When she came out of the shower and was drying herself, she heard the kids’ voices in her bedroom. She wondered if Bobby just wanted to be with Mommy or if Bobby was already developing a curiosity about females. He was hardly old enough for that, but on the other hand, he was Bob’s son. She remembered the first time Bob had talked her into taking her clothes off. At Fort Riley. She remembered that very clearly. She was seven, so Bob must have been eight. A naked little girl and a naked little boy, staring at each other with frank curiosity. He had a thing, and she didn’t.
The next time he had seen her without her pants she had been twenty and he had been a twenty-one-year-old second lieutenant. It had been in a room in the Carlyle Hotel in New York City on the first night of their honeymoon.
“Jesus Christ,” Bob had said. “It grew a beard.”
The bastard. So had his. And she’d told him so.
Barbara stuck her head through the bathroom door.
“Scram, Bobby,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because boys aren’t supposed to be around when ladies aren’t wearing clothes,” Barbara said. “Go wait for Chaplain McGrory.”
“Is he coming again?”
“Yes, he is,” Barbara said. “Now beat it.”
When he had finally made a reluctant retreat, Barbara came out of the bathroom naked and got dressed. Eleanor, a year younger than her brother, sat in the middle of the bed and watched her get dressed, first a bra and pants and a half-slip and a garter belt and stockings (no girdle, not even after two kids), and then making up her face and doing her hair. Finally she put on a gray suit, and last, her jewelry: her wedding ring and her engagement ring, and the miniature of Bob’s West Point class ring.
She always had a question in her mind about wearing the engagement ring on occasions like this. It was a four-carat, emerald-cut diamond. Worth a bundle. It had been Bob’s mother’s. When, to absolutely no one’s surprise, she had come back from the Spring Hop at the Point and announced that she and Bob were going to be married the day after he graduated, General Bellmon had given Bob the ring to give to her. She hadn’t even had to have it resized.
It had never been a problem with the enlisted wives, who either didn’t notice it, or thought it was costume jewelry, or thought that all officers’ wives had diamonds like that. But it had gotten looks from some of the officers’ wives on whom she had made “notification calls” with Father Bob.
The army sent a chaplain, and an officer of equal or senior rank, and, if one was available (as Barbara inarguably was), a regular officer’s wife to offer what help and comfort she could.
She had received some jealous looks, a jealousy born of the fact that she was an officer’s wife whose husband was still alive, who wasn’t being visited by a notification team. That entirely understandable jealousy, however, sometimes changed into material jealousy. She couldn’t be blamed for bearing condolences, for being the visitor instead of the visited. But she could be resented for being rich, for being part of the aristocracy within the army: those with private means, those who waited for the men to come home in a fifteen-room, servant-filled house on ten acres overlooking the Pacific instead of a tiny rented apartment, those with four-carat, emerald-cut engagement rings worth a major’s annual pay and allowances.
But she always ended up wearing it. It was a symbol. It had been on the third finger of an officer’s lady’s left hand for half a century, and one day, Bobby’s lady would wear it.
Barbara stood on one foot again and slipped her feet into brown pumps. They were too tight. Her feet always seemed to swell after she played eighteen holes.
Then she gestured toward the door and followed as Eleanor toddled out of her bedroom and down the tiled corridor to the living room, a large and airy room full of books and souvenirs and General Waterford’s collection of silver cups from polo fields and equestrian competition all over the world.
The Reverend Robert T. McGrory, S. J., Colonel, Chaplain’s Corps, United States Army, got to his feet when he saw her walk in the room. Some chaplains looked like what they really were, clergymen in a uniform that was actually the antithesis of their calling. “Father Bob” was tall, red-haired, ruddy-faced, and built like a football player. His uniforms were impeccably tailored, and he wore them with every bit as much flair as General Waterford wore his; more, Barbara had often thought, than Bob did.
Every time she saw Father Bob, she remembered reading that the Jesuits had acquired a great deal of power by making themselves available to the nobility in Europe, and wondered if that was what Mac had really been up to all these years.
Normally, she called him “Bob.” She was Episcopal, after all; and Bob had been in her life, on and off, as long as she could remember. Calling him “Father” seemed a little forced.
But today, he had brass with him. A bird colonel she didn’t recognize.
“Hello, Father,” Barbara said. “Handsome as ever, I see.”
“Barbara, this is Colonel Destin,” Mac said, putting his arm around her shoulders, and then stooping over to pick up Eleanor.
“How do you do, Colonel?” Barbara said, giving him her hand.
“Mrs. Bellmon,” the colonel replied.
“Someone senior this time?” Barbara asked.
“I’m afraid so,” Colonel Destin said.
I don’t like the way that sounds, Barbara thought. Father McGrory put his arm around her shoulders again.
“Mrs. Bellmon,” Colonel Destin said. “I have the unfortunate duty to inform you that your husband, Lieutenant Colonel Robert F. Bellmon, is missing in action and presumed to be dead after action near Sidi-Bou-Zid, Tunisia, as of 17 February.”
“Oh, shit,” Barbara Bellmon said. Without being aware that she was doing it, she balled her hands into fists and then smashed them together.
“It’s only presumed, Barbara,” Father Bob said.
“Save it, Chaplain,” Barbara said, nastily. She took Eleanor from him, and held her as she walked to the window looking down on the Pacific. The child cuddled up close and didn’t struggle to be put down. Finally, Barbara set the child on her feet. Then she sat down on the windowsill and looked at the two officers.
“Who’s the other one?” she asked. Destin didn’t understand what she was asking.
“A warrant officer named Sanchez,” Father Bob said. “We got word that he died in a prison camp in the Philippines.”
“Would you like a cup of coffee, or something to eat, before we go see her?” Barbara asked.
Father McGrory took a long time to reply.
“Are you sure you want to, Barbara?” he asked, finally.
“What else should I do?” she replied. “Sit around here and have hysterics?”
Fighting back the tears, she walked across the living room and down the corridor to the front door and outside. She looked up at the flag, and went to the pole and lowered it to half-mast. Then she looked up at it. She leaned her forehead against the flagpole, and fought back the urge to weep.
“What the hell am I doing?” she asked aloud, pushing herself erect. “I’ll believe he’s dead when I see his casket, and not before.” Then she ran the flag all the way back up the pole again.
She wept a little later that day, with Mrs. Sanchez, but that was for Mrs. Sanchez, not for Bob or herself. She didn’t weep again, not that evening at dinner, looking at her mother’s face, nor that night, when she went to bed, nor the next morning when she woke up early and lay in bed and told herself that the way the army worked, the odds were that Bob really had bought the farm, and the only reason they hadn’t come out and said so was because they hadn’t found his body. And that meant that this was the first day of her life that she could remember that Bob wasn’t going to be around.
She wept ten days later when they called from the Western Union office and said they had a telegram for her, and did she want them to read it to her. She knew what it would be, and she didn’t want to hear it read over the phone, so she said she w
ould be in the village and would pick it up herself. After she wept, she got dressed and drove the old Ford convertible into the village and picked up the yellow envelope in the Western Union office and carried it out to the car to read it.
WAR DEPARTMENT
WASHINGTON DC
MRS. BARBARA BELLMON
CASA MANANA
CARMEL, CALIFORNIA
A LIST FURNISHED BY THE GERMAN AUTHORITIES VIA THE INTERNATIONAL RED CROSS STATES THAT LT COL ROBERT F. BELLMON, 0–348808, IS A PRISONER OF WAR. NO CONFIRMATION IS AVAILABLE, NOR IS ANY OTHER INFORMATION OF ANY KIND AVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. YOU WILL BE PROMPTLY NOTIFIED IN THE EVENT ANY INFORMATION DOES BECOME AVAILABLE.
INFORMATION REGARDING PRISONERS OF WAR GENERALLY IS AVAILABLE FROM THE PERSONNEL OFFICER OF ANY MILITARY CAMP POST OR STATION. FOR YOUR INFORMATION, THE CLOSEST MILITARY INSTALLATION TO YOUR HOME IS: HUNTER-LIGGETT MILITARY RESERVATION, CALIFORNIA.
YOU MIGHT ALSO WISH TO MAKE CONTACT WITH THE PENINSULA INTERSERVICE OFFICERS LADIES ASSOCIATION, PO BOX 34, CARMEL, CALIFORNIA. THIS UNOFFICIAL GROUP OFFERS ADVICE AND SOME FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE IF REQUIRED.
EDWARD F. WITZELL
MAJOR GENERAL
THE ADJUTANT GENERAL
When she learned Bob was alive, then she let it out, right there in the car, and then she went home and told her mother that it would be all over Carmel that she’d been on a crying jag, right downtown.
(Four)
Bizerte, Tunisia
9 March 1943
The POW enclosure had its prisoners under canvas, much of it American, captured during the German offensive. The enlisted men were separated from the officers, and the company grade officers were separated from the field grade.
The squad tent in which Major Robert Bellmon was housed also held a lieutenant colonel of the Quartermaster Corps, who had been captured while looking for a place to put his ration and clothing dump, and an artillery major who had been captured while serving as a forward observer.
They had been treated well, so far, and fed with captured American rations. The camp was surrounded by coiled barbed wire, called concertina, and wooden guard towers in which machine guns had been mounted. There was no possibility of escape for the moment.
A Wehrmacht captain, accompanied by a sergeant, walked up to Bellmon’s tent and called his name.
“Yes?” Bellmon replied. He looked up from the GI cot on which he sat, but did not rise.
“Come with me, please, Herr Major,” the captain, a middle-aged man wearing glasses, said in thickly accented English. He gestured with his hand.
Bellmon walked out of the tent. The QM light bird and the artillery major looked at him quizzically. Bellmon shook his shoulders. He had no more idea of what was going on than they did.
The German sergeant took up a position behind him, and Bellmon followed the captain across the compound and through a gate. It had been cold the night before, but now, just before noon, the sun had come out, and it was actually warmer outside than it had been in the tent.
He was led to the prison compound office, a sunlit corner of a single-story building within the outer ring of barbed wire of the prison enclosure, and separated from the prisoner area by a double ring of barbed wire.
“The major wishes to see you,” the captain said, pushing open a door and motioning Bellmon through it.
Bellmon was faced with a question of protocol. The code of military courtesy provides that salutes be exchanged between junior and senior officers, even when one is a prisoner of the other. For the life of him, he could not recall what was expected of him, in his prisoner status, when reporting to a German major. In the American army, he would not have saluted another major. He decided that if it was good enough for the U.S. Army, it was good enough for where he was now.
He marched up to the desk, and stood at attention, but did not salute. If he were British, Bellmon thought, he could have stamped his foot as a sort of signal that he was now present as ordered.
The major behind the desk was an older version of the lieutenant who had stuck the captured .45 in his face the day he was captured. A good-looking, fair-skinned blond German, very military in appearance, very self-confident. The German officer looked up at Bellmon, smiled, and touched his hand to his eyebrow in a very sloppy salute. There was nothing to do but return it. The German smiled at him.
“Major Robert Bellmon,” Bellmon said. “0–348808. 17 August 1917.” Name, rank, serial number, and date of birth, as required by the Geneva Convention.
“Yes, I know, Herr Oberstleutnant,” the German major said. “Won’t you please sit down?” He indicated a folding chair. Bellmon recognized it as American. So was the bottle of bourbon on the major’s desk.
“I have some pleasant news for you,” the German major said. “Herr Oberstleutnant.”
“My rank is major,” Bellmon said.
“That’s my pleasant news, Herr Oberstleutnant,” the major said, and he slid a mimeographed sheet across the desk to Bellmon. It could easily be a forgery, but it looked perfectly authentic. It was a paragraph extracted from a general order of Western Task Force, and it announced the promotion of Major Robert F. Bellmon, Armor (1st Lt, RA), to the grade of Lieutenant Colonel, Army of the United States, effective 16 February 1943—the day before he was captured.
“And I have these for you, as well,” the major said. He opened a drawer in the desk and took from it a small sheet of cardboard, to which two silver oak leaves were pinned. The name of the manufacturer was printed on the face of the card. The insignia were American.
“Thank you,” Bellmon said. “May I have this as well?” he asked, indicating the promotion orders.
“Certainly,” the major said. As Bellmon folded them up and put them in the breast pocket of his newly issued olive-drab shirt, the major poured whiskey into two glasses. He handed one to Bellmon. Another problem of protocol, Bellmon thought. Is accepting a glass of captured whiskey from an enemy who has just presented me with a light bird’s leaf and the orders to go with it considered trafficking with the enemy?
“I don’t normally drink at this hour,” Bellmon said.
“A promotion is a special occasion,” the German said. “No matter what the hour or the circumstances.”
Bellmon picked up the glass and drank from it.
“Congratulations, Herr Oberstleutnant,” the major said, raising his glass.
“Danke schön, Herr Major,” Bellmon said. His German was fluent.
“You will be given an extra POW postcard,” the major said. “I’ve sent for one. I’m sure General Waterford will be pleased to learn that you know of your promotion.”
“Bellmon,” Bellmon said. “Lieutenant Colonel. 0-348808. 17 August 1917.” He said it with a smile, but it reminded the major that he was not going to discuss anything that could possibly be of use to the enemy.
“While this is technically an interrogation, Herr Oberstleutnant,” the major said, tolerantly, “I really am not trying to cleverly get you to reveal military secrets.”
“I’m sure you’re not,” Bellmon said, pleasantly sarcastic.
“No, I’m serious,” the major said. “We know most of the things about you that we try to find out. You’re an academy graduate, seventeenth in your class, of 1939. Your father was Major General Bellmon. You are married to Brigadier General Peterson K. Waterford’s daughter Barbara.”
Bellmon just looked at him and smiled. The major took a copy of the U.S. Army Registry and laid it on the table. Bellmon smiled wider.
“And we know where General Waterford is,” the major said.
“I’m sure you do.” Bellmon suddenly thought that if he was seeking information, he would have said where General Waterford was to get confirmation, or simply to check his reaction.
“And I really think, Herr Oberstleutnant,” the major went on. “That I know more of the present order of battle than you do. You were captured during the fluid phase of the battle, and couldn’t possibly know how things stand now.�
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“Even if I were not bound by regulation and the Geneva Convention,” Bellmon said, “and could talk freely, I rather doubt there is anything of value I could tell you.”
“Probably not,” the major said. “Front-line soldiers either know very little of interest to their interrogators, or have entirely the wrong idea of what’s really going on.”
What he’s trying to do, Bellmon decided, is lull me into making some kind of slip. But what he says is true. I don’t know any more about the order of battle of the II U.S. Corps than a cook in a rifle company.
“But just between us, Colonel,” the major went on. “What do you think of we Germans, now that we have met on the field of battle?”
Bellmon didn’t reply.
“Certainly someone who speaks German as well as you do can’t believe we’re savages?”
Damn it, why did I speak German.
“Not all of you, certainly,” he said, in English.
“Some of us, you will doubtless be surprised to learn, are civilized to the point where we scrupulously obey the Geneva Convention,” the major said. “And adhere rigidly to the standard of conduct expected of officers.”
“I’m very glad to hear that,” Bellmon said.
“Rank has its privileges,” the major said, “even in confinement. You will be flown to Italy, and possibly all the way to Germany. Majors and below are sent by ship.”
“I see,” Bellmon said, with a sinking feeling in his stomach. He had had a desperate hope that the Americans would counterattack, and that he would be freed.
“We make a real effort to insure that once senior professional officers are out of the war, they stay out of the war,” the major said. “You can conscript soldiers. Staff officers and battalion commanders cannot be trained in six months.”
“I have to agree with your reasoning,” Bellmon said.
A sergeant knocked, was told to enter, and laid a POW postcard on the major’s desk. The major took a fountain pen from his tunic and handed it to Bellmon. There was space for name, rank, serial number, and a twenty-word message, one blank line provided for each word.
The Lieutenants Page 3