The Military Philosophers - Anthony Powell [29]
‘Ah, Detroit?’ he said, speaking as if it had happened yesterday. ‘An unfortunate affair that… Miami… The name reminds me of my great-aunt’s grandfather, a man not to be trifled with, who held a commission from King George in the West Florida Provincials.’
To his own anecdotes, of which he possessed an impressive store, Cobb brought a dignified tranquillity of manner that might have earned a high fee in Hollywood, had he ever contemplated acting a military career, rather than living one. He narrated them in a low unemphasized mumble, drawing the words and sentences right back into his mouth, recalling certain old-fashioned types of Paris American. Like Finn, though in a totally different genre, Cobb indulged these dramatic aptitudes in himself, which, one suspected, could even motivate a deliberate visit – for example, the day after Pearl Harbour – should he feel an affirmation required to be made in public.
‘What’s America’s next step, Colonel?’ someone had asked on that occasion.
Cobb did not answer at once. Instead, he threw himself into a relatively theatrical pose, one of those attitudes, stylized yet unforced, in which he excelled; this time in the character of a man giving deep attention to a problem of desperate complexity. Then he spoke a considered judgment.
‘The US Navy are prohibited alcohol,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to call in their golf-clubs, I guess.’
Years later in New York, I repeated that comment to Harrison F. Wisebite’s nephew, Milton, met at a publisher’s party at the St Regis. Milton Wisebite, who worked in the Time-Life office at that period, had himself served in Europe with his country’s expeditionary force.
‘Courthouse Cobb?’ he said. ‘Haven’t thought of him in decades.’
‘That was his nickname?’
‘Throughout the US Army.’
‘What did it mean?’
‘There was reference to a supposed predilection towards severity in the exercise of discipline.’
That was a side of Colonel Cobb, imaginable, though happily never imperative to encounter. However, Milton Wisebite’s words recalled the stern tone in which Cobb had referred to the capitulation of Paulus on that day, endorsing thereby in memory the progress of the war and the moment when Hewetson left the Section. Finn was unwilling to replace him with an officer lacking any previous experience of liaison work. Accordingly the new man, Slade, a schoolmaster by profession, was given to Pennistone as second-string, and I was ordered to take over the Belgians and Czechs.
As it happened, on that evening at the St Regis, when everyone had had a good deal to drink, Milton Wisebite had gone on to ask news of Pamela Flitton, with whom, so it then appeared, he had enjoyed a brief moment of intimacy at some stage of the war. Apparently the episode had been the high peak of romance in his life, more especially as she was a kind of relation of his. Whatever took place between them