Chapter 13
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Ever since the draft had been reinstituted in January, people had tried to avoid it. Some draftees were able to come to an "understanding" with their commanding officers. Essentially they didn't have to serve, and the C.O. pocketed their entire salary, which was fair since they weren't actually doing the work. Other soldiers didn't exist at all, except on paper. The officers made up these names and made sure that their salaries went to their personal account. Empirical evidence has shown that jewish americans were no m ore likely to avoid this draft than gentiles, but the anti-semites were convinced that it was mainly jewish people who came to this understanding. Jewish officers were no more or less corrupt than gentile soldiers, but the conspiracy was that it was mainly jewish officers who made up these "Paper soldiers." Hamilton believed all of these conspiracy theories and more. I'm fairly certain that Hamilton was himself pocketing the salaries of paper soldiers, yet he'd blame the jews for this embezzlement. Having a commanding officer like this did not bode well for a jewish american like myself, particularly in Albany. With snipers everywhere just moving from building to building was dangerous. When you were in groups of three people, the person who ran first had the best chance of surviving. Typically Hamilton or another officer would go first, then the gentile soldier, than the jewish soldier. I was the third soldier more than once, I was lucky to have survived. Once, Hamilton caught a gentile soldier smoking a ciggarette, he just told her not to do it again. But he caught a jewish soldier doing this, and assigned him more dangerous duty. As a result of this he got injured. He survived, but lost a leg and received a medical discharge. That was hardly an isolated incident. Hamilton would typically assign jewish soldiers to more dangerous duty. Supposedly this earned them more points and got them rotated home sooner. He didn't seem to care that a lot of them got killed or seriously injured. Admittedly Hamilton never told me his reasons, I'm merely speculating based on what a number of other officers later admitted to doing. Hamilton wasn't the only anti-semetic officer or even neccessarily the worst, he was just the one that I was stuck with.
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This city was once the capitol of the state, now it was unrecognizable. Most buildings had been destroyed, rubble everywhere. It was in the dead of winter, you kept warm any way you could. I learned it's best to get boots that are at least one size two big, you stuff it with newspaper to stave of frostbite. There was one advantage to the snow, you walk in someone else's footprints, secure in the knowledge that those steps didn't contain a land mine. Fires at night were common, desperate people just trying to stay warm. With the glow of so many small fires, it was impossible to tell how many were from your side, how many from the other side, and how many were civilians. Officers typically wore private's uniforms, knowing that snipers preferred to target officers. That decreased your chance of getting shot, but the danger was still there. When not on duty I got out of uniform, hoping that the aliens were less likely to shoot civilians. This also decreased my chances of dying but by no means eliminated the danger. Because the aliens looked fully human, it was impossible to know for certain when they were out of uniform. Some were deserters, others just off duty. If you saw a person wearing a heavy coat in the middle of winter, and they were armed, you couldn't be certain. I'd see people that I suspected were aliens eating at the local food distribution places, I just stayed quiet, and tried not make a scene. There's an expression in war "The only way to tell who the enemy is, if they're shooting at you they're the enemy. If they didn't shoot at me I wouldn't shoot at them. The few civilians who were still here were mostly those who couldn't afford to move, and would do whatever work the military could throw their way. That included clearing the rubble, but so much new rubble kept coming that it was impossible to clear it all. And it was dangerous, both sides were planting landmines in parts of the city held by the enemy. But neighborhoods changed hands so often that many were killed by their own mines. And ofcourse children would search for scraps, things they could sell to survive. Many children died or lost limbs this way, but more children kept searching. Even when their friends were killed, they were still desperate enough to do this. For awhile I was assigned to help these children, teach them what to avoid. But I barely knew more than them on the subject. Perhaps Hamilton was hoping I would get killed, others were killed doing this. But in the confusion of war it's impossible to predict who will live and who will die. There was little to do on your off days. Books were scarce, mainly because they were burned for warmth. Sometimes you could find someone to play chess or cards with, and there were radio stations that played good music. So your best bet was to just curl up in your bunk and listen to the radio, leaving only for food or to use the latrine. I do remember one notice, a young female soldier promised to spend the night with anyone, male or female, with at least three pieces of wood for warmth. That was one way to keep warm, maybe even get some extra rations from an officer. But I resisted this, not wanting to take any chance of getting pregnant. One thing I must say in Hamilton's defense, he always made sure we had plenty of contraceptives. He knew that every child born would increase the population, and suppossedly the war wouldn't end until the number dropped to ten billion. By this point over one billion, human and alien, had died. Another three billion to go, and I'm sure that guys like Hamilton didn't want a lot of jews to reproduce . I'm not even really sure we were in Albany, except to fight the aliens in an area that was less densly populated with civilians. If my superiors had any other kind of strategy for Albany, I couldn't tell you what it was.