piece of rusty, corrugated tin. That cut had gotten infected and the infection was spreading. He should have been given penicillin, but there was no penicillin available.
Karin once read that honey had been used for hundreds of years to treat infected wounds and though the doctor told her she was being foolish when she suggested they try it, he had finally come around. Chambers’s wound was being treated with honey.
Karin removed the bandage and looked at the wound. It might have been her imagination, but she believed she was seeing some improvement. She began cleansing the area around the wound.
“How does it look?” Colonel Chambers asked.
“It’s looking good,” Karin said.
Chambers lifted his head and looked down at his leg. “Captain, if you think that looks good, you are definitely a woman who isn’t turned off by ugly. And that, my dear”—he pointed to the purple, puffy wound—“has a serious case of ugly.”
“Oh, it’s all in the eyes of the beholder,” Karin said.
“Hmm, where were you seventy years ago when I needed a woman who could overlook ugly?”
Karin laughed. “I’ll bet you were a fine-looking young officer,” she said. “I read in your records that you spent some time in Paris immediately after the war.”
Karin knew that Colonel Chambers, as a company commander in the 101st Airborne, had also jumped into France on D-Day, and had been at Bastogne during the siege, where he was awarded the Silver Star and a Purple Heart.
“I was in Paris, yes.”
“Now, be truthful, Colonel,” she said, as she used peroxide-soaked cotton balls to dab gently around his wound. “Did you, or did you not have your share of beautiful young French ladies?”
“Ahh, you do bring up memories, my dear,” Colonel Chambers said. “I seem to recall that there is one particularly pretty young lady who always sits down at the end of the bar at the Parisian Pony. Lovely thing she is, high-lifted breasts, long, smooth legs. I hope I’m not embarrassing you.”
“Not at all, I’m enjoying the description,” Karin replied.
Colonel Chambers was quiet for a moment. “I can see her now. She is so beautiful. Or was, I should say. My Lord, Chantal would be in her late eighties now. All of them. Every young woman I knew there. The soldiers too, the men who served with me, and under me. They were all so young then, and when I think of them, I remember them as they were, not as they must be now.” He grew pensive.
“All memories are like that, Colonel.”
“I suppose they are. If nobody has told you before, Captain, getting old—what is the term the young people use? Oh, yes, sucks. Getting old sucks.”
“Yes, but consider the alternative,” Karin said.
Colonel Chambers laughed out loud. “Good point, Captain, good point,” he said.
“Tell me, my dear, when I get out of here, would you be too terribly embarrassed to have dinner with an old man?”
“Embarrassed? Not at all,” Karin said. “I would love to have dinner with you.”
“That is, assuming there is a restaurant still open somewhere by then. I’ve lived under eighteen presidents ; none have frightened me as much as this one does.” He reached up to take Karin’s hand in his. “On the one hand, I am glad I am so old because I don’t believe living under this president is going to be very pleasant. On the other hand, I defended this country for many years, and I almost feel as if it would be an act of betrayal on my part if I were to die now, and leave this mess behind me.”
“Say what you want about yourself, Colonel, but don’t ever feel that you have betrayed your country in any way.”
“I notice by the lack of a ring that you aren’t married. But do you have a young man?” Colonel Chambers asked.
“I do,” Karin said. “But he wouldn’t mind at all my having dinner with you.”
“Ohh,” Colonel Chambers said. “Darlin’, when a pretty young girl says she will have dinner with you, and then says in the same breath that it won’t matter to her beau, that’s when you know you are getting very old.”
Karin laughed, then leaned over and kissed him on the forehead before she left.
Jake was sitting at his desk reviewing the new curriculum, lesson plans, and objectives, as well as a new SOP, wondering what he could come up with next to keep the men busy. Sergeant Major Clay Matthews tapped lightly on the door to his office, then pushed it open.
“Major Lantz?”
“Yes, Sergeant Major, come on in,” Jake said, pushing the written material to one side. “Have a seat,” he offered.
“How are the new lesson plans?” Clay asked.
“They are good,” Jake said. “They are surprisingly good. I just wish we could get the training going again so we could implement them. What’s on your mind?”
“I thought you might like to know that I have everything on your list that you asked for.”
“Including fuel? Jet fuel, I mean. I know you got the gasoline last month.”
“Yes, sir, I got the jet fuel.”
“I’m impressed,” Jake said. “How did you do that?”
“I had General von Cairns sign for a fifty-barrel emergency reserve.”
“And you convinced him to do that?”
“Not exactly,” Clay said. “Turns out that Specialist Roswell, who works down at HQ, can sign the general’s name as well as the general can. He signed an 1195 for me.”
“You didn’t tell him what this was about, did you?”
“No. I convinced him that I was going to sell it on the black market and give him half the profit.”
“I don’t know, Sergeant Major,” Jake said. “If there is no sale and he doesn’t get his share, it could cause us some trouble.”
Clay shook his head. “Not really, sir,” he said. “First of all, he’s not going to be able to say that he signed the general’s name without getting himself in a lot of trouble. And secondly, I have already sold fifteen barrels for five thousand dollars per barrel. I’m going to give Roswell the entire seventy-five thousand and tell him that’s half.”
“So, we have thirty-five barrels left?”
“No, sir, we have fifteen barrels left. I told the POL sergeant that the general had really only requested thirty barrels, but I changed the number. That way he could have twenty barrels to do whatever he wants with. That expedited the operation and it also kept him from making any telephone calls back to the general to verify the requisition.”
Jake chuckled. “I’m glad you are working for me, instead of against me.”
“I would never work against you, Major,” Clay said. He smiled. “I might be a thief, but I am a thief with honor.”
“I can’t argue with that, Sergeant Major.”
“Oh, and I got a desalination device. Hand pump, not power. I figure we may not always have power.”
“Good move,” Jake said, just as the phone rang. He picked it up. “Environmental Flight Tactics, Major Lantz. All right, thank you. I’ll be right there.”
Hanging up the phone, he ran his finger down the scar on his cheek for a moment. “That was the general’s office,” he said. “He’s issued an officers’ call. I hope it’s not . . .”
“It has nothing to do with our scrounging, sir,” Clay said. “It is something else. Something entirely different.”
“Do you know what it is?”
“Yes, sir, I think I do.”
“What is it?”
“I’d rather not say, sir,” Clay said. “I think you should hear it from the general himself.”
“All right, I will,” Jake said, standing up and reaching for his black beret. “You did well, Clay. You did damn
