The Berets

by W. E. B Griffin

  “You obviously know Hanrahan well enough to call in a favor,” Colonel Sauer said. It was a question.

  “I served under him in Greece,” Lowell said. “I think he’s right.”

  “I’m not sure I agree with the theory of elite troops,” Sauer said.

  “That depends on the definition of elite troops,” Lowell said. “If that means super troopers, trained to the nth degree, who are then sent in as assault troops and damn the casualties, neither do I.”

  “Then, what are they?”

  “Hanrahan objects to tying the Rangers in as part of the Special Forces heritage,” Lowell explained. “The Rangers were trained to accomplish the most difficult missions without regard to costs. He says he’s training his people to stay alive, so that when he’s finished training them, the army has too much invested in them to have them get blown away while charging up hills through a Willy Peter* barrage, shouting ‘Follow me!’”

  “Follow me!” is the motto of the Infantry School. But Colonel Sauer decided that an officer wearing four Purple Hearts, the Distinguished Service Cross, and the Combat Infantry Badge (Second Award) was entitled to make light of it if he so chose. As a matter of fact, Sauer had often thought that the function of a junior officer or noncom leading troops in combat was not to get out on the point himself. He would be quickly blown away there, leaving his troops leaderless. His job was to keep himself alive so that he would be in the position to make the painful choice of which of his troops was to assume the point and probably get himself killed.

  “Then what are they supposed to do?”

  “Train and command indigenous forces,” Lowell said. “The equation is simple: For every indigenous troop bearing arms for his country, one less American has to pick up a weapon. One of Hanrahan’s ‘A’ Teams can train and operate a couple of companies of native troops. When they’re in that role. Their other role, as guerrillas—blowing up bridges, cutting communications—can tie up an awful lot of enemy troops just running around trying to find them. I stand in that thin line of soldiers who think Hanrahan is right and everybody else is wrong.”

  “I’m a little surprised to hear you say that,” Sauer said. “The word I get from people I know at Bragg is that those green hats they wear went to their heads. They think they’re better than everybody else.”

  “They are,” Lowell said. “But that’s past tense with the Green Berets. They lost that fight. CONARC forbade the wearing of ‘foreign-type’ headgear.”

  “I hadn’t heard that,” Sauer said. “You think CONARC was wrong?”

  “Yes, I do. And I think CONARC is wrong in the next step in their screw Special Forces program.”

  “Which is…?”

  “They want to convert the Fifth Special Forces Group into the Fifth Airborne Regimental Combat Team and assign it to XVIII Airborne Corps. When I talked to him before lunch, Hanrahan said the President was about to arrive at Bragg. What I’m afraid of is that the President came there to make the announcement.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Airborne just lost a very serious pitch to take over Army Aviation. I think they’re going to be thrown a consolation bone called Special Forces.”

  “Is that why you’re not down there in a green beret? You found out they’re going to lose the battle?”

  “I have an unfortunate reputation in the army,” Lowell said. “I am one hell of a paper pusher. That being the case, I might as well shuffle paper in comfort rather than in a swamp, eating snakes.”

  Colonel Sauer sensed the bitterness and understood it. Once an officer acquired a reputation as a “good staff man,” that’s what the army assigned him to do. Napoleon said his army moved on its stomach. The U.S. Army had solved that problem, but only at the price of acquiring another problem. The U.S. Army moved on a sea of paper, and people who could shuffle that paper skillfully were in short supply and great demand. Whether or not they liked it, they were given desks rather than battalions and regiments.

  “Speaking of which,” Lowell went on, “I was due in Sodom on Potomac thirty minutes ago.”

  “You going to be in hot water?” Sauer asked.

  “My general will be so relieved that you didn’t throw me in the stockade for putting my nose in where it didn’t belong, I doubt he’ll say anything to me for being late,” Lowell said. “And I’m grateful to you, sir, for what you did. Thank you.”

  Offering his hand, Sauer said, “I will, Colonel Lowell, deal with the situation here in such a manner that I doubt there will be a reoccurrence.” And then, as Lowell walked out the door, Colonel Sauer called after him. “Say hello to Mac when you see him, will you?”

  “Yes, sir,” Lowell said. “I’ll do that.”

  “Charley,” Colonel Sauer said to his adjutant. “Cut orders relieving the company commander of ‘C’ Company. Have the exec assume command for the time being. Transfer the first sergeant and the field first out by 1500 this afternoon, and replace them. I will not entertain protests from the first battalion commander. Have the first battalion commander and the ex-company commander report to me at 0730 tomorrow. Let them squirm overnight about what I’m going to do to them.”

  “Yes, sir,” the adjutant said crisply.

  “And when you’re not doing anything tonight, Charley,” Colonel Sauer said, “I want you to write a little essay for me. Say, a thousand words.”

  “An essay, sir?”

  “Your subject, Charley, is ‘The Importance of Providing the Commander with Accurate Facts on Which He Will Base His Decisions.’ I somehow have acquired the feeling that you’re not as up on that as you should be.”

  (Three)

  The Delta Delta Delta House

  Duke University

  1530 Hours, 11 December 1961

  There was absolutely no question whatever in Dianne Eaglebury’s mind that she was being followed around by a weirdo. She had first had the feeling when she had gone to French 202 at nine o’clock. She’d felt eyes on her, which had made her very uncomfortable, and she’d had fleeting glances of a man who jumped out of sight the moment she turned around.

  In French 202 she managed to convince herself that her imagination was running off with her. And the proof of that seemed to come when no one was waiting for her when French was over.

  But it started again at lunch. She had gone to the cafeteria for a ham sandwich and a bowl of Jell-O and a glass of milk, and she’d felt the eyes on her again. This time she had quick glances at a vaguely familiar face, a guy wearing a tweed coat.

  When she came out of Political Science 440: City States of Italy and started back to the Tri-Delt house, she sensed again that she was being followed. This time, by spinning suddenly around, she saw the vaguely familiar young man in the tweed coat again, this time at the wheel of a Jaguar. (She didn’t know anybody who owned a Jaguar.) If he wanted to talk to her, why didn’t he just walk up and talk?

  When she spun around again, the yellow Jaguar was nowhere in sight. He had seen her looking at him, she realized, and that had frightened him off. When she got to the Tri-Delt house, she pretended to drop a book. While picking it up, she looked up and down the street. But there was no young man in a tweed jacket or a Jaguar convertible visible.

  Where had she seen him before?

  She settled on the mixer she had been talked into going to at the Delta Kappa Epsilon house. Dekes were weird, especially when they were drinking, and they prided themselves on how much they drank. That’s what it was.

  She went to her room, spent half an hour making her City States of Italy notes legible enough to read when exam time came up, and then went down to the living room to look for a newspaper.

  The yellow Jag was parked down the street in front of the Sigma Delta Chi house. There was somebody behind the wheel.

  Dianne had enough. Whoever it was, drunk or not, he had no right to follow her around. The Dekes had a reputation for letting things get out of hand. And a reputation for meanness. She didn’t want to have t
o keep looking over her shoulder to see if she was being followed. Or maybe getting grabbed and thrown into a car and kidnaped. Not really kidnaped. It would be some elaborate Deke joke.

  She found Mrs. Hawkins, the house mother, in her office off the kitchen and told her what was going on. Mrs. Hawkins went to the front door and peered out from behind the curtains. Satisfied that Dianne was telling the truth, she called campus security on the telephone and told them she would appreciate it if they would run off the young man in a yellow Jaguar who was annoying one of her girls.

  Once it was done, Dianne felt miserable. She didn’t want to get anybody in trouble. She just wanted to be left alone. She then talked herself into thinking that she had done the right thing. She didn’t know that it was innocent; for all she knew, he could be a rapist. Or worse.

  She went upstairs, headed for her room, but at the top of the landing she changed her mind and walked down the corridor to Louise Pfister’s room, which looked out onto the street. Louise, wearing nothing but panties with a hole in the side, was washing her hair in her sink. This was against the rules, since hair clogged the drains of the little sinks, but stuff like rules never bothered Louise.

  “What do you want?” Louise snapped.

  “I want to look out your window a minute,” Dianne said.

  “Look out your own window,” Louise said. Soap got in her eyes. “Shit!” she cried out, and put her head in the sink again. Dianne looked out the window.

  She saw a campus security Ford come up the street and then suddenly pull to the curb in front of the Jaguar. Two campus policemen got out, went to the car, and ordered the driver out. One of them spun him around and gave him a shove hard enough to send him sprawling toward the car. He threw his arms out against the car roof and stopped himself.

  The driver turned his head to say something to one of the policemen, and for the first time Dianne got a really good look at his face.

  I know him!

  One of the policemen ducked his head in the car and came out with a funny-looking object.

  “Oh, my God!” Dianne said aloud and raced out of Louise Pfister’s room, down the stairs, out the front door, and down the street.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I know him. This is all a terrible mistake!”

  “Who are you?” a policeman asked her.

  “I’m the girl he’s been bothering,” she said, instantly aware that was a really dumb thing to say. “But it’s all right. He’s a friend of mine.”

  The policeman shook his head at her and returned his attention to Tom Ellis.

  “What are you doing with an army radio?”

  “I’m an army officer,” Tom Ellis said. He took his wallet out and showed his AGO card.

  “I know he is,” Dianne said.

  The policeman handed the AGO card to the other policeman.

  “That looks legitimate,” he said.

  “What’s he doing with an army radio in his car?”

  “If you’ll call Colonel Wells, he can explain everything,” Ellis said.

  Dianne had seen boys blush before, but never this red, and never for so long.

  One of the policemen went to the police car and got on the radio. Dianne wanted to smile at Tom Ellis, but he wouldn’t look at her.

  The policeman came back in a minute.

  “Colonel Wells is down at the stadium,” he said: “We’ll go there and ask him about this. You follow us. We have your license number, and we’ll keep the radio until we talk to the colonel.”

  Ellis nodded.

  The policemen, one of them carrying the radio, went to their car and got in. Ellis, without looking at Dianne, got behind the wheel of the Jaguar. He started the engine and waited for the policemen to get their car moving.

  He’s leaving! If he leaves, he will not come back!

  Dianne ran around the front of the Jaguar and then climbed in beside him.

  He turned and looked at her, and then away, and then back.

  He has beautiful eyes, she thought. So sad.

  “I’m going with you,” she said.

  “I thought about coming here since you told me you were here,” Tom Ellis said. “But when I got here, I just didn’t have the balls.”

  They were moving now.

  He suddenly banged his fist on the steering wheel.

  “‘Balls,’” he quoted himself, furious with himself. “Shit!”

  He shoved the gearshift angrily into high.

  Dianne put her hand over his, then pulled it away from the gearshift knob and held it in both of hers.

  “It’s all right, Tom,” she said. “Take it easy.”

  He looked over at her.

  “There’s something you should know about me,” he said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I have this tremendous ability to make an ass of myself.”

  She laughed.

  “You actually came all the way up here to see me?” she asked. “I’m flattered.”

  “Well, actually,” he said, “I came up here to blow up your water tower.”

  “Well,” she said, giggling, “whatever, I’m glad you’re here.”

  I am, she thought, with considerable surprise. I really am very glad to see him.

  (Four)

  William B. Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport

  Atlanta, Georgia

  1830 Hours, 11 December 1961

  It wasn’t until he got off the airplane and found himself in the terminal that Geoff Craig really believed the nightmare was coming to an end, that he wasn’t going to wake up and find himself back in the stockade.

  But the night and the sounds and the smells of the airport made it all real. He was not going to be court-martialed, not going to be taken in handcuffs to the federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas. He didn’t know what was coming next, but it was beyond belief that it could be worse than what he had left.

  Tucked under his arm, he had a square eleven-by-fourteen-inch heavy manila folder, sealed shut, that contained his service record. The sergeant major who had driven him to the airport and marched him past the MPs on duty there had told him that he doubted he would be stopped and asked for his orders in Atlanta while he was changing planes, but if that happened, he was to tell the MPs that he was traveling “VOCG,” which meant “Verbal Order, Commanding General,” and if they didn’t believe that, to call, collect, the number written on the paper tape sealing his service-record envelope.

  When he got to Atlanta, the sergeant major told him, he was to retrieve his duffel bag and take it to the Piedmont ticket counter. There had not been time to confirm his Atlanta—Fayetteville reservation, and therefore his duffel bag could not be checked through to Fayetteville. There would probably be a reservation waiting for him at the Piedmont ticket counter, but if there was not, he was to get the first available seat to Fayetteville. When he got to Fayetteville, he was to look for a sign—there would almost certainly be one—giving a telephone number to call for transportation from the Fayetteville airport to Fort Bragg. He was to tell whoever answered the telephone that he was reporting to the Special Warfare Center—not Fort Bragg, nor the XVIII Airborne Corps, nor the 82nd Airborne Division; get that straight—and they would arrange transportation for him.

  The sergeant major had waited with him until the boarding call was given, and then he had surprised Geoff Craig by offering his hand.

  “Let me tell you something, kid,” he said. “Not all the sergeants in the army are like the bastard who crapped on you. Off the record, I’m glad you broke his goddamn jaw.”

  Geoff had been so surprised that he couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “Good luck, Craig. Keep your mouth shut and your eyes and ears open,” the sergeant major had said.

  And then Geoff had boarded the airplane, and it was like coming home from Mars. The flight wasn’t long enough for a meal, but a stewardess served a snack, a sandwich, cheese and crackers, and an apple. And she asked if he would like a cocktail.
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br />   The temptation to order a drink was nearly overwhelming, but he knew it was a court-martial offense (the phrase had an immediate, awesome meaning now) to drink on duty, and he was afraid that traveling on orders the way he was would be considered duty, so he didn’t take one.

  By the time he got to Atlanta, he regretted that decision. Most of the passengers on the airplane were soldiers, privates, noncoms, and officers, and most of them had had at least two drinks. They would not all be risking the stockade by taking a drink, he reasoned. He realized what was starting to happen to him. He was beginning to think like a human being again, not like a trainee or a confinee.

  Just as soon as he arranged for a seat to Fayetteville, he would have a drink. Christ knows, he was entitled to one. He hadn’t had a drink since the night before he had taken a cab downtown to the Armed Forces Induction Center—two million years ago.

  First things first. He had to reclaim his duffel bag.

  There were twenty-five or more duffel bags on the luggage carousel, all identical except for the names stenciled onto the sides. It was some time before Geoff could reach out with his good hand and pull his off the merry-go-round and onto the floor.

  He looked around for a skycap. None was in sight. He would have to move the damned thing himself. There were two options: He could try to stagger through the terminal with the bag hanging from its strap on his shoulder, or he could drag it along the marble floor. He opted for that. He was aware that he looked a mess anyway.

  When they had arrested him, someone had taken all of his possessions from their prescribed place and jammed them into the duffel bag, which had then been taken to the supply room and stored. His tunic and trousers were badly crushed, and so was his brimmed cap. It was entirely possible, he thought, that whoever had packed his things for him had taken special pains to crease beyond repair the leather brim of his cap.

  He started down the corridor to the Piedmont ticket counter.

  Two MPs appeared in the line of traffic. Geoff’s heart stopped when they looked at him.