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“You’re from an Army family?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh, is he from an Army family,” Cronley said. “Not only did his grandfather, First Sergeant Dunwiddie of the legendary Tenth U.S. Cavalry Regiment, beat Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War, but his father, Colonel Dunwiddie, is a 1920 classmate of General White’s at Norwich.”
“Really?” Ginger asked.
“That’s what he was doing on General White’s train. Making his manners to his godfather.”
“General White is your godfather?” Ginger asked incredulously.
“Yes, ma’am, he is,” Tiny said, and glowered at Cronley.
“I would rather have that truth circulating among the ladies at the commissary checkout line than have them wonder what we were doing on the train,” Cronley said.
Dunwiddie considered that for a moment, and then, grudgingly, said, “Okay, blabbermouth, point well taken.”
“You mean I can tell the girls?”
“Only if the subject comes up, Ginger,” Cronley said. “If, and only if, the subject comes up, then and only then, you can say, ‘What I heard, girls, is that Captain Dunwiddie is General White’s godson.’ Okay, Ginger?”
“Got it,” she said.
“And now, before we accept Captain Dunwiddie’s kind offer to dine with him, at his expense, at the O Club, what else should we talk about?”
Bonehead took the question literally.
“A couple of weeks ago, we had a meeting of Aggies in Kassel. One of them was a classmate of your pal Cletus Frade, before Frade dropped out, I mean. He said he heard he became an ace with the Marines on Guadalcanal early in the war. But that was the last he heard. Did he come through the war all right, Jimmy, do you know?”
“I was about to say,” Cronley said, “that it’s a small world, isn’t it?”
“And I was about to say the trouble with letting one worm out of the can is then the rest want out,” Dunwiddie said.
“I don’t understand,” Ginger said.
“This doesn’t get spread among the ladies in the checkout line or anywhere else, okay?”
“Understood.”
“Colonel Cletus Frade, Navy Cross, United States Marine Corps . . .”
“He got to be a colonel?” Bonehead asked incredulously.
“A full-bull fire-breathing colonel,” Cronley confirmed. “He spent most of the war running the OSS in Argentina. In his spare time, he got married—to a stunning Anglo-Argentine blond named Dorotea—and sired two sons. And one day, when he was visiting Germany . . .” He stopped in midsentence. “The look on Captain Dunwiddie’s face tells me he’s wondering why I’m telling you all this.”
“You’re very perceptive,” Dunwiddie said.
“I have my reasons,” Cronley said. “So let me go off on a tangent for a moment. Bonehead, what kind of a security clearance do you have?”
“Top Secret. As of about a month, six weeks ago.”
“I think I know where you’re going,” Dunwiddie said.
“You’re very perceptive. Should I stop?”
“Go on.”
“Captain Dunwiddie and I have need, Bonehead, of a white company grade officer with a Top Secret security clearance to command Company C, 203rd Tank Destroyer Battalion, the enlisted men of which, some of whom you met today, are all of the African persuasion, and most of whom are as large as you are.”
