The Majors Page 10

  “Three of them are, sir.”

  “Tell me about them,” Davis said.

  Lowell bent his head and pointed to the medals. “This is the Order of St. George and St. Andrew,” he said.

  “Korean?” Lt. Col. Davis asked, a challenge.

  “Greek, sir,” Lowell said. “And this is the Korean Distinguished Service Cross, the Korean Military Medal, and the Tae Guk, which is the same as our DSM.”

  “If it was your intention, Major,” Lt. Col. Davis said, “to dazzle me with your fruit salad, you have succeeded.”

  “Sir, regulations stipulate that decorations will be worn when reporting for duty in garrison.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Davis said, coldly. Lowell did not reply.

  “How do you plan to handle it, Major,” Davis asked, “when Camp Kilmer reports you AWOL as of 20 April?”

  “Sir, I spoke with the AC of S, Personnel, a Colonel Gray, who informed me that a TWX from my receiving organization would clear that up.”

  “And you expect to be reimbursed for your commercial travel here?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And you hoped to be continued on leave here in Germany, is that it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You made a mistake reporting in, Major,” Lt. Colonel Davis said. “I’m very short of chopper pilots, even ones fresh from flight school. I am going to have to put you right to work.”

  “Yes, sir,” Major Lowell said, immediately. That was the first thing Major Lowell had done of which Lt. Col. Davis approved. He had expected at the very least a delay while Lowell thought that over, and at worst a recitation of tragic facts that made his being on leave a humanitarian necessity. Lowell hadn’t blinked an eye.

  “You were with the 73rd Armor in Korea?”

  “73rd Heavy Tank,” Lowell said, making the correction. “Yes, sir.”

  “They were involved in the breakout from the Pusan perimeter?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Were you with them, then?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Tell me something, Major,” Lt. Col. Davis asked, with deceptive innocence, “what is a regular army Major with nearly as much fruit salad as George Patton doing flying a chopper?”

  Lowell met his eyes, and there was a pause before he replied.

  “I came to the conclusion, sir, that my future as an armor officer was going to be less than I hoped.”

  “Fucked up, did you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And it was reflected on your efficiency report?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And it was either into army aviation or out of the army?”

  “Very nearly, sir.”

  “How much service do you have? Until you have your twenty years, I mean?”

  “I’ve got five years and some months of active duty service, sir.”

  “You made major in five years?” Davis asked, disbelievingly.

  “I was out for two years, sir. From 1948 until 1950. I was recalled for the Korean War.”

  “How old are you, Lowell?” Davis asked.

  “Twenty-six, sir.”

  “And at twenty-six, you have had time to make major and then fuck up by the numbers?”

  “That would seem to sum it up nicely, yes, sir.”

  “You say you have a son?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Living with his mother here in Germany?”

  “His mother is dead, sir. He lives with his mother’s family.”

  “Do you think your responsibility toward your son is going to interfere with the performance of your duties here?”

  “No, sir.”

  “See that it doesn’t,” Davis said. “I am one of those old-fashioned soldiers who believes that an officer’s primary responsibility is to his duty. Those with personal problems which interfere with their duties should get out of the army.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You understand your position here, Major?” Davis asked, and went on without waiting for a reply. “You’re on an initial utilization tour. The primary purpose of such a tour is to build up your flying time. By and large, you will be treated exactly as if you were a warrant officer or a second lieutenant. Your rank, during your initial utilization tour, is not going to buy you any privileges. You understand that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m going to send you down to Lieutenant Colonel Withers, who has the Rotary Wing Special Missions Branch,” Colonel Davis said. “Read VIP.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Colonel Withers will teach you how to fly our way,” Davis went on. “And after a long while, he might even let you fly passengers. Unimportant ones. Not the brass. The aides.”

  Lowell smiled and said, “Yes, sir.”

  “There is one thing you fuck-ups get when you come to army aviation,” Colonel Davis said. “A clean slate. So far as I’m concerned, Major Lowell, your slate is clean. But the other side of that coin is that I dislike people who come to aviation because it’s their last chance.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lowell said.

  “I’ll certainly see you around, Lowell,” Davis said. He got up and put out his hand. “You may consider yourself officially welcomed to the Seventh Army Flight Detachment.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  “You’re dismissed, Major.”

  Lowell looked askance at him.

  “Something?”

  “It would help, sir, if I knew where to report to Colonel Withers.”

  Davis had forgotten the little ploy he’d made about needing chopper pilots so badly that Lowell would not get the rest of his leave.

  “How much time, minimum, would you require to get your personal affairs straightened out?” he asked.

  “My son is in Marburg, sir,” Lowell said. “A day up there, a day there, and a day back. Three days.”

  “Take it as VOCO,” Davis said. “Then it won’t be charged as leave. And while you’re gone, I’ll speak to Colonel Withers. Maybe after we get you checked out in the local area, we can work a week or ten days’ leave in.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Lowell said. He saluted, did an about-face, and walked out of the office.

  Davis wondered for a moment what Lowell had done to fuck up, and then put him out of his mind. He would make up his mind whether he was a Class “A” fuck-up (unsalvageable), or a Class “B” (just another mediocrity who had a bad efficiency report), or a Class “C” (salvageable and of potential use to army aviation in the future), after he’d read his service record and made some inquiries on his own.

  It was not necessary for Colonel Davis to do the latter. The day after Major Lowell had reported for duty, Colonel Davis got a letter from the man recognized by the small group of professional soldiers in army aviation as the President.

  The tiny nucleus of army aviators who were interested in more than getting their twenty years in for retirement were generally regarded with disdain by the others. They called them the Cincinnati Flying Club, a derogatory reference to the Society of the Cincinnati, membership in which was limited to descendants of officers who had served under George Washington in the Revolution. Lt. Colonel William R. Roberts, USMA ’40, a graduate of the first class of liaison pilots ever trained. (“The Class Before One”) was known, affectionately or disparagingly, depending on who was talking, as “the President of the Cincinnati Flying Club.”

  PO Box 334

  Fort Sill, Okla.

  20 March 1954

  Dear Ford:

  I have arranged to have sent to you one Major Craig W. Lowell, who graduated, barely (he is not a natural pilot) from RW 54-6 today. I personally don’t like him, but in our present personnel situation, and because of considerable pressure applied to me by, among others, Bob Bellmon, I decided he’s worth the risk.

  In the opening days of the Korean War, Lowell, then a recalled National Guard captain, led the breakout from Pusan after the Inchon invasion. He’s the Lowell of Task Force Lowell. I
t got him a major’s leaf at twenty-two, and he subsequently covered himself with glory and medals in the dash to the Yalu and the withdrawal from Hamhung. Paul Jiggs, who commanded the 73rd, and who was last week given his first star, swears he is a splendid combat commander, and the best plans and training man—and oh, God, how we need them—he has ever known.

  The bad news is that he has, Bellmon informs me, an efficiency report as bad as he’s ever seen. He is on the s——tlist for two things: not recommended for combat command and lack of judgment.

  The first thing that has him in trouble was standing up in a court-martial and announcing that he could see nothing wrong with an officer executing on the spot another officer who didn’t measure up in combat. The accused in the trial was a young, Negro, Norwich-type captain who was accused of murdering an allegedly cowardly-in-the-face-of-the-enemy officer in the Pusan perimeter, and then turning his own tank cannon on another yellow one during the move up the peninsula. The connection becomes involved because he’s Norwich, and because his father, Colonel Philip Sheridan Parker III, retired, commanded the task force from Porky Waterford’s Hell’s Circus which snatched Bellmon back from the Russians in the closing days of World War II.

  Young Parker, incidentally, “volunteered” for aviation the same day Lowell did, and graduated with him. He has been assigned to Alaska, which is as far apart as I could arrange to have them separated.

  The second thing that has Lowell on the spot is the scandal he caused by taking Georgia Paige (the actress who doesn’t wear a brassiere) up to the front when she was here with a USO troupe. Photos got out. The story is that Lowell was carrying on with her whenever they could find a horizontal place.

  In any event, Lowell was assigned as an assistant professor of military science at Bordentown Military School, and Parker was assistant housing officer at Fort Devens. These are the sort of people from whom we must recruit.

  One more thing about Lowell: he is obscenely rich, by inheritance, and has considerable influence in the Congress.

  Further interconnection: Bellmon believes that the reason he is not at this moment among the missing in Siberia is because of the decent behavior, at considerable risk to himself, of the officer commanding the stalag. Our man Lowell, when he was in Germany early-on, married a German lady who turned out to be the daughter of Colonel Count Peter-Paul von Greiffenberg, who was at the time cutting down trees for the Russians in Siberia.

  The count was released by the Russians in 1950, just in time to meet Lowell before he was sent to Korea. Lowell was in Korea about four months when a drunken quartermaster major (U.S.) ran into her car near Giessen and killed her. The boy is being raised by his grandfather. Grandfather is now Generalmajor von Greiffenberg of the Bundeswehr. Deputy Chief of Intelligence.

  All of these details, Ford, so that you’ll be aware of what we have in Lowell (and to a lesser degree in Parker). The potential to do us enormous good is there, but so is the potential for damage. My gut feeling is that if the trouble he’s just been through hasn’t taught him his lesson, we should get rid of him quickly and permanently, even if this enrages the armor establishment. It puts a heavy burden on you, and I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.

  It will be announced in the next week or so that Camp Rucker, in Alabama, will be reactivated and designated the Army Aviation School. I have been there. There is one dirt strip, last used during War II as an auxiliary field by the air force. Whatever we need we’ll have to build ourselves, which means begging for money. But at least we have our own base!

  What we need are some senior people, for the next couple of years. I try hard, but evangelism doesn’t seem down my alley.

  Helen sends love to you and Betty.

  Always, Old Buddy,

  Bill.

  PS: In case you didn’t notice, I was #34 (of 36) on the last colonel’s list. I think that it should come through (in eight or nine months) in time so that the eagle will qualify me to take over the Aviation Board, which will be among the first activities opened at Camp Rucker.

  Lieutenant Colonel Davis had indeed noticed the name of Lt. Col. William Roberts on the colonel’s promotion list. His own name had been conspicuously absent. The fact that Bill Roberts was on it might be significant. And it might not. Roberts was West Point. His promotion might be because of the West Point Protective Association, which took care of its own, even the mad-eyed radicals of army aviation. But it might be because somebody in the Pentagon appreciated what he had done in the past, and what he might do in the future.

  Davis wished that he had known about Lowell before he had assigned him to Withers. Withers had been a horse’s ass even before he had discovered Jesus Christ as his personal savior at age forty-four, and what he was now was a religious fanatic. It would have been better to have kept Lowell closer to home, where he could be watched, and perhaps, if he turned out, taught something, perhaps even converted to the One True Faith. But it was too late now. And maybe what Lowell needed was a CO washed in the blood of the lamb.

  (Three)

  Marburg an der Lahn, West Germany

  15 April 1954

  The major domo at Schloss Greiffenberg (it was more of a villa than a castle, having been built in 1818, after improvements in the tools of warfare had rendered battlements and moats obsolete; but a Graf doesn’t live in a villa, he lives in a Schloss) was new and didn’t know Lowell, and was unimpressed when Lowell told him who he was. He left him outside, with the door closed in his face, with the announcement he would “make inquiries.”

  A woman opened the door. An attractive, prematurely gray-haired woman who smiled and put out her hand, and spoke to him in English.

  “My dear Major Lowell, you will have to forgive us. All Peter-Paul’s man said was that ‘there was an American at the door.’ Please come in.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Peter-Paul didn’t expect you until next month,” she said, and then she raised her voice, and called in German, “Liebchen, your Papa is here!”

  Her voice was considerably less pleasant when she spoke to the major domo.

  “Put Major Lowell’s things in the room next to the child’s, and the next time, don’t be such a stupid ass. This American is the child’s father.”

  She doesn’t, Lowell realized, understand that I speak German. That could be interesting, or amusing.

  The child didn’t come. They had to go find him. Then he hid behind the woman’s skirts.

  “He’s not used to you,” she said.

  Peter-Paul Lowell had been born in 1947. That made him seven, his father decided, a little old to be hiding behind a woman’s skirts. Or is it that I am so formidable a figure?

  “What do you say, Squirt?” he said.

  The child didn’t reply.

  “I think, if I may say so,” the woman said, “that it would be best to leave him alone. He has the von Greiffenberg hard-head.”

  “There’s some Lowell in him, too,” Lowell said. “Well, to hell with him. If he doesn’t want the guns, I’ll just give them to somebody else.”

  “What guns?” the boy said.

  “It can talk, you see?” Lowell said. “The guns in the brown bag. The man took it upstairs to my room.”

  The boy fled the room.

  “Major,” the woman said. “Forgive me. What can I offer you to drink?”

  “Scotch, please,” he said.

  “I think there’s a little left,” she said. “Peter-Paul has been waiting for you to come so that he can get you to buy liquor from the army.”

  “I didn’t think to bring any,” Lowell said. “And you forgot to tell me who you are?”

  “Oh, just another of the displaced relatives Peter-Paul has taken in,” she said. “This one from Pomerania. I’m Elizabeth von Heuffinger-Lodz. The countess and my mother were sisters.”

  I’ll bet, Lowell thought, that there’s a title that goes with that.

  “As you gather, I’m the child’s father,” he said. “My nam
e is Craig.”

  She shook his hand again.

  I’d like to screw her, he thought, and then he wondered why that thought had suddenly popped into his mind. That would really be a goddamned dumb thing to do, even if she was interested, and there was no reason to suspect she would be.

  Peter-Paul Lowell, P.P., came into the room as she handed Craig Lowell a drink. He had on a cowboy hat, a vest, a pair of chaps, on backward, a gun belt, and two enormous six-shooter cap pistols.

  “You have your chaps on backward,” Craig said.

  “Excuse me?”

  The European accent and the European manners of the boy made the father sad. He took a large swallow of the weak drink, and then dropped to his knees to show his son how a cowboy wore his chaps.

  When he looked up at the woman, he saw her eyes on him. He had the feeling that she was surprised about him, for some reason. She probably expected me to come in here wearing Bermuda shorts, knee socks, and chewing gum, he thought.

  V

  (One)

  The Pentagon

  Washington, D.C.

  15 May 1954

  Major Rudolph G. MacMillan, wearing his pinks and greens with all his ribbons and overseas bars and the unit shoulder insignia of both the Armored Center (where he was presently assigned) and the 82nd Airborne Division (his most significant World War II assignment), very carefully opened the door of the men’s room cubicle a crack and peered out. Then he closed the door carefully and slid the lock in place. A colonel had come in, one he didn’t know, and he wasn’t waiting for him.

  Major MacMillan was off limits. The men’s room in which he sat, trousers up, was a senior officer’s latrine, reserved for colonels and better. Lieutenant colonels down to second lieutenants had their own latrines and the enlisted men had theirs.

  MacMillan hated the Pentagon, and Pentagon types hated MacMillan types, as company clerks hated squad corporals. But squad corporals could take company clerks out behind the PX beer hall, or waylay them on their way home from the service club and kick the shit out of them when they misused their typewriters.

  Corporal Rudolph G. MacMillan had kicked the shit out of a company clerk at Fort Benning in ’41 for making a “clerical error” on his service record that kept him from getting the three stripes of a buck sergeant. And the company clerk had told the first sergeant, and the first sergeant had hauled him before the company commander, and both the company clerk and the first sergeant had been sure that he was going to come out of the company commander’s office with bare sleeves, and with a little bit of luck, under arrest pending court-martial. But he had had his facts straight then, and he’d come out of the company commander’s office as Sergeant MacMillan.