Casualties of War: The Advocate Trilgy

by Bill Mesce

  I nodded to let him know he didn’t have to finish. “Well, what about Captain Courie?”

  “Sorry?”

  “What do you think of him?”

  “What do I think of Captain Courie?” He was showing the befuddlement of a man rarely asked for his opinion. “You mean as a…well, as a what?”

  “Just in general. I haven’t met the man, you know. I’m just trying to get a picture.” I made some gesture with my notebook as if to indicate some journalistic justification.

  Alth shrugged noncommittally. “He seems like a good officer. As a lawyer, he’s a pretty sharp cookie. I think I can learn a lot from him. As a lawyer, like I said.”

  “Did the captain select you? Or did you…’insinuate’ yourself into the position?”

  “Sorry?”

  “How did you get this job on the prosecution team?”

  “I’m not sure – ”

  “Young man with very little experience, his career still in front of him. This must have looked absolutely scrumptious to you. And to have a mentor like Captain Courie, whom, so I’m informed, has quite the record back home – ”

  He took a step back from the doorway. He wasn’t quite sure whether or not this was an indictment, but was nonetheless wary. “I really have things – ”

  “I understand he hasn’t been here very long either. The captain that is.”

  He was still edging away from the door. “Well, longer than me – ”

  “I suppose what I’m curious about, Lieutenant, is whether or not you’re uncomfortable – with just your two months here – passing judgment on a man with over a year’s service overseas? A good portion of it, I believe, in combat?”

  “I’m not passing judgment, Mr. Owen. The jury does that.”

  “You’re just prosecuting him, then.”

  “I’m assisting Captain Courie.”

  “So, you really have no opinion, no personal feelings on the matter.”

  “That’s right. If there’s nothing else – ”

  “One last thing, Lieutenant? Please? La comtesse – ”

  “Sorry?”

  “The countess. Is she being compensated for your use of the premises?”

  “Compensated? You mean paid?” This was harmless enough – in his eyes – to stem his retreat. He paused, considered, earnestly curious and puzzled. “I think Captain Courie negotiated the use of the place. The Signal Corps people were already here… I don’t know if she was paid anything. Belgium’s an ally, right? I think it was something along the lines of her contributing it to the war effort, military necessity, cooperating with an ally, that kind of thing.” His wariness returned, he now seemed to be of a mind that anything from me, no matter how innocuous, must have a razor concealed somewhere within. “Maybe that’s something else you should ask the captain when he comes in tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “There was a radio message a little while ago. It looks like him and Colonel Ryan will be hung up in Wiltz until sometime tomorrow. Look, Mr. Owen, I don’t know what you’re trying to get at, but I’m like any other guy in uniform. I’m just here to do a job.” He took another step rearward, turned, and toddled off down the corridor.

  I flipped my notebook closed, having not made so much as a scratch, and looked about at the empty shelves. Just here to do a job. Weren’t they all?

  *

  We were sitting in the dining hall, a cavernous room barely warmed by the blazes in the fireplaces at either end. Harry, Ricks, and I sat clustered at one end of the long dining table – another unwieldy piece which had escaped the Germans’ kleptomania or need for heating fuel. Harry, characteristically, had left the head of the table open, sitting by me. “Supper” was a loose term for the stew pot of mixed rations Harry and Ricks had concocted by picking their way through the crate of 10–in1, accompanied by a side buffet of open boxes of K–rations.

  “Evening mess” had had – as Lieutenant Alth had warned – no more announcement than Harry and Ricks clattering about the kitchen. I poked my head in the door and saw Harry going about the business of foraging for food with none of the low–key drollery I would have expected from him. There was a pall about him, even in the innocuous conversation between he and young Ricks over the stove. It was still there as we sat at the table, like some ghost constantly whispering in his ear; an incessant and dismal distraction. He seemed to blink himself into full focus as Ricks began a rant about the discarnate Captain Courie.

  “I’ve never met Courie and I’ve spent all of five minutes talking to his little flunky Alth and they already give me a pain in my arse! Left and right cheek respectively!”

  I chuckled, but the mirth was instantly killed as I stirred the glutinous mess in the bowl in front of me. “I appreciate that you lads had to make do with what was on hand…” I scooped up a spoonful and watched it ooze back into the bowl. I picked through the open K–ration boxes strewn between us and picked out a tin of cheese and biscuits. “What has the esteemed in absentia prosecutor done now?”

  “Alth says that for this meeting of the minds down in Wiltz, Courie had to – he just had to – take everything with him to review it with Cota. Depositions, statements…they took everything on the discovery list with them but Sisto!”

  “Rawthah unsporting, wot?” I said in my best Etonian whine.

  Ricks flashed a look which said he was not nearly as amused by my apery as I was, before fulminating on: “And now we get this crap about him not coming back until tomorrow? He’s cheating us out of another half–day! I don’t know what kind of law they practice in Cleveland – ”

  “The same kind they practice everywhere else,” Harry said with a resigned sigh. I looked over and saw him with elbows on the table, his hands tiredly massaging his brow. “You and Joe Ryan ought to start a club,” he said to Ricks. He let his arms drop heavily to the table. He pushed his bowl away, and picked through the K–ration boxes until he found a fruit bar. “I would just like to point out that this guy from Cleveland you and Ryan don’t seem to think too much of is sitting on what I’ll bet is a fully–prepped case, has managed to shove a short trial date down our throats, and has – legitimately – been cutting down whatever prep time we have left. So, the next time either of you want to make some crack about the practice of law in Cleveland, I hope it is one of respect and reverence.”

  “Captain Courie is, so I’m told, a ‘sharp cookie,’ “ I offered in corroboration. The argot was misplaced enough in my Scot’s mouth to bring raised eyebrows from my supper mates.

  “Colonel Voss?”

  We turned to see a lanky fellow hovering in the entryway of the dining hall, the sleeves of his windcheater adorned with corporal’s stripes.

  “Come on in, Andy!” Voss hailed. “Eddie, let me introduce you to the only guy in this rock pile who was as happy to see us coming down the road as Dominick Sisto!”

  At first glance, the corporal reminded me of the cowboys I’d seen in American films at the cine: tall, lithe, a bow to his legs that gave him something of a rolling gait. His handsome face was all clean angles, his dark eyes sharp, his black hair thick and bushy. Yet, unlike those cinema Westerners, his face was unlined, still graced with the unfinished quality of youth. He nodded politely in my direction. “Evenin’. I guess you’d be Mr. Owen.” His voice carried the flat twang of the Great Plains.

  “Eddie, this is Corporal Andrew Thom,” Harry introduced. “He was, when I got here, the saddest–faced son–of–a–bitch I’ve ever seen.”

  “Close friend of Lieutenant Sisto?” I asked. “I imagine that’d account for it.”

  “Not zackly,” Thom said.

  “He was Sisto’s defense counsel,” Ricks said with a sympathetic smile.

  “These guys looked like the cavalry ta the rescue ta me!” Thom proclaimed. “Like ‘The Three Mesquiteers.’ You fellers ever see any a those Three Mesquiteers pitchers?”

  “And yet another piece of American popular art fails to bridge the cultural
divide!” I pronounced.

  Thom frowned lightly before turning to Harry. “He always talk like that, Colonel?”

  “He makes his living writing,” Harry explained. “He thinks that obligates him to make people think he’s smart.”

  “Don’t be too impressed,” Ricks put in. “He gets it all from a word–a–day thing in the funny papers.”

  I smiled in gracious tolerance of the jibes before turning back to the corporal. “I get the impression you were feeling somewhat overwhelmed prior to the arrival of reinforcements?”

  “Overwhelmed?” He considered the word for a moment. “Mr. Owen, I was still waitin’ on my bar exam scores when I got called up, so I guess you could say I was feelin’ just a might overwhelmed!” He was the first to chuckle, as much – I suspect – in relief as in an attractive degree of self–effacement. “Colonel, I just thought maybe I’d bring some chow up ta the lootenant. If that’s ok.”

  “In the kitchen,” Harry said with a nod.

  As the corporal disappeared through the kitchen door, Ricks leaned forward on the table, as if ready to share some discretion. He turned to Harry while nodding at me: “Seems like the time to put it to him now we’re all here.”

  Harry nodded and tossed his fruit bar, unopened, back into one of the K–ration boxes. “Andy!” he called out. “Before you go back upstairs?”

  Thom re–entered from the kitchen. His puzzled attention was on the stuff in the bowl in his hands. “Who made this?”

  “I refuse to answer on the grounds it might tend to incriminate me,” Ricks said.

  “Least it’s hot,” Thom said, taking the seat Harry indicated next to Ricks.

  Harry took a moment, as if reconsidering pressing on. Then, “Eddie, I need to ask you a favor.”

  “Harry, you know you don’t need to ask. Say what it is, and done is done.”

  “You better hear me out. You know we have a time problem. Dominick gave me a list of people in his outfit I’d like interviewed. It’s the men named in the inquiry report, and a whole lot more. To get through them, get the interviews back in any kind of time where we can review and collate them into some kind of usable shape – ”

  “Back from where?”

  “Wiltz. In a rare burst of cooperation, Alth says he can get a message through to divisional headquarters in Wiltz, have the men brought in from the field, have a place set up for interviews. I was thinking of sending Pete and Andy down there. I’ve already talked it over with them, and they’re ok with this…” Harry paused, reluctant to make the final imposition.

  “You want me to go with them? Help out?”

  He nodded.

  “Of course, Harry! Though I should point out: I’m no lawyer. I’m not sure I’d know how to conduct a proper – ”

  “There won’t be anything proper about it,” Harry said. “We don’t have time for formal depositions.”

  “Still – ”

  “You’re naturally nosy, Mr. Owen,” Ricks put in. “At least that’s been my experience. That’s the only qualification you need.”

  “I need them interviewed quickly but thoroughly,” Harry said. “All the usual questions: What happened? When did it happen? Who was there? That doesn’t sound any different than what you’d annoy the Army with on your own, does it?”

  “Well, I resent investigative journalism being referred to as an ‘annoyance,’ but yes, that’s how I’d annoy them on my own. It doesn’t seem like much of a favor, Harry. Why the reluctance?”

  “You’re here thanks to Joe Ryan. But there’s no way I can get him – or anybody else – to swallow a reporter as a legitimate part of the defense team. Handling some Q & A’s, I think we can squeak by on that, but as anything more than background assistance… And I won’t violate privilege with Dominick. What he says to me I can’t share with you. That means you have to do a lot of this in the dark. And whatever you get in those Q & A’s… You’re not working for your paper. You’re working for me. You can’t use anything that doesn’t get cleared by the Judge Advocate and the Public Relations Office.”

  “It’s not the first time you’ve asked me to keep a secret, Harry.”

  “It’s the first time I’ve asked you to keep it from your paper. I wouldn’t want to put you in a bind with them. If they find out how close you are to this, and wonder why none of it’s getting back to them – ”

  “That’ll be their concern, Harry. Not mine.”

  He smiled. “Then you’re off first thing in the morning. All three of you. I’ll stay here, work with Dominick and start plowing through the discovery material when Courie gets back.”

  “I’d best get this up ta the lootenant ‘fore it gets cold,” Thom said, rising.

  “And if it’s a bright and early start we’re talking about, I’m going to go pack my ditty bag,” said Ricks joining him.

  “Do you still have your copy of Manual of Courts–Martial?” Harry asked him.

  “Didn’t have much use for it in Italy, and it’s lousy latrine reading.”

  “Take mine. In whatever spare time you have – on the latrine, maybe – get re–acquainted. As our recently–Americanized Scottish friend has pointed out, Courie is a – what was that phrase, Eddie?”

  “I believe the appellation in question is, ‘sharp cookie.’ ”

  Harry grinned and shook his head, still unable to quite swallow it with a Scots burr. “But he earned his reputation in a civilian criminal court. He hasn’t been with JAG that long; he might still be learning the ropes. We might be able to find a blind spot there.”

  Ricks nodded, then he and Thom made their goodnights and retired.

  Harry immediately lapsed back into his grave and meditative mood. We sat silently for a moment, just the two of us in the great room, before he pushed away from the table and walked slowly – as if pondering something – toward the nearest fire. He threw another log on, poked the blaze to a new height though it did little to provide more warmth beyond the immediate circle of the hearth.

  “There must be something about your city of Cleveland which cultivates a killer instinct,” I said, finally breaking the silence.

  He seemed startled by the sound of my voice, as if he’d forgotten I was there. “Hm?”

  “I was saying about Cleveland.”

  “Oh.”

  “That was where Albert Markham was from, wasn’t it?”

  His head came up, then. “That’s right. I forgot that. I’ve been thinking about him off and on today, but I forgot he was from Cleveland.”

  “What brought him to mind?”

  “Talking with Dominick.”

  “How so?”

  But he’d drifted off again, his eyes engaged by the licks of flame now curling about the fresh wood.

  “What’s wrong, Harry? Harry!”

  He turned to me with an apologetic smile. “Not much of a reunion, is it? Seems like all I ever do when I see you is ask you for – ”

  “I appreciate the sentiment, but the apology is quite unnecessary.” I caught the pensive look in his eye. “Worried about the case?”

  “Worry comes from not knowing what’s going to happen. I am not worried. They’ve got Dominick nailed. I’m pretty confident I can get the heavier charges reduced, maybe even dropped. But he’s going to get convicted and he’s going to end up in Leavenworth for a looong pull. It’s not the case I’m worried about.”

  “Then what is it, Harry? Something Sisto said to you up there today? I wouldn’t want you to breach a confidence, but – ”

  “It wasn’t anything he said about the case.”

  I walked to him and set a hand on his shoulder. “Harry.” Said as one friend says to another simply to let them know, I’m here and I’ll wait as long as they need. There was another long moment while I watched the flickers from the fireplace play over his face, its folds manifesting some mix of puzzlement, pain, sadness.

  He took a long breath. “For most of the afternoon, Dominick has been telling me what he and his m
en went through in those three days on that hill. I saw that boy grow up, Eddie. I remember the first summer he learned to walk, clomping along down the hall on his fat little bare feet. He came in our open door like our place was his own, wearing nothing but a diaper and a smile.” A smile of remembrance: “And it was kind of like his place. Dominick was my…’practice run’ before I had my own boys. I think, maybe, he made me want to have kids of my own. And now…” The smile evaporated, a lip twitched in anger. “Sometimes I wish I could put the whole goddamned human race on trial.” He turned to me, and there was something…imploring is the only word I can think of, in his eyes. “That could just as well be one of my boys up there.”

  “I should think this mess’ll be all tick by the time they’re of age, Harry.”

  “Maybe this one. What about the next one?”

  He said goodnight and turned for bed, touching my arm lightly as he passed. I envied him his worry, for all I had to keep me warm in the high, cold hall was the fire.

  *

  I cleared our mess from the table, then puttered about the kitchen for a bit clearing away the several days’ worth of debris left by the chateau’s other tenants. I could not fix the world’s ills, or even ameliorate those of my friend, but I could at least clean the dishes. I was so occupied when Corporal Thom found me later that evening as he dutifully – for he was a dutiful lad – returned Lieutenant Sisto’s empty bowl. Without a word, he removed his windcheater, rolled up his sleeves, and took a stand by me at the sink, drying as I washed.

  “I feel bad,” he said. “I shoulda been doin’ this all along.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, Corporal, with the university years one needs to complete one’s juris doctor, I’m surprised you were not taken on as an officer candidate.”

  A rueful smile. “Well, it was suppose’ ta go that way. Come the end a basic, I did get put up as a candidate for OCS, ‘n’ that was all–righty fine with me. But then they folded up the class I was suppose’ to be in. The way it was put ta me at that pertickaler time, they needed more riflemen over here then they needed lawyers. After spendin’ the last coupla weeks dealin’ with Courie ‘n’ that lootenant a his, I’m a mind not ta think much a lawyers myself.”