What do you want, Daughter?''
''Mashed potatoes and a plain salad.''
''You're a growing girl.''
''Yes. But I should not grow too much nor in the wrong directions.''
''I think that handles it,'' the Colonel said. ''What about a fiasco of Valpolicella?''
''We don't have fiascos.
This is a good hotel, you know.
It comes in bottles.''
''I forgot,'' the Colonel said. ''Do you remember when it cost thirty centesimi the liter?''
''And we would throw the empty fiascos at the station guards from the troop trains?''
''And we would throw all the left over grenades away and bounce them down the hillside coming back from the Grappa?''
''And they would think there was a break-through when they would see the bursts and you never shaved, and we wore the fiamme nere on the grey, open jackets with the grey sweaters?''
''And I drank grappa and could not even feel the taste?''
''We must have been tough then,'' the Colonel said.
''We were tough then,'' the Gran Maestro said. ''We were bad boys then, and you were the worst of the bad boys.''
''Yes,'' the Colonel said. ''I think we were rather bad boys.
You forgive this will you, Daughter?''
''You haven't a picture of them, have you?''
''No.
There weren't any pictures except with Mr. d'Annunzio in them.
Also most of the people turned out badly.''
''Except for us,'' the Gran Maestro said. ''Now I must go and see how the steak marches.''
The Colonel, who was a sub-lieutenant again now, riding in a camion, his face dust, until only his metallic eyes showed, and they were red-rimmed and sore, sat thinking.
The three key points, he thought. The massif of Grappa with Assalone and Pertica and the hill I do not remember the name of on the right.
That was where I grew up, he thought, and all the nights I woke sweating, dreaming I would not be able to get them out of the trucks.
They should not have gotten out, ever, of course.
But what a trade it is. ''In our army, you know,'' he told the girl, ''practically no Generals have ever fought.
It is quite strange and the top organization dislikes those who have fought.''
''Do Generals really fight?''
''Oh yes. When they are captains and lieutenants.
Later, except in retreats, it is rather stupid.''
''Did you fight much?
I know you did.
But tell me.''
''I fought enough to be classified as a fool by the great thinkers.''
''Tell me.''
''When I was a boy, I fought against Erwin Rommel half way from Cortina to the Grappa, where we held.
He was a captain then and I was an acting captain; really a sub-lieutenant.''
''Did you know him?''
''No.
Not until after the war when we could talk together.
He was very nice and I liked him.
We used to ski together.''
''Did you like many Germans?''
''Very many.
Ernst Udet I liked the best.''
''But they were in the wrong.''
''Of course.
But who has not been?''
''I never could like them or take such a tolerant attitude as you do, since they killed my father and burned our villa on the Brenta and the day I saw a German officer shooting pigeons with a shot-gun in the Piazza San Marco.''