The Winston Affair (2 page)

“Sir?”

“You understand, I am asking. This is not an order, Barney. If you feel it is beyond your capacity at the moment, you may decline.”

“Well, sir—just a moment to think, if I may. It is three years since I looked at a lawbook.”

“I would gladly give you more than a moment—a day or a week, if we had it, Barney. However, this court-martial has been twice postponed, and the circumstances are such that it can't be postponed again. It's scheduled for Monday morning, five days from today. I know how short a time that is—and the fact that the man I want you to defend is being tried for murder, makes the time factor worse. It means that you are being projected into an almost impossible situation, that you will have to work day and night in a strange place, and that you will surrender the well-deserved right to orient yourself in your own good time. On the other hand, we are at war, and if this was a combat area, you would ask neither time nor favor. Add to that the record—you ranked first in military law at West Point, you had thorough preparation for the Judge Advocate General's Department, and you graduated from Harvard Law with honors. I'm not going to refer to the choice that took you into the infantry. You did what you thought was right. In the normal course of events, you would have your majority or better. That is apart from all this, although your combat experience is to the point—and the point is that you're a well-trained lawyer, an excellent combination of civilian and military training. Now, will you take the case?”

Barney Adams nodded slowly. “Of course, sir, I will. I can make my attitude plain. I'm prepared to accept any assignment you have for me. Only, I don't understand—”

“You will understand. We will give you every assistance conceivable, Barney. And of course I intend to explain the circumstances.” The general stepped over to his desk and took up the Manila envelope he had put there as Captain Adams entered. “Here is my personal file on the case. There is a British major outside whom I must see for a few minutes, and while I'm talking to him, you might glance through this file. Then I'll try to explain just what this whole damn thing amounts to.”

Captain Adams nodded. General Kempton took him into the outer office, introduced him to Sergeant Candyman, and then returned to his office with Major Wyclif of the Queen's Own Riflemen.

Wearing shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, his long mustache drooping in the fashion of his regiment, Major Wyclif stood stiffly on a narrow line between stern complaint and necessary politeness. He felt that his life and regiment were in the tradition of both. When asked to be seated, he responded with equal formality, and explained that his mission was neither pleasant nor easy.

“I dislike most,” he said, “the impression of whining.”

“Then let us agree that there is no such impression, sir,” General Kempton assured him. “We have our obligations.”

“I don't quite understand that, sir,” Major Wyclif said with some asperity.

“The war—the theater. Unity, of course. And to ourselves. What I am trying to say, Major Wyclif—and I don't want to seem sentimental over it—is that we are very close, the same breed and the same language. Perhaps that is why these things happen.”

“Then you know what happened last night?”

“I know that there was a fracas in a house of ill repute, and that two of your men were roughed up somewhat—” General Kempton finished lamely and sat waiting behind his desk.

“Roughed up? Is that what you would call it in the States?”

“As I heard it,” General Kempton answered softly, controlling himself very well indeed and wondering how abject, properly speaking, a Theater Commander should be before a British major on an occasion like this. He toyed with a mental image of throwing the major out, and the chaos which would follow. He sighed sympathetically.

“One of them has a fractured skull,” Major Wyclif said pointedly. “He is in the hospital.”

“I had no idea it was as bad as that. Will he be all right?”

“Fortunately, he will. The other lost two teeth and suffered a broken jaw. It's a rotten business, sir—I think you will agree with me.”

“I do agree.” Kempton shook his head. “A dirty, filthy business. As I understand it, there were two of your men and five of ours. A scrap is understandable, but this kind of business, Major, turns my stomach. Rest assured. The men have been placed under arrest, and they will be tried.”

“We appreciate your support in this, really, sir—I can't say how much.” The major softened considerably. “But the fact of the matter is not punishment but a “general worsening situation. I talk for General Cunningham, you understand, sir, not for myself. He stressed, particularly, this affair of Lieutenant Winston. If that can be cleaned up, then at least on our part we can make efforts at better relations.”

“It will be cleaned up—within a week. You can pass that on to General Cunningham, as coming from me.”

“Thank you, sir.”

General Kempton replied that he did not want to be thanked for what was his plain and simple obligation and duty.

Wednesday 9.45 A.M .

Sergeant Candyman seated Captain Adams in the waiting room, so to speak, which was space between the outer office—where four sergeants and two lieutenants, first and second respectively, worked at old wooden desks—and the wall which separated the general's office and three other offices, occupied by various colonels and majors, from the long, partitionless front of the building. This space was railed off and about a dozen chairs were lined up against the rail. There were also two low tables which held magazines and ashtrays. On the tables were old copies of
Life, The Saturday Evening Post, Yank, National Geographic, Esquire, Time
, and
The Infantry Journal
. There were also several copies of
Punch
.

“Now you can just browse among these stateside magazines,” Candyman said. “If I say so myself, they are the finest collection in the theater. I put them together myself.”

“Thank you, Sergeant. I have something to read.”

“Of course. Feel free to do so, Captain. Mine was merely a suggestion. Do you need cigarettes, Captain?”

“I'm well supplied, Sergeant.”

“Good. I like to know about such things. Your comfort is my duty and my pleasure, Captain. The Coca-Cola machine is down against that wall over there. Sergeant Miller—the one with the beady eyes over there—he keeps the dimes. It is the courtesy of the house for senior officers who are here on business.”

“Why only for senior officers, Sergeant?” Adams asked curiously.

“Junior officers are very thirsty and without a significant sense of dignity or restraint. They would empty the machine three times a day. We can't have that, can we, sir?”

“No, I guess you can't.”

“Captain, would it be presumptuous on my part to ask where you were wounded?”

“You mean what part of my body?” Adams smiled.

“No, indeed, sir. I mean the theater.”

“It was in Italy,” Adams said.

“Oh! Well, we also serve who stay at home and wait. Italy, you said?”

“Italy.”

“Thank you.” The sergeant nodded and returned to his desk.

Then Barney Adams opened the portfolio and began to sort through the documents, scanning a page here and there. But whenever he began to read, his thoughts would wander. He had come a long way and much had happened to him, and he had a sense of great distances and great loneliness. He strove for the mental discipline that would reassure him and convince him that he did not want to be home.

Wednesday 10.15 A.M .

Captain Adams watched the general and waited. Kempton was one of those large, well-fleshed men whose calm façade and controlled facial muscles simulate repose; but he was always a little weary from the struggle he fought against his own nerves and sensitivities. He had been smoking cigarettes before; now he puffed on a cigar. He had an almost unnoticeable habit of clicking the thumb of his left hand against the pinkie nail of his right hand. A mist of perspiration lingered upon his brow and temples; it had been there before, it was there now.

All of this, Barney Adams noticed. He sat behind his own façade, the good-looking face, the clear, untroubled blue eyes, and the soft red hair. It would have surprised General Kempton to know with what detail Barney Adams noticed and itemized, for no matter how much men—Kempton among them—recognized and honored Adams' courage and excellent manners and good humor, they did not quickly give him credit for being clever. His record was ascribed to an earnest and satisfactory intelligence; he himself did not regard cleverness as a virtue to be paraded, and the knowledge that it troubled those around him added to his own uncertainty. Just as he was never consciously polite, so was his modesty quite unconscious; and out of this combination, those who knew him also knew that he would go to the top. It was accepted that a long and rewarding army career lay before Barney Adams, and General Kempton emphasized this before he went on to anything else.

At the same time, Adams had the advantage, for he knew a great deal about Kempton, about the older man's hopes and dreams and bitter luck and wretched frustrations—whereas the general, accepting Adams so readily, knew nothing of any depth or importance about him except that he was the son of an old and dear friend. It might also be said, in all fairness, that Barney Adams knew very little about himself; and thus he neither disputed nor regretted the assumption of what lay ahead for him. He had never thought about his assignments very differently.

“The point is,” said General Kempton, “that I want your steps to be good steps, proper steps. And I think that this is a proper step, Barney. I am breaching neither good taste nor procedure when I tell you that you will have your majority when this court-martial is finished, Barney, and in good time I want to let your father know that I have a full colonel, name of Barney Adams, on my staff. I make no promises; I don't have to. You have three generations of notable military careers in your family. I don't think it could be otherwise.”

“That is very kind of you, sir.”

“Not at all,” the general said. He sat on his desk, puffed his cigar and gestured toward the portfolio. “How much of that have you read?”

“Only a few pages carefully. But I've scanned through all of it. It doesn't appear too complicated as a case.”

“The picture is plain but the frame is God damn complicated, Barney. The one takes a few minutes in telling; the other involves a century and a half of history and misunderstanding. Five days from now, you will know the facts far better than I do. But I don't think anything can be altered. There is no confusion of guilt or circumstances—nor is there the slightest doubt about the facts. A Sergeant Arnold Quinn of the British Army was murdered by Second Lieutenant Charles Winston of the United States Army. It happened four weeks ago at a little way-station on the narrow-gauge railroad, a place called Bachree. Sergeant Quinn was unarmed. Lieutenant Winston shot him four times, using his service revolver. There were witnesses to the crime, and the accused man has confessed. All this you must have gathered out of the file—even with a cursory reading.”

“Yes, sir. It seems to be one of those sordid and unhappy things that happen when a great many men are armed. Sometimes I'm amazed that it doesn't happen more often.”

For some reason, the general appeared to be surprised by Adams' remark; Adams noticed his glance and raised brow.

“I gather it doesn't end with the crime itself?” Adams said.

“It doesn't.”

“And I imagine it created bitter feeling among the British.”

“Oh, the feeling was already there, Barney. This simply made it murderous. It's no secret that all isnot joy and brotherhood with our British cousins in this theater, and it's small consolation, if any, to say that I inherited it when I took command six months ago. I'd like to imagine that things are better since I have been here, but the plain truth is that things are worse. There is literally no day that goes by without some incident between the British troops and our troops, and just between us, the provocation is more often on our part than theirs. I've become so adept at apology that I do it in my sleep. Take this matter of Major Wyclif, who was in here a few minutes ago. Two of his enlisted men got into a scrap with some GIs in a cheap bordel here. The British soldiers were badly beaten and the place was wrecked. Now the NCOs will cover for the men and the junior officers will cover for the NCOs. I am not going to institute a spy system. I make my apology, for what it is worth, but even apologies wear thin. Are you familiar with this kind of thing between ourselves and the British?”