FATE IS FLUENT IN IRONY

 

Captain Richard Blaine and Sgt. Theo Savalas have narrowly escaped a firing squad only to be given a suicide mission.

Now, what does New Year's Eve, 1944, have in store for them?

FATE IS FLUENT IN IRONY

“Sometimes you lose a battle. But mischief always wins the war.”

- Ulysses

 

General Bradley fixed me with an eagle’s glare. “You’re Army. How did you come to be trained to operate a midget submarine?”

Again, Sentient was silent so, I gave what seemed to be a reasonable explanation. “There were orders.”

“Oh, so those orders you followed?”

“They got me away from Major Laska and that was more than enough incentive for me.”

“I can believe that,” the general snorted.

As if sensing that I was winging it with my answers, he asked, “Are you telling me the truth?”

I was getting weary of Sentient leaving me to fend off questions whose answers only She could know. “Adolph Hitler wrote that the victor will never be asked if he told the truth.”

Bradley looked taken aback. “You read the writings of Hitler?”

I shrugged. “Sun Tzu wrote ‘knowing your enemy is the first step in defeating him’.”

“I forgot. According to that MI6 report, you taught for a year at West Point.”

Now, it was me that was taken aback, I tried for a blank face and drawled, “I sometimes forget that myself.”

Sentient mocked inside my mind, ‘Records are so easily forged in your primitive society. I needed an explanation for your rank and for your fluency in German, Russian, French, and Japanese.’

Bradley shook his head. “With your credentials, why aren’t you still teaching there?”

Sgt. Savalas snorted, “He probably had the same winning way with his superiors there that he has with Major Laska here.”

Bradley fixed him with a hard look and the sergeant cleared his throat and added, “Ah, sir.”

The general tapped a folder on his leg absently. “Well, your superiors and instructors in the Navy were quite taken with you, Major Blaine.”

“Ah, that’s Captain, sir,” I said confused.

“No, Major Blaine. I said what I intended. Battlefield promotion is within my discretion. I want to see the look on Laska’s face when I tell him of your new rank.”

He growled low, “Presume to order me, will he?”

Bradley turned to Savalas. “And you are promoted to Sergeant Major.”

Now, it was Savalas’ turn to be shocked … and with good reason: Sergeants Major made up less than 1% of the Army and generally consisted of the most experienced leaders in the enlisted corps. There were nine enlisted ranks in the Army, and you must be selected over your peers across the entire Army through comprehensive promotion panels to reach this prestigious rank.

Bradley gruffed, “These stars of mine do come with some privileges along with the migraines. If I say you are a Sergeant-Major, Savalas, then, by God, you are one. Let Laska chew on that and choke.”

I thought that Bradley promoted the man to Sergeant-Major instead of First Sergeant because the “Major” to the rank would be a mockery of Laska’s own  … and would gall the man to call Savalas by his new rank.

He turned to me and said softly, “I’m just sorry that I can’t retrieve the letters from that girl of yours that Laska has confiscated.”

“W-What? Helen, ah, Miss Mayfair has been writing me?”

Bradley nodded sadly. “Without fail. Mails them every Wednesday according to agent Cloverfield’s MI6 report.”

I felt the blood drain from my face. “The day of the week we first met.”

Sgt. Savalas looked odd. “I never knew you had a girl.”

“Thanks to Major Laska neither did I until just now.”

Bradley sighed. “Cloverfield managed to get a peek at one her letters. I think that gal of yours has a bad memory.”

He brought up the paper he’d been tapping against his leg.  “Where was that paragraph? Oh, here: “Your hair seems all colors, a grove of trees in autumn, deep brown, and wine-red.”

Bradley chucked softly, ”An untrimmed tangle across the top of your head. Your cheeks pale without being anemic. Full lips eternally in an amused smile at some jest only you hear. You look like a friend; like someone you have known all your life.”

He shook his head bemused. “You look like Jimmy Stewart to me.”

Sgt. Savalas said, ’The Captain looks like Tyrone Powers to me right now.”

He ran long fingers over his bald head. “Funny thing. No one can seem to remember what his face looks like after he leaves them.”

Bradley snorted, “This girl of his seems to.”

Savalas’ face flinched as if slapped as he murmured, “Maybe only true love remembers.”

The gut-sick look to his face suggested his love had proven not so true. Or maybe there were holes in his life in the shapes of a sweetheart or a friend who gave a damn which had never been filled.

Bradley shook his head. “Now, look what you two have done. You’ve made me hope you come back alive.”

He sighed, “Well, Major Blaine, do you have one last quote for me before I send you both off to your deaths?”

Sentient, of course, was silent, so once again I had to wing it.

It was a good thing I had spent so much time with a lovely librarian. “War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that the enemy too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.”

Sgt. Savalas scoffed, “Who the hell said that?”

“Karl Kraus, an Austrian writer, journalist, and poet. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature three times.”

Bradley looked over our heads into the distance, seemingly seeing things I did not want to know but figured I soon would. “He should have won. He was right.”