by Bill Mesce
“And Captain Anderson?”
Dell almost laughed aloud. “Tarzan. That’s what I called him. Real crazy guy. I mean, not really crazy, not medically — ”
Harry smiled disarmingly. “Gotcha.”
“He called his squadron ‘Anderson’s Apaches,’ and him and all his fellas had that on their flight jackets and planes. The RAF has radio monitoring stations along the coast, and they follow all the radio traffic. You have to hear this guy, him and his whole squadron. They go into a dogfight and they start doing these Indian whoops on the radio. Captain Anderson is pals with Major Markham, too, but not like the major and Colonel Adams. Different.”
“How so?”
“Oh, like...like when you were back in high school? The little kid that always hung around the quarterback? Anything I can do for you, champ?”
“I got the picture.”
“Anderson goes everywhere the major does. Markham goes over to the hospital every day to visit the wounded, so does Anderson. Only, Markham goes because he wants to. Anderson goes — ”
“Just because Markham does.”
“Yeah.”
“Now we come to Lieutenant O’Connell.”
“Sergeant Sadapple.” As soon as he said it, Dell’s Ups tightened in self-reprimand. “Sorry.”
“That’s what they called O’Connell? Sadapple?”
“I don’t want to talk bad about some fella who didn’t come home.”
“It’s OK, Captain.”
“Well, that’s how I thought of him.” He shook his head, angry at himself. “Ah, I don’t know. Maybe I’m not being fair. It’s no easy row for anybody to hoe, any of those fellas that go up there. You come back and that night you’re looking around the mess table and there’s some faces aren’t there. What those fellas face up there, no wonder some of ’em, like Anderson, they go a little squirrelly. All of those flyboys are at least a little crazy, Major. They have to be. I sit down with them when they come home and you see it gets to all of them. Some try to hide it, they try to laugh stuff off. One of their buddies goes down and they just go — ” he shrugged his shoulders “ — and have a drink and chalk it up to a roll of the dice or something.
“They make it a game. They shoot down a plane, it’s just another point they rack up. You hear ’em talk about it and it’s like listening to somebody talk about how the Giants outplayed the Dodgers. Then I remember that every one of those little swastikas they paint under their cockpits was some fella, and that any one of these boys at the table could wind up a little American flag under some krauts cockpit. You get all that buzzing around in your head and you can’t help but go a little ‘khaki wacky.’”
It took Harry a moment to regain himself: Spotty-faced young boys should not have such weighty matters in their tousled heads, he’d been thinking. He announced a return to the business at hand with a clearing of the throat.
“Do you think it would get to you, like it did to O’Connell?”
“Like I said, Major, it gets to all of them. It just doesn’t always come out the same way.”
That was all for the young captain. He made his exit in the proper military manner, with a crisp salute before making a smart turn toward the door and out, leaving his Coca-Cola bottle behind, tottering on Harry’s desk. Harry reached out to still the rattling wobble of glass on wood. The caramel dregs rolling round the thick bottom made him suddenly thirsty. He released the bottle and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes, allowing a moment to let the image of young Captain Dell’s tainted innocence clear from his mind.
He turned to the target profiles Van Damm had provided, spreading them out on his desk, flipping through them. There was an E-boat repair station near Ostende, and a rail causeway that breached a section of the swamps created in Normandy where the Germans had allowed the Dives valley to flood as an anti-invasion measure. Another target was a radio-monitoring station near Calais. All three were much closer to Donophan than the Helsvagen fuel depot. The other two targets that had been passed by were satellite fuel depots similar to the one at Helsvagen: one northwest of Brussels, about halfway along the road to Mechelen, and the other just west of Bastogne. There seemed no obvious reason — other than, in some cases, possibly distance — for the selection of Helsvagen above the other targets. Ah, Harry thought, the vagaries of the military mind.
“Nagel!”
He heard Nagel’s chair scrape back from the desk.
“Don’t come in here! I want you to call the acting CO of the 351st Fighter Group at Donophan Airfield. Tell him I’ll be out there tomorrow afternoon to talk to him. Get directions! And tell General Halverson’s Wing headquarters I’m on my way over.”
“What about Colonel Ryan?”
“What about him?”
“You owe him a call. Should I get him — ”
“No.”
“Do I know where you are if he calls again?”
“No. Did you call Halverson’s office?”
“If you don’t mind my saying so, sir, generals usually like you to make appointments.”
“Make the damn call!” Harry bellowed back down the hall, and then he was gone.
*
St. Aloysius Academy for Young Men sat in proud isolation in the rolling country west of London. Ivy-clad granite walls with turrets and machicolations, steeply raked slate roofs, narrow, high windows of stained glass — the Academy looked a combination of castle and cathedral and, in the way it had tutored and counseled English young in the High Tory ideals of empire-ruling, it had been both.
Now, The Empire was a bit in need of repair, and the school desks were stored in the cellars along with the tapestries that had hung in the marble halls detailing grand episodes in British history. According to the sign posted on the whitewashed stakes pounded into the once immaculate sod round the great arched entrance, St. Aloysius had become home to the “188th Combat Wing Headquarters.”
Corporal Nagel’s warning notwithstanding, a young lieutenant stood waiting on the wide front stairs to usher Harry through the paneled entrance hall and up the marble stairs straight to what had been the headmaster’s office.
Behind the monolithic oaken desk where generations of headmasters had once stood beneath the school’s coat of arms surrounded by rich, dark woodwork and floor-to-ceiling shelves of leather-bound volumes, now sat Brigadier General Russell Halverson. Harry knew the general from routine JAG dealings in the past, but this Russell Halverson he barely recognized. In better days, Halverson was trim, erect, handsome in an unobtrusive way, and sincerely polite in a cool fashion his British colleagues considered admirably un-American. But this day Harry saw a pale, rumpled, sagging man. Halverson resembled a bronze bust returned to the furnace, its features running under the great heat.
The air in the office was rife with the smell of cigarette ash. The teletype and its alert bell were strangely silent, as were the rank of telephones on the general’s desk. Paperwork sat scattered across his baize blotter like autumn leaves. The only movement in the office were the dust motes dancing in the bars of colored light angling down through the stained glass.
“Good to see you again, Major,” the general said, rising behind his desk.
“I wish the circumstances were better, sir.” Harry was glad to retrieve his hand from the general’s unexpectedly soft clasp.
“So do I.” He flicked a wry twist of a smile, then beckoned Harry to a comfortable, cushioned chair by his desk. They both sat.
“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, sir.” Halverson nodded with an officious smile. He pushed a pack of Camels toward Harry and they each lighted one. As Harry went to drop his match, he noticed the overflowing ashtray on the desk.
“How’s the case going?” the general asked quietly.
“All right, sir.”
“I understand they haven’t been formally arrested yet.”
“We’re still in the investigation process, sir.”
“I spoke to Colonel Ryan earlier. He sai
d it looked pretty open-and-shut.”
Harry cleared his throat. “Just a few loose ends to tie up. I’d hate to hurt a prosecution by going too fast.”
“When are you going to talk to them?”
“If I talk to Markham and Anderson now, I’ll have to offer counsel, and once they have that they’re going to start building a defense. If I talk to them without offering them counsel, well, we’re open to an appeal down the road on the basis that their rights were infringed. Unless they request counsel, I’m not compelled to offer it to them until they’re formally arrested. By then, though, we’ll have a solid groundwork in place before they can effectively counter. I don’t want to talk to them until then.”
Halverson nodded deeply, understanding, but then became quite still and concerned. “You may not have much time with this, Major.”
“I know.”
Halverson leaned back in his chair and drew deeply on his cigarette. “I’d like to ask you a question. Maybe you can explain something to me.”
“If I can, sir.”
“There’s war parties gathering at SHAEF ready to go after Patton’s scalp because he slapped a couple of GI’s in Sicily. You heard about that, of course. Who hasn’t? So, here he is on the verge of giving them the damned island, but he spanks these two kids...well, that’s something you just don’t do.” He shook his head. “Meanwhile, about two weeks ago, Ninth Bomber Command in North Africa hit the Rumanian oil fields at Ploesti. They lost over thirty percent of their aircraft — over five hundred men — in a half-hour raid. They’re pinning medals on that bunch.”
Halverson’s face was tired and sad, yet he grinned over the pathetic humor of the point. “I’d really appreciate somebody explaining that scale to me, Major. If you can, maybe you can tell me where I fall on it.”
“General, I’m not investigating you.”
“It’s early yet. I’ll bet Major Van Damm thinks you should.”
Harry fiddled with his notepad. The foolscap seemed too bright, a rainbow garland at a wake.
“I’m being impolitic, hm? Not to mention impolite.” Halverson smirked at his discomfort. “What is it I can do for you, Major? Can I begin by offering you a drink?”
“A little too early for me, sir.”
Halverson nodded and reached into a bottom desk drawer. He pulled out a nearly empty bottle of brandy. “It’s always later than you think. Did you see my glass anywhere? Ah!”
He took the bottle with him over to the row of windows that ran along one side of the office. Tall and arched at the top, sections of red, blue, and green glass created haloed figures in robes emblazoned with the cross of Saint George. All brandished swords and heraldic shields and pennanted lances. Halverson nursed the first sip, staring blankly through one of the open panes at the trim lawn outside.
“I don’t like this heat,” he said, absently patting at the moisture on his upper lip with the back of his hand. “You’d think out here in the country it’d be cooler.” He took another sip and topped his glass again. “You have questions?”
“Several, if you please, General. Major Van Damm — ”
“I find the major tends to the histrionic, don’t you?”
“Perhaps. He seems capable enough.”
“So did the G-2 section of the Ninth.”
Harry stubbed out his cigarette and began to slide his pad back into his briefcase. “General, this is obviously a bad time — ”
Halverson held up his hand. “I apologize, Major. That was uncalled-for. These haven’t been my best days.” He returned to his seat, setting his glass and bottle on the desk in front of him. “You’re right about Van Damm. The major has, some might think, a rather flamboyant way of putting his case, but he is capable. Very.”
“The way the major explained the command structure...Well, I assume that since Major Markham was senior staff at the 351st, you were acquainted with him.”
“Somewhat. Markham was Frank Adams’s exec. Inevitably, Markham and I met a number of times. Briefings, staff meetings, the odd social occasion.”
“What about these other men involved in the mission yesterday? This Captain Anderson — ”
“Anderson I’d met a few times, usually official. He was one of the squadron commanders out there. Can’t say I really knew the man, though, if you know what I mean. I decorated him once.”
“Really?”
“Early on, one of the group’s first missions, shepherding some bombers down to Brest, I think it was. Anderson had to nurse two of his pilots home after their planes were hit. He wound up going against a pair of Messerschmitts, bluffing them out with empty guns. I remember Frank — Colonel Adams — saying in passing that Anderson was something of a free-wheeler, tugged at the leash a little too much, but that’s all I know.”
“And Lieutenant O’Connell?”
Halverson took another sip of his drink. “Never had the pleasure.”
“These other two fliers? McLagen and Jacobs?” Halverson shook his head.
“Major Van Damm mentioned that you were friends with Colonel Adams.”
“For a very long time. Very long. I — both my wife and myself, actually — we were very close with Frank Adams and his wife. Old friends. That made it very hard...writing her.”
Harry meekly cleared his throat, feeling painfully intrusive. “I’m also told that Colonel Adams was good friends with Major Markham.”
“Oh, yes, yes. Frank talked about the major a good deal. I think he’d taken quite a shine to him, in a sort of paternal way. And he considered Markham top-drawer material as a pilot and a commander. If you’d known Frank Adams, you’d know just how impressive a recommendation that was. As I said, I’ve met the major a number of times. He seems a nice enough fellow, very bright, very congenial without being sycophantic about it, which was refreshing. Markham wasn’t the one that actually did the shooting, was he?”
“I won’t know for sure who did the shooting until the ballistics analysis comes back from Scotland Yard.”
Halverson shook his head. “I can’t say that either Markham or Captain Anderson — what little I know of him — seemed the type to be involved in this sort of thing. Then again, I have a wife who doesn’t think I’m the kind of man who sends boys out to die.”
“I think that’s an oversimplification, General. One that’s a little unfair to yourself.”
Halverson nodded appreciatively and took a long, slow sip from his glass. “That’s what I do for a living, isn’t it? I send men out to do a job, and part of that job is that some of them will die. If that becomes your chief concern, then you can’t do your job effectively. You start holding back, which means targets aren’t hit square, defenses are left intact. The consequent irony is you then lose more men by trying to save them. So, you strike some sort of balance, an unspoken agreement that your men will follow your orders because they believe you won’t waste them; you balance getting the job done with giving these youngsters a fair chance of getting home. I didn’t do that job too badly, Major. That’s why they gave me this just a few weeks ago.” He flicked a finger at the star on his collar tab. “I was going to be moved up to GHQ at the end of the month.”
“And Colonel Adams was going to get the Wing?”
“Hm?” Halverson, his sense of propriety offended by his own self-flagellating lecture, had leveled an accusing stare at the brandy bottle.
“Colonel Adams was to be given command of the Wing?”
“You heard? No official announcement had been cut, but the paperwork on his full colonelcy was already in the pipe.” Halverson smiled ruefully. “If the papers had moved a little faster, Frank Adams would’ve been here instead of at Donophan the night the Germans hit. He’d still be alive and you’d be here talking to him, while I’d be the one at GHQ siccing you on him.”
“Nobody’s siccing me on anybody, General. In fact, you initiated the investigation — so, for now, I’m working for you.”
Halverson’s smile turned cruel. “Of course. How s
o very forgetful of me.” The smile faded. “Anyway, Frank was going to get the Wing, and we planned to give Markham the group for a probationary period.”
“Probation? From what I’ve heard, Markham sounded capable enough.”
“Frank had one reservation and, after he laid it out for me, I shared it with him. Markham is extraordinarily close to his men. There may be worse faults, and Im sure there are those who’d say that’s no fault at all, but it can be a problem — a big problem — in a line commander.”
“Is it? A problem with Markham?”
“Markham has beefs — always on behalf of the men, mind you — and some of those beefs come to me. He can be pretty adamant about them, sometimes to the point of being an irritation, but nothing I thought was out of line. Even Frank said he saw no evidence it was interfering with Markham’s across-the-board responsibilities. Frank worked closely with Markham, I deferred to his judgment, and that judgment was it was best to err on the side of caution. We planned a trial period. It never got to that.”
“Because the Germans hit Donophan.”
“Three days before we were going to make the announcements. Are you sure I can’t persuade you to have a drink, Major?” Halverson didn’t wait for a reply before he poured the last dregs into his glass. He looked mournfully at the empty bottle and set it aside.
“Major Van Damm seemed to have trouble seeing any justification for your authorizing the August fifteenth raids.”
“He did.”
“He seemed to think they were...ill-advised.” Halverson couldn’t restrain a blurting laugh. He held his glass up in salute. “To your tact, Major. Van Damm was a touch more emphatic when he broached that particular point to me. In retrospect, I’d be an ass to take issue with him.”
“You obviously had a different opinion beforehand.”
“Obviously.”
“Well, on what basis did you decide — ”
“Major Markham decided. That’s not to absolve myself, Major. I am Markham’s commander. Markham may have persuaded me to go along with his decision, but, ultimately, it was my call. And, any day now, somebody — maybe you — from the JAG is going to come banging on my door and point that salient fact out to me. It’s funny, but that’s the same reason I agreed to the missions.”