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Chapter Twelve


Douglas MacArthur, in one of his more humble moments

Douglas MacArthur, in one of his more humble moments



42nd Division Headquarters, France

Sigi returned to division headquarters with mixed feelings. Unquestionably, he’d helped the 69th win their battle at Meurcy Farms, but he felt oddly dissatisfied. At first, he’d chalked it up to worry for Hank. Sigi had few friends and having one shot up was a new experience. But hearing that Hank was recovering well in a field hospital only a couple miles away alleviated those fears.

The men of the 69th who had died in the attack weighed on him professionally, but he hadn’t had time to get to know them as individuals, except for, perhaps, Sergeant Kilmer and Donovan himself.

Perhaps it was because his contribution had been largely based on geometry. He’d only needed map reading skills and an understanding of artillery procedure. What he’d done hadn’t really required that much courage, or any real leadership. He’d just done some quick calculations, then refined the math to keep the artillery coming in on top of the enemy.

Donovan had farewelled him warmly, commended him, and assured Sigi he’d recommend the newly established Citation Star for Sigi’s quick thinking and skill in coordinating the artillery. Hank he was recommending for the Medal of Honor—but expected to secure only a Distinguished Service Cross. Donovan made it clear that should either, or both, of them escape durance vile up at the 42nd, he’d find places for them in the 69th.

No jealousy tinged Sigi’s thoughts. Hank’s own matter-of-fact account plus the word of those who had seen in him action left little doubt in his mind that his friend deserved the higher award. It was just that Sigi, somehow, still didn’t feel like a real officer, and now, here he was back up on division staff, well away from the action.

I’ve got to escape.

Sigi checked in with the duty officer in the foyer of the chateau which was serving as the 42nd’s headquarters. The harried captain told Sigi that General MacArthur wanted to see him ASAP. Sigi made his way through the building to the richly appointed study that MacArthur had secured as the Chief of Staff’s Office.

Inside he found a sergeant and two privates packing up MacArthur’s books, liquor collection, and other sundries. MacArthur himself stood, directing them with sharp words and his swagger stick.

“No, no, wrap the decanter more carefully, Cartwright, I don’t want that crate smelling like brandy when we arrive!”

Sigi cleared his throat politely. MacArthur turned to see who had interrupted his packing. The shiny star of a brigadier general did, indeed, grace MacArthur’s lapel. Sigi came to attention, saluting MacArthur crisply.

“Sir, Lieutenant Abramovich reports to the general as ordered,” Sigi said.

MacArthur waved his swagger stick in the general direction of his forehead.

“Ah, Abramovich, I see you interpreted my orders in the broadest possible sense,” MacArthur said with an arched eyebrow. “And took some liberties in arranging support from the divisional artillery.”

“No excuse, sir,” Sigi said, feeling his stomach drop and a bead of sweat roll down his neck. If MacArthur was annoyed or embarrassed by his actions, his career was about to take a nosedive.

MacArthur’s expression remained inscrutable for another three heartbeats, then the man smiled, an ironic quirk of his lips.

“I think you’ll find that results almost always provide adequate excuse, Lieutenant,” MacArthur said. “Well done.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Now, as you can see, I have been promoted.” MacArthur paused, expectantly.

“Yes, sir, congratulations. Will you remain as chief of staff?”

“No, I have been given command of the 84th Brigade.” MacArthur’s smile was sublime. “I had hoped to bring both you and Thornton along with me, but needs must and with Thornton in the hospital, I have decided to name you my senior aide-de-camp. With that comes a promotion, of course.”

Sigi attempted to conceal his reaction, but MacArthur must have seen some of his discomfort.

“Is something wrong, Lieutenant Abramovich?” MacArthur’s voice cooled, and he tapped his swagger stick lightly on one of the crates.

Oh, shit, I better lay it on thick.

“Sir, it has been an honor serving with you. I cannot begin to tell you how much I’ve learned and how appreciative I am for the opportunity to benefit from your mentorship,” Sigi said. “But with the war winding down, I have to request a chance to lead troops in battle. The 165th has several companies shy a commander.”

Sigi used the 69th’s Table of Organization number, 165th, rather than its traditional numbering. MacArthur frowned, but it seemed a thoughtful expression rather than an angry one. Perhaps Sigi could avoid a patented MacArthur tantrum after all.

“I appreciate your desire to command your own unit, Sigmund, but I must be frank with you; officers of your faith and race face more fearsome social and professional obstacles than we gentiles. Outside my influence, I’m afraid you may find your career unfairly stagnant.”

Bilious bastard, though he may have a point.

This time, Sigi did manage to keep his reaction internal.

“You may be right, sir,” Sigi said. “But what kind of career is it if I never get the chance to lead men in battle? Major Donovan told me how you kept him from being reassigned to the field school so that he could command his battalion. I’m asking you to help me the same way.”

For a moment MacArthur said nothing, the only sound in the study the wind outside and the rustle of the enlisted men packing his things away. Sigi waited, silent, while MacArthur considered his point. Finally, the general whacked the edge of a crate with his stick once, decisively.

“All right, Abramovich,” MacArthur said. “I fear you may be ruining your career, but I won’t hold a man back from the front lines. See the adjutant, tell him I approve your transfer to the 165th. Good luck.”

MacArthur turned his back on Sigi, his attention back on ensuring his baggage was packed correctly for his new assignment. Sigi smiled ruefully as he left. The abrupt dismissal didn’t bother Sigi—he’d gotten what he’d wanted. The fact that he’d merited as much as “good luck” from Douglas MacArthur after the man had no further use for him was noteworthy unto itself.


Mobile Field Hospital, France

A young woman helped Hank into the tent. The green canvas was set up around the back of a French truck. Hank knew the French called them, “Little Curies,” but had no clue why. The young woman was dressed in the bulky uniform of a French Army nurse, her black hair tied tightly away from her face. Her large, dark eyes were hazy with fatigue, but she managed a smile for the wounded young American as she gave him instructions in heavily accented, but easily understood English.

“All right then, Lieutenant, please to lie down on the cot, there.”

Hank gave the canvas rack and the black panel underneath it a skeptical glance.

“Pardon my accent, miss,” Hank said in French. “But could you tell me what this contraption does?”

The girl laughed.

“Your French is quite good, Lieutenant,” she said, her drawn features brightening into a smile. “This device is called an X-ray machine. It is a relatively new invention—or at least the portable version is. It will allow us to photograph the inside of your leg to ensure there is no shrapnel or fragmentation left behind without any need for an incision.”

“For real?” Hank was startled back into English. The girl smiled indulgently and nodded.

“Just lie down there.” She gestured to the cot again. “Do not worry, this should not hurt at all.”

Hank complied, easing himself onto the cot. His thigh throbbed where the scar tissue in his quadricep shifted, but the pain was manageable. The girl began to move the film tray and other apparatus into position over his leg.

“About how long will it take?” Hank asked.

“Fifteen to twenty minutes to get an exposure. As long as you do not toss and turn, you may nap.”

Hank settled down to wait, and maybe catch a short siesta, but then a question reoccurred to him.

“Miss, why do they call these trucks, ‘Little Curies’?”

The girl’s smile shifted from one of indulgence to one of pride, her shoulders squaring against her fatigue.

“They are named after their inventor, my mother, Marie Curie,” she said. “I am Irene Curie.”

“Your momma is Marie Curie?” Hank whistled. “Even out in Podunk, Texas, we’ve read about Marie Curie. She won the Nobel prize, right?”

“Twice,” Irene said, fiddling with some instrumentation on the machine. “And she offered to melt both down for their gold in order to finance these ‘Little Curies’ when the government said it didn’t have funds to do so.”

“That’s noble,” Hanks said, then realized his unintentional pun. “Sorry, it’s admirable. I imagine being able to peer into a fellow’s body without cutting him open has been right useful.”

“I think so, yes. I don’t have the exact numbers, but we’ve conducted at least hundreds of thousands of X-ray exposures, and we have to have saved tens of thousands of lives. Now, if you’ll lie still as you can, Lieutenant, we’ll see how you’re doing.”


The X-ray found no fragmentation or bone splinters, but the doctors insisted Hank needed at least another week in hospital to allow the wound to fully heal before putting it back into field conditions. Hank sulked at the news; he was bored out of his mind in the field hospital and, if he was being honest, sitting amongst the amputees, the shell-shocked, and the dying ate at him harder than the shelling, the bullets, even the blood-soaked brutality of the melee.

Despite the pain in his leg, he spent as much time outside the hospital tents as possible, fulfilling whatever light duty requirements he could for the hospital staff away from the hacksaws and needles and the necessary butchery of the surgeons. Two days after his conversation with Irene Joliot-Curie, Hank was charged with censoring the American doctors’ and nurses’ mail.

The willingness of some of the young women to write to their sweethearts and husbands in graphic and titillating detail, even knowing their mail had to be censored, shocked the naïve young Texan. It also gave him an unpleasantly voyeuristic thrill. Hank had grown up on his family’s ranch with little interaction with girls who were not kin. He’d attended Lubbock High School, but he could count his female classmates there on the fingers of one hand.

West Point, naturally, had been populated entirely by men. The normal schedule of debutante balls and mixers with proper young women’s educational institutions had been one of many things omitted in order to rush the next class of lieutenants to a war front which was desperately short of officers. Hank was still, like most of his peers, whatever their stories to the contrary, a virgin.

Thus it was that a letter from one particularly libidinous young nurse so thoroughly engrossed the young man’s imagination that he failed to notice his best friend entering the hospital staff tent until Sigi was standing right in front of him.

“Hank, you with us?”

Hank started and stood up from his camp stool, dropping the letter. Recognizing Sigi, he wiped a hand across his flushed face.

“Oh, Sigi, it’s you,” Hank said. “Sorry, old boy, I was just caught up—”

Sigi reached down and snatched up the letter. He started scanning it, then whistled.

“I can see why you were focused,” he said, handing it back. “Aloysius there seems a lucky man.”

Hank snatched back the letter, scowling at his friend.

“Sigi, that’s private, darn it.”

Sigi laughed.

“Hank, they know the letters have to be censored for security,” Sigi said. “If she wanted privacy, she wouldn’t have put it to paper.”

“Even so, Sigi, it ain’t polite to go talking about it out loud,” Hank said, glancing around the staff tent. It was mostly empty, but here and there a few doctors scribbled out reports for the 42nd Division, or penned letters to home—letters they knew would have to go through the same censorship process to maintain security.

Sigi held up his hands.

“You’re right, of course, Hank. Sorry. I’d apologize to the lady in question, but I’m sure that would only make it more awkward.”

“Forget it,” Hank said, sealing the letter in its envelope and putting it in the OUT pile. “How are you? How are things back at Division?”

Sigi grinned, then his expression took on a more sober tone.

“That’s why I came to see you,” Sigi said. “MacArthur got his star and command of the 84th Brigade. I managed to wrangle a transfer down to the 69th.”

“That’s great news,” Hank said. “Well, you getting out of Division is great news, not sure how I feel about General MacArthur. As soon as I’m out of the hospital, I’ll try to get down there and join you.”

Sigi looked a little sheepish.

“We’re moving out, tomorrow,” Sigi said. “I think there’s a big push in the works. It may be a while before you can catch up with us.”

It might be forever. A hell of a lot of men had been killed in their first battle. Hank found his throat thickening. Surprised at the sudden emotion, he coughed loudly into his hand and blinked rapidly. They stood there for several seconds. Sigi looked as unsure what to say next as Hank felt. Finally, Hank broke the silence.

“Well, Sig, you give ’em hell for me, you hear?”

“Will do.”

Hank coughed again and chuckled.

“And don’t get your head blown off, while you’re at it, all right? I’m going to need you when we get to Leavenworth someday,” Hank said.

Sigi laughed.

“Well, I’m a much smaller target than you, so I should be all right,” Sigi said. “I better get going. See you around, Hank.”

Sigi stuck out his hand. Hank grabbed it and tried to put his emotions into his grip, simply unable to say it out loud.

“See you, Sigi.”

X X X

The day before Hank’s release from the hospital, a tall lieutenant colonel with a long, thin nose and narrowed eyes, wearing an immaculate uniform with brightly polished knee-high boots under his jodhpur pants walked in. In a loud voice he announced, “I’m looking for a lieutenant named Thornton.”

Hank took one look at the man’s scowling face and parade-ground-sharp uniform and a flash of anxiety hit him.

Oh, Lordy, what does this guy want?

“That’s me, sir, how can I help you, Colonel?” Hank said, standing up, his left leg barely twinging under the weight. The starched and pressed lieutenant colonel looked him up and down clinically.

“My name is Patton, I command the 1st Tank Brigade. You’re the Texan cowboy who killed three Germans with a shovel? The same man who played linebacker for my beloved alma mater?”

Hank chuckled nervously.

“Well, sir, I only killed one German with a shovel,” Hanks said. “I shot one and bayonetted another.”

Patton laughed from his gut and slapped Hank on the shoulder.

“Well, I’m glad you cleared that up, Thornton, can’t have a captain who doesn’t report accurately. Pack up your kit and come with me.”

“Pardon me, sir?”

“You’ve been reassigned, son. And promoted.” Patton pulled out a small box and opened it, showing Hank the twin-silver bar captain’s rank therein. “I need company commanders, your reputation indicates I might not have to relieve you or shoot you, so you’re it.”

“Sir, I don’t know the first thing about tanks,” Hank protested.

“I can teach a man tanks, Thornton. I can’t pull good combat leaders out of my ass. Now, come here, boy.”

Hank stepped forward. Patton released his lieutenant’s bars and replaced them with the captain’s insignia.

“Not as grand as when Pershing pinned my railroad tracks, I’m afraid,” Patton said. “But the pay’ll spend just the same. Welcome to the 1st Tank, Captain Thornton.”


69th (165th) Infantry Regiment, France

It was late afternoon by the time Sigi found his way down to the 1st of the 69th’s bivouac area. Passing the line for chow, Sigi didn’t see Sergeant Kilmer or any of the men he’d worked with a few days ago. Plucking up his courage, he picked out a man with sergeant’s stripes on his sleeves and walked up to him.

“Excuse me, Sergeant,” Sigi said. “I’m Lieutenant Abramovich, could you tell me where the battalion command post is? I need to talk to Major Donovan.”

The sergeant was of medium height but beefily built with blue stubble on his jawline and a bored expression that looked permanent on his blunt features.

“Well, Lieutenant, it’s actually Lieutenant Colonel Donovan, now,” he pointed west. “And his command post is about half a mile that way. Big tent. Can’t miss it.”

The sergeant turned back to jawing with a corporal with flaming red hair. Sigi muttered his thanks and turned to leave. He pretended not to hear their murmured commentary as he departed.

“Man, lotta jewboys in the army, these days,” said the corporal.

The sergeant grunted. “You got something against Jews?”

“They’re all so damn smarmy,” he said. “And there’s the fact that they killed Jesus.”

“Higgins, you know what Father Duffy says about the blood libel shit,” the sergeant cut him off.

“Well, I don’t know about you, Sergeant, but I don’t fancy following a Hebrew midget through a cloud of mustard gas, why couldn’t we keep that cowboy—”

Sigi moved too far away to hear what the beefy sergeant said to Higgins in retort. He merely shook his head and kept walking. It wasn’t the first time; it wouldn’t be the last.

The tent was relatively quiet and calm compared to the last time he’d been at the 1st of the 69th’s command post, but still busy. Senior Staff NCOs and officers carried on phone conversations with regimental headquarters or supporting arms like the artillery and engineers. The junior NCOs applied graphics to maps with grease pencil and metal stencils. Donovan himself was bent over his field desk, writing on the top sheet of a thick stack of paper.

Sigi approached Donovan and coughed politely. He looked up, his eyes unfocused, mind clearly elsewhere for a moment until recognition dawned. Sigi saluted.

“Sir, Lieutenant Abramovich reporting as ordered.”

Donovan returned the salute and smiled.

“Ah, Abramovich, I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “Willis, where is that citation?”

Over at a desk with a white-painted wooden sign reading, “S1-PERSONNEL,” a reed-thin NCO looked up from his stack of papers.

“Just a second, sir,” he said, shuffling through a few different piles, before snatching up a document. “Here it is.”

Donovan accepted the paper.

“Abramovich, this should’ve been cleared already, but the French pushed back on it,” Donovan said. “I’m walking this over tomorrow with some other citations to have a word with them, but we weren’t, well, we weren’t actually sure how your last name is spelled.”

Donovan handed the paper over. Sigi read it rapidly. Seeing phrases like “tactical acumen rare in an officer so young,” and, “instrumental in securing victory,” and, “Lieutenant Abramovitch’s skill and intrepidity reflect credit upon himself and the Service,” made Sigi a tad uncomfortable. But the facts of his actions were represented accurately, not inflated.

Hell, maybe I do deserve a medal . . . 

“There’s no T. It’s just I, C, H at the end.”

He handed the paper back to Willis. The personnel NCO looked long-suffering but accepted the correction with a “Yes, sir, we’ll fix it right away.”

“Wait, Sergeant,” Sigi said. “You probably need a copy of these as well. They’re my transfer orders.”

Willis took Sigi’s orders as well and Donovan grinned again. He reached out and shook Sigi’s hand.

“You did manage to escape. Congratulations, Abramovich, and welcome to the 1st of the 69th, we’re glad to have you.”

“Thank you, sir, I’m happy to be here.”

“I’m actually in the market for a new adjutant.” Donovan’s expression sobered rapidly. “I’m afraid I’ve lost two in short order. You were here when Oliver Ames was killed. I’m afraid we lost Sergeant Kilmer to a sniper on a leader’s recon the day after you went back to Division.”

A melancholic sensation washed over Sigi. That he’d had a brief chance to know a favored writer as a man and a soldier before his death made the loss sharper, but also hallowed.

“I’m very sorry to hear that, sir,” Sigi said. “I didn’t get a chance to know him well, but I respected his work here and at home very much.”

“Me too, Abramovich.” Donovan took a deep breath. “So, what do you say? Would you like to be my adjutant?”

Sigi hesitated, unsure how to ask for what he really wanted without sounding ungrateful. Donovan must have misread his expression.

“If you don’t want the job, I can understand,” Donovan said. “I’m not superstitious, but it does seem to have a low survival rate. We have staff primary positions open in the Operations and Intelligence shops if you’d prefer one of those.”

Sigi straightened, indignation forcing a louder protest than he’d intended out of him.

“It’s not that at all, sir!”

Donovan raised an eyebrow at the outburst. Sigi looked at his boots for a second, chagrined.

“What is it, then, Lieutenant?”

Sigi hesitated for a moment to consider his phrasing.

“It’s just that I know you have company command positions vacant,” Sigi said. “I was hoping for one of those.”

Donovan nodded, sympathy and understanding appearing in a fatherly smile.

“You’ve been stuck on staff since you got to France, you finally escape only for me to make you a staff officer again. I can understand why that is less than you hoped for.”

He paused, tapping his pen on the desk three times, then shaking his head.

“The trouble is that we are headed back into the line too quickly for a company to get adjusted to you and vice versa. We’ve already got a passel of replacement troops we’re breaking in. I’m loath to reshuffle the leadership on top of that; especially this close to a major attack.”

Sigi should’ve known his escape from Division had been too easy. Well, being Donovan’s adjutant would be far from dull. At least he’d be at the front. He opened his mouth to say so, but Donovan continued—

“Here’s what I’ll do for you, Abramovich. Take the adjutant job for three weeks, the war is unlikely to be over by then. That will give the battalion time to get used to you, time for me to figure out which company would be the best fit. Do a swinging job, and I’ll give you one of my open companies; and the captain’s bars to go with it if I can swing it. Square deal?”

“Yes, sir!”

“By the way,” Donovan asked, “how’s your pal Thornton doing?”




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