The Captains

by W. E. B Griffin

  “How are you, Lowell?” Bob Bellmon said a moment later. It wasn’t at all hard to detect that he wasn’t thrilled with the prospect of talking to him.

  “Why I’m fine, Colonel,” Lowell said. “May I offer my congratulations? I saw in the Army-Navy Journal that they’ve finally given you your silver chicken.”

  “Thank you,” Bellmon said, stiffly. “Very kind of you.”

  “How may I be of service, Colonel?” Lowell asked lightly, enjoying Bellmon’s discomfiture.

  “In point of fact,” Bellmon said. “Your name came up at lunch today.”

  “My ears haven’t been burning,” Lowell said. “What was said about me?”

  “In the opinion of the officer with whom I had lunch…”

  “Who was that, Colonel?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say,” Bellmon said. “A senior officer, who somehow knew that I know you.”

  “And what did this anonymous senior officer have to say about me?”

  “He holds the opinion that there was something of an overreaction to that business with you and the movie star.”

  “You’re talking about my efficiency report?”

  “Yes, of course I am.”

  “That efficiency report was a result of my testifying for Phil Parker in his court-martial.”

  “That’s not the story I get.”

  “Well, Bob, that’s the story.”

  “Your case, as you are probably well aware, has been brought to the attention of a very senior officer by one of your politician friends.”

  “Now, I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re denying it?”

  “Yes, I’m denying it. I’ve been thinking about having a word with my senator—my cousin’s got one in his vest pocket—about getting me permission to resign, but so far I haven’t talked to him.”

  At that point, he thought of Porter Craig.

  “My cousin may have done something like that,” he said. “But, believe me, Bob, I didn’t.”

  There was a pause before Bellmon went on.

  “In any event, your case was brought before a senior officer by a senator.”

  “The one you had lunch with, no doubt?”

  “I had lunch with his aide-de-camp,” Bellmon said.

  “And?”

  “As I said, he feels there has been an overreaction to what happened to you in Korea.”

  “I wish you would get to the point,” Lowell said.

  “You’ll shortly receive orders to Sill,” Bellmon said. “To an assignment more in keeping with your experience and abilities.”

  Now Lowell paused before replying.

  “What about Phil Parker?” he asked.

  “Phil’s going to Sill, too.”

  “Virtue, I gather,” Lowell said, “is its own reward. Thanks for calling me. I appreciate it.”

  “I can’t accept credit for something like that,” Bellmon said. “It was pointedly suggested to me that since we were such old friends, that I make the call.”

  “What do I have to do, Bob,” Lowell flared, “to get in your good graces? Win the goddamned Medal? There’s two sides to the Korean story, believe it or not!”

  “Both of you stop it,” Barbara Bellmon said angrily, apparently on an extension. “Craig, he told me again and again he thought you got a raw deal in Korea.”

  “I apologize, Lowell,” Bellmon said.

  “You apologize, ‘Craig,’” Barbara Bellmon said firmly to her husband.

  “I apologize, Craig,” Bellmon said dutifully.

  “Now I’m embarrassed,” Lowell said. “You don’t owe me an apology, Bob. I know I grate on your nerves. I can’t help it.”

  “Daddy grated on his nerves, too, Craig,” Barbara said. “You’re in good company.”

  “That’s right, that’s right,” Bob Bellmon said righteously. “You and Porky Waterford are two of a kind, Lowell.”

  “‘Craig,’” Barbara corrected him again.

  “I’m a full colonel,” Bellmon said. “He’s a lousy major. I can call him anything I want to call him.”

  It was a joke, and they all laughed. And they talked of P.P., and Lowell promised to come by the Farm on his way to Sill, when he got his orders. Finally, he hung up.

  He rolled over onto his back.

  “What was that all about?” Evelyn Wood asked, smiling at him, stroking him.

  “I’m about to be sprung from durance vile,” Lowell reported.

  “I don’t know what that means,” Evelyn said. “You’re going somewhere?”

  “Right.”

  “Where?”

  “Fort Sill, Oklahoma,” he said. He smiled happily. “Now where were we?”

  Damn, she thought, as he took him in her mouth again. She should have known it would turn out like this.

  XVIII

  (One)

  The Artillery School

  Fort Sill, Oklahoma

  New Year’s Day, 1953

  The United States Air Force traces its heritage to the aviation section of the Signal Corps in the days before World War II. Army aviation traces its heritage back to the Civil War, when Thaddeus Lowe provided the army with balloons, from which Union Army artillery fire was directed against the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia attacking Washington.

  The vast bulk of army aircraft (as opposed to Army Air Corps aircraft) in World War II, almost all of them Piper Cub L-2s or Stinson L-5s, were assigned to the artillery for the same purpose, aerial direction of artillery fire.

  It was natural, therefore, that artillery took over the role of pilot training. Artillery observers were trained at the same time as the gunners were trained, on the huge Fort Sill reservation.

  In both separate batteries, and as part of armored formations, a large portion of U.S. Army artillery is self-propelled; that is, the cannon are mounted on tracked tank chassis.

  Major Craig Lowell thought there was nothing really unusual about his assignment to the Office of the G-3 (Plans and Training) of the Army Artillery Center, Fort Sill. It was the sort of assignment to which he was entitled. He was an armor officer with S-3 experience. He knew tracks, and how to teach people to operate and maintain them.

  Neither was it surprising, only a pleasant coincidence, that Phil Parker should have been called from passing out dependent housing at Fort Devens for assignment to Sill, following what Lowell thought of as “the conditional pardon.” It was a logical place for him to be assigned, too. Parker was made motor officer, tracked vehicles, in the Self-propelled Artillery Department of the Artillery School. His job was to make sure that sufficient self-propelled tracks were available to carry out the training missions prescribed by the G-3.

  They weren’t in armor, but it was the next best thing. The BOQs were ghastly, perched so that the sand of Sill was blown into everything by the never-ending wind. Regulations did not permit bachelor officers to live off post, that privilege being reserved for officers with dependents, for whom no housing was available on the post.

  It was a question of semantics. They were not confined to the post, but they would not be paid a housing allowance since BOQs were available to them.

  Lowell, on his third day at Fort Sill, after investigating the available hotel accommodations and rental housing nearby, and finding them just about as bad as the BOQs, had thrilled a salesman at Lawton Realty by making a five-thousand-dollar down payment on the demonstration model of the Holly Crest Split-Level ($26,500) in the Lawton Heights subdivision, sufficient to get quick approval of the mortage at the First National Bank of Lawton. He then gave him another check for the furnishings, which were on sort-of-a-loan from Oklahoma Home Furnishings.

  All that was required to move in was a visit to the department store for sheets, towels, and that sort of thing, and to the grocery store.

  It did cause some raised eyebrows from the neighbors, first when the wives came bearing gifts for the wife, and learned there was no wife, and next when an enormous black
captain also moved in.

  They didn’t look like fairies, but you couldn’t tell anymore, these days.

  There was some talk like that until the next Friday, when a tall and elegantly dressed black woman got out of a taxi and smiled at the horseshoe of flowers propped against the door with a ribbon reading, “WELCOME TO THE WILD WEST, ANTOINETTE.” She had been mailed a key, since Phil couldn’t get off during the day to meet her at the plane.

  Antoinette, despite her parents’ protests that doctors of medicine or not, nice girls don’t fly thousands of miles to spend weekends with a soldier, was a frequent guest at 2340 Bubbling Creek Lane, and she was there when the telephone call came on New Year’s afternoon. So was Harriet Albright, the assistant vice president at the First National Bank of Lawton. Harriet, a redheaded divorcée, had been thrilled at the prospect of “burning some steaks” at Major Lowell’s house, after having been informed by the Morgan Guaranty Trust—of whom she had made the necessary inquiries relative to granting a mortage—that there was no question whatever regarding his credit rating, and even after he had carefully pointed out to her that his roommate was colored, and that they had, as their house guest, his roommate’s fiancée, who was also colored.

  Harriet had never been personally prejudiced herself, and there weren’t that many bachelors around whom a vice president of the Morgan Guaranty Trust would describe as “very rich.”

  Craig was in the kitchen with Antoinette, having just tasted Antoinette’s Pommes Frites d’Alsace, when the pale yellow telephone matching the wallpaper went off in his ear.

  He was on his fourth martini, and feeling better than he had felt in a long time.

  “Hello,” he said to the telephone.

  “Major Lowell, please,” an obviously military voice said.

  “What number are you calling, please?” Lowell said. He had no intention of running out to the post to do something that damned well could wait until Monday morning.

  “The number I got from information,” the caller said. “Is that you, Lowell?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “My name is Roberts. We have a mutual acquaintance, Bob Bellmon.”

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  “I’ve been looking for you, and for Captain Parker, since Thursday,” Roberts said. “I presume he’s there with you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “My wife and I would like to call on you, Major,” Roberts said, and it was clear from the tone of his voice that whatever this was about, it was not social. “Would in an hour be convenient?”

  “Could you give me some idea what this is all about…is it Colonel?”

  “Lieutenant Colonel,” Roberts said. “I’m the deputy post aviation officer.”

  “Colonel, we’re in the middle…we’re about to have dinner.”

  “I’ll give you an hour and a half then,” Colonel Roberts said. “2340 Bubbling Creek Lane, isn’t it?”

  “It’s the house with the ‘Sold’ sign nailed to the ‘Furnished Model’ sign on the lawn,” Lowell said.

  Antoinette laughed at him.

  “Why don’t you take that down?” she asked.

  “It beats a street number all to death, doesn’t it?”

  Antoinette laughed, and then she said: “Every time I have my girlish dreams of getting you two out of the army, and into respectability, I have this nightmare: I see that ‘For Sale/Sold’ sign, and I remember you’re not really housebroken, socially speaking. It’s probably better my parents haven’t met either one of you.”

  “I’ll have you know,” Lowell replied, “you beskirted chancre mechanic, that Congress has decreed that Phil and I are gentlemen.”

  He patted her on the bottom, and then he went in to where Phil was mixing another pitcher of martinis and told him what was about to happen.

  An hour and fifteen minutes after his telephone call, Lt. Colonel and Mrs. William Roberts got out of their Mercury coupe and walked up to the door of 2340 Bubbling Creek Lane. Colonel Roberts pushed the doorbell, and he and his wife could hear the first eight notes of “Be It Ever So Humble.” Mrs. Roberts giggled.

  Lowell opened the door. He was dressed in a polo shirt and slacks.

  “Colonel Roberts, I presume,” he said.

  “I love your doorbell,” Mrs. Roberts said, with a wide smile.

  “Wait till you see the wallpaper in the downstairs lavatory,” Lowell said. “It’s an artistic rendition of that famous statue in Belgium of the little boy doing you know what.”

  “Fantastic!” she said, and she and Craig Lowell smiled at each other.

  “Please come in,” Lowell said. Roberts shook his hand, but didn’t say a word.

  Captain Philip Sheridan Parker IV, who had been on the couch with Dr. Antoinette Ferguson, got up.

  “‘I just can’t get over,’ as they say,” Mrs. Roberts said, “‘how big Sweet Little Philip has grown!’”

  “I beg your pardon?” Parker said.

  “I have been brought along on Bill’s recruiting expedition as proof that at least he’s married to someone friendly,” she said. “I knew you at Riley before the war. My folks and yours still exchange Christmas cards. I’m…I was…Jeanne Whitman.”

  “Oh, sure!” Parker said, his face widening with a smile. “How’s your father?”

  “Fine. And yours? My parents are out in Carmel.”

  “Mine are still outside the gate at Riley,” Phil said. He turned to Antoinette. “Mrs. Roberts, may I present Dr. Antoinette Ferguson? And this is Mrs. Albright.”

  “Doctor of medicine?” Colonel Roberts asked. “Or of philosophy?”

  “I’m a pathologist,” Antoinette said.

  “And Harriet is a banker,” Lowell said. “Make sure you mention that when you write his mother.”

  “Our neighbors refer to this place as Respectability Hall,” Parker offered.

  “I’ll bet they do,” Colonel Roberts said. “Well, now the small talk is out of the way, why don’t you regale the ladies, Jeanne, with stories of the Old Army while I talk to these two?”

  “I’m really sorry to break into your party this way,” Jeanne Whitman Roberts said, “but there’s no stopping Bill when he gets this way.”

  “Is there somewhere we can go?” Roberts asked.

  “Can I fix you a drink?” Lowell asked.

  “I’m a little afraid you’ve had too many already,” Roberts said bluntly.

  “And I intend to have at least one more, Colonel,” Lowell said coldly. “Phil and I have fixed up the third bedroom as sort of an office. We can go up there.” He picked up the martini pitcher, poured a drink and held it out to Roberts. Roberts paused, and finally gave in and took it. Lowell offered another martini to Phil Parker, who shook his head, “no.” Then Lowell poured one for himself and waved Roberts up the stairs.

  “OK, Colonel,” he said, when Roberts had helped himself to the only upholstered chair in the room, “what’s this all about?”

  “I’ve got a couple of questions to ask you,” Roberts said. “And do me the courtesy of giving me straight answers.” Both Phil and Craig nodded.

  “What do you think, by and large, of army aviators?” Colonel Roberts asked.

  Phil Parker shrugged his massive shoulders. “Not much,” he said. “I mean, I never thought of them much, period. But now that I am thinking of them, per se, I don’t think much of them, either. Is that straight enough for you, Colonel?”

  “Lowell?” Roberts asked, without replying.

  “I have always wondered why the army feels it can turn a half-million-dollar tank and command of a four- or five-man crew over to a sergeant, and on the other hand has to have a lieutenant or a captain—or even a major—flying a two-seater, fifteen-thousand-dollar airplane.”

  “In other words, you don’t think much of army aviators, or, for that matter of army aviation?”

  “You want it straight?” Lowell asked. “OK. There’s obviously a place for airplanes in the army. God knows, there’s nothing better
for column control. I’ve used them myself. I’ve even wondered why the hell we can’t put rockets on some of those little planes. Maybe even on choppers. They’d be good tank killers. But that’s not what’s happening. Army aviators are a collection of commissioned aerial jeep drivers playing air force.”

  “You don’t think much of the typical army aviator, is that what you’re saying?”

  “No offense intended, Colonel. But you asked for it. And there it is. I’m like Phil. I don’t think much of them, period, except to wonder why the hell they should be officers.”

  “A good many aviators leave a good deal to be desired,” Roberts said. “A number of them, in fact, are officers who got into some scrape in their basic arm, saw the handwriting on the wall, and came to aviation because it was either into army aviation or out of the army.”

  “Tell me, Colonel, have our reputations preceded us?” Lowell asked.

  “I know a good deal about the both of you,” Roberts said. “Including the bad.”

  “And since we are such certified fuck-ups, you’re here to recruit us for army aviation?” Lowell challenged. “I don’t think I’m quite that fucked up, Colonel, thank you just the same.”

  “Shut up, Craig,” Phil Parker said, sharply. “The colonel is a guest in our quarters. We didn’t expect visitors, Colonel. We’ve been drinking.”

  “It doesn’t seem to make you forget that you’re supposed to be an officer and a gentleman,” Roberts said. He glowered at Lowell as if waiting for an apology. He didn’t get one.

  “Flight classes at the aviation section of the Artillery School consist of thirty-two officers,” Roberts said, after a long, tense pause. “In the event that, during the first two weeks of flight training, something causes an officer to drop out of flight school, Fort Sill is authorized to replace those officers from qualified officers already present at Fort Sill. The training schedule, as you can understand, Major Lowell, will have to go on regardless of the number of officers present to take the training.”

  “And you just happen to have lost two of your students, is that it?” Phil Parker asked.

  “Well, I’m sorry this has been a wild-goose chase for you, Colonel,” Lowell said. “But before I would become an aerial taxi driver, I would resign.”