Dress Gray

by Lucian K. Truscott

  The phone call to Hedges had produced nothing but hot air and a promise for a report before close of business, an hour away. He never got anything out of Hedges over the phone. He always had this feeling Hedges was using the phone as a weapon, wielding it in a circular fashion, like a sling. He had this image of Hedges whipping the phone around and around his head … then letting it go … the phone sailing through the air like a mortar round … black and slow and deadly. Rylander heard his stomach this time, grinding and crunching like gravel beneath a truck’s tires. He reached again for the Maalox. June Week was going to get the best of him again this year. He could tell.

  Everything had to be perfect for June Week. It was the high point of the year at the academy. In the crisp, early summer mornings, West Point was fresh, lime-green, young in some odd, indefinable way. Thayer Road, the area of barracks, the Plain, the cliffs overlooking the Hudson River Valley, all would be crowded with “old grads,” wandering around the grounds, checking to see that the academy, though it changed perceptibly from year to year, carried on the grand traditions of the Long Gray Line. Maybe that was why West Point seemed young during June Week. Because every year the old grads who returned seemed older.

  The men who would walk the grounds of the academy during June Week were the Long Gray Line. The traditions preserved by West Point were their traditions. At least, the old grads thought the traditions were theirs. June Week was a time of high emotion, a time when the academy stood at attention to be inspected by those of the Corps who had come before. June Week celebrated the past, held it aloft and worshiped it, for in the past was to be found the path to the future.

  June Week was West Point with shoulders back and head high, West Point in its most public incarnation, in full-dress uniform, handsome, cinematic, regal, the military way of life carried to its most elegant conclusion. June Week was a grand parade of perfection. Every year the New York Times and the Daily News and the wire services and the three television networks sent reporters to the academy. The news media made its annual pilgrimage, it seemed, to reassure the world that at least here among the great gray stone buildings of the academy, here among the cadets with the close-cropped hair and the impeccable manners, here among the medal-bedecked officer corps—here at West Point life went on, unperturbed by events outside. The news stories emanating from June Week would chorus: At West Point they still believed.

  Everything had to be so perfect for June Week that the entire plebe class was moved, en masse, to Camp Buckner, the summer training installation ten miles away from the main academy grounds, where later that summer they would undergo two months of intensive field exercises. Technically, in May, the plebe class was of West Point, but they were not yet West Pointers. They had not been “recognized,” the formal ceremony following graduation parade when each plebe would shake hands with each upperclassman in his company. Plebes were thus not yet fit for public consumption. They would spend June Week by themselves, getting ready for summer training. It was a carefree, unhindered week for the plebes, the first time all year when they were not under the constant gun of the upper classes. Lake Popolopen offered swimming, canoeing, sailing, water skiing, fishing, and for the first time since they had entered the academy, access to Camp Buckner’s own version of West Point’s famous “Flirtation Walk,” along which amorous adventures with those of the opposite sex could take place.

  Now this plebe, Hand, had been found floating in Popolopen down at the end of Flirtation Walk. The deputy com had said it looked like an accident. Accidental cadet deaths were all too common during June Week, though rarely, if ever, did one receive public exposure. Every year, one or two cadets would do themselves in. This year it had already happened. Two first-classmen had killed themselves in a Corvette, making a last-minute dash back to the academy from Snuffy’s Bar, a little roadhouse located precisely fifteen miles from the academy gate, the closest bar where cadets were permitted to drink. Their deaths went unreported in the press. The year before, Rylander recalled, a drunken cadet had run over a child in Highland Falls, the small town just off post. The cadet had been charged with manslaughter and was later exonerated. The whole business was hush-hush. Many cadets never found out the “accidental” killing of the child had occurred.

  Where was Hedges? Why in hell is it taking him so long to get that report to me?

  Brigadier General Charles Sherrill Hedges had been commandant of cadets for nine months; Rylander had been superintendent for two years. The two men did not get along. The superintendent sat down behind his large oak desk and scratched his crew-cut head. He was beefy and tall—6'1", 220 pounds, only a bit over his playing weight when he had captained the army football team. His face was soft, unlined, almost youthful-looking, despite his fifty years and combat experience in three wars. He had the offhanded bearing of one who had been brought up to think he was better than everyone else. This had not been true of Axel Rylander. He was a Wisconsin farm boy and had worked his father’s small dairy before he entered the Military Academy in the summer of 1935. The Depression had killed his mother, and an appointment to West Point the year of her death had seemed at once a blessing and a cop-out, leaving his father and kid sister alone to run the dairy … it had bothered him when he was a cadet. In retrospect, he thought the guilt he felt leaving his family behind was probably the reason he was a turnback. He could never keep his mind on his studies, so he took out his frustrations on the football field, where because of his size and his anger, he excelled.

  His career had been a normal one—command time, staff time, combat, all the army schools, a graduate degree in foreign relations from George Washington University, gotten at night when he was stationed at the Pentagon as a lieutenant colonel in the ‘50s. If there was anything that set him apart, it was his command of the 1st Cav back ’65–’66, when the war was being won. Everything seemed to go right for him that year. The 1st Cav made headlines almost every day. The press needed something to focus on, something to hold up as evidence that, indeed, a war was being fought over there in Vietnam, ten thousand miles away from the nearest American Main Street. The correspondents who were covering the war, Cronkite and some of the older ones anyway, remembered Rylander from World War II. They remembered Bastogne, the refusal of the greatly outnumbered 101st Airborne troopers to surrender. Rylander had been there. No doubt about it, Bastogne brought back a lot of memories … and the memories of another battle, another war … the memories gave Rylander credibility.

  Now they wanted another war, and he gave them one—the kind of war he remembered: great division-strength operations sweeping across huge pieces of the II Corps highlands, rushing to the Laotian border and back again. Rylander deployed more troops in the field on actual combat maneuvers than any unit commander in Vietnam. The 1st Cav would go two months before a “stand-down,” a return to the rear area for a brief respite from life in the jungle. Rylander’s division was the army the way the American people remembered their army from service in World War II, Korea … from the late movie on television. Rylander commanded a division that got out there and got the job done.

  That the job which was getting done had little bearing on the political realities underlying an elusive military situation went completely unnoticed by press, politicians, and public. In ’65–’66 the war in Vietnam was being won. The 1st Cavalry Division was the most visible symbol of this uncontested fact. General Rylander was a symbol. He symbolized the military man of history textbooks and Hollywood motion pictures. He symbolized the military man Life had celebrated on so many covers over the years. Rylander went on the cover of Life. Not long afterward, the President showed up at his division headquarters, in the company of a phalanx of public relations types from Saigon. There were TV crews all over the place. The President looked around the headquarters, went outside, and shook some hands. Rylander recalled thinking that he looked like he was campaigning somewhere in Texas—it was all dusty and he was hot, sweat straining his armpits and the back of his white shirt. Th
en he walked up to Rylander and asked if he could take a ride in a helicopter. Just like that. Rylander had been dumbfounded. The President sounded like a kid asking a parent if he could ride the roller coaster. It was in the tone of his voice. Through the famous Texas drawl, Rylander detected that touch of fascination and fear and awe only a kid would experience just before his first ride on a roller coaster. So they climbed in the chopper and went up for a ride. One of the PR types from Saigon took Rylander aside and told him not to take the President anyplace. “Just ride him around a bit. You know,” the man had said. The cameras rolled. That night, all across America, it would look like the President of the United States was taking off on a combat mission, really getting up there on the front lines and mixing it up with the troops. Truth was, Rylander rarely if ever used the helicopter which sat next to the division headquarters bunker. He preferred to look at things on the ground, see the terrain the way the foot soldier would see it, walk around and get a feel of the goddamn land.

  Now, three years later, the same President he’d taken for a ride in his helicopter had abdicated. The war in Vietnam had not been won with a few crack Airborne units and a Marine division or two, as the Pentagon and the politicians had hoped. Now the “brushfire war” was called a “protracted struggle.” Official United States Army language had adopted the political slang of Chairman Mao to describe the war which just seemed to ooze from day to day with no end in sight. Slowly, the country was being weaned from its historical fascination with the military. Men like Axel W. Rylander had become, almost overnight, obsolete. And he knew it.

  In one year, at the end of his tour of duty as superintendent of the Military Academy, his career would be over. Rylander leaned back in his chair and stared at the lush green hills across the Hudson. In one year, he’d be cashiered with a third star and shuffled off to a harmless duty assignment where he could serve out his final years in the army with quiet dignity. It was the army way. The payoff. An active-duty pension. The pasture.

  Rylander knew that the army of 1968 had changed in quantum leaps from the army of just three years ago. Right now, down in the Pentagon, they were looking for some young buck, some up-and-comer to push on the public as an image for the New Army General. What bothered Rylander about his commandant of cadets was the fact that Hedges was just the man they were looking for. He was young. He was hot. He had combat experience. And something—some gut instinct deep down inside Rylander—told him Hedges was well connected politically. The army general of the future, he surmised, was going to be a political animal. Hedges was such an animal. He was moving ahead with unreal speed, and he was toeing the current Pentagon line, prattling to the cadets in his lectures on the war about “the airmobile concept” and the “body count.” Hell, his old unit was now called the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in deference to helicopter tactics, the new doctrine which was coming out of the Pentagon in a desperate attempt to find some kind of formula with which the Vietcong could be effectively dealt a crushing military and political blow. The magical ingredient, the key to instant success, was the body count. Helicopters and body counts. Rylander scratched his crew cut again and laughed out loud.

  Hell, he’d fought in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, the Battle of the Bulge, and finally in Germany itself. He had walked his way through most of World War II. Now they were flying around over in Vietnam in helicopters … all Hedges could talk about when he was telling war stories at cocktail parties was his “C & C ship.” It was like he was talking about some temple, some place he went to worship, the way he talked about his C & C ship. So they flew around in helicopters, and they spent the night on cots in places they called base camps, and they counted bodies. This was winning the war. Well … if it wasn’t winning the war, it sure was promoting those who flew the most missions and counted the most bodies.

  Hedges almost glowed when he talked about body counts. In his unit, they stacked the enemy dead like cordwood, took pictures of them, and put the photos on the wire services and television. Often, Hedges would have a big plywood crest of his unit leaning against the bodies, so everyone would know which unit had scored the victory. One night at a reception Rylander had given for the Board of Trustees of Boston College, Hedges pulled from his Dress Blues jacket pocket a color photograph of a particularly large stack of Vietcong dead, with his unit crest prominently displayed in front of the pile. The Boston College trustees were horrified. It wasn’t just a color photo Hedges was showing them. It was his family Christmas card. The photo had been duplicated and run off on a white background, with the words “Season’s Greetings” and “Peace to the World” ringing the photo of the dead VC bodies. One of the trustees from Boston College approached Rylander and asked him if the commandant was trying to make some kind of sick joke. Rylander walked across the room and asked to see the card. Hedges showed it to him, explaining that he and his wife had just sent out two hundred to their entire Christmas card list. It wasn’t a sick joke. It was Charles Sherrill Hedges, Brigadier General, United States Army. An up-and-comer.

  Counting bodies was a crime. An enemy was an enemy, and he deserved respect. Counting his dead, and photographing their bodies, violated Rylander’s notion of the nature of war. Every soldier knew that wars were fought over land, territory, dirt. You deployed your forces, executed maneuvers, killed enemy soldiers, and you occupied land you took away from them. When you had occupied and controlled all of the land, as the Allies had done in World War II, as had been done in World War I, as had been done in the Civil War, as had been done by Napoleon, and by Caesar, and by Alexander the Great … then you won. The fact that II Corps, the area of operations over which he had command, was now completely controlled by the Vietcong, meant that in three years of war in II Corps, the United States Army had lost.

  Sitting in his office waiting for Hedges to show up with his report on the dead plebe, General Rylander was disgusted. But he would hide his disgust. For in truth, his disgust was turning slowly to shame, and generals were not supposed to feel shame. And he, Axel W. Rylander, was certainly not going to feel shame in the presence of his manipulative, political commandant of cadets, Charles Sherrill Hedges. Rylander sat up straight in his chair. He swiveled around and gazed across the Hudson. West Point, he resolved, was not going to go the way of the Charles Sherrill Hedgeses of the world. Not while he was superintendent, it wasn’t. He swore softly under his breath. After twenty-eight years in the army, he was resigned to protecting the United States Military Academy like it was a piece of turf in some gang war in the Bronx. If the nation had any idea what was happening to its sacred West Point …

  6

  “General, the commandant is in the outer office.” It was Mrs. Moore, Rylander’s secretary. The superintendent swiveled his chair around so it faced his oak desk, nodded his head in a signal to his secretary, and took a pad of yellow legal paper from his lower left-hand desk drawer. He chose a sharp pencil from a row of pencils to his left, next to the phone. The door opened. Hedges strode into the supe’s office. He reached a spot immediately in front of a chair located slightly to the left of the desk and about two feet away from its corner. It was a subtle gesture, and Rylander took note. According to protocol, the commandant should have placed himself squarely in front of the supe’s desk, about four feet distant, and reported his presence in a military fashion, waiting for a signal from the supe to walk over to the chair and sit down. Instead, Hedges was poised, ready to sit down as he spoke:

  “General, I’ve got that report from Terry King we’ve been waiting for. He just stopped by my office and gave it to me. I got over here as soon as I could.” Rylander looked at Hedges. He was not carrying a briefcase, a manila folder, the distinctive light blue Top Secret container for sensitive information, a sheaf of papers … he wasn’t carrying anything. Rylander waited a mental four-count before speaking:

  “Where is it?”

  “I am prepared to give you the facts, verbally, sir. You seemed in a hurry when I spoke to you on the telep
hone. I figured you just wanted to get the facts and be on your way down to Bear Mountain for the dinner.” Rylander didn’t move a muscle. He did not want to give Hedges the slightest indication that he was being invited to be seated. Let him stand there and stew a minute. Nothing in writing. You seemed in a hurry.

  “General Hedges, I will determine when I am, as you put it, ‘in a hurry,’ and when I am not ‘in a hurry.’ ” Rylander let the sarcasm of his words sink in. “It so happens that right now, at this moment, I am not ‘in a hurry.’ Do you understand me, General?”

  “Yessir … I just thought …”

  “General Hedges, I do not expect you to sit in the commandant’s office all day and ‘just think.’” Again, the sarcasm. “Today, I expected you to get that report on the dead plebe to me. It so happens that all day I have been, as you put it, ‘in a hurry.’ There is much I must do in preparation for June Week. You are aware of this. The plain fact is, I did not hear word one from you until 1700, exactly forty-five minutes ago, when I had my secretary place a call to your office, and we spoke. You have not exactly been very solicitous of my time, if you are indeed, as you say, aware of the fact that I have been ‘in a hurry.’ Now, where, may I ask, is the report?”

  “Back in my office, sir.” Hedges’ words were curt, and edged with the realization that he was getting a grilling. He drew himself to his full 5'9”, and pulled at the bottom of his uniform jacket. Rylander noticed it was a nervous habit Hedges had, the constant straightening of his uniform, as if every crease had to be in precise alignment in order for Hedges to function properly. He often thought of Hedges as a machine, so perhaps it was true. Machines need to be aligned, balanced, in order to run. So, obviously, did Hedges.