The Captains Page 18

  “Let me make my position clear,” Jiggs interrupted him. “You are going to be relieved. That’s been settled. The only question is how.”

  “Sir,” Ellis said, “I will protest my relief.”

  “Are you that stupid?” Jiggs said, trying to sound more angry than he really felt. He really felt lousy, not angry.

  “I resent that, sir,” Ellis said.

  “Resent it all you want,” Jiggs said, “but get it through your head that I’ve got you by the balls. Don’t you threaten me with an official complaint.”

  Ellis seemed to be forming several replies, but in the end he said nothing.

  “What I really have in mind, Major, is the good of the unit. Above all else. And I know you’re the same kind of a soldier—the outfit comes first.”

  “I like to think of myself that way, Colonel.”

  “Now, I can relieve you as of this moment, Ellis, and you can complain to Walton Walker himself, and you’ll stay relieved. If you think that through, you’ll know I’m right.”

  “You have that prerogative, sir.”

  “To do that, it would be necessary for me to write an efficiency report on you that would keep you from getting any other responsible assignment, and more than likely, would see you finishing out your twenty years with stripes on your sleeve.”

  Ellis looked at him, met his eyes, but said nothing for a moment. Finally, he said: “I’ve tried to give you my best, Colonel.”

  “I know you gave me your best, and I’m grateful to you for doing it; but your best simply has not been good enough.”

  “You’re talking about Lowell, of course,” Ellis said. “Colonel, he’s a graduate of the Wharton School of Business. He’s got a mind like a goddamned adding machine. I have to work at it, look things up. He remembers them.”

  “I have never for a moment believed you weren’t giving me the best you had to give, Charley,” Jiggs said. “But it’s not good enough.”

  “I appreciate your breaking this to me as gently as you could, Colonel,” Major Ellis said after a moment. “I won’t bitch. You knew I wouldn’t.”

  “I’m not through, Charley,” Jiggs said. “I want more from you. And I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you in return.”

  “What else can you want? I’ve already agreed to cut my own throat.”

  “I want Lowell as my S-3,” Jiggs said.

  “The minute you relieve me, G-1 will send you a replacement. And if they’ve doubled the size, more than doubled the size, of the outift, they’re liable to send you a light bird. Two light birds, one to be your exec. Or, shit, you’re liable to get ranked out of your job.”

  “I’ve been promised the job for thirty days. They didn’t say it, but if I get through the next thirty days, I’ll get an eagle. If I don’t…up the creek.”

  “In any event, there’s no way you can make Lowell your S-3,” Ellis said.

  “If my S-3 is Absent in Hospital,” Jiggs said, “I can give him the job temporarily. And after thirty days, I can promote him.”

  “Is that what all this is about? Getting a promotion for Lowell? Christ, he’s not old enough to be a captain.”

  “What this is all about is providing the outfit with the best S-3 I can,” Jiggs said, rather coldly.

  “I’m sorry,” Ellis said. “I’m a little shaken. I hadn’t expected any of this. Shit, what am I going to tell my wife?”

  “If you want to, you can tell her you’re having a little trouble with your back, which is why you’re in the hospital. Give me a month in the hospital, Charley, and I’ll give you a good efficiency report and have you sent home.”

  “That won’t work,” Ellis said. “They won’t keep me at the MASH. They’ll either send me back here, or to Japan.”

  “I’ve got that fixed,” Jiggs said. “I know the MASH commander.”

  “You know what’s funny, Colonel?” Ellis said. He didn’t wait for Jiggs to reply. “Now that it’s out in the open, I’m not ashamed. Goddamnit, I did my best.”

  “Yes, you did,” Jiggs said. “This would have been a lot easier for me, Charley, if you hadn’t.”

  (Four)

  Back at the MASH, Colonel Jiggs found a sergeant and sent him to fetch the MASH commander.

  “This is Major Charley Ellis, Howard,” Jiggs said. “Treat him right.”

  “We’ll start him off with a shot of medicinal bourbon,” the MASH commander said. “And then a hot bath, and then we’ll see what’s wrong with his lower back.”

  Ellis reached over and shook Jiggs’s hand before he got out of the jeep. Jiggs watched him walk toward the Admitting Tent. Ellis turned and looked at him. Jiggs raised his hand in a crisp salute. Ellis returned it just as crisply, and then went inside.

  Jiggs turned his jeep around and drove to the CP.

  He saw the sergeant major.

  “Put Major Ellis’s shaving gear, other personal stuff, in a bag and have someone—you, if you have the time—carry it to him at the MASH. Then ask Captain Lowell to come here.”

  “He’s in S-3, Colonel,” the sergeant major said.

  “Well, then,” Colonel Jiggs said, “we won’t have to send for him, will we?” Then he went into S-3 and informed Captain Lowell that he was now acting S-3 of the 73rd Heavy Tank Battalion (Reinforced).

  VIII

  (One)

  Pusan, South Korea

  12 September 1950

  The S-3 sergeant of the 73rd Medium Tank Battalion (Separate) was Technical Sergeant Prince T. Wallace, RA 33 107 806, of Athens, Georgia. Prince Wallace was a tall, heavy, barrel-chested man of thirty-one. He had been drafted during World War II, served in the North Africa, Normandy, and French campaigns, and had commanded the third tank in the task force under Colonel Creighton W. Abrams in the relief of Bastogne. As a master sergeant, loaded with points for long overseas service, and with decorations for valor and for having been three times wounded, he had been among the first of the troops repatriated and discharged after the war.

  He enrolled under the GI Bill of Rights at the Valdosta State Teacher’s College in his native Georgia, and completed a year of college training. By then he had come to the conclusion that he really didn’t want to be a schoolteacher, and that the prospect of three more years in college was something he didn’t want to face. He also decided that he really missed the army, so he went to Fort MacPherson, in Atlanta, and reenlisted.

  Since he had been out of the army more than ninety days, he had lost the right to reenlist as a master sergeant. He reentered the army as a private first class and underwent an abbreviated basic training course at Fort Bragg. He was then assigned to the G-3 section, Headquarters V Corps at Bragg, as a clerk-draftsman. He applied for Officer Candidate School, was accepted, and was promoted to corporal before his orders to the OCS at the Ground General School at Fort Riley, Kansas, came through.

  In his fourth month at OCS, it seemed quite clear to him that in the shrinking army there was going to be less and less room for officers who did not have a college degree. Looking into the future, he saw himself as a first lieutenant, possibly even a captain, who would be “nonselected” for retention on extended active duty as a reserve officer. There was no way he could qualify for a regular army commission because he did not have a college degree, and no way that he could see to get a college degree. Five or ten years down the road, he would be starting out as an enlisted man again, for the third time.

  There was a third possibility for an army career, one which posed few risks. That was appointment as a warrant officer. An “officer” is correctly a “commissioned officer.” That is to say, he has a commission, signed by the President of the United States, naming him an officer. Corporals and sergeants are called “noncoms,” from noncommissioned. They have no commission. They issue orders under the authority of a commissioned officer. Warrant officers have warrants. They too are not officers (they cannot command), although they are entitled to a salute from enlisted men and their own juniors; and the pay of the fo
ur warrant officer grades (Warrant Officer Junior Grade, and Chief Warrant Officer Grades Two through Four) is identical to that of second lieutenant through major. Warrant Officers live in BOQs, eat at officer’s messes, and are addressed as “sir” by enlisted men.

  Warrant officers were traditionally expert in some military skill, from Explosive Ordnance Disposal to Enlisted Pay. Traditionally, noncommissioned officers in the top two enlisted grades were offered appointment as warrant officers, either directly, because of some skill they had, or as the result of competitive examination. Being made a warrant, and thus accorded the respect paid to an officer, was sort of the unofficial bonus paid to noncoms of long and faithful service. They spent their last few years in an officer’s uniform, and were retired with the pay of a captain or a major.

  Prince Wallace thought that was the way he would like to go. He would become an expert S-3 sergeant, highly skilled in the planning of military operations and the training required to carry them out, and he would, sooner or later, get his warrant. He would thus have the good life of the officer without the responsibility, and without running the risk of being busted back to the ranks.

  Corporal Prince T. Wallace, having voluntarily resigned from Officer Candidate Status, was ordered to the Far East Command (FECOM) and ultimately assigned to the S-3 section of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, First Cavalry Division (Dismounted) on the island of Hokkaido, again as a clerk-draftsman. He was ordered to the First Cavalry Division’s NCO Academy, and as a reward for having graduated at the top of his class, promoted sergeant. He was reassigned to First Cavalry Division (Dismounted) Headquarters, as Noncommissioned Officer in Charge (NCOIC) of the Logistics Section, Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, Plans and Training, G-3. In the vernacular, he was now the First Cav’s G-3 logistics sergeant.

  A year later, he was promoted staff sergeant, and it was as a staff sergeant that he prepared to deploy to Korea when the gooks came across the border in June 1950. He made it as far as the dock, where his visibly and unashamedly furious G-3 informed him that those miserable sonsofbitches at Eighth Army (Rear) had grabbed him as cadre for some about-to-be-formed tank battalion, and how the fuck they expected the First Cav’s G-3 section to function without trained people was something he didn’t understand.

  Staff Sergeant Prince T. Wallace made a good first impression on Lt. Colonel Paul T. Jiggs, newly appointed commander of the 73rd Medium Tank Battalion. Sergeant Wallace looked like a soldier. His hair was cropped closely to his skull, and his face was cleanly shaven. His fatigue uniform was starched and tailored to fit him like a second skin. His boots glistened.

  For a couple of days, Lt. Colonel Jiggs toyed with the notion of making Wallace either the first sergeant of Headquarters and Service Company, or the sergeant major of the battalion itself. He had met both those senior noncommissioned officers and found them wanting.

  But he had also met his S-3, Major Ellis, and formed the instant opinion that the man was going to need all the help he could get. Staff Sergeant Prince T. Wallace, who had been logistics sergeant for the First Cavalry Division G-3 section, was obviously the man to give him that help.

  Colonel Jiggs took Staff Sergeant Wallace for a ride in his jeep and explained the situation to him. What the battalion needed was a good S-3 sergeant, even more than a sergeant major or a Headquarters and Service Company first sergeant. You could pick up sergeant majors and first sergeants anyplace; S-3 sergeants, good S-3 sergeants, were goddamned hard to find. Jiggs told Wallace that he recognized it was costing Wallace a couple of stripes, for the TO&E slot for an S-3 sergeant was only a technical sergeant, paygrade E6, as opposed to the paygrade E7 authorized for first sergeants and sergeants major. Staff Sergeant Wallace told Lt. Col. Jiggs that he understood the situation, and would do his best as the S-3 sergeant. Lt. Colonel Jiggs that same afternoon went to G-1 at Eighth Army and made an obnoxious prick of himself until the G-1, just to get rid of him, came through with authority to promote Staff Sergeant Wallace to technical sergeant, paygrade E6, immediately.

  Jiggs’s snap judgments of both Major Ellis and Sergeant Wallace were quickly vindicated. Without Wallace, Ellis would have fallen flat on his face. Ellis tried hard, but he just couldn’t hack it. Jiggs tried very hard to have him replaced before the 73rd went to Korea, but there was simply nobody else around.

  The first time Captain Craig W. Lowell met Technical Sergeant Wallace, he too formed a snap judgment, but not quite the “now there’s a noncom” judgment of Lt. Colonel Jiggs. What Captain Lowell decided, when he became aware of Technical Sergeant Wallace’s eyes surreptitiously on him, was, “Why, that big sonofabitch is as queer as a three-dollar bill.”

  Captain Lowell’s snap judgment, like that of Lt. Colonel Jiggs, was one hundred percent on the money.

  Captain Lowell had also decided that it was none of his business, that Wallace was Ellis’s problem, and that unless he found out (and he would certainly make no special effort to find out) that Tech Sergeant Wallace was taking teenaged PFCs and corporals into the bunkers, he would not only say nothing but go out of his way to keep from even raising his eyebrows.

  At first, Wallace was not very impressed with Captain Craig W. Lowell (except, of course, physically: Wallace thought Lowell was handsome to the point of beauty—like a fucking statue). He did not think it set a good example for an officer, particularly a company commander, to go around without his helmet, and with a Garand slung from his shoulder (two clips of ammo clipped to the strap, like a common rifleman) and a German Luger stuck in the waistband of his trousers instead of the .45 in a shoulder holster considered de rigeur for line-company tank officers. Captain Lowell, moreover, was doing a number of things either without permission or in direct contravention of regulations and the standing operating procedure (SOP).

  Sergeant Wallace knew for a fact that Baker Company was drawing comfort rations (cigarettes, toilet paper, writing paper, beer, Coca-Cola, razor blades, and shaving cream) from both Eighth Army (where they were supposed to get them) and from the Korean Communications Zone depot (which supported the rear echelon troops not assigned to Eighth Army), where Captain Lowell had convinced the supply officer that his company wasn’t getting anything from Eighth Army.

  Wallace subsequently learned that the noncoms of Baker Company were actively engaged in the black market, almost certainly with Captain Lowell’s tacit (and probably active) permission. The company’s supply sergeant regularly took loads of fired brass 75 mm shell casings into Pusan, where instead of turning them in to the ordnance salvage dump, he bartered them with a Korean black marketeer. In return he would get Korean handicrafts of one form or another (most often things like cheap OD-colored cotton jackets with “I KNOW I’M GOING TO HEAVEN, BECAUSE I’VE SERVED MY TIME IN HELL—KOREA 1950” embroidered on them, or pictures of women with grotesquely outsized bosoms, painted on black velvet; but also some really rather beautifully engraved brass dishes, bowls, and ashtrays, made of course from the fired shell casings). The handicrafts themselves were then bartered. As a result, Baker Company always had ice from the Quartermaster Ice Point; it had its own movie projector and a steady supply of 16 mm films from Eighth Army Special Services; and most outrageous of all, Sergeant Wallace knew for a fact, it had its own rolling brothel, operating out of the back of an ambulance. The girls were actually delivered to the troops manning the tanks on the line, and plied their profession in the rear of the ambulance, which was equipped with a mattress, sheets, water for washing, and illuminated by a red night-light from a tank.

  On the other hand, as Sergeant Wallace had to admit, Baker Company had the highest percentage of tracked vehicle availability in the battalion; the lowest incidence of heat exhaustion; an almost negligible VD rate; and most important, the highest combat efficiency. Captain Lowell lost fewer men, wounded or KIA, than any other company commander in the battalion; and Baker Company regularly killed more of the enemy than anybody else, because somehow Baker Company’s tanks started when they were sup
posed to start, ran when everybody else’s had succumbed to either overheating or old age, and fired whatever had to be fired.

  However, it wasn’t until Captain Lowell had started “helping out” in S-3 (when Major Ellis had been “snowed under”), that Sergeant Wallace really changed his mind about Captain Lowell. He came to respect Lowell, not only for his professional competence, but for his extraordinary tact and compassion in dealing with Major Ellis. Only he and the colonel, Sergeant Wallace was sure, were aware of what a square object in a round hole Major Ellis was. When he looked at Major Ellis, Sergeant Wallace saw himself (if he had gone through OCS and taken a commission) assigned duties he was simply not equipped to handle, which would have doubtless put him in grave risk of being knocked back to the ranks, if not thrown out of the army entirely.

  Technical Sergeant Wallace had been in ths S-3 bunker when the colonel came in and told Major Ellis to get his pot and go for a ride with him. He sensed that something unpleasant was happening, but he wasn’t sure what. After Captain “Deadeye” Lowell came in (with his Ml cradled in his arms like a hunting rifle and that German Luger stuck in his belt) and asked, “Where’s the Boss?” he realized Captain Lowell didn’t know either.

  If anything was going to happen to Major Ellis, Sergeant Wallace knew that Captain Lowell would be among the first to know. When he told Captain Lowell the colonel had taken Major Ellis away, Captain Lowell seemed genuinely surprised. He went to one of the folding tables and asked Sergeant Wallace to get him the Wheeled Vehicle Status Report from the safe. Captain Lowell had been very careful about not asking for the combination to the safe; access to the material inside was limited to the commanding officer and the S-3 and, if the S-3 chose, to the S-3 sergeant. Company commanders, even one “helping out” as much as Captain Lowell did, were not supposed to have the combination.

  Captain Lowell spent an hour with the Wheeled Vehicle Status Report, and finally came up with a list of vehicles, by serial number and date, to be turned in to the newly established Ordnance Wheeled Vehicle repair facility. The list was neatly typed; Captain Lowell typed nearly as neatly, as fast, and as accurately as Sergeant Wallace himself did.