Chapter One Thousand Three Hundred Ninety-Seven
31st August 1960
West Point, New York
“George is in California these days” Bradley said, “When he was put out to pasture, they sent him to the Veterans Home in a place called Yountville in the Napa Valley. He can talk about marching with the Roman Legions to his heart’s content out there and not only won’t he annoy anyone, he might actually finally find a receptive audience.”
Omar Bradley was talking about a man who had been his superior and subordinate at different times in his long career and then finally his predecessor as the Superintendent of West Point, George Patton. There was some debate about if the retired General was brilliant and eccentric or just plain nuts. His belief that he had be reincarnated again and again in order to fight in all the great wars throughout history. Needless to say, some of the things that he had said over the years had proven controversial and Patton’s stubborn nature wouldn’t allow him to admit that he had gotten anything wrong in his public pronouncements. It was hardly a surprise that the Policy Makers in Washington D.C. would want him as far away as possible.
Bradley himself could have retired a few years earlier, but he had accepted this appointment as a chance to finish his career in the same place where he had started it decades earlier. When he had learned that Emil was planning on traveling around the world, Bradley had invited Emil to visit West Point. However, Emil got the impression that Bradley had never thought that he would accept it and Zella was a wrinkle that few could have anticipated. The problem was that only Emil knew what she was doing, and he really wished that she would cut it out already.
“That seems harmless enough” Emil replied, “Though it is bit of a shame, Horst said that he and Sjostedt encountered Patton in France just after the Battle of Ussy. Hiding in a ruined building. They didn’t have time to take him prisoner, so they told him to wait till dark and follow the river back to where your Army held a crossing.”
“It’s hardly a surprise that George never told that story. Still, he and Walter Horst sharing the same air?” Bradley remarked, “Those two monstrous egos in one spot, I’m surprised that there wasn’t a massive explosion along the lines of the Mont-Blanc.”
That had been a relatively small incident, overshadowed by the conclusion of the war just a few weeks earlier, but it had loomed large in the history of Saint-Nazaire. The SS Mont-Blanc sitting in the harbor during the winter of 1917, her hold stuffed with explosives that the French Government had forgotten about because the war had ended. No one had ever been able to figure out the cause, but the ship had exploded while tied up to the pier and it had taken a substantial portion of the city out with it in the largest manmade explosion up to that point. It was just one more calamity in France during those years.
“Fortunate for them, Horst had Sjostedt with him” Emil said, “Blessed are the peacemakers and all that.”
“Just who is this Sjostedt?” Bradley asked.
“He was a Feldwebel, er… Sergeant back then” Emil replied, “These days he’s a Bishop in the Lutheran Church.”
Bradley found that amusing. Emil’s eyes darted to Zella to see what she was doing.
There were times when Emil was reminded that while Zella was his daughter, she had every bit of Maria’s intelligence. She didn’t really want to be here and the Cadets that attended West Point were as a whole, simple not the sort of men she was interested in. Sure, she was acting the role of the perfectly respectable Lady visiting the Military Academy. She was also feigning an inability to speak English so that she wouldn’t have to engage in conversation with any of them. And those who attempted to speak to her in German got an abrupt lesson in the Berliner dialect that anyone who had never lived in that city would find difficult to understand. Zella had maintained only a vague smile on her face for the entire meal, but Emil knew that she was laughing inside at the looks of frustration that were evident on the faces of the young men
“Your daughter will be fine” Bradley said, “Those boys understand what you will do to them if they are not perfect gentlemen. With me helping out, of course.”
“That isn’t the problem” Emil said, “I know that Zella can take care of herself. It’s just that she is having a great deal of fun at their expense.”
Bradley looked at what was happening and looked back with a quizzical look on his face.
“I don’t see it” Bradley said, “Sure, there is a bit of a language barrier, but that is what happens when you have guests from foreign countries.”
“Zella spent the first four years of her life in Australia and has traveled widely in the years since” Emil replied, “She probably speaks English better than they do and she is pretending not to because she doesn’t want to talk to them.”
Bradley found that hilarious. “Then those boys are going to be getting a bigger lesson out of this then they ever imagined.”
“Excuse me?” Emil asked.
“It’s the stupid arrogance that I’ve been trying to beat out of them” Bradley said, “The idea that people from other countries might have their own agenda never seems to enter their thinking. With that bunch, learning the hard way that a pretty girl doesn’t consider them to be the cat’s meow is a harmless way for them to learn it.”
That was certainly one way to look at it.
