Premonition Realized

By Shirley Ann Freeze

Aaron Spence, a young man who struggled with social interactions, enlisted in the army. He was deployed to Vietnam where he learned important social skills. Returning home was a return to his former status but then he met Laurel Curtin and life became more meaningful. Their unusual experiences and struggles brought them increasingly closer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Editions Dedicaces
• Release date: Apr 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463388419

Shirley Ann Freeze

Shirley Ann Freeze has used her writing skills in lesson plans and activities for students in classrooms for elementary school, middle school, junior high school, senior high school, adult education, alternative education, and college. From this experience she produced a vocabulary workbook for practical everyday use. Premonition Realized is her first completed fiction novel.

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Shirley Ann Freeze

Premonition Realized

Copyright © 2019 by Shirley Ann Freeze

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

Shirley Ann Freeze asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

A Tribute to Aaron

About the Author

Chapter One

Short, skinny white boy. 5’8". 123 pounds. Quiet, shy, not popular, a little timid. Hardly a typical Army recruit, Aaron Spence, never-the-less, was a newly-inducted soldier. He had voluntarily enlisted to avoid the draft and now had a new title—short, skinny white boy dba soldier. At least this was a step above just short, skinny white boy.

When he had finished his paper work and the assigned date arrived, Aaron rode a bus to his first base in Georgia. Basic training was quite a challenge for the little man, but he was stubborn and driven, determined to endure boot camp as well as the larger, more-physically-fit recruits, whom he both envied and hated. Boot camp seemed to last forever, the longest three months of Aaron’s life. The beginning wasn’t bad, sitting in neat, orderly classrooms, learning all about the army, its history and procedures, its regulations. And safety. How to be safe and survive was stressed daily ad nauseum.

Even physical training started out okay. After morning inspections the young recruits were required to do calisthenics. The routine was not much more demanding than football drills had been in high school. Poor little Aaron. Fifteen years old. Too small to actually get to play for the Eagles, too unpopular in school not to try out for the team, following a futile hope of raising his status with girls. At Karma High School everyone who tried out for football made the team, even Aaron. After tryouts positions were assigned. Following pre-game practices, Aaron’s position was designated bench-rider. He had the cleanest uniform on the team. One year of this humiliation was enough for the young man. He would have to find another way to fit in.

The slower pace of army training lasted only a few days. After that the recruits had to march for miles, straining under the weight of heavily-loaded backpacks; stand at attention for what-seemed-like hours; and learn to assemble, load, and shoot heavy field artillery. Aaron’s muscles throbbed every day and every evening he fell onto his cot, too tired to even roll over.

Day after day, the short, skinny white boy panted for breath, sweated profusely, and struggled to perform the challenges he had to meet to be accepted by the officers and other recruits in military service. Standing at attention for hours in freezing rain and belly-crawling (while carrying a rifle) for miles were Aaron’s least favorite requirements. However, the tenacious little man managed to make it through every day’s rigors. Whatever they threw at him, he caught.

He had a plan, a goal, a reason to keep going. It started with his interview with an army recruitment officer. Aaron had felt alone and invisible in high school. He had few friends and fewer accomplishments. But the army recruiter looked directly into his eyes and talked to him as if he were important. He painted a colorful picture of Aaron’s future in the army. He would live a glamorous life as a much-needed and respected electronics expert who would travel all over the world from base to base where everyone he met would admire his skills. His schooling and training would be free and he would live a life to be envied by other soldiers. Aaron had never been envied by anyone unless one considered his younger brother who envied him for being born first. This family order made Aaron feel responsible for his younger sibling, but made Ben hate Aaron, something everyone except Aaron, Ben, and their parents could clearly see.

He survived the boot camp challenge with pride and hope. The end of training. The worst was over. He knew the first three months of service in the army were designed to separate the men from the boys and now that boot camp was over, he was one of the men.

Unfortunately, the thrill of success was short-lived. The tenacious survivor was summoned to report to the base commander’s office at 0800 the day after boot camp ended. From behind his neat desk a bored, robotic colonel delivered a crushing blow. Private Spence’s dream for his service time of glory would not come true. He had passed the strenuous combat training, but a color deficiency (that had been discovered and recorded his first day on base) made him ineligible for electronics school, a fantasy that had started the first time he saw a John Wayne movie about World War II. No one had bothered to tell him about the limitations he would face due to his sight deficiency. He felt betrayed, gullible. He wanted to cry, to go home, to say the enlistment was all a mistake and that he had changed his mind. He wanted to tell the colonel all that in his most colorful language, but he didn’t. He didn’t. Doing so would not be a fitting finish for the trial he had just passed. Instead of giving in to this temptation, he swallowed hard and sat stiffly in the now-uncomfortable chair, listening to the colonel’s words. Feigning stoicism wasn’t easy when reality had just hit him