The next day, you polish your boots to a spit shine before putting them back on. The whole day, you don’t think of much other than how tough and sharp they look on you. After work, you decide to go downtown again before heading home. You come across the surplus store. You wonder what else they have that you might want.
The man who sold you the boots greets you as you enter. He looks you up and down.
“Boy, do you real-ahs you have an ink stain on yoohr pants?”
You don’t see anything when you look down at where he points.
“Where?” you ask.
“There,” he says, this time touching the fabric of your chinos. “It looks sloppy, son. You should replace them raght away.”
Suddenly you see the stain he was talking about. How could you not notice it before? You ask if the store carries any pants. Lucky for you, it does. The man brings you a pair of olive drab wool trousers. But before you try them on, you should wear the matching OD cotton drawers and OD tank top. In the fitting room, you take off your boots, pants, and dress shirt, before putting on everything that the man gave you. It all looks good on you, though you don't exactly have the guns or chest to rock just a tank top. You put back on your shirt and tie, and toss your chinos in the garbage.
At the register, the man has 2 more sets of the OD trousers, 6 more of the drawers, and a bunch of tanks and tees in white or OD. There’s also a rucksack for you to carry it all in.
“And of course, once you’ve transported yoohr new purchase, you should use the rucksack for rucking. Boys like you should be fit and strong. Marches and PT was how Ah grew hair on mah chest. Here, let me show you.”
The man shows you how to do proper pushups, sit-ups, and other bodyweight exercises, and how to add weight to make things more challenging. He tells you how to add sandbags and bottles full of rocks to weigh your rucksack down, and how to keep a good pace while rucking.
Without a second thought, you buy all the clothes and the sack. Wearing the rucksack, you run home to burn off the restless energy that’s building up in your legs. Drenched in sweat, you throw your work shirt in the hamper before weighing down your rucksack and striding six miles into the nearby forest. You then start doing weighted pushups, sit-ups, and other exercises and calisthenics.
The next day, you wear your new clothes to work, with a white shirt and blue tie over your olive drab tank top. You can’t concentrate on anything but how your drawers, tank, and boots feel on you, and how you long to be working out in the forest, instead of stuck on a computer at work. When work is finally over, you run over to the surplus store again. You ask the man if he could lead you in a work out. He smiles and says he was just about to start a session with a few other recruits. There are 7 other guys in the store, all wearing the same boots and trousers, though their undershirts vary. You take off your shirt and tie and step into formation by the gas masks.
The man, who tells you all to address him as “Sir,” runs you ragged on a course through the forest. Your limbs and your lungs ache, but he tells you constantly that “pain is weakness leaving the body”. He has you repeat cadences. Finally, when you return to the surplus store, you think that you’re finished, but he commands you all to the second floor, where he lives in a loft. It’s a very spartan pad, in nothing but whites, beiges, and greys, and minimal furniture. But an entire half of the space is a dedicated gym, full of free weights. He splits you into four pairs for spotting, rotating exercises every 6 minutes.
You finish at 2300 hours. Your sweat-drenched hair’s been getting into your eyes and making it hard to focus. When you complain to Sir, he tells you to report to him at 0500 hours so that he can fix the issue for you.