But he concluded again, as he always did, that he had made the right decision, that he had made a greater contribution doing what he had done than he would have had he gone up the ladder of command in airborne to platoon, company, and battalion. Besides, he thought wryly, you can break your ass jumping out of airplanes. If God had wanted men to do that, he would have given them a parachute growing out of their backs. Ten minutes later, he found the sign:
HEADQUARTERS
U.S. ARMY SPECIAL WARFARE SCHOOL
FORT BRAGG, NORTH CAROLINA
It was a typical "temporary" two-story building, built for World War II. He remembered that the last time he'd been on Smokebomb Hill, the area had been occupied by an engineer regiment. He turned off the road and drove to the rear of the building. There were reserved parking spaces for the Commandant, Deputy Commandant, Chief of Staff, Adjutant, Sergeant Major, and two for Official Visitors. The commandant's space was empty, but Hanrahan nosed the rented Chevrolet into one of the visitor's spots; the man he was replacing might still be here, and he didn't want to tread on his toes. As he got out of the car, a very natty and very young-looking lieutenant colonel came trotting up. He threw a crisp salute.
"Sir," he barked. "The acting commandant reports to the commandant, sir." How the hell did he know I was coming? Hanrahan returned the salute, wondering what he should say next. The young lieutenant colonel didn't give him a chance to say anything. "Sir," he barked, "if the commandant will be good enough to come with me, sir?" And then he started walking around the end of the building. Hanrahan followed him. When they got to the front, there was something there he hadn't seen before. Two groups of soldiers, twenty-five officers and close to forty noncoms were lined up at attention. "Sir," the lieutenant colonel barked. "The staff is formed, sir. Will the commandant troop the line, sir?" "Yes," Hanrahan said. "Sir," the lieutenant colonel barked. He saluted, then marched stiffly to a position in front of the formation, did an about-face, and stood there at attention. "Stand at ese Hanrahan called out. And when they had come to "at ease," he went on: "Where the hell did you come from? You weren't here sixty seconds ago."
There was pleased laughter, and then Hanrahan walked to the lieutenant colonel and offered his hand. "Paul Hanrahan, Colonel," he said. "I'm impressed and grateful."
"We wanted to make you feel welcome, Colonel," the lieutenant colonel said, with a smile. "I'm going to troop the line informally," Hanrahan said, raising his voice. "Please give me your name, sol can say hello." He was impressed with what he saw. The officers and noncoms were neatly turned out, with one notable exception, in stiffly starched fatigues. Their boots were shined, their faces shaved, their hair cut, and they looked bright and proud.
The one exception, the last man in the rear rank of the enlisted platoon, was Master Sergeant Stefan Wojinski. He wasn't wearing glossy jump boots. He was wearing battered boots with hobnail heels and soles. He was wearing a soiled, patched British Army battle jacket and baggy British trousers, which had pockets sewn to their knees. There was a little, unauthorized, handmade (from a brass cannon casing) pin in the shape of technical sergeant's stripes pinned to one collar point, and the insignia of the 27th Royal Hellenic Mountain Division to the other.
"My name is Wojinski, sir," he said, trying to look innocent. "I know your name, you ugly bastard," Hanrahan said, close to team. "You hung on to that crap, did you?"
"What the hell, Colonel, in some ways they was good days." "Yes, Ski, they were," Hanrahan said. "Colonel, we had the mess hall make a cake, and there's coffee, inside," the lieutenant colonel said. "Thank you," Hanrahan said. "Ski, there's something in the back of my car, from another couple of Gone Greeks. Would you get it and bring it inside, please?"
"Yes, sir," Wojinski said, and trotted around the far corner of the building. "I wasn't sure the colonel would be amused," the lieutenant colonel said.
"They're all crazy, the old Greek hands, Colonel," Hanrahan said. "Wait till you see what I've got in the back of my car." He walked in front of the formation again, and made a gesture with his hand over his head.
"Break ranks and follow me," he called.
The lieutenant colonel held open the door for him. And immediately on stepping inside the door, a tall, crisply uniformed master sergeant thrust a clipboard and a pen at him. "May I have the colonel's signature on this please?" he said. Hanrahan looked at it.
HEADQUARTERS
U.S. ARMY SPECIAL WARFARE SCHOOL
FORT BRAGG, N.C.
GENERAL ORDER
NUMBER 41
29 December 1958 The undersigned assumes command effective this date.
Paul T. Hanrahan Colonel, Infantry Commandant Hanrahan scrawled his signature on the document. "You're very efficient, Sergeant."
"I try to be, sir," Sergeant Major Taylor said. "Your office is this way, sir." There was a sign, with his name on it, on the commandant's door.
He sat down behind the commandant's desk. A sergeant brought him a cup of coffee and a piece of cake. Wojinski carried in the flowers.
"Jesus," Wojinski said, "you'd know the Duke would do something like this. The Duke and the Mouse. Christ. I remember the day the Duke nearly got blown away.." it brings back memories."
"He's a major now, Ski," Hanrahan said. "Both of them are. I talked, for a couple of minutes, to the Mouse yesterday." He remembered the circumstances, and that reminded him that he had not called Bellmon about Captain Jean-Philippe Jannier. He would have to call, and right now. But to hell with it, he'd call the Duke first. He'd cut him off yesterday.
"Until I get a post phone, I don't know how they're going to bill me," he said to Sergeant Major Taylor, "but I want to put in a personal call to Major Craig W. Lowell right now. I don't have the number, but he should be in the Washington book, and if he's not, get his number through MDW." (Military District of Washington)
"No problem, sir." The floral display had made a hit with the troops, he saw. He finished off his cake and was sipping his coffee when Sergeant Major Taylor was at his ear.
"I got Major Lowell's number, sir, and called it. Someone who said he was the butler told me that Major Lowell is at Fort Rucker, but that he has no number where he can be reached." He must have just gone to Rucker, then. Because the Mouse said he was with him.
"Get me Major Felter on this number, then, please," he said, writing it down. "Also in Washington." Major Sanford T. Felter was on the phone in ninety seconds. "Mouse, I just got your flowers," Hanrahan said.
"Sir?" I knew god damned well the Mouse knew nothing about them.
"Well, ask your pal the Duke about them when you see him again."
"He's right here, sir."
"I heard he was at Fort Rucker." "We are, sir," Felter said.
"Oh," Hanrahan said. "They switch your calls, do they, Mouse?"
"Yes, sir," Feltersaid, evenly, "they do. Here's Craig, sir."
"Good morning, sir," Lowell said, cheerfully. "Your flowers dazzled the post commander, Craig." "I was hoping to dazzle you," Lowell said. Hanrahan felt emotion surging up inside him. "The Mouse leads me to believe you had your ass in a crack again," Hanrahan said, to change the subject. "There was, frankly, an awkward moment or two," Lowell said. "But all has been forgiven, and I now have a new job."
"I was about to offer you a job," Hanrahan said. "That would be at Fort Bragg, sir," Lowell asked, "where perfectly sober people leap from functioning airplanes?"
"I'm commandant of the Special Warfare School," Hanrahan said. "I could use you."
"If it would involve jumping out of airplanes, running obstacle courses, sleeping on the ground, and things of that nature and I'm sure it would thank you, no, sir." Hanrahan let it drop. "I need a favor, Craig," Hanrahan said, and told him about Captain Jean-Philippe Jannier. Then he put Master Sergeant Wojinski on the horn, and let him talk to both of them. He sipped thoughtfully on his coffee. He would offer Lowell a job again. The very reasons Lowell didn't want a job, were the reasons he would be valuable. Hanrahan
didn't want super troopers He wanted people like Lowell, who had led foreign troops, and thought jumping out of airplanes was idiocy. It was very interesting, now that he thought of it, that his records had been maintained by DCSINTEL. Felter was in intelligence, high enough up so they transferred his calls around the country as if he was a member of the White House staff.
III
(One) Fort Rucker, Alabama 1430 Hours. 31 December 1958
Mrs. Jane O'Rourke Cassidy, Administrative Assistant, GS-7, of the U.S. Army Aviation Board, stood at the door to Major Craig W. Lowell's office, leaning against the jamb, so that her sweater was drawn tightly against her breasts. It was the first thing Lowell noticed when, sensing her presence, he looked up from the papers on his desk.
Jane Cassidy, who had just turned thirty, was a tall lithe woman. She wore her natural, pale blond hair parted in the middle and drawn tightly into a bun at the base of her neck. She looked more Danish than Irish, and the family joke had been that long ago a visiting Viking had paid more than casual attention to one of the lasses on the auld sod.
Her job at the Aviation Board was new, her assignment to Major Craig Lowell even newer; and it was the second real job she had ever had. She had married Tom Cassidy the week she had graduated from Spring Hill College in Mobile. She became pregnant that fall, and there were now two children. The youngest, Tom III, was now eight; Patricia a year and two days older. She had lived in Enterprise all of her married life. Six months before their marriage Tom had come out of Auburn University with a master's degree in chemical engineering, to a job at Enterprise's major (some said only) industry, the Wiregrass Peanut Oil Company. Tom joked that he had been offered the job because he graduated cum laude, and the Wiregrass Peanut Oil Company was determined to stay on top of Leguminosae technology and also because his uncle, John Patrick Cassidy, not only had not been blessed with a son, but was president and major stockholder of the company as well.
Raising the kids, Jane had not had the time to learn to really hate Enterprise until Tom Ill had started school. She had been and was still a good mother. Caring for the children and making a home had kept her busy. But with the kids off at school, there was a lot of free time, and the interesting things to do in Enterprise were few and far between. She was, because of Tom and John Patrick Cassidy, part of the Enterprise Establishment, but her peers in this social class bored her out of her mind.
Jane had been born and raised in Mobile, where her family had been in the ship chandlery business since before the Civil War. Mobile was a somewhat unpleasant three-hour drive from Enterprise. When she made the trip, every month or six weeks, there was a chance to be with her peers, the girls she had grown up with. There was the country club, which her grandfather had helped found, and the Althesan Club, and half a dozen restaurants. Her peers scorned most of this, and went another three hours down the road to New Orleans for their escape from the boredom of children and home.
There was nobody to blame but herself. She had made her her father had tactfully pointed out to her that Enterprise was not going to be Mobile... and now she would lie in it. Tom was happy. He was now out of the lab and into the plant manager's office, and clearly the heir apparent. He had to travel a lot which was fun for him. But even at home, the life for men in Enterprise was more varied than it was for women. The men had their golf, and they hunted in season, and there was an illegal bar in two rooms of the Hotel Enterprise where they met after work.
The idea of going to work at Fort Rucker had come to Jane as soon as the post had reopened and begun the transition from World War II infantry training base to the Army Aviation Center. When she had brought the subject up to Tom, he just didn't understand why she should want a job. They didn't need the money, and wives of members of the Enterprse Establishment generally, and the wife of the plant manager of the Wiregrass Peanut Oil Company specifically, did not take jobs.
"What would you do, anyway? Punch a typewriter?"
She had driven out to the civilian personnel office at the post one afternoon, where she was given a large packet of material describing careers in government service, plus a list of the available jobs. Tom had been right about one thing: she was unqualified to do anything but punch a typewriter, and truthfully, not even that. When she took the typist's examination, she just barely passed, qualifying only for a job as a Typist. (Trainee) GS-l.
And then Tom had thrown another monkey wrench in the gears: "Honey, if you took a job like that, you'd be taking it away from some woman who really needs the money.
That had put the idea of working at the post to rest, and for good, she had thought... until there was an advertisement in the Enterprise Star, announcing an examination for
"Federal Service Interns." College graduates would be taken into the federal service as GS-5s, to be trained for a year in some specialty, and afterward they'd enter into a "career field" as a
GS-7.
It took only the price of a stamp to apply. So Jane applied, more than a little embarrassed that she could fill only one line in the large blank for "educational and work experience": B.A. (French) Spring Hill College, Mobile, Ala." 1949.
In spite of that, two months later she received a letter announcing that she had been selected for the intern program. She was to report to the U.S. Army Hospital the following Tuesday "not later than 1330 hours" for her physical examination.
Tom, it turned out, wasn't nearly as upset as she thought he would be.
He just laughed: "Working for the government will drive you out of your mind," he told her. "You really want to waste your time, go ahead and try it."
Her interview with her first boss was more than a little disappointing.
He was a colonel, Robert F. Bellmon, and he was in charge of something called
"Aviation Combat Developments." He had been politely blunt: "The fact is, Mrs. Cassidy, that I did my level best to avoid getting an intern. I consider what we're doing here very important, and I tried to make the point that I don't have time to run a training program. I lost. I will have an intern working here. Franldy, if you come to work here, you'll probably be more trouble than you're worth.
On the other hand, you're head and shoulders above the other people they've sent over for me to interview. If you're willing to lend a hand here, wherever you're needed, and clearly understand that any training you get will be on the job, I'm willing to give it a try."
She had taken the job, convinced that what she was going to do would be what Tom had prophesied, punch a typewriter, and badly. But punching a typewriter was better than sitting around the house watching the maid polish the silver.
And there was already sort of an office manager, a dentist's wife from Dothan, who was equally jealous of her prerogatives. Instead, Jane O'Rourke Cassidy spent her year's internship mantaining the flight records of the aviators assigned to Combat Developments, and doing what was called
"Updating the Jep."
Every pilot's entire flying time had to be accounted in his record: what kind of airplane; how long the flight had been; and whether or not the flight had been under instrument flight conditions. In addition, a certificate had to be sent each month to the Finance Office stating that the pilot had flown the four hours required to qualify for flight pay. Because they flew all over the country, all the pilots at Combat Developments were issued a set of manuals in a salesman's case. The manuals contained loose-leaf binders containing information about every airport in the United States, maps of the airfields, radio frequencies, and NOTAMs
"Notices to Airmen" about hazards or closed runways.
These were published by the Jeppsen Company, who each week mailed each pilot an update, reflecting changed information. The old sheets had to be removed from the binders and the new sheets inserted.
"Updating the Jep" struck Jane as an idiot's job, but none of the clerks who had been doing it had been able to do it correctly or on time. But there were several things in the job's favor: it allowed her to get out of the house eve
ry day and to meet interesting people. The pilots seemed to be very nice guys, very grateful to have an updated Jep and their flight pay certificates filed on time. Before long they began to take her to lunch at the officers' club with them.
To her great relief, none of them made passes at her. Most of the pilots were married, and the ones that weren't were so young they treated her with a respect that was almost embarrassing. Gradually, Jane began to do other services for them, typing up forms of one kind or another that the typists were either unwilling or unable to do.
She had made a good deal, Jane thought, in taking the job. It wasn't quite what she had expected, but it was better than nothing. She also thought it was making acontribution to her marriage: she was more alive than she had been before she'd come to work. Though the magic a nice word for lust had long been gone from her marriage, at least now she could talk to Tom over dinner about something interesting that had happened to her during the day.
W E B Griffin - BoW 04 - The Colonels Page 6