Morale

Morale, by Murray Leinster

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Title: Morale A Story of the War of 1941-43
Author: Murray Leinster
Release Date: March 28, 2007 [EBook #20920]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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+--------------------------------------------------------+ |Transcriber's Note: | |
| |This etext was produced from "Astounding Stories", | |December
1931. Extensive research did not uncover any | |evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was| |renewed. |
+--------------------------------------------------------+

Morale
A Story of the War of 1941-43
By Murray Leinster
[Illustration]

PART I
"... The profound influence of civilian morale upon the
course of modern war is nowhere more clearly shown than in the case
of that monstrous war-engine popularly known as a 'Wabbly.' It landed
in New Jersey Aug. 16, 1942, and threw the whole Eastern Coast into a
frenzy. In six hours the population of three States was in a panic.
Industry was paralyzed. The military effect was comparable only to a
huge modern army landed in our rear...." (Strategic Lessons of the War
of 1941-43.--U. S. War College. Pp. 79-80.)
Sergeant Walpole made his daily report at 2:15. He used a dinky
telephone that should have been in a museum, and a rural Central put
him on the Area Officer's tight beam. The Area Officer listened drearily
as the Sergeant said in a military manner:
[Illustration: It spouted a flash of bluish flame.]
"Sergeant Walpole, sir, Post Fourteen, reports that he has nothing of
importance to report."
+--------------------------------------------------+ |The Wabbly,
uncombatable engine of war, spreads | |unparalleled death and
destruction--until Sergeant| |Walpole "strikes at the morale" of its crew.
| +--------------------------------------------------+

The Area Officer's acknowledgment was curt; embittered. For he was
an energetic young man, and he loathed his job. He wanted to be in the
west, where fighting of a highly unconventional nature was taking
place daily. He did not enjoy this business of watching an unthreatened
coast-line simply for the maintenance of civilian confidence and morale.
He preferred fighting.
Sergeant Walpole, though, exhaled a lungful of smoke at the telephone
transmitter and waited. Presently the rural Central said:
"All through?"
"Sure, sweetie," said Sergeant Walpole. "How about the talkies
tonight?"
That was at 2:20 P. M. There was coy conversation, while the civilian
telephone-service suffered. Then Sergeant Walpole went back to his
post of duty with a date for the evening. He never kept that date, as it
turned out. The rural Central was dead an hour after the first and only
Wabbly landed, and as everybody knows, that happened at 2:45.
* * * * *
But Sergeant Walpole had no premonitions as he went back to his
hammock on the porch. This was Post Number Fourteen, Sixth Area,
Eastern Coast Observation Force. There was a war on, to be sure. There
had been a war on since the fall of 1941, but it was two thousand miles
away. Even lone-wolf bombing planes, flying forty thousand feet up,
never came this far to drop their eggs upon inviting targets or upon
those utterly blank, innocent-seeming places where munitions of war
were now manufactured underground.
Here was peace and quiet and good rations and a paradise for
gold-brickers. Here was a summer bungalow taken over for military
purposes, quartering six men who watched a certain section of
coast-line for a quite impossible enemy. Three miles to the south there
was another post. Three miles to the north another one still. They
stretched all along the Atlantic Coast, those observation-posts, and the

men in them watched the sea, languidly observed the television
broadcasts, and slept in the sun. That was all they were supposed to do.
In doing it they helped to maintain civilian morale. And therefore the
Eastern Coast Observation Force was enviously said to be "just
attached to the Army for rations," by the other services, and its
members rated with M. P.'s and other low forms of animal life.
Sergeant Walpole reclined in his hammock, inhaling comfortably. The
ocean glittered blue before him in the sun. There was a plume of smoke
out at sea indicating an old-style coal-burner, its hull down below the
horizon. Anything that would float was being used since the war began,
though a coal-burning ship was almost a museum piece. A trim Diesel
tramp was lazing northward well inshore. A pack of gulls were
squabbling noisily over some unpleasantness floating a hundred yards
from the