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To his mild surprise, Stecher didn’t put up a fuss. Maybe Farris had said the right thing. After all, didn’t an army travel on its stomach?
    Captain Lytle walked unsteadily up to them. “We are now a recon battalion and part of the Thirty-Second Infantry Division currently stationed here in San Diego. When your men are through stuffing their faces, there are some trucks to take us to temporary quarters, and after some training, out to our patrol areas.”
    Farris saluted and went to gather his troops. They were part of an understrength and poorly trained National Guard detachment from Pennsylvania that had been fleshed out with a number of raw recruits, brand-new officers like Farris, and a handful of real soldiers like Stecher. They were all part of a civilian army girding for war and were a long way from being soldiers. Well, he thought, so was he. The really disconcerting fact was that he was the senior lieutenant in the company, a de facto second-in-command to Lytle. The other three lieutenants were even less experienced than he and had received their commissions a few weeks after he had.
    For the thousandth time he wondered why he hadn’t pulled some strings and gotten into the navy, even if it had to be as an enlisted man. At least sailors had decent places to sleep and even better food, he was told, and they didn’t have to march through swamps or climb mountains. He’d envied his uncle and still did, even though Uncle Tim had gotten damn close to being killed in the Midway Massacre. Tim had managed to get a telegram to the family that all was well, which had both relieved and shocked them. Nobody’d had any idea he was out on any ship, much less the doomed Enterprise .
    Stecher returned and glared at Lytle as the short, pudgy captain departed. “What the hell does he mean by patrol areas? I want to kill Japs, not patrol some fucking beach.”
    Farris didn’t think that patrolling a beach in Southern California was all that bad an idea, especially in the summertime when California girls went out sunbathing. He’d heard delicious rumors that a lot of them swam and sunned in the nude. Yes, he’d like to patrol those beaches.
    However, he understood Stecher’s concern. The sergeant’s brother had been killed at Pearl Harbor and he wanted revenge. Steve had heard the story a dozen times, and it always ended with a rightfully furious Stecher raging that “The fucking Japs murdered him. He was running across a field and one of their planes strafed him. Who the hell would cut down a man who’s running away?”
    Farris had no answer. He deeply sympathized with the sergeant and said so, but there was nothing he or anyone else could do. The army would send them where it wished.
    Originally it appeared that they’d been slated to go elsewhere, and rumors first said it would have been North Africa or some other place that was dry and dusty. This made sense when they were first given some desert gear. But then came the Midway debacle and fears rose that the Japanese would attack the West Coast; thus, they and large numbers of other American soldiers were sent on their way to San Diego.
    Base was a tent city outside San Diego. Still exhausted from their trip, Farris and the others were issued additional equipment and uniforms and assigned places in the tents that would be their new home, at least for a short while.
    Lytle gathered them around him. He was reasonably sober now. Perhaps it had something to do with the presence of other and more senior officers.
    “Tomorrow we’ll be issued weapons and we’ll start in with physical training and shooting, although it looks like we’ll be getting shit for equipment.”
    “It won’t matter much if all we’re gonna do is patrol the beaches,” Stecher muttered.
    Lytle continued. If he’d heard the comment, he didn’t let on. “Additionally, there are a lot of Marines in the area, and we’re ordered to steer clear of them so there are no incidents.”
    Stecher