''But soldiers of our time.''
''You use the word our with facility.
I like it though.''
''But didn't many modern soldiers write?''
''Many.
But did you ever read them?''
''No.
I have read mostly the classics and I read the illustrated papers for the scandals.
Also, I read your letters.''
''Burn them,'' the Colonel said. ''They are worthless.''
''Please. Don't be rough.''
''I won't.
What can I tell you that won't bore you?''
''Tell me about when you were a General.''
''Oh, that,'' he said and motioned to the Gran Maestro to bring Champagne.
It was Roederer Brut '42 and he loved it. ''When you are a general you live in a trailer and your Chief of Staff lives in a trailer, and you have bourbon whisky when other people do not have it.
Your G's live in the C.P.
I'd tell you what G's are, but it would bore you.
I'd tell you about G1, G2, G3, G4, G5 and on the other side there is always Kraut-6.
But it would bore you. On the other hand, you have a map covered with plastic material, and on this you have three regiments composed of three battalions each.
It is all marked in colored pencil.
''You have boundary lines so that when the battalions cross their boundaries they will not then fight each other.
Each battalion is composed of five companies.
All should be good, but some are good, and some are not so good.
Also you have divisional artillery and a battalion of tanks and many spare parts.
You live by co-ordinates.''
He paused while the Gran Maestro poured the Roederer Brut '42.
''From Corps,'' he translated, unlovingly, cuerpo d'Armata, ''they tell you what you must do, and then you decide how to do it.
You dictate the orders or, most often, you give them by telephone.
You ream out people you respect, to make them do what you know is fairly impossible, but is ordered.
Also, you have to think hard, stay awake late and get up early.''
''And you won't write about this?
Not even to please me?''
''No,'' said the Colonel. ''Boys who were sensitive and cracked and kept all their valid first impressions of their day of battle, or their three days, or even their four, write books.
They are good books but can be dull if you have been there.
Then others write to profit quickly from the war they never fought in. The ones who ran back to tell the news. The news is hardly exact. But they ran quickly with it.
Professional writers who had jobs that prevented them from fighting wrote of combat that they could not understand, as though they had been there.
I do not know what category of sin that comes under.
''Also a nylon-smooth Captain of the Navy who could not command a cat-boat wrote about the intimate side of the truly Big Picture.
Everybody will write their book sooner or later.
We might even draw a good one.
But I don't write, Daughter.''
He motioned for the Gran Maestro to fill the glasses.
''Gran Maestro,'' he said. ''Do you like to fight?''
''No.''
''But we fought?''
''Yes.
Too much.''
''How is your health?''
''Wonderful except for the ulcers and a small cardiac condition.''