The Winston Affair (27 page)

Adams studied the officers of the court-martial, but there was nothing to be read from their appearance. They were tired, and their faces were set and expressionless. Their eyes sought no one and conveyed nothing.

“I don't care now,” Adams told himself. But that was not true; he had cared more and about more things this past week than ever before in his life. He had cared more deeply and felt more poignantly than ever before—and he still cared. He had struggled with thoughts that were new, with words that were unfamiliar, and with concepts unclear and only half formed.

He had a sense of failure, of inadequacy and defeat. But he still cared; that had not changed.

“Will the prisoner stand,” Colonel Thompson said.

Winston rose to his feet. He did not look at Thompson or at Adams, but only at his hands, which he held trembling at his waist.

“The court has come to a verdict,” Thompson continued. “The court finds that the prisoner is not guilty and orders that he be returned to the General Hospital for further treatment.”

Winston gave no evidence of having heard anything at all. He stood as he had been. Adams heard himself saying, in a hoarse whisper, “I'm glad it's done.”

Adams had taken his company back from the front to the rest area at Okinawa, and their mail was waiting. Among his letters was one from Major Kaufman, the first communication since they had parted some five months before. He read it-eagerly.

I hope this finds you in good health. I have no idea where you actually are now, but I think I might guess. Will it surprise you to hear that in so short a time the Winston affair is practically forgotten? Not only did it fail to split the Grand Alliance, but strangely enough the decision ended some of the ill feeling in this theater.

Winston, poor devil, managed to cut his wrists on the way back to stateside and he was buried at sea. I can feel a twinge of pity for him now. From Sorenson, I had a note only a few days ago—the first in a long time. She just married a British merchant seaman, the first officer on an armed cargo ship. Not many details. She speaks of him as a. decent fellow, and she may remain in England when this long and weary war ends.

I know that you became fond of Oscar Moscow, one of your assistants at the trial—and it's a bitter thing to have to tell you about his death. He volunteered for service in Burma—I guess you read about that operation—and his request was granted all too eagerly. He was killed in action there—I don't suppose he had it in him to be much of an infantryman. Harvey Bender was very close to him and very deeply affected by his death. He holds Thompson responsible, but I think he's all wrong there. Moscow did what he had to do, and only he was responsible.

For myself, my prediction was remarkably accurate. I am dispensing drugs, counting atabrine pills, and tending to all the various and sundry ailments that flow into our dispensary at the end of the narrow gauge, about seventy miles past Bachree and in the same stinking jungle. My one solace is the day or two each week that I spend with Major Kensington—you remember him, of course. We play cribbage, a foolish game he taught me.

One more note on my own fate—and I imagine this will interest you. Before I left, General Kempton called me in to Headquarters. I had a brief hope that he intended to recognize my small talents and employ them, but he immediately made it plain that he had no intentions of interfering with Colonel Burton's decisions. He pointed out that as Theater Commander he stood apart from such things. Then he sat me down, gave me a cigarette, became as charming as the occasion demanded, and wanted to know whether it was my idea to testify-that is, my very own.

Of course, he pointed out that I was not obligated to tell him, but I saw no reason not to. I said that you had persuaded me—that left to my own devices, I'd have had neither the guts nor the desire to stick my neck out.

“And you did this because Barney Adams talked you into it?” he said.

I said that you had not talked me into anything except a sharp and dear look at myself—and then I had recognized the simple necessity of living with myself.

He didn't buy this easily, but the truth is that you were his problem, not me. He said this and that and then came to the heart of the matter—what devil drove Barney Adams?

Why ask me, I wanted to know—and he said words to the effect of my being a psychiatrist and therefore under some obligation to understand why men did the things they do. Well, I replied that the approach was fallacious. You were not sick, and therefore no more my problem than his. But I offered a guess—a poor one, I suppose. I said that a thoughtful soldier can suffer a particular agony of his own, and that it becomes almost an implacable necessity to balance killing with some rational purpose.

I don't know whether he saw what I meant, although your Kempton is far from a fool. He replied that whatever his own feelings were concerning one Barney Adams, he refused to believe that you would not defend your country—whether or not you believed in your country's cause.

I had no quarrel with that. I only wondered—aloud—whether under such circumstances you could also defend Barney Adams.

“Then he was defending himself?” Kempton demanded.

“Or whatever he believed in,” I replied, and pointed out that there were people to whom belief was of prime importance. He then wanted me to spell out this belief—re Winston, but I had no right to talk for you, and I left him perhaps no less troubled and bemused than I had found him.

For myself, I have thought about it more than I should, and I think I begin to comprehend the Winston affair. It does not bear easy explaining. It is almost a frightening thing to come to believe that no infraction of the laws that man made to defend man can be lightly tolerated, that the whole fabric is one, and that, ripped anywhere, it can threaten the whole. Is it this long and terrible war that has given some of us the feeling that the rights of man are holy beyond dispute? Or is that the single ray of light in the darkness that covers the world? I must confess that I don't know. The Winston case is something I feel very deeply, as I am sure you do, but I find it very hard to talk about.

So there is a very brief summary or postscript to the Winston affair. I should enjoy hearing from you sometime—if you find yourself with time on your hands. As with so many people one meets in a war, you want to know them better and longer. But the whole thing is too large and too much in motion.

My best—and all the good luck in the world.

He finished reading. A sergeant, passing by, asked him, “Good news, I hope, Captain?”

“Good and bad,” Adams answered with a shrug.

He sat looking at the letter, a pang of incredible loneliness clutching his heart. It would always be there, he realized; it would never go away; the loneliness would temper and dull as time passed, but it would not go away.

A Biography of Howard Fast .

Biography

Howard Fast (1914-2003), one of the most prolific American writers of the twentieth century, was a bestselling author of more than eighty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and screenplays. Fast's commitment to championing social justice in his writing was rivaled only by his deftness as a storyteller and his lively cinematic style.

Born on November 11, 1914, in New York City, Fast was the son of two immigrants. His mother, Ida, came from a Jewish family in Britain, while his father, Barney, emigrated from the Ukraine, changing his last name to Fast on arrival at Ellis Island. Fast's mother passed away when he was only eight, and when his father lost steady work in the garment industry, Fast began to take odd jobs to help support the family. One such job was at the New York Public Library, where Fast, surrounded by books, was able to read widely. Among the books that made a mark on him was Jack London's
The Iron Heel
, containing prescient warnings against fascism that set his course both as a writer and as an advocate for human rights.

Fast began his writing career early, leaving high school to finish his first novel,
Two Valleys
(1933). His next novels, including
Conceived in Liberty
(1939) and
Citizen Tom Paine
(1943), explored the American Revolution and the progressive values that Fast saw as essential to the American experiment. In 1943 Fast joined the American Communist Party, an alliance that came to define—and often encumber—much of his career. His novels during this period advocated freedom against tyranny, bigotry, and oppression by exploring essential moments in American history, as in
The American
(1946). During this time Fast also started a family of his own. He married Bette Cohen in 1937 and the couple had two children.

Congressional action against the Communist Party began in 1948, and in 1950, Fast, an outspoken opponent of McCarthyism, was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Because he refused to provide the names of other members of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, Fast was issued a three-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress. While in prison, he was inspired to write
Spartacus
(1951), his iconic retelling of a slave revolt during the Roman Empire, and did much of his research for the book during his incarceration. Fast's appearance before Congress also earned him a blacklisting by all major publishers, so he started his own press, Blue Heron, in order to release Spartacus. Other novels published by Blue Heron, including
Silas Timberman
(1954), directly addressed the persecution of Communists and others during the ongoing Red Scare. Fast continued to associate with the Communist Party until the horrors of Stalin's purges of dissidents and political enemies came to light in the mid-1950s. He left the Party in 1956.

Fast's career changed course in 1960, when he began publishing suspense-mysteries under the pseudonym E. V. Cunningham. He published nineteen books as Cunningham, including the seven-book Masao Masuto mystery series. Also, Spartacus was made into a major film in 1960, breaking the Hollywood blacklist once and for all. The success of
Spartacus
inspired large publishers to pay renewed attention to Fast's books, and in 1961 he published
April Morning
, a novel about the battle of Lexington and Concord during the American Revolution. The book became a national bestseller and remains a staple of many literature classes. From 1960 onward Fast produced books at an astonishing pace—almost one book per year—while also contributing to screen adaptations of many of his books. His later works included the autobiography
Being Red
(1990) and the
New York Times
bestseller
The Immigrants
(1977).

Fast died in 2003 at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Fast on a farm in upstate New York during the summer of 1917. Growing up, Fast often spent the summers in the Catskill Mountains with his aunt and uncle from Hunter, New York. These vacations provided a much-needed escape from the poverty and squalor of the Lower East Side's Jewish ghetto, as well as the bigotry his family encountered after they eventually relocated to an Irish and Italian neighborhood in upper Manhattan. However, the beauty and tranquility Fast encountered upstate were often marred by the hostility shown toward him by his aunt and uncle. "They treated us the way Oliver Twist was treated in the orphanage," Fast later recalled. Nevertheless, he "fell in love with the area" and continued to go there until he was in his twenties.