When the Commandant of Cadets’ secretary called back a minute later to say that the General was free to see him, he picked up Felter’s records and walked down the portrait-lined corridor of the building to the office of the Commandant, the United States Military Academy.
“Would you like coffee, Charley, or something a little stronger?” the Commandant asked, when he had waved him into his large, rather elegantly furnished office. The Commandant was a tall, thin, very erect man whose uniform hung loosely over his shoulders. He was known to the Corps of Cadets behind his back as either the Hawk or the Vulture.
“Strong, please, sir,” the Commandant of Cadets said. “I guess the little sonofabitch got to me. There aren’t many people I can’t stare down.”
“And you were probably thinking, Charley, ‘If I can’t go, why the hell should you get to go?’”
“Christ, I suppose so,” the Commandant of Cadets said. “‘What did you do in the war, Daddy? Why, I wiped noses and changed diapers at the Academy, that’s what Daddy did.’”
The Commandant chuckled. He handed him a scotch and water.
“Thank you, sir,” he said.
“Plus, of course,” the Commandant said, “he’s right.”
“You really think so?”
“So do you,” the Commandant of West Point said. “You don’t, you can’t, learn about war sitting in a classroom.”
“Christ, the whole class of ’46 will try this, once it gets out.”
“Not necessarily,” the Commandant said.
“I think they will,” the Commandant of Cadets said. “Hell, I would.”
“They’re not eligible for direct commissions,” the Commandant said. “Felter is.”
“He didn’t say anything about a direct commission,” the Commandant of Cadets said, visibly surprised. “That’s the first I heard about that.”
“He probably figured that would really make you blow your top. But the fact is, he is eligible for a direct commission as a linguist-interrogator. Two years of college, and fluency in one, or preferably more languages on the short list. He speaks Russian, Polish, and German.”
“If he gets a direct commission, he could never come back here,” the Commandant of Cadets said.
“I disagree with you there. We’re already starting to pick up bright young reserve officers to run them through here. If he’s right, he could come back.”
“Right about what, sir?”
“That the war will shortly be over,” the Commandant said. “He may be wrong. This may be a lot longer war than we think it will be. We’re getting the shit kicked out of us in the Bulge, Charley.”
“Yeah, while you and I sit here drinking scotch whiskey, and watching that little Jew manipulate the system.”
“If I thought he was manipulating it for his personal benefit, I would personally see to it that he wound up in a line company,” the Commandant of West Point said. “But what I think we have here, Charley, is a perfectly bona fide case of devotion to duty.”
“What do you want me to do, General? Discharge him from the Corps of Cadets and turn him over to his draft board?”
“No,” the Commandant said. “What I want you to do, Charley, is to change the training schedule.”
“Sir?”
“I want the reveille formation on 2 January 1945 to be in full dress. I want the band there, not just the drums and the bugles. I want the color guard. I want Felter there in pinks and greens. You, in your pinks and greens and all your decorations, will hold the Bible while I, wearing mine, swear him in. I want an adjutant, an officer not a cadet, to read his orders in a very loud voice. ‘Second Lieutenant Whateverhisnameis Felter will immediately proceed to the Overseas Replacement Depot, Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, for priority air-shipment to’—a division in the field. Have him sent somewhere flashy, maybe the 82nd Airborne, or the Big Red One, or one of the armored divisions. You follow me, Charley?”
“Yes, Sir,” the Commandant of Cadets said. “I see what you’re doing.”
“I want the flags flying, and the band playing ‘Army Blue,’” the Commandant of the United States Military Academy said. “When the the Corps of Cadets marches by, at eyes right, I want every goddamned eye to be wet with emotion and green with envy. If I thought I could get away with it, I’d have the bugler sound the charge.”
(Two)
First Lieutenant Wallace T. Rogers, Infantry (USMA ’43) was Cadet Corporal Sanford T. Felter’s tactical officer. A tactical officer is mixture of disciplinarian, mother hen, and observer of the cadets committed to his charge. He was having as much trouble with the resignation of Corporal Felter as was the Commandant of Cadets.
Lieutenant Rogers had volunteered for the airborne, and upon graduation had been sent to the Parachute School at Fort Benning, Georgia; and upon graduation from there, he’d been sent to the Airborne Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where, on his very first jump as a platoon commander, he had been blown off the drop zone and into a stand of pine trees. He’d suffered a compound fracture of his left leg, just above the ankle.
On his release from the Fort Bragg Army Hospital to limited duty, he had been assigned to the United States Military Academy at West Point as a tactical officer.
His classmates, his friends, were in combat, commanding troops around the world, and here he was baby-sitting the cadets. And now Felter was trying to pull this resignation business.
Lieutenant Rogers, moreover, was aware that he did not like Cadet Corporal Sanford T. Felter. He was even willing to admit that there just might be an element of anti-Semitism in his dislike, but he really believed that it wasn’t anti-Semitism but a personality clash based on chemistry. He just didn’t like Felter’s type.
Rogers was tall, Felter was short. Rogers was muscular, Felter was skinny. Rogers had had to really crack the books, Felter seemed to have a mind like a camera. He saw or heard something once, and thereafter could effortlessly call it forth from his memory. Rogers was gregarious, Felter was a loner. Rogers was a team player, Felter, as this resignation business proved, was completely immune to peer group pressure.
Wallace T. Rogers, aware of his personal feelings toward Cadet Corporal Sanford T. Felter, leaned over backward to make sure that not only did he treat Felter exactly as he treated the other cadets, but that Felter would never suspect that Rogers considered him to be a wise-ass Jewboy who had no business being in the Corps, or in the regular army.
When the word from the Commandant of Cadets had made its way down the chain of command to the company, instead of sending the charge of quarters to fetch Felter, Lt. Rogers told the CQ he was going to see Felter in his room.
Felter’s door was open, and Felter was in the process of buttoning himself into his greatcoat. He sensed the presence of Lieutenant Rogers, turned, and snapped to attention.
“Rest,” Rogers said, immediately, and smiled. “I seem to have caught you as you were leaving.”
“Sir, I was going to the telephone.”
“Then I’m glad I caught you, Felter,” Rogers said, smiling. “I just got the word from the Commandant of Cadets. You are authorized Christmas leave.”
“Yes, sir,” Felter said. “Thank you, sir. Sir, may I ask if there is some reason they changed their minds?”
“They didn’t say, Felter. I can guess…”
“Please do, sir.”
“Well, I don’t imagine with everything shut down for the holidays, that very much can be done about your resignation. And the commandant probably realized there was no reason you shouldn’t be granted leave.”
“Yes, sir,” Felter said. “That seems logical. Thank you, sir.”
Felter decided that what it really was was that the Commandant of Cadets was giving him another chance to think it over, that after his leave he would be given another chance to withdraw his resignation.
“You’re going to have to hustle to make the 4:48, Felter,” Lieutenant Rogers said.
“Yes, sir.”
“G
et your gear, and I’ll run you to the station in my car.”
“Thank you very much, sir.”
There was no time for Felter to call home and tell them he would be late. He called home from Grand Central Station. His mother answered the telephone and told him that Sharon and his father had gone to Pennsylvania Station in Newark to meet him, and hadn’t come back yet. He told his mother that he had missed the first train and would be home in about an hour.
On the train ride down the Hudson River to New York, he had considered again what, if anything, he should tell his parents, and more importantly, Sharon, of his intended resignation. He decided again to tell them nothing about it until he knew for sure what would happen. There was no point in going through the explosion that would follow his announcement until he had to. He had no intention of debating the issue with them.
Felter took the Hudson tubes from Manhattan to Newark attracting curious stares in his long, gray, brass-buttoned greatcoat and brimmed cap with the brim precisely one inch over his eyebrows; and again there were stares on the bus from the station to the Weequahic section of Newark. There weren’t that many West Point cadets anywhere, and there was only one in the Weequahic section of Newark.
Nice, upwardly mobile young Jewish boys from Weequahic tried to get in Yale and Harvard, not the United States Military Academy. Although some had rushed to the recruiting stations after Pearl Harbor, and there were as many blue-starred flags hanging from windows to announce a son or a father in the service in Weequahic as there were anywhere else, Sandy Felter was aware that he was probably the only individual in Weequahic who did not plan to take off his uniform as soon as the war was over.
When she saw him get off the bus, Sharon came out of the Old Warsaw Bakery, on Aldine Street, and let him hug her. The greatcoat was so bulky that he really couldn’t feel any of her except the warmth of her back under his hands.
Inside the bakery over the cash register, there was a picture of him as a plebe in a small frame with two little American flags crossed over it. It rather embarrassed him. He knew the only reason his parents were happy that he was at West Point was because it kept him out of what his father called the trenches. His father had been a Polish conscript in World War I.
When he saw Sharon, and smelled her, and tasted her, he wondered if he had done the right thing. If he stayed, he would live. The war was going to be over. He and Sharon could be married the day he graduated, and then he would have the four years of his obligated service to convince her that being a regular army officer was just as good and just as prestigious a way of life as a lawyer’s or a doctor’s or some other professional’s. Right now, Sharon, her parents, and his thought he was still behaving like a child.
He had, he realized, made the right decision about not telling them about resigning. It would have ruined Christmas. They were Jews, Polish and Russian Jews on Sandy Felter’s side, and Czech and German Jews on Sharon’s, but they celebrated Christmas anyway. Not in a religious sense of course, but with a Christmas tree and the exchange of presents and all sorts of Christmas baked goods from the old country. There was even a roast goose for Christmas dinner.
He couldn’t ruin that.
On Christmas Day after dinner, when both he and Sharon were feeling the wine they’d had with the goose, Sharon’s mother caught them kissing on the back stairs. He didn’t know how long she had watched them before she made her presence known, but she hadn’t seemed all that angry—even though Felter knew that Sharon’s mother had taken great pains to make sure they weren’t alone in circumstances “where something could happen.” They even had to take Sharon’s brother with them to the damned movies.
Whenever he could get Sharon alone for a moment to kiss her, he considered again that if he stayed at the Point, in eighteen months he could marry Sharon, and they wouldn’t have to take her little brother with them anymore. He didn’t believe that Sharon had the same thing happen to her that happened to him (his nuts ached), but he suspected, knew somehow, that she wanted to make love with him as much as he wanted to do it with her.
If he went off to the war, he was not only going to break his mother’s and his father’s heart, but he was liable to get killed, and then he would have died without ever having done it with Sharon.
On 28 December 1944, the field-grade duty officer at West Point telephoned the residence of Thaddeus Felter (formerly Taddeus Felztczy) in Newark, N.J., asked to speak to Cadet Corporal Felter, and told him, after he came on the line, that his leave had been cancelled and that he was to report back to the Academy as soon as possible.
Cadet Corporal Felter was not given a second chance to reconsider his resignation as he’d expected. He was ordered to turn in his cadet uniforms and equipment. He was then outfitted in an insignia-less olive-drab uniform, the “Ike” jacket and trousers now authorized for wear by both officers and enlisted men, and assigned a room in the Hotel Thayer.
He spent December 30 and 31 filling out forms and being fitted for uniforms. He ate a solitary dinner in the Hotel Thayer dining room on New Year’s Eve. He called his parents and Sharon, separately, two calls, and wished them a Happy New Year, and told them that no, nothing was wrong.
At 0445 on 2 January 1945, Lieutenant Wallace T. Rogers came to the Hotel Thayer, his arms loaded with uniforms from the officers’ sales store and a canvas Valv-pak with FELTER S.T. 2ND LT 0-3478003 already stencilled on its sides. He watched as Felter put on a green tunic and pink trousers and a gabardine trench coat, nodded his approval, and then delivered him to the quarters of the Commandant of Cadets, who fed him breakfast.
At 0615 on the plain, with a light snow falling, Sanford T. Felter raised his right hand and repeated after the Commandant of the United States Military Academy that he would protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from enemies, foreign and domestic, that he would obey all orders of the officers appointed over him, and that he would faithfully discharge the duties of the office he was about to enter. The Commandant of the United States Military Academy (’18), the Commandant of Cadets (’20), First Lieutenant Wallace T. Roger (’43), and the cadet colonel of the Corps of Cadets (’45) shook his hand.
A bull-voiced lieutenant colonel (’28), the sheet of paper flapping in his hands, bellowed, “Attention to Orders,” and then went on.
“Second Lieutenant Sanford T. Felter, Infantry, Army of the United States, 0–3478003, having reported upon active duty will proceed immediately to the Overseas Replacement Depot, Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, for further shipment by military air transport, Priority AAA1, to Headquarters, 40th Armored Division, in the field, European Theater of Operations.”
He about-faced and saluted the Commandant of West Point and the Commandant of Cadets.
“March past!” the Commandant of West Point ordered.
The cadet colonel and Second Lieutenant Felter marched up onto the low reviewing stand after the adjutant. The band played “The Washington Post March,” and the Corps of Cadets marched past the reviewing stand. When the color guard reached the reviewing stand, the band segued to “Army Blue.”
“Eyes right!” the first battalion commander called out.
Four bandsmen struck four bass drums. Boom.
Everyone knew the lyrics.
“We Say Farewell to Kay-det Gray.” Boom. “And Don the Army Blue.” Boom.
The Commandant of West Point looked out the corner of his eye, as he held the hand salute, at the Commandant of Cadets, and Second Lieutenant Felter, and the cadet colonel.
“We Say Farewell to Kay-det Gray.” Boom.
“And Don the Army Blue.” Boom.
The Commandant of West Point’s eyes were misty.
The band segued to “Dixie!”
That sonofabitch, the Commandant of West Point thought. The Commandant of Cadets was a goddamned Rebel, and he was always slipping the word to the bandmaster to play “Dixie.” He’d have a word with him.
And then he had second thoughts.
This wasn
’t the first time the band had played “Dixie” on the plain when a cadet resigned his appointment to go off to a war. The band had played “Dixie” at the last parade for the cadets who had resigned their appointments so they could fight for the Confederacy.
The Corps of Cadets, forming a Long Gray Line, marched off the plain to the strains of “Dixie” to return to the barracks and change uniforms and go, three-quarters of an hour late, to class. Second Lieutenant Sanford T. Felter walked off the reviewing stand and got into the Commandant of Cadets’ Ford staff car and was driven to the railroad station.
Lieutenant Wallace T. Rogers saw him onto the train.
“Good luck, Lieutenant,” he said.
“Thank you, sir,” Lieutenant Felter replied.
He was home just before three and his father wept and his mother shrieked and wailed as he thought they would.
Sharon told him just after supper, when they were left alone for an hour, that she had made up her mind that she wanted him to do it to her, but that her time of the month had come early and she was sorry that they couldn’t.
He reported to the Overseas Replacement Depot at Camp Kilmer at fifteen minutes before midnight, and two days later the Transportation Corps people took him and eight other people by bus to Newark Airport and put him on a C-54 just about full of crates marked FOR MEDICAL OFFICER ETO WHOLE BLOOD RUSH.
(Three)
Stalag XVII-B
Near Stettin, Poland
3 March 1945
The regulation stated only that a photograph of the Führer would be “prominently displayed.” It did not say that there had to be one in every room, or specifically that one be hung on the wall of the commanding officer, although the Führer’s stern visage had frowned down from the walls of every commanding officer’s office that Colonel Graf Peter-Paul von Greiffenberg could call to mind.
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