“I’m Max Ostrowski, Ziegler,” the blond man said. “I understand you’ve been temporarily banished to us?”
“It looks that way,” Augie replied, and then asked, “You’re Polish?”
“Guilty.”
Augie nodded.
“Let’s have a look at what the MPs have come up with,” Cronley said.
“I’ll have to tell you what the inside of the ambulance looked like,” Augie said. “The photo lab isn’t finished. I told them to send prints as soon as they’re done.”
[ TWO ]
U.S. Constabulary School
Sonthofen, Bavaria
American Zone of Occupied Germany
0655 24 January 1946
There were twelve officers seated around the heavy table in the senior officers’ dining room of what had once been the Adolf Hitler Schule, where the sons of the Nazi aristocracy had been trained to assume leadership roles in the Thousand-Year Reich. The dozen officers at the table were dressed in woolen ODs. Their shoulder insignia was that of the U.S. Constabulary, a three-inch yellow circle outlined in black, with a “C” in the center. A red lightning bolt pierced the “C.”
Major General I. D. White—a stocky forty-six-year-old who had led the 2nd “Hell on Wheels” Armored Division to the banks of the Elbe River, and then, after the Russians had been allowed to take Berlin, into the German capital—sat at the head of the table, where Der Führer had once reigned over his dinner guests.
Sitting at the table were a full colonel of cavalry, a full colonel of infantry, a lieutenant colonel wearing the insignia of an aide-de-camp to a major general, a captain wearing the same insignia, a lieutenant colonel and a lieutenant of artillery (both wearing liaison pilot wings), a colonel and a lieutenant colonel whose lapel insignia identified them respectively as chaplains of the Jewish and Christian faiths, a colonel and a lieutenant colonel of the Medical Corps, and a lieutenant colonel of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps.
General White believed that command problems could be discussed and possibly resolved over a meal at least as well as, and possibly better than, gathering everyone around a table in a conference room. Thus, once a week, on Thursdays, he scheduled a breakfast—“So everyone will be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed”—to which were invited those officers concerned with a problem who might have a solution for it. Their invitations provided the subject to be discussed.
General White waited until everyone invited had entered the dining room and was standing behind the ornate chairs at the table. Then he walked—marched would be more accurate—into the room.
His senior aide-de-camp called, “Ah-ten-hut!” and everyone came to attention.
“Be seated, gentlemen,” General White said, and sat down.
“For obvious reasons it would be inappropriate to discuss the subject of the day while we’re eating our breakfast,” he went on. “So we’ll hold off until we’re having our coffee.”
Thirty minutes later, after two young men wearing starched white jackets over their uniforms cleared the table of dishes and placed coffee cups in front of the diners, the moment to discuss the subject of the luncheon conference had come.
General White did so without rising from his chair.
“The problem we have, gentlemen,” he said, “is social disease, which is a polite way of saying venereal disease. How does this affect the Constabulary? And what do we do about it? Your thoughts, please, Lieutenant.”
He pointed to the lieutenant wearing the liaison pilot’s wings.
The lieutenant, visibly surprised to be called on, rose to his feet. And appeared to be struck dumb.
“Didn’t they teach you at West Point, Lieutenant Winters, that the junior is called upon first, so we get his honest opinion, rather than what he thinks his superiors want to hear?”
The lieutenant flashed White what could have been a dirty look. The general did not seem to notice.
“Yes, sir. I was taught that,” he said. “Sir, venereal disease is a problem . . .”
“That’s why we’re having this conference,” White agreed.
“. . . not only in that men are sick in hospital rather than available for duty, but that it poses a problem, sometimes a fatal problem, for them for the rest of their lives.”
“I couldn’t have summed it up better myself,” White said. “And how would you suggest we deal with the problem?”