my days running up and down hills to stay in fine physical shape. PT every morning at 05:30. Through the obstacle course one more time, trooper. And do it faster this time around. Hit the dirt and give me fifty pushups. Sound off. Six straight years of basic training with the added attraction of jumping out of airplanes from time to time. Shouting Geronimo. I guess I'll stick around the Signal Corps. They say the ones who bitch the most are the ones most likely to re-enlist. Depressed and disoriented the moment the great green mother Army takes her loving arms from around them. Nine hundred and eleven days to go. At the top of the Tehachapi pass, the Fifty-third pauses, ready to plunge into the vitals of California, ready to leave the desert forever. Below them, down in the valley somewhere, are the green fields heavy with crops, trees sagging with the weight of oranges, stretches of soil lumpy with potatoes trying to burst through to the surface, rows of corn moving sluggish |