“Really?”
“The story I heard was that General George C. Marshall asked himself, ‘What do I do with officers who’ve been behind barbed wire since 1942 when they’re finally freed?’ And then came up with the answer. He sent many of the ones from the Philippines and Japan here, and many of the ones from German POW camps to Japan.
“They get a command appropriate to their rank—nothing too stressful, of course—in Military Government or Graves Registration—there will be permanent military cemeteries all over Europe—or on staff somewhere. If they need medical attention, and a lot of them do, there are good Army hospitals here and in Japan. They get requisitioned quarters much nicer than what they’d get at Fort Bragg or Fort Knox. With cheap servants, not that cheap matters, as most of them got three years of back pay as soon as they got off the planes that flew them to the States. And nice clubs, with very low, tax-free prices. Getting the picture?”
“Fascinating,” Frade said. “I never thought about what would happen to them after the ‘welcome home’ parade.”
“General Greene told me the story when I was ordered to give up this place—it was headquarters for OSS Forward—so they could turn it into a club for senior officers.”
Cronley looked around the room. He couldn’t tell, of course, which of the officers in their dress uniforms had been prisoners. But no one in the room looked anything like the hollow-eyed walking skeletons in rags he’d seen in the newsreels of prisoners being liberated.
Or even like Elsa.
He had first seen Elsa von Wachtstein not a month earlier, carrying a battered suitcase in a refugee line approaching a checkpoint three kilometers north of Marburg an der Lahn. She was emaciated, her face gray, her hair unkempt—a thirty-two-year-old who looked fifty. But she was the daughter of Generalmajor Ludwig Holz and daughter-in-law of Generalleutnant Graf Karl-Friedrich von Wachtstein—both brutally killed for their roles in the attempted assassination of Adolf Hitler in July 1944. Jimmy had last seen her in Buenos Aires, when she’d reunited with her brother-in-law—and now one of Clete Frade’s closest friends—Major Hans-Peter von Wachtstein.
“And speak of the devil,” Mattingly said as he got to his feet.
General Greene and a formidable-looking woman were walking up to the table.
Frade and Cronley stood.
“Good evening, General, Mrs. Greene,” Mattingly said.
General Greene shook his hand. Mrs. Greene nodded.
“Mrs. Greene, may I introduce Colonel Cletus Frade, USMC, and Captain Cronley?” Mattingly said.
She nodded, and then asked, “How is it you’re in olive drab, Captain?”
“Captain Cronley didn’t expect to be here tonight, Grace,” General Greene said.
“The dress code—it’s posted as you come in—says ‘Pinks and Greens, or more formal, after Seventeen Hundred.’”
“Grace, for God’s sake, ease up,” General Greene said.
I wondered before, Cronley thought, why Rachel, and not the general’s wife, was president of the Officers’ Wives Club. Now I know. If this pain-in-the-ass was, there’d be nobody else in it.
“Rules are rules and decorum is decorum,” Mrs. Greene said.
“You’re absolutely right,” Frade then said. “I’d have him taken outside and shot but I’m as guilty as he is. I’m not wearing a pink uniform either. I don’t even own a pink uniform.”
Both Mrs. Greene and Mattingly glared at him, she because she obviously was not used to being challenged, much less mocked.
Clete put away all that scotch! He’s plastered!
And Mattingly sees it.
This is going to be fun. Or a disaster.
“Actually, Colonel Frade,” Mattingly said, “the term is ‘pinks and greens.’”
Frade ignored him. He wasn’t through.
“Does this Army dress code prescribe female attire?” he asked.
“What do you mean by that?” she snapped.
“Just curious. In the Naval Service, officers don’t tell our ladies what to wear. And of course vice versa.”