A Man Called Milo Morai

by Robert Adams

  Dr. Sam Osterreich's uniform was the dark blue of the Navy, the sleeves of his blouse encircled with the four wide, gold stripes indicating the rank of Navy captain, the full equivalent of James Lewis' rank.

  Later, as the four men sipped wine and talked, the story came out. "You see, Milo," said Lewis, "back when I was twistin' tails to get that pissant shithead Jarvis from off of your ass, I come to find out you had been in a hospital in Chicago back in the late thirties and the doctor what had done first took care of you was just then a major at Dix, up in Jersey. When I got in touch with him, he said he'd do all he could for you because he knowed fuckin' well you wasn't no Nazi because of how you'd got in a lot of trouble when you got on the shitlist of some Nazi Bund priest in Chicago and that that was how you come to join the Army to start out with."

  "But, besides that, he put me in touch with Sam here, who's still at Bethesda like he was then, and has some kinda pull—believe you me he has!—more'n you can shake a fuckin' stick at, too. It was him, almos' all him, what got your balls outen that crack, Milo, and give that dumb shitface Jarvis a comeuppance he had just been a-beggin' for for a fuckin' long time. Afore it was done, some first-class, fuckin' remain's had been done on him, too, a coupla fuckin' new assholes worth, I tell you. 'Cause of you and whatall he was tryin' to do to railroad you, Doc Sam, here, he not only was able to get you bailed outen the shit, but he got poor Schrader and two, three other guys from our division off the fuckin' hook, too. Like old maids sees burglars under ever' bed and in ever' closet, thishere fuckin' scabsucker Jarvis was seein' fuckin' Nazis ever' place he come to look; if a soldier could talk German good, to that fuckin' Jarvis, it meant he was a Nazi spy. The brass-balled fucker even had the gumption to ask me, flat out, if the real reason I was stickin' up for you wasn't because my mama's maiden name was Gertrude Bauer. And he damned fuckin' near got hisself busted down a whole helluva lot further than he did, too, when he asked Colonel Kessler if he'd been borned in this country and how long ago was the last time he was in Europe. Milo, that fuckin' li'l bastard's mouth's gonna dig him a fuckin' grave!"

  Osterreich, looking chubbier than Milo remembered him, holding his crystal wineglass delicately by its stem, shook his head sadly. "The former Major, now Lieutenant, Jarfis is a sad case, misplaced to begin, then terribly overworked. He is not possessed of either emotional or of physical strength or endurance, unfortunately. He is seriously crippled by some rather sefere phobias and a most irrational belief he has in his intuitife powers."

  "The unfortunate man is skirting perilously close to a nervous collapse at the best of times and I therefore made a recommendation that he be hospitalized or separated for the good of the Army. But he apparently possessed of some influential friends is and he only was reduced in rank, reprimanded and then sent on his way to continue, one supposes, to ferret out Nazi sympathizers and spies."

  "And the saddest of all about him is that he most likely a real Nazi would not know. A real spy would easily hoodwink such a man as him, for he is far from truly intelligent and the most of his boasted intuition mainly is self-delusion."

  "I know Nazis, gentlemen, I attended several meetings of the fledgling National Socialist German Workers' Party in the nineteen hundred and twenties, and in those early days of the party I was honored and welcomed and made much of as a former cavalry officer of the Imperial Austrian Army. All of this was, of course, before the fact of my Jewishness became all-important to them. I impart to you all no secret, here. It all is well known to any who wish to learn of it, for it was not only the National Socialists meeting I attended now and then, but the Communists', the Monarchists', the Anarchists' and many another group, all of whom I found to be basically the same—a cadre of wild-eyed but cunning fanatics attempting to form hordes of troubled, desperate, demoralized German men and women into a political power base."

  "The man Jarfis knows nothing about the Nazis, although had he been a German in Germany, he would no doubt have made them a good recruit, though he is too unstable to have been able to rise very far in their ranks. His ideas of Nazism are terribly skewed and twisted and distorted. I feel very sorry for him, for he truly is suffering, but there is nothing I can do for him. Under present circumstances, he is the responsibility and the very great problem of the Army, not the Navy."

  Martine Stiles and Milo got along every bit as well from the start as had he and her husband. Throughout the courses of the sumptuous dinner served that Friday night, she chatted gaily with Milo and the others, slipping effortlessly from English to French, Danish, German, Italian and Spanish, though she carefully limited all general conversation to her British-accented English for the benefit of James Lewis, who was not a linguist.

  The meal itself was a palate-pleasing blending of haute cuisine and Southern country cooking—terrapin soup, broiled fillets of shad, capon Provencal, a profusion of garden vegetables, a hot apple pudding topped with melted cheese and sprinkled with crushed walnuts, all accompanied by the best that the extensive wine cellar had to offer and capped at last with steaming coffee and an 1854 cognac, pale, smooth and very powerful.

  Martine had grimaced in self-deprecation upon the serving of the capon, remarking, "This wretched war, gentlemen, please to accept my sincere apologies, but although almost all of the food is raised here, upon the farm, one still feels guilty to serve meat too often." Then, smiling, she added, "But never to fear, tomorrow night there will be a roast of veal."

  Milo did not meet the Stiles children until the following morning. Almost four, Per was a grave, formal, quiet little boy, who sat and handled the reins of his Welsh pony with as much ease and authority as did his father and mother sit and control their thoroughbreds. Gabrielle was a tiny, chubby near-duplicate of her mother. Riding in a trap driven by the children's nurse, she bounced and chattered gaily, smiling and laughing throatily.

  Earlier, in the stableyard, Osterreich, forking a frisky red-bay filly, had watched Milo mount and quickly take control of a mettlesome dark-mahogany-hued gelding. Kneeing his mount over, the doctor had spoken in a low voice in Russian—a tongue not thus far used in this multilingual household, but which he knew they both knew.

  "Milo, old friend, now I know that I was right about you, years ago. I was right, and that old soldier Patrick O'Shea was right, also. Lieutenant Jarvis' vaunted intuition may well be accurate to the extent that even I am certain that you are not really an American. At least, if you truly are, you did not learn your horsemanship in America or in England, even."

  "The way that you just mounted, the way that you sit your beast, the way that you hold the reins, these are all classic European military ways, Milo. I, too, was taught just so, in the Imperial Hussars, before the Great War, and I helped to teach them as a Fahnrich of cavalry."

  The doctor smiled and patted Milo's bridle arm reassuringly. "This is no accusation, my old friend and comrade. I, of all people, know that you simply do not, cannot remember anything of more than five years ago… not on a conscious level. But your body and your unconscious, they remember, you see."

  After that early morning, Milo was convinced that the doctor might well be right about him. He had ridden a few times in the recent past, for exercise—on rented horses in Chicago with Irunn Thorsdottar, now and again with Jethro on post and off—but those had always been on bridle trails. The morning at Jethro's farm was crosscountry on spirited, well-bred horses kept in the peak of condition by experienced handlers who had no other function and were never lacking for anything necessary to the well-being of their charges.

  Jethro and Martine on their big Irish hunters led a fast, hell-for-leather pace across meadows, through little rills, over fences and hedges, ditches and the occasional mossy bole of a fallen tree. Through it all, for the length of that morning hell-ride, Milo's body reacted without his conscious urgings or instructions, making of him and his mount one single smoothly operating device for a safe, easy-looking transit of the rough, dangerous, but exhil-arating course.

 
; Nonetheless, the sudden, strenuous, rarely practiced spate of exercise left Milo disinclined to ride out that afternoon with Jethro, James Lewis and Sam Osterreich to look over the working parts of the farm. He found the library and, with a book and a bottle of sherry, whiled away the best part of the first two hours after luncheon. Then he was joined by Martine.

  When she had selected and filled for herself a slender goblet of the straw-colored wine, she drew up a chair to face him and seated herself.

  "Milo Moray," she said, using her British English on this occasion, "since first I set my eyes upon you yesterday, getting from out the automobile, I knew that we two have been… or, perhaps, will be… very close persons, soulmates, possibly even lovers. Do you, too, feel this… this unseen bond between us, Milo Moray?"

  What Milo felt just then was a cold chill along the whole length of his spine, a prickling of his nape hairs and a rush of adrenaline similar to that he had felt when he had, once on bivouac, found a timber rattler coiled between his blankets.

  Slowly closing the book, he said gravely, "Mrs. Stiles, your husband is my best friend, and I—"

  Tilting her head back, she trilled a silvery peal of laughter, but then she looked him in the eye and stated, "Milo Moray, you misunderstood. Perhaps I said the improper words. English is not, after all, my native language."

  "No, I very much love and respect my fine husband. I have loved him for the most of my remembered life and wanted to be nothing else than that which now I am—his wife and the mother of his children. Never would I even to consider betraying him or dishonoring my marriage vows with another man… not even with you."

  "But still, I feel this strong feeling that we have been or we will someday be of a much and personal closeness. I cannot shake away this feeling, and I but wondered if you, too, had had this experience when you met me."

  "No," said Milo simply. "No, I have had no such feelings, Mrs. Stiles. If this disappoints you, I am sorry. I but tell you the truth."

  "No, no, I feel no disappointment, Milo Moray. Why should I feel such? If anything, I feel great joy that you have here proved to me just how good a friend to my husband you truly are. He chose well, I think, when he chose you as his—what is the word? buddy?—he chose well, indeed. You are a gentleman of the old mode, and you always will be most welcome in this house."

  "But I want your solemn vow, Milo Moray. I want your firm promise that you will care for our Jethro, do all that the good God allows to keep him safe in the dangers that lie ahead. Will you so vow?" There could be, this time around, no mistaking her meaning or her deadly seriousness.

  Milo was puzzled. "Mrs. Stiles, Jethro is in more real danger driving through the city of Washington than he could face down South, doing staff work in a training unit. Of course, I will do anything I can to protect him from whatever, but I'm based in Baltimore, over eight hundred miles away from his post. No two ways about it, I'd like to be back with him in the old unit, but the Army seems to feel I'm of more use to them up at Holabird."

  "Our Jethro, gallant soul that he is, still abrim with a senseless guilt for something long ago that was not really his fault, has persuaded certain persons to give him a combat command, a battalion of infantry. He soon will leave for his new posting. Can you not find a way to join him again, there, Milo Moray?"

  Chapter VIII

  "Jesus H. Christ on a frigging GI crutch, Moray," stormed Major Barstow in clear consternation. "Have you lost your mind? Not only is a linguist like you of immense value here to Uncle Sam, but you're in the safest, cushiest billet you'll find this side of the damned Pentagon complex. Man, with your talents and your cooperation, I can keep you here for as long as the war lasts. What is it you're after? Rank? I can bump you up to master, within a week, no sweat. You want a commission, hell, man, I can get you that, too, a direct one. Just give me a little time and you'll have it all."

  "But, please, for the love of God, don't hit me first thing on a Monday morning again with such a line of lunatic nonsense like you wanting an immediate transfer to an outfit that I know damned good and well will likely be in that meat grinder they're running in Italy inside six months!"

  Barstow kept at Milo up until almost the very moment that he shouldered his barracks bag and entrained for South Carolina. His final words were, "You're a nut, Moray, but I guess that without your kind of nuts, no war would ever get won. I've put the very highest marks I can in your file; that's all I can do, now. Here it is; it's sealed, that's GI regs. If you unseal it, for God's sake, do it carefully so you can reseal it easily, huh? You do as good a job for the bastards where you're going as you did for us here, you'll be wearing three up and three down soon, don't fret about it. Good luck, Moray. Try not to get your head or any other essential parts shot off."

  The entire unit, from division on down, was still in a state of flux, none of the components completely filled in. The grizzled master sergeant who checked Milo in still wore his Ninth Infantry Division patch. When once he had torn open the sealed records and seen that he was dealing with a Regular rather than another johnny-come-lately uniformed civilian, he unbent considerably and offered Milo a cigarette and a chair across the cluttered, battered desk from him.

  "Thishere Colonel Stiles, he must know where some fuckin' bodies is buried to git that bunch in Holabird to let you go, Moray. You know him? What kinda fella is he? West Pointer?"

  "Not hardly," Milo chuckled. "He's a gentleman, but he was a tech when the war started, first sergeant of a training company. I was his field first… and his buddy."

  The master looked pleased at this news and nodded. "A Regular, huh, like us?"

  "About thirteen, fourteen years service, sarge, all but the last two years of it in the ranks. He's hard, but he's fair, too, doesn't play favorites. You give him what he wants, what he thinks you can do, and he'll take good care of you. What else can you ask of an officer?"

  The master shook his head. "Not a fuckin' thing more, Moray. Sounds like I fin'ly lucked into a good spot for a fuckin' change. And he's sure stickin' by you, too. All the fuckin' comp'ny commanders yellin' their friggin' heads off for trained noncoms, and he's got you down in a staff slot." He leafed through the personnel file for a moment, then grunted. "Shitfire, man! You talk Krauthead, Frog, Eyetie, Swede and all thesehere others, too? Hell, no fuckin' wonder they had you up to Holabird. The wonder —and it's a pure wonder!—is just how thishere Colonel Stiles managed to pry you away from 'em. He prob'ly has you lined up for S-2, but he better not let regiment or division hear too much about you or they'll jerk you right out of this fuckin' battalion afore you can say goose shit. Rut, say, how come you ain't a fuckin' of'ser, Moray?"

  Milo shrugged. "Oh, I don't know, sarge, mostly probably because I never wanted to be one, I guess. Besides, I have no college degree, either."

  The master made a rude sound. "Hell, Moray, that eddicayshun crap don't matter diddlysquat no more. Shit, piss and corruption, even I's a of ser… for a while. Then me and a coupla good ole boys busted up a of sers' club, bashed the fuckin' post snowdrops around purty good, too. We all got court-martialed, of course, and busted back… way back. The onlies' fuckin' way I could git my three and three back was to 'volunteer' for thishere fuckin' new division. But hell, it don't matter none, no way. I'm with you, Moray, I'm a lot happier as a master than I was as a damn, fuckin' of ser anyhow!"

  "Okay, let's us get you settled in, Moray." He pulled a clipboard from beneath the mountain of papers on the desktop, precipitating a small avalanche, which he ignored. "I'm gonna put you in a squadroom with two other techs and a staff in, lessee, in Buildin' H-1907. Got that? The lockers and racks is a'ready in there, so you can lock up your stuff while you go over to Head and Head supply and draw your mattress and bedding and all. But you watch that fuckin' crooked-ass Crockett, hear me? Make damn sure he gives you blankets and all out of brand-fuckin'-new bales, les' you c'lects crotch pheasants for fun."

  "Oh, by the way, Moray, I guess as how I'm the fuckin' battalio
n sergeant major, leastways till we gets in another master or a warrant or somebody better for the job. You done been a first—you wanta take over Head and Head Comp'ny till things get shook down some? I could give you a two-man room, then."

  Milo shrugged. "Sure, sarge. Why not?"

  The formation of the Sixtieth Infantry Division was best described as snafu—"situation normal, all fucked up"—all the way. Needed personnel and specialists slowly trickled in from every point of the compass, supplies and equipment came late or not at all or the wrong kind or in impossible quantities. For almost two weeks, the entire Head and Head—battalion headquarters and Headquarters Company—consisted of the cooks and mess steward, Sergeant Major/Master Sergeant John Saxon, Milo, four other first-three-graders—the battalion supply sergeant, Moffa, the battalion S-3 sergeant,

  Evans, the signal section sergeant, White, and a staff sergeant/specialist who was a clear case of misassignment, since his specialty was medical records keeping—and an agglomeration of eighteen drivers (with no vehicles to drive, as yet), one corporal and one pfc (the both of them fresh out of Graves Registration School), and two buck sergeants (one a tracked vehicle mechanic and the other a dog handler with his Alsation dog). But all of that began to change; the state of hopeless-looking disorder began to fall into order at about eleven on the morning of Milo's tenth day of service as H&H first sergeant.

  Even clear down in the battalion supply area where he stood arguing with the slick and slimy Sergeant Moffa, all could hear from the headquarters building the hoarse bellow of "Ten-HUT!" and recognize the voice of Master Sergeant Saxon.

  Stepping out of the supply shack and looking up the row of T-buildings, Milo could recognize even at the distance and despite its thick covering of road dust the long, sleek shape and maroon color of a Lincoln V-12 coupe. Lieutenant Colonel Jethro Stiles, Infantry, USA, had arrived to take command of his battalion.