W E B Griffin - BoW 04 - The Colonels

by The Colonels(Lit)

  Jiggs flashed him an angry glance, and then smiled.

  "Well, maybe working for us on this will keep his mind off that," he said.

  "You've decided on him?" Bellmon asked.

  Jiggs nodded.

  "How are you going to handle Roberts? He's liable to resent it."

  "I'll explain the situation to him," Jiggs had said. "He'll understand."

  Jiggs was explaining that situation to Roberts when word came that Lowell had shown up at Rucker. Now he was going to have to explain it all over again to Lowell.

  The moment General Jiggs asked him what he could do for him, Lowell brightened and smiled. "How odd that you should ask what you can do for me!" he quipped.

  "Uh oh," Jiggs said, chuckling.

  "I'm glad Colonel Roberts is here," Lowell said. "We can go through channels right now."

  "What's on your mind, Lowell?" Roberts asked. "Sir, I am no longer required for the rocket chopper program. Colonel Warner is perfectly capable of taking over what's left to be done."

  "And?"

  "It would like a transfer to Special Forces, sir. Colonel Hanrahan has twice asked me if I would come over."

  Roberts shook his head. "I would be grateful for anything that could be done to expedite the paperwork, sir," Lowell went on.

  "You can't go to Special Forces, Craig," Jiggs said. "Paul Hanrahan wants me," Lowell said. "He's asked me twice." "He can't have you," Jiggs said.

  "He's led me to believe that he can recruit anybody he wants," Lowell said.

  "He's wrong," Jiggs said. "At least in your case." Lowell looked at him for an expalantion. "I really did have official business in Washington, despite rumor to the contrary," Jiggs went on. DC SOPS sent for me."

  "Well, then, your trip wasn't wasted, was it?" Lowell said. "Neither has yours coming to my office, Major," Jiggs said. "I had something on my mind beyond your calamitous personal affairs."

  His voice was firm and he had used Lowell's rank. He had Lowell's attention.

  "What follows is Secret and Top Secret," Jiggs said.

  Lowell's eyebrows went up.

  "Item one," Jiggs said. "It is considered possible that an augmentation of the advisors currently in Vietnam will be necessary.

  That much is Top Secret. As part of that, I have been directed in a document classified Secret-to coordinate the efforts of Aviation Combat Developments, the Aviation Board, TATSA, and SCATSA in the development of a provisional aviation battalion for possible deployment to Vietnam." (Transportation Corps Aviation Test & Support Activity; Signal Corps Aviation Test & Support Activity)

  "Interesting," Lowell said.

  "Item two," Jiggs went on, "classified Secret. SEC ARMY is going to convene a board to determine the feasibility of developing a division that will be airmobile. That board will be chaired by whoever is the senior of the three post commanders involved, Benning, Bragg, and here."

  "It will be either Bragg or Benning, and they will view army aviation as another means of transporting parachutists," Low eli said.

  Jiggs ignored the comment.

  "Item three, classified Top Secret," he went on. "I have been directed to prepare plans for army aviation and MATS participation in an invasion of Cuba, from Florida."

  "And MATS?" Lowell asked, surprised. (The Military Air Transport Service had started as the Air Transport Service of the air force.

  Later they won a political battle to strip the navy of their own independent air transport service, and the two had been combined into the Military Air Transport Service, to serve the army, navy and marine corps as well as the air force under an air force commanding general.)

  Colonel Roberts was aware that Lowell was not behaving the way a major was expected to behave when talking to a general officer. After long service with a general officer, a full colonel might offer unsolicited comments the way Lowell was, but never a major. But then Roberts recalled that Lowell was Jiggs's 5-3 in the 73rd Heavy Tank Battalion.

  He was acting as if that were still the case. Roberts was offended, but since Jiggs didn't object, he could not correct Lowell. "And MATS," Jiggs repeated. Then he went on: "To accomplish these tasks, I will be provided with a number of staff officers. My recommendations regarding which experts I would prefer to have have not been solicited.

  If I didn't know better, I would suspect that there are political considerations involved. However, I was thrown a bone: I was told that if there was anybody in particular I wanted, I could, of course, have him."

  "What was it, a swap? Airborne gets aviation, and you get to tell MATS when and where you want their airplanes?"

  "I don't think it was quite that simple," Jiggs said. "But I haven't finished."

  "Sorry."

  "You came immediately to mind, of course," Jiggs said. "All bullshit aside, you're one hell of a planner; and you've had experience dealing with the establishment of aviation companies.

  "And that's why I can't go to Bragg?"

  "Just shut up a minute, Craig," Jiggs said, impatiently.

  Roberts was pleased to see there was a line Lowell could not cross with impunity.

  "Sony, sir," Lowell said, contritely.

  "It further occurred to me that if I assigned you to any of these activities, you would find yourself in one of two impossible situations. You would either be under the command of someone who would be prone to ignore the advice of a major; or you would be a liaison officer, and you know how little attention is paid to the opinions of liaison officers."

  He let that sink in a moment, and then went on.

  "So I'm going to leave you right where you are," Jiggs said. "The idea being," Lowell asked, instantly catching on, "that since I have nothing to do, I can work for you out of school."

  Jiggs nodded his head. Despite himself, Roberts was impressed with Lowell's grasp. He believed that a staff officer's efficiency was in direct proportion to how well the staff officer understood the commander.

  "And General Bellmon and Colonel Roberts, of course," Jiggs said, throwing Roberts a bone. "We'll see you're kept abreast of what's going on. And when your ideas are presented, they will be the sound reasoning of either me or General Bellmon or Colonel Roberts."

  Lowell nodded his understanding and agreement.

  "I didn't really want to be a Green Beret, anyway," Lowell said, with a smile. "When do I start?" 227 Melody Lane Ozark, Alabama 2030 Hours, 7 July 1959

  The Oldsmobile 98 four-door hardtop with Fort Rucker sticker No. 1 turned onto Melody Lane. The commanding general's lady was about to make an unannounced and uninvited call upon one of her husband's officers aware that if her husband knew about the call, he would make it quite plain to her that. it was ill advised.

  At first she had told him that she was going to have Craig to supper, but her husband had shot that idea down.

  "I think the one thing Craig doesn't need right now is domestic bliss on display," he said. "Leave him alone for a while, Jane, so he can lick his wounds."

  "He's probably lonely as hell," she argued.

  "He's working. That's the therapy he needs," Paul Jiggs said.

  "He's probably sitting around with a bottle," she replied.

  "I don't think so," Paul said.

  Paul was now off at Fort Monroe, CO NARC headquarters in Virginia.

  Jane Jiggs had been to a fashion show at the Ozark Country Club. Now was the time to call on Craig.

  In absolute honesty, she thought she could walk in and tell Craig that she desperately needed a drink. When she was Mrs. Commanding General at a female social function, she limited herself to two glasses of white wine. What Mrs. Commanding General did, the other officers' ladies did. Some officers' ladies could not handle liquor. Since Jane Jiggs thought there was nothing more disgusting than a drunken woman, she was going to do nothing whatever to encourage women to drink.

  When she pulled into the driveway, she saw that Craig was not alone.

  There was a Buick station wagon in the carport with a green, civil
ian post sticker on the bumper. She stopped, put the Olds in reverse, and backed down the driveway. And then she stopped again.

  She knew who the Buick belonged to. Craig's secretary, the tall, good-looking blonde who was married to the man who ran the peanut oil company in Enterprise. A nice woman, Jane thought, who was doubtless at Lowell's house in order to combine business with a little compassion. Jane Jiggs had met Jane Cassidy, and, as far as Jane Jiggs was concerned, Jane Cassidy was the kind of woman who would feel as bad about what that woman had done to Craig as she herself did.

  She stopped the Olds, backed it up to the edge of lawn, and got out.

  She cut across the lawn to the carport. The house was on a little hill, and you couldn't see into the windows from the street. But you could from the lawn. Inside, for the second time in her life (the first being an "exhibition" she and Paul had gone to years before, off the Rue de Pigalle in Paris) Jane saw a woman performing the act of fellatio. After she'd gotten the Olds started up again, the first thing she thought was that she should have listened to Paul. She'd put her nose in where it was neither wanted nor needed.

  The second thing she thought was that if word of this affair got to Paul, he would be outraged. She was married, she often thought with pleasure, to the last decent, moral male. Paul had stormed out of the exhibition in Paris in genuine disgust and undisguised contempt for the officer, a classmate, who had taken them to see it.

  In other words, Paul would understand if Craig Lowell had found solace in the arms of an exotic dancer providing that she was not married.

  Jane realized that she was going to have to do something. She was going to have to end the relationship before Paul got word of it. And word would certainly get out sooner or later, and then things would be terribly messy.

  She was going to have to do something, but she had no idea what.

  "Goddamn it!" she said aloud, as she ran the stop sign and turned onto Rucker Boulevard.

  She had gone no more than 200 yards when she became aware of flashing red lights in her rearview mirror.

  The cops had been watching the intersection for people to run tue stop sign. Now, to put a cap on everything, she was going to get a ticket.

  The fine, she recalled, was $35 plus court costs of $27.50.

  Being a good Samaritan, she thought, was going to be expensive.

  She pulled to the curb. The police car pulled in behind her, and she saw a cop open the door. She opened her purse and took out her driver's license and the registration. She rolled down the window and looked for the cop. He was nowhere in sight. And then she saw that the cop was back in his car, which was now making a U-turn back toward Ozark.

  They're not rushing off to stop a robbery at the Bank of Ozark, she thought. They'd seen the No. 1 sticker on the bumper. They were not about to risk the rage of Mayor Howard Dutton for having given his good friend the general's wife a ticket for running a stop sign. She was ashamed at her relief.

  And that put Howard Dutton into her mind.

  (Four) Bachelor Officer's Quarters, Bldg. T-2204 The U.S. Army Special Warfare School Fort Bragg, North Carolina 1200 Hours, 9 July 1959

  Second Lieutenant Thomas J. Ellis pinned gold second lieutenant's bars to the epaulets of a tropical worsted blouse, reflecting angrily that the bars were gold and not silver.

  Regulations authorized the promotion of second lieutenants to first lieutenant after completion of six months' satisfactory service.

  Satisfactory service was usually defined as service during which the second lieutenant did not desert; steal the inventories he had been assigned to verify; make a pass at the commanding officer's wife; or commit some other outrage against good military order and discipline.

  Second Lieutenant Ellis had been a commissioned officer since 15 December 1958. He should have been promoted first lieutenant, therefore, on 16 June 1959; and he had not been. On 16 June he had been sitting in a swamp on Eglin Air Force Base, roasting pieces of a small and incredibly tough wild pig on a fire built on the stump of a cypress tree.

  He finished pinning his insignia to his tropical worsted blouse, then put it on his bed. He put his trousers on, and carefully pulled them high on his thighs so as not to ruin the crease while he was putting on and lacing up his glossy jump boots. Then he hitched the trousers down and bloused them with rolled and tied Sheik condoms.

  After he'd finished dressing, he left the BOQ and went to the barracks housing Training "A" Team 59 23. They were all waiting for him. He felt a little silly with only his jump wings and nothing else on his breasts. The others all wore the ribbons that anywhere from five to ten years of service had earned them. Most of them had been to Korea.

  Many also had Combat Infantry Badges and Silver Stars and Bronze Stars and Purple Hearts. If these guys wanted to call him the Boy Wonder, that seemed all too understandable.

  When it was time, he formed his troops into two ranks in front of the barracks, called them to attention, and marched them to the open area in front of headquarters. Seven training teams would be graduated today. Five of them were already there, and the last was behind him.

  There was a band not the whole thing, Ellis noticed, but maybe half-strength.

  When the brass came out the front door of headquarters, Ellis saw that the little Jew light bird he'd seen around a couple of times was with Colonel Hanrahan and It. Colonel Macmillan. He was curious about the little guy to begin with, and now that he saw him in tropical worsteds, he was even more curious. He was wearing a brass's hat with scrambled eggs on the leather brim, so he wasn't a Green Beret. But he was sure loaded down with medals and crap. He had a gold rope hanging from his epaulets that looked liked it weighed two pounds, and he had the CIB and jump wings, and at the shoulder seam was a Ranger patch.

  And the Jew didn't stand with Colonel Hanrahan and the sergeant major and the other brass, but walked over to where the trainees were standing. The senior officer among them, a captain, was serving as company commander of the "company" made up of the seven training teams.

  It looked as if the Jew was taking over from him, and that's what happened. The captain went back to his team, and the little Jew with all the crap hanging on his uniform stood where the company commander was supposed to stand.

  The band played, and they went through the first part of the graduation ceremony. And then Colonel Hanrahan gave a speech.

  "I always try to say a few words about our heritage," he said. "Today that seems especially appropriate. We trace our beginnings to the first Special Service Force which was joint Canadians Anerican. during World War II. But we also trace ourselves back to the Office of Strategic Services in its guerrilla function. And to units of Americans training and leading the native forces of our allies.

  "Some of those people are still around in the service. And we had one hell of a time, frankly, coming up with criteria by which past service could qualify an individual as worthy of the green beret. It was finally decided that an individual would be considered qualified if he had had experience operating behind enemy lines, or if he had served as an advisor to allied forces engaged in combat, and preferably both.

  "I sort of jumped the gun when Colonel Macmillan joined us. I just decided on my own that he was entitled to a beret. I thought that anyone who had won the Medal of Honor could be said to have sufficient on-the job training."

  There was laughter.

  "But I want to say that Colonel Macmillan is fully qualified under the new criteria. After he won the Medal, he led forty other escaped prisoners of war across Poland to safety. jhat earned him the Distinguished Service Cross. In Korea, Colonel Macmillan operated behind enemy lines in an operation that's still classified. And on yet another mission, this one closely related to what we're doing, he found himself at Dien Bien Phu in Indochina shortly before it fell. And he did so well there that the French took him into the Legion of Honor in the grade of Chevalier. They also gave him the Croix de Guerre. And, what should really impress our friends across the post,
the professional parachutists, he was made an honorary member of the Third Parachute Regiment of the French Foreign Legion."

  Colonel Mac, Lieutenant Ellis thought, looked distinctly uncomfortable.

  "And we have another officer here "today, who by the authority invested in me by God and the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, will henceforth and forevermore be entitled to wear the green beret, having qualified for it by on-the-job training. Not only was he with Colonel Mac in Korea and Indochina, and decorated with roughly the same fruit salad for it, but he has one far greater distinction. When he was but a young officer, wet behind the ears, he had the privilege of serving with that great warrior, your modest beloved commandant, in Greece."