W E B Griffin - BoW 03 - The Majors
Page 43
Band; a company of troops from the Aviation Center; the officers and men of the U.S. Army Aviation Combat Developments
Agency; the officers and men of the U.S. Army Aviation
Board; and then the other distinguished guests and friends.
The funeral parade moved slowly away from the main post chapel, down the winding street past the officer's open mess golf course, down Third Avenue, and finally to Parade Ground
No. 2.
There were permanent bleachers erected on Parade Ground
No. 2, and they were filled with people. Military personnel, except for essential operating personnel, had been ordered to be present. Civilian employees had been encouraged to be present.
The Cadillac hearse and a matching flower car which would take the casket from the post to Memory Gardens in Ozark following the award of the DFC were waiting behind the bleachers.
Interment would be private.
When General Jiggs got out of his staff car, he saw, circling a mile or so away, the aircraft which would make the flyover, the final item on the agenda. When he got to the VIP stand,
he saw something that was not on the schedule of events.
Drawn up at the end of the parade ground, just at the crest of the hill beyond which were the old artillery range impact areas, were the Russian T34s. They were parked in a line, twenty yards apart. Five of them. There had been, he recalled, six, but Greer had blown one of them away just before he went
in.
He wondered if that was another of Colonel Tim F. Brandon's bullshit ideas or whether it had been the idea of the T34 tank crews, a tribute on their part. Well, no matter. It was too late to do anything about them now. There they sat, red stars and all.
The troops and the band had formed on the parade ground.
The band was playing what the schedule of events called "appropriate music" (at the moment, "For in Her Hair, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" in a mournful tempo) while people found their seats.
The M48 with Greer's casket was parked directly in front of the bleachers, equidistant between the troops and the bleachers.
The color guard was standing next to it, facing the bleachers.
They would serve as a background for the shot in which
General Black would award the DFC to the widow.
When all but a few stragglers had found their seats, the band began to play "The Washington Post March." The troop units marched past the bleachers and then back where they had been.
General Black and party marched out onto the field. The post adjutant would read the orders awarding the DFC posthumously to First Lieutenant Edward C. Greer. General Black would then walk to where the widow sat in the bleachers and pin the decoration to her dress. He would then turn and make his "final remarks," during which he would apologize to the air force for violating the Key West Agreement of 1948. Then the flyover would take place, an empty slot in the final "V" formation representing the lost pilot.
When that was over, the pallbearers would carry the casket
from the M48 to the hearse, and that would be the end of it.
It had been arranged for whatever was said over the microphones to be transmitted to the aircraft circling a mile or so away, so their flight over the parade ground would be when it was required sequentially, rather than at a specific time. It had been realized by the planners that it would be next to impossible to run the operation by the clock.
And, as always, there was one sonofabitch who hadn't gotten the word. In addition to the steady drone of the aircraft engines orbiting a mile or so away at 3,500 feet, there came the sound of one chopper, much lower and much closer. Heads turned to locate it.
The ground control officer behind the bleachers went on the air, repeating over an dover, changing frequencies to make sure the dumb sonofabitch finally heard him, "Chopper operating in vicinity of Parade Ground No. 2, immediately leave this area. Chopper operating in vicinity of Parade Ground No. 2, immediately leave this area.
The pilot apparently wasn't listening to his radio, or more likely, the ground control officer decided, he was listening to the adjutant reading the general order awarding Greer his DFC.
Whatever the reason, the sound of his engine didn't go away, and when they finished reading the order, it even grew louder.
And then as General Black walked across the field to present the DFC to Melody Dutton Greer, the machine came in view.
It popped up behind a row of barracks behind the massed troops, and then a moment later dropped out of sight again. They could hear the engine, but they couldn't see it. The next time they saw it, it was behind them, and people just had time to turn their heads and spot it and identify it as an H-I 9C before it dropped out of sight again.
The ground controller ran from his portable radio to the VIP section of the bleachers and to the microphone General Black would use for his remarks. He grabbed it.
"Helicopter operating in vicinity of Parade Ground No. 2, leave the area immediately. Leave the area immediately."
If the dumb bastard was listening to the speeches, he would hear the order.
The chopper appeared a third time, this time to the left of
Parade Ground No. 2. It popped up, but this time it did not immediately drop back down again. This time, the cyclic obviously in full up position, the engine obviously being called upon to deliver full emergency military power, it rose nearly straight up to maybe 2,500 feet. Then the nose dropped, and the sound of the rotors changed pitch. The chopper pilot made a full-bore, high-speed run down the center of the parade ground, coming so low that he actually had to pick the chopper up to get over the M48 wiih the flagged-draped casket on it.
One of the network TV cameramen, spinning rapidly to keep the chopper in his viewfinder, fell off the camera platform.
In desperation, he grabbed for the camera and pulled it off the platform with him.
That meant, Colonel Brandon thought, that only two networks would be able to telecast the antics of this idiot. Then he realized that this was wishful thinking. The media stuck together. One of the two who had got the shot would make it available to the moron who fell off the platform. This whole thing would be on the six o'clock news, although not exactly in the way Colonel Brandon had intended.
When the pilot got to the tanks, he pulled the chopper up again and stood it on its side, then passed over the troops in ranks. Still banking, he turned back over the parade ground, slowing up, straightening out, until he was in an "out of ground effect hover" directly over the M48.
-The downblast from the rotors blew dust thirty feet in the air. Hats flew. Major MacMillan and WOJG Franklin jumped up on the M48 to lie on the casket, to keep the flapping flag from being blown off.
The helicopter could be clearly seen now. The fuselage had been painted black. On the fuselage, between the trailing end of the door and the tail boom, was a white outline sketch of
Woody Woodpecker. Woody was pictured leering with joy as he threw beer bottles.
Above him, in clear, legible letters was the legend: Big Bad
Bird II.
There were strange-looking objects, which very few people had ever seen before, mounted on the landing wheel struts.
Exactly fifteen seconds after Big Bad Bird II had come to a hover over the M48 carrying Ed Greer's casket, there was a dull rumbling noise from the helicopter. A stream of 3.5 inch rockets came from the left canister, twenty-seven in all in 7.5 seconds. Then in another 7.5 seconds, twenty-seven more from the right canister.
In fifteen seconds, fifty-four rockets. In fifteen seconds, five perfectly functioning T34 tanks were turned into so many tons of twisted, useless metal.
Big Bad Bird II dropped its nose and flew slowly down the parade ground through the clouds of dense black diesel smoke rising from the blown-away T34s and disappeared.
The TV cameras made an arty shot. They followed the dense cloud of smoke from the burning T34s as it rose up into the sky.
Melody Dutton Greer
looked up at General E. Z. Black.
"Is that what Ed was working on?" she asked.
"That's it," General Black said.
"You really put on a show for me, didn't you?" Melody asked.
"I had nothing to do with it, honey," General Black said.
"That was uit legendary Major Lowell' paying his condolences."
General Black then delivered his final remarks. He departed
from his prepared text. He made no reference whatever to the
air forceŽor to the Key West Agreement of 1948.
Major General Paul Jiggs had concluded who was responsible long before General Black had. He had suspected who was responsible when he'd seen the spectacular climb the pilot had made before he made the high-speed run. When he'd returned to hover over the casket, there had been no doubt. Jiggs couldn't see the pilot, but the right-side window had had something taped to it: the soiled and somewhat frayed guidon that was once the property of the 73rd Heavy Battalion. General iiggs had even been able to read the grease-pencil lettering which spelled out "TIF LOWELL."
He called over the provost marshal.
"Get me Major Craig W. Lowell," he said. "He's probably going to try to take off from Laird in the next couple of minutes in a civilian Aero Commander. But I don't care where he is.
You get him for me."
* * *
(Two)
Laird Army Airfield
Fort Rucker, Alabama
28 December 1958
General E. Z. Black walked into the VIP lounge where
Major Lowell was being detained. An MP captain and the airfield commander called "atten-hut" almost in unison.
"Thank you, gentlemen," General Black said. "That will be all." He waited until they had left before speaking.
"Fascinating demonstration, Major," he said, finally.
"L'audace, l'audace, toujours l'audace, mon gdnt'ral,"
Lowell replied.
"What I really would like to know, Lowell," General Black said, "is whether that was audacity or stupidity, and more importantly, whether you know the difference."
"I didn't want the Big Bad Bird going down the toilet,
General," Lowell said.
"That's it. That's the bottom line?"
"Yes, sir."
"Where did you get the other firing mechanisms?" Black asked.
"Redundancy, General," Lowell said. "I learned all about redundancy when I was a young officer."
"And you got Cramer to help you?"
"I assume full responsibility, General."
"And besides, what the hell, they won't court-martial me anyhow; I'm being thrown out of the army anyway, and a court-martial would be embarrassing'?"
"That did occur to me, General," Major Lowell said.
General Black went to the window and pushed the curtain aside. An air force Grumman, a VIP transport, was waiting for him. He had been down here too long as it was.
"You have an interesting ally, Major," General Black said.
"Actually, it's ironic."
"I'm afraid I don't quite understand you, sir," Lowell said.
"Brandon," General Black said. "That horse's ass actually tried to save your ass, Major. He lost no time in pointing out to me that socking it to you would not be in the best interests of the army."
"He's a horse ass," Lowell said. "But you need people like that."
"The army needs all kinds of strange people, Lowell. Horse's asses like Brandon, and even people like you."
"Sir?"
"Let me tell you what happened, Lowell," Black said. "I was so god damned mad when that asshole came and said we should handle your case with what he called delicacy,' I almost kicked his ass. Literally, not figuratively. I had a nearly uncontrollable impulse to open the car door and kick his fat ass out."
He looked at Lowell to make sure Lowell understood he was telling the truth. "A long time ago, I learned something about myself," he went on. "It might be useful to you. Whenever you really lose your temper, there is a very good possibility that you're wrong about whatever pissed you off."
He paused again. "Phrased very simply, when you break a shoelace, that's your fault for not noticing the shoelace was worn and should have been replaced. You understand?"
"I don't get your point," Lowell said, simply.
"What really pissed me off about you, Lowell, had nothing to do with your screwing the senator's wife. What enraged me was that I had personally given you an order, and you had disobeyed me."
"You mean about staying away from Felter?"
"That's right. Here you are, a miserable major, with a well deserved reputation for being, on occasion, a colossal fuck-up, and you get an order from the Vice Chief of Staff and you disobey it."
"I'm guilty of that, sir."
"And I'm guilty of violating a principle of command that I learned when I was a second lieutenant," General Black said.
"Never give an order you know will not be obeyed."
"You had the right to expect me to obey your order, sir,"
Lowell said.
"The right, sure; but considering the personality, no reasonable expectation that you would."
Lowell looked at him and said nothing.
"I didn't think it through," Black said. "There was no way, no way, that you were going to sever your relationship with a man who had saved your ass in Greece, who had buried your wife when you were off at war, simply because some old fart who can't pour piss out of a boot tells you to."
"I don't think of you that way, General," Lowell said.
"OK. Put it this way. You decided the order made no sense, so fuck it."
"Yes, sir. That's pretty close."
"OK. Now I'll explain point two of this little lecture. Once
I got pissed off at you, it was easy to keep pouring gas on the flames. Whatsername, the senator's horny wife, for example.
And then I found the real excuse to get mad at you."
"What was that?"
"How dare that young sonofabitch, with a brain like his, with a proven capability of combat command, fuck up his own career the way he has? I'll fix his ass: I'll throw his ass out of the army."'
He stopped and lit a cigarette, and then looked into Lowell's
eyes.
"Am I getting through to you, Major?"
"I understand what you're saying, General Black, and I'm grateful for the explanation," Lowell replied. "But I don't understand the point of it."
"I dared entertain the hope," Black said, sarcastically, "that a few words of a philosophical nature might be of value to you in your later career, when you might lose your temper and make a bad decision."
"They make decisions by committee in the banking business,
General," Lowell said.
"You missed my most important point, Lowell. Perha s I should have spelled it out."
"Sir?"
"When you know you've made a mistake, you bust your ass to correct it. Even if it means you are going to have one hell of an argument with the Chief of Staff."
"I don't want to sound stupid," Lowell said, "but the only interpretation I can put on that is that you have changed your mind about throwing me out of the army. And I'm afraid to hope for that."
"As of 1 January 1959, you are relieved from DCSLOG and assigned here for duty with the Army Aviation Board as project officer for the rocket-armed helicopter."
"Thank you, sir," Lowell said.
"Don't make me regret it, Major," Black said. He met
Lowell's eyes for a moment, and then he pushed open the glass door from the VIP lounge and walked out to the Grumman VIP transport.
They had not, Lowell realized, exchanged salutes. He pushed open the glass dpor and went out on the taxiway. The door to the Grumman was already closed, and the pilot was in the process of starting the port engine. The Grumman started to taxi.
Major Lowell raised his hand in salute and held it, even when there was no response from inside the airplane, until the
/>
Grumman had turned onto the runway and started the takeoff roll.
ABOUT THE AOTHOR
W.E.B. Griffin, who was once a soldier, belongs to the Armor
Association; Paris Post #1, The American Legion; and is a life member of The National Rifle Association and Gaston-Lee