Part 8 (1/2)

The jeep moved through the blackout. The streets of the city were fined with military trucks and heavy equipment, all moving toward the harbor where the s.h.i.+ps were loading for Italy. The jeep, running counter to the traffic, climbed the hill and went over the ridge and into the valley on the other side, into a valley which had at one time been a place of vineyards and small country houses. But now it was a vast storage ground for sh.e.l.ls and trucks and tanks, lined and stacked and parked, waiting to get aboard the s.h.i.+ps for Italy. The moon lighted the ma.s.ses of material getting ready for war.

”Where are you taking us?” the lieutenant asked.

”You'll see. Just be patient.”

The jeep pulled up to a very white wall that extended off into the distance and disappeared into the pearly in-definiteness of the moonlight. A high gate of iron bars and spikes opened in the wall. The lieutenant commander went to the gate and pulled a rope that hung there, and a small bell called softly. In a moment a white-robed figure appeared at the gate, a tall man with a long, dark beard.

”Yes?” he asked softly.

”May we come in?” the lieutenant commander asked. ”May we come in for evensong?”

”Yes. of course,” the brother said. He pulled at one side of the gate and the hinges cried a little.

Inside the wall was a lovely garden in the moonlight. No war material at all. Everything was cut out except flowers and the little sound of running water and the thick outline of a st.u.r.dy church against a luminous sky. The lieutenant (j.g.) said, ”You speak very good English.”

”I should,” said the brother. ”I was born in Ma.s.sachusetts.”

”American?”

”We come from all over. We have Germans and French, and even a Chinese. Some Russians, too.”

The party moved slowly up the path and came to the little fountain which made the dripping sound and put a cool emphasis on a hot night. ”The song has already started,” the brother said. ”Walk quietly.”

The way went among the walls of flowering shrubs and then up two outside steps, and then into a dark hallway, and finally through an entrance into a place that was familiar and strange. Over the rail and below was the body of the church, only you could not see it, for only one candle was burning, and it merely suggested the size and height. It picked out a corner and an arch and a point of gold, and your mind filled in the rest. Lined below, just visible, were the rows of the white brothers. And then their voices came softly and swelling, singing the ancient music, the disembodied and unimpa.s.sioned music, of which Mozart said he would rather have written one chant than all his own. The evensong rose higher and higher, and it was rather like the dimness of the arched roof overhead. The great, vague room swelled and pulsed with the sound, and then it died and one single voice took it up and the others joined in and the candle flame darted about on its wick.

The sound of the trucks and the half-tracks and the pound of the tanks came vaguely from the distance and the music rose to a high note and stopped. The lines of white figures filed slowly out and a hand came into the candlelight and pinched out the flame.

The jeep went back into the city, and this time it went very slowly because it was caught between a weapons carrier and a troop truck loaded with sleepy, upright soldiers who swayed when the truck struck a rough stretch of street.

The lieutenant (j.g.) was very quiet. Some paradox worried him. He said, ”The change from one thing to another was too quick. There was no time to get used to it. You should have time to get used to things like that.”

”There was actually no change,” the lieutenant commander said. ”I've always thought that naval warfare was composed like chamber music. There wasn't any change. You just saw two sides of the same thing. You can't make islands of experiences. They relate just exactly as the strings relate in a quartet. Maybe you'll see in a day or two when we get into action. You haven't been in action, have you?”

THE WORRIED BARTENDER.

SOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, October 20, 1943 October 20, 1943-When our small American force had captured the island of Capri with no resistance whatsoever on its part or on ours, it was only natural that sooner or later we should meet Luigi the bartender. Luigi had kept warm during the whole war a love of Americans based, he freely admitted, on a memory of tips in the nicer days when American tourists came to bathe in the Blue Grotto and the pink wine. When sailors and officers from the little force inspected the defenses of Luigi's bar and found them formidable. Luigi was cordial but sad. He spoke the English we know, the English of the banana pushcarts and the pizzerias, of the spaghetti joints and grind organs. Luigi's dialect sounded like home.

Luigi was gay but sad. His joy had a habit of falling off in the middle and dissipating. One afternoon, after each one of us had tried to remember a man named Giuseppe Marinari, of Gary, Indiana, who was Luigi's third cousin, we inquired into his sadness. And only then did his trouble come out with a rush.

It seemed that Luigi had a daughter and, more than that, he had an incipient grandchild. But this daughter and this expectation were across the little stretch of water in Castellammare. And what was worse, the Germans were moving up on Castellammare and we were not there in enough force either to repel or to intercept them. Consequently it seemed that Luigi's daughter was very likely to have her child in a sh.e.l.l hole, illuminated by star sh.e.l.ls and parachute flares and possibly speeded up by bomb bursts. Luigi was worried and upset because, he explained, it was not as though he had other daughters or grandchildren. This was his sole chick, due to some misfortune or deformity, the reason for which was known only to G.o.d. And as Luigi poured out his story he also poured out Scotch whisky that had been buried in the earth in back of his bar ever since the war started.

Going back to the s.h.i.+p, the little group could not lose the sadness that Luigi had planted in it. ”How would you like it to happen to your family?” Lieutenant Blank said. ”Why, you can look across to Castellammare.”

On this basis the group visited the commodore in the wardroom of his flags.h.i.+p. They told their story and the commodore looked gravely over his coffee cup at them. And his very calm blue eyes got bright with amus.e.m.e.nt. ”What do you want me to do,” he asked, ”attack Castellammare?”

”No, sir,” said Lieutenant Blank. ”But we have six captured Italian MS boats. How would it be if we took one of them and just went over and got her? It would only take an hour or less.”

”And suppose you lost the boat and got yourself killed?”

”We wouldn't do that, sir. We would just run over and get her. We could do it in practically a few minutes.”

The commodore said, ”I can't permit it. The thing is out of the question. The thing is silly. We're trying to run a war, not a maternity hospital. And besides, I have work for you to do. You can't go running about like this.”

”Yes, sir,” said Lieutenant Blank.

”These are your orders,” said the commodore. ”You are to take one of the MS boats and patrol the coast of the mainland, particularly in the area about Castellammare. You will report the presence of any German s.h.i.+pping there and if you see any hostile craft you will report it and engage it. It may be necessary for you to go pretty far insh.o.r.e to carry out these orders. Do you understand?”

”Yes, sir,” said Lieutenant Blank, ”but I sure wish we could have got that girl off.”

”This is no time for sentiment,” the commodore said.

The thing was very quick. It required only to pull up to the little dock at the little town and to ask for Luigi's daughter. In ten minutes she was at the dock carrying a bundle of clothing and, in our estimation, she was a little closer than even Luigi suspected. And then the Isotta-Fraschini engines of the MS boat purred and the white wake spread away from the boat and she cut through the water back to Capri, for MS boats do not ride on top of the water, they knife through it.

The rest was very silly. Luigi was at the waterfront and he cried and his daughter cried and about a thousand Caprianos cried and the sound of kissing was deafening and a lot of sailors looked gruff and a kind of triumphant procession went up the hill on the funicular railway and there was something in the nature of a party at Luigi's bar. The child, no matter what its s.e.x, is going to have Lieutenant Blank's first name, and not only Luigi but all Luigi's relatives are going to remember all of us in their prayers for hundreds of years to come.

So much for the a.s.surances. But the next morning a party of five went up on the hill to get haircuts. We were sitting reading copies of The London Pictorial The London Pictorial for 1937 and waiting for the one barber chair to be vacant when in the doorway Luigi appeared. And Luigi carried a little tray and on the tray was a Scotch and soda for each of us. And later in the day we went shopping and wherever we stopped to look and to buy there Luigi appeared with his little tray. for 1937 and waiting for the one barber chair to be vacant when in the doorway Luigi appeared. And Luigi carried a little tray and on the tray was a Scotch and soda for each of us. And later in the day we went shopping and wherever we stopped to look and to buy there Luigi appeared with his little tray.

It was a pretty nice day.

THE CAMERA MAKES SOLDIERS.

SOMEWHERE IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WAR THEATER, October 21, 1943 October 21, 1943-I suppose that there is no weapon which so slyly and surely attacks the souls of men as a moving-picture camera does. Men who are disgusted or hurt or just plain ignorant react to a Bell & Howell Eyemo as a frog does to a hot rock. One of our best sports writers suggested one time that the best way to get touchdowns in football was to mount a newsreel camera between the goal posts. It is a secret weapon which dissects people and brings out the curious childish ego that everyone has and lays it spread out thick on the surface.

Recently in Africa and Sicily and Italy we (not editorial we, but a cameraman and I) were working on a technical picture for the Army and there we discovered that the same force that operates at Long Island garden parties and at tennis matches also works on a battle line. It worked everywhere. Weary troops straightened up and marched stiffly and some of them tried to hog the camera and some of them looked fierce and soldierly. All shoulders went back and steps quickened. The thinly covered actor in everyone came out. A line of Army stevedores on a dock in a North African port suddenly, on seeing the camera, began to pa.s.s boxes of C-rations with a speed and rhythm which has probably never been duplicated in Army history. Of course the moment the camera was moved they went back to a much more sensible, goldbricking pace, but for the few feet of film we have, the boxes shot by and piled up in a mountain out of camera range.

The impact of the camera is by no means limited to the Americans. Our picture had to do with all kinds of work and all kinds of men. One day we set up on a barge where a number of Arabs were employed to unload cargo and, incidentally, were doing the finest bit of sleepwalking I have ever seen. Each Arab regarded each box as a personality he didn't like, touched with reluctance, and got rid of with relief. His repugnance, however, did not make him carry it to its destination with any speed that required streamlining. With these people we did not find any speedup when the camera was produced. The moment it began to turn, every Arab stood up grandly and presented his profile and looked sternly toward Mecca. Time and time again we tried to catch them in what is called a natural pose, not of work, because that would be a contradiction in terms, but just relaxed and looking Arab. But either they had seen too many Hollywood films of Valentino as an Arab, or a Valentino had studied Arabs under the impact of the camera. We never caught them any other way except looking sternly offstage, always in profile and always n.o.ble. We had wanted to get them relaxed because I suppose Arabs have as few n.o.ble moments as anyone in the world. Bushmen may compete with them in this respect but I doubt it. And they could not be fooled. They knew when the camera was turning and when it wasn't. They were as highly trained in stealing scenes from each other as dress extras in Hollywood. Finally we gave up. They will continue n.o.ble as far as we are concerned. We will perpetuate this myth of the n.o.ble Arab. The moment we stopped shooting they collapsed into natural Arabs, but we never got it on film.

The camera works everywhere. There is no ferocity like that on the face of a quarterback who is running, not at an opponent but at newsreel coverage on a tripod. And this may all be egotism, but there was one example of something that seemed to be much more than this. One day we set up the camera to photograph the discharge of the cargo of a hospital s.h.i.+p which had been loaded in Sicily. The side doors of the s.h.i.+p were opened and the wooden platform was extended. The lines of ambulances were drawn up on the pier, and then the stretcher-bearers came down in a steady line with the wounded men sitting and lying and huddled and stretched out in positions indicated by the nature of their wounds. Some of them were sick with pain, were gray with pain, and some were only slightly hurt so that their eyes were clear. And not one single man as he pa.s.sed the camera failed to respond to it. Everyone gave it either a smile or a little nod. Some saluted it gravely. The rigid features changed and the eyes brightened, and if an arm could move it moved in greeting. I think this was not egotism. I think these men, each one of them, had a quick thought. ”Someone at home will see this picture. I must appear less badly hurt than I am. Otherwise they might worry.” I think those tired smiles were a great hunk of consideration and courage.

THE STORY OF AN ELF.

Monday, November 1, 1943-This story could not be written if there were not witnesses-not vague unknown men, but Quentin Reynolds and H. R. Knickerbocker and Clark Lee and Jack Belden, who was hurt at Salerno, and John Lardner and a number of others who will come clamoring forward if anyone doubts the facts here to be presented.

The thing began when a British consul met Quentin Reynolds in the hall of the Alletti Hotel in Algiers. The consul was a small, innocent, well-mannered man who liked to think of the British and Americans as allies and who was willing to make amicable gestures. In good faith he asked Reynolds where he was staying and in equal good faith Reynolds replied that he had not yet been billeted.

”There's an extra bed in my room,” the consul said. ”You're welcome to it if you like.”

That was the beginning, and what happened was n.o.body's fault. It was just one of those accidents. The consul had a nice room with a balcony that overlooked the harbor and from which you could watch air raids. It wasn't Reynolds' fault. He accepted hospitality for himself, not for the nine other war correspondents who moved in with him. Nine is only a working number. Sometimes there were as many as eighteen. They slept on the floor, on the balcony, in the bathroom, and some even slept in the hall outside the door of Room 140, Alletti Hotel, Algiers.

It was generally agreed that the consul should have his own bed, that is, if he kept it. But let him get up to go to the bathroom and he returned to find Knickerbocker or Lee or Belden, or all three, in it. Another thing bothered the consul a little. Correspondents don't sleep much at night. They talked and argued and sang so that the poor consul didn't get much rest. There was too much going on in his room. He had to work in the daytime, and he got very little sleep at night. Toward the end of the week he took to creeping back in the middle of the afternoon for a nap. He couldn't get his bed then. Someone always had it. But at three in the afternoon it was usually quiet enough so that he could curl up on the floor and get a little rest.

The foregoing is not the unbelievable part-quite the contrary. It is what follows that will require witnesses. It was during one of the all-night discussions of things in general that someone, perhaps Clark Lee, perhaps Dour Jack Belden, suggested that we were getting very tired of Algerian wine and wouldn't it be nice if we had some Scotch. From that point on this is our story and we intend to stick to it.

Someone must have rubbed something, a ring or a lamp or perhaps the utterly exhausted British consul. At any rate, there was a puff of blue smoke and standing in the room was a small man with pointed ears and a very jolly stomach. He wore a suit of green leather and his cap and the toes of his shoes ended in sharp points and they were green too.