Ordinary Heroes

  Years ago, I broke a story about one of the supervising lawyers in the Kindle County Prosecuting Attorney's Office, whose gambling habit left him indebted to local loan sharks. My source was an FBI agent who was understandably concerned about the perils of having an Assistant P. A. in the pocket of hoodlums, and the Bureau guy even showed me the federal grand jury transcripts so I could reassure my editors before we went to press.

  It was a great coup for me. The only problem was that the prosecutor involved, Rudy Patel, was a pretty good friend of mine. Both serious baseball fans, Rudy and I were part of a group that shared season tickets to the Trappers' games. We'd often sit side by side, cursing the Trappers' perpetual misfortunes, high-fiving homers as if we'd hit the balls, and berating the players for strikeouts and errors. Bleeding for the Trappers is a Kindle County ritual and it became a bond between Rudy and me. I gave him good coverage on his trials. And then cost him his job.

  Fortunately for Rudy, he got into an impaired lawyers program, enrolled in Gamblers Anonymous, and avoided getting disbarred or prosecuted. Naturally, though, he had to be fired, and was required to live with the ignominy of being outed by me. He ended up as a professor at a pretty good local law school and has gone on with his life, albeit with none of the promise that radiated around him earlier. I took care of that.

  Rudy and I still live on the same bus line to Nearing and every now and then in the station we'll see each other. Every time I do, I can feel myself light up instinctively with the affection of our old friendship, and even see him begin to brighten, until his memory returns and he retreats into loathing. Over the years, his look of pure hatred has abated a little. He must know I was doing my job. But the fact is that there's nowhere to go. Even if he forgave me wholeheartedly, our friendship would be part of a past that he's both set aside and overcome.

  I mention this because it reminds me a little of my father's visits with Mrs. Bidwell. These brief meetings clearly upset Dad. Driving home, he had a look of quick-eyed distraction, gripping and regripping the steering wheel. I don't know what illusion had brought him to the North End. That he was obliged to keep faith and memory? That by showing us off he could restore just a shred of the stake in the future Mrs. Bidwell had lost with the death of her son? But after the last of these trips, when I was about ten, Dad looked at my mother as soon as we returned home and said, "I can't do that again." My mother's expression was soft and commiserating.

  I'm sure Dad kept his vow and didn't go back. As I have said, there was never a living place for the war in my father's life. It was not life. It was war. Loyalty could not overcome that.

  Nor, frankly, do I imagine that Mrs. Bidwell ever tried to contact him again. Looking back, I'm struck that neither Mr. Bidwell nor Biddy's brothers were ever there. For them, there was probably never any accommodating themselves to the intolerable irony of losing a son and a brother whose only equal opportunity involved dying.

  In the end, Mrs. Bidwell and Dad were a lot like Rudy and me. There was a shared history, but it was a history they were impotent to change. Fate, inexplicably, had favored one and not the other. There was no erasing that inequity, or any other. And because they were powerless in these ways, they could only regard what the past had dished up with great sadness and then move on to the very separate lives that remained.

  Chapter 29.

  WINNING

  From Don't Be a Sucker in Germany!, a pamphlet published by the 12th Army Group, found among my father's things:

  The facts in this booklet were compiled by the Provost Marshal of the Ninth U. S. Army as a guide for troops in Germany. Nothing here was "dreamed up" by someone behind a desk. This booklet is a summary of the experiences of the French, Dutch, and Belgian underground workers now serving with the American armies. They know the tricks and the answers. That's why they are alive to pass this information on to you.

  DON'T BELIEVE IT

  Don't believe there are any "good" Germans in Germany. Of course you know good Germans back home. They had guts enough and sense enough to break from Germany long ago.

  Don't believe it was only the Nazi government that brought on this war. Any people have the kind of government they want and deserve. Only a few people bucked the Nazis. You won't meet them; the Nazis purged them long ago.

  One Belgian major, wounded twice in two wars with Germany, was stationed in Germany from 1918 to 1929. He says:

  "A German is by nature a liar. Individually he is peaceful enough, but collectively, Germans become cruel."

  If a German underground movement breaks out, it will be merciless. It will be conducted by SS and Gestapo agents who don't flinch at murder. They will have operatives everywhere. Every German, man, woman, and child, must be suspected. Punishment must be quick and severe. This is not the same thing as brutality. Allied forces must show their strength but must use it only when necessary.

  ***

  We won the war. In February and March, the Allies ground forward. The Germans finally seemed to realize they were overwhelmed--depleted by the Battle of the Bulge (as people were now calling what had happened in the Ardennes), outmanned in the skies, and facing massive Russian forces attacking on their eastern front. "Bald schiessen wir nicht mehr."

  For the Third Army, the principal problems were weather and terrain. The worst winter in fifty years abated with an early thaw, swelling the rivers and streams in the mountainous landscape on which the Siegfried line had been erected. Waterways that our forces once could have forded on foot now required bridging by the engineers while the troops waited. But Patton, as always, advanced. Nineteenth Tactical Air Command provided comprehensive support for the forward columns. On March 22, Patton defied Supreme Headquarters and secretly mounted a massive assault across the Rhine, thereby depriving Montgomery of the intended honor of being the first general into the German heartland. The fur was flying around HQ for weeks afterward, and I have no doubt that Patton's little mutiny provided much of the impetus that led to him being relieved of command as general of the Third Army by May.

  Even with the end in sight, our progress brought none of the jubilation that had accompanied the liberation of France. Our men had been at war too long to celebrate combat, and, far more important, there was the daily evidence of what our victory meant to the local populations. A relentless parade of Germans driven from their homes by the fighting flowed back into our path, marching along with their most valued possessions on their backs. They lived in the open in unhappy packs that were soon breeding grounds for typhus. Some waved the Stars and Stripes as we passed, but we had killed their sons and fathers, and exploded or plundered their houses. For the most part, there was a miserable sulking suspicion between them and us, especially since we knew that many German soldiers had ditched their uniforms to hide among the throngs of the displaced.

  Despite mass German desertions, the Third Army alone took 300,000 German POWs in those weeks. They were trucked to the rear, dirty, hungry, defeated men, herded into barbed-wire cages, many of whom, when addressed, prayed for the end of the fighting, which, under the Geneva Conventions, would allow them to go home.

  As for me, I remained desolate and occasionally temperamental. I never carried through on my threat to myself to volunteer for combat. Instead, I went through the routines of a military lawyer with proficiency and disinterest. Reports describing thefts, rapes, and murders of Germans arrived on our desks in a tide and were generally ignored. We proceeded only with investigations of serious crimes against our own troops. It was not simply that the Germans were our enemies. Many military commanders, including General Maples--he was promoted April 1--expressed the view that a nasty occupation in Germany was justified, not so much in the name of revenge, but so that the Germans saw firsthand what they had unleashed on the rest of the world. I never contested that point of view.

  But I contested little. For me, the war was over. Like the cities and towns of western Europe, my steeples lay in ruins. I wanted only to go home and find time to pick t
hrough the rubble. It was the downcast civilians, as much as our own troops, with whom I often felt a bond.

  From home, I continued to receive heartsore entreaties from Grace Morton, who refused to accept my judgment that our marriage would never occur. My darling, she wrote, I know how awful this time has been for you and the tragedies you have witnessed. Soon, we will again be together, this madness will be forgotten, and we will be one.

  I wrote back with as much kindness as I could muster, telling her she would save us both continued anguish by abiding by my decision. In response, her letters grew more openly pleading. When they went unanswered, her magnificent dignity wore away. One day I would receive a diatribe about my disloyalty, the next a rueful and lascivious contemplation of how wrong we had been not to sleep together before my departure. I forced myself to read each note, always with pain. I was stunned by the extraordinary contagion bred by war, which had somehow conveyed my madness across the ocean to infect her.

  The Third Army moved its forward HQ twice within a week, ending up in early April in Frankfurt am Main, which had been bombed unceasingly before our arrival. Blocks of the city were nothing but hillocks of stone and brick above which a little aura of dust lingered whenever the wind stirred. In the area close to the main train station, a number of the older buildings remained standing and the Staff Judge Advocate set up in a former commercial building on Poststrasse. I was given a spacious office that had belonged to an important executive, and was still unpacking there on April 6 when a chubby young officer came in, twirling his cap in his hands. He was Herbert Diller, an aide to the Assistant Chief of Staff of the Third Army, who wished to see me. I was rushing down the block with him toward the General staff headquarters before he mentioned the name Teedle.

  I had not seen the General in person since the day I had slunk back from the Comtesse de Lemolland's to report Martin's initial disappearance. As far as I knew, Teedle had received my written reports, although I'd gotten no response. Now, from Diller, I learned that on April 1, General Teedle had been relieved of command of the 18th Armored, which was being cycled into a reserve position for the balance of the war. With that, Roland Teedle had become Patton's Assistant Chief of Staff. As Diller and I hurried down the broad halls of this former government ministry, I could hear Teedle yelling. His target turned out to be his corporal Frank, who'd been transferred with him.

  General Teedle looked smaller and older in the office where I found him, a somber room with high ceilings and long windows. He was on his feet, facing, with evident bewilderment, a desk on which the papers looked as if they'd simply been dumped. I was surprised to feel some warmth for the General at the first sight of him, but I suppose after my visit to OSS in London, I'd come to recognize that he had been right about most things. Whatever else, Robert Martin was both disingenuous and a subversive force in the military. Not that I'd completely forgotten Bonner's accusation. It occurred to me for a second that Teedle might have been moved to HQ so someone could keep an eye on him. But I'd never know for sure, not whether Bonner spoke the truth, or had misperceived other conduct, or, even if correct, where Teedle's misbehavior should rank among the war's many other travesties.

  I congratulated the General on his new posting. Another star had come with it. As usual, he had no interest in flattery.

  "They're already replacing the warhorses, Dubin. They think diplomats should be in charge. The next phase of the war will be political. I'd rather be feeding cattle than sitting behind a desk, but at least there's some work left to do. Patton wants to be in Berlin before the end of the month, and I believe we will be. So how did you like war, Dubin? A bitch, isn't it?"

  I must have betrayed something in response to his scoffing, because Teedle focused on me with concern.

  "I know you had a bad time, Dubin. I don't mean to make light of it."

  "I don't think I'm the only one with sad stories to tell."

  "There are three million men here with nightmares to take home with them, and a million or so more half a world away. Makes you wonder what kind of country we can ever be. So much of civilization, Dubin, is merely the recovery periods between wars. We build things up and then tear them down again. Look at poor Europe. Some moments I find myself thinking about all the fighting that's gone on here and expect blood to come welling out of the ground."

  "You sound like Martin, General." As ever, I was surprised by my forwardness with Teedle. But he seemed to expect it.

  "Oh, hardly, Dubin. I'm sure Martin wants to put an end to war. I take it as part of the human condition."

  My expression, in response, was undoubtedly pained, but in retrospect I am unsure whether that was because I resisted Teedle's view, or regarded it as a harrowing truth. Observing me, Teedle leaned back and drummed a pencil on the thigh of his wool trousers.

  "Do you know what this war is about, Dubin?"

  Teedle had made Diller wait outside and I could hear voices gathering, meaning another meeting was about to take place, most likely involving officers superior to me. But I wasn't surprised that the General wanted to take time for this discussion. There had never been any question that Teedle found something essential in his contest with Martin. He opposed everything Martin stood for--the solitary adventurer who thought he could outwit the machines of war; a spy who favored deception over hand-to-hand assault; and, of course, a Communist who would give to each man according to his need, as opposed to the fathomless will of God.

  I asked if he was referring to the Treaty of Versailles.

  "Fuck treaties," he said. "I mean what's at stake. In the largest terms."

  I knew Teedle valued my seriousness, and I tried not to be flippant, but the fact was that I had no idea anymore and I said so. Teedle, naturally, had a view.

  "I think we're fighting about what will unite people. I think that all of these machines we've fallen in love with in this epoch--the railroad, the telegraph and telephone, the automobile, the radio, the moving-picture camera, the airplane, God knows what else--they've changed the compass of life. A shepherd who tended his flock or a smith at his forge, folks who knew only their fellow townsmen, now contend with people a thousand miles away as an immediate presence in their lives. And they don't know exactly what they have in common with all those distant companions.

  "Now, along come the Communists, who tell the shepherd the common interest is the good of man, and maybe he should give up a few sheep to the poor fellow a few towns over. And then we have Mr. Hitler, who tells his citizens that they should be united by the desire to kill or conquer anyone who doesn't resemble them. And then there's us--the Allies. What's our vision to compete with Mr. Stalin and Mr. Hitler? What are we offering?"

  "Well, Roosevelt and Churchill would say 'freedom.

  "Which means?"

  "Personal liberty. The Bill of Rights. The vote. Freedom and equality."

  "For what end?"

  "General, I have to say I feel as if I'm back in law school."

  "All right, Dubin. I hear you. I think we're fighting for God, Dubin. Not Christ or Yahweh or wood elves, no God in particular. But the right to believe. To say that there is a limit to this big collective society, there's something more important for every human, and he will find it on his own. But we're trying to have it two ways, Dubin, to be collective and individual at the same time, and it's going to get us in trouble. We can't tolerate Fascists or Communists, who want the same answer for every person. Or the capitalists either, if you want to know the truth. They want everyone to stand up for materialism. And that's a collectivism of its own and we have to recognize it as such."

  "There's quite a bit of collectivism in religion, General, people who want you or me to do exactly as they believe."

  "That's the nature of man, Dubin. And very much, I think, as God expects. But it's the human mission to welcome all reasonable contenders."

  I wasn't following and said so. Teedle circled around his desk, coming closer in a way that felt strangely unguarded for him.

>   "I believe in democracy," he said, "for exactly the same reason Jefferson did. Because God made each of us, different though we may be. Human variety expresses His infiniteness. But His world still belongs to those who will struggle to do the mission He has chosen for them, whether it's the Trappist contemplating His will in silence, or the titan astride the globe. If God made a world with a billion different human plans, He must have expected struggle. But He couldn't have intended a world where one vision prevails, because that would mean only a single vision of Him, Dubin."

  "Is war what God wants then, General?"

  "We all think about that one, Dubin. I can't tell you the answer. All I know is He wants us to persevere." He picked up a paper off his desk. "I've been getting reports for a. day now from a place called Ohrdruf. Heard anything about that?"

  "No, sir."

  "Three thousand political prisoners of one kind or another lying in shallow graves, starved to death by the Nazis. The few who remain alive survive in unimaginable squalor. The communiques keep repeating that words can't describe it. God must want us to fight against that, Dubin."

  I shrugged, unwilling to venture onto that ground, while the General continued to scrutinize me. I understood only then what my attraction had been to Teedle from the start. He cared about my soul.

  "All right, Dubin. So much for the bright chatter. I have an assignment for you, but I thought we should have a few words first. I heard about your visit to London, checking up on me."

  "I did what I always told you I had to, General. Confirm the details."

  "You were checking up on me. I don't mind, Dubin. I suspect at this stage you hate Robert Martin more than I do."

  "I've come to feel rather neutral, to tell you the truth, sir. I can't really make out what his game is. He might just be mad in his own way."

  "He's a spy, Dubin. Nothing more complicated than that. He's on the other side."

  There was no question that Martin and the General were on different sides. But so were Teedle and I. Not that I could name any of these camps.