“The Army then flew Beatrice over here. Little Georgie is at West Point. He was discouraged from coming with his mother.
“The morphine, or whatever the hell they were giving Georgie for the pain, pretty well knocked him out.
“So, after Beatrice arrived, Georgie stopped taking the morphine whenever Beatrice was with him. When she finally left his room to get some sleep, he got them to give him morphine. Then Beatrice ordered that a cot be brought into his room so she wouldn’t have to leave him.”
“Oh, my God!” Mrs. White said.
“So, he stopped taking the morphine. Period. And eventually, he died. Instead of getting killed by the last bullet fired in the last battle, Georgie went out in prolonged agony, stretched out like some heretic they were trying to get to confess in the Spanish Inquisition.”
White’s voice seemed to be on the cusp of breaking.
Mrs. White rose, and went to him and put her arms around him, and for a minute he rested his head against her bosom.
Then he straightened.
Cronley saw a tear run down his cheek.
Mrs. White leaned over and picked up a shot glass from the table.
“Gentlemen,” she said, “if I may, I give you . . .”
Everyone scrambled for a glass and to get to their feet.
“. . . the late General George Smith Patton Junior, distinguished officer and Christian gentleman,” she finished.
And then she drained the shot glass.
The others followed suit. Somebody said, “Hear, hear.”
“You may recall, Captain Cronley,” White said, as he sat down, “that when you told me your name at Rhine-Main, I said, ‘Bingo.’”
“Yes, sir.”
“One of the first things I planned to do on arrival here was to send for you.”
“Sir?”
“Got the briefcase, Paul?” General White asked.
Whatever this is about, the Patton business is apparently over.
Why was I on the edge of tears? The only time I ever saw him was in the newsreels. The last time, he was pissing in the Rhine.
“Sir, I’ve never let it out of my sight,” White’s senior aide-de-camp, a lieutenant colonel, said.
He then set a leather briefcase on the table, opened it, took out a sheet of paper, and handed it to Cronley.
“Please sign this, Captain,” he said, and produced a fountain pen.
“What is that?” Dunwiddie asked.
“Although your curiosity seems to have overwhelmed your manners, Chauncey,” General White said, “I’ll tell you anyway. It’s a briefcase full of money. One hundred thousand dollars, to be specific.”
He turned to Cronley.
“Admiral Souers asked me to bring that to you, Captain,” he said. “And to say ‘thank you.’”
“What’s that all about?” Mrs. White asked.