by Bill Mesce
“Apologies. Proceed.” I took on a pose of obeisant attentiveness.
“Of course we want the book to be accurate. It’s a history, isn’t it? But then again, not quite, and that, as the gentleman from Stratford used to say, is the rub. There’s a question, here of…I think of the word, ‘tenor.’”
“Oh!” I nodded gravely. “It’s ‘tenor’ now, is it? Mayhaps we should discuss some soprano as well? And some basso profundo to round out the presentation?” Somewhere in the back of my mind I posted a reminder that, in future, I should refrain from alcoholic indulgences when lunching with my editor. But at the moment, I was feeling quite exhilarated with the toll I was taking on the poor bloke.
He started to beckon for the waiter. “I’m thinking this might be a discussion best held for another day.”
I waved the waiter off. “There are no other days!” I sounded grandly. “At least none assured, mate! Let’s have it, old man! Thrash it out! What’s the problem? What’s the difficulty? Don’t be shy, old man, we’re all over twenty–one here!”
He took a moment to settle himself in his seat and present himself with a fortitude I hadn’t thought in him. “There is a difference between when you were with the papers and this. A paper cost a few pence and all you had to do to draw a reader was have the story first. A book is a dicier proposition, as you well know. The feeling round the editorial table – the consensus – is that the marketplace – the reading public – at this moment they’re feeling a bit triumphal still. You’ve presented us with a fine work, Edward – aye, it is fine work; no one faults the execution – but we question how inclined readers may be in setting down a pound or two for a book that takes that feeling away from them.”
And then I’m afraid I got a bit haughty. As if I’d been the only one to go through the last few years eyes open. “Triumphal feeling.”
“Well, aye, in light of – ”
“The victory and all that.”
“Aye.”
“Beating down the evil Hun – well, it was the evil Hun on this side of the world. I suppose on the other side it were the yellow devils or some such.”
“You see, Edward, it’s that same mocking tone – ”
“Mocking? I’m not mocking. The Germans have their faults, mind you, starting wars and such, but they do have a penchant for trenchant philosophy, bless their black Teuton souls. ‘Liberty is from God,’ says an old Hun proverb, ‘liberties from the devil.’ We went to war for Liberty, old man, but it seems all we really wanted to win was the right to take liberties.”
“I think you’re being – ”
“What am I being, mate? Unfair? Overly critical? Dare I say it? Cynical! Good God and Heaven forefend!”
He uncrossed his legs, made as if to leave.
“Don’t.” It had the unfortunate, um, shall we say “tenor”…of a demand. “Don’t!”
And then I went on a bit of a rant, I’m afraid. Vented my spleen, you might say, fueled by yet another unnecessary drink.
I recalled to him how our noble allies the Russians had held their advance at the Vistula in August ‘44, sitting idly by while the Germans crushed the Polish Home Army’s uprising in Warsaw, left the Poles waiting for a helping hand that was never extended while jerry hunted the poor beggars down into the sewers. The Russians had not come to Poland liberators but conquerors and were quite content to let the Nazis deal with a lot promising to be just as pesky for Ivan as they had been for Adolph clamoring for liberty, freedom, and all that sort of thing. And then, when the time came, the Red Army rolled on and into Germany on a tide of rape and pillage not seen since Attila.
To be fair to our Eurasian comrades, I pointed out they’d hardly had the corner on hypocrisy. DeGaulle, that self–appointed Messiah of France, had quickly maneuvered in the first days of La Liberacion to isolate French Communists from meaningful participation in the new French Republic; this after, as members of the Resistance, so many of them had fought and bled – often in the Gestapo’s torture cellars in Lyons – on France’s behalf during the long, dark years of The Occupation.
I had been at Lake Success, I rambled on, for that first session of the new United Nations. Still had my notes I did, exact quotes of all those hyperbolic espousals of a new age of Peace, Prosperity, and Co–Operation. “They shall make war no more!” they’d rejoiced. But even before the smoke had cleared from the combat theatres, “they” were unanimously beating their ploughshares into swords and looking for new reasons to use them.
Stalin had brought down his Iron Curtain across the middle of a still–devastated Europe, and had had his lackey Molotov walk away from the Marshall Plan with his satellite puppets in lockstep behind him; better his new subjects starve than witness the merciful largess of the West. China had become object of a duel between the fanatical Mao Tse–Tung and a corrupt Chiang Kai–Shek. Painful, bloody paroxysms separated India from The Empire, leaving Indian Muslims and Indian Hindus to now fight freely amongst themselves. The French, despite declaiming Equality, Liberty, and Fraternity, were at that very moment fighting two wars to reclaim colonial dominion over Algeria and Indochina. In Korea, the Americans were just then digging in for a last–ditch defense on the Pusan Perimeter; facing them across the battlefield was an enemy backed by the Chinese and Soviets; U.S. allies just a few years before.
“It is not a mocking tone you detect, mate,” I said, my face hot, I could feel the sweat gathering about my collar, “it is anger and bitterness. And if you detect anger and bitterness, you may take it that I am angry and bitter! This…this Grand Dystopia is what we spent fifty million souls to produce?
“No, I don’t feel triumphal, and I’ll not apologize for injecting a sour note into the victory parade! We beat an enemy. What we won?” I shrugged.
He seemed genuinely sad. I don’t know if it was over what I’d been going on about, or I simply presented as such a pitiable a figure. I looked about. I’m ashamed to say I’d seemed to have put a few patrons off their luncheon.
I reached for my glass, then held myself, placing my hand in my lap. The guilts were setting in. We were not some pompous author and puffed–up editor from a swank publishing house negotiating thousands of pounds over luncheon in a posh Edinburgh dining room. His house was a humble if reputable one, as was the little restaurant. He was doing his best within circumstances not of his design. He had always been a better than fair editor, and polite enough in his dealings with me in the past; he did not warrant my condescension or ill–manner. And I had been a writer of several histories of the war of some popularity, but of moderate enough success that I had no cachet to spout off to him as I had.
I sighed and hoped he could read the sense of apology in it. I was not quite man enough to say it aloud. “So. What part of history am I being asked to delete?”
My sudden civility renewed his interest. “Actually, Edward, I think you’re spot on the problem there. It’s not quite a history, is it? I mean it’s a true account, but that doesn’t necessarily make it history if you get my meaning. I mean, not like your other work.”
“History is not all great events,” I said. “It certainly seemed moment enough to us.”
“To ‘us’?”
“I was there. I knew these people. I was there.”
“I see.” He seemed surprised that an irascible sort like me might have personal feelings for a body. His lips pursed, his head bowed, he re–crossed his legs. “Hm, I see now.”
“Do you? I’ll take no advance on this one. Write it on your napkin and I’ll sign that promise here and now. Print as few as you like. A thousand. A dozen.”
“As long as it’s in print.”
“Aye.”
He smiled. “It’s not a book you’re offering, is it, Edward? It’s an elegy.”
“I suppose it is.”
“They were that important to you?”
“Where were you during the war?”
Self–consciously: “Here.”
“Then you’ll
never know how important. Ever read Edith Wharton? ‘There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle, or the mirror that reflects it.’”
“Fancy yourself a bright, shining candle, Edward?”
“Nae. A rather poor mirror. It’s their light.” I asked humbly, now: “If I keep it as it is, am I to be sent packing?”
“Nae! We would just need to discuss an alternative project.”
“Until such time as the time is right for this one.”
His shoulders moved noncommittally. “Perhaps. Until such time.”
“Remember, old man: there are no other days. Assured.”
*
“On the outskirts of every agony,” Virginia Woolf wrote, “sits some observant fellow who points.” That should have been me; ostensibly that had, for most of my working life, been my job. But I’d long since come to the sad realization that I’d never been more than a carnival barker inviting passers–by to peep at the misshapen and freakish.
But Harry…Och, now there was something else again.
Others would manage to put the war behind them. One could never truly forget, but they would, resiliently, move past it, bury the memories, and continue on. In such a manner they were able to return home to love, marry, rear children, work, re–build, create anew.
Harry would not have done so. He could not. Even then his memories haunted him. And for all that accumulating pain he carried with him, he continued to diligently seek, as he had in Rome, to increase his mental catalogue of horrors, not out of morbid fascination or nihilistic collapse, but out of a sense of obligation. That was his gift – his damnable, self–soul–killing gift – to be a Rememberer; if I might appropriate a bit from The Bard, to be the conscience of the kings. The next time someone were to trot along filled with messianic nonsense and claim, “I have a solution!” while reaching for his scabbard, the Rememberers like Harry would be there to open their memories, sound a reminding alarum that we’ve tried this before, and refresh us as to the cost…even of what we might consider success.
Joe Ryan was right: Harry was the better of us all. Even if we had had the gift, we had not the spirit to exercise it. But now, if I am to be as true a friend to him as he always felt me to be, I must do the remembering for him.
In the end, I would make the edits more from a sense of wanting to be done with it than anything else. Long after, I would wonder how much time would need to pass before it would be a proper time to air the unexpurgated copy. In my more morose, Cassandra–esque fugues – which seem to scud across my consciousness more and more with the years – I wonder if enough time can ever pass.
But I will wait. As the other Rememberers are laid in the ground and I find myself close to alone in carrying those days with me, I am charged more than ever before with standing ready for that day. For as it says in The Book, “I only am escaped alone to tell thee.”
Ed. Owen,
Edinburgh, September, 1950
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A Cold and Distant Place is a work of fiction. However, as in the earlier Harry Voss novels, I have tried to integrate the fiction with true events, in this case those of the European campaign during November and December of 1944. In doing so, I apologize for any disservice I may have inadvertently done to the actions of those real units who participated in the fights in the Huertgen Forest and in the Battle of the Bulge, especially in regards to the 28th “Keystone” Infantry Division which suffered so horribly and performed so valiantly in both fights.
Though my wife Maribel has been of enormous (and, shamefully, unacknowledged) help to me throughout the series, she has been especially invaluable as I’ve worked on A Cold and Distant Place. It is no overstatement to say that this book would never have gotten done (nor would I have stayed sane during its writing) had it not been for her.
As usual, I find myself owing an enormous debt to the work – and works – of others:
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Immerso, Michael. Newark’s Little Italy: The Vanished First Ward. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 1997.
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Matlach, Cadet Charles. “Evolution of US Army Divisional Structures.” www.dmi.usma.edu/ Milresources/Division.
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Merriam, Robert E. The Battle of the Bulge (abridged version of Dark December). NY: Ballantine, 1965.
Miller, Edward G., and David T. Zabecki. “Tank Battle in Kommerscheidt.” World War II. November 2000: 42+.
Nichols, Mike. “Return to Base.” The Sunday Star–Ledger. May 23, 1999: Section 8, p. 1+.
Rivkin, Robert S. The Rights of Servicemen. New York: Baron, 1973.
Ryan, Cornelius. The Longest Day. New York: Pocket, 1969.
Schreckengost, Gary. “Buying Time at the Battle of the Bulge.” World War II. January 2001, 50+.
Schults, Arthur. “Dark Forest.” http://www.thedropzone.org
Smart, Don. “Terror At Honsfeld.” World War II. November 2001, 50+.
Stouffer, Samuel A. et al. The American Soldier: Combat and Its Aftermath. Vol. II. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Universty, 1949.
Swift, Michael, and Michael Sharpe. Historical Maps of World War II Europe. London: PRC Publishing, 2000.
Tillotson, Col. Lee S. The Articles of War. 2nd revised ed. Harrisburg, PA: Military Service Publishing, 1943.
Tourtellot, Arthur B., ed. Life’s Picture History of WW II. NY: Time, 1950.
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Wars Edition of Pictorial History of the Second World War. Vol. IV. Wm. H. Wise Co., 1946.
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Research Assistance
Helen Antonakakis, Michael McMorrow, The Hon. Robert S. Armstrong, Lt. Col. Hillary Morgan, USAF (ret), Kathleen Bryant–Turitz, Mark B. Peters, Esq., USA, Maj. Richard Herman, USAF (ret.), Robert Shanahan, Esq., Ron KochelTina Young.
Table of Contents
The Advocate
Officer of the Court
A Cold And Distant Place