Once an Eagle

by Anton Myrer

  And now, staring at them hard, laughing, at Bowcher with his Silver Star and Jackson and Rodriguez and De Luca and the others who had gone all that weary way with him, down the river through the flashshot dark—to his great surprise he found himself weeping, wildly and unashamed.

  3

  The air in the Statler Bar was vibrant with talk and the rattle of glasses and the easy laughter of women; it quivered with power. Admiral Rolfe Haymes, head of Southern Sea Frontier, and a mixed party of six or seven were chatting quietly at a large table. In one of the far corners Packy Vinzent, his broad, florid face grim, his eyes popping, was giving a group of officers his version of the tank battle at Sidi Bou Noura, and the chicanery and toadying that had led to his relief. Courtney Massengale, moving calmly through the tables, smiled to himself. Tough break for Packy; but that was how the old flag wagged. It was a hard world, the air near the summit was rarefied. The clock was still ticking very fast, as the Chief said; and those who couldn’t think on their feet, be right the first time and no second guesses, had to go.

  Everyone was here—at this fleeting, fashionable hour between the office pressures and the official Washington evening. Colonel Frénart, head of the Vichy mission, looking gloomy and supercilious, was listening to a woman with a hard, beautiful face and high-piled blond hair. Catching Massengale’s eye he nodded with a gloomy smile; Massengale nodded back. Poor old Vichy: caught now between the American eagle and the German condor. Their day was waning. To his right, Kjelsen, the junior senator from Nebraska, was talking earnestly with Jim Wiggen, one of Nelson’s bright boys on WPB, and beyond them Van der Sluys, the Air Inspector, and a group of young women were laughing uproariously at a story a colonel in procurement was telling. Power. It rose from the tables, hovered over the little orchestra, the smartly uniformed waitresses, it mingled with the cigarette smoke and perfume and alcohol and rose with a faint, pleasurable giddiness to the brain. The world’s farthest reaches reverberated to what was said and done here in Washington in the early spring of 1943. A delectable sensation. Massengale nodded to a man on the Priorities Board he disliked; there was a noisy quartet of Navy fliers, a fat British brigadier all by himself, with an untouched martini sitting before him—and there on his right was Lieutenant General Caldwell, with a little group; a group that held Tommy Damon.

  “Massengale …” Caldwell had risen with alacrity, although there was certainly no need for him to do so, and they shook hands. “How are you?”

  “Bemused, General. Bemused.”

  Caldwell laughed, one arm extended toward the table. “You know everyone here, I daresay. Margie Krisler, Tommy, my grandson Donny—oh, no you don’t, do you? This is his fiancée, Marion Shifkin. General Massengale.”

  He greeted them in turn. The boy came to his feet. He was in uniform, an enlisted man; sergeant. Curious. He was taller than Massengale remembered him, with a steady, calm manner, Tommy’s flashing dark eyes. The girl was small and mouselike, not pretty, with a Slavic jaw and a candid, rather vulnerable glance.

  Caldwell was saying, “What are you doing in this den of arrogant iniquity?”

  “Just passing through, General. I just got young Tanner off for—well, for foreign parts; and I was playing hooky on my way back to the salt mines.”

  “How are Emily and Jinny?” Marge asked.

  “In fine fettle. Emily’s up in Boston visiting for a week or so. Jinny is undermining the foundations of higher education.”

  They laughed, and Caldwell said: “Come sit with us, won’t you?”

  Tommy was gazing up at him, her face flushed and agitated, her lips parted in a fearful plea. Please go, her eyes said; please. She had never looked as attractive to him as she did at that moment.

  “I’d be delighted,” he answered Caldwell. He smiled his most charming smile. “I’m not intruding on a strictly family affair?”

  “Goodness, no!” Marge Krisler uttered her full, shivery laugh. She had put on weight in the years since Luzon, but she still had that inviting warmth that certain men found appealing—which was one of the crosses poor old Krisler had to bear. “We’re all sitting in the dumps, trying to be cheerful,” she went on. “Cheer us up.”

  “Yes, cheer us up, Court,” Tommy said. “Tell us all about Casablanca. How was Casablanca?”

  “Oh—exotic, ebullient. The prevailing mood was optimism.”

  “Optimism!” the women exclaimed.

  He nodded. “The President and the Prime Minister were in the best of spirits. Negotiations and planning went forward in an atmosphere of practical jokes and repartee, and the promise of good things to come.”

  “A touch premature, isn’t it?” Caldwell said dryly.

  “Yes, sir, I imagine so. But the African landings were a great tonic. Everybody felt we’d got momentum, we were going forward now; that kind of thing. The consensus is we’ve achieved a really excellent working relationship with the British.”

  “You mean they’re extremely pleased that we’re doing what they want us to.”

  Massengale laughed. “I suppose that’s more or less it. Though they do have some enormously capable staff planners. And of course they’ve been through the mill.”

  “The Chief isn’t entirely happy about it, is he?”

  “Not altogether, no. He’d have preferred the other thing. Several others, in point of fact.” The entire table was watching him now, a little warily, almost fearfully; it was amusing to toss out oblique references to high policy, conflicts and decisions most of the country knew nothing whatever about. Old Caldwell knew, however; his fine, courtly features were impassive but his eyes held a faint sardonic gleam. They always knew more over there in Ground Forces than you suspected. The Old Army grapevine.

  “But the Chief’s a great team man,” he concluded. “He gets solidly behind whatever’s decided.”

  “Oh Court, you’re such a diplomat,” Tommy teased him.

  “That’s true, isn’t it? You should have heard me at Aïn Krorfa,” he informed them seriously. “It fell to my lot to present Bus Barron in all his irascible glory to the inhabitants. Bus is from Alabama—southern Alabama at that—and the natives began to express a few reservations: putting their hands on their scimitar hilts, things like that. Well, it was going from bad to worse—you know how tricky these things can be, General—and I had visions of the whole Moroccan venture going up in the fire and sword of a Lucknow. Finally I threw open my hands and cried in my most flawless French: ‘Gentlemen, fear not. I have brought you a blood brother in General Barron. His skin may be white—but his heart, gentlemen, is as black as your own! …”’

  Caldwell and the women were laughing, the politely dutiful laughter that one employed when rank told some pleasantry, good, bad or indifferent. The Damon boy did not laugh, however; he was watching Massengale with a steady, distinctly non-adulatory gaze. A trifle miffed he said: “Where are you stationed, Donald?”

  “Maxwell, sir.”

  “And your duty?”

  “B-17s, sir. Waist gunner.”

  “I see. Leaving to join the Eighth soon?”

  The boy’s face turned flat and hostile. “I wouldn’t know, sir.”

  Massengale laughed easily. “Good for you.—He’s going to make a commendable soldier,” he said to Caldwell.

  “I’m certain of it,” the General replied with some constraint.

  Massengale glanced at Tommy; her eyes darted to her son, back to his—all at once she looked down, smoothing her gloves in her lap. She’s afraid, he thought; she’s nearly out of her mind with fear. Impulsive, devil-may-care Tommy Damon. He remembered when the boy had enlisted; they had met at a War Department reception in the fall—Tommy had accompanied her father, who was talking to someone else—and the eddies and flow of social pressures had beached them alone in a corner.

  “How are things?” he’d asked her lightly.

  “Things are—terrible,” she’d answered; a fierce exhalation that astonished him. “Things are just as awful
as they can be …” It seemed that Donny had left Princeton that afternoon, or the day before—she wasn’t too clear about this—and had enlisted in the Air Corps. “After he’d promised me, too,” she cried softly, “—his solemn promise.” Her eyes had glittered as if she had fever, and her lip trembled. He had watched her in a curious little confusion of amusement and pity.

  “But—aren’t you proud of him?”

  “No, I’m not proud of any part of this stupid, stupid idiot’s delight!” She glanced around the room wildly; he could see that she was on the edge of bursting into tears. His amused curiosity became tinged with caution. For all he knew she might fly into one of her headlong rages, one of “Tommy’s tantrums”—this would be an unappreciative setting.

  “Perhaps it’s not as bad as all that,” he observed.

  She stared at him as though he had just called her a coward. “Oh!” she said tensely. “Oh, God. What do you know? What the hell do you know about it, anyway? Staff,” she sneered, and he saw that several drinks had preceded the one she held tightly in her hand. “You’re all a pack of gold-braided, flunky, play-acting fools … He put him up to it—I know it, I know it!”

  “Who?” he queried.

  “Who do you think? He’s been after the boy, that’s what it is. Some of that lovely, divine force of personal example … What in holy hell are you laughing for?” she demanded hotly, though he could swear his expression had not changed. “God, I’d like to have two weeks to run this country. Just two weeks. That’s all I’d need. What’s the play where the women take over, where they refuse to wangle-dangle until the men stop hacking away at each other—what’s the name of it?”

  “Lysistrata,” he murmured.

  “Yes, well they went at it all wrong—they should have grabbed the household cash and some clothes and the kids and sailed away to a nice, quiet, palmy isle, and let the poor sods blow each other up until there’s not one of them left.”

  “Isn’t that rather shortsighted?”

  “Why? Because it doesn’t allow for propagating the precious race, you mean? Don’t worry—there’ll always be one or two males sitting in the bleachers, egging the other ones on. A few prudent souls dug in down in the good old Munitions Building …”

  He smiled—though he knew it was a dangerous thing to do. “You can’t have it both ways, sweetie,” he told her evenly. “We’re all of us either suicidal maniacs or self-sacrificing heroes.”

  “—Don’t tell me what I can or can’t have,” she began in a low, fierce tone—but then, mercifully, her father and a colleague had come up to them; and after a few moments he’d beaten a decorous and grateful retreat …

  “How’s Samuel?” he asked her now, abruptly; though he knew.

  Her eyes became flat and calm again. “Oh, he’s fine.”

  “They’re back in Australia now—he and Ben,” Marge offered. “We think they are, anyway. Rest and Rehabilitation. They both got malaria.”

  “I shouldn’t wonder. That was a splendid job they did at Moapora. We had a radio not long ago from Sutherland—he calls them the Gold Dust Twins.”

  “Sam just got his first star,” Marge ran on happily, “and Ben’s a chicken colonel. Isn’t that terrific?”

  “It certainly is. No two doughfeet deserve it more.” So the Night Clerk had caught him again. The fortunes of war. Except that he was very senior in grade—he was in line for his second star soon.

  “Remember, back at Benning,” Marge was saying to Tommy, “when Ben used to rant and roar about him and Joey being lieutenants together in the same company?”

  Tommy rolled her eyes. “What would we all have done without World War Two?”

  “No, but you know what I mean, honey.”

  “I certainly do. There were even times when I thought our grander halves were going to wind up privates in the same squad …”

  Massengale joined in the laughter, thinking of the night of the masked ball on Luzon and Ben standing there in that idiotic bummer’s rig, with his hands on the edge of the table. Well, he hadn’t grabbed the first Clipper back to Alameda; but here he was, moving through the palace, sitting on the right hand of one of the lordly sieges of power—and those two highly emotional gentlemen were out at the hot gates, sword in hand … No gods, no Parcae spilled our fortunes with the dice. We did for ourselves. It was all there for the seeing, that tumultuous evening: Ben’s headlong self-immolating defiance, and Jarreyl—Jarreyl—with his destructive malice, and Tommy standing by the car, her hair wild in the rain, screaming at him—

  He thrust the memory away as though it had never been. “From what I hear,” he said to Caldwell, “they were lucky to bring it off. It sounds as though it was touch-and-go for a while, there.”

  The General nodded; his eyes flicked over to the others, who were now engaged in talk. “It was a lot closer than that. Hardly anybody has any idea how bad it was. If it hadn’t been for Sam … They should have given him the division,” he added grumpily.

  “How is it he didn’t get it?”

  “MacArthur said he was too young. Apparently you’ve got to be a Methuselah to get a command out there.” Caldwell smiled a wintry smile. “Over in Africa you’re antediluvian if you’ve completed grammar school. The magic age seems to be fifty-two.”

  “Who got it?”

  “MacArthur—or somebody in his bull pen—asked for Duke Pulleyne.”

  “The cavalryman?”

  “None other. Christ, they ought to have had more sense … Curious man, MacArthur. Imaginative, austere, great showman, but—” The General broke off, bit on his pipestem. “Well: we all have our failings. God help the poor devils who have to pick up after me.”

  “Oh Poppa, you’re just sour because they won’t give you a field command,” Tommy chided him. “Break down and admit it …”

  Caldwell looked at his daughter placidly. “Joe Stilwell’s sixty. Krueger’s even older. I guess I’d have held up as well as Muggsy McComb. Or poor old Westy.”

  “He down in Australia?”

  “No. They shipped him back. His heart was affected.”

  “Must have been pretty grim, all around.”

  “I guess so.”

  Massengale sipped his drink. What a Godforsaken business. Stuck out there at the farthest end of Poverty Row. The men, the equipment and supplies were going to Africa, to Britain, to Pearl Harbor and Nouméa—they were going everywhere but Kokogela and Milne Bay. It was fantastic—MacArthur, the nearest thing to a military genius the country had, forced to eke it out with leftovers, handouts, the barrel scrapings. Well, it was the old feud: the Chief’s hand was against him, and Halsey’s. And just plain distance. Nobody wanted to go out there—who in hell would, in his right mind? With a few exceptions the only people being sent out there were the culls, the misfits, the hell-raisers, the clowns.

  “—I hope they give them a real good long rest,” Tommy said. “In Australia.” She was watching him warily now, that shadow of entreaty still behind her eyes.

  “I’m sure they will.” His face was grave, he knew; grave and compassionate. But the dark interior laughter welled up again. That was the entrancing part about Operations: there was nothing you didn’t know—or that you couldn’t find out, if you were highly enough placed, or if you went about it correctly. There was so much he knew: that Sicily had won out over Sardinia, that that dull, colorless, plodding Bradley was going to be given a corps, that in June the division in which Damon and Krisler were serving would take part in an assault on Wokai, a tortuous peninsula running northwest from that ugly dragon’s head of New Guinea—a vicious place abounding in cliffs and caves and impenetrable rain forest. Nobody at this table knew it, Damon and Krisler certainly didn’t know it; but that was what was going to happen. The mills of the gods, grinding slowly and surely …

  Listening to Caldwell he sighed, but not from ennui. At certain moments, going to the safe to draw out maps or secret documents, or attending conferences in the still, calm, nicely or
dered rooms, he would be visited by a tremor not unlike those fugitive, precarious seconds before the onset of orgasm—but without the ensuing sense of loss, the depletion, the all-consuming chagrin. This endured. Dry-mouthed, exultant, he would draft an action radio and hand it in for dispatch, beholding in his mind’s eye the parade of preparations, the signal flashes from a hundred bridges, the tense flurry in the operations rooms five thousand miles away, the issuing of weapons and clothing, the crating and strapping of field desks and rations and tentage, the interrogation of prisoners and refugees, the outpour of general orders, special orders, field orders, memoranda—the whole ponderous uprooting of tens of thousands of men toward some distant, furious rendezvous.

  —Yet the originating force was not his. That was what rankled. He could advise, he could suggest, emend, implement—but he was not the source of action. He could not conceive and fashion this modern-day epic, like a Renaissance sculptor confronting his colossal block of marble …