Robert Adams - A Man Called Milo Morai

Even clear down in the battalion supply area where he stood arguing with the slick and slimy Sergeant Moffa, all could hear from the headquarters building the hoarse bellow of “Ten-HUT!” and recognize the voice of Master Sergeant Saxon.

Stepping out of the supply shack and looking up the row of T-buildings, Milo could recognize even at the distance and despite its thick covering of road dust the long, sleek shape and maroon color of a Lincoln V-12 coupe. Lieutenant Colonel Jethro Stiles, Infantry, USA, had arrived to take command of his battalion.

When once he had heard the reports of Saxon and Milo, the commanding officer sighed deeply and shook his head slowly. “John, Milo, it’s the same, sad fucking story from division on down, I’m here to attest to that much. The Powers That Be really broke it off in this division, and the general is so fucking mad that he’s chewing up twenty-penny nails and spitting out carpet tacks. It seems that we got every fucking goldbrick and fuck-off and miscreant and mother’s mistake that any other outfit wanted to unload somewhere.

“Howsomever”—he smiled lazily and tilted back his head to gaze at the resinous rafters above him—“I just may have helped the overall situation a bit. I made a few telephone calls and sent a few wires from division, earlier this morning, called in some markers and cadged a few favors here and there. If it all jells, I think that I can safely assure you that from now on, this battalion will be at the very tiptop of the general’s most-favored list.”

“In that case, colonel,” began Milo, only to be stopped.

“Milo, John, when we’re alone together, it’s no ‘colonel’ and ‘sergeant,’ hear me? This rank of mine is only a wartime expediency, every Regular knows that, and I feel one hell of a lot more at home and properly placed among you and men like you than I do among most of the officers, anyway.

“Now, that matter aside, you have a problem, Milo?”

“We have a problem, Jethro, two of them, in Head and Head. Supply sergeants are always out for the main chance, everybody knows that, but this precious pair we’ve got here—Moffa of battalion supply and Crockett of Headquarters Company supply—take the fucking shit-cake. Somehow, between the two of them, they’ve managed to convert a shipment of two thousand brand-spanking-new GI blankets that arrived just last week into less than half that number of ragged, motheaten, threadbare pieces of shit that it would be a fucking crime to issue to a fucking dog. And that’s just their most recent sleight-of-hand with our supplies.”

Without a word to Milo, Stiles picked up the receiver of the desk telephone and, after about fifteen minutes, was talking to his party. “James? Jethro, here. Can I have just one more? Gabe Potter, that’s who. Well, isn’t there any way you can get those charges dropped? I really need the fellow, James. Yes, yes, thank you, James, that’s yet another one I owe you. Take care, you old bastard.”

“Master Sergeant Gabe Potter?” Milo yelped, “Jesus, Jethro, he’s the crookedest man at Fort Benning! He’s the last thing we need up here. Moffa and Crockett are bad enough.”

Stiles raised his eyebrows for a moment, then said, “That’s right, Milo, you’ve been away for a while. Well, it’s Captain Potter, now, and since he made captain he’s kept the whole place humming with courts-martial hearings and reductions in rank, with sentences to Leaven worth and stockade time. He was a master crook himself, so he knows every fucking dodge there is, and he’s ferreted out every racketeer in the whole damn training command. Of course, he’s garnered a whole pisspot full of enemies at it, so he just might be glad to get up here into a new unit where he won’t have every other fucker gunning for his ass … well, at least not for a while yet.”

When they all finally straggled in and he got a look at them and their files, Colonel Stiles forced a captaincy back on Master Sergeant John Saxon, ignoring his loud and profanely voiced objections and opinions of officers in general. Then the old soldier was made the battalion adjutant.

Affairs in both battalions and the higher echelons were well on the way to normalcy when Milo was called to battalion headquarters one day. He found Stiles waiting for him outside the building, beside a jeep.

When he had returned the salute, he said, “Get in and drive, Milo. They raise pure fucking hell if I drive myself anymore, even in my own car. Drive somewhere out in the boondocks. We two need to talk, and I don’t want half the fucking division hearing us.”

When once they were off the built-up portions of the post and rolling along a dusty dirt road between brushy shoulders backed by stands of pine and scrub cedar, Stiles spoke again.

“Milo, there’s something godawful fishy going on. I’ve twice tried to get you a commission, now, and each time the forms have been returned, rejected by higher authority, nor have I been able to wangle or worm out any explanation for any of this. Tve run into a brick wall every time, and that’s not my usual batting average in dealing with the Army. They won’t even accept an application in your name for OCS, for God’s sake, man. Have you got any ideas why?”

Milo was nonplussed and said so, whereupon Stiles continued his monologue. “Well, maybe we’ll get to the bottom of it all in time. At last, we’ll have a bit more of that commodity. Inside information I’ve acquired— and this is strictly not for repetition, Milo—has it that, what with all the fuckups we’ve had to put up with, we’ve been replaced by a more combat-ready division for the Italian business. They’re going to give us more time to shake down and form up, see, save us for the big invasion, probably early next year. Somewhere in France, obviously, the Mediterranean coast, I’d guess, considering how well fortified the Krauts have made the Atlantic coasts and how assuredly costly an assault on those coasts would be certain to be.

“I own a villa in Nice, you know. Of course, I’ve not been there in almost twenty years, but until the war started I still received regular rents on it. It would be good to see it again, if we wind up anywhere near it.

“But that’s all in the future and a bit speculative, at best. Look, Milo, I’m going up to Washington for a week or so next month on some business for the general. I’d intended to spend a bit of time out at the farm, and Martine wants me to bring you, too. Can you get away from the company that long, do you think?”

The slow, unhurried and quiet pace of life in the Virginia countryside was very restful, soothing, after the frenetic months of trying to whip nearly nine hundred strangers into a tight-knit unit, with every new disaster and shortfall landing squarely atop the last.

Jethro left early each morning for Washington and sometimes did not return until well after dark, usually too tired to do much other than eat lightly, have a few drinks, bathe and go to sleep in preparation for the next day. During his absences, Milo and Martine spent the days riding or walking the length and breadth of the thousand-plus acres of the farm, joining the children in playing with a litter of puppies, talking about anything and nothing in a half-dozen languages and otherwise lazing away the long days in trivialities.

Melusine Stiles had been just over six weeks old upon Milo’s arrival with her father. Having no milk this time, and not caring to try the bottle method, Martine had sought out and hired a wet nurse for her newest child. However, she still spent time with the baby as well as with her two older children, and during these times, Milo, ever voracious for knowledge, always hoping against hope that some passage read somewhere would trigger his dormant memories of the past, made use of the well-selected array of books in the library of the house.