The Sergeant and the Slave Girl

he broke every regulation the army ever made

For everyone who got mixed up in the war, I guess, there was one high point, one experience that towered above all the others: an amphibious landing, maybe, or that three-day pass to Rome, or the promotion to corporal, or the day the hunk of hot shrapnel landed in the old gluteus maximus. For me it was the time in North Africa when the chaplain collided with the sergeant who had bought the slave girl.

My first contact with this extraordinary event took place one morning when I was sitting at my desk in the orderly room. Pfc. Wellburn and Pfc. Meyers came in and asked the company clerk for permission to speak to the duty sergeant.

"There he is," the clerk said. "Why are you asking me?"

There was something funny about the way they were acting, and I found out right away why.

"Sergeant Brown," Pfc. Wellburn said, "me and my buddy respectfully request to be put on K.P."

I put down the Stars and Stripes; I even took my feet off the desk. "Gabriel," I said to the company clerk, "are the acoustics pretty good in this shack?"

"Pretty good," he said. "Nothing spectacular." He used to be a radio announcer.

"Well, then I heard what I thought I heard?"

"I think so," he said. "I heard it too."

I gave Wellburn my famous paralyzing glower for about 10 seconds, and then my famous crescendo: "Soldier, if I am not being too inquisitive, What The Hell Are You Up To?"

This usually puts them completely in my power, but it didn't this time. Wellburn was all innocence. "Up to?" he repeated. "Why sarge, you know I wouldn't be up to anything. It's just that there's so little to do around here, sometimes I think I'll scream. I just want a little K.P. to keep me busy. Really."

I turned to Meyers, who seemed less sure of himself. "You, Meyers," I shouted, "are you bored with your present life? Do you dream of adventure in far-off foreign lands?"

"Nossir," Meyers said. "But I had a private talk with the chaplain, sarge, and he told me to come over here and ask you for some K.P. Penance."

Then I got mad. This was too far outside the range of my experience. "OK, you jokers," I said. "I'll give you some K.P., all right. Gabriel, put these men down for a week of K.P., the early shift, every day for the next week."

They busted out in big smiles. "Oh, thank you, Sergeant Brown," Pfc. Wellburn said. "Thank you. " They almost danced out the door, and I could see them hopping and exulting down the path.

"Gabriel," I said, "there is a very distinctive aroma in the air."

"Very piscatorial," the clerk said.

"There is something here," I said, "that will bear looking into."

This was in December 1942, a couple of months after the fall of Oran. Somehow we got left behind when the fighting moved off to the west, and there we were in Arzew, a miserable coastal town about 20 miles from Oran -- the nth Surgical Hospital, a bunch of 60 pill rollers with nothing to do but look after a few semi-ambulant cases and get into trouble.

Which is just what they did. Of course, you have to make allowances for our situation -- stuck out there in that cold, rocky, godforsaken desert, at loose ends after some very heavy action. No dayroom, no recreation, no women, not many passes to Oran; not even any movies, except the V.D. lectures.

That was one of the horrible things about this time at Arzew: all of a sudden we were snowed under with V.D. lectures. Just about every other morning the bulletin board announced another V.D. film. And it was at one of these lectures -- on the same day, in fact, that Wellburn and Meyers came in -- that we all made the acquaintance of our new chaplain, Capt. Withers. It was a very interesting experience.

When the men filed in for the lecture they found the new chaplain sitting up front, beaming at them with the most simple-hearted and kindly expression I have ever seen on a human face. He radiated love of his fellow man; and also the fact that he was no more equipped to handle an Army job than I am to train lions. "Hi, fellows," he said, raising his arm for a timid little wave. The men looked at each other in amazement and a wicked sadistic gleam came to their eyes.

Then the lights went down and the movie started, another of those repulsive parades of chancres and lesions and pathetic old geezers with paresis, while a fruity-voiced narrator tried to scare hell out of us. The men groaned and cracked jokes and gave each other the hotfoot until it was over. The light went on and the new chaplain stood up.

"Is he gonna threaten us or appeal to our loftier nature?" I heard a soldier ask.

Capt. Withers did neither. He was completely bewildered. Obviously he had never seen such a film before. He took off his pince-nez and made a hesitant gesture toward the blank screen. "Golly!" he said at last. "That looks like a very serious affliction. Mercy! In my early missionary days I saw many cases of yaws----" He didn't know how to go on. Then his face brightened. "But you know, fellows, I believe they've found a quick cure for it, using penicillin. So if I were you I wouldn't worry too much about it."

The men broke into delighted howls and applause, and one of them called out in a British accent, "I say, it's no worse than a nasty case of the sniffles."

"Ah, you've had it then?" the chaplain asked, smiling around the room. There was nothing but benevolence in him. "Which of you fellows was it that has had it?"

It was a big stupid private named Gallagher who had made the crack, and now his buddies pushed at him and stood up and pointed at him until he had to get to his feet. The chaplain looked at him fondly.

"Ah, you poor boy," he said. "But you say it was not painful?"

"Yessir, nossir," he said, pretty scared. He knew it didn't pay to fool around with officers.

"Well, that's good," Capt. Withers said, all warmth and kindness. "Disease is everywhere in the world, of course. You just have to be as careful as you can, and hope you don't get something unpleasant. Isn't that right?"

"I guess so, sir," Gallagher said, and sat down.

"Brush your teeth twice a day -- that's very important," the chaplain said. "There's nothing worse than a toothache."

And with that remark -- which was the end of the V.D. lecture -- he got the undying loyalty of every single man in the room. From then on they loved him -- not the way he loved them, of course, but the way soldiers will love a dog, or any innocent creature that they have decided to cherish. From then on the chaplain was their mascot and their buddy.

Incidentally, from then on we had no more V.D. shows.

That evening I went over to the tent area about an hour after chow, looking for McHugh, the mess sergeant and cook. He was the one to ask about that voluntary K.P. I found him in his tent, and I got right to the point.

"McHugh, two clowns came in this morning and asked for K.P."

"Only two?" he asked. "I put the word out to half-a-dozen."

"Two," I said, "is plenty. You are involving innocent soldier boys in one of your nefarious exploits. Now brief me before I express my puzzlement within the hearing of the C.O."

"Leave off with these idle threats, old friend," McHugh said. The familiar mad light danced across his simian features and he emitted a gruesome chuckle. "Brown, this is my finest hour! Lawrence of Arabia, Montgomery of Alamein, McHugh of Arzew -- immortal triad! History will not soon forget this glorious day."

"What day?" I asked.

"Yesterday," he said, "when I purchased and imported into these quarters Roxane, my slave girl, flower of the desert."

"You mean you have a girl right here in camp?" I cried. "Right now?"

"I have," McHugh stated.

Now, I had known for a long time that McHugh was crazy, but I hadn't known he was that crazy. There is such a thing as carrying whimsicality too far, even if hatred of the Army is your ruling passion; and this is what I told McHugh. But he was carried away by his vision.

"Just imagine it!" he exclaimed. "What a beautiful concept! It breaks every regulation the Army ever made! And it's foolproof. Nobody will give the show away -- they have too much to lose."

"McHugh," I said, "this outfit is blessed with no less than 15 officers. Officers do not like soldier boys to have this sort of good clean fun. They will get wind of it, and you will be middle-aged before you get out of jail."

"Officers never find anything out unless some soldier tells them," he said. "This will not happen."

I tried another tack. "You have been conned," I said. "These Arabs are an ancient and crafty race. They do not go around selling their sisters, mothers and so on, unless they have some fancy scheme afoot. Tomorrow your girl walks out on you and what do you do?"

"Roxane is here to stay," McHugh said. "About a week ago I heard about this Berber off the desert, smuggling a girl down to Saudi Arabia for the harem of Abu ben Schnook. So he was breaking the law too, which was good. Well, the invasion caught this guy in transit and he was holed up in Oran, willing to unload and go back to his sand pile until things quiet down. The girl was happy about the whole thing -- anything she got into was better than what she got out of. I just happened to have a few surplus commodities in my possession, so a transaction took place."

"And merely as a matter of historic interest," I asked, "how much did Roxane cost the U.S. taxpayer?"

"Oh, not too much," he answered. "Four dozen K rations, four dozen C rations, 10 cartons of cigarettes, 10 mattress covers, 500 million units of penicillin. It wasn't easy to deliver this price without getting rolled, I tell you. Things were pretty tight there for a while."

"Well, where is she?" I asked. "Let's see her."

"Not yet," he said. "Things aren't quite ready."

"You know, McHugh," I said, "somebody is going to have to save you from yourself. You know that."

"Brown, you bastard!" he exclaimed. "You're not going to turn me in!"

"Of course I'm not," I said soothingly. "It was just a manner of speaking." But I already had an idea.

I didn't see McHugh for several days after that, but I certainly felt his influence. Morale in the camp suddenly (continued on page 73)Slave Girl(continued from page 20) leapt upward. The men went about their work with happy, secretive smiles on their faces; applications for passes to Oran fell off to almost nothing, whereas volunteers for K.P. came in at the rate of three or four a day. There was none of the usual bellyaching about nothing to do, too much work, uncomfortable quarters, etc. Everybody was happy. Too happy.

Of course, the officers noticed that something was different and were puzzled by it. The C.O. called me in one morning to feel me out on the subject, but I didn't know what he was talking about. Of the officers, only the new chaplain, that poor innocent guy, never caught on to the fact that something unusual was going on. As Special Services Officer he was in charge of providing entertainment for the troops, and he was overjoyed that they seemed to need so little diversion.

"Fine boys!" he said to me. "Clean, upstanding young men! What rich inner resources they must possess! Why, do you know, Sergeant Brown, not one of them has applied for a pass to Oran this weekend? They prefer to stay here at the camp."

This was in the orderly room on a Saturday morning. Chaplain Withers spent a great deal of his time in the orderly room, trying to garner information about how to handle his job -- from me, mostly. It turned out he had been a missionary in China most of his life.

"One reason, I suppose," he went on, "is that most of them are anxious to hear my little talk on snakes this evening."

"Talk on snakes?" I said. I knew he had scheduled something with lantern slides, but that was all.

"Herpetology, you know," he said, beaming at me. "My hobby, and a fascinating one, I assure you. I have a rather fine collection of them -- in bottles, of course -- and I rather believe the men will enjoy hearing what I can tell them about these most maligned of God's creatures. The serpent in the Garden of Eden ----"

"Excuse me, captain," I interrupted, "but you know, on Saturday night the men usually get together in their tents and recount amusing anecdotes and sing a few rousing songs and that sort of thing. They probably won't want to listen to a lecture on snakes, not tonight. I think maybe the room will be sort of empty."

The chaplain was perturbed. "You think I've chosen a bad night for it, eh?" he asked. "Now, that won't do. I don't want the men to give up their regular get-together just because they feel they have to be polite. No, sergeant" -- and he transfixed me with a look of purest Christian charity through his bifocals -- "no, we'll cancel the lecture this evening."

So I posted a notice on the board that the Special Services entertainment had been canceled, owing to the indisposition of the chaplain; and then, about the middle of the afternoon, I went over to the mess hall to see what McHugh had done with his slave girl.

The door was locked, as it should have been. I banged on it -- I knew he was in there -- and after a while it was opened by Meyers.

"What the hell are you doing here?" I asked.

"Good afternoon, sergeant," Meyers said. "What can I do for you?"

"You can goddamn well let me into this building," I said. "Where's McHugh?"

"Sergeant McHugh is taking inventory," Meyers said, getting nervous. "I don't think he would want to be disturbed, sir."

"Well, I think I'll disturb him," I said, pushing into the room. "Where is he?"

"I don't rightly know, sir," Meyers said, dancing around in his anxiety.

I went through the mess hall and back to the kitchen. Behind the kitchen was a corridor, with rooms on each side for the storage of food and mess necessities. I tried all the doors until I found the one that was open.

I have never seen such a room. God knows where McHugh had liberated the stuff, but he had the place done up like an oriental harem, Hollywood version. A Persian carpet covered the floor, and the walls were draped with yards and yards of some flimsy material, alternating panels of orange and blue. In one corner he had rigged up a canopy of white cloth over a divan, on which he now reclined in dressing gown and slippers, with -- I swear it! -- a turban on his head, smoking a hookah and reading a book. The slave girl knelt by his side, fanning him slowly with a huge peacock-tail fan, adoration in her liquid black eyes.

Reading from north to south, she was clad in earrings, necklace, a transparent yellow skirt, and sandals. She was beautiful. Around 50° N. latitude she was almost blinding.

McHugh looked up from his book, and he seemed a bit annoyed. "How'd you get in unannounced?" he asked. "Where's Major-Domo Meyers?"

"Gee whizakers!" I exclaimed. I was flabbergasted by the enormity of McHugh's transgression, and awed at being in the presence of a man who was apparently willing, in his loyalty to his convictions, to spend the next 20 years in durance vile.

There was a gentle rap on the door and in came Major-Domo Meyers. He walked four paces into the room and bowed very low from the waist, placing his right hand on his forehead. "McHugh Pasha," he said -- very seriously, not trying to be funny at all; in fact, scared. "Please excuse the way Sergeant Brown busted in. But what am I gonna do when the duty sergeant pushes me away from the door?"

"Goddammit, Meyers," McHugh said, "what if it had been an M.P.?"

"Oh then, sir, I mean sahib," Meyers said quickly, "I wunt even of opened the door. I can see through the little window who it is. But the duty sergeant is different -- he knows I'm in here and he can get my ass."

"Well, never mind, Meyers," McHugh said. "Depart."

Meyers salaamed again and departed. McHugh waved his arm at Roxane, whereupon she arose and busied herself with the coffee pot. "You're just in time for the afternoon refreshment," he said: his old self again, not making like the oriental potentate. "Sit down on yonder hassock."

"McHugh," I said, sitting down,"how do you get these G.I.s to kowtow and salami and say 'pasha' and 'sahib' without busting out laughing?"

McHugh puffed on his narghile. "It's amazing what the simple organism is capable of," he said, "if you offer the proper rewards."

"Improper rewards, I suppose you mean."

"Right," said McHugh. "A few of my body servants enjoy a favored position on Oriental Hospitality Day, which is almost every day. They are first in line and don't have to pay."

Roxane kept moving about, bending over, etc., and I had a hard time following the conversation. Out there in that bleak desert waste it was almost too much to have the impossible dream right before your eyes. She knelt by my hassock and poured out a cup of coffee about as thick as heavy cream. The curve of her breast was exquisite. I tried to keep my eye off it, especially with McHugh watching, but there was simply nothing else to look at in that whole room. My Adam's apple began to bob up and down. McHugh puffed on his hookah, seeming pleased.

"Roxane would be glad to entertain you after your coffee," he said. "Avec les compliments de la maison, needless to say."

"She would?" I croaked. "How do you know?" After all, I'm against slavery.

McHugh said something to the girl in Arabic. It sounded like a question -- certainly not like a command. Roxane looked up at me from her kneeling position and seemed to size me up, demurely, with those almond eyes of hers. She said something to McHugh and he nodded. Thereupon she stood up and gently pressed my head against her body.

"You see?" he said. "She would."

That was my worst battle: worse than the landing, worse than the ambush outside Oran. I got out of both of those, barely. I got out of this one too, barely; but it was a different sort of bare.

It was wonderful!

This episode almost destroyed my firm resolve, but not quite. McHugh had to be saved from himself; and it was the chaplain, obviously, who would provide the way.

But no opportunity presented itself for a week. For a whole gorgeous week the idyll continued; and during that time I found out how much I enjoyed McHugh's company. He was really a most engaging fellow. I would drop over to the mess hall almost every evening, so that we could talk about philosophy and esthetics and things like that. He was a stimulating conversationalist. And he was a gentleman, too: his hospitality was unlimited. One appreciates that sort of gentility in the rude climate of an Army camp. When it came to the grand and negligent gesture in the regal manner, McHugh was great. Great!

By the end of the week the officers were very suspicious indeed. The atmosphere in the camp just wasn't normal. When the pill rollers whistle merrily while emptying the bedpans, something is fishy. I heard the C.O. talking with one of the lieutenants. They were asking each other why the men were so cheerful all of a sudden, and the lieutenant said he thought they must have set up a still somewhere, probably in the Q.M. warehouse. "By God, then we'll find it," the C.O. said. "We'll search all the buildings."

The next day was payday, and the chaplain was in the orderly room as usual, talking about China and asking me if I didn't think some of the men would like to go on a nature-study hike with him, looking for African snakes for his collection. I was explaining to him, very gently, why this was a terrible idea, when an expression of wonder came over his face.

"Now why in the world," he asked, "would those fellows be doing that at the mess hall in the middle of the afternoon? And at the kitchen door, too."

I looked out the window. A half-dozen guys were lined up at the entrance to McHugh's hideaway, pushing each other and horsing around. It was obviously Oriental Hospitality Day. I was dumbfounded by his carelessness: any minute an officer would go over to investigate. At the same moment I had my flash of inspiration.

"Why, chaplain," I said, "I believe I heard this morning that one of the fellows had caught a real curious snake. He has it in there and he's letting the other men see it for a dime a look."

"A snake?" the chaplain said eagerly. "No wonder the fellows are so interested. By jiminy, that's something I want to see too." And he toddled off toward the mess hall, wagging his fat bottom.

"Now you've done it, sarge," Gabriel, the clerk, said reproachfully. "You've goosed the cook that laid the golden egg."

"I've saved him, Gabriel," I said, dashing out the door. "I hope."

I dodged around the building and tore for the front entrance to the mess hall. Meyers must have seen me coming, because he had the door open when I got there.

"Meyers!" I said urgently. "Get in there and tell McHugh the chaplain is in line at the other door. I'll try to stall things off."

"The chaplain?" Meyers said, buckling at the knees. "Oh my! I think I'll just pop over to my tent for some cigarettes."

"No you won't," I said. "Get on in there!"

Meyers scuttled off and I ran through the mess hall to the kitchen door, where Wellburn was standing sentry. Looking through the grilled window, I was just in time to see the chaplain arrive at the end of the line. The men suddenly turned to statues, slightly green in color, and a look of pitiful amazement and anguish came over their faces. After a few seconds the first two men sauntered casually to the corner of the building and then broke into violent (continued overleaf) forward motion. But the others were afraid to do anything and stayed where they were. The chaplain saw that his arrival had caused a change in their behavior.

"Please, fellows," he said, "don't let the presence of an officer disturb you. We're all here for the same reason, so just act yourselves. Why, hello, Gallagher," he said to the man in front of him -- the wiseacre from the V. D. lecture. "Does this interest you too?"

Gallagher's mouth opened and closed several times. "Does this interest you?" he managed to ask.

"Oh, this is my hobby," the chaplain said.

"Your -- your hobby, sir?"

"Oh, yes," the chaplain said. "I get a real delight from this. And it's certainly worth a dime, isn't it?"

"Yessir, I guess so," Gallagher said. "Sure is." The other three had turned around to listen, and now they smiled. You could see their thought: this chaplain sure was a very peculiar chaplain.

"Pardon me, sir," one of them asked cautiously, "but how often do you do this?"

"As often as I have the chance," the chaplain said. "Some days in China I would go out looking for them and sometimes I'd find as many as five or six. Say, do you think we might get up a group of fellows to hike around for some specimens?"

"We sure could!" Gallagher said. "Man, this here Army sure has changed!"

"It's hard work, though," the chaplain went on. "And you have to take a bottle along, to pickle them."

"Yep, that's the way, all right!" Gallagher exclaimed. "Man, this ole Army sure has changed!"

"Now, about this specimen," the chaplain said. "About how big is it?"

"Oh, I'd say about five feet," Gallagher answered.

"Five feet!" Capt. Withers exclaimed. "Upon my word! I didn't know there were any that big in North Africa. Do you know whether it's poisonous?"

"If she's poisonous," Gallagher said, with a loud guffaw, "then all I can say is, this whole danged camp is poisoned."

"Do you mean the snake has bitten someone?" the chaplain asked in alarm.

Gallagher stared at him stupidly, and I realized that it was time to interrupt, or he would spill the beans. I didn't know what the outcome would be, but I had no choice. I opened the door.

"I'm awfully sorry, Captain Withers," I said, "but I'm afraid you won't be able to see the snake. Somehow it got out of its box and escaped through the window. And you men," I shouted, using my famous bellow, "stop congregating around here, blocking traffic. Beat it!"

The men beat it, all except lughead Gallagher.

"But sarge," he protested, "you know they ain't no snake. This here chaplain is an OK Joe -- he just wants a little piece of tail like the rest of us."

"Gallagher!" I hollered fortissimo. "Quiet! Get out of here, on the double! Scat!"

So he scat.

I stepped out of the building and let the door latch behind me.

"Oh, what a pity," the chaplain said. "This would have been a most interesting experience."

"Yes, sir," I agreed. "It certainly would."

"What did Private Gallagher mean about a piece of tail?" he asked.

"Well, sir," I said, "I believe he must have had the idea that the snake's tail was going to be cut up in pieces for souvenirs of North Africa, after everyone had seen it."

The chaplain turned pale. "But surely, sergeant, no such infamous deed was intended! One of God's innocent creatures!"

"No, sir," I said, "certainly not. Private Gallagher was completely confused."

"That's good," the chaplain said. For a moment he was still shaken by the notion; then he brightened.

"Sergeant Brown," he said, "I'm sorry, but you were dead wrong about my idea for a cross-country snake hunt. The men here were extremely enthusiastic about it. We'll do it on Sunday." And, full of love and Christian goodness, he gave me a little poke in the ribs.

Well, that was the end of that. When I went back into the mess building I found that McHugh had hidden Roxane in another room and had completely dismantled his oriental seraglio. Now it was just another storeroom.

"Dammit, Brown," he said, "you officer-lover, you did turn me in."

I told him about the C.O. and the lieutenant, and after a while he calmed down. That evening he smuggled Roxane out of the camp in a potato bag, took her back to Oran, bade her a fond farewell, gave her a hundred dollars -- a fortune -- and formally released her from bondage. She was touchingly grateful, and insisted on kissing his feet.

The next day, sure enough, the M.P.s turned the camp area inside out; and that evening McHugh gave me a bottle of Black Label, which, in those days, was like giving away your left arm.

Real Black Label, not that stuff the Arabs made, which you had to feed to a buddy first, to see whether he went into convulsions.