Brotherhood Of War: The Lieutenants Part 4

Of course, he questioned that judgment, too, wondering if he had lost his courage, or if he was subconsciously identifying with the German enemy because of what he had seen at Katyn, because yon Greiffenberg had gone to the cavalry school at Samur with Porky Waterford and cradled Barbara in his arms.

He had imagined he'd get some sort of pressure from the Germans, at least a subtle pointing out that the Germans and the Americans were the same kind of people, functioning under a Christian ethic; that it was really absurd that they should be fighting each other, rather than the common, G.o.dless Soviet enemy; that Hitler, had after all, gone out of his way not to get into a war with the Americans.

But there had been nothing at all like that. The only propaganda to which he had been subjected was the magazines and newspapers in the Stalag library. And that was to be expected.

There was nothing more reprehensible about providing captured American officers copies of the German Army magazine Signal than there was in providing captured German officers copies of Yank.

In September, the British and French officers who had been in the stalag with them had been transferred elsewhere. Stalag XVII-B was now entirely American.

That had posed certain administrative and logistic problems.

Without Bellmon having paid much attention to it, captured British and French enlisted men had been the logistic backbone of the stalag. They were the cooks, the -orderlies, the latrine cleaners, the laundry workers, the bed makers.

When the British and French officers left, so did their enlisted men, and that left the kitchen and the laundry without people to operate them. There was a cook, a phlegmatic Bavarian, and a laundry supervisor, but no labor force.

Bellmon had crossed with the senior pensioner over that.

"What we'll have to do," the senior prisoner said, "is simply take turns. On a roster. Make it fair."

Bellmon was furious but kept his temper. If the colonel did not realize that they were not boy scouts out roughing it in the woods, he would have to teach him.

"We are officers," Bellmon said. "In many cases field-grade officers. We will not work in laundries. Commissioned officers of the United States will riot be kitchen helpers. Commissioned officers will not clean latrines."

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake, Bob, we're prisoners."

"We're officers," Bellmon said. "You, Colonel, as a reservist, as much as me."

"Since you bring that up, Bob," the colonel said, without much conviction, "I am the senior officer. I could order you to do what has to be done."

"And I would obey your order. And the day we get out of here, I would bring you up on charges of conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman," Bellmon said. "Who the h.e.l.l would ever know if your precious officer's dignity was relaxed?" the senior prisoner demanded. When he said that, Bellmon had sensed he had won. The colonel was more afraid of him than of the Germans.

"The enemy," Bellmon said, gently. "That's the point, Colonel." The commandant said that he had requested a contingent of enlisted prisoners to take over the housekeeping duties, but he had no idea when, or even if, they would be sent.

No officer details were sent to the kitchen, and none to the laundry. Two German soldiers were sent to the kitchen to help the cook. Officers carried their mess plates to the mess, ate, washed their plates and cutlery, and left with them. Officers washed their own underwear, and if they wanted clean outer garments, washed and pressed them themselves.

Bellmon spent long hours with a cast-iron clothes press, keeping his trousers, shirts, and tunic neat. He tested the principle of inspiring by example. It had a thirty percent effectiveness factor ,he found. One officer in three followed his example and tried to look as much like an 'officer as he could.

Two out of three let themselves go.

Bellmon stopped talking to the impressed and unshaven, or even acknowledging them with a nod of his head. When they sought him out, mostly for his skill as an interpreter, or for his opinion on the legality of a move they planned in connection with an escape attempt, he refused to deal with them.

"Can I have a moment of your time, Colonel?"

"You need a shave, Lieutenant. And your uniform is foul." They came back, shaven, in slightly more presentable uniforms. He told them what they wanted to know. He shamed the senior prisoner, who not only resumed shaving daily, but began a British-style mustache.

The slovenly percentage dropped to fifty percent and then below. Some of the shaven and self-laundered began to mock ,him with crisp salutes whenever they met him. He returned the salutes as crisply, with motions right off the parade ground at the Point. The mockery in the salutes gave way to casual touching of the hand to the eyebrow. But they were still salutes. Not to everybody from everybody, but from all the company grade to all the field grade, and from everybody to the senior prisoner and Bellmon.

He was in command. What good it would do, specifically, he didn't know. But he believed, devoutly, that the prisoner complement of Stalag XVII-B was a military formation, and a military formation must have discipline. Without discipline, a body of men becomes rabble. Rabble dies, either on the battlefield or in a POW camp.

Six weeks after the French and British left, a convoy of canvas-topped Hanomag trucks came through the heavy ,wooden gates of the compound and discharged four truckloads of American enlisted prisoners, twenty-two to a truck.

Bellmon heard the sound of the trucks and looked out his window and watched the troops get off. Some showed signs of long imprisonment (how he could tell, he didn't know, but he knew), and others had apparently only recently been captured. They were all dispirited. They sat in groups immediately to the side of the trucks that had brought them, and waited for whatever was going to happen to them. Many of them looked as if they really didn't care.

Bellmon b.u.t.toned his tunic, straightened his tie in the mirror he had carefully made by polishing a sheet of steel with ashes~, and went out into the courtyard.

At first none of the prisoners reacted to his presence beyond looking at him expectantly. Bellmon put hrs hands on his hips and let his eyes fall on them, one at a time, looking carefully and without expression. He had looked at perhaps thirty of the prisoners that way when one of them suddenly got to his feet and walked over to him.

"Sergeant MacMillan, sir," he said.

MacMillan wore the stripes of a technical sergeant sewn to the gabardine tunic issued to paratroops. Bellmon could see where the insignia of the 82nd Airborne had been cut from it.

The Germans regarded that insignia as a special souvenir, much as Americans were delighted to get their hands on the death's head insignia of the SS.

MacMillan was a young man, stocky and muscular, a typical parachutist. Irish, Bellmon thought. Or maybe Scotch. But he sensed something about this noncom. Somehow he knew that this sergeant was a regular.

"Is that the way you were taught to report to an officer, Sergeant?" Bellmon asked, quietly. Sergeant MacMillan looked at him for a moment, then popped to attention. He threw his hand to his forehead, held it.

"Technical Sergeant MacMillan reports to the colonel with party of eighty-seven, sir," he said.

Bellmon returned the salute.

"Fall the men in, Sergeant," he said.

Macmillan did a precise about-face movement.

"All right," he bellowed. "Fall in!"

There was some stirring, and one or two men got to their feet, but there was no movement toward Sergeant MacMillan, no suggestion that they intended to obey this order.

MacMillan didn't move for a full minute. Then, very deliberately, he walked to the man sitting nearest to him on the ground. He bent over him, picked him up by his shirt front, and punched him in the mouth. The soldier, a buck sergeant, fell on his rear end and put his hand to his bleeding mouth.

None of the others moved at all, but one man spit.

"Get up," T/Sgt MacMillan said, softly, and pointed with his left hand, finger extended, to the spot where he wanted the man to stand. The buck sergeant backed away from MacMillan like a crab, but then got to his feet and walked to where MacMillan had indicated, and more or less came to attention.

"Anybody else?" MacMillan asked, looking at the faces of the others. No one moved or said a word. "Fall in on him," MacMillan said. "Three ranks."

Slowly, resentfully, the others formed on him. When they were all in place, standing at a position that charitably could be called attention, MacMillan did another snappy about-face and saluted again.

"Sir," he said, "the detachment is formed."

"Very good, Sergeant," Bellmon ordered. "Prepare the detachment for inspection." MacMillan did another about-face movement, and gave the commands. "Dress, right, dress! Open ranks, march!" Bellmon marched to the left-hand comer of the formation.

MacMillan marched to join him. Bellmon went down the ranks, pausing to look at each man, giving each man a chance to look at him. Then he marched out in front again.

"Stand at ease," he ordered. "My name is Bellmon. I am the executive officer. The first thing we are going to do is feed you, show you where you will be quartered, and see that you have a shower. We have to fend for ourselves here. Sergeant MacMillan will appoint mess hall, shower point, and delousing details of six men under a noncom, each." He looked at MacMillan, who was standing at parade rest in front of the formation. "First Sergeant," Bellmon called. "Front and center." MacMillan walked up and saluted still again. Bellmon told him where the kitchen and the shower were.

"When you get things running, come to my quarters," he said.

MacMillan nodded.

Bellmon raised his voice.

"First Sergeant, take the detachment," he said, and then did an about-face and marched back to his barracks building.

A group of officers had been watching from inside.

"Colonel, can I ask a question?" one of the captains said.

Bellmon nodded. "What would you have done if they had just kept on sitting there?" Bellmon felt anger sweep through him. It must have shown on his face, for the captain quickly said, "Sir, the question wasn't supposed to sound flip."

"That's a regular army sergeant out there, Captain," Bellmon said. "He would have been unable to leave them sitting there. An officer had called for them to fall in, and they would have fallen in, or somebody, maybe the sergeant, would have been dead." He wondered how he knew, why he was so sure, that Technical Sergeant MacMillan, who was hardly more than a boy, was regular army.

When MacMillan came to his room, he gave him a cup of the real coffee.

"How long has the colonel been a prisoner, sir?"

"Since North Africa," Bellmon said. "Ka.s.serine Pa.s.s."

"They got me about three weeks ago," MacMillan said.

"Just before the G.o.dd.a.m.n war is about over."

"We hadn't heard the 82nd was engaged," Bellmon said.

When MacMillan looked surprised that he had known his division, Bellmon explained he had seen where the patches had been cut off.

"Operation f.u.c.king Market-Garden," MacMillan said. "We tried to grab the Rhine bridges. Biggest f.u.c.k-up in the war. We got the s.h.i.t kicked out of us."

"That's normally when they catch prisoners," Bellmon said.

"Ka.s.serine was a big f.u.c.k-up, too."

"How'd the colonel get caught, if you don't mind my asking?"

"I was in a tank. A PzKwIV got us. I got blown off."

"We went across this f.u.c.king river," MacMillan said. "Little f.u.c.king English boats. No f.u.c.king oars. Collapsible sides. They mortared the s.h.i.t out of us in the water. And then when we got to the other side, there was no f.u.c.king ammo. No f.u.c.king ammo. How the f.u.c.k do they expect you to fight without ammo?"

"So what happened?"

"So we took it off the dead, and shot that, and when that was over. . . what the f.u.c.k was I supposed to do? Do a John Wayne? Charge with a f.u.c.king carbine bayonet in my hand?"

"What did you do?" Bellmon asked.

"I got out of my f.u.c.king hole and put my hands up, that's what I did."

"I tried to play dead," Bellmon said, aware this was the first time he had ever told the story. "But they saw me breathing, rolled me over, and stuck a .45 up my nose."

"So what happens to us now, Colonel?" MacMillan asked.

"We wait for the war to end," Bellmon said.

"We was nine days on the train, plus half a day on the truck," MacMillan said. "We're a-long way from our lines. How far are we from the Russians?"

"I just don't know," Bellmon said.

"There's no sense in trying to get Out of this f.u.c.king place now," Macmillan said. "There's no way we can get back on our own, G.o.dd.a.m.n it."

"MacMillan," Bellmon said, "there is an active, enthusiastic escape committee here." MacMillan looked at him.

"If they ever reach the point where they're going to try it, I will order them not to," Bellmon said. "But in the meantime, I don't think you should let your opinion of the situation be known."

"Keep ee busy, huh, Colonel?"

"If I had some whitewash, I'd have them painting rocks, Sergeant," Bellmon said. He laughed. He realized it was the first time in a very long time that he had laughed.

MacMillan grunted understandingly. They were smiling at each other now, two hometown people who had found each other in an alien land.

"Are there any more regulars here, Colonel? Or is it you and me?"

"Just you and me, MacMillan," Bellmon said.

"Ah, what the f.u.c.k, Colonel," MacMillan said. "If it wasn't for the war, you'd still probably be a first john, and I'd still be a corporal."

Office of the commandant.

He was going over in his mind what would likely happen inside the commandant's office, and what his responses should be. He was uneasy, but determined.

"If Felter is out there," a metallic voice came over the intercom, "send him in."

"You may go in," the commandant's secretary said.

Felter stood up. He put his shako squarely on his head, and picked up his M1 Garand rifle. As long as he had been at the Point, he had never before reported under arms to an officer indoors. He wasn't sure if he should march in with the piece at right shoulder arms, and then come to present arms, or whether he should march in with the piece at trail arms, come to attention, and ..render the rifle salute. He decided, right then, to do it at trail arms.

He knocked at the door, waited for the command to enter, and then marched in, coming to a stop eighteen inches from the huge, polished mahogany desk. He came to attention, lowered the b.u.t.t of the Garand onto the carpet, and rendered the first movement of the rifle salute. He moved his right hand across his body, fingers extended and stiff, so the fingertips of his right hand contacted the stacking swivel of the M1 he held in his left hand. "Sir, Cadet Corporal Felter, Sanford T., reporting to the Commandant of Cadets as ordered, Sir," he said.

The major general behind the desk, who was the Commandant of Cadets, returned the salute. He was an athletic man in his late forties, who wore his gray hair in a closely cropped crew cut. He was the sort of man one knew had played football in college, and now spent as much time as he could spare on the golf course. Felter completed the salute, snapping his right hand quickly back across his body to his side. He stared six inches above the commandant's head, at the knees of a portrait of General Philip H. Sheridan. "

"Stand at ease, Felter," the commandant said. Felter moved the muzzle of the Garand four inches forward, moved his left foot six inches to the side, and put his left hand in the small of his back. The position was that of parade rest, but this was the commandant's office and the commandant, and he was a cadet corporal, and parade rest seemed to be the position to a.s.sume. In at ease it was permissible to look around. Cadet Corporal Felter lowered his eyes and met those of the commandant.

"I have your resignation, Felter," the general said. "You want to tell me about it?"

"Sir, I believe it speaks for itself," Felter said, without hesitation.

"Oh, no, it doesn't," the general said. "I want to know what curious line of thinking is responsible for it."

"Sir, I believe the war will be over before I would graduate," Felter said.