“Sit!” Douglass said, and walked to his bed and pulled a clean T-shirt over his head.
“Who do you recommend to assume command of your squadron. Major Delaney?” Douglass asked.
“Sir?” ;
“By the authority vested in me by Eighth Air Force, you have been ap- i pointed executive officer of the 344the Fighter Group, “Douglass said.
“The job carries with it a gold leaf.” I “I’m sorry about Major Till, Sir,” Delaney said.
“Yeah,” Douglass said.
“I asked you a question, Major.” ‘, “I’m not sure I can handle it, Colonel,” Delaney said.
“I made that decision,” Douglass said. He had his undershorts on by then and was in the process of working his feet into half “Wellington boots. When he had them on, he walked to the desk and unscrewed the cap on the imperial quart of Scotch.
“Till, you unlucky bastard,” he said, holding the bottle up.
“I hope you went quick.”
He handed the bottle to Delaney.
Delaney wiped the neck on his blouse jacket and took a swig.
“Maybe he was dead before he went in,” Delaney said.
“Needham followed him down, and he said he never got the canopy open.”
“I just wrote his family that his ship blew up,” Douglass said.
“One of the things a field grade officer must know. Major Delaney, is when to lie.”
Delaney looked at him and nodded, but said nothing.
“I will be gone for the next twenty-four to thirty-six hours,” Douglass said.
“You will tell whatever lie you think you can get away with if there are inquiries as to my whereabouts. I’m going to leave a number where I can be reached. You will use it only if necessary, and you are to give it to no one.”
“May I ask, Sir, where you will be?”
“Repeating the caveat that you are to tell no one, I will be at Whithey House in Kent. It’s where the OSS hangs out.”
There was relief in the way he said that, and on his face. The moral sonofabitch was afraid that I was going to tell him that I was going to be shacked up somewhere.
“It takes me about an hour and a half to get back here from there,” Douglass said.
“In case I am needed. I will not be needed to fly. I have checked the weather, and nobody will be flying.”
“If you keep up that ‘yes, Sir’ crap,” Douglass said, “you will almost, but not quite, succeed in making me feel guilty for leaving my new executive officer in charge.”
Delaney gave him a hesitant smile.
“Am I allowed to ask what you’ll be doing with the OSS?”
“I am going to get drunk, Major Delaney,” Douglass said.
“I do that sometimes when something like Dave Till happens. It ill behooves a commanding officer to get shit-faced somewhere where his subordinates can see him in that condition.”
“You will personally see to Till’s personal effects,” Douglass said.
“Collect them, go through them to make sure there are no dirty pictures, love letters,
or anything else that might suggest he was a healthy young male. Make an inventory of what’s left, and leave it on my desk.”
“How are you fixed for money?”
“Sir?”
“You have been promoted, Major,” Douglass said.
“It is a hoary tradition of the service that you have a promotion party.”
“I have money, Sir,” Delaney said.
“But thank you.”
“In this case,” Douglass explained, “your party will also serve to keep our young warriors on the base tonight. You will lie again. You will tell them that just before the colonel left for High Wycombe and the headquarters of the Eighth Air Force, he left word that twenty-four-hour passes for pilots are authorized as of–and not before–0400 tomorrow. It has been my experience that if I turn them loose after a mission like the one we flew today, they tend to behave in a manner unbefitting officers and gentlemen. And as you are about to find out, there is a good deal of paperwork involved when one of our young heroes punches out an English cop, or steals a taxicab.”
“I understand, Sir,” Delaney said.
“You do, Jack, you really do. That’s why I gave you the job.”