New Orleans, Louisiana
0730 9 November 1942
Second Lieutenant Anthony J. Pelosi, CE, AUS, late of the 82nd Airborne Division, was shaving when he heard the knock at his hotel room door. He was taking special care. Today, officers of the U.S. Navy were going to teach him something about ships—and about blowing them up, or at least sinking them. He suspected they would know that he was an Army officer, even if he was in civilian clothing. All the same, he wanted to look like an officer and a gentleman.
He was still smarting about how he looked when he first arrived—no goddamned socks, and a goddamned zipper jacket, for Christ’s sake! Especially when Sergeant Ettinger was wearing a suit that made him look like a banker. And Lieutenant Frade—after showing up at the railroad station in his cowboy suit—looked like an advertisement in Esquire magazine.
Tony, who was naked, wrapped a towel around his waist, then walked to the door and opened it. He stood behind it so no one would see him wearing only a towel.
“This is for you, Sir,” a bellman said, and handed him a twine-wrapped paper package that looked like something you would get back from a Chinese laundry.
“Just a minute,” Tony said, then went to the bed and slid his hand between the mattress and the box spring and pulled out his wallet. He took a dollar bill from the wallet and gave it to the bellman.
After he closed the door, he carried the package to the bed and sat down, making sure that he didn’t sit on his new tweed sports coat and gray flannel pants that he had laid out to wear. Though it was not what he originally picked out, he liked the clothing more now than when he first bought it. Lieutenant Frade “suggested” then that he buy what he did. He was the commanding officer of the team, so Tony went along. Now he was glad he did.
For the first time, Tony saw a sheet of hotel notepaper stuck inside the twine on the package. He took it out and unfolded it:
Pelosi, put this stuff on, and meet me in the dining room at 7:45. A.
A. stood for Adams, one of the three mentors sent down from Virginia. Tony now understood that the word meant something like teacher or counselor; it was just like the OSS to use a word that nobody understood. Adams was somewhere in his thirties, a slight, bright-eyed man who had been an assistant professor of engineering at the University of Idaho. When Tony asked him how he’d wound up in the OSS, Adams replied, “That’s not really any of your business, is it, Pelosi?”
Tony opened the drawer in the bedside table, took out his pocketknife, cut the twine, and unwrapped the package. It contained a pair of blue dungarees, a canvas jacket with a corduroy collar, a navy-blue woolen turtleneck sweater, a woolen knit cap, long-john underwear, heavy woolen socks, and a pair of work shoes. Each item of clothing was marked somewhere with “USN.” It was, Tony realized, the Navy equivalent of Army fatigue clothing.
And then he realized it was Navy enlisted men’s work clothing. He’d heard somewhere that in the Navy, officers didn’t wear work clothing, because it was below the dignity of a Navy officer to get his hands dirty.
How the hell am I going to look like an officer and a gentleman if I have to wear this Navy enlisted man’s shit?
He didn’t like what he saw in the mirror when he had put on the clothing. And when he walked into the Monteleone Hotel di
ning room in the Navy fatigues, he got a dirty look from the headwaiter.
No wonder! I look like I’ve been sent to unstop the fucking toilet, for Christ’s sake, not sit down and have my breakfast.
He looked around the dining room and saw Adams sitting at a table with three sailors. There was a full lieutenant, a chief petty officer, and a bo’sun’s mate first class. They were all wearing regular blue uniforms. Two tables away, he saw Lieutenant Frade with a couple of mentors. He had on a blue, brass-buttoned blazer, a crisp white shirt, and a striped necktie.
Lieutenant Frade saw him, smiled as if he thought Tony wearing a sailor’s work uniform was the funniest thing he had seen all week, and winked at Tony and gave him a thumbs-up sign. Tony pretended he didn’t see him and walked to Mr. Adams’s table.
“Mr. Pelosi,” Adams made the introductions, “this is Lieutenant Greene, Chief Norton, and Bo’sun Leech. Gentlemen, this is Mr. Pelosi.”
The sailors looked at him with frank curiosity.
Lieutenant Greene shook his hand without speaking. Chief Norton said, “What do you say, Pelosi?” And Bo’sun Leech grunted and tried to squash his hand when he shook it.
There was little conversation at breakfast. Adams and the Navy men—all of whom were at least ten years older than he was, and all of whom, he was sure, thought he looked as funny as Lieutenant Frade did—had already eaten their breakfasts. They waited impatiently for him to order and then eat his.
Two vehicles were waiting outside: a Navy-gray truck, sort of a panel truck, but with windows and seats in the back, and Frade’s Buick convertible. Frade and his mentors got into the Buick and drove off.
“Why don’t you sit in the back, Pelosi?” Lieutenant Greene suggested.
Bo’sun Leech came in the back with him. Lieutenant Greene went behind the wheel, and Chief Norton got in the front beside him.
That pretty well sets up the pecking order, putting me on the bottom, Tony thought. I wonder if Lieutenant Greene knows I’m an officer.
They drove out of town, east, across a long, narrow two-lane bridge set on pilings. Tony saw signs saying they were on U.S. Highway 98.
Chief Norton turned around and looked at him.
“Adams said you know something about explosives, Pelosi. That right?”