Once an Eagle

by Anton Myrer

  There was more discussion of Competrin’s predicament, and a lengthy exchange between Massengale and Farnham over the alternative possibility of the seizure of the island of Hainan as a buildup area for a subsequent assault on the China coast. Massengale disagreed vehemently: Hainan was largely rice paddy or mountainous country, there were no adequate facilities for training and supply areas; they would merely be repeating the Taiwan predicament all over again. Bliss replied coolly that the Japanese had found Yülin and the south coast adequate enough for their purposes in the forties. Massengale said that in any event they would only have alerted the Chinese to the threat of invasion, without effecting the desired objective, which was to reestablish the Generalissimo on the Chinese mainland. With raging admiration Damon watched him at the map, discussing distances, logistics problems, terrain. Brilliant: they would still say he was brilliant, inventive, tireless. No topographical wrinkle had not been examined, no eventuality had not been explored. Nothing ever changes, he thought bitterly. He had been caught in a malevolent time bubble of steel—the clean, stately, cool room, the long table, Massengale at the map (though without the ivory-tipped pointer), everybody else obediently nodding. Though note the undeniable advantages of increased rank, he told himself. Then we only kept the wars going; now we can plan out how to start them …

  All the threads, all the ingredients. So pat. The show was in the works, the skids were greased, everything was set to roll for a fine, spanking war against the dirty Chinese Reds. And here he sat—the only one of this august company who had crawled through the boondocks to talk to Hoanh-Trac, who had prowled around the wretched camps at Pao Xieng, nodding earnestly to the bland offerings of the Chinese interpreter while he listened to the squad and company commanders talking among themselves; the only one for that matter who had ever talked and hiked and fought with these same dirty Chinese Reds—here he sat, far down at the end of the table, with Porky Bannerman and Toddles Carrick, the jet carrier wizard, and the man named Frazier, and two of the Undersecretary’s staff.

  “Emphatically, sir,” Massengale was saying to the Undersecretary. “The Generalissimo gave me the most solemn personal guarantee that he was ready to throw all his resources into this operation. He is convinced that the timing is right, and that it cannot fail.”

  The Undersecretary nodded and chewed at his glasses frame. His face still bore the impassive, intent expression, but Damon could tell: he was being won over. It all sounded so right, so necessary, so inevitable—

  “General Bannerman, what is your opinion?”

  “Most emphatically affirmative, sir!” Porky had held his body weight down pretty well, but his face betrayed him. There had been so many extracurricular attractions at Kyoto and Bad Godesburg and Paris and Ankara and Seoul: and now here in Cau Luong. “All of that patishery!” Raebyrne had used to say, watching the little midinettes hurrying home, their dark eyes flashing. “Just feast your eyes on ’em, Skipper …” Porky had found the patisserie—both culinary and feminine—irresistible during the lush years of occupation duty and overseas missions. It was said he kept two Khotianese beauties—each in a separate apartment—here in Cau Luong, and that his stag parties were awesome things, even among the Mobile Forces revels. Now he stared eagerly down the table at the Undersecretary, blinking with thought. His face had swollen hugely, almost as though the bone itself had thickened, and then deepened to a choleric red stitched with fine purple veins, so that now he looked not so much like a petulant baby as a rather bright, handsome little pig—one of Ulysses’ argonauts, perhaps, caught in midtransmogrification in Circe’s palace, just tapped by the malignant wand. But he knew what he wanted—or what was expected of him. “It’s a perfect multiple solution, sir,” he declared in his thin, hoarse voice. “This would settle once and for all the problem of Communist infiltration from China: we could seal off all points of ingress to the entire Indochinese complex, without fear or favor. If you want my opinion it’s time we started carrying the fire to these people, instead of falling back into a defeatist pattern, waiting for them to hit us before we move …”

  There was a rustle of amusement around the table. The Undersecretary smiled, which made his face look suddenly boyish and winsome. “I can share your impatience, General.”

  Porky licked his lips; two tiny beads of sweat glistened at the corners of his nose. “I didn’t mean to sound so frantic,” he added. “But it gets to you, taking losses the way we have. My boys have been carrying the load, and with damned little support, too. It seems to me we’ve got to begin to get somewhere in this hassle.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more.” The cool gray eyes came to rest on Damon. “How about you, General?”

  It was a curious moment. The Undersecretary had spoken, but it was Massengale’s gaze he felt constrained to meet. All these years; and always his junior in grade, leading from weakness, not strength. Always the outlaw, the heretic voice. The bad soldier … Only this time he wasn’t lying smashed to pieces on a cot, and there were no Salamanders he felt himself personally responsible for.

  He drew a breath and said: “Sir, I am solidly opposed.”

  The Undersecretary blinked as though he’d just been awakened in the middle of the night. “You are? To what?”

  “To the entire idea.”

  “Oh balls, Sam,” Porky exclaimed with an air of humorous exasperation; but the others were silent.

  “Your reasons, General?”

  Damon leaned forward. Here goes nothing, as Joey would say. In with both feet. “First of all: at the operational level, General Ch’en’s forces are utterly unreliable.”

  There was a low murmur at this. Massengale laughed lightly and said: “Whatever you’ve got, the Night Clerk’s against it!… Samuel, on precisely what do you base that conclusion?”

  “Five days at Pao Xieng, General.”

  They were all looking at him in surprise. The Undersecretary said, “You were there? You inspected the army?”

  “I observed this force right down to company and squad level. On several occasions I got away from the staff watchdogs and talked with both officers and men. They are completely demoralized, and they are demoralizing and enraging the Khotianese among whom they are living. They are subsisting mainly by brigandage and the opium trade: there are ample evidences of both. The field-grade officers are every bit as corrupt as they were during the war against Japan. Discipline is almost nonexistent, there are no training schedules, their weapons and equipment—our weapons and equipment, I should say”—he shot Brokaw a swift, sharp glance—“are in fearful condition. General Ch’en’s ‘army’ has no value as an effective fighting force.”

  There was a short, embarrassed silence. Porky was apoplectic; Beemis was watching him with irritation and distaste, Massengale’s expression was the old one he remembered—a steady, baleful speculation; Farnham was inspecting his cuticles; Brokaw’s face was impervious, but his ice blue eyes held the faintest trace of contemptuous amusement; the Undersecretary was tugging at his glasses, his mouth open in disbelief. All right, then: the hell with all of them. They’d get reality if they choked on it.

  “That is your considered professional opinion, Damon?”

  “It is, sir. Far from being of top-caliber assault quality, these soldiers—I am using the word rashly—would crumble like chalk at the first organized resistance, and blow away. Also, I have talked at good length with General Hoanh-Trac at Plei Hoa, and two other of the northern commanders. I can say without hesitation that not only would they refuse to support a venture such as that outlined here today, they would be unalterably opposed to any operation in conjunction with or in support of these lawless divisions. They merely want them out of their country, in the same way that we would seek the removal of some renegade Mexican force bivouacked in the Gila Bend.”

  “The Generalissimo will never acquiesce to such an eventuality,” Massengale said sharply.

  Little old Peanut will acquiesce to what the United Nations dir
ects, Damon thought; or to what Hoanh-Trac sets in motion. But he made no reply.

  Brokaw smiled his thin, secret smile. “Do you mean to say that they are opposed to the Chinese Communists, Damon?”

  “Yes. They are. But they will not support the idea of serving as the front line in a war of aggression.”

  “But if it should simply come about? They would have no choice.”

  “Don’t worry,” Beemis broke in, “they’d fall in line. They know which side their bread is buttered on.”

  “They’re not eating bread in Plei Hoa, Mr. Beemis,” Damon answered. “They’re eating rice.” He said to Brokaw: “Everyone always has a choice. It may be very narrow but there is still a choice. And I maintain they will not support any such scheme—in fact they are quite likely to take military action against it.” He turned to the Undersecretary again. “And thirdly, I know a little about the Chinese partisan and guerrilla warfare. I traveled with several columns in Shansi and Hopei Provinces in the late 1930s, and I learned a good deal about their tactics and their morale.” He put his hands flat on the polished wood. “I can tell you this: they will no more engage in the conventional forms of warfare—as we are pleased to wage it—than the Khotianese insurgents have; they will not be cast down by the most grievous losses in territory, matériel or human life; and they will never, never give up.” He swept his eyes around the table. “Are we seriously contemplating this kind of war—a vast, interminable ground war—on the Asiatic mainland?”

  Massengale said sharply, “Look here, Samuel, you came out here a scant two months ago on an impromptu junket—”

  “I came out here to Asia twenty-four years ago, and I didn’t sit around sipping Scotch-and-sodas in Shanghai or the Legation, either. I learned about the people’s war at first hand. And I’ve spent nearly six weeks this time in the field, talking to the Khotianese on all levels. Listening to them, too. Have you gentlemen?”

  “For pete’s sake, Damon,” Beemis broke in, “—whose side are you on, anyway?”

  “I’m on the side of reality, and against the side of horse shit and wishful thinking.”

  “Reality—the reality of it is they’re the enemy, those people up there. They’re completely opposed to our way of life—our efforts to modernize their country, industrialize it, raise their standard of living. Are you in any doubt about that? Damned if I know what your persuasions are, but I guess it’s true what they say about you …”

  “What do they say about me, Mr. Beemis?” Damon said in a quiet voice.

  The industrialist glanced at him savagely, twisting his neck inside his collar; but he volunteered nothing more. “I don’t think my loyalty needs to be questioned here,” Damon went on. “I don’t think anyone will. I have served my country in fair weather and foul for forty-three years, and that is a good deal more than you can say, Mr. Beemis. But I can respect the patriotism of men from other lands—who are every bit as loyal and self-sacrificing and earnest as we are ourselves. They do not happen to believe what we believe; but have we been given some irrefutable proof that our way is the only way for all the rest of the world?—a world that is not as much in awe of us as we’d like to think. Not nearly as respectful and friendly toward us as it was fifteen short years ago …”

  “Samuel,” Massengale said in the icy, menacing tone he remembered, “if you find that you shrink from the necessary means—”

  “Yes, I shrink from them,” he answered, and now he could not keep the heat out of his voice. “I shrink from them …”

  “That isn’t the way you operated on New Guinea,” Brokaw observed with a quick sardonic laugh. “I read Marv Randall’s column—he said there wasn’t anything in the book or out of it you wouldn’t pull …”

  Randall: yes, he would read Randall like holy writ. Beemis and Brokaw. God, they ought to be a vaudeville act. “Yes: once you are in battle all means are at hand. Who is going to debate niceties of design, degrees of ferocity then? Flamethrowers, napalm, phosphorus, crossbows, poisoned stakes, shu-mines—don’t expect men caught in the desperate straits of war, crushed with a thousand hellish decisions, to resort to Marquis of Queensberry tactics then, Mr. Brokaw. Once that word is said—that one, final, utterly irrecoverable word—then there is no turning back: the wraps are off, the game is on, all manner of deviltry is unleashed … And so I shrink from the saying of that word. Yes. I know everything it means.” He turned and faced the Undersecretary, whose face now showed a marked agitation. Damon suddenly remembered he had been a communications officer with the Fifth Army in Italy. Very softly he asked: “Do you want to be the one to say that word, sir?”

  The Undersecretary pulled feverishly at one drooping wing of his mustache. “That’s not for me to do,” he said in some confusion. “You must realize that. Of course I can recommend certain courses of action …”

  “This is getting us exactly nowhere at all,” Beemis came in hotly. “Talk about prima donnas! You figure you’re too good for it all, Damon, is that it? Look, we’ve all got a job to do. Mine is to run Competrin. Yours is to carry out what’s been decided.”

  “Correction,” Damon retorted. “My job is to give advice. I’m giving it.”

  “Samuel.” Massengale was chewing on his jade holder, waggling it up and down rapidly between his teeth. “Are you trying to advance the theory that Communist China is not an enemy of the United States?”

  He looked back levelly, his chin on his thumb. All these years: ever since St. Durance, in the blood-red sunlight, by the well. Ever since Dormer, when Tommy had danced with him, and over Irene Keller’s shoulder he could see her lovely little face flushed with excitement—and watching, he had felt suddenly afraid. Here Massengale was still, brandishing the authority, the charm, the verbal facility, the astonishing intellectual prowess like some jeweled sword. He would always be there: he would always be in command.

  But it didn’t matter. This crazy, trumped-up assault on the Chinese mainland, using Chiang’s demoralized, superannuated, tatterdemalion army wasn’t for the good of the service, or the country, or the world.

  “I don’t know, General,” he said quietly. “It’s so hard to keep abreast of things. Back in 1950 you and Bliss and Mr. Beemis here were all telling us the Soviet Union was the real enemy—you were calling for war with them, predicting the terrible disasters that would befall us if we didn’t bomb Moscow. We didn’t take your advice; and the disasters didn’t take place. Now you tell me that China is the real enemy, the blackhearted aggressor we must battle, right down to the last GI … ” He glanced around the ring of faces, letting the scorn show in his eyes. “What a pity, gentlemen, if we had all of us died in a preventive war against the Russians in 1951—a war that obviously didn’t need to take place at all! … ”

  They were all silent: he was a magnet, drawing their hatred toward him, polarizing them all. But none of them spoke. What was it Tommy had always said: “Nobody can say no to you, Sam …” A kind of loving despair in her voice as she said it. Well, so be it, then. He would make one more try.

  “Sir,” he turned to the Undersecretary, “I beg you to reconsider all of this most carefully. This venture General Massengale is proposing will not prosper; it will undo us. Taipei will use us coolly for their own purposes, the Chinese will fight skillfully and bravely. We will be drawn into a sea of sacrifice and blood: two divisions, ten divisions, forty divisions and what will be gained? There will be no end to it, and we will wither away like the Japanese in the great Hwang Ho Valley … This is not a heaven-sent opportunity: it is a siren song. It is still, as a very fine soldier said some years ago, the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. It will be the greatest catastrophe our country has ever known.”

  He sat back and locked his fingers at the edge of the table, and looked at the others. Some avoided his eye, others glowered at him. Massengale smiled—though Damon knew it was not a smile at all—and said:

  “Have you finished your peroration, Samuel?”

  “Yes,�
�� he said, “I’ve finished.”

  They went on talking about strategic hamlets, economic reforms, the problems of security in Cau Luong. He stared at the blank pad in front of him, and drew a circle, and inside it a square, and inside it a circle, and inside it a square; and surrounded the figure with a crazy scrawl of concertina wire. Swan song. Famous last words. Well, at least he’d had them. He would be recalled now, without fanfare: a rather dim, dull ending, his only souvenir a galloping case of gastroenteritis, now fortunately more or less under control. Only the Undersecretary’s face was unmarked by anger or resentment; the narrow-set gray eyes were pensive, absorbed. His glance rose thoughtfully once to Damon’s, slipped away.

  Well: he was tired. He was too old for all this Jungle Jim jazz, as Tony Giandoli put it. He’d had his day in court and to hell with them: let them whip up their artful, murderous little folly. It was time to go home, anyway.

  In the center of the monotonous colophon he placed a tiny five-pointed star.

  4

  “It was quite bad,” the Undersecretary said. “Really quite bad.” He raised the white linen handkerchief to his mustache and patted it gently. “The whole front of the building was smashed in. They had them laid out on the street outside. Nine dead, eighty-four injured. Weren’t those the figures, Gil?”