Ordinary Heroes by Scott Turow Read Free Book Online Page A

have been damned effective, Dubin. Don't sell them short. You know the fucking Krauts, they think they're gentlemen, so they're never as suspicious of females as they should be. This girl claims to be a nurse sometimes. You ca n g o just about anywhere in a nurse's uniform in th e m iddle of a war.
    "Now it's true, she's probably twenty years younger than Martin, and by all accounts he's been giving her the old one-two and maybe he's even in love with her or thinks he is. That's the theory in London, I suspect, about why he won't go back. My theory is that it just jollies him up to grind his finger in my eye.
    "But as for the fact that he's stuck on the girl, or fighting beside his bed partner, they may not like that in the General staff, think it's bad for discipline when our troops catch on, but I couldn't care less. Soldiers always want sex. Do you know why?"
    Because they were away from women, I answered. Their wives, their girlfriends.
    "You think they'd hop their wives the way these boys go diving after these French girls? I don't. They think they're going to die, Dubin. The reasonable ones anyway. That's what I think. And if you get the time in combat you say you'd like, you'll be thinking that way, too. And when you feel death imminent, Dubin, you don't want to be alone. Isolation is the next stage, in the casket. You desire nothing more than contact with life, and life in its purest form. You want sex. And God. These boys want God, too. They want to fuck. And they want to pray. That's what a soldier wishes for when he doesn't wish he was back home. Forgive me for lecturing, but you're new to all of this and you're better off getting used to the truth.
    "So I don't care if Martin's fucking this girl, or some calf he encounters on the road. We have a few troops doing that, too, I get the farmers in here complaining. Fuck who you want to as far as I'm concerned. But follow orders. So write up what I need to sign and then tell that son of a bitch to get the hell out of my area or he'll have an escort to the disciplinary barracks. That's all."
    Yet again, Teedle lifted the canteen. It was his fifth or sixth drink. He should have been loaded, but his fury burned at such intensity that the liquor was probably vaporized on the way down his throat. I had no idea exactly what to think of General Teedle, especially the eagerness with which he'd invited m e t o dislike him. He seemed to have been one of those boys picked on all his childhood who grew up determined to be tougher than the bullies, yet who never overcame the hurt of being the odd man out. But his brusque honesty impressed me, especially since it even seemed to go so far as acknowledging his own unhappiness.
    After seeing General Teedle, it made more sense not to return to Nancy, but rather to set out for Major Martin, who was nearby. The General directed his G-i to assist us, and the personnel officer, Lieutenant Colonel Brunson, briefed us further and ordered maps. When we were done, we returned to the motor pool, where the sergeant in charge informed us that they'd dispatched our jeep and couldn't spare another until morning.
    Biddy caught on immediately. "Burnin our gas, not theirs," he murmured to me. He was right, of course, but we still weren't going to get a vehicle. Instead we went off separately to seek billeting. The captain of the headquarters company found me a cot in a four-man tent and showed me where dinner would be in the officers' mess, formed from two squad tents. The meal, when it was served, was hot B ration reduced to a greenish mash, but no one around here was complaining, since even headquarters company, which usually wangled the best, wa s d own to only two meals a day. One of my most embarrassing little secrets was that I had found during training that I did not mind field rations, even what came in tins in the B and C: meat and vegetables, meat and beans, meat and spaghetti. The typical lament was that it looked like dog food and tasted