The Captains

by W. E. B Griffin

  What surprised General Harrier was that when he read Lowell’s version of the staff study he had to admit there had been improvements to his original proposals and the arguments in favor of them. There was no mistaking it; it was excellent staff work, and Harrier recognized it as such.

  There were some places where Lowell was dead wrong, too, and Harrier pointed them out to him.

  “We’ll go with your version,” Harrier finally said. “As changed. Have it typed up.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “To tell you the truth, Lowell—and I’m aware I’m running the risk that your head will swell even larger—that was pretty clear thinking. Perhaps you’re not quite as incompetent as Colonel Minor suggests.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “I meant that, Lowell, just the way I said it. Have it typed up. All work and no play makes Lowell a dull boy. Go down to the club and get yourself a drink.”

  “One of the reasons I did this, General,” Lowell said, simply, “was to keep myself out of the club.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s a good thing I’m not rich,” Lowell quipped. “I could very easily become a drunk.”

  Harrier was concerned. Jiggs had told him about Lowell’s wife. The day he’d earned himself a footnote in the history books with Task Force Lowell, the day he had become a twenty-four-year-old major, there had been a TWX telling him he was a widower. Maybe he was into the sauce and worrying about it.

  “But you are rich,” General Harrier said. “I just got the report of your Top Secret background invesigation. Fascinating reading.”

  Lowell didn’t reply.

  “Getting yourself a reputation as a teetotal, a drudge,” General Harrier said, “could do your career as much harm as being rich. A lot of business is transacted at an officer’s club bar. You can tell a man, at the bar, that he’s as full of shit as a Christmas turkey, and get away with it. You can’t do that in an office.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lowell said.

  “Your trouble, Lowell, if you do stay in the army, is not going to be doing your duty,” Harrier said. “It’s going to be concealing your opinion that most people are horse’s asses.”

  Lowell didn’t reply.

  “Most of them are, Lowell,” General Harrier said. “But you can’t let them know.” He smiled at the young officr. “Good night, Lowell.”

  “Good night, General.”

  (Two)

  When General Harrier left Lowell’s tent he started to walk back up the hill toward the White House and the general officer’s quarters. Then he changed his mind about going to bed. He wasn’t sleepy. He walked to the sandbagged G-3 operations bunker. The MP guard on duty outside was standing more or less erect with his Thompson submachine gun in the proper sling-arm position rather than sitting down on the sandbags with the Thompson on his lap, so Harrier knew that someone senior was inside.

  “Good evening, sir,” the MP said, giving him a crisp hand salute.

  “Good evening, Sergeant,” Harrier said, and walked inside. Inside, there was the sound of the smaller, separate diesel generator that provided power for the Ops Center, and the clatter of a teletype machine. The G-2 and G-3 were in the Ops Center, and so was the general.

  “Insomnia,” Harrier explained his presence. “Tomorrow night, I won’t be able to keep my eyes open.”

  He walked to the enormous situation map, and one of the G-2 sergeants told him what was going on. Not much. With the exception of some harassing and intermittent artillery fire on the positions of the 45th Division, and a couple of platoon-sized probing patrols against the 187th Regimental Combat Team, the front was quiet.

  The bureaucrats were at work, however, General Harrier thought. The teletype machine was still clattering. He turned to look at it. The general was watching it, and possibly something was up, for the general waited until the lengthy message had been completely transmitted and then tore it from the machine himself. He carried it to one of the two upholstered chairs facing the situation map, sat down, and started reading the three-and-a-half-foot length of yellow teleprinter paper.

  General Harrier went and sat in the other upholstered chair and waited patiently for the general to finish reading the TWX. The general snorted, swore, and made unbelieving faces as he read the document, and Harrier knew that whatever it was, the general didn’t like it. Finally, he handed the yellow sheet of paper across the small table between the chairs to Harrier.

  “When I was a G-3,” the general said, “I moved an entire infantry division from North Africa to Sicily with a shorter Ops Order.”

  Harrier glanced at the heading of the TWX in his hands.

  FINAL ITINERARY: THE WAYNE BAXLEY AND HIS ORCHESTRA USO TROUPE.

  Harrier began to skim over the TWX. In infinite detail, it listed the members of the USO troupe, by age, sex, and assimilated rank, ranging from the lowest stagehand, who would be accorded the privileges of a lieutenant while in Korea, to Mr. Wayne Baxley and Miss Georgia Paige, the movie star, who would be treated as VIPs, that is, provided with quarters and transportation normally reserved for major generals. Then, in fifteen-minute segments, it traced where the troupe would be from the moment it landed at K1 Airfield outside Pusan until it boarded the transport planes which would fly it back to Tokyo from K16 (Kimpo) outside Seoul thirteen days later.

  But the general was not finished: “Furthermore,” he said, “I entertain very serious doubts that these troupes really do anyone any good.”

  “Sir?” General Harrier asked, to be polite. The general wanted an audience.

  “The alleged purpose of these USO things is to raise troop morale,” the general said.

  “I thought it was to remind the troops of the girls they left behind,” General Harrier replied. “For whom, along with Mom’s apple pie, they are allegedly fighting.”

  “It reminds them of girls, all right,” the general said. “And, if you get right down to it, that’s pretty damned cruel, maybe even perverse.”

  Harrier was surprised to realize that the general was quite serious.

  “They bring these girls over here, and get them to prance around the stage wearing just enough clothes to keep them from getting arrested, and that reminds these healthy, horny young troopers of girls all right. And then we tell them they can look, but they can’t touch. Now, that’s cruel and perverse.”

  “I really hadn’t thought of it that way,” Harrier said.

  “In terms of efficiency,” the general said, “it would be cheaper to do what the French do.”

  “From what I’ve heard,” General Harrier said, chuckling, “that solution occurred to Paul Jiggs, too.”

  The reference was to the French custom of providing brothels to troops on the line, and to the rumor that the ambulances of the 8222nd Ambulance Platoon attached to the 73rd Heavy Tank Battalion (Reinforced) had carried warm female bodies to the MLR as often as they had carried wounded bodies away from it.

  “Shame on you, General,” the general said. “Those were volunteer native nurses, bringing what comfort they could to the troops.”

  There was general chuckling, involving the sergeants as well as the colonels and the generals. The general took notice of it.

  “It’s a good thing I know you guys don’t talk about what you hear in here at the NCO mess,” he said. “It always breaks my heart to send a good G-2 or G-3 sergeant down to walk around a QM dump with an M1 on his shoulder.”

  The sergeants laughed.

  “Well, what about it?” the general asked one of the G-3 sergeants. “Do the troops get any good out of these USO shows?”

  “Even if all I can do is look, General,” the sergeant replied, “that’s better than nothing.”

  “OK, so I’m wrong,” the general said.

  “General,” the G-2 sergeant said. He was a thin man in his early thirties. “You know what pisses the troops off? The way the women wind up with the officers. I mean, in the messes.”

  “Well, damn it, that’s not my fa
ult. They tell us where to feed them,” the general said. He pointed to the TWX. “Hell, they even tell us who we have to assign as escort officers. Did you see that, Harrier? Paragraph 23. Or somewhere along in there.”

  General Harrier found Paragraph 23 on the long sheet of teleprinter paper.

  23. In order to facilitate the movement of the Troupe through its itinerary, each Corps (and the XIX Corps, Group) will assign one officer, preferably an aide-decamp, in the grade of major or above as escort officer for the Troupe while it is within the respective Corps area. (Or the area of the XIX Corps, Group). Such officer will report to the Wayne Baxley Troupe Escort Officer (Col. Thomas B. Dannelly, or his designate) two (2) days before the Troupe is scheduled to arrive at the respective Corps (or at the XIX Corps, Group) and will remain attached to the Troupe until it departs the respective Corps (or the XIX Corps, Group).

  “What do you think about that?” the general asked. Harrier handed the TWX to the G-3, who, it occurred to him, had been too polite either to ask for it, or to read it over Harrier’s shoulder.

  “Sorry, Charley,” General Harrier said, and then responded to the general’s question. “I presume, General,” he said, “that the press of urgent military duties has, regrettably, made our aides unavailable for anything else, no matter how worthy an enterprise.”

  “What do you propose?” the general asked.

  “Let the special service officer handle it,” Harrier said. “Let him go himself, if it comes to that.”

  “No,” the general said. “Do you know that they actually run an after-operations critique on these things? And if we didn’t give up one of the aides, there would be a paragraph in there saying we had failed to comply with paragraph such and such, and some chair-warming sonofabitch with nothing better to do would have us replying by indorsement stating our reasons. It will be less trouble to send them an aide.”

  “Yes, sir,” Harrier said.

  “Just keep those people away from me, Harrier, while they’re here,” the general said.

  “Away from you, sir?”

  “Another paragraph in there ‘strongly recommends’ that the commanding generals entertain them at dinner. As of right now, General, entertaining visiting movie stars and band leaders is the responsibility of the chief of staff.”

  “Yes, sir,” Harrier said.

  “Just get them in here, and out of here, with no waves,” the general said.

  “Yes, sir,” Harrier said. “Sir, the chief of staff has always believed it is his duty to bring to the corps commander’s attention facts of which the corps commander may not be aware.”

  “Such as?”

  “Does the same Georgia Paige register with the general, sir?”

  “That the one who goes around without a brassiere?” the general asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What about her?”

  “Does the corps commander really wish to forego the opportunity to reconnoiter that anatomical terrain personally?”

  The general laughed.

  “The chief of staff is herewith advised,” he said, “that in his heart of hearts, the corps commander is like any nineteen-year-old trooper in the Corps. If he can’t have it, he doesn’t want to have it waved in his face.”

  “Does the chief of staff have the corps commander’s permission to look, sir?”

  “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Harrier,” the general said, and laughed again. “Just keep those boobs away from me.”

  “Yes, sir,” Harrier said.

  General Harrier took a pencil from his pocket and bent over the sheet of teletype paper.

  “Action: SGS,” he wrote. “Maj Lowell. Harrier.” He held the teletype in the air, and the commo sergeant came and took it from his hands. Major Lowell was the junior field-grade officer among the six aides-de-camp. Junior officers get the dirty jobs.

  Christ, knowing Lowell, General Harrier thought, he was liable to wind up getting his hands on the magnificent boobs of Miss Georgia Paige. She really had a gorgeous set. General Harrier had seen her picture on the posters announcing the coming of Wayne Baxley and his Orchestra. He wasn’t that old.

  It had been a flip, irreverent thought. And then he had a somewhat sobering thought: Maybe a woman was what Lowell needed. Lowell had never taken an R&R. He’d been in Korea since he’d returned from the compassionate leave he’d taken right after his wife had been killed. Was it “devotion to duty,” an unwillingness to leave his duties? Harrier didn’t think so. It was probably that he was afraid he was going to lose control. He was holding it all in. He couldn’t do that forever. Maybe he could get himself laid.

  Bullshit. These people didn’t come over here to fuck the troops. They come to entertain them, and to get their names in the papers.

  The odds against Major Craig Lowell, or any soldier, getting into the pants of Georgia Paige, or any of the other women in the Wayne Baxley Troupe, were probably precisely the same as they would be if they paid a ticket to see them in the Paramount Theater in New York. On the order of two million-to-one.

  (Three)

  Kwandae-Ri, North Korea

  30 August 1951

  When Lieutenant General E. Z. Black walked out of his office into the office of the Secretary of the General Staff of the United States XIX Corps (Group), he found that officer, a thirty-five-year-old major, having words with another officer who looked just about old enough to be a lieutenant, despite the gold major’s leaf on his fatigue jacket collar.

  That aroused General Black’s curiosity, as did the fact that the young major wore a nonstandard holster with a German Luger in it. And then, when the SGS saw General Black and shut off the conversation and got to his feet, and the young major came to attention, he saw that he was wearing some very interesting insignia, the two-starred aide-de-camp’s insignia on the other collar point, and the triangular armored force insignia with the numerals 73 where the armored division number was supposed to go.

  “Go on,” General Black said, “I can wait. Take care of the major.”

  “Sir,” the SGS said, “I just informed the major that we have no Major MacMillan here.”

  “And?” General Black said.

  “And I asked the major if he was inquiring on behalf of General Harrier, and he tells me he’s inquiring personally.”

  “What do you want with MacMillan, Major?” General Black asked.

  “He’s an old friend, sir,” Lowell said. “I was under the impression he was your aide, sir.”

  “He was,” General Black said. “But I’m afraid he’s not available. I can get word to him, if you’d like, that you were here to see him.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Lowell said. “It’s not important. I just happened to be here and thought I’d take a chance and try to look him up.”

  “Is General Harrier coming here?” General Black said.

  “No, sir. Not that I know.”

  “You just came to see Mac, is that it?”

  “No, sir. I’m here about the USO troupe.”

  The young major was obviously less than thrilled about being baby-sitter to the movie stars. Understandable. He was a tank officer.

  “How long were you with the 73rd Heavy Tank?” General Black said.

  “About eleven months,” the young major said.

  “Then you were in on Task Force Lowell?”

  “Yes, sir,” the young major said, with a funny kind of a smile.

  “Well, when you go home,” General Black said, “you can remember that, and forget the USO baby-sitting.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You have the advantage of me,” General Black said. “You know my name, but I don’t know yours.” He put out his hand.

  “Lowell, sir,” he said.

  “You’re Lowell?” General Black said. “That Lowell?”

  “Yes, sir. I had the task force, if that’s what you mean.”

  “What are you doing as a dog robber?” General Black asked.

  “I’ve got a
couple of months to go before I rotate, sir. And when they sent in a qualified S-3, Colonel Jiggs found a home for me.”

  “And now you’re baby-sitting the USO? Jesus Christ!”

  Lowell didn’t say anything.

  “I gather you’re not tied up with them now?” General Black asked.

  “No, sir. I’ve got a transportation truck company due here by 1800, to move the troupe baggage. The air force is going to pick up the movie stars at 0745 tomorrow.”

  “In that case, you’ve got time for a cup of coffee?” General Black said. “I read that after-action report. You gave a lot of people fits using M24s as supply guards, and armored trucks to take the point.”

  “I hope I didn’t give you a fit, sir.”

  “Hell, no,” Black said. “The way to use armor is to hit as hard as you can with the most you’ve got, not telegraph your punches.”

  He threw a stack of papers to the SGS.

  “See if you can keep people from bothering me for the next forty-five minutes or so,” he said to the SGS, and then he motioned Major Lowell into his office ahead of him.

  General Black was bored. If they wouldn’t give him an armored force to command, and since he was too old, anyhow, to command a tank force in a classic cavalry maneuver, the next best thing was to do it vicariously. He wanted to talk to this young officer, full of piss and vinegar, who had proved pretty goddamned clearly that there was still a place for cavalry and a balls-to-the-leather attitude in the age of nuclear warfare.

  “You can either have coffee, Major,” Lt. General Black said, “or a belt of this.” He held up his last bottle of 24-year-old Ambassador scotch.

  “I think the booze, sir,” Major Lowell said.

  “I was afraid you’d say that,” General Black said. “The most dangerous place in the world to be is between a bottle of booze and a thirsty cavalryman.”