(Last updated February 4, 2010, first draft)
“It Ain’t Necessarily So” (September 12, 1942)
By the end of travel the next day, Katherine wondered why she had bothered taking a bath the night before. Whatever cleanliness she had felt hadn’t lasted through the morning.
But either today had been cooler or she was becoming slightly acclimated to the heat and more able to deal with sand coating her skin and the inside of her mouth and nose, as well as every part of her it could reach and some parts she would have been sure it couldn’t reach. It was bad, but she hadn’t suffered any more bouts of insanity. Most likely it was both slightly cooler and she was starting the acclimation process.
But that night when they stopped, something changed in the camp. She was kept out of the way and not allowed to see enough to have any idea what was going on. But something was happening between Captain Kichner and Major Cleere as if the power had shifted. Then Sergeant Hauber was called away which left her without a guard so she wandered over to where everyone else was standing in formation.
Major Cleere was yelling at Captain Kichner about one of his men being a spy. And Kichner was standing at attention taking it. And his men were behind him all standing at attention. Finally she got a piece of an idea but had trouble fitting it into her view of the world as she knew it. She couldn’t stand the confusion and, first asked and then when she was ignored, shouted at the Major, “What is going on?” He turned to her as if he had forgotten she existed, which seemed likely. She demanded to know, “Are you in charge here?”
“Yes.”
She turned to Captain Kichner, “And that makes you?”
“S.I.G. [5] When she looked at him blankly, he explained, “German Jews mostly from the Haganah in Palestine who were recruited by the British to operate behind enemy lines passing as Germans soldiers”
She tried to absorb this. Her brain seemed addled in its attempt to reorganize where everything fit—where everyone fit! It all made sense on some level and some things she had noticed, but not thought through, she now saw as puzzle pieces that were in the wrong places in the picture. She shook her head knowing that wouldn’t help but just as a demonstration of how confused she was. She just hadn’t known there was a puzzle for these pieces to fit into. But she saw a partially completed puzzle now even if the pieces were still in the process of moving from their previous positions into new ones where they fit better. But she still felt like hitting her hand against the side of her head to dislodge more pieces from their firmly entrenched positions. She had to completely revise her view of who everyone was and shifting the ideas and pigeon holes in her brain was not happening quickly or easily. So, just for the dramatic effect, she hit the heel of her hand against the side of her head.
“What an idea. Recruited from organizations that had been fighting the British in Palestine. How long has that been going on?”
“A few months.”
She began to walk away mumbling to herself, but then she turned back to them having finally filtered in a piece of what the major had been yelling at Kichner—now revealed to be a German Jew disguised as a German officer. Maybe hitting her head at actually gotten more of the pieces rearranged.
“Major, am I to understand that you think that one of these men who has been pretending to be a German is actually a German spy?”
“Or a traitor.”
She turned to the captain, “Do you agree that it is one of your men?”
He followed his commanding officer’s lead and humoured her with an answer. “That seems the most reasonable explanation.”
“Um.” She lowered her voice so only the two of them could hear her. “In that case, I think I can find your spy.”
They both turned to her incredulously, The major actually said, “What?”
She started moving away and as she had expected Kichner and Cleere moved with her. When she felt they were out of normal earshot of the others, she called out to those she had thought were British prisoners, “Does anyone have a deck of cards?” When no one answered, she asked again, “Oh come on. Someone has to have a deck of cards.” She turned to the major. “Promise you won’t punish anyone or confiscate the cards and have someone come up with some cards.”
“What do cards have to do with it?”
“So, I can find your spy.”
“With a deck of cards?”
“And a table and two chairs.”
Her brain rebelled at telling them anything. But if there was a spy, they were all at risk. She wouldn’t reveal her deepest secret but she had to reveal the one that would allow her to find a spy that was as much a threat to her as to them so she told the major, “You see—it is so hard to trust you because I have the mindset of not trusting him. but it looks like we are all in this together. Please forgive me but my brain is still trying to adjust and I feel a little fuzzy-headed at the moment. Well, I spent five of the formative years of childhood living among those you call Gypsies.”
The major’s furrowed brow showed that he wondered how that could help and then came up with a conclusion. “You mean you learned how to tell the future?”
She was exasperated. It is one thing to earn money by telling fortunes to silly people and another to find that intelligent people might think there was any chance of anyone telling the future, but maybe he was just responding to what he thought she thought she could do. She shook her head. “No, Major, of course I can’t tell the future. I do not believe anyone can tell the future and Gypsies never tell fortunes to each other so I wasn’t raised to believe it could be done. What I really am fairly good at is reading the past, and it is the past that concerns you here. Get a pack of cards from your men, Major.” She raised her voice. “Sergeant Hauber, get me the table and the chair from the captain’s tent and find something else that can be used as a chair as you did for the dinner that first night.”
The sergeant waited for his superior to confirm this order so she turned to Kichner and whispered. “Come on, Captain. What is your idea for finding your spy? If you had any suspicions of who was the spy among you, surely you would have gone after him instead of being yelled at by Major Cleere. And this proves another contention of mine that people can’t tell a Jew from a non-Jew, after all, all Gadji are really all alike.” She took a deep breath and then went on. “I am going on the assumption that if there is someone among you who is working for the enemy, he isn’t a Jew. Even though he seems to have fooled every single one of you. I guess it is possible for the man to be a traitor instead of a spy, but I really feel the odds are that he is a German, what they have started to call an Aryan, pretending to be a Jew pretending to be a German soldier. That has got to be hard on the psyche and so little signs of it will leak out in behavior.”
She knew she was rambling but organizing her thoughts as she spoke barely keeping up. “And I am sure I can figure out who is going through this kind of triple confusion among people who were going through only a double identity and now can mostly be themselves. It will probably come as a surprise to you two, but I am really quite good at knowing a lie when I hear it. Which makes it doubly annoying that you all were able to fool me. I need to analyze why I failed at that for I never thought for a moment that any of you were anything other than what you presented yourselves as being. Be that as it may, if you only have one card left in your hand, you have to play it, and I suspect I may be the last card in your hand.”
Kichner narrowed his eyes at her. “I do not believe you can find a spy that I haven’t detected.”
One of the major’s men handed him a deck of cards and as he took them he said, “Neither do I.”
“Yet you both think that there is a spy among you that you haven’t detected. The proof shall be in the pudding, gentlemen. Although I want to admit to you that the evidence I uncover will be circumstantial. I will need you and your men, Captain, to think hard about the person who I find is lying about things.” She paused for a moment to gather her thoughts. “Can you tell me what causes you to think there is a spy?”
“Why would you need to know that?” asked Kichner.
“Captain, it isn’t a military secret.” The major overruled him and told her, “One of the Italian women left a note in his jacket which he didn’t find until just a little while ago after we stopped for the night.”
“Of course she did.”
Kichner frowned at her but gave her more facts in spite of the fact that he made it obvious he didn’t trust her and didn’t believe she could help the situation, “The note said that someone had gotten a message to her father that said we were not what we seemed and that we, Germans, were working for the British and the British prisoners were commandos. She said her father was still thinking about whether to give the information to Colonel Runstedt but probably would after we left, which was wise as there was nothing that one German Colonel and some Italian civilians could have done while we were there. But they did have a radio.”
Cleere asked her, “Why would you think you can find the spy?”
“Gypsies use cards and questions that seem non-relevant to see how a person reacts which tells them what that person is avoiding and embarrassed about. I am more confident that I can find a spy in your midst, than you, Captain, are confident that you can seduce any woman you come across.”
“I don’t always succeed.”
“That is why I am more confident.”
“If you not only find someone you think is a spy but convince me of that, I will take you dancing when we get back to civilization.”
She smiled sweetly, “I don’t think so.”
“What? You don’t dance?”
“First of all, what would make you think I wanted to go dancing with you? But, of course, I dance, I was raised by Gypsies.” She paused and then admited, “It is follow I don’t do.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?”
“Captain, please confirm my request to your sergeant and gather your people around the table when he has it set up.” Katherine started separating the cards while the table appeared. She returned most of the numbered cards to the major. She was left with face cards, aces and tens. She planned to improvise a version of Gypsy fortune telling just for this occasion.
She addressed the men still in German uniforms. “Gentlemen, I am going to define these cards for you once. Do not try to remember or try to figure out their full meaning, your subconscious will do that. Just listen to my descriptions.”
When she finished one of the men said, “That death card means death doesn’t it?”
“Sort of. But it doesn’t predict your own death; nothing can do that. The death card can refer to death that surrounds you or it can be a major change. It can be a lot of things. Don’t worry about it if it appears. I would expect it to appear often in a group that deals with death as much as soldiers do. The cards are not individually indicative of anything it is their combinations that show who you are and what is happening in your life.” She was shuffling the cards now. “Gypsies have special knowledge of the unconscious mind and can use cards to focus a mind so that it can be read [7]. Here is how it works: Each of you in turn will come and sit here. You will shuffle the cards then answer each of the following questions, and with the answer, you will lay down a card:
When and where were you born and where did you go to school?
What did your father do for a living and where is he now?
Where are your mother, siblings, wive, and any children now?
What was the Torah passage you read for your bar mitzvah?
What military experience did you have before joining the S.I.G.s?
When did you join the S.I.G. and how did you find out about it?”
“Captain, please instruct your men to answer these questions truthfully as a lie would be suspicious.” He really didn’t want to do that she could tell and when he complied she realized that he realized he didn’t have any other options that he could think of. Katherine had subtlety maneuvered the sergeant to be on her extreme right and it was to him she first turned. “You are first sergeant.” He hesitated. “Nu?” She said. That little touch of common Yiddish surprised them all but got him to move.
Sergeant Hauber came and sat and started shuffling. “What were those questions again?” She told him the first one and he answered and then asked, “Do I just take the one off the top.?”
“That is entirely up to you. You can shuffle and cut the cards with each question or just now start at the top and then do one after anther. Or pull out the bottom card. Whatever you want. Go with your first thought.”
He stopped shuffling and laid down the top card and as he answered each question laid down the next card from the top without shuffling in between. Born May 3, 1907, Torah reading was Leviticus 21:1-24:23. Was in the Haganna. Katherine was surprised the sergeant knew the numerical chapter and verse and asked him why he remembered it.
“He was hard to learn to read the passage and I finally just memorized the Hebrew sounds.”
“Did you learn the meaning?”
“Just a bunch of silly, stupid rules.”
She glanced at the cards and reached for them with one hand and held out her hand for the rest of the cards with the other one. She mixed them a bit as she looked up at the man who had been on the sergeant’s right. “Your turn.” He also hesitated. “Sergeant, tell this gentleman that it didn’t hurt.”
The soldier with whom she had had no dealings at all frowned at her and came over and reached out for the cards and he too asked for the questions, gave her the answers and laid down each card from the bottom of the deck after he stopped shuffling. Birthday 10/21/1920, He said he didn’t remember his exact Torah passage but it was something in Genesis about Abraham.
She glanced at these cards and reached for them at the same time that she held out her hand for the rest of the deck.
“Don’t we get a reading?”
“If you want a reading, ask me afterwards.”
She glanced up at Captain Kichner who was next. She smiled and held out the deck. He didn’t move. She reached up to rub her left jaw, “Come on, Captain. You owe me. And this is your chance to get information you have failed to obtain any other way.”
His eyes narrowed but he moved, sat in the chair and took the cards. She started to recite the questions, but he looked at her coldly and said, laying down a card with each answer, “I remember the questions. The answers are, I was born in Berlin on November 9, 1911. My father owned a motor dealership and repair shop. He is dead as are my mother and brother. My sister went to live with relatives in America. My wife divorced me and I have no idea where she went. No children. I was in the German army from June 1932 to March 1933. I was recruited for the SIG from the Haganah which I had joined years ago. Torah passage I studied for my bar mitzvah was Genesis 21:1-8,” He had shuffled while talking and at the end of each answer had laid down the card that was on top.
She had noticed his toned changed at one point and she took a chance. “You really do know where your ex wife is, don’t you?”
His anger almost overcame his knowledge that he needed this to work. “Yes, she married a farmer and now has two children.”
She decided to change the subject. “Did you resent having a passage that was mostly about a woman?”
She could see he was still angry but grateful to be off the subject of his ex-wife so he answered but took a dig at her which she found amusing. “Yes. But at least she was a beautiful woman, or had been when she was younger.”
“Thank you Captain. Please reinforce to your men that they shouldn’t lie as I don’t know them as well as I know you and it might make me suspicious and that would take us down the wrong path. I expect lies only from the spy.”
She saw his anger flare up again but he got control and turned to his men. “Sorry. I wanted to test her but as you can see she has some skills I don’t understand so let’s just get this over with. Don’t lie, don’t mislead. Answer her God Damned questions simply and quickly—most of these things are probably already in the files the British have on us.”
The next man, who she had never spoken to, didn’t hesitate and he obeyed the order to the letter. He also didn’t remember his Torah passage at first but remembered some of the Hebrew and some of the translation and she was satisfied.
Next was Untersturmführer Hofmann. She smiled at him sweetly and offered him the cards and he smiled back and took them and started shuffling and answering the questions. He, too, remembered the questions and didn’t need prompting. “I was born in Frankfurt-am-Main on December 10, 1917, but we moved to Tel Aviv when I was seven. My father runs a jewelry store, my mother and brother still live there. No wife, no children. I don’t remember my Torah passage.” He laid down his cards and tried to hand her the deck but she didn’t reach out to take it.
She glanced briefly at the cards he had laid down but said, “Surely you have a vague idea of your Torah passage?
“I don’t remember it; it’s been a long time and since I spoke and read Hebrew on a daily basis, it wasn’t as big a thing with me to learn it.”
“Makes sense. Did you do the reading on the day assigned or was your day moved?”
“I don’t remember, I guess on the day assigned.”
“Then it would have been about a very famous ruler. Can you tell me who?”
“Sorry. Don’t remember. How much do you remember of things you learned when you were 13. We weren’t religious; it was just a silly ritual to get through. I hardly remember any part of it.”
“It would have been about King David. Does that ring a bell?”
“Yeah, right.”
“So, you had been living in America before you returned and immediately joined the S.I.G.s.”
“Yes.”
“Most of the group joined from the Haganah, I hear.”
“I didn’t.”
“Yet, you were made an officer.”
“I had the education and certain skills and they thought I had leadership potential.”
Katherine turned to the others, “Who knew this man when he joined up?”
“I met him when we joined at the same time.”
“Did he seem to have some military training already?”
“Yeah.”
“Where did you get your military training?”
“You think I’m the spy?”
“Yes, I do.”
“On the basis of this?”
“The Torah passage you would have read couldn’t have been about David who wasn’t mentioned in the Torah, not that a secular Jew would necessarily know that, it was about the Pharaoh and his dreams. And you have been exhibiting several visual cues, what poker players call tells, that show you were lying and making things up as I asked about the Torah passage. I only asked about it to force the spy to lie since it wouldn’t have been something any spy would have learned in a regular preparation for a job like this. Who ever discusses his Torah passage? Few remember it, how would it come up in conversation so what spy would think he would need to know which one was assigned for his day of birth. Everyone else was remembering or trying to remember their passage but your body language, ‘tells’ showed that you were making it up as you went along which is why you grasped onto my suggestion.”
“What?”
“You don’t play poker? A tell is a mannerism that someone exhibits when they have a good or a bad hand. It is what people reveal in body language when they lie.”
“You think you can tell when someone is lying?”
“I was raised by Gypsies. Gypsies think that a five year old child who can’t tell when someone is lying is retarded. Gypsies live in a world of lies; they couldn’t exist among the dominate cultures they find themselves in without lies. They are rarely given honest ways to earn a living.”
Kichner had begun moving towards the table and was now within Hofmann’s line of sight so he asked his superior officer. “You don’t believe this do you, Captain?”
“Some of it is falling together with things she cannot know.”
“She may be the spy.”
“And I would willingly believe that if she knew the information that we have learned has been passed on. But she was never in a position to find out any of it. She was always with Major Cleere, Sergeant Hauber, or myself. I made sure she never passed on any information last night. And she didn’t know we weren’t Germans.”
“You are only focusing on me because of her mumbo jumbo which you cannot believe.”
“No, it is entirely the way you are answering her questions, not the silly cards.”
Others were moving up also. Seems once the thought was put into their heads, many found reason to suspect him. The guy to his right was one of the British non-coms who had his sidearm on. Hofmann moved quickly and totally unexpectedly from a totally relaxed position, took the sidearm and brought it to bear. Katherine bent the cards in her hand and sprang them at him and then threw herself down off the chair behind the weak table and so she didn’t see Kichner throw a knife she hadn’t known he had.”
Major Cleere threw a fit with the words men use when they are not around women. Obscenity, profanity and blaspheme. Katherine wondered how many of these words he had ever used before joining the army. In effect he said, I didn’t want him dead: that the spy had had valuable information.”
Kichner just looked at him coldly, silently. He had expressed himself with his action.
Katherine got up from the ground behind the table where she had been out of sight and forgotten and seeing Hofmann lying there with Kichner’s knife sticking of his neck said, “Major, how do you think it would help you to have him alive? Do you think he was going to tell you what he knew.”
“With some persuasion.”
“And how long did you think you were going to have for this persuasion? You actually think a few hours or even a day of concentrated effort would get you the truth to an enemy you dispised? Maybe it would if you were willing to use Gestapo techniques, but when you have no way to prove any part of what someone tells you and you cannot keep them safely, securely around to test what they tell you, you have no idea if they are just telling you what they think you will believe.”
Captain Kichner said, “I thought you could tell if someone was lying.”
Katherine was talking just off the top of her head without thinking it through and at first seemed to ignore Kichner’s observation. “Another problem with the idea is that you, Major, couldn’t do the things that it would take to get someone to talk. The captain here might be willing and able to do it, but I wouldn’t be willing or able to stay around through such an interrogation to find out whether Hofmann was lying. And I have no idea if someone would exhibit distinctive tells under torture—I suspect torture would throw off everything I know about lies. The only lies I have known are those told voluntarily. I cannot imagine what changes torture would effect. And it takes a lot longer than that to torture the truth out of someone even if you use the ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques of our enemy. But there was really no choice anyway, although we should all have foreseen his attempt at killing some of us when he gave up on his own life. And how much time do you have before you do whatever you are going to do? For surely you are headed for an operation, one which now you must assume is being anticipated.” Katherine finally ran out of observations but she still had one more question. “Where are you headed? What operation are you going to?”
“I do not think I can tell you that.”
“What are you going to do, leave me here? Or you can take me but not tell me where we are—actually that might work since my knowledge of North Africa consists of maps of Suez, Cairo, Alexandria and that railroad station where the British have held the line: El Alamain.”
“Hofmann didn’t know exactly where we were going anyway, did he Captain?”
“I saw no reason to reveal our exact target; none of my men know, except in the broadest way, where we are going. As far as I know only you and I know the target and the details of the mission.”
“All right, if you won’t answer my first question, how about this one, Captain, since you must have wanted not to have to destroy that British column, why did you try so hard to stop me from firing that mortar.”
“If I had been trying to stop you, I would have. I could have outrun you or thrown a knife, ordered someone closer to tackle you or any number of other ways. But it wasn’t my intention of stopping you a second before I actually did.”
“Before I acted how had you been planning to get out of attacking the British force?”
“Actually, I hadn’t quite figured out something when you provided the means. I still had to make it look good or we would have had a pitched battle at the top of that ridge against the Oberleutnant’s troops. And I was trying to avoid a fight in which many of our side were likely to be killed.”
“But they had the mortars set up. Weren’t you running out of time?”
“I admit that I was racking my brain to come up with something that didn’t involve a battle. Was just trying to find an opening. You were heaven sent.”
“What a strange thing for heaven to send.”
He hadn’t wanted to ask her anything indicating that maybe she had done something unusual but his curiosity got the better of him. “How were you able to do it?”
“Ah, some of it was that I learned to juggle while the Gypsies I was with joined with a circus as animal handlers and fortune tellers. I learned a lot of skills there from different performers. Also I have an uncle in the military who arranged for me to see military weapons one day so I had lifted a shell and knew what to expect and I had seen how a mortar worked.” She wasn’t even tempted to tell them the nationality of her military uncle.
“So, you had a lot of strange skills that helped you do this. God should get some of the credit for putting you in the right place at the right time.”
“If God could do all that, why does He not do something to stop some of the worse situations people are finding themselves in these days. All I did was save you from having to figure out something. You had weapons and men, I suspect you really don’t believe you really needed me.”
“So, you think it was coincidence?”
“What else?
Captain Kichner, leaned towards her. “Maybe you are a German spy and you planned all this to get into our confidence.”
“But you already had a German spy in your confidence. And everything I have done that would lead you to think I was a spy has been done to help the British.”
“Could be an elaborate ruse.”
“Captain, you have an extraordinarily suspicious mind. But he is right, of course, Major, I am surprised there is any trust among us.”
“Trust is always difficult, especially in wartime.” Cleere had calmed down. “Let me ask you, are you sure Hofmann was the spy?”
“He tried to grab a gun. Not in a panicky sort of way but from a relaxed position, deliberately. Of course he was a spy. Do either of you have any doubts, now?”
Kichner admitted, “I don’t doubt he was a spy, I just doubt how you figured it out.”
“There was no magic in that, Captain. The thing that amazes me is that all the rest of you fooled me. I think that was just because I believed so very much in you being what you obviously were. I knew you were a German officer; you knew how to live the part, not play the part. I had had an occasional thought that you and the major seemed very chummy, but I believed totally that you were both what you claimed to be. Major, you also did a great job. Smooth. But you, Captain, were perfect. You were once a German officer as you said.”
“I resigned in March 1933.”
“A little more than a month after Hitler came to power. Long before officers were required to change their oaths.”
Kichner responded to something in her with the truth, “I was actually forced out.”
She accepted the truth she had been given and didn’t push it further. For a moment it seemed Cleere was going to ask what happened but Katherine went on. “Even the oddities I observed about you just convinced me more of your authenticity. So, I also believed in everyone else. Sergeant Hauber never put a foot wrong and I never had a single doubt about him either. And you kept me away from everyone else, either British or German. Except for one and I sensed a difference immediately. Hofmann was not just playing a part, he was playing a part within a part and he was sending off mixed messages all over the place. I admit there are just people I cannot figure so I thought he was just one of them. And I didn’t think anything of it until you told me you were only pretending to be the enemy and that you had a spy among you. Then I suspected who the spy was—although I wasn’t sure there wasn’t someone else among you that I had had no contact with that might fit the bill even better. But there was something wrong about Hofmann and I just had to figure out how to bring that out.”
“So, you aren’t a spy?”
“Me? No, Although, you are, Captain.”
“I would have to admit that my position is similar to what Hofmann was doing, pretending to be on the side I oppose.”
The major interrupted. “How did you come to be raised by Gypsies?”
“Oh that. Well, my parents were killed in an auto accident when I was seven. One of the explanations I was given by well-meaning relatives as to where they were and why they couldn’t come back was that they went off to the far, far West and I could join them some day. Well I had been taught about the directions of the compass so the West seemed reachable, unlike heaven which was said to be in the sky. So, without talking to anyone about it, I hooked onto this explanation and learned how to always tell which direction was West by the sun and the stars. I was living with my uncle and his family at the time and we went on a family vacation to a resort to the West and we drove for half a day to get there. Well, I thought this must have brought me closer so I pretended not to feel well and went to bed early when they planned to be out for the afternoon and well into the night. I arranged my bed to look like I was in it in case anyone looked in and I snuck out and started walking West. By dark I had gotten onto a side road with no traffic and was getting scared. Then a band of Gypsies came by and found me. It would have been death to them to be found with a a child like me but the woman who I came to know as my grandmother couldn’t leave me there and then they didn’t find any place to drop me off that was safe for them and me. Since they were headed West, I wanted to stay anyway. Months later they hooked up with a circus troop like I said. And together everyone still moved West. Later when I figured out that West was just a metaphor, I was settled with them.”
“How did they explain your coloring?”
“My grandparents would say they had a daughter who married a non-Gypsy and she had died in childbirth and he had run off.”
The captain seemed bored by this story but when it ended, he had his own question. “So, how did you come to know the schedule for reading the Torah?”
“Well, that starts later after my grandmother died and my adored grandfather started talking about me needing to get married—I was 12. So, I started traveling east back to my uncle and family. Although my uncle and his sons were gentle and understanding his wife regarded me as a “little heathen” because the Gypsy form of Christianity didn’t match hers. So, in addition to school and extra tutors, she wanted me to study Lutherism with a minister. The first two she sent me to were disasters. But she was told about one across town who was a scholar and although she only met him once, she sent me and he and I got along and we started with the Old Testament and got through the first three books before I moved on to another aunt and uncle that I had forgotten I had and to whom I had started writing. When I moved in with them when I as 15 my uncle noticed that I had an astonishingly good memory. He demonstrated it to a group once and one of them had in his pocket a calendar of the readings and since no one would expect me to know that, they gave it to me to see how much I could remember in just an hour’s study and since I knew the books pretty well—which I didn’t tell them—it wasn’t that hard and I was regarded as a memory expert. Which didn’t help me pass the tests for Oxford or Cambridge because I was missing a lot of basic information other people had; but I later sailed through basic nursing and other specific courses.”
The major had something else on his mind that changed the conversation completely. “You speak so calmly and dispassionately about all of this. Do you feel anything about just getting a man killed?”
“I feel a lot about some of the things that happened. Did I mention that my grandmother died saving my life? I was only giving you the basics. Just the part that answered your questions. As for this death,” she looked over to where they were carting off his body for burial, “What should I have done? Let him get the rest of you killed. No I feel nothing about the Gadjo.” That is what she said but her vision started the blur as she spoke. And then there was a drop of moisture on her cheek. She brushed it away angrily, but it was replaced by several more. Soon she was crying and she said, “Sorry.” and turned away from the two men and walked to the tent to find some privacy. She did not know what she was crying about but she cried herself to sleep on the cot.
—To Be Continued—
(Should have Days 4 and 5 up in mid September and also plan to edit the first three days more. Day 4 describe a skirmish that was supposed to support a battle and Day 5. at least the first part of it, will be the consequences and beginning of recovery of the death and destruction. The British lost the battle and its skirmishes on this day and hid it for decades — people lost relatives on the ships that were sunk and never learned what happened to those ships! Churchill made a terrible miscalculation when he tried to retake Tobruk out of pride!)
Please offer suggestions using the comments box. Anything you can think of might help.
Copyright 2007-2009 by B. E. Warne: All rights reserved.