Scott Turow - Ordinary Heroes

He paused to see how I was taking this. His face, especially his large, lumpy nose, had gained even more color, and he helped himself to another snort from his canteen.

"That, in a few words, is what I don't like about Robert Martin. I've been a soldier my whole life, Dubin, I know how the game is played, and I realize I'd get nowhere with the General staff complaining about Martin's heroics. But I passed the word to OSS that he's outlived his usefulness here. And eventually they agreed. Told me I should order him back to London. And now we get the melodrama. Because Martin won't go.

The prick won't go. I've given him his orders in writing three times, and he's sitting there like he's on vacation. I've tolerated the bastard when I had to, Dubin, but I've got him dead to rights now, and I'm not taking any more of his crap. All understood? So type that up, just the last part there, and I'll sign it."

"I thought there was something to do with a woman, sir. That's what Colonel Maples indicated."

Teedle laughed suddenly. He was so relentlessly intense that I nearly jumped at the sound. I would have bet the man in front of me laughed at nothing.

"Oh, that," he said. "I'll tell you the truth, Dubin. I don't give a dry turd about the woman. Patton's G-I cares-they want the same rules for all personnel, naturally. Before D-Day, Martin commanded an Operational Group here on the Continent-Sidewinder, or some such name. They were spying and making the Nazis' lives difficult with little hit-and-run operations. He must have had thirty men under him, a few Allied spies who'd come ashore like him, but most of his command were members of the French and Belgian underground. The Frenchmen have all run home, the spoils of war and whatnot. I suppose the bastards are going to fight each other about who runs the show here.

"There are still a few odd ducks remaining with Martin, probably because they're not welcome anywhere else. And one of them's a woman, a beautiful little bit from what I hear. He recruited her in Marseilles a few years ago, and she's been beside him, helping with a lot of the ruses OSS is always employing. These OSS women have been damned effective, Dubin. Don't sell them short. You know the fucking Krauts, they think they're gentlemen, so they're never as suspicious of females as they should be. This girl claims to be a nurse sometimes. You can go just about anywhere in a nurse's uniform in the middle of a war.

"Now it's true, she's probably twenty years younger than Martin, and by all accounts he's been giving her the old one-two and maybe he's even in love with her or thinks he is. That's the theory in London, I suspect, about why he won't go back. My theory is that it just jollies him up to grind his finger in my eye.

"But as for the fact that he's stuck on the girl, or fighting beside his bed partner, they may not like that in the General staff, think it's bad for discipline when our troops catch on, but I couldn't care less. Soldiers always want sex. Do you know why?"

Because they were away from women, I answered. Their wives, their girlfriends.

"You think they'd hop their wives the way these boys go diving after these French girls? I don't. They think they're going to die, Dubin. The reasonable ones anyway. That's what I think. And if you get the time in combat you say you'd like, you'll be thinking that way, too. And when you feel death imminent, Dubin, you don't want to be alone. Isolation is the next stage, in the casket. You desire nothing more than contact with life, and life in its purest form. You want sex. And God. These boys want God, too. They want to fuck. And they want to pray. That's what a soldier wishes for when he doesn't wish he was back home. Forgive me for lecturing, but you're new to all of this and you're better off getting used to the truth.

"So I don't care if Martin's fucking this girl, or some calf he encounters on the road. We have a few troops doing that, too, I get the farmers in here complaining. Fuck who you want to as far as I'm concerned. But follow orders. So write up what I need to sign and then tell that son of a bitch to get the hell out of my area or he'll have an escort to the disciplinary barracks. That's all."

Yet again, Teedle lifted the canteen. It was his fifth or sixth drink. He should have been loaded, but his fury burned at such intensity that the liquor was probably vaporized on the way down his throat. I had no idea exactly what to think of General Teedle, especially the eagerness with which he'd invited me to dislike him. He seemed to have been one of those boys picked on all his childhood who grew up determined to be tougher than the bullies, yet who never overcame the hurt of being the odd man out. But his brusque honesty impressed me, especially since it even seemed to go so far as acknowledging his own unhappiness.

After seeing General Teedle, it made more sense not to return to Nancy, but rather to set out for Major Martin, who was nearby. The General directed his G-i to assist us, and the personnel officer, Lieutenant Colonel Brunson, briefed us further and ordered maps. When we were done, we returned to the motor pool, where the sergeant in charge informed us that they'd dispatched our jeep and couldn't spare another until morning.

Biddy caught on immediately. "Burnin our gas, not theirs," he murmured to me. He was right, of course, but we still weren't going to get a vehicle. Instead we went off separately to seek billeting. The captain of the headquarters company found me a cot in a four-man tent and showed me where dinner would be in the officers' mess, formed from two squad tents. The meal, when it was served, was hot B ration reduced to a greenish mash, but no one around here was complaining, since even headquarters company, which usually wangled the best, was down to only two meals a day. One of my most embarrassing little secrets was that I had found during training that I did not mind field rations, even what came in tins in the B and C: meat and vegetables, meat and beans, meat and spaghetti. The typical lament was that it looked like dog food and tasted like it, too. But much of it struck me as exotic. My parents, for all their lack of formal religious practice, had never brought pork into our home. Pork and beans was not my particular favorite, but I regarded ham as a delicacy, so much so that even Spam was a pleasure.

Afterward, I wandered toward the staging area where the enlisted men were encamped to make sure Bidwell had found a place. There was a virtual tent city there encompassing several battalions. It had its own eye appeal. The ranks of pup tents were in perfect lines stretching out hundreds of yards, with the latrine slit trenches dug at regular intervals, all of it illuminated by the brightness of the fires the cooks were still tending. I walked along, exchanging salutes with the enlisted men who took notice of me, trying to find Division Headquarters Company, with whom Biddy was said to be quartered.

Now and then, when I asked directions, I'd also see if I could swap novels with some of the men. I had stuffed books in every pocket of my fatigues before we left Nancy, eager for new reading material. I sometimes felt I had read every novel in the city. I had been holding on to two of the most popular titles, Lost Horizon and Sanctuary, by William Faulkner, the latter much in demand because of Popeye's foul activities with a corncob. My hope was for more Faulkner, which I was lucky enough to find in the hands of a redheaded private from Texas. I also got a novel by James Gould Cozzens in exchange for The Last Citadel.

It would be hard to say how important the few minutes I spent reading each night were to me. Thoughts of my parents, of my brother and sister, or of Grace were fraught with emotion. I could not surrender to the comfort of imagining myself among them again, to the security of the life I had left, because I knew I could go mad with yearning and with regret that I'd been so determined to do my duty. But the chance to feel myself in another locale, neither here nor home, if only for a few minutes, was a special reprieve, an essential sign that life would again have the richness and nuance it holds in times of peace.