Casualties of War: The Advocate Trilgy

by Bill Mesce

  “Major: what in God’s name were you thinking?”

  “Objectionobjectionobjection!” which Courie punctuated with a slap on his table. “The question is intended to be inflammatory and argumentative! We’ve already covered all this ground and to rehash it in such an insulting manner – ”

  “I read you, Captain,” Ryan said soothingly, “and you only have to object the once. Sustained! On the manner of the question.”

  Harry nodded, tried to regain himself. “I’ll re–phrase.” Speaking carefully: “Major Joyce: with all these things in mind, on what basis –…How could you not believe Dominick Sisto?”

  Joyce blinked nervously “I simply didn’t believe him. I don’t know how else to say it.”

  “You know what I think, Major? I think you didn’t want to believe him! For the first time – for the first time – Colonel Porter was being the commander you needed him to be so you could get out from under him when he led those men up that hill! And then he started being the old Colonel Porter again, and you were not going to lose this opportunity! If you could turn this thing around, well, that’d be you showing your stuff finally – ”

  But all through the now furious disquisition, Courie and Alth were both on their feet, banging on their table: “Objection! Objection! Dammit, objection!”

  “I had to go by what I could see, and what I believed cases to be!” Joyce exploded. “I had to make a decision quickly and there wasn’t time to – …” Then, exasperated, “How much was I reasonably expected to know about everything that was going on up there?” He immediately attempted to rein himself in, his arm jerkily reached for the glass, nudged it from its perch. The crack and tinkle sounded small and lost in the arch–ceilinged chapel.

  “That, Major,” Harry said glumly, “seems to be the question of the hour.”

  The chapel/courtroom grew quiet then. One of the MPs threw a fresh log in the fireplace, one fresh from outside, and the ice in its cracks popped and then hissed into small geysers of steam.

  “Colonel Voss, do you have any further questions?” Ryan prodded.

  Harry stood there in the well looking at Joyce with…I could only call that odd, almost paternal look “pity.” For a moment I thought he was going to say, “I’m sorry,” to the major who now sat slope–shouldered in the witness chair, his eyes on the floor, his last detonation evidently having drained him.

  “Colonel Voss – ”

  “No further questions,” Harry said quietly. “Thank you, Major.” He returned to his seat.

  “Captain Courie,” Ryan called, “I’d be mightily surprised if you didn’t have a re–direct?”

  “Major Joyce, you ordered Lieutenant Sisto to hold his position at the top of the hill, did you not?”

  “Yes.” Lifeless.

  “Flat out told him to hold?”

  “Yes.”

  “He refused?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cut off communication?”

  “Yes.”

  “Didn’t contact you as he should have to advise you the battalion was preparing to displace from the hill.”

  “Yes.”

  Courie nodded triumphantly and turned toward the jury panel. “The colonel brought in so many side dishes I didn’t want anybody to forget what the main course was.” He returned to his seat.

  “Major Joyce,” Ryan said, “you’re dismissed.”

  The young major didn’t rise immediately. It seemed to take him a moment to muster the strength, then he stood, slowly unfolding himself until he was upright. He looked at the splash of broken glass and water on the stone floor. For a moment, I thought the boy was going to kneel down and begin cleaning up the shards himself.

  “We’ll see that’s attended to, Major, don’t worry,” Ryan salved.

  Joyce brought himself to attention. He saluted Ryan, saluted the jury panel, then managed some semblance of the faux air of command he’d presented when he’d first entered as he turned on his heel and made for the chapel doors.

  At the defense table, Dominick Sisto had his head tilted in conversation toward Peter Ricks, while a congratulatory hand was clamped on Harry’s shoulder.

  But Harry’s attention was on Whitcomb Joyce. He watched the captain walk the full length of the chapel aisle, his eyes remaining on the heavy oak doors long after the MP sentinels had re–closed them.

  “Colonel Ryan,” Courie addressed, “the Judge Advocate’s case for the prosecution rests.”

  Harry – reluctantly it appeared – drew his attention back to the case at hand as he rose. “Defense moves for dismissal, Sir. We do not believe the prosecution has met the burden of proof on either charge.”

  It was a routine request at that particular juncture of the trial, and Ryan just as routinely dismissed it, then asked, “Is the defense ready to proceed at this time?”

  “Actually, Sir, my intended first witness is still in transit. He should be here shortly.”

  Ryan looked at his watch. “You know, it’s been a long morning. Let’s do this: I’ll call an early recess, we’ll all get to enjoy a long lunch, and then reconvene at 1300 hours. But at that time, Colonel Voss, I hope you can put somebody in the chair. So, if neither counsel has any objection…? Boy, I wish you guys could be that nice all the time. Court’s in recess, gentlemen,” and the gavel came down.

  *

  The Military Policeman outside Dominick Sisto’s quarters held the door for me as I pushed the tea trolley through, then closed and locked it behind me. I seemed to have stepped into a rather spirited in–progress debate between the lieutenant and Harry.

  Harry was standing along the curved tower wall, his eyes directed out one of the narrow windows, but the frustration in his face – both with Sisto and whatever it was his eyes were waiting to see – was clear. But in opposition to his stillness and quiet discomfiture, Sisto flitted and hovered like a sea bird, his voice excited and raised.

  “I can put this guy in the ground, Signor!” he was saying, oblivious to my entry.

  “We already talked about this, Dominick. I told you at the beginning – ”

  “You put him on the ropes, but I can lay that high–hattin’ sonofabitch out!”

  “It’s not about putting him in the ground!” Harry said, quiet as was his wont, but snappishly. “He’s not the enemy.”

  “No? Who do you think put me here? Barney Google?”

  I remained in the sheltering lee of the tea trolley. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “Thankfully, yes!” Peter Ricks said enthusiastically pulling himself out of his chair and heading for the trolley upon which the mess staff had laid on a tray of sandwiches and urn of piping coffee. As Ricks picked his way through the sandwiches looking for something that piqued his interest, I pointed to the urn.

  “I’d be after the coffee first if I were you. While it’s hot. It never seems to stay that way for long in this place.” I nodded questioningly at Harry and Sisto.

  Ricks shrugged. “I’m just trying to stay out of the line of fire,” he said through a mouthful of Spam and cheese.

  “Joyce filed the charges,” was Harry’s rejoinder to Sisto, “but the law put you here. Well, the Army’s variety of it.”

  Peter Ricks pulled Sisto away from Harry and thrust a half–sandwich at him.

  Sisto pushed it away. “I don’t feel like – ”

  With an accuracy and aplomb bred of his extensive combat experience, Ricks expertly threaded the sandwich past Sisto’s moving jaws and into his mouth. “Shut…up,” he said with understated calm. He directed Sisto toward the bed, giving him a final push that left the lieutenant seated atop the mattress. “Right now, Whit Joyce comes off in front of that jury as a kind of snot–nosed little prick who won’t dirty his hands with the doughs in the trenches or even the other officers who’ve got to do the heavy lifting. It’s not enough he’s losing on personality; he doesn’t look like he’s all–aces at his job, either.

  “You? That’s another story. You’re the
poor working stiff, a gets–his–hands dirty GI–fightin’–Joe that Mr. Never–ends–a–sentence–with–a–preposition is always picking on, that he looks down on. But you’re the guy who gets the job done! That wine cellar in Italy? I guarantee you, any one of those officers on the jury who spent time in Italy or France has had something just like that happen. Or at least knows of something like it. Their troops go off on a bender, it may not make the real Bible–beaters in the bunch happy, but they understand. The Rapido River? You broke the rules going after your buddies. That’s practically all–American! I’m surprised Courie even brought it up!”

  “He had to,” Harry said. “He had to try to discredit it because if he didn’t, he knew I’d be up there waving Dominick’s Silver Star like a Dodger pennant.”

  “If I might…?” I offered, stepping forward. Peter Ricks waved me by with a broad sweep of his arm, and Dominick Sisto – who had, by now, began devouring his “gag” – beckoned me to hold forth. “Perhaps most importantly, laddie, what your colleagues on the jury saw today was that Joyce and Porter spent most of those three days in November in the comparative comfort and safety of the battalion command post. You, on the other hand, were one of those few, those happy few, charged with having to fight an impossible fight…and giving it your all.”

  “Add it all up, Dominick,” Harry said, “and what you get is right now you look a lot like a victim. That ends the minute you open your big, goddamn mouth.”

  Which Sisto endeavored to do and was stopped by a warning finger from Peter Ricks. “All Courie has to do is get you to loose your cool just once and you spout off like you’re about to, and you’re screwed.”

  He was an intelligent enough boy to see the logic of it all, but that didn’t stop him from being completely unoffended. “You don’t think I can handle myself going head–to–head with Cue Ball?”

  “Dominick,” Harry sighed, “I’ve known you your whole life. You’re cocky. You’ve got a smart mouth. You can be a real wisenheimer sometimes. You don’t have a lot of patience for people you think are jerks.” Harry smiled with a wry warmth. “I say this as somebody who loves you, Dominick.”

  “Gee, a couple more compliments like that and I’m just gonna bust out cryin’!”

  Harry’s smiled broadened into a grin. “I think all these little foibles of yours are part of your charm. They make you a kind of North Ward – …” He frowned in puzzlement, then turned to me. “You’re the vocabulary expert, Eddie. What would the word be? Imp?”

  “Actually, by definition, I’m thinking more of a pixie.”

  At which Sisto humph–ed, and exclaimed: “Why don’t you guys just call me a queer and get it over with?”

  “Point is, what’s colorful back in the North Ward is going to play like smart–ass on the stand, and nobody likes a smart–ass.” Harry crossed and sat by Sisto, setting a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “There’s nothing you can tell them that hasn’t already come out. All you’ll do is make it tit–for–tat. It’ll look personal and then they’ll start thinking you’re both full of it.

  “Keep this in mind: when a defendant tells his own story, a jury always weighs the factor of self–interest. They instinctively know what the lawyers know and the judges know and everybody else knows: when the subject is yourself, everybody lies a little. But if you don’t testify…?”

  Sisto nodded with realization. “Then I don’t lie.”

  “Between you and Joyce, if only Joyce testifies, only Joyce lies. Ipso facto, you end up telling more of the truth by keeping your mouth shut.”

  “So I don’t testify.”

  “Say it like you mean it.”

  Sisto took a deep breath and sat erect. “I don’t testify.”

  “Say it like you love the idea.”

  The lieutenant drew up an asinine grin, and with an emphatic pump of his fist across his chest, bellowed, “I don’t testify!”

  Wincing at the volume, Harry nodded approvingly as he returned to his post by the window. “Now that you love the idea, we don’t have to have this discussion again. Right? Right. Eat your lunch.”

  I noted him nervously regarding his watch. I stood with him and offered a cigarette.

  “I hope he shows,” he said as he drew his face to the lit match I extended. “I’d hate to have to juggle the batting order now.”

  “Listen, Harry, all those notes from the interviews I and the lads conducted in Wiltz…do you think I might have a look at them again?”

  “Sure. Come by the room after court. Something up?”

  I shook my head uncertainly. “Perhaps I’m just setting a foundation to explore a few things.”

  He grimaced at the echo of his own courtroom performance. “That’s funny. Ho ho. What’re you doing here, Eddie? You should be having lunch with that very nice lady of the house again.” Then he paused, as if unsure how far he should go. It had been originally intended as a jest but I could see the change in his face. “Don’t make the same mistake twice.” Then, immediately, a look of apology, feeling he’d transgressed. But before I could tell him the counsel was appreciated rather then resented, he was drawn back to the window. “Ah, here we go!” Outside, a mud–splattered jeep slipped and slid down the snow–covered drive that ended in front of the chateau. Harry fumbled with the catch for the window and swung it open. With an uncharacteristic gusto, he called out the window: “I could do without the drama of a last–minute rescue thank you!”

  I joined Sisto and Ricks at the next window and saw Christian Van Damm standing by the jeep that had pulled up in front, puffing on the short stub of a cigar. He was in much the same condition as his vehicle: splattered with mud, his boots and trouser legs to the knee nearly a solid cake of the stuff.

  “You give lousy directions!” he called up to Harry. He took a moment to regard the towers and walls of the chateau.

  “Impressed?” Harry asked.

  With a burlesqued disdain, Van Damm flicked the stub of his cigar toward the granite walls and said, “Ahh, I know a Cicero whorehouse that puts this shack to shame!”

  The others laughed while I hoped la comtesse was nowhere within earshot.

  *

  “Major Christian Van Damm, Army Intelligence, currently attached to the G–2 staff of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force in Versailles.”

  Harry then walked Van Damm through his military curriculum vitae in reverse chronology: his years with the London–based American military Intelligence staff; his coming over with the first advance elements of the Eighth Air Force in 1942 to help lay the groundwork for that same intelligence system; an early foray even before America’s entry to the war, late 1940 into early 1941, as an observer to see how the British old hands handled their show.

  At the conclusion of this recitation, Harry turned to Courie: “Is the Judge Advocate satisfied with the witness’s credentials?”

  “We accept him as an expert witness on Intelligence matters.”

  Harry nodded his thanks and turned back to Van Damm. The G–2 colonel presented himself in not much more improved a condition than when he’d appeared in front of the chateau. Though the larger clots of mud had been shaken from his trousers and boots, he still wore the same splattered and stained kit, and he had the red eyes and unshaven trim of the weary and unrested. “Colonel Van Damm, let’s begin with the obvious. This trial is set against American operations in the Huertgen. If you can, without violating any security restrictions, can you tell us what the objective – or objectives – of those operations are? What are we doing in the Huertgen?”

  An acidic smile crossed the colonel’s wan visage. “If you find out, you let me know.” The remark brought nary a grin or snicker in the room, nor was it intended to. “I wish that was even partly a joke.” He rose to stand at the easel beside the witness stand. First of the several charts mounted there was a map covering an area of the Belgium/German border, from Aachen to the Luxembourg border, with the seventy square miles of forest the Americans colle
ctively dubbed the Huertgen shaded in gray. Van Damm made as if to begin outlining some military maneuver when he shook his head and turned to Joe Ryan. “Sir, I don’t want to violate any courtroom niceties, but I’m so hungry my head’s spinning and I’m about ready to fall over and smash my face on this hard stone floor of yours. I’ve been traveling since early this morning and all I had on the road was a D–bar. I didn’t even have time to get into some decent duds,” this last with a nod of apology to the tribunal.

  Ryan sent one of the sentries for coffee and toast, then nodded at Van Damm to continue.

  Van Damm turned back to the map. “We stumbled in there. It was in the way. It’s that simple. First Army was on an attack axis that was going to funnel it into the Monschau Corridor, a kind of plateau that’d take it through this sector. But once we got in the trees and bumped our nose – why we stayed in – well that’s something else. We could’ve – nix that – should’ve pulled out, pivoted east and west, bypassing and containing the whole area.”

  “But we didn’t.”

  “General Hodges says Ike wants all the krauts west of the Rhine cleared out in prep for the big push into Germany when the weather gets better so, hey, that means you have to clear it. General Collins at VII Corps here in the north, he says the Huertgen threatens his right flank, so he wants it cleared. He ought to come down and have a look–see for himself. That’s goddamned awful ground in there to try to launch an attack from. That’s one of the reasons we’ve been getting our arse kicked in there. What it is is goddamned great defensive ground, which is another reason we’ve been getting our arse kicked in there.”