For God and Country. Mark Bowlin
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add the two quarts of bourbon, slowly working it in. Then, in another bowl, whip the whites and the remaining sugar together just like for a meringue. Then combine the two bowls, and then fold, fold mind you, the cream into the eggs. It’s the best damn nog you’ll ever have. Promise. Now hurry along so it’s done by the end of dinner.”
The wine turned out to be a decent Sangiovese, and the cousins toasted one another and their friends and family back home. They were joined at their little table by a platoon leader from Dog Company who was in an exceptionally jovial mood after having lived through his first battle and, being a former teetotaler, having drunk his first three glasses of wine.
The battalion cooks had done them proud. Even with the battlefield conditions, the occasional freezing rain, and the short notice, they served roasted turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, fresh rolls, stewed cauliflower, and buttermilk pie. It was certainly the best meal that either Sam or Perkin had eaten for weeks, and in the nature of hungry men, the assembled soldiers all swore that it was best food they had ever eaten.
Toward the end of the dinner, as Sam was finishing his third piece of pie, two battalion cooks carefully carried in a huge glass punch bowl filled with Sam’s eggnog. The bowl had been liberated from a destroyed home in San Pietro, and the red faces and wide smiles of the cooks suggested that they had liberated some of Sam’s bourbon as well.
They carried it up to the front table where Spaulding and the company commanders sat on one side of a long table facing the remaining guests. The mess sergeant leaned over and whispered to Major Spaulding while his men filled paper coffee cups with the eggnog and passed them out to the assembled soldiers.
Major Spaulding accepted a cup of the eggnog, tentatively sniffed at the beverage, and then turned the cup upside down. The eggnog didn’t move. Seemingly coming to a decision, the battalion commander stood up, and in the gradually ensuing silence, he indicated that his guests were to keep their seats.
“Gentlemen, may I have your attention please? I’d like to thank y’all for comin’ here tonight. I know that everyone is tired and looking forward to gettin’ back to your companies and havin’ a quiet night’s sleep, so I won’t keep y’all here long. Please charge your glasses with the remainder of the wine, before we advance to our next objective . . . this . . . uh . . . curious eggnog, which smells promising even if it melted my nose hairs.”
Spaulding watched as the men filled their cups—a mixture of wine glasses and canteen cups—and then said as he stubbed out a cigarette in his plate, “Please stand. I’m gonna teach you an old Able Company tradition: the Texas Roister. As in war, do as I say, when I say it, and y’all may live through the experience.” When the soldiers were all standing with full cups, he continued, “The Texas Roister is a time-honored tradition which our historian, Captain Professor Berger, assures me was the last act of the defenders at the Alamo.”
Perkin looked at Sam and grinned. He had made that up two years before while drunk at an Able Company party at Camp Bowie.
“And as we are the 1st Battalion of the famous Alamo Regiment, it’s only fittin’ that we should carry on the tradition.”
Sam rolled his eyes back at Perkin and whispered across the table, “I think the fumes from the eggnog got to him. Bill ain’t normally this long-winded.”
“We’re gonna do four toasts, but we only drink at the end. And it all goes down. OK, gents, hold your cups out like this.” Spaulding demonstrated by holding his cup out with his wrist bent outward at a right angle. When everyone complied, he said in a firm voice, “To God!”
Led by Perkin and Sam, the soldiers seconded the toast, “To God!”
They watched as Spaulding then did a curious thing: instead of taking a drink, he brought the glass of wine up to his ear, held it there for a moment as if he were listening to the wine’s stories, and then he brought the glass back down in front of him still held at the awkward angle. Following Sam and Perkin’s lead, the others did likewise.
“To Country!”
“To Country!” This time the deep voices toasted in unison, and the movement of the glasses to ear and back was much more fluid.
“To Texas!”
“To Texas!” Enthusiasm was in their voices, and grins of anticipation were now seen throughout the audience.
“Gentlemen, our next stop is Rome. It’s a damn hard road gettin’ there, but, ‘On to Rome!’”
“On to Rome!”
“Now, boys, do what I do!” With a loud rolling “Roiiiiiisssssster!” Spaulding downed his drink in a single swallow and slammed his empty glass on the table. With evident satisfaction, Spaulding watched as the soldiers followed his lead with a stretched-out “roister” of their own.
Applause, laughter, and cheers followed; the soldiers who hadn’t had much cause lately for applause, laughs, or cheers quickly moved their attention to uncovering the mysteries of Sam’s eggnog, and amid a boisterous dissonance of carols and roister-practicing, the Christmas celebration resumed anew.
* The 36th Division, like most US infantry divisions in WWII, had approximately 15,000 soldiers of whom about a third were infantrymen. The 36th had three regimental combat teams (141st, 142nd, 143rd) formed around three rifle battalions (plus numerous other units), which in turn were comprised of three rifle companies and a heavy weapons company. Each company had three rifle platoons and a weapons platoon. On paper, a full-strength company was 187 soldiers.
Chapter Three
December 27, 1943
1000 Hours
CINC Southwest Headquarters, Monte Soratte, Italy
Major Douglas Grossmann sat alone at a conference table in a mahogany-paneled room, where two months before he had received the most depressing news possible: orders to establish a spy network in the Naples–Caserta–Cassino area of operations and infiltrate the American high command. On paper, it sounded challenging but doable. He was more American than German after all, and he had done it before at Salerno. But in practice, it would be more than challenging. At Salerno, the Allies were disorganized, but by the time they took Naples and continued their march north along the Italian peninsula, they had networks of their own. Intelligence collection networks of spies and collaborators. Counterintelligence networks manned by hard men—professionals who played the great game to win. He had thought it a death sentence.
Then a disagreeable prick of a colonel had told Grossmann that good men were dying by the millions on the Eastern Front. All German soldiers were expected to do their part, including dying if necessary, and he was asked, “What makes you special?”
That’s the kind of question that a soldier might have an answer to, but can’t really articulate to an unpleasant superior officer, so Grossmann had taken his orders, fulfilled his mission as best he could, and come back to the German lines. But it hadn’t been without cost. Now he was sitting in that same room, waiting for the same disagreeable prick of a colonel, in order to find out the consequences of his last mission and perhaps learn something of his next assignment.
Grossmann had been given a week off and now it was time to get back to the war. He was ready. Christmas had been spent alone in a small apartment that he kept near the Piazza Navona. He had been tempted to put on civilian clothes and cross the river to go mingle with the crowd at Saint Peter’s Square, but he decided to stay in bed and sleep instead. He was a deeply, deeply lapsed Lutheran in any case, and had no desire to participate in a Catholic ceremony simply because he was lonely.
That was the crux of the problem—the source of his discontent. Major Grossmann was lonely. His comrade and good friend, Captain Mark Gerschoffer, had been killed at San Pietro by an American captain named Berger, and his own source with access to the American camp reported