The Berets

by W. E. B Griffin

  He took a shower. It was the first time that his left armpit had been washed in eleven days; it reeked accordingly. What few showers he had had in the past ten days he’d taken with his right hand held high over his head.

  The shower was a delightful experience with what seemed to be unlimited hot water. When he went back to his bunk, wearing his damp towel around his waist, Karl-Heinz Wagner was already in his bunk, lying in what Geoff thought was a military manner. He was on his back, the blankets were drawn up to his chin, and he was supporting his head on both hands.

  “I take bath in morning,” Karl-Heinz offered. “Shave in shower. Saves time.”

  “You really eat this stuff up, don’t you?” Geoff asked.

  “I am a soldier,” Karl-Heinz Wagner said simply.

  “You’re German, aren’t you?” Geoff asked, slightly hesitant that it was question he should not have asked.

  “Dresdener,” Karl-Heinz said. “I was born and schooled in Dresden.”

  Dresden, Geoff recalled, was in East Germany.

  “How did you get here?” Geoff asked curiously.

  Karl-Heinz turned his head enough to look at him.

  “Is only one way to get out,” he said matter-of-factly, his tone implying that he thought everyone should know that. “Over the wall.”

  Geoff had seen the newsreels of the Berlin Wall, and an image came to his mind’s eye of an East German hanging dead from a fence of barbed wire, blood dripping from multiple bullet wounds.

  “Wasn’t that risky?”

  “Yes, it was risky,” Karl-Heinz said.

  “How did you do it?”

  Karl-Heinz moved his head again to look at Geoff, and Geoff knew he was making up his mind whether or not to tell him.

  “They are always improving wall,” he said. “They take down weak section and put up strong section. When they do this, they take up mines and move big barriers out of way. I find out where they do this. I go to motor pool and tell them to load truck with cement bags.”

  “I don’t understand that,” Geoff said.

  “I go to motor pool and tell them to load truck with cement bags,” Karl-Heinz repeated. “Great big Czech truck, Skoda, like American six-by-six, but with diesel motor.”

  “How did you get them to do that?”

  “Oh,” Karl-Heinz said, as if for the first time understanding Geoff’s confusion. “I was Oberleutnant of Pioneers. Same as first lieutenant. In DDR army, when Oberleutnant says load truck, soldiers load truck.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I take guns away from them,” Karl-Heinz said. “And I tell them what I am going to do, and ask if anybody wants to go with us….”

  “Ursula was with you?”

  “I got to take her with me,” Karl-Heinz said. “She’s my sister. We don’t have nobody else.”

  “Oh,” Geoff said softly.

  “So nobody wants to go with us. What they do, for the soldiers, is make sure the ones close to the wall have families. So I lock them up and drive truck myself.”

  “Where was Ursula?”

  “In back of truck. Bullets won’t go through cement.”

  “And you crashed through the wall?”

  “Ja,” Karl-Heinz said simply. “We was lucky. We made it.”

  “And now you joined the American army as a private?”

  “Ja,” Karl-Heinz said.

  “There was nothing else you could have done?” Geoff asked.

  “I am soldier,” Karl-Heinz said. “Since I am fifteen, I am soldier. My father was soldier, killed in Russia. A soldier is what we do.”

  “But as a private?” Geoff wondered aloud.

  “When I finish this school, I am sergeant,” Karl-Heinz said. The surprise was evident on Geoff’s face. “You didn’t know that?” Karl-Heinz asked. “When you finish training, they make you sergeant?”

  “No,” Geoff said. That was the first time he had heard that.

  “Then I am sergeant,” Karl-Heinz said. “When I am soldier two years, I can apply to be citizen. When I am citizen, I go to officer school. I will be officer again.”

  “You volunteered for Special Forces so you could get a quick promotion?” Geoff said.

  “That’s nice, but not the reason. I come Special Forces so I can kill Communists.”

  He means that, Geoff realized. He is dead serious. He wants to kill people. It gave him a little chill.

  “Why you come Special Forces?” Karl-Heinz asked.

  “That’s quite a story,” Geoff said after a pause.

  “You don’t want to talk about it,” Karl-Heinz said. “Okay. I go to sleep now.”

  He rolled over on his side.

  Geoff looked at the back of his neck.

  Jesus H. Christ! he thought. I am actually in a bunk beside a man who used to be an officer in the East German army, who escaped with his sister by crashing through the Berlin Wall in a stolen truck, and whose announced purpose in life is to kill Communists.

  It took Geoff longer to go to sleep than he thought it would. And then he dreamed. Ursula was rubbing her breast against his face again. The difference in his dream from what had happened in the airplane was that she was naked. And she moved her breast so that he could get the nipple in his mouth. When he kissed it, he woke up in his bunk with the accumulated seminal fluid of two months abstinence in his shorts.

  He got up and took another shower, and as he walked back to his bunk, past the sleeping PFC Karl-Heinz Wagner, he had two thoughts: Karl-Heinz Wagner was the first friend he had made in the army; and PFC Karl-Heinz Wagner would not hesitate to slit his throat if he tried to do awake what he had done to Ursula in his dream.

  (Four)

  Room C-232

  The Holiday Inn

  Durham, North Carolina

  2230 Hours, 11 December 1961

  Lieutenant Thomas Ellis was asleep on his back, with his mouth open and his legs spread, and this triggered in Dianne Eaglebury several emotions she had not previously experienced. One of them was anger: How dare he fall asleep!

  Another was sort of a detached anatomical curiosity. His thing looked about as long as his thumb—and about as threatening. Yet, five minutes, three minutes (how long had it been?) before, it had been at least four times that size and as stiff as a board. And in her.

  The first time had not hurt her nearly as much as she had been led to believe it would, and it had produced in her physical and emotional reactions that she had heard a lot about.

  She was now a woman, she thought: no longer a virgin.

  My God! What was I thinking of?

  She was not only a woman; she was a somewhat lewd and shameless woman who had decided to ask this boy to make love to her in the middle of the afternoon, in the bright sunlight, without so much as a sip of alcohol to blame it on.

  It was worse than that. She had decided that she was going to let him be The First One while he was still acting The Perfect Gentleman. He was not displaying the slightest hint that he would like to get her into a horizontal position, rip off her clothes and do wicked and forbidden things to her innocent body. She had, in other words, none too subtly let him know what she wanted.

  She had touched his hand, and his arm, and let her breasts rub against his arm, and looked into his eyes, and done everything but take off her clothes and throw him a bump and grind.

  And, God forgive me, that was thrilling!

  She corrected herself. Maybe it hadn’t been a bump and a grind, but she had certainly rubbed her middle against his middle and kept it there even after his thing had grown stiff.

  They had been dancing. Old-fashioned dancing in a new place on Jefferson Avenue that played old big-band records and records of Frank Sinatra singing romantic songs, and where it was so dark, you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.

  Going there had been her idea. After they’d had dinner.

  He smelled like a man. She had never before paid any particular attention to how a boy—a man—smelled, unl
ess he was sweaty and needed a shower. But when he put his arms around her and she felt his hand on her back, she had smelled him. She couldn’t describe the smell, but it did things to her. It made her want to put her face in his neck and smell more of him. It made her want to rest against him, to feel the hardness of his chest against her own softness.

  They hadn’t had anything to drink in the Stardust Ballroom. Tom said he was sort of on duty and didn’t want Colonel What’s-his-name to smell alcohol on his breath if “something happened.” She hadn’t wanted anything to drink because she understood that she was crazy enough as it was on Coca-Cola.

  And they’d only stayed for one Coke. Two dances. The first dance was the one when she hadn’t pulled her middle away from his stiff thing in maidenly modesty. And in the second dance she had removed any question of the first time being innocent by rubbing her middle against his the minute he put his arms around her.

  They went out and got in his Jaguar, and he turned to her and looked at her. And kissed her. And she had her tongue in his mouth the minute their lips touched. And pressed herself against him as hard as she could.

  And he hadn’t said a word while he drove her to his motel.

  At the motel she felt strange—not like a dream, but like she was watching somebody else getting out of a car and walking up a noisy steel stairway to an outside corridor, and going into a motel room. It had even been unreal when she looked around the room, saw that there was an open canvas suitcase on the other double bed, saw him locking the door, saw him coming toward her and putting his arms around her again.

  There had been a moment’s panic when she felt his hand under her skirt and his fingers under her underpants, the very first time anyone except Dr. Gladys Eisenberg had ever touched her there. But she was by then too far gone, and the next thing she knew, she was on the bed with her skirt and slip and panties off and he was putting it in her.

  She still had her sweater on. And her brassiere. He was still wearing his shirt and undershirt and socks.

  He woke up. His eyes opened and he looked up at her.

  “Jesus!” he said.

  She averted her eyes.

  Now she felt shamed and humiliated. She wanted to cry.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She nodded her head, averting it from him. Her eyes were closed.

  “Why did you do it with me?” Tom Ellis asked. “The first time, I mean?”

  He had to ask the one question that was absolutely the worst question he could possibly ask.

  She shook her head.

  “Jesus!” he said.

  She wished the floor would suddenly open up and swallow the entire damned motel room.

  He put his hand on her back. She squirmed away from the contact.

  “If I had known,” Tom announced, half apologetically, half righteously, “I wouldn’t have done it.”

  He is letting me know that I seduced him, Dianne thought, and then realized that was ridiculous. Virgins don’t go around seducing men. Except she had.

  His hand touched her again, lower down. She stiffened but did not jump away.

  The telephone rang.

  “Oh, my God!” Dianne said.

  He chuckled, and she turned and glowered at him.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, wonderingly, “you’re beautiful!”

  “Yeah,” she said bitterly.

  The telephone rang again.

  “Answer it, for God’s sake!” Dianne said.

  With a sudden movement, and with such strength that she could not resist, he reached up and pulled her down against him. Her face was against his chest, and she could feel his heart beating as he stretched out and picked up the telephone.

  “Lieutenant Ellis,” he said.

  She felt his hand move under her sweater and the balls of his fingers caressingly, possessively, run over her backbone.

  He laughed. “I’m very glad to hear that, sir,” he said to the telephone.

  She relaxed her torso against his, marveling again at how hard his chest was.

  “Yes, sir, I’d love to see it,” he said. “I’ll leave right away, sir. Thank you for calling.”

  If he was leaving, that meant she would have to get up. Dianne didn’t like that. She wanted to stay right where she was forever.

  He stretched again as he replaced the telephone in its cradle, and then he lay down again. She felt him tugging at her sweater. What he was doing, she realized, was pulling it and her bra up, so that her breast would be naked where it pressed against him.

  “Oh, my!” he said, when they had finished what they wanted.

  “You went to sleep,” she accused.

  “Did I?” He sounded surprised.

  “You did,” she said.

  “I’m awake now,” he said, and then he chuckled. “All over.”

  He took her hand and pushed it to his crotch. She balled her fist.

  The nerve of him! How dare he do that!

  But she let it touch her hand. It was hard again. She opened her eyes and raised her head just enough to look down there. It was standing up, sort of curving in her direction. Her balled fist opened and closed around it.

  “You must think I’m a slut,” she said.

  “I think maybe I’m in love with you,” Tom said.

  “Oh, you shouldn’t have said that!” she said.

  “Probably not,” he agreed.

  Why did you have to say that?

  “I have to go,” he said.

  “Where? Who was that?”

  “We have blown up the water tower,” he said.

  “You said that before,” she said, with one part of her mind. “What are you talking about?”

  The other part was thinking that if she just rolled over a little on him, she could stick it in her. There had been a dirty movie at the house, and there had been a scene of a girl sitting on a man. It was the first time Dianne had ever considered it possible to do it that way.

  “My ‘A’ Team is destroying your campus,” he said, laughing.

  She really didn’t hear what he had to say.

  She rolled over on him and put him in.

  “Jesus!” he said.

  “You like that?”

  “Oh, God, yes!”

  She moved up and down on him. It was wild. She was sore, but that didn’t seem to matter.

  “Take your sweater off,” he said. “I want to look.”

  She pulled her sweater off, and the brassiere. She looked down at him and at her breasts, and then glanced and saw her reflection in the mirror over the washbasin in the bathroom.

  She felt the trembling, and the tremors, and the shortness of breath starting all over again.

  She heard him saying something and forced herself to pay attention.

  “I love you,” he said.

  “Me too…me too…me too,” she said and then the convulsions came over her and she collapsed on him, and she thought that would be the end of it, but he gently turned her over and kept at it, and as if from a distance, far off, she heard her voice calling his name over and over.

  (Five)

  The Delta Delta Delta House

  Duke University

  Durham, North Carolina

  0825 Hours, 12 December 1961

  Dianne saw the Jaguar pull up in front of the house, but she could not force herself to go down to face him.

  It was daylight now, and a new day, and the craziness had left her. Last night it seemed like a splendid idea to have breakfast with Tom. Now it seemed like a lousy one. She wished that she would never have to see him again in her life—ever.

  “The army is here for you,” one of her sisters said. Dianne looked at her but said nothing. “Some guy from ROTC. He’s on the porch.”

  “Thank you,” Dianne said. She picked up her books and went into the foyer.

  He was dressed in work clothes. Last night he had worn a regular uniform. She had thought he looked very nice in his uniform. She thought he looked very nice now
.

  “Sorry to keep you waiting,” she said.

  She had planned to say that something had come up, and she just couldn’t have breakfast with him. He would go away, and she could avoid, somehow, seeing him again.

  “It’s okay,” he said, and he pulled the storm door outward and held it open for her.

  If he tries to kiss me, I don’t know what I’ll do.

  He didn’t try to kiss her, or even to touch her. He just walked beside her to the car. He didn’t even hold the door for her.

  He drove off the campus.

  “Where are we going?” she asked in alarm. “I meant the cafeteria!”

  “There’s a steak place down here a little ways,” he said. “The team is there.”

  “Steak. At eight o’clock in the morning?”

  “They serve breakfast,” he said. “You can have eggs or whatever.”

  “Oh,” she said. There was nothing she could do but go.

  Inside Western Sizzling Family Steak House nine soldiers were eating breakfast around three tables pushed together. Each of the soldiers was eating a very rare steak.

  Two of the soldiers were officers; one was a captain.

  “These are the guys who blew up the campus last night,” Tom introduced her. “This is Dianne Eaglebury.”

  They politely shook her hand.

  “How did a nice girl like you wind up knowing a disreputable character like this one?” the captain asked as soon as she sat down.

  “My brother was a Green Beret,” she said. “Or the next thing to one.”

  The reply had come without her thinking about it.

  “‘The next thing to one’?” he asked, politely curious.

  “He was in the navy, but he trained with Tom,” she said.

  Screw her sisters, she thought angrily. Screw what people at Duke thought. Screw what anybody thought.

  “He bought it in Cuba,” Tom said levelly.