“Heard it just the other day from one of the cadets up in Building 720. Hedges is giving him the heave-ho right after June Week. Has to do with trouble Eldridge had with his son. The kid got bounced out of basic training down at Fort Dix with a bad discharge because they claimed to have found some dope taped under his wall locker. Eldridge says his son swears it wasn’t his. He said some other guy fucked him, because the whole platoon knew his old man was a famous lifer noncom. Thing was, they never even brought the kid up on charges. Never court-martialed him. They just processed him out administratively, so the kid never got a chance to defend himself. Got an undesirable discharge. Broke old fuckin’ Eldridge’s heart. He wanted the kid to go through basic and AIT, then get into the prep school down at Belvoir and try for an army appointment to West Point. Christ, it’s a real tragedy. A classic.”
“And Hedges didn’t do anything for him?”
“Are you kidding? The sergeant major went up to see him about his kid, see if Hedges could pull a couple of strings for the kid, at least get the bastards down at Dix to charge the kid with possession, and let him defend himself. What does Hedges do? He takes a fuckin’ walk. In the opposite direction. Know what he said to Eldridge? He said, ‘I don’t want to hear about it.’ That was it. ‘I don’t want to hear about it.’ You believe that?”
Buck whistled that low whistle between his teeth and stared at the floor.
“Jesus H. fuckin’ Christ,” Buck stuttered. “The sergeant major was a legend. Hell, everybody in the fuckin’ army knew he was Audie Murphy’s platoon sergeant in the Third Division during the war. He’s got the … fuckin’ … Medal of fuckin’ … Honor, for crying out loud. He was the dude who was feeding fifty-caliber rounds to Audie Murphy when he shot up that German battalion. You seen the goddamn movie. They even let old Eldridge wear his blue and white stripe Third Division patch on his right shoulder still, you know. Most of ‘em wear their Vietnam unit patches. Not fuckin’ Eldridge. He still wears the Third.”
“Last time I saw Eldridge, walking along Brewerton Road, he looked like a truck had just run over him. Said they were retiring him. Big ceremony. Giving him the Legion of Merit, like he needs another ribbon or something. But the whole thing is happening after June Week, when none of the cadets from the regiment will be around to pay their respects. Most of the officers will be on leave, too. Christ. Thirty years in the goddamn army, and Hedges is pushing the sergeant major out the back door. I don’t think he’s too big on old Two-Dash Hedges any more. Nosir. I’d be willing to bet you my cow stripes old Eldridge would give anything to carve off a piece of Hedges before he leaves. I’ll bet you Eldridge is chewing on his hat brim up here in 720 to keep himself under control. That clerk I talked to said the sergeant major had fuckin’ blood in his eyes, he was so pissed.”
“Think we can get anything out of the sergeant major about what Phineas T. was doing up in Hedges’ office this afternoon?”
“You fuckin’-A right I think we can get Eldridge to feed us the poop on what King was up to. What’s he got to lose? His Legion of Merit? He’s out of here, out of the army in two weeks. I never thought I’d see a hard-core, brown-shoe army sergeant with a short-timer’s attitude, but old Eldridge had it written all over him when I saw him shuffling along Brewerton Road. Fuckin’ Hedges stepped on his dick when he turned his back on Eldridge. He took the sergeant major for granted, figured loyalty was a prerogative of rank. He couldn’t have made a worse mistake. When Eldridge got the cold shoulder, he wrote off Hedges for good. I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t put trash all over Hedges on the old-sergeant-grapevine. You know how those old fuckers stick together. One of ‘em can’t fart in Korea without the rest of ‘em hearing the echo. And Sergeant Major Eldridge has always been one of the heaviest of the heavies. If he trashes Hedges, his bullshit isn’t going to be worth fuckall when it comes to senior NCOs.”
“So what do we do about Eldridge?”
“Give me a clean pair of socks out of my drawer, will you, Buck? I’m finished messing with these damn feet.” Buck got up and handed Slaight a neatly folded pair of black cotton socks. Slaight grimaced as he pulled the socks over his swollen feet.
“I’ll tell you exactly what we do about Eldridge. We put a bug in his ear, that’s what we do. Let him know we’re interested. Colonel King probably had him galavanting all over the goddamn place today, anyway. I’m sure he knows the shit’s astir. And we ask him to keep an eye peeled for any relevant poop-sheets which come to his attention. He’s always feeding us poop-sheets, anyway. Half the shit we’ve got filed away in this room came through Sergeant Major Eldridge during the past year. He is one goddamn fountain of poop-sheets. Good stuff, too. Remember back in January, when he fed us that poop-sheet that said they were doing away with reveille, two weeks before it happened? We won about three hundred bucks betting on the demise of reveille.”
“Poop-sheets.” Buck whistled again and gazed around the room. Two-twenty-six looked like the final resting place for all academy paper officialdom. A paperwork graveyard. The room was madly organized chaos, like a political campaign headquarters in the final throes of the last week before the election. Buck remembered when his father was running for county Democratic chairman back in Burning Tree. The family living room looked just like his room at West Point. Papers and books piled on the window ledge, overflowing the bookshelves, stacked on both gray metal desks. A metal typewriter table had been imported to hold a stack of magazines, two rows, eighteen inches deep. Two olive-drab file cabinets—the kind with five legal-width drawers—lined the walls behind both desks, to the left and right of the window overlooking New South Area. The file cabinets contained thousands of poop-sheets, army slang for official documents of every description, relating to matters as banal as trash pick-up schedules, as momentous as first-generation photo copies of the minutes of meetings of the Academy Board of Visitors, the closest thing West Point had to a board of trustees.
Neither Buck nor Slaight could recall why they had decided to start collecting poop-sheets. They probably hadn’t decided—sometime in the past, the flow had simply begun, and now after three years, it couldn’t be stopped. One poop-sheet after another found its way to Room 226, via a circuitous route of cadets and NCOs with chain-of-command positions through which streamed a steady flow of official memoranda, records, orders, bulletins, disposition forms, and just plain extraneous make-work military gibberish. Their room had become a corps-wide repository for poop-sheets. Buck read them, and Slaight filed them. Buck filtered out useless data and fed relevant information to Slaight on a nightly basis, when they took their showers just after taps. Between them, they probably knew more about what transpired at the United States Military Academy than the brigade S-1, the adjutant, the officer with responsibility for the generation and flow of all academy paperwork. They were fascinated by the swamp of paperwork upon which the army seemed to float, for within its murky depths, they surmised, could be found more than a few of the secrets about what made the wheels go round.
“So here’s the plan, Buck. Tonight, I’m going up to Eldridge’s quarters. I’ll wait until he’s had a few beers, then I’ll put the bug in his ear. I’ll fill him in about Hand from last summer. The kid was not without his share of enemies, you recall. Then I’ll let him know that it would not go unappreciated if he passed along any relevant poop-sheets coming to his attention about the death of Cadet David Hand. I give the sergeant major three days, max. If there’s a lid down, he’ll uncork the fucker. Nothing gets past an old sergeant major like Eldridge who decides to call in his debts. Nothing. If Hedges so much as burps over his tuna salad sandwich, Eldridge will get a report on what key he burped in. All we’ve got to do is sit back and wait.”
“Slaight … you wily-ass SOB, I think you done got it nailed,” said Buck, grinning widely, making his already youthful face look positively pubescent. “Now, I suggest you haul your ass over to the hospital and let that doctor over there have a look at those feet. He’s
probably going to recommend you for a medical discharge, this time.”
“Shit. I just want my basic load of Darvon and codeine. Seven more fuckin’ hours and I’m finished, Buck. Seven goddamn hours. Give me a half-dozen Darvon and a couple of those big horsepill codeine caps, and I’ll hump my fanny from here to New York. Jesus. That it should come to this. Darvon, codeine, and fuckin’ moleskin.”
“At least you’re not up there floating in Popolopen, polluting the lake,” said Buck, digging into his papers again.
“Yeah. Christ. Hand’s dead. Guy told me on the area today, I just about dropped my gun. Drowned. It just doesn’t … fuckin’ fit, you know, Leroy?”
“Yeah.”
“So what is it you got for me, Buck? Let’s have a look.
“Aw, just another goddamn DF from Grimshaw. More total wisdom from the tactical officer, bless his khaki ass. But this one’s a goody.” Buck handed Slaight the memo. It had been run off on DD Form 314s, official Department of Defense DFs, Disposition Forms. DFs like it came down from Grimshaw on a daily basis.
DISPOSITION FORM
SUBJECT: Marriage
DISPOSITION: 1 ea. 1° & 2° Cadet Rooms
CLASSIFICATION: None.
1. You gentlemen are no doubt aware that June Week is nearly upon us. I have before me a list of 1° cadets who intend to marry, subsequent to June Week festivities and Graduation. It has come to my attention that several 2° cadets have become “engaged.” I would remind all you gentlemen of the following:
2. Pick yourself a good Army Wife. This is not a matter to be taken lightly. A good Army Wife is necessary for your Career. Many of you have heard me expound upon the fact that I had to turn in my first wife for a New Model. Gentlemen, my first wife did not cut the mustard. She had to go. My present mate fills the bill. She is All-Army and Gung-Ho. In fact, I have affectionately dubbed her “Rangerette Grimshaw.” As cadets, you will not—repeat, not—address her by this nickname.
3. Do not be fooled by Clever Packaging. (I think we all know what is meant by this.)
4. Do not let June Week get the “best of you.” You all know what I used to tell my troops in the old Triple-Deuce in Nam. Keep it in your pants, and it’ll stay between your legs. Good advice, gentlemen. You may chuckle now, but someday you will know the accuracy of my words.
GRIM
Nathan E. Grimshaw
Maj/Inf
Tac Off Co. D-3
“Fuckin’ Grimshaw. You can’t beat him, can you?” asked Slaight with mock amazement.
“Nope. Not old Nathan E.,” said Leroy Buck, his nose deep in the financial pages of the Times again. “Now, drive your ass over to the dispensary, you lazy dimbo. That poop-sheet ain’t doing your feet any good. Now, get.”
5
Axel W. Rylander, Major General, United States Army, had been a turnback. He had flunked mathematics his third-class year at West Point, and after summer tutoring, had passed a make-up examination in mathematics and been readmitted to the corps of cadets with the class behind him, repeating his third-class year. The phenomenon of the turnback was at once West Point’s way of punishing a man for not trying hard enough and yet hanging on to promising young cadets whom the army would have missed had they simply been flunked out altogether. So General Rylander, class of 1940, should have been class of 1939. Among generals, Rylander was a running joke. He had, in effect, two sets of classmates—those with whom he had been admitted as a cadet and those with whom he had graduated. Rylander, however, thought the joke was on everyone else. He had twice as many classmates as his contemporaries. Therefore, he had twice as many friends in high places, looking out for his interests.
Having been a turnback, Rylander hardly shone in academics, graduating in the deep confines of the bottom quarter of the class of 1940. His academic standing did little to hold him back. He was captain of the army football team and first captain, the highest ranking cadet, brigade commander of the cadet corps. When he graduated, he married the daughter of the owner of a large brewery in northern New Jersey. She was “horsy,” which meant she was well placed in that stratum of the social scene in the New York metropolitan area who considered horseback riding somewhere between cleanliness and godliness. It had not hurt the career of young Lieutenant Rylander when his wife’s father was chosen by President Roosevelt to become the deputy Secretary of War in charge of production in 1941. Much could be said—was said—about Axel W. Rylander and his Washington connections during the war years. But truth was, he had taken his duty assignments as they had come to him, and in 1945 was still commanding the same company he’d had for the past year and a half. His father-in-law’s War Department position had been, if anything, a nuisance, for the suspicion that somewhere behind the scenes strings were being pulled for him followed Rylander throughout the war. And it pissed him off but good. He was an infantry combat commander. The only thing his father-in-law ever did for him was to send him a pair of boots from L. L. Bean during the winter of ‘43 in a War Department pouch that had gone to the Fifth Army Headquarters. That was it.
General Rylander paced the sky-blue carpet of his office overlooking the Hudson. The great room had a twenty-foot-high ceiling with exposed wood beams that had to be sixteen inches across. The walls were oak-paneled, and sliding doors opened along one wall onto the wide stone stairwell which led into the courtyard of the Academic Headquarters. He figured the office had once been a conference room before some superintendent had come along and decided to expand, to move from the cramped corner office which had served superintendents for nearly a hundred years. He wasn’t particularly happy with the new arrangement. The big office seemed … hollow. There was too much air in the place. A man couldn’t get in there and light up a cigar and get some smoke going and muddy up the light, create a little cocoon around himself in which a man could think.
In his two years as superintendent, Rylander had done little to his office. Same desk. Same chair. Same dull gray drapes. Same leather sofa. Same small conference table and chairs over at one end of the room. Same portrait of Sylvanus Thayer, class of 1808, the fifth superintendent of the academy and so-called Father of West Point, the man who founded the academic system still used at the academy in 1968, small classes, testing and grading of students every day, emphasis on the applied sciences and engineering. Old Thayer just sat up there on the wall, staring, glaring at everyone who walked into the supe’s office. It was like he still owned the place, like he knew, up there in heaven or wherever he was, that the academy was virtually unchanged from his day. He had the eyes of a psychopath, thought Rylander. Or maybe he had a tiff with the man who did the portrait, and the artist had painted in that crazed glint, that cast to his eyes which meant they never looked the same. Rylander continued to pace. There was little else in the big room to catch his eye. His office was completely devoid of what he called “garbage,” the standard collection of mementos of one’s career. The year before, when Army beat Navy, they’d tried to present him with the “game ball,” which had been mounted on a walnut stand and was flanked on either side with brass castings of football players in action. He told them to put the thing in a glass case over in the gym, “where the paying customers can see it.” So the presentation Army-Navy game ball was sitting in a glass case next to the Army Athletic Association ticket window, as per the supe’s instructions.
Major General Rylander was pacing the sky-blue (infantry color) carpet in his office because he was bothered by this business with the dead cadet they found up in Popolopen early that morning. He heard about it around 9 A.M. from his aide, who burst into his office with a telephone message from the duty officer up at Camp Buckner, where the plebes were stashed during June Week, preparing for their summer training. The duty officer had called about fifteen minutes before Rylander reached his office, and the aide just found the message, buried in some papers on his desk, taken by the Academic Headquarters Duty NCO, who went off at 8:30 A.M. Rylander expected the normal flap would begin any moment—phone
calls, messengers, military police, and emissaries from the Tactical Department running all over the place. He waited. Nothing happened.
At 10:30 A.M., an hour and a half after he first received word of the dead cadet, he received a call from the deputy commandant of cadets, Colonel Theodore Reed, class of ‘50, who reported that General Hedges, the commandant, had wanted to personally make a report to the supe, but he was at that moment on his way out to Buckner. Or someplace. The colonel wasn’t sure. He had received a cryptic message from the com to call the supe and “let him know what’s going on.” The dead cadet’s name was Hand, David, class of 1971. He drowned in Lake Popolopen. That was all he knew.
Rylander was busy preparing for June Week. That was why he worked a full day on Saturday. Seemed like every year there was more to do. This was just what he needed: a dead plebe. He spent most of the day on the phone to Washington. It was the Chief of Staff’s thirtieth class reunion (he was class of ‘38), so there were additional preparations to be made, a private reception at the supe’s quarters for the chief’s classmates, an address to the class of ‘38 on “The Military Academy of the Future,” a special picnic up at Round Pond honoring the chief and his wife. June Week was normally a hellish time for the academy superintendent, and now this. A dead plebe laid at his feet three days before the whole thing was due to begin. Just what he needed. Rylander felt his stomach grumble and remembered that he had forgotten to take his Maalox at lunch. He reached into the top drawer of his desk, pulled out a sterling silver flask, and took a quick swig. Blaaah! The stuff tasted the same, no matter what you drank it from.
Rylander had waited all day for a follow-up report on the dead cadet from the commandant. When by 5 P.M. he had heard nothing, he called Hedges. He hated to call Hedges. They worked only a hundred yards away from each other, and it seemed like there should be some better way of doing business than the telephone. He thought about putting on his cap and just walking over to Hedges’ office and asking what the hell was up with the dead cadet, but then he thought again. Hedges was the one who was supposed to report to him, the supe. Hedges should be hot-footing it over to the other side of Thayer Road about twice a day—once in the morning, once in the afternoon—for a face-to-face with the man he worked for. Rylander made a note to himself. Daily meetings w/Hedges here. AM—PM.
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