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Our Bloody Nose
Meanwhile, since we were removed from the fighting, things around the FDC
were pretty dull. We had a couple of ground observation posts, but they weren't high
enough or close enough to see much on the far side of the river - at least nothing to shoot
at. We got at least one intelligence report telling where a German army field kitchen fed
its troops at midnight to avoid being seen. We fired TOTs there at midnight several times,
but I don't know whether they had any effect. I expect that if the report was true, the
kitchen at least moved somewhere else.
Most of our observation, consequently most of our fire missions, came from our
little air section, which kept a plane in the air whenever visibility was good enough. Since
our only communication with them was by radio, we moved a radio operator into the
FDC. He was a T/4 named Amico, and he hailed from Brooklyn, NY, as anyone could
tell from his accent. The radio itself was some distance away, on high ground, but Amico
was connected with it by telephone. In order that he not have to sit listening to the static
all the time, he had an associate at the set who would flip a switch and ring the phone
when there was an incoming message. When Amico wanted to send a message himself,
he would say "Transmit" into the phone. The other operator would flip the switch again
and Amico could speak directly over the radio.
One day when things were exceptionally quiet, we all were having a kind of
wandering discussion of nothing in particular. Someone said something about small
countries, and I delivered the confident statement that the smallest independent country in
the world was Monaco, with an area of only sixty square miles.
Amico spoke up from his seat in the corner. "No, sir. It's six-tenths of a square
mile."
That brought me up short. Amico had never impressed me as either studious or
well-informed. "Oh, no," I said. "I may have the decimal point off by one digit, and it's
only six square miles, but it can't be any smaller than that. "
Amico reached into the pocket of his field jacket and pulled out a tattered copy of
what he called the Woild Almanac. Thumbing through it expertly (expoitly?), he pointed
to the place on the page. "See, sir? Six-tenths of a square mile. "
"Wow!" I said. "You're right. I'm impressed. Do you know everything in that
book?"
"Not everything," he admitted modestly, "but I know the population of Greater
London, and of each borough in the city of New York." And he proceeded to prove it.
"Gosh," I said. "How did you get to know so much?"
"Well, sir, in the pool hall on Toity-Toid street, where I used to hang around, we
made bets about things like that. You get pretty sharp!"
I made a note not to make any bets with Amico.
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