The Captains

by W. E. B Griffin

  “There are nineteen officers at Fort Sill at the moment on the waiting list,” Roberts said, undaunted. “Ready and willing to take flight training.”

  “Then why do you want us?” Phil Parker asked.

  “Because, in your case, Captain Parker, you have been identified to me as a solid and stable officer, from a long line of soldiers, who was given a raw deal in Korea.”

  Parker didn’t reply. Roberts looked at Lowell.

  “And you, Lowell, I want you because of what’s written in your Counterintelligence Corps dossier.”

  “I don’t understand,” Lowell replied.

  “You have political influence at the highest levels,” Colonel Roberts said, “and you will continue to have it, no matter which party holds temporary power, because you are, through inheritance, not because you did anything at all to earn it, obscenely rich.”

  “I have never attempted to use my financial position,” Lowell said, slowly and distinctly, so that Parker, recognizing this as a sign of fury, looked at him with concern, “in any way whatsoever to seek special privilege in the army.”

  “You were relieved of your duties at the Bordentown Military Academy, Major, by the Vice Chief of Staff, at the request of the senior senator from New York.”

  “I was presented that as a fait accompli,” Lowell said. “My cousin arranged that. He doesn’t want me in New York.”

  “I believe that,” Roberts said. “But nobody else will. And I notice you didn’t complain that you were receiving special treatment.”

  “Oh, shit!” Lowell said. “I should have known something like this would pop up.”

  “It’s not the end of the world,” Roberts said.

  “If you know about it, Colonel,” Lowell said, “it will be all over the fucking army.”

  “Your political influence is one thing that makes you attractive to me,” Roberts said. “I was not overly impressed with that grandstanding ride you took out of Pusan. You’re lucky you didn’t get the whole task force wiped out.”

  “Colonel,” Lowell said, “don’t talk to me about Task Force Lowell. I was there, and you weren’t, and that was the proper use of tanks in that situation.”

  “You enjoy command, don’t you?” Roberts asked. “Pity you’ll never get another one in armor.”

  “You seem a good deal more sure of that that I am, Colonel,” Lowell said.”

  “Don’t take my word,” Roberts said. “But what about Paul Jiggs? Would you take this? Or Bob Bellmon’s?”

  “You’ve been talking to them?”

  “They’ve been trying to sell you to me, Major. And you’re doing a very good job of unselling yourself, political influence or no political influence.”

  Lowell just looked at him. Their eyes locked. Finally, Roberts picked up the telephone. “Operator, get me Colonel Paul Jiggs, at the National War College, in Washington, D.C.”

  Lowell reached over and broke the connection.

  “I’m a little surprised that Colonel Jiggs would bring up the political business,” he said.

  “I shouldn’t tell you this, because you’re arrogant enough,” Roberts said. “But I finally seem to be getting through the layer of smart-ass, and I’ll take a chance. Jiggs said that you’re a splendid combat commander, a splendid S-3, and a three-star wise-ass. He said that with luck, you may grow out of being a smart-ass, and that I’m going to need both commanders and planners, and that I’m not going to get many to volunteer.”

  “What you’re suggesting is that I could get a command in army aviation,” Lowell said. “Of what? A reinforced platoon of Piper Cubs?”

  “How about a company of rocket-armed helicopters?”

  “You’re a dreamer, Colonel,” Lowell said. “The air force won’t stand still for that.”

  “I see entire divisions, entirely transported and supported by army aircraft,” Roberts said. “That’s what I dream.”

  “A vast armada of L-19s, Beavers, and H13s filling the sky,” Lowell said, sarcastically.

  “I told you to watch your lip,” Phil Parker said.

  “That’s my brain talking, not the booze,” Lowell said.

  “OK,” Roberts said. “Paragraph Four. Conclusions. Where you stand now, Major Lowell, is as an officer far too young for the grade you hold, with an efficiency report that will hang around your neck the rest of your career. There is no way, no way, that you will ever command a tank battalion, and you’re smart enough when you’re sober to know that. And when your time comes to be considered for lieutenant colonel, if you last that long, and the choice is between you and some officer whose efficiency report does not state he acts impulsively and cannot be recommended for command, you know who will be promoted.”

  “You’ve been reading my efficiency reports, too, huh? You get around, don’t you, Colonel?”

  “Yeah, I do,” Roberts said. “I’m generally as unpopular with my peers as you are with yours.”

  “Who’s going to promote an officer who spent ten years flying a Piper Cub?” Lowell asked.

  “In ten years, I don’t intend that the army will be flying Piper Cubs,” Roberts said. “And when they start picking aviation battalion commanders, they’ll have to pick them from aviators. By your own statements, you consider most army aviators mediocrities and misfits. Against that kind of competition, you just might not have to go from being the youngest major in the army to the oldest, Lowell.”

  “What’s in it for you, Colonel?” Lowell replied.

  “I told you. Both Bob Bellmon and Paul Jiggs have been touting you as the best G-3 type I can get. That and the political influence.”

  “You keep saying ‘I,’” Philip Sheridan Parker said. “You sound like you own army aviation.”

  Roberts gave him a cold look.

  “Right now, I’m one of the three officers on active duty who were in the first class, the ‘Class Before One,’ before they numbered the classes for liaison pilots. The other two are about to retire. To the considerable surprise of my classmates, who to a man felt that I had thrown away my career, I have been promoted with them. Right now, I’m one of the very few people with the vision to see an air-mobile army. Yeah, Captain, I guess you could say I have a certain possessive feeling toward army aviation.”

  “You really think you can get away with it?” Lowell asked.

  “I hope I can,” Roberts said. “I work pretty hard at it.”

  “What do you think, Phil?” Lowell asked.

  “He sure do talk it up, don’t he?” Captain Philip Sheridan Parker IV said, in a thick Negro accent. “He make a fine casket salesman. He make it sound like you need the solid bronze.”

  “I’ve got to do a lot of things I don’t like to do,” Roberts burst out, furiously. “But I don’t have to take being mocked by assholes like you two.”

  “Colonel, you have really sprung something on me I didn’t expect,” Lowell said. “I’d like to think it over. When do you have to know?”

  “Right goddamned now,” Roberts said, still red in the face and furious.

  “I saw my father on the way out here,” Phil Sheridan said. “He said that I was making the same mistake a lot of people were making.” Confused, both Lowell and Roberts looked at him. “He said that armor wasn’t cavalry, and he said that there will always be a place on the battlefield for cavalry.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Roberts asked.

  “He said it didn’t come down from Mount Sinai engraved on stone that cavalry has to be mounted on a horse,” Parker said. “What you said before, Craig. About arming helicopters? What the hell is that, a fast-moving lightly armed force, unrestricted by roads, but cavalry?”

  “You think the man has a point?” Lowell asked.

  “What happens to me next?” Parker asked. “There aren’t many field-grade motor officers around. Count me in, Colonel.”

  “Don’t be impetuous,” Lowell said. “This needs some thought. If we fuck this up, Philip my lad, we would really be f
inished. How soon do you need an answer, Colonel?”

  “Right goddamned now,” Roberts said. “I need two bodies at the airfield at 0800 tomorrow. Yours or somebody else’s.”

  “Well, in that case,” Lowell said. “I think I’d better have another martini.”

  “What the hell kind of an answer is that?” Colonel Roberts demanded.

  “It mean,” Captain Philip Sheridan Parker said, again in his thick Negro accent, “look out aviation! Here come duh Duke and King Kong!”

  Roberts was still mad. “I hope you two bastards don’t think you’re doing me a favor,” he said. But he got up and put out his hand to both of them.

  (Two)

  Antoinette didn’t seem impressed one way or the other when they came down from their meeting with Colonel Roberts and told her that they were about to soar off into the wild blue yonder, starting at 0800 the next morning. But when they tapered off from the martinis into wine spritzers, she became what Lowell thought of as a royal pain in the ass.

  When Harriet finally went home, she got even worse. And then, surprising the both of them, she made a pitcher of martinis, and when asked about the pitcher, said she was in a good mood to drink at least one pitcherful, and possibly two.

  “Would you tell me why you’re being such a bitch?” Phil Parker asked.

  She finished the martini she was drinking before she replied.

  “Why am I being such a bitch?” she said. “Right. Good question.”

  “You’re drunk, for Christ’s sake!” Phil said to her.

  “In vino veritas,” Antoinette said.

  “Ergo sum,” Lowell said.

  “E pluribus unum,” Parker said. He and Lowell laughed.

  “Screw you, Phil!” Antoinette snapped, furiously. And then she started to cry.

  “What the hell is the matter?” Phil asked, half angry, half concerned.

  “Well, excuse me, kiddies,” Lowell said. “Little Craig is going to go tuck it in.”

  “You stay!” Antoinette ordered.

  “What the hell have I done?” he asked, but he sat back down.

  “I’ve had enough of this,” she said.

  “Of what, honey?”

  “Of being a damned camp follower.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way,” Phil said.

  “I’m not like that redheaded tramp of yours, Craig.”

  “Harriet? Hey, Slim, if Harriet is the problem, it’s solved. I’ve had about all of her I can stand myself,” Lowell said. “And now may I go to bed?”

  “No,” she said. “That’s not what I mean. What I mean to say is that I can’t go on like I am. I have to make up my mind.”

  “About what?” Phil asked.

  “Every time I come out here, I convince myself that I’ll be able to talk you out of the army, and get you home to Boston. And every time, nothing happens.”

  “Nothing will, Toni,” Parker said softly. “I’m a soldier. That’s what I do.”

  “And I’m a doctor,” she said. “That’s what I do.”

  “And ne’er the twain shall meet?” Phil said.

  She looked at him, and with tears streaming down her cheeks, nodded her head.

  “I’ve had enough of this maudlin bullshit,” Lowell said, and got up.

  “Watch it, Craig!” Parker said, angrily.

  “Either she loves you and wants to marry you and bear your children, or she doesn’t. It’s as simple as that. You two can fight about it all night for all I care, but for Christ’s sake, if she gets hysterical, throw some water on her. I need my sleep.”

  He stormed out of the room and went upstairs.

  Five minutes later there was a knock at his door. Captain Philip S. Parker IV and Miss Antoinette Elaine Ferguson, M.D., wished him to be the first to know that they were to be joined in holy matrimony.

  “In a couple of weeks, Craig. Just a little ceremony. My folks and Toni’s, and that’s about all. You, too, of course.”

  “But not Harriet?”

  “No,” Toni said, and leaned over and kissed him. “Not Harriet.”

  “I suppose this means I’ll have to find someplace else to live, doesn’t it?” Lowell said.

  “This is your home, dummy,” Parker said.

  “I’ll make you a good deal on it,” Lowell said, “if you agree to rent me a room. This one.”

  (Three)

  Fort Sill, Oklahoma

  14 January 1953

  Chaplain (Lt. Col.) James Jackson “Brother Jack” Glover, Fort Sill’s senior chaplain, was a Southern Baptist from Daphne, Alabama. He naturally reflected the “mores of his background,” as he thought of it, but he prided himself on keeping his feelings about colored people to himself. They were all God’s children, after all, and this wasn’t Daphne, Alabama, but the U.S. Army. There was no room for prejudice in the armed forces of the United States, and he did whatever he could, whenever he could, to condemn bigotry.

  Having said that, there was really no phrase Brother Jack could think of to better describe the colored officer who had come to his office five days before than “an uppity nigger.”

  His door had been open to him, and his heart, and he had been willing to render unto him precisely the same services that he would render to any of his Protestant military flock, regardless of color.

  He had tried to explain to him that marriage was a sacrament and that it should not be entered into lightly and not without a lot of prayer. He had told him that he had regularly scheduled marriage counseling sessions and that he would be happy to schedule the captain and his young lady for the next one.

  “Chaplain, all I want from you is to tell me when I can have the chapel in the next five days. I intend to provide my own clergyman, and I’m really not interested in counseling. I’ve given this marriage a good deal of thought for a long time.”

  “But has your young woman?”

  “My ‘young woman,’ Chaplain, is a doctor of medicine, and she’s given the matter even more thought than I have.”

  “Captain,” Brother Jack had told him, “my marriage counseling sessions have the enthusiastic support of the general. It is official command policy that officers and enlisted men be encouraged to participate before assuming the responsibilities of marriage.”

  “With all respect, Chaplain, when can I have the chapel?” he asked, not even bothering to conceal his impatience.

  Brother Jack would not have been surprised if the colored captain’s intended had turned out to be a white woman. There was a certain class of white women, mostly Yankee intellectual types, who really chased after big black bucks like this one. But she was a coon, too. She had brought their wedding license to the chaplain’s office two days later, after he’d told the colored captain that he would have to see the marriage license before he could turn the chapel over to a civilian clergyman. Good-looking woman, Brother Jack thought. Obviously had a lot of Arab—or white—blood in her. Not one of your flat-faced jungle bunnies. Maybe she really was a doctor. That’s the way she signed the marriage license, anyway.

  Then things started happening that really began to bother Brother Jack, though the way the liberals were running things and ruining the army, the last thing he wanted was a run-in with the NAACP about picking on the colored.

  The first thing that happened was that he walked into the chapel and found the general’s aide snooping around. When he asked him what he could do for him, the general’s aide said all he knew was that the general had told him to come to the chapel and make sure things were up to snuff.

  Brother Jack could hardly call the general and ask him what he was worried about, but just to be sure, he called in all the chaplain’s assistants and had them give the chapel a good GI party, top to bottom. It didn’t need it, of course, but a chapel could never be too clean.

  The next thing that happened was that Mrs. Roberts, the wife of the head aviator, came to the chapel and started nosing around herself. She told him that an old friend of hers was being married there
, and she wanted things to be first rate.

  He wasn’t really surprised when the friend turned out to be the colored captain.

  He expected that the civilian minister who was going to perform the ceremony would be in touch with him, but that didn’t happen; so Brother Jack called the president of the Lawton Ministerial Association, of which he was a member, and asked him who would be a likely candidate among the colored clergy to marry a colored officer and his fiancée. He got three names, and called all three of them, but they had never heard of a Captain Parker.

  On the morning of the wedding, Brother Jack went by the chapel just to make sure things were all right. There was a self-propelled 155 mm cannon, a Long Tom on a tank chassis, parked in front of the chapel. He didn’t know what was going on, and he went to the driver and asked him what he was doing, and the driver told him all he knew was that he had been told to bring the vehicle to the chapel, and that the general’s aide would meet him there.

  And then things really started to happen. Two panel trucks showed up from Lawton loaded with flowers; and then Mrs. Roberts started to arrange them all over the chapel. The obvious thing to do, to show her he had no prejudice, was to help her with that, and that’s what he was doing when he saw the front door of the chapel open, and a major wearing a sword came in.

  “I got the sabers, Chaplain,” the major said. “Where’s the condemned man?”

  The major’s name was Green, and he said that he was president of the local chapter of Norwich graduates, and he just wished to hell they’d given him a little more time; all he could come up with on such short notice was twelve officers, including himself. Brother Jack had never heard of Norwich, and didn’t know what he was talking about, and moreover, Major Green had obviously been at the bottle. You could smell it four feet away.

  And then what really put the cork in the bottle, the chapel door opened again and a major general came in. Brother Jack saw the stars first, and only afterward the silver crosses on his lapels. There is only one man in the U.S. Army who wears the two stars of a major general and the crosses of Christ: the Chief of Chaplains.