The Majors Read online

  “I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Andre Pretier said. “Craig, frankly, hasn’t talked much about what he’s been doing.”

  “He’s been becoming an army aviator,” Felter said.

  “My ignorance is total,” Pretier said. “I didn’t know the army even had aviators.”

  “When the air force became autonomous, Andre,” Felter began, and Andre Pretier sensed that Felter was relieved to have found a safe subject for conversation, “they began to devote most of their effort toward bombers and high-speed fighters, and to rockets. The army needs light aircraft, right on the battlefield. Since the air force was unable to provide them, the army was given authority to develop its own air service—army aviation. Craig is in on the ground floor.”

  “There are a few wild-eyed madmen around, Andre,” Lowell said, wryly, “who envision entire divisions being airlifted by helicopters.”

  “I see,” Pretier said. “And you saw, or see, enough merit in this theory to leave tanks? As Guderian saw enough merit in the blitzkrieg to change over to the German tank corps from signals as a colonel?”

  “Would that it were so,” Lowell said. “The cold truth, Andre, is that my last efficiency report in Korea was so bad that I had the choice between going to army aviation or turning in my soldier suit.”

  Pretier looked in surprise at Felter, saw the pained look on his face, and knew that Lowell was telling the truth.

  “It wasn’t quite that bad, Craig,” Felter said.

  “You know better than that, Mouse,” Lowell said. “Cut the bullshit.”

  “But you were decorated in Korea,” Pretier said, genuinely surprised. “Several times decorated. And promoted.”

  “That was before I fucked up,” Lowell said, helping himself to more cognac.

  “What did you do?”

  “You are looking, Andre,” Lowell said, making a mock bow, “at one of the few, perhaps the only, soldier in Korea who got into a sexual scandal with a white woman.”

  “I am not surprised,” Pretier said, trying to make a joke of it.

  “The establishment was almost as pissed about that as they were when I stood up in a court-martial and announced, under oath, that I could see a situation in combat where an officer has the duty to blow away another officer who is not doing his duty.”

  Andre Pretier looked at Sanford Felter again, and again got confirmation from the pained look on his face that Lowell was telling the truth.

  “Who was the woman?” Pretier asked, choosing, he hoped, the least delicate of the two subjects.

  “Georgia Paige,” Lowell said.

  “The actress?” Pretier asked. “The one who…”

  “Goes without a bra?” Lowell filled in for him. “Yes, indeed, that Georgia Paige.”

  “And that is what you were doing in Los Angeles when you first came back?” Pretier asked.

  “It didn’t take long,” Lowell said, bitterly, “for it to become painfully apparent that Georgia and I, to coin a phrase, were simply ships that had passed in the night.”

  “What happened, Craig?” Felter asked, and it was a demand for information from a friend that could not be denied.

  Lowell didn’t reply immediately. Felter wondered if he was thinking over his reply, or deciding whether or not to reply at all.

  “We hit it off pretty good in Korea,” Lowell said.

  “How did you arrange that? In Korea, I mean?” Felter asked.

  “I think she was carried away with the warrior image,” Lowell said. “I showed her my tank, and that seemed to excite her.”

  “Come on!”

  “Scout’s honor, Mouse. That’s where it happened. Some of the ‘immature judgment’ my efficiency report talks about was taking her up to the line, to my old outfit.”

  “That was immature,” Felter said. “Also stupid.”

  “Be that as it may, it excited the lady,” Lowell said. “And true and undying passion burst into flower. And I returned to the ZI full of youthful dreams. I would pick her up in L.A., and I would fly off to romantic Germany with her, where she would instantly form a fond attachment to my son. We would thereupon start looking for a small house by the side of the road, where we could be friends to man and start making babies.”

  “What happened?”

  “For one thing, she was making a movie and couldn’t get away for six weeks, and then when the subject of Peter-Paul came up, she said, ‘Oh, yeah. Your kid. I forgot about that.’”

  “Oh,” Sandy Felter said, sympathetically.

  “I began to wonder if she would really make the loving stepmother I believed she would,” Lowell said. “Ah, shit, what’s the difference?”

  “Did she know you’re rich?” Felter asked.

  “We rich say ‘well off,’ Mouse,” Lowell said.

  Felter decided he was onto something.

  “She wanted you to get out of the army, and you wouldn’t do it?” he asked.

  “We didn’t get that far,” Lowell said.

  “But she knew you were ‘well-off’?”

  “I don’t really know. She knew, of course, that I had some clout out there in movieland. The firm, by an interesting coincidence, was financing her movie. If we hadn’t been, I don’t think I would have been allowed near her. Christ, I had to pull in all the clout I had to get in touch with her. But that wasn’t it, one way or the other. What it was was that I was such a goddamned fool that I mistook a marvelous piece of tail for love.”

  “I’m sorry, Craig,” Felter said.

  “I thought all my problems were over when Bellmon called me…oops, that slipped out, didn’t it?…and told me you had gone to a hero’s grave in far-off Indo-China. After a suitable period, as short as possible, I would marry Sharon, and all of my problems would be solved.”

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you,” Felter said.

  “Next time, don’t get my hopes up,” Lowell said. “Next time, stay dead.”

  “Somebody will come along, Craig,” Felter said. “Aside from your morals, you’re every maiden’s dream.”

  “I know, I know,” Lowell said. “But it embarrasses me so when they get on their knees and start kissing my hand.”

  “He’s right, Craig,” Andre Pretier said. “You’ll find someone.”

  “I don’t really think I want to,” Lowell said. And then, quickly: “For Christ’s sake. Let’s start telling dirty jokes or something.”

  (Two)

  Aviation Detachment

  Headquarters, Seventh United States Army

  Augsburg, Germany

  15 April 1954

  Lieutenant Colonel Ford W. Davis, Commanding, Aviation Detachment, Headquarters, Seventh Army, happened to be in the outer office of the detachment when the civilian walked in. He was curious to the point of being annoyed. He didn’t like what he saw.

  The civilian was dressed in a mussed sports coat, and gray flannel slacks, a civilian-model trench coat hung over his shoulders. There was a silk foulard in the open collar of his white button-down-collar shirt.

  A reporter, Colonel Davis decided. Probably an American, probably from the Munich American, a tabloid published by a bunch of wise-ass ex-GIs, catering to the enlisted men, a bunch of goddamned troublemakers always looking for a story that made the army generally, and the officer corps specifically, look bad.

  Colonel Davis laid the file he had been reading on top of the file cabinet and walked over to where the civilian was talking to the sergeant major.

  “What’s going on?” Colonel Davis asked.

  “This officer is reporting in early from delay-en-route leave, Colonel.”

  Davis looked at him. Colonel Davis was suspicious of tall, handsome men, particularly the kind that wore scarves around their necks and trench coats over their shoulders. The officer came to something like attention.

  “Actually, sir,” the handsome young man in the movie actor costume said, “I’m not coming off leave. I’d hoped to be able to get a PX card.”
<
br />   “When are you due off leave?”

  “My orders call for me to report to Camp Kilmer 20 April, sir,” he said.

  “Then what are you doing here now?”

  “I was married to a German, sir,” the officer said. “I have a son here.”

  “How’d you get here?”

  “I came commercial, sir.”

  Davis put everything together. As a general rule of thumb, only German whores married Americans. Officers did not marry whores. Not officers with any smarts. So what this young buck had done was marry a kraut whore, and he was smart enough to realize that meant he had ruined his career. What officers who fucked up their careers in their branch of service did was apply for flight school.

  Colonel Davis was a career soldier, out of Texas A&M into the artillery. He had gone to flight school as an artilleryman in War II, when the primary function of army aviation was artillery fire direction, using Piper Cubs as airborne forward observation posts. In those days, there had been an “L” superimposed on pilot’s wings, to differentiate between “liaison” pilots flying Cubs and “real pilots.” Colonel Davis had been a liaison pilot in those days.

  He’d stayed an army aviator, not because he was a fuck-up, but because he and a tiny clique of others saw the future role of light aircraft in the army. The air force, when it had become a separate branch of the armed services, had made it clear they weren’t going to bother giving the army what aerial services it would need. They were going to fight the next war with nuclear weapons dropped from 40,000 feet; with fighter planes flying at twice the speed of sound; with rockets, for Christ’s sake, from space. They were not going to waste their time fucking around with the guys in the mud on the ground.

  The army was going to have to have its own aerial capability, not only artillery direction and liaison—messenger—flights, but medical evacuation, probably by helicopter (Korea had proved that theory) and, eventually, an aerial transport capability in the fifty miles behind the front lines. What the army really needed was its own close support aircraft, low and slow and near the ground. They were a long way from that, but Colonel Davis believed that, too, would come in time.

  He had stayed in army aviation because he believed in it.

  And because he was a professional soldier, he had looked for and found the weaknesses in army aviation. If you don’t know what’s wrong, you can’t fix it. He was sure he had found the greatest weakness in army aviation, but he had no idea how to fix it.

  The weakness could be described simply: the officer corps of army aviation, like Ivory soap, was 99 44/100 percent pure incompetents, malcontents, ne’er-do-wells, and fuck-ups. Instead of throwing the incompetents out of the army, they were allowed to go to flight school. There was no question, looking at Handsome Harry standing here before him with a goddamned silk scarf wrapped around his throat, trying to look like Errol Flynn, that he was about to get one more fuck-up that nobody else in the army wanted, an officer so goddamned dumb that he had married a kraut whore.

  “I don’t know what you expected to find here,” Colonel Davis said, icily. “But this is a military organization, and we expect that when newly assigned officers report for duty, they do so in keeping with the customs of the service. That is to say, in uniform.”

  “Yes, sir,” Handsome Harry said.

  “The sergeant here will sign you in,” Colonel Davis said. “And see that you’re installed in the bachelor officer’s quarters. I did hear you use the past tense in reference to your marriage, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And then you will present yourself here in uniform and report for duty. Clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You’ve given the sergeant major a copy of your orders?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When you’re through with them, Morgan, bring them in to me,” Colonel Davis said, and then he turned away and walked into his office.

  As he closed the door, he heard Handsome Harry say, his voice amused, “That, Sergeant, is what is known as starting off on the wrong foot.”

  Wise-ass prick thought it was funny, did he? He’d straighten his ass out in a hurry.

  The first occasion Colonel Davis had to consider that perhaps he had made an error in his snap judgment of Handsome Harry was when the sergeant major came into his office a few minutes later and laid a battered, creased copy of Handsome Harry’s orders on his desk. Colonel Davis glanced at them quickly, and then looked more closely.

  “A major?” he said. “A regular army major? He doesn’t look old enough to be a captain. And regular army?”

  “No, sir,” the sergeant major agreed. “He doesn’t.”

  “Do we have his service record?”

  “No, sir. It must be on the way. He wasn’t due to report to Camp Kilmer until 20 April.”

  Colonel Davis looked at Handsome Harry’s orders again, reading them carefully this time, to see what they could tell him.

  HEADQUARTERS

  THE U.S. ARMY ARTILLERY SCHOOL

  FORT SILL, OKLAHOMA

  SPECIAL ORDERS:

  NUMBER 87:

  20 March 1954

  EXTRACT

  31. MAJ Craig W. LOWELL, 0439067, ARMOR Student Off Det, Avn Sec, The Arty Sch, having successfully completed the prescribed course of instruction, and having graduated from Rotary Wing Aviator’s Course 54-6, The Arty Sch, is designated an army aviator, effective 20 Mar 54. (H-13 and H-23 aircraft only).

  32. MAJ Craig W. LOWELL, 0439067, ARMOR, is awarded Primary MOS 1707 (Army Aviator, Rotary Wing only) eff 20 Mar 54.

  33. MAJ Craig W. LOWELL, 0439067, ARMOR MOS 1707 Stu Off Det, Avn Sec, The Arty Sch, is relvd prsnt asgmt, trfd and WP Hq US 7th Army APO 709 c/o Postmaster, NY, NY, for further asgmt with Avn Sec ARMY SEVEN as RW Aviator. Auth: TWX Hq DA Subj: Initial utilization assgmt newly designated RW Aviators dtd 3 Jan 54. Off will report in uniform NLT 2330 hrs 20 Apr 54 to USA Personnel Cntr, Cp Kilmer, NJ, for further shpmnt to US Army Europe via mil sea transport. Off auth thirty (30) Days Delay En Route Lv. Home of Record: Broadlawns, Glen Cove, Long Island, NY. Off auth trans of household goods and personal auto at Govt expense. Permanent Change of Station. Effective date change Morning Report 20 Apr 54. Tvl & mvmnt household goods and personal auto deemed nec in govt interest. Approp: S-99-999-9999.

  EXTRACT

  BY COMMAND OF

  MAJ GEN YEAGER:

  Jerome T. Waller

  Colonel, AGC

  Adjutant General

  OFFICIAL:

  Peter O. Romano

  Captain, AGC

  Asst Adjutant

  All that Major Lowell’s orders told Lieutenant Colonel Davis was that Lowell was a just-graduated chopper pilot. But between the lines, Davis could read that he was a fuck-up. Majors didn’t go to army aviation unless they had fucked up by the numbers. What piqued Davis’s curiosity was Lowell’s rank, and his regular army status. He didn’t seem old enough to be a major, and Davis would have given odds that he wasn’t West Point, or one of the other trade schools, A&M, the Citadel, VMI. Maybe Norwich. Probably Norwich. He was Armor, and Norwich turned out large numbers of RA tankers.

  Two hours later, the sergeant major announced Major Lowell.

  “Send him in,” Davis said.

  Major Lowell marched into Lieutenant Colonel Davis’s office. He stopped three feet from Davis’s desk, raised his hand in a crisp salute, and announced:

  “Major C. W. Lowell reporting for duty, sir.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Davis returned the salute.

  “Stand at ease, Major,” he said. Lowell assumed a position closer to “parade rest” than “at ease.” He met Davis’s eyes. At “parade rest” he would have looked six inches over Davis’s head.

  He was in a Class “A” uniform, “pinks and greens,” a green tunic and pink trousers. The uniform, Davis saw, had not come off a rack in an officer’s sales store. The fit was impeccable. Obviously tailor-made. Obviously expensive. But what impressed Lt. Col.
Davis was the fruit salad.

  Above Major Lowell’s breast pocket was an Expert Combat Infantry Badge, a silver flintlock on a blue background, with wreath. A star between the open ends of the wreath indicated the second award of the CIB. Major Lowell had been to war, twice. Davis decided that he was obviously a good deal older than he looked, some freak skin and muscle condition that made him look twenty-four, twenty-five years old. Sewn to one shoulder of his tunic was the insignia of the Artillery School. Sewn to the other was a triangular Armored Force patch with the numerals 73. There was no armored division numbered as high as 73, so it must be one of the separate battalions. Davis recalled that a separate armored battalion had made the breakout from Pusan in the opening months of the Korean War.

  That tied in with some of the fruit salad: UN Service Medal; Korean Service Medal, with three campaign stars; and the Korean (as well as American) Presidential Unit Citations worn over the other tunic pocket.

  Immediately below the CIB were aviator’s wings, obviously brand new. Below the wings were his medals. Distinguished Service Cross. That was the nation’s second highest award for gallantry in action. He also had the Distinguished Service Medal. And the Silver Star with an oak leaf cluster signifying a second award. And a Bronze Star with “V” device, signifying that it had been awarded for valor. Two oak leaves on that. Did that mean he had four Bronze Stars or just three? Davis wasn’t sure if they gave second “V” devices for second valorous awards. Purple Heart with three clusters. Wounded four times. Then there were ribbons signifying foreign decorations, four of those, and then the World War II Victory Medal (which didn’t mean he had actually been in World War II; that hadn’t been declared over until late in 1946, and if you were in the service then, you got the medal) and the Army of Occupation Medal (Germany).

  They were very careful about how they passed out the DSC.

  “I don’t recognize some of those, Major,” Lt. Col. Davis said.

  Major Lowell said nothing.

  “What are the foreign decorations, Major?” Davis asked, a somewhat menacing tone in his voice. “Korean?”