An Acceptable Warrior

by Earle Looker

  “Your case,” the General grumbled, whipping his words through the blue haze of his cigar like an old Joss angered into speech, “seems to be without precedent. Who do you think you are, bringing this back with you?” He touched the stiff paper of the Etat Major letter with his stained fingers to push it further away on the tabletop.

  David stood motionless. General Applegate rubbed the gray bristles of his square jaw. “Answer me!” he demanded.

  “That letter,” David replied, “says how a good many things that happened on the day of the armistice are being overlooked. It suggests that in the case of Colonel Gaspard …”

  “What’s that got to do with you?” the General interrupted irritably.

  “Nothing sir, or everything. The letter says, requests I mean, that no charges be preferred against me because to do so would involve Colonel …”

  “It’s a damned political set-up,” the General said. “That’s what it is. But hell … it’s open and shut what should be done. You know that. I’ve got to convene court, convict you of absence without leave for …”

  “Forty-two hours, sir.”

  “Convict you …”

  “Respectfully sir, this letter would have to be part of the evidence passed up through channels to higher authority …”

  The General clicked his clunky West Point class ring loudly upon the table. “Don’t interrupt me!” he said sharply and brooded for a moment. “Damn you, Major! Don’t think for a moment I can’t see the implications of this and how cleverly it’s taped to prevent a court-martial.”

  “It is a mess,” David admitted, “but for which I am entirely responsible. Well sir, you see, frankly, General, I lost my head. I expect you to take summary action in any case, relieve me of command and order such other punishment as you may feel is fit …”

  “You’re … a cool one! To suggest to me what I should do with you! You’re damned irregular. If I hadn’t decorated you twice with my own hands, I’d not even talk with you now. It’s to your credit, however, you report directly to me and tell me what appears to be a straightforward story.” He looked out the window not without some wistfulness, “By God, I’d like to have been with …” He halted himself, began afresh, “What punishment do you suggest?”

  David stiffened though he had prepared himself for this. “We’ve lost over seven thousand men, sir, killed and wounded in this Division,” he said, “if I’ve got the figure right. For every death there’ll be half a dozen or more of his people at home to be considered …”

  “Keep to your case,” the General said.

  “I am sir. I mean I was about to suggest a heavy fatigue duty, which I’m fit to perform and which might appeal to you …”

  “Be brief.”

  “We’ve buried our dead, but we’re not done with them yet.” The General seemed to freeze. A chill went down David’s spine with his strange choice of words; a hot-spot seemed incandescent in his brain; there was far less deference, as he heard his tone, then he would usually have shown toward his General. “I mean, sir, suitable letters, now the action is over, will have to be written to the next-of-kin of men who have died.”

  The General sat smoking with short panting puffs as if he were making a long, heavy metal grade. David wondered, for the first time of the many to follow, just how he had conceived this idea. “Many officers,” he said, “will find it next to impossible to write these letters; commissions haven’t been given for – for literary ability; but the letters must be done. Now I happened to have been a newspaperman …”

  A subtle change seemed to come over the General; he was more alert and distinctly wary.

  “These letters,” David continued, “ought to be the best that can be written. In effect, sir, a letter about the death of a man is something like the final estimate of the man.”

  The General spilled the ash of his cigar over the ribbons across his tunic but let it lie unheeded.

  “These letters could go through my hands,” David said. “I could pass some, send some back to be revised, write a good many myself. It’s all got to be done very quickly and well. Delay will cause criticism; families will be writing the War Department for information. They’ll think commanding officers heartless or careless unless something is done promptly. Now, sir, this is not an easy job; how would you like to write to the father of a casualty or the mother? It’s a hard and a thankless job. I can think of nothing I’d like less to do. I’d rather break rocks. I suggest it as a punishment for. . .”

  Applegate said: “You are relieved of the command of your battalion. You will be assigned to these headquarters, to the Assistant Chief of Staff G1, for duty. The Division Adjutant will furnish you with the casualty figures, by battalions. These you will check against letters. Letters will be written by the officers commanding, down to companies. You will pass such letters as meet requirements, which will be outlined for your guidance. Those that fail in some way you will return to the writers with definite suggestions as to their revision. You will revise yourself, where necessary, such letters as are resubmitted to you. You will be assigned to such other writing as may become necessary here at headquarters. You are not to consider yourself a member of my staff or to mess with it. You will confine yourself to headquarters and when, eventually, we are taken out of the line and put in billets, to the headquarters town, not going out of it without permission. You are not under arrest at present, though I am considering it – not entirely in the event of additional charges being preferred against you. I shall also consider other fatigue duty. That is all. You may go now.”

  2

  Letters … letters … sacks of them, stacks of them, converged upon him from all the battalions, typewritten, pen written, some in almost illegible pencil. More frequently than not, the facts as written failed to ring true to David. Upon those cases he devoted hours trying to check statements against what records existed. Many of those letters sincerely trying to express sympathy, at the same time strained so hard after it that they seemed to camouflage the actual cause of death, implying the man had been killed in circumstances unnatural even in war. David found that men who had been killed outside the line of duty, in drunkenness or debauchery, were often described as “gallant – faithful – loyal – even intrepid.” He found how often when the language was blunt and careless, the names and addresses of the next-of-kin suggested they were capable of weighing words, of reading not without intuition, of seeing falsity. Facts seemed to cry aloud the uselessness of so many of these deaths. But David’s orders were clear. He was prohibited the mention of mistakes, unnecessary accident, suffering; every death was to be useful, quick, honorable. David’s own specifications were as impossible to meet without spending a day upon each letter.

  The letters seemed to take on an embodiment, to be actual men pushing and shoving among themselves to get to him. Always in their army life, these men had stood in line for equipment, food, medicine, surgery. They could not escape a line now, even in death. Each man seemed to struggle to stay longer than his fellow on David’s desk, pleading for a just consideration of his case. Yet the line must be kept shuffling along. Often, particular cases applied unusual pressure upon him. Sometimes he passed letters with hardly a glance but, after they had gone, worried about their effect. Others he toiled upon, phrasing and rephrasing until he felt he had wrapped the poor body of the truth in decent words – then wondered if it would be read by next-of-kin with a working vocabulary of perhaps three hundred words, not all of them English. Eventually, he found the simplest words to be the best and grammatical construction merely a hindrance.

  The other writing of which General Applegate had spoken developed out of the passion of the War Department, aloof in wartime Washington, for historical documentation from which to take as war training material for writing new texts on strategy, administration and all complexities of military life and action, now that this “war to end all wars” had ended.
Turning to these reports, with an almost editorial frenzy, David tore their meaningless paragraphs to shreds, clarified, corrected, recast with the intense exasperation of one who saw what was needed but had no time in which to accomplish it. Once, in a moment of exhaustion, he handed an unfinished report back to a Brigadier General, to such stunned amazement he failed to reprimand David for saying in a voice breaking with strain, “Kindly take this between the forefinger and thumb of the right hand and …”

  Insanity this, David knew, in a soldier to his superior, yet he was protected for the moment by the fact he was indispensable to the degree that none wished his job or felt capable of performing it. To most men of action, there is a mystery in the conveyance of ideas by words other than orders. David himself felt his punishment had put him into an air-lock between military and civilian life by which he was being decompressed far more rapidly than his comrades. It seemed a continuous process. He could not shut it off at the end of the day. He lay through long sleepless hours forming and editing paragraphs before his eyes. Thus, he created form letters that would have made his dead-letter duty a mechanical routine.

  His conscience resisted this temptation just as it had earlier rejected the comfort some of his friends were finding in the arms of village girls in billets. He blamed them not at all for this; his casualties suggested the living had earned the right to live as they chose as long as they harmed no one. He found himself still tolerant when, some ninety days after the armistice, it seemed the whole army in France sought to seed itself in every furrow. He was not untouched himself; like all the rest he was young, full-blooded and at no time so urgently demanded. But though he could not fail to see what lay in the eyes of some of these fine lusty Rabelaisian girls, full-bodied models many of them for the school of Rubens, rough as the way they dressed but of a coarseness open and honest and natural. The sharpness of his desire for Celeste had reached an edge he felt would be dulled in any side affair, and the opportunities all seemed sordid.

  3

  “What you need,” Gaspard said with finality to David, “is obvious to me. I find you pale. Apathique. Your attitude is not like you. Where is your soldier spirit? At the moment the war ended you were a man. You were just beginning to get your second – how you say? – a second wind. Now it is just gas. Any doctor would say flatuosite. Or have you a civilian soul after all?” he reflected at length. “I will say it: what you need is a mistress.”

  “You advise that?” David said with rising anger, thinking of him as the father of Celeste.

  “I merely state fact. We are comrades are we not and can speak truth together? I see a distressing change in you. Why do you not go on leave? Cela te ferait du bien!”

  “You know I can’t apply for leave. You know all the circumstances of this damned special duty I’ve been given as discipline for going to Paris with you.”

  “Did you not invent that duty yourself?”

  “Perhaps,” David said, thinking again of his conception of the idea. The more he had thought of it the surer it had seemed an expression of a wider human experience than his own, a sharper sense of justice, a quicker understanding of significance, a riper mind like Alan’s. So often David had found himself trying to reenact, like a witness preparing to testify, those moments when he had felt Alan’s compulsion. The most realistic conclusion he had been able to reach was that they had been caused by his idealization of Alan, while much action in which they had both been concerned had gone from his memory. It was not infrequent for men who had been under heavy fire to come out of it with recollection amnesia. David was sure also of how the anguish of making vital combat decisions had consumed some part of his mind. This might account for his inability to clearly remember certain incidents. Thus might be explained as a recollection of that quotation in the Forest of Argonne but lack of memory as to it and when and how Alan had talked about it.

  “Perhaps,” David said, “I did invent the duty myself – but it’s slowly driving me mad. I’m fed up. Army. Discipline. Rank. Duty. Those letters – my God! Yesterday, I had three letters to write going to the same address in Indiana. We decided it would be kinder to combine them into one.”

  Gaspard thrust his cigarette into his beard, exhaled like a burning bush. “Gaspard,” he said, “Papa Gaspard, now a general might arrange it. What you need, assuredly, mon vieux, is leave and love …”

  “Paris?” David blurted then substituted other words than those with which he had begun, “But all Paris leaves have been cancelled.”

  Gaspard seemed very still. “Let us be frank,” he said slowly. “I know you and Celeste have been writing letters to each other, hein? Eh bien. I do not know what is in those letters, but I can guess. It is sufficient, to my mind, that they are going back and forth. This fact does not alter the advice I have just given you. This fact does not deter me from helping you to get this leave and to recommend that you take care of – ah! – the rest of yourself.”

  “But Gaspard!”

  “Daveed, I feel toward you as I would toward a son. Voila! I see that you are in a position of extreme difficulty. I am in many ways responsible for it. I also feel how it is due to the impassable condition of the road of your mind; there are holes in the mud of your American upbringing that need to be filled. I am concerned as a comrade. I am concerned, also, as a father, much as perhaps your own father in Virginia. I should feel better satisfied if it were possible for you to acquire, with some quickness, more experience. Do not shake your head at me!”

  David regarded Gaspard with amazement and sudden aversion. Instead of speaking he lit a cigarette, finding his hands were definitely unsteady.

  “You are American and I, French,” Gaspard said abruptly, “so we do not think alike? Non, mon vieux, we do think alike, almost exactly. But you do not say what you think, not half a dozen times a year. A Frenchman is an American who says what he thinks six times a day. Voila tout!”

  David found his voice, heard himself say, “I could understand your idea better if you hadn’t mentioned Celeste.”

  Gaspard pulled on the tip of his moustache. “You have come near to saying what is in your mind. You are still offended by plain speaking. I shall try now to be reticent to spare your feelings. I know nothing about American women, by experience. Experience is everything. I do know something about French women. Do not forget this about them: you must meet their expectations.”

  “I have no intention of taking any more of your advice,” David said with the command ring in his voice.

  Gaspard ran his fingers through his mane while the waves of red and white passed across his face. “Name of God!” he cried. “Why cannot you? Why do you not? Do not forget I made an attempt to talk freely and frankly.”

  4

  “You’re making trouble again, Major,” General Applegate said. “What have you to say for yourself this time?”

  “I know of no cause for criticism,” David said.

  “Let’s not beat about,” the General said sharply. “I’m not making specific charges – yet. But my information with regard to you has been sufficiently definite to be disturbing. I think it’s better to speak to you before it gets to the point of preferring charges. Some irregularities, Atwood, in your personal conduct.”

  “Ch?”

  “You’ve been very warmly defended.”

  “I’ve done nothing to need …” David began. ‘Gaspard!’ David thought. ‘He’s attacking me by pretending to defend me to the General … against the stories he started himself, drawing attention to the illusions.’

  “Now,” the General said, “I was given the sort of advice in my younger days that you could not have failed to receive …”

  “I think I understand, Sir,” David said not without bitterness. “I think I see what happened.” But he suddenly saw he could not explain Gaspard’s motive for this action.

  “Evidently, you anticipate me. But in case you’re m
istaken I’ll repeat the advice: if you must play around don’t do it at this post.”

  “Yes, Sir,” David said automatically. But every regular officer had told him that in their first official interview.

  “I’m not asking for an explanation,” the General said. “I’m well aware of the causes.” His bronzed face turned slightly darker; ash fell from his cigar. “I told you not to consider yourself a member of my staff. Well, you’re not, but I have to carry you as such on the returns. No, I’ll not have even a nominal member of my staff accused of scandalous behavior. You understand? How’d you like to stand trial for conduct unbecoming?”

  “I’d be acquitted.”

  “You’re still a cool one. Look here, young man: if these damned civilians sent from home begin to dig into your behavior, then charges might be proffered, which would be necessary to bring to trial.” The General glowered, “I’ve had enough court-martials in this division!” David saw the General was concerned because many punishments were an indication of low morale. “I’m sure you don’t want a trial, even if in some way the case isn’t proved against you. You have a distinguished record, which such charges would mar.”

  That last was pure Gaspardese, David thought. The General was certainly repeating something Gaspard had said to him.

  “In all fairness to you, Major Atwood, your work on the letters, while it was disciplinary, has been conscientiously done.” He looked suddenly sorry he had made this revelation. David judged the General himself had received commendation for this work from a higher authority.

  “I seem to be,” David said, “what they call ‘under a cloud.’ Why don’t I just resign from the service?”

  The General almost smiled. “Do you think it so easy? Do you think you’re in the army?” he asked.

  The question seemed insane to David. Was he not in the army as completely as any man could be, short of being killed in it? Then he understood the General meant the Regular Army establishment. “No sir,” David said.