Curtain of Death (Clandestine Operations 3)

The lieutenant visibly thought his reply over before making it.

“If it were up to me, sir, I would open first aid stations for any German girl who wanted to come in, get examined, and then if she had the clap, syphilis, or scabies, treat her. And I would examine all the prostitutes in the brothels and walking the streets, whether or not they liked it, and offer them the choice of getting treated or going to jail.”

“Nonsense!” the Christian chaplain said, for which he was rewarded with a withering glance from General White.

“And what about our Constabulary troopers?” White asked.

The lieutenant again debated replying, but finally said, “Sir, you’re probably not going to like this.”

“Nevertheless?”

“Sir, I’d see to it they had a chance to do what the officers do.”

“Which is?”

“Sir, they find some friendly doctor to give them penicillin so they don’t have to go to the hospital and wear a bathrobe with VD stenciled on the back. And get it in their service record.”

“General,” the Medical Corps lieutenant colonel said, “I have to protest!”

“Duly noted,” General White said. “Lieutenant, are you saying you have personal knowledge of officers who”—he paused, and then repeated verbatim what the lieutenant had said—“who ‘find some friendly doctor to give them penicillin so they don’t have to go to the hospital and wear a bathrobe with VD stenciled on the back’? ‘And get it in their service record,’ or do you just think that’s what’s going on?”

“I have personal knowledge of that happening, sir.”

“And what would you do with our enlisted troopers, Lieutenant?”

The lieutenant’s mouth ran away with him. Or perhaps he consciously decided that since he had just flushed his military career down the toilet anyway, What the hell? Why not?

“Sir, I’d get the doctors to determine who had the clap and scabies and nothing worse, and teach the first sergeants how to give them the six shots of penicillin to kill the clap and stuff to kill the scabies. I’d have the doctors send the people with syphilis to the hospital, but I’d diagnose it as something besides syphilis so that it wouldn’t fuck up their careers.”

He heard what he had said, and added, “Sorry, sir. That ‘fuck’ just slipped out.”

The Medical Corps colonel said, “General, if I may—”

“You may not. I decide who speaks here and when,” General White replied, not at all pleasantly. He paused, obviously in thought, and then went on. “I’ve just decided that’s me.”

He gestured for the lieutenant to sit down.

“While I am sorely tempted to do so,” he began, “I am not going to quote the late General George Smith Patton’s insightful comment on officers and enlisted men and the carnal union of the sexes . . .”

All the officers in the room knew that Patton had famously said, “A soldier who won’t fuck won’t fight.”

More than half of the officers at the table laughed or chuckled. The rest showed shock or disapproval or both.

“. . . but I don’t think anyone can honestly argue with the fact that the ideal solution to our venereal disease problem, abstinence or chastity, is simply not going to be available.

“I have also believed since I first heard this at Norwich that if something valuable is going to be issued by the Army, the officer corps gets theirs after the enlisted men do. I can see no reason that this shouldn’t apply to the curing of social diseases. Finally, when I first learned that patients in hospital suffering from venereal disease were forced to wear bathrobes with VD stenciled on them, I thought—I knew—that this was going to keep soldiers from seeking the treatment they needed.

“So, what we are going to discuss now—”

The door to the dining room opened and a second major general practically burst into the room.

He was wearing, like the others, a woolen olive drab Ike jacket but, unlike the others, instead of OD trousers he was wearing riding breeches and highly polished riding boots. He carried a leather riding crop. His shoulder insignia was that of the Constabulary. The opposite shoulder carried the insignia of the 2nd Armored Division, indicating that the general had served in wartime with the division.

Major General Ernest Harmon had in fact commanded Hell on Wheels until, on assuming command of the VI Corps, he had turned it over to I. D. White. He was scheduled to turn over command of the Constabulary to General White on February 1.

General White was the first to see General Harmon. He rose to his feet. So, quickly, did everyone at the table.

“Gentlemen, I’m really sorry to bust in this way, but I have to have a few minutes with General White.”