A while later, Captain Snow made his way toward the Regimental Command Building. The atmosphere at the camp had shifted from the chaotic energy of arrival to the focused, frantic hum of a staging ground. A motor pool's worth of deuce-and-a-half trucks were backed up to the loading docks, their engines idling with a low rumble. Soldiers and laborers were busy offloading crates of signal equipment, field desks, and steel filing cabinets to establish the Regimental Headquarters.
Snow entered the building, dodging two privates struggling with a massive topographical map table. Regimental staff elements were already digging in on the ground floors, their faces buried in manifests and telegraph ribbons. Snow flagged down a clerk who was balancing a precarious stack of personnel folders.
"Hey, soldier. Where's Major Stanley's office?" Snow asked.
The clerk didn't look up from his papers. "Second floor, farthest room to the right, sir. Just follow the smell of the Major's humidor."
Snow nodded and took the stairs. The second floor was quieter, the air thick with the scent of floor wax and expensive cigar smoke. He reached the end of the hall and gave the heavy door a sharp knock.
"Come in," a familiar, easy-going raspy voice called out.
Snow entered. Major Stanley was behind a desk that looked far too small for his frame. He had his jump boots propped up on the table next to a stack of classified morning reports, a thick cigar clamped between his teeth. He looked like a man perfectly comfortable in the eye of a hurricane.
"You called for me, sir?" Snow asked, standing at a loose attention.
Stanley exhaled a cloud of gray smoke. "Oh... right. Yes. Other than asking you what the hell you're doing with your men—making them crawl back to the camp like whipped dogs—I'm sure Javier told you about our rushed schedule."
"He mentioned it, sir," Snow said.
Stanley dropped his feet to the floor and leaned forward, his expression turning sharp. "You've seen the current training regime. It was drawn up for an eighteen-month cycle—a full year of basic and six months for tactics and weapons mastery. We wanted refined soldiers. The Brass now wants 'combat-ready assets.' They've cut our clock to a single year. The 98th through the 101st Airborne are being forced into a compressed schedule: only four months in Albiore for jump school and tactics, and only eight months here for basic."
Snow paused, his mind calculating the loss of training hours. "I don't think a year is enough, sir. Not with the current manual. We'll be sending replacements into the meat grinder with half-baked drills and no muscle memory."
"I don't think so either," Stanley agreed, tapping ash into a tray. "But, if we overhaul the regime with your recommendations... the ones you've been 'field testing' on that mountain... do you think you can bridge the gap? I don't want to deploy a bunch of green recruits with half-baked training. I'm the one who has to sign the casualty reports, Snow. I won't have it be because they didn't know how to clear a stoppage under fire."
Snow thought for a moment. "A few adjustments would tighten the belt, sir. But let's be straight about the cost. We'll have to expand the infirmary for stress fractures and exhaustion, and we should expect a higher percentage of Section 8 discharges or unqualified recruits being sent back to the states. I'd suggest front-loading small unit tactics and marksmanship to Phase 2, alongside the mock-up towers. Expose them to the weight of the M24 and the logic of the fireteam before they even see an airship."
Stanley smirked, a glint of shared ruthlessness in his eyes. "Exposure therapy. I like the sound of that. I have a few ideas of my own to pitch in—mostly involving night-navigation and live-fire maneuvers." He turned back to his desk. "Alright, Captain. I want your formal training syllabus adjustments on my desk by 0700 tomorrow."
"Yes, sir."
"Oh, and one more thing," Stanley added as Snow turned for the door. "Colonel Sax thinks your mountain run is a 'stellar' idea for building esprit de corps. All companies are expected to hit the slopes starting tomorrow morning. He says the Medics will be on standby for the ones who wash out."
Snow felt a grim sense of satisfaction. If his men had to suffer, at least the rest of the 506th would be sharing the misery.
During the first week, all nine companies joined Easy in the "Mountain Descent." It was a massacre of morale. At least ten percent of the recruits were sent straight to the infirmary with shin splints, heat exhaustion, or physical collapse. But the sight of the other companies struggling actually galvanized Easy. They weren't the "special targets" anymore; they were the veterans of the mountain, watching the 'leg' companies suffer the way they had. They held on, reaching out to pull their squadmates through the brush.
By the second week, the mountain run had become a grueling routine. Snow and Stanley upped the ante. Now, they ran in full fatigues, with weighted ruck-packs, carrying their rifles and steel pots. The "slow burn" of the climb became a rhythmic agony. At 0900 hours, they moved straight from the mountain to the Combat Obstacle Course, a gauntlet designed to break anyone who hadn't found their second wind. The goal was simple: beat the regimental record or kiss your weekend goodbye.
By the third week, Easy Company had found their "game faces." The soft-eyed kids from the Marmello docks were gone. In their place were lean, tanned paratrooper-candidates who were used to hitting the gravel at 0400, running six miles in PT gear one day and full combat load the next. Miraculously, not a single man or woman from Easy was sent to the infirmary that week. They had adapted.
But they weren't the only ones. Dog, Able, and Item companies were clawing at their heels, their times at the Gauntlet beginning to shatter records. The competition was becoming a matter of company pride.
At the end of the first month, Snow stood before 250 men and women of Easy Company. They were formed up in the "Easy Street" zone, the lines so straight they looked like they'd been dressed by a transit. He scanned their faces.
"All of you have performed well these past thirty days," Snow said, his voice carrying clearly without the need for a bellow. "Despite the grueling pace, you didn't fold. You didn't let your brothers and sisters down. I expect that same resolve in the months to follow. You haven't just met the standard—you've set it."
A wave of quiet, hard-earned pride swept through the ranks.
"Now," Snow said, a small smile playing on his lips. "Do you want to know the results of the Gauntlet's fastest speed record?"
"SIR, YES SIR!" they shouted in unison, the sound echoing off the barracks.
First Sergeant Lewis stepped forward and handed Snow the official tally.
"Coming in third place..." Snow paused, letting the tension simmer. A top-three finish meant a 48-hour pass—a golden ticket to a civilian bed and a hot meal. "Dog Company at 4:59."
The company clapped. Dog was a tough outfit; there was no shame in that.
"For second place..." Snow's smile widened. "Easy Company, coming in at 4:51."
The formation broke into cheers. Jack grabbed Kenlil's shoulder, shaking him with a laugh. They had done it. They were getting forty-eight hours of "liberty" to be civilians again.
The timing was perfect. Their first month's pay had just been disbursed, and the recruits were buzzing with the prospect of spending it. For Jack and Natalia, the pass was about more than just a steak dinner. They had maintained their "friends with benefits" arrangement since before the draft, a secret shared between hushed whispers and stolen glances. The military strictly forbade "romance"—the drama of heartbreaks was a poison for unit cohesion—but the Brass was remarkably pragmatic about "intimacy."
In their hygiene lectures, the medics had been blunt about the "Blue Pills" served with every chow. They weren't just vitamins; they were advanced contraceptives developed for the integrated military. Ever since the Republic started fielding female combatants, pregnancy had been a major logistical hurdle. The "Blue Pill" was the solution—rendering both sexes temporarily sterile for exactly twenty-four hours. As long as they kept taking their "vitamins," the "biological risks" were managed. It was the military's way of acknowledging that if you put thousands of fit, stressed-out young people together, they were going to blow off steam one way or another.
As the cheers died down, Snow called for silence. "And for first place. The company that receives the extra monthly allotment for the Company Fund and the trophy in the HQ... Able Company, at 4:43."
The clapping this time was respectful but cold. Captain Jones of Able Company was a notorious petty tyrant. He was a man who lived and died by the manual, a "Sobel" type who would revoke a man's weekend pass for a slightly tarnished buckle or a stray thread on a collar. He treated the morning inspections like a high-stakes trial and spent his nights dreaming up new ways to make his men suffer.
His men in Able Company didn't just dislike him; they despised him with a unified, white-hot intensity. Jones used that hatred as fuel, turning his company into a cold, mechanical machine. They ran faster and worked harder not because they loved the jump, but because they wanted to deny Jones the satisfaction of finding a fault. He would order a full-pack night march through the mud just because someone smirked in formation, and his men would finish it just to spite him.
Easy Company didn't mind coming in second. They had their passes. They had their scrip. And for forty-eight hours, they were going to forget the mountain even existed.