W E B Griffin - BoW 03 - The Majors
Page 17
VII
(One)
Frankfurt am Main. Germany
17 April1955
As regulations prescribed, Major Craig W. Lowell was given an efficiency report at the conclusion of his year-long initial ultilization tour as an aviator. It wasn't much of an efficiency report; it wouldn't do him much good.
It said that he had performed the duties required of him in an exemplary manner and had materially increased his skills and knowledge as an aviator. Aviators on initial utilization tours were expected to materially increase their skills and knowledge as aviators. Most of them worked hard at it.
The efficiency report also said: "Inasmuch as subject officer has been on an initial utilization tour during the reporting period, he has not been required to perform any functions of command. Consequently, the rating officer has been unable to evaluate his performance as a commander, or to form any opinion concerning subject officer's potential performance as a combat commander in his present or in a higher rank."
In effect, what the efficiency report said was that he managed to put in another year's service without either killing himself in a helicopter or getting into trouble.
What he had become, Major Craig Lowell thought, was a taxi driver to the brass. He was nowhere nearer to doing anything important than he ever had been. There was no reason that a second lieutenant, six months out of flight school, couldn't do what he was doing.
The brass preferred not be flown by second lieutenants. The more senior the brass, the more they could make this known.
They felt more comfortable being flown by senior captains and majors and even lieutenant colonels than they did by second lieutenants.
It was Lowell's belief that the younger the pilot, the better.
He had prepared a staff study (for Bill Robert's signature; his own signature would make the document meaningless) proposing that fifty enlisted men no older than eighteen years of age, who met the basic requirements for OCS in terms of physical and mental ability, be sent to flight school for training as warrant officer rotary wing aviators. Current practice was to send to flight school deserving noncoms of long and faithful service, technical and master sergeants only, which generally made them twenty-eight or thirty. The performance of the fifty boy pilots over a couple of years would either confirm Lowell's theory, or disprove it.
Roberts had reported that the staff study had caused fits all up and down the Pentagon, particularly with the Transportation
Corps, whose senior officer, the Chief of Transporation, had only recently won a major skirmish to have L-20 Beaver and
H-34 Choctaw companies designated Transportation Airplane and Helicopter Companies, on the lines of Transportation Truck
Companies, and bluntly announced he didn't want a flock of teen-aged warrant officers running loose with his aircraft. The staff study had not been rejected, however. It was "being studied."
Rumor had it being studied by the Secretary of Defense himself.
"When you inevitably get us shot down in flames, Lowell,"
Bill Roberts had written, "we will make a spectacular crash."
Today, leading a flight of eight Bell H-13s, Lowell had r
TIff MAJORS
143 flown up the autobahn from Heidelberg to Rhine-Main Airfield outside Frankfurt, where they had topped off the fuel tanks.
After they'd taken off, they'd cut directly across Frankfurt over the Bahnhof and then up Erschenheimer-Landstrasse to the grassy expanse in front of the enormous curved facade of the former I. 0. Farben Building, now Headquarters, U.S. Forces,
European Theater (USFET).
The seven other Bell H-13s flew in trail behind him in a V, each chopper flying two hundred feet behind and one hundred feet above the bird in front of him. They would make an intentional display of themselves when they all suddenly, and virtually simultaneously, swooped out of the sky to pick up a visiting one-star and his collection of colonels and lower hangers-on and ferry them to Heidelberg, to Headquarters, U.S.
Army, Europe.
"All right," Major Lowell said to his microphone, "now let's do it right."
He put the H- 13 into a steep turn to the left, his eyes on the white painted H of the helipad. He straightened the bird out, dropped like a stone, flared, and touched down. He looked out the plexiglass bubble. Six of the seven choppers were on the ground. The seventh was coming in very slowly, like a bather about to test the temperature in a swimming pool. There's always one sonofabitch who's a minute late and a dollar short,
Lowell thought, and then started to shut the helicopter down.
A tall, quite handsome officer, with a glistening star pinned to his overseas hat (you didn't see many of them anymore; the generals. had taken to wearing the new olive-green uniform, whose hat was generously provided with scrambled eggs on the brimŽfar more general-like than an overseas cap) came rapidly striding toward Lowell's H-13.
Lowell hadn't expected them for a good five minutes. But he unsnapped his harness, jumped out of the helicopter, ran under the still rotating blades, and held open the passenger door for the buck general with one hand while he saluted with the other.
The general looked him up and down and got into the helicopter.
By the time Lowell got back in, the general had already found the headset and put it on.
"I'm Major Lowell, sir," he said. "Were we by any chance late?"
"No, you were thirty seconds early," the buck general said.
That was pretty spectacular, that swooping pigeons bit. Do you do that all the time, or just to impress visitors?"
"We practice all the time, sir," Lowell said. "So that we can impress visitors."
"One of your pigeons was late," the general said. "Did you notice?"
The other pilots reported in, one at a time, giving just their number, to signify their readiness to take off: Five. Two. Seven.
Four. Three. Six.
The needles were in the green. Lowell picked up on the cyclic, swooping back in the air. He saw in the mirror that the rest of the flight had taken off when he did. Perfect. The general hadn't seen that, of course. Just the bastard who was late.
"You're smiling," the general said. "I suppose the rest of your flock got off the ground by the numbers."
"Yes, sir."
"Including Tailgate Charley?"
"Yes, sir."
"Now that we're in the air, don't you think it would be a good idea to ask me where we're going?" the general asked.
"I was informed the general's destination was Heidelberg, sir.
"There has been a change in plans. I want to go to Bad
Godesberg. Can you do that, or are you going to have to fuel up someplace?"
"We have enough fuel for Bad Godesberg and a thirty minute reserve, sir," Lowell replied. He pressed his microphone button and called Rhine-Main area control and told him of the change in flight plans.
"That swooping pigeon bit was very impressive," the general said, when he had finished. "Does it have some sort of bona fide military application, or is it like chrome-plating mess kits?"
"If the general can imagine each of these machines as capable of carrying eight fully armed infantrymen, the general can probably imagine that we can discharge a platoon and its basic load of ammunition in just about the time it took us to pick up the general's party, sir."
"And each of those machines could be flown by a teen-aged boy, right?"
That surprised Lowell to the point where he looked at the general.
"Yes, sir, I think they could."
"You are one of Bill Robert's acolytes, then?" the general said.
"I don't think of myself so much as an accilyte, General, as a monsignor to his bishop."
The general laughed. "You've heard about the teen-age pilots, then?"
"I was able to help the bishop draft the appeal to the heavens, sir."
That suggests you wrote it," the general snapped. Lowell didn't reply. "Either you did, or you didn't," the general snappe
d.
"Which is it?"
"I wrote it, General."
"Then you must be another of the ,recent recruits to peace on earth through air mobility," the general said. "Another bright young officer throwing his career away in a quest for the Holy
Grail."
Lowell didn't trust himself to reply.
"Had second thoughts already, have you?" the general asked.
"No,'-sir," Lowell said, and then he thought, fuck it, this guy hates army aviation anyway. "I'm in army aviation because
I don't have a career to throw away. And, with all respect, sir,
I think a lot of people are going to eat their words about Colonel
Roberts. He's right, and most of his critics are wrong."
The general said, dryly: "Your loyalty is commendable."
Lowell now knew that whatever he said would be wrong.
He said nothing.
The general said, "That was a colorful phrase, didn't you think? Another bright young officer throwing his career away in a quest for the Holy Grail."'
The reply came before Lowell could stop it.
"I don't frankly think much of it, General."
"But you will admit it's colorful? I mean, it has a good deal more class than, for example, you dumb fuck, you!' Wouldn't you say?"
Lowell had to chuckle. "Yes, sir, it does."
"General Simmons has always had a flair for the spoken word," the general said. "He just used that Holy Grail line on me, when I told him that I had turned down chief of staff of the 2nd Armored Division to assume command of the Army
Aviation Center."
The general was smiling when Lowell looked at him in surprise.
"If you're a monsignor, Major, and Bill Roberts is a bishop,
I guess that makes me the Pope." The general made the sign of the cross. "Bless you, my Son," he said. "Go and sin no more." He seemed highly pleased with himself.
After a moment, he asked: "I have two more questions,
Major."
"Yes, sir."
"There was a Task Force Lowell in the breakout from the
Pusan perimeter. That was you, correct?"
"Yes, sir."
"OK, those blanks are filled in. I've heard about you. Next question. As one old tank commander to another, are these things hard to drive?"
"General, they're a bitch," Lowell said.
"I was afraid you were going to say that," the general said.
"Then your thesis is the younger the man, the easier he will be to train?"
"Easier to train, in better physical condition with quicker reflexes, and he can be retained on flying duty for a longer period of time, with consequent reduction of training costs."
"Final question," the general said. "When you can find time,
I want you to write down this instantaneous discharge of ground troops from helicopters for me. Send it to me at Rucker, it's in Alabama someplace, I never heard of it. Mark the envelope personal.'"
"Yes, sir," Lowell said.
"My name is Laird," the buck general said. "My friends call me Scotty."' He paused. "You can call me General."'
Lowell smiled dutifully at General Laird, who was obviously delighted with his wit. Lowell had heard that you can call me
General' line before. And then he remembe. :d where. The first time he had ever seen a general up close, on the polo field at
Bad Nauheim. That long ago. Before he had been an officer; before, even, he had met Ilse.
The general had been Major General Peterson K. "Porky"
Waterford, then commanding the U.S. Costabulary, the Army of Occupation police force. He had used the same line on his newly formed polo team, which had consisted of the general, two full bull colonels, and PFC Craig W. Lowell, soon to elevate from draftee to second lieutenant, because "Call Me
General" Waterford wanted to beat the French. The French played only fellow officers and gentlemen, and PFC Lowell happened to be a three-goal polo player.
Lowell spent long hours in the three weeks after he dropped
Brigadier General Laird and his staff off at Bad Godesberg, writing and rewriting a draft field manual, Helicopter Placement of the Infantry Platoon.
It wasn't something he had just thought up; the idea had occurred to him a long time ago (and not, he readily admitted, to him alone). The difference was that he had done more than think about it. Encouraged by Bill Roberts's responses to other ideas of his, he had considered the problem as something real and immediate, as if it were going to happen tomorrow. The only imaginary thing in his proposal was the helicopter itself.
The army had already begun to take delivery of Sikorsky H-
34 helicopters which could, under ideal conditions, indeed lift eight fully armed troops and their combat load.
The yet-to-be-designed, much less built, helicopter described in Helicopter Placement of the Infantry Platoon was capable of carrying twelve fully armed troops under all reasonable conditions, plus five hundred pounds of supplies, and the machine was designed so that troops would be off-loaded through doors on both sides.
Lowell played the devil's advocate, trying as hard as he could to find fault with his own idea and its execution. But finally it was done, and he typed it up himself, with five carbon copies, as neatly, he thought, as any clerk-typist of questionable sexual persuasion could type it, each copy having a cardboard cover and bound together with a paper clip.
Typing the address gave him the biggest thrill.
Brig. Gen. Angus C. Laird
Commanding General
The U.S. Army Aviation Center
Camp Rucker, Alabama 36362
PERSONAL
Brigadier General "Scotty" Laird had asked for it.
Lowell sent a copy to Phil Parker in Alaska. A Xerox copy; he had forgotten about Phil until he was halfway through typing it up. Six weeks later, he got a Xerox of Emplacement of the
Infantry (Ski) Platoon in Arctic Conditions by Ski-Equipped
UJA "Otter" Aircraft.
Phil had adopted his idea to arctic conditions and had used as his imaginary aircraft a sort of super Beaver, a fourteen passenger DeHavilland single-engine Bush aircraft not yet in the army inventory.
It was the only response Lowell ever got to his proposal.
Colonel Bill Roberts acknowledged receiving it, but made no comment. General Laird never even acknowledged receiving it. After several months, Lowell concluded that Laird had just been playing with him, laying some charm on a young officer, getting him to write up an idea that he never intended to seriously consider. He was bitterly disappointed.
And he wasn't doing a god damned thing of importance now.
He was still with the Seventh Army Right Detachment. He had picked up a bullshit title, "Deputy to the Chief, Special
Rotary Wing Missions Branch," but he was painfully aware that he was still playing commissioned jeep driver, ferrying people from one place to another in a flying jeep. in Dothan. She was wearing a matching set, bra, panties, and half-slip, all black. The half-slip was lace from the hem nearly halfway to the waist. The panties were nearly all lace, except where a strip of solid material was necessary here and there to hold them together, absolutely as fragile and delicate and transparent as it was possible to make them. The bra, while it looked as fragile as the panties, was really quite strong. It had to be to hold her breasts up the way it was, and yet it was surprisingly comfortable. It was also surprisingly expensive, even for Martinette's
Finer Ladies Wear.
When she had taken the undies out of the sealed cellophane packageŽwhich. meant that she would have to buy themŽ she would have bet the thin straps would cut painfully into her shoulders. And she thought the plastic, or whatever it was, that pushed up the half-cups (the tops were open; anyone looking down her dress could see her nipples) was going to dig into the bottom of her. breasts and probably jab painfully into the flesh below. But that didn't happen. The bra was as comfortable as any she had e
ver worn. And sexy!
But God, if Tommy didn't show up, how was she going to pay for it? Doc would blow his cork if he got a bill from
Martinette's for $79.95 plus tax. Dentistry wasn't a printing press for money, he would say. Again.
She turned around, looking over her shoulder into the mirror.