If Warren Cochran had been a little more cautious, a little pickier, or a little more suspicious, he would probably not have been in the army.

The name of the girl who got him there doesn't matter, since she barely comes into the story at all. The thing was that Warren spent some time with her on a blanket in the bushes off the road, and she came to him telling him that he got her pregnant. He had done what he could to prevent that, but you never know...

When he suggested paying to remove the problem, she said no, she wanted to marry him. Well, that he did not want. He was willing to pay child support, if it came to that, but he knew he did not want to face this woman every morning. He wasn't even sure why he had sex with her, except that she was there and he was horny.

So he decided to join the army and at least make it difficult for her. If she went to court, she could still get child support from his pay, but it would mean making her prove that he was the father -- which he was not sure of. Between the time he joined and the time he left he heard from a friend that the woman had tried claiming pregnancy twice before, when she found someone she thought would make a good husband. And sure enough, he later heard that she never did start showing.

But by then it was much too late. After basic training, Warren was shipped off to Spain. He was put under a disbursing officer, keeping books, making deposits and pay vouchers, and writing letters back to Washington on any problems. Warren wrote the letters, that is, and got the lieutenant over him to sign them (or sometimes somebody higher up, depending).

That lieutenant was... well, Warren couldn't see why the army took him or how he made officer, but he could see why the lieutenant was in the army. In civilian life, the man would have been on welfare or in a home. Warren had to explain the letters to him. Almost all of them, it seemed like. Warren was at that job for a year, then an opening came up in a hospital pharmacy and somebody decided that since he had once worked in a drugstore he should go there. He didn't put in for it, but there he went.

That job was a lot duller, but he stayed in better shape with all the walking and stooping and climbing he had to do. That was another year. Then they put him in a warehouse for a while, both at paperwork and at moving crates. A couple of months before he was due to be discharged, he was sent on maneuvers. Yeah, he had to put on a pack and march and sleep in a tent out in the rain and all of that. Not that Warren hadn't done it before, but this was the longest stretch of it he had gone through, as if the army decided that they had to live up to the cliche before they could let him go.

But we should talk about Spain. Warren developed this theory that the reason that we have had troops stationed overseas since WWII had nothing to do with defending this country, or those countries. Warren thought it's a social program. You have a lot of young civilians who have never been out of the US, and probably wouldn't go under their own steam until they were middle-aged or older if at all. And then as tourists, so they only see hotels and museums. If the armed services send them over, they may really get an idea of what a foreign country is like, and that might influence their thinking.

Even improve it in some cases, he guessed. Warren found it easier to learn Spanish than he had to learn French in high school, partly because it would do him more immediate good, partly because people around him were actually using it. Talking to the senoritas when he was on leave didn't matter all that much, since many of them knew English, or at least the ones who would talk to the soldiers did. It did help to understand the comments they made to each other about GIs, though.

Though that was largely slang. The really outright prostitutes were easy to pick out (hell, they stuck out, not to mention coming at you) but a lot of the women angled for gifts before they would do anything. This was after the US started paying soldiers half-decent wages, and with the new pay and the Spanish prices, a corporal could almost afford to set up a woman in an apartment. There were a number of local people who had jobs on the base or near it, jobs that would not have existed without the US military there, either because they were dealing with the army as such or with the soldiers as individuals.

So in a way, the military bases also served as a sort of foreign aid -- more efficient than the State Department kind, maybe, because it actually went to the people instead of just the politicians. Obviously bartenders, less obviously restaurant owners, launderers, and shop-keepers of different sorts, and of the people on the base secretaries, stock-clerks, whatever needed doing that there was no soldier to do at the moment -- or where the army felt it was just cheaper to hire someone.

Pilar Giralt was hired as a typist at Rota. She did not completely look Spanish, or not as you think of the Spanish as being. She was una rubia, a red one, which means not what we call a redhead but a blonde. And she was not quite even that but somewhere toward the yellow end of black-haired or maybe a dark blonde. Blondes are rare among the Spanish, but not so much that there isn't a special name for them, and for them to be chased after.

That they would have occasional fair-haired people is not surprising since Roman soldiers from all over were posted to Spain for a long time; sailors came by long before and after; and, going way back, the Beaker People traded from England to Spain, and who would be surprised at an English blond? Spanish men are more blatant about chasing women than Americans, even young American soldiers, so Warren's own slow approach might have been more appealing than what she was used to.

Also there was the religious question. The picture you get of Spanish women being very protected from the world and tossed into a convent if they get too interested in men is not far from the truth. Another problem, in a way, that Pilar had was that she was not Roman Catholic. You hear of Spain as a Catholic country. Ninety per cent of it is; but that leaves four million people. Pilar had no idea when her family became Methodist, but it was at least a few generations back.

This meant that most Spanish men would not want to think of marrying her unless she converted, which was not a thing she much wanted to do; and that they did not respect her because she was not Catholic, but would only look on her as a fair game conquest. Warren, however, was also raised nominally as a Methodist, and was quite willing to get to know her slowly. At first, at least, he was quite happy just to have someone to talk to.

Her English was quite fluent, which was why she was hired as a typist at the base, and he was grateful after a while for the sound of a female voice in a language he could relax in. Pilar was also chased by Spanish men for what they thought was her relative immorality. She was unmarried and living alone. The pay was better at the base, but not enough to support her family also, so she moved off the farm and into an apartment house near the base. The landlady there (though the Spanish men did not take her into their account) was a widow of some years who was protective of Pilar.

Warren eventually realized, though, that... But we'll get to that later. Warren first met Pilar when he took something in to the typing pool to have it done up. She was the only one not busy at the moment, and there was no backlog, so he handed it to her. She had a nice smile. That work was done faster and more accurately than usual, so he sought her out the next time. After a few more weeks, he stopped to explain to her something that took special handling, and he ended by asking her to dinner. Pilar stopped and stared at him for a few seconds, and then said yes, but she wanted to name the restaurant.

The place had a few other soldiers there when they arrived, but also several friends of Pilar's, male and female, including a woman whom he did not notice but who turned out to be her landlady. That woman was there to act as a duenЄa, but she left after a while. She felt Warren would at least be harmless in public. The place had an area for dancing (with American rock records) and Pilar and he used it after dinner. He discovered that Pilar was very nice to hold close, and that the months without female companionship were affecting him.

When they walked back to their table, one of Pilar's friends, Julia, said in Spanish that if Pilar didn't want him, she would be happy with a castoff. She made a comment about his polla, which was a word he did not get in his Spanish course and didn't recognize then. Pilar made a face, but didn't say anything. Warren walked with Pilar to where she lived and they talked outside, and at the end he kissed her on the cheek. She glared and slapped him, but not very hard. He caught a glimpse of the landlady in the window.

A week later they went to a Mexican western in town. One theatre ran Mexican films on weekends because they often had subtitles in English, so the soldiers could either practice their Spanish or not, as they wanted. After a while in the dark, Pilar accepted his kisses without objections, and indeed got seriously into them. When he took her home, she did object to the point of trying to dodge his lips, but she did not struggle when he held her still. That, he was sure, was for the landlady's benefit. Warren began to speculate on his chances of sometime actually getting Pilar into bed and pumping between her legs. Not high, he thought, though it was worth working toward.

The third time she suggested that they quit early and she invited him into her apartado. At least partly to reassure her landlady, she left the window wide open so that their voices carried. That window stayed open for some other evenings, but their voices were not always audible, because their mouths were sometimes otherwise occupied. And then one night Pilar closed the curtains.

When she sat again beside Warren on the couch he took her in his arms and softly grazed one breast. Her eyes stared into his, and slowly her hand went into his shirt to touch the skin there. He became bolder and opened the first button on her blouse. By the time he left that night he had bared and cupped and fondled both her breasts, and their farewell kiss was very passionate. His estimation of the odds on getting her into bed had just improved. He wondered how lively she would be.

The next evening they spent together, they ate dinner and went immediately to her apartment. They did talk a lot, but the evening ended with his hand inside the loose cotton culottes she wore. Warren had caressed her flat stomach and begun to creep below the waist when she stopped him for a second to open a button there. The material relaxed, and now his palm slid easily downward. She became visibly nervous as he contacted her pubic hair, but the slow stroking calmed her. As he went lower, he lifted his hand so that there was little or no contact until he was at the very bottom of things.

Warren moved his hand in then to hold her and press. Her head turned aside to give him a fervent kiss and then hold her breath. Then he moved his middle finger to the very back of her vaginal crease and lightly moved it forward. She gasped and did it again as he duplicated the action, with a little more pressure and parting her lower lips by a tiny bit. Pilar shoved his hand away and withdrew to the far end of her couch. She looked frightened as she whispered, "Yo 'stoy una virgen!"

Which meant that all those Spanish men may have tried hard but did not get anywhere much. Well, Warren was not going to try to change her condition, at least tonight. And indeed by the time he left her he was barely able to convince her to come back into his arms.

She had been paralyzed by the realization of how far they had gone. But Warren began to be haunted by the vision of taking the blossom of this Spanish rose, of opening her legs and opening her inside, and entering that warm wet new territory and making her shudder under him in ecstasy. Two more weeks and Warren did nothing with her that could not be done in public, at least in a dark corner.

The week after that he explained to her just what he wanted to do and what limits he was placing on himself. And that night Warren removed her underwear and played around the entrance of her wet vagina, never more than a fraction of an inch in, until she reached an orgasm that made her snap her hips up and hold him against her until he almost worried about being bruised. It looked like Pilar would be quite something, and that he might have a chance to find out just how wild she was.

The next week Warren did the same things, but now Pilar unzipped the front of his trousers to reach in and hold his erection and stroke him. It had been six weeks since she first touched his bare skin above the waist, but before this she had made no attempt to go beyond that. Pilar had grown up with three brothers, and had some general knowledge of male anatomy; and she said that a man in the market-town near her farm exposed himself when he was drunk also.

But she was amazed at what she found inside Warren's pants. She knew that he was taller than other men she knew, but felt that this was out of proportion. Evidently she had tried to avoid considering the evidence that she had provided herself whenever they spent time together. "Su cipote..." and then she giggled without continuing. She was thinking as he was, and making up her mind whether to go all the way with him. The next Saturday they met early in the day and entered her rooms at noon. The landlady was gone off to visit a relative and would not be back until the afternoon of Sunday.

While Warren prepared a lunch for the two of them, she vanished and returned wearing a dressing-gown and beneath that a pale blue piece of air and nothing whose proper place was obviously a bed. It was clear that Pilar intended to go further today that ever before, and that the distance was not geographical. Warren found it impossible while they ate to not stare at the small dark circles of her nipples as they peeped through the sheer material. He had seen them before in plain light and without covering, but this was different because the situation was different and they seemed more intriguing for being half-seen.

His eyes were also drawn to the dark triangle of hair covering her chocha, though that also he had seen, and touched, and fondled until it brought her to a peak of sensation. When the food was gone, Pilar rose and took his hand and they left the plates and pot on the table. Inside her bedroom, she took each piece of his uniform from him and Warren took her into his arms to hold her warm body against his naked one. His shaft was full and hard and standing straight up as it was pressed into her belly, and her small hand slipped down to touch and caress it.

And to slip over it a government-issue condom, which she had purchased at the post exchange. Warren lifted her in his arms and lay her squarely in the middle of her bed, and lay beside her. Her eyes went wide as his tongue entered her mouth and her arms went around his back to draw him in. Slowly Warren raised her gown until the front of it was gathered at her neck, so that he could touch her breasts with more freedom than they had enjoyed before, and then to taste the tips, which excited her a great deal. Then Warren lay pressing down on her breasts, their hips deliberately not lined up, to kiss her again.

That other contact would come soon, and be the better for a little more delay. Warren rolled onto his back, taking Pilar with him so that his erection could lie along the line of her crease and slide back and forth, not entering but doing everything else and giving her a little more anticipation. Then he returned, to lie above her between her legs with his aching pole still on the outside of her belly and kiss her again. Her legs were spread and wrapped around him and she was as ready as it was possible for her to be. A little fear returned to her eyes as Warren touched the head of his penis to her opening.

"Su rabo es gigante!" He entered her barely enough to count as entry, and then he withdrew. Then a little more, and a little more. Since the head is a little larger than the first part of the shaft and there is something like a barb there, that sensation of going back and forth just at the entrance began to stimulate her and make Pilar ache for him to be deeper in. And of course he had not yet touched her maidenhead. After a minute of that very shallow penetration, now up to perhaps an inch and a half or two inches, Pilar was becoming very agitated. "Mas! Mas de su falo!" she cried, and so he gave her more.

Warren slid into her well-lubricated tunnel until he met the barrier that no one had ever passed, and he stretched and broke it. He went deep into her, forcing the walls to expand to accomodate him, and gave her a powerful orgasm as he did. Her long-stored passion came to the surface now and expressed itself several more times before Warren joined her and pumped the little sack full of hot semen.

Her status as a civilian employee meant that she was eligible for subsidized medication, including the birth-control pills that Warren suggested to her. So on later afternoons, and then nights after it became plain to the landlady what was going on, Pilar found out directly what his passion felt like as it gushed into her. The landlady, once it became obvious to her that Pilar's innocence had been surrendered, and happily surrendered, turned now to seeing that no one else knew. She knew that it was necessary to get a commanding officer's permission to marry, and this was often difficult to obtain.

But easily given if a soldier was transferred out or sent home. She felt that this was the reason they had not legalized their relations. Pilar knew that Warren was not inclined to marry her, that he was only carrying on a relationship until his time in Spain was up. Or so at least he had told her over and over at every step, and for a long time he thought she had accepted that.

She was far from her family and the village nearby, and no one (unless she spoke of it) knew that they had done anything beyond what could be seen on any street corner. She would be free to find another man and marry him once he was gone (or before, for that matter, if she wished) and there was no one who had any reason to tell of any relationship before that. She would be far from the first woman to mysteriously become inexperienced again. For now, she could have her cake and eat it.

But somewhere along the way, her emotions or her hopes overwhelmed her memory of what she had agreed to. Just before Warren was sent on maneuvers, he visited Pilar and told her he would not be back for at least a while, and would not see much more of her when he did. He had heard that the field exercises would last several weeks, and he knew that he would be sent back home not long after that. Warren was trying to give her gentle advance warning, but she was outraged. Outraged even that he would be gone for some weeks, let alone that he was not taking her with him when he left for good.

She began screaming at him in words he did not know that she knew in English, throwing things, and as he fled the landlady downstairs chased him with a broom. For all the warnings he had given, his conscience still bothered him, so Warren wrote his old sergeant six months later to find out how Pilar was doing. The man scribbled back a note that he had better find another girl, because that one was getting married soon.