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18 TelDtinnTrouble lAYS PASS IN RESEARCH, evenings in interviews, nights listening to Burt talk, and sometimes sing, one night when he stands in the comer of the living room and belts out childhood songs, also operatic arias, all a cappella, loud enough for the stage. Some of these he sings in his own singing voice, powerful, clear, direct. Others, at my prompting, he sings in his version of his brother's singing voice, unschooled, laboring, imprecise. It is a virtuoso performance , and Betty and 1 break out in applause. Seldom in Washington do 1 have time to myself. 1 am always on the move, rushing from this place to that. 1 listen to well-known historians express their debt to S. L. A. Marshall, compatriots who served under him during World War II and were proud to be considered "Marshall Men" for the rest of their careers. There is Forrest Pogue, biographer of General George C. Marshall, and Martin Blumenson, biographer of General George S. Patton, Jr., and author of more than a dozen books. "I still adore Sam," Blumenson tells me. "I always will." My emotions are taken on a wild ride all over the territory. Exhaustion predominates, but there are also moments of fascination, or boredom, or elation. Surprises about my grandfather still crop up. 1 am researching in Suitland, looking through a box labeled "Office of Quartermaster General, Cemeterial Files, 1915-1939" when 1find the file belonging to "Jones, William c.-Sgt. 2236578, Ft. Worth, Texas." Charly Jones, my grandfather's buddy, whose death prompts that poignant inscription in my grandfather's scrap181 182 RECONCILIATION ROAD book. That was my great discovery on my first trip to EI Paso, convincing proof of my grandfather's combat experience. Now, I hold Charly Jones' final Army papers in my hands and read his first sergeant's account of his death: "On the morning of the 8th of November, Sgt. Jones was in charge of a detail repairing the Villers devant Dun-Montigny road. Sgt. Jones' detail was working on the road forks leading to an old German ammunition dump, a point about one kilometer southwest of the town of Montigny. About ten o'clock, a HE [high explosive artillery round] came over and dropped pretty close to where my comrade was working. The second shell hit right in the midst of Sgt. Jones' gang and I saw the men fall. I ran towards them and when I got there, Sgt. Jones was lying face down by the edge of the road. He was dead when I got there, evidently having been instantly killed. Upon examination I saw that he had been hit by several shell fragments in the chest. He was buried about fifty yards from the edge of the road, on the East Side opposite the spot where he was killed." This eyewitness account of Charly Jones' death suddenly confirms my worst fear-that my grandfather lied when he wrote his inscription. This account shows that all the crucial details of Charly Jones' death are wrong in his scrapbook. Jones was not killed "near Bantheville," as my grandfather wrote; he was killed close to Montigny , seven miles away. He was not killed "going forward"; he was killed while working on a road. And he was not killed by "three machine-gun bullets in his head"; he was killed by artillery fragments in the chest. In my newspaper series, I had written that "I cannot imagine a returning doughboy lying about a fallen comrade in his war scrapbook ." Now, I confirm my grandfather did exactly that. There were clues I missed then, things I should have caught, it occurs to me in the evening. I had made no connection when I read the letter home to his father with its mention of having been in the Argonne campaign "for a few days." Charly Jones was killed more than two weeks into that campaign, so why didn't that click in my mind months ago? Why wasn't I more skeptical, more cautious, less eager to be convinced by my brilliant research? But the real question that bedevils me is: Why did my grandfather do it? Did he just want to appear braver when he showed his TEMPTING TROUBLE 183 war scrapbook to pals in EI Paso? Or was something more going on? Did he feel guilt about not being there when his best buddy needed him most? And was he trying to cover his guilt by making them comrades...

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