Lucinda, I know what death means now. I noticed some white hairs in my beard as I was shaving out of my helmet this morning. But this is war, and I hope the American people will wise up to the fact — but fast. I’m living in a grove where the rain never stops falling. The mud of North Africa is like melted chocolate ice cream.
A sentinel has just passed. Perhaps he too is thinking of his wife. The image of you is constantly before me. Keep sweet. . . .
Captain Motes read his letter over several times. Then he filled his washbowl and put the sheet of paper into it. He swooshed his letter quickly around in the water, then let the blurred letters dry. He sealed it in its envelope. On the lower left-hand corner he affixed the base censor’s stamp he’d brought overseas with him. He didn’t know whether a base censorship detachment had yet been set up in Casa; but if it had, that stamp would let his letter go through unopened.
Next morning Captain Motes, wearing leggins and side arms, reported to the Shell Building on Boulevard de la Gare. It was the headquarters of the Atlantic Base Section. He went at once to a certain office, the location of which he’d demanded of the MP. This was the most ornate and inaccessible of all the offices. At the desk was the captain who was aide to the commanding general. This aide sounded off, out of an easy familiarity with the great:
— Don’t be a goon, captain. You simply can not see the general. He’s still setting up ABS. The fighting stopped in Casablanca only last week. He’s a very busy man, the general . . .
— I’m afraid you don’t understand, sir, said Captain Motes with a mellow laugh. I am . . . keep this under your hat . . . an intelligence officer . . .
— A dime a dozen, captain, the aide beamed, picking up a phone. There were scads of em running around and asking stupid questions on the beach under fire. . . . He hates em. Now they’re coming out of their holes and askin for cushy jobs. Come back in a month, captain . . .
— I advise you to let me see the general, Captain Motes said, raising his voice to underline his intentions.
Then a short fierce man with a star on his collar stormed out of the inner sanctum. His white eyebrows met over his nose. His mouth was a cold dash of red on his face. Captain Motes snapped to attention.
— For Chrissake step inside, the general bawled. Stop rubbing your hands together and talk to me as man to man. . . . I suppose they flew you over from Washington. That’s the way the hellish thing always operates. No replacements or no prophylactics or glare goggles, but they’re forever flying in intelligence officers and the CID to check up on me. . . . I knew they’d put the hooks to me because I haven’t had time yet to take care of the security angle. What for Chrissakes do they think a war is in Washington? Cutting up letters?
The little old man ran round his desk like a terrier trying to remember where he’s buried a bone. Back of his desk was an American flag drooping from an ebony pole, the perch of a golden eagle. Captain Motes hesitated, prodding his dubbined toe into the rich nap of the rug.
— I won’t lie to the general, he said softly, returning to the position of attention. Washington is . . . well, disappointed at the intelligence setup here. No BCD. No traveler censorship at the airport. As they understand it, and the general does too, a base section must do all the brainwork for our fighting men . . .
— Close your yap, the general screamed, running in the opposite direction. I suppose this means I’ll never get my second star.
— There was talk in Washington, Captain Motes said, discreetly lowering his voice, of the fine work the general is doing here. . . . One man can’t think of everything, sir.
— Very well! . . . Shut up and listen to me and stop rubbing your hands. I’m giving you a direct order. VOCG. The stencils will be cut this afternoon. . . . It is my desire that you take charge of all censorship in the Atlantic Base Section. . . . Are you listening? I don’t want to be bothered ever again with any of this damn G-2 nonsense, do you hear, captain? I delegate it all to you. Read all the letters you please. But I don’t ever want to see your face again unless I send for you. Now get the hell out of my office.
Captain Motes saluted and wheeled into the streets of Casablanca.
So as the North African Theater of Operations became the ominous and murky name NATOUSA, Captain Motes became postal censor of this area, which some thought was an Ayrab city which they sought in vain on the maps of Morocco and Algeria. The importance of the work of censorship made Captain Motes secretive and distrustful. He was jealous of the weight of his own mission. He thought of himself as uneasy and as friendless as a king. After office hours he tended to spend all his time in his hotel room, dreaming up ways to extend his censorship empire. Eventually, as the war came onto the continent of Europe, he saw himself as chief theater censor with offices in each new fallen city. And as Hollywood magnates acquire the feeling that they control the emotions of the world, so did Captain Motes grow aware that he wielded a baton over the thoughts of all the soldiers and officers in North Africa.
He became more nervous. His walk developed a sidelong twitch that was almost a wish. He smoked more because he couldn’t take to cognac and Casablancaises the way all the others seemed to. His head was too full of military secrets and classified material for him to trust himself to relax. If he drank or made love, he’d babble of recondite things. His hair was growing gray. He never told Lucinda exactly what he was doing, even though he had the privilege of sending his letters out of the theater with his special stamp affixed. He discouraged his officers’ leaving the city where they worked, for he had a dread of intelligence officers’ getting together and hashing over what they knew. Finally he decreed that all officers working together should mess and live together in the same billets.
— Captain, said one of his examiners, isn’t it hell enough to have to read mail all day long side by side with sixty other officers at the same table? Do I have to look at their ugly faces for twenty-four hours on end?
— This is war, Captain Motes answered, lighting a cigarette from the butt of the last. People in Tunisia are living in the same foxholes month after month. Goddam it, you’re better off than most of the people in the States.
— Are you threatening me with the front? It would be heaven besides sitting on my arse for eight hours a day and going blind over trying to decipher what an illiterate Negro writes to his ex-shack job back in Georgia. . . . Smiles. . . . Ha-ha, baby. . . . Letter writing is no longer a fine art, captain. . . . I’m bucking for a section eight.
— You were commissioned in military intelligence, Captain Motes replied, toying with Lucinda’s picture. Do you wish to resign your rank?
— I’m going rapidly mad, the lieutenant said.
— If you think you are, it’s a sure sign you’re not. . . . Take the afternoon off and go to the movies.
Captain Motes heard that his officers were using the unit’s trucks for week-end trips to Fez and Rabat. He ordered the practice to cease at once. What would the taxpayers say if they knew that the gasoline they were doing without was being used for pleasure jaunts? He took none himself. He even begrudged himself his personal jeep. He looked with a bloodshot eye on the time his officers spent with the girls of Casablanca, talking French, which he couldn’t understand. God only knew what military secrets they might be revealing to these girls. One day he made a speech to all his command as they sat under the rows of strung lights at the long tables laden with mail. They peered at him from under their eyeshades:
— We must not forget, men, that a short time ago these French were entertaining the Germans. They shot at our boys when they landed here. . . . I’m putting this to you as American commissioned officers. Do you think it . . . prudent to . . . fraternize with these French? . . . I am not forbidding it, gentlemen. I merely suggest that you think it over. On whose side are you fighting? These North African French are simply milking you for all they can get.
— But the captain knows no French, a voice spoke up. A lot of us do, and enjoy talking the language.<
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— That’s beside the point. Neither do I know Japanese. I simply would think twice about handing over my PX rations and my health to some woman who doesn’t even pay me the compliment of learning my language. God only knows what’s going on in the back of a frog’s head.
— I resent that! another voice cried. The French are our allies.
— Well, think it over, gentlemen, Captain Motes said. Think it over. . . . Remember that you’re in Africa to help win a war.
After this uneasy session Captain Motes rarely addressed his commands directly. He knew their hostility. He arranged that the base post office should send him all his officers’ mail. He read it and censored it in his hotel room each evening. A leader must know how far he can trust his subordinates. Many evenings at his desk his cheeks scorched at what was said about him in V-mails. But now he had an exact index of whom he could trust of his officers and how far. From the letters of a plump sturdy lieutenant he chose his executive officer.
Lieutenant Frank was a cavalry sergeant of the regular army, paunchy, bluff, and, he said, straightshooting. He’d come up the hard way, so he had no use for an army of conscripts and pale civilians commissioned after ninety days at officer candidate school. Lieutenant Frank entered rooms like a steam roller, never knocking, but kicking doors open. Oaths dropped liberally from his lips. He said that men must be sworn at to get things done.
— Them goddam letter openers, he would cry. A buncha ninnies. Commissioned schoolteachers. . . . Ya too kind withem, captain.
I treat em like an old first sergeant, and they think morea me. Throw the book at em when they step outa line. It’s the only language they’ll understand.
— But they’re commissioned officers in the United States Army.
— Ah, crud. They’ll do as they’re tole. They’re in the army, ain’t they? They’ll take their orders just like you an me.
Lieutenant Frank sometimes nudged his commanding officer to bring home the point of his remarks. Captain Motes smiled fastidiously. But under the influence of Lieutenant Frank a new regimen was adopted in all the base censorship detachments of North Africa. The ten-minute break for each hour was abolished. Examiners were permitted one fifteen-minute interval in the morning, one in the afternoon. A time clock was set up at the entrance of each examination room. Each officer must punch his ticket as he entered and left work. There was no going to the latrine without permission of the front office. In order to step up the number of letters that each officer read, no talking or whispering was permitted at the examination tables. Officers late to their office hours were restricted to quarters for the week end and given a punishment OD. Captain Motes told his officers through the mouth of Lieutenant Frank that they must not forget they were still in the army; there was danger of hemorrhoids and potbellies from too much sitting.
Sometimes, sitting till after midnight in his hotel room and hearing the buzz of Casablanca fade out till there was only the moaning of the sea, Captain Motes found it necessary to condemn letters that his officers had written home. He read them all now every night. For they bitched to their wives and friends about the work and about himself. He was hurt and astonished to see how indiscreetly intelligence officers wrote. He suspected that the constant handling of classified matter had blunted their sensitivity to security measures. One officer wrote to his girl:
A commissioned officer in the United States Army! Why, with this introverted bastard who’s our CO, I had more prestige and privilege as a Pfc! I think that nothing worse can happen in this outfit, and it always does. . . .
Captain Motes didn’t speak directly to the officer who wrote this letter. He simply had him transferred to the Oran office, with orders that he be employed on the table where all day long packages were opened, censored, and tied up again. Work for grocery clerks, but done by men with bars.
Often in the mornings he’d stand in front of the plate-glass screen that shut off the front office from the room where the mail was examined. He’d observe the examiners at their work, how many were reading Stars and Stripes or magazines on the government’s time, how many were writing V-mails, how many were staring into space. As a result of this reconnoitering a new order came out, signed by Lieutenant Frank as executive officer. This order stated that each officer must read two hundred ordinary letters or five hundred V-mails in one working day. Those who fell below their quota would report for evening duty. But because Captain Motes had observed how pale and weary his examiners had grown under the screaming nitrogen reading lamps, he prescribed one hour of close-order drill for all officers after work was done in the afternoon, to be taken in the open sunlight. The order ended rationally and sweetly:
— We are all officers and owe it to ourselves and our country to keep in A-1 physical condition.
As he was about to leave the front office that evening, Captain Motes had a visit from one of his letter openers, the redheaded Lieutenant Almeranti, who’d been yanked out of the armored force into censorship. Captain Motes knew him only from the beetling and whining letters he wrote home. Lieutenant Almeranti’s red eyebrows were bouncing like springs. He leaned with both hands on Captain Motes’s desk.
— Don’t you believe in standing at attention before your commanding officer?
— I’m not an enlisted man. And I’m tired of playing soldier around here. . . . You’re demoralizing all of us by treating us like prisoners of war. You’re made a sweatshop of this detachment and then you turn around and pretend you’re GI. You’re not. You’re the warden of a reform school. . . . Captain, I want a transfer. . . . Are you trying to drive us all crazy? Have you ever sat and tried to read mail for eight hours? After a while your head starts to whirl and all you can think about is the war and your home and your wife . . .
— It is a difficult task, Captain Motes said smoothly. As your commanding officer, no one is more aware of your complaints than I. . . . As I wrote my wife only last night, there are many unsung heroes in the rear echelons. At the front they face danger. Here we die of boredom. . . . Did I ever tell you about my wife? She’s something of a writer. This is her latest book of verse, Lieutenant . . . ?
— Can’t you even remember my name? . . . Listen, captain. I want to pull out of this censorship shit. I was trained for the armored force. I’m willing to go into combat. . . . It’s this negative work, day after day after day, that gets me. . . . I want some action. I’ll risk my life rather than my reason. . . . But I won’t sit out the war on my tail snipping Casablanca off the dateline of letters.
— Don’t undervalue yourself, Captain Motes said, lighting another cigarette. You’re an expert, and censorship is a very restrictive field. Don’t imagine that every officer in the army is capable of doing what you’re doing.
— That’s all very fine, Lieutenant Almeranti said, tossing his lion’s mane, but I still wish to get transferred out of your outfit.
— Then have the sergeant major type you up a transfer.
— What good will that do if you only write disapproved on it? . . . Listen, captain. I know G-2 policy inside out. They hold onto their personnel like bulldogs so they can have big commands and get promotions . . . by our sweat. . . . I want your permission to go over your head for this transfer.
— You have it, Captain Motes said with weary sweetness. Tomorrow I’m giving you an hour off from work to go to the Shell Building and see the A C of S G-2 yourself.
— This is almost too good to be true, Lieutenant Almeranti said.
He saluted and left the front office.
When the lieutenant had gone, Captain Motes thought and smoked three cigarettes. Then he put out his hand for his field phone. He knew that the assistant chief of staff G-2 for ABS stayed late in his office in the Shell Building. There he drank, played solitaire, wrote poetry for Stars and Stripes, and made love to his French secretary. So Captain Motes dialed, hoping to find this colonel in. He was.
— Colonel? Evening. . . . Motes speaking, sir. . . . How are tricks? Long time
no see. . . . Well, fancy that, sir. . . . Sir, I have a problem, and a man of your experience should be able to see right to the bottom of it. Are you listening, colonel? I’ll only take a moment of your time, sir. . . .
Then over the phone, dropping his voice as though the wires were tapped, Captain Motes told the tale of a certain officer of his who wished to leave his outfit. Of how the man was incompetent and unworthy of his commission. Of how this officer should not be permitted to go to another outfit, where he might irreparably sabotage the war effort of the United States. Of how at present he was doing a minimum of harm by reading letters, which after all was a job for a deadhead. How Captain Motes hoped by his influence to rehabilitate this officer and make him again into a real man. Of how this officer was often drunk and scandalous in public. Of how this officer in question would probably come in to see the colonel tomorrow with a pack of alarmist lies. . . .
When he’d finished telephoning, Captain Motes sighed over the perfidy of the world, donned his field jacket, and went out into the sunset on the Boulevard de la Gare. He messed at the Roi de la Bière. As he sat down to his soup of C-ration, a young lieutenant in the seat opposite rose until he’d taken his chair. This pleased Captain Motes. Deference to rank was rarely observed in officers’ messes outside the United States. Then he realized he’d seen the young lieutenant that very morning, one of five fresh replacements to his own detachment of censors. As he dabbed at his mouth with his napkin, he looked the young lieutenant over: the brown face, the thick oiled mustache, the huge eyes of beasties peering out of copses (Lucinda’s phrase).
— Just call me Stuki, the lieutenant said.
His teeth seemed of vanilla.
— Well, of course there are certain formalities to be observed, said Captain Motes amiably. Unless I’m mistaken, I’m your new commanding officer.
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