The Majors

by W. E. B Griffin

  And there had been, as there inevitably are when large numbers of people are involved in something solemn, elements of high comedy.

  It had been decided and accepted without question that Lieutenant Greer’s casket would be carried on a tank from the main post chapel to Parade Ground No. 2, where Mrs. Greer would receive her husband’s Distinguished Flying Cross. There were no tanks at Rucker, so two M48s had been ordered down from Fort Benning. Someone had then realized (1) that not having been ordered to provide tank crews, Benning had not sent any and (2) there was no place on a tank where a casket could be carried.

  Both of those problems had been solved by the Red Army maneuver troops from Fort Riley, the ones who had brought the Russian T34s down. They, of course, were qualified tank crewmen who could drive the M48s, and they quickly welded a platform to support the casket over the engine compartment.

  Platforms. Both tanks had been so modified, in case something should go wrong with one of them. As the Red Army tank crews had brought six T34s from Riley to make sure three would be available, there were two M48s where one was going to be needed. There were two public address systems in place where one would be needed. There were four extra jeeps standing by in case something should go wrong with the four jeeps which would be used as flower cars. The term was redundancy.

  There would be, of course, a riderless horse with reversed boots in the stirrups to be led in the procession behind the tank with Greer’s casket. In the dry run, the first time the horse heard the tank engine start, he voided his bowels and then jerked loose from his handler and galloped wildly away with half a dozen field-grade officers in hot pursuit.

  A second horse had been acquired, who was not terrified at the sound of a tank engine.

  In the middle of all this, there had been grand theft, helicopter.

  More than a little chagrined, the commanding officer of Rotary Wing Training had sought audience with General Jiggs. An H-19C was missing, and the colonel was absolutely convinced that it had been stolen. He wanted the FBI notified and a bulletin sent to all airfields within 350 miles of Rucker asking that they report any H-19C that had landed at their field.

  General Jiggs had not been willing to go along with that. He didn’t doubt that an H-19C was missing, but the idea that anyone would steal one was absurd. If someone had reported an H-34B was missing or an H-37 or one of the new YH-40s, Jiggs would have been concerned. An H-34B could be flown somewhere and stripped for parts, for the Sikorsky was now in wide civilian use. It was conceivable, though unlikely, that the Russians might want to grab a YH-40, so they could study it. But a worn-out, ancient H-19C? Absurd!

  What would you do with it? To whom could it be sold? He concluded, and so informed the commanding officer of Rotary Wing Training, that one of two things had happened to the “stolen” H-19C:

  (1) It had simply been misplaced; that is, someone had taken the wrong H-19C when making an authorized flight. The thing to do, General Jiggs told him, was to conduct an inventory and see if anybody had an extra H-19C, which would be the case if someone had taken the wrong one off someplace.

  (2) A practical joker was at work, someone who thought more of a good belly laugh than of his career and had taken the machine and hidden it somewhere on the reservation in the sure and certain knowledge that a lot of people would be running around like headless chickens when it was discovered missing. If this scenario were valid, the thing to do was look for the missing H-19C in places where someone so inclined would be likely to hide it.

  None of this, however, affected the people or the proceedings in the chapel. On the right side of the chapel immediately behind the pallbearers, sat the brass: General and Mrs. E. Z. Black; Lieutenant General and Mrs. Richard D. Hoit (General Hoit commanded Third Army, in whose area Rucker was located. He had not known Lieutenant Greer, but if the Vice Chief of Staff was going to his funeral, so was he); Major General and Mrs. Paul Jiggs, and Mrs. Robert F. Bellmon.

  Behind the family (on the left) and the brass (on the right) were the other distinguished guests and friends. An area of the lawn outside had been set aside for distinguished guests and friends who had invitations, but for whom there was no room inside. Loudspeakers would carry the ceremony to them.

  The Third Army chaplain raised his hand in blessing.

  “The peace of God, which passeth all understanding, be with you and yours,” he said.

  The pallbearers (Brigadier General Robert F. Bellmon; Major Rudolph G. MacMillan; WOJG William B. Franklin; Master Sergeant Wallace Horn; Staff Sergeant Jerry P. Davis and Corporal Sampson P. Killian) rose and took their places around the casket. The organ began to play “Nearer My God to Thee.” On the fourth bar, the organ was joined by the 77th U.S. Army Band outside.

  The casket was carried down the aisle.

  The widow and her family followed it out and then the brass. By the time they were outside, the casket had been installed on the rack on the back of the M48. A line of soldiers moving quickly, but not running, carried the floral tributes from the chapel to waiting jeeps. The floral tributes included one from the French government, who had also ordered their consul general from New Orleans to pay final respects to a holder of the Croix de geurre. The decision to send the consul may have been based more on the fact that network TV crews were going to be on hand than on Greer’s service to France, but the point was that he was there, and his Citroen with the CD tags and his purple ribbon of office worn diagonally across his chest gave Colonel Brandon another good shot.

  As soon as the widow and her baby and the black lady had gotten into the first of two limousines, the driver of the M48 started his engine. A cloud of acrid diesel smoke was blown down the line of cars and the people waiting to get in them.

  There was a second Cadillac limousine carrying Mayor and Mrs. Dutton, and then General Black’s staff car, and then (as protocol demanded, since a consul general of a friendly power ranks a three-star general) the Citroen with the CD tags, then General Hoit’s and General Jiggs’s staff cars. Mrs. Bellmon rode with General and Mrs. Jiggs.

  Preceding the M48 were a company of the WOC battalion; the color guard; the staff car carrying the three clergy; and the four jeeps carrying the floral tributes.

  Following General Jiggs’s staff car were the 77th U.S. Army Band; a company of troops from the Aviation Center; the officers and men of the U.S. Army Aviation Combat Developments Agency; the officers and men of the U.S. Army Aviation Board; and then the other distinguished guests and friends.

  The funeral parade moved slowly away from the main post chapel, down the winding street past the officer’s open mess golf course, down Third Avenue, and finally to Parade Ground No. 2.

  There were permanent bleachers erected on Parade Ground No. 2, and they were filled with people. Military personnel, except for essential operating personnel, had been ordered to be present. Civilian employees had been encouraged to be present.

  The Cadillac hearse and a matching flower car which would take the casket from the post to Memory Gardens in Ozark following the award of the DFC were waiting behind the bleachers. Interment would be private.

  When General Jiggs got out of his staff car, he saw, circling a mile or so away, the aircraft which would make the flyover, the final item on the agenda. When he got to the VIP stand, he saw something that was not on the schedule of events.

  Drawn up at the end of the parade ground, just at the crest of the hill beyond which were the old artillery range impact areas, were the Russian T34s. They were parked in a line, twenty yards apart. Five of them. There had been, he recalled, six, but Greer had blown one of them away just before he went in.

  He wondered if that was another of Colonel Tim F. Brandon’s bullshit ideas or whether it had been the idea of the T34 tank crews, a tribute on their part. Well, no matter. It was too late to do anything about them now. There they sat, red stars and all.

  The troops and the band had formed on the parade ground. The band was playing what the schedule of events ca
lled “appropriate music” (at the moment, “For in Her Hair, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” in a mournful tempo) while people found their seats.

  The M48 with Greer’s casket was parked directly in front of the bleachers, equidistant between the troops and the bleachers. The color guard was standing next to it, facing the bleachers. They would serve as a background for the shot in which General Black would award the DFC to the widow.

  When all but a few stragglers had found their seats, the band began to play “The Washington Post March.” The troop units marched past the bleachers and then back where they had been.

  General Black and party marched out onto the field. The post adjutant would read the orders awarding the DFC post-humously to First Lieutenant Edward C. Greer. General Black would then walk to where the widow sat in the bleachers and pin the decoration to her dress. He would then turn and make his “final remarks,” during which he would apologize to the air force for violating the Key West Agreement of 1948. Then the flyover would take place, an empty slot in the final “V” formation representing the lost pilot.

  When that was over, the pallbearers would carry the casket from the M48 to the hearse, and that would be the end of it.

  It had been arranged for whatever was said over the microphones to be transmitted to the aircraft circling a mile or so away, so their flight over the parade ground would be when it was required sequentially, rather than at a specific time. It had been realized by the planners that it would be next to impossible to run the operation by the clock.

  And, as always, there was one sonofabitch who hadn’t gotten the word. In addition to the steady drone of the aircraft engines orbiting a mile or so away at 3,500 feet, there came the sound of one chopper, much lower and much closer. Heads turned to locate it.

  The ground control officer behind the bleachers went on the air, repeating over and over, changing frequencies to make sure the dumb sonofabitch finally heard him, “Chopper operating in vicinity of Parade Ground No. 2, immediately leave this area. Chopper operating in vicinity of Parade Ground No. 2, immediately leave this area.”

  The pilot apparently wasn’t listening to his radio, or more likely, the ground control officer decided, he was listening to the adjutant reading the general order awarding Greer his DFC. Whatever the reason, the sound of his engine didn’t go away, and when they finished reading the order, it even grew louder.

  And then as General Black walked across the field to present the DFC to Melody Dutton Greer, the machine came in view. It popped up behind a row of barracks behind the massed troops, and then a moment later dropped out of sight again. They could hear the engine, but they couldn’t see it. The next time they saw it, it was behind them, and people just had time to turn their heads and spot it and identify it as an H-19C before it dropped out of sight again.

  The ground controller ran from his portable radio to the VIP section of the bleachers and to the microphone General Black would use for his remarks. He grabbed it.

  “Helicopter operating in vicinity of Parade Ground No. 2, leave the area immediately. Leave the area immediately.”

  If the dumb bastard was listening to the speeches, he would hear the order.

  The chopper appeared a third time, this time to the left of Parade Ground No. 2. It popped up, but this time it did not immediately drop back down again. This time, the cyclic obviously in full up position, the engine obviously being called upon to deliver full emergency military power, it rose nearly straight up to maybe 2,500 feet. Then the nose dropped, and the sound of the rotors changed pitch. The chopper pilot made a full-bore, high-speed run down the center of the parade ground, coming so low that he actually had to pick the chopper up to get over the M48 with the flagged-draped casket on it.

  One of the network TV cameramen, spinning rapidly to keep the chopper in his viewfinder, fell off the camera platform. In desperation, he grabbed for the camera and pulled it off the platform with him.

  That meant, Colonel Brandon thought, that only two networks would be able to telecast the antics of this idiot. Then he realized that this was wishful thinking. The media stuck together. One of the two who had got the shot would make it available to the moron who fell off the platform. This whole thing would be on the six o’clock news, although not exactly in the way Colonel Brandon had intended.

  When the pilot got to the tanks, he pulled the chopper up again and stood it on its side, then passed over the troops in ranks. Still banking, he turned back over the parade ground, slowing up, straightening out, until he was in an “out of ground effect hover” directly over the M48.

  The downblast from the rotors blew dust thirty feet in the air. Hats flew. Major MacMillan and WOJG Franklin jumped up on the M48 to lie on the casket, to keep the flapping flag from being blown off.

  The helicopter could be clearly seen now. The fuselage had been painted black. On the fuselage, between the trailing end of the door and the tail boom, was a white outline sketch of Woody Woodpecker. Woody was pictured leering with joy as he threw beer bottles.

  Above him, in clear, legible letters was the legend: Big Bad Bird II.

  There were strange-looking objects, which very few people had ever seen before, mounted on the landing wheel struts. Exactly fifteen seconds after Big Bad Bird II had come to a hover over the M48 carrying Ed Greer’s casket, there was a dull rumbling noise from the helicopter. A stream of 3.5 inch rockets came from the left canister, twenty-seven in all in 7.5 seconds. Then in another 7.5 seconds, twenty-seven more from the right canister.

  In fifteen seconds, fifty-four rockets. In fifteen seconds, five perfectly functioning T34 tanks were turned into so many tons of twisted, useless metal.

  Big Bad Bird II dropped its nose and flew slowly down the parade ground through the clouds of dense black diesel smoke rising from the blown-away T34s and disappeared.

  The TV cameras made an arty shot. They followed the dense cloud of smoke from the burning T34s as it rose up into the sky.

  Melody Dutton Greer looked up at General E. Z. Black.

  “Is that what Ed was working on?” she asked.

  “That’s it,” General Black said.

  “You really put on a show for me, didn’t you?” Melody asked.

  “I had nothing to do with it, honey,” General Black said. “That was the ‘legendary Major Lowell’ paying his condolences.”

  General Black then delivered his final remarks. He departed from his prepared text. He made no reference whatever to the air force—or to the Key West Agreement of 1948.

  Major General Paul Jiggs had concluded who was responsible long before General Black had. He had suspected who was responsible when he’d seen the spectacular climb the pilot had made before he made the high-speed run. When he’d returned to hover over the casket, there had been no doubt. Jiggs couldn’t see the pilot, but the right-side window had had something taped to it: the soiled and somewhat frayed guidon that was once the property of the 73rd Heavy Battalion. General Jiggs had even been able to read the grease-pencil lettering which spelled out “T/F LOWELL.”

  He called over the provost marshal.

  “Get me Major Craig W. Lowell,” he said. “He’s probably going to try to take off from Laird in the next couple of minutes in a civilian Aero Commander. But I don’t care where he is. You get him for me.”

  (Two)

  Laird Army Airfield

  Fort Rucker, Alabama

  28 December 1958

  General E. Z. Black walked into the VIP lounge where Major Lowell was being detained. An MP captain and the airfield commander called “atten-hut” almost in unison.

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” General Black said. “That will be all.” He waited until they had left before speaking.

  “Fascinating demonstration, Major,” he said, finally.

  “L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace, mon général,” Lowell replied.

  “What I really would like to know, Lowell,” General Black said, “is whether that was audacity or stupidity
, and more importantly, whether you know the difference.”

  “I didn’t want the Big Bad Bird going down the toilet, General,” Lowell said.

  “That’s it. That’s the bottom line?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where did you get the other firing mechanisms?” Black asked.

  “Redundancy, General,” Lowell said. “I learned all about redundancy when I was a young officer.”

  “And you got Cramer to help you?”

  “I assume full responsibility, General.”

  “And besides, ‘what the hell, they won’t court-martial me anyhow; I’m being thrown out of the army anyway, and a court-martial would be embarrassing’?”

  “That did occur to me, General,” Major Lowell said.

  General Black went to the window and pushed the curtain aside. An air force Grumman, a VIP transport, was waiting for him. He had been down here too long as it was.

  “You have an interesting ally, Major,” General Black said. “Actually, it’s ironic.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand you, sir,” Lowell said.

  “Brandon,” General Black said. “That horse’s ass actually tried to save your ass, Major. He lost no time in pointing out to me that socking it to you would not be in the best interests of the army.”

  “He’s a horse ass,” Lowell said. “But you need people like that.”

  “The army needs all kinds of strange people, Lowell. Horse’s asses like Brandon, and even people like you.”

  “Sir?”