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other end and at the signal man, whenever the sound faded.
    "Tell him that I have two battalions down to one ration a day. No, damn it. Two battalions, one ration. One ration. An army moves on its stomach. Ask him if he's heard that one. If the Nazis kill these boys it's one thing, but I'll be damned before I see their country starve them to death." I'd heard that the frontline troops were often hungry. In the officers' mess in Nancy, food was plentiful--canned goods, pastries with honey, tea, Nescafe. Midday meals were often huge. The meat and poultry, requisitioned from the locals, swam in heavy gravies.
    Teedle handed the phone roughly to the signal man and dismissed him, then plunged to his seat, looking unhappily at the papers stacked on his desk.
    He had yet to remove his helmet. The General barked suddenly at Bonner.
    "Are you telling me that Halley Maples sent that pup to deal with Martin?" As far as I had noticed, Teedle hadn't even looked at me.
    Bonner turned my way and said with his subversive smile, "The General will see you now ."
    When I'd first heard Teedle's name, I had expected some round little fellow who'd look at home in a Technicolor musical movie like The Wizard of Oz. But the General gave every impression of being a soldier, the kind who would have been happy to be referred to as a rough-and-ready son of a bitch. Teedle was a big red-faced man, with a chest as round as a cock robin's, . A nd tiny pale eyes set off starkly within lids that appeared to have been rubbed raw, probably from exhaustion or perhaps an allergic condition, or even, I suppose, tears.
    In front of the General's desk I came to attention again, gave name, rank, and unit, and explained that with his permission, I would like to take a statement from him, in connection with the Rule 35 regarding Martin. Teedle studied me throughout.
    "Where'd you go to college, Dubin?"
    "Easton."
    "Uh-huh. I'm from Kansas. None of those fancy-ass schools in Kansas. How about law school?"
    "Easton. If I may, General, I went on scholarship, sir."
    "Oh, I see. A smart guy. Is that what you're telling me?"
    Not to suggest that, sir."
    "Well, if you gad about telling everybody you meet first thing how bright you are, you're not very smart at all, are you, Lieutenant?"
    I didn't answer. He had me pinned and that was the point anyway. Teedle was plainly another of those commanders who wanted his troops to know he was the match of any of them. He took a second to set his helmet on his desk. His hair, what little was left of it, was somewhere between red and blond, and stood up on his head like stray wires. He'd found his canteen and screwed off the cap. Even at a distance of six feet, I could smell the whiskey. He took a good solid slug.
    "All right, so what do I need to tell you about Martin?"
    "As much as you can, sir."
    "Oh, I won't do that. You'll start thinking Martin's a wonderful fellow. You're likely to think he's a wonderful fellow anyway. I'll tell you something right now, Dubin. You're going to like Robert Martin a good deal better than you like me. He's charming, a sweet talker. And brave. Martin may be the bravest son of a bitch in the European theater. You seen combat, Dubin?"
    "No, sir. I'd like to."
    "Is that so?" He smirked and pointedly lowere d h is line of sight to the JAG Department insignia on the collar of my tunic. "Well, if you ever find yourself in the middle of a battlefield, Lieutenant, what you'll see around you is a bunch of fellows scared shitless, as they should be, and one or two sons of bitches jumping up and down and acting as if the bullets can't touch them. They get hit sooner or later, believe me, but it takes a hell of a lot longer than you'd think. Martin's one of those. Thinks he's invincible. I don't like that either. A soldier who's not afraid to die is a danger to everybody."
    "Is that the problem, sir? The root of it?"
    "Hardly. The problem, if you want to call it that, is that the fucking son of a bitch won't follow