Kane and Abel/Sons of Fortune Read online

  “Well, if you’re so eager to join up, Mr. Rosnovski, I could use you, but not in the way you imagine. General Demers needs someone to take overall responsibility as quartermaster for the Fifth Army while they’re fighting in the front line. If you believe Napoleon was right when he said an army marches on its stomach, you could play a vital role. The job carries the rank of major. That is one way in which you could unquestionably help America to win the war. What do you say?”

  “I’ll do it, General.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Rosnovski.”

  The general pressed a buzzer on his desk, and a very young lieutenant came in and saluted smartly.

  “Lieutenant, will you take Major Rosnovski to personnel and then bring him back to me?”

  “Yes, sir.” The lieutenant turned to Abel. “Will you come this way, please, Major?”

  Abel followed him, turning as he reached the door.

  “Thank you, General,” he said.

  Abel spent the weekend in Chicago with Zaphia and Florentyna. Zaphia asked him what he wanted her to do with his fifteen suits.

  “Hold on to them,” he replied, wondering what she meant. “I’m not going to war to get killed.”

  “I’m sure you’re not, Abel,” she said. “That wasn’t what was worrying me. It’s just that now they’re all three sizes too large for you.”

  Abel laughed and took the suits to the Polish refugee center. He then returned to New York, went to the Baron, canceled the advance guest list and twelve days later handed the building over to the American Fifth Army. The press hailed Abel’s decision as a “selfless gesture” of a man who had been a refugee of the First World War.

  It was another three months before Abel was called to active duty, during which time he organized the smooth running of the New York Baron for General Clark and then reported to Fort Benning, to complete an officers’ training program. When he finally did receive his orders to join General Demers of the Fifth Army, his destination turned out to be somewhere in North Africa. He began to wonder if he would ever get to Germany.

  The day before Abel left to go overseas, he drew up a will, instructing his executors to offer the Baron Group to David Maxton on favorable terms if he was killed and divide the rest of his estate between Zaphia and Florentyna. It was the first time in nearly twenty years that he had contemplated death, not that he was sure how he could get himself killed in the regimental canteen.

  As his troop ship sailed out of New York harbor, Abel stared at the Statue of Liberty. He could well remember how he had felt on seeing the statue for the first time nearly twenty years before. Once the ship had passed the Lady, he did not look at her again, but said out loud, “Next time I see you, you French bitch, America will have won this war.”

  Abel crossed the Atlantic, taking with him two of his top chefs and five others of the kitchen staff who had enlisted. The ship docked at Algiers on February 1, 1943. Abel spent almost a year in the heat and the dust and the sand of the desert, making sure that every member of the division was as well fed as possible.

  “We eat badly, but we eat a damn sight better than anyone else” was General Clark’s comment.

  Abel commandeered the only good hotel in Algiers and turned the building into a headquarters for General Clark. Although Abel could see he was playing a valuable role in the war, he itched to get into a real fight, but a major quartermaster in charge of catering is rarely sent into the front line other than to feed the troops.

  He wrote to Zaphia and George and watched by photograph as his beloved daughter Florentyna grew up. He even received an occasional letter from Curtis Fenton, reporting that the Baron Group was making an ever larger profit, every hotel in America being packed because of the continual movement of troops and civilians. Abel was sad not to have been at the opening of the new hotel in Montreal, where George had represented him. It was the first time he had not been present at the opening of a Baron, but George wrote at reassuring length of the new hotel’s great success. Abel began to realize how much he had built in America and how much he wanted to return to the land he now felt was his home.

  He soon became bored with Africa and its mess kits, baked beans, blankets and fly swatters. There had been one or two spirited skirmishes out there in the western desert, or so the men returning from the front assured him, but he never saw any real action, although often when he took the food to the front, he would hear the firing, and it made him even angrier. One day to his excitement General Clark’s Fifth Army was posted to Southern Europe. Abel hoped this would be his chance to see Poland once again.

  The Fifth Army, while American, landed on the Italian coast in amphibious craft. Aircraft gave tactical cover. They met considerable resistance, first at Anzio and then at Monte Cassino, but the action never involved Abel and he began to dread the end of a war in which he had seen no combat. But he could never devise a plan that would get him into the fighting. His chances were not improved when he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and sent to London to await further orders.

  With D Day, the great thrust into Europe began. The Allies marched into France and liberated Paris on August 25, 1944. As Abel paraded with the American and Free French soldiers down the Champs Elysées behind General de Gaulle to a hero’s welcome, he studied the still magnificent city and decided exactly where he was going to build his first Baron hotel in France.

  The Allies moved on up through northern France and across the German border in a final drive toward Berlin. Abel was posted to the First Army under General Omar Bradley. Food was coming mainly from England; local supplies were almost nonexistent, because each succeeding town at which the Allies arrived had already been ravaged by the retreating German army. When Abel arrived in a new city, it would take him only a few hours to commandeer the entire remaining food supply before other American quartermasters had worked out exactly where to look. British and American officers were always happy to dine with the 9th Armored Division and wondered how the 9th had managed to requisition such excellent supplies. On one occasion when General George S. Patton joined General Bradley for dinner, Abel was introduced to the famous Patton, who always led his troops into battle brandishing an ivory-handled revolver.

  “The best meal I’ve had in the whole damn war,” said Patton.

  By February 1945, Abel had been in uniform for nearly three years and he knew the war would be over in a matter of months. General Bradley kept sending him congratulatory notes and meaningless decorations to adorn his ever-expanding uniform, but they didn’t help. Abel begged the general to let him fight in just one battle, but Bradley wouldn’t hear of it.

  Although it was the duty of a junior officer to lead the food trucks up to the front lines and then supervise mess for the troops, Abel often carried out the responsibility himself. And as in the running of his hotels, he would never let any of his staff know when or where he next intended to pounce.

  It was the continual flow of blanket-covered stretchers into camp that March day which made Abel want to go to the front and take a look for himself. When it reached a point where he could no longer bear the one-way traffic of bodies, Abel rounded up his men and personally organized the fourteen food trucks. He took with him one lieutenant, one sergeant, two corporals and twenty-eight privates.

  The drive to the front, although only twenty miles, was tiresomely slow that morning. Abel took the wheel of the first truck—it made him feel a little like General Patton—through heavy rain and thick mud; he had to pull off the road several times to allow ambulance details the right of way in their return from the front. Wounded bodies took precedence over empty stomachs. Abel hoped that most were no more than wounded, but only an occasional nod or wave suggested any sign of life. It became obvious to Abel with each mud-tracked mile that something big was going on near Remagen, and he could feel the beat of his heart quicken. Somehow, he knew this time he was going to be involved.

  When he finally reached the command post he could hear the enemy fire in the near distan