“I was in the CIC/ASA motor pool, sir, when they dragged it in. Colonel Schumann’s driver was still in shock.”
“And?”
“So I asked him what had happened, and he said they were in the Bavarian Alps on some back road Schumann insisted they take and they came across a CIC detachment—in a monastery—that Colonel Schumann had never heard of. So he decided to have a look. A lieutenant told him that he couldn’t come in—”
“That was me,” Cronley said.
“And the colonel said, ‘Don’t be absurd. Go around him.’ And then three of the . . .”
“Of the what?”
“He said ‘three of the largest, meanest-looking . . . Negroes’—that’s not exactly what he said, sir, if you take my meaning—he’d ever seen let loose with a pedestal-mounted .50 cal Browning.”
“This story is all over the ASA, is it?”
“Yes and no, Captain Cronley,” Lieutenant Stratford said. “Has everybody heard it? Yes. Is anybody going to talk about it, except within the ASA? No. The same afternoon they dragged Colonel Schumann’s staff car into the motor pool, Major McClung went down there and told everybody that nobody had seen a shot-up staff car. The ASA is in the business of keeping secrets.”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt this, sir,” Staff Sergeant Kramer said.
“I’m glad you did,” Cronley said. “It reminded me of something else I need to say. I don’t know how this idiocy got started, but the Army pretends that cryptographers and radio operators—hell, clerk typists—don’t read or understand what they’re typing, encrypting, decrypting, or transmitting or receiving.
“I don’t go along with that. So long as you’re here, I not only expect you to read whatever we send or receive over these de
vices, but to understand what’s being said. If you don’t understand something you’ve handled, ask. Everybody got that?”
There was a chorus of “Yes, sir.”
“Okay. Get a desk and chair from downstairs. We’ll set these things up in the larger of these two closets.”
The three non-coms went to the stairwell, then down it.
“Permission to speak, sir?” Stratford said when they were out of earshot.
“I went to Texas A&M, Stratford. Not West Point. You don’t have to ask my permission to say anything.”
“Yes, sir. I wanted to say that was very impressive. You handled that very well.”
Cronley didn’t reply.
Stratford said: “Tell me. Did this enormous first sergeant of yours go to college?”
“As a matter of fact, he did.”
“Norwich?”
Cronley nodded.
“Me, too. When I heard that line about the Buffalo Soldiers beating Teddy Roosevelt up San Juan Hill, I knew it had to be Dunwiddie. He was a rook—a freshman—when I was in my senior year. But you pay attention to rooks who are as big and black as Dunwiddie.”
“I’m really glad to hear you know Tiny, Stratford.”
“How come he’s not an officer?”
“Because he got screwed out of his commission by a white officer.”
[ FIVE ]
The ASA technicians had the Collins and the SIGABA set up far more quickly than Cronley expected they would.