JUST RECENTLY, by air mail, I received an invitation to a wedding that will take place
in England on April 18th. It happens to be a wedding I'd give a lot to be able to get to,
and when the invitation first arrived, I thought it might just be possible for me to make
the trip abroad, by plane, expenses be hanged. However, I've since discussed the matter
rather extensively with my wife, a breathtakingly levelheaded girl, and we've decided
against it--for one thing, I'd completely forgotten that my mother-in-law is looking
forward to spending the last two weeks in April with us. I really don't get to see Mother
Grencher terribly often, and she's not getting any younger. She's fifty-eight. (As she'd be
the first to admit.)
All the same, though, wherever I happen to be I don't think I'm the type that doesn't
even lift a finger to prevent a wedding from flatting. Accordingly, I've gone ahead and
jotted down a few revealing notes on the bride as I knew her almost six years ago. If my
notes should cause the groom, whom I haven't met, an uneasy moment or two, so much
the better. Nobody's aiming to please, here. More, really, to edify, to instruct.
In April of 1944, I was among some sixty American enlisted men who took a rather
specialized pre-Invasion training course, directed by British Intelligence, in Devon,
England. And as I look back, it seems to me that we were fairly unique, the sixty of us,
in that there wasn't one good mixer in the bunch. We were all essentially letter-writing
types, and when we spoke to each other out of the line of duty, it was usually to ask
somebody if he had any ink he wasn't using. When we weren't writing letters or
attending classes, each of us went pretty much his own way. Mine usually led me, on
clear days, in scenic circles around the countryside. Rainy days, I generally sat in a dry
place and read a book, often just an axe length away from a ping-pong table.
The training course lasted three weeks, ending on a Saturday, a very rainy one. At
seven that last night, our whole group was scheduled to entrain for London, where, as
rumor had it, we were to be assigned to infantry and airborne divisions mustered for
the D Day landings. By three in the afternoon, I'd packed all my belongings into my
barrack bag, including a canvas gas-mask container full of books I'd brought over from
the Other Side. (The gas mask itself I'd slipped through a porthole of the Mauretania
some weeks earlier, fully aware that if the enemy ever did use gas I'd never get the
damn thing on in time.) I remember standing at an end window of our Quonset but for
a very long time, looking out at the slanting, dreary rain, my trigger finger itching
imperceptibly, if at all. I could hear behind my back the uncomradely scratching of
many fountain pens on many sheets of V-mail paper. Abruptly, with nothing special in
mind, I came away from the window and put on my raincoat, cashmere muffler,
galoshes, woollen gloves, and overseas cap (the last of which, I'm still told, I wore at an
angle all my own--slightly down over both ears). Then, after synchronizing my
wristwatch with the clock in the latrine, I walked down the long, wet cobblestone hill
into town. I ignored the flashes of lightning all around me. They either had your number
on them or they didn't.
In the center of town, which was probably the wettest part of town, I stopped in front
of a church to read the bulletin board, mostly because the featured numerals, white on
black, had caught my attention but partly because, after three years in the Army, I'd
become addicted to reading bulletin boards. At three-fifteen, the board stated, there
would be children's-choir practice. I looked at my wristwatch, then back at the board. A
sheet of paper was tacked up, listing the names of the children expected to attend
practice. I stood in the rain and read all the names, then entered the church.
A dozen or so adults were among the pews, several of them bearing pairs of small-size
rubbers, soles up, in their laps. I passed along and sat down in the front row. On the
rostrum, seated in three compact rows of auditorium chairs, were about twenty
children, mostly girls, ranging in age from about seven to thirteen. At the moment, their
choir coach, an enormous woman in tweeds, was advising them to open their mouths
wider when they sang. Had anyone, she asked, ever heard of a little dickeybird that
dared to sing his charming song without first opening his little beak wide, wide, wide?
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