"I love the Air Force. I just don't like what it's doing to me. I shot down three planes in Korea, I'm an ace, and nobody believes me. Think about it, I'm the first Negro ace, and nobody gives me the time of day. They won't let me fly; I don't even have a job in the Air Force, except to come in here and let you pick my brains."
Frazier was persistent. "I can't comment on the ace business, out of my field. But how do you think the Air Force treats Negroes in general?"
"Compared to what?" It was a rhetorical question and he went on. "Compared to towns in the Deep South, it's terrific. Compared to the Army or the Navy, it's good. Compared to how it should be, it's lousy."
"Give me some specifics."
"Let's do it next time, when I can think about it. Right now I'm too pissed off to comment."
"Well, I've got to finish a report a week from tomorrow. Would you give it some thought between now and then, jot down your ideas, and bring them with you for the next session?"
Marshall went home, churning the idea over. Oddly enough, most of the information he had on the Air Force now came from Saundra, material she'd gotten from her activist friends. From what he could gather, integration had gone pretty well at most bases. The real rub was off-base relations—in many places, North and South, there was as much segregation as ever.
He picked up the phone and began calling, with Lockbourne first. It was like a chain letter; every place he called gave him some information, then referred him to someone else. He gave up everything but his running to stay by the phone, not worrying about the phone bill, trying to call Negro friends still in service, getting suggestions from them on who to call next.
Many of them were suspicious at first, but he was gratified to find out that his name was well known, and that they would talk frankly to him.
The results surprised him. Two of his old buddies from the 332nd at Lockbourne said that integration had sold them out—that they had a chance in a segregated outfit, but were strictly out of luck in an integrated unit. He talked to two others who said just the opposite, that they had a better chance in an integrated unit.
He felt he'd hit the jackpot with a sergeant in personnel at Scott Field who had access to the statistics that indicated what sort of opportunity a Negro had. The sergeant told him that only twenty-two of 2,085 aviation cadets were Negro, a little over one percent; there were 1,356 officers in flight training, and only eleven were Negro, less than one percent. And as far as living conditions, things were worse in the South, predictably enough. At Keesler, the base commander had forbidden base teams to play with local teams that would not play against Negroes; yet off base, in Biloxi, there was not only total social segregation everywhere from restaurants to poolrooms to whorehouses, but everything was substandard or worse. At Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, he found that segregation was just about eliminated on base, but not entirely, because white civilian chaperones at dances sometimes tried to keep Negroes out. Off-base housing was still miserable for enlisted Negroes, who had to live in a shantytown.
But on the whole, and to his surprise, it was heartening; time after time he got back reports that the ice had broken, that jobs were opening up, that people were getting used to the idea. The only really outrageous thing he found was that Little Rock Air1 Force Base, an elementary school built with federal funds and intended exclusively for Air Force dependents, was segregated because it was located on Pulaski County property, and the local school board rules applied.
He gave the report, six pages, single-spaced, to Frazier the next Friday.
"Jesus, John, I only wanted an opinion, not a thesis."
"This is no thesis--but it's a pretty good capsule survey of the Air Force and integration. The Air Force is doing a better job than I thought."
"Does that make you feel better?"
"Some. There's been progress, but not enough of it. When I get back to work, I'm going to see what I can do to help. But that's the big question—when are you going to be finished grilling me? When am I going back to flying?"
"I'm finished, and it was a pleasure to work with you. I understand you'll be getting orders in a few days. I hope they are just what you want."
That night John had a shaker full of martinis waiting when Saundra came in. They kissed and she asked, "How did it go?"
"Honey, I knocked him on his duff! He couldn't believe the information I had in that report. I couldn't believe it either—things seem to be looking up."
Saundra stood, unsmiling, a folded Los Angeles Times under her arm. "Tell me more."
"He says the investigation's over and that I should be getting orders pretty soon. I'll probably be back in the cockpit this time next month."
"That's great, 1 hope so. But you might want to take a look at this."
She flopped the newspaper in front of him, tapping at an article in the first column of the front page. The headline read russell rails against traitors and followed with a letter printed in full from Senator Richard Russell of Georgia to Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson.
Marshall read it out loud. "My views may be extreme, but I believe that those who collaborated and the signers of false confessions should be immediately separated from the services under conditions other than honorable." The letter went on for several more paragraphs, but John dropped the paper to the floor. "Conditions other than honorable"—it was impossible.
"This may not mean anything, Saundra. It's just a letter from a die-hard Southerner. The services still have their say."
She took his face in her hands and whispered, "John, John, think about it. The Air Force won't even let you put in your claims for your victories. Maybe they won't discharge everybody. But they'll probably have to sacrifice some."
"Saundra, they couldn't. I never told the Commies anything useful. And before we went into combat, when the intelligence guys briefed us about capture, they never told us we had to die! Sometimes they said, Tell them only your name, rank and serial number' and sometimes it was Tell them anything they want to know.' But they didn't give us any poison pills, or anything. Besides, most of us didn't know anything the Communists didn't already know."
"You don't have to convince me, John, you just have to convince a board of white officers who probably already think you're a trouble-maker because you're claiming to be an ace. Damn it, think about it! Will they pick Langford Uppercrust the Third from Harvard to be a sacrificial lamb, or will it be poor John Marshall, a jigaboo from Cleveland?"
He sat with his head in his hands. The prospect of a dishonorable discharge was too much.
"Okay. You're right. I'll resign my commission." She hugged him, saddened at the thought that this, the smart thing to do, was going to make him unhappy for the rest of his life.
*
Little Rock, Arkansas/April 1, 1954
Baker ran his hands uneasily over the DeSoto's chrome and plastic steering wheel. "You realize we could get arrested for this?"
Josten snorted with impatience. "For what? Sitting peaceably in a car?"
"Loitering in a car by a schoolyard. If some old woman reports us, the cops'll be down in a minute, figuring we're waiting here to flash our weenies at the kids."
Josten sulked as Baker put the car into gear, turning down the first street away from the schoolyard.
"I just wanted to see where my son will go to school."
Baker glanced at Josten in troubled silence, uncertain how to handle Josten's growing schizophrenia. More and more it seemed as if he were working with two totally different men. One was a brilliant planner, a leader who inspired the Storm Klanners, rational, courteous, sometimes even pleasant to get along with. The other was a man hurtling toward madness, obsessed with the idea of reclaiming his wife and his child.
With an abrupt gesture, Josten stuck the clawed fingers of his hand under Baker's nose and launched into a tirade that had become familiar in the last few weeks.
"See these burns? I spent many months on my back in a hospital, not knowing wheth
er I'd live or die, whether I'd ever walk again.
The one thing that sustained me was the thought of my son, that I had to live to take care of him. Do you think I'm going to let some stupid American pilot take my place, to serve as his father?"
Baker eased into the parking lot of a drive-in root beer stand. When these moods struck—and they did with increasing frequency—their conversation fell into a pattern: Josten's complaining, and Baker trying to calm him. "Look, Helmut, you're not the first guy whose wife divorced him and took the kid. It happens all the time."
Nothing impaired Baker's appetite, and he ordered two hamburgers, french fries, and a root beer float for himself, a coffee for Josten. Eating methodically, licking his fingers between bites, Baker said nothing, contemplating the situation. As long as he still needed cover, he'd have to put up with Josten's growing craziness. The Air Force inspectors had torn McNaughton's paperwork apart, and Elsie performed exactly as Ruddick had instructed her to, preferring charges against Baker with the local district attorney. It satisfied the Air Force, which backed off to concentrate on getting McNaughton's production procedures straightened out.
He enjoyed working with the Klan, feeling superior to most of the members, and seeing many ways that he could profit from it in the future. His duties for Josten were light, and he liked the entertainment he found in the bawdier sections of New Orleans, going down for a week or two at a time, feasting on oysters before nosing around the red-light district, looking for new young girls just in from the bayous.
While he ate, the other man watched him with amused contempt, realizing that Baker could have no inkling of what it was like truly to love some one, or what it meant to have your son stolen from you. He looked on Baker as his senior non-commissioned officer, a good sergeant who did what he was told. It didn't matter that he was a pig—uncultured, ill-mannered, unread—for he did not want him as a friend. He needed him only as an instrument, an extension of his own crippled arms and legs.
As Josten slowly regained his composure, he realized that he would have to say less about his feelings for Lyra and Ulrich—he was giving too much away, and while Baker might be a good worker, he had no illusions about his loyalty.
As they drove back to Pine Bluff in silence, Josten realized that he was better far off here than at McNaughton. The work with the Klan suited his own needs perfectly, giving him time to recover his health, and to plan for his reunion with Lyra. He already had his first objective well in hand, making the Storm Klan into an elite unit. In a way it was his apology for his disloyalty to Hitler. There had been too many men like himself, who had not supported Hitler at the most crucial moments, when the war might still have been won. Now half of Germany was occupied by Russian peasants, the other half by predatory Westerners who bled the country dry. Negro music rang in the dance halls, German girls were bearing half-caste babies; it was exactly what Hitler had predicted—the degradation, the "nigrification," of Germany.
Now Josten was beginning the expansion of the elite Storm Klan concept to other Klan "Realms," as the state organizations were called. In its decline, the Klan had splintered, disintegrating into local, autonomous chapters. The Kleagles—organizers—enjoyed their power and had been suspicious of previous suggestions that they cooperate. But in the past few weeks, Ruddick had brought several of them in to see how well things were working in Pine Bluff, and now there was even talk about affiliating to create a United Klans of America. From there it would be but a step to a political party.
The idea of a party made it essential that he create a plainclothes force, and he had recently spent days interviewing likely ;Storm Klanners, trying to see which ones would have the intelligence and the presence to insinuate themselves into responsible positions in the community. It was tough going—most of the Storm Klanners were Neanderthals, much more willing to fight with a club or fists than with their brains. But there were a few who made good candidates, and they were recommending more. One was already a deputy sheriff in Pulaski County, and another was on the school board. Several were in the National Guard. It was a start.
But more important than anything was planning his personal mission. He would not allow someone else to take his rightful place. No one else had any right to Lyra and Ulrich.
*
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio/ April 15, 1954
The giant base spilled like an upset Monopoly board along the Erie Railroad and the Mad River, extending from the old Fairfield Air Depot over ten miles of farmland to the runways at Wright Field. Bits and pieces of logic were evident in those few acres where streets were laid out in nice rectangles, and sweeping drives approached handsome headquarters. But most of the area was filled in with a crazy quilt of buildings, some ugly because they were quickly and cheaply built, others strange-looking because they had unusual test functions to fulfill.
At the core of the complex was an array of bureaucracies acting as its central nervous system, fulfilling the age-old military needs of procurement and supply. These civil service fiefdoms, replete with manual calculators, file cabinets, and endless serried rows of clerks, labored on through the years, growing quietly, layering the paperwork into an immense, inedible baklava of rules and regulations.
Dependent upon this core were the many engineering divisions, experimenting with materials and processes, creating new test procedures, guarding the established standards. The engineering divisions provided a stability and a continuity to the field and had strong, productive contacts with its civilian counterparts. This layer grew, too, at a faster pace than the central core, but not so swiftly as the new stars of the expanding Wright-Pat galaxy, the Weapon System Project Offices, products of new management needs that had to keep all the many facets of a modern weapon system coordinated. There you found the bright young officers, the advocates who identified their careers with the complex systems they managed and took weapons from the cradle of inspiration to the grave of obsolescence.
Bandfield's first memories of the place went back to 1934, a simpler grass-field time when he'd flown the losing entry in a twin-engined bomber competition. He hadn't done too well then—he wondered how he'd do today.
"Riley, this place reminds me of a coral reef; always growing one new organism, one on top of another. An organization is created for a new project; it matures over time and becomes part of the foundation while a new outfit gets superimposed on it."
Riley laughed. "Yeah, it's been a real alphabet soup—AMC, WADC, WADD—always changing with the Air Force mission, with the weapons."
They walked down the shining corridors, so worn and polished that wood knots gleamed like voyeurs' eyes through the linoleum that dated the building to wartime construction. Bandy noticed it, and reflected how floors signaled when a government building was built—hardwood in prewar, linoleum in wartime, and asphalt tile in postwar, a downward spiral of aesthetics. The route took them past dozens of glass-walled partitions, which transmitted some of the light and all of the noise, toward the B-47 WSPO—the Weapon System Project Office.
"You satisfied with how things are going with the B-47?"
Riley took two steps and clicked his heels. "Christ, I'm happy as a clam because LeMay is happy. We'll have nineteen operational B-47 wings by December, and twenty-seven a year after that. The in-commission rate is good and getting better, and we've finally got a handle on the engineering change proposals. LeMay attributes it all to the fact that the WSPOs are working so good, and he thinks Bernie Schriever and I are geniuses for setting them up."
"What's the secret? You're working with the same people."
"The real reason is LeMay—people know he wants the system to work, so it does. It has what I call lateral leadership; the project officers can cut across the usual chain of command to get something done. You get a hotshot young captain cooking in here, and he can make things happen."
"Well, Bernie Schriever made brigadier last year—when are you due?"
Riley looked genuinely surprised. "Me m
ake general? Are you kidding? There's more chance they'll court-martial me than make me a general."
He walked along, pensive. "Seriously, Bandy, I've never thought about it before. Hell, I haven't done any of the right things, gone to any of the right schools. They'd never even consider me."
"All you've done right is get next to LeMay and straighten out the B-47 program. You should ask LeMay to be the B-52 WSPO director—that should do it."
"We'll talk about it later."
They turned the corner, threaded their way through the battered and ill-assorted desks, some still wearing the NRA tags they came with during the Depression, to a series of offices lining the wall. The glass partitions here went all the way to the ceiling and the offices were reserved for lieutenant colonels and above. At the end, one office had been called a conference room; it was identical in size to the other four offices along the wall, but it had a long conference table, straight-backed chairs, and an overhead projector. Sitting around the table, faces long, were representatives from the various Wright-Patterson divisions—Engineering, Procurement, even Flight Test. In the center of the table, tagged like toes in the morgue, were the milk-bottle pins Bandfield had pulled from the Pinecastle B-47 crash the previous February. Next to them was a black three-ring binder, the kind school kids use.
Bandfield studied the men for a moment before Riley introduced him. This was exactly what Riley had devised his systems management and the WSPOs to overcome—the dogged inertia of the usual civil service hierarchy. He looked at them with a mixture of anger and sympathy. They were a classic Wright-Pat civil service team—five GS-12s, in rumpled suits from Sears, their stained birthday-gift ties worn and frayed, each man with a forest of pencils in his shirt pocket. Together they constituted an engineering Greek chorus, ready to back up past decisions or defer new ones.
Most of the engineering at the complex was a mere ratification of the manufacturer's proposals; a very few individuals, one or two in each office, were aggressive enough to stick their necks out a little to do some engineering on their own. More than anything else, they were skilled in a thousand ways to cover their asses.
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