Teenage space troopers perish in their thousands as the humans go on offense.
Galactic Date 5127.504
Gina Andromeda’s song “Love” tops the Xares-27 charts today, reaching #1 after a meteoric rise that marks a new high point in the 16 year old singing sensation’s career. Today, the big boobed blonde superstar will appear in an interview with Xares Broadcasting Systems (XBS) to confirm all the widespread rumors about the song. “Yes, I was making love when I recorded it…with my boyfriend…I was getting close when I hit all those high notes and that long moan was when I had my orgasm!” Gina admits. She also confirms that the male groan at the end of the song was produced by her boyfriend as he ejaculated deep inside of her. The interview generates an immediate scandal, even in the sexually liberated society of Xares-27. Xarian mothers order their teenage daughters not to listen to the song, but this only fuels its popularity and adolescent girls all over Xares do their level best to imitate Gina’s high-pitched orgasmic moan that serves as the ballad’s climax…
Delta Quadrant
In the predawn darkness, 5,000 space troopers in Delta Quadrant are rousted out of their bunks at 0300. Run through a cold shower, but deprived of breakfast, the naked teens are then marched over to the locker rooms to don their black battle armor; they’re the first wave of the renewed offensive that will bring final victory over the Zadons. Most, but not all of them are from Epsilon Quadrant; carrottop is one of the thousands who wriggles his bare ass into his tight fitting armored pants. Running on just a few hours of sleep, the teens are eager for combat; while they’ve enjoyed scoring Delta pussy over the past couple of weeks, they’re now looking forward to action of a different kind. As they were told in the training video, this is not going to be a quick, easy mission; their armor is specially equipped with an upgraded breathing system that that will allow them to survive for 48 hours without taking off their helmets. Each boy is given a dermal nutrient patch that he applies to his upper left arm before putting on his upper body armor; the patch will provide him with sustenance for the next 2 days and he’s assured that it will help to suppress his hunger, too. Before putting on his helmet, he swallows an extra strength binding pill that will prevent his bowels from moving for the next 48 hours. He also tucks two hydration pills under his tongue; one of the pills has a slightly thicker coating and will dissolve more slowly, releasing into his system only after the first pill has been depleted. Once he’s in his armor, helmet locked in place, he dons extra gear not normally used in any other quadrant. He cinches a belt around his waist; attached to it are a sheathed 6 inch combat knife and a water bottle. He’s mystified by both items; the knife, since he obviously won’t be able to kill a Zadon with it and the water bottle since he won’t be able to take his helmet off to drink from it during the mission. He then heaves a backpack onto his shoulders; pairing off with another trooper, the two boys help each other to adjust and tighten the straps on their respective packs. The pack contains food, an extra pair of boots and a blanket, as well as a miscellaneous hodgepodge of other items, an extra 25 pounds of weight that our teen will be lugging around on his back. Taking up his laser rifle in his thickly gloved hands, he’s now ready for combat. Even more weighted down than the average troopers are the corporals and sergeants. Besides carrying his laser rifle and hefting his backpack, each noncom also has a rocket launcher slung over his shoulder; a laser pistol and ammo pouch full of rockets compete for room on his belt with the water bottle and the useless knife. Some of the sergeants also sport plasma grenades clipped to whatever open space they can find on their belts and we also spot at least one sergeant with a backup, small-charge laser pistol in a thigh holster. Weighed down and clanking with all their extra gear, the teenage troopers march to the jumping off point; once there, they have several hours of standing in formation ahead of them, just staring out into the darkness. Their empty bellies rumble, but their hunger is suppressed by their excitement and eagerness for combat…
Beta Quadrant
Even as the space troopers in Delta prepare for combat, an equally important operation is already underway elsewhere on Xares. Another force of 5,000 troopers has been assembled for a strike mission to take out a quad of Zadons that’s been detected near a ruined village in the northeastern corner of Beta Quadrant. The intention of the quad is unknown, but such a concentration of cyborgs represents a major threat to the entire sector, especially after the surprise raid on Xenon. Unlike the abortive ambush attempt in Alpha a few days ago, this mission will be a straight-on assault; converging on the quad from three directions, north, south and west, the space troopers will throw themselves at the Zadons in dense assault waves and the cost in human lives is expected to be high, even if the operation is successful. Not wanting to alert the cyborgs by flying in a fleet of transports, the space troopers begin marching in the early morning hours towards their objectives. If everything is timed correctly, they should be hitting the quad with coordinated mass assault waves and rocket fire from three directions just as the sun is coming up over the horizon…
Delta Quadrant
The massed ranks of space troopers watch as a signal rocket streaks up into the darkened sky and then bursts in a shower of stars. The long awaited command from Kaylee rings in their ears: “Advance…Advance…Assault Wave Formation…Assault Wave Formation…” The heavily encumbered troopers lumber forward, the scrawnier 14 year old recruits with their shoulders hunched from the weight of their backpacks. Moving out as daylight slowly starts to seep over the empty landscape, the advancing teens brace themselves; they expect to be immediately swarmed by Zadon battle drones, but the dreaded flying predators never materialize. There’s no trace of the Zadons and in fact, there’s nothing at all to be seen, just wide open terrain. After about 15 minutes, the sergeants and corporals order the troopers to adopt open formation and the teens begin to relax. They call out good naturedly to each other; there’s not going to be any fighting after all today, just a march to the first day’s objective line. The ground is still solid beneath their feet but after another 15 minutes, it suddenly starts to feel squishy. This isn’t unexpected; just as they were briefed in the training video, the boys know that they’re entering the bog…
Aside from the town of Xenna and some other smaller villages, most of Delta Quadrant is taken up by a giant bog that separates the human settlements from the Zadon controlled sector. The cyborgs are on permanent defense in Delta; they aren’t stupid enough to venture into the bog, knowing that they would literally be swallowed up if they tried. Instead, they’ve so heavily fortified the solid ground on their side that no transports can land there; every square foot of terrain not occupied by a Zadon pod has a live electrical grid, molten plasma pit or just a plain, old fashioned scrap metal obstacle that renders landing a transport impossible. The only way to get through the bog is on foot; the goal of the offensive is to secure the deposits of rare trace minerals on the Zadon side, but exactly how and why capturing these deposits is going to result in the total collapse of the Zadon war effort has never been fully explained by anybody in the High Command…
The troopers’ feet start to sink into the muck as soon as they take their first steps into the bog. The pace of the advance, already slow, grinds to a crawl as the weighted down teens struggle forward and the ground becomes even more squishy; soon the boys find themselves sloshing through liquid muck up to their ankles and in some places even up to their knees. The atmosphere is so dank, so humid, that the teens literally marinate in their own sweat; the intense humidity is so high that it activates the armor’s normally unresponsive cooling system but this does little to alleviate the boys’ suffering, as they continue to plod forward...
Beta Quadrant
Light is just starting to edge the horizon as two of the space trooper assault columns reach their objectives in Beta Quadrant. Strike Force A has approached from the north and Force B from the west and are now in position to launch their attacks; Force C, approaching from the south, still hasn’t appeared on the scene. Tired from their long night march, the troopers can see the dark, looming shadows of the Zadon quad grouped just outside the ruins of the village; surprise has been achieved and the cyborgs seem oblivious to their presence. The teens pause to catch their breath and give a few more minutes for Force C to catch up to them. They have to wait until full daylight to commence their attack anyway, since one strange aspect of the Zadon Wars is the poor quality of night optics on both sides which restricts combat to daylight hours only. The sergeants in command of the A and B units communicate with each other and with the Operations Center over CommLink to coordinate the attack; the sky is rapidly brightening and soon the Zadons will be able to sight the space trooper formations if they haven’t done so already. After more tense minutes pass, the Ops Center informs them that Force C, a recruit battalion composed of raw 14 year olds, has been delayed and still hasn’t arrived at its designated strike position yet. Further delay will only result in disaster, so the order is given; Strike Forces A and B will attack immediately. The neuron transmitters jolt the massed thousands of teens into full arousal; the sergeants and corporals start maneuvering to take up position with their rocket launchers while the rank and file troopers surge forward in their dense assault wave formations, hurling themselves at the now fully awake cyborgs…
Delta Quadrant
Thoroughly exhausted from 2 hours of plodding through muck up to their ankles, the platoon of space troopers stare blankly ahead through the face plates of their helmets at the unending expanse of the bog stretching out in front of them, the empty monotony of the landscape broken only by a few weirdly stunted trees here and there. Native Delta boys, a good mix of blonds and redheads, they’ve been brought up on legends and myths about the bog, but none of them have ever experienced it first hand and they’re about to get a brutal education. The slightly built 14 year old redhead at the far left end of the advancing file of troopers is the first to spot it, visible as a fleeting speck at the very edge of his restricted field of vision. “Drone!” he shouts, not even having time to raise his laser rifle before the shock wave thumps him in the chest and flings him down onto his back in the muck. Thump-thump-thump-the entire first rank of boys goes down as the drone sweeps them with its shock cannon, working their ranks from left to right. “Halt! Return fire!” the platoon sergeant calls out; taking cover in the wide open bog is not an option and only disciplined return fire can neutralize the threat. Obediently, the 14 and 15 year old troopers stop in their tracks and train their laser rifles at the intruder; before they can open fire, it veers off sharply, traces a wide arc and comes tearing back in for another pass, again from left to right, enfilading the second rank of teens, cutting them all down before they can respond. “Fuck! Shit! Fuck!” the 17 year old blond sergeant curses. He has a rocket launcher slung over his shoulder, but he’s authorized to use it only on Zadons, not lowly drones; he starts to raise his laser rifle when a shock wave thumps him directly in the center of his chest, instantly slamming his heart to a brutal, shuddering stop. Even with their sergeant dead, the young troopers maintain admirable discipline, standing their ground and firing at the twisting, turning drone as it continues to work their ranks over with its twin cannon, scything them down, file by file. Just when it looks like all the boys will be left dead on the field, a blond 15 year old gets a lucky hit with his laser rifle. The blast knocks the drone sideways, sparks flying. Sputtering, it hovers in place for a moment, as if in shock; this gives the surviving troopers the window they need and they blaze away with their rifles, hitting it again and again until it detonates in a shower of flying wreckage. The human wreckage lies in neat rows, their armor clad bodies spattered with mud; out of the 105 boys in the unit, 66 are dead, including the sergeant and all 5 corporals. The senior surviving 15 year old takes charge of the depleted platoon and leads them forward, deeper into the unforgiving bog…
The attack is only the first of the day as swarms of battle drones come zipping in, blasting the advancing space troopers with their shock wave cannons. The teens can only stand and take the punishment, their casualties mounting as they exchange fire with the flying marauders; the firefights continue until the drones are destroyed or they choose to break off their attacks. Casualties are appalling; one recruit platoon of freckle faced Epsilon boys loses 91 dead, destroying it as an effective fighting force. Even as the battle drones deal out death, recon drones hover just on the horizon; they act as spotters for the next weapon that will be unleashed on the hapless teenagers…
The freckle faced boys from Epsilon plod their way forward, the mud splattering their boots as they make slow but steady progress through the bog. Further back in the advance, the recruit platoon* of fresh faced 14 year olds is still intact, having avoided the drone attacks so far and now there seems to be a lull; the battle drones have backed off, leaving only a few recon drones hovering at the far edge of the battlefield. Tired from slogging through the muck, but in good spirits, the redheads start laughing and joking with each other when without warning, a high velocity projectile comes dropping in at a steep trajectory right into the middle of their closely packed ranks. Fused to detonate at waist level, the hypersonic mortar shell bursts, releasing a concentrated energy pulse; the teens have no time to process what’s happening to them as they absorb the shock wave that devastates all of their internal organs. The wave spreads out, pulsing through armor and shredding bowels, rupturing lungs, pulverizing hearts and liquefying brains. Bodies are flung in all directions and for the lucky boys close to the epicenter of the blast, death is instantaneous; those on the periphery writhe and gasp out their last breaths in unspeakable agony. In the eerie silence that follows, the bodies of the slain lay sprawled out in every contorted position imaginable, many of them flung yards away from the blast site; all 105 boys in the platoon have been killed with a single shot. With the recon drones acting as spotters, the mortars use their range to render every corner of the bog unsafe for the advancing teens and unlike the drones, there’s absolutely no defense against them. The mortar blasts are even more lethal than the drones; one shell catches two platoons that have unwisely clustered together, killing 176 teens with a single blast. The shells are fused to detonate at varying heights; an overhead burst can churn the brains of 100 boys into a gray, soupy mush before any of them can even blink an eye. Other shells explode at chest or waist level; the Zadons also plop seismic wave shells into the bog itself, to churn up even more of the unstable quagmire and open up sinkholes for the advancing teens to fall into. As the battle drones return to tear through their ranks again and the mortar shells plop down among them with steady frequency, the dwindling band of adolescent warriors plods grimly forward…
To the twin scourges of drones and hypersonic mortar blasts, our teens must confront a third, even more frightening terror, the bog itself. Just imagine yourself for a moment as a boyishly cute 14 year old, a brand new recruit with deeply dimpled cheeks and a stray lock of blond hair that falls across your forehead and in front of your bright blue eyes. You lost your virginity just two weeks ago to your pretty 15 year old neighbor; you know that she’ll be waiting for you when you get home after the Zadons are finally defeated! Now, eager for combat, you’re sloshing through the mud here in Delta with the rest of your platoon when suddenly you feel the ground vanish beneath your feet as solid becomes liquid; you’ve just blundered into one of the bog’s numerous sinkholes. Before you can even utter a warning cry to your fellow troopers, you disappear into the dank, torpid waters with a loud splash. Weighted down by your heavy backpack and other gear, you feel yourself plunging like a rock into the murky depths; plummeting rapidly, the water swiftly inundates your breathing system and then surges into your lungs, snuffing out your young life before your racing brain can even completely process what’s happening to you. Life now extinct, your drowned, armored husk inertly descends to the bottom; waiting to greet you there are hundreds of your fellow teens, entombed in their armor and anchored to the bottom in their heavy boots where you will join them. You’ll never know it, but your swift death by drowning makes you a very lucky young lad, indeed. To experience an even worse fate, let’s now put ourselves into the boots of another teenage space trooper who falls victim to Delta’s voracious, man-eating bog…
Imagine now that you’re a 15 year old; tall, cute and cocky, heavily freckled and with a shock of curly red hair, all you have to do is flash your braces at a blonde chick and she’s ready to drop to her knees and blow you. You’re a stud and you know it; you and your 7 inch pecker have been on too many adventures with too many blonde chicks to count, but right now it really sucks to be you. You’re wishing that at this moment you were somebody, anybody else, because you’re slowly sinking into a part of the bog that’s not completely liquified. As you think back, you remember how it all happened so gradually but inexorably. The ground just kept getting more and more squishy; first the muck was up to your ankles and then before you knew it, you were sloshing in it up to your knees. The other members of your platoon were able to keep slogging through it somehow, but your pace started to slow and you fell further and further behind. Now all alone, you try to take one more step forward and you realize that you can’t; you’re stuck and you suddenly realize that you’re submerged in the spongy mire up to your waist. Blind fear seizes you; you try to pull yourself out, but you can feel the bog tugging back, gripping you strongly by the hips and pulling you further down. Realizing that your heavy backpack is helping to drag you down, you throw away your laser rifle and frantically pull at the straps on your pack, but your thickly gloved hands and mounting panic make you lose all dexterity and defeat your fumbling efforts to remove the dead weight pressing down on your shoulders. You continue to squirm and to struggle; you try to heave your whole body up and out of the mire, like some giant, writhing insect, but all your efforts only make you sink down even further and now you’re up to your armpits in the merciless muck. A platoon of space troopers passes by at a safe distance, but nobody even bothers to look at you; they’re following strict orders not to help anyone being sucked into the bog, lest they get pulled in, too. You try to gauge the consistency of the muck that’s swallowing you, because this will determine how you will die; if it’s fairly viscous, it will slowly seep into your armor through the joints and seams and through your breathing system until it forces itself into your nostrils and mouth, drowning you in a thick brown grotesque sludge. If it’s of thicker consistency, it won’t seep into your armor, but you’ll be entombed alive and slowly suffocated, experiencing all the horror of helplessly waiting for your air supply to run out. You’ve now settled into the muck up to your chin; the dank, putrid smell of the bog fills your nostrils and you can feel yourself becoming one with the vile entity that’s swallowing you alive, like a giant, wriggling worm. From head to toe, your armor encased body is now drenched in a cold, clammy sweat and your green eyes are open wide in abject terror. It really, really sucks to be you…
The experiences of our two teen troopers will be shared by hundreds of other boys today who will drown or suffocate in the bog, disappearing from sight individually, in pairs, or sometimes in whole squads...
Beta Quadrant
Smoke is billowing high into the sky as Strike Force C, the southern prong of the space trooper assault mission, finally reaches its jumping off point at the edge of the battlefield. This force should have gone into action at dawn in coordination with the other two prongs of the attack, but having lost their way in the darkness, they’ve only just completed their 5 mile march; it’s now full daylight and the battle has already been raging for two hours. This force is a recruit battalion, comprised entirely of eager 14 year olds and the young troopers gaze in awe at the three burning Zadons off in the distance; “Holy shit!” “Fuck, yeah!” “Look at ‘em burn!” the teenage voices chorus their approval from inside their helmets at the sight of the destroyed cyborgs. The Zadons have been hit hard by the other two converging pincer attacks, but the recruits can see that the battle is far from over; most of the Zadon quad is still standing and the landscape is littered with hundreds of corpses in black armor. A rocket wooshes through the air and detonates with a concussive explosion just feet away from one of the surviving Zadons, a near miss. Force C braces itself; directly ahead of them are a pod of cyborgs, still intact, with heaps of dead space troopers lying in front of their position. In the first bloom of adolescent virility, the fresh faced recruits, dimpled blonds and freckled redheads, know what they have to do; keep the cyborgs pinned down while the non-coms from the other two assault forces outflank them and get into position for a shot with their rocket launchers. Having caught their collective breath, the teens hear Kaylee’s voice ringing in their ears; “Assault wave formation…assault wave formation…” They hear the neuron transmitter beeping in their ears and their teenage love tools simultaneously snap to full, throbbing attention. As one vast, living organism, the armored wave of 14 year olds surges forward, shoulder-to-shoulder in their densely packed ranks, their rapidly beating hearts thumping in unison. Eagerly, the boys call out encouragement to each other; “C’mon, dudes! Let’s go!” “Let’s get ‘em!” Any fear that any individual boy feels is subsumed in the fervor of the mass, as the teens quicken their pace; they’re all seized with the frenzy of excitement that sweeps assault waves forward as they hurl their armored bodies at the hated cyborgs. Their red eyes glowing pitilessly, the Zadons level their shock wave cannons at the advancing mass of armored humanity; they allow the shouting, surging teenagers to advance closer and closer before unleashing the continuous rolling barrage of fire that will cut so many young lives so short…
Delta Quadrant
Night finally falls over the bog. The advance grinds to a halt and the space troopers try to take stock of this first day of the renewed offensive. The teenage troopers are not only exhausted, they’re also stunned by the sheer level of violence that’s torn through their ranks on this blood soaked day; what was supposed to be a staging march to the first day’s objective has turned into a bloodbath. Out of the 5,000 troopers who started out this morning, only a little over 2,000 are left; entire platoons have been obliterated and losses in non-coms have been especially staggering. All of this carnage was inflicted without even encountering a single Zadon. The surviving teens search for solid ground to camp on for the night; even the firmest spots they can find are coated with a layer of mud. The little encampments that they make are absolutely cheerless, with no food and no fires to warm them; the only light comes from burning Zadon battle drones casting an eerie red glow. All the teens’ adolescent exuberance has vanished; instead of the boisterous, high spirited boys that they were this morning, they’re now just a group of huddled figures conversing in grim, subdued tones. They quickly discover that their nutrient patches do nothing to suppress the hunger pangs that stab at their empty bellies with intense ferocity; with their helmets locked on, the food that they have in their backpacks is completely useless to them. They can at least take off the heavy, hated packs; inside them, they find the only useful extra gear that they’ve been weighted down with, their blankets and sleeping pads. Spreading the sleeping pads out on the muddy ground at least offers them some support from the unforgiving mire of the bog; stretching out on the pads, they wrap themselves in their blankets but still shiver in their armor as the temperatures plunge to near freezing. Trying to get some sleep, most of them are only able to lapse into a half dazed stupor as the long, miserable night wears on...
Beta Quadrant
The sun dips below the horizon, putting an end to the day’s battle in Beta Quadrant as the space troopers finally break off their relentless attacks against the Zadons and pull back out of range. Tangled heaps of black armored corpses await disposal by the Zadon utility bots; the dozers, equipped with high beam headlights, are soon piled high with bodies to fill the burial pits, but the Zadon tech bots have their work cut out for them, too. The space troopers have destroyed 5 Zadons in the daylong battle; a sixth cyborg has had one of its arms blown off by a rocket and will be sidelined for weeks, if not months, as the tech bots painstakingly repair the damage. The activities of the quad in this sector of Beta has been severely disrupted; if the Zadons were planning another big raid on a village, those plans have been thwarted. In return, 3,000 space troopers have been slain in the biggest single battle of the year so far. The boys in Force C, the late arriving southern pincer, have been completely wiped out, all 1,000 of them eagerly sacrificing themselves in successive rolling assault waves, throwing their lives away to keep the Zadons distracted and pinned down, allowing the rockets to do their work of destruction. Now, with the flames from the burning Zadons lighting up the night sky, the surviving space troopers hovering on the edges of the battlefield are tired and hungry but elated. They know how many of their fellow teens have perished today, but they can also see the damage that they’ve inflicted on the quad and this makes the heavy loss of human life worth it. This is victory, or at least something very close to it. From the most battle hardened, veteran 17 year old sergeant, to the rawest, most wide eyed 14 year old recruit, they want to stay and finish the job in the morning, wiping out the rest of the quad even if it costs them their own lives, too. Setting up camp for themselves, they converse in excited tones about the prospects for another big battle tomorrow, even as they listen to the clanging and clattering of armored corpses being flung onto the dozers that will haul their fellow teens away to the Zadon burial pits…
Back at the Beta Operations Center, the female officers are pleased with the results of the day’s action; 3,000 dead space troopers for 5 destroyed Zadons is a very good exchange and plans are made to renew the battle in the morning. They have the resources to do it, plenty of willing, black armor encased teenage bodies to hurl at the cyborgs. The 2,000 surviving troopers from today’s battle are psyched and ready to go; their air supplies are rapidly running out, but oxygen booster units can be flown in to them by transport, giving them another 12 hours of air. In addition, the Ops Center can throw 20 fresh regular platoons and a fresh recruit battalion into action at dawn, amounting to another 3,000 men. The result will be another bloodbath, but the chance to completely wipe out a Zadon quad is well worth the heavy expenditure of human life that will be required. The colonels and captains at the Ops Center are bubbling with excitement when the video feed from Supreme HQ in Xaron goes live. The oxygen is sucked out of the room as the general, appearing on the monitor, tells them to bring the surviving space troopers home. One of the colonels protests, informing the general of the promising outlook for tomorrow’s battle, but her efforts are rebuffed. The manpower demands of the Delta offensive take priority, the general replies curtly. All units must be available for immediate transfer to Delta if called upon and that includes the extra units needed for tomorrow’s proposed operations, as well as the survivors of today’s battle. The general then abruptly terminates the video link. Orders are orders; the Ops Center immediately dispatches a fleet of transports to evacuate the surviving troopers and bring them home…
A crushing wave of disappointment sweeps the depleted ranks of the teens on the battlefield. Eager for another day of combat, instead they find themselves filing aboard the transports that will withdraw them from the combat zone. They’re fully aware that they’d be joining their friends and brothers in the Zadon burial pits, but that would be a very small price to pay for wiping out the rest of the quad; they’re being held back from final victory by a bunch of timid chick officers far from the scene of the action. Despite their disappointment, the teens have a great feeling of accomplishment for all the damage that they’ve inflicted on the Zadons. Living to fight another day, they can reward themselves by getting laid, burying their bones in teen girls or MILFs and spreading their seed; they can sacrifice their lives another day, hopefully in the very near future…
(*Recruit Platoon---Space trooper platoons composed entirely of raw 14 year old recruits. Unlike regular platoons where recruits are integrated into the ranks with older space troopers to form a well oiled fighting machine, recruit platoons emphasize quantity over quality and are part of larger 1,000 man recruit battalions, organized for the sole purpose of providing cannon fodder for space trooper offensives. Recruit platoons are led by platoon leaders who don’t have any more experience or training than their fellow 14 year olds, they’re simply the tallest boys in the platoon and are usually the first targets that the Zadons lock onto in battle. Noted for their boyish enthusiasm, recruit platoons usually suffer 80-90% fatalities in almost all of their battles and are completely wiped out in many of them. Originating in Epsilon, the formation of recruit platoons and recruit battalions has spread to the other Quadrants and with steadily increasing Xarian birth rates, there are those in the High Command who argue for the formation of 10,000 man recruit brigades to make maximum use of the burgeoning numbers of surplus males.)