The Berets

by W. E. B Griffin

  Nine millions of dollars, in other words, that would have gone to purchase aviation fire trucks, avionic maintenance vans, hydraulic stands, tools, APUs, and the other paraphernalia of aircraft maintenance, went instead to the marines to fund a “Joint Project in Engineering Feasibility Studies for Twin-Engined Observation Aircraft.”

  Grumman Aircraft of Bethpage, Long island, longtime supplier to the navy and marines of fighter and utility aircraft for use from aircraft carriers, quickly came up with engineering drawings of a strange little airplane that looked like neither a fighter nor a utility airplane but contained features of both.

  There were twin engines—not little gas-poppers but turboprops—of one-thousand-shaft horsepower each. They had been proved on Grumman utility aircraft long in use flying mail and passengers onto aircraft carriers. There were two sets, side by side, up in front of the engine. There was originally a single vertical stabilizer on the tail, but this didn’t work out, and two additional vertical stabilizers were added.

  Because the marine corps was not denied armed aircraft, provision was made in the wings and fuselage for “hard points” of sufficient strength to take machine guns and other weaponry.

  The marine corps knew that the navy would never give them the money to buy aircraft like Mohawks for observation purposes or even, with weapons mounted, for use as close ground-support aircraft. But the marines also knew that if the army got the aircraft into production, should a war come, there would be no problem in ordering their own. In the meantime the army had made a gentleman’s agreement to loan a number of Mohawks to the marines immediately on the opening of hostilities.

  It had thus been in the marines’ interest to keep the air force in the dark, too, and the marines are good at keeping secrets.

  When the first Mohawks were delivered to the army, the army announced that they were unarmed electronic surveillance aircraft to study the battlefield with an array of radar and infrared sensing devices. A twin-engine aircraft was needed to carry all that electronic equipment.

  That was true.

  And it was also true that it would have cost an enormous amount of money to remove the weaponry-capable hard points from the wings and fuselage. The army assured the by now alarmed-that-the-army-camel’s-nose-was-under-the-tent air force that they understood perfectly well that the Key West Agreement of 1948 specifically forbade them armed aircraft. The army promised to continue to abide by that agreement.

  This was not true.

  Roberts and Bellmon and some others believed that once the army got armed Mohawks into battle, the air force would look pretty silly beating its breast and pulling its hair and complaining that the army was breaking the rules. The army was actually shooting at the enemy, and they’d have to be ordered to stop.

  The problem was to get the Mohawks into battle without letting the air force know they existed. And a kind warrant officer wanting to turn his troops loose because it was Christmas Eve could blow the whole thing.

  Under an interservice agreement, air force planes routinely refueled at Miller Army Airfield, and their pilots routinely took a good look around to see what the army was up to. Any air force pilot, not just one sent to have a look, would have been fascinated to see one of the army’s turboprop “reconnaissance” planes sitting in front of Base Ops, festooned with a rocket pod under one wing and a machine gun pod under the other.

  Lowell walked around the plane doing the preflight as an APU in a jeep trailer was plugged into the airplane and fired up.

  With his story that he had been co-pilot on the first acceptance test flight of the Mohawk, Lowell had given the Mohawk pilot the impression that he was highly experienced in the airplane. That was some distance from the truth. He had gone along with Mac that first time because all Mac had planned to do the first time was take it up, circle the field, and bring it down. It had been more a ceremony than a real test flight. The plane had just been delivered from Bethpage by a Grumman test pilot. It had performed flawlessly. Lowell’s ceremonial ride was a bone tossed to a hungry dog: He would not get command of the OV-1 Observation Platoon (Provisional, Test) that was shortly to be formed, although he had done everything but wag his tail and beg for it. He would continue shuffling paper. Bellmon had told him pilots were a dime a dozen, but “staff men” of his caliber were one in fifty thousand.

  His checkout and subsequent experience as a Mohawk rated aviator (a total of thirty-five hours) had been much of the same thing: “Check him out in it; make him feel he’s part of the team.”

  He had never before actually flown a Mohawk solo, although on paper he had. It had all been done with great finesse: “We know you can fly it, so take Lieutenant So-and-so to Benning, drop him off, and pick up Captain So-and-so.”

  C. W. Lowell, Lieutenant Colonel, 25 hours total Mohawk time, pilot in command.

  Lieutenant So-and-so, 250 hours total Mohawk time, “passenger.”

  He wasn’t sure if they were concerned that he might bend the bird or that he would hurt himself while bending the bird. The Grumman line was rolling Mohawks out in a steady stream; the aviation school was turning out a steady stream of pilots. But “staff men of his caliber were one in fifty thousand.”

  He put the Mohawk pilot’s flight helmet on, stood on the hood of the jeep, and climbed into the cockpit and plugged the helmet in.

  He flicked on the main power buss and heard the gyros come to life. There were a number of red flags on the panel, and he examined each one carefully. With the exception of a malfunctioning ADF, all the problems were in the black boxes on their shelves in the fuselage. These had nothing to do with the engines, controls, or navigation aids of the airplane itself.

  He looked down at the ground and gave a thumbs-up signal. The Mohawk pilot, who was manning a huge wheeled fire extinguisher, nodded.

  Lowell reached for the Port Engine Prime control and worked it. Then he held down the Port Engine Start toggle switch. The engine started smoothly, and the blades began to whirl. He primed the starboard engine and pushed down the SRBD Engine Start switch.

  The ground crewman disappeared from sight to pull the chocks from the wheels and then reappeared.

  “Miller,” Lowell said to the boom microphone, “Mohawk One-One-One at Base Ops for taxi and takeoff.”

  The tower operator came right back.

  “One-One-One, you are cleared via Taxi One to the threshold of one-eight.”

  Lowell waved to the people on the ground and put his hand on the throttles, advanced them, and started taxiing.

  He lowered the canopy in place when he came to the threshold of the runway.

  “Miller, One-One-One on the threshold of one-eight. Request takeoff permission, VFR direct OZR.”

  “One-One-One is cleared for takeoff. There is no reported traffic in the local area. The winds are negligible, the altimeter is two-niner-niner-eight, the time is five to the hour.”

  Lowell turned the Mohawk onto the runway, locked the brakes, put the flaps all the way down, and ran up the engines.

  “One-One-One rolling,” he said, and took off the brakes.

  The force of the acceleration pressed him hard against the seat. The airspeed needle hesitated, then sprang to life, indicating seventy. When it reached eighty, he eased back on the stick and felt it almost jump into the air. He pulled the gear and the flaps and farther back on the stick.

  Fort Benning and Columbus dropped beneath him. There was enough light to see U.S. 431 below him to his left. He broke off the climb and dropped the nose. The altimeter was at 2,500 feet. The sonofabitch climbed like a rocket. He took it down to 750 feet and put the highway on his right.

  The airspeed indicator had climbed to 350.

  It was a pity, he thought, that at that speed he would be over Dothan in twenty minutes. It would be nice just to fly for a while.

  Nap-of-the-earth flying was forbidden without specific authority.

  “To hell with it,” he said aloud, and pushed the nose down again.


  The altimeter indicated less than one hundred feet, but he wasn’t looking at it. He was looking out to make sure he didn’t run into a power line—or over a cow.

  Even at an indicated airspeed of 370 knots, he could see Christmas trees in some of the farmhouse windows.

  (Two)

  Quarters No. 1

  The Army Aviation Center

  Fort Rucker, Alabama

  1230 Hours, 25 December 1961

  Lowell turned the Mercedes off Colonel’s Row and into the drive leading to Quarters No. 1. Colonel’s Row at Fort Rucker looked more like Levittown than Colonel’s Row at Bragg, Benning, or Knox. Dependent housing at Fort Rucker was new—construction was still going on—and the houses were frame, with a little brick facing in the front, one story; the only visual difference between the ranch houses on Colonel’s Row and those on any street in a lower-middle-class housing development were the little signs on the lawns providing the occupant’s name and rank.

  Quarters No. 1 differed from the houses on Colonel’s Row only in that it sat on a small knoll on an acre plot and was slightly larger than the colonels’ houses.

  Quarters No. 1 at Fort Knox was a substantial two-story brick colonial building, the sort of house a vice-president of Ford Motor Company would have. This one, Lowell thought, carrying a dozen roses in green florist’s tissue up the narrow concrete walk to the front door, looked like the house of an assistant zone manager for some second-rate life insurance company.

  The little sign on the lawn at the entrance to the drive read: P. T. JIGGS, MAJOR GENERAL.

  Jane Jiggs opened the door.

  Lowell thrust the flowers at her.

  “Merry Christmas, louse,” she said.

  “Louse?”

  “I was sure it was Meissen china,” she said. “And what did I get?”

  “I’ll get you china,” he said.

  “Oh, I’m only kidding,” she said. “Come in. I’ll make us a drink and we can watch the kids play with their toy.”

  “Where’s Paul?”

  “That’s who I mean,” she said. “You don’t think he’d let the little kids play with that, do you? He and Davis are up to their ears in train parts.”

  She led him into the living room, where Major General Paul T. Jiggs, Lieutenant Jerome Davis, his aide-de-camp, and the Jiggs children were assembling an elaborate electric train set.

  “Santa Claus is here, children,” Jane Jiggs said. “Scotch, Craig?”

  “Please,” he said.

  “Not meaning a word of what I have to say,” Paul Jiggs said, “you really shouldn’t have done this, Craig.”

  “I got a deal on it,” Lowell said. “By which I mean my father-in-law bought the company. He apparently told somebody to send me a sample, and with Teutonic efficiency they sent one of everything they make.” He stooped and picked up a locomotive. “Nice, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, yeah!” Paul T. Jiggs, Jr., thirteen, said in awe.

  The men laughed.

  “I just got off the horn to him,” Lowell said. “Generalleutnant von Greiffenberg, Retired, extends his best wishes to Major General Jiggs and family on Christmas and for the New Year.”

  “You repaid the compliment, I hope?” Jiggs asked.

  “Sure,” Lowell said.

  “How’s Peter-Paul?” Jane Jiggs asked.

  “Like this one,” Lowell said, touseling the hair of Paul Jiggs, Jr. “Except that he talks English like a limey.”

  “He was just fourteen?” Jane Jiggs asked as she handed him a drink.

  “Last month,” Lowell said. “And what interesting has been going on while I have been off, shuffling paper?” Lowell asked. It was evident he wanted to get off the subject of his son.

  “Odd that you should mention that,” Jiggs said, getting to his feet. “At nine this morning I had a most interesting telephone call from the staff duty officer. It seems the mayor of Eufaula, Alabama, had telephoned him last night, more than a little upset—‘furious’ was the word the SDO used—that one of our airplanes had buzzed his bucolic little town on Christmas Eve.”

  “No!”

  “According to the staff duty officer, the mayor said that this maniac, whoever he was, came like the hammers of hell right down Main Street, twenty feet or so over the trees, scaring dogs and old ladies, and disappeared in the direction of Fort Rucker.”

  “Did His Honor happen to get a tail number?” Lowell asked.

  “No,” Jiggs said, “he did not.”

  “Then I guess you’ll have some trouble finding out who did something like that, won’t you?” Lowell said. “Pity. We can’t have our people going around scaring dogs and old ladies, can we?”

  “What the hell is the matter with you, Craig?” Jiggs asked. “How much Mohawk time do you have?”

  “More than thirty hours,” Lowell said. “We paper-shufflers are given first shot at flying the Mohawk.”

  “You really buzzed Eufaula, Uncle Craig? In a Mohawk?” Paul T. Jiggs, Jr., asked, delighted.

  “Is that what I’m accused of?” Lowell asked innocently. “Of course not. I am a responsible field-grade paper-pusher-type officer who wouldn’t dream of doing something like that. I might have been a little under fifteen hundred feet when I flew down the river, they’re having electrical trouble with the Mohawk I was flying, and the altimeter might have been off. But twenty feet off the trees? Me?”

  Lieutenant Davis chuckled.

  General Jiggs gave him a dirty look.

  “Davis,” Lowell asked. “Did you know that I served under General Jiggs in Korea?”

  “I believe I’ve heard something about that, sir.”

  “And have you heard that when he was nothing but a lowly lieutenant colonel, he posed for an obscene photograph?”

  “Oh, God!” Jane Jiggs said.

  Mary-Beth Davis, Lieutenant Davis’s bride of four months, looked baffled.

  “It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Jane Jiggs said to her.

  “I think it’s a lot worse than scaring dogs and old ladies,” Lowell said. “Particularly for a West Pointer who, one presumes, is taught all about the conduct expected of an officer and gentleman.”

  “Show them the picture, Craig,” Jiggs said.

  “Paul!” Jane said.

  “Dare I? They just got married,” Lowell said. “Could she stand the shock? She probably has never seen one.”

  “We’ll have to now,” Jiggs said. “Otherwise Mary-Beth will think it’s really obscene.”

  “As opposed to what?” Lowell asked innocently.

  “Come with me, please, Mary-Beth,” General Jiggs said.

  Smiling uneasily, Mary-Beth Davis followed General Jiggs to a small room he had outfitted as a personal office. One wall was covered with photographs. One of the photographs showed a younger Paul Jiggs standing on the engine cover of an M-46 tank, relieving his bladder. He was shaking his fist at the photographer. It was clear that the photographer had called his name to get his attention and had snapped the photograph the instant Jiggs had seen his camera.

  “I’m sorry you had to be exposed to something like this, Mrs. Davis,” Lowell said unctuously.

  “That’s the Yalu,” Jiggs said.

  “What he was doing was what Patton the Elder did in the Rhine,” Lowell said.

  “I didn’t expect to have it recorded for posterity,” Jiggs said.

  “But once it was, what the hell, hang it on the wall, right?” Lowell said.

  “Who took the picture?” Lieutenant Davis asked.

  “Do you have to ask?” Jiggs said.

  “What’s the ‘Yalu’?” Mary-Beth Davis asked.

  Lowell and Jiggs exchanged glances.

  “It’s the border between North Korea and China, honey,” her husband, embarrassed, explained to her. “It was as far north as the army got in the war.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “Another officer would have planted a flag,” Lowell said. “But you see how General Jiggs chose to mark the
spot.”

  Mary-Beth was aware that she had just revealed her ignorance of something that was important to her husband’s boss. She desperately searched her memory and came up with something.

  “I was just a kid then,” she said, “but that was when all the Americans had to retreat…through the mountains in a blizzard?”

  “I like to think of it,” Lowell said solemnly, “as advancing in the other direction.”

  “Jesus!” Jiggs said.

  Mary-Beth was now genuinely impressed.

  “You two were there?” she asked.

  “Legends in our own time,” Lowell said. “Me for my distinguished service and General Jiggs for…well, now you’ve seen the photo.”

  “How would you like to go back, Craig? For Auld Lang Syne?” General Jiggs asked.

  Lowell looked at him.

  “Somehow I don’t think that’s an idle question,” he said.

  “It’s not,” Jiggs said. “How would you like thirty days in Korea?”

  “If I can have a tank battalion or an aviation battalion for the standard tour, I can be on a plane this afternoon,” Lowell said. “But do I want to go to Korea for thirty days? No.”

  “It’s for thirty days,” Jiggs said, leading everybody out of the office. “That’s not up for debate. But you’re going for thirty days. The only question is where.”

  “Because I am suspected of livening things up in Eufaula?” Lowell asked. “Is the mayor that mad?”

  Jiggs shook his head.

  “Then what?” Lowell asked.

  “Let’s say that some people think you have been working too hard and that you need thirty days away from your typewriter to recharge your batteries.”

  “Who is ‘some people’?”

  “The Vice-Chief of Staff,” Jiggs said.

  “Paul, honest to Christ,” Lowell said, “the only thing I have done that’s half an inch out of line was last night. And I don’t think the Vice-Chief of Staff has heard about that yet.”