ACROSS the RIVER and INTO the TREES by ERNEST HEMINGWAY

“But how did you ever marry one?”

“By mistake as I explained before.”

“Go on and tell me.”

“There were more maps in the room than Our Lord could read on his best day,” the Colonel continued. “There were the Big Picture, the Semi-Big Picture and the Super-Big-Picture. All these people pretended to un­derstand them, as did the boys with the pointers, a sort of half-assed billiard cue that they used for explanation.”

“Don’t say rough words. I don’t know, even, what half-assed means.”

“Shortened, or abbreviated in an inefficient manner,” the Colonel explained. “Or deficient as an instrument, or in character. It’s an old word. You could probably find it in Sanscrit.”

“Please tell me.”

“What for? Why should I perpetuate ignominy just with my mouth?”

“I’ll write it if you want. I can write truly what I hear or think. I would make mistakes of course.”

“You are a lucky girl if you can write truly what you hear or think. But don’t you ever write one word of this.”

He resumed, “The place is full of correspondents dressed according to their taste. Some are cynical and some are extremely eager.

“To ride herd on them, and to wield the pointers, there is a group of pistol-slappers. We call a pistol-slapper a non-fighting man, disguised in uniform, or you might even call it costume, who gets an erection every time the weapon slaps against his thighs. Incidentally, Daughter, the weapon, not the old pistol, the real pistol, has missed more people in combat than probably any weapon in the world. Don’t ever let anyone give you one unless you want to hit people on the head with it in Harry’s Bar.”

“I never wanted to hit anyone; except perhaps An­drea.”

“If you ever hit Andrea, hit him with the barrel; not with the butt. The butt is awfully slow, and it misses and if it lands you get blood on your hands when you put the gun away. Also please do not ever hit Andrea because he is my friend. I do not think he would be easy to hit either.”

“No. I do not think so either. Please tell me some more about the meeting, or the assembly. I think I could recog­nize a pistol slapper now. But I would like to be checked out more thoroughly.”

“Well, the pistol-slappers, in all the pride of their pistol-slappery, were awaiting the arrival of the great General who was to explain the operation.

“The correspondents were muttering, or twittering, and the intelligent ones were glum or passively cheerful. Everybody sat on folding chairs as for a Chautauqua lecture. I’m sorry about these local terms; but we are a local people.

“In comes the General. He is no pistol-slapper, but a big businessman; an excellent politician, the executive type. The Army is the biggest business, at that moment, in the world. He takes the half-assed pointer, and he shows us, with complete conviction, and without fore­bodings, exactly what the attack will be, why we are making it, and how facilely it will succeed. There is no problem.”

“Go on,” the girl said. “Please let me fill your glass and you, please look at the light on the ceiling.”

“Fill it and I’ll look at the light and I will go on.

“This high pressure salesman, and I say this with no disrespect, but with admiration for all his talents, or his talent, also told what we would have of the necessary. There would be no lack of anything. The organization called SHAEF was then based on a town named Ver­sailles outside of Paris. We would attack to the east of Aachen a distance of some 380 kilometers from where they were based.

“An army can get to be huge; but you can close up a little bit. They finally went as far forward as Rheims which was 240 kilometers from the fighting. That was many months later.

“I understand the necessity of the big executive being removed from contact with his working people. I under­stand about the size of the army and the various prob­lems. I even understand logistics which is not difficult. But no one ever commanded from that far back in history.”

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