586
LEO E. LITWAK
Jason invited me to join their otherwordly retreat at head–
quarters. He had pull. I, too, could become a clerk. They had a
cozy thing going. They had each other during the day. They had
their own bedroom in the HQ barracks. To Jason, the war was a
holding operation, an intermission between his junior and senior years
at Harvard.
I'd invested too much in the war to settle for anything less than
combat. I'd so often fantasied my ordeal that to stop now, before
anything was proved, would have left me dreamy.
I kept my eye on Witty. He, too, flaunted being a college boy
but somehow he didn't antagonize. He led the current events discus–
sion in our Information and Education classes. He rallied us against
the traitor, John
L.
Lewis. Those goldbrick miners were striking for
a larger share of the pie while we were stuck in the army getting
sixty-five a month. Those slackers were making hay with the girls.
That was how Witty, the college boy, saw current events. He lived in
Grosse Pointe, Michigan, a fancy place. His father was a big-shot
Detroit surgeon. Witty had never worked a day in his life. About
women he was very collegiate, copping feels at USO dances. And
yet he lectured these red-necks and slum kids about what a rotten
deal it was to be deprived the earnings of sweaty labor and other
men's wives. He took the words right out of Dewey Carrol's mouth.
Dewey Carrol accepted the word of the nobleman. He didn't give any
credit to frauds, though, and he clearly spotted me as a fraud.
"You sure do talk, don't you, boy?"
That shrewd peasant. He understood that my gabbiness disguised
a lack of grace.
I saw Witty at a USO dance go straight for a hostess who was
officer material. He took charge, a confident dancer. He made her
dip with him. He swung her out and back. He ended by forcing her
arms behind, locking her hands, so that her breasts were shoved
against him. He was polished in everything he tried, in contrast to me
who couldn't hit a man, shoot a man, bandage or innoculate a man.
I was afraid to touch. I knew that I could endure being hit. I didn't
want to make the first move though.
Dewey Carrol went to Charleston once a month. "To get my
gun off," he explained. That was the medicine Dewey prescribed for
growing boys. He took Witty with him one weekend. On their return
