The Berets Read online

  “You were at Dien Bien Phu, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir. President Eisenhower sent me over there shortly before it fell.”

  “In one sentence, how do you assess the Viet Minh?”

  “As a formidable opponent, sir.”

  “And how do you think our senior officers regard them?”

  Felter was obviously reluctant to say what he had on his mind.

  “Go on, Felter,” the President said.

  “They make two mistakes, sir: They do not hold the French army in very high regard, and infer from that that our army can accomplish things the French could not.”

  “The French haven’t won any wars lately,” the President said dryly. “That feeling is understandable.”

  “The Troisième Regiment Parachutiste of the Foreign Legion, which fell at Dien Bien Phu, was as good a regiment as any I’ve ever seen, Mr. President.”

  “You said two mistakes.”

  “They believe the Viet Minh to be a rabble of ignorant natives equipped with scavenged World War II small arms who will collapse as soon as they are faced with modern, well-equipped forces.”

  “Well, then, presuming we have to do something about them, what do you recommend?”

  “General Taylor is far better qualified to answer a question like that than I am, Mr. President.”

  “I’ve already asked him; now I’m asking you.”

  “I would try to repeat what we did in Greece, Mr. President, rather than attempt to overwhelm the Viet Minh with conventional forces.”

  “Do you think that will work?”

  “No, sir, I do not,” Felter said. “I don’t think we should go into Indochina.”

  “Neither, for your private information,” the President said, “does General Taylor.” When there was no response from Felter, he went on. “I’m going to send the airplanes, and I’m going to send advisors. But I haven’t made up my mind yet what to call them. It’s been proposed that these five thousand troops masquerade as flood-control engineers. I may end up calling them what they are, however.”

  There came the sound of helicopter rotor blades thrashing through the air.

  “Ah, Pierre and the gentlemen of the Fourth Estate,” the President said.

  “With your permission, sir, I’ll leave you to get ready for them,” Felter said.

  “Sandy, I want to go have a look at the Green Berets,” the President said, “at Fort Bragg. And soon. Will you come up with some sort of itinerary?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Maybe we can decorate Lieutenant Ellis or something.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  (Two)

  Station Hospital

  Fort Jackson, South Carolina

  0815 Hours, 30 November 1961

  Recruit Geoffrey Craig was transported to the emergency room of the station hospital in a patrol car, an olive-drab Chevrolet four-door sedan whose hood and trunk lid had been painted white and on whose roof were a siren and a flashing red light.

  He was dressed in fatigues. A large P had been stenciled on the back of the fatigue jacket, and smaller P’s had been stenciled to the trouser legs above the knees.

  In addition to the two military policemen assigned to the patrol car, Craig was accompanied by and handcuffed to a large military police sergeant. It was normal procedure to restrain a prisoner by handcuffing his hands together behind him, but Recruit Craig’s right hand and wrist were so swollen that the Smith & Wesson cuffs would not close around the wrist.

  Earlier, at 0430 hours, the prisoner had called the attention of the NCO in charge of the detention facility to his painfully swollen hand and wrist. The NCO in charge of the detention facility had reported the matter to the desk sergeant, who told the NCO that the prisoner would have to wait until the stockade medic came on duty at 0715 hours—unless it looked like the bastard was going to croak or bleed to death or something.

  After examining him, the medical technician assigned to the post stockade said that the prisoner would have to go to the hospital. It looked like he had broken the wrist and probably a couple of fingers. This fact was reported to the stockade commander, and the decision was made that since the prisoner was in no immediate danger, moving him to the hospital would have to wait “until they were finished charging him.” In the meantime he suggested that the medic give the prisoner a couple of APCs.

  An APC was a small white pill, a nonprescription analgesic, so called because it contained aspirin, paregoric, and codeine. Enlisted medics had the authority to dispense APCs as they saw fit.

  At 0805 the prisoner was brought from the detention cell, a small room with wire mesh over the windows, to the officer of the stockade commander in the Stockade Administration Building. He was there informed by the commanding officer of Company “C,” First Battalion, Eleventh Infantry Regiment (Training), that he was being held pending investigation of certain charges made against him.

  He was advised that, under the provisions of the thirty-first Article of War, he did not have to answer any questions; that he had the right to have an officer learned in the law present to advise him during questioning; and that anything he said could and would be used against him in a court-martial. He was asked if he understood that.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, then, Craig?”

  “I think I’d better talk to a lawyer, sir.”

  “In other words, you refuse to answer any questions?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “In that case, Recruit Craig, it is my duty to inform you that I have conducted an initial investigation into the charges made against you and have decided to bring the facts of the case as I understand them before a board of officers with the recommendation that you be charged with assault upon a noncommissioned officer in the execution of his office. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I have further decided that, in view of the violent nature of the charges made against you, it is in the best interests of the service to order you confined pending disposition of the charges made against you. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I inform you further that I am presently investigating other charges made against you, and that other charges may be brought against you. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I now serve you with the charges I am making against you,” the captain said. “You will read them, and if you have any questions, I will try to answer them. Then you will sign your name, which signifies only that you understand the charges, not that you acknowledge committing any offense. Is that clear to you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When it was obvious that Recruit Craig could not manage the charge sheet with his one good hand, he was permitted to sit down, and the folder was laid before him on the stockade commander’s desk. When the folder was opened in front of him, he saw, in the brief moment before it was snatched away, the typewritten speech his company commander had given him. He’d wondered about that—wondered if the captain had previously memorized all that legal business, or whether he had memorized it this morning before he’d come to the stockade.

  Since the charges that he had “assaulted Staff Sergeant Douglas B. Foster, RA 14 234 303, Company ‘A’ 11th Infantry Regiment (Training), a noncommissioned officer in the execution of his office” were already typed out, it was pretty clear he had made the right decision in refusing to answer questions. The decision to court-martial him had apparently already been made.

  “I can’t use my hand, sir,” Recruit Craig said. “How do I sign this?”

  “Use your left hand,” his company commander said.

  After his interview with his company commander, Recruit Craig was taken from the Stockade Administrative Building into the stockade proper. This was a collection of twelve two-story barracks and administrative buildings. These were surrounded by two barbed-wire fences, ten feet apart. The space between the fences was filled with expanded coils of
barbed wire, called concertina. There were guard towers at each corner of the stockade compound, to which flood lights capable of illuminating the area were mounted.

  The normal in-processing procedure began with the prisoner being ordered to strip and shower. Following this, he was issued prisoner fatigues (with P’s painted on them), given a haircut, and fingerprinted and photographed. He was next given the “Orientation Lecture for Newly Confined Prisoners.” In the case of Recruit Craig, since he was obviously unable either to bathe himself or to have his fingerprints taken with his hand swollen the way it was, it was decided that all the processing he would receive was the issuance of fatigues and the haircut. He could finish his in-processing when they’d done whatever they were going to do about his hand and wrist.

  In due course, it was time to send him to the hospital. In the station hospital a medic directed Craig and his guards to a small cubicle and pulled a white drape closed after they had entered it.

  Two minutes later a portly, balding, gray-haired man wearing a medical smock came into the room. There was a name-plate pinned to the smock, giving his name (J. W. Caen, M.D.) but no rank, although he was wearing a uniform shirt and trousers beneath the light green medical smock.

  “Take the handcuffs off, Sergeant,” the doctor said. “And wait outside.”

  The sergeant freed Craig’s hand, and then stepped back against the white curtain.

  The doctor gently pulled Craig’s swollen hand away from his chest. Then he looked up.

  “I said wait outside.”

  “I’m not supposed to leave the prisoner,” the sergeant said.

  “Get out, Sergeant,” the doctor said flatly.

  The sergeant hesitated a moment and then left.

  “There’s no question there’s broken bones,” the doctor said, conversationally. “We’ll take an X-ray and see how many.”

  He probed Craig’s chest with his fingers. Craig winced and yelped.

  “We’ll X-ray your ribs too,” the doctor said. Then he looked into Craig’s eyes. “You’re not thinking of doing something else stupid, are you? Like running away?”

  “No, sir,” Craig said.

  The doctor looked into his eyes for a moment. Then turned and whipped the white curtain away.

  “You can run along, Sergeant,” he said. “I’m admitting this man.”

  “I’ll have to accompany him to the prison ward, sir,” the sergeant said, “and have them sign for him.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” the doctor said. “I’ve just assumed responsibility for him.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, you can’t do that,” the sergeant said.

  “Sergeant,” the doctor said, “I command this hospital. You don’t tell me what I can or cannot do. It works the other way around. I’ve just given you an order to leave.”

  “May I call the Provost Marshal’s office, sir?”

  “You can call anybody you want,” the doctor said. He took Craig’s arm and led him out of the emergency room.

  The sergeant looked for a moment as if he wanted to follow them, but instead went to a telephone hanging on the wall.

  After three minutes in a maze of corridors, they came to the X-ray suite. A medic came more or less to attention.

  “Son, run down to the PN ward, tell them to set up a room, and bring back some pajamas, a bathrobe, and slippers, will you, please?” the doctor said.

  “Yes, sir,” the medic said.

  “Hand, hands, first, I think,” Dr. Caen said. “Then your ribs. Can you hold your hand and wrist flat against this thing?”

  He pointed to a grayish plate on an X-ray machine.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “PN stands for psychoneurosis,” Dr. Caen said. “Otherwise known as the loony bin. Anybody who belts a sergeant is more than likely crazy. And you’ll be more comfortable there than in the prison ward.”

  “I don’t think I’m crazy, sir.”

  “I never met a loony who did,” the doctor said.

  He gently arranged Craig’s swollen wrist where he wanted it, adjusted the X-ray equipment, then stepped behind a barrier. The equipment made a whirring noise and, a moment later, another. Dr. Caen reappeared, arranged the other hand where he wanted it, and repeated the process.

  “I’m a bone man,” he said, “and I’ve been looking since I was a resident for an X-ray technician who can take decent pictures. I feel like Diogenes.”

  Craig chuckled.

  “You know who Diogenes is, do you?” he asked, then: “Hold it!”

  “Yes, sir,” Craig said, when the doctor reappeared.

  “College boy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Draftee?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Your ass in the frying pan; you know that, I suppose.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The medic returned, carrying white pajamas, a purple bathrobe, and white cloth slippers.

  “Put the pajama bottoms on,” the doctor said, “and then climb up on the table. You need help with your boots?”

  “I think I can manage, sir,” Craig said.

  “Help him,” the doctor ordered, “and then soup the film.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  When he lay on the X-ray table, there was a sharp pain in Craig’s chest, and when he complied with the doctor’s order to roll over, he felt another so sharp that he grunted.

  “The sergeant got in a couple of licks of his own, I see,” the doctor said.

  “He got the first lick in,” Craig said. “The minute I stepped out the door, the sonofabitch belted me in the ribs.”

  “Is that the way it happened?” the doctor said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Who taught you to fight?” the doctor asked.

  “I was on the boxing team in school,” Craig said.

  “Well, you did a job on the sergeant, if that’s any solace,” Dr. Caen said. “I was up half the night working on him. You broke his nose and his jaw—in several places. It was a hell of a wiring job. He’ll be taking liquids for a month.”

  When there was no response, Dr. Caen said, “I don’t detect any signs of regret.”

  “I regret that I’m going to be court-martialed,” Craig said.

  “You got any money?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They’ll send you a defense counsel in a day or two. Tell him you want a civilian attorney. It’s your right. Insist on it.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Craig said. “Thank you, sir.”

  “They’re probably going to find you guilty anyway,” Dr. Caen said. “‘Pour l’encouragement des autres.’ You know what that means?”

  “To encourage the others,” Craig said. “Yes, sir.”

  “But a civilian lawyer worthy of the name can get them to make all kinds of procedural errors that will get your conviction thrown out on appeal. You probably won’t be in the stockade more than a couple of months.”

  “It doesn’t matter that I didn’t start it?”

  “No,” Dr. Caen said. “I don’t think it will.”

  “I appreciate the advice, Doctor,” Craig said. “You’ve been very kind. Thank you.”

  “About once a cycle, one of Staff Sergeant Douglas’s trainees shows up over here,” Dr. Caen said, “with various bruises, contusions, and fractures suffered ‘taking a fall down the stairs’ or ‘slipping in the shower.’ I didn’t feel all that sympathetic to him when they carried him in here last night.”

  (Three)

  204 Wallingford Road

  Swarthmore, Pennsylvania

  0830 Hours, 30 November 1961

  Dianne Eaglebury was coming down the stairs when the door chime went off. She answered the door herself.

  Colonel Hanrahan and the boy soldier were standing on the porch. Outside she saw a maroon Cadillac limousine backing out of the driveway.

  “Good morning,” Hanrahan said. “I thought it might be a good idea if Ellis and I came now, in case we are needed. The others will be along late
r.”

  “Please come in,” she said.

  They were both in uniform, a blue uniform Dianne could not remember ever having seen before. Lieutenant Ellis apparently did not have any medals to wear, for his tunic was bare; but Colonel Hanrahan’s chest was heavy with his medals. For this occasion he wore the full-size medals, not just the narrow, inch-long ribbons. Dianne recognized the Distinguished Service Cross among them, the only one she could identify.

  Ellis smiled shyly at her.

  “Have you had breakfast?” she said. “I was just about to have them make something for me.”

  “We’ve had breakfast,” Hanrahan said. “Thank you just the same.”

  “How about some coffee?” Dianne pursued.

  “I’ll have some coffee, thank you,” Ellis said.

  She led them to the dining room via the hallway rather than through the living room, where Ed’s casket was.

  “The others should start arriving shortly,” Dianne said. “My parents are still asleep, I suppose.”

  Neither said anything.

  “There’s some nice bacon,” Dianne said. “Are you sure you won’t reconsider having breakfast? Bacon and eggs?”

  “If it wouldn’t be any trouble,” Ellis said.

  “Not at all,” she said. “Colonel?”

  “Not for me, thank you,” Hanrahan said. “But I will have some coffee.”

  Dianne went through the butler’s pantry into the kitchen and ordered breakfast. The door chime went off as she was returning, and again she went to answer it.

  It was a navy captain, and he had two other naval officers with him.

  “Come in,” Dianne said. “The army’s already here.”

  “They are?”

  “Two of them,” Dianne said. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “That’s very kind of you,” the captain said. “I need to have a word with the army.”

  Dianne led them into the dining room and offered them breakfast, which they refused. But coffee was accepted all around, so she went in the kitchen to get more cups and saucers.

  When she returned, the navy captain had opened his briefcase on the dining-room table and was watching Colonel Hanrahan read a stapled-together sheath of papers.

  The captain said, “The honorary pallbearers, Colonel—I’m sure the protocol is the same in the army—will walk immediately behind the remains, which will be carried by Commander Eaglebury’s academy classmates. All but one. One of them is a Pensacola classmate.”