As quickly as he could, he hid the shotguns under their mattress and told Brunhilde if she had any feelings for him at all, she would never tell anyone what he was hiding because if Master Sergeant Quigley ever learned about them he would be instantly sent over to the NCO Academy of the U.S. Army School of Infantry Excellence, where he would be subjected to rigid physical training eight or more hours a day, to the point of exhaustion, day after day, in the dark.
Brunhilde, surprising him, promised to keep her mouth shut.
And surprising him even more, she kept her promise.
PPL, he came to understand, meant Professional Papers Library. And in Phil’s case, this meant the three volumes of The Daily Notes of CIC Administrator P. W. Williams.
These quickly joined the shotguns under the mattress.
[ FOUR ]
Over the next several months, things went well for Technical Sergeant and Mrs. Williams. Brunhilde complained every once in a while that she really missed her double Slivovitz with water on the side and her cigars, but understood that was the price she had to pay for having let her lust carry her away.
And she made some friends.
There were a number of other German-speaking women married to sergeants at Fort Benning and she had quickly met some of them. There were also a number of German-speaking women married to commissioned officers and gentlemen at Fort Benning, but they, of course, did not associate socially with their sisters unfortunate enough to be married to common enlisted men. The German-speaking women married to commissioned officers who belonged to the Fort Benning Chapter of the West Point Protective Association of course spoke only to each other.
Brunhilde’s new German-speaking women friends quickly began to explain in detail what horrors she could expect when she got to the delivery room of the Fort Benning Hospital Maternity Ward, but she said that whatever these horrors would be, they were the price she would have to pay because she had been unable to control her lust.
On his part, Phil was learning that there were things associated with having one’s wife in the family way that he had never previously considered. For one thing, now that she was eating for two, so to speak, her appetite doubled. And what she hungered for was filet mignon and fresh oysters, that sort of thing, as opposed to hamburgers and breaded fish sticks.
And she required additions to her wardrobe, as she was getting a little thick in the midsection and all of her shoes had apparently shrunk as she could no longer slip—or jam—her feet into them.
All of this cost money.
Phil had a nice little nest egg after two years on per diem in lieu of rations and quarters plus hazardous duty pay and especially after he had learned he could charge restaurant and room service charges to the CIA. But that nest egg was shrinking, if eggs can be said to shrink.
He was perfectly prepared to take a second job, so to speak, as many members of the USAAMU Varsity Team did, as bartenders in the many officers’ clubs in which the Fort Benning Officer Corps slaked their thirsts.
The Varsity members could hold such jobs, because they finished their shooting tours at about 1600, which gave them plenty of time to shower and put on their bartender’s uniforms and get to the officers’ clubs in time for the 1700 rush hour.
The Junior Varsity, on the other hand, was required, when the Varsity quit shooting at 1600, to “police the area for expended brass and hulls.” This meant the spent casings of rifle and pistol cartridges and shotgun shells had to be picked up from the many ranges of the USAAMU, sorted by size, and then placed in boxes that then had to be loaded into Master Sergeant Quigley’s Suburban.
Quigley generously took care of further disposal, which was whispered to be by selling them to the Columbus, Georgia, Reloader’s Supply Company. Whether or not this was true, it was true that Master Sergeant Quigley had a Cadillac as well as the Suburban and had quite a reputation as a big spender at the Fort Benning NCO Club.
Policing the brass kept Phil at the USAAMU at least until 1730, which was too late to go to work at an officers’ club bar, and almost too late to prepare whatever Brunhilde had found in the luxury foods section of the commissary for him to cook for her supper.
Phil was sorely tempted to get the hell off the Junior Varsity, which he could easily accomplish by going twenty-five straight, but feared that if he did so, Master Sergeant Percy J. Quigley would smell a rat about his suddenly improved marksmanship and ship him out to the NCO Academy of the U.S. Army School of Infantry Excellence, where he would undergo rigid physical training eight or more hours a day, to the point of exhaustion, day after day, in the dark.
So, as his nest egg shrunk by the day, he decided the best thing to do was stay with the Junior Varsity for a while.
[ FIVE ]
Quarters 103B
Bataan Death March Avenue
Fort Benning, Georgia
Thursday, March 9, 1950
A month after his HG&PPL arrived, so did his personal mail.
This consisted entirely of alumni news bulletins. Having nothing better to do at the time—Brunhilde was out with the girls learning more about what horrors she could expect to experience in the maternity ward—he read them.
The front page of one of them, the one from Groton, caught his eye. There was a photograph of a distinguished Groton alumni handing the Groton headmaster, the Reverend Peabody Jones, D.D., a check. Phil knew the chap to be Cumings Bradshaw IV because they had been at Groton together.
The accompanying story said that ol’ Cumings was now editor in chief of the Old American Library, which was not surprising when Phil thought about it since ol’ Cumings had been editor in chief of the Monthly Grotonian and had told Phil that when he finished at Groton and then at Harvard, he was going to ask his father to buy him a publishing company, as he didn’t want to follow his father into the hedge fund trade because of its crass commercialism.
An idea popped into Phil’s mind that at first seemed insane, but after some thought he decided might not to be so insane after all. He had said more than once that his perusal of CIC agent reports vis-à-vis the sexual hanky-panky of field grade officers and their dependents for strikeovers, grammatical errors, and ambiguities had given him enough knowledge of such hanky-panky to write a book.
What the hell? What have I got to lose? he thought aloud, and reached for the telephone.
Ol’ Cumings wasn’t at the Harvard Club, but Phil ran him to earth at the 21 Club at 21 West Fifty-second Street.
Cumings came on the line: “Phil, old boy! How the hell are you? I’ve always wondered what happened to you after you got the boot from our beloved Groton.”
“I went into the Army, Cumings, old chum, where I have had many experiences which I have been thinking of turning into a book. I wondered if you, as esteemed editor in chief of the Old American Library, might be interested in publishing it.”
“There is always a market, old chum Phil, for books about our brave men in uniform, just so long as the patriotism, devotion to duty, courage, et cetera, is liberally laced with sex, the more perverted the better.”
“Really?”
“I EXPLETIVE DELETED!! you not, old chum. So why don’t you take a shot at it, so to speak, pop it into an envelope, and send it up here for me to peruse?”
Phil immediately, which means that very night, started work on what was to become his first published work, Comfort Me With Love, which is what a general’s wife had ordered her husband’s aide-de-camp to try to do.
The first passages of the work were written in pencil on a lined pad on the kitchen table of Quarters 103B on Bataan Death March Avenue in NCO Town, but the next day—and every day after that—Phil brought an Underwood typewriter home from the USAAMU and creatively wrote on that.
Brunhilde thought his creative writing was a dumme EXPLETIVE DELETED!! Verschwendung von Zeit, which means, “stupid EXPLETIVE DELETED!! waste of ti
me,” but he persevered, and a month later, when he had finished, he popped the pages into an envelope and sent them off to ol’ Cumings for his perusal.
A week later, a letter arrived:
THE OLD AMERICAN LIBRARY
MADISON AVENUE AT 51ST STREET
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
OFFICE OF THE EDITOR IN CHIEF
Dear Old Chum Phil—
I have now had the chance to peruse your manuscript, “Comfort Me With Love,” and regrettably must inform you its 100 pages do not meet our minimum page count of 200.
On the other hand, it shows some promise, and I am enclosing herewith a contract for its publishing and a check for $500, which we in the publishing profession call an “on signing” payment. If you double the length of your literary work to 200 pages, and said doubling meets my approval, there will be another check for $500 which we in publishing call the “on acceptance” payment. Even further down the pike, there will be still another check for $500 when the book is published, which we plan to do so with a cover price of $0.25.
If I don’t get the expanded manuscript within six months—and the more sex you can get into the expansion the better—you will have to return the “on signing” check for $500.
With best regards and fond memories of our days at dear Old Groton, I am,
Faithfully yours,
Cumings
Cumings Bradshaw IV
It took Phil—who had, the reader with even a half-decent memory will remember, literally years of experience removing excess verbiage from draft reports—about six days to put excess verbiage into his first draft of Comfort Me With Love and pop it into an envelope to send it to ol’ Cumings for his perusal.
Ten days later, he got the $500 “on acceptance” check, and immediately began work on Opus #2, to which he gave the tentative title Comfort Me with Cucumbers, which was what a lieutenant colonel of the female persuasion had asked her lady friend, a captain, to do.
It is germane to note here that at this time Phil was being compensated for his labor at the USAAMU at a monthly rate of $367.70, and thus regarded each of the $500 checks as a EXPLETIVE DELETED!! fortune.
It is also germane to note here that Phil had learned that Brunhilde devoutly believed that money was made to be spent as quickly as possible and as he thought he should be establishing a little nest egg for his soon-to-be-born firstborn, he didn’t tell her the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about his income from his creative writing. Specifically, he told her the total amount came to $500.
She was pleased to hear this, commenting that perhaps his idea to be a writer wasn’t as much of a dumme EXPLETIVE DELETED!! Verschwendung von Zeit as she had previously thought.
The next step in Phil’s new publishing career came with the arrival of the galley page proofs for Comfort Me With Love. When ol’ Cumings had telephoned to announce, “I’m shipping you the galleys,” Phil had a mental picture of two or more old-time nautical vessels with banks of oars protruding from their sides arriving at Quarters 103B on Bataan Death March Avenue on a flatbed eighteen-wheel truck.
The galleys turned out to be unbound pages of Comfort Me With Love. As soon as he made any corrections to them, the corrected pages would be sent to the printer for printing, binding, and ultimate release to the public.
Then Phil saw the title page: A Novel by Philip W. Williams III.
And he was as unexpectedly thrilled as he had been when he went in their bedroom at the Hotel Bristol and found Brunhilde lying on the bed in transparent intimate undergarments and with a rose in her teeth.
It was, like the sight of Brunhilde lying on the bed in transparent intimate undergarments and with a rose in her teeth the day of their marriage, something he would remember to his dying day.
But then a chill swept through his body.
He suddenly realized that with his name on the cover, the Army would quickly deduce that the literary lion writing in such detail about the hanky-panky of majors and up and their dependents was actually Technical Sergeant P. W. Williams of the USAAMU and then his EXPLETIVE DELETED!! or his EXPLETIVE DELETED!!—probably both—would really be in a crack.
What he needed was a nom de plume, which since he now spoke French, he knew meant pen name.
After many hours of deep thought and study of telephone books, he had narrowed the myriad name possibilities down to two. One was “Tom Clancy,” which he thought had a really nice writer’s ring to it, and the other was “Wallingford Philips,” of which he one day could prove ownership if the need arose.
Unable to make an intellectual decision between the two, he flipped a coin . . . and Tom Clancy lost.
[ SIX ]
Fort Benning, Georgia
Monday, June 5, 1950
When the first ten free bound copies of Comfort Me With Love by Wallingford Philips arrived several months later, he looked at his first published work as awestruck as he would be at 0545 the next day when he looked for the first time at the somewhat ruddy wrinkled face of Brunhilde Williams.
Not his wife, but his firstborn.
The way that happened was that shortly after one a.m., he had been awakened by Brunhilde, who reeked of Slivovitz and had a cigar clenched between her teeth.
“Take me to the hospital!” she had ordered. “My day of reckoning for not being able to control my lust has arrived.”
“I couldn’t help but smell the Slivovitz and see the cigar,” Phil said as he hastily dressed.
“I’ve been on the wagon for eight months,” Brunhilde replied. “And suffered the pangs of unsatisfied nicotine addiction for a like period. That’s over. It’s been over since Mother Nature told me This Is The Day, which occurred about a half hour ago. Got it?”
Approximately four hours later, he was allowed into Brunhilde’s room, where Brunhilde was cradling an infant in her arms. The only reason Phil was allowed into the room at that time was that the chief of obstetrical services hoped that Brunhilde’s husband could convince the new mother to give up her cigar, which he had been so far unable to do.
Finally, the chief of obstetrical services admitted defeat and left the new family alone.
“What are we going to call it?” Phil asked.
“It’s a her, stupid,” the new mother said.
“Well, what are we going to call her?”
“If she had been a he, what would you have suggested we call him?”
“I was thinking along the lines, should that have occurred, of Philip Wallingford Williams the Fourth. Sort of a familial tradition.”
“I think it’s a great familial tradition,” Brunhilde said. “Say hello to your daughter Brunhilde, Daddy.”
[ SEVEN ]
Fort Benning, Georgia
Friday, October 6, 1950
The next four months or so were a mixed bag for Phil.
On one hand, he realized that for the first time in his life, he was really in love.
With Brunhilde—the one in diapers, of course.
On those rare occasions when he was allowed to hold his firstborn in his arms, he made goo-goo eyes at her and made strange noises, to which she responded in kind.
He came to understand that Brunhilde was the only child he would ever have, as the day he brought Brunhilde and Brunhilde home from the hospital Brunhilde (the mother) moved him out of their bedroom and into the nursery, telling him that when the time came, she would move Brunhilde (the one in diapers) out of what had been their bedroom and back into the nursery and he could move back into Bedroom #1 with her.
From the way Brunhilde (the mother) was treating him—actually not treating him . . . it was as if he had suddenly become invisible—he thought that when the time came for him to move back into their bedroom, they would have to roll him in on a wheelchair from where he would be living in the geriatric intensive care ward.
On the other hand, things at the USAAMU went well. He finally had enough of picking up brass and empty shot shells and “earned his way” off the Junior Varsity and into the big time, or Varsity.
What actually happened was that he had about six beers too many at lunch and forgot himself. What he did specifically was go ninety-eight straight—the first time he’d done that on a USAAMU range. Then, with two shells left, he compounded his sin by turning his back on the traps, bending over so that his head and the Remington Skeet Special were between his knees, and called for “doubles,” which caused two birds to be thrown simultaneously from both the High House and the Low House. Both birds, which were of course #99 and #100 in his possible one hundred straight, disappeared in two puffs of black dust.
He waited for the ax to fall, but it didn’t.
Master Sergeant Percy J. Quigley personally pinned his “1st Award—100-Straight” embroidered patch to Phil’s shooting vest at a specially called Retreat Parade, welcomed him to the Varsity Team, and told him to pack his bags, as the Varsity Team was going to Fort Dix, New Jersey, to compete against a team from the U.S. Coast Guard.
From the moment Phil had taken his head and the Model 1100 Skeet Special from between his knees, Phil had really expected that Master Sergeant Percy J. Quigley would personally take him over to the NCO Academy in handcuffs to begin the “eight or more hours a day, to the point of exhaustion, day after day, in the dark” regimen that would last until the day his enlistment was up.
The only things Phil could think of to explain Quigley’s not having done so were that Quigley planned to arrange a fatal accident on the Fort Dix Skeet Range. Or that Quigley, himself a father, knew that new fathers often lost control, and took pity on him. Whatever the reason, Phil vowed it would be a cold day in hell before he would ever again be so foolish as to go one hundred straight again.
When he told Brunhilde that he was reluctantly going to have to leave her and Brunhilde alone for a few days, as the Army was sending him to Fort Dix, she replied, “I don’t give a good EXPLETIVE DELETED!! where you go.”
The Hunting Trip Page 25