Renewed determination

I am going to wrestle this goddamn Army novel I've been fighting for forty years to the ground this time, I swear I am. I have a good draft of the first part of three. I am now front-burner brooding about the rest of the story.

This is great material. Here are some moments in Part One I like.

“The president thinks I’m a soldier, thinks I’m worth extending. Maybe it’s time to prove myself by punching out a paratrooper.”
Across the room, somebody yelled, “Fuck Kennedy!”
“I think the word’s spreading,” said Bass.
Buddy-pooh appeared and said, “Sullivan, you hear the news?
Sullivan nodded.
“I think some songs are in order,” Buddy-pooh told Bear.
Bass said, “I don’t think I’m in the mood.”
“He’s right,” Sullivan said. “I want to sing every anti-Army song you ever wrote.” Then he started singing at the top of his lungs, words Bass had written to the tune of “Ragmop”:
“I say F … I say F, U … F, U, C … F, U, C, K … F-U-C-K A-R-M-Y, fuck the Army, beetle-leet bop-be-da-ba … fuck the Army, beetle-leet bop-be-da-ba …”
As soon as other linguists heard Sullivan, they joined in, many standing and moving to gather around Sullivan and Bass, faces straining to sing louder than a neighbor, everyone spelling out the Fuck the Army Ragmop song. Someone fetched Bass’ guitar and brought it to him. Buddy-pooh suggested the next song, and Bass started it alone, to the tune of an old labor song, strumming along as he sang:
“I don’t want your spit shine, mister. I don’t want your shiny brass. As far as I am concerned, mister. You can shove them up your ass.”
By the time Bass reached the last verse, dedicated especially to the Russian linguists with their top secret codeword clearances, everyone was singing in a loud chorus, defiant and solemn, as if the song were an anthem:
“I don’t want your secret clearance. I don’t want your world-wide badge. All I want is a pair of my civvies. And the freedom I once had.”
No one wanted to stop when Jake decided to close at midnight.

.......

There were 57 bars in downtown Baumholder, a figure made astronomical by the fact that downtown consisted of nine square blocks. Most of the bars had names chosen to appeal to Americans: the California Club, the Florida Club, the Texas Club, Jazz Alley, Blues Alley, The Liberty Bar. Others tried to lure in soldiers with exotic names like The Golden Hirsch, Dancers A’GoGo, The Femme Fatale, Gangster Den. Bass believed the rumor that most of the bars in Baumholder were owned by a syndicate of German businessmen, most of whom lived in Berlin and Munich. But others were owned locally, the way Konrad was said to be a partner in The Family Club, which the linguists called their off-base home. Seeing how much money was being made by serving the troops, some local farmers joined the frenzy to make a quick mark off the Americans, who after all had more money to spend than the Germans had seen in a very long time.
The bars had come to Baumholder during the troop buildup of the Korean War. A Soviet invasion of Germany was a threat real enough to respond to, and the U.S. responded by bringing tens of thousands of soldiers to West Germany. Baumholder, before World War II a small farming community in southwestern Germany’s Rhineland area, with a population never exceeding 3000, was chosen for the major American buildup because the Germans themselves had trained here, taking advantage of the bare, rolling hills for their military maneuvers and war games. The Americans did the same.
Almost overnight, new bars opened downtown to entertain and serve the American G.I.s. Bakeries became bars, barns became nightclubs. Because the American army was segregated at the start of the Korean War, the new bars became segregated. The Florida Club, for example, became a bar that only black troops frequented. The tradition of segregation had remained even after the army became integrated, and today if Bass entered The Florida Club, he would be one of only a handful of whites there, the others young Germans eager to hear the American jazz on the jukebox. The jukeboxes in the white American bars featured country-western music.
The Family Club became the hangout for the Monterey Marys because it was the first bar one reached coming down from the hill at the east end of town, which also made it the farthest from Smith Barracks, Baumholder’s main post, where 30,000 Animals were stationed beyond the west end of town. There was a certain sense of security in the fact that a thirsty Animal would have to pass 56 bars before reaching The Family Club. Of course, under normal circumstances the linguists avoided the Animals at all costs and therefore stayed on the hill whenever the Animals came to town. The linguists, numbering only one hundred (with another hundred in Headquarters Company), knew full well that beating up a Monterey Mary would be considered great fun among the paratroopers and special forces after six or seven weeks of shooting at each other in war games in the field. It was always more fun to take hostility out on a stranger than on a comrade.

......

Sullivan disliked sentiment and sloppy thinking and sometimes performed a routine that demonstrated as much. With a few drinks in him, he was known to recite a portion of a poem by William Blake to much delight and hoopla from his inebriated colleagues: “Tiger, tiger, burning bright,” Sullivan would begin, his blonde hair short but long enough to comb, which really meant long enough to look uncombed because Sullivan always had the shaggy look of an absent-minded professor, and as he began the poem, his hand would sweep the hair from his forehead in a theatrical gesture, “in the forests of the night, what immortal hand or eye, could frame thy fearful symmetry?” Here Sullivan would look positively baffled by the question, as if it had cosmic significance. “What the hammer?” he asked next. “What the chain? In what furnace was thy brain? What the anvil?” – and at this precise moment Sullivan would scrunch his ruddy face into an expression of speechless horror and bewilderment, as if the questions were too great for the contemplation of mere mortals, hanging in the air like painful reminders of human ignorance and insignificance – and after holding the moment for all it was worth, and perhaps making yet another theatrical sweep of his hand to brush hair from his forehead, Sullivan would shout with an exuberance that never failed to set the first-time listener aback, “What the fuck!? WHAT THE FUCK!?”

......

His first whore parade. Bass remembered it like it was yesterday. He’d only been in Baumholder for two weeks when the linguists learned from the girls at The Family Club that the Animals would be in town the following weekend, which meant the influx of thousands of prostitutes to serve them would begin in mid-week. Taking a newk to the train station to witness their arrival was a kind of initiation ceremony for a new linguist, and Sullivan, who had known Bass at the language school and on whose trick Bass had been assigned at Operations, took the newk under his wing and together, with a dozen other linguists along for the fun, they gathered at the bahnhoff to watch the first trains arrive.
Bass had no idea what to expect. The train station was a square stone building with a tower, no larger than the several churches in town. Inside were benches for travelers waiting for the train and tables for those who wanted to eat or drink as they waited. The linguists pushed several tables together and took chairs around them.
Bass couldn’t stop grinning, partly from anticipation and partly from the feeling that he was somehow being suckered, like the country boy taken on his first snipe hunt. Bass knew from overhearing his colleagues that several trains a day would be pulling into the station, each filled with hundreds of women, but Bass had no way of realizing the enormity of this migration and its impact on him. So he just kept grinning, waiting, and listening for the punch line of whatever joke was being pulled on him.
The arrival of the first train changed everything. Bass did not have to watch the parade of girls long to realize this was no snipe hunt, here was an event even more surreal and dreamlike than the descriptions of his colleagues suggested. Several hundred girls spilled off the first train, marching in disorder into the train station, women varying in age from teens to forties, women of all size and description, fat and skinny and in between, pretty and plain, hardened and innocent-looking. What struck Bass first was that so many of them were younger than he was.
“They look so young,” he said to Sullivan at the table beside him.
“The youngest are escapees from East Germany,” Sullivan explained. “They think they’re taking a job as a server in a gasthaus or a waitress in a restaurant, but it’s the syndicate bringing them into their fold. Once they’re captured, it’s hard to get away. They arrive broke, often without family or friends. They risk everything for freedom and end up here. It’s a tragedy really.”
Only Sullivan’s tone didn’t suggest tragedy. His voice had the hardened neutrality of a doctor working the midnight shift in an emergency room, who has seen every bodily disaster many times over. Neutrality, lack of concern, was the best defense mechanism.
“Jesus, they’re young,” Bass said again. “The one in the bluejeans can’t be over fourteen or fifteen.”
“I think there’s a law they have to be sixteen,” said Sullivan.
“Young enough.”
Some of the girls flirted as they passed but most looked tired and travel-weary. How far had they traveled to get to Baumholder just ahead of the Animals’ weekend pass? Some from as far away as Berlin, the Netherlands, even London, according to Sullivan.
No sooner had the several hundred women passed through the station than the train pulled away to make room for another behind it, and the parade of prostitutes began all over again. As the second group marched through the station, Bass heard someone shouting and turned to find a small group of young German men holding up placards in protest, though he didn’t know enough German to read them. But their manner was clear: their shouts at the women clearly meant disapproval.
Sullivan leaned close to Bass.
“See the guy waving his sign? That’s Karl, son of the proprietor of the gasthaus at the bottom of the hill.”
“Are they a religious group or what?”
“Nazis.”
“What?”
Bass stared at Sullivan in disbelief.
“Well, it’s illegal, so they have to be underground and pretend they’re something else. That D.P. on their caps stands for Patriots of the Homeland. Something like that. I forget the German exactly. Buddy would know. The thing is, this is so hypocritical because Konrad has a stake in the Family Club, yet his son is one of them. The Germans bitch about American immorality and then turn around and put the women in their clubs at starvation wages, which means they’re forced to put out on the side just to survive.”
“This is hard to handle,” said Bass. He stood up.
“Where you going?”
“To the can.”
In the men’s room he splashed cold water on his face. On the counter was a stack of neatly folded cloth hand towels, and he took one to dry himself.
So this was the infamous whore parade he’d heard so much about. The descriptions of what awaited him were too extreme to be believed – and yet they fell short of capturing the grotesque unreality of what he was witnessing. Bass had expected to be titillated but instead had escaped to the men’s room feeling light-headed and almost sick in his stomach. It wasn’t that some of the women weren’t attractive, many were – but there were too many of them, too extreme and blatant a display of commercial sex parading in front of him, he felt overwhelmed from the sensual overload of it all. This was more like a scene from a Felinni movie than an afternoon in the once-lazy farm village of Baumholder.

......

Lt. Brown sauntered into the room.
“Something I should know about, sergeant?”
“Yes, sir. We’ve intercepted and confirmed reports that a good many Russian units – maybe even all Russian units – are heading for Berlin.”
The lieutenant’s lips puckered while he thought.
“To Berlin, sir,” Malinowski repeated.
“Do you know why?”
“I think we can guess why, sir.”
“You’re telling me the Reds are invading Berlin?”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“Has Central Command put us on alert?”
“Not yet. We just got our reports out to them. I suspect they’re still evaluating the situation.”
“If this is true, goddamn right we’ll be on alert.”
“I expect so, sir.”
“You heard these reports yourself?
“I don’t speak Russian, sir.”
“Right, right. But the reports were intercepted and translated.”
“Yes, sir. And confirmed by four other stations in the field. There’s no question about this, sir.”
“We’ll be on alert then.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Not like the monthly test. The real goddamn thing.”
Malinowski nodded.
“Well, sergeant, if you learn anything else, you know where to find me.”
“Yes, sir.”
After the lieutenant was gone, Malinowski turned to his men.
“Better go get yourself some coffee while you have a chance. Maybe grab a sandwich to go while you’re at it. It’s going to be a long night once the alert is called.”
Everybody but Buckley headed out. Buckley wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do, so he stayed right where he was, hoping the sergeant would give him a direct order.
It took a moment for Malinowski to realize his clerk had stayed behind.
“Buckley, you don’t want coffee?”
“I would, yes. Thank you, sergeant.”
“Just a minute.”
Buckley had stood up from the desk and now he waited for more.
“You know what happened to Sullivan last night?”
“I heard he went to town.”
“He’s still hot for that girl?”
“I think so.”
“Dumb shit. He’s just asking for trouble. He’s a damn good linguist, too. One of the best in the building.”
Buckley was silent, watching the sergeant try to make up his mind about something.
“I’m giving you a pass, Buckley. I want you to go to town and see if you can turn up Sullivan. You only have about an hour. Ask in the Family Club. If he stayed in town, he would’ve gone there. Tell him we’re going on alert and his ass belongs up here.”
Malinowski went to the desk and took out a form. He started scribbling on it. When he was done, he handed it to Buckley.
“This will get you through the gate and satisfy any MPs you run into. Get moving. I want you back here before things get crazy.”
“What about Bass, sergeant?”
“He’s probably in Denmark by now. Bass is a good soldier. Soon as he gets word the shit’s hit the fan, he’ll high-tail it back. Get moving, son.”
Malinowski headed off again. The newk stared at the pass. It was an emergency half-day pass. Buckley folded it and put it in his pocket. He grabbed his uniform jacket from the coat rack and slipped it on. He put on his overseas cap. He took a final look around the empty section and stepped out into the hallway as smartly as a soldier on parade.