“Why didn’t you ever let on who you really were?” Tony asked.
“Well—several reasons,” Dick said. “As I told you, I’m not concerned with singing now, but fighting. I’m Dick Donnelly. And then if they knew who I was, I’d always be asked to be singing here and there, at shows and camps and such. Then like as not I’d find myself transferred to some morale-building branch of the service just going around building soldiers’ morale by singing operatic arias. And I’d get no fighting done at all. I got into this war to fight. I want to stamp out all the rotten government I saw in Italy when I was there—and its even worse versions in Germany and Japan—and everywhere.”
“I see,” Tony Avella replied. “I feel pretty much the same way, not thinking about anything but this job we’ve got to do. So I won’t go spouting around that you’re Ricardo Donnelli, the great singer. But if we’re ever alone out in the hills at night, will you sing Celeste Aïda some time?”
“I sure will, Tony,” Dick answered with a warm smile. “If I can still sing.”
“I’ll keep my trap shut, too,” Max said. “If you want to be just Sergeant Dick Donnelly, then you can be it. You see, I had an uncle and aunt in Germany that I loved a lot. They didn’t like Hitler and they said so. They were that kind. And they’re dead now—died in stinking concentration camps. So I’m not thinking much about anything, either, until I get even for them. It’s going to take a lot of dead Nazis to make up for Uncle Max and Aunt Elsa.”
“For a bunch of guys who say they want to fight so much,” Dick laughed, “we seem to be taking it pretty easy, sitting here in the shade on a nice afternoon.”
“I Want to Stamp Out the Rotten Government.”