"Gee, that's keen! Look, when you come back, Uncle Private Bronson, I'll let you play with them. Anytime."
"And I'll beat you, Sport."
"Says you! Well, so long. Don't take any wooden nickels." Little Marie kissed him with tears in her eyes, then fled from the room. George kissed him on the cheek and muttered, "You be careful, Uncle Ted," and left also. Brian Junior said, "I'll take real good care of your automobile-I'll keep it shined just the way you do," then hesitated-suddenly kissed his cheek and left, leading Richard.
Carol had his sandwich, neatly wrapped in waxed paper and tied with a ribbon. He thanked her and put it into an outer coat pocket. She placed her hands on his shoulders, stood on tiptoes and whispered, "There's a note in it for you!"-kissed his cheek and left quickly.
Nancy took her place and said quietly, "The note is from both of us. We're going to pray for you every night when we pray for Papa." She glanced at her mother, then put her arms around his shoulders and kissed him on the mouth, a firm peck. "That's not good-bye but au revoir!" She left even more quickly than her sister, head high and moving like her mother.
Mrs. Smith stood up, said quietly, "Father?"-and waited.
"No."
"Then turn your back."
"Mmrph. Yes." Mr. Johnson studied the pictures on the wall.
With a soft rustle Mrs. Smith came close to Lazarus, looked tip at him, held up a little book. "This is for you."
It was a vest-pocket New Testament; she held it opened at the fly leaf. He took it and read the original inscription, somewhat faded:
"To Maureen Johnson, Good Friday 1892, for perfect attendance. Matthew vii 7"
And under this, in fresh and crisp Spencerian script:
To Private Theodore Bronson
Be true to self and country.
Maureen J. Smith
April 6, 1917
Lazarus gulped. "I will treasure it and keep it with me, Mrs. Smith."
"Not 'Mrs. Smith," Theodore- 'Maureen." She put up her arms.
Lazarus stuffed the little book into his breast pocket, put his arms around her, met her lips.
For a long moment her kiss was firm and warm but chaste. Then she moaned almost inaudibly, her body softened and -came strongly against him, her lips opened, and she kissed him in a fashion that Lazarus could barely believe even as he answered it in kind-a kiss that promised everything she could give.
After some uncounable eternity she whispered against his lips: "Theodore...take care of yourself. Come back to us."
DA CAPO-VI
Camp Funston, Kansas
Dear Twins and Family,
Surprise! Meet Corporal Ted Bronson, acting sergeant and the meanest drillmaster in the whole National Army of the United States. No, I have not scrambled my circuits. I temporarily lost track of a basic principle of evasive action, i.e., the best place to hide a needle is in a stack of needles and the best place to avoid the horrors of war is in an army. Since none of you has ever seen a war, or even an army, I must explain.
I had (foolishly) planned to avoid this war by running away to South America. But South America is a place where I could not possibly pass for a native, no matter how well I spoke the language-and it is loaded with German agents who would suspect me of being an American agent and might arrange some nasty accident for Ol' Buddy Boy, bless his innocent heart. And the girls there have beautiful flashing eyes, suspicious duennas, and fathers who love to shoot gringos up to no good.
Unhealthy.
But if I stayed in the United States and tried to stay out of the Army-one slip and I wind up behind cold stone walls, eating miserable food, and making little rocks out of big ones. Unappealing.
But in wartime the Army gets the best of everything- aside from a mild hazard of getting shot at. The latter can be avoided.
How? This is not yet the era of total war, and an army offers innumerable bolt holes for a coward (me) to avoid unpleasant dangers from strangers. In this era only a small part of an army gets shot at. (An even smaller part gets hit, but I don't plan to take that risk.) At this here-&-now land warfare is fought in certain locations, and there are endless army jobs not in those places, where (despite a military uniform) an army man is really just a privileged civilian.
I am in such a job and probably won't move until the war ii over. Someone has to take these brave, young, innocent lads, fresh off the farm, and turn them into something resembling soldiers. A man who can do this is so valuable that- officers are reluctant to let him go.
So I'm full of that old fighting spirit and won't have to fight. I teach, instead-close-order drill, extended drill, markmanship and care of the rifle, bayonet, barehanded combat, field hygiene, anything. My "amazing" aptitude in military matters caused surprise, me being a recruit with "no military experience." (How could I admit that Gramp taught me to shoot five years after the end of this war and that I first handled these same weapons as a high school cadet ten years from now and that my military experience is scattered over the next hundred years plus a little now and then for centuries more?)
But a rumor hints that I was once a soldat in the French Foreign Legion. a corps of one of our Allies, made up of cut-throats, thieves, and escaped convicts, and famous for their go-to-hell way of fighting-possibly a deserter from it and almost certainly under another name. I discourage this canard by becoming surly if anyone gets inquisitive and only occasionally make the mistake of saluting French style (palm forward) and correct it at once-but everybody knows that I "polly-voo" because my knowledge of the French language had a lot to do with my change from "acting corporal" to real corporal assigned to instruction, and now greasing for sergeant. There are French and British officers and sergeants here to teach us trench warfare. All the French here are supposed to speak English-but the English they speak these Kansas and Missouri plow jockeys can't understand. So in slips lazy Lazarus as liaison. Me and one French sergeant almost add up to one good instructor.
Without that French sergeant I am a good instructor when I am allowed to teach what I know. But only in unarmed combat am I allowed to, because unarmed hand-to-hand fighting does not change through the ages; only the name changes, and it has only one rule: Do it first, 'do it fast, do it dirtiest.-But, take bayonet fighting- A bayonet is a knife on the end of a gun, and the two parts add up to the Roman pilum, used two thousand years earlier and not new even they. One would expect the art of bayonet fighting, in 1917, to be perfect.
But it isn't. The "Book" teaches parries but not counters-yet a counter is as fast as a parry, far more deceptive, and fatally confusing to a man who has never heard of one. And there are other things-
There was (will be) a war in the twenty-sixth century Greg. in which the use of the bayonet became a high art and I was an unwilling participant until I managed to duck out. So one morning here, on a bet, I demonstrated that I could take on and never be touched by a U.S. Army regular sergeant-instructor-then a British one-and then a French one.
Was I allowed to teach what I had demonstrated? No. I mean "Hell, No!" I wasn't doing it "by the Book," and my "smart-alec" attempt almost lost me my cushy job. So I went back to doing it by the sacred "Book."
But this book (used at Plattsburg where my father- and yours-trained) is not bad. In bayonet fighting its emphasis is on aggressiveness, which is okay within its limits; the bayonet is a horror weapon in the hands of a man eager to close and kill-and that may be all these kids have time to learn. But I would hate to see these pink-cheeked, brave lads go up against some old, tired, pessimistic twenty-sixth-century mercenaries whose sole purpose is to stay alive while their opponents die.