“What’s with the .38s?” Tom had asked the warrant officer armorer.
“You want some? Help yourself, Lieutenant.”
“Are they on the books?”
“Same as the .45s,” the warrant had told him. “‘Available for informal practice.’ I got a ton of it. Nobody wants to shoot a .38.”
“My stepfather’s a cop in New York,” Tom said. “They make them buy their own for practice and qualification.”
“Lieutenant, if you wanted some of that .38, I don’t think anybody would say a thing if you took it home to practice with your stepfather.”
“Give me a couple of boxes, then.”
“Couple, shit. You can’t do any practicing with a lousy couple of boxes.”
He had handed Tom as much as he could pick up with two hands—eight boxes.
Philip had one of the boxes open and was looking at one of the cartridges.
“I can’t use this; it’s armor-piercing,” he said, holding up the cartridge, indicating the bullet, which was metal-plated. Philip seemed pleased, Tom thought, that he had found an excuse to refuse the gift.
“That’s not armor-piercing,” Tom said. “That’s what they call ‘gilding metal.’ Like the .45.”
“You’re an expert on ammunition now, Lieutenant?”
“I know the difference between armor-piercing and ball,” Tom said.
“And I know armor-piercing when I see it,” Philip said.
“Okay, so it’s armor-piercing. Go shoot up a tank with it.”
He wasn’t inside the door ten minutes, and they were at it already.
“I’m glad you’re here,” his mother said, obviously hoping to end the argument before it got out of hand. “Philip is going to 116th Street to see his children, so we can have a nice talk.”
His stepfather wasn’t determined to have a fight tonight. Sometimes he was.
“I was about to leave when you came,” Philip said. “I got to see my kids, take them their presents, you understand?”
“Sure,” Tom said.
He told himself there were a number of reasons why Philip didn’t like him. For one thing, Tom was white. For another, Philip must know that he didn’t make nearly as much money as a lieutenant on jump pay in the army did.
Screw it. What difference did it make?
Tom had an amusing thought. Philip really believed the .38 was armor-piercing. He was not going to take Tom’s word that it was not. What he would more than likely do was big-deal it with the other cops, tell them he’d come into some army armor-piercing ammunition, and pass it out six rounds at a time. All over the subway system of the City of New York there would be cops carrying pistols loaded with what they thought was armor-piercing ammunition.
He had to get out of here, Tom realized. He had to come because it was Christmas and it was his mother. And he had to get out of here because she was his mother.
After Philip left, his mother told him about work. She worked downtown, off Third Avenue, in a loft where they sewed dresses. She had started years ago with the same firm, and she was now sort of a supervisor. What that meant was that she spoke both Spanish and English: The seamstresses were newcomers from Puerto Rico who spoke only Spanish, and Mr. Feldstein and the cutters and fitters didn’t speak Spanish. So she told the Puerto Rican women what was expected of them.
Tom listened politely, not because he gave a damn about Field Fashions, but because if his mother wasn’t talking about work, she would have nothing to talk about. She liked her job, which was a good thing, since sixty percent of Philip’s pay went for child support, and they needed the money. She was happy married to Philip, and he was glad about that too.
But even if she was his mother, he didn’t belong here. And just as obviously he didn’t belong in Swarthmore either. The only place left was the army. He belonged to the army.
When Philip came back, just before one (he had more than likely taken his kids to midnight mass), Tom left. Philip called a cab for him so that he wouldn’t have to walk the streets, trying to catch one. Philip told the cab company he was Officer Francissa. Otherwise the dispatcher wouldn’t have sent a cab to that address. When the cab came, Tom asked him how much he would charge to take him to the other side of the George Washington Bridge, so that he wouldn’t have to go through the bus terminal.
Cabdrivers had the right to refuse out-of-the-city fares, and even after Tom showed him his AGO card, this one refused to take him to the car park in Jersey.
He rode the bus back across the Hudson, brushed the snow off the Jaguar’s windshield, and got the engine going. He would stop at the first motel he came to. Then, in the morning, he’d drive straight through to Bragg.
He had had some half-baked notion of maybe dropping in on Dianne again on the way home. He knew now that he couldn’t do that. For Christ’s sake, the thing with Dianne had been about as smart as his enlisting for cooks and bakers school. He would not, he knew, go to see her again when the holidays were over and she was back at Duke.
He knew what he would do. They were about to send some Berets to Vietnam, wherever the hell that was. He would tell the general he didn’t like being a dog robber. He wanted a team to take to Vietnam.
(Four)
Building To 2007
The Infantry Center and School
Fort Benning, Georgia
1930 Hours, 24 December 1961
There had been hardly anybody at supper in Consolidated Mess Number 6, which served the Parachute School; but aside from having fewer mess trays, tableware, and coffee cups to wash, there was little difference in what was expected of the KPs from a day when the whole place was full of paratroopers-in-training.
The red tile floor of the kitchen, the stoves, and the work tables had to be scrubbed. And the floor of the mess hall itself, and the tables, and the coffee urns, and the steam table.
It was nearly seven before Private Geoffrey Craig, shivering in water and grease-soaked fatigues, got back to his barracks after fourteen and one half days of KP. He found a newspaper in a garbage can and balled it up, then stuffed it into his soaked combat boots so they would dry overnight. Then he stripped off his fatigues and shoved them under his bed, found clean underwear and his shower clogs, and went to the shower room for a long and hot shower.
There was a feeling, not exhilarating but satisfying, that coming off KP was sort of significant. He would not have to pull KP again at the Parachute School. He was two-thirds through the three week course. Which meant that the worst of that was over too.
The first week had been primarily muscle building and brainwashing. The muscle building hadn’t bothered him much, except for push-ups, which had hurt his hand. The sit-ups hadn’t bothered him at all, although some of the other trainees had thrown up from the strain on their muscles and stomachs. The duck walk had been a strain, but he had been able to handle it.
The brainwashing, the chickenshit, Karl-Heinz Wagner had told him with professional assurance, had a valid purpose. Presuming everyone did exactly what they were told, and did it instantly, there was really very little danger in parachute training. They had been teaching people to jump out of airplanes for twenty years, and by now they knew how to do it well and safely.
But things happened—accidents, mistakes, broken equipment. When that happened, the instructors knew how to handle it, presuming the trainee did exactly as he was told. According to Karl-Heinz Wagner, the chickenshit, the “Give me fifty” (push-ups) for the slightest violation of petty rules and regulations was designed so that the trainees would instantly and without question obey any order they were given.
The instructors, the “cadre,” were without exception young men in splendid physical condition who performed their duties with enthusiasm. They dressed in rigidly starched fatigue uniforms and wore calf-high lace-up boots, jump boots, polished to an unbelievable shine. When the cadre was functioning at a high level of sadism, Geoff sometimes thought that he would like nothing more in the world than to immerse them all in a giant vat of u
sed engine oil.
As far as the parachute school was concerned, there were two classes of people: trainees and cadre. The cadre was just as willing to scream at an officer trainee as they were at a private, although they seemed to treat the two field-grade officers in Geoff’s training company with a modicum of respect: “I would be grateful, sir, if the major would get down and give me twenty-five, sir.”
Before they had left Bragg for Benning, they had had a pep talk from the first sergeant.
“What we want you people to do at Benning is what they tell you to do, and with your mouths shut. Put up with whatever they throw at you. You’ll only be there three weeks, and you have to get through jump school before you can start your training here. If they give you your weekends off, behave. Stay the hell away from Phoenix City, which is right across the river from Benning in Bragg. Falling out of an airplane, tied to a static line, which automatically opens your chute, does not pose any intellectual problem to anybody. When you get back here, we will teach you what parachute jumping is all about.”
It had been a long trip from Bragg to Benning in the Volkswagen. Ursula had ridden in the back with their tin suitcases, while he and Karl-Heinz had shared the driving. Ursula apparently did not know how to drive, which dashed Geoff’s hope that at some time during the trip he would be alone with her on the front seat.
Karl-Heinz insisted on buying the gasoline and the food. The food was sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs and milk packed by Ursula in a grocery bag. They would not accept his offer to spring for dinner. They could not afford to reciprocate.
Somewhat reluctantly, once they had gotten to Benning, Karl-Heinz borrowed the Volkswagen and drove it into Columbus, Georgia, to find a place for Ursula to stay. The sergeant who had told Geoff about TPA had told Karl-Heinz that the NCO club at Benning was always looking for waitresses, and if his sister needed a job, she should go see a Sergeant Whitman.
That had come to pass too. Every afternoon, after she had washed and starched Karl-Heinz’s fatigues to a stiffness equal to the rigidness of the cadre’s fatigues, Ursula took a bus from the furnished room and a half in Columbus out to the NCO club on the post and worked from 1600 to 2230 as a waitress in the dining room. She was paid $1.25 an hour, plus tips. Karl-Heinz didn’t like the idea of her being alone at nearly midnight, so, insisting that he pay for the gas, he allowed Geoff to drive them to the NCO club and wait for her to come out.
She always looked tired, Geoff thought. Goddamned pretty, even in that stupid uniform, but tired. And even more beautiful when she smiled and showed off how much she had earned in tips on a good night.
Sometimes Karl-Heinz would get in the back, which meant Geoff would be alone with her in the front seat and could steal a look at her every once in a while. Sometimes she caught him looking at her, and then she flushed and modestly looked away.
Geoff cordially hated the Volkswagen, its sole redeeming feature being that it was so small that sometimes, when Ursula was in the front seat with him, her leg would accidentally brush against his. Otherwise it burned a lot of oil, and other things went wrong. Karl-Heinz was apparently an expert on Volkswagens—another one of his surprises.
There were Volkswagens in East Germany, imported from the capitalistic west for the use of senior East German officials. Karl-Heinz’s commanding officer had owned one, and he and Karl-Heinz had rebuilt the motor when it began to burn oil. Geoff, he said, was going to have to think about doing a ring-and-valve job on the Volkswagen before the problem developed into something serious.
It had taken the seed of what Karl-Heinz had said some time to bear fruit, but then it had all seemed clear. Karl-Heinz could fix engines. People who fixed engines were paid to do so. Karl-Heinz needed money. Ergo, Karl-Heinz should fix whatever he said was wrong with the engine and get money for doing so.
When they got back to Fort Bragg, maybe, Karl-Heinz said. The car would probably not break down before they got there. But Geoff was right: The car needed work. Therefore, since going back to Bragg in it was the highest priority, it should be saved for that purpose. They would no longer use it to take Ursula home each night from the NCO club. He would ride with her on the bus, and then come back out to the post.
The very first night that Karl-Heinz rode into Columbus on the bus with Ursula, the engine of the Volkswagen failed. It took Geoff fifteen minutes to find the engine oil drain plug on the bottom of the engine, and another five minutes and skinned knuckles to get the damned thing out. But only five laps around the parking lot before the engine seized. He’d tell Karl-Heinz it was vibration that did it.
Master Sergeant Martinez, the ex-first sergeant from the First Division (who, although neither of them suspected it, had been told by Sergeant Major Taylor to keep an eye on PFC Wagner and Private Craig), kindly dragged the Volkswagen into Columbus behind his Buick station wagon.
While Geoff had been on KP, Karl-Heinz had been installing a rebuilt engine from Sears, Roebuck. He had determined that exchanging the failed engine for a rebuilt one would be cheaper than rebuilding the one that had failed.
Karl-Heinz was charging Geoff ninety percent of what Sears, Roebuck wanted for installing the rebuilt engine, and was honest enough to tell Geoff that he was glad to have the work. He knew that Ursula was buying him a little Christmas present, and now he could buy her one. She was probably going to give Geoff a present, too, Karl-Heinz said.
Geoff had spent more time in the PX, selecting a present for Ursula, than he had ever previously spent selecting presents. He finally settled on a one-of-a-kind portable FM radio. That way she could listen to good music. It cost $119.95. He also bought a “$10.95 reduced from $29.95, slightly damaged” electric can opener. He took both back to Building T-2007 where he spent twenty careful minutes with a razor blade and a can of lighter fluid moving the “$10.95 reduced from $29.95, slightly damaged” price sticker from the can opener to place on the radio where she would find it. He had thrown the can opener away.
In the morning, at 1115 hours, Karl-Heinz and Ursula Wagner would motor to the post to the mighty purr of the replacement engine. They would take Christmas dinner in the mess, where for eighty cents they would be served the army’s ritual fourteen-course Christmas banquet—literally everything from soup to nuts, via roast turkey and baked ham. They would then take Private Craig into Columbus with them for “coffee and cake.” There he would give Ursula the $10.95 FM radio and Karl-Heinz a Swiss army knife he had admired; and Ursula would give him whatever she was going to give him; and just maybe, carried away with the Christmas spirit, she might actually let him kiss her.
Dressed in clean underwear, smelling of Lifebuoy, Private Craig took the blanket off his pillow and slipped between the sheets. He rearranged his pillow and the blanket so that it would support his head and began to read Time magazine.
He sensed, a few minutes later, that somebody important, a cadreman or even an officer, had come to the second floor of Building T-2207. The conversations in the three small knots of people in the almost deserted squad bay died. There was an expectant, almost frightened hush. It had to be a cadreman, Geoff decided. No one had called “Attention.” What did the sadistic sonofabitch want on Christmas Eve?
The visitor, wearing a camel’s hair overcoat over his shoulders like an actor and a green Tyrolean hat with what looked like a shaving brush stuck in its band, looked around the room, found Geoff and sat down on the bunk beside him.
“Hello, there, young man,” he said cheerfully. “Jumped out of any good airplanes lately?”
Geoff chuckled. “I haven’t yet; that’s next week.”
“In bed a bit early, aren’t you?”
“I’ve been on KP.”
“So I have been informed.”
“Am I supposed to leap to my feet under the circumstances?”
“No, just kissing my ring will suffice.”
“And what do I call you, under these circumstances?”
“The circumstances being Christmas Eve, which has
apparently escaped you, you may call me Cousin Craig.”
“How did you know I was here?”
“I just spoke to your mother; my annual Christmas Eve next-of-kin telephone call. When I asked where you were, she said, tears choking her voice, that not only had the beastly army refused to let you off for Christmas, but it was denying her baby access to a telephone.”
“Christ, I didn’t call!” Geoff remembered.
“So I have been led to understand,” Lowell said. “Put your clothes on; we’ll get you on the horn.”
Geoff pulled his legs out from under the blankets and started to put on fatigues.
“Have you got civilian clothes?” Lowell asked.
“No.”
“It’s permitted, you know,” Lowell said.
“There hasn’t been time to get any from home or to buy any here,” Geoff said.
“Well, then, Class A’s,” Lowell said.
“Why, where are we going?”
“I thought I would take you away from all this,” Lowell said dryly. “After we got to my motel and call your mother, we’ll go down to Rucker. I can’t offer a Christmas tree and roast turkey, but I thought you might settle for steaks and booze.”
“I can’t do that,” Geoff said.
“Yes you can,” Lowell said. “I’ve fixed it with the army.”
“That’s not what I mean,” Geoff said. “I’ve made other plans.”
Lowell looked at him and smiled.
“You say that with such determination that there must be a female involved,” he said.
“Yes,” Geoff said.
“Well, you can tell me all about her on the way to the motel,” Lowell said. “I promised your mother I would put you on the phone.”
When they went outside the barracks, a captain wearing an OD brassard and a sergeant were standing nervously beside a silver Volkswagen.
“Go sign out,” Lowell ordered. “I’ll wait.”
As Geoff went to the orderly room door he heard the captain say “Good evening, sir.”
“Merry Christmas,” Lowell said.
“Is there some way I can help the general, sir?” the captain asked.
The Berets Page 25