Once there was a war

Eddie delicately exposed the butt end of a bank that looked like a rolled roast for a large supper. The Pole sighed with happiness, and the other two, who were remarkable and successful for no other reason than that they could disappear in a crowd, rubbed their hands involuntarily, as though to keep their fingers warm. Eddie concealed his poke as modestly as a young woman adjusts the straps of an evening gown that has no straps. He kneeled down beside the blanket and said, “What about is the tariff?” A wall of spectators closed behind him.

Eddie faded thirty of a hundred. The Pole rolled and won and let it lie, and Eddie took a hundred of the two hundred and the Pole shot a six and made it. Behind the dense circle of spectators running feet could be heard. This was to be a game. The ship took a slight list as GIs ran from all over just to be near a game like this, even if they couldn’t see it.

The four hundred lay on the blanket like a large salad. The two disappearing men looked at Eddie, and Eddie went into his roll and undid four hundred in small bills and laid them timidly out. This Pole glared at him with his brown eye, and smiled at him with his blue eye, a trick which served him very well in poker, but had little effect on a crap game. He breathed on the dice and didn’t speak to them. He rolled an eight and smiled with both his eyes. Again he breathed on the dice and cast them backhanded to show how easy that point was, and a four and a three looked up at him.

Eddie, breathing easily, relaxed and sure, pulled the big green salad gently to his side of the blanket. He unrolled two hundred more from his roll like toilet tissue, and laid them down. “One grand,” he said, “all or part.”

The Pole took half and the two anonymous men split up the rest, and Eddie rolled a rocking chair natural, a six and a five. “Leaving it lay,” he said softly.

Only the Pole listened to him. He picked up the dice and looked them over carefully to be sure they were the ones he had put in himself. And then, scowling with both eyes, he covered Eddie. The pile of money was ten inches high now, and spilling down like a loose haycock.

Eddie hummed a little to himself as he rolled, and a seven settled firmly. The Pole snorted. Eddie said, “And leaving that lay, all or part, anybody.” Breathing had stopped on the ship, only the engines went on. Mouths were open. Figures frozen in the dense crowd about the blanket. Only once in a while word was passed back about what was happening.

Scowling at Eddie, the Pole scraped bottom. A whole week of very tiring play for the Pole lay on the blanket, and the pot was set. Eddie was magnificent. He moved easily. He did not shake or rattle the dice or speak to them or beseech them. He simply rolled them out with childlike faith. For a long moment he stared uncomprehendingly at the snake eyes that stared back at him. And then his expression changed to one of horror. “No,” he said, “somepins wrong. I win on Sunday, always win on Sunday.”

A sergeant shuffled his feet uneasily. “Mister,” he said. “Mister, you see, it ain’t Sunday. We’ve went and crossed the date line. We lost Sunday.”

Anyway, it’s one of Mulligan’s lies.

Africa

PLANE FOR AFRICA

A NORTH AFRICAN POST (Via London), August 26, 1943—At nine o’clock in the morning word comes that you have been accepted for Africa. You go to the office of the transportation officer. “Can you go tonight?” he asks. “Your baggage must be in at three. You will report to such and such an address at seven-thirty. Do not be late.”

It is then about noon. You do the thousand things that are necessary for a shift of continents. You pack the one bag and store the other things which you will not take, the warm clothes and the papers and books. You call the people with whom you have made appointments and call them off.

At seven-thirty you arrive at the address given and from then on the process is out of your hands and it works very smoothly. At a quarter of eight you get in an Army truck and are taken to the station. An Army train is waiting. It is called a ghost train because it has no given destination. All kinds of units are getting on board the train: combat crews going out to get their ships, colonels who are going home after months in the field, couriers with bags and packages of mail. The combat crews carry pistols and knives and they have the huge bags of flying equipment with them. They are brown officers who have been serving in the desert and they look a little sick with fatigue.

A bomber crew that has not yet gone into action, indeed has not had a ship since it got overseas, has been working on English beer and has managed to get to the singing state. The whistle blows and everyone piles into the train. It is a sleeper.