The Captains Read online

  It was one of the tougher decisions the Commander in Chief was forced to make. He made it based on his own experience as a captain of artillery. It was a goddamned dirty trick on the officers involved, and he knew it. But there was another side to the coin. Sending troops into battle under inexperienced officers when experienced officers were available was inexcusable. The first duty of an officer—whether a lieutenant or a captain or the Commander in Chief—is to the enlisted men. That was a basic principle of command. He could not justify not calling up the best qualified officers simply because they had already done their duty. They were needed again. They could save some lives. It was a dirty goddamned trick on them, but that’s the way it was going to have to be.

  (Three)

  Kokura, Japan

  7 July 1950

  The well worn but immaculate jeep of First Lieutenant Philip Sheridan Parker IV, the commander of the third platoon of Tank Company, 24th Infantry Regiment, 24th Infantry Division, rolled up before the barracks housing his platoon. Parker slid gracefully out of the vehicle.

  The lieutenant, whose skin was flat black and whose features brought to mind an Arab in a flowing robe, was six feet, three inches tall and carried 225 pounds without fat. He walked quickly up the walkway to the barracks. He was dressed in stiffly starched fatigues and wore a very small fatigue cap squarely on the top of his head. Around his waist was a World War I pistol belt, from which dangled a swiveled holster holding a Model 1917 Colt .45 ACP revolver.

  He had just learned that his platoon would not deploy to Korea with the rest of the company, but would take possession of some new tanks first. The division ordnance officer had learned of the presence of eight M4A3 medium tanks in the Osaka ordnance depot, where they had undergone conversion of their main armament from a 75 mm cannon to the new, high-velocity 76 mm cannon. In addition, the tanks had undergone Depot Level IRAN, or Inspect and Repair As Necessary. This had meant an almost complete rebuild. Thus, in their moving parts, they were new tanks.

  The ordnance officer, after first receiving assurance that he was welcome to the M4A3 tanks, had made his discovery known to the division commander. The division commander had first told the ordnance officer to send someone to Osaka to take physical possession of the tanks. He then decided to assign them to the tank company of the 24th Infantry Regiment, the other two regiments of the division already being in the process of deployment to Korea. The regimental commander of the 24th Regiment had told the tank company commander of the availability of the tanks.

  The tank company commander had decided to give the medium tanks to the third platoon. For one thing, Lieutenant Parker had recently come onto the promotion list for first lieutenant, having completed the requisite time in grade. For another, the company commander was of the opinion that Lieutenant Parker was the best of his three platoon leaders. And finally, Parker had had experience with the high-velocity 76 mm tube at Fort Knox. Having made his decision, he called Parker in and told him.

  Parker pushed open the left of the double wooden doors of the barracks and started up the stairway, taking them two at a time. His platoon was housed in two twenty-five-bed squad bays on the third floor of the tank company barracks. He knocked on the door of the private room of the platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class Amos Woodrow, and when Woodrow came out, followed him into the nearest of the squad bays.

  “Atten-hut!” Sergeant Woodrow called, and the troops, who had been reluctantly packing their personal equipment in foot-lockers (which would be stored by the quartermaster during their Korean deployment), came to attention.

  “Go next door and get the other guys,” Woodrow ordered, pointing his finger at the trooper nearest him. The trooper, a slight little man who lived in mingled fear and awe of both his platoon sergeant and his platoon commander, scurried out of the room.

  Parker thought that Sergeant Woodrow would be a good man to have along with him. He wasn’t overly impressed with many of his troops, and some really worried him, but Woodrow was obviously a first-class noncom.

  Sergeant First Class Amos Woodrow also approved of Lieutenant Parker. Sergeant Woodrow was thirty-eight years old, and had been a soldier since 1942. He had served with the 393rd Tank Destroyer Battalion in the Normandy campaign, had been wounded and hospitalized, and then had served a tour with the only Negro unit in the Constabulary in the Army of Occupation of Germany, the 175th Armored Field Artillery Battalion, where he had been crew chief and section leader of a self-propelled 105 mm howitzer.

  Sergeant Woodrow liked Lieutenant Parker’s style.

  On Parker’s fifth day with the platoon, Corporal Ezikiah Lavalier had called Corporal Franklin Roosevelt Taylor a motherfucker when Corporal Taylor had accidentally sprayed him with a water hose while washing an M24.

  “Well, Taylor,” Lieutenant Parker had said, “I must confess that I am both surprised and very disappointed to hear that.”

  “Suh?” Corporal Taylor had said, popping to rigid attention.

  “I would never have thought that of you, Taylor,” Lieutenant Parker had gone on smoothly.

  “I don’t know what the lieutenant’s talking about, sir,” Taylor had said, uneasily.

  “Didn’t you hear what Corporal Lavalier called you?” Parker had inquired innocently.

  “Oh, that,” Taylor, visibly relieved, had replied. “That don’t mean nothing, Lieutenant, sir. We just talks like that.”

  “Oh, then, it doesn’t bother you? You don’t mind someone saying that about you?”

  “It don’t bother me none, Lieutenant,” Taylor had reasured him.

  “Well, I guess that just goes to show how different people are, doesn’t it?” Parker had said, and walked away.

  That night, in the regimental NCO club, Sergeant Thaddeus J. Quail, the two-hundred-pound assistant mess sergeant, had conversationally requested of Corporal Taylor: “Motherfucker, hand me them peanuts.”

  “Watch your mouth, nigger,” Taylor replied sharply. “Don’t you be calling me no motherfucker.”

  “Who you calling nigger, nigger?”

  “Let me spell it out for you, nigger. You’re a nigger, but I ain’t no motherfucker. You got that straight?”

  Whereupon Sergeant Quail punched Corporal Taylor in the mouth. When the participants in the brawl had been separated and returned to their orderly room by the division military police, Lieutenant Parker had been the officer of the day. The charge of quarters had summoned Sergeant First Class Woodrow from his room.

  When he got to the orderly, both Sergeant Quail and Corporal Taylor were standing to attention before Lieutenant Parker’s desk. Corporal Taylor had lost a tooth, and there was half-dried blood on his lip.

  “Rank has its privileges, Sergeant. You may give me your version of what happened first,” Lieutenant Parker had told him, in his dry manner.

  “Sir,” Sergeant Quail said, uneasily, “me and Taylor had a little argument.”

  “I see. What about?”

  “He called me a nigger, that’s what he done, and I ain’t taking that from nobody,” Quail said righteously, and then remembered to add, “sir.”

  “What he done,” Taylor said, equally righteously, “was to call me a motherfucker. That’s what he done, Lieutenant, that’s what started the whole thing.”

  “Is that true, Sergeant? Did you accuse Corporal Taylor of having sexual relations with his mother?” Lieutenant Parker asked.

  “I didn’t say that,” Sergeant Quail said. “I just called him, friendly-like, that.”

  “What’s ‘that’?”

  “You called me motherfucker, and you know you did, and other people heard you, nigger!” Corporal Taylor said.

  “See, there he goes again!” Sergeant Quail said, righteously.

  “The term ‘nigger,’” Lieutenant Parker said, reasonably, “comes from the African country of Nigeria. The way it began was the same way people started calling people from Poland ‘Polacks’ and people from Hungary ‘Hunkys.’ It is not very nice, and I
don’t like it myself. In fact, I become very angry when someone calls me a ‘nigger,’ and I sympathize with you, Sergeant Quail. Under the circumstances, I have been known to lose my temper myself.”

  “But he called me a motherfucker, Lieutenant,” Corporal Taylor said, in equally righteous indignation. “A motherfucker is a lot worse than a nigger.”

  “Yes, it is,” Lieutenant Parker agreed.

  There was a long, long pause, during which Lieutenant Parker appeared to be seriously considering the problem. Then he took the 1928 Manual for Courts-Martial from the desk drawer.

  He consulted the index until he was quite sure that both sinners knew what the volume he held in his hand was, and then found the applicable Article of War.

  “Whosoever shall use provoking language to another in the military service shall be guilty of conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline,” he read slowly and solemnly, “and shall be punished as a court-martial shall direct.” He looked up at Sergeant Woodrow.

  “Sergeant Woodrow,” he said, “you’re an old soldier. Would you say that calling someone a name that suggests he’s having sexual relations with his mother is provoking language?”

  “Unless it were true, sir,” Woodrow said, “it would be.”

  “Goddamn, you know that’s not true,” Taylor said, shocked.

  “I didn’t mean it that way, Lieutenant,” Sergeant Quail said. “And Taylor knows I didn’t. And anyway, he called me a nigger.”

  “I’ll have to give this matter some thought,” Lieutenant Parker said. “I want to talk it over with Sergeant Woodrow, to decide whether a court-martial would be in the best interests of the service. Until we reach a decision, you two stay away from each other, and away from the club.”

  Thereafter the incidence of one soldier of the third platoon of the 24th Infantry Regimental Tank Company suggesting incestuous activity on the part of another soldier dropped dramatically, although there were several fistfights unreported to official authority.

  Sergeant Woodrow thought Lieutenant Parker had class. He had not been surprised to learn subsequently that Parker was one of the old breed, that Parkers in the service went back to the Buffalo Soldiers of the Indian wars.

  Other soldiers, all Negro, of shades ranging from Parker’s flat black to light pink, came into the squad bay and lined up in a half-circle around Lieutenant Parker.

  “Atten-hut!” Woodrow called again. As soon as they were still and quiet, Parker gave them at ease.

  “Everybody try to pay attention. I’ve got some news,” he said.

  The troops didn’t seem to care. Parker saw that at least four of them were quite drunk.

  “Hey, Lieutenant,” one of the tank commanders called, “Where did you get the go-to-hell six-shooter?”

  “My grandfather carried it in France,” Parker said. “In World War I.”

  “While he unloaded ships?” a voice from the rear of the group said. Parker recognized him. Staff Sergeant Sidney, a light-skinned troublemaker.

  “Stand to attention,” Parker said softly. Slowly, almost defiantly, the soldier, a staff sergeant, stood to attention.

  “Your ignorance shows, Sergeant Sidney,” Parker said, softly. “So I will take time we should be spending doing more important things to tell you things you should know. My grandfather served as a captain with the 369th Infantry Regiment. They fought at Chateau Thierry. My grandfather was awarded the Croix de guerre by the French government. The regiment, whose troops were all Negro, received the Distinguished Unit Citation. The regiment were soldiers, not stevedores. I will not have them slandered by anyone, especially by anyone with your attitude. Do I make myself clear?”

  Sergeant Sidney didn’t reply.

  “Do I make myself clear, Sidney?” Parker said. There was now menace in his voice, although he didn’t raise it.

  “Yes, sir,” Staff Sergeant Sidney said, after a moment.

  “Don’t open your mouth again until I give you permission,” Parker said, and waited a long moment. Then he said, “You may stand at ease.”

  The room was now absolutely silent.

  “There are eight M4A3 tanks, with the high-velocity 76 mm tube at Osaka,” Parker said. “I have been told that if I can guarantee we can use them, the third platoon can have them. Who here besides Sergeant Woodrow has had any M4 experience?”

  A dozen hands went up, including Sergeant Sidney’s.

  “How well do you know the M4A3, Sergeant Sidney?”

  “I was school-trained at Knox,” Sidney said.

  “OK. There will be a bus out in front of the barracks in an hour. Make up a list of the others with M4 experience. And have them ready to go when the bus shows up.”

  “Sir,” Sergeant Sidney protested, “we were told we could have the night off, before going on the ship tomorrow.”

  “You’ll be in Osaka tomorrow,” Parker said. “We’re going there tonight.”

  “I’ve got to say good-bye to my girl, Lieutenant,” Sergeant Sidney said.

  “I’m sorry,” Parker said. “There won’t be time for that. We have to go to Osaka, take delivery of the A3s, get them on ship board, and rejoin the rest of the regiment in Korea.”

  Sergeant Sidney said nothing. But there was a look on his face that annoyed, even angered Parker. But there was nothing he could do about it now.

  “We’re going to turn our M24s over to the other two platoons,” Parker went on. “They’ll serve as spares. I’ll answer questions, but you’re warned that I don’t know much more than what I’ve told you.”

  Sergeant Sidney was not outside the barracks when the bus came, nor was he anywhere to be found.

  “Turn the sonofabitch in as AWOL to miss a movement, Lieutenant,” Sergeant Woodrow said. “Let him do six months in the stockade.”

  “I think Sergeant Sidney would much rather be doing pushups in the stockade than getting shot at in Korea,” Parker said. He was embarrassed that he hadn’t thought ahead and had Woodrow keep an eye on him.

  “What good would he do us in Korea?”

  “He’s school-trained on the A3,” Parker said. “Can you find him, do you think, Sergeant Woodrow?”

  “Yes, sir, I know just where to look.”

  “I would hate to see the career of a good soldier like Sergeant Sidney ruined by his having missed a shipment, Sergeant,” Parker said. “Do you think you could reason with him?”

  “Has the platoon sergeant the platoon commander’s permission to speak informally, sir?” Sergeant Woodrow asked.

  “Yes,” Lieutenant Parker said.

  “I’ll have that nigger motherfucker on the boat if I have to break both his legs,” Sergeant Woodrow said.

  “Carry on, Sergeant,” Parker said.

  III

  (One)

  New York City, New York

  10 July 1950

  Craig W. Lowell was not surprised to find Andre Pretier’s chauffeur waiting for him beyond the glass wall of customs at LaGuardia, but he was surprised when the chauffeur told him that Pretier was in the car.

  Andre Pretier was Lowell’s mother’s husband. Not his step-father. They had been married after Craig had been drafted into the army in early 1946, following his expulsion for academic unsuitability from Harvard. While the chauffeur collected his luggage, Lowell looked for and found the car.

  It was a Chrysler Imperial, with a limousine body by LeBaron, a long, glossy vehicle parked in a TOW AWAY zone. There was an official-looking placard resting against the windshield, bearing the seal of the State of New York and the words OFFICIAL. Craig had often wondered if Pretier had been provided with some sort of honorary official position by some obliging politician, or whether he or his chauffeur (who had been with him for twenty-five years) had just picked it up somewhere and used it without any authority, secure in the knowledge that airport and other police asked fewer questions of people in custom-bodied limousines than they did of other people.

  The first Pretier in America had come as a member
of the staff of the Marquis de Lafayette during the American Revolution. He had stayed after the war and founded the shipping (and later import-export) company which was the foundation of the Pretier fortune. He had been at Harvard with Lowell’s father, and there, incredibly, become enamored of the woman who was to become Craig Lowell’s mother, an infatuation that was to last his lifetime. He had proposed marriage precisely one year and one day after Lowell’s father had been buried.

  Andre Pretier leaned across the velour seat of the Chrysler and offered his hand to Lowell as he bent to enter the car.

  “I didn’t expect this,” Lowell said. “Thank you, Andre.”

  “We had to take your mother to Hartford,” Pretier said.

  Oh, shit, that’s all I need, Lowell thought.

  Hartford was the euphemism for the Institute of Living, a private psychiatric hospital in Hartford, Connecticut.

  Pretier handed Lowell a small crystal bowl, a brandy snifter without a stem.

  “Bad?” Lowell asked.

  Pretier threw up his hands in resignation.

  “She simply can’t take strain, or excitement,” Pretier said.

  “What was I supposed to do, Andre?” Lowell asked, sharply. “Tell my father-in-law to stay in Siberia?”

  “I don’t think that had anything to do with it,” Pretier replied, not taking offense at Lowell’s outburst. Lowell had often thought that the real reason he disliked his mother’s husband was that Andre Pretier rarely, almost never, took offense at anything, no matter what the provocation.

  “What set her off, then?”

  Pretier threw his hands up in frustration again.

  “I don’t really know. She…uh…had a relapse in the city.”

  “A spectacular relapse?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Pretier said. “They had her at Bellevue.”

  “She’s all right, now?” Lowell asked.

  Pretier nodded. “I thought you had enough on your hands,” he said. “Otherwise I would have called.”