“Felter,” Felter finally said, putting out his hand to Lowell.
“Lowell,” Lowell replied, shaking his hand. Felter saw the field artillery captain get up and walk to the window, obviously to spare himself the business of introductions. He turned to look at Lowell again.
“I think you have just been snubbed,” Lowell said.
Felter chuckled. “Where are you from?” he asked.
“New York,” Lowell said.
“I’m from Newark,” Felter volunteered.
“What did you do wrong?” Lowell asked.
“According to the DR,” Felter said, “I have violated every known uniform regulation. And, in addition, went unshaved.”
“I meant before,” Lowell said. “Why are they sending you to Greece?”
“Actually, I volunteered for the assignment,” Felter said.
Lowell didn’t reply. Felter understood that Lowell didn’t believe him.
“What about you?” he asked.
“Apparently things are terribly fucked up in Athens,” Lowell said. “And General Clay decided I was the only man who could straighten things out.”
Felter chuckled.
“What about you, Captain?” Lowell called across the room. “What shocking breach of military behavior did you commit?”
“When I have something to say to you, Lieutenant,” the captain flared, “I’ll let you know. Now you just sit there, and keep your goddamned mouth shut.”
Lowell insolently clapped his hand over his mouth.
“Are you looking for trouble, Lieutenant?” the captain flared.
“What are you threatening, Captain?” Lowell said. “That you’ll have me sent to Greece?”
The captain glared at him.
“Just shut the fuck up,” he said, finally.
“Yes, sir,” Lowell said, and started to say something else. Felter shook his head, “no.” Lowell said nothing else.
A jeep came for them thirty minutes later, and carried them far down a taxiway to a Douglas C-47, which bore the insignia of the European Air Transport Command. Below the cockpit window was a well-executed painting of a nearly nude, large-breasted female and the words THE GREASY GODDESS II.
The aircraft had its nylon-and-pole seats folded against the walls of the fuselage to accommodate a half dozen large crates strapped to the floor. Forward, behind the door to the cockpit, was a pile of canvas mail bags. Running down the center of the fuselage ceiling was the cable to which static lines were hooked, and the red and green lights used to signal the jump-master were mounted by the door. The plane was equipped to drop parachutists. Felter wondered, idly, if it had been used for that purpose in the war.
The crew chief asked for their names, and wrote them on the manifest. He handed a copy of it to a ground crewman. He walked forward; and almost immediately, the plane shuddered as the engines were started. The crew chief came back, closed the door, and spoke to them briefly.
“When we get up, you can probably find a mail bag soft enough to sleep on,” he said. He steadied himself by putting a hand, palm up, against the ceiling. The Gooney-Bird was already taxiing to the runway.
They refueled late at night in Naples, and then flew on through the blackness to Athens.
VII
(One)
Athens, Greece
12 July 1946
They landed at Elliniko Airfield as dawn broke. They were met at the airport by an American sergeant who wore British Army boots and who carried a Thompson submachine gun slung over his shoulder. He led them to the first British Army truck either of them had ever seen. The captain got in the front seat and they got in the back of the truck and were driven into Athens. Peering awkwardly out the back, Lowell saw a waterfront.
“We’re on the coast,” he announced. “What is that, the Mediterranean?”
Felter shook his head.
“That’s the Saronikos Koplos,” he said.
“The what?” Lowell asked, chuckling.
“Saronikos Kolpos,” Felter repeated. “Greece is sort of a peninsula here between the Ionian Sea and the Aegean. At the bottom is the Sea of Crete. What we’re looking at is the Saronikos Kolpos.”
“Lieutenant, sir,” Lowell said, now actually laughing, “you are a fucking fountain of information.”
Despite himself, Felter smiled at Lowell. Lowell was obviously a fuck-up, and Felter accepted as gospel that an officer was judged by his associates. He had intended to treat Lowell with correct remoteness—in other words ignore him, let him sense he didn’t want to become a buddy. But he could not do that, and neither could he bring himself to pull rank on the handsome young second lieutenant.
“I know what that is,” Lowell said a few minutes later, pointing out the rear of the truck at the Acropolis. “That’s the Colosseum.”
“Acropolis, stupid,” Felter corrected him.
“Acropolis, Colosseum, what’s the difference?”
“Culture as we know it comes from this one,” Felter said, not really sure if he was having his leg pulled or not. “And they fed you Christians to the lions in the other one.”
“I’ll be goddamned!” Lowell said, in mock awe.
They passed the Grande Bretagne Hotel, then drove to the rear of it and stopped. They entered the building through a rear door around which had been erected a sandbag barrier. A major was waiting for them. He showed them the dining room and told them where to find him after they had had breakfast.
Breakfast in the elegant but seedy dining room of the Grande Bretagne was coffee, bread, reconstituted dried scrambled eggs, and very salty bacon from 10-in-1 rations.
Afterward, they sought out the major, who turned them over to a florid-faced, middle-aged lieutenant colonel of artillery who didn’t bother to disguise his disappointment in them. He told them they would receive their assignments later that day, after they had been “in-processed.”
They were given some additional immunization injections and provided with a bottle of pills by an army doctor, a young captain, who warned them not to so much as brush their teeth in water that had not had a pill dissolved in it.
They were given a brief lecture by a major of the Signal Corps on the role of the United States Army Military Advisory Group, Greece. A captain of the Adjutant General’s Corps, an old one, twice as old as the starchy little prick who had rushed Lowell out of the Constab with such relish, took from them their next of kin and home address, and provided them with a printed LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT.
The elderly AGC captain didn’t say anything, just raised his eyebrows, when Craig Lowell elected to leave all his worldly goods to a fraulein named Ilse, in Germany. Fraulein Ilse, it was the captain’s solemn judgment, would not be the only fur-line to be enriched by the death of some kid whose cherry she had copped. Fuck it, it was their life, and their money, and in the captain’s judgment, there wasn’t all that much difference between a kraut cunt and some greedy goddamned relative in the States.
However he had to tell Lowell there was no way the army would let him leave his GI insurance to a German lady; beneficiaries not next of kin had to be U.S. citizens.
They were then taken to the fourth floor of the Grande Bretagne, where a ballroom had been converted into a supply and arms room. They were issued British Army helmets, the notion being that the silhouette of standard U.S. Army helmets was too close to that of the Wehrmacht and Red Army helmets with which some of the communist guerrillas were equipped. There was no mistaking the silhouette of a British Army helmet. It resembled a flat-chested woman, the captain of ordnance in charge of the arms room told them.
They were given their choice of weapons.
There were M1 Garand .30–06 rifles and .303 British Lee-Enfields and 7.92 mm German Mausers, even a few 7.62 mm Russian Moissant Nagants.
There were U.S. .30 caliber carbines, M1 and M2.
There were .45 ACP Thompson submachine guns and 9 mm British Sten submachine guns.
There were standard issue .45 automatics
, .455 Webley revolvers, .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolvers, 9 mm Luger pistols, and even a half dozen .32 ACP Browning automatic pistols. These were made in Belgium but bore the Nazi swastika on their plastic grips right below the place where the words BROWNING BROS OGDEN UTAH USA had been stamped in the slide.
“Things are a little fucked up,” the ordnance officer, an old leathery-faced chief warrant officer, told them. “Eventually, the Greeks will have all U.S. Army stuff, and there won’t be any problem. But right now, what the troops have is English and captured kraut stuff. Lugers, Mauser rifles, Schmeisser machine pistols. Now that’s the thing to get your hands on, if you can. Best goddamn machine pistol ever made. Naturally, none of them ever get back this far, and when they do, the brass grab them. The Sten gun isn’t worth shit.
“The M1, the Garand, has it all over the Lee-Enfield .303, but there’s goddamn little .30–06 ammo in clips up where you guys are going. Plenty of .30–06 for the machine guns, so if you want to try to reuse your clips, that’s your option.”
Lowell remembered trying without much success to reload the spring steel clips for the Garand on the rifle range at Fort Dix.
“I can give you all the clipped .30–06 you want here, but you’re going to have to carry it with you,” the old warrant officer went on. “Now the Webley .455 ain’t worth a shit either, and that .38 S&W shoots a .38 S&W as opposed to a .38 Special. That’s really not worth a shit. There’s nothing beats an army .45 if you can shoot one, but there’s Lugers if you want. Plenty of 9 mm all over.”
“What do the regulations say we’re supposed to draw?” Lieutenant Felter asked, politely.
“They haven’t made up their mind yet, Lieutenant,” the warrant officer said. “There’s one school of thought that says you’re a technical advisor and a noncombatant, and don’t have to go armed at all. Nobody believes that shit. Now, if you should want to draw a U.S. Army weapon for protection against burglars, or whatever, you can have a .45 and either an M1 or a carbine or a Thompson. But you have to sign for them.
“You don’t want to sign for a weapon, you can take your choice of anything else. One pistol and one rifle or a Sten. They’re not on paper.”
Lieutenant Felter took and signed for a Colt .45 and a Thompson submachine gun. The captain from the 19th Armored Field Artillery took and signed for a .45 and a carbine. Lowell had fired the Thompson “for familiarization” at Fort Dix and hadn’t been able to keep it from climbing off the target. He was therefore afraid of it and signed for an M1 instead. Giving in to an impulse, he also took a 9 mm Luger. He had never held one in his hands before. For that matter, it was the second pistol he had ever held in his hands at all. He had also fired “for familiarization” the Colt .45 at Fort Dix and had been unable to hit a three-by-four target at twenty-five yards with it.
Had he wanted to, however, he could have fired High Expert with the Garand. He had been surprised at how he had taken to the Garand. The legendary recoil, which had frightened him and the other trainees, had turned out to be far less uncomfortable than that of the 12-bore Browning over-and-under his grandfather had given him for his twelvth birthday. He had spent long hours firing the Browning on the trap range his grandfather had built behind his house on the island. He had understood the Garand from about the fifth shot he had taken with it; and by the time their week on their range was over, he felt quite as comfortable with it as any gun he had ever fired. If he had to take a shot at somebody, which seemed beyond credibility, he would do it with a Garand. He took the Luger because he had always wanted one. It looked lethal. All self-respecting Nazi bad guys in the movies, and sometimes even Humphrey Bogart and Alan Ladd, used Lugers. But the idea that he would actually shoot it at somebody was as ludicrous as the grade B movies.
Lowell took a sealed oblong tin can marked “320 Rounds Caliber .30–06 Ball in Clips and Bandoliers” and two loose bandoliers of Garand ammunition. The ordnance warrant officer gave him two cardboard boxes of pistol ammunition. The printing on them was in German: Fur Pistolen -08 9 mm deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabrik, Berlin. 50 Patronen.
It wasn’t quite credible, despite the evidence in his hands, that the pistol and the ammunition for it had been intended for use by the German Army.
They were fed lunch, 10-in-1 ration Beef Chunks w/Gravy, in the elegant dining room of the Grande Bretagne. Afterward, they found their names on a mimeographed Special Order of Headquarters, U.S. Military Advisory Group, Greece, which had been slid under their door. Felter and Lowell had been assigned to share a room. The field artillery captain’s rank had entitled him to a private room, next door.
“Shit,” Lowell said, when, sitting down on the bed, he read his orders. His name and the captain’s were on the orders together. They were being assigned to the Advisory Detachment, 27th Royal Hellenic Mountain Division. Felter had been assigned to Headquarters, USAMAG(G), to something called DAB, Operations Division.
“What the hell is DAB?” Lowell asked.
“I think it means Document Analysis,” Felter replied. “Probably Document Analysis Branch.” He could tell from the confused look on Lowell’s face that Lowell knew no more than he had before his reply. “I’m sort of a linguist,” Felter said.
“No kidding?”
“My parents came from Europe,” Felter said. “I picked up German, and Russian, and Polish.”
“I had a German governess,” Lowell said, in German.
“They need people who speak German,” Felter replied in German. “They told me most of the maps are German and that what I’ll be doing is adapting them for us. Didn’t you tell that AG captain you spoke it?”
“I told him I didn’t speak it,” Lowell said, still in German.
“Well, go tell him you can. You can stay here,” Felter said. “You’re going to get yourself killed with one of the divisions.”
“Why do you say that?” Lowell asked.
“You don’t really think that ROTC and Basic Officer’s Course qualified you for what you’ll be doing, do you?”
“I was directly commissioned,” Lowell said. “I don’t know what they teach in ROTC or Basic Officer’s Course.”
“Directly commissioned as what?” Felter asked.
“Actually, so that I could play polo on a general’s team,” Lowell said.
“Am I supposed to believe that?”
“It happens to be the truth,” Lowell said.
“You’ve had no duty with troops?” Felter asked.
“I was thrown out of college, so the draft board got me,” Lowell said. “And then I had basic training, and then I was the official golf pro for the U.S. Constabulary golf club, and then I played polo,” Lowell said.
“You’re absolutely unqualified for duty as an advisor to troops on the line,” Felter said.
“And you are?” Lowell asked. Felter let that pass.
“You’re liable to get killed. Don’t you understand that?” Felter asked.
“Ever since I put on this officer’s uniform,” Lowell said, “with a rare exception here and there, people have gone out of their way to let me know they think I’m something of a joke as a man. I’m rather tired of it. I intend to see if I am, or not.”
“You don’t know what the hell you’re saying,” Felter said.
“You too, you see? Even you.”
“I’m a professional soldier,” Felter said, somewhat solemnly.
“Sure you are,” Lowell said, sarcastically.
“Listen to me, stupid,” Felter said. “I was at West Point. I was in on the last days of the war. For what it’s worth, I’m even a Ranger.”
“No shit?” Lowell asked. He was dumbfounded. “Christ, you don’t look like it.”
“Thanks a lot,” Felter said. They smiled at each other. Felter got up.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to tell the adjutant you speak German,” Felter said.
“No, you’re not,” Lowell said. “Leave things alone. It’s important to me.�
��
Felter, standing by the door, looked at him.
“If you’re a West Pointer, and whatever else you said, a ranger, what are you doing here?” Lowell asked.
“I asked for this assignment,” Felter said.
“Why?” Lowell asked.
“For the experience,” Felter said.
“I want the experience, too,” Lowell said. “Please mind your own business, Felter.”
“Good God!” Felter said. “Have you got notions of glory, or what?”
“I just want to see what happens,” Lowell said, simply. “And, figure it out. It would be your word against mine about whether or not I speak German.”
Felter looked at him for a moment, and then walked to where Lowell had rested his M1 Garand against the wall beside the bed.
“Do you know how to use one of these?” he asked.
“Actually, I’m pretty good with one of them,” Lowell said. “But I’d be grateful if you’d show me how that Luger works.”
“Why did you take a Luger if you don’t know how it works?” Felter asked, throwing up his hands.
“I already know I can’t shoot a .45 worth a shit,” Lowell said, simply. “And I thought the Luger was prettier.”
“Jesus, you’re insane!” Felter said. Then he picked up the Luger. “Come over here, Lieutenant. I will show you how this works.”
“Thank you, sir. The lieutenant is very kind, sir.” He smiled at Felter. “Are you really a ranger, you little bastard?”
“Yes, I am, you dumb shit,” Felter said.
(Two)
At midnight, there was a boom. Lowell, who had been sleeping fitfully dreaming of Ilse, sat up in bed and turned the light on.
“Douse the light!” Felter ordered in a fierce whisper. Lowell saw him, .45 in hand, standing against the wall. He turned the light off and started to giggle before it sank in that the boom had been a shot and that they had been issued weapons and what the army called “live ammo” and that they were in Greece and there was a revolution going on.
He slid out of bed, and groped in the dark for the Garand. He found it in the corner of the room. He took an 8-round clip from the cloth bandolier and opened the action. It made an awful amount of noise. When he slipped the clip into the action, it sounded like a door slamming. His heard was pounding. He stood between the beds, the M1 at his shoulder, covering the door.
The Lieutenants Page 26