The Lieutenants

by W. E. B Griffin

  (Eight)

  Captain and Mrs. Rudolph G. MacMillan had been assigned a fourteen-room villa on the slope of the Tanaus Mountains looking down on the resort town itself. Lowell thought that it looked very much like the house his cousin Porter Lowell had built in East Hampton. He wondered where the Germans who owned it were now living.

  He parked his jeep beside MacMillan’s Buick and followed him up the brick stairs to the door. A German maid opened the door, but Roxy, in a white blouse, unbuttoned blue sweater, and pleated skirt, came rushing out of the living room.

  She grabbed Lowell’s arm, planted a kiss on his cheek, and said, “Congratulations, I’m so happy for you!”

  He had no idea what that was all about, and he was aware that MacMillan had signaled his wife to shut up.

  “Ooops,” Roxy said. “Me and my big mouth. What do you drink, Craig? We got it all.”

  “I’ll have a beer if you have one,” Craig said.

  “Good, that’ll go with the steaks,” Roxy said. She looked at her husband. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Mac, why don’t you tell him?”

  “Yes, indeed, please, Captain, sir, tell me,” Craig said.

  “Get us a beer, Roxy, and bring it out on the porch,” MacMillan said.

  The “porch” was actually a veranda, a thirty-by-eighty-foot area paved in red flagstone, along the edges of which a two-and-a-half-foot tall, foot-thick brick wall had been laid. Bad Nauheim was spread out below them. Craig could see the six-story white brick and glass headquarters building, the only modern building in town. And the municipal park, and the polo field, and even, he thought, the red tile roof of his stable.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said.

  Roxy came onto the veranda and handed him a beer.

  “It’s a long way from the chicken coop, I’ll say that,” she said. She banged the neck of her beer bottle against his. “Mud in your eye, kid.”

  “The chicken coop?” Lowell asked, smiling.

  “Our first home,” Roxy said. “Mac and I got married in Manhattan. That’s Manhattan, Kansas. Outside Riley. We lived with my folks, at first, and then Mac went airborne, and we went to Benning. Some redneck farmer had decided he could make more money gouging GIs than he could raising eggs, so he hosed out his chicken coop and turned it into three apartments. Plywood walls, and a two-holer fifty yards away. He charged us fifty bucks a month and Mac was drawing a hundred and fifty-two eighty, including jump pay. And we were glad to get it.”

  “Well, this is lovely,” Lowell said, sincerely, gesturing around the patio and up at the house itself.

  “It’s supposed to be field grade,” Roxy said. “But Mac pulled a couple of favors in.”

  Lowell didn’t know what to say, so he just smiled.

  “Have you told him? For Christ’s sake, tell him, so we can start the party.”

  “Jesus, Roxy, you can really screw things up,” Mac said.

  “You want me to tell him? OK, I’ll tell him,” Roxy said.

  “I’ll tell him,” MacMillan said. “I’ll tell him.” Lowell looked at him expectantly.

  “Have you ever thought of becoming an officer?” MacMillan said.

  “Not for long,” Lowell said. “They wanted me to go to OCS in Basic…”

  “You should have,” Roxy said.

  “I really don’t mean to be rude, Mrs. MacMillan,” Lowell said, “but I was in the army about three days when I realized that I didn’t belong in the army.”

  “That’s only because all you’ve seen of the army is the crap,” Roxy said. “It’s a good life, you’ll see.” He wondered what the hell she meant by that. But she was a good woman, and he would have been incapable of saying anything to hurt her feelings, even if he hadn’t been afraid of her husband.

  He smiled at her. “You have fifteen months and eleven days to convince me,” he said.

  “Tomorrow morning at 0800,” MacMillan announced in a flat voice, “you’re going to be sworn in as a second lieutenant.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Lowell asked.

  “You heard what I said,” MacMillan said. He was smiling at Lowell’s discomfiture.

  “I heard what you said, Captain,” Lowell said. “But I can’t believe it.”

  “Believe it. You got it from me. You can believe it,” MacMillan said.

  “Now we can party,” Roxy MacMillan said, and kissed him again, wetly, on the cheek.

  “Now just a moment,” Lowell said. “I don’t think I want to be an officer.”

  “What the hell kind of talk is that?” Roxy said. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Let me spell it out for you, Lowell,” MacMillan said. “The general wants to beat the frogs in a polo game. Now I don’t know why that’s important to him, and I don’t care. I’ll tell you this, though: it’s more than wanting to beat them at a game on horses.”

  “I was an enlisted wife,” Roxy said. “I know what it’s like. And it’s a hell of a lot better on officers’ row.”

  “Roxy, for Christ’s sake, will you shut up?” Rudy MacMillan said.

  She gave him a dirty look.

  “The general thinks the only way he can beat the frogs is if you’re playing polo,” MacMillan said to Lowell. “And frog officers don’t play polo with enlisted men. The general says you will play. You with me so far?”

  Lowell nodded, but said nothing.

  “So tomorrow you get sworn in as a second lieutenant,” MacMillan said. “You don’t know enough about the army, about soldiering, to make a pimple on a good corporal’s ass, much less a good officer. I know that, and you know that, but that’s not the point. The point is that you will be an officer and a gentleman, and you will get on your horse and play polo. You got that?”

  “And what happens at the end of polo season?” Lowell asked.

  “The general’s sure to get another star, and pretty soon. That means going back to the States. You keep your nose clean, and I give you my word we’ll take that gold bar off you as quick as we put it on.”

  “And I go back to being a private?”

  “You get out,” MacMillan said, his voice hard. “I will see to it that your application for relief from active duty for hardship reasons is approved.”

  “This isn’t the way I thought this was going to be at all,” Roxy said. “I thought he was just getting a commission. I don’t think I like this.”

  “How soon can I expect to get out?” Lowell asked.

  “In six months, you’ll be out. You can believe that. You got it from me.”

  “OK,” Lowell said.

  “You little shit,” MacMillan said, angrily. “When I was your age, I would have given my left nut for a commission.”

  “May I be excused, Captain?” Lowell said, getting to his feet.

  “Now wait just a minute!” Roxy said. “Mac, you stop this crap right now. This is my party. I asked Craig here for a party, and we’re going to have a party. You guys just leave your differences at the goddamn door.”

  “No, you can’t be excused,” MacMillan said. “The general and Mrs. Waterford are due here in ten minutes. You will stay here, and you will act like you’re having a good time. You understand me?”

  “Now there’s a direct order if I ever heard one,” General Waterford said from the edge of the veranda. “But I don’t see how you could possibly enforce it, Mac.”

  Lowell and MacMillan stood up.

  “Good evening, Craig,” Mrs. Waterford said. She walked up to him and gave him her hand. “How nice to see you.”

  “Good evening,” Lowell said. He wondered how much of the exchange the Waterfords had heard. There were no signs that they had heard any of it except the last angry remark MacMillan had made.

  “I understand that you’re to be commissioned,” Mrs. Waterford said. “Congratulations. I think you’ll make a fine officer.”

  He looked at her, wondering if she was simply being gracious, or whether she actually meant what she was saying.

  “Thank you,
” he said.

  A cut-in-half, fifty-five-gallon barrel on legs was carried onto the veranda by two German maids. Major General Peterson K. Waterford removed his tunic, his necktie, and rolled up his sleeves. He put on a large white apron, on the front of which was stenciled the face of a jolly chef in a chef’s hat and the legend, CHIEF COOK AND BOTTLEWASHER. Next he built a charcoal fire, and then personally broiled steaks. While he was cooking, he drank several bottles of beer, from the neck.

  The steaks were excellent, thick, charred on the outside and pink in the middle. Roxy MacMillan provided baked potatoes, a huge salad, and garlic bread.

  They talked polo. MacMillan, who knew nothing about polo, had nothing to say, and this pleased Lowell.

  What the fuck, Lowell thought, sometime during the evening. I will play polo, and I will get out of the army six months early, and in the meantime I will be an officer. What have I got to complain about?

  V

  (One)

  Bad Nauheim, Germany

  24 May 1946

  The Army of Occupation, recognizing the need for personal vehicles, and unwilling to pay what it would cost to ship tens of thousands of civilian automobiles from the States, had run excess-to-needs jeeps through the Griesheim ordnance depot. These were rebuilt to military specifications, except that the vehicles were painted black rather than olive-drab. They were sold to the post exchange for the cost of rebuilding $430, and resold to enlisted personnel who had expressed a desire to purchase such a vehicle for private transportation and who had been lucky enough to have their name drawn from a drum usually employed for bingo games at the service club. Private Craig Lowell’s first (and as it turned out, his last) visit to the service club had been to witness the raffle. His had been one of ten names drawn.

  Private Craig Lowell, in a Class “A” OD uniform, parked his black jeep behind division headquarters and met Captain Rudy MacMillan in the basement coffee shop. MacMillan told him to take off his Ike jacket. When Lowell had handed over his jacket, MacMillan laid it on the table, and unpinned the enlisted man’s insignia (a U.S. and a representation of a World War I tank stamped on round brass discs) from the lapels. He reached out his hand and dropped them into Lowell’s hand.

  “Souvenir,” he said. Then he ripped open small cardboard packages. He pinned small, unbacked, U.S. insignia to the upper lapels, a representation of a World War I tank to the lower lapels, and a single golden bar on the epaulets of the Ike jacket. He handed the jacket back to Lowell. By the time Lowell had shrugged into it, MacMillan had pinned a gold bar to the front of a gabardine overseas cap with officer’s braid sewn along its seams.

  He tossed Lowell’s woolen enlisted man’s overseas cap into the wastebasket.

  “You won’t need that anymore,” he said. He handed Lowell the officer’s cap. “You tuck that under your belt,” he said. “You do not tuck it in your epaulet.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He led Lowell back through the coffee shop, into a corridor, and to an elevator. They rode up to the fourth floor, walked down a hotel corridor, and came to a corner suite, converted into offices.

  “Good morning, Sergeant,” MacMillan said to a master sergeant behind a desk. “I believe Colonel Webster expects us.”

  “Oh, he expects you all right,” the master sergeant said. “You’ve really made his whole day with this, Captain.”

  “Yours not to reason why, Sergeant,” MacMillan said. “Yours but to have everything all typed out.”

  “He called the general, you know,” the sergeant said.

  “I thought he might,” MacMillan said. “I’m sure that the general reassured the colonel of Lowell’s splendid, all-around qualifications to become an officer.”

  The sergeant looked at Lowell with amused contempt. He shook his head, then picked up the telephone.

  Fuck you, Lowell thought. Fifteen minutes from now, you will have to call me “sir.”

  “Captain MacMillan is here, Colonel,” he said. There was a reply. “Yes, sir.”

  He hung up the telephone.

  “I gather the colonel is composing himself,” he said, wryly. “He said to get everything signed.”

  MacMillan nodded. The sergeant got up. “You’d better sit down,” he said to Lowell. “There’s a lot of paperwork.”

  He handed Lowell a pen and handed him the first of an inch-thick stack of forms, each of which had to be signed. Lowell’s fingers actually became cramped before he was finished, and by the time he was done, his signature, never very legible, had deteriorated into a scrawl.

  There was a five-minute wait after all the papers had been signed. The sergeant major and MacMillan discussed someone Lowell had never heard of, an old friend from long ago. The telephone rang.

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant said. He listened. “Yes, sir,” he repeated, and hung up the telephone.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “the colonel will see you now.” He stood up and held open the door.

  Lowell marched into the large room on MacMillan’s heels. When MacMillan stopped, he stopped. When MacMillan saluted, he saluted.

  “Good morning, Colonel,” MacMillan said. The colonel ignored him.

  “You are Craig W. Lowell?” the colonel said to Lowell.

  “Yes, sir.”

  There was a look of utter loathing in the colonel’s eyes. He hadn’t liked it when the army had directly commissioned engineers, transportation experts, college professors, and other professionals in War II. He was furious with the idea of this young pup being made an officer simply because General Waterford wanted to play polo with him.

  “I thank you for your opinion, Colonel,” the general had said, when he telephoned him to protest. “But I want him commissioned.”

  Colonel Webster, a portly, dignified man, stood up.

  “Come to attention,” he said. “Raise your right hand and repeat after me: ‘I, your name…’”

  “I, Craig W. Lowell…”

  “Do solemnly swear, or affirm…”

  “Do solemnly swear, or affirm,” Lowell parroted, “that I will defend and protect the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to them; that I will obey all orders of the President of the United States and the officers appointed over me, according to the regulations and the Uniform Code of Justice; and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office which I am about to assume. So help me, God.”

  The colonel lowered his hand. With infinite contempt, he said, “Congratulations, Lieutenant, you are now a member of the officer corps of the United States Army. You are dismissed.”

  MacMillan saluted, and Craig Lowell saluted. They performed an about-face. They started to march out of the office.

  “I’m going to have your ass for this, MacMillan,” the colonel said.

  MacMillan did not respond. They marched out of the outer office and went back down the corridor to the elevator. MacMillan didn’t say a word until they were back in the basement.

  “The general,” he said, “will be free about 1430. Adjust your schedule accordingly.”

  “Yes, sir,” Lowell said.

  “Until you get your feet on the ground, I suggest you keep your ass out of the line of fire,” MacMillan said.

  Lowell nodded his understanding.

  “Don’t look so goddamn scared,” MacMillan said. “You’re a survivor. You’ll be able to handle this with no sweat.”

  Lowell nodded his head, because he knew MacMillan expected him to. In point of fact, however, he was not scared. Colonel Webster was obviously furious that he had been commissioned, and obviously held him in contempt; but Webster understood that Lowell hadn’t had any more choice in the matter than he did. MacMillan’s ass was in the line of fire, not his.

  As he walked across the parking lot to his jeep, a technical sergeant threw him a crisp salute, and barked, “Good morning, sir.”

  Second Lieutenant Lowell returned the salute.

 
“How are you today, Sergeant?” he said.

  I’ll be a sonofabitch, he thought. I did that splendidly.

  When Lowell drove back to the stable, climbed the stairs to his rooms, and pushed open the door, the bed had been stripped of sheets. When he opened his wall locker, it was empty. He turned around in confusion and found himself facing Ludwig, the groom, who was smiling broadly.

  “I have taken the liberty of having the lieutenant’s luggage packed and sent to the bachelor officer’s hotel,” Ludwig said to him. The lieutenant will find his boots and breeches in the officer’s locker room.”

  “The word got around quickly, didn’t it?” Lowell asked.

  “Will the lieutenant accept the best wishes for a long and distinguished career from a former Rittmeister of the 17th Westphalian Cavalry?”

  “Is that what you were, Ludwig?” Lowell asked.

  Ludwig nodded.

  “Well, thank you,” Lowell said. “But I’m afraid my ‘long and distinguished career’ is liable to end as quickly as it began. When, for example, the French ride all over us.”

  “I think you’re going to do very well,” Ludwig said. “The ponies are coming along very well. And they’re eighty percent of the game.”

  “You’ve played, haven’t you?” Lowell asked, with sudden insight.

  “Yes,” Ludwig said. “And one day, perhaps, I will be able to play again.” He was trying, Lowell realized, to sound more cheerful than he felt.

  “For God’s sake, don’t let the general hear you say that,” Lowell said, “or you’ll wind up as a second lieutenant.”

  “I would be happy to be a second lieutenant,” Ludwig said. “That sounds so much better than Unterwachtmeister.”

  “What the hell is that?”

  “I have been accepted by the Grenzpolizei, the border police, as an Unterwachtmeister. The same thing as a PFC.”

  “I don’t understand that,” Lowell said. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m a soldier, as you are a soldier, Lieutenant,” Ludwig said. “For me it was either the French Foreign Legion or the border police. The Legion is full of Nazis, so it’s the border police.”

  “You’re wrong about that, Ludwig. I’m no soldier.”