The Majors Read online

  The company commander had made his decision, as Corporal MacMillan had bet his life he would, not so much on fairness, but on what was best for the company. What was right counted, but what really counted was what was best for the company.

  What Major MacMillan was betting his life on now was the accuracy of his perception that the Pentagon was nothing more than an oversized orderly room. The majors and lieutenant colonels were company clerks who used their typewriters with far greater subtlety when they wanted to screw one of the field troops, and you couldn’t grab one of the bastards by his shirt collar and bloody his nose. But a good soldier could still lay the facts out before the company commander, and if he had his facts straight, and what he proposed was good for the army, the Old Man, even if he wore the stars of a general officer instead of a captain’s railroad tracks, would do what was best for the outfit.

  The hydraulic door-closer whooshed again, and MacMillan cracked open the door of his cubicle again. A lieutenant general walked into the latrine and headed for the urinals, his hand dropping to part his tunic, to get at his zipper.

  Major MacMillan pushed open the door of his cubicle and walked to the adjacent urinal. The general glanced at him casually, looked away, and then looked back.

  “I’ll be damned,” the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations of the United States Army said, shaking himself, tucking himself in, zipping himself up. “Mac MacMillan. How the hell are you, Mac?”

  “A little nervous, General,” MacMillan said.

  “How so?”

  They were shaking hands.

  “I just punched a company clerk in the mouth, General,” MacMillan said.

  The general laughed.

  “That was a long time ago, Mac. God, that was a long time ago.”

  “This was another company clerk, General,” MacMillan said. “This one is a colonel.”

  “You’re in trouble, Mac?” the general asked, seriously now.

  “That’ll be up to you, General.”

  “You didn’t really punch…?” the general asked. With MacMillan, the question had to be asked, and not only because when the general had first met Corporal MacMillan, Mac had been about to try out for the post boxing team.

  “Figuratively speaking, of course, General,” MacMillan said. “The way a major punches a colonel is to wait in a latrine for the general after the colonel has made it quite plain that the colonel has made up his mind and doesn’t want to hear any more discussion of an issue. After the colonel has made it an order that I am not to bother the general.”

  “All you have to do, Mac, to talk to me, anytime, is to call me at the house.”

  “I’m not here as your friend, sir. I’m here as an officer.”

  The general’s face suddenly turned stern. “If we weren’t friends, Mac, I would ask you what the hell you’re doing in the senior officer’s crapper.”

  “General, the major requests fifteen minutes of the general’s time.”

  “I heard you were being assigned,” the general said. “Hell, I arranged it, Mac. You don’t like your assignment, is that it? You don’t want…”

  “I’m a soldier, General. I go where I’m sent and do the best I can when I get there.”

  “Then what is it? I thought you’d be glad not to have to work here.”

  “Sir, the general, in my opinion, has made a mistake in setting that whole aviation development operation up the way he has,” Major MacMillan said.

  “Major,” the general said, “I am now going back to my office. I will inform my secretary that I have given you an appointment—” he stopped and looked at his watch—“for fifteen minutes at 11:30. I will hear your arguments. Inasmuch as I made the decisions I have made on the advice of Colonel Gregory, I will ask Colonel Gregory to join us.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  “Or, after pointing out to you that Colonel Gregory will be your efficiency report rating officer, I will completely forget we ever had this little chat.”

  “Sir, I will be there at half past eleven.”

  At 11:28, Major MacMillan walked into the outer office of the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and told the receptionist that he had an appointment with the DCSOPS at 11:30.

  It is said that the DCSOPS is the man who actually runs the army. Legally, he is coequal with the other deputies to the Army Chief of Staff—DCSPERS (Personnel), DCSLOG (Logistics), and DCSINT (Intelligence)—but as a practical matter, he is the one who makes the recommendations to the Chief of Staff (rarely overturned) about where and when and how the army will fight. Intelligence will tell him about the enemy; personnel will tell him how many troops he can have, and logistics will tell him about supplies. He adds these things up, and decides, taking into consideration the probable intentions and capabilities of the enemy, where to send the troops and their logistical support.

  In peacetime, he decides whether the army needs tanks more than artillery, communications more than tanks, or, recently, whether the army needed an air mobility capability more than the tanks and cannon and rifles that armor, artillery, and infantry were screaming for.

  When Major Mac MacMillan was shown into the inner office, both Colonel Arthur Gregory, Chief, Aviation Branch, DCSOPS, and Brigadier General Howard Kellogg, Assistant DCSOPS, were already there, sitting, the width of a cushion between them, on a red leather couch against the wall.

  “Sir,” Major Mac MacMillan snapped, bringing his stocky, barrel-chested body to rigid attention, “Major R. G. MacMillan reporting as ordered, sir.”

  The DCSOPS returned the salute with a casual wave of the hand.

  “Stand at ease, Major,” he said. “You know these gentlemen, I believe. You have fifteen minutes.”

  “With your permission, General,” MacMillan said, and walked to the coffee table before the couch. He had a briefcase in his hand. Such had been his parade ground behavior and posture that none of the three officers noticed it until he set it on the floor and began to neatly lay papers from it in stacks on the table.

  “Sir,” he said, and both the Assistant DCSOPS and the Chief, Aviation Branch, DCSOPS, noticed his use of the singular “Sir” instead of “Gentlemen.” MacMillan was making his pitch to the DCSOPS, not to them. That violated the rules. But the DCSOPS was going along with him. It was going to be the Assistant DCSOPS and the Chief, Aviation Branch, DCSOPS, vs. Major MacMillan, with the DCSOPS himself hearing the case without a jury. God damn MacMillan! Medal or no goddamned medal, that was going too far.

  “Sir,” MacMillan said, “I am under orders to report to the president of the Airborne Board, Fort Benning, Georgia, for duty as liaison between the Aviation Section of the Airborne Board and DCSOPS.”

  “We know that, MacMillan,” the Assistant DCSOPS said. MacMillan acted as if he hadn’t heard him.

  “In a very short time,” he went on, “the Aviation Section of the Airborne Board will become the Aviation Board, shortly after the reactivation of Fort Rucker, Alabama. Aviation testing and development will then report directly to you, sir, rather than through the Airborne and Artillery Boards.”

  “We know all that,” the Assistant DCSOPS said. “What I don’t understand is why we’re discussing this with you.”

  “And that’s Camp Rucker, MacMillan,” the Chief, Aviation Branch, said. “And I was under the impression that whole business was classified. What was your right to know?”

  “Let him talk,” the DCSOPS said.

  “I will then become the liaison officer between the Army Aviation Board and the DCSOPS,” MacMillan said. “In other words between army aviation and the army.”

  “Army aviation is a concept, not a branch of service, Major,” the Assistant DCSOPS said.

  “Yes, sir,” MacMillan said. “That’s my point.”

  “Your point then,” the aviation officer said, sarcastically, “is lost on me.”

  “Let’s hear him out,” the DCSOPS said, somewhat icily.

  “My efficiency report will be
written by the president of the Aviation Board, and endorsed by Colonel Gregory,” MacMillan said. “Whatever information you get up here will come from the president of the Aviation Board via Colonel Gregory.”

  “Have you a better suggestion?” Gregory asked, sarcastically.

  “What’s wrong with that, Mac?” the DCSOPS asked. He wasn’t overly impressed with MacMillan’s intellectual ability, but he knew that MacMillan knew what he was risking by coming here the way he had. MacMillan had paid his dues, the Medal aside, and he was entitled to a full, fair hearing before he paid the price. It had already become apparent to the DCSOPS that he could no longer be assigned to the Aviation Board; MacMillan had already burned that bridge.

  “Both Bill Roberts and Colonel Gregory are members of the Cincinnati Flying Club,” MacMillan said.

  “You refer, I’m sure, to Colonel William Roberts,” Colonel Gregory said, fury in his voice.

  “The Cincinnati Flying Club?” the DCSOPS asked. “What the hell is that?”

  “The old-timers, the establishment old-timers. They think army aviation belongs to them.”

  “Define establishment,” the DCSOPS said.

  “Regulars who stand a chance to make general,” MacMillan said. “The WPPA. People like that.”

  The Association of Graduates and Former Cadets of the United States Military Academy at West Point was widely referred to throughout the army, by officers who had not been privileged to attend that school, as the West Point Protective Association, or WPPA. This appellation was disliked by members of the WPPA.

  “I resent that, Major,” Colonel Gregory said. “I deeply resent that.”

  “Make your point, Mac,” the DCSOPS said. He now deeply regretted stopping in for a quick leak in the colonel’s can. He had a private pisser in his office and he should have used it. He wondered for the first time how long MacMillan had stalked him in there. All morning, certainly. Maybe all week.

  “The only information you’re going to get, General,” MacMillan said, “will be what the Cincinnati Flying Club wants you to hear.”

  “That’s slanderous and insulting!” Colonel Gregory flared.

  “Shall I stop, sir?” MacMillan asked.

  “No, go on, Mac,” the DCSOPS said. “You’ve already dug your grave. You might as well jump right in.”

  “Sir, you would be making a mistake to turn army aviation over to the Cincinnati Flying Club.”

  “MacMillan, I’ve heard about all I intend to take about the so-called Cincinnati Flying Club,” Colonel Gregory said. MacMillan ignored him again.

  “You need a separate outfit down there, General,” MacMillan said. “Separate from the Aviation Board, separate from the Flying Club. Otherwise, the Flying Club will see that their guys get the command assignments, their projects get the money, and their ideas about how to use aircraft to support the ground troops get to be doctrine and get printed as field manuals.”

  There was silence for a long moment in the room. The DCSOPS knew that neither Gregory or his own Assistant DCSOPS would be able to let that accusation pass without rebuttal. He wondered what form it would take.

  “A special unit, commanded, no doubt, by you?” the Assistant DCSOPS asked, sarcastically.

  Ignore it, it’ll go away. Ridicule it, it’ll be ignored. Not bad, the DCSOPS thought, but it won’t wash.

  “By Bob Bellmon,” MacMillan responded. “Or somebody like him. Somebody who’s not artillery. Who’s not in the Flying Club. But somebody who’s also in the WPPA.”

  “Bob Bellmon’s not even an aviator,” the Assistant DCSOPS said, disgust in his voice. “And I resent, Major, your constant and insulting references to a West Point Protective Association.”

  “I could teach him, or anyone else, how to fly in a month,” MacMillan said. “Flying’s not as mysterious as some people would have you believe.”

  “Mac,” the DCSOPS said, “you’re going off half cocked. “You haven’t thought this through.”

  “Yes, sir, I have,” MacMillan said. “What we need down there is a Class II Activity of DCSOPS, maybe called ‘Combat Developments.’ Here it is.”

  A Class II Activity is an army unit stationed on a military post, which is not subordinate to the post commander, but instead to another—usually higher—headquarters. Hospitals, for example, “belong” to the Surgeon General, not to the commanding general of the post where they are located.

  MacMillan handed the DCSOPS a thick sheaf of papers held together with a metal fastener. “Here’s my proposed table of organization and equipment. Briefly, it consists of a commanding officer, an executive officer, some logistic and engineering officers, and a liaison officer. Plus the necessary enlisted technicians.”

  The DCSOPS took the material from MacMillan and started to read it. It was immediately apparent to him that somebody besides MacMillan had had a hand in it. It was a finished piece of staff work, and while MacMillan might be the warrior’s warrior, he was anything but a staff officer. Whoever had done this for him knew what he was doing.

  The DCSOPS thought it over for a moment, then grew angry.

  “Mac, who put you up to this?”

  “Sir?”

  “Goddamnit, somebody did. You didn’t write this.” The DCSOPS had already made up his mind to hang the sonofabitch who, afraid to state his position publicly, had connived to get poor simple Mac to stand up for him.

  “Those are my ideas, sir,” MacMillan said. “I had a friend of mine help me put them down on paper.”

  “Who’s your friend?” the DCSOPS asked.

  “I can’t tell you, General,” MacMillan said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because he said I was committing suicide coming in here with this, and he wouldn’t help me do that.”

  “What’s his name, Mac?” the DCSOPS asked, weighing MacMillan’s apparently honest reply in his mind.

  “I gave him my word as an officer and a gentleman that I wouldn’t say who he was, sir,” MacMillan said.

  MacMillan was incapable of making that up, the DCSOPS decided. He was so simple, such a virgin in this whorehouse of the Pentagon, that he actually believed in such Guidebook for Officers platitudes as the word of honor of an officer and a gentleman.

  “I’m not asking you, Mac,” the DCSOPS said. “I’m telling you.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t do that,” MacMillan said. He came to attention.

  The DCSOPS looked at him a moment. Then he stood up and tossed the staff study in the lap of the Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations.

  “You take a quick read of that,” he said, and then pointed at MacMillan. “And you come with me.”

  He led MacMillan into his small conference room.

  “Mac, I have to know who put you up to this,” he said.

  “Nobody put me up to it, General,” MacMillan said.

  “All right, then, who ‘helped you with it.’ I give you my word as an officer and a gentleman that I won’t do anything to him, now or later. But I have to know.”

  “Why do you have to know?”

  “Because what you’ve done is suggest that there is someone in the service, someone besides yourself—someone rather senior, I would judge, from that staff study—who feels that Colonel Gregory and the Assistant DCSOPS have made a serious error in judgment. Or less kindly, are trying to put something over on me.”

  “Hell, he’s not senior,” MacMillan said, chuckling.

  “Who is he, Mac?” DCSOPS said. When there was no reply, feeling foolish, he repeated: “I give you my word, Mac, as an officer and a gentleman, that I won’t do anything to him.”

  “His name is Lowell,” MacMillan said.

  “Rank? First name?”

  “He’s a major. Craig W. He just finished flight school.”

  “Lowell? That’s the young buck who was screwing the movie star in Korea?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And then got involved in Phil Sheridan Parker’s boy’s court-martial?�
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  “Yes, sir.”

  “No wonder he didn’t want his name involved. He’s got his ass in a deep enough crack the way it is.”

  The DCSOPS was relieved to find out what he had. And rather surprised that the Lowell kid—he recalled that he was only twenty-six or so—was capable of such good staff work. Pity he’d fucked up his career the way he had. The army had good staff officers and they had good combat commanders, but there had been a severe shortage of men who were both since Valley Forge. The Lowell kid had already made his mark as a combat commander. If he was also capable of staff work like this, he could have gone far and fast.

  “It won’t go any further, Mac,” the DCSOPS said. “You have my word.”

  “Yes, sir,” MacMillan said. “Thank you, General.”

  They went back into the large office. The DCSOPS looked at his assistant and raised his eyebrows in question. He was not surprised that the two of them were ready with a reply to shoot down MacMillan.

  “Sir, we don’t need an empire down there,” the Assistant DCSOPS said. “Gregory’s shop can handle anything that comes out of Rucker. The whole idea in sending Major MacMillan down there is to smooth things out, not make waves. A lot of people would be furious if we tried to shove something like this down their throats. Armor doesn’t have a special operation for combat developments. Infantry doesn’t have one. Why should aviation?”

  “How do you respond to that, Major?” DCSOPS asked.

  “The colonels and the majors at Knox and Benning who are planning for the next war commanded companies and battalions and regiments in the last one,” MacMillan said. “There’s nobody, nobody, in aviation with combat command experience.”