The General looked over the administration of the organization at Bourges and kept me busy for two days making out a detailed report of the place, giving reams and reams of statistics on every conceivable detail of the American establishment there. I was afraid the General was so full of regulations and knowledge of how organizations should function that my life from now on was going to be very hectic indeed. A couple of reports like this one and I’d be bleary.
We traveled in a big touring car. I had a field desk and a portable typewriter that wasn’t worth two whoops, and which I didn’t use unless I couldn’t find a better one wherever we happened to be. Chilblaines was the boss’s errand boy and Getterlow drove. I guess the General kept Chilblaines with him for the latter’s protection: the lieutenant’s father or mother or uncle or somebody was a close friend of the General’s and I guess he figured the best turn he could do Chilblaines was to keep him away from any outfit that might go near the Front: Chilblaines wouldn’t last a week up there. Someone would let the sky fall on him, probably.
I saved Getterlow from the consequences of his sins several times, just to avoid a scene. I hated to see a fellow get bawled out. But he was getting worse. He got drunk every time we stopped and he thought every mademoiselle in France had been waiting for him to arrive. The end was near.
The General discussed the possibility of getting rid of Getterlow. I wrote to Ben, but didn’t hear from him, so didn’t know where I’d find him when the time came.
—10—
We were in Tours five days but I was too tired to do anything but work with the General. We had a busy trip from Dijon on, jumping all over this section of France, visiting aviation fields, all kinds of training schools, hospitals, ordnance depots, quartermaster depots, motor transport parks, and God only knows what else. We were in all kinds of crazy places, including Cosne, Issoudun, Romorantin, Orléans and Blois, and now we were back in the headquarters of the S.O.S.
Found two letters here. One from Ben informed me that they finally threw him out of the infirmary and put him in a Casuals company. I’d have to move fast now or he’d be getting sent up to some replacement outfit, and once a man got up in that neck of the woods it took a lot of officerial influence to get him out.
I also had a letter from Jay-Jay, which gave me something to think about. He said he was asked by Aunt Elinor to look me up and see how I was getting along. Said he hadn’t heard from my sister for months—“Do you know where she is now?” Wanted me to let him know if I ever got near Paris or Tours or Chaumont, because he was still in the entertainment business and those were the centers of activity. Said he’d be glad to see me any time I could get away.
Let us laugh! Wasn’t he condescending! A sweet chance he had of getting a letter from this soldier! Why, he’d know my writing at once.
I suppose he had written to me at home and wondered why I hadn’t answered. But Aunt Elinor hadn’t said anything about a letter from him. Well, anyway, he needn’t think he could make me put my foot in it: I would write a letter to him and send it to Aunt Elinor to remail. That’d take over a month but it would throw him off the track. I’d make the letter very general and if the censor took the trouble to look at it he’d think it was a letter I’d received from a girl in the States. That for you, Mr. Wise Guy!