Armageddon (24 page)

“General Hansen. I have sat here, day in, day out, week after week listening to one German after another repeat the same story like broken records. They say ... we were only following orders ...just following orders ... just following orders. I’m not going to commit murder in the name of my country for you or anyone else just because orders are orders ... I’ll take full responsibility for my decision ...I’m sorry, I believed in you ...”

The light went on again. Hansen kicked off the comforter and stared sullenly at his knobby big toes. In a moment a chaw of tobacco was tucked deeply into his jaw and he sighted in on the spittoon at bedside.

Sean was a rare officer. He had emerged from personal tragedy, assumed a vital command, performed with near brilliance. In this Army ... no, in this whole goddam world ...there are so few men who have the courage of their convictions ...it’s so easy to pass the buck, as he, Hansen, knew he was trying to do. That one rare man in ten thousand who says with quiet simplicity, I’ll take the responsibility ... that’s it! Smack on the button. No buck passing, no wishy-washy whining.

What had happened when Sean fired Dante Arosa? General Hansen never knew. Sean merely said, once again ... I’ll take the responsibility. Those two were close friends. What made Arosa resign from the Army? It takes guts to punish a friend ... and even more guts to defend an enemy.

What the hell ... didn’t Sean know there are times when every man must bend a little?

And what the hell was the use of trying to rationalize? Hansen knew, in his heart, that Sean O’Sullivan had made a great decision. It was that type of decision a man makes alone when all well-meaning advice is to the contrary. It is a decision in which the maker leaves himself knowingly open to scorn and danger. There were so precious few men capable of making a great decision that it was an awesome thing to know such a man.

“Okay, you son of a bitch,” he grumbled, “we go down together.” Hansen snatched the phone. A half-dozing operator answered. “Find Nelson Goodfellow Bradbury and have him report to my quarters immediately.”

With that he dressed, went to his writing desk, and began the first of many drafts of Proclamation 26.

It was two full hours before Big Nellie could be located in Wiesbaden at the tail end of a serious drinking bout with the Air Corps. He had to be pried loose and sobered enough to comply with the unusual summons. When he arrived he was in a suspended state of silliness.

“Got here as soon’s I could, General. What’s up?”

“This,” Hansen snapped, handing him a paper.

Nellie’s great paws lined the paper up for reading.

PROCLAMATION #26 MILITARY GOVERNMENT HEADQUARTERS, FRANKFURT A/M

Upon complete re-examination and reconsideration it is deemed that
PROCLAMATION
#22 (calling for special tribunals) is inconsistent with democratic ideals, the vision of our founding fathers, and the meaning of the American Republic. Even suspected Nazi war criminals are entitled to due process of law as we understand it. Therefore,
PROCLAMATION
#22 is hereby null, void, and rescinded.

A. J. Hansen, Major Gen. United States Army

“Jesus H. Christ! When did you people decide all this?”

“We people didn’t decide nothing. I decided. Frankly, I don’t even know if I have the authority. However, lad, you are going to see to it that this is on the front page of every AP newspaper in America by their morning editions simultaneous with its being sent through channels here. So, if it isn’t official, you make it official.”

Big Nellie knew what he had to do. There was not much time. He folded the proclamation and put it into his breast pocket. “You’re an ace, General Hansen,” he said, and left.

It was about noontime of the following day, two hours after Proclamation 22 was nailed dead, that Sean maneuvered his jeep through the streets of another German rubble pile. This one was called Frankfurt. Supreme Headquarters for Germany had been established in the I. G. Farben building, formerly the heart of the world chemical cartel. The fact that the building stood intact while nearly everything around it had been leveled was an irony of war. The building was a gargantuan affair comparable in miles of halls and millions of square feet and numbers of elevators to the Pentagon and the Chicago Merchandise Mart

Sean O’Sullivan, a mere major, was lost in the flood of silver oak leaves, eagles, and stars. Everyone here walked with a chipper air. None of that tired drag of the combat man. Each man felt that he carried in his briefcase the most important problem in Germany ... if not the world.

After much ado, Sean was able to ascertain where General Hansen’s office was located.

He stepped into one of those odd, open-faced, one-man elevators that move continually on a vertical conveyor belt so that stepping in and out through the open shafts on each floor called for correct timing, particularly when one was juggling one’s briefcase.

“Major O’Sullivan is here, sir.”

“Send him in.”

Sean stepped before his desk, and accepted the extended hand. “I heard the news sir. I heard about it when I was driving through Mainz an hour ago. What will they do to you, sir?”

“What the hell do you think? They’ll pin a goddam medal on me!” Hansen waved Sean into a chair. “Well, so far my ass has been chewed out by Ike and four of his deputies and three people from the State Department. At the present moment, my future is being discussed by the Pentagon and the White House. We might as well have a game of checkers while we’re waiting ... you
do
play checkers?”

“How about blackjack?”

Sean lost forty-two consecutive games of checkers while they waited. It was evening when the statement was released from the White House. A single sentence summed up the entire affair:
THE RESCINDING OF PROCLAMATION
#22
WAS CORRECT
.

“You know,” Hansen said, “we Americans have the damnedest luck. The Lord has granted us a rare thing ... that chance to take a second look at things. And on that second time around, we usually come out all right.”

Hansen looked at his watch. “Well, now that we know we are in the Army for a while longer, I’d like you to stay over. There is something very, very important I was saving to discuss with you.”

From the tone of Hansen’s voice, Sean knew that another fateful decision was looming up ahead of him.

Chapter Thirty-four

D
URING AND AFTER DINNER
the two men spoke of the matters of the day. General Hansen had completed a tour of the British, French, and American zones. The statistics on Germany’s demise, now pouring into Frankfurt, staggered the imagination. Frankfurt itself had 150,000 dwellings before the war; 40,000 of these now stood. Never in the history of modern civilization had a country been so thoroughly demolished.

To add to the misery, tens of millions of displaced persons swelled the roads of Europe, and Germany was being forced to take in millions of her ethnics from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary; expelled from these lands for betrayal to Hitler.

All of those things which make man civilized did not function within Germany. Now came revelations from Poland about places named Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka, Chelmno that made the death factories of Dachau and Schwabenwald mild by comparison.

Hansen saw the problem in three phases: short range, intermediate, and final. The short-range problem revolved around a single word,
food.

“We can get by on all our other problems. If the Germans get cold enough this winter they can cut down their precious forests ... but food ...”

In the transition period the rebuilding would begin. The Ruhr coal mines had to work again; people had to be put on jobs; and the economy had to switch from things of war to things of peace. Parts of Europe ruined by German arms deserved the first help, and to further complicate German recovery Russia had put in a multibillion-dollar-reparations claim in the form of taking out any workable machinery.

The culmination, to allow Germany to govern itself again, seemed so far away as to be impossible. “We haven’t got enough trustworthy or trained Germans to run a good garbage dump.”

Slowly General Hansen worked up a direct comment to his young officer. “We have a fourth problem, Sean. That’s really what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Yes, sir?”

The general hedged. “How do you figure things stand in Rombaden?”

“It’s going to be painful and slow just like the rest of Germany. My outlook is parallel to yours. Of course, I do have Ulrich Falkenstein. He’s invaluable.”

“And Falkenstein has O’Sullivan. Don’t be modest. What about you, yourself?”

Hansen had been working a long way around to the question; Sean countered with a question. “What about me, sir?”

The general’s poker face was gone. “Well ... what is your own estimation of how long you figure on staying in the
Army.”

“I realized when I joined military government that I would be expected to stay on for some time after the end of the war. I haven’t refined those thoughts down in terms of weeks or months.”

“What’s your personal attitude about it?”

“Shall I level?”

“Shoot.”

“I’m sick of Germans. I’m sick of Germany. I promised you I’d remain fair. I’ve tried like hell to keep that promise.”

“Emma Stoll would testify to your fairness. How badly is it getting you down, Sean?”

“It’s bad at night. At least during the day I’m busy. I’m learning that the lonesomeness of being commander is quite a penalty. Sure, I could impose my comradery on my officers, but there always has to be an aloofness ... what the hell am I telling you about it for ... like it’s something you don’t know. So, I button up in my study and around midnight I get to thinking about my brothers and I have to get a little smashed to drown my hatred ...”

“What are you going to do when all this is over?”

“Hell, that’s easy. If you were a genii and could grant me three wishes I’ll tell you what they would be.”

“Wish number one?”

“I want to be near my mother and father for the rest of their lives. They deserve that much. Wish number two ... I need a woman, General ... I want a wife. I’m not a kid any more and I’m tired as hell. I’ll probably marry the first woman who treats me with tenderness. Maybe wish number one is all mixed up with wish number two. I want my mother and father to live and see their grandchildren. I want them to know that another generation of O’Sullivans will follow.” And then Sean became silent.

“You still have another wish coming.”

There was an expression of nostalgia in Sean’s eyes. He dared allow himself to remember now that which he had shoved into a dark corner of his mind, and he said, “A campus. A green, green campus. Big lawns, old buildings like castles, and trees. Watching the campus from my class, and those cute little things walking by swishing their cute little asses. I want that beautiful quiet before the carillons play in the tower. I want to look into the faces of students filled with hope and energy and inquisitiveness.”

“And how will you get wish number three?”

“Well, I was a political science instructor, you know. I continued my own studies at night I’ve got a semester for my masters and in two or three years I think I’ll be ready for a doctorate.”

“And in between classes you’ll fight four-round preliminaries again?”

“No ... not this time. My brothers have paid me back with their lives. Two lives ... ten thousand dollars a life. Ironic, isn’t it? Anyhow, the GI insurance will keep my parents comfortable until I finish. And then, with this new GI Bill ...”

“Well, when you are ready for your doctorate you should be able to do a hell of a paper on military government.”

Sean laughed. “Probably not enough theory ... scholars are practical only when it doesn’t disturb theory.”

“Your three wishes are very simple. Have you ever thought about staying on in the Army? You’ve got a big rank for a young man.”

“I’ll stay on long enough to get my job done.”

“Done? But that may take twenty years.”

“I mean ...”

“You mean, complete the first phase in Rombaden.”

“Yes, sir, that’s what I mean.”

Hansen went through the business of finding and lighting a pipe. He longed for a chaw, but never chawed in the presence of a second party ... except his wife. “General,” Sean said, “you’re a lousy poker player. What is it that you really want to ask me?”

He put out a fourth match, waved away the billow of smoke. “I’m going to Berlin. I want you to come with me.”

“Berlin?”

“That’s right, Berlin.”

Sean collected his wits and asked shakily, “Is the General implying he wishes me to remain in the Army?”

“I am implying that his country needs him more than his mother and father or his own personal desires to find peace of mind.”

The blood drained from Sean’s lips. He tried to envision it. Berlin! A monstrous prison. The piles of rubble and the pall of gray devoured his beautiful green campus and the haunting lonely eyes of his father.

Sean shook his head slowly. “No, sir. I don’t want to go to Berlin.”

“Neither do I, Sean,” Hansen said with deliberate slowness. “I’ve been looking for peace of mind for thirty years. I don’t want to go to Berlin, either.”

“But my father!”

“Ask your father!” The general got to his feet and began to pace. “Oh Christ, yes. The campus is cozy and warm. A handsome Irish buck like you will go right to the top. Pat the ass of the president’s wife and smile with those big brown eyes and the world is yours by the nuts on a downhill pull. And think of the nice young stuff you can sort, stud, and train to your exact liking. Hell yes, Sean, anybody give up that green campus for a friggin’ rock pile like Berlin would have to be nuts. None of the ugly things like Schwabenwald and sick Germans and rubble to contend with. Just discuss them in a scholarly manner. No decisions to make there, lad.”

“Lay off, General. I don’t know why the hell I’ve suddenly become the indispensable man in the Army.”

“I’ll tell you why! America is committed to the world, only America doesn’t know it or believe it yet. We would all like to make a retreat to the campus, but the comforts of home and hearth are henceforth to be denied unborn generations if our country is to survive.”