The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway - Ernest Hemingway [231]
“That’s the same way you said ‘Casa del Campo.’ ”
“Yeah,” he said. “I laugh every time I think of that.” Then he went on, “You see, now, they’re not frightened of tanks any more. Nobody is. We aren’t either. But they’re still useful. Really useful. Only with the anti-tank now they’re so damn vulnerable. Maybe I ought to be in something else. Not really. Because they’re still useful. But the way they are now you’ve got to have a vocation for them. You got to have a lot of political development to be a good tank man now.”
“You’re a good tank man.”
“I’d like to be something else tomorrow,” he said. “I’m talking awfully wet but you have a right to talk wet if it isn’t going to hurt anybody else. You know I like tanks too, only we don’t use them right because the infantry don’t know enough yet. They just want the old tank ahead to give them some cover while they go. That’s no good. Then they get to depending on the tanks and they won’t move without them. Sometimes they won’t even deploy.”
“I know.”
“But you see if you had tankists that knew their stuff they’d go out ahead and develop the machine-gun fire and then drop back behind the infantry and fire on the gun and knock it out and give the infantry covering fire when they attacked. And other tanks could rush the machine-gun posts as though they were cavalry. And they could straddle a trench and enfilade and put flaking fire down it. And they could bring up infantry when it was right to or cover their advance when that was best.”
“But instead?”
“Instead it’s like it will be tomorrow. We have so damned few guns that we’re just used as slightly mobile armored artillery units. And as soon as you are standing still and being light artillery, you’ve lost your mobility and that’s your safety and they start sniping at you with the anti-tanks. And if we’re not that we’re just sort of iron perambulators to push ahead of the infantry. And lately you don’t know whether the perambulator will push or whether the guys inside will push them. And you never know if there’s going to be anybody behind you when you get there.”
“How many are you now to a brigade?”
“Six to a battalion. Thirty to a brigade. That’s in principle.”
“Why don’t you come along now and get the bath and we’ll go and eat?”
“All right. But don’t you start taking care of me or thinking I’m worried or anything because I’m not. I’m just tired and I wanted to talk. And don’t give me any pep talk either because we’ve got a political commissar and I know what I’m fighting for and I’m not worried. But I’d like things to be efficient and used as intelligently as possible.”
“What made you think I was going to give you any pep talk?”
“You started to look like it.”
“All I tried to do was see if you wanted a girl and not to talk too wet about getting killed.”
“Well, I don’t want any girl tonight and I’ll talk just as wet as I please unless it does damage to others. Does it damage you?”
“Come on and get the bath,” I said. “You can talk just as bloody wet as you want.”
“Who do you suppose that little guy was that talked as though he knew so much?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’m going to find out.”
“He made me gloomy,” said Al. “Come on. Let’s go.”
The old waiter with the bald head unlocked the outside door of Chicote’s and let us out into the street.
“How is the offensive, comrades?” he said at the door.
“It’s O.K., comrade,” said Al. “It’s all right.”
“I am happy,” said the waiter. “My boy is in the One Hundred and Forty-fifth Brigade. Have you seen them?”
“I am of the tanks,” said Al. “This comrade makes a cinema. Have you seen the Hundred and Forty-fifth?”
“No,” I said.
“They are up the Extremadura road,” the old waiter said. “My boy is political commissar of the machine-gun company of his battalion. He is my youngest boy. He is twenty.”
“What party are you comrade?” Al asked him.
“I am of no party,” the waiter said. “But