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  Black Bear Blues

  A Memoir of the Endless War

  Volume 2

  Stephen Wishnevsky

  Copyright

  Stephen Wishnevsky

  3-7-17

  All Rights Reserved

  And in the morning, it was indeed a whole new world. The tanks and pursuits had been refueled and restocked with ammunition, while the crews snatched a few hours of rest. We did the same. It had been about three or four days of crap in one day. I had lost count of how many times I had almost been killed. The air and armor roared out to eradicate the Germans and their tribal allies at first light, while we slug-a-bedded for a few more precious hours.

  Yelena had me lug the fruits of her salvage to the Officer’s Mess, I shuttled food and coffee to her while she translated the papers we had looted from the Hauptmann’s staff car. After my belly was full, I dragged my battered ass over to HQ and availed myself of a Royal portable, a ream of bond, carbons, and started typing her notes into a coherent narrative. My butt was still tender from the second or third time I had nearly gotten killed yesterday, my trousers had been nearly burned off my fat ass when I crashed my Curtiss. Adventure gets boring after a while.

  Painful, but better than cleaning up the mess we had left outside the gates of Jiu-quan, that was sure. A few thousand wrecked and burned trucks, ten or twenty times that number of dead enemies was a job best left to the troops and the coolies. Rank hath its little privileges. And if you don’t use them, they go away.

  The main story was clear and somewhat reassuring. The south hook, the attack through the Gobi we had feared so long, had turned out to have been a last-ditch desperation move. They had not been attacking us as much as they had been fleeing the Persians. Reza Khan, who had been Prime Minister of Iran and the former general of the Persian Cossack Brigade, had just became the new Shah, united the Khurds, the Assyrians, the Persian patriots, and some of the other hill tribes. Reza had expelled the Germans and their allied tribes, and seized the ports. The merchant and Navy Brits had been able to flee by sea to India and Egypt, but the inland Germans had nowhere to go except through our forces in Jiu-quan, the end point of the Great Wall. They had to reach Irkutsk, and the Trans-Siberian Railroad, link up with Goering’s Regular Army thrust from Novosibirsk, and conquer the American Expeditionary Force Siberia, the Polar Bears. All at the same time. They hadn’t made it. Stilwell had seen to that. He might be salty, irreverent, and unable to suffer fools under any conditions, but he got the job done.

  Stilwell’s thrown-together division, the 33rd, and Amelia Earhart’s aviators had stopped them in their tracks. The mopping up would be brutal and best not witnessed, but that was not our problem. I guessed that the local Uyghurs could be counted on for that little chore, all we had to do was to make a report. By dinner time. Piece of cake.

  Speaking of which, I lumbered up to the bar and promoted more coffee and a whole pound cake. I needed to restore my tissues. My brain and heart was another matter. I had watched my wife die, crashed a plane, fought off an attack, two attacks, and helped sort through a shit-pile of dead bodies looking for intelligence. That’s what I needed. Intelligence. If I had any, maybe that would help be not get into disasters like this one.

  I also seemed to have given up drinking. Or given up getting drunk. A tiny little part of my soul told me I needed to sit somewhere quietly for quite a long time, and slowly recuperate, but the rest of it said, “Fuck that shit, Cabbage Head, there is a war on.” Majority rules.

  >>>>>>>>>>

  Yelena finished, without a flourish or comment. She handed me the last page of notes, neatly jogged the German papers into order, sipped cold coffee and asked me, “Miles, how do you feel?”

  “I… I don’t even know what to tell you. I’m tired. My ass is still raw and tender. I feel tired. And hungry. I need some real food. Let’s hand in these papers, and try to get something solid to eat, before they think up some more fuck-ups for us to fix.”

  “What about Maeve?”

  My wife. “She’s dead.”

  She scowled at me. “I know that. What about her… her body?”

  “We could never find it, even if there was enough left to identify. The plane burned. It had a full tank of gas. I don’t even know where we were. Someplace on the other side of Karamay. All that desert looks the same to me.”

  “So?” She poised an eyebrow, enough to make weak men quail. I could give a shit. A part of me had burned in the desert with Maeve. It didn’t hurt, there was nothing left to hurt with.

  “So, we hand in the report, and see what Stilwell wants us to do. Then we do it. Or die trying.” What else?

  “You remember what I offered you?”

  “That… Partnership deal?”

  “Yes.” She cocked her head, I was taken with how beautiful she was, even disheveled, filthy, charred around the edges, and smelling of dead meat. Half Malay prince and half Russian aristocrat. Not many people like that. Was I lucky, or even more doomed? What difference did it make? Apply cliché salve here. “In for a penny, in for a pound” is a good one. “We join forces, and we try to get someplace safe, someplace away from war.”

  “You know where that might be, Isis?” That was the first name I knew her by, a nom de guerre.

  “No. South America perhaps?” She ventured.

  Nothing doing. “Constant revolutions and the Mexican War are going to inflame that whole continent.”

  “Then where?”

  Good question. No answer from me. “I guess, we will just have to build a place like that. No matter how many motherfuckers we have to kill.”

  “A plan. Let’s eat.” I offered her my hand, she took it. Some sort of a ritual. I hoped I didn’t lose this one. This one was special. Now, if I knew that I actually liked her…

  >>>>>>>>>

  Stilwell had his staff writing, dictating to clerks, as we presented our contribution. He skinned it rapidly, handed it to a senior clerk, said, “Five carbons.” He glowered at us. “You two are out of uniform. Understandable, but intolerable. Get kitted out, cleaned up, and be ready to go first thing in the morning. First thing.”

  “Sir. Both of us? Where?”

  “Of course both of you, you are going back to Dalny. Hodges needs you. We can’t spare a plane, you will have to draw a staff car, drive. The roads are good; you can do it in three days. Any questions?”

  I volunteered information. I wanted to not be here anymore. “We actually have a car. Most of a car. That Hauptmann’s LaSalle. It needs a windshield, a good checking over. But it runs good enough.”

  “Done.” He pointed to get an aide’s attention. “Saxby, take care of these officers’ needs. Now.”

  We said, “Yes, sir,” and ran for cover. The LaSalle had been a very nice car, I had a rough half hour, but had done better than most of its companions. The Roof was gone, where we hacked it off with axes to get the dead people out, it needed a front seat too, from where the driver had leaked all over it, but trivial details. Halfway through instructing the motor pool sergeant, I started to get the shakes, teeth chattering so bad I could barely make words. I told them it was hunger and fatigue, but I lied. It was relief. I would not have to fight again tomorrow. I would not have to fly an airplane. I might live all day with only car crashes, bandits, disease, and pissing off Isis to worry about. A vacation.

  Isis dragged me by the ear to the BOQ, they didn’t have showers, water was scarce out here, but they did have a tin bucket of warm water to sluice off in. And a Chinese tailor. The best kind, I knew I would have uniforms in the morning. With that accomplished, my butt greased, and a couple of meals under my belt, it was time to fall out, before I hurt myself. Once inside her quarters she faced me, eye to eye, and laid down
the rules. “You don’t have to fuck me, I don’t have to fuck you, but neither of us fucks anybody else, correct?”

  “What if I hire a whore?”

  “No. You fall in love with them. You are a male idiot.” She said, with some force.

  “Yeah, you have a point. You going to count women on your score board, or just men?”

  “For you?”

  “No, of course not. I mean for you?”

  That made her look me over shrewdly. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because a lot of the women out here are lesbians. I noticed you looking over Justine, a few times. I don’t really care, I’m just curious.”

  “You want to watch? Some men do.”

  “No thanks.” I noticed she did not answer my question. Never mind. Take the cash and let the credit go. In God, we trust, all others, cash on the barrelhead. Words to live by.

  >>>>>>>>

  We slept in separate beds. Her on a Japanese-style mat, me on a dusty old divan that was almost but not quite big enough. No matter. She was up an hour before I was, packing her belongings, which were mostly weapons. I still had the Luger and a Tommy gun I had picked up yesterday, and I had a couple more pairs of socks. Well-equipped for a war zone. Have to do.

  We drew rations, extra canteens, put on our new uniforms, and checked out our vehicle. The windshield was a foot too wide, there was no roof, but they had strapped extra jerry cans of water and gas to the running boards. We fired it up, ran past her place to get more blankets, deserts are cold at night, and off we went. All she said was, “If you kissed me, we could pretend this was a honeymoon.”

  I just looked at her. No words. I pointed east, she pressed down on the throttle, off we went. What was there to say?

  We had no chance of getting lost, our problem was not getting run down by the avalanche of trucks and tanks headed west. All sorts of flags, Nationalist, Red People’s Army, even some Indian and Burmese colors. Your Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere in action. You could occasionally see flights of pursuit planes through the dust overhead. Everything headed west. Big trouble. But not for me.

  It was late August, as hot as it was going to get, air full of dust and exhaust, not any part of a pleasure jaunt. Two fourteen-hour days got us eight hundred miles east, and out of the desert. Once out of the dust cloud, we could see to drive, the headlights actually did some good. We roared through the fertile belt, swapping off driving, stopping only for gas and coffee and beans, bypassed Peking at night, saw nothing but headlights and more dust, taking six hour shifts, trying to snatch a few hours of sleep in the back seat. Normally, it would have been torture, but compared to the last few months, it was a vacation. Nobody shot at us.

  We made it to the port of Qinang-dao at the ass-crack of dawn, there was a ferry, we passed out so thoroughly, sitting in the LaSalle, that they had to shake us to wake us. We putted to the Recon Office, snarled hello at Browning and Peaches, and made it to my bed before noon. Our bed.

  Somehow I woke up with her astraddle of me, faint light through the drawn curtains hinting at her beauty. I didn’t speak. I knew it had been coming, regardless of her words and my good intentions, women just have to put their smell on you, mark their territory. Like cats. Go with the flow. Fuck it, so to speak, there is a war on. Morality is a frail reed when you average getting nearly killed once a day, minimum.

  I was somehow reluctant to give her more than she wanted, willing to let her set the limits. What was more important to me was hot showers and Su-mi’s version of American food. I needed to get back to work too, as if to erase my stupidity of insisting on going out to the front with Maeve. Would it have hurt less if I had not seen her die? I had no way of telling. But, here, I could do something worthwhile, leave the adventures to the young and stupid. I supposed, in some corner of my mind, that I realized I was in shock, but that trauma would have to line up behind all the others and take a ticket to be served. Get your program, you can’t tell your traumas without a program.

  Downstairs, a few people tried to express sympathy about Maeve, but I just growled at them. Most of them had some idea that Isis was no one to be messed with, so they didn’t. Smart people. Peaches and Lupo and Frank were on the job, but it seemed that we were the big story, world-wide. It was expressed as a great victory over a superior German force, and I didn’t feel the need to correct that impression. I called up Ray Reynolds, gave him the real scoop, I had a copy of the gleanings from the German’s papers, had somebody copy that and sent the original to Hodges, with copies for our files and the Bulletin. Then I rattled off a report of what I had actually seen, sent that off too. Back in the saddle. Just doing my job.

  Speaking of which. That captain, William Doyle, who had been the USAS historian, up in Verkhneudinsk, on The Line, was standing around looking like a man who needed something to do, or else needed a drink. Or both. I had requisitioned him for a researcher, then ran away to the war zone before he got here to Dalny. “Bill, you need a job?”

  “I was wondering when you would notice.”

  “Yeah, sorry. War on. I need a report on Persia, and another on the other historical routes of the Silk Road. Tributaries and such… You know. If Germans are blocked out of Persia, what is their next best way to outflank the Line?”

  “I can do that. The easy way is southeast from Omsk, down to Urum-qi, but they still have to get through the Wall, and that’s not going to be all that easy. The Imperial Chinese were really good at what they did.”

  “Write it down, with references, maps if you can get them. I’m sure Bradley knows all that, but still…”

  “For our own reference. I understand.” He looked sharply at me. “Rough out there?”

  “Rougher on the krauts and the tribesmen.”

  “A festering plague on both their houses.” He didn’t spit on the floor; he was a gentleman. But I could tell he wanted to.

  “Amen, brother Doyle, amen.”

  >>>>>>>>>>

  The war in Mexico was still a stalemate, as best we could tell, both sides victoriously advancing to nowhere in particular at top speed. Europe was shut down, as was England, with a very suspicious lack of news from Ireland. Genocide of what few Micks were left was the best bet. Denmark was gone, but Sweden and Norway were broadcasting a little news. There was yet another Finnish war, or maybe the old one never stopped, the Finns had taken advantage of the Russian chaos to declare independence, and the Germans had not completely stifled them yet. We had had troops in Murmansk and Archangel, but they were gone, as far as anybody could say. And nobody was saying.

  South Africa had not quite declared independence from the British Empire, but you could tell that was on the way, one way or another. It was a period of consolidation, for most of the world, at least the parts that had been colonized, but that was none of our business. Our business was all the materiel and deportee troops that kept flooding into Dalny and Vladivostok and Qinang-dao in a mighty river. All of them headed west as fast as they could go. I won’t say the ground shook, but the windows rattled in their sashes as some of the heavier stuff trundled on by.

  >>>>>>>

  It was not quite dark yet, so I gathered up Isis, Doyle, and Lupo, and drove down to one of the big replacement depots down near the Feniks bar. That was where Commander Epstein had wrapped up his salvage operation in Dalny harbor, before moving on to the even bigger mess of Port Arthur proper. Stilwell had organized the 33rd Division there out of odds and ends, and it was not hard to see that his machine was still cranking away. At least they had the improvised barracks and headquarters and parade grounds and obstacle courses to run more raw troops through. Not as hard a job as it might have been, a whole lot of the Section Five guys, the American Federation of Labor union guys, the Wobblies, the Bonus Marchers, most of the loners had all spent their time in the sixteen-year meat grinder in France. Some had lived through it, and for their reward, got deported to play in a brand-new war. Lucky us guys. No good deed goes unpunished. Jesus loves you, everybody els
e wants to fuck you over.

  The Feniks was doing a land office business, they had two more bars outside under tents, and professional grade roistering was well underway. Celebrating our great victory, I suppose. Enjoy it while you can, boys, plenty more krautheads where that last batch came from. Ignore the idiots, the followers, the sheep. Look for loners, people who are not too drunk, people on the edges. Takes one to know one, right?

  I told them, “You guys split up, find people to talk too, get a taste of what is going on back in the states. We are not getting much from the radio; it feels to me like the Hoovers have cracked down. Again.” I saw a few women clustered around one end of one of the bars, and asked Isis, “You want me to walk you over there?”

  “I can take care of myself.” As if I didn’t know that.

  “Yeah. Sorry.” And off she toddled. I realized that this was one woman I would never fall in love with. Admire, maybe. Be scared as shit of? Not a bit of a problem. But you have to like people at least a little to fall in love with them. No matter. As a partner, she was incomparable. As a bed fellow, she had more experience than all of New Orleans put together. I just couldn’t cope. My fault, no doubt. And fuck that for a game of sojers.

  Time for a small drink. I bellied up to the inside bar, ran into my Stateside friend Arthur Marx, a newspaper reporter. A Jew from New York City. I had played a dirty trick on him a few months ago, but he didn’t seem to have noticed. “Miles! Good to see you, let me buy you a snort.” He was slightly illuminated, his natural state. I said reporter, didn’t I? Anna, the owner, was behind the bar herself, coining money, keeping track of every penny, no doubt. A Ukrainian woman. Enough said. You either know, or you will find out the hard way. She noticed me, nodded, set a round on the bar without a word. Thanks. I had helped get her this building.

  “Miles, this is my buddy from the Bronx, Stan Gilliam. Another pavement pounder.”

  Stan was one of those warty men, thin and sandy. Looked competent enough. “Pleased to meet you, you working at the Bulletin too?” I asked, to open the conversation.