Battle Cry - Leon Uris [176]
He had a silly grin as he accepted the kisses of the many Rogers and MacPhersons who came up the receiving line. Pat was adorable and tolerant as she kissed all the squad. Even though they had loused up the ceremony she was not angry. She radiated happiness and sweetly forgave them. As the church emptied, Sam Huxley brought up the rear. Pat drew him aside.
“It was very nice of you to drive all the way up here, Colonel.”
“I’m happy, Pat, very happy,” he said.
“You will come to the reception?”
“I’m afraid we’re A.W.O.L.,” he said. “Really, we must return to camp, but we just had to come for the wedding.”
“Colonel.”
“Yes, Pat?”
“Would you settle for the middle name if we have a boy—Timothy Huxley?”
Huxley put his arms around her and kissed her cheek. “Thank you very much, my dear,” he said.
The reception took place in a large banquet room of the farmer’s meeting hall in Masterton. If Masterton was dry, it was obvious that the Rogers and MacPherson families had not heard about it. Either that, or they had drag with the local constabulary. The honor table and the two long tables running off either end of it were loaded with bottles of every shape and breed. There were wines, ales, whiskies, rums and mixtures never seen before by the eyes of men, and several cases of homemade beer stood ready against a wall if the other bottles should run dry.
The squad occupied the honor table at the head of the hall with Pat and Andy and her immediate family. At the right table was the MacPherson clan, on the left, the Rogers clan. Scattered tables held the overflow and in a separate little room the children held their own celebration with milk and soda pop. A bandstand held the more talented kinsmen who played dance music.
The photographers in the families dashed about madly posing up, as the entire entourage assembled. Platter after platter came from the kitchen detail of farmers’ wives. I had never seen so much food and drink in one place—it looked like the FMF mess hall. For the Marines they brought forth plates piled high with fried chicken and potatoes. The clans knew how to run a shindig.
Harn Rogers, the family elder and toastmaster, babbled through a well-planned speech on the happy union while they all gorged.
“Gentlemen,” Harn climaxed the oratory, “charge your glasses. I propose a toast.”
All refilled and everyone in the hall arose. The patriarch of the Rogers clan gave a toast to the bride and groom and everyone sang:
“For they are jolly good fellows,
For they are jolly good fellows,
For they are jolly good fellows,
And so say all of us….
Hip, hip, hurray!”
It was the damnedest thing I had ever heard. They downed their drink and were no sooner seated than the MacPherson side of the room was heard from. The elder MacPherson was on his feet. “Gentlemen, charge your glasses. I propose a toast.”
And they all went through the routine again. Before I could get my teeth into a drumstick, the Rogers’ were heard from. “Gentlemen, charge your glasses.”
The MacPhersons weren’t going to be outdone by their rivals. I began feeling like an elevator. The only time I got to sit down was about the ninth round when they finally got to toasting the best man. I felt silly as hell when they gave out with that “Jolly good fellow,” but the “Hip, hip, hurray!” really made me blush.
“My men were close to oblivion even before they came into the hall but they weren’t going to be outdone by the hard-drinking kinsmen of the bride. (The ladies had long ago switched to soda pop.) Finally, to break the monotony the Marines began unlimbering a few toasts of their own.
In the next two hours we drank to Pat, Andy, the Rogers clan, the MacPherson clan, the squad, the Marine Corps, the New Zealand army, navy and air force, Sam Huxley, Chaplain Peterson, the King, the Queen, the Vicar of St. Peter’s, President