Robert Adams - A Man Called Milo Morai

At the sergeant’s mention of the surname, it all finally came back to Milo—the vaguely familiar voice and the pointy, ratlike features. Smiling coldly, he said in Dutch, “Well, Comrade Jaan Brettman, how are things in Moscow?”

Later, seated on a wooden case of small-arms ammo across a folding field table from Tom Beverley, with a white-faced, trembling Brettmann standing stiffly off to one side of the small tent, Milo said tiredly, “He’s full of shit, too, Tom, he always has been. If I’d really tried to kill him, ever , the little fucker would be pushing up daisies by now, and you know me well enough to know it, too. Don’t you?”

Beverlyy just nodded; he did know Milo that well. He fumbled briefly in a bag at his feet to come up with a bottle and a pair of battered tin cups. After pulling the cork with his teeth, he filled both cups and shoved one across to Milo. He did not even glance at Brettmann.

“Okay, Milo, division wished the Jewboy here off on us, and ah don’t know him from Adam’s housecat. He says you tried to kill him years back and again just now, so you must’ve known him before this, unless he’s completely round the bend … and that’s possible, too. If you did know him sometime and someplace else, tell me about it. Ah need to know all ah can about mah men and officers.”

Milo sipped appreciatively at the smooth single-malt whisky and sighed with pleasure. “There’s not all that much to tell, Tom. I knew him only very briefly. We met on only one occasion, in fact. He was from a family of Dutch Jewish immigrants; all except him were good, decent, hardworking people. Out of the proceeds of a tiny one-man tailor ship, his father was sending both him and his eider brother, Sol, to college … and all this was in ‘37, too, mind you.

“Sol Brettmann was in law school, but Jaan here apparently was a major in revolutionary Bolshevism, while on the side he was teaching impressionable, sheltered young girls the finer points of burglary and sneak-thievery. When I caught him trying to break into my strongbox in my room of the house I was then calling home, he tried to knife me, and I broke his arm for him. Because he had involved a daughter of my landlady in his criminal activities, the police were never called into it, and after he was deemed fit to travel, he was sent back East somewhere to live with relatives. Until today, when he surprised me and I drew my pistol on him, I’d never seen or heard of him again, and I’m here to tell you that even this meeting, seven years since the last, was way too soon.”

Beverley drained his cup, refilled it, then leaned across to pour more into Moray’s half-empty one. He nodded. “That’s all we need, Milo, all we need. We don’t have enough troubles with the comp’ny more than forty percent understren’th and another fucking push coming fast as sure as God makes road apples? So ah told John Saxon ah had to have an exec, hoping ah’d get a mustang like you or him that knew shit from Shinola, and what did those division shitheads send down here? A lying, thieving kike bastard of a pinko who’s so damn dumb in important things that ah don’t think he knows which end to wipe the shit off of! And ah cannot imagine how he ended up in Charlie Comp’ny, to begin with, Milo. His frigging 201 file says he’s a fucking quartermaster officer, for Christ’s sake!”

Momentarily forgetting his circumstances in his righteous wrath, Second Lieutenant John Brettmann abruptly burst out, “It was all a conspiracy, I tell you, a hideous capitalistic conspiracy, to send me over here to die. I was at Camp Lee, Virginia, showing the enlisted men how they could form a union and teaching those who wanted to learn about progressive ideas the philosophy of Marx and Engels and the teachings of Lenin. Then, all at once, I was ordered to report to a port of embarkation and found myself being sent to Europe as a replacement infanty officer. I don’t want to be here any more than you foul-mouthed, anti-Semitic alcoholics want me here. I’d never have gone into the Army, anyway, if the Party hadn’t said to.”

Captain Tom Beverley just looked at Milo and Milo looked back at him. No words were necessary between them, not on this matter. For the sake of bare survival of the men who depended upon them, this officer could not ever be allowed in a combat-command position, and for just such a position he was currently in direct line.

Leaving the tent, the three officers paced across the CP area, passed the perimeter and walked on several scores of yards beyond it before Tom Beverley halted.

Pointing to the blackened, rusting hulk of a Mark III panzer squatting some fifty yards away just beyond a flat field with knee-high grass growing around shell craters, the captain said, “Brettmann, your ticket back Stateside is in the turret of that tank. Go over there and climb up on it and open the hatch and fetch me back the musette bag that’s hanging in it, heah? And be damned careful with it, too, boy. You break airy one of those bottles and ah’ll have your guts for garters.”

Brettmann paced rapidly across the field, clambered clumsily onto the hull of the gutted tank, then jerked at the flaking handle of the central hatch until it came open with a shrill protest from rust-eaten hinges. After a moment, he shouted back, “Captain, there’s nothing in here that even looks like a musette bag.”

Beverley cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed, “A’rant, then, just come on back here, on the double!”

Second Lieutenant John Brettmann had trotted about halfway back in their direction when, with a flash and an ear-shattering explosion, his body was flung a good ten feet into the air to flop down sprawling, unmoving and incomplete.

“Do you think he’s dead, Tom?” asked Milo coolly.

The captain shrugged. “Looks to be from here, and ah’m not about to send any of mah men into a minefield to find out one way or the-othuh. Whenevuh regiment or division gets around to clearing that field, they can take his tag and bury him. Let’s us get back—the othuhs ought to be there by now, and ah need to hash out some things with the bunch of you.”

Reinforced with replacements to only about twelve percent under their D-Day strength, the battalion took part in the attack on and capture of the German city of Aachen, just behind the broken Siegfried Line. But it did not prove a bloodless victory. Quite a few of the ill-trained new men were lost in it, along with irreplaceable men like Sergeants Gardner and Cooper and Captain Tom Beverley. Major John Saxon was wounded, but before he would let them take him back to the division hospital, he ordered the necessary promotions and transfers to keep his battalion running as smoothly as possible under the circumstances.

At battalion headquarters, where he had been ordered to report, Milo dropped off a handful of dog tags with the clerk assigned to handle KIAs, then sought out the harried adjutant, Captain Davies.

Looking up but fleetingly to see who stood before his cluttered field desk, the cadaverous-looking man muttered, “Moray, you’re bumped up two notches by order of Major Saxon and some single-star at division. Take over Charlie Company and get ready for another push … soon. You’ll be needing a first sergeant, since yours was killed along with Captain Beverley, but, no, I cannot supply you a noncom, or any other warm bodies, for that matter. Maybe soon, but not now. If you can beg, borrow or steal a truck and dragoon a driver for it, I can authorize you to pick up ammo and rations, and that’s it. Questions?”

But despite Captain Davies’ assurances of new actions, there was no fresh push, not for either battalion or regiment. All had just been too badly chewed up for anything until once more up to at least near strength. They were moved back to their original areas south of the Meuse River.