Discipline on Deployment, Pt. 01

The stench of a capital city with no sewer system hit me full on as I let my Humvee idle through the gate of the UN forces' military compound on the former campus of Somali National University. While the compound itself benefitted from contractor-installed latrines, shower units, and window screens, the vast urban expanse outside was a cautionary tale of failed government, clan warfare, unchecked cruelty, and deprivation. I stomped on the accelerator, and the wind coming through the zipped down windows stirred the stench and kept the sweat beads on my forearms from joining up to form rivulets. There were no street signs; every bit of metal, to include plumbing and electrical wiring, had been scrapped long ago. Nor were there traffic police to enforce whatever rules the signs once announced. My driving decisions were reviewable only by whatever neglectful divine power had jurisdiction over this picked over patch of earth. Fortunately for the upright and four-legged creatures wandering among the broken pavement, I was a responsible twenty-five year-old United States Army lieutenant and I arrived at the main gate of the port facility without having added to the ambient suffering.

After checking in with the Air Force guards, I let the Humvee crawl along the vast expanse of concrete poured by Soviets a generation earlier, skirting the airport, slowly crossing the seaport, and then enjoying the Indian Ocean breeze as I climbed the rocky roadway to one of my company's commo sites. A signal unit, we got to occupy the high ground, maximizing our line-of-sight range, and that meant this spot, like the one we'd occupied at the Kismayo port months earlier, was the absolute best place to be, with constant breezes, an easy downhill walk to a beach, and indirect access to some of the harder to come by items that would arrive tucked in the cargo planes. I parked, dismounted, and walked toward the leftmost green canvass tent, neither hurried nor dawdling. I had an appointment, but, since I was the ranking attendee, it wouldn't begin until I arrived.

The tent's three residents were women, so I paused at the screen door flap and announced myself. "C'mon in, LT," replied the familiar, raspy, mid-west accented voice of the commo team's sergeant. I ducked and stepped through onto the plywood floor, going just far enough in for the sloping roof to clear my 6' head. As my eyes adjusted to the lower light, I took off the maroon beret we wore as Airborne soldiers and folded it into the cargo pocket of my desert BDU pants, hung my sunglasses into a chest pocket, and surveyed the women's living quarters. It was unavoidably spartan but with signature feminine decorative touches, powders, lotions, and pieces of lounge wear. It smelled intoxicatingly girly. The sergeant removed a swimsuit hanging on one of the cords running at shoulder level along the walls, folded it neatly, and put it on a stack of MRE ration boxes that served as a night stand beside her cot. I admired her form. She wasn't really my type, as I've always had a superficial preference for petite, Rubenesque brunettes. However, we'd all gotten tanned and lean over the months of our deployment, and her lithe, well-endowed figure, accentuated by the snug, brown t-shirt and cinched BDU pants, was worth a quick scan as she bent, straightened, and turned to me.

With the three cots arranged along the walls, the six-person tent had enough room in the center for the two of us and a chair. The sergeant ran her fingers through short-cropped dirty blond hair in her habitual expression of frustration. "She went down to the beach before her shift, but I told her to be back by now," she said, referring to the specialist I'd come to see. Then she added unnecessarily, "She knew to be here."

I felt sweat begin to roll down my spine in the still tent air. I was wearing the extra layer of my BDU blouse with a purpose. Its display of rank, skill badges, and a combat patch from my previous deployment conveyed the distinct but related messages that I was experienced, in charge, and there on business; I'd tolerate the discomfort to keep that front of everyone's mind. I took the one chair, leaving the sergeant to stand or sit on her cot. She stood. That was good.

She was a couple of years older than me but we were each familiar with and comfortable in our respective roles. We'd served in the same battalion for the past three years and had a history. In fact, she'd once filed a discrimination complaint against me for denying her last-minute leave request conflicting with a training exercise. The complaint was investigated and declared unfounded, and I never mentioned it. Afterwards, I felt the supplemental, unofficial power in our professional relationship as she obediently accepted my decisions, and came to me with respectfully-framed requests. Like the tearful one to reassign the dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks PFC who'd jumped out of the driver's seat of a Humvee while it was in gear and she still in the passenger seat. The same kid who'd later used his M-16 to butt stroke one of his teammates over a mean quip about his IQ. After she'd endured the problem soldier for several months, I found another spot for him, and she remained grateful.

I cleared the road dust from my throat and spoke evenly. "So, tell me, Sergeant. Whose responsibility is to get her here?" Her eyes revealed an involuntary stress response before she looked down to one side. Also good. Before she could compose an answer, I asked, "And while we're at it, whose responsibility is it to make sure someone's awake and in that commo van 24/7?"

She suddenly seemed to not know where her hands should be, putting them first on her hips, then down at her sides, folding her arms across her chest, and finally layering them behind her in a relaxed parade-rest posture. She inhaled through her nose and replied quietly, "Mine, Sir."

"Yours," I confirmed, holding her renewed gaze until she dropped her eyes again. I let the pause extend.

In the awkward quiet, we heard soft footsteps on the rocks outside the tent. A tentative, "Sarge,... LT?" announced the arrival of our third, the wayward and tardy specialist. She pulled the screen door open and peeked in. Her strawberry blond hair was salt-curled and messily piled on top of her head, and her freckled young face, slightly sunburned, expressed an anxious curiosity.

"Get in here," ordered the sergeant, taking hold of the screen door flap with one hand and the specialist's bare upper arm with the other, gently but firmly guiding her inside. The specialist stood where the sergeant put her in the small middle area of the now full tent. She was wearing mesh water shoes, a long thick towel around her waist, held in place by her freckled fist, a dark one-piece swim suit, and sunglasses that she tucked into the neck of her suit. The air in the tent became even more still as the sergeant lowered the canvass flap over the screen door.

Like the rest of us, the specialist, a diminutive, plump girl back in garrison, had slimmed down and tanned during our deployment. She'd always been on the wrong side of the Army's height/weight chart during quarterly APFT testing, requiring her to join the short line of soldiers being subjected to the embarrassment of having their BMI measured by calipers. That wasn't an issue now, though, thanks to Uncle Sam's seaside spa. I may be partial to curvy women, but I wasn't hating the view.

"We had a shot go out last night," I said, refocusing on the task at hand. "I was up troubleshooting from OPS, and nobody answered in your team's rig." I let the building indictment hang in the hot, still air. "Sergeant tells me you were supposed to be on shift." The specialist's blue eyes darted between mine and a neutral spot on the floor. "It took us an extra hour-and-a-half to get that shot back in because we had to get word to your sergeant and wait for her to wake you up to do your job." I noticed with approval the quickening of the specialist's breaths, the white knuckles as she squeezed the towel at her waist, and the water forming in her eyes. "What's your excuse?"

"I -" she paused, momentarily trying to look over her shoulder at her sergeant, who, still standing behind her, was out of her range. She started again, "Sir, I..." She put her free arm behind her in an approximation of a military stance. "No excuse, Sir."

Very good. Excuses are pointless wastes of time. I was glad we were agreeing at the outset to forego them.

I continued the lecture, building, "We're in a combat zone, specialist. Maybe you forget that with all the time you spend down at the beach, but there are real soldiers out there in the shit depending on our coms to get their food, fuel, and bullets." She nodded, blinking back tears. "Because we're in a combat zone, this is a court-martial offense under the UCMJ." That got her attention and, I noticed, the sergeant's. I dialed it back a half-step. "Nobody's going to court martial you, specialist, but an Article 15 is absolutely appropriate for someone not reporting for duty."

The reference to the "non-judicial punishment" provision of the Uniform Code of Military Justice implied a week or two of typically unpleasant extra duties and/or restrictions. The term "shit detail" wasn't just a metaphor on a tactical deployment. The specialist swallowed, nodded, and blinked back tears.

"We can't have someone who spends all day at the beach and sleeps through her shift." She started to interrupt me but then thought better of it. "After you serve your Article 15 punishment, I'm gonna ask the CO to send you home and swap in someone who'll do the job." And then the floodgates opened.

"NO! Please, Sir! Don't!" She turned to look back at the sergeant, who gave a slight shrug. Then the specialist animatedly pleaded for lenity. "I know I messed up! And I'm sorry! It won't happen again, I promise! Just please, PLEASE, don't send me home!" She was sobbing now, waiving the towel in one clenched fist while gesturing with the other hand.

I was nonplussed by this turn of conversation. After months in country, most of us were looking forward to going back home. I'd been worried about rewarding dereliction by giving her an early return, but here she was, distraught at the thought of reacquainting herself with cable TV, fast food, night clubs, soft beds, and carpeted floors. I looked at the sandy plywood and tried to solve the puzzle. Sure, she was getting "combat" pay, but that wasn't enough to make soldiers want to extend their deployment.

"Sergeant," I spoke past the specialist, ignoring the way the edge of her swimsuit traced along the front of her hip and disappeared over the rise to her backside, "why would we keep a dead weight soldier on your team?"

The sergeant cleared her throat and stopped her hand from running through her hair again before replying, "Sir, she's usually pretty good. Just lately, since... Well, I hope we can find a way to keep her." Something wasn't being said and that was starting to annoy me.

"Speak," I ordered. At his point, either someone was gonna clue me in, or I'd be making their lives unpleasant. The two women exchanged a glance, confirming a narrative I wasn't privy to.

The sergeant took a half-step toward me and to the side of her soldier, putting her hand gently around the younger woman's upper arm. "You know how Article 15's used to be called a 'Captain's Mast?'" she began.

"I'm aware." That was the Navy and in an era when sailors might be lashed for infractions at sea. I was starting to get where the sergeant was guiding her subordinate and our conversation.

"We're hoping you'll handle this... kinda like that." She paused while the specialist looked everywhere but at me. The silence and stillness in that hot-box of a tent felt like its own reality, with its own physical and moral laws. I knew exactly what the sergeant was proposing; my knee would be the "Captain's Mast," and I'd be punishing this delinquent young woman for her dereliction in an immediate and painful but not ultimately career-harming way. I was a by-the-book officer, but in that moment, mortifying the specialist's bottom to a degree calculated to improve her judgment and performance seemed like the only appropriate response.

The specialist shuffled a couple of steps toward me until the sweat beading up on her smooth legs might've been absorbed by the fabric of my uniform pants. Now, she was looking me in the eyes, waiting for encouragement or permission. That's what I needed too. "I'm going to spank you. You understand that, right?" She nodded. "Use your words, specialist."

"Yes, sir." She was speaking quietly, but in the singular dimension of the tent, we could hear each other breathing.

"It's going to hurt and I won't stop until I'm satisfied you've learned an unforgettable lesson." She nodded and looked up at the canvass ceiling as the first tear escaped her eye. "Speak," I reminded her.

"Yes, sir." The tears were making trails down her sun-kissed, freckled cheeks.

"And this is what you're asking for?" I continued. She looked back at her sergeant, who nodded.

The specialist wiped her face with the towel and answered for the third time, "Yes, sir." The sergeant silently took the towel from her charge's hand, folded it loosely, and dropped it on the nearest cot. The specialist rubbed her palms against her upper thighs and blew out her breath.

"Then ask me." The specialist's pupils popped for a moment, and the sergeant shifted her weight from one leg to the other. The pause that followed felt like electricity charging up the atmosphere.

The increasingly humiliated specialist blew out again, involuntarily catching a soft groan this time and took in another full breath before rolling her eyes in the mildest act of defiance available. "Please spank me. Sir."

I patted my knee. "Let's get this over with." She lowered herself into a half-crouch, put a hand on the chair seat and the other on my knee, and lowered herself gingerly across my lap, as if being graded on it. Her placement was as graceful as the awkward maneuver permitted. I felt her belly conforming to my lap and saw her rest her mesh-covered toes on the plywood. She reached back with her far hand and ran a finger under the edge of her swimsuit, pulling it down and toward her hip in an adorable expression of modesty and then gently gripped the chair leg. I suddenly experienced an avuncular sympathy for her in that humbled, nervous moment. But I couldn't fail to fulfil our shared expectations; we'd all be disappointed if I didn't administer the vigorous punishment she'd earned and bargained for. I rested my hands on her back.

The sergeant, transfixed, had folded her arms under her breasts and shot a hip out. Her perspiration had traced a pattern of her bra line and made her fine arm hair glisten in the hot. still shade. "At ease, sergeant," I said in a measured command voice. As if jolted, she quickly straightened up and folded her hands in the small of her back.

I clamped one hand on the specialist's hip and rotated, raising my dominant hand high. I paused in the backswing, picking a spot on the specialist's spandex-covered bottom, before bringing my hand down in what I expected to be a shocking and satisfying impact. I hadn't counted on her sweat muting the blow, but it did. So, I followed the first with two more rapid spanks in the same place, calibrating my strength and snap to get the desired effect. Just as I could feel the specialist starting to rotate her hips to spare the one cheek, I switched to the other for the next three strokes. She reversed her sideways roll and I added force to the next three spanks spanning the inner sit spots of both nates. I returned to the first cheek for five and then abandoned symmetry and counting, tattooing her bottom as she rolled and bucked on my lap. Her mounting distress expressed itself in her feet scrabbling for purchase on the dusty floor, first one then the other rising up. As I settled into a steady rhythm, I heard her signature vocalizations, "Aah's" and "ohh's," syncopated with the reports of my palm visiting her bottom. Her exertions undid the adjustment she'd made, and the tight one-piece suit began riding up away from her tan lines, exposing her pale globes. I maintained my pace, making sure to cover her entire behind several times over before slowing and finally pausing altogether. I could feel her rapid breathing begin to regulate as she grew still and mute across my knees. She reached her far arm toward her backside, perhaps to restore her modesty or touch her blushing bottom. It didn't matter which. I gently, firmly pushed her arm down and away. Embarrassment was part of her punishment, and I wasn't finished with her bottom yet.

"Why are you being spanked?" I asked. The silence lasted a moment too long for my taste, so I delivered five cheek-spanning spanks and repeated the question.

"Aahhoww!" she responded. "Because I was with Silvio when I was supposed to be in the van!"

"Who the hell is that?" I demanded to know.

The sergeant replied for her charge. "He's with the Italians."

Our deployment was part of a multi-national effort, with Nigerians, Swedes, Pakistanis, Germans, Tunisians, Belgians, and Italians in units of various sizes and specialties. My soldiers had at times consorted with their foreign counterparts, occasionally in ways that showed a lack of judgment appropriate to their age and the fact that, for most of them, this was their first overseas adventure. That this young woman was canoodling with an Italian soldier wasn't a surprise. That she was doing it when she was supposed to be in that commo rig was aggravating.

The specialist shifted on my lap, as if she was going to get up, but I clamped my hand on her far hip and held her in place. I raised my punishing arm high and brought my palm down on her bottom with renewed vigor. There wasn't much to fill the off-hours in Mogadishu, so I was running and lifting weights daily. Already in good physical shape, I'd become harder over the months of our deployment. I wasn't counting, keeping time, or pausing, and could've kept on mortifying that poor girl's shuddering bottom throughout the morning and into the afternoon, but once her soft sobbing and limp body told me that she'd gotten the full benefit of her time over my knees. I dialed down the strength of my blows, slowed the pace, and finally stopped.

I noticed her hair had mostly escaped the scrunchie, which was holding onto a hank of blonde curls off to the side., and one of her water shoes had popped off of her heel. I could feel her diaphragm on my thigh as she struggled to regain control of her breathing. I rested my hands on her back and waited until she became quiet and still. "What are you expected to do from now on?" I asked quietly.

"Be in the van for my shift," she answered between sniffles.

"And what will happen if I find out you aren't?" I gently pressed.

Another sobbed escaped, as she answered, "You'll spank me."

"I will," I confirmed, "and it'll be worse." For some reason, that coaxed the remaining sobs from the chastened specialist. We stayed in place while they ran their course.

The breeze had picked up outside, and the tent walls were rippling gently. Once she was finally still again and quiet occupied the tent, I released her. "You can get up." She tried to push herself up, but her arms began to give, so I helped her to her feet. Her hands went to her back side, gently touching with her fingertips where I'd focused my efforts and then wincing. She hovered her hands over the traumatized flesh while looking at me with bloodshot eyes. She bent her knees slightly and ran her fingers under the edges of the suit's bottom to pull it out. She took a deep breath and blew it clear, pulled the scrunchie the rest of the way off, and rolled it onto her wrist.

Punishment endured and modesty partially restored, she laid herself on one of the cots, belly down, arms folded beneath her head, and face turned to the canvass tent wall. I could see and hear her full, cleansing breaths as she regained her composure.

I turned my attention to the sergeant, who'd remained standing near the flap door, but whose posture had relaxed after I finished administering her charge's punishment. It wouldn't do for her to avoid accountability. "Sergeant," I spoke evenly, just over the sounds of the increasing wind on the tent fabric, "a lapse in judgment for her was a failure of supervision for you." Her eyes went wide as she immediately appreciated the import. She immediately resumed her "parade rest" posture, erect, shoulders back, hands folded behind her, and replied simply, "Yes, sir."