The Lieutenants
Page 42
Thanks for everything. Try to stay on the black stuff between the trees.
Fondly,
Craig.
Andre liked classic cars, and he had done well by his mother. Ilse thought that it was a very nice thing for him to do. Ilse was about as afraid of the Jaguar as she had been of the Packard. And one day, when he had the Jaguar in for service, Ilse had walked out of the showroom and stared into the adjacent showroom.
“That’s sweet,” she said. “Are they very expensive, Craig?” she said about the car on the showroom floor. So he’d bought her an MG-TC with wire wheels. It made you feel as if you were being dragged along the ground in a bucket.
Ilse was coming along well. He couldn’t be happier. They took an apartment high up at 2601 Parkway, nothing fancy, just enough for them; and Ilse furnished it in something called Danish Modern. He didn’t know or care about things like that, but if it made her happy, great.
The apartment had three bedrooms, a kitchen, and an enormous living room on two levels. He went to a used office furniture place and bought a huge desk, some bookcases, and a lamp that moved around on swivels. He also rented a typewriter from IBM. The bills for the apartment and the typewriter, and what the GI Bill didn’t pay for at Wharton, went into his Trust. As a married veteran with two dependents the government sent him a check for $134.80 a month. He gave that to Ilse for pocket money. The estate of Geoffrey Craig sent him a check every month, and a much larger check every three months. He played around with the stock market with the larger check, what was left of it after it passed through the hands of the accountant; and he lived on the monthly checks. When the checking balance got out of hand, he put the excess in the market, too.
He turned down business propositions from Porter Craig. He told him he would wait to get into that until he was through Wharton and in New York when he could look at everything and see where things stood.
Porter had been obliging as hell from the time he’d seen him in the Waldorf right after the funeral. He was obviously kissing ass for his own reasons, but some of it was useful. For instance, Porter had put him up for the Rose Tree Hunt, on the Main Line. He didn’t intend to hunt, but they played some half-assed polo, and there were bridle paths.
Ilse was riding. And she rode well. And she gradually started to tell stories about riding as a child in Germany with her father. Not all the women at Rose Tree were horse’s asses. Some of them were actually rather nice, and Ilse had moved into those circles. Unhappily, his fellow students at Wharton were generally a pain in the ass, fiercely ambitious pencil-pushers. But he held his own against them academically, and he came to form the nasty arrogant opinion that if those morons were the competition he was going to have to face when he went to New York, then he was not going to have a hell of a lot of trouble.
Giving Andre the Packard had been rather like casting bread upon the waters. He was sure Andre was responsible for the armed truce that now existed between him and his mother. His mother and Andre had been to see them twice, once when they first moved into the apartment, and next a couple of months ago, when the Pretiers were on their way to the Palm Beach place.
Ilse, who was as hardheaded as a rock, was never going to completely forgive his mother for the scene at Broadlawns, but she had decided that a baby needed a grandmother and possibly vice versa, so she watched carefully as his mother would play—briefly—with P.P. It was hardly a scene, Grandma and Child, that would wind up on a cover of the Saturday Evening Post, but it was something.
In the campus parking lot Craig Lowell stepped around a panel truck and found himself six feet from the muzzle evacuator on a 90 mm tube on an M26. Somebody was moving the turret. It was the cleanest M26 he had ever seen. Behind the tank was the recovery vehicle that had obviously carried it onto the campus. And behind that was an M24 light tank, a couple of M8 armored cars, some trucks, and a couple of jeeps.
The Pennsylvania National Guard was recruiting on campus.
“You want to look inside?” a captain in ODs asked him.
Lowell smiled and shook his head, “no.” But then, he decided, what the hell. He laid his briefcase on the fender and climbed up over the drive wheel. He waited until some potential recruit, smiling with delight, climbed out of the commander’s turret, and then he swung his legs through the hatch and dropped inside.
They’d stationed a master sergeant inside. Christ, the inside was spotless. The paint wasn’t even chipped. It must be brand new, or damned near brand new. The master sergeant showed him the breech of the tube, and the place where they stored the rounds and the driver’s seat.
Craig sniffed and smelled the familiar smells, and then he smiled and hoisted himself out of the commander’s hatch.
“Like to drive something like that?” the captain asked him, with a smile.
Craig smiled back and nodded, “yes.”
“Give me two minutes of your time,” the captain said, “and let me explain our program to you.”
Somehow reluctant to get off the tank, Lowell nodded.
If he would enlist in the Guard—either in the Tank Company or the Reconnaissance Company, which also had vacancies—he would be trained to drive and operate a tank at the regular Tuesday evening meetings, half past seven to half past nine. Then in the summertime, there were two weeks active duty for training. During these two weeks he would receive the same pay and allowance the regular army got. After he had gone to enough Tuesday Evening meetings and had completed one summer camp, he would be eligible to enter Advanced ROTC; and on graduation he would be commissioned a second lieutenant in the army reserve.
“I’ve already got a reserve commission,” Craig said.
“You do? As what?” the captain asked.
“First john,” Craig replied. “Armor.” He jerked his thumb at the M26. “M26 platoon commander.” He had been promoted to first john the day before he had been released from active duty.
“School training? You been through Knox?”
“I taught M4A4 gunnery at Knox,” Lowell said.
“No experience on these, then?”
“I was an assistant project officer at the Armor Board for that 90 mm high-velocity tube,” Lowell said. “I know a lot more about that hot noisy sonofabitch than I really want to.”
“We can use you,” the captain said.
“No, thanks,” Craig said.
“Get you a promotion to captain,” the captain said. “What the hell, it’s a day pay for two hours on Tuesday.”
“No, thanks,” Craig repeated. “But thank you just the same.”
The captain gave him his card and said he should think it over. No obligation, he said, just come by the armory on Broad Street some Tuesday and see what it’s like.
The first sergeant was a Fairmount Park cop. None of the platoon leaders had ever served a day on active duty. They were graduates of the One Night a Week for a Year, Plus Two Weeks at Summer Camp PANG OCS. The supply sergeant was Colonel Gambino’s brother. Colonel Gambino had served two years as a major and then light bird in War II. He had commanded a Transportation Corps truck battalion, after being directly commissioned because of his experience with heavy trucks. Gambino and Sons had for years had the garbage hauling contract for the north end of Philadelphia.
“I’ll tell it to you straight,” Colonel Gambino said. “I felt like a fucking fool at Indiantown Gap last summer. We had nine tanks, and we couldn’t get one of the fuckers out to the firing range without the fucker breaking down.”
“What about the one I saw out on the campus?”
“I borrowed it, and a guy to run it, from the 112th Infantry in Harrisburg.”
“You got spare parts?”
“I got a fucking warehouse full of spare parts. What I don’t have is anybody who ever saw a fucking M26 before. I did all right with the M4A4s we had.”
“I think I can get the M26s running for you,” Lowell said.
“You get them fuckers running, you’re a captain.”
“I
’m a captain and Tank Company commander, and then I get them running,” Lowell said.
“I already got a company commander. He’s the S-4’s brother-in-law. I can hardly fire him.”
“If you want me to get your tanks running, Colonel,” Craig Lowell had said, quite sure of himself, “you’re going to have to.”
HEADQUARTERS
111th INFANTRY REGIMENT
PENNSYLVANIA NATIONAL GUARD
305 North Broad Street
Philadelphia, Penna.
SPECIAL ORDERS 15 May 1949
Number 27
EXTRACT
3. 1st Lt Craig W. LOWELL, 0–495302, Armor, U.S. Army Reserve (Apt. 2301, 2601 Parkway, Phila Penna) having joined, assigned Tank Company, 111th Inf. 28th Inf Div, PANG for dy.
4. 1st Lt. Craig W LOWELL, 0–495302, Armor PANG, is Promoted CAPT PANG with DOR 15 May 1949. (Auth: Letter, Hq, The Adjutant General PANG, Subj: One Grade Promotion of Officers to fill PANG vacancies, dtd 11 Feb 1949.)
BY ORDER OF COLONEL GAMBINO
Max T. Solomon
Major, Armor, PANG
Adjutant
HEADQUARTERS
111th INFANTRY REGIMENT
PENNSYLVANIA NATIONAL GUARD
305 North Broad Street
Philadelphia, Penna.
GENERAL ORDERS 15 May 1949
Number 3
The undersigned assumes command effective this date.
Craig W. Lowell
Captain, Armor, PANG
While it proved impossible to get all nine M26s ready for firing in time for summer camp, Captain Lowell got all of them running well enough to be driven from the armory to the railhead, and then from the railhead at Indiantown Gap to the training area.
He found one competent mechanic and two half-assed mechanics in the company; and the four of them—Lowell happily up to ears in grease—got the turrets and the traversing mechanisms and the range finders and the sights and the tubes themselves ready on three tanks. There was no way that all nine tanks could be gotten into shape with the time and the people he had.
There was a simple dishonest solution to that. He fired nine functioning tanks by firing the same three functioning tanks three times over. The regular army inspecting staff was so surprised that any of the 111th Infantry’s M26s ran and fired at all that they didn’t notice (or pretended not to) that the paint on the vehicle identification numbers was fresh and a little runny, as if the numbers underneath had been painted over.
Everybody was happy, from the division commander down to Captain Lowell. When he came back from summer camp, he loaded Ilse and P.P. in the car and they went down to Cape May, N.J., and rented a cottage on the beach for the rest of the summer until he went back to school. Every Tuesday night, he got in the Jaguar and drove back to Philly for drill at the armory.
What he was thinking of doing, when he finished school in January and they moved to New York, was join the New York National Guard. What the hell, some people played tennis for a hobby and some played golf. What he would do for a hobby is play soldier.
He’d straightened out the Fairmount Park cop who was his first sergeant, and the first sergeant straightened out the platoon sergeants while Captain Lowell straightened out the platoon commanders. Tank Company, 111th Infantry, PANG, was arguably the sharpest company in the regiment, possibly even in the division; and Lowell could not remember anything else that had given him so much pleasure since he had taught the Greeks of No. 12 Company how to fire the Garand.
It might be a little childish, but so what? If he was going to spend the rest of his life computing potential return on capital investment, getting out in the fresh air and getting his hands dirty would probably be very good for him.
(Four)
The American Sector
Berlin, Germany
21 May 1950
Lieutenant Colonel Bob Bellmon came through Berlin as part of some visiting general’s entourage and looked up Sandy Felter. Bellmon was now in the Pentagon, assigned to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations.
He called Felter and offered to take Sharon and Sandy out for dinner, but they had him instead to their quarters. Sandy offered to send a car to pick him up, but Bellmon said he had a car and it wouldn’t be necessary.
Felter was curious about two things: How did Bellmon come into possession of his quarters’ telephone number, which wasn’t listed in the Berlin Military Post telephone directory, and how did he know where he and Sharon lived? The compound was not listed either.
Sharon, sensing that Sandy liked Bellmon and that Bellmon was important to their future, made a special dinner, and even arranged for one of the maids to take care of Little Sandy after he’d been shown off, so that he wouldn’t be a nuisance. After dinner she tried to leave them alone twice, in case “they wanted to talk,” but each time Bellmon made her stay. The third time she asked, Bellmon said, “I really would like a couple of minutes alone with him, Sharon.”
Sharon said she’d go see how Little Sandy was doing.
Felter offered Bellmon a brandy and set the bottle in front of him.
“How’d you get my quarters’ number, Colonel?” Sandy asked, aware that he was putting Bellmon on the defensive. I am no longer an innocent young lieutenant, he thought.
The telephone number had come from Red Hanrahan, Bellmon told him, and that amounted to an announcement that Hanrahan was also in Washington. Hanrahan, Bellmon said, sent his best wishes and had asked about Duke Lowell.
“I haven’t heard from him since he got out,” Bellmon said. “Have you?”
“Sharon hears from Ilse all the time,” Felter said. “He made captain in the Pennsylvania National Guard.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ!” Bellmon said. “God help the National Guard.”
In the mistaken impression that Felter knew MacMillan, Bellmon said that Mac had gone to helicopter school, and that he had been assigned to Tokyo. “MacArthur likes the notion of having another Medal of Honor around, I suppose. They can exchange war stories.”
“Is he working for MacArthur?”
“He’s assigned to Supreme Headquarters,” Bellmon said. “I think he’s too smart to get close to MacArthur. Good Soldier Mac avoids getting too close to the flames if at all possible.” Then he asked, surprisingly, “You like working in civilian clothing, Sandy?”
“It’s all right.” There was more to the question than idle curiosity. “Colonel Hanrahan ask you to ask me that?”
Colonel Bellmon ignored the question.
“How are you getting along with your station chief?” he asked, instead.
Felter didn’t answer the question.
“He asked to have you replaced,” Bellmon said. Felter wondered if the visit of Colonel Bellmon was social, if Hanrahan had known he was coming to Berlin and had asked him to have a word with him, or whether Bellmon’s role with DCSOPS had an intelligence connection of its own, and he was here officially.
Whatever the case, Felter was sorry Bellmon had told him what he had. Not because the station chief had stuck a knife in him, but because it might tend to cloud his judgment about the station chief.
“If I were in a position to ask for his relief,” Felter said, flatly, “I would. And I would be justified. He’s not.”
“The story is that you’re putting your nose in the wrong places,” Bellmon reported.
“An intelligence officer has to walk a narrow line between putting his nose every place he can and interfering with somebody else,” Felter replied. It had just occurred to him (and he wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him before) that the only two officers in the army to whom he could say exactly what was on his mind were Hanrahan and Bellmon. Hanrahan because of their Greek service, Bellmon because of Katyn and Task Force Parker.
“You don’t think you’ve gone over the line?” Bellmon asked. Felter shook his head.
“The only time I came close to it was asking for a file on a Soviet prisoner, a man named Greiffenberg.”
/> “Greiffenberg? Our Greiffenberg?”
“I don’t know. The one I found is a lieutenant colonel,” Felter said. “And plain, without the ‘von.’”
“Do you think it’s possible he’s still alive?”
“About one chance in two hundred,” Felter said. “I thought it was worth checking out. But I was very careful. The file I asked for was purely routine. I checked that out. It had been offered to everybody. CIC. DIA. Even the Office of Naval Intelligence.”
“What was your information? Where is your Greiffenberg?”
“I had fairly reliable information that there was an Oberstleutnant Paul Greiffenberg at a labor camp in Siberia. There are twenty-two people with that name in the Berlin phone book.”
“How did it come up?” Bellmon asked.
“I’ve been compiling a list, a private file, on potential East German Army staff officers. The reason I checked was obviously personal. Not really personal. A gut feeling. Sometimes I go on my gut feelings. Ilse Lowell’s maiden name was Greiffenberg, and her father is missing.”
“Ilse’s father is dead,” Bellmon said. “The Russians shot him the day before you and Phil Parker showed up at Zwenkau.”
“You see the body?”
“They shot all the Germans,” Bellmon said.
“The reason I asked is that I found out they usually didn’t shoot Oberstleutnants and better. Not even the SS equivalent. Not right off, anyway, the way they blew your people away.”
“I didn’t see the body,” Bellmon said. “I didn’t want to see it. But I think other people did.”
“The operative word is ‘think,’” Felter said.
“You don’t happen to have a photograph?”
“I never got to see the file,” Felter said. “My station chief sent it back.”
“Why did he do that?”
“I was being put in my place,” Felter said.
“What would you do if you found out?” Bellmon asked.
“Tell Craig and let him decide,” Felter said.
“If the Russians knew he knew about Katyn,” Bellmon said, “he’d be dead.”