Whiteout!

I found myself pausing to glance at my glove before touching the door handle, and reflecting that one lesson had been learned.

Camp Belvoir is named after the Corps of Engineers' headquarters in faraway, peaceful Virginia , and there they kitted me out: long woollen underwear like my grandfather's, khaki battledress over it, a thick parka lined with wolverine fur, wind-proof trousers, a khaki, fleece-lined cap with ear flaps, silk gloves with woollen felt overmitts, and big heavy boots of thick white felt. I looked at the boots, puzzled. 'Surely these aren't waterproof?'

The stores sergeant cocked an eye at me. 'You reckon on rain?'

'The snow will saturate them, surely?'

'Trick is,' he said, 'keep 'em real dry, like Sunday in Missouri . Listen, you're outside, cold don't get through that felt. Your feet are warm, and the heat can't get out. Felt keeps heat and cold apart. Snow's cold, so it don't melt; feet's warm, so they don't freeze. Right? Just you be sure of one thing: you come indoors, you kick every last snowflake offa that felt, and put them boots by to warm and dry.'I nodded. 'I see.'

'Sure you do. I'm still gonna tell you. You come in and don't kick the snow off; the snow melts, right? Just a little, but it's plenty. The boots ain't wet, they're just kinda damp. Then you go outside and the goddam damp freezes and the cold goes straight through, right? Freeze your goddam feet off in ten minutes. Before you know it you're walking on two stumps, okay?'

'I'll remember.'

He grinned. 'Now you'll remember.'

Major Cohen, commander of Belvoir, said, 'That's not enough. Pile up your tray.'

I wasn't particularly hungry and said so.

'Pile it up,' he said. 'You need the calories.' There were two big steaks on his own tray, two vast jacket potatoes, assorted vegetables, rolls and butter, about half a pint of ice-cream and a big glass of milk. I glanced back along the line. Service was cafeteria style in the mess hall at Camp Belvoir and all the plastic trays were loaded with food. I took another potato, a small one, and Cohen placed a glass of milk on my tray.

'You eat well,' I said.

'Five thousand calories a day,' Cohen said. "And we need it. Just being here burns food. Up on the cap they eat close to seven thousand.'

'And get fat?'

'Hell, no. You know what Uncle Whiskers thinks about fat soldiers. They need the food. Up there three thousand calories would be a slimming diet. Think they'd haul it up there if they didn't have to?'

He led the way to a corner table and sat down. 'You met the Bear yet?'

'The Bear?'

'You haven't, huh ? Well, he'll be along.' He cut into a steak. I followed his example. It was very good steak and I said so.

'Once upon a time,' Cohen said, 'I was attached to your people, the British. Not long, but long enough.'

'The army?'

'Sure. Maybe I should have tried for the Wrens, but I wasn't as cute, then.' He grinned. 'Korea, it was. I was only a kid, you understand. But this I remember: they ate their bully beef off the regimental silver. Now us, we're barbarians, right? We eat off plastic trays, but we eat steak.'

I said, 'Who or what is the Bear?'

'The Polar Bear.'

'Go on.'

'Major Barnet M. Smales, US Army Corps of Engineers, Commander of Camp Hundred. The Polar Bear.'

'He's here? At Belvoir?' I was surprised.

'Sure he's here. Been here two weeks and three days. Flew down for some welfare supplies and couldn't get back.'

'I'll look forward - '

He interrupted me. 'Wish he'd get his goddam ass the hell back up there while I've still got some kind of an installation around here.' He was staring at his food, talking loudly. Footsteps scuffed behind me and I half turned as Cohen added, 'He's nothing but a goddam highwayman. If it's loose, he steals it.'

The man with the white beard stared at Cohen, and at me for that matter, with what looked like malevolence. He joined us at the table and sipped at a steaming mug of coffee. 'You told this guy I was a goddam polar bear?' he asked Cohen.

'Yeah.'

'He's right. Shake a paw.' Smales extended a hand towards me and I shook it. 'Now lemme see, you're

. . .'

'Bowes,' I said. 'Harry Bowes, from Thomson-Keegan.'

He nodded. 'What a dump, huh? Even the chow's lousy. Wait'll you get to Hundred. Can't you even feed your guests, Cohen?'

Cohen said, 'Seventeen days we fed the Bear. We're running clear out of seals.'

'Out of ping-pong balls too,' Smales said. 'Two dozen girls, you'd expect a problem, but two dozen ping-pong balls!'

Cohen sighed theatrically. 'It's kleptomania,' he said to me, touching his index finger to his temple. 'Know what he did last night?'

Tell me.'

'He walks into the sergeants' club. They're shooting pool in there. Middle of a game, right ? So he lifts the twelve ball right off the table. Now why was that?''

'Because,' Smales said, 'we're a twelve ball short at Hundred.'

'So one of the sergeants, he says, "Sir," he says, and you'll see here at Belvoir we observe the proprieties, "Sir," he says, "without that twelve ball, the whole pack's useless, right?" So what does the Bear say ? I'll tell you what he says. He says, "Okay, I'll take the rest." So now he's got two packs and he's still one goddam twelve ball short.'

'Strategic reserves,' Smales said.

'He didn't even let them finish the game. Why didn't you let them finish, Barney?'

Smales said, 'I might have forgotten.'

Cohen spread his hands in appeal to me. 'You see. Don't stay more than two weeks in this guy's hands. What he's got, it's contagious. They come down here like plagues of locusts. Can't keep their hands off nothing. He stole my skis last time here.'

'Borrowed his skis,' Smales corrected amiably.

'Like Stalin borrowedCzechoslovakia.'

It went on like that and I listened as they batted insults back and forth like the ping-pong balls Smales kept demanding. It dawned on me after a while that it wasn't just banter; Smales was intent upon removing to Camp Hundred any trifling thing that could conceivably make life easier. After a while I asked how long it might be before we reached Camp Hundred. Major Smales pointed out that Cohen's guests couldn't wait to leave his lousy hotel, then he said he didn't know. Something in his eyes suddenly told me he wasn't far from anger and I wondered why. Smales finished his coffee, rose and left us, and I said to Cohen, 'Something's wrong?'

He frowned. 'Barney's worried about morale.'

'You mean the place can't live without him?'

Cohen shook his head. 'It's not his absence that matters. It's what's up there.'

'And what's that?'

'Six dead men. No, make it seven.'

Chapter 2

I drove back to Thule Air Base next morning in a sober mood. Cohen had told me the details. Having told me, he'd said, 'Look, forget it,' but I couldn't forget; I'd thought about it most of the night, sleeping intermittently and badly. No wonder Smales was concerned about morale. Until two weeks before, Camp Hundred had had a perfect safety record, apart from the odd bumps and bruises; there hadn't even been a bad case of frostbite in the three years the camp had been in existence. Now there had been two separate tragedies. The first, and worst, had been a helicopter crash, and nobody knew how it had happened. It seemed that four men, one of them an army padre, had been taken out of the underground camp to a helicopter and had climbed aboard. The vehicle that had carried them had about-turned and gone back. It had stopped at the tunnel entrance to watch the lift-off and then gone below. Next morning a bulldozer had gone to clear the overnight snow from the entrance and the driver had spotted the wreckage. Pilot, radio operator, padre and the three soldiers were dead. What made it worse was that two of the men had apparently survived the crash; they'd been badly injured, but alive and must have tried to crawl back to Hundred. They had frozen to death. Now there were six bodies lying in a snow tunnel up in the icecap. What was almost worse was that they'd been there two weeks: a ghastly daily reminder to every man in the place that death was very close at hand. If it had been possible to fly them out quickly, the tragedy would gradually have receded, but the weather had prevented any flying to or from Hundred.