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“By ‘we,’ you mean me and Wagner.”
“You’re going to do it. I’m going to take Wagner to see General White. Have a nice day, Mr. Ziegler. I’ll see you at the hotel at the cocktail hour.”
[ THREE ]
München Ostbahnhof
Haidhausen, Munich
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1205 1 February 1946
The locomotive was pulled nose first into the left platform of the station. An American flag and a red flag with two silver stars—indicating the presence of a major general—hung limply from poles mounted forward of the boiler.
“Relax, Casey,” Cronley said to PFC Karl-Christoph Wagner. “He really doesn’t eat people alive.”
“Actually, I sort of like him,” Wagner replied. “He reminds me of my grandfather.”
“When he’s through with you, call the office and they’ll send a car. Got the number?”
“Yes, sir.”
They walked past the locomotive, which was lazily puffing steam from under its boiler onto the platform, and then past the car immediately behind the locomotive. A very crisply uniformed Constabulary sergeant stood guard at the door of the next car. He was armed with both a Thompson submachine gun and a .45 ACP pistol. He wore a glistening helmet liner and had a yellow scarf puffing out of his Ike jacket.
He looked to be a little younger than Wagner, and Cronley recalled another lecture from Freddy Hessinger, in which Freddy had reported that the average age of enlisted men in USFET was eighteen-point-something years, that ninety-something percent of them were high school graduates with an average Army General Classification Test score of 113, which would have qualified them for officer candidate school had they been old enough—twenty-one—to become officers. Seventy-something percent of them had taken advantage of the Army’s desperate need for troops by accepting the offer to enlist for eighteen months, which made them eligible for college under the GI Bill.
“Sergeant, this is Mr. Wagner, who has an appointment with General White,” Cronley said to the eighteen-point-something-year-old sergeant.
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant replied. “We’ve been given a heads-up. If you’ll come with me, Mr. Wagner?”
The sergeant did not seem at all surprised that another eighteen-point-something-year-old was wearing the triangles of a civilian employee of the Army or that he had an appointment with the major general who commanded the U.S. Constabulary.
Wagner, who was not supposed to salute another civilian wearing triangles, saluted Cronley, who returned it.
—
As Cronley opened the door of the staff car, he was still considering the surreal aspects of the situation, which included himself having become a captain while his A&M classmates were still waiting for their automatic promotion to first lieutenant after eighteen months of service and his being in charge of an operation attempting to get a full bull colonel back from the Russians who had kidnapped him.
He was abruptly brought out of his reverie when a voice barked, “Sir, Lieutenant Douglas, sir. Aide-de-camp to Major General White, sir. General White’s compliments. Sir, it would please the general if you would attend him at your earliest convenience.”
Cronley turned and found himself looking at a second lieutenant whose Constabulary uniform bore the lapel insignia and aiguillette of an aide-de-camp to a major general and who looked to be about as old as PFC Wagner.
“Lieutenant, how long have you been in the Army?”
“Sir, about seventeen months. I’m Norwich, ’45.”
“When you were at Norwich, did you know a great big black guy named Dunwiddie?”
“Yes, sir, as a matter of fact I did. Tiny Dunwiddie was my first sergeant, and then he dropped out of school. There was a rumor he enlisted. I’ve always wondered what happened to him.”
Well, right about now he’s a captain standing on the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin, dealing with NKGB Senior Major of State Security Ivan Serov, trying to get a colonel the Russians kidnapped back.
Surreal!
“Lead the way, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir. If you’ll come with me, I’ll take you to the general.”
