“No problem,” Marjorie said. “This will give me a chance to go back to Sears Roebuck and count the tools in the hardware department again.”
“Is it that bad for you?” he asked.
“Yeah, it is,” Marjorie said. “You say you think you’re going to at least RON?”—Remain Over Night.
“I think we’ll have to.”
“Stay in the Daleville Inn,” she said. “Separate rooms.”
“You’re going to fly down?”
“If I can get on an airplane, I will. If I can’t, I’ll drive the Jag. Don’t tell Jack.”
“Okay.”
[ THREE ]
Base Operations
Cairns Army Airfield
Fort Rucker, Alabama
1115 23 January 1965
The parking space immediately before the Base Operations building is reserved for transient aircraft. Fort Rucker’s aircraft park elsewhere on the field. There are exceptions to every rule.
For example, when Captain Darrell J. Smythe, at the controls of a Grumman Mohawk, got on the horn and requested of the Cairns tower landing and taxi instructions: “Cairns, Army Six-oh -six, five miles out, landing and taxi, please,” he added another phrase: “I have a Code Seven aboard.”
The Cairns tower operator understood that there was a general officer in the Mohawk. In the Army rank structure, a second lieutenant is identified as an O-1, a first lieutenant as an O-2, and so on up to through the grades to O-10, which is the code for a full, four-star general. A Code Seven is a brigadier general.
“Army Six-oh-five, Cairns,” the Cairns tower replied, “you are number two to land on twenty-seven, behind the L-23 on final. The winds are negligible, the altimeter is two-niner-niner. Take the first taxiway to the Base Operations tarmac.”
Fort Rucker airplanes with a brigadier general aboard get to park in front of Base Operations.
“Six-oh-six,” Captain Smythe said into his microphone. “I have the L-23 in sight.”
As Captain Smythe lined up with Runway 27, he saw the L-23 touch down. On his landing roll, Captain Smythe saw the L-23 taxiing toward the Base Operations building, and decided it was a transient aircraft, or possibly a Rucker airplane with a colonel aboard. Exceptions were often made for full-bull colonels, too.
As ground crewmen directed him to park immediately adjacent to the just-landed L-23, its crew and passenger debarked. There were three people aboard. All were wearing flight suits. They were all wearing green berets. One of them was slight, and very fair-skinned, and looked like a boy, and Captain Smythe at first decided he was the enlisted crew chief, being taken along for a ride.
As Captain Smythe helped Brigadier General Edward J. Devlin, Assistant Chief of Staff for Plans and Training of the III Corps at Fort Hood, disconnect himself from his seat and shoulder harness and the connections to his helmet, Smythe noticed, idly, that the two officers in the L-23 were tying the aircraft down, while the young-soldier-who-was-probably-the-crew -chief stood by watching, and wondered what that was all about.
It could be, he decided, that the kid was not the crew chief, but rather an enlisted man at Fort Bragg who had caught a ride to Rucker.
“Goddamn Green Berets,” General Devlin said.
“Sir?”
“My general is long overdue for an L-23, and when he was finally advised it was on the way, the next day they told him the goddamn Green Berets were going to get it instead. That one looks brand new; that’s probably it. What the hell do they need an aircraft like that for?”
“Yes, sir,” Captain Smythe said.
“There is no place in the Army for a quote elite force unquote,” General Devlin said. “The Marines understand that. I have never been able to understand the mystique surrounding the goddamn Green Berets.”
“Yes, sir,” Captain Smythe said.
By the time a ladder had been produced so that General Devlin and Captain Smythe could climb down from the cockpit of the Mohawk, the three people from the L-23 had entered the Base Operations building.
When General Devlin and Captain Smythe entered the Base Operations building, the two Special Forces officers were leaning on the wall under the oil portrait of Major General Bogardus S. Cairns, for whom the field had been named. Neither showed any interest when they saw General Devlin.
General Devlin had served—as a major—with General—then colonel—Cairns in the 1st Armored Division, and had admired him greatly. The entire armor community had been saddened when Cairns, shortly after receiving a well-deserved second star as commanding general of Fort Rucker and the Army Aviation Center, had crashed to his death in an H-13. There was a story that it was his own fault, that as a nearly brand-new pilot, he had forgotten to turn on his carburetor heat, whatever the hell that meant, but Devlin didn’t believe it.
What he did believe was that junior officers should come to attention in the presence of a general officer, maybe especially when they were standing under a portrait of a distinguished general officer, and these two Green Beret clowns had not done so.
He marched purposefully toward them to deliver a small lecture on the military courtesy expected of majors and lieutenants and had almost reached them when a female voice called his name.
“Hello, Eddie,” Mrs. Barbara Bellmon called. “Bob didn’t say anything about you coming here.”
General Devlin had the highest possible regard for Major General Robert F. “Bob” Bellmon, with whom he had served at three different occasions during his career. Mrs. Mary-Catherine O’Hare Devlin and Barbara Bellmon were friends from the start, at least to the extent that the wife of a captain can be friends with the wife of a senior colonel.
The two Green Beret clowns would have to wait.
He went to Barbara Bellmon and kissed her cheek.
“I’ll only be here for lunch,” he said. “Bob called me and said it was high time I had a good orientation ride in the Mohawk, and sent Captain Smythe to Hood to pick me up in one.” He turned. “Captain?”
Captain Darrell Smythe walked to General Devlin and Mrs. Bellmon.
“Do you know Mrs. Bellmon, Captain?”
“Sir, I haven’t had that privilege,” Smythe said.
“How do you do, Captain?” Barbara Bellmon said, smiling at Smythe and offering him her hand.
“A pleasure, ma’am,” Smythe said.
A very attractive young woman in a sweater and skirt walked up to them.
That’s Marjorie, General Devlin thought. God, I remember her when she had braces on her teeth. What did Mary-Catherine tell me? That she was involved with an enlisted man? Yes, but she also told me that she had married an officer.
“Hello, Marjorie,” General Devlin said. “How nice to see you again.”
“General Devlin,” Marjorie Bellmon Portet said.
“I understand you’ve been married,” he said.
“You and Mary-Catherine were invited, Eddie,” Barbara Bellmon said. “You sent regrets.”
“And a 220-volt toaster, which you said you were sure we would get to use, sooner or later. Thank you again,” Marjorie said.
“Our pleasure, honey,” General Devlin said.
“Jack,” Barbara Bellmon called, and when she had his attention, beckoned him over. And then beckoned again, to Major Lunsford.
“Jack, this is an old, old friend of the family, General Edward Devlin,” Barbara said. “Eddie, this is my new son-in-law, Jack Portet.”
A Green Beret! That’s worse than an enlisted man.
“How do you do, sir?” Jack said politely.
“Congratulations, Lieutenant, I’m really sorry we missed the wedding,” General Devlin said, and then his mouth ran away with him. “That was you in the L-23, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Brand-new, I think?”
“Yes, sir.”
“General Hanrahan’s aircraft?”
“Actually, sir, I guess you could say it’s Major Lunsford’s airplane, ” Jack said, nodding at Lunsford.
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“Sir,” Lunsford said.
Devlin offered him his hand.
“Special Forces gives L-23s to majors?” Devlin asked, trying hard to smile, to seem interested in a friendly way.
“Well, sir, it’s mine only in the sense that it’s been given to a project they gave me,” Lunsford said.
“What project is that?”
“I’m sorry, sir, I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” Lunsford said.
“Of course,” General Devlin said, somewhat coldly, but still trying hard to smile.
Goddamn Green Berets. They classify everything they do.
“Well, Barbara, it was nice to see you and Marjorie again, and to meet these officers,” General Devlin said.
“Give my love to Mary-Catherine,” Barbara Bellmon said.
General Devlin shook hands with Jack and Father, and walked to the door to the parking area, where Captain Smythe and a staff car waited for him.
When the door had closed behind him, Barbara Bellmon turned to her daughter, her son-in-law, and Major Lunsford.
“Are you out of your minds?” she asked.
“Jack got back yesterday,” Marjorie said. “I wanted to be with him.”
“You’re not authorized to fly in Army aircraft,” Barbara Bellmon said.
“She wore a flight suit and put her hair up,” Jack said.
“I authorized it,” Father said.
“And if General Hanrahan hears that you ‘authorized’ it?” Barbara snapped. “Or my husband?”
“That’s one of those bridges we’ll cross if we get to it,” Lunsford said.
“Why?” Barbara Bellmon asked in exasperation.
“Johnny was supposed to fly Father here,” Marjorie said. “He called Liza Wood to tell her he was coming, and would she see him, and she hung up on him. And then he got drunk.”
“And we didn’t want General Hanrahan to hear about that . . . ,” Jack said.
“Johnny got drunk?” Barbara asked, genuinely shocked.
Marjorie nodded.
“How sad!” Barbara said. “My God!”
“So Jack flew me down here, and Marjorie said she was going to drive down so she could be with him, and I figured, what the hell . . .” Lunsford said.
“We owe Johnny, Mother,” Marjorie said. “Among other things, the only reason Bobby has his wings is because Johnny broke the rules and coached him.”
“We owe Johnny, agreed. But what you did?”
“She’s going back commercial,” Jack said. “It’s done.”
“You mean, you got away with it,” Barbara said.
“It looks that way, wouldn’t you say?” Lunsford said.
Barbara looked at Marjorie.
“I don’t know what these two are going to do here, but you and I, my irresponsible daughter, are going to have a long talk about the responsibilities of being an officer’s wife.”
“Mother, a half-dozen—more—times, I’ve heard you described as the perfect officer’s wife. I think that’s true, and I also think in the same circumstances, you would have done the same thing I did. I wanted to be with my husband. I needed to be with my husband.”
Barbara Bellmon looked at her daughter, opened her mouth to reply, closed her mouth, shrugged, and then said, “The car’s outside. ”
Captain Darrell J. Smythe escorted Brigadier General Devlin to the office of the commanding general, and after General Bellmon had personally come to the door of his office to beckon General Devlin to enter, had telephoned the office of the director of fixed-wing training to report that he had picked up General Devlin on schedule at Fort Hood, flown him to Fort Rucker, demonstrating en route the capabilities of the Mohawk, had just now turned him over to General Bellmon, and planned, while General Devlin was having lunch with General Bellmon, to prepare the aircraft for the return flight to Fort Hood.
“Major Calhoun will take him back to Hood, Darrell. At 1300 you will present yourself to the office of the chief of staff.”
“Sir?”
“The chief of staff telephoned me and said, ‘Have Captain Smythe report to me at 1300.’ I told him you were doing a dog-and -pony show for General Devlin, and he replied, ‘Have Captain Smythe report to me at 1300.’ What’s this all about, Darrell?”
“Sir, I have no idea. You don’t?”
“Thirteen hundred. Chief of staff’s office.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m sending Major Calhoun over there now, in case you want to take a shower and put on a nice uniform or anything before 1300.”
“Yes, sir.”
As Captain Smythe looked down the narrow flight of stairs that led from the commanding general’s office to the main floor of the headquarters building, the two Green Berets were coming up them, and, deferring to the Green Beret major’s seniority, Captain Smythe waited for him to come up before starting down himself.
“Hey, bro,” the Green Beret major said, “people are going to talk if we keep meeting like this.”
Captain Smythe smiled with an effort. He hated the term “bro.” He did not consider himself to be a brother of every other Negro/colored/black man/whatever in the world.
“So, Eddie,” Major General Bellmon said to Brigadier General Devlin, “what do you think of the Mohawk?”
“It’s an amazing aircraft,” Devlin said honestly, as he nodded his head in reply to Bellmon’s gesture of offering a cup of coffee. “That side-looking radar capability has enormous potential.”
“You have to see it work before you really believe it,” Bellmon said. “And the Signal Corps is working on an infrared version. The prototype I saw shows little images, tanks, trucks, people . . .”
“We’re really a long way from directing artillery fire from the side window of a Piper Cub, aren’t we?” General Devlin mused. “And what I thought on the way up here was that the pilot of that sophisticated airplane was really a professional pilot, not an artilleryman, or whatever, who also knew how to fly.”
“That’s one of our problems,” Bellmon said. “It’s asking a hell of a lot of a pilot like Smythe to be a pilot, and, in his case, armor, keeping up with all he has to know to command a tank company.”
Devlin grunted.
“What did you think of him?” Bellmon asked.
“Truth to tell?” Devlin asked. “He impressed me from the moment I saw him, and I wondered what the hell he was doing driving an airplane, when I really need bright young officers to command tank companies.”
“That was before your first Mohawk ride?” Bellmon asked, smiling.
“Yeah,” Devlin said.
“Well, Captain Smythe is about to get command of a platoon,” Bellmon said.
“A platoon?”
“We’re forming a Mohawk platoon, for Vietnam. We chose from among ten of the best and the brightest captains we could find; Smythe was the final choice.”
“Captains commanding platoons . . .”
“We’re accused, of course, of inflating, or diluting, the rank structure, of course,” Bellmon said. “But it’s just not that way. When III Corps gets a Mohawk platoon—”
“Will that be before or after Bob Grisham gets his Corps Commander’s L-23?”
Bellmon ignored the dig.
“—it will consist of six Mohawks. Each aircraft requires two aviators, and of course you need spares. The draft TO and E calls for ten aviators, all commissioned officers, because we are not yet at the point where we can train warrant officer pilots to fly them. There’s also a maintenance officer, commissioned, and a deputy, warrant, and an avionics officer, commissioned, and a warrant deputy. And a supply officer, commissioned. From that perspective, you wonder if a captain isn’t a little junior to command.”
“And all of the officers have to stay current in their branch?”
“The brightest of us,” Bellmon said jokingly, “can do both. Command a tank unit and fly. Me, for example,” he paused. “Craig Lowell.”
Devlin shook his head.
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�Where is he now?”
“McDill,” Bellmon replied. “Aviation officer for STRIKE command.”
“I heard he’s a Green Beret,” Devlin said.
“Unfortunately,” Bellmon said.
“I was in Task Force Lowell, you know,” Devlin said. “I thought Lowell was what you find when you look up ‘combat commander’ in the dictionary.”
“He’s a fine combat commander,” Bellmon agreed. “And I have to keep telling myself that what he’s doing as a Green Beret is important. But I find myself wondering if he shouldn’t be commanding an aviation company in Vietnam.”
Devlin grunted.
“Or a tank battalion at Hood,” he said.
“And they’re attracting the bright young officers, or stealing them—”
“Stealing them?” Devlin interrupted.
Bellmon didn’t reply directly.
“You remember my aide, Johnny Oliver?” he asked. “He’s up at Bragg, eating snakes with Red Hanrahan. Even my son, who should know better, put in an application for Special Forces. And my daughter married one of them.”
“I just met him,” Devlin said, and when Bellmon looked surprised, went on: “He was at the airfield when we got here. With Barbara and Marjorie.”
“You ever hear ‘the general is the last to know’?” Bellmon said. “I had no idea either of them were here.”
“They came in just ahead of us in an L-23,” Devlin said, “which I strongly suspect is the one Bob Grisham expected and didn’t get.”
“For God’s sake, don’t tell him you got this from me, but it is. The reason I know is that my son-in-law went out to Wichita to pick it up.”
“Seems like a very nice young man,” Devlin said.
“Unfortunately, he is. Otherwise, I could hate him. Marjorie took one look at him, and that was it.”
“Academy?”
“No. He got drafted and then took a direct commission. He was an airline pilot.”
“And now he’s a Green Beret?”
“Don’t ask, Eddie. For those of us who like to go by the book, it’s painful.”
The General’s intercom went off:
“General, Major Lunsford and Lieutenant Portet are here. Major Lunsford says you expect him.”
“Give them a cup of coffee and tell them I’ll be available shortly,” Bellmon replied. He looked at Devlin. “Last night, the chief called me at my quarters. He said two officers would be coming here from Bragg, from the Special Warfare Center, on a recruiting mission. Read ‘steal my brightest officers.’ ”
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