The Young Lions

The hell with it, he thought, Generals or no Generals. He strode, upright and swift, through the room to the bar.

"Whisky and soda, please," he said to the bartender, and drank the first gulp down in a long, grateful draught. A British RASC Colonel was talking to an RAF Wing Commander at Michael's elbow. They paid no attention to him. The Colonel was a little drunk. "Herbert, old man," the Colonel was saying, "I was in Africa and I can speak with authority. The Americans are fine at one thing. Superb. I will not deny it. They are superb at supply. Lorries, oil dumps, traffic control, superb. But, let us face it, Herbert, they ca

The Wing Commander nodded solemnly and both the officers of the King ordered two more whiskies. The OWI, Michael thought grimly, staring at the Colonel's pink scalp shining through the thin white hair on the back of the head, the OWI is certainly throwing away the taxpayer's money on these particular allies.

Then he saw Louise coming out into the room in a loose grey coat. He put down his drink and hurried over to her. Her face wasn't serious any more, but curled into its usual slightly questioning smile, as though she didn't believe one half of what the world told her. At some moment in the cloak-room, Michael thought, as he took her arm, she had looked into the mirror and told herself, I am not going to show anything any more tonight, and switched on her old face, as smoothly and perfectly as she was now pulling on her gloves.

"Oh, my," Michael said, gri

"Oh, my, what danger I am in."

Louise glanced at him, then half-understood. She smiled reflectively. "Don't think you're not," she said.

"Lord, no," said Michael. They laughed together and walked out through the lobby of the Dorchester, through the old ladies drinking tea with their nephews, through the young Air Force Captains with the pretty girls, through the terrible, anchored English jazz, that suffered so badly because there were no Negroes in England to breathe life into it and tell the saxophonists and drummers, "Oh, Mistuh, are you off! Mistuh, lissen here, this is the way it goes, just turn it loose, Mistuh, turn that poor jailbird horn loose out of yo' hands…" Michael and Louise walked jauntily, arm in arm, back once more, and perhaps only for a moment, on the brittle happy perimeter of love. Outside, across the Park, in the fresh cold evening air, the dying fires the Germans had left behind them sent a holiday glow into the sky.

They paced slowly towards Piccadilly.

"I decided something tonight," Louise said.

"What?" Michael asked.

"I have to get you commissioned. At least a Lieutenant. It's silly for you to remain an enlisted man all your life. I'm going to talk to some of my friends."

Michael laughed. "Save your breath," he said.

"Wouldn't you like to be an officer?"

"Maybe. I haven't thought about it. Even so – save your breath."

"Why?"

"They can't do it."

"They can do anything," Louise said. "And if I ask them…"

"Nothing doing. It will go back to Washington, and it will be turned down."

"Why?"

"Because there's a man in Washington who says I'm a Communist."

"Nonsense."

"It's nonsense," Michael said, "but there it is."

"Are you a Communist?"

"About like Roosevelt," said Michael. "They'd keep him from being commissioned, too."

"Did you try?"

"Yes."

"Oh, God," Louise said, "what a silly world."

"It's not very important," said Michael. "We'll win the war anyway."

"Weren't you furious," Louise asked, "when you found out?"

"A little maybe," said Michael. "More sad than furious."

"Didn't you feel like chucking the whole thing?"

"For an hour or two, maybe," said Michael. "Then I thought, what a childish attitude."

"You're too damned reasonable."

"Maybe. Not really, though, not so terribly reasonable," said Michael. "I'm not really much of a soldier, anyway. The Army isn't missing much. When I went into the Army, I made up my mind that I was putting myself at the Army's disposal. I believe in the war. That doesn't mean I believe in the Army. I don't believe in any army. You don't expect justice out of an army, if you're a sensible, grown-up human being, you only expect victory. And if it comes to that, our Army is probably the most just one that ever existed. I believe the Army will take care of me to the best of its abilities, that it will keep me from being killed, if it can possibly manage it, and that it will finally win as cheaply as human foresight and skill can arrange. Sufficient unto the day is the victory thereof."

"That's a cynical attitude," Louise said. "The OWI wouldn't like that."

"Maybe," said Michael. "I expected the Army to be corrupt, inefficient, cruel, wasteful, and it turned out to be all those things, just like all armies, only much less so than I thought before I got into it. It is much less corrupt, for example, than the German Army. Good for us. The victory we win will not be as good as it might be, if it were a different kind of army, but it will be the best kind of victory we can expect in this day and age, and I'm thankful for it."

"What are you going to do?" Louise demanded. "Stay in that silly office, stroking chorus girls on the behind for the whole war?"

Michael gri

"How do you feel about it?" Louise demanded.

"Frightened."

"Why're you so sure it will happen?"

"I don't know," he said. "A premonition. A mystic sense that justice must be done by me and to me. Ever since 1936, ever since Spain, I have felt that one day I would be asked to pay. I ducked it year after year, and every day that sense grew stronger; the payment would be demanded of me, without fail."

"Do you think you've paid yet?"

"A little," Michael gri

"Maybe," Louise said, smiling, in the darkness, "maybe you're not the officer type after all."

"Maybe I'm not," Michael agreed gravely.

"Still," said Louise, "you could at least be a Sergeant."

Michael laughed. "How the times have slid downhill," he said. "Madame Pompadour in Paris gets a Marshal's baton for her favourite. Louise M'Kimber slips into the King's bed for three stripes for her PFC."

"Don't be ugly," Louise said with dignity. "You're not in Hollwood now."

The Canteen of the Allies, for all its imposing name, was merely three small basement rooms decked with dusty bunting, with a long plank nailed on a couple of barrels that did service for a bar. In it, from time to time, you could get venison chops and Scotch salmon and cold beer from a tin washtub that the proprietress kept full of ice in deference to American tastes. The Frenchmen who came there could usually find a bottle of Algerian wine at legal prices. Almost everyone could get credit if he needed it, and a girl whether he needed it or not. Four or five hard-eyed ladies, nearing middle-age, whose husbands all seemed to be serving in Italy in the Eighth Army, ran the place on a haphazard voluntary basis, and it conveniently and illegally served liquor after the closing hour.