William Wharton - A Midnight Clear

We’ve also got the regimental band: thirty of the most unlikely soldiers to be found on the wrong side of division. As I said, they usually stand perimeter guard for the company. I’ve never heard them play, but then there haven’t been many parades. We liberated a violin at Rouen and Mel Gordon wanted a tryout but was told there’s no room for violins in a military band. But wouldn’t it be great, hearing taps or reveille – better yet, retreat – played on a violin?

Last and least comes the I and R platoon. There are twelve in a squad; squad leader’s buck sergeant, assistant corporal; no orderlies. Our squad is down to six. Mel Gordon became corporal to our squad the same time I made sergeant. It wasn’t for much we did except stay alive. He hasn’t sewn on his stripes yet, either.

I and R is the eyes and ears for S2. S2 is regimental intelligence. Our S2 is Major Love, both name and job gruesomely inappropriate. Love was a mortician in civilian life. He’s ‘eyes and ears’ to Colonel Douglas Sugger, regimental commander, usually referred to as ‘the Dug Sucker.’ The Dug’s a past master at war costumes and heroic jaw thrusting. Major Love has a slight talent for jaw thrusting, too.

Love’s main passion is generating business for his professional colleagues, the grave registrars. His most available target has been the I and R platoon, with which he has had some sporadic but notable success. Whistle Tompkins always claimed that any living, moving human body was an insult to Love’s sense of propriety.

It’s thanks to Love and his military-mortuary skills I’ve made my recent headlong leap to three stripes. We lost half our squad in the Saar, attempting one of his map-inspired, ill-conceived, so-called ‘recon’ patrols. You can’t imagine how meaningless and stupid this was. It’s so bad I won’t tell about it; I hope.

When I say lost , I mean killed. Nobody in the army ever admits someone on our side is killed. They’re either lost, like Christopher Robin; hit, as in batter hit by a pitched ball, take your base, or they get ‘it,’ as in hide-and-seek, or, maybe, ‘get it,’ as with an ambiguous joke.

Our squad leader was Max Lewis, twenty. His assistant, Louis Corrollo, nineteen. We called them ‘the Louie [like Louie, Louie, You Gotta Go ] twins.’ The other four of us who got ‘it’ that day were Morrie Margolis, Whistle Tompkins, Fred Brandt and Jim Freize.

Morrie was my tentmate. We shared shelter halfs, buttoned them together to make a pup tent, shared other things, too. Not one of those six had an AGCT (AGCT is another inbuilt military paradox, an army intelligence test) score of under 150; each, intellectually, one in ten thousand. But that’s all another story, a story even more stupid than Love’s patrol. I’m liable to tell that one.

I have a penchant for telling true stories no one can believe.

My being squad leader is also another story. It’s another story the way Peter Rabbit is another story from Crime and Punishment .

Our division took a mauling outside Saarbrücken. We gained a few miles of European real estate and lost the beginnings to untolled (much more than untold) generations of very bright people. I think the U.S. Army considered this a good deal.

So now we’ve been moved north into the Ardennes Forest to rest and wait replacements. This is supposed to be a sector where nothing’s ever happened and nothing is ever going to happen, a kind of high-class halfway house; a front-line position for adjusting makeup, straightening out nerves and general refurbishing.

I’m not sure if I myself am recuperable. I’m scared all the time and can’t sleep, not even on a long guard. I’ve already had two crying fits but nobody saw me and I gave them every chance. I hung around Mel Gordon, our unofficial squad doctor and psychiatrist, moaning, but he didn’t even notice. Nobody wants to look.

My biggest immediate trouble is an absolutely historic case of GIs. Thank God for olive drab underwear.

The medics here have marked me down as a paregoric addict and won’t give me any more. Yesterday I walked to my old company, Company L, and begged two doses from Brenner, third platoon medic.

I shat five times going and only three coming back so it must’ve helped. I’m eating K ration biscuits and K lunch cheese almost exclusively; but I’m too gut scared for processing food. Making me squad (try squat) leader might be one of the greatest impractical jokes of the war.

With this jolly thought, I end our briefing and drift off into what passes for sleep these days; Mother is snoring beside me.

In the morning, Lieutenant Ware pulls open our tent flap; the pages are gone; Shutzer got them, I hope.

‘Sergeant Knott, Major Love wants us at the S2 tent. You chow up, then I’ll come by at o- nine -hundred.’

He waits to make sure I’m awake, then he’s gone. I lie back and try to think of some appropriate non-obscene word to express my feelings. I’m not awake enough. ‘Shit!’ is all that comes. Father says we are succumbing internally if we think in their terms. I admit it; inside, I’ve succumbed. Maybe that’s why they made me squad leader. Maybe that’s why I have the GIs, too; I’m polluted.

But it’s better this morning. I can even lean over to lace my boots without feeling I’m squeezing a balloon filled with sewer water in my stomach.

While I’m getting dressed, wriggling in a pup tent, trying not to wake Wilkins, I should explain something about my name; more briefing. Our family name is Knott. My parents wanted to call me Bill or Billy, but because there’s no Saint Bill or Billy, I was named William. They insist no joke was intended.

By third grade at school, I was Will Knott. I learned to live with it, my private martyrdom. So I was more or less prepared to grit it out again in the army, Willingly or Knott (Ha!). What I wasn’t ready for was the conglomeration of certified wise guys and punsters called the I and R platoon. They decided my nickname must be Wont or Won’t; only the spelling was contended.

All through basic, the controversy raged. Max Lewis was leader of the apostrophe group, claiming I’m a natural radical, troublemaker and guardhouse lawyer who Won’t do anything I’m told. Mel Gordon headed the no-apostrophe crowd, insisting I’m too nice, and Wont to do anything I’m asked.

They called themselves ‘the apostates’ and ‘the antiapostates.’ Father Mundy says it’s all in the mind of the beholder.

So everybody calls me Won’t or Wont and it’s up to me. That is, all except Max, who called me W-O-N-apostrophe-T right up till he got IT.

I’m dressed now and sliding out of the tent, mess kit and cup in hand. I see Mother Wilkins has cleaned out the bottom of my cup again. I wonder what he leaves for his wife to do at home?

I mention all the above nonsense about my name to give some idea of the wheel spinning that can go on when you have too much brain power concentrated in too small a place. Our squad has one hell of a lot of intelligence but not much reconnaissance. We’re a covey of nit-picking Talmudic Jesuit Sophists continuously elaborating one unending bead game.

I decide to take the big risk and eat some regular, scrambled hot eggs and one sausage. I know better than to try coffee. Coffee works like castor oil on me. I’m not sure if it’s coffee itself or all the coffee I’ve drunk scared; but the smell, the taste, the feel of coffee makes me jumpy, shattery, scared shitless, to be precise. It still does today.

I take my mess kit and climb into one of the communications trucks, slink down and try to eat carefully, quietly, in peace, chewing each mouthful twenty times and swallowing slowly.