The Berets

by W. E. B Griffin

  “If she doesn’t come in here in a minute, I’m going out and get her,” he said.

  “You’ll do no such thing!” his wife said.

  “What’s wrong with him, Dad?” Suzanne said.

  “I told Mother, there’s nothing wrong with him,” he said.

  What’s wrong with him is what you said, Suzanne. There’s something special about people like that. You saw it in Ed, and you married him, and now you’re a thirty-year-old widow with two kids. I’ll see Dianne make the same mistake over my dead body.

  (Three)

  Tom Ellis parked the Jaguar on the Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel and took the bus to the Port Authority Bus Terminal on Forty-first Street. If he took the Jaguar home, he could count on losing the wheels and tires, and possibly the whole car. But it was Christmas Eve, and perhaps he was being too cynical. Perhaps, full of joyous yuletide season spirit and goodwill, the punks would only run a knife blade through the roof and down the fenders.

  He had trouble with the cabbie. The cabbie said there was no way he was going “up there.”

  “You either take me ‘up there’ or down to the cop on the corner,” Tom said. “The law says you have to take me.”

  “It’s Christmas Eve, for Christ’s sake! Give me a break!”

  “I don’t want to ride the subway up there on Christmas Eve,” Tom said. “Give me a break. Do we go talk to the cop, or what?”

  “Sonofabitch!” the cabbie said. “On Christmas Eve!”

  But he put the hack in gear and did a U-turn and headed uptown.

  Cars lined both sides of the street in front of the three-story brownstones in Spanish Harlem. The cabbie drove past the number Tom had given him and stopped instead at the far corner, before the plate-glass windows of a bar and grill. The cabbie was afraid that if he stopped where he was supposed to on the dark street, drug-soaked spics with flip-blade knives or guns would appear out of the darkness and relieve him of both his money and his life.

  Tom took all the bills out of his wallet, paid the cabbie, and put the rest of the bills in his sock. Then he got out of the cab and started walking down the street to his mother’s apartment. He was carrying a small blue canvas bag, the kind people carry gym clothes in. The cab was gone before he had taken a dozen steps.

  He had gone twenty-five yards when he heard the footsteps behind him.

  “Excuse me, sir,” a voice asked with exaggerated courtesy.

  Tom stopped and turned.

  There were three of them. A tall, thin one with sunken eyes, a stocky one who looked nervous, and a little, wiry one, who looked both vaguely familiar and dangerous.

  “Merry Christmas, sir,” the tall thin one said. He was wearing a nylon zipper jacket and a too-small hat with the brim turned down all around. He was probably freezing his ass, Tom thought.

  When Tom didn’t reply, the tall thin one said, “You got a match, sir?”

  Tom’s hand came out of his pocket. There was a click as his switchblade opened.

  “No, but if you want that cigarette cut in half, I’ll be happy to do that for you,” he said in Spanish.

  Two switchblades and a length of chain were produced.

  “You are not very friendly,” the tall thin one said.

  “No, I am not,” Tom said.

  “What have you got in the bag?”

  “Let me tell you something, my friend,” Tom said. “What I have in the bag is none of your business.”

  “What are you doing in this neighborhood?”

  “My mother lives in 333,” Tom said, “with her husband the policeman.”

  “I know this man,” the little wiry one said. “He lived here.”

  “Then you know of my mother’s husband the policeman,” Tom said.

  “He’s not a policeman, he is a Transit Authority cop.”

  “But he has a gun, and if he should hear screaming, as if someone had their belly slit open, he would come with his gun.”

  “Who would have their belly slit?” the little wiry one asked.

  “You,” Tom said. “Maybe you and me, but you for sure, because you know who I am, and it is not nice to rob your neighbors on Christmas Eve.”

  The intentions and tactical capability of the enemy were being evaluated, Tom thought. The enemy was not what he at first appeared, a white alien, sure to be unarmed and unsure of himself on foreign territory. They had challenged instead an armed former native, who could be presumed to know the territory and who might not be worth the trouble that attempting to relieve him of his goods and money might provoke.

  “We don’t rob our neighbors,” the tall thin one said, having on due deliberation reached his decision. “We just don’t like strange people on our turf, you understand.”

  “I am a neutral passing through,” Tom said.

  “Yeah,” the tall thin one said. “You know how it is, my man.”

  “Say Merry Christmas to your mother,” the little wiry one said.

  They turned and walked away with a swagger.

  Tom’s stomach hurt, and he was aware of a chill, clammy sweat. He folded the switchblade against his leg and put it back in his pocket, and walked down the street to 333.

  His mother’s husband opened the door. He was a tall and paunchy black man, a Puerto Rican.

  “Well,” he said in Spanish, “the lieutenant.”

  He stepped out of the door.

  “Hello, Philip,” Tom said. “How are you?”

  Tom’s mother was Philip’s second wife. His first wife lived a couple of blocks away with their four children, on sixty percent of what the New York City Transit Authority paid Philip to ride the subways forty hours a week.

  Tom’s mother was Puerto Rican and white. Or at least, he thought, mostly white. His father had been another Transit Authority policeman, an Irishman, who had started beating up Tom’s mother after they had been married long enough to produce him. He was now living in Staten Island with his second wife, an Irishwoman, and their three children. Tom’s father saw in Tom shameful proof of the one great big mistake he had made in his life: marrying a spic. Tom had not seen his father in years.

  Tom’s mother’s husband saw in Tom shameful proof that his wife was so dumb that she had married an Anglo. The Anglo, predictably, had thrown her out.

  Two days after he had turned eighteen, his father being no longer required to pay child support, Tom had enlisted in the army. The recruiting sergeant had told him the army would send him to cooks and bakers school, where he would learn all there was to know about cooking and baking, so that when he got out of the army, he would have a trade. He also told him that the union had a special rule for veterans, so that he could get into the union.

  When he had been at the reception center, they had made him take the Army General Classification Test twice. When they saw the scores he had made on it the first time, they thought it was either a mistake, or that he’d cheated, or that he had just been incredibly lucky just guessing where to put the pencil mark on the test form.

  He hadn’t understood what that meant then, but when he was in cooks and bakers school at Fort Lee, Virginia (Christ, what a mistake that was!), the company commander had called him in and said that he’d been going over his AGCT scores and that Tom was in Category I, thus qualifying him to apply for OCS. He hadn’t really understood what OCS was, and the idea of becoming an officer was incredible, but he figured what the hell, it would get him out of the kitchen.

  In OCS at Benning, his tactical officer had called him in and asked whether hs mother was a member of a Spanish Surnamed Hispanic Minority Group, and Tom told him she was. The tactical officer was a good guy, a little guy like Tom, who had explained that the army was leaning over backward to make sure that all the opportunities the army had to offer were made available without regard to race, creed, or national origin. And what that meant, his tac officer said, was that if Tom claimed status as a member of the Hispanic minority group, he could forget getting commissioned in the Quartermaste
r Corps and counting canteen cups and get a commission in a combat arm: infantry, artillery, or armor. He could also probably get jump school right out of OCS, which meant another $150 a month, and get himself assigned to the Eighty-second Airborne Division.

  By then Tom had understood something of the army. If he was commissioned in the Quartermaster Corps, after having graduated from cooks and bakers school, there was a very good chance he would be assigned as an assistant mess officer in some huge consolidated mess, as officer in charge of condiments. He proclaimed himself to be a member of the Hispanic minority group and applied for a commission in infantry, for parachute school, and for initial assignment to the Eighty-second Airborne Division. His requests were favorably acted upon.

  The night before Second Lieutenant Thomas Ellis, Infantry, left the parachute school at Fort Benning, Georgia, for the Eighty-second Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, there was a game of chance in the BOQ. Normally, Tom Ellis was a lucky poker player, and far more skilled than his boyish face would suggest. But that night he had lost his ass: all of his money, his watch, his ring, and his MG coupe.

  Once he got to Bragg, he would be all right. He would be reimbursed for his Travel by Private Automobile. That and charging his meals at the officers’ club would see him through to payday. The problem was how to get from Benning to Bragg. There was only one way: by standing by the side of the highway and sticking up his thumb.

  He was quickly picked up by a tanned man in a Cadillac, who told him he was going right through Fayetteville. It’s a long drive from Benning to Bragg, and they talked. He told the guy in the Cadillac that he was just out of OCS and jump school and on his way to Bragg. The guy in the Cadillac told him he’d been in the Eighty-second during the war. Tom told him what had happened in the poker game, which explained why he was hitchhiking.

  Just outside Fayetteville the guy in the Cadillac pulled into a truck stop and said he would spring for dinner. Then he went to the john, and when he came back he was wearing a uniform with the silver oak leaves of a lieutenant colonel on the epaulets and a bunch of ribbons. It was the first time Tom had ever seen one of the ribbons, an inch and a half of blue with stars on it, but he knew what it was: the Medal of Honor.

  Lieutenant Colonel Rudolph G. MacMillan pressed two hundred dollars upon Second Lieutenant Thomas Ellis and told him he wanted it back a hundred a month for the next two months. Colonel Mac said he was going to the Special Warfare School, where Ellis could find him on payday.

  Lieutenant Ellis was assigned as a platoon leader in Dog Company, 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, with additional duty as mess officer, VD control officer, reenlistment officer, and minority affairs officer. He heard what the Special Warfare School was. It was where they trained the snake eaters. The snake eaters ran around in the jungle, eating snakes, sticking knives in people, and blowing things up. Snake eaters wore green berets, and for that reason were called Green Berets.

  There was supposed to be very little chickenshit among the Green Berets, mainly because most of the enlisted men were sergeants, and because of their colonel, an Irishman named Hanrahan. It was also supposed to be very good duty for a junior officer, the catch being that you had to be one hell of an unusual junior officer to get into Special Forces. They did not want second johns right from jump school, but senior lieutenants and captains who had done their troop duty and been overseas, preferably during a war.

  Lieutenant Ellis, who did not like being mess officer, VD control officer, reenlistment officer, and minority affairs officer in addition to his basic duty as platoon commander, decided that all Colonel Mac could tell him was no. It wouldn’t do any harm to ask, and just as soon as he had Colonel Mac’s two hundred bucks, he would go over there to give it to him and see if he could bring up the subject of his becoming a snake eater.

  That fell in his lap. The first thing that happened was that when he was hoping to draw a seven to go with his three kings and a seven, he drew another king. The fourth king was worth Colonel Mac’s two hundred, a wristwatch, and a substantial down payment on a red Ford convertible.

  The second thing that happened was that when he drove the red rag-top Ford over to Smoke Bomb Hill and the Special Warfare Center, he found that Colonel Mac had a small problem on his hands.

  As Tom handed him the two hundred, the first question Colonel Mac asked was “You sure you can afford this?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The second question was “What have they got you doing over there? VD control officer?”

  “Yes, sir, and some other things too.”

  The third question was “You know some spics over there who’re looking for a new job?”

  “I don’t quite understand the question, sir,” Ellis said.

  “You know what a spic is, don’t you, Ellis? Pepper eaters? I’ve got to find a bunch of them. They have to be jumpers, and they have to speak spic.”

  Lieutenant Ellis’s next reply was in Spanish.

  “Where’d you learn to talk spic?” Colonel Mac had asked in surprise.

  “Most of us spics speak spic, my colonel,” Ellis said. “I was raised in Spanish Harlem. My mother’s maiden name was Juanita de Torres.”

  “Jesus!” Colonel Mac said. “You sure don’t look it. No offense, Ellis.”

  “None taken, sir.”

  “You want to come over here?”

  “Sí, my colonel.”

  “Let’s go see the colonel,” Colonel Mac said.

  The commandant of the Special Warfare Center and School, Colonel Paul T. Hanrahan, had not taken Ellis’s word that he spoke Spanish. He had called in a sergeant and told him to find out how well the lieutenant spoke Spanish.

  Three minutes later the sergeant reported that Ellis spoke a strange kind of Spanish, almost Castilian, although he was just as fluent in the Puerto Rican dialect.

  “We had Spanish nuns in school,” Ellis explained.

  He had thought that he had a fair chance to be transferred to Special Forces. There was a chance, a good chance, that his company commander would not want to let him go. If his company commander didn’t want to let him go, the regimental commander would go along with him. But maybe, Tom had thought, he could plead his case, maybe pull that member-of-Hispanic-minority bullshit and get them to let him go.

  He was wrong about that. While he was still in Colonel Hanrahan’s office, the colonel had picked up the phone and called the Eighty-second Airborne Division G-1 (Personnel Officer) and told him to cut orders transferring Second Lieutenant Tom Ellis from the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment to the Special Warfare Center. Tom moved in a Special Warfare Center BOQ that same afternoon.

  Special Warfare had a “personnel priority.” Hanrahan had been directed to recruit Spanish-speaking recruits from wherever he could find them. The Deputy Chief of Staff, Personnel, had been privy to President Eisenhower’s decision to have the CIA send a force of exiled Cubans back to Cuba to take it back from Castro. Special Forces was to “cooperate” with the CIA in training and equipping the exiled Cubans. When DCSPERS directed Hanrahan to recruit Spanish speaking personnel, he at the same time issued a directive stating that personnel selected by Special Warfare, and who wished to volunteer for Special Forces duty, would immediately be made available for transfer, regardless of any other consideration.

  Lieutenant Tom Ellis had not known of the “personnel priority” or of the reasons for it. They hadn’t told him they wanted him to take an “A” Team into Cuba by parachute to set up a radio direction finder until he was just about finished with his Special Forces training, two weeks before he was to jump into the hills above the Bahai de Cochinos.

  Tom’s mother came into the corridor, yelped, and ran to him. While she hugged him, she asked why he hadn’t let her know he was coming.

  “I didn’t know I could get away,” Tom said.

  He set the canvas bag on the kitchen table, unzipped it, and gave her her Christmas present. It was French perfume from the PX. He knew h
ow much his mother liked perfume.

  “I sent your presents off to the army,” she said.

  “It’s all right.”

  Tom took a second package from the canvas bag and handed it to Philip.

  “What’s this?” Philip asked. The package was heavier than it looked, and Philip almost dropped it.

  “Merry Christmas,” Tom said.

  “I didn’t get you anything,” Philip said.

  “It’s all right.”

  Philip weighed the heavy package in his hands. Curiosity got the better of him, and he set it down and tore the Christmas wrapping from it.

  “What’s this?”

  “You’re always complaining that they make you buy your own ammo to qualify,” Tom said. “So I got you some.”

  The package contained eight boxes of what the army called “Cartridges, pistol, .38 Special, ball, 50 rounds per box.”

  Philip looked at him.

  “They’re not hot, Philip,” Tom said, knowing what he was thinking.

  “Where’d you get them?” Philip asked.

  “In the PX,” Tom said.

  “They just sell these to anybody?” Philip asked. “No wonder every punk on Manhattan Island’s got a gun.”

  “I’m an officer, Philip,” Tom said.

  He had, in fact, not bought the cartridges in the PX. He had gotten them from the armorer. He had gone there to get the general a couple of boxes of .45s. General Hanrahan liked to shoot the .45 pistol. He had one that was all tuned up, with adjustable sights. Tom had learned from him that cutting a playing card in half with a pistol bullet at twenty-five feet wasn’t really so awesome if you considered that the .45 bullet was nearly a half an inch in diameter, which meant that if you came within an inch of the card, you hit it.

  He had seen the .38s on the steel shelves in the armory, and thought of Philip bitching about having to buy his own ammo every six months to qualify with his service revolver. He thought that if he had to do what Philip did to make a living, he would be out on the range, practicing every spare moment, not bitching about having to qualify every six months and pay for his own ammo.