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The education of Private Melvin: Difference between revisions
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{{a|opcoboone|}} | <div class="indent"> | ||
{{a|opcoboone|}}===Interview=== | |||
“Look, I’m not ''proud'' of it, but everyone was doing it. Tough times, man.” | |||
Private Melvin P. Melvin, Jr. dragged on a cigarette and squashed it into an aluminium foil tray. He wiped his eye with his wrist. | |||
Palmer offered him another one. Melvin stooped, clutched it between his lips and dragged hard as Palmer sparked his zippo. The cheroot caught. | |||
“You have to understand: we were five years into this raging transcontinental war, and we were bogged down. Five goddamn years. We hadn’t moved fifty metres, forward or back. Oh sure, you’ve heard about the tranche warfare — ''everyone'' knows that: miles and miles of winding, sopping slits in the Belgian forests — but you didn’t have to ''live'' it. | |||
They sanctioned lethal force. It didn’t sit well with me but, look: orders are orders. Still, I rode light. I made sure I was late to the contact. I let the others do the work. My buddies didn’t mind – they loved the action. They lapped it up. Guilt free wasting of regional Italian landbank units? What’s not to like? We felt no guilt. It was win-win. This was war. | “Even the upper tranches were bad: cold, wet, wind-whipped, vulnerable from three sides, but the bottom tranches was hell.” | ||
“What was so bad?” | |||
“Mud. Oh, the constant mud.” | |||
“Mud?” | |||
“Dirty credit. You know — sludge. Gunge. Mucky pulp. Really low quality, sordid, filthy stuff. And we lived in that shit. I saw good men drown in that sludge, before my eyes. And, oh man, it stank to high heaven. We were deluged — subordinated — by it: it just saturated everything. It got in your hair, in under your fingernails, in your mouth. Oh! I can barely stand to think about it, even now. Just cascades of mud. Waterfalls of the stinking stuff, running down your backs, up to your waist, gushing around, and all we had was these shitty, gutless howitzers. If they fired at all, they barely shifted ordnance out of the goddamn tranche, but so much of it was shitty credit. It kept going off: blowing up we could even get it out of the warehouses, let alone into those crumby howitzers. And even then, every other one we loaded was a dud. | |||
“How so?” | |||
“It was just gunk, man. They only sent us the cheapest crap they could find. Even the stuff we managed to deliver — much of that the Jerries caught and sent straight back. | |||
“Jerries?” | |||
“Germans. Landesbanken units. Sparkassen units. Girozentralen. The odd Handelsbanken. They weren’t that sophisticated, but they were well organised and they fought like tomcats. I mean, it wasn’t just the Jerries. The Dutch, the Belgians, the French — they were all at it, too. But the Germans were the best organised: the BvB drilled their units well, and kept the liquidity supply lines strong and well-defended. | |||
“But I have to think the mud was just as bad for them. Given how much we sent over with our howitzers. A lot of the time, they just took it. We laid waste to their ECP emplacements up and down the front, but they just sucked it up. We ran low on ammo, started putting anything we could find in those cannons. Cheap credits. | |||
“As the Europeans got better, we got more bogged down. Eventually they started getting the upper hand. We didn’t know it, but they were setting up fused, recession-sensitive mines. And timebombs. Just when things were turning down they would go off and throw the combat field into chaos. They executed lightning raids behind our lines with their own start-up challengers. Incredible: just showered us with BaFin cover. | |||
“They engaged in limited, effective ways. They trained their troops better. They began regularly picking off our Locust Class attack funds. The Spanish captured a British savings bank. Our trading units took sustained margin flak. Collateral damage. We got ''more'' bogged down. | |||
“Then we got, you know” — Melvin made air quotes — “the ‘orders’.” | |||
“Who gave the orders?” | |||
“Oh, you know, they came down the line, like they always do — always with plausible deniability; you know, well-diffused escalations, so you never know ''who'' gave the order. But make no mistake, it ''was'' an order. Go down range | |||
“Down range?” | |||
“You know, ''clear out easy targets''. Prepare the ground for a spring assault. Break their will, but clearing out the weak gazelles.” | |||
Melvin looked far away. He dragged hard on the cigarette. He coughed. | |||
“They sanctioned lethal force. It didn’t sit well with me but, look: orders are orders. Still, I rode light. I made sure I was late to the contact. I let the others do the work. My buddies didn’t mind – they loved the action. They lapped it up. Guilt free wasting of regional Italian landbank units? What’s not to like? We felt no guilt. It was win-win. This was war. | |||
But one day it got me. It was a mistake. I couldn’t have seen it coming. We were clearing out some bomb-damaged structures on the main supply line back to real money. Just knocking them flat, making them safe, putting them beyond moral hazard. The bulldozer detail was assigned to clearing out radioactive waste in the Enron badlands, do for this low priority stuff they were happy enough for us sappers and doc jockeys to go in and clear them out, physical style. | But one day it got me. It was a mistake. I couldn’t have seen it coming. We were clearing out some bomb-damaged structures on the main supply line back to real money. Just knocking them flat, making them safe, putting them beyond moral hazard. The bulldozer detail was assigned to clearing out radioactive waste in the Enron badlands, do for this low priority stuff they were happy enough for us sappers and doc jockeys to go in and clear them out, physical style. | ||
I don’t deny it was fun. You feel like a hero, togged up in Kevlar annexures, camo-moly anonymising ALD codes, and those gleaming brass barrels on those old sweet bastard OSLAs. They don’t make stock lenders like that anymore. This modern dreck: it’s so anodyne, so commoditised, so dreadfully rectangular. | I don’t deny it was fun. You feel like a hero, togged up in Kevlar annexures, camo-moly anonymising ALD codes, and those gleaming brass barrels on those old sweet bastard OSLAs. They don’t make stock lenders like that anymore. This modern dreck: it’s so anodyne, so commoditised, so dreadfully rectangular. | ||
It took me back, as so much seemed to do nowadays, to Bundie. The old dog barked up a ton of wrong-headed trees, but boy was he on the money barking up that one. David goddamn Bundie. | It took me back, as so much seemed to do nowadays, to Bundie. The old dog barked up a ton of wrong-headed trees, but boy was he on the money barking up that one. David goddamn Bundie. | ||
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I can still hear him saying it, in that put-on baritone of his, all faux swagger and stuffy authority: | I can still hear him saying it, in that put-on baritone of his, all faux swagger and stuffy authority: | ||
</div><div class="quotalic"> | |||
“Now, mark my words, soldiers” — he was always calling us that — “treasure your weapon. Respect it. Treat it like a child, and it will treat you like it’s a fire-eyed mastiff and you are master of the hounds of hell.” | “Now, mark my words, soldiers” — he was always calling us that — “treasure your weapon. Respect it. Treat it like a child, and it will treat you like it’s a fire-eyed mastiff and you are master of the hounds of hell.” | ||
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At that moment, Bundie’s face darkened. A light went out. Something closed down in there. A door that had briefly shown a delicate perimeter of golden rays slammed shut. The youthful, vigorous warrior was gone and the kind old defence against indemnities master returned. “I — I don’t know what you mean, Punchface.” | At that moment, Bundie’s face darkened. A light went out. Something closed down in there. A door that had briefly shown a delicate perimeter of golden rays slammed shut. The youthful, vigorous warrior was gone and the kind old defence against indemnities master returned. “I — I don’t know what you mean, Punchface.” | ||
</div><div class="indent"> | |||
Well, the old bastard had been right. Totally right. ISDA rolled out a plastic twin network SL/Repo mod designed to work with their 02, but it was never popular, and there were documented examples of them falling apart during live margining exercises. The failure rate was off the charts. Reports of entire battalions throwing them down in the field and just running for their lives. As the enemy SIVs rumbled up the salient they didn’t even stop to collect them. They didn’t even take the unspent margin ammo for their rehypothecation tanks. They just rolled over them, atomising these weapons and grinding them into the mud. | Well, the old bastard had been right. Totally right. ISDA rolled out a plastic twin network SL/Repo mod designed to work with their 02, but it was never popular, and there were documented examples of them falling apart during live margining exercises. The failure rate was off the charts. Reports of entire battalions throwing them down in the field and just running for their lives. As the enemy SIVs rumbled up the salient they didn’t even stop to collect them. They didn’t even take the unspent margin ammo for their rehypothecation tanks. They just rolled over them, atomising these weapons and grinding them into the mud. | ||
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The old guy’s intonation rang in my ears. | The old guy’s intonation rang in my ears. | ||
</div><div class="quotalic"> | |||
“Maintaining a ’95 OSLA takes skill, soldiers. Dedication. Deep insight. Handling them takes real skill. But, oh — the rewards. That perma-balancing portfolio margining. The native netting stability. That dependable 5 point bias. But ongoing service and maintenance takes time, effort and craft. Mark my words: they’ll ditch these babies. They'll outlaw them. We won’t see their like again.” | “Maintaining a ’95 OSLA takes skill, soldiers. Dedication. Deep insight. Handling them takes real skill. But, oh — the rewards. That perma-balancing portfolio margining. The native netting stability. That dependable 5 point bias. But ongoing service and maintenance takes time, effort and craft. Mark my words: they’ll ditch these babies. They'll outlaw them. We won’t see their like again.” | ||
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“I.S.D.A.” | “I.S.D.A.” | ||
</div><div class="indent"> | |||
They were bad derelicts. They were mainly deserted. It was target practice: guilt-free workout on the downside levers. | They were bad derelicts. They were mainly deserted. It was target practice: guilt-free workout on the downside levers. | ||