Scott Turow - Ordinary Heroes

Rather than commandeer a house in town for himself, as other generals might have done, Teedle had remained with his men in a large tent that served combat-style as both his billet and headquarters. The heavy blackout flaps had been raised in daytime. Inside, a board floor had been installed in sections, and there were several desks, two of them face-to-face, where a couple of corporals were pounding away at Remingtons. Another, larger desk was unoccupied beside a frame cot which was certainly the General's. Two footlockers were stacked there with a kerosene lamp atop them for nighttime reading.

I approached the first of the two corporals, who was working with a pencil clenched between his teeth, and gave my name and unit. He was a very thin fellow with a wry look and he began to rise. I said, 'At ease," but he tossed off a quick salute from his seat.

"Corporal Billy Bonner, Paragraph Trooper in the Armchair Division."

"Oh, isn't that cute?" said the second corporal, without looking up from his work. "Bonner's going back to burlesque when the war is over." Bonner addressed the other corporal as 'Frank,' and told him to shut up. They bickered for a moment.

"Well, then just don't talk to me at all," Frank concluded. His voice was high and he gave his head a dramatic toss. I exchanged a look with Biddy, who had remained at the tent opening. No need to ask why that one wasn't in combat.

In frustration, Bonner arose and limped toward Biddy, waving me along. Bonner proved chummy enough that I felt free to ask about his leg. He'd been shot at Anzio, he said, and had opted to become a clerk rather than go home. The reward for his dedication, he said, was working beside Frank. "Welcome to the Army," he added. Listening to him, I remembered a sergeant in basic training who'd warned me not to tell anybody I could type, good advice as Bonner could now attest.

The Corporal had just finished explaining that Teedle was due back momentarily from an inspection of forward installations, when he caught sight of the General and scurried to his desk like a schoolchild.

I snapped to attention as Teedle stormed past us. A private from the Signal Corps was trailing him, hauling the body of a huge radio telephone while Teedle screamed into the handset, alternately venting at the poor fellow at the other end and at the signal man, whenever the sound faded.

"Tell him that I have two battalions down to one ration a day. No, damn it. Two battalions, one ration. One ration. An army moves on its stomach. Ask him if he's heard that one. If the Nazis kill these boys it's one thing, but I'll be damned before I see their country starve them to death." I'd heard that the frontline troops were often hungry. In the officers' mess in Nancy, food was plentiful-canned goods, pastries with honey, tea, Nescafe. Midday meals were often huge. The meat and poultry, requisitioned from the locals, swam in heavy gravies.

Teedle handed the phone roughly to the signal man and dismissed him, then plunged to his seat, looking unhappily at the papers stacked on his desk.

He had yet to remove his helmet. The General barked suddenly at Bonner.

"Are you telling me that Halley Maples sent that pup to deal with Martin?" As far as I had noticed, Teedle hadn't even looked at me.

Bonner turned my way and said with his subversive smile, "The General will see you now."

When I'd first heard Teedle's name, I had expected some round little fellow who'd look at home in a Technicolor musical movie like The Wizard of Oz. But the General gave every impression of being a soldier, the kind who would have been happy to be referred to as a rough-and-ready son of a bitch. Teedle was a big red-faced man, with a chest as round as a cock robin's,. And tiny pale eyes set off starkly within lids that appeared to have been rubbed raw, probably from exhaustion or perhaps an allergic condition, or even, I suppose, tears.

In front of the General's desk I came to attention again, gave name, rank, and unit, and explained that with his permission, I would like to take a statement from him, in connection with the Rule 35 regarding Martin. Teedle studied me throughout.

"Where'd you go to college, Dubin?"

"Easton."

"Uh-huh. I'm from Kansas. None of those fancy-ass schools in Kansas. How about law school?"

"Easton. If I may, General, I went on scholarship, sir."

"Oh, I see. A smart guy. Is that what you're telling me?"

Not to suggest that, sir."

"Well, if you gad about telling everybody you meet first thing how bright you are, you're not very smart at all, are you, Lieutenant?"

I didn't answer. He had me pinned and that was the point anyway. Teedle was plainly another of those commanders who wanted his troops to know he was the match of any of them. He took a second to set his helmet on his desk. His hair, what little was left of it, was somewhere between red and blond, and stood up on his head like stray wires. He'd found his canteen and screwed off the cap. Even at a distance of six feet, I could smell the whiskey. He took a good solid slug.

"All right, so what do I need to tell you about Martin?"

"As much as you can, sir."

"Oh, I won't do that. You'll start thinking Martin's a wonderful fellow. You're likely to think he's a wonderful fellow anyway. I'll tell you something right now, Dubin. You're going to like Robert Martin a good deal better than you like me. He's charming, a sweet talker. And brave. Martin may be the bravest son of a bitch in the European theater. You seen combat, Dubin?"

"No, sir. I'd like to."

"Is that so?" He smirked and pointedly lowered his line of sight to the JAG Department insignia on the collar of my tunic. "Well, if you ever find yourself in the middle of a battlefield, Lieutenant, what you'll see around you is a bunch of fellows scared shitless, as they should be, and one or two sons of bitches jumping up and down and acting as if the bullets can't touch them. They get hit sooner or later, believe me, but it takes a hell of a lot longer than you'd think. Martin's one of those. Thinks he's invincible. I don't like that either. A soldier who's not afraid to die is a danger to everybody."

"Is that the problem, sir? The root of it?"

"Hardly. The problem, if you want to call it that, is that the fucking son of a bitch won't follow orders. He's gone off on several operations without my say-so, even though he's supposed, to be under my command. Successful operations, too, I don't dispute that, sabotaging train lines, mostly, so those Nazi pricks can't get troops and supplies where we're heading. He's a whiz at that. Every railway worker in France seems to bow at Martin's feet.

"But twice I've sent troops to the wrong position because I didn't know he'd already blown the lines. I've had to hold off artillery because I got late word that Martin and his men turned up in the target area, without any prior communication to me. And I've slowed deployments several times because Martin was off screwing with the Germans, instead of finishing the recons he'd been assigned. And it's not just discipline that concerns me, Lieutenant, although I believe in discipline as much as any other general you've ever met. What makes my hemorrhoids ache is that men were in danger each time, men who didn't need to be killed. Not that day. Not in that place. And I take that personally."

My face must have reflected some doubt about his choice of words.

"You heard me, Lieutenant," he said, and stood behind his desk. "It's personal. I get up every goddamn morning knowing that young men under my command are going to die-even now with nothing special happening, I'm losing thirty men a day, and I'll carry their souls with me as long as I live, Dubin. I mean that. While I last on this globe, there will always be some shadow of grief. I wanted this star so bad I probably would have killed someone to get it, but I didn't realize that the dead stick with generals this way. I grieved for plenty who died under my command at lower ranks, but that burden departed, Dubin, and it doesn't now, and when I've asked others, all they can say is that this is just how it is."