James Benn - A Mortal Terror

“Quite a lady,” I said. “Pearls and pizza.” Kaz nearly choked on his wine.

The pizzas were good, thinner than I was used to from the North End, but tastier. The place was crowded, and I was glad to see normal life returning to this little part of Italy.

“What was it like in Yugoslavia?” Kaz asked Luca as we relaxed after the food.

“Garrison duty, mostly boring. A few times we went out with the army to hunt for partisans. We never found them, which was frustrating, since they could always find us when they wanted to. We lost men on guard duty, throats slit. Terrible.”

“Did you have a hard time with the Germans, when the king declared the armistice?”

“No. There were no Tedeschi in our area. The Carabinieri stayed loyal to the king. Other units did as their commanders told them. Some even joined the partisans to fight the Germans. It was a difficult time.”

That was that. I got the impression Luca didn’t want to talk about it, and I wondered if he had friends or family who had gone over to Mussolini’s puppet state in the north.

“Boring, frustrating, difficult,” I said. “You add terrifying and you pretty much sum it up for all of us, Luca.”

No one disagreed.

The 32 nd station Hospital was buzzing. It was a complex of buildings that might have been Italian Army barracks from a couple of wars ago. Outside of the headquarters building, a line of ambulance trucks, their sides painted with huge red crosses, pulled into the central square. Doctors, nurses, and orderlies spilled out of half a dozen buildings, unloading stretchers and directing the wounded to different wards. The patients were all bandaged and wearing army-issue pajamas; these weren’t fresh casualties, but transfers from evacuation and field hospitals closer to the line.

At the same time, GIs were loading a pair of trucks parked next to the dispensary, as a nurse with a clipboard checked the inventory while talking with a doctor. He wore a wrinkled white lab coat, a major’s gold leaf, and a neatly trimmed mustache. He looked like the guy we’d come to see.

“Excuse me, Major Warren?”

“I’m a little busy, Lieutenant. See the adjutant if you’re looking for a buddy, or Ward 13 if you’ve got the clap.” He spoke without looking at me, and went back to reviewing the inventory with the nurse. She wore the army-regulation white dress and blue cape, which looked snazzy, but wasn’t very useful closer to the front lines, where nurses wore whatever army fatigues they could scrounge.

“It’s about Captain Galante, sir.”

“Listen, Lieutenant,” he said, turning to face me. “I’ve talked to CID and gave them a statement. I don’t have time to go over that again, so check with them. Some sergeant was here, I forget his name.”

“Sergeant Cole?”

“Yeah. Talk to him, I’m busy.”

“He’s dead, sir. He killed himself.”

“Jesus! Was that the guy who shot himself on the palace roof?”

“Yes sir. I just need a few minutes of your time.”

“Perhaps I can assist with the supplies, while the doctor speaks with my friend?” Kaz said to the nurse. She was pretty, but I knew Kaz was going to interrogate her while I talked to the doctor. Major Warren agreed, and led me to his office. The sign above the door read Chief of Medical Services.

“Sorry if I barked at you, Lieutenant, but I’ve been up to my eyeballs in work today, starting before dawn.” He fell into the chair behind his desk and I sat across from him, waiting as he lit up a Lucky. His desk was stacked with patient charts, an overflowing inbox, and an empty outbox. “Accident on the road from Naples. A truckload of replacements-ASTP kids-goes over an embankment. Broken bones, lacerations, the usual for a road accident. Poor bastards hadn’t been off the boat for a full day yet, and they’re all banged up already.”

“I hear there’s a lot of replacements coming in,” I said, trying not to think of my brother Danny and worrying if he was headed for trouble.

“Indeed. Some of us have been told to get ready to move out. There’s a big push going on somewhere, that’s for sure. Now, what can I do for you?”

“I need to ask some questions about Doctor Galante that Sergeant Cole may not have asked. Did he frequent prostitutes?”

“Galante? That’s a good one, Lieutenant. He probably never even thought about it. I never heard him speak about much of anything except medicine and Italian culture.”

“You’re sure? This won’t be part of any official report, in case you’re worried about his family finding out.”

“I’m sure. Have you talked to the doctors he roomed with? Wilson and Bradshaw?”

“Yes, they didn’t really know him well. Ships passing in the night. Galante was transferred from Third Division. You know anything about that?”

“Just what I heard. He got into a dispute with a colonel and got booted upstairs. He wasn’t happy about it, I can tell you that.”

“You all must work hard, but this place does look pretty comfortable.”

“It is. Long hours every day of the week, but clean sheets and decent food every night. A far cry from battalion aid stations near the front lines. The Luftwaffe bombed us once, but that’s as close as we’ve come to real danger here.”

“What was it that Galante didn’t like?”

“He wanted to work on combat fatigue cases. Exclusively. He was almost a bore on the subject.” He looked at me shrewdly. “You probably know that’s what the beef with the colonel was about. Sending him here was a real punishment. We don’t treat psychiatric disorders. We have dentists, physical therapists, surgeons, even a dietician, but no psychiatrists.”`

“So what happens to combat fatigue cases?” I sensed that there had been no love lost between Warren and Galante, especially on this topic.

“We don’t often get casualties direct from the front. Like the boys who just came in, they’ve already been patched up and sent here for further treatment. They have to be actually wounded to be sent here.” He crushed his cigarette out.

“What’s your opinion on combat fatigue?”

“Not sure. I’m a surgeon. If I can’t cut it out or sew it up, I’m at a loss. I know some cases are sent back to headquarters to do menial work. Seems sort of pathetic.”

“I agree. I’ve seen the waiters in the senior officer’s mess.”

“But Galante’s theory seems weird too. A hot meal, change of clothes, a good night’s sleep, and then wham, back to the front.”

“Isn’t that what you do? Patch them up so they can go back as soon as they’re able?”

“That’s what Galante said. I guess the difference is some of the brass don’t mind GIs in a hospital bed if they have holes in them, but they don’t like the idea of able-bodied men getting a rest from combat.”

“Able-bodied, yes. But what about their minds? Their spirits?” I thought about Jim Cole. No surgeon could ever cut out the memory of that basement, remove the guilt, and patch it all up.

“Like I said, I cut, I stitch. And I do a damn good job of it, as well as running this place. I’ve seen the inside of men’s bodies, I’ve operated on the brain more times than I like to recall. But I never saw evidence of a spirit in there. Sorry. I wish I had.” I wasn’t so sure he was. Anyone who looked for the soul between bits of bone and blood didn’t know what they were looking for.

“Did Galante have professional differences with another doctor over this? Anything more than a medical disagreement?”

“Far as I know, his serious disagreements were all with the brass at Third Division. We may debate medicine here, Lieutenant, but we’re usually too exhausted to do much about an opposing opinion. But there is someone you should talk to. Doctor Stuart Cassidy. He’s in Radiology, but he’s the closest thing we have to a shrink. He interned with a psych department in Chicago, I think. He and Galante were friendly, as far as that went with the late doctor.” Major Warren made a call, and told me to hustle out to the trucks that were being loaded. Cassidy was one of the doctors being transferred to parts unknown.