The Side of the Angels

By Robert McLaughlin

The Side of the Angels, first published in 1947, is a novel set in World War II centering on two brothers: Tom Egan and his older brother Clark. Tom, a private in the U.S. Army, sails for Italy and takes part in the landings at Salerno. Clark, also in Italy, serves in the OSS. The brothers’ experiences - Tom is wounded and Clark escapes death during a German air-raid - and differing viewpoints drive them apart, and their differences grow upon their return to America. The Side of the Angels is compelling for its warm, sensitive portrayal of the characters within the broader scope of the war. Author Robert McLaughlin (1908-1973) was a journalist and editor of Time magazine for more than 20 years. He served in the U.S. Army during World War II. In addition to writing three novels, he published numerous short stories. The Side of the Angels was his first novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Burtyrki Books
• Release date: Feb 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781839742637

Robert McLaughlin

Robert McLaughlin has an avid interest in theme park history. He is also the author of Pleasure Island, Boston's own former Disneyland of the East. Frank R. Adamo started at Freedomland as a heavy equipment operator and moved on to management positions for the life of the park. Adamo was also in charge of dismantling Freedomland. It is Adamo's extensive photograph collection and his collective involvement with Freedomland that made this book possible.

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Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

THE SIDE OF THE ANGELS

By

ROBERT McLAUGHLIN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

DEDICATION 5

BOOK ONE — Spring, 1943 6

1 6

2 11

3 24

4 27

5 49

6 55

7 59

8 65

9 70

10 85

11 90

12 98

13 104

14 112

15 121

16 124

17 133

18 138

19 142

BOOK TWO — Winter, 1943 147

1 147

2 161

3 172

4 176

5 182

6 190

7 193

8 203

9 208

10 213

11 224

BOOK THREE — Spring, 1944 232

1 232

2 245

3 249

4 257

5 258

6 258

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 258

DEDICATION

* * *

TO MIKE

BOOK ONE — Spring, 1943

1

The general’s car moved smoothly through the Maryland countryside. He sat in the rear of the tonneau, a small, stocky man with a freckled face and close-cropped graying hair that bristled on his red neck. He had a short, stubborn chin, small blue eyes that were pouched and crinkled by his fifty-seven years, and a short, rather flared-nostril nose. There was much that was reminiscent of the toy bull about the general, from the compressed lips of his scenting-the-air face, through the tensed erectness of his body, to his small feet, just barely touching the floor of the car. He had an air of preposterousness mingled with one of dogged menace.

His name was James Oliver Van Leuvan, and he had just been given command of the Twentieth Army.

It had all happened informally. He had been called to Washington this morning from the leave he was spending at his Maryland home. At the Pentagon he had reported to the office of the Chief, a wide, high-ceilinged place, shadowed by Venetian blinds, cooled by refrigeration, spare and efficient-looking with its wall maps and neatly aligned bookshelves. The Chief sat back in his swivel chair, elbows on the arm rests, fingertips joined before his chest, and looked interestedly at the general.

This will be your own show, said the Chief, almost as though the general needed some convincing. We’ll support you all the way, within reason. Let me know what you need. There are three Infantry divisions and an airborne division earmarked for you now. We’ll get you at least two more later.

Six divisions. That would be the Twentieth Army—six divisions, seventeen Field Artillery battalions, a mechanized Cavalry group, tank and tank-destroyer battalions, battalions of Engineers, of AAA.

Will they all be American? asked the general.

The four are American. The other two may be British or French.

May be?

We don’t know yet, said the Chief. The British want a hand in it, he added.

That was the only prospect that displeased Van Leuvan. He liked to work with his own kind, he liked to be able to blast people in his own way, not through an interpreter or a liaison officer.

The Twentieth Army was to launch an amphibious invasion of Yugoslavia. The Balkans, Van Leuvan thought, I go into the Balkans, into the cauldron of Europe. He would land on the Dalmatian coast, press inland through localities improbably named—Bosnia, Herzegovina, the Banat. He had been to Ragusa once, as a side trip on an Italian vacation he’d taken with Mary, his wife. It was called Dubrovnik now, he remembered. A lovely town, white against the mountains. In its day it was a minor-league rival of Venice. Ragusan fleets had sailed the Adriatic.

He was no authority on Yugoslavia. He began to check with himself what he did know: it was inhabited by South Slavs; by Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Montenegrins, Albanians. And by Jews, Turks, and another group whose name he had forgotten. Cherkesses? No, they lived in the Caucasus. The people he wanted were the descendants of the ancient Illyrians.

And, more important, today Yugoslavia was inhabited by Partisans, Chetniks, Ustachi—cleavages through race and class and religion. He would work with Tito, the general reflected. Not that, for the moment, he was going to put any dependence on the Partisans. He would put dependence on himself and the Twentieth Army. What the Partisans could do to help him would then be so much gravy. But he was planning his fight only with the units he knew he had.

He hadn’t been told where he and his army belonged in the larger picture of invasion. From the size of his force—it was a corps, really, not an army—and the mission given him, it was obvious that his was a secondary action. He thought briefly of his opponent, the for-the-moment anonymous German commander who was fighting a jigsaw campaign against the partisans. He wondered what kind of man the German commander was, and how much he had. Six to ten first-line divisions was the general’s guess.

His mind shifted again to the picture of Ragusa as he had seen it in 1925. He remembered the mountainous coast, the island-dotted waters of the Adriatic. He didn’t anticipate much trouble in seizing a beachhead. In the air would be only the debilitated Luftwaffe, on the sea only the scorpion-strike of Nazi E-boats and submarines and mines. But he had to hit hard and go fast and far. He had to prevent the Nazis from bogging him down, from getting time to pull together their scattered divisions to dull his blow.

And they would be after time. Time to have the decision in western Europe worked out; time to seal off his thrust in the blind valleys of the Balkans. He saw ahead of him a campaign of small actions and demolitions, of the enemy in the constant retreat of the Tunisian campaign, making his advance an agony of reconstruction, of incessant small losses, of never coming to grips. They would try to keep their forces intact while the greater struggle was fought and determined in the north.

His mission was to pin them down, to make them fight, to hit them so hard that they would ask Berlin for help instead of being able to detach any divisions for France.

For his staff he could have anyone within reason. Well, he would be reasonable. Chief of staff, of course, would be Charles Cavanaugh. For G-2 he wanted Burt Stulka, a dark, encyclopedic man, a humorless, slightly pompous, but tireless worker. G-3 would be Hannaday, acid-tongued and a driver. The Twentieth Army would hate him all of its life, but because of him the Twentieth would live through battle. G-4 he wasn’t so sure about. Brauchner or Weston or maybe someone else entirely. In a way, the general wasn’t so sure he wanted an old Army man for Supply. That would take some thinking over. G-1 was easy: Holmgren. Holmgren, the perfect adjutant.

The car turned into a driveway between two squat brick posts set in shrubbery and upholding twin carriage lamps. The general’s house was on a low hill, surrounded by a lawn that ran down to a ravine in the rear and lost itself in a box hedge and trees in front. It was a smallish, two-winged building of red brick and white-painted woodwork. Shutters were fastened back from the windows, and summer furniture stood on the side terrace that overlooked Winters Run.

As he stepped from his car, the general said to his driver: Go over and get General Cavanaugh, Walters.

Van Leuvan went up the flagged steps and opened the screen door. It banged discreetly after him and he stood for a moment in the cool hall with the nice sweep of the stairway going up before him and a shaft of sunlight penetrating through the fanlight. He stood listening for sounds of Mary. There was some slight noise of occupancy from the direction of the kitchen, but the rest of the house was still.

Mary! he called, and went into the living-room.

She was there. She had heard the car come up the driveway and stood beside a chair with the book she had been reading angled over the arm of it.

Yes, Olly? she said. She was fractionally taller than he was, a stout, determined-looking woman with gray hair and a direct expression. She took his kiss on the side of her mouth, said: Tell me.

I’ve got it, he answered.

Oh, Olly... she said. And Is it good? Is it as big as we hoped?

For us it’s big, he replied.

Her face glowed. I’m so happy and proud. She led him to the couch. How much can you tell me?

He sat down, holding her hand, leaning his head back and looking up at a portrait of one of Mary’s bad-tempered ancestors, a sour-faced man in a high Websterian collar.

It’s Europe, he said, and it’s soon.

Not—?

He smiled indulgently. No, Mary, I don’t lead the second front. But it’s going to be my own show.

Oh, Olly, she said again. You’ll do wonderfully, I know that. Are you going to get everyone you want?

I think so. The Chief sounded very good. Charles will be my chief of staff.

Of course, she said. Who else?

Burt Stulka and Hannaday and Holmgren— Mary made a slight face; she didn’t like Holmgren.

Who for G-4? she asked.

I don’t know. Brauchner, maybe.

She said: How long have we?

A few weeks, perhaps. The sooner I get over...

I know, Olly. She made a tired movement of her hand to her forehead, then said: I don’t want to worry you with anything else right now, but I want something, too, while you’re gone.

What? he asked.

I want to adopt a baby.

He was surprised, but looked at her steadily. All right, Mary.

You don’t mind?

Not if you want it, Mary.

I’ve thought about it a lot. You’re a good father, Olly. I want another boy to have what Allan had.

He looked at the empty fireplace with the weight of Allan’s death on him again. The boy had died a year ago in a plane crash in Texas. He had never even got to the war.

All right, Mary, he said, though I don’t expect he’ll be much of a boy without your blood in him.

He’ll have my blood in him, she said, if I have to pierce both our thumbs.

He smiled a little, knowing she would do just that. They heard a car coming up the driveway. That’s Charles, said the general, getting up. Will you have some sandwiches and beer sent to the map room?

You’re going to start eating badly again, she told him. Then she said: This will be the last time you go away. This will be the end of it, this will.

He knew what she meant. No more moving about, to Leavenworth, Benning, Hawaii. The evening of life was ahead of them and here was the house, waiting; and Mary waiting, too. They were both looking forward to the banked fires of old age.

I hope it will, he said. He turned. Hello, Charles.

Brigadier General Charles Cavanaugh was wearing a white shirt, an old Panama hat, and jodhpurs. He was a handsome man of fifty, very military, very frosty-eyed, with fierce eyebrows.

Well? he asked. Are we going some place?

Van Leuvan was suddenly the arrogant bantam again. We’re on our way already.

Cavanaugh followed the general into an oak-paneled room off the living-room. A sand-table depicting a hilly, wooded terrain stood by the large window, and on the walls were half a dozen large-scale maps of war fronts on three continents. They were kept up to date with pins and bits of colored string by Mary Van Leuvan.

In the center of the room was a large cork-covered draughtsman’s table whose neat blueprint trays contained Van Leuvan’s maps. During the long years of peace the general had played Kriegspiel here with Cavanaugh and a few others. Van Leuvan opened a drawer, thumbed briefly through its contents, and drew out a large topographical map and spread it on the table.

Cavanaugh bent over it, his frosty eyes alive. So it’s the Balkans, he said.

Van Leuvan nodded. Yugoslavia.

What’s our port of embarkation?

Bari.

Cavanaugh outlined its position with a thumbnail. We’re going to need Engineers, he said, a hell of a lot of Engineers.

It was a little thing, even an obvious thing, but it pleased the general. It was a good omen that Charles instantly diagnosed the probable German plan just as he did himself: as a delaying action, a time-hoarding operation. The Germans would undoubtedly try to avoid a decisive fight in Yugoslavia.

Cavanaugh studied the map for some minutes; then he pulled open another drawer, took out several scratch pads and some pencils.

All right, he said, let’s go.

They were set for the rest of the day.

2

When Private Thomas Egan woke, it was just like any other morning at Camp Shelburne. Lights were on in the barracks as he sat up in bed and reached for his fatigues on the shelf beside the window. He dressed and lowered himself from the top bunk of the double-decker bed and, sitting on his footlocker, laced his shoes. He was oblivious of the other sleepy-faced soldiers, and they of him.

A whistle shrilled outside and GI shoes drummed on the wooden floor as the men poured from the barracks and fell in on the company street. Though the sun was not up yet, the earth and sky had a lightness, and clouds could be distinctly marked against the pale sky. It was all the same: the gravelly feel of the slag underfoot, the drift of smoke from the thin chimney on the latrine, the irritated bark of the non-coms: Cover off, there!

Shut up, damn it, you fall in at attention!

Just as for a hundred other pre-dawn reveilles, Egan stood between Privates Etovich and Edwards. Ahead of him was the narrow back of Duvall; behind was Paul Garshe, sniffling as usual.

As always when he was in ranks, Tom Egan felt a loss v of identity. But he was enough of a soldier now so that he could cut his mind adrift while turning right or left or obliquely, walking or halting, running or marking time, standing slumped or rigid, all at the barked commands of another man.

It was no novelty to stand in line. He stood in line at mess and at mail call, to see a doctor or dentist, to go to a movie, to buy a beer or a bar of candy. He stood in line to be paid, and to spend his pay.

Yet he found the Army more bearable than he had imagined he would. Sometimes the marching wasn’t so bad. Both the going out and the coming back were good. He liked to step out in the misting of early morning with clouds floating loose in the sky and the growing light coming up over the forest and fields. To go along a country road, hearing the awakened birds and the voices of men, sour but friendly, was pleasant.

And then, at night, coming back tired, with the pack pulling heavy on your shoulders and your mind deadened against thought, to pick up the familiar landmarks as the march neared its close, to know that ahead was the welcome oblivion of bed and sleep—that was good, too.

And parts of the day itself weren’t bad. Combat problems, for example. If the weather was right, there was pleasure in moving through the dark of a silent wood, in crawling on your belly over the warm earth, or lying motionless in the pulsing grass to see the sun flash on a distant hill.

Now that their basic training was over, now that they had fired for record, crawled the infiltration course, crouched in foxholes while a tank clanked over them, been on their week’s bivouac—it wasn’t so bad.

The corporals of each squad reported and the platoon sergeants returned their salutes and about-faced.

Report! snapped the first sergeant.

The cry came down the company front, the platoon sergeants giving it a rhythm and intonation: First platoon all present and accounted for!

Second platoon all present and accounted for!

Third platoon all present and accounted for!

Fourth platoon all present and accounted for!

There was a moment’s silence and you could feel the men straining to be away. Dismissed!

They broke ranks with a yell, and Tom Egan went to his barracks with his platoon, began making his bed. The green of his fatigues was whitened a little by the salt of his body and the strong soaps of the laundry; his face, neck, and hands were tanned and weathered. He was a pleasant-looking boy of twenty-four with a strongly modeled face; the ridge of the temples very pronounced, the forehead high, the cheekbones clearly marked beneath the skin, the mouth full. His black hair was close-cropped and his eyes and smile and most of his movements were quite deliberate.

When his bed was made, he hoisted himself on it. Feeling in his pockets for cigarettes, he looked around at his fellow soldiers, seeing them with detachment for nearly the first time in seventeen weeks, realizing that he would never see most of them again, for the training company was being broken up and they would be scattered to dozens of different units. A few of them had already been assigned: Esterman, a colonel’s son, to OCS; a half-dozen truck-drivers and clerks to headquarters and headquarters company, another ten or so to cadre school.

But most of them were still here, the men he had worked and lived with for more than three months, some of the D’s and all the E’s and F’s and G’s. Duvall and Dyson and Ealing; Gunn and Guzzo and Gwynn.

Below him he could see the outstretched legs of Mike Etovich as he lay back on his bunk. He was a slim, towheaded boy of twenty-two with a broad face and eyes that never looked at you directly. Tom knew he was from Detroit and that he had never worked gainfully in his life, that he had a background of relief and unfinished schooling and long evening hours spent leaning against the corner lamppost talking with the fellows, or standing, one of a row, against a poolroom wall, watching the light-absorbing green baize and the free roll of billiard balls.

Mick Gallagher, the other very low I.Q. of the squad, was across the way. He came from western Pennsylvania, a short-tempered, sullen-faced Irishman, who had worked as a foundry helper and was now arguing with Galloway and Ewing about whether his job would be there when he got back. Galloway and Ewing fed his fears. They’re getting along without you now, aren’t they? What the hell will they need you for when it’s all over?

He stared at them, hot and angry, clasping and unclasping his big, calloused hands, muttering: I’ll get along all right, don’t worry about me. I’ll have a job—

In a pig’s ass you will.

Galloway was a fat, florid-faced Texan. He was twenty-five and had completed two years at Texas A. and M. Even if the Army hadn’t interrupted his schooling, he would have been a long time graduating, since he would go to school for a year and then back to the farm for however long it took to make expenses for another year. I tried working and going to school at the same time, he told Tom once, but I’m not sharp enough for that. It took too much out of me.

Down beyond them was Fleuret, yawning and stretching, with his arms flung up and his big chest arched, his yellow-toothed mouth cavernous. He was a squat fellow with black, curly hair and a lined, pugnacious face. He looked like a New York cab-driver, but was a French Canadian from Massachusetts. Sitting dreamily on the next bed, paring his nails, was Ealing, a young Sioux Indian from Montana. Tom, who had never before met or even seen an Indian, had been interested in Ealing, but soon found that all he ever wanted to talk about was how his mission school had beaten a white high school for the state Class B basketball championship.

Coming in the door from the latrine were Farinacci, a Negro-black Sicilian from Chicago, and his pal, Garshe, a rat-faced boy from Pittsburgh. Garshe knocked the fatigue hat off the head of Gellerman in passing, and Gellerman, a pudgy Jewish lawyer from the west coast, picked up his hat and said, without emotion: You son of a bitch.

Why don’t you slug him, Gellerman? asked Ewing, bored with his baiting of Gallagher. Damned if I’d take that kind of crap. He looked mischievously from one to the other of them; he was a good-looking, sullen-faced man of thirty-five, whose dark, curling hair had some gray in it. He had worked as a lawyer for the Government in Washington and was full of grievances; against the Army for drafting him, against people he knew who had direct commissions, against the company non-coms, against everyone who didn’t look the way Ewing thought he should look, or talk the way Ewing thought he should talk, or think the way Ewing liked people to think.

Sprawled on his stomach on the next bunk, staring unseeing at his trailing fingers on the floor, was Edwards, still another lawyer, a lean alcoholic from Kentucky whose prejudices were softened by a lazy goodwill.

These were all that were in Tom Egan’s immediate line of vision. The others, shaving in the latrine or busy with bunk fatigue, were as familiar to him. There was Ely, an accountant; Ferguson, who was something of an old woman and had managed a chain shoe store; Goetz, a dour and unimaginative typesetter; and a chemical engineer named Finnegan, a young giant who was difficult to get on with, a sarcastic, quick-to-anger man. And there were a lot of unformed boys just out of high school who were filled with an intense parochial patriotism, willing to argue by the hour the merits of Ohio, North Carolina, Iowa, Oregon, and Texas, Texas, Texas. The Texans—Galloway, Gunn, and Duckworth—were never quiet.

That was the platoon. These were the soldiers to implement the arsenal of democracy.

Chow! yelled someone in the company street, and the plaintive yelp was taken up by the men in the barracks. The soldiers jumbled through the door and streamed toward the mess hall.

Leisurely, Egan swung down from his bunk. A few men still remained. Gwynn, a pouting-lipped boy, was shining a GI shoe held between his knees; Eckstein, an Austrian refugee, slept with his hat over his face; Milan Dankovic, a Serb schoolteacher from Akron, was marking a laundry slip.

Egan prodded Eckstein in passing and stopped beside Dankovic. Let’s go, he said. Dankovic, who had a sober, wide face with the features a little too closely centered and sandy hair parted well to one side, nodded as he counted socks. He marked a number on his slip, stood up, and he and Egan went out to the company street, took their places at the end of the chow line.

Tom said: Are you finding out about ASTP today? Dankovic lit a cigarette. I’m supposed to. I have an appointment at Personnel at one o’clock.

Well, I hope it works out. But you’ll end up in the Infantry anyhow, you know.

You were at ASTP, weren’t you? asked Milan, stating a fact.

Yes. Engineering. This is my second time through the mill. I had two months of basic training before, then I was shipped off to ASTP, and I was nearly through that when the Army decided the hell with it, they had enough Engineers, and so I was dumped back here to take basic all over again.

It doesn’t make much sense, Dankovic conceded.

Tom shrugged. I hope I get shipped overseas this time. I’m curious to see if it’s as snafu there as it is here. Moving into the mess hall, they took plates from the stacks and received cold bacon, cold toast, and cups of hot, too sweet coffee. The plates had been stacked undried the night before and there was a damp ring in the center of each.

They sat at a table on which were scattered individual boxes of breakfast food and two quart bottles of milk. Tom said to Dankovic: You ought to be in the Office of Strategic Services.

I’d like to.

My brother Clark is with OSS in Washington, said Tom. I’ll write him. Not that I expect it’ll do much good.

What’s he doing there? Milan asked.

Damned if I can tell you. Clark was in advertising in New York before he went to OSS. Tom poured milk on his cornflakes. What would an advertising man be doing with OSS? Your guess is as good as mine.

Edwards, the Kentucky lawyer, was sitting across from them. What are you boys bitching about? he asked.

Tom said: We’re trying to figure a way of making the Army use Dankovic in the war effort. Since he can speak Serbian he’s a natural to be sent to the South Pacific unless we do something about it.

Edwards said: Hell, I can fix that. I’ll just have Ewing put in a good word for him.

Ewing was at the end of the table, and hearing his name, he asked: What? What’s that?

Edwards turned to him. We want you to put in a good word for Dankovic here with your pals in Washington. We don’t think he’s being treated right.

Ewing gave them a hot and outraged look. Don’t think that people in Washington aren’t going to hear plenty. I’ve taken about all the crap I’ll put up with. Christ, when I think of some of the bastards I know holding down commissions or getting deferred in the draft—

Why did you get him started so early in the morning? Tom asked Edwards.

Ewing stood up. Christ, he said in disgust, you bastards don’t even know what the score is. You’ll go on making half-baked jokes until you finally stop a bullet somewhere. By God, if I had my way I’d do some shooting here in this country before I did any overseas—

If I had my way, you would never grow old... sang Edwards.

Bright bastards, said Ewing with heavy contempt as he pushed past them.

The mess hall was emptying and they could hear the clink and clatter of plates being manhandled by KP’s. A wind stirred in the pines beyond the screened windows.

Edwards said: What kind of a detail will we draw today?

Have you seen the bulletin board? Tom asked.

Yeah, we’re not on it. You and I aren’t, I know. I’m not sure about Dankovic.

We’ll get some leaf-raking detail, then. I had a real stinker yesterday—making beds in the officers’ quarters.

Edwards said to Dankovic: Listen to him. Still full of civilian attitudes. He doesn’t like doing chores for officers. Edwards shook his head.

How are you making out at the Judge Advocate General’s? asked Egan.

Don’t change the subject, replied Edwards. Then he said: Terrible. But I don’t discourage easy. I’ve got an appointment there this afternoon and I’ll bow and scrape and pull my forelock.

I thought you were in when you drew that court-martial assignment, Tom said.

You’re never in, Edwards replied gloomily. He added: Did I tell you they found that guy guilty? He got ten years at hard labor.

What was that? asked Dankovic.

Oh, I’ve been sucking around JAG for an assignment, said Edwards, so they let me be court stenographer at a court martial last week while you guys were on bivouac. They were trying a mess sergeant from Company F. He’d had a lot of liver lying around his refrigerator and an inspection was coming up, so he had his KP’s stuff it down the latrine. Of course, it fouled up the sewage system and they got him dead to rights. The chump.

A table waiter came over and said: Why don’t you guys get the hell out of here?

Button your lip, son, said Edwards.

They rose and went out into the growing sunlight. It was going to be hot. The men assigned to cadre school were lining up before one of the barracks, carrying full field packs, rifles, gas masks, canteens. Edwards gave them a superior smile. That’s what bucking gets you boys, he told them, and they gave him the look of men inured to insult.

Egan, Edwards, and Dankovic, with nine other soldiers, were marched off to RTC Supply at eight o’clock. From there a second lieutenant took them out to a lecture area and they were given vague orders to clean the place up. They worked leisurely in the hot sun that filtered through the pines, gathering the brush into piles, cutting down shrubs, rolling logs and stones and uprooted stumps to the edge of the road.

During their ten-minute breaks they sprawled on the warm earth, shading their faces with fatigue hats, smoking and talking and lying eye-closed in the sun.

Tom Egan talked with Dankovic about the Balkans. My father took us back there when I was sixteen, Milan said. I went to school in Belgrade for two years and then we returned to America. So I don’t know a lot about Yugoslavia—not at first hand. But I know that all of the Balkans have to get together if they expect to survive. But as to how it’s to be done— He shrugged faintly.

Tom said: They sound like the Irish and Poles; never able to agree on anything.

I’m not so sure, Milan answered. Here in this country the Balkan peoples get along all right. The younger ones anyhow. In Akron I have Bulgar friends, and Slovenian, and even a few Rumanian. But none of our parents get along. I think they are even worse than people back in the Balkans; all their dislikes have hardened. Tom was lying on his back, looking up through the trees, hearing the soughing of the pine tops. He said: Louis Adamic says some form of Communism is the only solution for the Balkans.

Milan made an expression of distaste and Tom, glancing at him, said: You don’t like Adamic?

He’s all right, I guess. He’s a popularizer of problems. He does for the Balkans what Lin Yutang does for China, and Duranty for the world. But I don’t think he’s said anything yet that’s valuable.

Well, what do you think should happen in the Balkans?

Milan said, with a sort of desperate effort at clarity: There has to be some sort of federation between them. The nations of southeastern Europe must get together. They’ve gone through history being stooges of the big powers. Unless they get together, that’s all the future holds for them.

Tom asked about Tito, and Milan answered cautiously: I’m a Serb. My sympathies, at first, were with Mihailovich, but he has an odor now. But I’m not sure that Tito is much better. He didn’t start fighting the Germans until Russia was invaded. The Yugoslavs may be getting diddled again—it won’t be the first time. Tom said: In short, you don’t know what you think. Spoken like a true liberal. We can’t go the whole way with anybody—not even ourselves.

Milan gave him an unhappy look. Yugoslavia means a great deal to me. So does America, of course. But the world means most to me, and I think that is the problem now. Not whether America or Yugoslavia or Russia or Thailand is good or bad, but whether the world is.

That sounds good, but it doesn’t mean anything, Tom said. The world is the total of its aggregate parts; it can’t be good unless they are. It comes down eventually to the individual man everywhere, to the human nature that apparently hasn’t changed much in two thousand years.

Edwards was lying beside them, smoking and listening boredly. He said: The cranium boys are at it again. You sound like an orientation lecture.

We must sound better, said Tom; you’re still awake.

A platoon of Negro soldiers went swinging by on the road beyond the lecture area, counting cadence and moving with snap and precision.

A soldier said lazily: Them niggers sure can march. Edwards rolled over to look. A jig can do anything well that doesn’t require brains.

Tom began to speak, and then saw that Edwards was regarding him with amusement, that he had only said what he did to bait him. Not today, said Tom.

The pure in heart, murmured Edwards. God protect us from the pure in heart.

You’re getting the contagion from Ewing, Tom told him. Trouble for sweet trouble’s sake.

He always speaks well of you, chum, said Edwards. That’s not to my credit, Tom replied.

They came in for chow at eleven-thirty, and Ewing, sitting on the barracks steps, told Tom and Edwards they were on orders. He was grinning maliciously, They’ve tapped the bright boys, he said. Now you can fight this war you’re so damned light-hearted about.

Tom and Edwards ran down to the orderly room, pushed through the crowd at the bulletin board. There were twelve names on the list; Gwynn was the only one besides themselves from the second platoon.

The first sergeant gave them more information. You report to the hospital at one o’clock for a physical, then turn your equipment in to the supply room—everything but your gas mask and bedding. Turn your bedding in tomorrow when you leave. You get a ten-day delay en route and report to Camp Shanks, New York.

Back in the barracks the rest of the platoon milled around them. When are you going? Where?

Camp Shanks! said