"THE MAZE IS HELL, SIR!"

6. INSPECTION TIME Ferris Belvedere Grangerfield Sherman the Third was his full name, or as much of it as I could remember, anyway. There could have been more. His pedigree would shame a Kentucky thoroughbred. His drawl was unmistakably Carolinian. His beer belly revealed his favorite vice. To look at him failed to give away the fact that his pocket money could probably purchase the entire state of North Carolina in one lump sum or that he was heir to a sizable tobacco fortune from his family’s plantation. Surprisingly, Sherman didn’t smoke. From the start, he refused to allow anyone to call him Ferris or any one of those other names he had. To all of us he was Hutch. His informal manner belied his personal wealth the only giveaway of which was an elegant gold watch which was probably worth more than the car I had sold before leaving Florida. While many of us had joined the Navy because we needed a decent job and all the attached benefits, Hutch had signed up because he thought it was the honorable thing to do for his country. “I am an American citizen,” he said with genuine pride, “and I wish to serve my country.” His family was Navy going back a long way: brothers, uncles, and virtually all his ancestors back to the Revolutionary War. He did have one great-grandfather who had joined the Confederate Army “when the North invaded America”, all the more ironic since I had always associated the name ‘Sherman’ with the Union cause. Hutch was simply following an old family tradition. Hutch had plenty of family yarns where this Sherman or that had saved the day and the cause of freedom. Hutch was determined to add to the family chronicle of war heroes and make the blood run just a shade bluer. Most of his bluster was all in good fun and just about everyone realized this about him and liked him—except Ali. But they wisely avoided each other in order to prevent any trouble in the company. Hutch was an affable bear who usually figured out how to get his way: when his feet began hurting from all the marching, he asked to see the corman and received written permission to wear sneakers all day so that when we all marched in formation, amidst the clomp, clomp of everyone’s shoes, one could detect the squish, squish of Hutch’s sneakers. Through the ensuing weeks, I found that Hutch had a knack for bending the rules and stretching the regulations as far as possible; to this teacher of mine I would owe my success as a Naval officer.