Time Enough for Love (81 page)

But the country boy who is sure he knows it all (and sometimes is indeed a good shot)
won’t listen.

It’s a chore to convince him that he is not going to do it
his
way; he is going to do it the
Army
way, and he had better learn to like it.

Sometimes these know-it-alreadys get so angry that they want to fight—me, not Huns. These are usually boys who haven’t found out that I also teach unarmed combat. I’ve had to accommodate a couple of them, out behind the latrine after retreat. I won’t box them; I have no wish to flatten my big nose against some cow-milking fist. But the idea of fighting rough-and-tumble, no rules, either makes their eyes glitter—or they decide to shake hands and forget it. If they go ahead with it, it doesn’t last over two seconds as
I
don’t want to get hurt.

I promised to tell you where and how I learned la savate and jujitsu. But it’s a long story, not too nice in spots, one I should not put into a letter but wait until I have a pass that gives me time enough to visit Kansas City.

But I haven’t had anyone offer to fight me for at least three months. One of the sergeant-instructors told me that he had heard that the recruits call me “Death” Bronson. I don’t mind as long as it means peace and quiet when I’m off duty.

Camp Fun’s-Town continues to have just two sorts of weather, too hot and dusty, too cold and muddy. I hear that the latter is good practice for France; the Tommies here claim that the worst hazard of this war is the danger of drowning in French mud. The poilus among us don’t really argue it but blame the rain on artillery fire.

Bad as the weather may be in France, everyone wants to go there, and the second favorite topic of conversation is “When?” (No need to tell an old soldier the first.) Rumors of shipping out are endless and always wrong.

But I’m beginning to wonder. Am I going to be stuck here, doing the same things month after month while the war goes on elsewhere? What will I tell my children someday? Where did you fight the Big War, Daddy? Funston, Billy. What part of France is that, Daddy? Near Topeka, Billy—shut up and eat your oatmeal!

I would have to change my name.

It gets tiresome telling one bunch after another to stack arms and grab shovels. We’ve dug enough trenches in this prairie to reach from here to the moon, and I now know four ways to do it: the French way, the British way, the American way—and the way each new bunch of recruits does it, in which the revetments collapse—and then they want to know what difference it makes because General Pershing, once
we
get there, is going to break this trench-warfare stalemate and get those Huns on the run.

They may be right. But I have to teach what I’m told to teach. Till I’m white-haired, maybe.

I am pleased indeed to hear that you are in the Seventh Regiment; I know how much it means to you. But please don’t disparage the Seventh Missouri by calling it the “home guards.” Unless somebody gets a hammerlock on Hindenburg pretty soon, you may see a lot of action in this war.

But truthfully, sir, I hope you do not—and I think Captain Smith would agree with my reasoning. Someone
does
have to guard the home—and I mean a specific home on Benton Boulevard. Brian Junior isn’t old enough to be the man of the family—I think Captain Smith would worry if you weren’t there.

But I do understand how you feel. I hear that the only way for a sergeant-instructor to get off this treadmill is to lose his stripes. Would you feel ashamed of me if I went absent over leave just long enough to get busted back to corporal…then did something else to lose those chevrons, too? I feel sure it would get me on the first troop train headed east.

You’d better not read that last to the rest of the family. An “Honorary Smith” had best find some other way.

My warmest respects to you and to Mrs. Smith,

My love to all the youngsters,
Ted Bronson “Smith”
(And
most
happy to be “adopted”)

*   *   *

“Come in!”

“Sir, Sergeant Bronson reports to Captain Smith as ordered!” (Pop, I wouldn’t have recognized you. But durned if you don’t look just as you ought to. Only younger.)

“At ease, Sergeant. Close that door. Then sit down.”

“Yes, sir.” Lazarus did so, still mystified. He had not only never expected Captain Smith to get in touch with him, but he had refrained from asking for a pass long enough to let him go to Kansas City for two reasons: One, his father might be there that weekend—or, two, his father might
not
be there that weekend. Lazarus was not sure which was worse; he had avoided both.

Now a dog-robber type on a motorcycle with a sidecar had suddenly picked him up with orders to “Report to Captain Smith”—and it was not until he had done so that he knew that this “Captain Smith” was Captain Brian Smith.

“Sergeant, my father-in-law has told me quite a bit about you. And so has my wife.”

There seemed to be no answer to that, so Lazarus looked sheepish and said nothing.

Captain Smith went on, “Oh, come, Sergeant, don’t look embarrassed; this is man to man. My family has ‘adopted’ you, so to speak, and it meets with my heartiest approval. In fact it fits in with something the War Department is starting, through the Red Cross and the Y.M.C.A. and the churches, a program to locate every man in uniform who does not get mail regularly and see to it that he does. Get a family to ‘adopt him for the duration’ in other words. Write to him, remember his birthday, send him little presents. What do you think of that?”

“Sir, it sounds good. What the Captain’s family has done for me has certainly been good for
my
morale.”

“I’m pleased to hear it. How would you organize such a program? Speak up, don’t be afraid to express your own ideas.”

(Give me a desk and I’ll make a career of it, Pop!) “Sir, the problem breaks down into two—No, three parts. Two of preparation, one of execution. First, locate the men. Second, at the same time, locate families willing to help. Third, bring them together. The first has to be done by the first sergeants.” (The top kicks are going to love this—in a pig’s eye.) “They will have to require their company clerks to check mail against the roster before handing it out. Uh, this must he speeded up; holding up mail call for any reason is not a good idea. But checking can’t be left to platoon sergeants; they aren’t set up for it and would slop it. It has to be at the point where the mail orderly delivers mail to each company clerk.”

Lazarus thought. “But to make this work, if the Captain will pardon me, the Commanding General must tell his adjutant to require from each company, troop, and battery commander a report of how many pieces of mail each man under his command has received that week.” (And a damnable invasion of privacy, and the sort of multiplication of clerical work that bogs down armies! The homesick ones
have
homes and
do
get mail. The loners don’t want letters; they want women and whiskey. The prairie dog pee they sell for whiskey in this “dry” state has made a teetotaler of me.) “But that should not be separate paper work, Captain; it need only be a column of tally marks on the regular weekly report. Both company commanders and top sergeants are going to bellyache if it’s too time-consuming—and the Commanding General would receive reports that would be mostly products of company clerks’ imaginations. The Captain knows that, I feel sure.”

Lazarus’ father gave the grin that made him look like Teddy Roosevelt. “Sergeant, you have just caused me to revise a letter I’m preparing for the General. As long as I am assigned to ‘Plans & Training’ no new program will add to the mountain of paper work if I can help it. I have been trying to sweat this one down to size, and you’ve shown me a way to do it. Tell me, why did you turn down officers’ training when it was offered to you? Or don’t tell me if you don’t want to; it’s your business.”

(Pop, I’m going to have to lie to you—for I can’t point out that a platoon leader has a life expectancy of around twenty minutes if he takes his platoon “over the top” and does it by the Book. What a war!) “Sir, look at it this way. Suppose I put in for it. A month to get it approved. Then three months at Benning, or Leavenworth, or wherever they’re sending them. Then back here, or Bliss, or somewhere and I’ll be assigned to recruits. Six months with them and we go overseas. More training behind the lines ‘Over There’ from what I hear. Adds up to about a year, and the war is over, and I haven’t been in it.”

“Mmm…you could be right. You want to go to France?”

“Yes,
sir!
” (Christ,
no!
)

“Just last Sunday, in K.C., my father-in-law told me that would be your answer. But you may not know, Sergeant, that the billet you are in will be just as frustrating…without the compensation of bars on your shoulders. Here in ‘Plans & Training’ we keep track of every enlisted instructor—and the ones who don’t work out we ship out…but the ones who
do
work out we hang onto like grim death.

“Except for one thing—” His father smiled again. “We have been asked—the polite word for ‘ordered’—to supply some of our best instructors for that behind-the-lines training in France you mentioned. I know you qualify; I’ve made it a point to note the weekly reports on you ever since my father-in-law told me about you. Surprising proficiency for a man with no combat time…plus a slight tendency to be nonregulation about minor points, which—privately—I do not find a drawback; the utterly regulation soldier is a barracks soldier. Est-ce que vous parlez la langue française?”

“Oui, mon capitaine.”

“Eh, bien! Peut-être vous avez enrôlé autrefois en la Légion Etrangère, n’est-ce pas?”

“Pardon, mon capitaine? Je ne comprends pas.”

“Nor will I understand you if we talk three more words of it. But I’m studying hard, as I expect French to be my own ticket out of this dusty place. Bronson, forget that I asked that question. But I must ask one more and I want an absolutely straight answer. Is there any possibility
whatever
that any
French
authority might be looking for you? I don’t give a tinker’s dam what you may have done in the past, and neither does the War Department. But we must protect our own.”

Lazarus barely hesitated. (Pop is telling me plain as print that if I am a deserter from the Foreign Legion—or have escaped from Devil’s Island or any such—he’s going to keep me out of French jurisdiction.) “Absolutely
none
, sir!”

“I’m relieved to hear it. There have been latrine rumors that Pop Johnson could neither confirm nor deny. Speaking of him—Stand up a moment. Now left face, please. And about face. Bronson, I’m convinced. I don’t remember my wife’s Uncle Ned, but I would give long odds that you are related to my father-in-law, and his theory certainly fits. Which makes us ‘kinfolk’ of some sort. After the war is over, perhaps we can dig into it. But I understand that my children call you ‘Uncle Ted’…which seems close enough and suits me if it suits you.”

“Sir, it does indeed! It’s good to have a family, under any assumption.”

“I think so. Just one more thing…and this you must forget once you go out that door. I think that a rocker for those chevrons will show up one of these days…and not long after you’ll be given a short leave that you haven’t requested. When that happens, don’t start any continued stories. Comprenez-vous?”

“Mais oui, mon capitaine, certainement.”

“I wish I could tell you that we will be in the same outfit; Pop Johnson would like that. But I can’t. In the meantime please remember that I haven’t told you anything.”

“Captain, I’ve already forgotten it.” (Pop thinks he’s doing me a
favor!
) “Thank you, sir!”

“Not at all. Dismissed.”

DA CAPO

Staff Sergeant Theodore Bronson found Kansas City changed—uniforms everywhere, posters everywhere. Uncle Sam stared out at him: “I want
you
for the United States Army.” A Red Cross nurse was shown holding a wounded man in a stretcher as if he were a baby, with the one word: “GIVE.” A sign on a restaurant said: “We Observe All Meatless, Wheatless, and Sweetless Days.” Service flags were in many windows—he counted five stars on one, saw several with gold stars.

More traffic than he recalled and streetcars were crowded, many passengers in uniform—it seemed as if all of Camp Funston and every camp or fort within reaching distance had all been dumped into the city at once. Untrue, he knew, but the train he had dozed in most of last night had been so jammed that it seemed true.

That “Khaki Special” had been almost as dirty as a cattle train and even slower; it had sidetracked again and again in favor of freights, and once for a troop train. Lazarus arrived in Kansas City late in the morning, tired and filthy—having left camp clean and rested. But he had his battered old grip with him and planned to correct both conditions before seeing his “adopted” family.

Waving a five-dollar bill in front of the railroad station got him a taxi, but the hackie insisted on picking up three more passengers going south after asking what direction Lazarus was going. The taxicab was a Ford landaulet like his own, but in much worse condition. The glass partition between front and back seats (the feature that made it a “limousine”) had been removed, and the collapsible half-top of the rear compartment appeared to have collapsed for the last time. But with five in it, plus baggage on knees, ventilation was welcome.