Lt. Col. Robert F. Bellmon nodded his head. General Waterford put out his hand, to shake that of Colonel Bellmon, and then suddenly changed his mind. His arm went up and around Bellmon"s shoulders, and still clutching the bottle in his fist, he hugged Bellmon to him.
"I"m sorry," he said, when they had broken apart, "that I couldn"t get here sooner."
"I understand."
"You are suffering from exhaustion and malnutrition," General Waterford said. "That"s all."
"This is the neuropsychiatry ward," Bellmon said. "I"m surprised there isn"t a sign."
"You have never been in the N-P ward," Waterford said.
"The surgeon is an old friend of mine."
"I"m not really crazy, you know," Bellmon said. "Skinny, certainly, and my teeth seem to be fal1ing out. And in a rage. But not crazy."
Waterford didn"t reply. He walked to the bedside table and spilled some of the scotch into a water gla.s.s, then picked up the gla.s.s and handed it to Bellmon. "Drink that Bob," he said.
Bellmon took the gla.s.s, and a mouthful, and swirled it around his mouth before swallowing it.
"First in a long time, huh?" General Waterford asked.
"No, actually, it"s not," Bellmon said. "Philip Sheridan" Parker III, in the sacred tradition of the cavalry, had a bottle in his saddlebags, when he sounded the charge and rode to the rescue."
"I have to tell you this, Bob," Waterford said. "If I had known what Phil Parker was planning to do, I would have stopped him."
"What the h.e.l.l"s the matter with you?" Bellmon exploded.
"Don"t hand me any of that n.o.ble, no special privileges bulls.h.i.t. I wasn"t the only officer there; and if Parker hadn"t shown up when and where he did, two hundred and thirty-eight officers, including me, would now be pushing up daisies or on our way to a Siberian prison camp."
"1 don"t intend to debate the matter with you," Waterford said, coldly. "I just wanted you to know my position. in the matter."
Bellmon looked at his father-in-law with ice in his eyes, apparently on the edge of saying something. He said nothing. Then he drank the rest of the scotch in the gla.s.s and helped himself to more.
"What happens to me now?" he asked.
"I"ve got you a uniform. You"ll put it on. And then you"ll be driven to Frankfurt. You"ll be borne in thirty-six hours."
"Thank you very much for the special privilege, sir," Bellmon said, sarcastically. "But if it"s all right with you, I"ll just stay here and press charges."
"You didn"t hear me, Bob," General Waterford said. "You will be driven to Frankfurt, and you will be flown home. If you are not in a mental condition to be able to obey a lawful order when you receive one, you will be sent home in a padded cell on a hospital ship."
"You"re ordering me home?" Bellmon asked.
"You"d d.a.m.ned well better be grateful for special privilege.
George Patton is ordering you home. Eisenhower and all of his staff want you locked in the b.o.o.by hatch."
"Do you understand the nature of the charges I"m bringing?" Bellmon asked.
"The counterintelligence officer you spoke to is another old friend of mine. He came to me before he pa.s.sed the story upstairs."
"He wanted me to give him the photographs," Bellmon said, "and the other evidence."
"I think you"d better give them to me," Waterford said.
"Over my dead body," Bellmon said. "This is not going to be whitewashed."
"I want whatever you have, Bob," Waterford said. "I"m asking for them as nicely as I intend to."
"You can have them taken from me, I suppose," Bellmon replied. "But you"ll have to use force. And that will force Barbara to choose between us."
"Just what the h.e.l.l do you think you can do with that stuff? For G.o.d"s sake, those allegations have already been considered and dismissed as enemy propaganda."
"They"re not allegations," Bellmon said, furiously. "G.o.dd.a.m.nit. I was there." "You were a prisoner, subject to enormous psychological pressure."
"I was taken to Katyn by Peter-Paul von Greiffenberg," Bellmon said. "Did your CIC friend tell you that, too?"
"No," Waterford said. He was visibly surprised to hear that.
"He did not."
"And did he tell you that the ranking officer of the group of Germans who had made themselves my prisoners, who our Russian allies stood against the wall at Zwenkau, shot, then made us bury under a pile of cow s.h.i.t, was your old friend, Colonel Count Peter-Paul von Greiffenberg?"
"Good G.o.d!" Waterford said.
"I"m not crazy, Dad," Bellmon said. "Two hundred and thirty-eight officers saw what those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds did."
"The Germans" hands aren"t clean, Bob," Waterford said.
"What"s that got to do with it?"
"One of my regiments ran over a place where the Germans took the Russians and Polish, and for that matter, their own Jews. They ga.s.sed them, Bob, by the tens of thousands, maybe even by the millions. Then, after they shaved their hair and pulled their teeth for the gold, they burned them in ovens."
Bellmon looked at him.
"I can"t believe you"d tell me something like that if it wasn"t true," he said. "It"s true. I went and saw it myself," Waterford said.
"Then I suppose, under the rules of land warfare, we are going to have to try the Germans responsible for that, and hang them. As I intend to have the Russians responsible for Katyn and Zwenkau tried and hung."
"You can forget Zwenkau," Waterford said.
"Forget it?"
"It was a regrettable misunderstanding, with error on both sides," Waterford said.
"Because one Russian got himself blown away with a ricochet?" Waterford nodded. "Prisoners were taken from me," Bellmon said. "And shot down in cold blood."
"The Russian story is that they liberated you from the Germans, who were killed in the engagement."
"My officers will tell you different."
"The senior prisoner is mad," Waterford said. "Certifiably mad. He is going home in a padded cell on a hospital ship."
"I had a.s.sumed command," Bellmon said. Waterford shook his head "no".
"Just for the h.e.l.l of it, Dad," Bellmon said, sarcastically, "let me tell you about the little girl the Russians gave us. Pretty little thing. About thirteen, I would say. They had raped her; and then when they got tired of that, before they gave her to us, they stuck a bayonet up her a.n.u.s. She died in the half-track on the way back. Because we couldn"t stand the smell, we buried her by the side of the road. Her mother was so afraid of the Russians she begged us not to leave her. She wouldn"t even get out of the half-track long enough to watch us bury her daughter."
"Oh, for Christ"s sake, this is getting us nowhere," General Waterford said, impatiently. "Don"t you think I"ve heard these stories before?"
"If you have, they don"t seem to bother you very much," Bellmon said.
"I"ll lay it out for you, Bob, and hope you can understand what I"m saying. You can continue making noise about this.
You have my word it will get you nowhere. No matter what you say the Russians have done, the Germans have done worse.
If you continue to make noise here, you will be sent home for psychiatric care. That would be the end of your career, and you know it."
"If this is how I am supposed to behave as an officer, I"m not sure I want a career."
"You can go home now and keep your mouth shut, bide your time, and decide in a year or so if you want to make a stink then. Get it through your head you cannot make a stink now. No one will listen. It would be an exercise in futility."
"s.h.i.t!" Bellmon said, and walked to the window of his hospital room. The sun was shining, and the trees just starting to turn green. But Bellmon smelled burned wood and stagnant water, perhaps even a faint odor of rotting human flesh in the air. He looked at the gla.s.s of whiskey in his hand, raised it to his lips, and drank it down. Then he walked back to the bedside table and poured more scotch in his gla.s.s.
"So what"s your advice?" he asked, turning to face his father-in-law "I think you should go home, get your weight and your strength back, be with Barbara and the kids, and take time to make up your mind."
"My mind is made up!"
"Decide whether you can be of greater service to your country as a general officer when that time comes, or as a shrill, forcefully retired officer who went mad in a POW. camp," General Waterford said.
"You"re saying that no one will believe me?"
"I didn"t say that." Waterford said. "I believe you. Patton believes you. That"s why he"s sticking his neck out for you.
I"m saying that if you expect anything to be done, you"re wrong."
"What did Colonel Parker do? I presume he got a speech like this."
"Patton pinned a Silver Star on him and then he got him out of theater before the chair-warmers around Ike could relieve him of his command. You owe Phil Parker, Bob. That operation he mounted to go get you cost him his star."
"What the h.e.l.l kind of a war is this?"
"A s.h.i.tty kind of a war," General Waterford said. "Do you know of any other kind?"
(Five) Mrs. Robert F. Bellmon, her mother, Mrs. Peterson K. Waterford, and the Bellmon children were on hand at Andrews Army Air Corps Base near Washington, D.C., when Lt. Col. Robert F. Bellmon was returned from the European Theater of Operations by military aircraft.
The first thing Barbara Bellmon thought when she saw her husband walk stiffly down the portable stairway rolled up against the Military Air transport Command C-54 was that he was an old man.
All the returned prisoners were reunited with their families in a hangar which had been cleared of aircraft and support equipment on a semi permanent basis for that purpose.
The aide-de-camp to the commanding general of Andrews Army Air Corps Base waited until Lt. Col. Bellmon had a moment to embrace his wife, his children, and his mother-in- law; and then he went to him and gently touched his arm. When he had his attention, he quietly told Bellmon there was a car waiting" for him outside the hangar, that it would not be necessary for him to ride with the others on the bus to the Walter Reed U. S. Army Medical Center. The commanding general of Andrews and Major General Peterson K. Waterford had been cla.s.smates at the Academy.
Lt. Col. Bellmon"s children had no idea who he was.
Barbara Bellmon was sure that Bob would blow his cork when he found out that he would be required to undergo, for seventy-two hours a comprehensive physical and psychiatric examination before he could go on leave. But he said nothing at all about it, just nodded his head; and she wondered if there was perhaps something wrong with him mentally.
She bad already been briefed by an army psychiatrist, who told her that she should prepare herself for significant psychological changes in her husband"s behavior. Imprisonment was, he said, a psychological trauma.
On the morning of his fourth day home, he called her where she was staying at the Wardman Park Hotel.
"Have you got any money?" he asked.
"I don"t know what you mean?"
"If I don"t stick around here to get paid, I can leave now," he said.
"Come," she said.
"Come right now."
Mrs. Waterford took the kids to the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, and said that she would probably buy them supper somewhere.
When he tried to make love to her, he couldn"t.
"The psychiatrist warned me this was liable to happen," he said. "I"m sorry."
"Don"t be silly, Bob," she said. "We have the rest of our lives to catch up." It didn"t seem to bother him, she saw with enormous relief.
He immediately changed the subject.
He rolled away from her on the bed and handed her his copy of his physical examination. It had been determined, she read, that he was of sound mind and body, though showing signs of malnutrition. He had been warned to seek dental attention, since prolonged malnutrition made the gums shrink, loosening teeth and causing other oral-dental problems.
The very phrase "prolonged malnutrition" filled Barbara with pity.
"I"m an a thirty days" returned prisoner-of-war leave," Bob told her. "And we have reservations at the Greenbrier Hotel, at government expense. Do you want to go?"
"Do you?" Barbara asked.
"I don"t know," he said listlessly.
"What would you like to do?" Barbara pursued.
"I"d like to buy a car," he said. "And take a long, slow drive to Carmel."
"OK," she said. "When do you want to look for a car?"
"How about now?" he asked.
Barbara got out of bed and started to get dressed.