All day and night he drills me, handing me different numbers, telling me, You’ll thank me for this.
And I do. In a few days I can type the reports so fast they send a lieutenant from HQ to see if these are made-up numbers done the night before. Sergeant Burdick says, No, no, I’m right on his case, and the lieutenant looks at me and tells him, We got corporal material here, Sergeant.
The sergeant says, Yes, sir, and when he smiles his eyebrows are lively.
When Shemanski returns I expect to be reassigned to Ivan but the captain tells me I’m staying on as clerk in charge of supplies. I’ll be responsible for sheets, blankets, pillows and condoms which I’ll distribute to dog handler trainees from all over the European Command making sure everything is returned when they’re leaving, everything but the condoms, ha ha ha.
How can I tell the captain I don’t want to be a clerk down in the basement where I have to requisition everything in language that is backward, cases, pillow, white, or balls, Pong Ping, counting things and making lists when all I want to do is get back to Ivan and the dog handlers and drink beer and look for girls in Lenggries, Bad Tolz, Munich?
Sir, is there any chance I could be reassigned to the dogs?
No, McCourt. You’re a damn fine clerk. Dismissed.
But, sir . . .
Dismissed, soldier.
There are so many dark clouds fluttering in my head I can barely make my way out of his office and when Shemanski laughs and says, He gave you the shaft, eh? Won’t let you back to your bow wow? I tell him fuck off and I’m hauled back into the captain’s office for a reprimand and told if this ever happens again I’ll face a court-martial that will make my army record look like Al Capone’s arrest record. The captain barks that I’m a private first class now and if I behave myself and keep accurate accounts and control the condoms I could rise to corporal within six months and now get outa here, soldier.
In a week I’m in trouble again and it’s because of my mother. When I came to Lenggries I went to the HQ offices to fill out an application for an allotment for my mother. The army would retain half my pay, match it, and send her a check every month.
Now I’m having a beer in Bad Tolz and Davis, the allotment clerk, is in the same room drunk on schnapps and when he calls to me, Hey, McCourt, too bad your mother is up shit creek, the dark clouds in my head are so blinding I throw my beer stein and lunge at him with every wish to strangle him till I’m pulled away by two sergeants and held for the MPs.
I’m locked up for the night in Bad Tolz and taken before a captain in the morning. He wants to know why I’m assaulting corporals who are drinking a beer and minding their own business and when I tell him about the insult to my mother he asks, Who’s the allotment clerk?
Corporal Davis, sir.
And you, McCourt, where you from?
New York, sir.
No, no. I mean, where you really from?
Ireland, sir.
Goddam it. I know that. You’ve got the map on your face. What part?
Limerick, sir.
Oh, yeah? My parents are from Kerry and Sligo. It’s a pretty country but it’s poor, right?
Yes, sir.
Okay, send in Davis.
Davis comes in and the captain turns to the man beside him who is taking notes. Jackson, this is off the record. Now, Davis, you said something about this man’s mother in public?
I . . . only . . .
You said something of a confidential nature about the lady’s financial problems?
Well . . . sir . . .
Davis, you’re a prick and I could send you for a company court-martial but I’ll just say you had a few beers and your jaw flapped.
Thank you, sir.
And if I ever hear of you making comments like that again I’ll ram a cactus up your ass. Dismissed.
When Davis leaves the captain says, The Irish, McCourt. We gotta stick together. Right?
Yes, sir.
In the hallway Davis puts out his hand. Sorry about that, McCourt. I should know better. My mother gets the allotment, too, and she’s Irish. I mean, her parents were Irish so that makes me half Irish.
This is the first time in my life anyone ever apologized to me and all I can do is mumble and turn red and shake Davis’ hand because I don’t know what to say. And I don’t know what to say to people who smile and tell me their mothers and fathers and grandparents are Irish. One day they’re insulting your mother, the next day they’re bragging their own mothers are Irish. Why is it the minute I open my mouth the whole world is telling me they’re Irish and we should all have a drink? It’s not enough to be American. You always have to be something else, Irish-American, German-American, and you’d wonder how they’d get along if someone hadn’t invented the hyphen.
15
When they made me supply clerk the captain didn’t tell me that twice a month on Tuesdays I’d have to bundle company bedding and take it by truck to the military laundry outside Munich. I don’t mind because it’s a day away from the caserne and I can lie on the bundles with two other supply clerks, Rappaport and Weber, and talk about civilian life. Before we leave the caserne we stop at the PX to get our monthly ration of a pound of coffee and a carton of cigarettes to sell to the Germans. Rappaport has to pick up a supply of Kotex to save his bony shoulders from the weight of the rifle when he’s on sentry duty. Weber thinks that’s funny and tells us he has three sisters but he’d be goddamned if he’d ever step up to a sales clerk and ask for Kotex. Rappaport gives a little smile and says, If you have sisters, Weber, they’re still in the rag stage.
No one knows why we’re allowed a pound of coffee but the other supply clerks tell me I’m a lucky bastard I don’t smoke. They wish they didn’t smoke so they could sell the cigarettes to German girls for sex. Weber from Company B says a carton will get you a whole load of poontang and that makes him so excited he burns a hole with his cigarette in a bundle of Company A sheets and Rappaport, the Company A clerk on his first trip like me, tells him watch it or he’ll beat the shit out of him. Weber says, Oh, yeah? but the truck stops and Buck the driver says, Everybody out, because we’re at a secret little beer place and if we’re lucky there might be a few girls in the back room ready to do anything for a few packs from our cartons. The other men are offering me low prices for my cigarettes but Buck tells me, Don’t be a goddam fool, Mac, you’re a kid, you need to get laid too or you’ll get strange in the head.
Buck has gray hair and medals from World War II. Everyone knows he had a battlefield commission but time and time again he drank and went wild and was busted all the way down to buck private. That’s what they say about Buck though I’m learning that no matter what anyone in the army says about anything you have to take it with a grain of salt thrown over your left shoulder. Buck reminds me of Corporal Dunphy back in Fort Dix. They were wild men, they did their bit in the war, they don’t know what to do with themselves in peacetime, they can’t be sent to Korea with their drinking, and the army is the only home they’ll have till they die.
Buck speaks German and seems to know everyone and all kinds of secret little beer places on the road from Lenggries to Munich. There are no girls in the back room anyway and when Weber complains Buck tells him, Aw, fuck off, Weber. Why don’t you go out behind that tree and jerk off. Weber says he doesn’t have to go behind a tree. It’s a free country and he can jerk off anywhere he likes. Buck tells him, All right, Weber, all right, I don’t give a shit. Take out your pecker and wave it in the middle of the road for all I care.
Buck tells us get back in the truck and we continue to Munich with no more stops at secret little beer places.
Sergeants shouldn’t tell you take the laundry to a place like this without telling you what the place is. They shouldn’t tell Rappaport, especially, because he’s Jewish, and they shouldn’t wait till he looks up from the truck and screams, Oh, Christ, when he sees the name of this place on the gate, Dachau.