The Captains (27 page)
“Say again that last transmission,” someone replied.
“What I said, Sergeant Donahue,” Lowell's voice came back, nearly under control, “was to have the bugler sound the fucking charge!”
The three-quarter-ton Wasps, their gunners in their homemade turrets immediately test-firing the .50s, jerked into motion. The lead tank, Lowell's, the M46 named
ILSE
, moved out after them. When it had gone fifty yards down the road, the second tank began to roll. Colonel Jiggs waited until they had all gone, and until the dust on the road had settled enough for the L-5 pilot to take off. Then he leaned forward and asked how much fuel there was.
“About an hour, Colonel.”
“We'll wait ten minutes, and then take off. That should give us enough time to see what happens.”
Thirty minutes later, in the air, when he was sure, Colonel Jiggs tuned the radio to the command frequency and picked up the microphone.
“Victor, Victor, this is Bengal Six.”
“Go ahead, Bengal Six.”
“Stand by to copy Operational Immediate,” Colonel Jiggs ordered.
“Victor ready to copy Operational Immediate.”
“To Commanding General, Army Eight,” Jiggs dictated. “Operational Immediate. Personal for General Walker. Task Force Lowell, I say again, Task Force Lowell, I spell, Love Oboe Whiskey Easy Love Love, 73rd Heavy Tank, Major Craig Lowell, effected join-up with elements of X United States Corps at 0832 Hours near Osan. Recommend immediate award of Distinguished Service Cross to Major Lowell. Signature is Jiggs, Colonel, commanding 73rd Heavy Tank. You got that?”
“We got it, Colonel.”
“OK,” Colonel Jiggs said. Then he said to the pilot, “Now we can go home.”
(One)
The Farm
Fairfax County, Virginia
28 September 1950
Barbara Waterford Bellmon thought of it privately as “Belt Time.” It was the time of day, between four thirty and five, when she had a little belt. The kids' problems were taken care of for the day, dinner was well underway, all her parental and wifely obligations for the day satisfied. She took a shower and did her face and her hair, and had nothing more to do but wait for her husband to come home from the Pentagon.
She then made herself a drink, generally a stiff scotch with just a little ice, so that she could taste the whiskey; and she settled herself on the couch before the fireplace, spread the newspaper out beside her, curled her feet under her, and read the newspaper at her leisure.
There was a fire in the fireplace today; it was getting chilly enough for a fire in the fireplace, and she liked that. Her man would come to the cave from a day battling dragons and dinosaurs and find his mate waiting with a fire.
Bob Bellmon came home to a drink and a meal and a smile, rather than to a recitation of what had gone wrong in the Bellmon household. Barbara was proud that she was able to do that much for him. He was still working sixty or more hours a week riding a desk, and she felt sorry for him.
She had a thought that somewhat shamed her. It looked as if the Korean War was about over. That meant Bob wouldn't have a chance to go there to take command of a battalion, that he would have sat out this war at a desk in the Pentagon. Was it wrong to feel sorry for him? Was it wrong to think it a shame that the war was going to be over so soon (MacArthur had been quoted as saying the “enemy was near defeat; the troops should be home by Christmas”)? Was there something wrong with her, that she wanted her man to have his chance to go to war?
She flipped the pages of the
Washington Post
, scanning them quickly, reading what looked interesting. A story on the editorial page caught her eye, and she read it.
“My God!” she said, and read it again. And then she shook her head, and smiled, and looked up at the ceiling. And then she jumped off the couch and slipped her feet into loafers, and ran to the front door.
“Bobby!” she shouted. “I have to go to the store for a minute, I'll be right back!”
There was no response.
“Bobby!” she screamed.
Robert F. Bellmon III replied: “I heard you.”
“When I talk to you, you answer me!”
“Yes, Mother,” Bobby replied, resignedly.
God, she thought, he really is his father's son!
She went out of the house, pulling a sweater over her shoulders against the chill, and got in the Ford station wagon and drove three miles to the crossroads store. There was a stack of seven newspapers on a battered wooden table outside. She picked them all up, laid a dollar bill under the rock that had held them in place, got back in the car, and drove back to the Farm. She entered the house by the kitchen door, laid the newspapers on the kitchen table, and took a pair of scissors from a cabinet drawer.
One by one, she opened each newspaper to the editorial page, cut out the story that had caught her eye, and then neatly stacked the papers on the table, so that Bobby could bundle them up for the boy scout newspaper collection.
Then she took the seven copies of the story and carried them into the library. She took a roll of Scotch tape from the desk drawer, and began to stick the stories up all over the house. She put one on the glass in the front door and one on the glass of the kitchen door, just in case Bob came in the house that way. She stuck one to the mirror in the hall, where Bob would take off his tunic and hat. She stuck one to the mirror over the bar, one to the mirror in the downstairs bathroom, in case he would take a leak on his arrival home, another in their bathroom, and the last one to the mirror over her chest of drawers in their bedroom.
Then she went back and made herself another stiff scotch, sat down on the couch, and waited for Bob to come in.
KOREAN REPORT: The Soldiers
by John E. Moran
United Press War Correspondent
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA (UP) (Delayed) September 26âThe world has already learned that Lt. General Walton Walker's Eighth Army, so long confined to the Pusan perimeter, has linked up with Lt. General Ned Almond's X United States Corps, following the brilliant amphibious invasion at Inchon.
But it wasn't an army that made the link-up, just south of a Korean town called Osan fifty-odd miles south of Seoul; it was soldiers, and this correspondent was there when it happened.
I was with the 31st Infantry Regiment, moving south from Seoul down a two-lane macadam road, when we first heard the peculiar, familiar sound of American 90 mm tank cannon. We were surprised. There were supposed to be no Americans closer than fifty miles south of our position.
It was possible, our regimental commander believed, that what we were hearing was the firing of captured American anti-aircraft cannon. In the early days of this war we lost a lot of equipment. It was prudent to assume what the army calls a defensive posture, and we did.
And then some strange-looking vehicles appeared a thousand yards down the road. They were trucks, nearly covered with sandbags. Our men had orders not to fire without orders. They were good soldiers, and they held their fire.
The strange-looking trucks came up the road at a goodly clip, and we realized with horror that they were firing. They were firing at practically anything and everything.
“They're Americans,” our colonel said, and ordered that an American flag be taken to our front lines and waved.
Now there were tanks visible behind the trucksâM46 “Patton” tanks. That should have put everyone's mind at rest, but on our right flank, one excited soldier let fly at the trucks and tanks coming up the road with a rocket launcher. He missed. Moments later, there came the crack of a high-velocity 90 mm tank cannon. He was a better shot than the man who had fired the rocket launcher.
There was a soldier in front of our lines now, holding the American flag high above his head, waving it frantically back and forth. Our colonel's radio operator was frantically repeating the “Hold Fire! Hold Fire!” order into his microphone.
His message got through, for there was no more fire from our lines and no more from the column approaching us.
The first vehicles to pass through our lines were Dodge three-quarter-ton trucks. These mounted two .50 caliber machine guns, one where it's supposed to be, on a pedestal between the seats, and a second on an improvised mount in the truck bed. They were, for all practical purposes, rolling machine-gun nests.
Next came three M46 tanks, the lead tank flying a pennant on which was lettered Task Force Lowell. The name “Ilse” had been painted on the side of its turret. There was a dirty young man in “Ilse”'s turret. He skidded his tank into a right turn and stopped. He stayed in the turret until the rest of his column had passed through the lines.
It was quite a column. There were more M46s, some M24 light tanks, fuel trucks, self-propelled 105 mm howitzers, and regular army trucks. We could tell that the dirty young man in the turret was an officer because some of the tank commanders and some of the truck drivers saluted him as they rolled past. Most of them didn't salute, however. Most of them gave the dirty young man a thumbs-up gesture, and many of them smiled, and called out, “Atta Boy, Duke!”
When the trucks passed us, we could see that “the Duke” had brought his wounded, and yes, his dead, with him. When those trucks passed, “the Duke” saluted.
When the last vehicle had passed, the dirty young man hoisted himself out of his turret, reached down and pulled a Garand from somewhere inside, and climbed down off the tank named “Ilse.”
He had two days' growth of beard and nine days' road filth on him. He searched out our colonel and walked to him. When he got close, we could see a major's gold leaf on his fatigue jacket collar.
He saluted, a casual, almost insolent wave of his right hand in the vicinity of his eyes, not the snappy parade ground salute he'd given as the trucks with the wounded and dead had rolled past him.
“Major Lowell, sir,” he said to our colonel. “With elements of the 73rd Heavy Tank.”
We'd all heard about Lowell and his task force, how they had been ranging between the lines, raising havoc with the retreating North Korean Army for nine days. I think we all expected someone older, someone more grizzled and battered than the dirty young man who stood before us.
At that moment our colonel got the word that the young soldier who had ignored his orders to hold fire and two others near him had been killed when one of Lowell's tanks had returned his fire. The death of any soldier upsets an officer, and it upset our colonel.
“If you had been where you were supposed to be, Major,” our colonel said, “that wouldn't have happened!”
Young Major “Duke” Lowell looked at the colonel for a moment, and then he said, “What would you have us do, Colonel, go back?”
There shortly came a radio message for Major Duke Lowell, and he left his task force in Osan. He had been ordered to Tokyo, where General of the Army Douglas MacArthur was to personally pin the Distinguished Service Cross to his breast.
Barbara Bellmon heard Bob's Buick on the stones of the driveway. She pretended to be fascinated with the newspaper spread out on the couch beside her. She heard his footsteps before the front door, and knew that he was reading the newspaper story.
She heard him come in the house. He said nothing to her, and she wouldn't have looked at him if her life depended on it. She heard him go to the bar, where another newspaper clipping hung where he couldn't miss it. She heard him pour himself a drink. He said nothing.
“Oh, for God's sake, Bob,” she said, finally. “Don't be such a lousy sport. You were wrong about Craig. Admit it!”
“Lowell didn't go to Japan to get the DSC,” Bob Bellmon said. “He went there to go on compassionate leave.”
“He doesn't get the medal? What do you mean, compassionate leave?”
“He got the DSC,” Bellmon said. “But I don't think he cares one way or the other.”
“What are you talking about? What's this about compassionate leave?”
“On September 22,” Bob Bellmon said to his wife, “while Ilse was driving home from the commissary at the Giessen Quartermaster Depot, a major, who was drunk, ran head on into her.”
“Oh, my God!” Barbara said, faintly, almost a wail.
“Killing her instantly,” Bellmon went on.
“P.P.?” Barbara asked, in a hushed voice, her hands in front of her mouth.
“He was thrown clear, and bruised somewhat, but he's alive.”
“Oh, my good God!” Barbara repeated. “What can we do?”
“Not a hell of a lot,” Bellmon said. “I spoke with the count on the telephone, and Felter sent flowers to the funeral in our name.”
“What can we do for Craig?”
“Craig is probably already in Germany,” Bellmon said.
(Two)
Fort Polk, Louisiana
18 April 1951
Major General Ezakiah Black was a good soldier. When he was given an order, he said, “Yes, sir,” and without bitching performed that duty to the best of his ability. He had been ordered to assume command of the U.S. Army Replacement Training Center, at Fort Polk, and immediately devoted his best effort and most of his thought to taking a steady stream of enlistees and draftees and recalled reservists and turning them into soldiers.
Fort Polk, a hastily built World War II training camp, had been on “standby” status (for all practical purposes, closed) since the end of War II, when it had been last used as a separation center. The Louisiana National Guard had used a small portion of Polk for summer camp, and there was a small caretaker detachment stationed there. But the post looked like a ghost town when General Black arrived. The parade ground was grown up in weeds, the wooden buildings all needed paint, and the macadam roads had simply deteriorated.
There were problems with sewerage, with electricity, with the telephones, with dry rot in barracks and office buildings, with fuel storage tanks. Anything subject to deterioration from disuse or the elements had deteriorated. The Corps of Engineers let millions of dollars' worth of contracts to bring things up to at least minimal standards, but the post was really not ready when the first trainload of draftees arrived.
Getting it ready, getting the operation running smoothly, was for a month a bona fide challenge to General Black's managerial skills. But after that, the job was a great goddamned bore.
There was a basic nine-week cycle. Recruits arrived, spent a week getting their shots and their uniforms, getting tested, given orientation lectures. Then they started on the eight week, Phase I, of their basic training.
There were six hundred men in each cycle. When the pipeline was full, that meant 4,800 men in one week or another of Phase I. About half of each graduating class remained at Polk for Phase II training as infantrymen. The others were sent to Phase II training in other branches, artillerymen to Sill, tankers to Knox, Signal Corps to Monmouth, and so on. When the first group was in the third week of training, Black was informed his weekly input would be doubled, and that was followed by another burst of frenzied activity to double the number of barracks, and to have their stopped-up toilets fixed, their leaking roofs repaired, and their smashed windows replaced.