“Maybe,” Wilson said. “Hasn’t CID checked that already?” “I’ll check tomorrow. I only got in today, so I need to get up to speed.”
“From where?” Wilson asked.
“I was on vacation in Switzerland,” I said.
“Just what we need, a joker. Come on, I’ll show you to your room.”
The room was spare. One bureau with a washstand. One narrow bed. One small table and chair. One light hanging from the ceiling. One window. I tossed my duffle on the floor and sat on the bed. The springs creaked. The room smelled faintly of dust and stale air. I went to the window and opened it, despite the weather. I leaned out and lifted my face to the cold rain, hoping it would help me rally against the tiredness that was creeping through my bones. It was fully dark now, the B-17s on the airstrip lost in the gloom. I heard a jeep start up and saw headlights casting their thin glare on the rain-slicked road. Time for me to go too. Drinks at the palace. What a war.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I grabbed a meal at the officer’s mess at the palace. Not the senior officer’s mess, which I had first mistakenly blundered into. I knew something was wrong when I saw the white tablecloths set with gold-trimmed porcelain and crystal glassware. GIs wearing white jackets carried trays of broiled steaks and other delicacies to tables graced by elderly colonels and generals who looked more like businessmen at a hotel than soldiers not far from the front. I’d backed up to the doorway, not wanting to draw attention to my silver lieutenant’s bars. I watched the diners, staff officers most likely, and wondered what they wrote home about. The atmosphere was muted, soft and swanky, the hefty clink of real silverware on porcelain somehow reassuring.
GI waiters crossed in front of me, taking orders, clearing dishes, pouring wine looted from only the best cellars. I saw one guy trip, a little stumble, losing his balance enough to send his load of plates crashing down. It was loud, the tile floor sending echoes of shattering sounds across the room. Heads rose from beefsteaks, irritated at the interruption. Turning to leave, I noticed another GI huddled in a corner, hidden from the diners by a sideboard that held glasses and dishware. He gripped the sideboard with one hand, pulling himself up, the other hand held over his heart. His face was white, his mouth open as he gulped in shallow breaths of air.
“You okay, buddy?” I asked as I took his elbow.
“Yeah… yes, sir, I’m fine. The noise, it surprised me, that’s all. I’m fine.” He stood, embarrassment flushing his face red. At least it gave him some color. He tossed me a weak smile and left, glancing around guiltily in case anyone else had noticed.
There were no fine tablecloths in the officer’s mess. The food was warm and filling, even if I had to serve myself, and I didn’t linger. But there was plenty of lingering in the room that served as the officer’s club. A bar was set up beneath a towering gold-relief sculpture of an angel holding a scroll, with two doorways twenty feet high on either side. The floor was inlaid marble, with plush carpets set out in the seating areas to keep the noise down, but that did little to drown out the chatter that rose from every corner of the room. It was a lively bunch, officers of all ranks, nationalities, and services, with a liberal sprinkling of WACs, ATS, and other females, some wearing decidedly civilian outfits. Those ladies were surrounded by senior officers, guys who wouldn’t be questioned about their choice of female companion.
I saw Einsmann and he nodded to an empty table at the far end of the room. I got a whiskey at the bar and joined him.
“How are things, Billy?”
“Better for some than others,” I said, raising my glass in a toast and glancing at the brigadier general with a woman who looked like a movie star on his arm.
“You got that right,” he said. “This war is a real racket for some guys.”
“I saw the senior officer’s mess upstairs. Talk about easy street.”
“I ate there a couple of times. Nice thing about being a reporter is that when the brass wants to butter you up, you eat well. You know the chef they got up there worked at the Ritz in New York?”
“He should’ve brought over his own waiters. Those GIs dressed up in white jackets are lucky they aren’t paid in tips.”
“Better than white coats,” Einsmann said with a sharp laugh.
“Why do you say that?”
“They’re all convalescents from the hospital. Bomb-happy, you know what I mean? They got the jitters all the time. Somebody figured it was a good job for them while they waited to go back up the line.”
“Interesting choice of occupation,” I said.
“How so?”
“Waiting hand and foot on senior brass, watching them devour steaks, knowing they’re the guys ordering you into the mountains, to live on K rations in a muddy hole. Must be great for morale.”
“I never thought about that. Could be a story in it, Billy.”
“Everybody’s got a story,” I said, not certain where Einsmann might be going with this. Some of those convalescent boys had had it tough, and I didn’t want an overeager newshound making it tougher. “Did you find out anything about what I told you?”
“Not much, Billy. Word is Galante was kicked upstairs, sent to the 32nd Station Hospital because he didn’t get along with a senior officer on the 3rd Division staff.”
“Galante was with the 3rd? That’s the same outfit Landry was from.”
“Yeah, but he was with the Medical Battalion. Unless Landry had been wounded, chances are he wouldn’t run into him. There are probably over twelve thousand guys in the 3rd Division right now, especially with all the replacements coming in.”
“Okay, so what was the problem?”
“Shell shock, or nervous exhaustion, whatever they’re calling it these days. Galante had his own ideas about treating it, and he clashed with a colonel named Schleck. Seems Schleck doesn’t buy the whole concept, and blames any GI’s failure of nerve on poor leadership.”
“Combat fatigue,” I said, recalling what I’d heard back in London. “They’re calling it combat fatigue now.”
“Yeah, well, there’s plenty of it going around, whatever the moniker. The boys in the 3rd Division have been at it since North Africa. I wrote a piece about them a month ago. They hit the beaches at French Morocco, then ten months later in Sicily. Then more landings at Salerno, fighting along the Volturno River and up to Cassino. They finally got pulled out of the line a couple of weeks ago.”
“Is that why they’re here, to rest and refit?”
“Who knows? Maybe the brass is fattening them up for the kill. Me, I don’t know how the infantry does it. It’s one thing to fight the Germans in this terrain. It’s another thing to live up in those mountains, with the rain, cold and knee-deep mud. But to do both at the same time? No wonder some guys go off their rocker.”
There wasn’t much to say about that. I tried to imagine what it was like, winter in the high Apennines; Germans dug in behind every ridgeline, trying to kill you while you worked at not freezing to death. Yeah, no wonder. I sipped my whiskey and tried not to think about the guys who were up there right now, dying. There were times to think, and times to drink. If you knew which to do when, you might stay sane. I took another sip, then slammed back the rest of the booze, waiting for the warmth in my belly to spread while visions of cold and wet GIs faded from my mind.
They didn’t. As Einsmann and I gabbed, about the war, the women in the room, the brass, all the usual bull, I knew they were out there. I’d been there too, not as high as in those mountains, but out in a foxhole with cold water pooled at the bottom, hot lead flying above, and the cries of the wounded all around. I could see it now, even as I watched Einsmann return with a couple of fresh glasses, and for a moment it felt like there was no time at all, but simply here and there, the bar and the mountains, and I could as easily be in one as the other. I must be tired, I thought, too much travel. We talked, and drank, and the noise of the