“Bill, do me a favor, forget you ever heard the phrase ‘Para-Marines.’ I don’t know why, but it pisses off a lot of the important brass.”
The Managing Editor of Life chuckled.
“OK. So what do I call them?”
“Marine Parachutists, please.”
“Marine Parachutists it is. You going to be at Lakehurst?”
“Sure.”
“What I sort of have in mind, Jake, is a nice clean-cut kid hanging from a parachute. For the cover, I mean.”
“You got him. I’ll have a dozen for you to choose from.”
“Excuse me, Major,” Lieutenant R. B. Macklin said to Major Homer J. Dillon, “may I have a word with you, Sir?”
Jake Dillon gave Lieutenant Macklin an impatient look, shrugged his shoulders, and jerked his thumb toward the door.
God only knows what this horse’s ass wants.
“This is far enough,” Major Jake Dillon said to Lieutenant R. B. Macklin, once they were out of earshot of the people from Life. “What’s on your mind?”
“Sir, I thought I had best bring you up to date on PFC Koffler.”
“OK. What about him?”
“I have confined him to barracks. My adjutant is drawing up the court-martial charges. He believes that ‘conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline’ is the appropriate charge.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“The Major is aware that Koffler…that Koffler said ‘Fuck you’ to the gentleman from Life when he asked him what his name was?”
“I wasn’t, but so what?”
“Right there on the Landing Zone, as he stood over Colonel Neville’s body. I was there, Sir.”
“I repeat, so what?”
“Well, Sir, we just can’t let something like that pass.”
“Jesus H. Christ!” Jake Dillon flared. “Now listen to me, Macklin. What you’re going to do, Lieutenant, is tell your adjutant to take his goddamned court-martial charges out of his goddamned typewriter and put in a fresh sheet of paper. And on that sheet of paper, backdated to day before yesterday, he will type out an order promoting PFC Koffler to corporal.”
“Sir, I don’t understand.”
“That doesn’t surprise me at all, Lieutenant. Just do it. I want to see that kid here in thirty minutes. Showered and shaved, in a fresh uniform, with his parachute wings on his chest and corporal’s stripes on his sleeves. Those parachutists’ boots, too. I just talked to AP. They saw the picture of him that Life took, and they’re coming down here to interview him. And that Flying Sergeant who was flying the airplane. If AP’s coming, UP and INS won’t be far behind. Get the picture?”
“Sir, technically,” Macklin said, uneasily but doggedly, “he’s not entitled to wear either boots or wings. We haven’t had the graduation ceremony. Colonel Neville delayed it for the Life people, and after…what happened…I postponed it indefinitely.”
“Parachute boots, wings, and corporal’s stripes, Lieutenant,” Jake Dillon said icily. “Here. In thirty minutes.”
“Aye, aye, Sir,” Lieutenant Macklin said.
(Five)
“I think that’s about enough, fellas,” Major Jake Dillon said, rising to his feet. “Sergeant Galloway and Corporal Koffler have had a rough day. I think we ought to let them go.”
There were the expected mumbles of discontent from the press, but they started to fold up their notebooks and get to their feet. The interview was over.
Jake Dillon was pleased that he had thought about putting Sergeant Galloway in the press conference. Galloway had handled himself well, even better than Dillon had hoped for. And Corporal Koffler, bless his little heart, was dumber than dog shit; if Galloway hadn’t been there, that would have come out.
And the press seemed to have bought the story line that it was a tragic accident, something that just happened to a fine officer who was undergoing training with his men.
But Jake Dillon knew that when two or three are gathered together in the name of honest journalism, one of them will be a sonofabitch determined to find the maggots under the rock, even if he has to put them there himself. In this case, he wouldn’t have to look far.
Jake Dillon had formed his own unvarnished version of the truth vis-à-vis the tragic death of Lieutenant Colonel Franklin G. Neville, USMC, based on what he had heard from the jumpmaster, from Corporal Steve Koffler, and on his own previous observations of Lieutenant Colonel Franklin G. Neville.
Neville had been bitten by the publicity bug. When the guys from Life had shown very little interest in Neville himself, preferring instead to devote their attention to young enlisted men, it had really gotten to him. The whole thing was his idea, and nobody gave a damn.
And so he flipped. He was determined to have his picture in Life, and that meant he had to put himself in a position where the photographers could not ignore him. And he figured out that would be when they were shooting the parachutists exiting the aircraft. If he was first man out the door, they would have to take his picture, and they couldn’t edit him out.
So he pushed out of the way the kid Koffler, who was supposed to be first man out, and jumped. And something went wrong. Instead of being in center frame, he found himself wrapped around the horizontal stabilizer. That either killed him straight off, or it left him unconscious. Either way, he couldn’t pull the D-ring on his emergency ’chute.
Jake Dillon didn’t want that story to come out. It would hurt the widow, and would hurt the Corps.
“I would like a word with you, Sergeant, please,” Jake Dillon called after Galloway as Galloway and Koffler left the room. “You and Corporal Koffler.”
When he had them alone and out of earshot, he said, “OK. Where are you two headed?”
“Sir,” Sergeant Galloway said, “I understand that General McInerney’s coming up here in the morning. I’ve been told to make myself available to him for that.”
“I mean now, tonight. I know about the General.”
“Well, Sir, I thought I would like to get off the base. Find a room somewhere.”
“Good. Go now, and take Corporal Koffler with you. The one thing I don’t want you to do is talk to the press. Period. Under any circumstances. Consider that an order.”
“Aye, aye, Sir,” Charley Galloway said. A split second later, Steve parroted him.
“I’ve talked to General McInerney,” Major Dillon went on. “Here’s what’s happening. Colonel Neville’s body is to be taken to the Brooklyn Navy Yard for an autopsy. Then it will be put in a casket and brought back here. After the inquiry tomorrow morning, you and Koffler will take it to Washington. You will travel with General McInerney and an honor guard of the parachutists. Colonel Neville will be buried in Arlington. You and Koffler will be pallbearers.”
“Yes, Sir,” Sergeant Galloway said.
Jake Dillon thought he could bleed the story for a little more, with pictures of the honor guard and the flag-draped casket. And if they were still burying people in Arlington with the horse-drawn artillery caisson, maybe a shot of that and the firing squad, too. With a little bit of luck, he could get a two-, three-minute film sequence tied together for the newsreels. But that was none of Galloway’s or Koffler’s business, so he didn’t mention it.
“I don’t care where you guys go, or what you do. But I will have your ass if you either talk to the press or get shit-faced and make asses of yourselves. Do I have to make it plainer than that?”
“No, Sir,” they said, together.
Jake Dillon put his hand in his pocket.
“You need some money, either of you?”
“No, Sir,” they replied.
“OK. I want you back here at seven in the morning.”
“Get in the backseat,” Technical Sergeant Charles Galloway ordered Corporal Stephen Koffler as they approached the Mercury station wagon.
Galloway got in the front beside Mrs. Caroline Ward McNamara.
“Now what?” Aunt Caroline said, touching Charley’s hand.
“I’m sorry you had to wait like this,” Charley said. “Caroline, this is Corporal Steve Koffler. Koffler, this is Mrs. McNamara.”
“Hello,” Aunt Caroline said, looking at Steve. “I repeat, now what?”
“I have been ordered to keep an eye on Corporal Koffler overnight, and to bring him back here at 0700 in the morning.”
“Oh,” Aunt Caroline said.
“We are going to find a hotel room—rooms—someplace,” Charley said. “I wondered how that would fit in with your plans.”
“Well, it’s already dark, and I hate to drive at night, with the snow and all. Maybe I should think about getting a hotel room myself. Where’s Jim and the other lieutenant?”
“I understand Major Dillon sent for them. Maybe it would be better if we got off the base before he’s finished with them. I’m a little afraid that Major Dillon will tell one of them to keep an eye on me and Koffler.”
“Oh, I see what you mean,” Aunt Caroline said. She started the engine and headed for the gate.
“Just how close an eye do you have to keep on the corporal?” Aunt Caroline asked.
“I think an adjacent room would be close enough.”
“Adjacent but not adjoining, you mean?” Aunt Caroline said.
“Exactly.”
“Excuse me, Sergeant?” Corporal Koffler said.
“What, Koffler?”
“Sergeant, I live in East Orange. Do you suppose it would be all right if I went home?”
“You live where?”
“East Orange. It’s right next to Newark.”
“Oh, really?” Aunt Caroline said. “Maybe you could find a hotel in Newark for yourself, and Corporal Koffler could spend the night with his family.”
“The Essex House Hotel’s in Newark,” Steve offered helpfully. “I never stayed there, but I hear it’s real nice. You both probably could get rooms there.”
“Now there’s a thought,” Aunt Caroline said innocently.
“But I’m supposed to keep an eye on him,” Charley Galloway said. “If he went home alone, and Major Dillon or Lieutenant Ward or Lieutenant Schneider ever heard about it, we’d all be in trouble.”
“Well, we don’t have to tell them, do we?” Steve asked shrewdly.
“No, I guess we wouldn’t really have to,” Charley Galloway said. “Could I trust you to stay out of trouble, Koffler, and be waiting for me at, say, 0530, outside your house in the morning?”
“It’s an apartment house,” Steve said. “Sure, you could trust me, Sergeant. I’d really like to see my girl, Sergeant.”
“You’d better be careful about that, Koffler. Women have been known to suffer uncontrollable sexual frenzies at the mere sight of a Marine in uniform. That could lead to trouble.”
Aunt Caroline giggled, and Charley Galloway yelped in pain, as if someone had dug fingernails into the soft flesh of his upper thigh.
“My girl won’t get me in trouble, Sergeant,” Steve said.
“OK. Then we’ll do it. You give Mrs. McNamara directions to your house.”
On the outskirts of Newark, Aunt Caroline pulled into a gasoline station. As the attendant filled the tank and she visited the rest room, Charley Galloway saw a rack of newspapers.
“I’ll be damned,” he said, and went to the rack and bought two copies of the Newark Evening News.
He walked back to the station wagon and handed one to Steve Koffler.
“You’re a famous man now, Koffler,” he said. “Try not to let it go to your head.”
There was a three-column picture in the center of the front page. It showed Steve Koffler holding the risers and shroud lines of his parachute against his chest; he was looking down at the body of Lieutenant Colonel Franklin G. Neville. Tears were visible on his cheeks.
Over the picture was a headline, EVEN THE TOUGH CAN WEEP, and below it was a caption: “Cpl. Stephen Koffler, of East Orange, a member of the elite U.S. Marine Corps Parachute Force, weeps as he looks at the body of his commanding officer, Lt. Col. F. G. Neville, who fell to his death moments before when his parachute failed to open during training exercises at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station this morning. Koffler was second man in the ‘stick’ jumping from the Marine airplane, behind Col. Neville. [Associated Press Photograph from Life]”
On the way from the gasoline station to 121 Park Avenue, East Orange, Corporal Stephen Koffler of the “elite U.S. Marine Corps Parachute Force” (Jesus Christ, that sounds great!) ran over several times in his mind the sequence of events that would occur once he got home.
Dianne would have seen the Newark Evening News. Everybody read it. She would see his picture. She would wonder, naturally, when she would see him again. And she would more than likely realize that the reason he had been unable to come to see her was that he was busy with his duties with the Elite Marine Corps Parachute Force.
He would appear at her door. She would answer it. Her family would be gone somewhere. She would look into his eyes. They would embrace. Her tongue would slip into his mouth. She would break away.
“I saw your picture in the paper,” she would say. “Was it just awful?”
And he would say, “No. Not really. You have to expect that sort of thing.”
And they would kiss again, and she would slip her tongue in his mouth again. And this time he would put his hand up under her sweater, or maybe down the back of her skirt.
And she would say, “Not here,” but she wouldn’t mean it, and he would take her into her living room and do it to her on the couch. Or maybe even into her bedroom—and do it to her in her own bed.
Just by way of saying hello.
“Let’s get out of here,” he would say. “Where we can really be alone.”
“But where could we go?” she would ask.
“How about the Essex House?”
And she would say, “The Essex House? Could we get a room in the Essex House?”
And he would say, “Sure, we can. I’m a corporal on jump pay.”
He wasn’t born yesterday. Sergeant Galloway and the blond lady in the station wagon were going to shack up in the Essex House. That was just so much bullshit about getting two rooms. And if Sergeant Galloway was going to screw this blond lady in the Essex House, why shouldn’t he screw Dianne there?
And Dianne would say, “But what about Leonard?”
And he would say “Fuck Leonard. You’re through with that candy-ass civilian.”
No. He didn’t want to talk like that around Dianne. He would say, “To hell with Leonard. You’re through with that civilian.”
And once he got her into the Essex House and they’d done it a couple of times more, he would tell her that it didn’t matter that she was a couple of years older than he was, he was psychologically older than the age on his birth certificate. He was a Marine, for Christ’s sake, a member of the Elite Marine Corps Parachute Force. What he had done, and what he had seen, made him at least as old as Leonard, psychologically speaking.
It did not work out quite the way Steve envisioned it.
The first thing that went wrong was that his mother was not only home but looking out the window when Sergeant Galloway stopped to let him out of the blond lady’s station wagon.
By the time he got to the foyer, she had run downstairs and was waiting for him. She threw her arms around him and started crying, for Christ’s sake.
Steve hadn’t even thought of his mother. As she gave him the weepy bear hug, he was conscious that if she hadn’t been looking out the window, he could have gone straight to Dianne’s and started things off the way he planned.
But he was caught now. He was only too aware that he would have to spend a little time with her before going to see Dianne.
His mother’s husband appeared and shook his hand and, for the first time ever, seemed glad to see him. The sonofabitch even worked up a smile and said, “Come on up, I’ll make us a little Seven-and-Seven.”
As they were going up the stairs, Dianne came down them. Di
anne and Leonard.
“Hi!” Steve said.
“Hey, kid,” Leonard said. “I saw your picture in the paper.”
“Hello, Steve,” Dianne said. “Nice to see you.”
“Great to see you.”
That was it. The next second, Dianne and Leonard were down the stairs and gone.
The phone was ringing when they got in the apartment. It was Mrs. Danielli. She had probably seen his picture in the Newark Evening News, because his mother said to her, “Yeah, sure, we seen it. He’s here, Anna, he just this minute walked in the door.”
And then Mrs. Danielli must have told Vinny that he was home, because his mother handed him the telephone and said, “Say hello to Vinny, Stevie.”
“Ask them if they want to go out with us and get some spaghetti or something, why don’t you?” Steve’s mother’s husband chimed in. Steve pretended not to hear him. If he got involved with the Daniellis, he would never get loose to go look for Dianne.
His mother jerked the phone out of his hand.
“Vinny, tell your mother Stanley asked do you and your mother and father want to go out with us and get some spaghetti.”
It was agreed they would meet the Daniellis at the Naples Restaurant on Orange Street by Branch Brook Park in half an hour.
His mother hung up the telephone and turned to him.
“What were you so nice to that tramp about?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Dianne Marshall whatever-her-married-name-is, is what tramp I’m talking about—the one whose husband threw her out because she was fooling around.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Don’t you ever dare talk to me like that!”
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, Ma!”
She slapped him.
“Don’t think you’re a big shot, Mr. Big Shot, who can swear at his mother!”
“What the hell is going on out there?” his mother’s husband called from the kitchen.
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