Trial by fire: a novel

by Harold Coyle

  The commander of the 2nd Battalion, 13th Infantry, backed down, apologizing for running off at the mouth and promising to support the program, one hundred ten percent.

  Big Al's surprise attack had, for the most part, the desired effect.

  Unquestioning cooperation and team playing became the order of the day.

  Still, there were whispered comments and dissent in the ranks. Even in Dixon's own section, there were doubts about the wisdom of putting women in combat units. On the previous Friday, to Dixon's surprise, the captain in his section charged with coordination of the overall program for the division came in and asked Dixon to reassign him to other duties on the grounds that he could not support the program. While Dixon admired the man's honesty, he could not allow an officer who did not support Army policy and the Army equal-opportunity program to walk away without comment. After all, Dixon knew that officers could not be allowed to pick and choose what they did and did not want to support.

  To Dixon, a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute with twenty-one years of active duty and two wars behind him, it was an all-or-nothing proposition for an officer. Within a matter of hours, the officer was reassigned and Dixon had prepared an adverse evaluation that, in a peacetime Army, would effectively be a show-stopper to the captain's career.

  The entire affair was made easier since the captain had waited until the very last minute, just as the female officers were coming on board, to make his opinion known. That he chose to do so on a Friday, putting the coup de grace on an already doomed weekend, allowed Dixon to actually enjoy writing cutting comments on the captain's evaluation report.

  Two months before, Dixon had planned to take a long weekend in conjunction with the 4th of July and go down to South Padre Island with his two boys and Jan Fields, the woman he had been living with for the past three years. The military coup in Mexico, however, had caused Jan to drop out. The chance to be the World News Network senior correspondent in Mexico City was simply too tempting for Jan to pass up.

  Dixon, though put out, didn't complain. After all, she had given up a better position with WNN to become, as she referred to herself, a camp follower. The loss of the project officer for EFCO had finished the weekend.

  Instead of sitting on the beach on South Padre Island with his two sons, Dixon had sat in his office at Fort Hood with the division personnel officer looking for a suitable officer to become the new stuckee for EFCO.

  After looking at dozens of officers' records, they both agreed upon a new officer just coming into the division, a young captain by the name of Harold Cerro.

  Waiting to go in and be interviewed by the division G3, Captain Harold Cerro sipped at the coffee he had been offered and watched the comings and goings of the people around him. He was already pissed off by the fact that his assignment to a brigade staff had been changed, removing him still farther from "real" soldiers. At least at brigade level, Cerro thought, he would have had an opportunity, every now and then, to smell the horseshit and gunpowder. On division staff, all he'd get to smell was the horseshit.

  Already in what could be described as a deep funk due to his sudden reassignment, Cerro could find nothing impressive about the division staff that morning. Everyone, officer and enlisted, seemed to move at a half speed, lackadaisical pace. In most of the line units he had been in, there had always been a high degree of crispness in everything they had done, including their conversations. Here, everyone just sort of moseyed about, lost in their own little world as they drank coffee, shuffled paper, and became annoyed anytime a telephone rudely interrupted their sedate pace and required them to answer it. This, Cerro thought to himself, was going to take some getting used to.

  As he pondered his fate, a sergeant major came up to him, a smile on his face and his right hand stretched out. "Captain Cerro, I'm Sergeant Major Aiken. Welcome to the G3."

  Caught off guard, Cerro shifted his coffee cup from his right hand to his left, stood up as he did so, grasped the sergeant major's hand, and lied. "It's a pleasure to be here, Sergeant Major."

  Aiken looked into the captain's eyes for a moment as they shook hands and smiled a shy, knowing smile. "I'm sure it is, sir. I'm sure it is."

  The smile and comment did not escape Cerro's notice, and the look of concern on his face did not escape Aiken. "Sir, the G3 will see you now.'' Without waiting, Aiken turned and stepped off to lead Cerro to the G3's office. After quickly putting his half-empty cup down on the floor next to the seat where he had been sitting, Cerro turned and scurried after the sergeant major.

  By the time Cerro caught up to the sergeant major, he was standing outside the G3's door. Without a word, Aiken motioned that Cerro was to enter. As Cerro passed him, Aiken mumbled, "Vaya con Dios." Although he didn't respond to the remark, Cerro wondered why in the hell the sergeant major had said that.

  The G3's office was, relatively speaking, small. At one end was a simple and functional wooden desk facing the door. In front of the desk, a long wooden table with five chairs around it was set perpendicular to, and butted up against, the wooden desk. To Cerro's left was an overstuffed chair and an end table with an old unit history of the 16th Armored Division on it. Farther along the wall to his left was a wooden bookcase filled with a combination of field manuals, military history books, and loose-leaf binders of assorted colors and sizes. On the wall where the bookcase sat were two small-scale maps, one showing Germany and Eastern Europe and the second showing the Persian Gulf region.

  A third map, on the wall behind the desk, was a special overprinted map of Fort Hood that showed all the ranges and training areas on post. Behind the desk, seated in a large executive-style chair, with his feet propped on the windowsill, sipping coffee as he watched a parade rehearsal, was the G3.

  Coming up to the edge of the long table, Cerro stopped, came to the position of attention, saluted, and reported. "Sir, Captain Harold Cerro reporting for duty."

  Dixon had heard the captain enter his office. He had even heard the sergeant major's snide comment. The booming voice of the young captain, artificially dropped a couple of octaves so that he sounded huskier, more masculine, did not surprise Dixon. In fact, Dixon half expected the captain to end with the traditional, "Airborne."

  Without facing the captain, Dixon took another sip of coffee before moving the cup from his right hand to his left and returning the captain's salute rather casually. "Take a seat, Captain Cerro."

  For a moment, Cerro was taken aback by the casual, almost slovenly attitude of the G3. No wonder, Cerro thought, the G3 staff moves around half-stepping. They get it from the top. Heaving a sigh, Cerro dropped his salute, and took a seat at the head of the long table, waiting for the G3 to speak. The G3, however, didn't pay any further attention to Cerro. Instead, he continued to watch the parade rehearsal outside his window.

  With nothing better to do, Cerro turned in his seat and also watched.

  Down on the parade ground, the marching unit was just completing its final turn before passing the reviewing stand. The battalion commander, followed by his four staff principals, was in front of the reviewing stand, saluting the reviewing officer. As this was only a rehearsal, a major from the G3 shop was acting as the reviewing officer, returning salutes and taking notes on deficiencies as elements of the marching unit went by.

  Following the battalion staff came the companies, led by their captains and guidons. Cerro watched as the commander of each company gave his orders. First came the exaggerated preparatory command, ' 'Eyes,'' which alerted the company to what command was about to be issued. At the same instant the commander gave the preparatory command, the guidon bearer hoisted the guidon as high as he could. This was an old tradition, done in the days when commanders used the guidon to signal their commands to subordinates who could not hear them over the sounds of battle.

  After a pause, the commander shouted a crisp, curt "Right," the command of execution. In unison, the commander's head turned to the right as his right hand shot up to salute the review
ing officer. The guidon came down with an audible snap to signal the command of execution had been given. In the ranks of the company, the right-hand file continued to look straight ahead while every head in the two files to the left snapped to the right. The company held this position until its commander had passed the reviewing stand and reached a marker that told him the trail element of his unit had cleared the reviewing stand. At that point, he gave the order,

  "Ready," pause, "Front."

  Company after company marched by, with the national and regimental colors between the second and third company. As they passed the reviewing stand, the regimental colors dipped to a forty-five-degree angle in salute to the reviewing officer, but the national colors remained aloft, dipping for no man. This was the only time the reviewing officer initiated the salute, honoring the national colors.

  Cerro had seen all of this before and didn't really understand the G3's fascination with the parade--since, no doubt, the G3 had seen it far more often. Cerro was becoming quite uncharitable in his thoughts concerning his new superior until the horse platoon came by. Though the sequence was the same, there was more flair and drama, a flair and drama that Cerro found himself caught up in, as the horse platoon leader brought his drawn saber up before his face as he gave the preparatory order. Bellowing "Eyes" for all he was worth, the horse platoon leader snapped his saber down, catching a glint of sunlight on the polished blade as he did so. He held it there, with a stiff extended arm, as he issued the execution order, "Right." The horsemen and their mounts, passing two by two before the reviewing officer, did so with a precision and a casual ease that Cerro marveled at. No doubt, he thought, the horses, their heads held high, required as much drill as the troopers did. Following the horse platoon came the field guns. Each gun, pulled by four horses, had a crew of four, two men riding the trace horses, the ones on the right, and two men riding on the caisson.

  While their passing in review in itself had been interesting, the maneuvering and mock battle, followed by a mounted charge afterward, was, for want of a better word, exhilarating. As Cerro watched in fascination, he could feel his pulse rate increase. This, he thought, this was a ceremony worthy of the United States Army.

  As the horse platoon leader rallied his troopers, Dixon spun around in his chair and faced Cerro for the first time. "Ever see a cavalry charge before?"

  Cerro, surprised by the G3, shook his head. "No, sir, not really."

  Leaning back in his chair, Dixon spoke, studying the new captain as he did so. "Back when the Army did things like that for real, everything was simple, manageable, understood. The commander, riding a few paces in front of his troopers, would see and study the enemy, the land, and his objective. He could take it all in with a single glance. Using what he saw, along with his training, experience, and judgment, he'd issue a quick and simple order. He could do it on his own, since units were only as large as a commander's voice could carry. And the maneuvers were simple drills, something that a good troop had practiced many times. When he, the commander, felt all was ready, he would raise his saber and give the order to charge. In a matter of minutes, it would be success, or failure.

  Simple, clean, and quick. In the words of Major Joel Elliott at the Wash ita, 'Here goes for a brevet or a coffin!' "

  Cerro, sitting at the far end of the table, waited for the G3 to continue, or to tie his little story in to some profound thought. As he waited, he couldn't help but get the feeling that he was being set up for something, especially since Dixon had used Major Elliott's quote. Elliott, an officer assigned to the 7th U.S. Cavalry Regiment in 1868, was last seen alive leading a group of eighteen troops in pursuit of a group of fleeing Cheyennes on the first day of the Battle of the Washita. His body, and those of all eighteen troopers, were found almost two weeks later. Elliott had gotten his coffin. Was that, Cerro thought, what the G3 was preparing him for, a bullet or a brevet? That suspicion was justified as the G3

  continued.

  "Have you ever heard of the program called Evaluation of Female Combat Officers?"

  That was it. Without another word, Cerro knew what was coming.

  Still, he hesitated for a moment before answering. When he did, Cerro tried hard to maintain an even, calm voice. "Yes, sir, I am familiar with the program."

  Dixon picked up a small square paperweight and began to play with it, looking at the paperweight instead of Cerro, causing Cerro to wonder if Army lieutenant colonels used paperweights in the same manner that Navy captains used ball bearings.

  As Dixon spoke, Cerro could feel his shoulders, already dangerously close to the floor, slump down even further. "Well, by this time next week, you will be more than familiar with it. I have decided to assign you to the G3 training section as the individual training and gunnery officer for the division. One of your responsibilities will be monitoring and coordinating the EFCO program for the division. While you will have other duties, including being the division point of contact for the skills qualification testing, small arms and gunnery training, special schools, etc., none of them compare to the importance of EFCO. That is a very high-vis program that I expect you to remain on top of." Stopping his fiddling with the paperweight, Dixon looked up and into Cerro's eyes before continuing. "Understood?"

  Although Cerro didn't have any idea what all his responsibilities and duties concerning EFCO would entail, he understood the sensitive nature of the program, the publicity it had received and would continue to receive, and the controversies that would be generated when the results were released, no matter what those results were. For a moment, Cerro z pondered all of

  this, trying hard to come up with an appropriate response.

  Looking back at the G3, he suspected he was waiting for some comment that would offer him a clue as to how Cerro felt about his assignment.

  Remembering that a little humor, employed at moments like this, had more than once gotten him out of a tight spot, Cerro smiled. "Gee, sir, you had me going there for a -while. I thought you were going to give me something really tough to deal with."

  Caught off guard by Cerro's comment, Dixon looked at Cerro, then smiled. Well, he thought, if he wants to fuck with me, two can play at this. Leaning forward, putting his elbows on the desk and his hands together, Dixon looked Cerro in the eyes. "In that case, do you think you could also handle training ammunition?"

  The first thing that popped into Cerro's head was "Oh, shit, I misjudged this guy." That thought must have turned his own smile into a worried look, for after a brief pause, Dixon winked and smiled. "Next time, trooper, look before you leap. Understand?"

  Cerro shook his head. "Target, sir, cease fire."

  Standing up, Dixon walked to the door. "Your period of grace is over.

  Time for you to go to work. Follow me and I'll introduce you to Major Nihart, the G3 training officer."

  Headquarters, 2nd Battalion, 13TH Infantry, Fort Hood, Texas

  0945 hours, 3 July

  Turning off the road on which 2nd Brigade headquarters was located and into the parking lot behind the headquarters building for the battalion, the soldiers of 2nd of the 13th Infantry prepared to come to a halt. For Second Lieutenant Kozak, it had been a good start. Drill and ceremony, after four years at West Point, including one year as a cadet battalion commander, had at least prepared her for parades. Now, she thought, if the rest of the next year goes this easy, we've got it made.

  That she considered her success as a matter of "we" and not "I" was a subconscious admission that her success or failure would affect more than herself. Her performance, and that of five other young female officers like her, would determine if female officers would be allowed into the mainstream of the Army. So long as females, both officer and enlisted, remained restricted to combat support and combat service support branches, there would be barriers to promotion and ascent to the highest levels. Only by becoming members of the combat arms branches could women achieve real and unrestricted equality. And for this to be achieved, Nancy Kozak knew she
had to succeed.

  Marching into the parking lot, she looked at the back of her new company commander. Her success, and in turn, the success of the evaluation, rested heavily upon that man, Captain Stanley Wittworth. He could make or break her in a dozen different ways. From the tasks he assigned her, to the personnel he placed in her platoon, Captain Wittworth held the key to her future. Though Kozak tried to convince herself that the same was true for any second lieutenant, the consequences of her failure would be more than a simple statistic.

  Preoccupied with these thoughts, Kozak almost missed Wittworth's order to halt. Catching herself in time, she came to a halt, and, on command, faced to the left. Clutching her fists and wincing, she uttered a silent curse, reminding herself that she had to keep her head out of her ass and pay attention. First and foremost, she had to keep her eyes and ears open and her mouth shut.

  After dismissing the company, Wittworth wandered back to his office. He was in no hurry. All that waited for him there was paperwork and a line of soldiers waiting to see him about some damned thing or another. He didn't feel much like dealing with trivia at that moment. Instead, he needed to get his own head together. The nice, organized, and controlled world he had created for himself as a company commander had hit a speed bump named Nancy Kozak.

  Although he had known that having a female second lieutenant in his company was going to bring a certain amount of problems and difficulties with it, he hadn't reckoned on some of his problems coming from his own commander. Wittworth had been hoping for guidance and support, or at least some empathy. Instead, he got nothing. What little was said appeared, to Wittworth, to be interference bordering on micromanagement.

  The parade rehearsal that morning, the first official duty in which Lieutenant Kozak had participated, had served as a warning to Wittworth.

  Offering what appeared to be a simple recommendation, the battalion commander had suggested that Lieutenant Kozak be placed so that she was in the right-hand file of the company for the retreat parade. Wittworth had no way of knowing that the reason the battalion commander wanted Kozak to be on the right was so that she would be visible for everyone on the reviewing stand to see when the battalion marched by. It was the battalion commander's way of proving that he had taken Big Al's "sug gestion" and become a team player, and that Lieutenant Kozak was fully integrated in the battalion, like she was supposed to be.