"In my early military days, we had a green recruit in our battalion we called 'Sweet Punch.' The name may sound silly, but I guarantee you Sweet Punch was no laughing matter.

There was nothing Sweet Punch wasn't scared of. Or is that a double-negative? He wasn't ever scared, that's my intended remark.

Sweet Punch would call the drill sergeant a fish-masturbator to his face, something we only said behind his back, or dreamed about late at night. The drill sergeant would give him 2,000,000,000 push-ups as punishment and sat to watch him do them all. The drill sergeant would then get tired around 20 push-ups and wander off, leaving Sweet Punch to hang out with us for a while drinking until we all went to bed. To sleep, I mean, in separate beds.

In war was no different. I worked for the armed forces newspaper Stars N Stripes, gardening section, and would often cover Sweet Punch's amazing exploits in World War II, and later World War III, later known as the Korean Mistake.

Sweet Punch would walk into a mindfield, hit a mine, and come out laughing on the other side, usually through the hysterical euphoria of losing most of his limbs in an explosion. He would storm German machine guns and chew the bullets, spitting them out like tobacco. Tobacco filled with blood and face meat. He ran right up to Mussolini one time and socked him right between his fascist eyes. At least he thought it was Mussolini, it turned out to be that exact same drill sergeant, strangely enough, and he made him do 30 push-ups before getting bored and wandering off.

Actually, to be completely truthful, Sweet Punch, the first one, was killed the minute we stepped off the boat, the victim of a well-placed Nazi street pothole. After that we just called every green recruit we didn't know the name of Sweet Punch. It sure made us feel better."

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