The Lieutenants

by W. E. B Griffin

  It was too late for that now. He looked at the M1’s receiver, twisting it slightly to examine the sight.

  “I’ve never fired this sonofabitch before,” he said, so that Nick could hear him.

  Nick looked at him with contempt in his eyes. Lowell understood that he wasn’t just humiliating himself but Nick, too, for he was an officer.

  And then Lowell knew what to do. “Tell the captain,” he said, handing the M1 to Nick, “that it would be too easy for me to use this weapon, because it is mine.”

  Nicks’ eyebrows went up, and he said nothing.

  “Tell him I am going to take an unfired M1 from the case,” Lowell said, “and zero it with three shots, and then blow that goddamned marker away.”

  “I hope for both of us that you can produce,” Nick said, and then he smiled confidently and spoke in Greek to the captain.

  “Tell him to pick any of the rifles,” Lowell said. Nick led the captain to the crate of M1s. The captain looked over the four Garands in the top rack and picked one out. Then he handed it to Lowell. Lowell opened the action and peered down the barrel. It was thick with preserving oil.

  Lowell set the elevation at two hundred yards.

  “Tell the captain the barrel is oily,” he said. “And that I will clean it by firing twice.”

  Nick repeated the message in Greek. Lowell put a clip in the Garand, pushed the safety off, and shot twice in the air. Then he took up a sitting position.

  “Tell the captain that for a short distance and a target that large, it is not normally necessary to use the prone position.”

  “Use the prone position, for Christ’s sake. Hit that fucking road marker,” Nick said, wearing a broad smile. “Once these guys figure you for a phony or a candy-ass, you’re finished.”

  “Tell him what I said, Sergeant,” Lowell said, smiling warmly at Nick, and then decided to go for broke. “And tell him that a good shot normally doesn’t have to use a sling.”

  Nick spoke to the Greek captain.

  “Tell him I will now fire three rounds for zero,” Lowell said. He aimed very carefully, let out half his breath, held it, and squeezed the trigger. By pure coincidence, the sights were almost in zero. The bullet strike was vertically on the target, but two feet to the right.

  He aimed and fired the rifle again. The second strike was within a couple inches of the first.

  Lowell motioned the captain over, pointed to the sight.

  “Tell him that sometimes only two shots are necessary for zero,” he said. Nick repeated the message. “Tell him that I am moving the sight to the right twelve clicks, and that each click, at that distance, moves the impact two inches.” He held up his fingers to illustrate. The captain, smiling with transparent insincerity, listened to the translation and nodded his head.

  “And now tell him that I am going to demonstrate how to remove a partially emptied clip from the weapon,” Lowell said. Nick made the translation. Lowell ejected the unfired six cartridges and their clip and put a full clip in the weapon.

  “Shit, Lieutenant,” Nick said. “I hope you can pull this off.”

  Lowell put the Garand to his shoulder, lined up the sights, held his breath, and squeezed off the first round. Dead on. A chunk of concrete flew into the air. He then emptied the rifle, firing as quickly as he could line the sights up on the shattered remnants of the concrete road marker. When he was finished, it was difficult to see the road marker; horizontally, about half of it was shot away, and four more inches or so off the left side.

  With an entirely delightful feeling of triumph, Lowell gave Nick an idiot grin and then stood up. With a ceremonious bow, he handed the Garand to the captain and then motioned him to sit down in the firing position. He knelt over him, and fed a clip into the weapon.

  The captain fired one shot, and then the rest of the clip, rapid fire. He flashed another magnificent smile, got to his feet, and handed Lowell the M1.

  “Sonabitch!” he said. He reached over, patted Lowell’s cheek, and then kissed it. Then he weighed the Garand appreciatively in his hands.

  “That don’t mean nothing, Lieutenant,” Nick said. “Shit, they even hold hands! You just impressed the shit out of him, is all.”

  The Greek captain smiled at the American lieutenant. The American lieutenant smiled back. He smiled so broadly his cheek muscles began to ache. The captain, with an elaborate bow, waved him back to the bunker. He said something else.

  “He says he would be deeply honored if you would show him how the magnificent rifle works, so that he and his men may kill many godless communists with it,” Nick said. He watched Lowell’s face for his reaction.

  “They mean that, Lieutenant,” Nick said. “I’m glad you didn’t think it was funny.”

  Lowell felt a strange exhilaration.

  “Please tell the captain that I would be honored to attempt to show a magnificent shot such as he is how the U.S. Army rifle functions,” he said.

  (Six)

  Coordinates C431/K003

  Map, Greece, 1:250000

  22 July 1946

  To tell the truth, if it wasn’t for Ilse he wouldn’t mind this at all, Second Lieutenant Craig W. Lowell thought. It was like something out of the movies. The days were pleasantly warm, and the evenings were pleasantly cool, and there was nobody jumping on his ass at all.

  The simple truth of the matter was that he liked being an officer. Not a polo-playing officer, but a real officer. He had been given a duty, a real military duty, and he took no small pleasure in being able to discharge it, in the realization that he was meeting his responsibility—and well.

  It wasn’t even as if he were a marksmanship instructor in basic training. He was teaching the teachers. Through him and him alone, first No. 12 Company, and ultimately the entire 113th Regiment, 27th Royal Hellenic Mountain Division, would be instructed in the proper use of the M1 Garand rifle.

  Even Felter acknowledged that Lowell knew what he was doing, and Felter really was a West Pointer and a Ranger, even if he didn’t look like it. Lowell was smugly proud that he had his company, No. 12 Company, completely qualified with the M1 when Felter was still taking his company’s M1s out of their crates. Felter was a good man obviously (otherwise, how would he have gotten to be a Ranger?), but he wasn’t a good teacher. Not a leader of men.

  In all modesty, Craig Lowell believed that he had demonstrated his leadership ability by his courses of instruction in the M1. He had first demonstrated to each little group of trainees that with it he could blow the balls off a horsefly at two hundred yards. This established his personal credentials. Then he had blown away road markers firing the weapon as fast as it would fire, thus establishing the weapon’s credibility. After that, with Nick standing beside him translating his short, simple sentences into Greek, it had been a snap. They wanted to learn, and they soaked up the information like a blotter. It was completely unlike basic training had been. Nobody in basic training had given a shit for the M1 rifle. That was, Craig Lowell decided, because it had not been presented to them properly. By the time they actually got to fire it, they were so sick of looking at it, cleaning it, and dry-firing it that they wouldn’t have liked it if it had dispensed ice-cold beer.

  Later Felter had needed Craig’s help with his own company; and he’d been glad to give it. Then Felter had called Colonel Hanrahan and told him that he was having trouble but Lowell was doing splendidly, and that it would seem to make sense to have Lowell continue doing what he did so well so that he could return to see about the tracked vehicles.

  Hanrahan had gone along with the suggestion. And now Felter was back at loannina, while Lowell had the Garand rifle training of the whole regiment to himself. It was rather strange, Lowell thought, about Hanrahan and Felter both having gone to West Point. He had always associated West Pointers with people like General Waterford and Fat Charley. His kind of people, so to speak. There was no question that Hanrahan was a good officer, but he behaved less like Fat Charley than like an Irish police
sergeant.

  But there was no question about it, as difficult as it was to believe, both Hanrahan and Felter had at one time marched up and down the drill field at West Point in those funny hats with what looked like a pussy willow bouncing around on top.

  Lowell had become rather close to Nick. If Nick suspected that Lowell’s knowledge of the military had come entirely from basic training, he hadn’t made that plain. Aware that he had impressed Nick just about as much as he had impressed the Greek captain with that first day’s marksmanship exhibition, Lowell had decided that what Nick didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

  They shared a stone hut in the No. 12 Company area, taking turns boiling their eggs for breakfast, but eating the rest of their meals with the Greek officers. At night they read by the hissing light of a Coleman lantern. Nick could read Greek, so he got to share the Greek newspapers that came up and a few Greek magazines and what few books there were. The only thing in English to read was an occasional week-old Stars & Stripes from Germany and a shelf of field and technical manuals. For lack of something else to read, Lowell read the field and technical manuals. Some of them had as much application to what they were doing as the Saturday Evening Post, but some of them Lowell found fascinating.

  The Infantry Company in the Defense, for example, spelled out in minute detail what 230 officers and men were supposed to do from the emplacement of the .30 and .50 caliber machine guns to the number and placement and depth of “field sanitation facilities, or latrines.” Much of the information didn’t precisely apply here, but a surprising percentage of it did. Lowell discreetly checked and learned that No. 12 Company’s machine-gun emplacements more than met the criteria established “by the book.”

  Nick saw nothing unusual in Lowell’s spending his evenings reading field manuals. Nick probably presumed that officers ordinarily passed their free time expanding their professional knowledge. He did not, in other words, give any sign that he suspected Lowell was discovering for the first time the meaning of such terms as “beaten zones” and “fields of fire” and “ammunition units,” and what, precisely, a foxhole was beyond being a hole in the ground in which one took shelter.

  Their routine was fairly constant. Every day, late enough in the morning to be warm enough to take the open-jeep trip in relative comfort, Lowell and Nick visited another company along the line. There they’d instruct the officers and senior noncoms in the M1 rifle. Afterward they would share a late lunch with the officers of the company they were visiting, before returning to No. 12 Company. There Lowell would fool around with the Zenith Transoceanic radio (thank God I bought that, Lowell thought; I would go insane without it) or play a little chess to pass the time with the Greek officers.

  Sometimes, not always, he could pick up the American Forces Network on the short-wave band. That always triggered memories of Ilse, which sometimes depressed him and sometimes cheered him. He missed her terribly and worried about her; and he had to keep pushing back the fear that she would find somebody else. Other times, he was able to tell himself that he had found the woman who would share his life. When his year here was over, he would be reassigned to Germany, and they would be together again for good.

  God, did he miss her! He had a mental image of Ilse on the banks of the Lahn River. That was only three weeks ago! And there hadn’t been one letter in all that time.

  What was she doing now?

  Telling some new guy that she cost a hundred a month, plus rent on their apartment, plus the stuff he could get out of the PX?

  Spreading her legs for somebody else? Oh, shit!

  He forced that thought from his mind. He had read a line from a biography of General George S. Patton: “Never take counsel of your fears.” There was obviously a good deal of sense in that, Lowell thought, and reminded himself again that if he had to be in the army, this was the place to be. Broadening. That’s what it was. A splendid learning experience.

  There came the peculiar burrup-burrup ringing sound of a U.S. Army EE-8 field telephone. A head appeared at the door to the bunker, said something in excitement, pointed to the right.

  The Greek captain ran to a firing position, dropped onto his belly, and put field glasses to his eyes. He peered intently, and then suddenly turned and gave orders.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “They got a report of bearers,” Nick said.

  The enemy! It’s about time!

  “Sometimes they make a mistake and get seen,” Nick said, as he walked quickly to a firing position. He set the Browning automatic rifle in place in one of the rifle-firing points and peered off at what appeared to Lowell to be a bare expanse of rock.

  Then Lowell saw something move. It was five hundred yards away if it was an inch.

  The captain said something that Lowell somehow understood meant, “there.” He gave more orders. Soldiers were working on the 3.5 inch mortar now, shifting the weapon, moving its baseplate.

  The captain gave another of his insurance man smiles to Lowell and waved him to an empty firing position.

  There was more movement in the valley below, things flitting between the huge boulders, casting shadows. You had to look carefully the first time, but almost immediately your eyes began to catch small movements, and you could see there were people out there, coming down the side of a mountain, moving slowly, but there.

  The enemy!

  There was the crack of the captain’s M1, followed a moment later by a sharper sound, the burst from Nick’s BAR. Lowell found himself peering through the sights of his rifle. Goddamned fool. Even if he saw anybody out there, he couldn’t hit them. But he put his left hand on the sight of the M1 and cranked the knob, and the sight clicked as it rose up.

  If one were to be completely honest, he was willing to admit there was something just a bit frightening about all this. Presumably, they, the enemy, will shoot back.

  There came the roar of the 3.5 mortar going off behind him, and he felt the blast and his ears hurt. When he looked through the sights again, swinging the rifle from side to side, seeing nothing, he was trembling.

  Nick’s BAR went off and there was another shot from a rifle. And then there was an explosion out there, the dull crump of the mortar round landing. He saw by the smoke that it was far wide of the mark. The captain said something viciously sarcastic, then turned to his Garand again.

  There was suddenly an awful pain in Lowell’s bladder. I absolutely have to take a piss, he realized.

  There came the sound of bullets passing overhead, remembered from the pits of the rifle range at Fort Dix. It was all rather amusing then, because the greatest care had been taken to insure that the bullets whistling overhead, however thrilling, would be harmless. There was no such intent here. There was also the sound of ricochets, not unlike the sound in the movies, but infinitely more threatening.

  There came the noise that a kitchen knife makes when a large fat Negro, smiling broadly, swings it from behind his head and slices a red ripe watermelon in one fell swoop. On the porch of the mess hall at Camp Kemper. The Negro cook’s name had been Ellwood. That is what came to Craig Lowell’s mind when he heard the noise.

  He turned and saw Nick sprawled on his back on the sunbaked pebbles. He had a shattered watermelon for his head. Second Lieutenant Craig W. Lowell threw up, and when he had finished heaving, became aware that he had shit in his pants. A moment later he had also voided his bladder.

  He pulled his arms over his head. I am going to die here. I am going to have my head blown off. Oh, those dirty bastards!

  He pushed himself a half inch closer to the top of the rocks protecting him, then an inch, then four inches, to get his head over the top, to see them, the dirty bastards. He saw a flicker of yellow flame out of the corner of his eye, and turned his head. There were two of them, lying prone, behind a light machine gun. The gun was on a bipod with a shoulder stock, rather than on a tripod. They were sweeping the position with short bursts of fire, so as not to over heat the barrel.

&nb
sp; Where the fuck is my rifle?

  He slid down and then crawled backward to where he had dropped the M1, grabbed the muzzle, and pulled it up to him.

  Two bullets hit the rocks in front of him, high. They sent splinters into his face, stinging him, before ricocheting with a low whistle. He had a faint impression that he could see one at the top of its apogee.

  He slid up on the rocks, laying his hand on a flat spot, laying the forearm in his hand. Fecal matter slid down his inner thigh. Shit!

  He placed his cheek on the stock. He couldn’t see the fucking sights! He was crying. He took his hand from the pistol grip and the trigger and wiped his eyes with his knuckles, then with his fingers, and blinked. The sights came into focus.

  The machine gunner paused and then started swinging the muzzle back toward Lowell’s position. The M1 jumped against Lowell’s face. The loader let go of the belt of ammunition and collapsed. The machine gunner looked down at him, and then got to his knees and scooped up the machine gun in both arms. Craig shot him as he stood erect; again, as he wobbled; again, as he went back on his knees; and then, finally, very deliberately, in the head.

  That’ll teach you, you sonofabitch!

  The M1’s action was open, smoking slightly, giving off a faint bitter smell of gunpowder and burned oil. Following the example of the Greeks, Craig had wedged the leather rifle strap between the two rows of cartridges in two clips. He pulled one of them loose. The cartridges came out and spilled against the rocks, making a clinking noise. Trembling, he pulled the second clip loose. The cartridges didn’t fall out, but they were out of their proper position.

  Fuck it!

  He laid the empty M1 down and ran over to Nick. Nick’s eyes were wide open, very bloodshot, and blood ran out of his nose, ears, and mouth. The rear of his skull was shattered open. Lowell bent over him and felt the bile rise in his throat. He took BAR magazines from Nick’s pouches and ran with them to the firing position. Then he went and got Nick’s BAR and ran back, dragging it by the barrel, the stock banging on the rocks behind him. He dropped onto his belly, breathing heavily, eyes full of sweat again, and pulled the 20-round magazine from the BAR. Though there were cartridges in it, he threw it away anyway, and charged the BAR with a fresh magazine.