The Lieutenants
Page 30
The ring-knocker was a captain, a large man with a mustache. Hanrahan had noticed him before they were introduced. The captain was standing beside his luggage in the lobby of the Grande Bretagne. He was obviously new because he was wearing a complete OD uniform, his trousers tucked into new GI combat boots. He was also wearing his ribbons, including something Colonel Hanrahan had never seen before. It was an Expert Combat Infantry Badge without the silver wreath. All the captain was wearing was the blue part with the flintlock.
They looked at each other with frank curiosity. Hanrahan had gone Greek. His only item of U.S. issue uniform from his Limey helmet to his Limey hobnailed boots was a khaki shirt, to whose collar points were pinned the silver oak leaf of his rank and the gold letters, U.S. Everything else was British. He carried a Schmeisser submachine gun in his hands, not because he thought he would need it in Athens, but because there was a possibility the puddle jumper might have to land en route. And some of the areas between Ioannina and Athens were firmly in the hands of the bad guys. The captain was armed with a .45 in a regulation web belt, and a .30 carbine rested against his canvas Valv-Pak.
Lt. Col. Hanrahan had the distinct impression that the captain did not approve of him. He was, obviously, out of uniform. Hanrahan smiled at the mental image of what had happened back in Germany when they’d gotten Felter’s delinquency report back. It had come down through channels. From Frankfurt Military Post to Headquarters, U.S. Forces, European Theater; and then because the U.S. Army Military Advisory Group, Greece, was under the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, U.S. Army, in the Pentagon, it had gone to Washington. And then been flown to Greece.
One lousy little lieutenant had been caught in an improper uniform because he was halfway through a forty-hour plane trip from the States. And some chickenshit, nattily uniformed MP officer, for the sake of all that was sacred to the chair-warmers, in the name of General Clay, had ordered that the “subject officer’s commanding officer report by endorsement hereon the specific corrective disciplinary action taken.”
Van Fleet had thought it was funny. There was a note in his handwriting paper-clipped to the official “Your Attention Is Invited to the Previous Indorsement”:
“Red. If you have enough wood for a gallows, hang him. Failing that, I suppose shooting to death by musketry will have to do. Van Fleet, LT GEN.”
Red Hanrahan had not chuckled at the whole thing and thrown it in the wastebasket, as General Van Fleet obviously expected him to do. For some reason, he kept it. And a day after it arrived, he put it into his typewriter.
8th Ind
HQ US ARMY MILITARY ADVISORY DETACHMENT
27th ROYAL HELLENIC MOUNTAIN DIVISION IN THE FIELD
TO: HQ US ARMY MILITARY ADVISORY GROUP,
GREECE
c/o U.S. EMBASSY
ATHENS, GREECE
1. The serious transgressions by First Lieutenant Sanford T. Felter against good order and discipline enumerated in the basic communication have been considered at length by this headquarters.
2. After due and solemn consideration, and acting upon the advice of my staff, I have decided to slap subject officer lightly upon each wrist.
Paul T. Hanrahan
Lt. Colonel, Signal Corps
Commanding
He sent it to Athens in the next mail bag, thinking it would give the general a chuckle, and that the general would then chuck the whole ludicrous thing away. But a week later, there came in the mail bag a carbon copy of the ninth indorsement:
9th Ind
HQ US ARMY MILITARY ADVISORY GROUP, GREECE
THE UNITED STATES EMBASSY
ATHENS, GREECE
TO: HEADQUARTERS, U.S. FORCES, EUROPEAN THEATER
APO 757, US FORCES
PERSONAL ATTENTION GENERAL LUCIUS D. CLAY
The commanding general, US Army Military Advisory Group, Greece, heartily concurs in the corrective disciplinary action re: 1st Lt S. T. Felter detailed in the previous indorsement.
BY COMMAND OF LIEUTENANT GENERAL
JAMES VAN FLEET
Ward F. Doudt
Colonel, General Staff
Adjutant General
Clay was going to have to do something about that, when he got it. And it was unlikely that he would try to lecture Big Jim Van Fleet about the necessity of having officers properly uniformed and closely shaven. What would probably happen would be that Clay would simply pass the “Your Attention Is Invited to the Previous Indorsement” back down to the chickenshit MP, and that, it was to be hoped, would cause the bastard to lose some sleep.
Lt. Col. Red Hanrahan went into see the G-1, the personnel officer, first thing. He could see no reason why the entire goddamned United States Army could not arrange to make an infrequent shipment of PX items to the 27th Royal Hellenic Mountain Division’s advisors. All he wanted was razor blades, shaving cream, and maybe a couple of lousy boxes of Hershey bars.
The G-1 expected this routine complaint. He listened to it patiently, waited for it to end, promised again to do what he could, and then said: “Say, Paul. I just thought of something. I’ve got a new officer for you. And I don’t think he’s left yet.” A sergeant was dispatched to the lobby and returned with Captain Daniel C. Watson, the officer Hanrahan had noticed earlier.
Hanrahan took a certain perverse pleasure in being introduced as the man Captain Watson would be working for. It changed the captain’s attitude about 180 degrees.
“What is that thing on your chest, Captain?” he asked, with a smile.
He was informed that it was the Expert Infantry Badge, as opposed to the Expert Combat Infantry Badge. So far as Colonel Hanrahan was concerned, the CIB was the only medal that meant a shit. What this ring-knocker was wearing was a qualification badge. He could shoot every weapon in the infantry arsenal, jump over barbed wire, throw hand grenades at a target, and probably make a fire by rubbing two sticks together.
After the captain had gone (to be carried to Ioannina in a supply convoy), Hanrahan asked to look at his service record. The G-1 was a little reluctant, but finally produced it.
Captain Watson had gone ashore in North Africa with the 1st Division as a platoon leader in the 18th Infantry. He had next gone to a hospital. There was no record of a Purple Heart, and there was no award of the Expert Combat Infantry Badge. You got the CIB for ninety days in combat, or unless you were taken out of combat sooner by getting shot, in which case the CIB and the Purple Heart came automatically and together.
Hanrahan looked up from Captain Watson’s service record and met the eyes of the G-1.
“Battle fatigue,” the G-1 said.
“I don’t want him,” Hanrahan said. “I’ll send him back, and you can find a job for him here.”
“For Christ’s sake, Paul,” the G-1 said. “You know how that happens.”
The G-1 wore both the CIB and the ring. Hanrahan knew that another ad hoc meeting of the West Point Protective Association had just been called into session.
“He paid for it,” the G-1 went on. “He spent the war running basic trainees. He’s still a captain. His classmates are all majors, at least, for Christ’s sake. He deserves another chance.”
“Why?” Hanrahan asked, simply.
“I can show you his 201 file if you like,” the G-1 said. “Once a month, from the time he went to the hospital, he requested combat duty. Every goddamned month, Paul. A career shouldn’t be ruined by one incident.”
Hanrahan suspected that that was a slip of the tongue. The G-1 hadn’t used the word “incident” without some reason. The captain, Hanrahan decided, had either cowered in a hole, or run. The Association of Graduates of the United States Military Academy at West Point had taken care of one of their own. He had been adjudged to be suffering from battle fatigue. If you just lose it, they don’t use the word incident. What the hell, he had been close to running himself a dozen times.
“OK,” Hanrahan said. “We’ll give him a second chance.”
“Let’s go get some
lunch,” the personnel officer said. “I understand for a change that we’re having gravy with meat chunks.”
When Captain Watson reported to Ioannina the next day, the Expert Infantry Badge was missing from his breast. Hanrahan assigned him as assistant G-3 (Plan and Training), sending the captain who held that post up to one of the regiments. Watson worked like hell; Hanrahan was willing to grant him that. He lorded it over Felter, but Hanrahan figured not only that the Mouse could take it, but that two enthusiastic ring-knockers deserved each other.
In the next two months, Second Lieutenant Lowell had only one run-in that required Colonel Hanrahan’s personal attention. Righteously indignant, Captain Watson had reported to Colonel Hanrahan that Lieutenant Lowell “in his cups” had told him to go fuck himself when Captain Watson had suggested that not only was he making a spectacle of himself in the officer’s mess, but that he had never seen a dirtier, more disreputable uniform.
Hanrahan had jumped all over two asses about that. He told the Duke, as he had come to think of his gone-Greek handsome young lieutenant, that the next time he talked disrespectfully to a senior officer he would personally kick his ass; and he had explained to Captain Watson, with exquisite sarcasm, that it was his position as commanding officer to exercise a modicum of tolerance vis-à-vis the behavior of a nineteen-year-old officer who was almost daily exposed to enemy fire, and who by his personal valor had earned the respect and admiration of the 27th Royal Hellenic Mountain Division.
“The officer of whom we are speaking, Captain, manages to get back here about once a week. While I deplore, of course, any action on the part of any officer which might tend to bring discredit upon the officer corps of the United States Army, I must confess that if I hadn’t had a bath or a decent meal in a week, I myself, might be tempted to take a little drink when I came back here.”
Watson took the rebuke as if he had had his face slapped. Hanrahan, after a day or two, came to the conclusion that perhaps it was getting through to Captain Watson what the fuck the army was all about. After eight years in uniform.
The next week, Watson had come to him with the request that he be given responsibility for the armored supply column. The request came as a surprise, but the captain’s arguments were soundly based. And if the bad guys did try to bust through the lines, Hanrahan would prefer to have the Mouse here, to listen to the Russian frequencies and perhaps hear something of interest.
The Mouse took the news of relief without a word, but there was a deep disappointment in his eyes that shamed Hanrahan. The next time Hanrahan had a couple of drinks too many he told the Mouse about Watson being given a second chance. In the morning, when he remembered what he had done, he was furious with himself.
Although he looked for it, he could not detect any change in the Mouse’s attitude toward Captain Watson. He was, in fact, so helpful to Watson that Watson came and asked if Lieutenant Felter might not be assigned as his deputy. “In case the balloon does go up, it would be better to have a backup American officer.”
So ordered.
VIII
(One)
The Greek-Albanian Border
6 September 1946
The balloon went up three weeks later. Hanrahan had felt in his bones that it was about to happen.
There had been intelligence reports from Athens about movements from the interior of Greece toward the Albanian-Yugoslavian borders—an unusual amount of donkey-wagon traffic. Line-crossers reported to Athens and Athens reported to Hanrahan that there was an unusual amount of truck traffic in Albania. The number of reported attempted (and successful) infiltrations declined.
The Mouse had hit it right on the head. Hanrahan wondered how much longer he himself would have taken to figure it out.
There were reports from all over the line, first of sniper fire, then of mortar fire. The same reports had come in for the past five days. Nothing had happened. The fire had simply died down. The Greeks felt that they were teaching the Reds a lesson with their counter-mortar fire. Granting the Greeks could drop a 76 mm mortar round in a latrine hole at 1,000 yards, Hanrahan didn’t think this was the case.
And then Captain Watson had come into Colonel Hanrahan’s room.
“Lieutenant Lowell is on the radio, sir,” he said. “He wants to speak to you.”
If Captain Watson was piqued that Lieutenant Lowell hadn’t wanted to talk to him, he gave no sign.
What the hell was Lowell’s radio code? Hanrahan couldn’t remember.
“Duke, this is Pericles Six, go ahead.”
“I’m with Pegasus Forward, Colonel. We’re under heavy mortar attack.”
Pegasus Forward was No. 12 Company, 113th Regiment. Ever since Nick had been killed, Lowell had sort of adopted No. 12 Company, and vice versa. He was technically assigned to the headquarters company of 113th Regiment, but he spent his nights at the front with No. 12 Company. Hanrahan had learned that through Lieutenant Lowell’s dedicated efforts, No. 12 Company had more than its fair share of what creature comforts were available. These he’d mostly stolen from the American officers at division.
Hanrahan had not responded to the complaints. So far as he was concerned, the key to success in an operation like this was for distinctions between the Americans and the Greeks they were advising to disappear. This wasn’t the British Indian Army; the Greeks were not second-class citizens. The Greeks had to believe that, within reason, their American advisors lived as they did. Lowell was doing that. It was possible that his behavior would shame some of the other American officers into copying him. Lowell was proof of the colonel’s theory. He was the only junior officer in the division who matter-of-factly issued orders directly to Greek soldiers, and more important, had his orders obeyed. If Greek troops didn’t like their American officer, they weren’t insubordinate; they were simply unable to comprehend what the American wanted unless it was translated for them by one of their own officers. Yet they seemed to have no trouble whatever understanding what Lowell told them to do in his really awful, hundred-word Greek vocabulary.
Hanrahan stepped to the map, checking his memory that No. 12 Company’s two rock fortresses were on either side of a truck-capable road.
“When did it begin?” Hanrahan asked.
“About twenty minutes ago,” Lowell’s voice crackled over the radio. “They took out our signal bunker.”
“What are you using?” Hanrahan asked. Across the room, his eyes met those of Mouse Felter, who was standing, his arms folded on his chest, watching and listening.
“The M8 radio, Colonel,” Lowell said. The Duke doesn’t know diddly shit about proper radio security, Hanrahan thought. And then he thought that it didn’t really matter. “Pericles Six” was obviously known to the Russians as the American advisor’s radio code.
“What’s your situation?”
“I’m holding,” Lowell’s voice replied. “But we’re running through a lot of ammunition.”
Goddamned Greeks, Hanrahan thought. They regarded an incoming mortar round as a slur on their masculine pride, that had to be answered with a barrage.
“I’m holding?” Hanrahan said, a little annoyed. Lowell was not the commanding officer. He was just the goddamned advisor.
“Captain Demosthatis bought it,” Lowell said. “I assumed command.”
“How many other casualties?”
“All the officers,” Lowell said. “They’ve been hitting us pretty hard.”
“Mount your operation, Captain Watson,” Lt. Col. Hanrahan ordered. Then he pressed the microphone button: “Duke,” he said, “give them tit for tat. I’ll run some ammo up there to you.” He spoke conversationally, calmly, although his stomach was in painful knots.
“We can’t get out of here, Colonel,” Lowell said, and even in the frequency-clipped voice that came over the radio, Hanrahan could hear fear, perhaps even terror in his voice. “They got the motor pool, and when I came out to use the radio in the M8, the tires were all blown.”
“No sweat, Duke,”
Hanrahan replied. “They can’t get through your mortars, and we’ll get some ammo up to you right away. I’ve already given the order.”
“You better send some officers, too,” Lowell said. “I took a little shrapnel coming out to the M8.”
Hanrahan’s stomach twisted again.
“Well, boy, you just take it easy. We’re on our way. What they’re trying to do is get some trucks down your road. We know all about it, and we’re ready for it.”
“Annie Oakley clear with Pericles Six,” Craig Lowell’s voice, for the first time using the correct radio procedure, came over the radio.
“The cavalry’s on the way, Duke,” Hanrahan said. “I promise you. Pericles Six, out.”
He wondered if the message had gotten through. He wondered why Lowell had suddenly broken off radio contact.
He looked around the room. Felter, having checked it, was loading a 30-round magazine into his Thompson submachine gun.
“Sidney,” he said.
“Sir?”
“Nothing,” Colonel Hanrahan said. “Get moving.”
“Colonel, it’s Sanford,” Felter said, gently, shaming Hanrahan again. Then he put his Limey helmet on his head and left the G-3 office.
Carrying the Thompson under his right arm like a bird hunter, Felter trotted across the parking lot toward the sandbagged ammo bunker, where several vehicles had already shown up. They were being hurriedly loaded by Greek soldiers. He heard the peculiar sound of a half-track behind him. When he turned to look, he saw the driver’s face peering out the windshield. The armor plate which could be lowered to protect the driver was in the propped-open position. Felter waved the half-track into position in the column line.
Next he saw the command jeep, an innovation of Captain Watson’s that Lieutenant Felter did not approve. The jeep held their communications radios and had a .50 caliber machine gun mounted on a pedestal. Captain Watson apparently thought of it as his horse. He was going to lead his troops like Light-Horse Harry Lee. Bugler, sound the charge!