W E B Griffin - BoW 03 - The Majors
Page 24
"What happens to me when he finds out?" Greer said. "About my father, I mean? And you can't tell me he's pleased with the notion of you going out with a soldier in the first place."
"Where's your uniform?" Melody asked, and when he didn't answer her (at least he hadn't told her to get out), she went looking for it. She found the BOQ consisted of two rooms, the room she was in, sort of a living room, and a bedroom. In the bedroom there was a doorless closet, which was covered with a cotton curtain. She pushed the curtain aside and saw that it was jammed full of uniforms.
"Which one of these?" she asked. She looked over her shoulder. He was standing in the doorway.
"What do you plan to do, dress me?" he asked.
She met his eyes. "Yes," she said. "You can't dress yourself."
"The blue one," he said. She turned and took a blue tunic and trousers from the closet.
"Jesus!" he said. "Just put it on the bed."
She laid the tunic on the bed.
"And get me a white shirt from the dresser drawers," he said. When she was sliding drawers open, he said: "Christ, you're even going to have to put my socks on."
"Sit down and I'll put them on," Melody said.
He sat down on the bed. She found socks in the chest of drawers and then remembered underwear. She found jockey shorts and a T-shirt in another drawer, and then thought about a necktie. She didn't know how to tie a man's necktie. What was she going to do about that?
She went to where he was sitting on the bed. He avoided looking at her. She squatted and forced a laugh, and said, "I don't have much experience doing this."
She tugged his sock on. She looked up at him, pleasure in her eyes.
"There!" she said. "One down and one to go!"
"Shit!" he said, and it was a cry of anguish. He twisted on the bed to get around her, to get up. When he did, she saw his thing, hard, erect, poking out of the fly of his pajamas.
He got that because he was looking down my dress at my breasts, she thought.
"Goddamnit, why don't you just get out of here?" he said, when he had gained his feet.
"Obviously," Melody heard herself say, "because I don't want to."
"Don't tease me," he said. "Goddamnit, don't you tease me.
"I'm not going to tease you," she said.
"You know what's going to happen to your little schoolgirl's ass if you don't get it out that door, don't you?" he said.
Melody Dutton, as if she was in a dream, stood up, contorted her body, and reached behind for the zipper on her evening gown. The gown had a built-in bra, and when she stepped out of the gown, she was naked except for a brief pair of panties.
Meeting his eyes, she slid them down off her hips. She went to him and untied the cord of his pajama pants. Then she lay on the bed.
"You dumb little shit," Ed Greer said to her no more than two minutes later. "What did you do that for?"
"I wanted to," she said.
"I never copped a cherry before," Greer said.
"How did it feel?" she asked, nastily, aware that she was close to tears.
"Oh, Jesus Christ!" he said, and hugged her to him, and it was all right.
"Did you hurt your hands?" Melody asked and sat up and held them gently in her own.
"Who cares?" he asked. She smiled down at him.
"It didn't hurt as much as I thought it would," she said. "In case you're wondering."
"But it did hurt?" he said.
"Not after a while," she said.
"You're sure?" he asked. "I mean, I didn't break anything, did I?"
Melody leaned over and kissed him.
"Happy New Year," she said.
"Jesus, your parents," he said. "They're at the club."
Howard Dutton knew the moment he saw Melody and the soldier with the burned hands walking across the floor to their table. There was a look in Melody's eyes (not guilt) that had never been there before. And there was proof later, the way they looked at each other, the way that Melody blushed a little.
Prissy didn't suspect a thing. That was to be expected. Prissy didn't have the brains she was born with. All Prissy saw in this boy was the orphan needing a family.
But Howard Dutton knew. While the boy went to the men's room, he'd told Melody he thought Greer was an unusual young man, and when Melody had said, "I'm going to marry him,
Daddy," he wasn't all surprised.
Howard Dutton saidŽcalmlyŽbecause he knew there was nothing else he could say, "We'll talk about it, honey."
And he decided that first off, they would have to get the boy out of the army. He didn't want Melody running off to the four corners of the world like a camp follower. He wanted her right here in Ozark. There was plenty of room for the boy.
If not in the bank, then in one of the companies.
The Consulate General of the United States
Alger, Departement d'Algeier, Republique Francaise
22 June 1956
Major Craig W. Lowell, with Sergeant William H. Franklin beside him, flew the Hiller H-23 over the desert due north from the foothills of the Atlas Mountains until he reached the Mediterannean.
Then he turned right, several hundred yards out to sea, and flew along the beach and the coastal highway very low until he reached Algiers. He picked it up to a thousand feet then and flew directly across the city itself to the airport.
The crew chief came out while they were still shutting the bird down to deliver the message that the military attache, a starchy infantry full bull colonel wanted to see Major Lowell right away. Then he said, in awe: "Holy Christ! Did you see that?" He pointed to the tail structure of the Hiller, where half a dozen bullet holes stitched the covering.
"Yeah," Sergeant Franklin said, dryly sarcasticly. He was a tall, pleasant-faced, twenty-one-year-old black man. "I happened to be there when it happened."
"You better get a picture of that, too, Bill," Major Lowell said. "First a shot of the holes, and then rip the covering away and see what damage it did inside."
"Jesus Christ, Major," Sergeant Franklin said, examining the damage closely. In his dusty khaki shirt and shorts, he - looked very much like the Norman Rockwell painting of an
Eagle scout. "They came a hell of a lot closer than I thought they did."
"These things are a lot tougher than anybody believes,"
Lowell said. "And can take much more of a beating. As your properly focused, perfectly exposed movies are going to prove."
"Can I wait till I stop shitting my pants?" Sergeant Franldin said. He opened the side of a Paillard Bolex 16 mm motion picture camera, removed the exposed film it contained and reloaded it. Lowell had bought the expensive Swiss-made camera when the issue Eyemo camera had given Sergeant Franklin trouble. "Otherwise, the flick will shake a lot."
Lowell patted him on the shoulder.
"I am sure that you will do your usual splendid work," he said.
Franklin responded to the sarcasm in kind. "Yah, suh, boss.
I does mah best foah you, boss."
Lowell affectionately punched his arm and got out of the helicopter and walked to his Jaguar. He started for the consulate, debating enroute whether to report as he wasŽthat is, in a short-sleeved, somewhat sweaty, open-necked tropical shirt and trousersŽor to stop by his suite in the Hotel d'Angleterre on the Avenue Foch and change into something more in keeping with the formal atmosphere of the Consulate General. He elected to change uniforms. The military attache was a starchy old bastard, and all he needed from him was a lousy efficiency report to go with the lousy efficiency report he'd received from
It. Col. Withers.
He parked the Jag behind the elegant baroque villa that served as the Consulate building and had himself let in the back door by one of the Marine guards. When he saw that the military attache had chosen that day to wear a white uniform, he was happy that he had changed into fresh tropical worsted tunic and trousers. He went through the prescribed ritual, "Sir,
Major Lowell reporting to the mili
tary attachd as ordered," and
standing at attention until given at ease. It seemed a little absurd
in the baroque splendor of the villa, but he sensed the colonel
expected it.
"Rest, Lowell," the colonel said. "Would you like a little
something to cut the dust?"
"I would be profoundly grateful for a vodka tonic, sir."
"But you'll take a little neat scotch, right?"
"Yes, sir, with equal gratitude."
"How did it go?" the attache asked, taking a bottle of scotch
and what looked like Kraft cheese glasses from a drawer of
the enormous mahogany desk.
"They put in a company and a halfŽa company, plus half
the heavy weapons platoon and a signal sectionŽin about five
minutes. Against automatic weapons fire I would rate at medium to heavy," Lowell said.
"What kind?"
"German and U.S. light.30s, I think. A couple of Browning
.50s."
"And they didn't get their whirlybirds shot down?"
"They all got in all right," Lowell said. "Several of them
are going to have to be either repaired on site or destroyed.
They won't fly."
"And you have all this in your movies, right?"
"Yes, sir."
"That really surprises me," the colonel admitted. "I would
have given good odds that a good PFC with a BAR could knock
those things out of the sky like a skeet shooter."
"I'm really impressed with how tough the H-21s are. For
F that matter, all of them: I took half a dozen hits in the H-23
and didn't know it until we landed."
"Sergeant Franldin all right?"
"Yes, sir. Have we got anything on hazardous duty pay for
him?"
"Yeah, they turned it down. And they turned down flight
pay, too. It's not authorized. What I'm going to do is up his
housing allowance. The State Department pays for that, and
they're willing to go along. In money terms, he'll do better
than he would with flight and hazardous duty pay. It's not right; he should get credit for sticking his ass in the line of fire, but it's the best I can do."
"Thank you, sir," Lowell said. "I appreciate your efforts."
"You're not leaning on him, are you, Lowell? I mean, he really is a volunteer?"
"Yes, sir."
"I don't like to lean on troops," the colonel said, and then in the next breath: "What do you intend to do about your efficiency report?"
"Sir?"
"I've been waiting for your Exception to Rating and Indorsement,"' the colonel said.
"Colonel," Lowell said, "I'm guilty as charged."
"Bullshit," the colonel said. "You're guilty of getting your wick dipped, not of conduct suggesting a lack of the high moral standards required of an officer.' You'll never get rid of the gold oak leaf if you let that stay in your record."
"Sir, I don't know what I can do," Lowell said.
The colonel took a sheaf of paper and carbons from his desk drawer and threw it on the table.
OFFICE OF THE MILITARY A'ITACHE
THE CONSULATE GENERAL OF THE UNiTED
STATES
ALGIERS, ALGERIA
APO 303, CIO POSTMASTER, NEW YORK, N.Y.
201-LOWELL, Craig W. Maj 0439067
21 June 1956
SUBJECT: Exception to the Efficiency Report of 30
November 1955 and the Indorsement
Thereto.
TO: Secretary of the Army
Department of the Army
Washington 25, D.C.
In the absence of any specific allegations concerning the moral conduct of the undersigned, the undersigned protests the entire tone of subject efficiency report and the indorsement thereto and requests that it be expunged from his record.
Craig W. Lowell
Major, Armor
Assistant Military Attache
1st and
Office of the Military Attache
United States Consulate General
23 June 1956
Aigiers, Algeria, France
TO: The Chief of Staff
United States Army
Washington, D.C.
1. Recommend approval.
2. In the period subject officer has been assigned to the
Office of the Military Attache, U.S. Consulate General, Algiers,
Algeria, he has been under the close and personal supervision and observation of the undersigned. Not only has he demonstrated the highest personal standards to be expected of an officer, but has virtually daily risked his life in observing the operations of the French Army against the Algerian insurgents.
3. That his conduct has reflected credit upon the United
States, as well as the United States Army, is made evident by the letter of commendation from the Consulate General (attached as Enclosure I) and by the citation accompanying the award to subject officer of the Legion of Honor, Class of
Chevalier, by the Governor General of Algeria in the name of the French Republic. (Translation of citation attached as Enclosure
II. The medal and the citation is currently being forwarded, through State Department channels, to the Office of
Congressional Liaison, U.S. Department of State, requesting
Congressional approval of the Award of a Foreign Decoration to a Serving Officer in Peacetime.)
4. It is clear to the undersigned, based on his twenty-nine
(29) years of commissioned service that this officer has been grievously wronged in a personal vendetta, in all probability based on personal jealousy. Not only has this officer been promoted to his present grade long before his contemporaries, but is obviously destined, in the absence of petty chicanery against him, for much higher grade and responsibility.
5. The undersigned has been authorized to state that the
Consul General concurs in this indorsement.
Ralph G. Lemes
Colonel, Infantry
Military Attache
The indorsement was already signed.
"I don't know what to say," Lowell said.
"Just don't believe any of that heroic diplomat bullshit," the colonel said. "And for Christ's sake, keep your pecker in your pocket from now on."
"You didn't have to do this," Lowell pursued.
"No," the colonel said. "I didn't."
It took four months to come back.
HEADQUARTERS
DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Major Craig W. Lowell
Office of the Military Attache
The United States Consulate General
Algiers, Algeria, France
(Via Diplomatic Pouch)
Dear Major Lowell:
26 October 1956
Reference is made to your letter of 21 June 1956, in reference to your efficiency report and the Indorsement thereof, covering your service while assigned to the Flight
Detachment, Headquarters, Seventh United States Army.
The efficiency report and the Indorsement thereto has been expunged from your service record and the following substituted:
"While assigned to the Flight Detachment, Headquarters,
Seventh United States Army, Major Lowell performed in a wholly satisfactory manner all the duties to which he was assigned.
"The exigencies of the service having made the rendering of an efficiency report covering this service impossible, it is directed that any personnel actions being based on Major Lowell's record consider his service while assigned to the Office of the Military Attache, U.S. Consulate
General, Algiers, Algeria, as also applying to his service in Seventh Army."
The Secretary of the Army believes this to be an equitable resolution of the problem and has asked me to tell you that he extends every good wish for a successful ca
reer in the future.