The Lieutenants

by W. E. B Griffin

  “It’s a very good place for you to be,” Hanrahan said. “There aren’t very many aviators around who know their ass from a hole in the ground about the army. And don’t underestimate your medal. You can be a very big fish in a small pond.”

  “You know, I don’t believe any of this conversation,” MacMillan said.

  “I’m not finished,” the colonel said. “I’ve got you a space at Riley.”

  “The Ground General School? Doing what?”

  “For a fourteen-week course, after which you will be an army liaison pilot,” the colonel said.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” MacMillan said. “All those guys are is commissioned jeep drivers.”

  “Some of them are, and some of them are just as good soldiers as you are,” Hanrahan said, coldly. Then he lightened his voice. “They get flight pay, which is the same dough as jump pay. What have you got to lose?”

  “I’m supposed to spend the next ten, fifteen years flying one of those little airplanes? An aerial jeep driver?”

  “By then, you’ll be a captain. With a little bit of luck, a major.” He looked at MacMillan. “Airborne is dead, Mac. You either go to army aviation or you spend your time as a talking dummy for the PIO guys, giving speeches to the VFW. Believe me.”

  MacMillan looked at Hanrahan for a full minute before he finally said anything.

  “Army aviation?” he asked, incredulous.

  Hanrahan nodded his head.

  “Oh, goddamn,” MacMillan said. “Wait till Roxy hears about this.”

  “Happy landings, Mac,” Hanrahan said.

  (Two)

  Sandhofen, Germany

  16 February 1946

  It was Major General Peterson K. Waterford’s custom to receive newly assigned junior officers in his office at Headquarters, United States Constabulary. The headquarters was established in a Kaserne designed, it was rumored, by Albert Speer himself, and intended to provide the officer cadets of the SS with far more luxurious accommodations than those provided to officer cadets of the army, navy, and air force.

  The office now occupied by General Waterford was the most impressive he had ever occupied. His red, two-starred major general’s flag and the cavalry yellow flag of the Constabulary were crossed against the wall behind a desk. (The insignia of the Constabulary, sewn into the middle of the flag, was a “C” pierced by a lightning bolt, giving the irreverent cause to refer to the United States Constabulary, the police force of the United States Army of Occupation, as “the Circle C Cab Company.”) The desk itself was twelve feet long and six feet wide. It was forty-four feet from the forward edge of the desk to the door to the office.

  General Waterford lined newly arrived officers up before his enormous desk, and gave them a thirty-minute pep talk and “Welcome to the U.S. Constabulary” handshake, before sending them down for duty to the regiments and battalions and companies and platoons.

  Twenty or thirty company-grade officers every week or so were gathered in the general’s outer office by Lieutenant Davis, his junior aide-de-camp. They were given a cup of coffee, while the aide briefed them on what was expected of them when they passed through the door onto which was fastened a gleaming brass nameplate which read, MAJOR GENERAL PETERSON K. WATERFORD, COMMANDING GENERAL.

  The aide-de-camp explained that the reception was designed to make them feel part of the outfit, to give them an understanding of the great privilege it was for them to be in the Constab, and under the command of Major General Peterson K. Waterford himself.

  Lieutenant Davis briefed groups of junior officers so often that he hardly paid any attention to individual officers at all. The only reason that First Lieutenant MacMillan had caught First Lieutenant Davis’s eye at all was because of what MacMillan wore on the tunic of his pinks and greens when he reported at the prescribed time to be received by the general. Everybody else in the room was wearing the ribbons representing the decorations they had been awarded. The general desired that every officer and trooper of the United States Constabulary wear his authorized ribbons. The general’s desire was made known in the mimeographed Memo to Newly Assigned Officers furnished each newcomer.

  Lieutenant MacMillan was not wearing any ribbons at all when he showed up in General Waterford’s outer office. He did, however, have three metal qualification devices pinned to his tunic. On top was the Expert Combat Infantry Badge. Below the CIB was a set of paratrooper’s wings, with five stars signifying jumps in combat, and below them he wore a set of aviator’s wings.

  General Waterford said nothing about MacMillan’s defiance vis-à-vis the wearing of authorized ribbons, but when all the hands had been shaken, and the newcomers had been dismissed and were leaving his office, Major General Waterford said: “Lieutenant MacMillan, will you please stay a moment after these gentlemen have gone?”

  It was Lieutenant Davis’s firm belief that Lieutenant MacMillan’s first step in the Constab had been into a bucket of shit. He was going to have his ass eaten out, in General Waterford’s legendary manner, for not having worn his ribbons.

  And it had started out that way, too.

  “Lieutenant MacMillan,” the general said. “I am somewhat surprised to see that you are not wearing your ribbons.”

  MacMillan came to attention but said nothing.

  Oh, you poor bastard, Lieutenant Davis thought.

  “If I had your decorations, Lieutenant MacMillan, I would wear them proudly,” the general said. MacMillan responded to that with a slightly raised quizzical eyebrow.

  “Oh, yes, Lieutenant MacMillan,” the general said. “I know all about your decorations, and how you came by them. It has also been brought to my attention that under stress, you are prone to use foul and obscene language to senior officers.”

  “Sir?” MacMillan asked.

  “‘Fuck it, Colonel,’” the general said. “‘Have the bugler sound the charge.’”

  MacMillan looked really confused now. The general allowed him to sweat for a full sixty seconds before walking up to him with his hand extended. “Bobby Bellmon’s my son-in-law, Mac. Welcome aboard.”

  “Thank you, sir,” MacMillan said.

  “Take a good look at this officer, Davis,” the general had said. “There are very few men who get so much as a Bronze Star without getting their ass shot up. MacMillan has never been so much as scratched. But if he were wearing all his ribbons, the way he’s supposed to, he would be wearing that little blue one with the white stars.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Davis said.

  “I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do with you, Mac,” the general said. “Bobby wrote and asked me to take care of you, and you know I’ll do that. And I’ll be damned if I’ll have a Medal of Honor winner doing nothing more than flying a puddle jumper.”

  “Sir,” MacMillan said, “if the Lieutenant may be permitted to make a suggestion?”

  Waterford gestured with his hand, “come on.”

  “How about a company of armored infantry, sir?”

  Waterford shook his head. “Bobby said you’d ask for one,” he said. “But I don’t think so.”

  “Yes, sir,” MacMillan said.

  “What did you do before, Mac? Before you started jumping out of airplanes?”

  “I was a dog robber, sir.”

  “A dog robber? For whom?”

  “Colonel Neal, in the old 18th Infantry.”

  The general looked thoughtful for a minute. Then he said, “Why not? That’s a good idea.”

  “Sir?” MacMillan said.

  “For the time being,” General Waterford said, “you can be my flying aide-de-camp. I’ll be losing my senior aide before long, anyway. You can be my aide and fly me around. How does that sound?”

  “Whatever the General decides, sir.”

  “It’s settled then,” Waterford said. “Davis, see to his orders, and then see that he’s settled down in quarters, will you?” He shook MacMillan’s hand again. “In a couple of days, when you’re settled, Mrs
. Waterford and I would like to have you and Mrs. MacMillan for dinner. Just family, Mac. Bobby feels that way about you, and I’m sure we will.”

  Some time later, a friend in the office of the chief of staff told Davis that Waterford had written a letter to the War Department, urging the special promotion of Lieutenant MacMillan to captain, stating that in his present assignment he had “demonstrated an ability to perform in a staff capacity very nearly as well as his record indicates he can perform in ground combat.”

  MacMillan’s “ability to perform in a staff capacity,” Lieutenant Davis somewhat bitterly thought, was not quite what it sounded like on paper. MacMillan was an ace scrounger. If the Class Six (wine, beer, and spirits) weekly ration for the division included one case of really good scotch and really good bourbon, it appeared in the general’s mess and in his quarters. When Mrs. Waterford gave a buffet dinner for senior officers and their ladies, it contained roast wild boar and venison, even if that meant a squad of soldiers had to be sent out into the Tanaus Mountains with orders not to return until they had boar and deer in the back of their weapons carriers. MacMillan turned up a Hungarian bootmaker in a displaced persons’ camp and put him to work turning out handmade tanker’s boots for the senior officers and shoes for their wives. He even found a deserted railway car once owned by some Nazi bigwig, and put fifteen people to work turning it into a private “rolling command post” for General Waterford. Waterford was permitted to roll into Berlin to visit an old classmate with all the splendor of Reichsmarschall Göring. He rolled around Hesse in a Horche that had once belonged to Rommel. MacMillan found it, and arranged for it to be put into like-new order.

  There was nothing whatever Davis could do but nurse his ill feelings in private. Among other things, Mrs. Waterford’s golf partner and crony was Mrs. Roxanne MacMillan. MacMillan had moved in, and he was squeezed out. He didn’t like it, but there was nothing whatever he could do about it.

  The only one who had been able to resist him at all was Major Robert Robbins, the division aviation officer. Robbins was that rara avis, a West Pointer who was also an army aviator. And he knew how to play the game. By constantly reminding the general that a general should have a field-grade officer to fly him about, rather than a lowly lieutenant, and by subtly reminding the general that Lieutenant MacMillan was fresh from flight school, where he had been flying since 1941, he had remained the general’s personal pilot.

  (Three)

  The Frankfurt am Main—Chemnitz Autobahn

  Near Bad Hersfeld, Germany

  10 May 1946

  The highway winds its way through pine forests and fields, its two double lanes often so far apart that one cannot be seen from the other. When there is no traffic, as there was none today, there is a pleasant feeling of being suspended in time and space.

  The car was a Chevrolet, a brand new one, dark blue, which had been shipped as parts from the States and assembled at a General Motors truck factory in Belgium. It bore the license plates carried on personal automobiles of soldiers of the Army of Occupation, and a smaller plate identifying its owner as an enlisted man.

  The driver was a hulking, square-faced man in his late forties, his hair so closely cropped that a six-inch scar on his scalp was clearly visible. There were four rows of ribbons above his breast pocket, and an Expert Combat Infantry Badge. On his sleeves there were the chevrons—three up and three down, individual stripes of felt sewn on a woolen background—of a master sergeant. On one sleeve were nine diagonal felt stripes, each signifying three years of service, and on the other were six-inch-long golden stripes, each signifying six months of overseas service during World War II.

  Beside him on the front seat was a slight, gray-haired woman of about his age. She was wearing a skirt and a blouse and an unbuttoned sweater. Her only jewelry was a well-worn golden wedding band and a wristwatch. From time to time, she took a cigarette from her purse. Whenever she did, without taking his eyes from the road, the master sergeant produced a Ronson lighter and held it out for her.

  The back seat of the four-door sedan was jammed full of wooden boxes and paper bags. The ends of cigarette cartons, soap powder boxes, and other grocery items could be seen, as could bloodstained packages of meat.

  All of a sudden, when they came around a curve on the highway, two soldiers stepped into the road and signaled for the car to pull over. They wore varnished helmet liners with Constabulary insignia painted on their sides and leather Sam Brown belts; and they were armed with .45 Colt pistols.

  “Oh, goddamnit!” the master sergeant said, when he realized they had been bagged by a Constabulary speed trap. Then, glancing in embarrassment at the woman beside him, he said, “Sorry.”

  “It’s all right, Tom,” the woman said.

  He braked the Chevrolet and pulled to the shoulder of the road.

  One of the two Constabulary troopers walked to the car. The master sergeant rolled down the window.

  “Got you good, Sergeant,” the Constabulary trooper said. “Sixty-eight miles per hour.” The speed limit was fifty miles per hour and strictly enforced.

  “Now what?” the master sergeant asked.

  “Pull it over there, and report to the lieutenant,” the Constabulary trooper said, pointing to a nearly hidden dirt road. Twenty yards up it three jeeps and a three-quarter-ton weapons carrier were parked, and a canvas fly had been erected over a field desk.

  The master sergeant nodded, rolled up the window, and started up the road.

  “I’m sorry about this.”

  “It couldn’t be helped,” the woman replied.

  “What do you think I should do?” he asked.

  “Pay the two dollars,” she said, and laughed.

  He stopped the car, pulled on the parking brake, then took his overseas cap from the seat, put it on his head, and got out of the car. As he walked to the fly-shielded field desk, he tugged the hem of his Ike jacket down over his trousers.

  The lieutenant, the woman noticed, took his sweet time in making himself available to receive the sergeant; but he finally walked behind the desk, sat down on a folding chair, and permitted the sergeant to salute and report as ordered.

  She saw him handing over his driver’s license and the vehicle registration. Then the lieutenant swaggered over to the car.

  “You German, lady?” he asked.

  “No,” the woman said. “I’m American.”

  “What have you got in the back?” the lieutenant demanded, and then, without waiting for a reply, jerked open the back door.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. Look at this. What were you planning to do, open a store?”

  “Hey, lieutenant!” the master sergeant called.

  “What did you say? What did you say, Sergeant? Did I hear you say ‘Hey’ to me?”

  “Excuse me, sir,” the master sergeant said. “No disrespect intended.”

  “You just stand where you are, come to attention, and stay there until ordered otherwise, clear?”

  The master sergeant looked at the woman. She made a slight gesture to him, warning him to keep his temper. The master sergeant came to attention.

  “Just what do you think you’re doing, Lieutenant?” the woman asked.

  “What I think I’m doing, lady, is stopping your little black market operation.”

  “I wasn’t aware that it was illegal to have commissary goods in a personal automobile,” she said, reasonably.

  “Who you trying to kid, lady?” the lieutenant said. “You got enough goddamned goodies in there to start a store.”

  “They’re intended as a gift,” she said.

  “And pigs have wings,” he said. He called to the troopers standing under the fly, and pointed out two of them. “You guys start unloading this car,” he ordered. “I want a complete inventory.”

  “You are charging us with blackmarketing?” the woman asked.

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “Arresting us?”

  “You got it,” he said.
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  “May I make a telephone call?” she asked.”

  “No, you can’t make a telephone call,” he said. “You and your husband are under arrest. Understand?”

  “I understand that when you’re arrested, you are permitted a telephone call,” she said. “I’m politely asking you to make that call.”

  He looked at her for a long moment before he replied. “Who you want to call?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “OK,” he said. “Come on.” He walked ahead of her to the table, on which sat a field telephone. She saw that the Constab corporal, a pleasant-faced young kid, was embarrassed by the lieutenant’s behavior. “Get the switchboard for her,” the lieutenant ordered. The kid cranked the field phone.

  “Ma’am,” he said, “this is the 14th Constab switchboard.”

  “You know how to work a field phone?” the lieutenant said. “You got to push the butterfly switch to talk.”

  “Thank you,” she said. She took the handset and depressed the butterfly switch. “Patch me through to Jailer Six Six,” she said.

  The lieutenant looked at her with interest. Jailer Six was the Constabulary’s provost marshal. Jailer Six Six, he decided, was probably the provost marshal sergeant. This guy had six stripes; it was therefore logical to conclude that he was an old buddy of the provost marshal sergeant. The Old Soldier Network. Well, she was wasting her time.

  “Oh, Charley,” she said to the telephone, “I’m so glad I caught you in.”

  Charley, whoever Charley was, said something the lieutenant couldn’t hear. Then the woman went on: “Charley, Tom and I just got ourselves arrested. No, I’m not kidding. About ten miles out of Bad Hersfeld. Speeding, and I’m afraid we’re guilty of that. But also for black-marketing, and I plead absolutely innocent to that charge.”

  “Yes, there’s an officer here,” she said. She handed the telephone to the lieutenant.

  “Lieutenant Corte,” he said, sharply.

  “Lieutenant,” the voice at the other end of the line said, “the correct manner of answering a military telephone, unless you know that the caller is junior to you, is to append the term ‘sir’ after your name.”