The Berets

by W. E. B Griffin

  “I’m sorry…” the captain said.

  “It’s all right,” Dianne said. “It explains how come I know this disreputable character.”

  She reached over and caught Tom’s hand and squeezed it.

  They heard the fluckata-fluckata-fluckata sound of a helicopter ten minutes later.

  “Our transportation has arrived,” the captain said.

  The “A” Team had an army truck, on the door of which was taped an ROTC recruiting poster, and they drove it back to the football stadium. Dianne was supposed to be in class, but that didn’t seem to matter. She hadn’t used all her cuts, and she didn’t want to leave Tom.

  Tom parked the Jaguar outside the stadium. The truck drove inside. Cadets were being shown the helicopter as the “A” Team loaded its gear aboard when she and Tom walked up to it. He knew the pilot.

  “The general’s compliments, Lieutenant Ellis,” the pilot said. “And would you present yourself at your earliest opportunity?”

  “What general?”

  “Brigadier General Paul T. Hanrahan,” the pilot said.

  “No shit? They made him a general?”

  “And you will notice the berets,” the pilot said. “We got those back too.”

  “Jesus, that’s great,” Tom said. And then he asked, “He really sent for me?”

  “Yeah. Taylor called and said I was to bring you back.”

  “I drove up here,” Ellis said.

  “Let one of these guys drive the jeep back,” the pilot said.

  “My Jaguar?” Ellis asked incredulously. “No way.” He thought of something else. “I haven’t checked out of the motel. I wasn’t going back until tomorrow.”

  “My heart bleeds for you,” the pilot said.

  Tom turned to Dianne. He put the Jaguar keys in her hand, reached in his pocket, and came up with money.

  “Check me out of the motel, will you?” he asked. “And I’ll call when I know what’s up.”

  “Sure,” she said.

  He did that very possessively, she thought. As if I belong to him, and he has the right to expect me to take care of him.

  “Anytime you’re ready, driver,” the “A” Team captain called from the helicopter door, “we are.”

  Tom kissed her. The kiss, to applause from the “A” Team, was possessive. He stood in the door of the helicopter as it rose from the football field, not waving, not even smiling, just looking at her.

  And then the helicopter was gone, soaring over the end of the stadium, and she was standing there with his keys and three twenty-dollar bills in her hand, while the guys in ROTC looked at her.

  I should be furious at him, she thought.

  But I am not.

  The entirely pleasant thing to consider—scary but pleasant—is that I do, in a way, sort of belong to him. Which means that he, sort of belongs to me.

  She smiled as dazzlingly as she could at the guys in ROTC who knew who she was, and then wiggled her rear as she walked off the football field and out to Tom’s car, swinging his keys in her hand.

  VIII

  (One)

  Office of the Commanding General

  U.S. Army Special Warfare Center

  Fort Bragg, North Carolina

  1115 Hours, 12 December 1961

  “Lieutenant Ellis reporting as ordered, sir,” Tom Ellis said, saluting before Hanrahan’s desk.

  “If you had added ‘to the commanding general,’” Hanrahan said, “you would have earned three Brownie points, Tom,” Hanrahan said.

  “I was about to ask if I could offer congratulations, General,” Ellis said.

  “Oh, how I like the sound of that,” Hanrahan said. “And I see you got the word about the berets.”

  “The pilot told me, sir,” Ellis said.

  “Let this be a lesson to you, Lieutenant,” Hanrahan said. “Virtue is its own reward.”

  “I think most of us are as happy about your star as you are, sir,” Tom said, and then corrected himself: “General.”

  “I understand the Duke University water tower has developed a leak,” Hanrahan said.

  “Yes, sir, but—”

  “Which occurred while you were out spreading goodwill among the natives.”

  “Yes, sir. But—”

  “And a very comely native it was you were spreading goodwill upon, according to Colonel Wells. You apparently lost no time in reconnoitering the area.”

  “It was Dianne Eaglebury, sir. Commander Eaglebury’s sister?”

  “Oh, yes. You took notes in Philadelphia, obviously.”

  “She told me she was at Duke, sir, and suggested I come to see her.”

  Hanrahan smiled at him.

  “Colonel Wells tells me that the engineer says he can fix the water tank.”

  “He told me it can be caulked, sir.”

  “Have you got his name?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Make sure he and Colonel Wells get one of our famous ‘From His Friends in Special Forces’ Zippos, Tom.”

  “Yes, sir. But I thought Sergeant Taylor—”

  “The sergeant major took care of little odds and ends like that for me when I was a lowly colonel,” Hanrahan interrupted. “But now that I am a general officer, I am entitled to have a commissioned officer in the grade of either captain or lieutenant robbing dogs for me. Can you guess who I have chosen for that awesome responsibility?”

  “General,” Tom said uncomfortably.

  “Do I detect something short of uncontrollable enthusiasm?”

  “General, you need somebody who knows how to do something like that. One of the trade-school types. I’m a dogfaced soldier out of OCS. I don’t know anything about what an aide has to do.”

  Ellis’s objection had occurred to General Hanrahan within an hour of his getting his star, as they lunched with the President at the officer’s open mess. He had considered what he needed in an aide-de-camp very carefully. He really needed an aide steeped in the fine points of protocol and military courtesy, someone with a grasp of the army beyond command of an “A” Team, someone who would know how to help his general make his way through the minefields of the social side of the army. Someone, he now thought wryly, who does not openly refer to graduates of the United States Military Academy as “trade-school types.”

  But there were several good arguments in favor of appointing this boy-faced lieutenant as his aide-de-camp. For one thing, Hanrahan was determined that none of his people should get the idea that the West Point Protective Association had a chapter in Special Forces. If there was to be a fraternity of officers taking care of each other, it would be made up of officers who wore the green beret. Despite their permission to wear berets, despite his promotion, it was still Special Forces against the rest of the army.

  That war had already started. It had started while the President was still at Bragg. There had been an innocent remark at lunch, a crack about Hanrahan being now entitled to an aide, and a not-so-innocent remark from Major General Kenneth L. Harke, who was running XVIII Airborne Corps while Triple H Howard was off doing whatever he was doing: “What the General really needs is a commandant for the school. He needs somebody to take some of that weight off his shoulders.”

  “He’s right, Paul,” Triple H Howard had agreed.

  “I’ll name Mac commandant,” Hanrahan had said.

  “Mac isn’t senior enough,” General Harke said.

  “No, he’s not,” Howard had agreed.

  “We’ll send you somebody, General,” the Vice-Chief of Staff said. “I think General Harke is right. You can only spread yourself so thin.”

  They had really been enthusiastic to make sure he didn’t spread himself too thin, that he had the help he needed: a colonel serving as commandant of the Special Warfare School to take the weight off his shoulders.

  He had been informed that morning that Colonel Roland T. Miner, G-4 (Supply), 82nd Airborne Division, would report to him for duty as commandant of the Special Warfare School. Colonel Miner wa
s an artillery officer (Special Forces had no artillery) and was a member in good standing of the Airborne family. He was known to feel that Special Forces was a waste of assets, and Hanrahan had heard his name mentioned as the man most likely to be appointed to assume command of the Fifth Airborne Regimental Combat Team (the redesignated Fifth Special Forces Group) when that happened and Hanrahan got his marching orders. Hanrahan had also heard that Colonel Miner, a strict disciplinarian, was considered just the man to shape up Hanrahan’s ragtag army of misfits and ne’er-do-wells and turn them back into decent paratroopers.

  There were two compelling arguments for naming Lieutenant Tom Ellis aide-de-camp to the commanding general of the Special Warfare Center. The first was his loyalty, which was to Hanrahan personally. The second was that he deserved it. His performance in Cuba, had that been an official war, would have earned him at least a Silver Star, and possibly a Distinguished Service Cross, and a battlefield promotion to captain. It had not been an official war, and he had got neither medal nor promotion. All he’d gotten out of that was a remark on his efficiency report that he “had demonstrated, under combat conditions, not only great personal valor, but leadership far beyond that expected of an officer of his age and experience.”

  That was good, of course, but when the captain’s promotion board sat, there was bound to be some chair-warming sonofabitch on it who would point out that the officer in question had only a high school education, and neither professional education nor experience beyond commanding—no matter how well—a smaller than platoon-sized unit.

  What Hanrahan intended to do when (as Lieutenant Ellis’s immediate superior) he wrote his next efficiency report was to make him sound like a combination of Von Clausewitz and Georgie Patton the Elder. “In the undersigned’s personal observation, this officer has demonstrated a grasp of material and concepts one would expect from an officer of far superior rank and experience. He has demonstrated, time and again, his talent as a staff officer. I recommend him without qualification for rapid promotion, having no doubt whatever that he could not only assume command of a company, but serve with distinction as a staff officer at divisional or higher level.”

  It would take that much bullshit to get him the captain’s railroad tracks his performance had already earned him. It bothered Hanrahan’s sense of right and wrong, and of honor, to have to play the game; but he hadn’t written the rules, and he and Ellis were in the game, and it would not be fair to Ellis, or ultimately to the army, to describe him honestly as “a smart, tough young man who has the ability to lead men and more than his share of courage” and see him lose the promotion he deserved to another officer whose rating officer had been so pleased with the lieutenant’s performance in inventorying the supply room that his efficiency report made him out to be a logistical and tactical genius.

  And finally, Paul Hanrahan was comfortable around Tom Ellis. If he practically had to adopt some young officer into his family, he wanted somebody he liked. And whom Pat and the kids liked.

  “If you don’t want the job, Tom,” General Hanrahan said, “because you don’t want to be a dog robber, that’s okay. But if you’re worried about whether or not you can handle it, I’m a better judge of that than you are. And I’d like to have you.”

  “If you’ll point out the dogs to me, General, I’ll get their bones for you,” Ellis said.

  “Sergeant Major!” Hanrahan called.

  Sergeant Major Taylor came into the office.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “He took the job,” Hanrahan said.

  “May I presume to offer my congratulations to you, Lieutenant Ellis, sir, on your elevation to the upper echelons of command?” Taylor asked.

  “Screw you, Taylor,” Ellis said.

  “And I just made a special trip to the PX for you!” Taylor said, feigning a hurt pout. He handed Ellis a small piece of cardboard onto which were pinned the insignia of an aide-decamp to a brigadier general, a shield with one star. “They were a buck a half,” he said. “But the rope was $21.95.”

  (As a badge of office aides-de-camp to general officers wear a golden cord hanging from the tunic epaulet over their upper arm.)

  “Twenty-one ninety-five!”

  “That comes to $23.45,” Taylor said, “if you please.”

  “Close the door, Taylor,” Hanrahan said. “I’ll pay for that stuff.”

  “I’ll pay for it, sir,” Ellis said.

  “The first and great commandment for an aide-de-camp, Tom,” Hanrahan said, “is ‘Don’t argue with the general.’”

  “Yes, sir,” Ellis said. “Thank you, General.”

  “Pin the pin on,” Hanrahan said. “The appointment is official as of now.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ellis said, and started to unpin his infantry rifles from his fatigue jacket collar.

  “Let me do it,” Taylor said, and went to him.

  “First the social business,” Hanrahan said. “Mrs. Hanrahan and I will receive the officers and their ladies for cocktails tomorrow at five. You’re in charge, Tom, and your orders are that my wife is not to exhaust herself doing it herself. Check with Mrs. MacMillan and tell her what I said.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You will arrange to have beer delivered to the mess halls, two bottles per man, to be served with the evening meal tomorrow with my compliments,” Hanrahan said.

  “For everybody?” Ellis asked, surprised. Two bottles of beer for every enlisted man in the group and school was going to cost a bundle.

  “For everybody,” Hanrahan said. “This is probably my last promotion, and I’m going to do it right.”

  Ellis glanced at Taylor, who had put his finger in front of his lips, telling him to shut up.

  “Yes, sir,” Ellis said.

  “We have three personnel problems to discuss, and this discussion is not to go outside this room,” Hanrahan said.

  Sergeant Major Taylor and Lieutenant Ellis looked at him curiously.

  “We are about to be joined by Colonel Roland T. Miner, who will be commandant of the school,” Hanrahan said.

  Ellis had never heard of him. Sergeant Major Taylor obviously had. He frowned and shook his head.

  “It has been put to me that Colonel Miner’s assignment as commandant will take the weight of the school off my shoulder,” Hanrahan said. “With that in mind, I intend to see that none of the responsibility for the group, or the center, falls on Colonel Miner’s shoulders.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sergeant Major Taylor said.

  “Colonel Miner will doubtless feel it his duty to familiarize himself with the activities of the group and the center. Inasmuch as you are privy, Taylor, to all the classified activities—and you shortly will be, Tom—I wish to take this opportunity to remind you both, in the strongest possible terms, that possession of a Top Secret security clearance does not of itself grant anyone access to anything without a Need to Know. Do I have to go over that again?”

  “No, sir,” they chorused.

  “I will decide what Colonel Miner needs to know to perform his duties,” Hanrahan said. “I will not delegate that authority.”

  “Yes, sir,” they chorused again.

  “You, Tom, can play the dumb lieutenant who hasn’t been told anything. But it won’t be easy—it will be impossible—Taylor, for you to play the dumb sergeant. It is natural to presume that you have access to everything. I can only hope that you can handle this. I’ll back you up, if I have to tell you that, but I am relying on you to see that nobody has access to any classified material without the Need to Know.”

  “I understand, sir,” Taylor said. “Damn it, I knew things were going too smoothly.”

  “There’s no such thing as total victory, Sergeant Major,” Hanrahan said.

  “Is he bringing his chicken with him, General?”

  “I’m sure he is,” Hanrahan said. “I will do what I can to see that it is fenced in, so the fowl’s feces will drop only where it belongs, but I want you to keep your eyes open in case the
chicken escapes.”

  “Yes, sir,” Taylor said.

  “The other two personnel problems are at the other end of the rank structure,” Hanrahan said. “I’ll bring you up to date on the first one, Ellis. Taylor’s already aware of it. We were joined last night by a Private Geoffrey Craig. He came to us from the post stockade at Fort Jackson, South Carolina, with his hand in a cast. He broke his hand when he broke his basic-training sergeant’s jaw.”

  Hanrahan saw the surprise on Ellis’s face. Enlisted man accepted by Special Forces were invariably superior-quality troops, ninety-five percent of them already noncoms.

  “Private Craig was recommended to me personally by Colonel Lowell,” Hanrahan said. “Now, we are all fond of Colonel Lowell, and some of us, as you know, Ellis, more fond than others. I daresay that if Colonel Lowell called and asked you for a favor, Ellis, you would do your best to grant it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ellis said. There was emotion in his voice.

  Not too many months ago, Ellis had been with his “A” Team on the beach of the Bahai de Cochinos on Cuba’s Southern Coast. Sure that in no more than an hour or two he would be captured, he had been debating the merits of suicide, wondering if he could make himself do it. He had been absolutely convinced it was either putting his .45 in his mouth or undergoing unspeakable treatment at the hands of Castro’s patriots. At that moment Craig Lowell had landed in the water at the controls of an old amphibian. It didn’t matter that Lowell was not looking for them but for his buddy, Colonel Felter; there had been room on the Catalina for the whole team. Lowell had saved their ass too. Ellis considered that he owed him.

  “I was happy to grant Lowell’s request,” Hanrahan said. “But I have known Colonel Lowell since he was a second lieutenant, and I wondered about his sudden touching concern for this private soldier who had just broken his sergeant’s jaw. Sergeant Major Taylor made a few discreet inquiries at Fort Jackson, and the mystery was solved. Private Craig is Colonel Lowell’s cousin.”

  “Oh,” Ellis said.

  Taylor chuckled.

  “That poses the question ‘Is Private Craig a chastened young man who, having recognized the errors of his ways, has straightened up and will fly right, or is he what his first sergeant at Jackson told Taylor he was—a wise-ass rich kid who thinks he’s too good for the army and needed his teeth knocked down his throat?’”