Where do good little Sergeants-Major go when they pass beyond the veil? Why, to the Eternal Fields of PT Belts, of course.
I recently did a doodle about Sergeant Major Heaven (in Patreon) and it was a place where, for example, bright, reflective PT Belts grew on trees, and their wings were made of PT belts. It got me to thinking, which is always dangerous.
I had my old Sergeant-Major character from the early days of the comic, Rufus Q. Hoddson. I liked Hoddson, he really was, to me, the epitome of the Sergeant-Major in my mind’s eye at the time. He wasn’t truly toxic, he was mostly just self-absorbed. He was a guy who’d put in a lot of long, difficult years and finally reached the pinnacle of his achievement, and didn’t see anything wrong with using that position to take the (relatively) easy road.
Sure, he came up with stupid rules that caused petty frustrations among the troops, but at the same time he wouldn’t, for example, do truly corrupt things to enrich himself at their expense. He went through the motions of “making decisions” and otherwise sat back to enjoy being the king of his particular hill, before sliding down it comfortably into retirement.
I’ve featured past friends & colleagues from deployment in the past, but there’s a few I never followed up on. Hoddson was one of them; Chaplain Crossman was another. When I decided to make the doodles about “Sergeant-Major heaven” an official comic, I figured I was done with Hoddson and this would be a good send-off for him.
I like to put thought into my characters and consider where they came from and where they went after we met them. Since 2023 is the 20-year anniversary of the Iraq War, and the 10-year anniversary of BOHICA Blues, I figured I would give at least one of them a shot at their Final Reward.
Until next time!
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