“Thanks, Mel,” he said, “for the fine exposition that I knew you would give. I know all you ladies and gentlemen, our distinguished guests, must feel as grateful as I do to General Goodwin for giving us his time. Personally, I must add my apologies. He’s down here in Paris for a few days of well-earned relaxation, and I was mean enough to cut into his play hours and put the bee on him for this assignment—but now perhaps we’d better all relax and get a little of this—er—fog of battle out of our throats. If you care to follow me downstairs, I think there are a few refreshments waiting, designed to accomplish this, and if any of you have any questions you want to ask General Goodwin or me or anybody else, why we’ll be there to answer them. Thanks again, Mel.”
I watched the group file out of the room, and before following, General Goodwin did the right thing. Smiling, he thanked the young officers for handling the maps and shook hands with the lieutenant colonel of Intelligence.
“I’m sorry about the pointer, sir,” I heard the lieutenant colonel say.
“To hell with the pointer,” General Goodwin said. “What is it, Sergeant?”
“Would the General mind signing my short snorter, sir?” the sergeant asked, and he unrolled the collection of paper money which soldiers gathered in those days, in the various countries they visited, and attached together with scotch tape.
“Why, certainly,” the General said. “Pull it out, son. I started one of those myself once, but I don’t know where it’s gone.”
Cocktails were served in the offices downstairs. By this time the VIPs had grown to understand that refreshments followed nearly every event. They were to be entertained that night at a Military Government dinner, which would be preceded by another cocktail hour, but they were not allergic to refreshments at any time. I had been told that morning, greatly to my relief, that Military Government would take full charge of the party from five-thirty on, which meant that I need not attend the function and could spend an evening in Paris by myself, but this time was still far off. Weary as I was of cocktails and appetizers and hearing officers going through the same routine, I had to follow them downstairs, the last of the procession like the tail of a kite.
It had not been my intention to speak to General Goodwin, because he would be bothered enough with other contacts. In fact, I never thought that he would remember me, and it surprised me that he did, until I recollected that officers of field rank were obliged to file away quick dossiers of individuals and their aptitudes. Scotch was hard to find in Paris unless you were around with the big brass, and even the VIPs were beginning to run short and had begun hiding bottles in their suitcases. I was taking the precaution of ordering a double Scotch before the supply ran out, when the General spoke to me. He was right beside me with a double Scotch himself.
“Well, hello,” he said. “Who let you in here?” and he held out his hand.
I shook hands with him and told him I was there looking after the VIPs because someone had to. He asked if I didn’t wish we were eating K rations at Saint-Lô, and I said I certainly did. Then he asked me if I’d ever been in Paris before, and I told him I had worked there for several years before the war.
“I’ve only been here during wars,” he said. “Always passing through. Last time was World War I, just passing through, but you were in short pants in those days.”
Naturally I did not want to take up any more of his time, and I thought he would turn away and give his attention to someone else, but instead he went right on talking, in an easy, friendly manner. Perhaps he was not at home with writers, and my status bridged a gap and made it possible for him to be informal.
“Well,” he said, “maybe you’d better introduce me to the company,” but he did not look happy at the prospect and he seemed to have something else on his mind. “Look, Major,” he went on, “I’m at loose ends here. How about having dinner with me tonight—that is, if you haven’t got anything else to do? God damn it, you don’t have to. Never mind the rank.”
“I don’t,” I said, “unless you want to pull it on me.” Sometimes generals welcomed such a feeble joke. “Thanks for asking me, sir. I should enjoy having dinner.”
“Well, that’s fine,” he said. “You’re sure you don’t mind?”
“It’ll be a great pleasure, sir,” I said. He had obviously asked me on the spur of the moment, and now he may have realized that the whole thing was irregular.
“Don’t sound off about its being a pleasure,” he said. “I owe you a dinner. Those letters I gave you got home all right. Remember that mortar shell?” He laughed happily. “I always jump myself when those damn things go off. You never hear them coming—they’re just right there. Let’s have another drink and then I’d better meet the crowd.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, “I’d better introduce you. That’s my function, I guess, and I enjoyed your talk very much, sir.”
“God damn it,” he said, “let’s forget about the talk.”
“Especially,” I said, “about gittin’ thar fustest with the mostest men.”
He looked at me in a shocked way, almost as though I had uttered a blasphemy.
“Take me over and introduce me to that pretty girl,” he said, and he nodded toward Dottie Peale, who was standing arrogantly aloof in her tailored suit, drinking a double dry Martini cocktail.
As the General and I moved toward her, I remember thinking very favorably of Dottie Peale’s qualities of neatness and durability. The rest of the VIPs, though still avid enough not to miss a single minute of their unique experience, were beginning to suffer from museum fatigue, whereas Dottie looked as she had when she had awakened in the plane that morning over the ocean, fresh and in perfect order. The French, I was thinking, almost had a word for her—soignée—except that Dottie’s general appearance had never given me the impression of care or effort or made me feel that she did all the things to herself one reads about in Harper’s Bazaar. I found myself calculating her age by subtracting three or four years from my own, a computation which showed that she must have been about thirty-four that afternoon in Paris. She had never been aggressively or meltingly beautiful, but she still looked like a Rosalind in a page boy’s dress, if you wanted to bring in Shakespeare, and she might have been a better Rosalind than any I had ever seen. She was not as pretty as Helen, I was thinking, but she was the most attractive woman in the room, and General Goodwin obviously shared my opinion.
“There’s nothing like a nice American girl,” he said, “is there, Sid?”
It may have been that first warming glimpse of her that made the General call me Sid. It struck me at the time as one of those crude and forthright efforts at friendship that the big brass made occasionally, and all that surprised me was that he knew my first name. He must have heard the newspapermen call me Sid back there in Normandy.
Of course Dottie had been watching us edge toward her, although she smiled at us in quick, innocent surprise.
“Well,” she said to me after I had introduced the General, “I thought you’d got lost, Sid,” and she smiled again, not at me but at him, “behind those maps or somewhere.”
“Sid doesn’t get lost,” the General said. “Sid knows his way around,” and he gave my shoulder a quick, affectionate shake.
“Oh, I didn’t know you knew Sid,” Dottie said. “… Oh, thank you, sir.”
She had turned to a colonel who had arrived with another double Martini and who relieved her of her empty glass. The tone she used when she called him “sir” was charming, and ingenuous, but the colonel knew his protocol. If he had forgotten even for a moment that he was outranked, he would have remembered when the General glanced at him, and he left us.
“That Martini looks pretty warm,” the General said. “Here, let me call him back and tell him to get you a colder one.”
“Oh, no thanks,” Dottie said. “It’s very nice.”
“These Cocktail Joes ought to know enough to dish up cold cocktails,” the General said.
When Dottie spok
e again, her voice had a serious, respectful note.
“I thought your talk was intensely interesting, sir,” she said. “I’m not much at military details, not that I oughtn’t to be learning, with everyone so sweet about explaining things, but I loved seeing someone as sure of himself as you were.”
I still sometimes found myself believing Dottie when she was humbly serious. You might forget the words but never her sudden yielding manner of speech. Even though time and experience had given me immunity, I felt a slight pang of jealousy as I observed its effect on General Goodwin.
“Well, thanks,” he said, “but I guess you haven’t seen many soldiers, have you?”
“No,” Dottie said, “not many.”
“Well, out here, if we don’t want to get sent home,” he said, “we’ve got to be sure of ourselves and also of the whole works.”
“If you don’t mind, sir,” I said, “maybe I had better bring some of the other people up to meet you.”
He was on duty. It was no time to talk to Dottie, and he knew it.
“That’s right,” the General said. “Go and get them, but just stay here, will you, Mrs. Peale, and help me? I don’t know about these writing people.”
As a matter of fact, I did not need to get them. All the Very Important People were already gathering around the General, so closely that Dottie was pushed to the edge of the circle.
“Oh, Sid,” she said, “why didn’t you tell me? I didn’t know you knew him.”
“I didn’t know I did either,” I said. “It just came over us suddenly.”
“Darling,” Dottie said, “do you remember what I said about looking for a man?”
“He wears pants, all right,” I said.
“Oh, shut up,” Dottie said. “Darling, you’ve got to do something about him for me. I don’t want to lose him in this crowd.”
Of course she must have known very well she was not going to lose him.
That dialogue between Dottie and General Goodwin has remained fresh in my memory because of its very dullness, but then even dull conversation had a meaning of its own in a womanless war theater. I was struggling under a weight of satiety, wishing that General Goodwin had not asked me to have dinner with him, and wondering why I had not immediately thought of some polite excuse.
“Look at him,” Dottie said. “He must be bored to death, but he couldn’t be sweeter.”
“If you don’t mind, Dottie,” I said, “please stop saying that these people couldn’t be sweeter.”
“You never did like people, dear,” Dottie said. “Why can’t you be kind when someone is suffering? Just look at him.”
“I’m suffering myself,” I said.
“But not in a sweet way,” Dottie said. “You’re always nasty when you suffer. Sid, please look at him.”
“I’m going to see too much of him,” I told her. “He’s asked me out to dinner.”
“Good God!” Dottie said. “Why didn’t you tell me? I think you’re the most selfish person sometimes, Sid.”
If General Goodwin was suffering, he did not show it. On the contrary, he seemed to enjoy the group around him, none of whom would have given him a moment’s attention in days of peace. He would have been at some army post somewhere this minute if it had not been for the war, sitting on some veranda in officers’ row or in some office doing paper work. Perhaps this party was a welcome change for him. The word must have been passed that General Goodwin was a genuine combat general, and that he had seen a lot of action beginning with the North African invasion. A combat general was still a novelty to our party. He stood there answering their questions courteously, nodding and frequently smiling, with what looked like honest pleasure.
“Sid,” Dottie asked me, “what are all his ribbons?”
For some reason, although everyone in the party had been given an illustrated folder explaining service ribbons and decorations, none of them seemed able to keep them straight. They only knew that every officer was a walking totem pole and that they could not read the signs.
“They aren’t bad,” I said, “considering he’s a line officer and not in the Air Force. He’s been wounded twice. He’s got the Croix de guerre with a palm, Distinguished Service Cross, Legion of Merit, and a lot of other things with stars and clusters. He hasn’t done badly at all. They look like good, honest decorations, and they’re not too ostentatious.”
“Don’t be so patronizing. You haven’t any,” Dottie said.
I told her she was perfectly right, that I was in no position to collect those things, but I explained to her that officers, especially in the Regular Army, passed those things around to each other and valued them greatly because they were a help professionally, and that ribbons were useful also in indicating places of service, exclusive of heroism.
“I wish you would stop being cynical sometimes,” Dottie said, “and stop treating bravery as a joke.”
There couldn’t be enough bravery, I told her, to balance all the ribbons in the ETO, and a lot of brave men didn’t get them, and I told her that the General would tell her the same thing—that he really did have a very nice collection, but not all for good behavior.
“He’s looking at his watch now,” Dottie said.
“That’s true,” I said. “I guess he’s had enough. He’s going to ask the boss if he can go now.”
“Sid,” she said, and she pulled at my sleeve, “Sid, he’s coming this way.”
“All right,” I said, “all right.”
“Sid, can’t I go to dinner with you?”
“No,” I said, “you can’t. You’re going on another party.”
“Sid,” she said, “I’ve got a dreadful headache.”
“Then you can have something quietly in your room at the Ritz. You can’t walk out on the program, Dottie.”
“Oh, can’t I?” Dottie said.
“No,” I said, “and you’re not going to throw a monkey wrench into the machinery just because you have a sudden whim.”
“Oh,” she said, “so that’s what I have.”
“I’m putting it in a nice way,” I began, and then we both stopped because General Goodwin was back with us.
“Well,” the General said, “it looks as though the little party is breaking up.”
Dottie spoke quickly before I had a chance to answer.
“Won’t you come along with us to the Ritz, sir?” Dottie said. “Sid says that he’s dining with you. I’m not going anywhere tonight because I have a dreadful headache, but I have a sitting room.”
“Yes, that’s true,” I said. “Mrs. Peale has a headache and a sitting room,” but neither of them was listening to me.
“I’d love it,” Dottie said, “if you two would keep me company while I take some aspirin. It’s awfully lonely at the Ritz.”
“Why, Mrs. Peale,” the General began, “if you’re not feeling well—”
Dottie laughed lightly and musically.
“It’s only a diplomatic headache,” she said. “I don’t want to go out to that dinner party, and Sidney says if I don’t go, I will have to stay at home or it won’t be military, and it’s awfully lonely at the Ritz, but I have got a sitting room.”
She stopped and waited and I waited while the General considered the situation, and it only took him a second to put it all in order.
“Perhaps I might make a suggestion,” he said. “As long as you have a sitting room, why don’t we all three have a quiet dinner there, Mrs. Peale?”
Dottie laughed.
“I think it’s a very good suggestion,” she said, “as long as I didn’t suggest it first,” and then the General laughed as though Dottie had said something delightfully humorous.
“I’ve got a car outside that ought to get us there,” he said.
“Sid, dear,” Dottie said, “would you mind finding my coat for me?”
“I’ve got a coat and things around somewhere, too,” the General said. “Would you mind telling somebody to look them up for me, Sid?”
&
nbsp; As I left them, he and Dottie were talking as though I had never been there at all, and as though they were old friends who had met delightfully and unexpectedly and who had a great many things to say to one another.
Outside the General’s car was waiting in a highly preferred position. When he saw the General, the driver removed the cover from the two-star plate and opened the door.
“The Ritz, son,” the General said to the driver, and when we were all seated and the door was closed, he laughed. “Now that we’re all together, let’s cut out this ‘sir’ business and this rank. We both know Sid, and my name’s Mel. What’s your name, Mrs. Peale?”
“It’s Dorothy, sir,” Dottie said, “but you can call me Dottie if you like.”
“Dottie,” General Goodwin said, “you can’t know what it means to see a nice American girl again.”
“You’ve certainly met one now, General,” I said.
“God damn it,” the General said, “didn’t I tell you to call me Mel?”
“That’s right. Excuse me, Mel,” I said.
VI
Sid, Here, Knows What I Mean …
In Paris that February, the Bulge battle was such recent history that it was still a good subject for conversation. It was generally known that the armored division commanded by Major General Melville Goodwin was a part of the group engaged in what was called “blunting von Rundstedt’s spearhead.” The Silver Leaf Armored, so called because of the insignia placed on its rolling stock, had been rushed from the Vosges area to a small village named Maule, where the situation was so critical locally that the division was ordered to attack before any suitable liaison could be established with the forces on its flanks, and, through no fault of its own, the Silver Leaf had been cut off and in the subsequent free-for-all had sustained heavy losses. Indeed it had even looked for a time as though it might be wiped out as a fighting unit, and I had heard it said that it only got off as well as it did because of its high morale and its commander’s great skill with mechanized matériel. Whatever the facts might be, General Goodwin came out of the Battle of the Bulge very well personally. In fact if it had not been for the spectacular stand of the Hundred and First Airborne, the Silver Leaf Armored Division might have figured prominently in the news in those grim days when both headquarters and the press were looking rather frantically for heroes. As it was, everybody said that it had performed its mission correctly, dishing out more than it took and effectively chewing up von Rundstedt’s advance elements so that they could finally be contained.
Melville Goodwin, USA Page 9
