James Benn - The Rest Is Silence

“What?” Harding nearly shouted when we sat down and told him about Peter Wiley. “That’s impossible. He wouldn’t make it on board without authorization.” He slammed his coffee cup down hard enough for the hot joe to jump ship.

“Colonel,” I said, casting my eyes around the mess tent to be sure no one could hear, “this whole exercise was screwed up six ways to Sunday. One guy getting on an LST by hook or by crook isn’t that hard to imagine.”

“You both saw the body?” he asked, still not wanting to believe it. “Drowned, like the others?”

Tom and I both shrugged. “The surgeon at the Brixham clearing station wrote up a statement about what he found. I asked him to keep Wiley’s body secure, but he wasn’t sure he had the clout to get that done. From his quick exam, it looked like Peter may have been killed before he went into the water.”

“You mean when the LSTs were attacked?” Harding said.

“He can’t say for certain. I asked him to get the body to the morgue at his hospital and take a closer look, do a full autopsy if he had to. Is that something you can make happen? Major Dawes said the bodies were going to be taken away soon. We’ve heard rumors they’re going to be dumped in mass graves.”

“I’ll head there now and look up this Dawes. Between the two of us, we should be able to get the body released. But there’s a lot of pressure to wrap this up and keep a tight lid on it, so I can’t promise anything. This thing is being handled way above my pay grade. And there are no mass graves. Every man will get a decent burial.”

“Could you ask Ike to intervene, just to make sure?” Big Mike said. “Otherwise we got no corpus delecti .”

“No. He’s too busy working on the real invasion. He put us in charge of finding these officers for security reasons, but other than that, he’s focused on the real thing. It’s up to us. What’s the status on the missing men?” Harding asked, gulping the dregs of his coffee.

“We found all but one lieutenant and one captain,” I said, going over our checklists.

“Okay,” Harding said, tapping his fingers on the wooden table as he calculated how best to proceed. “Constable Quick, you and Big Mike continue the search. Go back to Start Point and see if any more bodies have been brought in.”

“That’s where we bagged the colonel,” Big Mike said to Tom.

“Then work your way north. My guess is that by tomorrow all the bodies will have been accounted for, unless the fish or the Germans got to them. Boyle, you and Lieutenant Kazimierz go to Greenway House. Lieutenant James Siebert is the officer who was responsible for keeping the manifests for all observers. He went into the water, but he had all his papers in a waterproof bag. He got a little banged up, but he’ll be back on duty tomorrow morning. See what light he can shed on how this happened.” Rain splattered the canvas above us, a crash of thunder not much farther away.

“Tomorrow morning is the funeral of Sir Rupert Sutcliffe,” I said. “Since everyone who spent time with Peter will be there, it might be worth our while to attend. Maybe he confided in one of them.”

“Worth a shot,” Harding said, giving us a curt nod. “But get to Siebert right after that. There’s no telling what may happen to any evidence connected with this debacle.” The rain became fiercer as wind gusts sent the tent flaps flying.

“Is the search going to proceed in this storm?” Kaz asked, a peal of thunder punctuating his sentence.

“It probably shouldn’t,” Harding said. “But then again, we may have to launch an invasion in weather not much better than this.” A loud, sharp crack whipped through the air as a bolt of lightning hit a nearby tree, the wood cracking and crashing to the ground seconds later. Saint Clare must have been busy elsewhere.

Harding went off to the command tent to radio Brixham and tell Major Dawes he was on his way, while the four of us waited for the worst of the storm to pass. Big Mike resupplied himself with doughnuts, and Kaz went in search of a cup of decent tea, a foolish venture in a US Army mess tent. Tom Quick and I stood at the open flaps, watching the rain fall on the sodden field.

“It’s a hard thing to see,” Tom said. “Even if you’re used to it.”

“It is,” I said. “I don’t think you ever get used to it, though.”

“You’ve been in combat,” he said. A statement, not a question.

“North Africa. Sicily. Salerno. How can you tell?”

“A man unused to carnage will throw up at the sight of it,” Tom said. “A man who has seen too much gets the shakes. And a man who tries to hide the fact stuffs his hands in his pockets.”

“You don’t miss much,” I said.

“I’m a trained constable,” he said. “Most days, all a village constable does is watch people. Little things tend to stand out. And I do know something about carnage. From a distance.”

“Does that make it any easier?” I said, turning to face Tom. For some reason, I had to know.

“I’ve no idea,” he said. “That’s like asking a one-legged man if losing a leg is easier than losing an eye, or a hand. How can he know? All he’s aware of is his own misery. What I do know is, it doesn’t get any easier when you’re confronted with more and more misery. It comes at you from every direction, no matter what you do. And it’s likely to keep doing so until this war is over. God knows when that’ll be.”

“It could be soon,” I said. “If the invasion goes well.”

“Jerry isn’t going to roll over once we get to France, you mark my words. It’s going to be a long haul. Some of the chaps I served with are starting their second tour of thirty missions. Nowadays they give them a few months’ rest with ground duty, then back for another go. Start the clock ticking all over again. Hard to fathom going through that twice.”

“I don’t know if I could ever do that,” I said. “I was in a bomber, once. We were jumped by fighters over the Adriatic. That was enough time in the air for me.”

“You can do anything once you’ve made your mind up about it. That’s what I’ve found, for what it’s worth. So go easy on yourself, Billy. You gave me a fright back there, laughing like a lunatic.”

“Thanks, Tom,” I said. “Looks like the rain’s clearing up.” We walked back to the jeep, and I flexed my fingers, working at not shoving my hands into my pockets. I still had a jittery sensation in my stomach, but the trembling was gone. Tom looked at ease, swinging his arms at his sides, whistling an unfamiliar tune. I worked to match his optimism, lunatic that I am.

“A successful day, Captain Boyle?” Meredith inquired when we entered the library, where Edgar was busy manning the drinks tray. “It must have been dreadful being caught in that storm.”

“Busy,” I said. “Not to mention wet. How about you? It must be a difficult time, with the funeral to arrange and a houseful of guests.”

“Quite. Which is why we are so glad to have the three of you, really. It provides a distraction and lets us think we are doing our part in some small way.”

“Billy,” Edgar said. “I daresay you could use some of this fine Scotch you brought us. Good for warming a man after that cold rain.” He handed me a glass with an ample supply of Colonel Harding’s whisky, and I didn’t argue. We’d come in soaked to the bone, courtesy of a renewed downpour when we’d been in sight of Ashcroft House. They’d run hot baths for us, and Alice Withers had taken our uniforms to dry out and press as best she could.

Since water was rationed as well as food, a hot bath in England was not as commonplace as back in the States. Soap was tough to come by as well. The limit for water was supposed to be four inches. Many hotels had a line painted in the tub to mark the level. But Ashcroft House bent the rules for three soldiers in need of a decent soak, and I didn’t complain. The regulation was unenforceable, but most people went along with it, even though it meant a decrease in cleanliness and an increase in bodily odors. A running gag among GIs was that the tents and Quonset hut enclosures for American troops were nicknamed Spam Town after the prevailing odor, and everything outside the wire was Goat Town, for the same reason.