W E B Griffin - BoW 04 - The Colonels

by The Colonels(Lit)

  When, over his silent but deep objections, Melody had become engaged to Lieutenant Ed Greer, Howard Dutton had a Presidential built for the kids as a wedding present. But after Greer had broken the engagement and jilted Melody, he had quickly sold it only to have to buy it back at a premium after Melody ran away to Algeria (where Greer was serving as an advisor to the French) and succeeded in getting him to the altar of the English church in Algiers.

  The Oldsmobile and the Buick pulled into the driveway of 227 Melody Lane, which had a Cadillac Coupe de Ville and a Volkswagen parked in its double garage. 227 Melody Lane was also a Presidential, the most luxurious of Woody Dell's offerings. The Presidential provided four bedrooms, three and a half baths, a separate dining room, a living room (which Dutton Realty called "the Great Room"), and a den with a wet bar. The staff car stopped on the street, and Master Sergeant Wallace got out, carrying a press camera. He also had a canvas ditty bag loaded with film packs and flashbulbs hanging from his shoulder.

  Wallace trotted up the driveway, reaching the house just as the kitchen door was opened by Mrs. Roxy Macmillan.

  "Does he know?" Barbara Bellmon asked.

  "No," Roxy giggled. "He hasn't the foggiest."

  "Who is it?" Mac Macmillan called from inside the house.

  "Bob and Barbara," Roxy called, and giggling again, added, "And some other people."

  "Come on in the den," Macmillan said, raising his voice. "The Mouse and me are having a beer."

  The five people trailed through the kitchen and into the den. Mac Macmillan, wearing brilliant yellow golf slacks and a striped, knit golf shirt was standing by the wet bar with a can of beer in his hand.

  Major Sanford T. Felter, in more subdued golf clothing, held a scotch and soda. When he saw Bellmon, he put the drink down on the bar.

  When General Jiggs came through, a look of puzzlement came on Mac's square, ruddy face.

  "What the hell?"

  "Get yourself in uniform, Major," General Jiggs said.

  "What the hell is all this?" Macmillan said.

  "The way it works, Mac, is that I'm the general and you're the major, and you do what I say." "Sir?" Macmillan asked.

  "Greens will do nicely, Mac," General Bellmon said. "Just shake it up."

  After Macmillan left, Felter smiled at General Bellmon.

  "It came through, did it?" Felter asked.

  "I brought the orders back with me," Bellmon said. "You think he knows?"

  "By now, I think he does," Felter said.

  "Well, we kept it quiet until now," General Jiggs said. "With Mac, that's an accomplishment. He has spies at every camp, post, and station in the army. They laughed.

  Macmillan returned in a surprisingly short time wearing a green uniform.

  "Where do you think, Wallace?" General Jiggs asked.

  "Against the wall would be nice, sir," Master Sergeant Wallace said, nodding at a wall on which more than a dozen framed photographs of army aircraft were hung.

  "Come over here, Mac," Jiggs said. "And you, too, Roxy." Roxy Macmillan, flushed with excitement, stood on one side of her husband, and General Jiggs stood on the other.

  Bellmon took a folded sheath of papers from his tunic pocket.

  "Attention to orders," he said formally, but smiling. And then he began to read: "Extract from General Orders Number Two Thirty-one, Headquarters, Department of the Anny, Washington 25, D. C." dated 31 January 1958. Paragraph 32. The following promotion in the Army of the United States is announced: Major Rudolph G. Macmillan, 0-678562, Infantry, to be Lieutenant Colonel, with date of rank from 1 October 1958. Official. James B. Pullman, Major General, U. S.A., Acting, The Adjutant General."

  "Jesus," Lieutenant Colonel Macmillan said smiling, embarrassed.

  "Who's got the leaves?" General Jiggs asked. Barbara Bellmon handed him a small piece of cardboard onto which were pinned two silver oak leaves. He tore one off and handed it to Roxy. Next he tore the other off. Then, at Master Sergeant Wallace's direction, they mimed pinning on the symbols of Macmillan's new grade and moved a little closer, so there would be a good photograph for the press release. Iv

  (One) Quarters No. 33 Fort Bragg, North Carolina 1616 Hours, 31 December 1958

  The commandant of the U.S. Army Special Warfare School, the sergeant major of the school, and three other of the school's senior noncommissioned officers were sitting in fatigue uniform on the floor of the living room drinking beer. A galvanized iron washtub rested on newspapers spread on the floor. It held a case and a half of Miller's High Life on a bed of ice. On a kitchen chair by the door from the foyer to the living room were a pile of green felt berets.

  The commanding officer and his senior noncommissioned staff looked exhausted.

  M/Sgt Wojinski, after a couple of beers, asked Colonel Hanrahan a very odd question.

  "If you don't mind me asking, Colonel, who's your pal in the White House?"

  "My pal in the White House? You mean as in Washington, D. C." that White House?"

  Wojinski nodded his massive head solemnly.

  "I don't know a soul in the White House," Hanrahan replied, truthfully.

  "Except General of the Army Eisenhower, of course. He's an old buddy."

  "No shit?" Wojinski asked, impressed.

  "Oh, sure, Ski," Hanrahan said. "He called upon me for tactical advice all through the war." "Bullshit," Wojinski said.

  "You want to know where I met Eisenhower?" Hanrahan asked, and then went on without waiting for a reply. "In 1944, in London. I was back from Greece, and somebody got the brilliant idea that I should brief the Supreme Commander on what was going on in Greece. So I spent three days writing a speech, got all dressed up in a brand-new uniform, and went over to SHAEF prepared to dazzle him with my all-around brilliance. So I waited patiently in the theater while a dozen other officers none less than a bull colonel made their pitch. When it was my turn, Eisenhower glanced at his watch, stood up, looked at me, and said, "Sorry, son, we've run out of time." That's how Ike and I came to be buddies. I don't know anybody in the White House, Ski." "Got it," MI Sgt Wojinski said, and winked at Colonel Hanrahan. "You don't know a soul in the White House." "Good Christ, Ski!" Sergeant Major Taylor said.

  "What the hell is he talking about, Taylor?" Hanrahan demanded of his sergeant major. "Do you know? Or has a little honest sweat and a couple of cold beers blown his mind?"

  Taylor shrugged. Hanrahan didn't like the look on his face.

  "I asked you a question, Taylor," Hanrahan said. There was a very subtle change of tone in his voice. It wasn't the joking tone it had been a moment before.

  "Sir," Taylor said, "I happened to get a look at the directive. You were given command of the school DP."

  "DP? What the hell is that?"

  "It means

  "Direction of the President," sir," Taylor said.

  "Are you sure?" Hanrahan asked.

  DP did mean Direction of the President, the highest authority possible to cite in the military an order from the Commander in Chief.

  Eisenhower got a DP during War II: Invade France. A DP had ordered the dropping of the atom bombs. But a DP was unlikely to be wasted on the assignment of a lowly colonel to a small school.

  "Yes, sir, I am."

  "I have no idea what it means," Hanrahan said. "But, I repeat, I don't know a soul in the White House." "Yes, sir," Taylor said.

  Quarters No. 33 was a two-story, brick house built in 1937 on what was now known as the main post. In 1937, there had been nothing but the main post. But in World War II, Fort Bragg, an artillery base, had been designated as the training center for airborne (parachute) divisions, and vast tracts of sandy scrub land and pine had been converted within a matter of months to a "temporary" base capable of housing nearly 40,000 men and all the service facilities necessary to train and care for them.

  When it was built, it was intended that Quarters No. 33 serve as family housing for officers in the grade of captain. One captain, who had memorialized his time a
t Bragg by carving his name, rank, and the dates of his occupancy on the inside of an upstairs bedroom closet door, had occupied the quarters for not quite two and a half years. By the time he was transferred and Quarters No. 33.became vacant for reassignment, the army had already grown much larger. The second officer to be assigned Quarters No. 33 had been a full colonel, and so had every officer since. The sixteen identical houses built to house captains and their families had long been known as

  "Colonel's Row."

  Each occupant of Quarters No. 33 had perpetuated the custom of carving his name, rank, and dates of occupancy on the closet door, until there was no more room left. Then a sergeant skilled with his hands had taken the door down, sliced the part with the carvings thin enough so it could be framed, and mounted it in the foyer. A substantial majority of the colonels who had once lived in Quarters No. 33 had gone on to achieve high rank. The first occupant, for instance, had reached lieutenant general before being retired.

  Assisted by Sergeant Major Taylor, MI Sgt Wojinski (the Operations Sergeant), MI Sgt Richard Stevens (the Armorer! Artificer), and MI Sgt Dewey F. Carter (the Communications Sergeant) in other words, Ski and his cronies-the present occupant of Quarters No. 33 had spent all day searching through the quartermaster Family Furniture warehouse for sufficient furniture so that his family could survive until their own furniture, now enroute from Saigon, arrived.

  There was not much furniture in the warehouse, and Hanrahan had concluded that the family furniture he had drawn from the exalted position of full colonel was even more beat up than the furniture he had drawn as a newly commissioned second lieutenant. But it would be enough to keep them afloat until their own furniture arrived. More important, it would get the family out of the Fayetteville Inn.

  When Ski had asked him if he could "use a little help with the furniture," he had accepted. If Ski went to the motor pool and drew a truck, that would mean that the PFC or the 5P4 assigned to the truck would not have to drive it on a day that everybody else had off. And with Ski's broad shoulders, between the two of them they could move anything.

  Ski had shown up with the sergeant major and two other master sergeants in tow. Later when Patricia and the kids dropped by to see how things were going, he sent her to the PX for beer. There was no other way to compensate his noncoms. They would have been insulted if he had offered them money for their services: the only time that a master sergeant dirties his hands or works up a sweat is when it pleases him to do so.

  The doorbell rang. It was, Hanrahan thought, an anemic buzz.

  He pushed himself off the floor and walked to the door.

  It was a full bull colonel from the 82nd Airborne Division, in greens, a great big guy festooned with all the regalia: colored woven cords hung from the epaulets, the gold-framed blue oblong of the Distinguished Unit Citation and the regimental colors flashed beneath the parachute wings, and there was an impressive array of individual decorations.

  "Good afternoon," Paul Hanrahan said.

  "Well, Paul," the bull colonel said, "I really didn't expect a warm embrace, but I did think you would at least remember who I was." "Jesus," Hanrahan said, finally realizing who he was, "Foster!"

  "Try to remember that you're an officer and a gentleman, Paul," Colonel I. Thomas Foster said to his roommate and classmate at the United States Military Academy at West Point. "Say something like, "Foster, Old Man, I'm glad to see you."

  "I am," Hanrahan said. "Jesus, Jerry, it's good to see you!"

  They shook hands.

  "Come on in and have a beer," Hanrahan said. "twhat I really had in mind was an icy martini at the club," Foster said.

  "Look at me," Hanrahan said, gesturing at his mussed and soiled uniform. "I can't go in public like this."

  "And you probably don't have any gin, either, do you?" Foster said.

  "Come on in, anyway, and have a beer," Hanrahan said, and led Foster into the living room.

  The noncoms were on their feet when the two colonels entered the room.

  Two of them were in the act of adjusting their green berets.

  Hanrahan introduced them.

  "They've been helping me get stuff from the quartermaster," Hanrahan said.

  "I never would have guessed," Foster said. "Colonel, with your permission," Sergeant Major Taylor said, "we'll be going." "Take the beer," Hanrahan said. "And thank you, fellas."

  "We'll leave you the beer."

  "Take the damned beer," Hanrahan said. "I am not being generous. It's starting to leak through the newspapers."

  "Well, if you put it that way, Colonel," Wojinski said, and gestured for Stevens to pick up the other end of the galvanized tub.

  "Happy New Year, fellas," Hanrahan said, "and thanks a lot."

  There was a chorus of

  "Happy New Year, Colonel."

  "I guess I should have taken a couple of beers before they left," Hanrahan said when he and Foster were alone.

  "You have always been unable, Hanrahan," Foster said dr oily "to think ahead. You now leave us no alternative but to make the perilous trek to my house."

  "Which is how far?" Hanrahan asked.

  "Two houses down," Foster said.

  "I'll have to leave a note for Patricia," Hanrahan said. "She took the kids to the movies."

  "It apparently never entered your mind to read the name signs in front of the quarters. Or perhaps you did read them and decided that Joan really wouldn't want to be bothered with one of her bridesmaids and her brats."

  "Hey, I just got here, for Christ's sake," Hanrahan said. "I'm not firing on all cylinders." "Obviously," Foster said. "Obviously."

  Hanrahan wrote a note for Patricia, and wedged it in the doorjamb. Then he put on his beret.

  "You really look absurd in that, you know," Foster said, "ignoring other considerations. You look like a girl scout."

  Hanrahan thumbed his nose at him.

  They walked down the tree-shaded street to Quarters No. 31. It was identical to No. 33, but the furniture was personal and there were carpets on the floors. The difference in the atmosphere was like day and night.

  "Joan's not here," Foster said. "I sent her away."

  "I'm sure she jumped at your command," Hanrahan said. "I wanted to spare her the embarrassment of listening to me give you my routine Dutch Uncle speech," Colonel J. Thomas Foster said.

  "God, I can hardly wait," Hanrahan said. "You have no idea how lonely and afraid I am when I don't have your wise counsel to steer me down the straight and narrow."

  "Would you "like a martini, or are you still a barbarian?"

  "If I drink martinis, I make an ass of myself, you know that."

  "And sometimes you don't even need the martini,". Foster said. "Scotch all right?"

  "Fine."

  "And take off that silly hat," Foster said. "Someone's liable to see you and think I know you."

  "This hat really bugs you, doesn't it, Jerry?" Hanrahan said, chuckling.

  "Not only me," Foster said, handing him a glass of scotch. He interrupted himself. "It's good to see you, Paul," he said. "Really good."

  "Yeah, me too, Jerry," Hanrahan said. They touched glasses..

  "Absent companions," Foster said.

  "Absent companions," Hanrahan repeated, lifting his glass with Foster.

  "Incidentally, the next time you need some strong backs give me a call.

  I'm running a daily average of 121 in the stockade, and they're supposed to do manual labor not six-stripers."

  "One of them is an old friend of mine, Jerry," Hanrahan said. "The others' are his friends. I didn't order them to help me move."

  "Appearances are what count," Foster said. "Which brings us back to the girl scout hat."

  "OK, tell me about the berets," Hanrahan said. "You are obviously obsessed with the subject."

  "The general doesn't like them," Foster said. "Make that plural. The generals: mine, Howard, and all the others." "Piss on "em," Hanrahan said. "I do."

  "I know for a fact,
Paul, that Howard sent "the commanding general desires' letter to every commander on the post, specifically dealing with headgear." "I saw it," Hanrahan said.