“I just wanted to thank you men for helping out today. I wasn’t always MacArthur, you know. I was like you. I was up on the line.” He spoke, they listened. He didn’t talk of his Medal of Honor or the numerous Silver Stars, or Back to Bataan or lording it over the defeated Japs from the heart of their own capital or ruling all of Asia and probably the United States if he wanted it. He talked of being up on the line in WWI, in forests like Lett. The stench of dead in trenches, the bodies above covering no-man’s-land like so much underbrush, the cold and wet wanting to crack your bones, the horror sounds of our outgoing versus their incoming. He made mistakes, just like them. One time he couldn’t find a gap in the barbed wire for his dear men. Another he forgot to carry his gas mask and got gassed for it. As he spoke, Lett noticed a couple officers poking their heads in the windows. “I well comprehend what the experience brings to a man. What it leaves. I understand that you fine warriors are special. Handpicked. This is because you have endured the grim wonder that is modern warfare. You are never the same upon knowing it so intimately. You know something greater than yourselves. Few will know this, throughout all of man-made history. You may consider yourselves wounded. You are not. You are instilled with a gold that can never be traded or stolen. As such, you offer society a worth that is beyond the comprehension of mere civilians. But I know it, men. MacArthur sees it.”

Lett found himself wishing the general would reach over and touch him, and later the thought would make him cringe, like a man holding a sharp kitchen knife and having the overwhelming curiosity to cut himself with it, just to see.

“Well then,” the general added, “you good men look like you might wish to know a thing or two about MacArthur, so do feel at ease to—”

The door flung open and Lansdale stepped in. “General, sir, you’re required urgently,” he said and glared at the men as he did so, his mustache vanishing behind his scowl.

“Well then, duty calls,” the general said. He slapped his thighs, stood, and strode past Lansdale and out the door.

Lansdale stood there. He wiped at his mouth and the mustache was back. He added a wide-open smile. “The great man knows no rest, and that’s why he’s the best!” he chirped and hurried out the door.

The men ignored the Air Force major, laughing and shaking their heads and nodding and recapping the last couple minutes as if it had included a curvy dancer who’d just burst from a birthday cake. They sucked their beers. Lett too had to shake his head in wonder.