The Majors

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Zeke!” Mrs. Black said. “That’s not going to change anything.” Mrs. Black was adjusting her hat before a mirror.

  Sergeant Wesley stepped out in the hall.

  “The general’ll see you now, Colonel,” he said. He held the door open for him, and then followed him into the room.

  When General Black straightened up, Master Sergeant Wesley busied himself with the ribbons of the general’s tunic.

  “I sent for you an hour ago,” General Black began. “I am not in the custom of being made to wait.”

  “I was on the horn to Washington, sir,” Colonel Brandon said.

  “Talking to the Chief of Staff, were you?” General Black inquired.

  “No, sir. To the Chief of Information, trying to salvage as much as we can from this.”

  “The next time I send for you,” General Black said, “you put everybody but the Chief of Staff in second place.”

  “Yes, sir,” Colonel Brandon said.

  “For your general information, Colonel,” Black went on, “I have spoken with the Chief of Staff. Two items on our agenda affect you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “One, I have been charged by the Chief of Staff with handling this situation,” General Black said. “Two, the Chief of Staff has approval for the immediate posthumous award of the Distinguished Flying Cross to Lieutenant Greer.”

  “That’s very nice, sir,” Colonel Brandon said. “It fits right in with what I’ve discussed with the Chief of Information.”

  General Black looked as if he were going to say something, but then he was distracted by Master Sergeant Wesley, who was holding out the general’s tunic. He slipped his arms into it.

  “Mrs. Black, Sergeant Wesley, and myself are about to pay our respects to Mrs. Greer,” General Black said. “You can ride with us and tell me what you have discussed with the Chief of Information.”

  There were four Chevrolet sedans sitting half on the grass along the driveway, an MP patrol car in front. With his hand on her arm, General Black led his wife to the car immediately behind the MP car.

  “I’ll drive,” Master Sergeant Wesley said to the sergeant first class who held the door open. He got behind the wheel. General and Mrs. Black got in the back seat. Colonel Brandon got in front with Wesley.

  Three of General Black’s four aides-de-camp got in the car behind his, and four burly young men in civilian clothes got in the last car. The MP car started moving.

  “Who are the guys in civvies?” General Black asked.

  “CIC, sir,” Colonel Brandon said. “Just in case.”

  “Don’t do that again, Brandon,” Black said. “Is there a radio in this thing, Wes?”

  “The CIC is gone, General,” Sergeant Wesley replied, picking up the microphone.

  “I am paying a personal visit to the widow of a friend of mine, Colonel,” General Black said. “Can you get that straight in your mind?”

  “I was thinking of the press, sir,” Brandon said. “They’re sure to be at the house.”

  “Fuck the goddamn press!” Black said.

  “Zeke, for God’s sake, get control of yourself,” Mrs. Black said.

  He exhaled audibly.

  “Let me have the benefit of your thinking, Colonel,” General Black said. “Your’s and the Chief of Information’s.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Colonel Brandon spoke reasonably, assuredly, and almost steadily during the fifteen minute ride off the post down Rucker Boulevard to Ozark and then up Broad Street to the plantation-style residence of Mayor and Mrs. Howard F. Dutton.

  The major points he made were these:

  (1) The networks were in town, and they were going to come up with some sort of a story, and the only option the army had was to make that story as little embarrassing under the circumstances as possible.

  (2) The air force had already begun to “take shots” at them in Washington, the gist of their argument being that the “tragedy” would not have occurred if (a) the army had only asked for air force expertise in aerial rocket fire and (b) by implication, if the army had lived up to the 1948 Key West Agreement not to arm their helicopters.

  (3) The national television media was going to want visuals. It was Colonel Brandon’s judgment that they had no choice but to turn over the film the army film crew had shot of what was to have been the dress rehearsal. In response to General Black’s inquiry, “how gory is it?” Colonel Brandon replied that it wasn’t “really gory.” It was “heart stopping.” The explosion had been “spectacular” rather than “gory.”

  (4) Since the network TV crews were here, they could probably be talked into taking additional material. Colonel Brandon suggested that a full military funeral, with an aircraft flyover, would probably receive “good coverage.” Greer’s posthumous award of the DFC would “tie in nicely” there, particularly if Mrs. Greer could receive it from the hands of General Black.

  (5) There was nothing the army could really do about getting caught in violation of the Key West Agreement of 1948 but plead excessive enthusiasm, as had been previously decided. A short announcement by General Black (Colonel Brandon handed him “Proposed Remarks vis à vis The Viper”) could, if properly handled, take care of that nicely. In essence, what he would say was that the idea of rocket-armed helicopters was a good one, and one which, after joint air force-army development, was surely going to become an important weapon in the arsenal which guaranteed the peace. The implication, Colonel Brandon explained, was that all the army had done was investigate the feasibility of the idea. Now that they were convinced the idea had merit, they would of course, in keeping with the spirit of the Key West Agreement of 1948, turn responsibility for technical development over to the air force.

  General Black grunted once or twice during Colonel Brandon’s presentation. It was his only reaction to it.

  There was a large crowd of people gathered on the sidewalk in front of Howard and Prissy Dutton’s plantation-style mansion. There were half a dozen Ozark city policemen, as many Dale County deputy sheriffs, and even two Alabama state troopers. Only known personal friends of the Duttons were permitted to walk up the sidewalk to the porch of the house.

  The state troopers waved the little convoy to the curb.

  “Stay in the car, please, Colonel,” General Black said. “I will give you my decision shortly.”

  Colonel Brandon was surprised to see that Sergeant Wesley marched into the house with the general.

  They were greeted by Prissy Dutton, who looked as if she were dazed on tranquilizers. She announced that “the mayor’s taken to his bed.”

  The sliding doors between the parlor and the dining room of the Dutton house had been opened. A buffet had been set up on the dining room table. There were thirty people munching in the dining room, as many standing around the parlor, and about as many filling folding chairs which lined the walls of both rooms.

  Mrs. Edward C. Greer, in a black dress, a single strand of pearls around her neck, sat on a red plush couch resisting attempts from a black woman standing behind her to take the baby, who was sleeping on his mother’s shoulders.

  “Wes,” General Black said, “close that door and get these people out of here.”

  Master Sergeant Wesley first closed the sliding doors, and then started easing people out of the room. The room emptied with surprising speed, until only three couples remained: Colonel and Mrs. Robert F. Bellmon; Major and Mrs. Rudolph G. MacMillan, and Major and Mrs. Sanford T. Felter.

  “I said everybody, and I meant everybody,” General Black said. “That includes you and Wes,” he added to his wife. He looked at Melody Dutton Greer. “You want to give the baby to one of the women?” he asked.

  “Is that a command, General?” Melody asked.

  He took her meaning. He waited until the black woman, very reluctantly, had allowed herself to be ushered out of the room by a firmly gentle Master Sergeant Wesley, and then he closed the door after her.

  He walked to where Melody sat an
d sat beside her.

  “Let me hold him,” he said. “Your shoulder will go to sleep.”

  “Why not?” Melody said, bitterly, and passed the sleeping infant to him. The child stirred, but did not wake.

  “You been drinking?”

  “Sure,” Melody said.

  “You want another drink?”

  “No,” she said.

  “I just learned that Ed’s being given the DFC,” General Black said.

  “You know what you can do with your goddamned medal,” Melody said. “Is that what you’re doing here? To tell me they’re coming up with a medal?”

  “No,” he said. “I came to tell you I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Now, can my friends come back in?”

  “Not just yet,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m the one you want to see,” he said.

  “Is that so?”

  “Yeah, I’m the one you want,” he said.

  “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Melody said. “And forgive me, General, but I really don’t much give a damn, either.”

  “Aside from the expected, ritual expressions of sympathy, let me tell you why the others feel bad,” General Black said.

  “Be my guest,” Melody said, sarcastically.

  “Felter feels guilty because Ed kept him alive when they walked out of the jungle at Dien Bien Phu,” General Black said. “And because if Felter had not arranged for Ed to go to Algiers, he would not have ultimately wound up flying the Bird.”

  “Fascinating,” Melody said.

  “MacMillan feels guilty because it was Ed flying the Bird and not him. The Indo-China business, too, to a lesser degree. But primarily because he knew how to fly the Bird and wasn’t flying it when it crashed.”

  “I’m getting just a little bored with this conversation,” Melody said. She got up and walked to the door, and for a moment it looked as if she was going to open it. Instead, she went to a table with bottles on it and splashed whiskey in two glasses. She walked back to General Black and handed him one. Then she sat down, drained hers at a gulp, and leaned back against the couch so far that her face was looking up at the ceiling. She sighed audibly.

  “Shitshitshitshit,” she said.

  “Bob Bellmon,” General Black went on and then stopped himself. “As of today, by the way, Brigadier General Bellmon. He doesn’t know yet.”

  “Whoopee!” Melody Dutton Greer cried, raising her empty glass gaily.

  “General Bellmon’s feelings of guilt are somewhat more intellectual. He was the one who came to me and asked for permission to build the Bird. And he was the one who had to order your husband to fly it.”

  “He didn’t have to order Ed,” Melody objected. “My late husband was just as crazy as the rest of you. The ultimate volunteer: ‘Look, Ma, no hands!’”

  “But they’re all wrong,” Black said. “I’m the sonofabitch responsible.”

  “What are you on, General, some kind of a guilt trip? What the hell did you have to do with it?”

  “I’m the one who sent him to helicopter school,” Black said. “That’s at the low end, the personal end. I didn’t want him to go. But I fixed it so that he could go. At the other end of the guilt spectrum, I’m the one who made the decision to go ahead with the Bird. Statistically, there was no question that someone would be killed during the testing. All I could do was hope it would be somebody I never heard of. Not Ed. It didn’t work out that way. So if you’re looking for somebody to blame, Melody, here I am.”

  She looked at him for a moment, shook her head, and then leaned back again so that she was looking at the ceiling.

  “Which leaves us where?” she asked.

  “Has Major Lowell been to see you?” General Black asked.

  “No, he hasn’t. Every other uniformed sonofabitch and his brother has, but now that you mention it, I have not been honored with the condolences of the legendary Major Lowell.”

  “Lowell is the only practical one of us,” General Black said. “He understands that when you really have nothing to say, the thing to do is to say nothing.”

  Melody looked at him again.

  “Hey,” she said, “I appreciate your coming here. I really do.” She rested a hand momentarily on his arm. “It took, as Ed would say, ‘balls.’”

  He didn’t reply.

  “But, at the risk of repeating myself, where does all of this leave all of us.”

  “With him,” General Black said, indicating the child.

  “Don’t worry about him,” Melody said. “Not only is my father—who at the moment, by the way, is drunk out of his mind—rich, but that baby is now eligible for all sorts of benefits from a grateful government. There was a guy here already just bubbling over with facts and figures.”

  “He will not have his father,” Black said.

  “No fooling? Jesus!”

  “You’re a young and attractive woman,” Black said. “You’ll probably remarry, and the boy will have a man around. And I’m sure that Mac and Felter and Bellmon and his other friends will maintain their interest. But the boy will never know his father.”

  “What the hell are you up to now? Are you trying to make me cry? To make me start screaming and pulling my hair out? Is this some new kind of new console-the-widow therapy?”

  “He’ll never know what kind of a man his father was,” Black said.

  “He’ll have that goddamned medal you talk about,” Melody said. “He can look at that and say, ‘My daddy was a hero; here’s ten bucks worth of silver-plated metal to prove it.’”

  “He can have more than that, if you’re up to it,” Black said.

  “I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” Melody said.

  “There are circumstances which make a very elaborate military funeral possible for Ed,” General Black said.

  “You can stick your elaborate military funeral up where you put the medal,” Melody said.

  “Bands, flags flying, troops marching, a…whatever they call it when they fly airplanes overhead…and a four-star general, the Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, pinning his medal on his widow.”

  “Maybe I am getting a little drunk,” Melody said. “Because you sound just about as impressed with that bullshit as I am.”

  “It doesn’t mean a thing to you, but to a kid in his impressionable years and older, looking at a movie of how the army buried his father, that just might make him think his father was something special.”

  She looked at him.

  “Ed was something special,” General Black said, barely audibly. After a moment, Melody Dutton Greer said: “Hey! Come on. For Christ’s sake, what if somebody saw you? You’re supposed to be a general. Stop crying.”

  XVIII

  (One)

  Fort Rucker, Alabama

  28 December 1958

  The main post chapel was a temporary building, thrown up as quickly as possible with the other temporary buildings in 1941, designed to last six years. But when Rucker reopened, it had been painted and there had been a “rehabilitation allocation” from the Office of the Chief of Chaplains which had provided for interior refurbishment, for a red carpet for the aisles, an electric organ, and the other accoutrements of a church.

  It was full now. Admission had been by invitation only, and more invitations had been issued than there were seats.

  The remains of Lieutenant Edward C. Greer in a government-issue gray steel casket, covered with an American flag, rested on a black cloth-covered stand in the center of the aisle.

  There were three clergymen. The Dutton family clergyman was a Presbyterian. He was there. The post chaplain was a Baptist. He was there. And so was the Third Army chaplain. Ed and Melody had been married by an Anglican priest, and Melody had requested—the only thing she had asked for—an Episcopal funeral ceremony. An L-23 had been dispatched to Third Army headquarters in Atlanta to get the ranking Episcopal chaplain.


  Sitting in the first pew on the left was the widow, holding Howard Dutton Greer on her lap, her parents (General Paul Jiggs wondered (a) how they had managed to sober up Howard Dutton and (b) if he was going to make it through the ceremony), and the black woman who had raised Melody and was now seeing her baby through this.

  Across the aisle were the pallbearers. The pallbearers were the Bird People, plus Brigadier General Robert F. Bellmon, less Major Craig W. Lowell and CWO (W4) Dutch Cramer. Major Lowell and Dutch Cramer had declined the honor of serving as pallbearers. Jiggs knew where they were. They were either in Annex 1 of the officer’s open mess or in Dutch Cramer’s BOQ paying their last respects to a lost buddy by drinking themselves into oblivion. Dutch Cramer was taking Greer’s accident personally and hard. It was his ordnance that had gone off at the wrong time.

  The service was being filmed. Unobstrusive windows had been cut in the wall between the chaplain’s and the choir’s vesting rooms in the front of the church (permitting the camera to shoot the audience from that angle) and in the wall of the chaplain’s office by the vestibule. These cameras, and the accompanying sound equipment, were manned by the army photo team. General Black had personally denied the television crews access to the chapel; the film the army shot would be made available to them.

  The TV crews were outside the chapel. An army six-by-six truck would carry one crew during the procession from the chapel to Parade Ground No. 2 so that it could film the procession in process, and other crews were in place along the route the funeral procession would follow and at the parade ground itself.

  An enormous amount of preparation had gone into Lieutenant Greer’s final rites. The “Plan for the Memorial Services for Major General Angus Laird” had been taken from the file and used as the starting point. General Jiggs had been somewhat surprised at how far General Black had gone along with Colonel Tim F. Brandon. He had accepted most (but by no means all) of Brandon’s suggestions. General Jiggs had been even more surprised at General Black’s willingness to make himself available to keep the TV networks happy.

  A tour of the WOC battalion, Colonel Brandon had pointed out, was not really news. A tour of the WOC battalion by the Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army was news, worth forty-five seconds on the six o’clock news. The general had permitted himself to be trailed all over the post, out to Laird Field to the Aviation Board, anywhere Colonel Brandon had suggested. He had even (and this really had surprised General Jiggs) permitted himself to be taken for a ride in the white H-13H by General Jiggs. All they had done was take off and fly out of sight and then return to Pad No. 1, but it had given the network TV people a “shot” of general officers in flight, and Black had gone along.