Turtle started swearing, softly, bitterly, accentuating each expletive with a dull thudding blow of his fist against the mantel until I was sure he’d bring his hand away bloody. He and Emsh had been boozing buddies; rivals in everything else. He would feel Emsh’s loss as perhaps no one else ever could.
“Goddamned Warren killed him, that’s what,” Turtle said savagely.
“We had to wait for tank support to pulverize the krauts’ positions before we could move up in that sector.” The major winced, his face dark with suppressed anger. “That was another reason why Jim stayed on the line,” he said.
“Gerhardt had rocks in his head. If only he’d known .” Turtle began.
“If he’d known, yes, but he didn’t.”
“Know what?” I demanded of the major.
“Known your father was wounded. Instead he reamed him.”
“Who? General Gerhardt? Reamed Dad? What for?”
“Failing to push on towards Setterich. Jim was told to quit fooling around, stop arguing about things like beetfields quit stalling, pull up our socks, and get with it.”
I stared at the major, incredulous at the general’s reprimand. For one thing, my father was a helluva good line officer. The regiment had many citations. Surely the general must have known that my father’s judgment was to be trusted.
“What the general didn’t know was that not only was the colonel wounded, not that that mattered in the advance, but we hadn’t enough officers. Captain Hainey was killed, Major Dunbar was badly wounded, and that left only Colonel Gregory, Major Sorowitz, me and - “
“Warren!” I inserted, beginning to understand. “So Father plays the hero because he won’t let Warren get command of the regiment.”
“Battalion,” the major corrected me. “I was Exec.”
“Why didn’t Dad just transfer Warren back to Division HQ?”
The major shook his head impatiently. “We don’t know, Carlysle. God knows I suggested it, hinted at it, and when we moved into action at Baesweiler, I came right out with it. I told the colonel if he wanted the regiment to move out with any confidence, he’d better transfer Warren.”
“And?”
The major grimaced ruefully. Turtle looked disgusted. “We got our heads handed to us,” Turtle finally said. “In no uncertain terms,” the major said humorlessly, “we were told that Colonel Murdock still commanded the regiment. And until his command was challenged by the commanding general, he felt no need to explain decisions.”
I blinked, visualizing the scene, picturing Dad’s lean face, expressionless as he always was when angered.
“His wound?” I asked tentatively, wishing to temporize my father’s unusual autocracy.
Both the major and Turtle shook their heads slowly. “Something was worrying him, Major,” Turtle said slowly, frowning in concentration. “And I didn’t have no clue. Not a one.” Turtle’s face reflected the hurt of this unusual reticence.
“He wouldn’t have worried about turning the regiment over to you, Major,” I remarked, “even with only a few officers.”
“I think,” the major began slowly, “it was more than relinquishing command just then although the morale was pretty bad after the beetfield incident. Near as I can remember, the colonel started getting edgy around October.” “DeLord joined us in October,” Turtle suggested.
The major shook his head violently. “DeLord’s all right. I’d bet my bottom dollar on that.”
“Dad liked him a lot.”
“He sucked up to Warren when your dad was dead!” Turtle growled.
“C’mon, Bailey, you must know what the colonel and DeLord were cooking up? They had too damned many quiet conferences.”
Turtle glowered unhappily. “All I know’s something about looting.”
“If DeLord was the looter,” I jumped on the idea, “and Dad was trying to make him make good, maybe DeLord killed him to keep HQ from finding out.”
Both the major and Turtle dismissed that notion instantly.
“DeLord preferred a thirty-eight,” Turtle said.
“And he was crying when he brought your father in,” the major added softly.
The silence that followed those words was punctuated by the wind outside, by the spatter of snow driven against the windowpanes. It made no sense, Dad’s murder. Maybe it had been a mistake.
If Dad, after Donald Warren had goaded Emsh into disregarding his judgment about sending Charlie Company into the beetfields, had finally decided the man was too much of a menace in the regiment, had gone to order Warren back to the rear, why would Warren kill him? That was too straightforward an act for Donald Warren. His modus operand! would have been to slyly report my father’s wounded condition to Division HQ and have Gerhardt order Dad relieved of duty. But Regan Laird would have assumed command, unless Warren tried to kill him, too, which made even less sense. For Warren, though he had never made any bones that he considered himself a superlative officer and a clever tactician, was not fond of the hazards of actual line duty. He didn’t want to get killed. No, Warren would not have killed Dad to prevent his transfer.
Now possibly someone else, hearing Dad send DeLord for Warren, might have decided that the dark road was a good place to remove Warren permanently.
“How many were around when Dad sent DeLord for Warren?”
Turtle swiveled round, startled, his jaw dropping, his eyes blinking nervously.
“Huh? Half of headquarters company. But we all left to check the ammo and rations.”
“Supposing,” I suggested, hunching forward, “someone decided it was time to transfer Warren permanently?”
The major sighed. “I’d considered that as the strongest possibility until
Turtle found out about the looting.”
“Looting?”
“Looting on an extensive scale.”
“Yeah, Bit. The regiment was sometimes first into an area. Like that Cotentin lorry.” He nodded to Major Laird who acknowledged the example. “A whole kraut truck trailer crowded with liberated’ things. The CAO sent out directives every third day about what to look for in the kraut transports, stuff they’d made off with, what monuments not to bomb, that kind of crap. Kind of stuff your father detailed over to Warren to keep him out of the line. Only some of the stuff wasn’t turning up at Division HQ.”
“What does that have to do with Dad’s death?”
Turtle screwed his face up in thought. “I think the colonel got worried that someone in the regiment was holding back. One time I caught him planting some things on a bombed-out kraut truck near Baesweiler. Told me to forget what I saw and shut up.” Turtle shrugged expressively.
I knew what he meant. Dad could be mighty short when he was worried and not even as long-standing an associate as Ed Bailey dared him in that mood.
“An officer?” I suggested, thinking of DeLord.
“Could have been anyone,” Turtle replied. “Hell, all the guys swarmed over the stuff. We all lifted things here and there.” He saw the major’s glare and rose to the accusation blandly. “Sure, me too.” Then his face hardened. “Until that - Warren started searching combat packs.
Lousy -!”
“Warren?” I asked, sitting up, my mind flipping through the possibilities. I might not feature Warren as a murderer but a larcenist? It was Regan Laird who pricked this theory.