St. Anthony, NF

The bright green trace slowly swept the radar screen, leaving tiny blips here and there in its path, and casting an eerie glow on nearby objects in the windowless room. The blips indicated aircraft that we were tracking, and I marked the progress of each on the screen with my grease pencil. A glance at the clock told me that it was time for another report, so I swiveled my headset microphone to my lips and called in a low tone, "Eyelash, Mother Goose."

Mother Goose was the call sign of our US Air Force radar station near the northern tip of Newfoundland. It was a lonely cluster of attached buildings perched on a precipice overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and the small fishing village of St. Anthony. Eyelash was our sector command center, 250 miles away.

"Go ‘head, Mother," came the response, as it had with each call throughout the day. I read him the latest position of each aircraft, and could hear his grease pencil squeak as he plotted the tracks on his glass map board. "Rog," he said, ending our conversation for another five minutes. That morning, when we first came on duty we chatted during the lulls, but now seven hours into the shift, we just conducted business and sleepily waited for our respective relief crews.

Leaning forward with my elbows resting on the scope shelf and my eyes fixed on the screen, I probably appeared to be diligently following the tracks, but as usual my thoughts were elsewhere. The hypnotic trace, droning on in endless rotation, was symbolic of the monotony and boredom that characterized my life at that isolated outpost in the late autumn of 1961. On the left edge of the screen I had written 173. That was the number of days left in my assignment there. Every airman at our station knew exactly how many more days until his departure date.

Events planned for that evening promised to provide a break in the boredom, though. A crew party was in the works, and I was eagerly looking forward to it.

Buck Sergeant Mike Snyder pushed away from the director’s desk and propelled his castored chair across the wide vinyl floor of the Operations dais. "Has Hartsfield pulled scope yet?" the young newly-promoted sergeant asked, drawing up next to me.

"No, he was really wasted this morning. He’s probably still asleep."

"You been on scope all day?"

"Fletcher gave me a break at lunch. I don’t mind. I gotta be here anyway," I said.

"Go get Hartsfield. It’s after 15:00. I’ll watch the scope," he said.

I showed him the active tracks on the screen and passed him the headset, then left the Operations Center for the latrine, where I splashed my face repeatedly with cold water in an effort to shake off my scope-induced lethargy. It was going to be a late night. Hartsfield had said that some of the girls who work at the orphanage would be at the party.

Gone only a few minutes, I returned to find a phenomenon that frequently signaled the end of the day shift in Ops. In the afternoon on clear days when the angle of the sun was just right, a bullet hole in the west wall became a pinhole camera, projecting onto the opposite wall a perfect, albeit upside-down, bright full-color image of the countryside to the west. Lieutenant Holland had dubbed it the Pinhole Panorama.

Snyder turned when he heard me step back up to the dais. Looking surreal with the brown, white, and sky-blue photo washing over him, he pointed at the open steel staircase and made a shooing motion. We both knew that Andy Hartsfield would be upstairs in the break room.

Andy was a heavy drinker and was perhaps the most irresponsible airman that I knew in my four years of service. He never stayed out of trouble for long. Making friends and enemies with ease, he’d earned a certain notoriety among the villagers of St. Anthony for his wild behavior and his black market dealings. He was a 15-year veteran of the Air Force, during which he’d been promoted to sergeant and busted back several times. At the time of this tale, I actually outranked him, although I’d been in the service only about 18 months.

Expecting Andy to be asleep, I entered the break room quietly, and was surprised to find him and Staff Sergeant Tom Healy shoulder to shoulder, kneeling on the sofa with their heads out the window. They looked my way long enough to identify me, but quickly turned back to their reconnaissance.

"I think she’s Portuguese," Tom said in his strong Boston accent. He was pressing binoculars to his eyes.

"She oughta be good for at least a dozen half-liters," Andy said. I knew immediately what they were discussing, and became just as interested as they. It was a ship and, crowding close behind them, I strained for a look at it. The reason for this avid surveillance was liquor. St. Anthony was a dry town.

"Maybe we can get enough for the whole crew tonight," said Tom.

"Are we going out there?" I asked.

"I think so," he answered, "I gotta talk to Swede.

To Andy I said, "Mike is waiting on scope for you to relieve him."

"Screw that," he said.

Tom handed me the field glasses and turned to Andy. "Better do it before Swede gets here, and clean yourself up. Comb your hair; you look like hell," he said. Tom Healy was Second Squad Leader, in command of our half of Charlie Crew. Buttoning his shirt, Andy left the break room.

I scanned the harbor through the glasses. Sure enough, there was a large black freighter at anchor. I barely had a chance to focus on it before Tom took the binoculars back and returned to his observations. "What’s the Spanish flag look like?" he asked.

"Beats the hell outta me." I said, leaving. "I gotta go clean up Ops."

The village St. Anthony was sprawled along the shore of its harbor in a great horseshoe, and landward it was surrounded by hills on three sides. The harbor offered good protection for ocean-going vessels during storms, so the Canadian government allowed foreign ships to anchor there, provided that they refrained from any contact with the local inhabitants.

There was a hospital and an orphanage in St. Anthony, and the religious mission that operated them was the big power in the area. If you wanted electricity in your home, you had to buy it from the hospital power plant. If you wanted a stiff drink, you were out of luck. The mission ensured that there were no taverns or liquor outlets. True enough, the radar station had three clubs, one each for airmen, non-commissioned officers, and officers, but the Airmen’s Club sold only beer, and the others could only sell hard liquor over the bar, by the shot.

The foreign ships however, had bottled liquor that could be bartered for. Typically, the merchant mariners were suspicious of unfamiliar currencies, so they often refused money, but a pair of GI mukluks would fetch about four half-liters of some awful stuff that everybody called cognac. A GI parka in decent condition was worth at least ten. I was already all set. For weeks I’d been saving a parka that I’d ‘found.’

The photo image on the wall was fading into oblivion. I had just begun my usual pretense of sweeping the floor when Tech Sergeant Carl Laarsen, our crew chief, stepped onto the dais and called out, "Hello all!"

Andy turned from the scope and, pointing at the break room, greeted him, "Hey Swede, Tom has something to show you." Snyder looked up from his log book to nod as the burly Laarsen lumbered past on his way to the stairs.

A few minutes later, the first guys from Able Crew arrived to start the swing shift. When Andy finished briefing his relief man, we left for the chow hall. Healy and Laarsen joined us shortly after. While we ate, the four of us conspired. Lt. Holland had arranged for us to use an empty boathouse on the far side of the harbor for the party, and had signed out a weapons carrier to transport everyone out there. If we were to have anything other than beer to drink, we would have to provide it ourselves, so a clandestine foray to the ship was planned for just after dark. We were to gather whatever barterable stuff we could find, and meet at the motor pool parking lot at 19:00. Tom owned a ’59 Ford; one of the very few private cars on the station. He would take us to the harbor. Swede would see to getting us the small boat necessary to reach the ship. After the trade, the four of us would drive to the boathouse in Tom’s car instead of riding in the weapons carrier with the others.

Finished dinner, Andy and I left the others and went to our barracks wing to bathe and change, stopping on the way to pick up our mail. I took a hot shower and relaxed on my bunk to read a letter from home, then promptly dozed off.

It was almost 20:00, an hour after we were supposed to meet at Tom’s car. I leapt from my bunk and dashed down the corridor to Andy’s room, then Tom’s, then a few others’. They were all gone. I dressed quickly, pulling the trading parka over my field jacket as I ran to the motor pool. Tom’s Ford was not there. There was no sign of the rest of the crew either, and no activity near the weapons carriers. "Damn!" I cursed aloud to myself. Thinking that I might still catch up to Tom’s car in the village, I set out on foot. I had only covered about a half-mile of the rough dirt road before someone gave me a lift. He dropped me at the St. Anthony Inn, the only public eating place in town.

Tom’s car was nowhere in sight. I strained to see if the other guys were on the water near the ship, but it was dusky out in the harbor and I could distinguish nothing. Still hopeful, I set out to search for Tom’s car along the narrow road at the water’s edge. Time was running short, for soon the hospital generator would shut down for the night and the village would fall into almost total darkness.

When I neared the public wharf, a call came from the loading area at the tip of the pier, "Ay Devine!" I knew the high-pitched voice with the strong Newfie accent. The dark figure approaching along the quay could only be Virgil Patey.

Virgil was sixteen years old. If he had parents, they obviously didn’t involve themselves in his life much. He seemed to be always on the streets. Andy had befriended him months before, and Virgil regarded Andy with a certain amount of hero worship. He became Andy’s primary source of information about who was who in St. Anthony, the local customs, and the black market. I had heard that Andy’s dubious mentoring had come to the attention of the local Mountie, so I usually avoided any close association with Virgil. This night I stupidly reversed that practice.

"Have you seen Andy or Tom?" I asked him.

" ‘Aven’t seen any Yanks tonight," he said. "Y’re da first."

"Damn! We were supposed to make a trade tonight," I said, gesturing toward the ship. "They left the hill without me."

" ‘Ose dory ‘ad dey?"

"Dunno, Swede had some plan."

Seeing that I carried no bundle, he asked skeptically, "Wha’d ya bring ta trade?"

"This," I said, tugging on the parka’s zipper.

"Lardy!" he said, excitedly. "Dat’ll bring 20 pint!"

"Would have," I corrected him.

After a brief pause he offered, "I kin get us a dory, if y’ll cut us in fer half."

I hesitated long. I didn’t like the idea of going out there with just this teenager. In fact, I didn’t like the idea of being with him at all, and most of all, I didn’t like the idea of sharing half my loot with him. But missing this opportunity to garner my own supply of hooch seemed the worst sin of all, so with misgivings I assented.

"W’ll ‘ave ta wait ‘til da lights goes owt," he said. We found an overturned dory and sat on it in silence. Only a few minutes later, when the windows all around the harbor darkened, we set out down the shore, stumbling over rocks and sundry nautical gear. I followed Virgil to the end of a small dock and into a dory moored there. He untied the lines and pushed us away. Together, we lifted the oars from the bottom of the boat and slipped them into the oarlocks. Virgil kept shushing me. "You row, I’ll watch fer rocks," he whispered, and made his way to the bow. I took the center seat and began to pull on the oars.

About fifteen minutes before 19:00, Swede Laarsen walked into the NCO Club. It was not yet open for business, but Sgt. Peck the bartender was there, preparing for the night’s activities. It was Bingo Night, an event that always drew a crowd. Peck was busy returning just-washed glasses to their places on the delicate glass shelves that adorned the mirrored wall behind the bar. The huge beveled mirror was a touch of class in an otherwise dreary room, and made the club seem much larger and more elegant than it really was.

Swede negotiated a deal with the bartender. He slipped Peck twenty dollars and Peck slid out the large cardboard carton that served as the club’s lost-&-found. Swede went through the box, snatching out hats, gloves, eyeglass cases, and various other items that he deemed tradable. He passed the box back to Peck, gathered the booty into his arms, and exited the back way. The rear door of the NCO Club opened onto the parking lot directly across from the motor pool garage. There he found Tom Healy bending over the open trunk of his Ford, making room for our gatherings. Swede quickly stashed his armload in the space provided.

"Tom, I think we better tell the lieutenant what we’re doing, so he won’t be expecting us to ride with him," he said. Tom agreed, so Swede went to the officer’s wing to find Lieutenant Holland, our crew commander.

When told what we were up to, the lieutenant laughed and said, "Save yourselves the trouble. I made a deal with the Officer’s Club. We’re having the party there instead of that damned unheated boathouse. All the men are welcome and the drinks are free - and none of that rot-gut cognac crap."

Swede rushed back to the motor pool and found Andy waiting with Tom. When they heard about the change of venue they were ecstatic. Tom brought his car back to the barracks wing and they spread the news to the rest of the crew. Andy stopped by to tell me about it, but when he found me sleeping he decided to let me be. He was sure somebody would pass me the news when I woke up. He and Tom went off to get an early start on the party.

WOK! The hollow sound of wood striking a solid object accompanied the sudden lurching stop of the dory.

"We hit a rock, didn’t we?" I asked.

Aye, ‘n’ w’re aground on ‘er," Virgil whispered. " ‘And me da oar."

He tried to pole us off the rock, but to no avail.

"Get yerself astern ta take da weight from da bow," he said. I complied, moving to the rearmost seat. Virgil then sat where I had been and from there was able to shove us free. He re-locked the oar and began to row us farther out into the harbor. We were soon in deep water where the rocks passed harmlessly beneath us.

"Want me to row again?" I asked.

"Nah, dis be OK."

Now idle, I took a look about. We were in deep darkness. Only three lights could be seen. The foreign ship was well-lit, there was a light at the hospital, and there was a flood light over the driveway at the Mountie station.

When we neared the freighter it was clear that there were no other small boats nearby. We eased alongside her below a draped ladder that dangled about six feet above the water. Virgil lifted an oar and beat it against the towering steel hull. "Ay in dere!" We waited a few minutes, but there was no response. He tried again. "Ay, wake up in dere!" he yelled, persistently banging the oar.

Reacting to the force of Virgil’s repeated pounding, the dory began a slow rotation. As the small boat came about, I saw the light at the Mountie station disappear behind the bow, reappear, disappear again, then reappear again. I was startled.

"What the hell was that?!" I gasped.

Virgil looked straight upward at the freighter’s rail, thinking that I had seen someone there.

"No, there!" I exclaimed, pointing at our own bow.

"Ay?"

"Our boat! It’s split apart!" I raised up and started forward, still pointing at the bow. My shifting weight caused the bow to dip lower and water gushed in through the two-inch-wide gap.

"Lardy be Jesus!!" Virgil shouted. "Get back!"

I threw myself to the stern, this time sitting atop the transom to get my weight as far to the rear as possible. The boat returned to its former incline and the harbor stopped flowing in, but the water already aboard ran toward me and washed over my feet. I was petrified with fear. There were no life jackets. If we went down there, no one would see or hear us, and the water was ice cold. "Get us on land!" I screamed. Virgil was already pulling the oars frantically. I held the gunwales in a death grip and leaned as far backward as possible. I could help in no other way. The next twenty minutes were among the longest of my life.

Virgil rowed like an Olympian and made no attempt to find the dock from which we had ‘borrowed’ the boat. As we approached the shore, another dock with a cluster of boats loomed up in the darkness. Virgil steered toward it, but did not slow down. We crashed into a dory that was triple-parked, and he immediately leapt from one boat to another in turn, and then to the dock. I followed with all the awkward speed I could manage in those bouncing boats. Behind me, I could hear the rushing water as our dory filled and sank.

Wordlessly, Virgil disappeared into the darkness along the shore. I sprinted for the main road, but slowed to a walk when I reached the inn, hoping that anyone who saw me would think that I had just left there. I knew that by morning the news of the wrecked stolen dory would be all over town.

The night that I had been anticipating for days had turned into a disaster. My boots and socks were soaked through. Resigned to failure, but glad that I had not traded off the warm parka, I began the long cold uphill walk back to base. Mercifully, after about a half hour I caught a ride with one of the civilian kitchen workers heading in to the station to prepare the midnight meal.

Returning dejectedly to the barracks wing, I noticed that Fletcher’s door was ajar and his light on. Of course Kenny Fletcher would not be at the party. He was a religious man who disapproved of drinking, gambling, and the other debaucheries that the rest of us routinely sought. Instead, he occupied the long days doing others’ laundry for a fee. He was good at it, too. A set of starched and pressed fatigues prepared by Fletcher was as spiffy as any from a professional laundry. I found him busy at his ironing board, as usual.

"Hey, Ken."

"You not at the party?" he asked, eyeing my wet boots and cuffs.

"I missed the ride," I said, disgustedly.

"Ride to where?"

"To the boathouse."

"Andy and them are at the Officer’s Club."

"What? Where?"

"The Officer’s Club. Sgt. Kahn told me that Lt. Holland rented the Officer’s Club for the party. Say, where you been, anyway?"

Infused with new energy, I bolted to my room and changed out of my wet clothes.

This was my first time in the Officer’s Club, and I was surprised at how small and seedy it was. It was hazy with smoke, loud with rock & roll, and had few occupants. Swede and Sgt. Kahn sat at the bar. There was no bartender. Three airmen from the first squad were at a table near the juke box. They were raucously drunk. Supine on a leather sofa was Lt. Strickland the Baker Crew commander, fast asleep with his mouth agape. And to my amazement, Ruby Simms sat at a table in the corner all by herself, displaying that stoic comportment that all Newfoundlander girls seem to adopt around GIs. There was a bottle of vodka on the table in front of her. When they saw me, the first squad guys let out a cheer. I waved to them and seated myself beside Swede.

"Jeez Devine, I thought you were gonna sleep all night," he said.

"What the hell happened with the trading trip?" I asked him.

He filled me in on his lost-&-found deal with Peck and how Lt. Holland’s procurement of the club and its good liquor had nixed the cognac expedition and how they had generously let me sleep. I didn’t tell him about my misadventure in the harbor. He’d hear about it soon enough.

"Where is everybody?" I asked.

"Tom and Andy had a cigarette deal going with some civilians. Left about an hour ago. Said they’d be back, but I wouldn’t bet on it. Andy was pretty pickled. Snyder went to the NCO Club for Bingo Night."

"Holland here?"

"He’s got a date. They’re behind the curtain there." He nodded to a doorway covered with dirty maroon drapes.

"And the orphanage girls who were supposed to be here?"

"Dunno. I think Andy made that part up."

"What’s Ruby doing here?" I whispered. I recognized Ruby because I had seen her a few times down at the inn. She was one of the very few women that I’d seen in St Anthony who struck my fancy. I had tried to angle my way into a conversation with her once before, but like most of the local girls, she had remained aloof.

"She was out with Strickland. He brought her here, then he passed right out," Swede said.

"He won’t get up?"

Swede shook his head. "Holland tried to wake him. He’s out cold."

"And everybody’s just leavin’ her there alone?"

"She refuses to talk to anybody but him."

"How’s she gonna get home?"

"Ain’t my problem, thank you," he said, hoisting his glass as though toasting Heaven. "That’s an officer problem."

"Dammit, this isn’t a party, it’s just another night at the club," I lamented.

Swede pushed a bottle of Crown Royal and a tumbler in front of me. "Pretty much, but the booze is better," he said. I sat there for a while, talking to Laarsen and Kahn, drinking Crown Royal on the rocks, and shooting glances at Ruby. She would occasionally sip from a martini glass that she otherwise clutched in her lap. Then the guys from first squad began to make advances, and I could see that she was frightened.

Now fortified with bottled boldness, I went to her table, offered my hand and introduced myself with all the sparkling charm I could muster. Perceiving me, I suppose, to be less of a threat than the mob behind me, she took my hand weakly and said only, "Ruby." It was a start. I sat in the chair opposite her, placing myself between her and the rowdy airmen. Swede called one of them over to the bar and had some words with him. They then directed their party away from us.

For the next hour, while draining most of her bottle, I talked and she listened, or seemed to. Sometimes she would allow herself a terse response. I concluded that she liked me in her own reserved way. Things were definitely looking up, and I wanted very badly to be alone with her. What little good judgement I possessed slipped away under a sea of alcohol and lust.

"Would you like me to take you home?" I asked her. It was a rash move. I was almost too drunk to walk, let alone drive on dark unfamiliar poorly graded roads. Also, I had no vehicle and no idea where I might get one.

"Yes," she said, and my excitement escalated.

I excused myself and went to Laarsen, who was now alone at the bar and still drinking them down. "Swede, listen. She wants me to take her home. I need a car."

He gave me a glassy-eyed smile and said, "Tom went to town."

"Isn’t there another way to get a car?"

He stared into his drink for about thirty seconds, then said, "Holland had a weapons carrier this afternoon; maybe you can use that."

Ruby’s eyes followed me as I crossed the room to the doorway with the maroon drapes. I peered through a slit in the material. It was the entrance to a short corridor with an outside door at the far end. On the right was another curtained doorway. I pushed through the first drapes and approached the second set. The space behind them was dark. A knock on the jamb drew no reply, so I cautiously pulled the curtain aside a few inches to let in light from the corridor. There was a wall-to-wall rod festooned with coat hangers. It was a cloakroom. Lieutenant Holland and a woman whom I did not recognize lay sleeping on a narrow cot, covered with four or five parkas. Their clothing was heaped on the floor beside them.

I shook the lieutenant’s shoulder. "Sir."

He stirred a little. "Sir," I repeated.

"Who’s that?" he mumbled.

"Airman Devine, Sir. I need to use the weapons carrier."

"The key’s in my pocket."

I fished a pair of trousers from the pile on the floor. As I went through the pockets, he murmured, "It’s still at the motor pool."

With key in hand, I reached over the sleeping bodies and carefully withdrew the parka that seemed the most superfluous, then scooted back to Ruby. "I borrowed a truck," I told her as I donned the parka. I helped her on with her coat and led her through the hallway past the cloakroom and out the back door.

A weapons carrier is an over-sized heavy-duty pickup truck. It is a combat vehicle, and as such has no courtesy light inside, no backup lights, and almost all the dashboard controls have safety switches that must be thrown first before they will work. This particular vehicle had been modified to carry passengers. Mounted on the bed was an extra-wide plywood enclosure with benches inside. Helping Ruby into the cab, I saw that it was parked behind a row of other vehicles, and would have to be backed to the far end the lot before I could turn onto the road. After struggling in the dark with the confusing switches, I managed to start the engine and turn the headlights on. I glanced at Ruby. She sat expressionless, staring straight ahead.

I shifted into reverse and turned to look in the mirror on the left. The window was cracked and no longer transparent. I reached to roll it down and found the crank-handle missing. I tried opening the door to lean out and look to the rear, but could not see past the wide passenger enclosure. Impatient with these impediments, I decided that I could back up blindly if I remained cautious and kept a close eye on the row of trucks next to us. I would turn and drive away as soon as we were beyond the last truck in the row. We crept backward across the lot as I concentrated on maintaining the distance to the vehicles beside us. Just as we seemed clear to make the turn, the truck contacted something. It felt like the wheels had bumped on one of the many log curbs that surrounded the lot.

Bingo was long over, and it was past closing time, but the NCO Club remained crowded. Someone who hit a slot machine jackpot had been buying for the house all night. Mike Snyder sat at the bar with a number of other patrons, their images reflected in the enormous mirror.

As Mike later described it, a sudden crash, loud enough to overpower the din of revelry, announced the shattering of the great mirror. It and the shelves full of pilsners, goblets, and flutes collapsed, creating a waterfall of broken plate glass and doomed stemware that cascaded onto the liquor cabinet below, burst into yet smaller pieces, and exploded outward onto every surface behind the bar, including Sgt. Peck’s backside.

For a few seconds after the last tinkling shard came to rest, there was no sound other than the plaintive wail of the country singer on the juke box. Then, as the occupants in various stages of intoxication realized what happened, they lunged for the rear door and boiled out onto the parking lot.

I had just shifted to first gear and was tugging the steering wheel hard to the left, when the area suddenly came alive with bright light and dozens of yelling NCOs. I was dumbfounded. My door was yanked open and I was pulled from the truck by my sleeve. I found myself in the grasp of 6’ 6" First Sergeant Toland.

"Who said you could take this vehicle, boy?!" he roared, lifting me to my tiptoes by my parka sleeve.

"Lieutenant Holland."

"Lieutenant Holland my ass! Where’d you get the key, dammit!"

"Lieutenant Holland. Ask him."

"I damned sure will. Where you goin’?"

"Takin’ her home." I pointed at Ruby.

"How’d she get here?"

"Lieutenant Strickland brought her."

"Don’t mess with me, boy! If he brought her here, how come he ain’t takin’ her back?"

"He’s sick. I’m doin’ it for him."

"Airman, your lyin’ ass is in a world of crap.

"Wake up the duty driver!" he barked at somebody. While we waited, the crowd began to filter back indoors. I remained in Sergeant Toland’s iron grip, still bewildered as to why everyone was so pissed off. Ruby sat motionless, her gaze rigidly fixed on the windshield.

A bleary-eyed airman emerged from the motor pool garage and approached us. "You want me, Sarge?"

"Take her home."

The duty driver helped Ruby from the cab and I could see that the poor girl was mortified. Head bowed and arms folded, she followed him across the parking lot to a staff car. That was the last time I ever saw her.

When someone pulled the weapons carrier back to its parking space, revealing the dented wall, the ugly truth became clear to me and I knew that I was indeed in a world of crap. Sgt. Toland released me into the custody of a corporal who was detailed to escort me back to my room. All the way down the long corridors the corporal repeated, "Boy, you done it now." He shoved me into my room growling, "Don’t let me catch your ass leavin’ here!" then slammed the door.

I woke up a little past noon, fully dressed, with a terrible hangover and agonizing memories of last night’s debacles. I sat on the edge of my bunk and saw that I was now in possession of two stolen parkas. I had to be at work in Ops at 16:00. I was truly miserable.

Clad only in a towel and shower shoes, I grabbed my shaving kit and the contraband parkas and hurried up the corridor. In the laundry room adjacent to the latrine, I hung the parkas neatly and checked the pockets for evidence. This done, I headed for the showers, where I stood under the hot bristling spray for half an hour, trying to wash away the cobwebs in my head. Thinking that a summons from the station commander might arrive at any minute, I gave myself the closest shave that I’d had since boot camp. I wanted to present the best image possible. Back in my room, I went through my uniforms and selected one of Fletcher’s finest works. Once dressed and polished, I made my painful way to the chow hall for coffee.

Lunch was over, but a few scattered people lingered in the dining room. Tom and Andy were at a table near the coffee urns. When they saw me, they both stood up laughing and applauded. I gave them the finger, poured some coffee and sat down with them.

"Man, you really pulled one last night," Tom said. "It’s all over the station. Did you really screw Strickland’s girlfriend in the weapons carrier?"

"What? Hell, no!"

"But you DID wreck the NCO Club?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Well you must be in a WORLD of crap, ‘cause Strahle sent for Laarsen about an hour ago."

That was bad news. Captain Strahle was Squadron Adjutant, second in command of the station. I took the three aspirins that Andy offered, and related the entire evening’s events, in between gulps of black coffee. They kept shaking their heads in wonderment. My misery continued unabated.

At about 13:30, Swede Laarsen came through the door. He filled a coffee mug, pushed a chair back-first to our table, and sat with his arms folded over the chair back. Motionless, we waited in quiet anticipation. He sipped at his cup while staring thoughtfully across the room, then turned to me and said, "You must be the luckiest sonofabitch walkin’."

"What happened?" asked Andy.

Swede took another long slow sip of coffee, torturing me. Then he looked over again and said, "Well, last night about twenty minutes after you left the Officer’s Club, the First Sergeant comes in and there’s nobody there but me at the bar and Strickland lyin’ dead on the sofa. He asks me what the hell I’m doing there, so I tell him about Holland renting the club for the party. Then he asks where Holland is, so I tell him and he goes in and finds the lieutenant and the girl lyin’ there naked. He wakes Holland and asks him about the weapons carrier, and Holland tells him he gave you the key. Strickland still won’t wake up, so Toland asks me did Strickland bring Ruby to the club. I tell him yeah an’ then he storms out madder’n hell."

By then Tom and Andy were writhing with laughter. I wanted to die.

"First thing this morning," Swede continued, "Toland goes to the Old Man with it, and the Old Man calls Holland and Strickland in, screamin’ and havin’ fits with both of ‘em. Then Strahle calls me in to tell me what they’re gonna do.

"Now get this… It turns out that:

"One: All they got on you is drunk driving, ‘cause you didn’t steal the truck.

"Two: It ain’t legal for anybody to sign out a vehicle and give it over to somebody else.

"Three: It ain’t legal for anybody to rent the Officer’s Club and let enlisted men in.

"Four: Anybody that brings a civilian on base is responsible to watch ‘em and make sure they leave.

"Five: The girl in the cloakroom with Holland is married to a doctor at the hospital who’s on the Mission Board."

My head was now swimming.

"So the Old Man figures if he court-martials you, he’s got to court-martial both lieutenants too, and if it comes out about Holland screwing the guy’s wife, it’ll antagonize the town fathers. So he decided to let it all drop.

"Also turns out that without a court martial they can’t make you pay for the damage you caused, which I saw was considerable, so you’re off that hook, too. You’re getting your GI driver’s license revoked, is all."

He leaned closer and lowered his voice. "I talked to Holland on the way back. He thinks the whole thing is funny, but he told me that Strickland is plenty pissed at you, so you better steer clear of him for a while."

Swede put his hand on my shoulder and with the barest hint of a smile said, "You are goddamned sure the luckiest sonofabitch on the face of the Earth."

I could not believe it. I was so relieved that I became giddy, then woozy. I needed to lie down. I thanked Swede and started back to my room. Andy caught up with me and we walked together until we reached the latrine, where he turned in, saying that he had to use the toilet, but I knew damned well he was after the parkas. I continued on to the barracks. I wanted nothing to do with whatever he was up to.

That evening, I arrived at Ops at about 15:45 to start the swing shift. The Pinhole Panorama was in full glory. When I tapped the scope man on the shoulder, he looked up and said, "No tracks. The scope’s clean," then headed for the latrine.

"Gotcha," I said, taking his place in the chair.

As I adjusted the headset, a bright blip appeared at the far eastern edge of the screen. I marked it with the grease pencil. "Eyelash, Mother Goose." The familiar voice responded and I gave him the co-ordinates. On the left edge of the screen, I inscribed 172.

END