Robert Adams - A Man Called Milo Morai

“But still, I feel this strong feeling that we have been or we will someday be of a much and personal closeness. I cannot shake away this feeling, and I but wondered if you, too, had had this experience when you met me.”

“No,” said Milo simply. “No, I have had no such feelings, Mrs. Stiles. If this disappoints you, I am sorry. I but tell you the truth.”

“No, no, I feel no disappointment, Milo Moray. Why should I feel such? If anything, I feel great joy that you have here proved to me just how good a friend to my husband you truly are. He chose well, I think, when he chose you as his—what is the word? buddy?—he chose well, indeed. You are a gentleman of the old mode, and you always will be most welcome in this house.

“But I want your solemn vow, Milo Moray. I want your firm promise that you will care for our Jethro, do all that the good God allows to keep him safe in the dangers that lie ahead. Will you so vow?” There could be, this time around, no mistaking her meaning or her deadly seriousness.

Milo was puzzled. “Mrs. Stiles, Jethro is in more real danger driving through the city of Washington than he could face down South, doing staff work in a training unit. Of course, I will do anything I can to protect him from whatever, but I’m based in Baltimore, over eight hundred miles away from his post. No two ways about it, I’d like to be back with him in the old unit, but the Army seems to feel I’m of more use to them up at Holabird.”

“Our Jethro, gallant soul that he is, still abrim with a senseless guilt for something long ago that was not really his fault, has persuaded certain persons to give him a combat command, a battalion of infantry. He soon will leave for his new posting. Can you not find a way to join him again, there, Milo Moray?”

“Jesus H. Christ on a frigging GI crutch, Moray,” stormed Major Barstow in clear consternation. “Have you lost your mind? Not only is a linguist like you of immense value here to Uncle Sam, but you’re in the safest, cushiest billet you’ll find this side of the damned Pentagon complex. Man, with your talents and your cooperation, I can keep you here for as long as the war lasts. What is it you’re after? Rank? I can bump you up to master, within a week, no sweat. You want a commission, hell, man, I can get you that, too, a direct one. Just give me a little time and you’ll have it all.

“But, please, for the love of God, don’t hit me first thing on a Monday morning again with such a line of lunatic nonsense like you wanting an immediate transfer to an outfit that I know damned good and well will likely be in that meat grinder they’re running in Italy inside six months!”

Barstow kept at Milo up until almost the very moment that he shouldered his barracks bag and entrained for South Carolina. His final words were, “You’re a nut, Moray, but I guess that without your kind of nuts, no war would ever get won. I’ve put the very highest marks I can in your file; that’s all I can do, now. Here it is; it’s sealed, that’s GI regs. If you unseal it, for God’s sake, do it carefully so you can reseal it easily, huh? You do as good a job for the bastards where you’re going as you did for us here, you’ll be wearing three up and three down soon, don’t fret about it. Good luck, Moray. Try not to get your head or any other essential parts shot off.”

The entire unit, from division on down, was still in a state of flux, none of the components completely filled in. The grizzled master sergeant who checked Milo in still wore his Ninth Infantry Division patch. When once he had torn open the sealed records and seen that he was dealing with a Regular rather than another johnny-come-lately uniformed civilian, he unbent considerably and offered Milo a cigarette and a chair across the cluttered, battered desk from him.

“Thishere Colonel Stiles, he must know where some fuckin’ bodies is buried to git that bunch in Holabird to let you go, Moray. You know him? What kinda fella is he? West Pointer?”

“Not hardly,” Milo chuckled. “He’s a gentleman, but he was a tech when the war started, first sergeant of a training company. I was his field first … and his buddy.”

The master looked pleased at this news and nodded. “A Regular, huh, like us?”

“About thirteen, fourteen years service, sarge, all but the last two years of it in the ranks. He’s hard, but he’s fair, too, doesn’t play favorites. You give him what he wants, what he thinks you can do, and he’ll take good care of you. What else can you ask of an officer?”

The master shook his head. “Not a fuckin’ thing more, Moray. Sounds like I fin’ly lucked into a good spot for a fuckin’ change. And he’s sure stickin’ by you, too. All the fuckin’ comp’ny commanders yellin’ their friggin’ heads off for trained noncoms, and he’s got you down in a staff slot.” He leafed through the personnel file for a moment, then grunted. “Shitfire, manl You talk Krauthead, Frog, Eyetie, Swede and all thesehere others, too? Hell, no fuckin’ wonder they had you up to Holabird. The wonder —and it’s a pure wonder!—is just how thishere Colonel Stiles managed to pry you away from ‘em. He prob’ly has you lined up for S-2, but he better not let regiment or division hear too much about you or they’ll jerk you right out of this fuckin’ battalion afore you can say goose shit. But, say, how come you ain’t a fuckin’ of ser, Moray?”

Milo shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know, sarge, mostly probably because I never wanted to be one, I guess. Besides, I have no college degree, either.”

The master made a rude sound. “Hell, Moray, that eddicayshun crap don’t matter diddlysquat no more. Shit, piss and corruption, even I’s a of ser . . , for a while. Then me and a coupla good ole boys busted up a of sers” club, bashed the fuckin’ post snowdrops around purty good, too. We all got court-martialed, of course, and busted back . . . way back. The onlies’ fuckin’ way I could git my three and three back was to ‘volunteer’ for thishere fuckin’ new division. But hell, it don’t matter none, no way. I’m with you, Moray, I’m a lot happier as a master than I was as a damn, fuckin’ of ser anyhow!

“Okay, let’s us get you settled in, Moray.” He pulled a clipboard from beneath the mountain of papers on the desktop, precipitating a small avalanche, which he ignored. “I’m gonna put you in. a squadroom with two other techs and a staff in, lessee, in Buildin’ H-1907. Got that? The lockers and racks is a’ready in there, so you can lock up your stuff while you go over to Head and Head supply and draw your mattress and bedding and all. But you watch that fuckin’ crooked-ass Crockett, hear me? Make damn sure he gives you blankets and all out of brand-fuckin’-new bales, les’ you c’lects crotch pheasants for fun.

“Oh, by the way, Moray, I guess as how I’m the fuckin’ battalion sergeant major, leastways till we gets in another master or a warrant or somebody better for the job. You done been a first—you wanta take over Head and Head Comp’ny till things get shook down some? I could give you a two-man room, then.”

Milo shrugged. “Sure, sarge. Why not?”

The formation of the Sixtieth Infantry Division was best described as snafu—“situation normal, all fucked up”—all the way. Needed personnel and specialists slowly trickled in from every point of the compass, supplies and equipment came late or not at all or the wrong kind or in impossible quantities. For almost two weeks, the entire Head and Head—battalion headquarters and Headquarters Company—consisted of the cooks and mess steward, Sergeant Major/Master Sergeant John Saxon, Milo, four other first-three-graders—the battalion supply sergeant, Moffa, the battalion S-3 sergeant, Evans, the signal section sergeant, White, and a staff sergeant/specialist who was a clear case of misassignment, since his specialty was medical records keeping—and an agglomeration of eighteen drivers (with no vehicles to drive, as yet), one corporal and one pfc (the both of them fresh out of Graves Registration School), and two buck sergeants (one a tracked vehicle mechanic and the other a dog handler with his Alsation dog). But all of that began to change; the state of hopeless-looking disorder began to fall into order at about eleven on the morning of Milo’s tenth day of service as H&H first sergeant.