assigned to their platoons. Ought to be interesting.”
“My kid brother is in ASTP, but I guess I would have heard if he’d been called up. I can imagine these veterans giving college boys a cozy welcome, especially since they’ve been sitting out the past few months on campus.” I hoped Danny wasn’t among this bunch. They’d have a hard time before they ever got to the front.
“I figure that’s what will make it interesting,” Einsmann said. “Word is some noncoms think the ASTPers will have a monopoly on promotions when they hand out new stripes. Especially the Southern boys.”
“Everything will probably smooth out once they get up on the line,” I said. Yeah, it’ll be peachy up there, one big happy family united by butchery and misery.
I saw Major Kearns making his way through the crowd, with two Carabinieri officers in tow. They both wore dark-blue dress uniforms, with the flaming grenade emblem of the Italian national police on their service caps.
“Lieutenant Boyle,” Kearns said, after a nod of greeting to Einsmann. “This is Capitano Renzo Trevisi, and Tenente Luca Amatori. Capitano Trevisi is in charge of the local Carabinieri garrison.”
“Billy Boyle,” I said, standing to shake hands.
“Pleased to meet you,” Trevisi said in heavily accented but precise English. He looked to be about forty, with a thick, dark mustache, a slight paunch, and a friendly smile. “If I can be of any assistance, I am at your service. Major Kearns has told us of your investigations. I do not think there is any civilian involvement in this unfortunate matter, but please ask should you require anything.”
“Thank you, Capitano, I will.”
Trevisi spoke in Italian to his lieutenant, who had been silent during the exchange in English. I heard Galante and Landry’s names mentioned as he gestured to me. “Tenente Amatori will provide whatever you need if I am not available. Buona sera.”
“Interesting,” Einsmann said as they moved off.
“What?”
“I’ve never seen Italian officers here before, army or Carabinieri. I wonder what’s up?”
“Well, the Italians are on our side now. They have a combat group fighting near Cassino, and most of the Carabinieri are loyal to the new government. Stands to reason they’d show up at HQ sooner or later. Plus there have been two murders.”
“Yeah,” Einsmann said. “But the killings are an army matter. No way they’d let the locals in on that unless they needed them for something.”
“Well, not my problem,” I said as I watched Kearns and the two Italians huddled in conversation. Maybe it was somebody else’s problem, maybe not. I decided I had enough to worry about without adding Italian cops, and got back to the subject of Galante.
“This Colonel Schleck, who got Galante transferred out. Where do I find him?”
“Personnel section, 3rd Division HQ, over at San Felice.”
“I’m headed there tomorrow. I’ll see what he knows.”
“What can he tell you? I doubt he killed Galante because they disagreed about combat fatigue.”
“No, but if he had it in for Galante, he had to know him, right? You can’t have a beef with a guy and not get to know him, even if it’s only his weaknesses.”
“And Galante’s weakness might tell you about who killed him?”
“It’s all I have right now,” I said.
I finished my drink and made my way out of the room, passing a group of colonels and women in low-cut dresses. The colonels were flushed and loud, their lips smacking with drink and lust. The women laughed, a harsh, high laugh that echoed off the marble floor and stayed with me as I stood in the rain, looking toward the invisible mountains to the north, where men shivered, suffered, and bled.
CHAPTER EIGHT
San Felice was a fair-sized village, or at least had been before the fighting passed through. Now it was a fair-sized pile of rubble, with the few intact buildings housing the 3rd Division staff. In front of a burned-out church, a water pipe stuck up from the ground, a spray of water gushing into the air. Women and children with buckets were lined up, eager to haul the fresh water home. At the base of the pipe, a gleaming white stone arm lay on the ground, its fingers gracefully pointing to the sky. Debris and masonry cascaded from the buildings into the street, making it hard to tell where the outline of homes and shops had been, but it was obvious this had been the piazza, the center of the village. Now it was crammed with shattered stone, a line of black-clad women, and American military vehicles.
I found G-1, Personnel, on the ground floor of a two-story school that was missing its roof. Colonel Raymond Schleck was seated at a desk near a boarded-up window, a tin bucket catching drips of rainwater from the ceiling. Files were stacked in wooden boxes all around him, and two clerks at the other end of the room pecked at typewriters, making piles of forms in triplicate, some nearly a foot high. They had the grimly bored look of men who knew there was probably an easier way to do this job, but also understood it had to be done the army way.
“Colonel Schleck?”
“See one of my clerks, Lieutenant, I’m busy.” Schleck cranked a field telephone, barked a few quick questions into it, listened, and slammed it into its leather case without comment. He crossed off names on a list and consulted a personnel file. Without looking up, he spoke again. “You still here?”
“Yes sir. I need to speak with you about Captain Max Galante. I’m afraid one of your clerks won’t do.”
“And who the hell are you to tell me what won’t do?” Now I had his full attention. I showed him my orders. He gave them back, frowned, then waved in the general direction of a chair.
“You’ve heard Captain Galante was murdered?”
“Yeah. Tough break. I lost a good platoon leader too. Landry. What can I do for you, Boyle?”
“Tell me about Galante. You two had a disagreement, right?”
“You think I killed him because of that?” He gave a small chuckle and shook a Chesterfield from a crumpled pack. He lit up and tossed the match into the bucket.
“You had him transferred out of the division, so I doubt there’d be a reason to kill him. But what did you think of him?”
“I thought he worked hard, and was sincere in his beliefs.”
“Listen, Colonel,” I said. “It’s nice not to speak ill of the dead, but that doesn’t help me find who killed Galante and Landry.”
“Okay,” Schleck said. “He was a snotty prig who thought he was smarter than everyone else. I mean it when I say he worked hard, but he had a bad attitude.”
“About combat fatigue?”
“Listen, Boyle,” Schleck said, sitting up straight and pointing his nicotine-stained finger at me. “You start telling these boys that all they have to do to get out of the line is to go on sick call with the shakes, pretty soon you’ll have empty foxholes all across these damn mountains. You can be damn sure the Krauts don’t believe in combat fatigue.”
“You think it isn’t real?”
“I don’t say there isn’t something to it. But Galante and I differed on the cause. In my book, there’s only one way to explain why one unit, on the line as long as another, has a completely different rate of combat fatigue cases.”
“What’s that?”
“Leadership, Boyle. At every level, from generals to second lieutenants. That’s what makes the difference. Poor leadership leads to excessive cases of nervous exhaustion, or whatever the shrinks call it. In a unit with good leadership, the cases are fewer. When the men trust their officers, they have confidence, and that keeps them going.”
“But it still happens, in every unit.”
“Some men are cowards. It’s unpleasant, but it’s true.”
“Was this the reason you had Galante transferred out?”
“It was on my recommendation, yes. We needed to send a message, that there was no easy way out of
