"I still think he'd be better off working for George Rand," Bellmon said.
"It's done, Bob," Hanrahan said. "If you raised a lot of hell about it, you might get it undone. But I'm not sure. Why don't you just let it be? If nothing else, for his sake, give him a little time to get over the woman. I'm probably betraying a confidence when I say this, but Major Lunsford told me he broke down and cried like a baby."
Bellmon looked at him.
It was a moment before he spoke.
"Just within these walls, I am about out of patience with that goddamned widow." Then he shrugged. "OK. If the best thing for Johnny to do is go eat snakes, bon appetit. "
"There's one more thing, Bob," Lowell said. "He had planned to tell you about this tonight. Apparently he was afraid of your reaction. Red told him you already knew; that he'd gotten a copy of the TWX changing his orders."
"I'm not about to add to the poor guy's problems. A crazy widow and you two, plus Felter, is more than enough of a burden for a young captain to bear." Lowell smiled and chuckled.
"Well, now that we're all old pals again," Lowell said, "would anybody like another drink before we go face the ladies?"
"Please," Generals Bellmon and Hanrahan said almost in unison.
[FWO]
The Officers' Open Mess
Fort Rucker, Alabama
2115 Hours 18 December 1964
When Major General Robert F. Bellmon had directed his then aide-de-camp, Captain John S. Oliver, to start setting up his official Christmas party, the direction had been in the form of a handwritten distribution form. On it he had written
Christmas Party
18 December. 1845. Dinner at 2000 sharp!
Mess Dress (preferred). Blues. Black Tie.
Dining Room A General and Special Staff,
including deputies Class II activities,
including deputies 31st Inf & 403rd Eng Odd 0-6s GS-13 + Mrs. B's orphans
Roast Beef Cocktails and wine on the Cash bar afterward Decent Band in Club!!
Dining Room A of the Officers' Open Mess was usually the cafeteria. It was on the main floor of the club, separated from it by folding doors. When it was in use for a more formal purpose, such as the Commanding General's Christmas Dinner-Dance, the glass-covered steam trays of the cafeteria serving line were hidden behind folding screens, and 6e plastic-topped tables rearranged and covered with linen.
The tables tonight had been arranged in a long-sided "U," a shorter line of tables in the middle of the U. Seating was determined by protocol, modified slightly by the unanticipated presence of Brigadier General Paul Hanrahan.
The Commanding General and his lady sat, naturally, at the head of the table, in the center of the U. To their left sat the Chief of Staff and his lady, and to the right, Brigadier General Hanrahan. No one sat across from the general officers and ladies.
People were seated on both sides of the legs of the U, their proximity to the head of the table determined for the most part by their rank and sometimes by their seniority within that rank.
Protocol was always made more difficult at an affair like this because officers from all the units on Fort Rucker were involved. Several of these officers were not subordinate to the Army Aviation Center & Fort Rucker.
General Bellmon, in his DF, had directed that the General and Special Staffs of the Army Aviation Center & Fort Rucker be invited to the party with their ladies. The invitation was de facto a command, although-except for the initial cocktails and the table wine-those attending would be expected to pay for the dinner and whatever else they chose to drink.
There were four General Staff Officers. All of these except the G-2, who was a lieutenant colonel, were full bird colonels. The Special Staff were the officers who provided special services. The provost marshal, for example, was for all intents and purposes the Fort Rucker chief of police. The signal officer ran the telephones and other communication. The engineer maintained everything from dependent housing to airfield runways. There was a flock of others, including the post chaplain, the veterinarian, and the chemical officer. These ranged in rank from full colonel down to captain. Most of them had wives, and most of them had deputies, and most of the deputies had wives.
General Bellmon also wanted Oliver to send invitations to the commanding officers (and their wives) of the two troop units and of the Class II activities. The two troop units were the 2nd Battle Group, 31st Infantry- "The Polar Bears," a reference to their service in Siberia 1917-1919-and the 403rd Engineer Construction Battalion. The commanders of the Class II activities included three full colonels and a lieutenant colonel, and their deputies included two full colonels, a lieutenant colonel, and a major.
Both troop unit commanders were lieutenant colonels. And both were subordinate to the Continental Army Command [CONARC]. There were four Class II Activities at Fort Rucker that were not subordinate to the commanding general of Fort Rucker. The hospital was subordinate, for example, to the Office of the Surgeon General. The Combat Developments Agency belonged to the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, U.S. Army. The Army Aviation Board belonged to CONARC. The U.S. Army Signal Aviation Test and Support Activity belonged to the chief signal officer.
The "odd 0-6s" on General Bellmon's DF made reference to 0-6s (full colonels) whose presence was desired although they were not General or Special Staff officers, or Deputies, or whatever. "GS-13" referred to Department of the Army rowan employees. For protocol purposes, "senior civilians" in pay grades GS-13 and above were considered to be entitled to the courtesy normally accorded a field-grade officer (major through colonel). There were perhaps a dozen such who would attend the party, either because they wanted to or because they didn't think it politically expedient to send regrets .
And "Mrs. B's Orphans" meant those officers who fitted none of the other categories, but who Mrs. Barbara Bellmon felt should be invited. They included people she knew (relatives or other officers visiting invitees, for example) or people who she had been told were on the post. And those like Captain John S. Oliver, who was no longer officially the General's aide-de-camp, and his friend the Texas National Guard Lieutenant.
All of these officers had to be seated according to their rank. A cork board the size of a sheet of plywood mounted on the wall of the small office of General Bellmon's aide-de camp had been used. Every invitee was represented by a small piece of cardboard on which had been typed his name, grade, and date of rank. These were thumb tacked to the cork board with a representation of the arrangement of the tables in Dinning Room A and rearranged as necessary.
One of the things that Johnny Oliver had learned during his tour as aide-de-camp was that General Robert F. Bellmon looked forward to official parties (there were half a dozen a year with slightly less enthusiasm than he would look forward to a session with the post dental surgeon where the agenda was the removal, without anesthesia, of all of his teeth.
This was not evident to the guests or to their wives. Bellmon had long ago decided that the parties, which were more or less an Army tradition, were part of his duties, and his duty was very important to him. He and Mrs. Bellmon, and the Chief of Staff and his wife (and both aides-de-camp, who took turns discreetly whispering the invitees' last names, read from invitations), stood in the foyer for forty-five minutes, shaking hands with, and smiling at, and more often than not coming up with a personal word of greeting for, everybody who showed up.
Once, sometime during the year, General Bellmon had come to his office late at night and found Johnny Oliver standing before the cork board, rearranging the guests for an official affair.
"It began, these official damned dinners, with the Brits," Bellman had told him. "Regimental 'dining in' once a month.
Good idea. Once a month they got together, shop talk was forbidden, and they got a little tight. And that worked here too, before the war, when there was rarely more than a regiment on a post. Thirty, forty, officers on a post, including all the second lieutenants. This is out of hand, of course
. But how the hell can you stop it? If it wasn't for these damned things, a field-grade officer could do a three-year tour on the post and never get to see the commanding general except maybe at an inspection or a briefing. And the wife never would.
"The most important element in command, Johnny, is making the subordinate believe he's doing something important. If he doesn't feel he knows the commanding officer. . ." Johnny Oliver had also learned that sometimes getting to personally know the commanding general could get out of hand. Officers' wives were the worst offenders, but not by much. One of the aides functions at official dinners was to rescue the General from people who had backed him into a corner, either to dazzle him with their charm and wit or to make a pitch for some pet project of theirs, ranging from getting use of the post theater for amateur theatrics to revamping the entire pilot-training program.
"General, excuse me, Sir," Captain Oliver had often said, to separate General Bellmon from pressing admirers, "General Facility is calling."
General Facility was a white-china plumbing apparatus hung on the tiled wall of the gentlemen's rest room. Nobody in the men's room would bend his ear while the General was taking a leak. But from what Oliver had seen of the women-especially with a couple of drinks in them-the General would not be equally safe in the ladies' room.
When Johnny Oliver entered the club, Captain Richard Hornsby, the new aide-de-camp, was standing where Oliver had stood so often, behind General Bellmon. Hornsby was wearing his dress mess uniform for the first time, and he had a clipboard and a stack of invitations in his hand. He smiled and said softly, "Captain Oliver and Lieutenants Bellmon and Newell. "
General Bellmon put out his hand.
"Good evening, Sir," Johnny Oliver said.
"Good evening, Captain," Bellmon said. "An officer is judged by the company he keeps. Try to remember that."
Then he withdrew his hand and offered it to his son.
"Good evening, Sir," Bobby said.
"Good evening, Lieutenant," Bellmon said. "I'm glad you could make it." Barbara Bellmon violated protocol. After she took Captain Oliver's hand, she pulled him to her and kissed his cheek.
"We're going to miss you, Johnny," she said.
"Me, too," John Oliver said.
"So will I, Oliver," the Chief of Staff said.
"Thank you, General," Oliver said, touched by the comment.
"Well," Mrs. Chief of Staff said, "you're only going to Benning. We'll see you." Next in the reception line was Brigadier General Paul T. Hanrahan. Oliver knew that he was in the line only because Bellmon had insisted on it. If it was true that it was a good thing for officers remote from the command post to shake the hand look into the eye, of the commanding general, it therefore followed that it was a good thing for officers to do the samething with visiting-and in Hanrahan's case, near legendary-general officers.
"Hello, Johnny," Hanrahan said.
"Good evening, General."
"Do me a favor?"
"Yes, Sir. My privilege."
"Keep an eye on Colonel Lowell. Amuse him, see if you can keep him out of trouble."
"I'll do what I can, Sir," Oliver chuckled, and then surprised himself: "General, I'd like you to meet my good friends Lieutenant and Mrs. Jose Newell." Hanrahan looked down the line, put his one hand on Bobby Bellmon's shoulder, and extended the other to Joe Newell.
"I'm General Hanrahan, Mrs. Newell," he said. "If Captain Oliver speaks well of your husband, he must be something special" Beneath his darker-than-usual skin it was plain that Newell's face was flushed.
"Thank you, Sir," he said, and then blurted, "I never thought I'd get a chance to meet you."
Hanrahan laughed.
"Now that you have, and if you have a dollar, they'll sell you a drink," he said.
In Dining Room A, Captain Oliver spotted Lieutenant Colonel Craig W. Lowell at almost the instant Lowell spotted him. Lowell was standing near the bar, holding a drink in his hand. He looked, Oliver thought, splendiferous in his uniform. He was in the center of a group of people, predominantly female. Oliver remembered what Mrs. Bellmon had said about Lowell attracting the ladies as a candle draws moths.
Lowell beckoned to Oliver with his index finger. The three of them walked over.
"Good evening, Sir," Oliver said.
"Lieutenant Bellmon," Lowell said by way of greeting, "now that you're here, go around and locate our place cards mine, Oliver's, Lieutenant Newell's, and yours-and relocate them to one of the tables at the rear of the room."
"Sir?" Bobby said.
"See if you can explain what I thought was a simple command to him, will you, Captain?" Oliver chuckled.
"Do it, Bobby."
Lowell turned to the others he was standing with.
"I have a standing rule at official dinners," he explained, "to sit as close to the back of the room, and the exit, as possible."
There was laughter, some genuine, some a little nervous.
Bobby, visibly uncomfortable, started to comply with his orders.
Major General Bellmon stood up and looked around the room. Some conversation stopped, but by no means all of it.
Bellmon rapped on an empty wine bottle with the handle of a knife until the room fell silent.
"You all have met General Hanrahan," he said. "And I know that many of you are wondering what he's doing here." He gave that a moment to sink in, and for a scattering of applause to die down. "One rumor I heard going around is that they ran out of rattlesnakes for General Hanrahan's Green Berets to eat in North Carolina, and that he's here to talk me out of some of ours. "
There came the expected laughter.
"That's not true, of course. And neither is another rumor about the Green Berets that most of us have heard: that Green Berets are all volunteers. I have two proofs of this. The first proof concerns an officer-he's here with us tonight whom General Hanrahan wished to become a Green Beret. Now this officer is not the type who would willingly eat snakes, sleep in the mud, wear an earring, or do many of the things expected of a Green Beret. So he said, Thank you very much, General Hanrahan, I am honored to be asked, but I don't happen to be a parachutist and therefore am not qualified.' "
There was more appreciative laughter.
"So General Hanrahan smiled that charming if mysterious smile of his and let this officer go. A few days later that same officer happened to be thirty~thousand feet over Fort Bragg, watching a Green Beret HALO-High Altitude, Low Open parachute jump. In the interests of safety, this officer was suited up like the Green Berets who were in fact about to jump from a C-130 at thirty thousand feet and land in the garbage can of their choice on the ground, although jumping himself was certainly not on his agenda."
"Uncle Craig," Bobby blurted, "he's talking about you, isn't he?"
"It would seem that way," Lieutenant Colonel Lowell said.
Oliver looked across the table at him. Lowell, shaking his head slowly, ostentatiously, was sitting with his arms folded on his chest and a large black cigar clenched between his perfect teeth.
"Have you got the picture?" General Bellmon went on.
"There was this officer, standing at the open rear door of the C-130, dressed up in sheepskin flight jacket and trousers, an oxygen mask over his face, marveling at the brash-some might say foolhardy-courage of these muscular young men, and more than likely thinking how wise he was to refuse General Hanrahan's kind offer to join them.
"And then two of General Hanrahan's more muscular Green Berets went to this unsuspecting officer, pried his fingers loose from his handhold, and carried him between them to the end of the platform and jumped off with him."
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