Ordinary Heroes Read Online Free PDF

map so I had it going in the right direction, but with a sullen air that made him somewhat unapproachable. When he had picked me up in Cherbourg where I landed, I recognized the sounds of Georgia in his speech, after my time at Fort Benning, but in response to my questions, he said only that his folks had left Georgia several years ago. He remained generally closemouthed about himself, not outwardly insubordinate, but with a sour look tending to indicate he didn't care much for anyone. I sensed that sooner or later we were going to clash.
    One evening, we stopped at the stockade so I could interview my client for the next day's proceedings. Biddy was with me as we entered the doubled-wire perimeter, where three long lines of pup tents were erected in abnormally tight formation. When my client shuffled out of the guardhouse in his ankle irons and manacles, Biddy buried a heavy groan in his chest.
    "Why they always colored?" he asked himself, but loud enough for me to hear. Enough of Georgia seemed to have come North with Bidwell that I preferred not to hear his answer. I gave him a bit of a l ook, at which he stiffened, but he had the good sense to turn away.
    Oddly, Biddy's remark provoked me to ponder his question, albeit from another angle. Given my sympathies for the French families who appeared so often as the victims in our courtrooms, it had not even struck me much at first that many of the soldiers being sentenced to long terms in disciplinary barracks were colored. Yet Biddy was right, at least about the pattern, and the next time I found myself alone with Colonel Maples, I asked why he thought Negroes appeared so frequently among the troops we prosecuted.
    "Negroes?" Maples looked at me sharply. "What in the world are you suggesting, Dubin? There are plenty in the stockade who are white." There surely were. Lots of soldiers had ended up in the Army only because a sentencing judge had given them that option rather than prison. Men who were strong-arm robbers and drug fiends at home did not always change their stripes, even on the battlefield. "Do you doubt these boys are guilty?"
    In most of the cases I handled, the soldiers were sober by the time I saw them and entered abashed guilty pleas. And the crimes with which they were charged were seldom minor. A few days ago, I had been the prosecutor of a colored soldier who literally knocked the door down at a girl's house, when sh e r efused him; he'd had his way with her only after beating both her parents brutally. It puzzled me that the colored troops had generally maintained such good order in England, but were losing discipline on the Continent.
    "They're guilty, sir, no question. But thinking about it, I've found myself wondering, sir, if we're as understanding of the colored troops."
    I did not need to mention any particular incidents, because that week we had evaluated the case of a decorated officer who'd been on the front since D-Day. As he'd watched a line of German prisoners marching past, he'd suddenly raised his carbine and begun shooting, killing three and wounding four others. His sole explanation was, "I didn't like the way they were looking at me." Colonel Maples had decided that we would seek a sentence of only three years.
    "These Negro boys aren't in combat, Dubin, not for the most part. We can't treat them as we do the men who've been through that." I could have pointed out that the colored battalions weren't generally given the option, but I felt I had gone far enough. "It's liquor and women, Dubin," the Colonel added. "You're a smart man to stay clear of liquor and women.) , I could tell my questions had troubled the Colonel, and I wasn't surprised two days later when he called me into his office. It was the former quarters of the school prefect, a room of tall antique cabinets in mellow oak.
    "Listen, Dubin, I don't know how to say this, so I'll just come out with it. About your remarks to me the other day? You'd best be careful with that sort of