The Colonels, page 10
part #4 of Brotherhood of War Series
Ski had shown up with the sergeant major and two other master sergeants in tow. Later when Patricia and the kids dropped by to see how things were going, he sent her to the PX for beer. There was no other way to compensate his noncoms. They would have been insulted if he had offered them money for their services: the only time that a master sergeant dirties his hands or works up a sweat is when it pleases him to do so.
The doorbell rang. It was, Hanrahan thought, an anemic buzz.
He pushed himself off the floor and walked to the door.
It was a full bull colonel from the 82nd Airborne Division, in greens, a great big guy festooned with all the regalia: colored woven cords hung from the epaulets, the gold-framed blue oblong of the Distinguished Unit Citation and the regimental colors flashed beneath the parachute wings, and there was an impressive array of individual decorations.
“Good afternoon,” Paul Hanrahan said.
“Well, Paul,” the bull colonel said, “I really didn’t expect a warm embrace, but I did think you would at least remember who I was.”
“Jesus,” Hanrahan said, finally realizing who he was, “Foster!”
“Try to remember that you’re an officer and a gentleman, Paul,” Colonel J. Thomas Foster said to his roommate and classmate at the United States Military Academy at West Point. “Say something like, ‘Foster, Old Man, I’m glad to see you.’”
“I am,” Hanrahan said. “Jesus, Jerry, it’s good to see you!”
They shook hands.
“Come on in and have a beer,” Hanrahan said.
“What I really had in mind was an icy martini at the club,” Foster said.
“Look at me,” Hanrahan said, gesturing at his mussed and soiled uniform. “I can’t go in public like this.”
“And you probably don’t have any gin, either, do you?” Foster said.
“Come on in, anyway, and have a beer,” Hanrahan said, and led Foster into the living room.
The noncoms were on their feet when the two colonels entered the room. Two of them were in the act of adjusting their green berets.
Hanrahan introduced them.
“They’ve been helping me get stuff from the quartermaster,” Hanrahan said.
“I never would have guessed,” Foster said.
“Colonel, with your permission,” Sergeant Major Taylor said, “we’ll be going.”
“Take the beer,” Hanrahan said. “And thank you, fellas.”
“We’ll leave you the beer.”
“Take the damned beer,” Hanrahan said. “I am not being generous. It’s starting to leak through the newspapers.”
“Well, if you put it that way, Colonel,” Wojinski said, and gestured for Stevens to pick up the other end of the galvanized tub.
“Happy New Year, fellas,” Hanrahan said, “and thanks a lot.”
There was a chorus of “Happy New Year, Colonel.”
“I guess I should have taken a couple of beers before they left,” Hanrahan said when he and Foster were alone.
“You have always been unable, Hanrahan,” Foster said drolly, “to think ahead. You now leave us no alternative but to make the perilous trek to my house.”
“Which is how far?” Hanrahan asked.
“Two houses down,” Foster said.
“I’ll have to leave a note for Patricia,” Hanrahan said. “She took the kids to the movies.”
“It apparently never entered your mind to read the name signs in front of the quarters. Or perhaps you did read them and decided that Joan really wouldn’t want to be bothered with one of her bridesmaids and her brats.”
“Hey, I just got here, for Christ’s sake,” Hanrahan said. “I’m not firing on all cylinders.”
“Obviously,” Foster said. “Obviously.”
Hanrahan wrote a note for Patricia, and wedged it in the doorjamb. Then he put on his beret.
“You really look absurd in that, you know,” Foster said, “ignoring other considerations. You look like a girl scout.”
Hanrahan thumbed his nose at him.
They walked down the tree-shaded street to Quarters No. 31. It was identical to No. 33, but the furniture was personal and there were carpets on the floors. The difference in the atmosphere was like day and night.
“Joan’s not here,” Foster said. “I sent her away.”
“I’m sure she jumped at your command,” Hanrahan said.
“I wanted to spare her the embarrassment of listening to me give you my routine Dutch Uncle speech,” Colonel J. Thomas Foster said.
“God, I can hardly wait,” Hanrahan said. “You have no idea how lonely and afraid I am when I don’t have your wise counsel to steer me down the straight and narrow.”
“Would you like a martini, or are you still a barbarian?”
“If I drink martinis, I make an ass of myself, you know that.”
“And sometimes you don’t even need the martini,” Foster said. “Scotch all right?”
“Fine.”
“And take off that silly hat,” Foster said. “Someone’s liable to see you and think I know you.”
“This hat really bugs you, doesn’t it, Jerry?” Hanrahan said, chuckling.
“Not only me,” Foster said, handing him a glass of scotch. He interrupted himself. “It’s good to see you, Paul,” he said. “Really good.”
“Yeah, me too, Jerry,” Hanrahan said. They touched glasses.
“Absent companions,” Foster said.
“Absent companions,” Hanrahan repeated, lifting his glass with Foster.
“Incidentally, the next time you need some strong backs give me a call. I’m running a daily average of 121 in the stockade, and they’re supposed to do manual labor not six-stripers.”
“One of them is an old friend of mine, Jerry,” Hanrahan said. “The others are his friends. I didn’t order them to help me move.”
“Appearances are what count,” Foster said. “Which brings us back to the girl scout hat.”
“OK, tell me about the berets,” Hanrahan said. “You are obviously obsessed with the subject.”
“The general doesn’t like them,” Foster said. “Make that plural. The generals: mine, Howard, and all the others.”
“Piss on ’em,” Hanrahan said. “I do.”
“I know for a fact, Paul, that Howard sent ‘the commanding general desires’ letter to every commander on the post, specifically dealing with headgear.”
“I saw it,” Hanrahan said.
“To which your predecessor responded by ordering his men into the authorized headgear.”
“So I understand,” Hanrahan said.
“What did they do, Paul, have them on when you arrived? So you would think that’s the way things were?”
“No,” Hanrahan said, “they were wearing regular headgear, and I asked about the berets. I’d heard about them. So my sergeant major showed me Howard’s letter.”
“And?”
“I directed their wear,” Hanrahan said.
“So it is true,” Foster said.
“Yeah,” Hanrahan said.
“Oh, I knew you’d authorized them,” Foster said. “I meant about your having friends highly placed enough so you can thumb your nose at Howard.”
“So far as I know, I don’t have any highly placed friends,” Hanrahan said. “Although everybody seems to think I do.”
“Paul, I’m probably the oldest friend you have in the army. Don’t tell me that.”
“OK. Between friends, I’ve been trying to figure it out. I have no idea why the DP was on my orders. For that matter, I was genuinely surprised at the promotion. I wasn’t even on the bird colonel’s list.”
“And you don’t have any idea who’s been laying hands on you?”
“No, but I guess someone has. My last efficiency report had the phrase, ‘for someone of his limited experience, this officer has performed adequately.’ That didn’t get me an eagle, nor the command of the school.”
“No,” Foster said, shocked at the language, “it didn’t.”
“You want a straight answer about the berets?” Hanrahan asked. Foster nodded. “I got a welcome speech from Howard when I reported in. He made it clear he thinks the Special Warfare School belongs to airborne. He used the phrase ‘the airborne family.’”
“And you don’t think it does?”
“No, I don’t. It’s just what it says, ‘special.’ Airborne is conventional.”
“You could find an argument about that, Paul,” Foster said. “From me, among others.”
“You establish a position by superior firepower, invest the terrain with troops, and hold it. That’s conventional,” Hanrahan said. “It doesn’t make any difference if you invest the position with a skirmish line, or by parachute, or by landing barge.”
“And ‘special’?”
“Guerrillas,” Hanrahan said. “Irregulars. Hit and run.”
“That doesn’t work,” Foster said.
“I know better,” Hanrahan said. “It worked in Greece during the second war. You do know how many divisions the Germans had there, don’t you? If those divisions hadn’t been tied up fighting guerrillas, they could have made the difference, possibly, in Russia. Or Italy. Or France.”
“That was World War II,” Foster said.
“Vietminh guerrillas defeated French paratroops at Dien Bien Phu,” Hanrahan said.
“A couple of American divisions, probably the 82nd Airborne alone, with an artillery regiment and a combat command of tanks, would have been able to send those people back to their rice paddies.”
“Oh, God,” Hanrahan said, laughing sadly. “You’re dreaming, buddy. Dreaming.”
“I’m not going to fight with you the first time I’ve seen you in fifteen years,” Foster said. “We’ll put that aside for the moment.”
“Good,” Hanrahan said, and then: “Can I have another one of these?”
Foster made him the drink.
“Get back to the berets,” he said.
“Do you know the status of the school?” Hanrahan asked.
“I don’t quite understand the question,” Foster said.
“It’s a class-two activity of DCSOPS,” Hanrahan said. “It’s not under Bragg.”
“It’s on Bragg. You’re a colonel. The general has three stars. It’s under Bragg.”
“Fort Bragg has been directed to support me logistically…”
“‘Me’?” Foster interrupted. “My, aren’t we drunk with power?”
“Which means Howard has to feed us, and pay us, and let us use his physical assets, but does not mean he commands us.”
“Who does?”
“DCSOPS,” Hanrahan said.
“And how long do you think it will take them to find a new commandant after Howard calls the DCSOPS and tells him ‘your colonel here is annoying me’?”
“I don’t know. I’m going to find out, I suppose, pretty quickly. To tell you the truth, Jerry, I feel a little silly in the green beret. That ‘girl scout hat’ line occurred to me, too. But I either jump when Howard says ‘jump,’ or I run the school. He’s ordered my troops to do something that I don’t think he has the authority to do, wear what kind of hats he thinks they should wear. If I give in to him on this, I give in all the way.”
“In other words, you don’t want to be a general,” Foster said. “Or for that matter, commandant of the Special Warfare School. You ever read any Mao Tse-tung?”
“Yes, indeed,” Hanrahan said.
“‘The reed bends with the wind, and then snaps up again,’” Foster quoted.
“‘When the enemy is strong, withdraw,’” Hanrahan quoted back. “‘When he is weak, attack.’”
“You don’t think he’s strong?”
“I don’t think he picked Paul Hanrahan to command the Special Warfare School,” Hanrahan said. “On the contrary. I’ll bet he spent a lot of effort trying to pick a commandant who thinks Special Forces are ‘part of the airborne family.’”
“And besides, you have friends in high places, right?”
“I told you, Jerry—do you want my word of honor?—I don’t know any more about the DP business than you do. Probably less.”
“But you’re willing to use it, right?”
“Within reason,” Hanrahan said. “Why not?”
“I think we had better change the subject, before we start saying things we’ll regret later.”
“In other words, you think I’m being devious?”
Foster did not reply to the question.
“I heard about the flowers,” he said, chuckling, and obviously to change the subject. “They really sent Howard up the wall, from what I hear.”
“Jesus,” Hanrahan said, also chuckling. “If I’d have had that bastard here, I’d have killed him.”
“An old friend?”
“Right after War II, in 1947, I was in Greece. I had two young lieutenants, a guy named Lowell, and a guy named Felter.”
Foster’s eyebrows went up.
“This is a pretty good story, Jerry,” Hanrahan said. “Lowell’s got more money than God. He was an eighteen-year-old draftee who knew how to play polo. So Porky Waterford arranged to have him commissioned so he could play polo against the French. And then Waterford dropped dead, so they got rid of Second Lieutenant Lowell by sending him to Greece, and they got rid of him in Athens by sending him to me.”
“He’s the guy who sent the flowers?”
“Yeah. Truth being stranger than fiction, he’s still in the army…”
“Tell me about the other one,” Foster said. “What was his name, ‘Felter’?”
“Yeah,” Hanrahan said. “He’s a West Pointer, smarter than a whip, and was in Greece because he wanted to learn about counterguerrilla operations…”
“And he sent you the flowers, too?”
“No, Lowell sent the flowers, and signed Felter’s name to the card.”
“But they’re both friends of yours, right?”
“Yeah, they are. Both of them turned out to be pretty damned good warriors. Lowell made a battlefield promotion to major in Korea, and…”
“And you don’t have a friend in the White House, right? Your word of honor. With the single small exception of Major Sanford T. Felter, GSC, who just happens to be…this is supposed to be classified, but it’s certainly not a well-kept secret…standing at the right hand of God. With rank as Counselor to the President.”
“Jesus H. Christ!” Hanrahan said, genuinely surprised.
It all fell in place now. And he felt like a fool. He’d heard about the Special Warfare School from Felter in the first place. He and Felter had agreed that it was high time the army stopped planning to fight the next war with the tactics of the last, and started training guerrilla and counterguerrilla forces. The mysterious, instantaneous switching of his telephone call to Felter, from Washington to Fort Rucker, now made sense. Felter had access to the White House switchboard, the world’s most sophisticated telephone communications system.
“You didn’t know, Paul, did you?” Foster said, after a moment.
“No,” Hanrahan said.
“This puts me on a bit of a spot,” Foster said.
Hanrahan looked confused for a moment, and then he understood.
“You were sent to see me, right?” he asked.
“If I had known, I wouldn’t have had to be sent,” Foster said. “But, yes, Paul, I was sent. My general had a call from Howard, who thought that you might listen to a few words of advice, about the berets and other things, from your roommate.”
“And you will go back reporting that not only am I intransigent, but that I have in fact a patron in the White House?”
“I’ll have to report that you’re going to prove difficult,” Foster said. “But if you don’t want me to say anything about your knowing Felter, I won’t.”
“Don’t,” Hanrahan said.
“Who?” Foster asked.
“Thank you, Jerry,” Hanrahan said.
“You want another drink, Paul?”
“No. I’d better be getting back,” Hanrahan said. “Patricia’ll be getting back from the movies about now.”
“We’ll see you at the New Year’s Eve party, then?”
“‘Not I, said Cock Robin.’ Red Hanrahan will be sound asleep long before midnight.”
“For your general information,” Foster said, “General Howard feels very strongly about his New Year’s Day reception. He expects all unit commanders, battalion and up, to be there.”
“I’ll be there,” Hanrahan said. “With my bells on. And my beret.”
(Two)
Hangar 104
Laird Army Airfield
Fort Rucker, Alabama
1745 Hours, 31 December 1958
Major Craig W. Lowell had just settled himself back in his office, after rescuing General Bellmon from the Fulton County Airport in Atlanta. His desk was littered with technical manuals, field manuals, Department of the Army pamphlets, tables of organization and equipment, and a foot-high stack of army regulations, plus—neatly stacked—the ten pages he had written so far on the IBM electric typewriter of ***SECRET*** (Draft) TO&E 1-XXX Helicopter Company (Rocket Armed) (Tank Destroyer). The document provided in precise detail for the personnel and all the equipment of a tank-killing chopper company.
He was sorry he hadn’t drafted this months before when he was in Washington. He had not written it then because he hadn’t realized that he would find himself in a position where he would officially have to “write” it, that is, get it into the system. He had thought then that his only contributions would be made after the first draft had been written by someone else and was being circulated among the concerned agencies for comment. At some point, he would have been asked for his comments. He would have made a few, officially, because that would have been a waste of effort. He was a major, and majors—at the Department of the Army level—were expected to be seen but not heard, like small children.
Instead (for he had very positive ideas how the company should be organized and with what it should be equipped) he would have made extensive unofficial comments which he’d have sent to Major General Paul T. Jiggs. Jiggs would then have made some minor changes of his own, and submitted the comments over his signature. The comments of major generals—especially those of the major general commanding the Army Aviation Center—would be very carefully weighed by the major generals in DCSOPS and the three-star who was the DCSOPS. These comments would probably be accepted and incorporated into the final draft sent to the Chief of Staff for his approval.
