Once There Was a War (14 page)

“Take off your dog tags and put them up here,” said the sergeant. He began to make notes on a pad from the dog tags. “Put everything in your pockets in this box.” He shoved a cigar box to the edge of his desk.

“But this here’s my stuff,” the little man protested.

“You’ll get a receipt. Put it up and roll up your sleeves.”

The two men who had been with the little fat man were silent and watchful. “Who was driving the truck?” the desk sergeant asked.

“A fellow named Willie. He jumped out and ran away.”

The sergeant turned to the other two. “Who was driving the truck?” he asked them.

They both nodded their heads toward the little fat man and neither one of them spoke. “You bastards,” the little fat man said quietly. “Oh, you dirty bastards.”

“Roll up your sleeves,” the desk sergeant said, and then: “Good God, four wrist watches. Say, this one is a GI watch. That’s government property. Where did you get it?”

“I lent a fellow money for it. He’s going to get it back when he pays me.”

“Put your wallet up here.”

The little fat man brought out a wallet of red morocco leather and hesitantly put it up. “I want a receipt for this. This is my savings.”

The desk sergeant shook out the wallet. “God Almighty,” he said, and he began to count the mounds of bills and he made notes on his pad. “Ten thousand Algerian francs and three thousand dollars, American,” he said. “You really are packing the stuff away, aren’t you, buddy?”

“That’s my life savings,” the little fat man said plaintively. “I want a receipt for that, that’s my money.”

The lieutenant behind the desk came to life. “Lock them up separately,” he said. “I’ll talk to them. Sergeant, you send a detail out for that truck and tell them to search the place all around there. Tell them to look out for watches, Elgins, GI watches. It will be a case about this size. It would have a thousand in it if they are all there. The Arabs are paying forty bucks for them. Okay, lock these men up.”

“A guy named Willie,” the fat man complained, “a guy named Willie just asked us to come for a ride.” He looked at the other two and his soft face was venomous. “Oh, you dirty bastards,” he said.

OVER THE HILL

A NORTH AFRICAN POST (
Via London
),
September 1, 1943
—Sligo and the kid took their forty-eight hour pass listlessly. The bars close in Algeria at eight o’clock but they got pretty drunk on wine before that happened and they took a bottle with them and lay down on the beach. The night was warm and after the two had finished the second bottle of wine they took off their clothes and waded out into the quiet water and then squatted down and sat there with only their heads out. “Pretty nice, eh, kid?” said Sligo. “There’s guys used to pay heavy dough for stuff just like this and we get it for nothing.”

“I’d rather be home on Tenth Avnoo,” said the kid. “I’d rather be there than any place. I’d like to see my old lady. I’d like to see the World Series this year.”

“You’d like maybe a clip in the kisser,” said Sligo.

“I’d like to go into the Greek’s and get me a double chocolate malted with six eggs in it,” said the kid. He bobbed up to keep a little wavelet out of his mouth. “This place is lonely. I like Coney.”

“Too full of people,” said Sligo.

“This place is lonely,” said the kid.

“Talking about the Series, I’d like to do that myself,” said Sligo. “It’s just times like this a fella gets kind of tempted to go over the hill.”

“S’posen you went over the hill—where the hell would you go? There ain’t no place to go.”

“I’d go home,” said Sligo. “I’d go to the Series. I’d be first in the bleachers, like I was in ’forty.”

“You couldn’t get home,” the kid said; “there ain’t no way to get home.”

The wine was warming Sligo and the water was good. “I got dough says I can get home,” he said carelessly.

“How much dough?”

“Twenty bucks.”

“You can’t do it,” said the kid.

“You want to take the bet?”

“Sure, I’ll take it. When you going to pay?”

“I ain’t going to pay, you’re going to pay. Let’s go up on the beach and knock off a little sleep.” ...

At the piers the ships lay. They had brought landing craft and tanks and troops and now they lay, taking in the scrap, the broken equipment from the North African battlefields which would go to the blast furnaces to make more tanks and landing craft. Sligo and the kid sat on a pile of C-ration boxes and watched the ships. Down the hill came a detail with a hundred Italian prisoners to be shipped to New York. Some of the prisoners were ragged and some were dressed in American khaki because they had been too ragged in the wrong places. None of the prisoners seemed to be unhappy about going to America. They marched down to a gangplank and then stood in a crowd, awaiting orders to get aboard.

“Look at them,” said the kid, “they get to go home and we got to stay. What you doing, Sligo? What you rubbing oil all over your pants for?”

“Twenty bucks,” said Sligo, “and I’ll find you and collect, too.” He stood off and took off his overseas cap and tossed it to the kid. “Here’s a present, kid.”

“What you going to do, Sligo?”

“Don’t you come follow me, you’re too dumb. Twenty bucks, and don’t you forget it. So long, see you on Tenth Avnoo.”

The kid watched him go, uncomprehending. Sligo, with dirty pants and a ripped shirt, moved gradually over, near to the prisoners, and then imperceptibly he edged in among them and stood bareheaded, looking back at the kid.

An order was called down to the guards, and they herded the prisoners toward the gangplank. Sligo’s voice came plaintively. “I’m not supposed to be here. Hey, don’t put me on dis ship.”

“Shut up, wop,” a guard growled at him. “I don’t care if you did live sixteen years in Brooklyn. Git up that plank.” He pushed the reluctant Sligo up the gangplank.

Back on the pile of boxes the kid watched with admiration. He saw Sligo get to the rail. He saw Sligo still protesting and righting to get back to the pier. He heard him shrieking, “Hey, I’m Americano, Americano soldier. You canna poot me here.”

The kid saw Sligo struggling and then he saw the final triumph. He saw Sligo take a sock at a guard and he saw the guard’s club rise and come down on Sligo’s head. His friend collapsed and was carried out of sight on board the ship. “The son of a gun,” the kid murmured to himself. “The smart son of a gun. They can’t do nothing at all to him and he got witnesses. Well, the smart son of a gun. My God, it’s worth twenty bucks.”

The kid sat on the boxes for a long time. He didn’t leave his place till the ship cast off and the tugs pulled her clear of the submarine nets. The kid saw the ship join the group and he saw the destroyers move up and take the convoy under protection. The kid walked dejectedly up to the town. He bought a bottle of Algerian wine and headed back toward the beach to sleep his forty-eight.

THE SHORT SNORTER WAR MENACE

SOMEWHERE IN AFRICA (
Via London
),
September 2, 1943
—The growth of the Short Snorters is one of the greatest single menaces to come out of the war so far. The idea started as a kind of joke in a time when very few people flew over an ocean in an airplane. It became the custom then for the crew of the airplane to sign their names on a one-dollar bill which made the new ocean flyer a Short Snorter. He was supposed to keep this bill always with him. If at any time he were asked if he were a Short Snorter and he did not have his signed bill with him he was forced to pay a dollar to each member present at the time when the question was asked. It was good fun and a kind of general joke and also a means of getting someone to pay for the drinks.

But then came the war and the building of thousands of ships and the transporting of thousands of men overseas by airplane and every single one becomes a Short Snorter. There are hundreds of thousands of Short Snorters now who have actually flown over an ocean and there are further hundreds of thousands who carry signed bills. And the new Short Snorter goes much farther than having his bill signed by the crew which carried him on his initial crossing. The custom has grown to have the bill signed by everyone you come across. At a bar you ask your drinking companion to sign your bill. You ask generals and actors and senators to sign your bill.

With the growing autographing one bill soon was not enough. You procured another bill and stuck it with Scotch tape to your first bill. Then the thing went farther. You began to collect bills from other countries. To your American dollar bill you stuck a one-pound English note, and to it a fifty-franc Algerian note, and to it a hundred-lira bill. Every place you went you stuck the money to your growing Short Snorter until now there are people who have streamers eight and ten feet long, which, folded and rolled, make a great bundle in the pocket, and these streamers are covered with thousands of names and represent besides considerable money. Even the one-dollar original is disappearing. Many new Short Snorters use $20 bills and some even $100 bills.

These are the new autograph books. The original half of the joke has been lost. In bars, in airports, in clubs, the first thing that must be done is a kind of general exchange of signatures. Serious and intelligent gentlemen sign one another’s bills with an absolute lack of humor. If the party is fairly large it might take an hour before everyone has signed the bill of everyone else. Meanwhile the soup gets cold.

There are favorite places on the bill for honored and desirable autographs. The little space under Morgenthau’s name is one such. The wide space beside the portrait on the bill is another. If you get an autograph you want to show, you have it written on a clear space, but if it is just one of the run-of-the-mill signatures it is put any place in the green part, where it hardly shows up at all. It is a frantic, serious-minded, insane thing. Men of dignity scramble for autographs on their Short Snorters. A special case, usually made of cellophane, is sometimes carried to house the bill, or the long streamers of bills, because these treasures are handled so much that they would fall to pieces if they were not protected.

The effort and time involved in this curious thing is immense. Entertainers who travel about to our troops sign literally thousands of Short Snorter bills. For no longer do people have to fly an ocean to be members. The new method is that any Short Snorter can create a new Short Snorter. The club is pyramiding. Probably there are ten million Short Snorters now and every day new thousands begin to scribble on their bills. It would be interesting to know how many bills are withdrawn from circulation to be used as autograph books. They must run into the millions.

The use of large bills as Short Snorter bills has a curious logic behind it. The man or woman who used a $20 or $100 bill feels that he or she will not spend this money because of the signatures on it, but he also feels that if he needs to he can spend it. Thus he has a nest egg or mad money and a treasure, too. He will not toss it over a bar nor put it in a crap game, but if he really should get into a hole he has this money with him.

Very curious practices grow out of a war and surely none more strange than this one has taken over the public recently.

THE BONE YARD

A NORTH AFRICAN POST (
Via London
),
September 5, 1943
—On the edge of a North African city there is a huge used tank yard. It isn’t only tanks, either. It is a giant bone yard, where wrecked tanks and trucks and artillery are brought and parked, ready for overhauling. There are General Shermans with knocked-out turrets and broken tracks, with engines gone to pieces. There are trucks that have fallen into shell holes. There are hundreds of wrecked motorcycles and many broken and burned-out pieces of artillery, the debris of months of bitter fighting in the desert.

On the edge of this great bone yard are the reconditioning yards and the rebuilding lines. Into the masses of wrecked equipment the Army inspectors go. They look over each piece of equipment and tag it. Perhaps this tank, with a German .88 hole drilled neatly through the turret, will go into the fight again with a turret from the one next to it, which has had the tracks shot from under it. Most of the tanks will run again, but those which are beyond repair will furnish thousands of spare parts to take care of the ones which are running. This plant is like the used-car lots in American cities, where you can, for a small price, buy the gear or the wheel which keeps your car running.

The engines are removed from the wrecked trucks and put on the repair lines. Here a complete overhaul job is done, the linings of the motors rebored, with new rings, tested and ready to go finally into the paint room, where they are resprayed with green paint. Housings, gears, clutch plates are cleaned with steam, inspected, and placed in bins, ready to be drawn again as spare parts. One whole end of the yard is piled high with repaired tires. Hundreds of men work in this yard, putting the wrecked equipment back to work.

Here is an acre of injured small artillery, 20- and 37-mm. anti-tank guns. Some of them have been fired so long that their barrels have burned out. Some of them have only a burst tire or a bent trail. These are sorted and put ready for repair. The barrels are changed for new ones, and the old ones go to the scrap pile. For when everything usable has been made use of there is still a great pile of twisted steel which can be used as nothing but scrap metal. But the ships which bring supplies to the Army from home are going back. They take their holds full of this scrap to go into the making of new steel for new equipment.

It is interesting to see the same American who, a few months ago, was tinkering with engines in a small-town garage now tinkering with the engine of a General Grant tank. And the man hasn’t changed a bit. He is still the intent man who is good with engines. He isn’t even dressed very much differently, for the denim work clothes are very like the overalls he has been wearing for years. Beside these men work the French and the Arabs. They are learning from our men how to take care of the machinery that they may use. They learn quickly but without many words, for most of our men cannot speak the language of the men who are helping them. It is training by sign language and it seems to work very well.