Robert Adams - A Man Called Milo Morai

During his long, solitary sojourn through the winter wastes of the Ardennes, dodging German panzers and infantry units and finding himself forced by these and by natural obstacles to bear farther and farther east of north, Milo had had much time to think. He now was pretty certain that there was something extremely odd, to say the very least, about the way he was put together. He had been knifed in Qhicago by the late Jaan Brettmann, shot by Moffa back at Jackson, shot again by that German sniper and now bayoneted two or three times over by that SS man, yet he still was here to think about it all, and any one of the wounds he had suffered could have, should have, killed him outright. Not only was he still alive, he didn’t even have any scars from these terrible wounds.

All around him since D-Day, men—good men, strong men, healthy and well-trained and intelligent men—had been dying, many of them of injuries far less outwardly serious than those he had sustained and survived. So, why? He was human in every other way saving that he never sickened and that he could come unscathed out of patently deadly situations and incidents. He breathed, ate, digested, defecated and urinated. He functioned perfectly well sexually (at least no woman had voiced any complaints about his performances). He slept when he could. He was capable of pity, disgust, hate, respect, anger, possibly love too (but he had never found himself “in love,” not in the classic sense, so how could he be sure?), the whole gamut of human emotions. So what made him so different?

He did not formulate any answer before he stumbled across a tank crew engaged in replacing a damaged track link on their Sherman, screaming profane and obscene invective at the tank and each other and offering prime targets, had he been a German.

First Sergeant Bernie Cohen had been in a state approaching traumatic shock since battalion had called down to announce that their long-lost company commander, Captain Milo Moray, had somehow gotten out of the Ardennes alive and well and would be along whenever Second Armored could get him in. He still could not believe it even when Milo alit from a jeep and came into the Quonset hut orderly room of the reforming company.

Not until Milo had racked his Thompson, dumped his pistol belt on the table he called a desk, laid his helmet atop the belt .and started to remove his jacket could Cohen manage to speak.

His thin lips trembling, the noncom said, “But … but Milo, I seen it! A Kraut jammed a K98 bayonet in your chest at least twice. I know I seen it. I was in the trees not fifteen yards away. That’s why I told everybody you was dead.”

Milo just smiled and gripped the stunned man’s shoulder, saying, “I know, Bernie, I know you saw some poor bastard bayoneted, more than one, too, for they did that to fourteen men there. But they did miss me. I’d been cold-cocked during the fight, and I guess they thought I was already done for. When I did come to, the Krauts were long gone and the bodies of our guys were already stiff. I’m sure you did think I was dead, so forget it.”

The German counteroffensive of December 1944 was stopped, of course, crushed under the tank treads of General George Patton’s Third Army, bombed and strafed incessantly by Allied air power and driven back with over 200,000 casualties. The so-called Battle of the Bulge quickly became history.

While Charlie Company was dug in on the eastern bank of the Rhine River, at Remagen, helping to hold that precious span from recapture by the Wehrmacht, Milo received orders to report back to battalion headquarters. He found there a jeep and driver waiting to transport him farther back, to division headquarters. Ushered into a warm, dry building and given a chair, he promptly fell asleep.

When at last he sat across the polished desk from Jethro, savoring his glass (real glass, cut and faceted) of cognac, he became unpleasantly aware of the fetid odor —compounded of wet, dirty woolens, gun oil, foul breath and flesh long unwashed—of himself.

As if reading his mind, Jethro said, “Finish your drink, Milo, and Sergeant Webber in there will drive you over to my quarters. You can have a bath and a shave, Webber will trim your hair—and he does it well, too-then he’ll take your clothes out and burn them. There’s a full kit waiting for you in one of the lockers there, boots too. Then you can rest or sleep for what’s left of today. If you want anything else, just tell Webber. We’ll have dinner tonight, and I have to talk to you about some things. I need a promise from you.”

When he was as clean as hot water, GI soap, a GI handbrush, a GI toothbrush and GI tooth powder could render him, Milo used one of Jethro’s matched set of razors and shaving cream to take off the stubble that had been well on the way to becoming a real beard. Before dressing, he had the most solicitous Sergeant Webber take off most of his just-washed but still-shaggy hair, leaving a half-inch or less overall.

The clothing left for his use looked like GI issue, but a mere handling established that it was not, it was of far better quality—the mesh of the jockstrap felt like and looked like silk, the shorts and undershirt were of an incredibly soft cotton, and, although certainly of wool, the long Johns and the padded boot socks were almost as soft and unscratchy as the cotton.

Before he could even start to dress, however, Sergeant Webber, armed with a can of DDT powder and other assorted paraphernalia, said, “Uh, sir, don’t you think you should oughta let me go over your body for lice? It won’t none on your head, but that don’t prove nothing, of course.”

“You’re more than welcome to try, Webber,” agreed Milo, “but it’s a waste of your time. The critters don’t seem to like me, for some reason, never have. Nor do fleas, either.”

The noncom wrinkled up his brows. He did not want to call the officer a liar to his face, but that he did not believe him was abundantly clear. “Uhh, captain, sir, you better let me check anyhow, huh? Typhus ain’t nuthin’ to fuck around with. The Krauts is dyin’ of it right and left, and so was the fuckin’ Belgians and Dutch and Frogs, too.”

The well-meaning sergeant still was shaking his head and muttering to himself in utter consternation at finding no lice or any other kind of parasites on Milo’s body as he stuffed the worn, filthy, discarded clothing into what looked like an old gunny sack. But as he reached the door, he turned back to Milo.

“Sir, if you’re hungry, the gen’rul said I should go over to the mess and bring you back anything you wants, so what’ll it be, sir? Roast beef? Po’k chops? Sumthin’ else?”

His mind fixed on the neat, tightly made GI bunk in the next room, Milo replied, “Thank you, sergeant, but no, what I need is sleep, and that’s exactly what I’ll be doing before you get that jeep out there started. If you want to stop by and drop off a can of Spam and some C-ration crackers, that will be fine; I might even wake up long enough to eat them.”

A look of sympathy and solicitude entered the sergeant’s gray eyes. “It must be pure hell up there where you come from, sir. Here, sir.” He fumbled out an almost-full pack of Camels. “The gen’rul, he don’t smoke nuthin’ but a pipe, now, and I noticed you ain’t got but one or two left in that pack of Chesterfields.”

“Thank you, Webber,” said Milo, then asked, “You’re not a Regular, are you?”

The noncom grinned and shook his head. “Nosir, not me. I was in the CCC for near on three years when the fuckin’ Japs come to bomb Pearl Harbor; that’s when I ‘listed up and went to drivin’ school at Fort Eustis. But I likes the Army—I gets three squares mosta the time, a place to sleep, good clothes and shoes to wear and sixty dollars a month besides. I don’t think I could do that good as a civilian, sir, so I means to stay in after the war’s over, and the gen’rul says he thinks as how I oughta, too. Does the captain think I oughta? I knows you and the gen’rul was sergeants together in the Reg”lars, back before the war, so you oughta know.”