The Episode on the Western Slope

They had to spend the afternoon on the western slope about one hundred yards below the great ridge. Many of them were exhausted from dehydration and days of walking without proper rest. Most of them didn’t think they would make it out of there alive. It was Jenkins who first started to show signs of complete cognitive meltdown. He was the first one to really crack. Around noon he began to recite the worst poetry any of them had ever heard. The poetry, if it could be called that, was so offensive that some of the men vomited up whatever was left in their nearly empty stomachs. It didn’t help any that Jenkins had an effeminate southern drawl that was extremely annoying to begin with. They all took turns trying to silence Jenkins, but nothing worked. They could not believe that Jenkins would have the gall to project such filth into the atmosphere at a time like this. The only one who wasn’t surprised was Till, who knew deep down that Jenkins was completely maladjusted. He had cheated his way into the service - clearly fooling all of the staff psychologists. Somehow he had convinced everyone that he was fit for duty. Till was the only one who knew that Jenkins should never have been with them. He knew that Jenkins was a liability, that he could put the whole outfit in jeopardy. He regretted not turning him into the senior staff before they left HQ. Many of the men would live on to tell stories from their experiences. The majority of those men still wake up some nights in fits of unholy terror with Jenkins’s god-awful poetry echoing in their ears as if heard for the first time.