After having spent so much time with his head bowed down, staring vacantly at the ground to his immediate front, it took the American major a bit of effort to refocus his eyes and begin to search out the SAS captain. While doing so, it struck him as strange that something as simple as winter camouflage could have so many variations. Though all the troops in the column belonged to nations that had been allied with each other for over half a century, and the outer clothing they wore was meant to conceal them under the exact same climatic conditions, the snow camouflage patterns that each national army had adopted were strikingly different. For the briefest of moments, Fretello wondered if the uniform-selection boards of the various NATO nations had intentionally gone out of their way to pick patterns that were distinctive and different. Never having given that subject any thought, he found the question quite intriguing.
He was still mulling over this newly discovered curiosity when he caught sight of his deputy. Since he lacked a certain amount of finesse and spontaneity when it came to his people skills, Fretello found it necessary to take time and prepare himself for encounters such as this. It didn't matter if the person he was dealing with was a superior, a coworker, or a subordinate. Nor did it make any difference what the subject to be addressed concerned. To Andrew Fretello, any one-on-one conversation was something of a challenge. Drawing himself erect, the plans-and-operations officer took in a deep breath while he contemplated an appropriate introduction.
Outwardly, there was little to distinguish Patrick Hogg from the other members of his team. With his head bowed low and shoulders pushing forward, he followed the footsteps of the man to his front like everyone else did. As with the others belonging to the diminished SAS contingent, he said nothing as he shuffled along. With so little known about what they would find once they reached their objective, there were no operational plans or details concerning the execution of the upcoming operation to clutter Hogg's brain. So his thoughts were free to wander.
Those thoughts didn't stray too far before they lit upon the subject that he had been dragging along like an iron ball chained to his ankle. Jenny. No matter how hard he tried, no matter what he did, his thoughts always went back to his wife and the sorry state of affairs he had left behind. The wounds caused by her decision to leave him cut too deep and were too fresh to ignore. Hogg found himself recounting, over and over again, all the choices he had made leading up to that fateful moment and how each had led his beloved wife to make the decision she did. Inevitably, his dark thoughts concluded that it had all been his fault, his doing. This evoked a wave of anger and self-condemnation for having been so selfish,so pigheaded and stubborn about the Army. In turn, a sense of loss, unlike anything he had ever experienced, wormed its way into his conscious thoughts, pushing aside the rage that had been building and giving way to an all-consuming grief that muddled his thoughts and blinded him to the harsh realities that surrounded him.
Ordinarily, Patrick Hogg was a practical man. As an SAS officer, he had to be. He was trained to deal with the hard facts of unconventional warfare. His superior expected him to make life-and-death decisions without hesitation. Those who followed him expected him to make the right ones. During his years in the Army, Hogg had never had a problem with meeting either demand. It was in the area of domestic affairs that he never seemed to get it together. Paddy, a close friend of his, once told him over a beer in the officers' mess.
"You're a regular contradiction, you are. On the one hand, you can take out a band of terrorists without so much as breaking a sweat. Yet, for some reason, you can't seem to muster up the nerve to lay down the law to your own wife. If it weren't for your choice of mate," his friend concluded, "you'd be the most together individual in the regiment." Though he knew his friend was right on all counts, Patrick Hogg had never spoken to that man again.
Lost in his own world, the SAS captain didn't take note of Andrew Fretello until the American officer spoke. "If you don't mind, I'd like to go over a few things with you."
Doing his best to conceal his surprise, Hogg straightened up and shook his head as he collected his thoughts.
Falling in next to Hogg, Fretello picked up his deputy's pace before speaking again. "I'm not familiar with your men, or with you, for that matter."
As he squirmed about, shifting his load before responding to the American, an old poem came to Patrick Hogg. "You familiar with the poetry of Wilfred Owen?" Without waiting for an answer, the Irishman looked up into the sky, studying the rolling gray clouds for a moment. "He was a Royal engineer in the Great War. Went a bit loony during it. His poetry reflects his attitudes, both before and after that experience, quite nicely."
Now it was the American major's turn to be thrown off guard as he tried to figure out how his statement had led to the topic of poetry. Though he had initiated the conversation with an entirely different purpose in mind, Fretello didn't quite know how to change the subject without offending the British captain who, for reasons known only to himself, had chosen this moment to embark upon a discussion of literature. In silence, Fretello kept pace with the SAS captain, who was searching the clouds above as if looking for his next line of poetry.
"This trek of ours," Hogg finally announced as he continued to stare off into the heavens, "sort of reminds me of one of his more famous pieces." Pausing, he took a moment to modulate his voice before he began to recite, from memory, the opening verse of that poem. "Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we curse through sludge, till the haunting flares we turn our backs and toward our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots but limped on, blood shod. All went lame; all blind; drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots of tired, stripped five nines that dropped behind."
Finished, Hogg's head drooped until he was looking at the ground before him. He stayed like that for a moment before facing his American commander. "He lasted almost until the end. Poor Wilfred was killed in action on November fourth, nineteen-eighteen, seven days before the Armistice."
"That's a pity," Fretello replied.
"Maybe, maybe not. The way I see it," Hogg explained, "it was probably the best thing that could have happened to poor Wilfred."
Surprised, Fretello looked at the Irishman. "How do you figure that?"
Hogg drew in a deep breath and looked up at the sky again. "There's more than one way to die, you know. Sometimes the physical end is a blessing, especially for a man like our friend Wilfred, who had seen so much that his faith in his fellow man had been brutally crushed. I don't see how he could have survived back in England had he lived to see the end of the unspeakable horrors that had become a way of life for him."
The direction that this strange and somewhat surreal discussion was taking made Fretello uneasy. Taking notice of this, Hogg managed to force a smile. "I don't suppose you came back here to chat about a dead English poet."
Glad to be given an out, Fretello shook his head. "As I was saying, I am at a serious disadvantage, not having had time to familiarize myself with my own command."
Knowing that he had made this American staff officer uncomfortable, Hogg now did his best to ease his burden of command, as a good executive officer should. "My lads are good lads. Like myself, most were levied from the cadre of Hereford for this operation. I've worked with the majority of them for the better part of two years and haven't had a single complaint to speak of as far as their abilities. The only problem I have is that I am a wee bit short on senior NCO's. The ones who started out have become hors de combat. My most senior man, after myself, is a corporal."