A Midnight Clear: A Novel (3 page)

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
W ont
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.

I’m almost finished when Lieutenant Ware finds me. He’s standing looking over the tailgate, his helmet pushed back on his head. He’s Van Heflin playing Van Johnson in a war movie with Marlene Dietrich as the Nazi spy.

A word here about Ware while I’m trying to get down the last two forkfuls and mediating my stomach into some kind of operational order.

Ware was in the Aleutian campaign. After that, he was reassigned to the Eighty-tenth Infantry Division, and more or less retired from the army. As Mel Gordon puts it, “He says he’ll do anything and then does nothing he says.” Stan claims that when he starts his Shutzer Surefire Advertising Agency after the war, he’s going to hire Ware; talent like his shouldn’t be wasted.

Colonel Sugger brought Ware into headquarters company to form the I and R platoon. Ware caught the I part. He had the regimental records sifted until he came up with the twenty-four people in the regiment with the highest AGCT scores. This was a wild idea in itself, but what made it even more bizarre is the way this goofy division was put together in the first place.

Two years ago, that original National Guard division Love worked out with between funerals, was spruced up and prepared for combat. But before it was shipped overseas, a maneuver with two similar divisions was held across the states of Mississippi, Tennessee and Louisiana. This was an overwhelming catastrophe. How can all three divisions lose in a war game? They did.

In the aftermath, someone realized that somehow the average AGCT for these particular divisions was in the mideighties. When it came to brains, they were on the down side of the second standard deviation to the left. Everybody with ability had been picked off by the air corps, the signal corps, the tank people, artillery and so forth. This was the sludge.

The military solution was shipping off to the South Pacific, as replacements, all the privates in these three divisions. This left cadres of not very bright officers and noncoms.

Meanwhile, back in civilization, another scenario was being played out. In the year 1943, most U.S. male graduating-high-school seniors were tested for entrance into what were called the A12 and V12 programs. Those selected would be sent to universities and trained in engineering or medicine. A12 was army. Their idea was to train us and rebuild our world after the nasty war.

Several thousand were selected and, upon duly enlisting, sent to universities. Since many of us had in the course of our scholastic careers been double promoted once or twice, we were too young for enlisting. At that time, the accepted age limit for being allowed to kill or be killed in a war was eighteen. So we were placed in the ASTPR, or Army Specialized Training Program Reserve. We were sent directly to universities, and were to be given our basic training when we came of age, then sent back to the university. It was sort of an early kindergarten arrangement.

However, while we were in infantry basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, the ASTPR and most of the ASTP were disbanded; taken off the drawing boards by the powers that be. We were sent to various infantry divisions to play at being real soldiers. It was like being super promoted from nursery school to grad school.

We ASTPRers have many outrageous theories about what actually happened. We’re strong on suspicion. The theories go all the way from selective genocide (to make the mediocre feel superior) to the idea that the whole ploy was a rather clever recruiting device.

Many of us were plugged in as replacements for those privates of the National Guard divisions who had been sent off to die in the South Pacific. This
did
boost the average AGCT and so solved that slight quantitative problem.

A large group of very young, arrogant almost soldiers unwillingly joined the Eighty-tenth Division in Camp Shelby, Mississippi, to help form a strange topsy-turvy organization: moron officers and noncoms trying to lead a disgruntled group of smart-ass privates. In retrospect, it wasn’t actually such an unusual situation.

 

So when Lieutenant Ware pulled us from the regimental records, he was wittingly, or unwittingly (if he had a whit of wit), tiptoeing through the tulips, culling the called, the chosen. Except for Father Mundy and Mother Wilkins, all our squad is, or was, ex-ASTPR, all with impressive AGCT scores.

ASTP is an unpronounceable acronym. However, Whistle Tompkins insisted it was easily pronounced; that the TP was a Babylonian diphthong pronounced as “S.” Shutzer counterclaimed that the TP went with the AS for wiping purposes.

 

That’s a lot to squeeze around two bites and some stomach settling, with Ware standing there tilt-hatted, watching me. I either chew exceptionally slowly, or I think very fast.

“Come on, let’s go, Knott! Love’s waiting.”

He looks at his watch.

Everything in the army is run by the clock, o-five-hundred and all, but they don’t issue watches. In our squad there are now three watches; there were once five. I don’t have one myself. In the world I come from, having a watch or a telephone is a privilege of the upper classes.

We move off toward the S2 tent. I do the usual thing, like an old-time Japanese wife, or a dog well-trained to heel, walk beside and about a step behind Ware; it’s part of the conditioning. He stops and looks around at me.

“Jesus Christ, Knott! Haven’t you gotten those fucking stripes sewn on yet? ”

“The supply sergeant says he doesn’t have any buck stripes in right now, sir. They’re waiting for a new shipment.”

“Hell, get some staff stripes and cut off the rocker.”

“That’d be destruction of government property, sir. I suggested it to Sergeant Lucas.”

I’m hoping that’s ambiguous enough. What happened was Lucas tried to push off staff stripes on me to be cut up and
I
suggested it would be destroying government property and we’d need to make out a Statement of Charges. This scared Lucas; he’s from the original division and somewhat slow.

“Well, I just hope to hell that son of a bitch Love doesn’t notice.”

You’d be surprised how much profanity goes on in the army when you’re tuned to hear it. At first, stopping cold was like going on a crash diet. For a while there, Father Mundy was running his private Profanity Anonymous Therapy Clinic.

 

At the S2 tent Ware goes in first. Just inside the flap, we snap to attention. It’s the usual setup. In the center, by the tent post, is a field table with a map covered in celluloid. At the rear tent wall is an extra-large cot and a down sleeping bag, already neatly arranged by one of Love’s orderlies.

On the left wall of the tent, Major Love is shaving in front of his portable sink and portable mirror. He’s wearing his tailored trousers (no other kind, even his fatigues) and a tailored OD undershirt.

We stand there at attention; I know he knows we’re there. Pfc. Tucker, his first orderly, is playing altar boy, standing beside him, holding out towels and a soaping dish. Tucker tailors his uniforms, too; he does this on his own and gets away with it, thanks to Love.

Finally, after we’ve watched some rigorous efforts to get a few last hairs from under the nostrils, Love glances at us, first using the mirror, then turning his head.

“At ease, men.”

Ware and I slouch, giving correct submission signals. Tucker hands Love a steaming towel from a bowl. Love sinks his face in it, rubbing strenuously. He continues to the top of his head, massaging with even greater vigor, then hands the towel to Tucker and takes a fresh, dry one. All our towels are army OD, so you can never tell if they’re filthy or clean, except by the smell; but these look fresh off supply.

Next, we have the privilege of watching Major Love comb his hair. First, he rubs in a few drops of Vaseline hair tonic. He has the kind of hair in which the mark from each tooth in the comb is left like a plowed clay field.

I think of the latest Squad Spoonerism Award. Gordon took it. Question: What’s the Bible? Answer: A fine couth tome. How in Saint’s name am I ever going to make it as sergeant with a mind that’s scattering all over the landscape like this? I’ve got to concentrate!

Now Love slips his fresh, orderly-ironed, tailored shirt over his sagging shoulders and turns to face us in his combat pose, shined combat boots about two feet apart, rocking slightly on his toes and buttoning. The tucking of shirttails is a prolonged ritual.

Lord, he’s got on his “recon patrol” face. We’re going into combat, yes, sir, stand up to the Huns. My slouch gets easier to hold. I can feel that sausage where my heart’s supposed to be.

Love walks around behind the map and leans on it. It’s angled slightly toward him. He looks up at us and smiles. Here it comes. Three of us on a tiger patrol sneak behind the Siegfried Line and take a prisoner—preferably an officer of staff rank, one who speaks English.

Love picks up a marking pencil and points at the map.

We are in for one of
Love
’
s
briefings. It’s usually a rehash of what’s been funneled down from division which some creative soul dreamed up at G2 or army intelligence from aerial photos taken fifteen months ago. I must admit, though, Love has the dramatic flair; probably comes from selling all those expensive coffins to grief-stricken little old ladies.