XXV

War Is Hell—in Alexandria or Anywhere Else

I followed the General into the library and closed the door. He had a well-compartmented mind that could move effortlessly from one thing to another.

“Let’s get this thing cleaned up, Phil,” he said. “I have to be in New York by five o’clock. That means leaving here by three forty-five. Make a note of it, will you, Flax, and take it up with Mrs. Skelton. Where did we break off last night?”

“You were back in Washington,” Phil Bentley told him, “in the summer of 1941.”

Melville Goodwin laughed and sat down by the fireplace.

“It was really hot that summer,” he said. “Everyone, as I remember, was sort of crazy with the heat.…”

In the final draft of his profile, Phil Bentley came up with only a paragraph on Melville Goodwin’s pre-Pearl Harbor experiences.

With his deceptively boyish smile that softened but did not obscure the tough corners of his mouth, Melville Goodwin described those months of shoestring improvisations and basic organizational blueprinting as follows: “The whole crowd were like jugglers in a three-ring circus, keeping pie plates in the air. No sooner did you catch one than you had to get rid of it in time to get the next one that the Old Man was scaling at you—and you couldn’t break them either. It was lucky for me I was a fast mover.”

He meant by this that he was a sort of liaison trouble shooter down in Washington, shuttling back and forth among high echelons, because A. C. Grimshaw, who had already attained a temporary two-star rank, began using him more and more as a second pair of legs and eyes. Grimshaw would send him as his representative to policy conferences on training and plans, and he did a lot of doubling and tripling in brass that summer. He never mentioned Muriel’s place in this picture to Phil Bentley, but he did take up the subject of Muriel with me privately.

Muriel, he said, came right up from Benning to Washington to win the war, and they had a few differences of opinion as to where he should fit in the scheme of things. Washington was quite a place, Mel Goodwin said, for an army girl that summer. Anyone who had what it took was bound to get more rank, and if you had some time for a little daydreaming, which he hadn’t, you could dream yourself right up to four stars. Of course the whole town was overcrowded, not alone with service personnel, but with dizzy New Deal civilians who were beginning to spin like dancing mice when Congress began upping the appropriations. Though he was assigned to duty under Grimshaw at the Department, he could not rustle up any living quarters for Muriel and young Charley and it was lucky Robert was at the Point. He had wanted Muriel and Charley to stay where it was cool until he could at least find out what the score was. He even suggested that Muriel might take Charley to Hallowell to visit her mother, who was living all alone in the house there since Mr. Reece’s death. He could not very well afford to keep them in some Washington hotel on his pay, and though Muriel and her mother never did get on well sharing a house together—because each of them was always taking over without consulting the other—he did hope Muriel would keep out of Washington for a while—not that he would not miss her.

He pointed out to her in several long letters, which he should not have spared the time to write, what with all the reports and directives he was always drafting for the boss, that he had no time for family life anyway. When he was not being sent somewhere around the country, he was at the Department during all his waking hours. Whenever he got back to the room he had occupied in “Shorty” Telfer’s apartment, he was in his sack in five minutes. Shorty was on the training program then, and Shorty was so tired at night that his wife Beatrice couldn’t get a word out of him, and even if there had been time for family evenings, you couldn’t tell your wife what was going on, because everything was classified.

Of course he must have known subconsciously that Muriel would never keep out of Washington. However, he did think that she might have warned him that she was coming instead of just appearing at Shorty’s apartment with Charley as though she had been airborne. It meant that for five days Muriel and Beatrice had to share the main bedroom while Shorty took over the guest room and Melville had the studio couch and Charley used a bedding roll on the living room floor. They all used one bathroom, and he was always forgetting about Charley and tripping over the bedding roll when he got home at night.

Finally, of course, they did get settled, because Muriel called up Enid, Bud Joyce’s wife, whom she had not seen since Schofield. Bud had rented a little house in Alexandria, and Enid told them to move right in with them and share expenses, even before she took it up with Bud. He never forgot old Bud’s expression when he came home to find the whole Goodwin family spread out, but then he had done Bud a good turn when Bud had begun feuding with “Bing” Bishop at Schofield. Besides, Bud was always a good sport, and he and Enid had always wanted a boy, and there was Charley. Bud’s only remark was that war was hell in Alexandria or anywhere else. As a matter of fact, Bud and Enid kept Muriel and Charley right there through the whole war, and they were all still good friends at the end of it, though he never understood how they had managed it.

There was another complication when Muriel came to Washington. As Bud said, the gals made up a general staff of their own and began doing long-term planning. Bud, with his desk at G–2, and limited duty because of disability, was not much for Enid and Muriel to work on, but Melville was really good material for two bright girls. He had done all right at the Tank School and Leavenworth and the War College, and Muriel’s thinking was always around the top of the heap. Still, if there was going to be a war, he did not want to be on any staff. As he pointed out to Muriel, somebody had to fight the war, but Muriel wanted him to be nearer the top and more on the administrative side, where the big brass might notice him, instead of being lost in some training area. When they wanted someone, she said, it was only human nature to look around and pick someone in sight rather than someone buried down in Texas. He did not have time to discuss these matters with Muriel except occasionally when they went for a walk on Sunday, but Muriel had lots of time to consider them.

One night in August when he had a few minutes alone with the chief in his office, he brought up the subject of the southern maneuvers and expressed a sort of wish, as definitely as you could express such a thing, that he might get down there with a regiment or something, but Grimshaw only said that he was needed right where he was and the situation was still fluid.

“And besides,” he said, “I may be wrong, but I think Muriel has some pretty sound ideas about you. Why don’t you leave things to Muriel and me?”

They had recently spent two Sundays at the Grimshaws’. When the General had the time, he liked to get a small crowd around and cook hamburgers in his back yard at Georgetown, and Muriel was very proficient with outdoor grills. He certainly did not want the General to think that he differed with Muriel, and it was quite a problem to think up an answer.

“Muriel really can cook hamburgers, sir,” he said. “Muriel can stir up anything.”

He was relieved that the Chief seemed to see what he meant.

“Don’t you worry about Muriel,” the General said. “Muriel intuitively knows what’s cooking.”

Grimshaw always did have a quiet sense of humor.

“Yes, sir, she certainly does,” Melville said, “but I don’t want her to overdo me on both sides.”

This was about as far as he could go, even with anyone like Grimshaw.

“Mel,” the Old Man said, “Muriel never overdoes anything, but maybe you and I both had better go down and look over those maneuvers. I may be wrong, but we might both get a few ideas.”

It was the best news he had heard in a long while. You never knew how the Chief was going to jump. Actually, when they were down there he was able to fix things so that he did something with simulated tanks before he was yanked back to Washington. You could never tell what was in the Chief’s mind, and he never knew why he was being kept on ice. When he asked for a job in the Philippines just before Pearl Harbor, the Chief turned him down flat, and twice that winter when he asked for something in the Pacific, the Chief turned him down again. Grimshaw was never a Pacific man. By the spring of ’42 he was still sweating it out there in Washington, when suddenly the Chief sent him out to Arizona to observe desert maneuvers, but not to take command of anything. He only got the connection when work began on “Torch” and he was promoted to temporary colonel. Muriel was beginning to find him pretty hard to hold when they were in the middle of the North African planning, but it was not until September that the Chief said the word, and then he dropped it casually.

“Mel,” he said, “some of you younger fellows will have to be going over. Maybe you’d better start thinking about packing.”

Two weeks later his orders were cut for Paisley, where they were training the armor, and the best thing about it was that Muriel had known nothing whatsoever about it. She had cried half the night when she heard he was going to Paisley because she was certain he would be lost down there. There were lots of rumors, but “Torch” was all top secret. The truth was Muriel did not want him to be killed, and it did no good to point out to her that it was about time someone did a little fighting.

Her feelings were hurt when he gave her the word that she had better stay with Bud and Enid and not go to all the trouble of following him down to Paisley.

“But you’ll be there for a year,” she said, “before you go overseas.”

Muriel could not be right about everything. She only got the point when he flew up to Washington to say good-by, and of course she could not ask him where he was going. Secret orders never did help home life, and curiously enough, Charley was the one who came closest to guessing it, because Charley was a smart kid. He had just turned fourteen and he really followed the war news.

“Say, Dad,” he said, “I’ll bet you’re going after Rommel.”

He always remembered this. Charley thought a lot of him and knew he could lick anyone.

“No,” he answered, “I’m going up to the North Pole to help out Santa Claus.”

“Shucks,” Charley said, “you wouldn’t be packing khaki pants along with your woolens if you were going to see Santa Claus.”

Charley was smart and he had narrowed down the operation. The only thing to tell him was to believe in Santa Claus and to take care of his mother. Actually he had only an hour or two to talk over plans and this was just as well. Sitting there in the living room in Alexandria looking at Muriel and Charley, he realized how big the break was going to be, even though it was something for which they had all been waiting. He and Muriel had been together ever since he had come back from the AEF. They had been everywhere as a family unit, even as far as Tientsin, and now it was all over. There would be no Muriel where he was going, to guide him or to talk to the boss. It was quite a thing to consider, quite a thing.

“Muriel,” he said, “don’t you think it would be best for you and Charley to go up to Hallowell?”

“No,” Charley said, “Ma gets into arguments with Grandma.”

“We don’t get into arguments, Charley,” Muriel said, “but your grandmother is an old lady and she has rather fixed ideas. The schools are better in Washington, and maybe I can be of some help here in Washington. At least I’ll be able to get some news.”

Still North Africa was quite a way from Washington.

“All right,” he said, “and say good-by to Robert for me, won’t you? Tell Robert to keep his nose clean, will you?”

“You always pick up coarse expressions,” Muriel said, “when you get away with troops.”

“Well,” he said, “he’ll know what I mean.”

“And what’s your final advice to me?” Muriel asked. “What about my own nose?”

“Muriel,” he said, “you always did have a pretty nose.”

“I wish you wouldn’t behave as though you were going to a surprise party,” Muriel said.

“Damn it, Muriel,” he said, “you don’t want me to cry, do you?”

“I just don’t want you to act as though you were going on a vacation,” Muriel said.

He could feel the tension and he was glad Charley was there because it eased things somewhat, and it was unsettling to see that Muriel was on the verge of tears.

“Come now, Muriel,” he said, “you wouldn’t want me to be out of this show.”

“For heaven’s sakes, don’t make a little speech,” Muriel said. “I just wish you didn’t make me think …” she stopped a moment … “that you’re glad I won’t be around.”

“Now, Muriel,” was all he could think of saying, “now Muriel.”

“Melly,” she said, “you’re all I have.”

“Now, Muriel,” he said, “you’ve got the boys.”

The mention of the boys pulled everything together, and besides, Muriel was a service wife who knew a wife must not upset things when the army was off to war.

“Forget what I said, will you, Melly,” she told him. “Of course you’re not glad you’re going—except at the same time you can’t help but be.”

“Now, Muriel,” he said, “now, Muriel.”

“And now we’re on the subject,” she said, “just see you keep your own nose clean.”

He saw plenty of other farewells. You could not avoid them when they took place, openly, all around you in every railroad station. They always created a personnel problem whenever troops were alerted for overseas, and every one of those scenes was characteristic of all the others. There was a staff sergeant, for instance, at Paisley named Cathgart, a well-set-up kid who had a lot of the army in him in spite of his having been an insurance agent on the outside. When the train was moving east from Paisley to the embarkation point, Mel Goodwin stepped off to get some air at some Middle Western whistle stop and there he saw Cathgart kissing a girl who was down at the station passing coffee for the USO and who acted like a wife, and he hoped she was, because she had a little two-year-old golden-haired kid with her. He never asked how Cathgart had arranged to have her meet the train. The man had broken security to do it, but sometimes it was advisable not to take cognizance of everything. At any rate there were Cathgart and the girl and the child in a threeway clinch on the platform, and when the word was given to get aboard again, Cathgart was sobbing like a baby, and he sent word to Cathgart to report to him in his compartment up in front. It was funny how you began traveling in style once there was a war. He had rated a private car and a driver at Paisley and plane priorities when he took trips from Washington. He rated a drawing room now because he had to do routine administrative business on the train.

“Listen, son,” he said to Cathgart, “I happened to see you outside there.”

“Yes, sir,” Cathgart said. “Christ, sir, I had no idea she would be there.”

“Oh, hell,” Melville Goodwin told him, “that’s all right, Cathgart, but everybody in this outfit has to say good-by to somebody. I had to say good-by to my own wife in Washington. I know how it takes it out of you, but we all go through it. Just remember that, and if you feel bad, son, and if you want to talk about it, just take your weight off your feet and light up a cigarette and tell me.”

“Thanks a lot, sir,” Cathgart said. “It just got me, seeing Milly.”

“So her name’s Milly, is it?” Melville Goodwin said.

“Yes, sir,” Cathgart said, and then he went on for a while about Milly. It seemed that he had married Milly three years before, at a time when he was selling farm machinery.

“Well, here’s something else to remember, son,” Melville Goodwin told him. “We’re all teammates, no matter what the rank, and nobody lets a teammate down.” It never hurt to let men know you were a human being.

God had kept him safe so that he could hear the guns again, and now he had his chance to pay his debt to God and to his country. There was no wonder that he looked as though he were going to a party, as Muriel had said. He had been working for quite a while to get dressed up for that party. He was not a shavetail any longer. He had been to the War College with its extremely limited and selected enrollment of officers who were almost certain to become top brass. He had the equipment to make a stab at any job that was handed to him. There had been a lot of white-haired boys in tough competition at Paisley, and he had been able to keep his place. What was more, he learned when he got to Africa that he was able to say to hell with all this accumulated knowledge when necessary. He meant that he was not weighed down by all his intellectual equipment, like these pedants or theorists who bored the hell out of sensible people. By the time North Africa was secure, even though he got a shell fragment in his shoulder before the show was over (which fortunately did not keep him off the beach where those damned Greek temples stood near Salerno), he was pretty handy.

Frequently you had to learn fast in North Africa if you wanted to be around next day to absorb more knowledge. Uncle Sam needed every horseshoe he had in his pockets for that operation—with the best units still green and none of them battle-wise. Sometimes he felt like old Rip van Winkle himself when he saw the self-propelled guns and the tanks and the jeeps and the trucks and the tactical air cover and compared them with the stuff around Château-Thierry in the other war. Nevertheless the basic elements were all the same, and all the old logistics headaches.

After the landing he was up ahead on the way to Tunis with a tank unit known by the code word “Force Goodwin”—but there was no use being technical about groupings. If they didn’t reach Tunis before the Jerries, you could blame it on the mud and roads, because they certainly tried like hell to make that play. He began to realize in a few days that you had to blow every instrument in the band. When it came to a pinch, you had to be an artilleryman or an engineer or a tank specialist, and you never knew how things would be balanced or grouped from one day to the next.

North Africa, in spite of its Frenchified cities, looked like something in a Sunday school picture book. He had read in ancient history that the country was semiarid, whereas, books to the contrary, it was always raining when you wanted air cover, and the gumbo on the roads was like glue—but somehow there was always good weather and good footing for the Jerries and the Italians. The Arabs fitted right into that mess. They could have the country any time as far as he was concerned, and anybody who wanted could have the Arabs. They were always around everywhere like flies.

Once when he was a whole lot farther away from everything than he should have been, trying to get a look himself at a German concentration—because nobody had sent any coherent word back—he and a walkie-talkie boy were suddenly pinned down by machine-gun fire. Just as he was trying to figure out some way to get some solid terrain between his party and the gun and was hoping the Krauts weren’t going to open up with the mortars next, he felt a pull at his leg. You might have thought it was someone in the group with a bright idea about something, but instead of that it was one of those Arabs trying to sell him half a dozen eggs. That was the way it always was with Arabs. They came right out of the ground like prairie dogs, and when they weren’t selling something, they were stealing, but he did not mean to deliver a travelogue. He never did see much of North Africa except for various portions into which his nose had been rubbed.

If he wanted, he could give a good lecture about Kasserine Pass, where we came so near to being pushed back on our behinds, but now he was not talking before the War College. His tanks and some other units that came under his command took a whipping there, but they pulled out all right, and maybe he had a little to do with this. Anyway, some people still thought that he had.

In order to refresh his memory about North Africa and subsequent operations, the General produced a packet of letters which he had written home and which Muriel had brought from Washington after hearing he was to be interviewed. He read excerpts from them to Philip Bentley and lent the whole lot to me later, and, though the letters did not shed much more light on North Africa, in certain ways they did help to round out the Goodwin picture.

DEAR MURIEL,

Babe, who just dropped in to say good-by, says he will give you this on his return to Washington, if he doesn’t wet his feet. Don’t ask Babe about his future plans because they won’t be bright, if you know what I mean. The poor guy just hasn’t got what it takes out here, and he’s on his way out. Poor Babe. I am replacing him, and naturally it hurts like hell. Funny, isn’t it? Remember how you used to say you wished I got around the way Babe did? Well, well.

I don’t need any socks or anything. Just now dry goods, including brassieres, are running out our ears. However, if you can pick up a handful of new westerns and whodunnits, give them to Bud to give to Gerald if he’s still in there with the Chief. Gerald can wangle them out here, but say to hold them with Smitty at Algiers. Maybe I’ll get back to that dream town someday and hang out in the Aletti—maybe. They have sawed-off beer bottles for glassware there and wrapping paper for napkins, all except the Limey boys, who have silver and napery. Well, well. Whoever said Africa was hot? It’s all mud. I’m even holed up in a mud hut with a mud wall around it. Goats jump over the wall and get in the yard. We ate goat yesterday and it still stays with me. Just now I picked a piece of him out of my back molar. Slim sends you his regards. He’s a real comfort to me. If you’re writing to Katie Burwell, tell her from me that Jim did fine. There wasn’t enough of poor old Jim to pick up, and a piece of him landed on my helmet, but you needn’t tell her that.

It’s cold as Greenland here but last week it was hot in certain sectors. Don’t worry about me and don’t go around asking questions. I’m feeling fine, and everything’s beginning to get in the groove. You know I’ve always liked this stuff, and everybody else here is beginning to like it. By God, they’d better. It’s building up, and if they want to slap us down, they’d better do it quick. I have a hunch they’re going to make a try for it, but don’t ask questions. Old Heinzy called me in last night, five miles in the mud, and all the usual yakety-yak. I hope he doesn’t drop it if he’s given the ball.

It’s nice to think of you in Washington. Give Charley my love and tell him we raised our little boy to be a soldier, and please tell Bob if he wants to try for the Pacific it won’t hurt my feelings. It looks as though they need a little help there. There’s something itching and I’d better read my shirt a while. We’re out of lice powder.

Love, and don’t worry,

MEL

DEAR MURIEL,

Shorty, who is going over to have a little talk about certain things that have happened, says he will get this to you, but don’t go trying to get hold of him. He’s got a lot on his mind. Oh yes, I’m in the base hospital with a piece of hardware in my shoulder, but I’m walking around already and playing gin rummy with the other hand, so don’t worry. I was lucky not to get my block blown off, and I walked out of it under my own steam, without running to the nearest exit, and no one else did either. They were a fine selfless bunch of kids. All they need is a little straight talk and they’ll do anything.

If you read the papers maybe you’ll know what all this is about. I’d like to read the communiqué myself. It will have to be a masterpiece because we really got a bloody nose and a few right in the guts—and maybe the Limeys rather like seeing us over the barrel. The orders were to pull out and it was pretty late to pull. I took over the cover-up job, between you and me, without consulting Heinzy. It looked for a while like old Custer making a last stand with a lot of Sitting Bulls around us. In fact I thought maybe I was going to be Custer, but they dug in when I got some heavy stuff around their right end. I mean they thought it was heavy, and we walked off. Slim got himself killed, you may have heard. There never was a finer kid. Please write Edwina that I’m writing personally. Who do you think I saw when I walked off? Old Folsom, my Tac at the Point. Do you remember? The one who told us to stroll on Flirtation Walk. He was dead—air strafing—but I had time to gather up some of his letters and things personally. You see the hardware in the shoulder didn’t slow me up, so don’t worry and don’t start pulling strings. I am not going Stateside because I shall be fit for duty in three weeks. I got the word this morning.

By the way, they came around this afternoon and pinned something on me and took some pictures. You can ask the Chief about it if you want. He or Gerald ought to have the details by now. Now don’t worry, I’m feeling fine. I’m reading Agatha Christie when I’m not playing gin rummy. The word is the shoulder won’t even be stiff. Give my love to Charley and Robert.

With love,

MEL

This letter was all he had ever set down regarding his part in the Kasserine Pass action, except for his report and recommendations now somewhere on file in the Pentagon, and a report would have been too technical to have made much sense—and he was not giving any military lecture anyway. The staff work was faulty, and a lot of people in back got the wind up. It was easy enough to give orders for a quick withdrawal, if you were sitting somewhere looking at maps—but this was off the record and he was not going to expert anything that happened. The order to withdraw came through at three in the morning—when anyone physically in touch with anything could see that there would have to be some sort of holding action along the high ground on the front known as Area 20, which overlooked a track along which the enemy would obviously move part of his armor. It was an elementary problem of buying time. When Melville Goodwin received the order, his chief, Arty Watson, who was commanding the area, saw as clearly as he did that a complete withdrawal would leave everything wide open. He had no criticism to make of Arty Watson, who immediately began sending back everything that was feasible, but half an hour later mortar and eighty-eight fire began dropping on them.

Mel Goodwin was still with his chief trying to straighten things out when one of those eighty-eights landed under a weapons carrier, and a minute later he was chief. He sent back everything that wasn’t needed, and by the time it was daylight he was alone with his combat team all dug in, plus three one-fifty-fives and four tanks, one of them disabled. It was light enough by that time to secure some information. The Jerries were coming right down the track just where he expected them, tanks and trucks and everything, evidently thinking that it was clear ahead. Sometimes the Jerries weren’t as bright as you thought they were going to be, considering their experience. It was something to remember, watching that column snaking toward their position over that Godforsaken country, with the sun just rising. The only problem was how to stop them for an appreciable period of time, and he waited until they were on the level ground in front before he let them have it with everything available. They were like sitting ducks, only there were just too many ducks. Nevertheless they certainly acted surprised, and their whole column was in an unholy mess. He always believed that if there had been more fire power available they might have turned back permanently. As it was, they overestimated his force, and they were confused when he got his tanks firing into them well on the left. It took personal persuasion to keep everything cracking, but just the same, it was a good fight. He only wished he could have had more time to observe it instead of being so continually busy.

At any rate by afternoon what was left of his group was still holding the high ground in Area 20. They had bought the time, and there was no use hanging around any longer. When the sun was setting, he sent back everything that could roll, and the rest of them began walking and they walked all night until they were picked up around daylight. He had brought off the wounded, but a lot of equipment and dead remained back in Area 20. He was not familiar with all of the night’s events. His shoulder had been bandaged and it had stopped bleeding, but the wound may have made him lightheaded. Nevertheless he kept everything under control all the way personally, and he could still put one foot ahead of the other when he walked into headquarters and made the report. His memory was vague as to just what he said, but other people told him later, probably making it into a good story.

The story was that he saluted old Heinzy, which he probably did, since his right hand was all right, and then he said:

“There’s been a little trouble up in Area 20, sir, but we’d all like to start going back as soon as we’ve had some coffee.”

That was what they said he said, and it made a good story, but he never could have said anything like that to a major general who knew the score. Nevertheless he always did think that they should have moved forward instead of pulling back farther. There was nothing in any of this to be proud of because he was paid to work out problems like Area 20, but there was one thing he did remember that pleased him. When he walked out of the headquarters—and he was still walking—he heard a master sergeant say, “The God-damned fighting bastard.”

That meant a lot to him, coming when it did, because his shoulder was full of red-hot needles and his left arm was numb. The man who had spoken was standing with three or four others beside a jeep, and Mel Goodwin walked right up to him.

“Son,” he said, “if I go first, I’d like to have you write those words on my tombstone.”

This was true, whether or not it made a good story, and he did not care who knew it.

He was in the hospital when Task Force Headquarters was reorganized. In May he did desk work in Algiers because the medics were still checking on his shoulder. He got his star in June ’43 but did not see the Sicilian show or any more fighting until he was on the beach at Salerno as an assistant division commander. He was a specialist in armor by then and he knew it. When he was yanked out and sent to England to take command of the Silver Leaf Armored and whip it into shape in preparation for the cross-Channel invasion, he knew that he was equipped to take armor anywhere, anytime and anyhow, and that was all there was to it. He did not want to be technical, but he did know quite a little about contemporary warfare, and why not? He had spent most of his life studying war and he had been presented with fine opportunities to perfect himself in practice. He wrote some of his thoughts in a letter to his wife in April 1944, and perhaps the letter would cover most of what he had to say.

DEAR MURIEL,

I don’t see what harm there is when you get this in asking the Chief or Gerald or somebody to tell you confidentially if they can what they’ve pinned on me over here. I don’t mean any more chest spinach either, though sometimes they do seem to pass decorations here as easily as we used to pass the buck. I mean the job they handed to me. Old Skeet Shaw felt kind of upset when he got the word to turn it over to me, and I felt kind of mean about taking it from Skeet after he had shown me around, but you know Skeet, and he knows we have to take what’s dished out to us on this picnic. Skeet said he would rather have it me than anybody else and he said kind words about me to the officers when he turned it over. The kids don’t seem to mind the idea of having someone who’s been there before help them get shaken down. They are nice kids, and Skeet has done a lot of pulling and hauling on them so they look about as much in the groove as they can be until they get their try-out. By the way, Bugsy Waters and Long John Gooch are both here with me. We’re making up into quite a team. I even like the padres. They look like athletic babies who will hand out the good word right.

Do you remember when we bought Robert the electric train the Christmas we were stationed at Sykes and Bob didn’t know he was going to get it, in spite of the carpenter setting up the table and Gooding working on the electrical gadgets? Do you remember how Bob looked, just as though the train and the tracks had dropped out of the sky, and how he kept walking around and around in a sort of daze as though he couldn’t believe it and then how we couldn’t pry him loose from that electric train for weeks? Well, that’s how I feel about this Thing and all the lovely gadgets that go with it. I feel just like a kid at Christmas and maybe sometimes I act that way. I keep getting up in the middle of the night and hopping in a jeep just to see it’s all pinned down and hasn’t moved somewhere else. I keep wanting to go right over across the street and try it out on the other gang. Believe me, it’s going to be good, and I think I’m going to know how to work it. I ought to after that Italian business, even if I finally bust a gut. Well, you go and ask the Chief, and you might tell Bob and Charley that they really handed the old man something. It won’t hurt them to know that the old man has kind of made good on his own and that some people think well of him for all the scrabbling around he’s done out here. I sort of wish you were here to see it.

Old Baldy is the number one in these parts, as maybe you can imagine if you’ve been talking to the Chief. The other night he asked a couple of us to his little shanty to dinner—it looked as though it belonged to a duke or something—to show us off to the Big Boy himself and some of the little big boys who were with him. I hadn’t seen Big Boy since North Africa and he’s grown some. Funny our paths never crossed, but you remember what Pershing said about him? He’d never known him either. Anyway, you’ll be pleased to know he chewed the fat with me for several minutes and asked me to look him up if I was ever around the big city. I won’t if I can help it. I’m an outdoor boy, and the high echelons always make me sweat, and when I sweat I stink. I can just hear you saying I always get coarse when I’m with troops. Everybody sends you their love, though, and a lot of them remember old times.

I laughed to read about you and Enid and the picture puzzles. Life is quite a picture puzzle in itself, isn’t it?—one you never finish because something’s always jiggling the table. Just take it easy now. I’m doing fine. All that worries me is that this island may sink with what we’ve got on it, even with the barrage balloons to hold it up, but that’s an old one, isn’t it? I’m glad Bob’s moving out. I wish I might have seen him, but tell him from me I know he’ll be good. How could he help it, considering who his mama is? The washcloths will come in handy the next time I have to hit the dirt. Give Charley a slap in the pants and tell him I’ll write him tomorrow.

With love,

MEL

There were some other letters, too, but this one seemed pretty well to cover the situation. Anyone who had been in preinvasion England could add in all the color himself. Old P. T. Barnum should have been alive to have seen it because it really was the greatest show on earth. It was something to be a part of that show and to have been right in the first team with the Silver Leaf Armored and with the teammates. It was a page of history, and if he was just one of the punctuation marks, still he was on the page, and anyone could read it without his doing much further talking. However, in case anything more was needed, he did have a newspaper clipping which he could show for what it was worth. He never suspected at the time that he was talking for publication, since he was not one of those field runners who made the papers, and there were too many stars anyway on that all-star, all-American team. Yet maybe this was not accurate—the British were on the team, too. At any rate when a newspaper correspondent named Al Crouch came around, Mel Goodwin never thought seriously that this would mean any kind of feature article, and after all, it only appeared in the Sunday supplement of a newspaper in upstate New York, but it might as well be included in the record.

Actually it made me a little homesick for the great days when I read it. Its journalistic language was characteristic of those days, and I had participated in many similar efforts when I had been in Public Relations. I could remember no correspondent named Al Crouch, but then, accredited correspondents were as thick as flies before the invasion. It was utterly characteristic that he did not call himself Albert Crouch, but just plain Al. All those correspondents were always abbreviating their first names. They had to be tough even if they were 4–F and wore glasses. The dispatch was simply dated “Somewhere in England, 1944,” and it had appeared in print only after the invasion. The headline was “Al Crouch Looks Them Over.…”

Your correspondent took a busman’s holiday today, spending his time visiting, instead of an Air Force outfit, an American armored division on a wind-swept English moor. He had the good fortune, on dropping into its headquarters, an uninvited guest, to ran smack into its commanding officer, Major General Melville A. Goodwin.

Some division!

If you have been around for a while on this tight little island you get hep to an outfit that’s ready and rarin’ to go, and, oh brother, this one was prancin’! And when you’ve rattled around enough among the big brass hats, you get to know when a man’s a real guy.

Some guy, this cocky young fighting divisional CO, with his words that hit you like a punch in the midriff and his infectious, boyish smile!

Some guy, this Mel Goodwin, right from the top of his battle-buffeted helmet with the two stars riveted on it, down to the toes of his GI shoes. No funny business—all fight and a yard wide!

Maybe you folks around Syracuse have never heard of Mel. It’s your loss if you haven’t, but the Mel Goodwins that make this army strut its stuff aren’t the kind you see at peacetime tea parties or handing out E award pins. In case you haven’t heard of Mel Goodwin, here’s the pitch, as Colonel “Long John” Gooch, his chief of staff, handed it to me hot off the griddle.

Melville A. Goodwin, born in the tiny town of Hallowell, New Hampshire (ever hear of it? I hadn’t), where his father was for many years the local druggist and where young Mel once jerked a few sodas himself (but maybe this ought to be off the record!). Young Mel got out of West Point just in time to knock out two German machine guns personally in World War I, and win the DSC and Croix de guerre with palm. He may not mention it himself, but he got all these things again in World War II and a shoulder wound for refusing to be evacuated in a little mix-up with some of Rommel’s bad boys, and then a couple of swift one-twos at Salerno.

“Hell,” he says, with that smile of his, “forget about the ribbons, son! I think perhaps they shower down a little easier when you get pushed up to the top of the heap.” Anyway, no GI in that armored outfit would agree with him. As Staff Sergeant Milton I. Hawker (Rochester, N. Y.) put it, when I brought up the subject, “That guy doesn’t look in mirrors. He doesn’t have to use mirrors.”

At any rate, I ran smack into “that guy” just as I reached headquarters, and the word is you run into “that guy” everywhere. This division is definitely his baby, and every one of its GIs is one of Mel Goodwin’s kids. Don’t ask me how.

“Well, son,” he said to me, “tag along if you want to look around.”

We just hopped into a nearby jeep. The General did the driving himself, a lot of it on two wheels.

Funnily enough, everybody seemed glad to see “that guy” whenever he stopped the jeep. He just fitted in naturally with the GIs. For instance, there was Pfc. Martin J. Flynn (Albany, N. Y.) taking a BAR to pieces.

“Here, son,” General Goodwin said, “let’s see if I can still do that.” A little group gathered around him just like kids watching teacher. “I haven’t fussed around with one of those things since Africa,” he said, tossing the BAR back to Pfc. Flynn. “It’s nice to know I can still do it. It may be useful to me where we’re going in case I see one lying around.”

This one got a good laugh.

With all that automatic fire power—the General pointed out to that serious-faced little group—all you had to do was to spray it out in front of you and keep walking.

“And I’ll be walking with you,” he said, “whenever we aren’t riding. We’ll just stop now and then and stretch our legs this summer. Summer’s a great season over in France—in case we should be going there.”

This got another laugh. He could really tickle the boys.

“Of course it might be that one or two of us may sprain an ankle,” he said, “but there’ll be nurses to massage it and you can take it from me, a lot of very sharp-looking nurses are coming over.”

And so it went for three hours all up and down the line. Hard-bitten, tanned, alert Mel Goodwin had the old army “pro” stamped over every inch of him. In spite of that quiet kidding manner, he always had the authority. He had so much that he could handle it carelessly, just as I have seen an old bar fly hold a glass. That was why he could rub shoulders with the toughest GI in the outfit, drop into a company mess hall as we did, scrounge a cup of hot java and sit exchanging salty wisecracks with the mess “sarge” and the KPs.

As Corporal Wally Sterner (Bath, N. Y.) laughingly confided: “You kinda don’t mind the fact he’s got stars and all the chicken gut over his left pocket.”

A private with a paintbrush was stenciling initials on the side of a truck—RTA.

“What’s that?” I asked.

Mel Goodwin regarded the truck quizzically.

“It’s sort of alphabet soup,” he quipped, “but it’s the division motto—Right There Anyhow—RTA. Maybe it sounds simple to you, but combat is a pretty simple thing. In fact you can sum it up in just one word.”

“What word?” I inquired curiously.

His eyes looked cold and icy blue. Maybe his mind was moving across the Channel to the Great Adventure.

“Guts,” he said, “four letters, son. Don’t laugh at it.”

I did not laugh at it because it sounded all right coming from Major General Mel Goodwin on that wind-swept British moor.

“American troops when handled by competent command are in my opinion the best soldiers in the world,” he said. “I think I know how to lead troops, with God’s help. Sometimes in battle you get pretty close to God. What was it the Marine said? There ain’t no atheists in foxholes. Yes, son, you wake up sometimes at night and think a lot of lonely thoughts when you wear stars and face the fact that you’re in charge of all these men, with no excuses and only yourself to blame. I hope I know my business because I think I’ve got the best damned division in the world. I mean I know.”

Then his mood changed. First he smiled and then he laughed.

“Hell,” he said, “I wouldn’t swap my job for Eisenhower’s. You see, I like it here.”

You had the feeling that everything in General Goodwin’s division was squared away—oh, oh, I didn’t mean to use navy talk.

Well, anyway, come D day, H hour and M minute, this scribe knows one rootin’, tootin’, shootin’ outfit that’s going to hit the beach and one general who isn’t going to do his fighting in any dugout. When I left them the sun was going down, the bugles were sounding retreat, and Mel Goodwin was saluting his flag. There was a lump in my throat when I drove away from there, but my chin was a little higher. I was a little prouder that I was an American and I was good and mad, too, mad at that army doctor who found that I had a heart murmur and flat feet. You see, really and truly I wanted to go Right There Anyhow, too! I wanted to throw in with that swell bunch! I wanted to hit the beach with Goodwin!

It was hard to see why this cracker-barrel sage had not driven Mel Goodwin nuts in May 1944. The General could not have been courting publicity. If he had been he would not have shot the works to an unsyndicated correspondent like Al Crouch. I could attribute part of his compliance to the respect and apprehension with which some high-ranking officers regarded the press, and also, perhaps Mel Goodwin had been lonely out there on his moor, not that I believed it was a moor. He may have leaned on this Al Crouch as he had on me in Paris, desirous of talking to someone who was out of the chain of command, someone to whom he could explain some of the things that everyone around him took for granted.

In spite of his clichés and ephemeral journalese, Al Crouch did have perceptive sensitivity of a sort. Despite the lapse of time, Al Crouch could make you see something of what he saw. Those direct quotes of his, one of modern journalism’s greatest banes, he had doubtless drawn from his memory, but they sounded so real that I could hear Mel Goodwin’s voice. In the end you began to distrust your own sophistication. If I had been there with Al Crouch, I, too, would have wished that I could throw in with that swell bunch and hit the beach with Mel Goodwin, even though I would have been of no great help had I hit it.

When Myra Fineholt read that piece aloud, I had the feeling that she, too, wanted to hit the beach and so did Phil Bentley. Naturally Phil concealed his emotions, and, as he had a good ear for prose, the piece must have hurt him even more than it did me.

“Well,” Phil Bentley said, “Mr. Crouch certainly gave you all he had.”

Mel Goodwin looked at Phil Bentley self-consciously.

“Well, frankly,” he said, “I know you can do better than that, Phil. That Crouch, now I come to think of it, was a funny sort of Joe, but he liked the old Silver Leaf, and anybody who liked the Silver Leaf goes down all right with me. Maybe I’m a ham actor at heart. There’s always that temptation in front of troops.”

I could see Phil Bentley’s face light up, and Myra was writing it down. It would make a good caption under one of the photographs—a ham actor at heart.

“Frankly,” Mel Goodwin said, “I was surprised when I saw that clipping. He sent it to me and asked me for my photograph. I don’t believe I said all those things, but just the same, it gives you a sort of working idea.”

I saw Colonel Flax squirm uneasily.

“You’re right,” Phil Bentley said, “I’d have done it differently, but it does give you an idea.”

“Well, there it is for what it’s worth,” Mel Goodwin said. “If he’s shot the works, so have I. I’ve been shooting them all over the place for you, Phil, and you’ve got me pinned right down. I keep living things all over again.”

Mel Goodwin paused, and we could see him thinking, half happily and half sadly, with much the same expression I must have worn when I told Camilla about my roller skates.

“You know,” he said, “if I say so myself, I used to be a good pistol shot, not that I’m so bad right now. In fact I believe I could have made the army team once if Mrs. Goodwin hadn’t discouraged it. She always had an idea it didn’t get you anywhere going around to shooting matches. Well, I used to have the sweetest forty-five. It fitted into my hand so that every line of my palm seemed to fill some part of the grip. I really think I could have plugged the head out of a dime with it snap shooting. It got to be a part of me, that forty-five. I left it back in Washington when I went out on ‘Torch’ because I wanted Bob to have some personalized gift from me, even though he isn’t any better than an average shot. Well, Bob mislaid it somewhere around Leyte. That’s all right, but I still get thinking about that gun. Sometimes I wonder where it is now … all rusted somewhere in the bush, I guess.”

The General held his hand in front of him as though he were gripping the memory of it.

“Now that gun,” he said, “is sort of like the old Silver Leaf. Of course nothing can be precise that’s made up of a number of thousand human beings all suffering wear and tear, but by and large the Silver Leaf was an efficient unit according to any set of standards. At any rate my greatest moments were with it. I guess I was made to head a division like the Silver Leaf. Everybody’s made for something, and maybe the better you get at doing one thing, the less good you are at coping with other things … maybe.”

The General’s face had a sad, half-empty look. It was the first time I had ever seen sadness in him, and the first time also that he seemed to be face to face with a situation that he could not quite estimate.

“Well,” he said, “where’s the old Silver Leaf now? It’s all in pieces like one of those alarm clocks I used to disassemble when I was a kid. It isn’t anywhere. What’s going to happen to people like me? Sometimes I think of all the casualties and dollars it cost to turn me into what I am. Maybe I was useful once, but what’s the point of it now, when I’m not really wanted any more? Oh, yes, I’ll get something. Maybe I’ll even be a permanent colonel, pushing or hauling on something, but maybe—I don’t mean to bellyache—but maybe I ought to be pushing daisies along the Rhine along with a lot of the old Silver Leaf crowd.”

Melville Goodwin stopped. It seemed to me that his voice had ended on a note of surprise when he reached that logical conclusion, and the worst of it was I found myself thinking that he might have been right. The power and the glory were gone, evaporated into a thin haze of memory.

Colonel Flax looked uncomfortable. From the Public Relations angle such a conclusion indicated an emotional instability that was not for the good of the service.

“Now, General,” he said, “you don’t mean that.”

Then the General must have realized himself that it was not for the good of the service.

“I guess I didn’t phrase my thought quite correctly, Flax,” he said. “The thought I was trying to convey is, I can never feel sorry for anyone who was killed clean in the line of duty, and that’s how I should have put it. Frankly, I’ve never been greatly interested in death, one way or another. Old whiskers with the hourglass is always hiding around some corner, isn’t he?” The General laughed, and looked relieved now that matters were back on a firmer basis. “Give me a cigarette, will you, Flax? My only thought, now that the old boy isn’t chumming around with me as much as he used to, is that I’ve got to do some future planning, and I’ve kind of forgotten how to sit still.”

“Now, General,” Colonel Flax said, “you know that the bosses won’t let anyone like you sit still.”

Melville Goodwin smiled again. For years there had been someone around prepared to tell him the right thing.

“Well, anyway, Flax,” he said, “I may be able to take a little time off to do some hunting and fishing. Did you ever try that wild boar shooting in Germany?”

“No, sir,” Colonel Flax said.

“Let’s see,” he said, “where was I?”

There was a curious pause. For a second or two no one seemed to remember where the General had left off.

“I guess you were about ready to hit that beach in Normandy,” Phil Bentley said.

“That’s right,” the General said, “it was Omaha.”

We all waited for him to go on, but he did not continue, and then I knew that he was empty and finished. His clock had stopped at Omaha and he did not want to wind it up again.

“You know,” he said, “I think you’ve got about all I have to give. Let’s break it off at Omaha.”

He glanced at his watch and stood up.

“What I want, Sid, is one or maybe two of those nice pale Martini cocktails and then a bite of lunch, and then I’d better kiss the girls good-by. Get yourself braced for it, Myra.”

It was the first time that he had called Miss Fineholt “Myra” and that concession was like the dropping of a curtain. Phil Bentley must have known how things were. There must have always been a time in other interviews when it was useless to go further.

“All right, let’s call it a day, sir,” Phil Bentley said, but it was not quite a day.

Now that the show was over, we were reluctant to leave the show, and Melville Goodwin was like a gracious host.

“You get my point, don’t you?” the General said. “There comes a time when you can’t blow your own horn any more. The rest of it is what you might call straight military history, and Flax can give it to you if you want it, or you might get in touch with my old chief of staff, General Gooch.”

“The Washington Bureau’s covered that already,” Phil Bentley said.

The General laughed.

“Well,” he said, “let’s hope I’ve lived right.”

We all laughed, but the General was waiting expectantly, as though something were missing, and I knew what it was. There had been no formal speech of acknowledgment, but just as I was about to make it, Phil Bentley did it instead.

“General,” he said, “I want to thank you for everything. You say you’re a specialist, and I suppose I’m one, too. I must have done thirty or more of these interviews and some of them have been tough. Well, this one hasn’t been tough at all.”

“And Phil and I wonder if you’ll sign us each a photograph,” Myra Fineholt said.

It was exactly the right touch, the photograph, and as she pulled two out of her briefcase, I could see that Mel Goodwin approved.

“Well,” he said, “I didn’t know this was coming. Flax, lend me your pen, will you?” but Colonel Flax had his pen out and waiting before the General asked for it.

To Myra, he wrote on Miss Fineholt’s photograph, who took down all of Operation Windbag, With love, from Mel.

To Phil, who made the old man stick his neck out, he wrote across Phil Bentley’s picture, and is too good a guy to chop it off, With admiration and affection, Mel.

“Say, Flax,” the General said, “how about going out and whistling for drinks.” The operation was over but headquarters was still intact. In fact I was almost embarrassed when he remembered where he was.

“Forgive me, will you, Sid?” he said. “I’m just like Muriel. I’m always taking over.”