A week later Clark received his new assignment sending him back to Europe within a month.... Naturally we were very rushed: one just can’t pick up one’s hankies and have a wedding!
There must be disappointments even in paradise. I mean, everything can’t be just sunshine and roses.... All of which is apropos of a letter I received from the Bureau of War-Risk Insurance, informing me that Sergeant Benjamin Garlotz had changed the beneficiary of his compulsory insurance policy on October 20, 1918, and that I was the beneficiary. General Backett was the secondary beneficiary. I didn’t know how to feel about it. The letter came to Leon, of course, and when he passed it over to me, I just had to cry; good old Ben ... must have changed his policy just after that dreadful experience at St. Nazaire and his unexpected promotion. And I thought at the time that he didn’t appreciate the promotion!... The money would go back to France where Ben’s body was. We would give it decent burial ... put a stone above it that would catch the eye of whosoever should pass ... and all who saw it would read there of a hard-boiled guy who had no one at home to mourn his heroic death.... As General Backett said, in telling me about the medal for Ben: “There weren’t enough medals to go round—but he needs no medal to make me proud of him!”
The most wonderful things never happen. It would have been so good to have Ben be our best man after all....
There was a wedding in Wakeham’s largest church. There were ushers in quantity, bridesmaids and flower girls, all the traditional pomp and splendor of a beautiful wedding service ... but there was no best man! My Clark could never in all his life do anything that would make me honor him and love him more than I did because he suggested this fine way of honoring the man who was the best of pals to both of us.... A man that could think of a thing like that and do it was almost too fine to be true. It injected a sad note into what would ordinarily have been a festive occasion and we had to explain it by referring to Ben as a dear friend of Major Winstead’s—but we were both glad that we did it. I mean, a thing like that makes you feel so warm and good—and it made us love each other all the more ... it was as if Ben’s death bound us the closer and faster together. This was not really so odd, since we owed Ben such a lot: he was my friend, faithful and good to me; he was my tutor in the vulgar arts that make life interesting; to him I was indebted for much of a liberal education—an education which was blissfully completed during that honeymoon in the very land and among the very scenes of my adventure.
Back to France on the great adventure, the one and only adventure which a woman can’t have without a man’s assistance!— Back to the theater that had been “for men only”—but now the play was ended, the mask was off, the Canwick tomboy was a blushing bride: for I have to report that I still could blush!
And that is the Tail of the Tale, for since that first night beyond the altar I have conscientiously rendered unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto the Headman all that’s left—for, after all, my prayers were answered. And HOW!
The rest is silence.