ON the thirteenth day, the ship docked at Oran in Algeria. There had been alarms, but no submarine strikes. Near the Azores, an old Spanish tramp had labored near, been warned off, and changed course. Corporal Tuero, a Cuban who had fought in Spain for the Loyalists, would have liked to sink it with shots from the ship's large guns, now lightly covered against the heavy spray. He wished they might invade Spain instead of Algeria, and was certain that all their movements were reported by Franco Falangists to the enemy.
The convoy, faithful to its orders, swung nicely into the Mediterranean Sea below the great rock of Gibralter. Nor were there further alarms before landing.
The Company disembarked, its vehicles were unloaded, and it rolled off into the hills behind the city. The hills were burnt and bare and the facets of the great Sun's diamond flashed upon them. They encamped. They set up pup tents, boiled water for Nescafe, and, even while they blessed terra firma, lamented the lost sea breezes. Nothing to do, nowhere to go, no escape from the heat. Wasn't this a conquering army? Why shouldn't they have pushed into the comfortable houses of the city? And let the inhabitants, the indifferent Arabs and the Vichy French, double up, shift for themselves. "Protect yourselves!" cried Sgt. de Lattre, "I know this heat. I was a soldier under General Lyautey. You will get sunstroke. Cover your heads!" They looked at him despairingly. The Lieutenant looked at his bare bald head. "Cover your head, Sergeant," he suggested. But the Sergeant said he was fine because he had gotten used to it. They tried crawling into the tents; the Sun was blocked but the heat was worse. Tout passe, and the Sun at last draped itself in an orange blouse and left for the night. The next morning Sgt. de Lattre was a startling red and complained of a bad headache.
All were up by dawn, each with his own hopes and fears for the day. There were no orders to move along, or to find some better place in the area, or to pick up large tents. There was an order, ascribed to General George Patton, their Commanding General, to wear woolen uniforms, the olive drab, not the summer khakis. It was because of the sweat drenching the cottons and the cool nights causing chills. You can argue the point; it was, in any case, from the frying pan into the fire. An immediate wholesale adjustment occurred. All empty vehicles were used to transport men to the relative comfort of town, whose most notable monument seemed to be a huge sign in a Greek that even the unlearned understood: PROPHYLAXIS. The other vehicles became refuges if they had generator-operated fans, or two-storied shelters with their canvas tops and beneath their chassis. Some men dug deep holes in the rough soil beneath their pup tents, and lay in these.
The Lieutenant leads a party back to the Sea. There, off shore, not too far for strong swimmers, lies a gunboat battered by shot and storm, half under water. He dives in and around it and with a tire wrench tears out a gauge from the torpedo tube and a second brass meter from the control room, and takes them ashore. (They are to send to his wife, who must soon know, if she did not connect it with the Mohave sleeping bag, that either he had poor taste in gifts or there was nothing to give that didn't rely to please upon the spirit of giving.)
Herz and he lost no time seeking out prisoners of war to interrogate, beginning with two Germans captured before the mass surrender of Tunis and an Italian from a captured hospital ship. No one thought the Axis could win. The Italian believed most Italians to be anti-Fascist; he did not like the Germans. The Germans were friendly and harmless, politically apathetic. Themes to be repeated in a hundred interrogations to come. They went again and again to the camp, and wrote their analyses down studiously, as if there were someone somewhere whose mind would be formed by reading them. Afterwards, they found a restaurant that fed them liver and noodles, with wine, a welcome change of diet. The population was not starving, but even the better restaurants barely excelled the Army messes. The unique genius of the 1st MRBC was beginning to reflect itself in their life style; a score of veteran travellers spread out over the landscape on intelligence and reconnaissance for la dolce vita.
His own specialty was biota and seashore, both of which he searched for his wife as much as for the Company:
Sweetheart,
Today I shall direct my propaganda to my audience; there have been tremendous developments in regard to a "bug-eyed" view of the world. Just now, for example, a steady stream of ants is winding across my tent floor, fortunately only battalion and not brigade size. Another army not far away is carrying off everything but the GI soap. They are not alone - there are weird little things that would bewitch, drive your pretty nose into the ground & befoul our romance - scorpions & daddy-long-legs, fat funny beetles & a horde of nearly invisible things of all kind. Yesterday, some winged little beast hit me in the back & almost knocked me down. There are lizards scampering about, interesting little snails, toads and turtles. They all hop, skip, march or crawl through our encampment en route to some great destination beyond.
But down at the sea yesterday! How can I describe it? I swam out around a point off the cove, where short, sharp cliffs descended into the sea and found dark, murky little caves with shiny rocks & the sea beating in at them, with dark and skulking crabs that slithered into crevices. When I approached, I could see little shell fish imbedded into the rocks, snails that crunched beneath their fancy shells and little red globs of jelly that packed things into themselves.
For his part, dashing Sergeant Tuero (he's won a promotion) has discovered Spanish settlers, and he brings the Lieutenant one day to a hill above the sea, there to eat abundant fresh fish and drink homemade wine. The French sailors who had picked them up and driven them there donated the bread. At twilight, after driving crazily along the cliffs and beaches of the seaside, they visit another Spanish farm where they take a cool bath from a pump and drink freshly-drawn cow's milk, mixing in lumps of sugar. Another time to a village restaurant run by yet another Spaniard, who fashioned for them a grand paella.
Supreme in pelf and procurement, Hans Habe took them to visit the home of a friend who presented them with a full French dinner, Armagnac and Cinzano to follow. The occasion coincided with the arrival of the special orders commissioning the three Lieutenants, and with the news that the world Communist Comintern had been dissolved. They took this news as a clever and proper gesture of the Soviets, making communists everywhere seem more nationalist and unrevolutionary, but doubted it would mark the end of the idea of a communist world revolution.
The Company finds itself a farm upon which to base itself more comfortably, but (or it would seem, therefore) orders quickly arrive to proceed eastward to Algiers. They are needed! Conniving ghouls have already spotted persons and machines in the Table of Organization of the Company that they would like to detach unto themselves. Early next day the convoy snakes along the desert road. The Lieutenant will not arrive, however.
As the column passes through an Arab village, an officer up ahead somewhere recalls the stern admonitions against espionage and the uncertain loyalties of the Arabs, and, thinking that the enemy might very well profit from knowing that his misinformation of the future was right now on its way to his men, shouts back to shut down the hatches and doors. The Lieutenant is riding in a radio van with a tight soundproof door, opened to catch a breath of air, and clutches the edge with his right hand to keep from falling out as the truck rocked and bumped along.
His favorite private, George Glade, dutifully jumps from the assistant driver's seat and slams the door, painfully trapping his officer's third finger, squeezing off its flesh, but, because Glade alertly and promptly reopened the door, the officer did not wrench off the flattened bones. Grimacing, he doses himself with sulfa powder from the first aid kit on his belt; he inquires of oncoming traffic where there would be a hospital big enough to provide morphine and amputate fingers, and has the Private drive him there. It's a British hospital under tents, off the road some miles ahead of the convoy. They speed ahead and into the admissions tent, where, all in good time, a doctor stops by to take a look. "We'll get back to you as soon as we can," said he, "messy, isn't it?" No morphine; the pain was aspirin-sized, a big throb as if the nerves were mostly dead and the surviving neurones had gathered together for mutual consolation.
He is lucky. By the time a number of worse cases are disposed of and he's had a spot of tea, the gory mess had begun to reassemble a finger; the bone was together, the tendons had relapsed from threads into tendrils; only the flesh was weak and largely absent. Let's give it a while to find itself, it was advised, and he joins a hearty if not hale group under canvas for the night. As he picks his way to a cot, a couple of ambulant patients are helping a podiatric amputee to escape the premises to go in search of the alcoholic beverages that had been forbidden him. They are gone for hours.
The other patients of the tent idle about, swapping tales of Old Blighty and the States and Africa. He has his first immersion among British soldiers; he has felt guilty for a long time because the Germans and Italians had to be fought off, in the West, largely by the British, and secretly appreciates that they do not stress the point: decent not to exclaim, "Where in bloody hell have you been all this while!" They do not razz him for the defeat and flight of Kasserine Pass in February that cost ten thousand men.
They tell the Yank that the Germans had incomprehensibly surrendered just now in Tunisia; they appeared to be in good order, well-equipped and supplied, and could have held out for some time. It wasn't like them. Perhaps the Eyeties had urged it upon them. The amputee hops back in to the tent, a large red roaring sight soaked to the gills, to the consternation of the staff that had been looking around for him.
The next morning, the injured member, swept clean of anti-biotic dust and examined closely, half-promises that it may heal. He bids his friends goodbye with a promise to bring them some of the partying materials that are in short supply and endless demand. Within a couple of days he has managed to collect sausages, cakes, whiskey and wine, and jazz records, and brings them out for a celebration.
He has meanwhile discovered his Company respectably encamped on the outskirts of Algiers, while he is being sought out for a project shaping up. He is authorized a room at the Psychological Warfare Hotel, the Corneille, in the City, with a Mr. Brooks, an English literary agent and editor, who spent four years in a German prison camp in World War I. He cannot talk of his job so it must be with the black propaganda station broadcasting in German. He is neat, inconspicuous, quiet, daintily mustached.
Food is poor at the "Corny Beef" Hotel, as some of the British call it. He sees at table an extraordinary assortment of faces, washing down a dull fare with carafes of wine: about half of the them are civilians, and, of these, half wear civilian clothes and the other half uniforms without insignia; the English are mostly older than the Americans; the garb, even the uniforms, is colorful and varied; there seem to be no Muslims; several are women -- English and French -- and there are French officers and civilians. All together they supervise the press, radio and movies of North Africa, and figure out ways of feeding their propaganda into Europe. For their cues, the British turn to England and Cairo, the Americans to Washington. The PWB operation is under the Allied Forces Headquarters, also set up in Algiers. It is not responsible for the American or British correspondents, who relate directly to the Army commanders. You learn by gossip. No general orientation is provided by lecture or booklet to the American Lieutenant and his Company.
His return from hospital coincides with a reception at night for the officers of the 1st MRBC, and particularly to honor the newly commissioned men. Their Commander arrives, Commander, in fact, of all of Psychological Operations in Africa and new Fronts to come, Colonel Hazeltine, a short, stocky, full-bellied watery-blue-eyed specimen well along in age, wearing cavalry boots half his height and the insignia of the U.S. Cavalry. He slouches about, guzzling whiskey liberally, muttering an incomprehensible mixture of trivia, tells the story all had been alerted to expect, how he had been appointed to his job and only then had heard of PWB for the first time, and had no idea what it was all about. He felt proud of this. It did not keep him from exercising -- and abusing -- his authority. He gets drunk, "was drunk" say some, "is always drunk" said others. Looking around him blearily, he fixes upon tall, slender, dandified, jovial Hans Habe, questions why he should have deserved a commission from the ranks, insults him as a foreigner and remarks contemptuously that he is too well dressed and pretentious for the work of a true soldier. Hans is indignant. So are the other officers. Not a one sides with the "shit- kicker," as the Lieutenant thenceforth calls him -- to his back of course. Captain Caskey, first in line to protest, says not a word. No one dares object. The tyrant is quite capable of putting one into a hole, somewhere, of sending him into a replacement depot for the next flesh-dealer who sends out a call.
All, civilian and military, all nationalities, all ranks, agree he is an incompetent drunken bastard. Yet there he remains forever, boasting that he knows nothing of psychological warfare, that he is a cavalry man and proud of it, further that he is the most senior colonel in the American Army, and resents the way his Juniors, Patton and Eisenhower, have been promoted over him. He doesn't shout all this muck, he says it in an ordinary voice lacking affect, which makes what he is saying more unbelievable.
Among the Army's many problems, which in turn leads to many other problems, is how to get rid of incompetents and destroyers of human relations. Attack someone like Hazeltine, and he will poison you from Washington and Capitol Hill, or deal with you summarily if he gets wind of it, so there is no way for a junior officer to do this. Still, it was astonishing that all the non-American officers and the American and British civilians of high rank in the organization, with all their connections back home, could not or would not take the necessary steps to be rid of him.
He should have gone before a retirement board of his peers, not easy, because he outranked everyone in seniority, which is as good as gold in the Army, even if it is by a week. He should have been given appointment as Ambassador to Nicaragua, fief of the Somoza family. He should have been sent on "Mission Impossible," but shot beforehand, just to make sure. His appointment to be chief of Psychological Warfare was as much of a disaster as one could possibly wreak upon the newest and most complicated organization in the European Theater. Compare the brilliance of Dr. Goebbels, commanding both domestic and foreign propaganda for the Reich, with this clown and his tricks, and you have one more reason why it took a while to win the War.
It cannot be said that there were not those who were pleased to have an evil misfit in charge to justify and conceal their own cupidity and ineptness. There were even some Englishmen who thought that Hazeltine was satisfactory, for they could operate free from top control or coordination -- it was not difficult to deceive him, even though he was paranoid -- and, if lazing or bumbling on their jobs, might seem quite competent to those who would compare them with their American model.
Only a few, the more useful characters, of the Company are in Algiers, the rest of the troop is encamped at the large hacienda in the country. Theoretically Our Man is still in command of a platoon, of which there are now three, commanded by Rathbun, Herz and himself. With him are Lieutenants Bell and Wallenberg, the one a good routine soldier, the other essentially a propagandist. He is relieved of practically all duties, but keeps his censoring job; the men were permitted to choose their censor and he got the most choices; they must know that since he writes many letters himself he is unsympathetic to excessive censorship and besides has to scan their mail fast.
Algiers is now the only French city in the world of any considerable gaiety. Undamaged by bombings, a fine European City up front, and an Arab city behind, complete with an intriguing casbah. Without effort, he falls into the sociable life of an easy-going espionage agent, planning and waiting for the Italian operation. Josephine Baker, as old as the hills and as beautiful, sings blues, hot jazz and ballads, throwing in French songs as well. She has a ten piece French band accompanying her that plays le jazz hot, which he calls corny.
He encounters Henry Kaplan, from the University of Chicago, expert in French, conversant with the area already, and together with an Algerian plainclothes policeman, they go on a private tour of the great casbah, touching in upon bars, shops, tiny restaurants, and a brothel, just to say hello. He addresses Jill about the tour:
Do these views strike interesting chords: "a wavering Arab drunk in great good spirits struggling up a steep street with a bloody basket overflowing with a ram's head, wild and alive-looking. What a dinner the Arab will have." Or "an Arab cemetery, full of small graves bearing the half moon, with olive, almonds, pomegranate and fig trees shading it". Or "a brothel with ugly women who bring you in to where two Arabs play on a piano and tambourine and sing Arab songs." Or "a drunken sailor of unknown nationality swinging a huge club down a narrow gutter of a street with perfect abandon." Or "a little meat shop in a grotto where entrails and other meats are sold & where a huge, quivering sheep's heart lies on the table with two great green flies sucking at it." Or "streets that are only passageways & stairways over which centuries old wood and stone structures rot." Or "a mosque in which several Arabs are kneeling or lying in the gloomy coolness." Or "a working class section where on some wall in each block is inscribed the hammer and sickle." Or "a beautiful church on a great hill dropping down to the sea." Or "a gruesome stench of burnt flesh and garbage, human manure and sewage, of filthy bodies and unaired holes."
They do impress her, for she writes to inquire in an uncritical but concerned way whether he had taken his brothel visit seriously. He replies no, and feels complimented that she was anxious about him, perhaps even jealous.
Pastor Phillips of the U of C Divinity School, "dapper Dan," who has turned up aboard another troopship, seeks him out. They exchange hospitality -- the genuine roast beef on the ship's table staggers him -- and they walk the deck, from which they can view the City above, more beautiful than real, as he points out when they walk around the City. He thinks of his clerical friend as one of the numerous "true" circle whom he knew at the University, quiet and not flashy, but loving the campus, the Midway, the rocks of the Lake and even to eating early breakfast at Steinway's or the Commons.
The Lieutenant arranges a car for the beach and the rocks and shore are indeed beautiful. They come upon a husky American soldier playing western songs on a banjo and a little old scrawny Englishman with a walrus mustache who is tap-dancing crazy Limehouse steps to the music. He boasted that he was classified B4, physically deficient, but then stood on his hands to the cheers of the crowd gathered around. Dressed in a towel and an oversized pair of military shoes, he danced to all the Country Western pieces with aplomb.
Hans Habe and the Lieutenant have become friends and are thinking of taking rooms together, perhaps because both are arrogant, or because the Lieutenant is outspokenly hostile to Colonel Hazeltine and the rest of the useless lot hanging around the Corny Beef and 1st MRBC, or because the Lieutenant has the bearing and dash of a "real" officer, Central European style, or is more of a man- about-town. Habe and he spend an evening at the house of a Viennese lady friend of his who prepares meals for no more than ten persons, authentic Viennese food. The other table is occupied by two U.S. Navy Captains, and a Commander, who recognizes Habe from a party at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, and they end up as a jolly single table once they all sense where the other is coming from. The Commander's first wife was Carole Lombard, his second Hedy Lamarr -- "the Hungarian Connection"! Upon leaving the jolly crew, Hans does his lady friend a favor: the duller of the Captains came once before and left with a bottle of excellent brandy without paying for it; what shall she do? Don't worry, says Hans, just put it on his bill and don't mention it. It worked.
On June 13, 1943, 240 cameramen, under the inspiration and orders of Mikhail Slutsky, spent 24 hours at 140 different filming points of the vast Soviet Front, gathering the raw data of "A Day of War," ultimately shown in eight reels. PWB was hardly in the same class. It was devoid of imagination, and underemployed. As a matter of fact, just about the time when the Soviet cameramen who survived were going to bed, there takes place a rousing party among the Corny Beef crowd and our Hero gets drunk, dances madly, borrows the trumpet player's instrument, and plays with the band for an hour until everything in the room is reeling and he decides to call it a night well spent.
True, they are doing what is permitted them. He gets Peter Viereck properly placed, for instance: "He is so weak personally, despite his sparkling intellect. Now he should be much more happy, at least for the time being, doing analysis and living a more intellectual life." Martin Herz arranges a number of excursions to prison camps, where Our Man, void of the linguistic excellences of the others in their crew, listens to an interpreter and studies the prisoners, their bearing, eyes, expressions, details of their personal care, musculature. There is much to be told of a person without understanding what 99% of his words mean. The Lieutenant listens so closely and sympathetically to the story of an Italian Major, about how he walked three times the length of the desert from Egypt to Tunis without proper equipment, weapons, and food, and how glad he was that the war was soon to be over, that the guy ended up by giving him his insignia to send home to his wife. Explained the lieutenant to her, "He was very happy about his changed situation, so it is in no way like the gold out of a dead man's tooth." The Germans this far from the front do not believe in victory, either, it seems. They have passed masses of American equipment and troops in getting here, and are impressed.
The interrogators discuss the advantages to be derived by sending back prisoners to their own lines, there to tell of the terrible weight of Allied arms. However, what seems at first to be a clever idea, is discarded for at least two reasons: many of the freed prisoners would be imprisoned or killed if they were in any way suspected of deserting or surrendering easily, and, in any case, they would be threatened with dire punishment should they ever disclose the impressive wealth of weaponry, vehicles, and soldiers of the enemy.
A team is formed for the first phase of the invasion of Italy. It consists, first, of John Whitaker, a famous American journalist, and Lt. Archimedes Patti, who are OSS cloak and dagger types. Then comes a tall American naval officer, Lt. Senior Grade Livingston Hartley, who is usually looking downwards through his bifocals like a stork, is Back Bay Boston, studied at Eton and Harvard, and had busied himself with League of Nations affairs, do-good groups, and the Committee to Save America by Aiding the Allies (the Lieutenant's group, too), and whose wife is a beauty and an actress, which gets Liv to talking of the plethora of Jews in the stage industry reproachfully, because his wife had been now and then accosted, harassed, and/or involved (one could not be sure of his grounds). He is always dressed for parade with a visored, braided hat.
There come then four Britishers. Two are very blond types, the one stocky, Captain Reyburn Heycock, the other slender with a blonde mustache, Major Galsworthy. Add one little Englishman, dark with a small mustache -- probably a Celt -- a journalist and civilian, named Barney; he had worked in Italy for years. The fourth man is a Scot (or so he says when talking against the English), Ian Robertson. This last one, "Robbie," becomes the American's closest friend, eternal source of amusing stories and commentary, veteran of the trenches in World War I, three times wounded, with ugly scars along his legs and arm, a fine mustache, a bachelor, twice torpedoed in trying to get to North Africa, of which we were to hear much in good time. He is brusque, and has a severe look, until you look into his warm brown eyes. He pretends to stand on his dignity as an old fighting officer and gentleman. He had moved to Italy, where he worked a Tuna fishery off the Island of Elba.
John Whitaker, thanks to OSS's secret slush funds, has a villa above the city and the group of eight decide to convene there each day to talk about the Italian situation and what they would like to do in Italy. The Lieutenant would try to systematize something but no one seems interested in planning, but only in having tea served to them and talking about Italians and their culture. They take turns leading the discussion but it is a silly show.
Heycock and Galsworthy are a close pair. They have just returned from the Front. To the Lieutenant, they appear to be up to something, maybe discussing means of assuring control over relations with the Eighth (British) Army Command. Whenever he comes upon them, they freeze, until finally he confronts them and says, look, this is a joint show, and you are obliged to keep me informed. "Poppycock" say the slight blonde; "Balls" says the stocky blonde. The Lieutenant turns on his heel and walks out of the room.
They must have conferred, because, a while later, apropos of nothing, they say to him that they had meant nothing derogatory by their remarks and quite agreed that it would be splendid if they and he shared information and worked together fully. He is surprised.
The two of them, with Robbie and himself, do work closer together as Whitaker and Patti retire, thick as thieves. The English don't like them, this famous American correspondent, whose book, You Can't Escape History, has just appeared, and his saturnine poker-faced sidekick Patti, whose name derived no doubt from the town of Patti in Sicily. Perhaps they are cosying up to the American Headquarters, the Seventh Army, whose help they will need if they are to be operating in Sicily. There is already something of competition between the Seventh and Eighth Armies, and certainly no love is lost between Generals Patton and Montgomery.
Without any formal orders coming from anywhere, or so it seems, our Lieutenant finds himself committed to the British Eighth Army. Somebody has cut the appropriate orders; else he would be called back; moreover the address on some of his mail is changed to go to Eighth Army HQ. It is a jumble. Where do Hartley's orders come from? Who is this ancient archaeologist from Egypt, who seems to have withered in the sands to look now like a leafless branch and joins them from time to time? Is Barney sure to come, or just taking an extended vacation out of reach of any authority? They all act like moles when it comes to divulging the holes from which they emerged and where they are about to dig next.
For a moment it would seem that Richard Crossman, who has turned up in Algiers, would want to go on the expedition. But then he is designated as a kind of head of the Brits at the Corny Beef, and begins duelling with Colonel Hazeltine, so the group did without his energy and bustling. He is not liked by the core foursome that I mentioned, nor do they, military men, want any civilians "buggering about the Front." Besides, they are Conservatives while Crossman is a Socialist.
There is also a British Colonel McFarlane to be accounted for, another handsome dark Scot, who seems to have a hold of some kind over the foursome. He is able enough to be loaded with important cares, but is destined for some useless job connecting the PWB operators and the Operations Branch (G3), Eighth Army. (In the American Army, propaganda operations were given over to G2, Intelligence. This was a mistake, though the Lieutenant is in no position to judge such questions yet.)
Somebody somewhere, probably Captain Caskey, is told by Hazeltine, who has been reminded by one of his civilian advisers, alerted to the imminence of warfare in Italy, to cut orders and get this new outfit over to Tunis closer to the war and out of the HQ which was crowded enough with all of its types, more of them, too, being shipped over by the Office of War Information all the time to do God knows what.
At this point the Lieutenant decides, if he is to be Eighth Army, he must look like one of those snappy British staff officers, so, to quote him addressing his wife, "I've had very little to do this morning except to be barbered at length by a very excellent, French barber in the neighborhood. I've had my curly locks shampooed and now look very sleek. Just think what you're missing - my fine, tan skin, my black hair and a very black mustache of recent vintage that my friend Barney tells me makes me look like one of Ireland's famed `black brood'". But, that's, of course, what Barney looks like.
Then it happens that they find themselves on the road to Tunis, convoying with some of the 1st MRBC. The latter would be doing POW interrogation and then move up if the need should arise. And others of them would be working on the fake Italian language broadcasting station, called "Italo Balbo," in honor of Italy's most famous aviator, whose planes had flown the Ocean and descended at Chicago under the Lieutenant's very eyes when he was a child. The little team rides along in two jeeps and a trailer, the several officers, less Whitaker and Patti who disappeared, less Captain Heycock, too, who has gone ahead to find them a home. On the way, a friendly warplane buzzes them and, believing it enemy, they are scared; it might easily have knocked some of them out, and he realizes that in all the hard training he had gone through, never had anyone thought to arrange for him to be buzzed by airplanes, in maneuvers or otherwise. The main defense was a periodic placement of anti-aircraft batteries along the main roads, constantly alert. Barrage Balloons would have helped for this purpose but were never to be seen. Lacking active help, it was well, if uncomfortable, to remove the jeep tops and lower the windshields; one could at least stop and get out quickly, then. Was this lack of training the fault of separating the Army Air Corps so completely from the Army ground forces? And a failure of combined training? No doubt. So simple it would have been to provide such training; and the same for the pilots: how had they learned to strafe troops? But the worse was yet to come.
For three days, they are on the road over the mountains to Tunisia. It is already June 25. He had missed the fighting in Tunis. Heycock, the Sandhurst Graduate, has, however, unerringly selected the best villa of a set of them along the sea north of the City of Tunis, at La Cram, not far from ancient Carthage. Bachelors, fops, and culinary incompetents notwithstanding, all must pitch into housekeeping; the American lieutenant prescribes it with a duty roster duly posted. There turn out to be eight men around the place, and several jeeps and drivers.
They all run around in shorts. Inspired by Robbie, they are calling the stately Hartley, "the Admiral" and the strutting barrel Heycock "the General." One day a couple of GIs wandering along the beach approach the Lieutenant lolling in swimming trunks by the door and ask whether he can lend them a bottle opener, whereupon he shouts, "Admiral, do you have the bottle opener?" and Hartley yells "No," and hollers at Heycock on the beach, "General, do you have the bottle opener?" and the soldiers sidle away, so that when the Lieutenant goes inside and appears shortly with the found instrument, they have disappeared.
Then Heycock and Galsworthy finally get around to telling the others about their experiences in combat propaganda. So now, for the first time, he learns that the principal combat effort of psychological warfare so far is to write and print up propaganda, stuff it into emptied smoke shells, and get them into artillery pieces to fire and burst over enemy positions, scattering down upon them like confetti cast from a window upon a parade. A Captain Foster, whom he will meet, has been credited with developing the technique. The stories enchant him for he is an artillery officer and what lies ahead is familiar. They have preliminary firing tables, worked out for the chosen weapon, the British 25 lb cannon. Its range covers the Front lines and well back. When tables are worked out for the American 105 mm cannon, it will become the standard means of delivery of frontline propaganda. The British had tried before El Alamein to send a small truck through the lines tossing out leaflets, but the operation was given up after the vehicle was captured by the enemy.
He is shown several leaflets that had been showered on the Germans. Thus, over a score of meals, and by evening's dim light, and driving along here and there, he picks up their knowledge, the first in the American army to do so. The other tasks of psychological warfare are to reveal themselves, at the time when he will be forced to address them, learning by doing, his old pragmatist educators would say. But he has roughly in hand the main combat propaganda medium of the coming campaigns.
He exchanges visits with his American comrades, encamped up the line, who are not sure at all to get in on the Sicilian operation. Some of his mail is still coming in through 1st MRBC channels. Too, cagily, he extracts from the American ration allowances food that can be brought to his comrades by the sea -- who are also, tutti quanti, living on British rations and the Italianate supplements that Robbie and the others can solicit from the environment (like the spaghetti made by a neighboring Italian lady in return for giving her an equal portion of flour for her own family).
On the Fourth of July he is naturally to be found in his American encampment, where a feast, in bulk if not in quality, is conducted, and before and afterwards the ritual game of baseball is played. His spectacular patriotism is not to deny his all too frequent aspersions cast upon the behavior of his countrymen. He is disgruntled with the War Effort, despite the mountains of materiel forthcoming.
The news from the States isn't too good and I wonder where future improvement will come from. Do you think people realize what stupid representatives they have in the Congress? They have managed to settle none of the great, pressing problems, save on reciprocal trade, and have generally mislegislated on things. The strike sounds bad, but I don't think it is too important. The removal of price subsidies and the refusal to tax sound much worse, as well as those silly personal quarrels which take up time, energy and news space. ..I won't bore you by getting completely wound up on the subject.
He waxes wroth over accounts of race rioting between whites and blacks in Detroit. He feels that the cure for strikes and racism is to put all offenders into uniform and ship them overseas. Hardly an original idea, and not even a good idea, considering how long it takes to get even a willing inductee into fighting condition, and what of their families, and who will make the tanks and guns and all of that? Well, on occasion he would sound like any regular Army officer. In her letters, his wife eggs him on, too. Moreover, he is irritated at the unused military and industrial manpower in North Africa, both French and Arab.
He does have a flash of insight into one matter at home, though. A Gallup Poll is put out reporting that the American people are becoming less isolationist, an encouraging sign to liberals. But, he thinks, "a mere sentiment is not enough. In fact it may show a dangerous and evil sort of imperialism and interference rather than a desire to cooperate. We shall know better après la guerre."
For war news from around the world, the Le Cram lodgers rely upon the British Broadcasting Service that enters their home with
the resounding chords of "Hearts of Oak." It is at least as reliable as news from any other source. The American service exaggerates and wastes time on enthusiasm; the German service is becoming ever less reliable in the face of defeats, and the Italian service desperate in anticipation of invasion. They get a lot of intelligence reports without any planned profiling of their needs. Robbie subscribes to the airmail microprint edition of the London Times, for its crossword puzzles, he insists.
Dapper Major Galsworthy, formerly of the Colonial Office and Private Secretary to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, is the perfect liaison, and the Le Cram lodgers are treated daily to the news of the build-up and the impending invasion. It is to be Sicily, of course, and he is trying to get his little team into one of the first boats, but there is a lot of competition to be among the first to land. The Army Staff does not understand combat propaganda yet, doesn't really want to, they are interesting in killing the "Boche." They are suspicious, more than the American Command, of men who know too much about the places they are targeting, and might have a vestige of free speech left, worse a command of means to get a contradictory message back. It is decided that the Lieutenant will be the sole American officer in the group. Liv Hartley will come later. Herz, Habe, Wallenberg, Grigis and the others are trying to get confirmation from the Seventh Army for their inclusion at some stage.
In the mail they hold for him, he learns that the war-baby is on its way. There is only one letter to him, dated June 15th, then another on the 25th. The first since leaving the States. The pregnant girl writes from Buzz' house in Washington:
Despite all the tempting alternatives - the Waac, a $2600 job as ass't technical editor at Fort Monmouth (a telegram came for me at Buss's this week - that's all I know about the job) - Lockheed, etc. etc., I'm awfully happy about the baby. I must assure you again of that, because maybe I didn't give you that impression when I last saw you. The idea just grows on one, and now I wouldn't lose it for anything & can't wait til I get large & complacent. I've been whoopsing some, but that will pass, & besides it isn't hard for one who whoopsed her way through college.
She forgets that he hasn't had a medical resume and gives him one:
Oh yes - I saw the doctor today. That test he took was positive, all right. However, since you didn't give me his home number, I called his office that day in Washington & got the wrong message. He's awfully glad it's a baby, & says I am well & should lay off ice cream. I am already abstaining from coffee, coke, cigarettes, alcohol (except when I'm forced) candy, spaghetti, fried anything and root beer, so I see very little point in eating at all, since the range is so narrow. I can't even have as much milk as I want. Incidentally, that long list of prohibitions is self-imposed. I'm just naturally averse to all those items. I'm glad you're not here, at least at mealtime. I would sicken and die at the sight of your filling your sweet face with goodies. I wish to hell you were here the rest of the time, tho.
I brought Martin's car back today, as I shall presently inform him. I'm telling everyone about the baby now, as I come to it. There's no point in keeping it a secret & it gets people to carry my bags for me.
Darling, darling. I wish I'd get a letter from you soon. I love you so much - it seems a shame we can't be together now somehow - either me there or something.
On the 10th of July the first soldiers land in Sicily. The Eighth Army Team packs up, leaves the villa to Barney, Grigis and Hartley, and drives down to Sfax looking for their boat, any boat -- its not systematic or even formal. They find craft of all sizes and shapes, coming and going. It seems every unit has a tail that has to be curled up into the last bit of space. Enemy airplanes are rare.
He memorizes some old English songs croaked by Robbie and several tippling visitors from Army Headquarters. Thus,
Frigging in the rigging, frigging in the rigging,
frigging in the rigging, there's fuck-all else to do...
and:
Oh, I stuck my finger in the woodpecker's hole,
the woodpecker said "God bless my soul!
Take it out, take it out,
Take it out--Remove it!"
which, in the final verse, went "Take it out, put it back, take it out, re-volve it!" and then his favorite, "They shifted Pa's remains, to make way for ten-inch drains," which after a couple of verses, proclaimed that
Father in his life was never a quitter,
(all: never a quitter,)
I don't suppose he'll be a quitter now,
(all: quitter now,)
So when the job's complete,
he'll haunt that shit-house seat,
and only let them crap when he'll allow,
(all: cor-bli-mey)
Oh, won't there be some frightful constipation?
(all: fr..con..)
Won't those shit-bound, high-brow buggers rave?
(all: bu..rave)
Its no more than they deserve, for having the bloody nerve,
to bugger about with a British workman's grave, corblimey,
(all: to bugger about with a British workman's grave.)
The sirocco blows like a blast out of hell. It penetrates the very wood of the doors and shutters. You cannot find words to describe it, it is awesome.
Robbie is getting impatient. He says to Galsworthy, "Come on now, let's get aboard. It's time I had a new kit." This is à propos the story I mentioned above. In World War I, young Robertson had lost his greatcoat in the course of a battle, and, despite repeated pleas, the Treasury refused to recompense him for the loss, saying that it was his fault. He nursed a grudge over the many years between wars. Then, his ship was torpedoed by a submarine on the way to North Africa. This time he held onto his greatcoat, but upon being rescued he filed an application for compensation for the loss of the coat, and received the money; so, he boasts, "I finally got even with the bloody bastards."
He was not so pleased at the etiquette on torpedoed boats. A confirmed bachelor and somewhat the misogynist, he rants at having been forced to stand back with other men like heroes while a crowd of nurses was being escorted into the life boats. He declared that he would much prefer to sail on a German ship "where the wretched women and children come last."
Finally a tank-landing craft comes in and the loading master gives it the word to take them aboard. The boat is of the design made famous in World War II for descending upon hostile or undeveloped shores, with an armored forward prow to cut the waves; yet the prow is split to open up quickly as it nears the shore; a vertical water-tight door contained behind it then opens from the top and drops down to become a platform to let out the men and machines.
The sea is fairly calm and the voyage is undisturbed by the enemy. The several officers aboard eat together in a handy little messhall topsides. The enlisted men -- "other ranks" one should now say in the 8th Army -- eat here and there. It is a slow boat, the voyage surprisingly long, they sleep aboard. His bunk is the latest in over half a hundred different sleeping spots since he became a soldier, an average of one every ten days.
On the prowl, he discovers that a ladder is fastened to the vertical door and goes down to a pit between the door and the false prow. With each dip of the prow the seawater rushes into the hole and is blocked from entering the hull by the door. He takes off his clothes, calling to the others, and descends the ladder into the pit. There he stands, and as each wave breaks into the false hull, it lifts him up and he thrashes about. The water rushes out as the bow rises and he stands in happy expectancy of the next surge. Heycock tries it out, once or twice, and gives his tight approving smile of the adventure. There comes another and another, all morning long.
The outlines of Sicily rise along the horizon. Not an enemy plane to be seen. The landings of the British had not been difficult. The problems encountered in the past forty-eight hours, some serious, were of their own making: confusion and amicide had begun to take their toll. The leading column has moved up from the beaches and passed through Syracuse.
The LST enters directly into the fine old harbor and sidles between a smoking sunken hospital ship and the Fountain of Arethusa. He scampers onto the quay. It has been about 2600 years since the first of his family had landed here with the Greeks, following upon natural disasters that had struck the natives. Here now it had been the Allied bombers. But the Fountain of Arethusa was still flowing and people of Syracuse were filling their jugs from it. They politely let him cut in, to fill his tin cup, and drink of the water.