On Desperate Ground Read Online Free PDF Page B

worried about.”
    “Aw, Doc, I’m OK,” Mack protested. “Just a little shook up from the Bulge. Everyone gets a little nervous in the service now and then. There’s nothing wrong with me that my Mom’s cooking won’t cure.”
    Doc looked at him with a frown. He threw down the chart and pulled a chair up to Mack’s bed.  
    “Captain, I’m going to give it to you straight. You’re not going home, not right now.”
    There was silence. Mack struggled to respond to what he had just been told. He worked his mouth but nothing came out. It was like he had been punched in the gut.
    “Wait a minute, Doc,” Mack finally gasped, grabbing the other man’s arm and raising his voice. “I’ve been hung out and wrung dry a dozen times in this war. I’ve been getting the shit end of the stick since I left the States in ’42, and it’s gotta stop! It’s gotta stop! Any luck I ever had, I left back in the Adrennes. I got nothing left, you understand?”
    “Now son, every guy thinks he’s special. Remember, lots of boys have been over here that long. And they’re not on SHAEF headquarters staff either,” Doc said with a reprimanding look at Mack. “I’m sure staff officers there all have some vital role to play, although in your case I can’t figure out what that might be. What is your job at SHAEF, if you can tell me?”
    Mack let go of Doc’s arm and wearily sank his head back onto his pillow.  
    “I was an investigator for the The Bronx District Attorney before the war. I was going to study law, but my old man thought a few years in the trenches with the DA would be good for me. I’d been at it three years when I joined the army a few months before Pearl Harbor. I figured there was going to be a war sooner or later, and it would be smart to get in uniform one step ahead of a million other guys. I wanted to work for the Judge Advocate General’s Office in Washington, to stay in the game, you know. Good place to make connections, my old man said. Instead, they sent me to North Africa with General Eisenhower. I haven’t seen the inside of a courtroom since.”  
    He discreetly left out the fact that his “old man” was a federal judge who had called in some political favors to insure a position with the JAG office in Washington. All that had changed when the General was sent to take command in the Mediterranean in 1942.
      “So you lucked out and got a desk job with Ike,” Doc said. “That doesn’t tell me why you think you deserve a ticket home.”
    “I thought it was going to be a desk job, as an Intelligence Officer. Turned out Ike wanted a more hands-on approach.”
    “You mean at the front?” Doc said, his eyebrows raised in disbelief.  
    “Yep,” answered Mack. “I do work in the G-2 section, but not as an intelligence analyst. My boss calls it the Verification Desk.”
    “Get to the point, Mack.”
    “Ike wanted someone under his direct control to report back on what was going on whenever he thought he needed some inside dope. Sometimes he thought he was getting snookered by the brass and wanted someone to take a quiet look-see. Sometimes verifying intelligence dope at the front, without letting the division or corps G2 staff know we were checking up on them. A little behind the lines action when needed. And some other stuff I’m not supposed to talk about.”
    “Which is why he wanted someone trained as an investigator, and grabbed you from JAG.”
    “That’s my guess. He told me I didn’t have to do any of this, that it was on a volunteer basis. But every time I tried to say no, he would start talking and then I’d find myself with his arm around my shoulder, walking me out of the office, smiling, thanking me, and telling me I’d make a great lawyer someday.”  
    “He sounds persuasive.”
      “When Ike starts in on you, you think everything he says makes perfect sense. You want to be part of the team. You want to help out. Then when you’re out in the hallway and his door