Chapter 18

SERGEANT TRAPANI’S having addressed the purple slip reporting the countermand order on the carts to the wrong person did not help much. As soon as the wrong person opened up the envelope and read the slip, he forwarded it to the right person.

The right person was Lt. Col. W. W. Norris, G-One Officer of the 49th Division. The wrong person put the purple slip on his desk. Col. Norris, who was burdened down with much too much paper work, did not even read it all the way through. He just read the first part, about General Marvin’s issuing the order that carts should be stopped on the outskirts of Adano.

Then he wrote in pencil on the upper left hand corner of the slip: “Usual copies for Division files. One extra copy to be sent to Colonel Middleton marked `For General Marvin’s Information.”‘ And then he tossed the slip in his outgoing basket.

A couple of hours later a Technical Sergeant emptied Col. Norris’s outgoing basket, and in time got around to making three copies of the purple slip for the files of the 49th Division, where they would be buried, never to be seen again. One copy went under M.P.’s, one copy into the Personnel file, and the third into the Intelligence files under Occupied Territory, Disciplinary Measures. The Technical Sergeant recopied the purple slip, so that he could make a clean top copy for Colonel Middleton and the General. He wanted to get ahead. He didn’t want to do anything sloppy. He was so careful in his typing that he didn’t even notice what the purple slip said.

The Technical Sergeant put the four copies and the original purple slip into Col. Norris’s incoming basket.

It happens that Col. Norris had an assistant, one Lieutenant Butters, who was very inquisitive. He annoyed the Colonel often by reading over his shoulder. He always wanted to know what the Battle Order was the moment it was drawn up, before it even went to regimental commanders.

The only advantage of Lieutenant Butters’ curiosity was that he usually read Colonel Norris’s mail more carefully than either Colonel Norris or his Technical Sergeant.

The morning after the Technical Sergeant put the purple slip and the four copies into the Colonel’s incoming basket, Lieutenant Butters got up bright and early, dressed, shaved out of his helmet, and before breakfast went to Colonel Norris’s desk and went through his incoming basket.

When he came to the purple slip and the four copies, he took the papers out of the pile, read until he had finished, put the pile back into the incoming basket, and then tucked the purple slip and the four copies into a portfolio on his own desk.

Later in the day, when the Colonel was out to a conference, Lieutenant Butters took out the purple slip and the four copies. He called the Technical Sergeant over to his desk.

“Did you see these?” the Lieutenant asked.

The Technical Sergeant, who was afraid he had made a mistake in typing, said merely: “Yes, sir.”

“Well, that Major was right,” the Lieutenant said. The Technical Sergeant, who hadn’t the faintest idea what the purple slip was about, said: “He was?”

The Lieutenant said: “Sure he was. It’s easy to see he was. And if General Marvin ever lays eyes on this Information copy, it’ll be just too bad for the Major.”

“Yes, sir,” said the Technical Sergeant, to be on the safe side.

Lieutenant Butters said: “Here, you file these, I’ll take care of the Information copy.”

“Yes, sir,” the Technical Sergeant said, taking the copies.

The Lieutenant said: “That Marvin trimmed me down once for something I didn’t do. I never have liked him. I don’t know this Major, but I think it would be a shame if he caught a trimming just for this.”

“Yes, sir,” the Technical Sergeant said. Then he frowned and added: “You aren’t going to get me in trouble, are you, sir, like when that letter to Colonel Norris from the P.R.O. got lost’?”

“No, don’t worry,” the Lieutenant said.

But the Technical Sergeant did worry for several days, until he got up the courage to ask the Lieutenant: “Sir, what did you ever do about that Information copy I made for General Marvin? You didn’t throw it away, did you? Colonel Norris is liable to ask me about it.”

“I wish I had thrown it away,” Lieutenant Butters said. “I didn’t have the guts. I put it in the courier pouch for Algiers. You know how much stuff we’ve been losing on that run. I thought maybe -”

The Technical Sergeant, relieved of his worry, smiled and said: “It might get lost accidentally on purpose?”