WHAT WAR IS LIKE…

With the world changing rapidly around us, with talk of war becoming almost commonplace and inevitable, I remembered a conversation from years ago. I’d wandered over to a favorite little town in New Mexico, whose name I won’t reveal for fear that the literally dozens of people who read this paper will descend upon the village in monstrous hordes and ruin it. I was standing in front of the country store with my friend Pat Cooke and her 15 year old dog Sue, when two of her pals stopped by for a chat.

Their names were Phillip and Armando and they had driven up from the south to visit. Both gentlemen were in their 60s or early 70s at the time, and Phillip had recently been discharged from the hospital after suffering a serious stroke. For six months he had been unable to speak and some worried that he would never recover. It was apparent, however, that Phillip had indeed recovered, and was making up for lost time. While he shamelessly flirted with both Pat and the dog, his older brother Armando told me his life story. I swear this is what he told me. The conversation went something like this…

“My brother and I are Basque, you know. We came from the Pyrenees before the second world war,” Armando explained.

“Really,” I said. “What did you do when you came over here?”

“Well,” he replied, “I went to work for the OSS.”

I knew what the OSS was…the Office of Strategic Services, the military intelligence agency during World War II. I know my WWII history pretty well, and since I also believe that in my last life I may have been the pilot of a B-24 Liberator in Europe that was shot down over Belgium in August 1944, I could converse fairly intelligently with him on the subject.

“The OSS?” I said. “Did you ever meet the director, Bill Donovan?”

“‘Wild Bill’ Donovan? Of course…I met with him several times in the President’s office.”

“The President’s office? Which president do you mean?”

“Why President Roosevelt’s office. You see, Franklin Roosevelt was president during the–”

“I know he was president during the war,” I interrupted. “You actually met President Roosevelt?”

“Yes, of course. He was a great man. Donovan was too…and tough. No man was tougher than Donovan.”

“Well,” I asked somewhat hesitantly, not knowing whether to believe a word of this, “what did you do for the OSS?”

“I was an agent,” he explained casually.

“You were a spy?”

Armando shrugged. “I guess you could say that.”

I looked at Armando. He barely stood five and a half feet tall. Stocky and balding with bushy white sideburns, I wondered if this man could really have pal’d around with the likes of FDR and “Wild Bill.” I decided that I believed every word he was saying.

“So where were you a spy?”

“Those were incredible times. Truly the future of our world was at stake. My partner and I were in pursuit of two German agents who were trying to get diamonds from South Africa to Germany via South America. The Germans needed the diamonds to make diamond bits…it’s the only way you can machine parts for weaponry and the like. Do you follow me?”

I nodded.

“We caught up with them in Brazil, near Angel Falls.” Armando put his ball cap on and pulled the brim down low over his eyes and looked up at the sky.

“It’s going to be another hot day. Too damn hot for September,” he observed keenly.

“Yes it is,” I said, “but what happened next?”

“What do you mean?”

“The diamonds.”

“Oh yes…OK. We had caught up with them in Brazil when they discovered we were following them…They killed my partner.”

“Oh no…so they got away?”

“No,” he replied grimly. “I killed both of them.”

He waited for a moment; then he continued. “I killed one of them instantly, and I thought the other was dead too. But I turned my back on him and he shot me with a small gun that he had concealed. So I finished him off. I was seriously wounded, but, obviously, I survived.”

I didn’t know what to think. Just minutes before, Pat and I had been chatting about the weather and the remarkable good health of Sue the Dog. Now my new friend Armando had led me into the dark and violent world of the OSS and the incredible role he played in it. If I could believe him.

“Did you recover the diamonds?” I asked finally.

“Yes. And then I threw the Germans into the Amazon and fed them to the pirranahs.”

“Oh,” was all I could manage to say.

“And can you believe this? The British had a force down there, and when they learned what I had done, they arrested me for desecrating a dead person. Fortunately, Donovan came to my defense and got me off. Besides, I was able to prove that they were Nazi agents.”

“How did you do that?” I was afraid to ask.

“All German spies had a small tattoo under their arm pit with a swastika and a serial number. Before I threw them in the Amazon, I got out my knife and I–”

“OK,” I said. “I think I get the picture.”

“I think those little patches are still in Washington somewhere. They don’t throw anything away in military intelligence.”

“No…no,” I considered. “I suppose they don’t.”

Armando gazed down the main street of Pat’s little town, a place that has barely changed since he chased Nazis in Brazil. “I was eager to get out of there and back home after all that,” he said. “So when those Amazonian women captured me and held me prisoner for three months, I was very upset.”

The bubble popped. “OK Armando. You’ve gone too far. I’ve believed you up to now. I’ve actually believed every word you’ve said…Why, I don’t know. But Amazonian women? Come on!”

“You don’t believe me?” Armando looked wounded. “OK,” he said, shaking his head. “I will have to show you.”

He unbuttoned his shirt cuff and rolled up his sleeve. On his arm, starting near his shoulder and extending all the way to his wrists, I noticed the strangest scar I have ever seen. It spiraled all the way down his arm, wrapping it completely every couple of inches or so as it descended toward his hand.

“Do you see the scar?” he asked. “Do you see it?”

Once again, all I could do was nod.

“That is from the leather restraints the Amazonian women put on me…for three months, they never took it off.”

Just then, Phillip poked his brother in the ribs and said, “It’s time to go, Armando. Let’s go.”

Armando shook my hand. “It has been a pleasure talking to you. We should get together again some time.”

“I’d like that,” I replied.

He took off his ball cap one more time to wipe the sweat from his brow. When he did, I noticed two deep scars on the top of his head, directly above each eye, but above where his hair line used to be.

“As long as you’re describing your scars to me, Armando…where did you get those two scars on the top of your head?”

Armando stroked them gently with his hand, as if it was helping to recall yet another adventure. “Oh yes…I remember these scars. They are from an operation. The doctors said they had to do it because I was too horny.”

“WHAT?” I cried.

“Goodbye, my friend,” he grinned and headed for the car.

“Wait a minute,” I yelled. “Was any of that the truth?”

“Believe me when I tell you…It was all the truth.”

Armando turned the key, the engine started, he put the car in gear, and roared onto Main Street, throwing gravel and a cloud of dust as he and Phillip made their grand exit.

Pat and Sue and I watched the car shrink in the distance. “What do you think, Pat? Was all that the honest-to-god truth?”

“Jim,” she said wisely, patting me on the shoulder, “never question the OSS.”

I decided she was right.