The Captains

by W. E. B Griffin

  “When the major returns, Sergeant Wallace, would you tell him those are my recommendations for the overhaul cycle?”

  They both knew that Lowell’s recommendations would be accepted entirely and without question. But they were playing the game. Wallace was delighted that Lowell had done the overhaul list; if Major Ellis had started on it, it would have been an all-day decision-making process. Major Ellis worried so much about making the wrong decisions and looking like a fool that he took forever to make any decision.

  “Sir,” Sergeant Ellis said, “may I ask the captain a somewhat personal question?”

  “Shoot,” Captain Lowell said.

  “I’ve been wondering why the captain doesn’t use a holster for the Luger, sir.”

  “Very good reason,” Lowell said, with a smile. “Because it won’t fit in a .45 holster. I’m aware that it offends your sense of propriety, Sergeant Wallace, but I don’t know what to do about it.”

  “I have the most remarkable houseboy, sir, Kim Lee Song,” Sergeant Wallace said. He saw Lowell’s eyes tighten, and he thought: He suspects. But he went on. “He has connections to get things made of leather, sir. I don’t mean the garbage you can buy along the side of the road. I mean quality goods.”

  “You think he can have a holster made for this?” Lowell said.

  “I’m sure he could, sir,” Wallace said.

  Lowell pulled the Luger from his waist and handed it butt first to Wallace.

  “There’s a round in the chamber,” he said. “Be careful with it.” Then he reached in his pocket and passed over an oblong piece of brass. “I want that mounted on the holster somewhere,” he said. Wallace looked at it, and after a moment recognized it as a German Army belt buckle. The words GOTT MIT UNS were cast into it.

  “It came with the pistol,” Lowell said, “and I want it on the holster.”

  It was, Sergeant Wallace recognized, something Lowell was not prepared to discuss.

  “Yes, sir,” Wallace said. “I understand.”

  “If Major Ellis wants me,” Lowell said, “I’ll be at the company.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sergeant Wallace said.

  A few moments later Colonel Jiggs entered the bunker. Sergeant Wallace called “attention,” and the enlisted men jumped to their feet. Lowell continued what he was doing; his back turned to Wallace, he was tucking his shirt in his trousers.

  “Rest,” Jiggs said. “I was about to send for you, Lowell,” he added.

  “Yes, sir,” Lowell said. “You caught me on my way out.”

  Jiggs took Lowell’s arm and led him deeper into the bunker to Major Ellis’s desk, and then handed him a piece of paper. Lowell’s eyebrows went up as he read it. The colonel said something to him that Wallace couldn’t hear, then patted Lowell on the arm, and walked out of the bunker. Lowell looked over at Wallace, and then sat down at Major Ellis’s desk. He had never done that before, and Sergeant Wallace again sensed that something was up. Lowell motioned with his finger for Wallace to come over.

  “Yes, sir?” Tech Sergeant Wallace asked.

  “Major Ellis has been hospitalized with a lower back condition,” Lowell said, his voice devoid of intonation. “I have just been named acting S-3.”

  “May I ask the captain how long the major will be gone?”

  “At least thirty days,” Lowell said.

  “But it is not anticipated that a replacement for the major will be assigned?” Wallace asked.

  “If anyone asks, Sergeant, we expect that the major will return tomorrow. Between you, me, and the colonel, however, the major will be gone at least thirty days.”

  “I’m sure the captain will be able to hold things down.”

  “You really think so, Wallace?” Lowell said. “Here’s something else between you, me, and the colonel.” He handed Wallace the small piece of paper Colonel Jiggs had handed him. It was a message form, and it had been filled out in pencil:

  FROM: CG, ARMY EIGHT

  TO: CO, 73RD HV TNK BN

  MESSAGE: PREPARE TO MOVE REINFORCED COMPANY STRENGTH FORCE 75 MILES DIRECTION SUWON ON LINE PUSAN KOCHANG SUWON ON TWO HOURS NOTICE. EXPECT MOVEMENT ORDER WITHIN SEVEN DAYS.

  WALKER

  LT GEN

  “We have been augmented by a bunch of troops,” Lowell said. “The colonel is going to send a list over as soon as he has it copied. As soon as we have it, I want you to take a three-quarter-ton truck and go collect their company clerks.”

  “Sir?”

  “Who knows more about a company than the company clerk?” Lowell asked. “And besides, most of them can type, and we’re going to have a lot of typing to do around here in the next couple of days.”

  “Yes, sir,” Wallace said.

  “Wait a minute, Wallace,” Lowell said.

  “Sir?”

  “I don’t want anybody to know about this, or anything I do, or anything I tell you to do, but you, me, and the colonel.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “From what I’ve seen of you, you’re one hell of an S-3 sergeant, and I would miss you. But the minute you open your mouth, you’re going to be back inside a tank. You understand me?”

  “Yes, sir,” Tech Sergeant Wallace said.

  “I have enough trouble with the colonel as it is,” Lowell said with a smile, “without having other people feed him arguments.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “I’m glad you do, Sergeant Wallace,” Lowell said. “You’re a big sonofabitch, and if I can’t get you to play ball with me, I’d frankly hate to have to stick the bat up your ass.” He paused. “I would, of course. It would be difficult, but I would.”

  “I believe the captain and I understand each other, sir,” Wallace said.

  (Two)

  Near Chinhae, South Korea

  13 September 1950

  Captain Philip S. Parker IV, commanding Tank Company, 24th Infantry, turned his jeep into a bowl in the terrain formed by a nearly complete circle of low hills, and stopped.

  He looked up the rim of the bowl, examining the positions of his tanks. They were placed at more or less regular distances along the rim, right in with the infantry. Here and there were multiple .50 caliber machine guns, mounted on half-tracks, manned by artillerymen who had arrived in Korea expecting to sit on a hilltop someplace waiting for enemy airplanes and instead found themselves sitting between tankers and infantrymen on the front line.

  Parker also looked at the dirt roads leading to his tanks and the half-tracks, as he did almost every day. He was looking for deterioration in the roads. He wanted to be sure that if they had to move the vehicles (if they had to bug out, in other words), they could.

  He was an unimportant company commander, who had no idea of the big picture, but he had a gut feeling that things could not continue as they were. Either the North Koreans would get off their ass, and mount an offensive which would succeed in breaking through the Pusan perimeter, or the Americans would get off theirs and really counterattack.

  There was some reason to believe the latter would be the case. There had been some replacements and some resupply. He had been astonished and pleased to see a column of brand-new M46 tanks rolling through Pusan one day. If there were M46 tanks, they could counterattack. He had experienced a moment’s wild hope that he would be reequipped with M46s, but then had faced reality. The 24th Division—and his regiment—were on the Eighth Army shitlist. They were unreliable.

  Eighth Army was not about to turn over new M46 tanks to the niggers. The niggers would more than likely promptly turn them over to the gooks, the way they had when they first came.

  Even Tank Company of the 24th Infantry had given most of its tanks away before Parker had assumed command. That’s what they would remember, not that after Parker had assumed command, Tank Company of the 24th hadn’t lost one tank, or bugged out an inch without being ordered to do so.

  It was known, Parker thought bitterly, as guilt by association, and there wasn’t one fucking thing he could do about
it.

  He was a fourth-generation cavalry soldier, and he was convinced that he had fought as well, and been as good an officer, as his ancestors. But so far as Eighth Army was concerned, he was just one more nigger.

  His father had warned him to expect this sort of thing. He had pointed out that the appellation “Buffalo Soldiers,” applied to the 9th and 10th (Colored) Cavalry in the Plains and Indians war, had had nothing to do with the bison that roamed the plains, but had been a derogatory reference to the short, bristly, buffalo-like hair on the heads of the Negro troops.

  He was surprised when an incoming artillery round detonated about seventy-five yards from where he sat in his jeep. You could usually hear them coming in. He hadn’t heard this one until it went off. It was probably a single harrassing round, designed more to keep everybody nervous than for any other purpose. But you never could tell, and it never hurt to be careful. So far he had gone without so much as a scratch, even when things had been really hairy for a while. He had lost half the people he’d come to Korea with.

  He reached down and flipped on the jeep’s ignition switch, moving his right leg up so that he could tromp on the gas pedal at the same time. He felt something slippery.

  What the fuck am I sitting in?

  He looked down and saw that the seat was covered with something red, and that it was all over his pants. It was a moment before he realized what it was. He’d been hit; that red stuff was his blood.

  He argued with himself: I didn’t feel a thing. How can I be hit, if I didn’t feel a thing? How can I be hit if I don’t feel a thing now? But there was no goddamned question about it: that was blood.

  He continued to start the engine. It didn’t hurt him to move his leg. He put the jeep in gear, and drove to a battalion aid station, built against the slope of the hills, a sandbag-covered shack with a Red Cross sign leaning against it.

  He blew the horn and a medic came out, and he waved him over to the jeep.

  “Yes, sir?”

  Parker pointed to the seat, and to his blood-covered rear end.

  “What the hell happened?” the medic asked.

  “I’ll be goddamned if I know,” Parker said.

  “You got hit, Captain,” the medic pronounced professionally.

  “No shit,” Parker said, sarcastically.

  “Looks like a piece of shrapnel,” the medic said. “Hurt much?”

  “No,” Parker said.

  “It will,” the medic said, matter-of-factly. “I think we better get you onto a stretcher, so’s we can get you over to the MASH. Way you’re bleeding, you’re going to have to go to the MASH.”

  It didn’t hurt even to get out of the jeep, and to walk into the aid station. But almost as soon as he was face-down on a stretcher, and the medic had cut his fatigue pants away from his buttocks, it began to hurt. It began to hurt like hell.

  The battalion surgeon, who had been asleep, was summoned, and he took one look at Parker’s rear end and said that he wasn’t in any danger. He would probably be back on duty in a month or six weeks, maybe sooner; but in the meantime, he could expect that it was going to hurt like hell.

  “You better get some blood in him,” the surgeon said to the medic. “And slap a compress on his ass. They can do the rest at the MASH.”

  Parker could cheerfully have kicked the surgeon in the balls.

  Where were you wounded in the war, Daddy?

  Why, Son, your heroic daddy caught one in the ass.

  Shit!

  (Three)

  Headquarters, 73rd Heavy Tank Battalion (Reinforced)

  Pusan, South Korea

  14 September 1950

  Surprising neither Lt. Colonel Paul T. Jiggs nor Technical Sergeant Prince C. Wallace, Captain Craig W. Lowell built Task Force Bengal, as the “reinforced company” was now known, around Company “B.” Lowell was still officially the Baker Company commander, despite his “temporary” assignment as battalion S-3 (“pending the return of Major Ellis from the hospital”); and he transparently hoped to be given command of Task Force Bengal. If it was built around his company, his chances of that happening were obviously enhanced.

  “You will notice, Sergeant Wallace,” Lowell said, “that the word ‘reinforced’ in reference to the company to be reinforced has not been defined. The amount of reinforcement is being left to our judgment, that is to say, my judgment. I intend to err on the side of generosity.”

  Orders were drawn augmenting Company “B” by one platoon of M46s from Able Company and another from Charley Company; and by a platoon of light M24s for “reconnaissance.”

  “‘Reconnaissance’ my ass; we’ll use them to guard the fuel and ammo trucks,” Lowell said. “We’re going to reconnoiter by fire, with Wasps.”

  “‘Wasps’?” Sergeant Wallace asked. He had never heard the term before.

  “What you do is mount another .50 in the back of a weapons carrier,” Lowell said. “And you make sort of a turret for the one in the back, and the one in the front, out of sandbags and old fuel drums. Then you barrel-ass down the road, shooting at anything that moves or that looks like it could be a machine gun or artillery emplacement. The natural tendency of people being shot at, Wallace, is to shoot back. And while they’re shooting back at the Wasps, we blow them away with the M46s.”

  “But what about the people in the Wasps?”

  “They run like hell at the first shot,” Lowell said. “That makes them a lousy target, and at the same time their evasive action keeps the bad guys from thinking about the tanks, which can then, almost at their leisure, blow them away.”

  “Does the colonel know about the Wasps?” Wallace asked.

  “Not yet,” Lowell said.

  “What do you think he will say when you tell him?”

  “He will probably be just as enthusiastic about the Wasps as I am about the overly melodramatic name he’s chosen for this little excursion of ours.”

  “I don’t know, Captain,” Wallace said, doubtfully.

  “Do you understand what’s really going on here?” Lowell asked.

  “Maybe it would be better if you told me,” Wallace replied.

  “Well, take a look at the map. There is no railhead at Koch’ang. It is not a major road hub. The river is fordable at this time of year, so there’s no bona fide necessity to grab the bridge. Which poses the question, why the fuck are we going to Koch’ang in the first place?”

  “Forgive me, Captain. Because we’re ordered to?”

  “That, too, of course. But why the order?”

  Wallace shrugged his admission of ignorance.

  “To see what Eighth Army is facing behind the lines,” Lowell said. “We’re being sent out to see how far we can get before we get blown away.”

  “You’re not suggesting that they’re sacrificing us, are you?”

  “They don’t use that word, but don’t you believe they give a shit what happens to us, just so they get the information they think they need.”

  “That’s a brutal assessment.”

  “They call this war, you know,” Lowell said dryly. “It’s a perfectly reasonable thing for them to do. The question then becomes what do we do after we do what we are ordered to do.”

  “You’ve lost me,” Wallace admitted.

  “OK. We’re ordered to Koch’ang. So we get to Koch’ang. Then what?” Wallace looked at him in confusion. “Look at it this way,” Lowell went on. “Eighth Army is willing to spend us to find out how strong the North Koreans are between here and Koch’ang. OK, so we do that. Quicker than they think. So that leaves us in Koch’ang. So then we come back? That doesn’t make any sense. To come back directly, I mean. Let’s stay behind the lines and raise hell until we have to come back.”

  “We’d have to be supplied by air.”

  “Only with ammo. We can take enough fuel and rations with us. Make up a two-day ammo requirement. Triple ration for all the guns. Regular ration for small arms, except for .50 caliber. I want a lot of that.”

&
nbsp; “Yes, sir,” Sergeant Wallace said. “But the colonel’s not going to like this.”

  “Let’s present him with a fait accompli and let him shoot that down.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sergeant Wallace said. He was glad again that he hadn’t taken a commission. Coming up with something like Captain Lowell had would have been impossible for him. He would never have dared to suggest, much less try to accomplish, something like Captain Lowell was doing. He wondered why he wasn’t sure that Colonel Jiggs would shoot Captain Lowell down.

  While Wallace prepared the lists of ammo requirements, Lowell studied the maps. He triumphantly laid a proposed route before Wallace.

  “This is what we’ll do,” he said. “It’ll take us only the twenty-four hours, maybe less, that backtracking down our original line of advance would. We can take the airdrop either at Koch’ang, or better yet, here in this area.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sergeant Wallace said, not wanting to argue with him, and not wanting to agree either.

  “This’ll turn Task Force Bengal—Jesus, what a lousy name—into a real tiger,” Lowell said.

  He laughed hard at his own pun, and it was contagious. Wallace joined in.

  “I thought,” Colonel Jiggs said, “that Task Force Bengal had a certain flair to it.” They had not seen him come in.

  Captain Lowell was embarrassed, Wallace saw, but he was not silenced.

  “I’ve just been having a fascinating chat with Sergeant Wallace, sir,” Lowell said. “He has come up with some very interesting ideas.”

  “Is that so?” the colonel asked. Wallace had no idea what Captain Lowell was talking about.

  “The sergeant,” Lowell said, “was pointing out on the map to me how we could turn this probing mission into a real, old-time, behind the lines cavalry raid.” At that point, Colonel Jiggs realized whose ideas Lowell was advancing, but he winked at Wallace and didn’t interupt Lowell.

  “I’ve underestimated you, Sergeant Wallace,” Lt. Colonel Jiggs said. “If I didn’t know better, I would think that these ideas came from the fevered brain of someone who had gone to the Wharton School of Business.”