The Onion

WASHINGTON—Expressing confidence that even the most hopeless group of outcasts could eventually be whipped into shape, Army recruiter Sgt. Paul Ackers confirmed Thursday that he was certain the ragtag bunch of teen misfits he had recently enlisted could be molded into a fighting force capable of dying in a conflict overseas.

Ackers told reporters the misfits, now members of the 194th Infantry Division, had been drawn from the ranks of high school underachievers across the country, all of them completely written off by their teachers and facing suspensions for such infractions as drinking in the parking lot, huffing aerosol from a rag, or setting off M-80s in the boys locker room. But with the proper motivation, Ackers said, his crew of outsiders would soon be fully prepared to wander haplessly onto the battlefield and be rapidly mowed down by highly trained enemy combatants.

“They’re a bit rough around the edges, and dumber than bricks, but I know what they’re capable of,” said Ackers, stating that every one of the “losers” and “burnouts” had what it took to be shot through the eye by a sniper after giving away their position by absentmindedly boasting about the time they had felt up “an abso- lutely stacked chick.” “You may see little punks with zero discipline, but I see warriors who’ll rise up when their backs are against the wall and be obliterated in an airstrike like they’ve been doing it their whole lives. I see brave soldiers who’ll be heading home mangled in body bags—that is, if you kick ’em in the pants a little.”

“When the time comes, and it seems like they don’t have a hope in hell, they’re gonna crash their armored ground vehicle into the side of a building and die screaming in the flaming wreckage,” Ackers added. “Guaranteed.”

After watching the recruits train and bond as a unit, Ackers’ superiors reportedly warmed up quickly to the idea that these misfits, some of whom had been manufacturing crude bongs in shop class just weeks earlier, could be disemboweled by a large wedge of shrapnel almost immediately, if they weren’t captured and tortured first. Given the surprising cohesion of the young enlistees, who are affectionately known as “The Wolf Pack,” some officers even suggested they could all be in a cemetery by Christmas.

“You never know how much new recruits like this are going to jerk you around, but there’s no doubt in my mind now that these kids are ready to be blown to pieces after fumbling their own grenades in a state of almost animal panic,” Capt. Rhea Wallace said. “They might’ve been slackers once, but these youngsters are going to prove they can breathe their last agonizing breath while waiting in vain for a medic who has already triaged them and determined they are a lost cause.”

Continued Wallace: “What would these kids have done if they were just sitting at home? Left to their own devices, they’d end up unemployed, abusing marijuana, and totally adrift in life. Now they have a purpose greater than themselves. Now they’re prepared to be shipped out to a war zone on foreign soil and to be taken apart so completely by a gunship that only half their body will be returned to their grieving parents.”

The military is said to be especially excited about the battlefield potential of recruit Marc Roth, an 18-year-old “total fucking psycho” from Hawesville, KY who reportedly went punch-for-punch with a member of the football team, often demonstrated butterfly-knife tricks for classmates, and once withstood an intense 10-minute interrogation from the principal without divulging the identity of a buddy who pulled a fire alarm. For his part, Roth told reporters he never imagined someone like himself wearing an Army uniform and preparing to bleed out on the other side of the world.

“Sgt. Ackers put us through hell,” Roth said. “We must’ve spent five hours a day doing pushups and the rest crawling through the mud with our rifles. I hated it at first, but now I realize he did all this to prepare us for an enemy tank to roll over our legs.”

“No one else ever thought a loser like me would amount to anything,” Roth added. “But I know I’m gonna stroll right into the most laughably obvious ambush and watch my friends get riddled with bullets before the lights go out for me. And I’ll have Sgt. Ackers to thank.”

At press time, Roth and every other member of his misfit squad had received Purple Hearts for combat deaths suffered before they themselves could even fire a shot, an outcome their recruiter proudly told reporters he never doubted for a minute.