IWW2 Dispatches

Not a one of us would’ve come back from Norcross if it hadn’t have been for the non-coms. The officers were all newly-minted brass. All of them were eager to prove they’d mastered the demands of being an officer. Most did it by giving back to the senior brass exactly what they wanted to hear – that is, exactly what the brass had already been saying. Those sorts were useless but had the advantage of getting themselves pretty dead pretty quickly. A lot more dangerous were the ones trying to prove their mettle by doing something new. I mean, you have to give them credit. They knew right away this was a different sort of war. But while they were experimenting, looking for the magic new tactic, us grunts were dying on the ground.

Like I said, anyone made it out of Gwinnett alive, he owes it to a non-com. In my case, it was Master Sergeant Donovan. Donovan came out of Five Points, the meanest rotten neighborhood on the whole island of Manhattan. You might think that, him and me being Irish, and him being from just across the river, that Donovan and I would be almost like family. Not to Donovan, though. To hear him tell it, being from Brooklyn was like being from Mars – no, worse. At least Marty didn’t root for the Dodgers. He gave me the most hell than anyone in the unit – more, even, than Jorgensen, the big dumb Swede from Wisconsin. Any son of Brooklyn was the spawn of the devil, he let me know. I hated him with all my heart, for three days.

Then we made contact with the walkers, and suddenly everything he’d been screaming came back to me, and saved my life.

To my own credit, even while I was hating him, I was smart enough to pay attention. Part of it was intimidation, I’m not ashamed to say. Anyone who gets out of Five Points alive has to be either the biggest, toughest brute you can imagine, or cleverer and nastier than the Devil himself. Donovan was a scrap of a man, maybe five foot four on tippy-toes. My rucksack weighed more than Donovan. But he was a mean son of a gun, fast and vicious. He knew all these moves to turn a guy’s strength against himself, and he was quick as greased lightning. In the ring for a “friendly” Sunday round of fisticuffs, he threw Jorgensen three times the Swede’s own length.

All that being true, I wasn’t just afraid of Donovan, though anyone with brains is a little afraid of his own master sergeant. I was in awe of him, too, a lot more than I was of any of the actual officers. Because Master Sergeant Donovan had something that none of the newly-minted brass had. They had confidence, and they had shiny new lieutenant’s bars, and they had college, most of ‘em. They had brains, and wit, and even some charm. Master Sergeant Donovan had his booming voice and his unending supply of oaths and his infinite disdain for us. And one thing more. Master Sergeant Donovan had the Walker Cross.

Today you see Walker Crosses everywhere you look in the Service. It’s like they’re giving them out in the bottom of Cracker Jack boxes. But look closely and you’ll see that today’s version are plated tin. Donovan’s was the real deal, the original article. It was in gold. And just like today, it signified that the wearer had seen combat against a fully-active walker, and had lived to tell the tale. Today, with what we know, that ain’t as much as it was.

Tags: Gwinnett, campaigns //