In his position he probably knows more military
secrets than anyone in the European theater of operations. But he explains,
“Mostly I don’t listen. If I do, it goes in one ear and out the other. I’ve got
other things to think about.” He has arrived at a certain philosophy regarding
the Army and his private life. About promotion he has this to say: “If you want
to be a general, then it’s all right for you to take stripes, but if you figure
that maybe you personally can’t win the war, then you’re better off as a
private and you have more fun.” He doesn’t like to order other people about any
more than he likes to be ordered about. He can’t avoid the second, but he gets
around the first by just staying a private. “Not that I’d mind,” he said. “I’d
take the hooks for a job like this, but I don’t want to tell a bunch of men
what to do.”
Having decided (1) that he couldn’t win the war
single-handed, (2) that the war was going to last quite a long time, (3) that
he wasn’t going to get home on any given day, and (4) what the hell anyways,
the Big Train settled down to enjoy what he couldn’t resist.
He probably knows England as well as any living
American. He knows the little towns, the by-roads, north and south, and he has
what is generally considered the best address book in Europe. He talks to
everyone and never forgets a name or address. The result of this is that when
he deposits his colonel, two majors, and a captain at some sodden little hotel in
a damp little town, there to curse the beds and the food, when the Big Train
gets dismissed for the night he consults his address book. Then he visits one
of the many friends he has made here and there.
The Big Train gets a piece of meat and fresh
garden vegetables for supper. He drinks toasts to his friends. He sleeps in
clean white sheets and in the morning he breakfasts on new-laid eggs. Exactly
on time he arrives at the sodden little hotel. The colonel and the majors are
exhausted from having fought lumps in their beds all night. Their digestions
are ruined by the doughy food, but the Big Train is rested and thriving. He is
alert and eventually will leave his officers in another tavern and find a
friend for lunch.
The Big Train is not what you call handsome,
but he is pleasant-looking and soft-spoken and he particularly likes the
company of women, the casual company or any other kind. He just feels happy if
there is a girl to talk to. How he finds them no one has ever been able to discover.
You can leave the Big Train parked in the middle of a great plain, with no
buildings and no brush, no nothing, and when you come back ten minutes later
there will be a girl sitting in the seat beside him, smoking the colonel’s
cigarettes and chewing a piece of the major’s gum, while the Big Train
carefully writes down her address and the town she comes from.
