Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

by Kathleen Rooney

  I shook myself alert. “Private,” I said, “if General Alexander tries to argue that your behavior today was insubordinate, you can rest assured—”

  Cepaglia was waving a hand in the general’s direction as if shooing flies. “No, no, no,” he said. “Fuck that guy. Fuckin’ asshole. I don’t come over to you to insult no generals. I gotta come clean about what I done.”

  This was the longest string of consecutive English words I had ever heard from Cepaglia, and I marveled at how much he’d learned since he’d first staggered off the train to Upton in his red shirt. “Of course, Private,” I said. “What is it?”

  Cepaglia looked suddenly overwhelmed to have my complete attention. His lower lip quivered: the only sign of weakness I ever saw in him. “It’s about this coat,” he said.

  In a vague way, I’d been aware that Cepaglia had been wearing an oversize army trench coat, too large for his lean frame, but finding an explanation for this had been vanishingly low on my list of concerns.

  “Red—Sergeant Cullen—he come in with it,” Cepaglia said. “Against orders, I know. Not s’posed to bring no coats. But real good to have. Then Peabody, Lieutenant Peabody, his leg got smashed up. And he was such a big prince about it! You remember? It hurt him so much. But he never showed it. All the time he laughed, he said jokes. He kept us up. He kept the men up. We all said, ‘That guy’s gonna get a big medal.’ Well, time goes on, and then we know: Peabody ain’t gonna see that medal. Ain’t gonna make it. So we give him the coat, the one Cullen had. The one coat in the whole outfit. It was our medal for him, for being brave. When he died, we don’t know what to do. With the coat, see? Munson says it’s bad luck to take a dead man’s coat. But I says, ‘I can’t have no worse luck than I got right now,’ and Munson says, ‘Dibs on the coat, then.’ And we take turns wearing it.”

  Cepaglia said all this while staring into the Pocket, his eyes steady and bright. It was already becoming hard to remember where our funkholes had been, the exact locations of certain momentous events. I’d lost track of Bill Cavanaugh’s body; he was in a shallow grave with the other men who had died at around the same time, perhaps now partly uncovered or more deeply buried as falling shells and rain had moved the mud that had covered him.

  “Cepaglia,” I said, “I’m an officer, and I can say that you didn’t break any rules. I’m an attorney, too, and I can say that you didn’t break any laws. I’m not a priest, and therefore I’m in no position to absolve you, but it seems to me that you didn’t do anything wrong. I knew Marshall Peabody pretty well, and my guess is that he’d be sore if you fellows hadn’t taken your coat back. And I don’t have Munson’s expertise on luck, but yours seems damn fine.”

  Cepaglia sniffed, nodded sharply, and gave me a bashful smile. “Okay, Major,” he said. “Shit, Lieutenant Colonel, I mean! Thank you. I feel okay. I think you understand. We train and train, you know? We got pretty good, right? Pretty damn good soldiers. But then there’s luck. And there’s what we do for luck.”

  “We all have our superstitions,” I said, thinking of Bill and his scapular. “Mine were my glasses. I told myself that if they didn’t break, then I’d survive. I’ve never told anyone that.”

  His dark eyes grew solemn beneath his bunched eyebrows, charcoal black, still not much darker than his battle-smudged skin. “This army is a lot of fuckin’ bullshit, sir,” he said. “But I’m glad they make you a colonel. That’s good. The guys, they all like you, and they’re gonna be real proud.”

  With that, Cepaglia saluted crisply and zipped away, true to his nickname.

  As it happened, his good luck would continue after the war. Munson’s wouldn’t, but I don’t believe that his fate depended on the coat.

  * * *

  • • •

  Major General Alexander ordered us rotated to divisional reserve, just as I had requested we be after the Small Pocket episode. Given our condition, I don’t suppose there’s much else he could have done with us.

  This took us off the front lines, but it still left much work to be done, particularly by me. The 308th had to be drastically reorganized: new officers promoted to take the places of the many who’d been killed, replacements arriving from Calais incorporated into existing units. McMurtry had wanted to assist, but his bruised knee was getting worse, and he could do only so much. Regretfully, and at my insistence, he limped off to the infirmary.

  Busy though I was, being in reserve gave me time to think in a way that had been all but impossible in the Pocket. I discovered, however, that thinking had become difficult. For seven days I’d been constantly possessed by an urgency to keep my men and myself alive under the threat of imminent attack. Now the threat was gone, but the urgency remained—and without any specific cause to warn against, it adhered to everything, like static electricity. Mundane administrative chores that I normally enjoyed and excelled at became nearly insufferable; they seemed pointless, even indecent in light of the slaughter under way a few miles to the north. I had trouble concentrating on these now-joyless tasks, and in my frustration I became quick to anger. I had never been an angry man before. It didn’t suit me; I wasn’t good at it.

  Though it was no longer in any way productive, I thought constantly of the Pocket. In an effort to stop recalling the carnage and misery that I’d witnessed—that I had led my men into—I tried to think in more abstract terms. I wondered, for instance, at our popular epithet, as Runyon had explained it. Why had the “Lost Battalion” caught the public’s imagination? Why “Lost” rather than “Beleaguered” or “Surrounded” or “Encircled”? “Lost” was, I supposed, the most romantic option, evoking ruined cities and sunken galleons. The idea disgusted me, and I was angry again.

  But the plain fact remained that if the moniker hadn’t caught on, we might never have been saved at all. I knew from my days training at Plattsburgh that one weak battalion didn’t count for much from a tactical standpoint; four years into a war that appeared eternal, the British, the French, and the Germans had all sacrificed vaster quantities of men, and Colonel Stacey had made it clear that the army was prepared to do the same to us if it suited the generals’ purposes. But the boisterously democratic American public was not yet inured to such imperial ruthlessness, and with news of the Lost Battalion flashing through headlines from coast to coast, certain gentlemen in Congress and the War Department had become skittish. Reports of our situation reached General Pershing from the top, not the bottom, and populated his thoughts with the disastrous consequences to home-front morale if we surrendered or if the army simply left us to die. Thus he ordered us rescued, no matter the cost. In a very practical sense, we owed our lives to Runyon and his ilk.

  Though I made no attempt to seek it out, it took only a few days for someone to hand me an edition of the New York American that included Runyon’s story. It exhibited the predictable degree of restraint: Out of the fog of fighting that hangs over the Forest of the Argonne came limping today Whittlesey’s battered battalion which made the epic defense in the dark glades and beyond. Out of this scullery of war—scullery?—the American infantryman is emerging as the greatest fighter the world has ever seen.

  As I read, I half expected a Sousa march to begin playing from thin air, like an enchantment in The Tempest.

  A bit farther down, I found Runyon’s account of the German request for surrender that hapless Hollingshead had delivered, and I was surprised to learn that I had responded by telling the Germans to “Go to hell.”

  At the time this was a source of amusement and mild irritation; I had no means of anticipating the number of occasions in the coming years when I’d be referred to in print or introduced at events as Charles “Go to Hell” Whittlesey.

  In fact I had made no response whatsoever to the Germans’ request, as I told reporters whenever they bothered to ask. McMurtry consistently corroborated my accurate account, often joking that as a thrifty New Englander I had chosen to co
nserve our remaining paper.

  But Runyon hadn’t lied exactly when he said that he didn’t write bunkum. He had a source for the quote, and he wasn’t alone, as it appeared in the less artful stories of other reporters, too. It had come, unsurprisingly, from no less lofty an authority than Major General Alexander. What did Whittlesey say to the Germans? the reporters had shouted at him in our bloody clearing, already knowing my answer and that it was insufficient for their purposes. Well, I imagine he told them to go to hell, said Alexander, and a dozen pencils sliced into a dozen notebooks. If any among them had scruples enough to omit the phrase, I imagine his account was simply drowned in the flood of consensus, dragged down by the dull weight of fact.

  Today, aboard the Toloa as it steams slowly south, I can flourish my contempt for this cavalier approach to storytelling. The truth is that I was guilty of it myself.

  When I emerged from the Pocket, I returned to regimental HQ, slept for the better part of two days straight, and awoke to find a fat stack of correspondence waiting for me, bound neatly in twine. A few letters—the first of many to come—were from complete strangers who’d read the early stories and written to thank me for my service. Most were from my family and my friends in New York, all of whom had reasonably surmised based on newspaper accounts that they might never see me again. Evidently they had decided that if I made it through alive, I should find assurances of their love and admiration immediately at hand.

  I tried to read them and found that I could not. Each statement of praise made me feel more unworthy, more fraudulent, more guilty over the many soldiers whom I had not saved, the many dead men who had trusted me. In time I stopped trying, made careful records of the addresses to which I’d send vague but sincere thanks, and threw them all away.

  My first response was to Bayard Pruyn. The fact that he’d been my law partner as well as my closest male friend somehow made it easier, providing a comfortable professional idiom wherein to cloak my disquiet.

  Had I made any effort to communicate the true nature of what I’d experienced, it’s doubtful that the censors would have let it though. But I made no such effort. I opted instead to allay concern—to convince him that I and all the others were holding up handsomely—and in so doing I nearly convinced myself.

  I appreciate your last letter, I concluded, moving the pen slowly to control my tremulous hand. If I said it any other way, I’d be trying to put into words what I cannot write. Because out here in the woods, Pruyn, where the hidden things of life begin to show, one learns new things. Friendships that can reach across five thousand miles and jog your elbow become pretty real and fine. And believe me, I felt your cheery voice when that letter reached me, at the end of a day that had been—oh, well, “some digging.” It’s a great life. Finest thing in the world, and we’ll never have the same small outlook on men when it’s over. Some of these fellows are just finer than anyone can say.

  And yet, and yet.

  I signed it, examining my signature closely in the hope that its familiarity would convince me that I remained who I had been. Then I folded it and slipped it into an envelope, leaving it unsealed for the army to read.

  A collection of largely indistinguishable days passed, and then Major General Alexander summoned me for an audience.

  I reported to his new headquarters, an elaborate complex that the Germans had built and then been forced to abandon in their retreat. He’d set up his command post there a day before he’d disregarded the misgivings of both Colonel Stacey and Brigadier General Johnson and ordered our advance up the Ravin d’Argonne. While we’d been in the Pocket being pulverized by our own artillery, he’d been exploring his new amenities: kitchens and mess halls, bathhouses with hot and cold taps, moving-picture theaters and bowling alleys. Even setting aside our misery in the Pocket, Alexander’s present comforts compared favorably to the day-to-day lives that most of my soldiers led back home: plenty of the city men lived in cold-water flats, and plenty of the westerners had no running water. Little wonder, then, that he’d looked so jolly as he marched into our clearing. Even when directly confronted by it, he found our suffering beyond his grasp. He simply had no sympathetic imagination, which probably made it possible, or at least more pleasant, for him to perform the daily task of sending men to die.

  In his office that evening, a fire roaring in the stove, I saw his high-handedness once more on display. “The 308th will be back in fighting form in practically no time, I hear,” he said from behind his capacious desk. “Well done, Whittlesey. General Johnson didn’t think there’d be much of a foundation left to rebuild on, but we’ve proved him wrong as usual, haven’t we?”

  Alexander’s rhetorical question was so dishonest in its assumptions as to be unworthy of a reply. “We’re ready for our orders, sir,” I said. “When do we move out?”

  “The regiment moves out,” he said, consulting his watch, “in thirty-seven hours. You, however, move out tomorrow morning. I trust that gives you enough time to pack your things.”

  I made no attempt to hide my alarm, or my irritation. “Pardon me, sir?” I said. “You’re separating me from my regiment?”

  “You’re damned right I am,” he said. “Come on, man, you can’t be surprised. You think we’re going to send you to the front lines again? Did you lose your damned mind in that ravine?” He laughed as if what he said had been extremely clever. “You’re a hero now. But you’re a funny sort of hero, in that all you really did was survive when no one expected you to. Now, take that fellow Rickenbacker, the pilot. If he’s shot down—as I expect he will be sooner or later—then all his victories still stand, don’t they? But if we rescue ‘Go to Hell’ Whittlesey against all odds only to get him killed by sending him to the front again . . . well, that spoils everything! Particularly after all the losses we took trying to recover your command. That would amount to pure goddamned foolishness. You’re valuable to the army—quite valuable—but not as a dead man. No, you’ll stay behind the lines. More than likely you’ll go back to the States.”

  I’d been prepared for stupidity and callousness, but the prospect of being parted from McMurtry and all the rest hadn’t occurred to me. “What’ll I do?” I asked.

  “You’ll train more men,” said Alexander, as if this were as plain as his salt-and-pepper mustache. “A massive offensive is planned for the spring, and we’re going to need every soldier America the Beautiful can provide. The men you trained at Upton turned into quite a bunch of bushwhackers, and we can use more like them. Sergeant,” he barked to his adjutant, “the lieutenant colonel’s travel orders, please.”

  Papers rustled, a typewriter chimed. “What about the others?” I asked.

  “How’s that?” Alexander said. “What others?”

  “The two hundred men who walked out with me, General. The Lost Battalion, as the papers have it. What happens to them? Do they go back to the States as well?”

  “Now you’re being deliberately daft. We can’t spare two hundred souls purely for propaganda purposes. Besides, two hundred names haven’t been in the headlines of every newspaper in America. One has: yours. We’ll try to keep the 308th in supporting positions until the fresh conscripts have learned the ropes and the memories of your adventure have faded a bit. But we still have a war to win.”

  The adjutant slipped the typed forms beneath the major general’s hand, and with a stroke of Alexander’s pen I was out of the fight.

  My train left at 11:00 A.M. the following day. I scarcely had time to bid good-bye to my men. I worried what would become of them, as well as what they’d think of my departure. They all seemed to admire me and to understand why I was leaving, concepts that continued to evade my own grasp.

  Before heading to the station, I turned in paperwork recommending an unusually large number of my men for decorations. I also filed a report on Revnes’s conduct. I hesitated at first to do so; I didn’t necessarily want him to be court-martialed, w
hich his petition in favor of our surrender might well have warranted. But recognition for the actions of the brave diminished in value when contrasting actions were not also faithfully recorded, so I wrote up the account—avoiding prejudicial language, being sure to mention Revnes’s commendable service earlier in the advance as well as the extenuating circumstances of his serious injury—and attached the note from him that Private Foss had delivered.

  Then I boarded the train. As I seated myself in the club car, the luxury was so far removed from the HOMMES 40, CHEVAUX 8 boxcars we’d taken from Calais that I had to laugh, but the laugh was mirthless. I stared out the window in silence as we roared west to Brest.

  From that sheltered port city on the Breton coast, I followed the deeds of the 77th Division as it fought on without me and captured Saint-Juvin, as well as Grandpré. While I didn’t miss combat, I missed the satisfaction of discharging my duties. I felt guilty, at loose ends: I was safe and comfortable, war and all its dangers receding.

  So, too, did I feel lonely, lonelier than ever, in a life that had been filled with considerable loneliness. I dispensed quickly with the few tasks that the army assigned me and spent my days roving the streets, crossing and recrossing the Penfeld River in the long shadows of the city’s squat tower and ancient castle, their massive walls testifying to the assumption of a permanent state of war. I worked, and I walked, and I waited for the bureaucrats to sort out my fate.

  One Saturday evening I went to a show in the American camp: skits put on by a troupe of army performers much like the one to which Lieutenant Revnes had been attached before he’d sought a transfer into a combat unit. The show was okay, amateurish but lively. I lurked in the back, as was my habit—partly because my height obstructed the views of other men but also because I didn’t desire to be recognized.

  My drifting attention was recaptured by a skit near the end: two soldiers in olive drab, portraying two soldiers in olive drab—not exactly an opportunity for thespian wonderworks but relevant to the audience’s concerns and easy on the costume budget to boot.