He only made the promises and explained how it would go.
There are no villains, I presume, in a Democracy.
He was only just as wrong as hell.
Period, he added in his mind.
The patches had all been removed even as far back as the rear echelon so that no Kraut would know that it was us, the three he knew so well, who were going to attack.
We were going to attack with the three of us in line and nothing in reserve.
I won't try to explain what that means, Daughter.
But it isn't any good.
And the place we were going to fight in, which I had taken a good look at, was going to be Passchendaele with tree bursts.
I say that too much.
But I think it too much.
The poor bloody twenty-eighth which was up on our right had been bogged down for some time and so there was pretty accurate information available about what conditions in those woods were going to be like.
I think we could conservatively describe them as unfavorable.
Then we were ordered to commit one regiment before the attack started.
That means that the enemy will get at least one prisoner which makes all the taking off of the Divisional patches silly.
They would be waiting for us.
They would be waiting for the old four leaf clover people who would go straight to hell like a mule and do it for one hundred and five days.
Figures of course mean nothing to civilians.
Nor to the characters from SHAEF we never saw ever in these woods.
Incidentally, and of course these occurrences are always incidental at the SHAEF level, the regiment was destroyed.
It was no one's bloody fault, especially not the fault of the man who commanded it.
He was a man I would be glad to spend half my time in hell with; and may yet.
It certainly would be odd if instead of going to hell, as we always counted on, we should go to one of those Kraut joints like Valhalla and not be able to get along with the people.
But maybe we could get a corner table with Rommel and Udet and it would be just like any winter-sports hotel.
It will probably be hell though and I don't even believe in hell.
Well anyway this regiment was rebuilt as American regiments always are by the replacement system.
I won't describe it since you can always read about it in a book by somebody who was a replacement.
It boils down, or distills, to the fact you stay in until you are hit badly or killed or go crazy and get section-eighted.
But I guess it is logical and as good as any other, given the difficulties of transport.
However it leaves a core of certain un-killed characters who know what the score is and no one of these characters liked the look of these woods much.
You could sum up their attitude in this phrase, ''Don't shit me, Jack.''
And since I had been an un-killed character for around twenty-eight years I could understand their attitude.
But they were soldiers, so most of them got killed in those woods and when we took the three towns that looked so innocent and were really fortresses.
They were just built to tempt us and we had no word on them at all.
To continue to use the silly parlance of my trade: this could or could not be faulty intelligence.
''I feel terribly about the regiment,'' the girl said.
She had wakened and spoken straight from sleep.
''Yes,'' said the Colonel. ''So do I.
Let's drink to it once.
Then you go to sleep, Daughter please.
The war is over and forgotten.''
Please don't think that I am conceited, Daughter, he said, without speaking.
His true love was sleeping again.
She slept in a different way than his career girl had slept.
He did not like to remember how the career girl slept, yes he did.
But he wanted to forget it. She did not sleep pretty, he thought. Not like this girl who slept as though she were awake and alive; except she was asleep.
Please sleep well, he thought.
Who the hell are you to criticize career girls? he thought.
What miserable career did you attempt and have failed at?
I wished to be, and was, a General Officer in the Army of the United States.