When the column had been Felter’s, he had the third half-track in line as the command vehicle. The radios would be protected, and so would the commander. If the column were ambushed, the first thing they would take out would be the lead vehicle. The way Watson had it set up, they would lose their communications and their commander to the first bad guy with a machine gun or a grenade.
Felter had tried to set up another group of radios in his half-track, but Watson had caught him at it and told him it wasn’t necessary. He had also taken the opportunity to pointedly remind Felter that he was the column leader, and that simple courtesy, as well as regulations, dictated that Felter consult with the commander before taking any action on his own. A fellow West Pointer should know that.
A General Motors six-by-six, and then another, appeared, and troops poured out the backs. They joined the lines of men handing ammo cases hand-to-hand from the bunkers. The trucks, which carried a 2.5 ton load (and for that reason were also known as “deuce-and-a-halfs”) were “new.” They had seen World War II, and had been rebuilt in ordnance shops in Germany. The American supply line was beginning to operate.
Felter didn’t like the way Watson was running around, excited, almost hysterical. He reminded himself that he knew something about Captain Watson that he shouldn’t know. He wished Colonel Hanrahan hadn’t told him about the captain’s record.
In ten minutes, the column was loaded and ready. Watson stood up in the front seat of his jeep and gave the forward sign.
“Charge!” Felter thought, sarcastically. The drivers of the vehicles behind him had been racing their engines for two minutes, ready to go. They would have followed Watson’s jeep the moment it moved. They didn’t need a hand signal.
The half-track jerked into motion. He felt like a fool. He was almost knocked off his feet, because he had been standing up like Watson himself.
He could hear the sound of the mortar barrage, even over the roar of the engines, long before they reached the site of No. 12 Company. As they grew closer, however, the blurred sounds became more distinct, and there were separate noises now, cracks, and crumps, and barooms, and the rattle of small arms fire. Felter thought they were “marching to the sound of the musketry,” but he couldn’t remember which famous general had said that.
They were close enough now to make out the differing sounds of Enfields, Mausers, and Garands, of .30 and .50 caliber machine guns; and they were close enough to be able to detect glowing light as mortars were fired and as their shells landed. There was a low-hanging yellow cloud of dust around the next curve of the road.
Felter leaned over and lowered the armor plate over the driver’s windshield. The driver would now have to steer by peering through a slit in the plate. He started to lower the armor plate on his side, and was suddenly thrown against the windshield. The half-track had lurched to a stop.
When he regained his balance, he stood up on the seat. There was a small cloud of yellow-and-black smoke on the road, fifty yards in front of Captain Watson’s jeep. That had been a long round, Felter knew, a fluke. Watson’s jeep should now move on.
Watson’s jeep did not move on. Watson jumped out of his jeep and ran to the side of the road, the down side, and stood behind a boulder taller than he was. He looked around for Felter, and when he saw him, signaled him to join him.
Felter left the half-track by climbing over the windshield onto the hood, and then down over the bumper and the winch in front. He carried the Thompson in his right hand. As he ran toward Captain Watson, another mortar round landed, thirty yards further down the slope from where Captain Watson stood, a hundred yards toward the firefight. Another wild round, the Mouse thought, wondering if he was going to get wiped out by a mistake made by some worker in an ammunition factory.
“We can obviously go no farther in this fire,” Watson said. “I intend to set up a defense line at the ridge of that hill.” He pointed to the rear.
“They’re waiting for this ammunition, Captain,” Felter said.
“They’ve been overrun,” Captain Watson said. “Isn’t that obvious?”
“I don’t think so, sir,” Felter said, politely. “I can hear their mortars and automatic weapons.”
“Well, then, Lieutenant,” Captain Watson said, sarcastically, “if you’re so sure, why don’t you just reconnoiter on your own?”
“Yes, sir,” Felter replied, accepting the sarcasm as an order. He ran back onto the road, and signaled the driver of Captain Watson’s jeep to pick him up. The half-track behind the jeep moved as soon as the jeep did. Felter held out his hand, ordering it to stop.
He jumped into the jeep.
“Felter!” Captain Watson shouted at him. “Come back here!”
Lieutenant Felter pretended not to hear him.
The jeep carried him three hundred yards down the road. The positions of No. 12 Company were under heavy fire, wrapped in smoke and dust. But they weren’t overrun. He could see muzzle flashes, and somehow his eye caught a mortar round at the apogee of its arc. No. 12 Company was returning fire, all right.
Felter studied the two little fortresses and the road leading to them through his binoculars. The road had been literally hacked out of the mountainside. It was one-way, just wide enough to take a half-track. But there was an advantage to that. If a mortar shell hit above the road, the shrapnel would be thrown sideward and upward. If one hit the slope of the mountain below the road, only a small amount of shrapnel would be thrown so as to strike anything on the road.
It would take a direct hit to knock out one of the column’s vehicles. Even if that happened, they could simply push the disabled vehicle off the road and out of the way.
When he was sure of his position, he ran back to his jeep. The driver already had it turned around.
Captain Watson was where he had left him. For some reason, he had drawn his .45 and was holding it in his right hand, limp, at his side.
Felter got out of the jeep and ran over to him.
“They’re under fire, sir,” Felter reported. “But they have not been overrun. And the amount of enemy fire actually landing on the road up there is negligible.”
“If they have not yet been overrun,” Captain Watson said, in a strained voice, as if forcing himself to speak, “it is just a matter of minutes until they are. And this column cannot survive the fire being brought upon the road.”
“Yes, it can, Captain,” Felter said, very calmly. “Everything’s going to be all right, Captain.” Captain Watson looked at him as if he had never seen him before. “We’re expected up there, Captain,” Felter said, talking slowly and reasonably. “The colonel told them we would be there. They need our ammo. Sir.”
“I’m not going to be responsible for this column being wiped out in any childish display of heroics,” Captain Watson said, very clearly, as if he had rehearsed what he was going to say.
The Greek captain who served as interpreter, and who rode in the first half-track, came running over.
“Is there something you can tell me to tell the men?” he asked. “Is something wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong, Captain,” Felter said. “We’re moving out.”
“We are not moving out!” Captain Watson said, firmly, loudly. “We are withdrawing.” The Greek captain looked from one to the other American.
“Captain, among others, Lieutenant Lowell is on that hilltop,” Felter said.
“I’m sick of you, and everybody else, telling me about Lieutenant Lowell,” Captain Watson said, his voice very intense. “Lieutenant Lowell this, Duke Lowell that.”
Felter felt himself, despite everything, smiling. Captain Watson sounded like Sharon when she was angry.
“Don’t you smile at me, Jewboy,” Captain Watson said. “Don’t you ever smile at me!”
“Sir, I respectfully request permission to take two of the tracks to the hill while you form a fall-back line,” the Mouse said.
“Denied!” Captain Watson sputtered. He was waving his .45 around. “You ha
ve your orders, and you will carry them out. Tell the drivers to turn around!” he said to the interpreter.
The interpreter looked at Felter. There was contempt for Watson in his eyes.
“I’ll ride in the first track,” Felter said to the interpreter. “We’ll leave the wheeled vehicles here until we see what the situation is.”
“Felter, I give the orders!” Captain Watson said, almost a shout.
“Sir,” Felter said, “I have been ordered by Colonel Hanrahan to reinforce Number 12 Company. I intend to carry out that order.”
“You’ll obey my orders!” Captain Watson said, and now his voice was shrill.
“Everything’s going to be all right, Captain,” Felter said, calmly. He raised his hand over his head and made a “wind-up” gesture. Starters on the tracks ground.
“Goddamn you, this is mutiny!” Captain Watson said.
Felter ignored him. He started back to the road.
There was the booming crack of a .45 going off. Felter kept walking. There was another shot, and this time Felter heard the bullet whirring beside his head. He stopped, paused motionless a moment, and then turned around.
“One more step and you would have been a dead man,” Captain Watson said. He was holding the pistol in both hands, pointing it at Felter.
They looked at each other for a long moment. Finally Captain Watson got control of himself. Trembling, he lowered the pistol, fumbled to get it back in its holster.
“Get these goddamned vehicles turned around!” he said to the interpreter.
Lieutenant Felter raised the muzzle of his Thompson submachine gun and pulled the trigger. Captain Watson fell over backward, struck by six .45 caliber bullets traveling at approximately 830 feet per second. And then his body started to slide down the mountainside.
The interpreter looked at Felter.
“Pass the word to the drivers that if a vehicle is disabled, they are to push it off the road,” Felter said.
“Yes, sir,” the interpreter captain said.
(Two)
Lt. Colonel Paul T. Hanrahan leaned forward and held up the sheet of paper in his portable typewriter and read what he had written. He looked across his desk at Lieutenant Sanford T. Felter, who sat in a straight-backed chair, his fingers locked together in his lap, staring at nothing. Hanrahan felt very sorry for him, a pity mingled with a surprised admiration. It wasn’t the sort of thing he would have expected from Felter. Then Hanrahan ripped the sheet of paper out of the typewriter, took a pen from a pocket sewn to the upper sleeve of his British battle jacket, and signed his name.
“Sidney,” he said. “Excuse me, Sanford.”
Lieutenant Felter stood up.
“Yes, sir?”
“Read this, Sanford,” Lt. Col. Hanrahan said. “Read it aloud.”
Felter took the sheet of paper, and started to read it.
“Aloud, Felter,” Hanrahan said. “I said, ‘read it aloud.’”
“Dear Mrs. Watson,” Felter read, in a strained voice. “By now you have heard from the War Department about the death of your husband. Please forgive the bad typing, but I wanted to get this letter out to you as soon as possible. It will be flown out of here with a young officer who was wounded in the same engagement in which Captain Watson gave his life.
“Captain Watson was commanding a relief column dispatched to relieve a Greek Army unit under heavy enemy attack. Heedless of the personal danger to himself, Captain Watson elected to lead the column in a jeep. En route to the scene of action, the convoy was ambushed by guerrillas. Captain Watson was struck by automatic weapons fire which killed him instantly, and I am sure, painlessly.
“I’m sure you will take some small comfort in knowing that, inspired by Captain Watson’s personal example of courage, the junior officer under him rallied his troops and saw the mission brought to a successful conclusion.
“Captain Watson’s courage and personal example were an inspiration to his men. I know of no finer epitaph for a soldier than to say that he died leading his men into battle.
“The officers and men of both the 27th Royal Hellenic Mountain Division and the U.S. Military Detachment join me in expressing their sorrow at the loss of your husband and their comrade-in-arms. I have been advised that Captain Watson has been recommended for a decoration by the commanding general of the 27th RHMD.
“Sincerely yours, Paul W. Hanrahan, Lieutenant Colonel, Signal Corps, Commanding.”
Felter looked at Lt. Col. Hanrahan.
“I’m not sure I can live with this, sir,” he said.
“You will live with it, Lieutenant. You will live with it the rest of your life. As I will live with the knowledge that if I had done what I knew should be done and had refused to accept him up here, he would still be alive. The subject is closed, Felter. I don’t wish to discuss it further.”
There came the sound of a multiengined airplane.
“That must be the Sutherland,” Colonel Hanrahan said. “I guess we better go say good-bye to the Duke.”
“People know, Colonel,” the Mouse said. “Captain Chrismanos saw me. Lowell was there when we brought the body back. He asked me what had happened and I told him.”
“The subject is closed, Mouse,” Hanrahan repeated. “Closed. Finished.”
He took Felter’s arm and led him out of his office. They walked over to the infirmary, another of the stone buildings reinforced with sandbags. There was a sign over the door: “The Mayo Clinic G&O Ward.”
“How is he?” Hanrahan asked the young American doctor, as if Lowell weren’t lying on the stretcher, awake.
“I’d like to get a little more blood in him,” the surgeon said. “He lost a hell of a lot. We need some type O-Positive. I was about to have a look…”
“I’m O-Positive,” Felter said.
“You look pretty shaken, Mouse,” the doctor said. “I think you’re right on the edge of shock.”
“I’ll give him the blood,” Felter said. “I’m all right.”
“You sure you got enough to give away?” Lowell asked.
“Get on with it, doctor,” Hanrahan ordered. “They don’t like to leave that Sutherland sitting here any longer than they have to.”
Felter rolled up his sleeve and lay down on the operating table.
When they were connected and left alone for a moment, he looked down at Lowell, below him on the stretcher on the floor.
“If they send you home, will you go see Sharon?” Felter asked.
“You gutsy little sonofabitch,” Lowell said. “I’ve been thinking about you blowing that yellow bastard away. I would never have thought you would have had the balls.”
“What I’m afraid of is that I really shot him because he called me Jewboy,” the Mouse said. “I shouldn’t have done it.”
“Christ, I’m glad you did,” Lowell said. “I was scared shitless up there. Better him than me. What the hell is the matter with you?”
“Will you go see Sharon?” Felter asked again, to change the subject.
“They’re not going to send me home. They’re sending me to Frankfurt, for Christ’s sake. I’ll be back here in a month.”
“But if they do, will you?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“You’ve got the address?”
“Burned in my memory,” Lowell said. “The Old Budapest Restaurant. How could I forget that?”
“Warsaw Bakery,” Felter corrected him, even though he knew Lowell was pulling his leg. “Are you in pain, Craig?”
“No, believe it or not. It feels like it’s asleep. Doc says it will start to hurt after a while. He gave me some pills.”
“You’ll be all right,” Felter said. “You were very lucky, Craig.”
The doc and the colonel came in and watched as the blood flowed between them. Then they were disconnected, and a couple of Greek soldiers picked up Lowell’s stretcher and carried it to the wharf and manhandled it into a rowboat. The doc rode out with him in the rowboat to the Sutherland seaplane and saw
that the crew chief knew what to do with him. He wasn’t really in any danger. His arm and shoulder had been sliced open with shrapnel, and he’d lost a lot of blood, but the doc doubted that there would be any trouble once they got him in a bed and started a penicillin regimen and got some decent food in him.
When the doc got back to shore, the Mouse had passed out and was on the stretcher.
(Three)
New York City, N.Y.
8 September 1946
The very existence of the United States Army Advisory Group, Greece, posed certain delicate administrative problems for the United States Army, especially when one of its members got himself shot up.
There was no war, ergo, there could be no wounds, no Purple Hearts. Personnel of USAMAG(G) were “injured” not “wounded.”
The entire Standing Operating Procedure—Notification of Next of Kin, U.S. Army Military Advisory Group, Greece, Personnel, was classified CONFIDENTIAL. The next of kin were to be advised by the most expeditious means, by a notification team consisting of a chaplain and another commissioned officer. In the case of company-grade officers, where possible, the notification officers would be a grade senior to the injured officer. They would exercise judgment in imparting specific information to the next of kin. The implication was that the next of kin be told as little as possible beyond the fact that their next of kin had been “injured”; his condition; the prognosis; and the medical facility (normally the 97th General Hospital in Frankfurt) to which he had been sent for treatment.
A brand-new olive-drab Plymouth four-door sedan, driven by a sergeant and carrying a major of the Adjutant General’s Corps and a lieutenant colonel of the Army Chaplain’s Corps bounced off the Governors Island ferry and headed up past the Battery to the West Side Highway. It crossed Manhattan on 57th Street, past Carnegie Hall, and then turned up Park Avenue. It turned left on 60th Street, and left again on Fifth Avenue, and finally stopped before a large apartment building overlooking Central Park. The doorman of the building, after a moment’s indecision, walked across the sidewalk and opened the door of the staff car.
The Lieutenants Page 31