The Captains (36 page)

So far the solution to the problem had been unofficial. There were far more aircraft and pilots than the tables of organization and equipment (TO&E) provided. They were just carred as “excess.”

The “excess” aircraft and pilots had been pooled at division and corps to provide aerial support to the headquarters and to units which were not provided with aircraft. The aircraft and their pilots, however, remained assigned to the units which were authorized on the TO&E. When a division was shifted from one corps to another, or relieved, their aircraft and pilots left with them.

For some time General Harrier had wanted to make the assignment, the authorization, official, but had put off doing anything about it until he had Lowell dumped in his lap. The boy came with a reputation as an S-3. OK. Let him do it. He told the Secretary of the General Staff to get it done and had not been at all surprised when the SGS had given it to Lowell to do. Working from General Harrier's detailed draft, Lowell was supposed to prepare the final version of the staff study, the basic army document for a change in policy, which Harrier would sign and send off on its lengthy bureaucratic journey to the Pentagon.

Given Major Lowell's seldom hidden belief that the army (with a few exceptions such as himself) was equipped with staff officers who were less than fully competent, General Harrier was not surprised that Lowell had made changes in his arguments and his proposals. Harrier was also aware that there were few majors who didn't believe they had better solutions to a given problem than the one proposed by a general. So it came as no surprise to General Harrier that Lowell would try to “improve” on the work of a man literally old enough to be his father and who had been an officer when he was born.

What surprised General Harrier was that when he read Lowell's version of the staff study he had to admit there
had
been improvements to his original proposals and the arguments in favor of them. There was no mistaking it; it was excellent staff work, and Harrier recognized it as such.

There were some places where Lowell was dead wrong, too, and Harrier pointed them out to him.

“We'll go with your version,” Harrier finally said. “As changed. Have it typed up.”

“Yes, sir.”

“To tell you the truth, Lowell—and I'm aware I'm running the risk that your head will swell even larger—that was pretty clear thinking. Perhaps you're not quite as incompetent as Colonel Minor suggests.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I meant that, Lowell, just the way I said it.
Have
it typed up. All work and no play makes Lowell a dull boy. Go down to the club and get yourself a drink.”

“One of the reasons I did this, General,” Lowell said, simply, “was to keep myself out of the club.”

“Oh?”

“It's a good thing I'm not rich,” Lowell quipped. “I could very easily become a drunk.”

Harrier was concerned. Jiggs had told him about Lowell's wife. The day he'd earned himself a footnote in the history books with Task Force Lowell, the day he had become a twenty-four-year-old major, there had been a TWX telling him he was a widower. Maybe he was into the sauce and worrying about it.

“But you
are
rich,” General Harrier said. “I just got the report of your Top Secret background invesigation. Fascinating reading.”

Lowell didn't reply.

“Getting yourself a reputation as a teetotal, a drudge,” General Harrier said, “could do your career as much harm as being rich. A lot of business is transacted at an officer's club bar. You can tell a man, at the bar, that he's as full of shit as a Christmas turkey, and get away with it. You can't do that in an office.”

“Yes, sir,” Lowell said.

“Your trouble, Lowell, if you do stay in the army, is not going to be doing your duty,” Harrier said. “It's going to be concealing your opinion that most people are horse's asses.”

Lowell didn't reply.

“Most of them are, Lowell,” General Harrier said. “But you can't let them know.” He smiled at the young officr. “Good night, Lowell.”

“Good night, General.”

(Two)

When General Harrier left Lowell's tent he started to walk back up the hill toward the White House and the general officer's quarters. Then he changed his mind about going to bed. He wasn't sleepy. He walked to the sandbagged G-3 operations bunker. The MP guard on duty outside was standing more or less erect with his Thompson submachine gun in the proper sling-arm position rather than sitting down on the sandbags with the Thompson on his lap, so Harrier knew that someone senior was inside.

“Good evening, sir,” the MP said, giving him a crisp hand salute.

“Good evening, Sergeant,” Harrier said, and walked inside. Inside, there was the sound of the smaller, separate diesel generator that provided power for the Ops Center, and the clatter of a teletype machine. The G-2 and G-3 were in the Ops Center, and so was the general.

“Insomnia,” Harrier explained his presence. “Tomorrow night, I won't be able to keep my eyes open.”

He walked to the enormous situation map, and one of the G-2 sergeants told him what was going on. Not much. With the exception of some harassing and intermittent artillery fire on the positions of the 45th Division, and a couple of platoon-sized probing patrols against the 187th Regimental Combat Team, the front was quiet.

The bureaucrats were at work, however, General Harrier thought. The teletype machine was still clattering. He turned to look at it. The general was watching it, and possibly something was up, for the general waited until the lengthy message had been completely transmitted and then tore it from the machine himself. He carried it to one of the two upholstered chairs facing the situation map, sat down, and started reading the three-and-a-half-foot length of yellow teleprinter paper.

General Harrier went and sat in the other upholstered chair and waited patiently for the general to finish reading the TWX. The general snorted, swore, and made unbelieving faces as he read the document, and Harrier knew that whatever it was, the general didn't like it. Finally, he handed the yellow sheet of paper across the small table between the chairs to Harrier.

“When I was a G-3,” the general said, “I moved an entire infantry division from North Africa to Sicily with a shorter Ops Order.”

Harrier glanced at the heading of the TWX in his hands.

FINAL ITINERARY: THE WAYNE BAXLEY AND HIS ORCHESTRA USO TROUPE
.

Harrier began to skim over the TWX. In infinite detail, it listed the members of the USO troupe, by age, sex, and assimilated rank, ranging from the lowest stagehand, who would be accorded the privileges of a lieutenant while in Korea, to Mr. Wayne Baxley and Miss Georgia Paige, the movie star, who would be treated as VIPs, that is, provided with quarters and transportation normally reserved for major generals. Then, in fifteen-minute segments, it traced where the troupe would be from the moment it landed at K1 Airfield outside Pusan until it boarded the transport planes which would fly it back to Tokyo from K16 (Kimpo) outside Seoul thirteen days later.

But the general was not finished: “Furthermore,” he said, “I entertain very serious doubts that these troupes really do anyone any good.”

“Sir?” General Harrier asked, to be polite. The general wanted an audience.

“The alleged purpose of these USO things is to raise troop morale,” the general said.

“I thought it was to remind the troops of the girls they left behind,” General Harrier replied. “For whom, along with Mom's apple pie, they are allegedly fighting.”

“It reminds them of girls, all right,” the general said. “And, if you get right down to it, that's pretty damned cruel, maybe even perverse.”

Harrier was surprised to realize that the general was quite serious.

“They bring these girls over here, and get them to prance around the stage wearing just enough clothes to keep them from getting arrested, and that reminds these healthy, horny young troopers of girls all right. And then we tell them they can look, but they can't touch. Now, that's cruel
and
perverse.”

“I really hadn't thought of it that way,” Harrier said.

“In terms of efficiency,” the general said, “it would be cheaper to do what the French do.”

“From what I've heard,” General Harrier said, chuckling, “that solution occurred to Paul Jiggs, too.”

The reference was to the French custom of providing brothels to troops on the line, and to the rumor that the ambulances of the 8222nd Ambulance Platoon attached to the 73rd Heavy Tank Battalion (Reinforced) had carried warm female bodies to the MLR as often as they had carried wounded bodies away from it.

“Shame on you, General,” the general said. “Those were volunteer native nurses, bringing what comfort they could to the troops.”

There was general chuckling, involving the sergeants as well as the colonels and the generals. The general took notice of it.

“It's a good thing I know you guys don't talk about what you hear in here at the NCO mess,” he said. “It always breaks my heart to send a good G-2 or G-3 sergeant down to walk around a QM dump with an M1 on his shoulder.”

The sergeants laughed.

“Well, what about it?” the general asked one of the G-3 sergeants. “Do the troops get any good out of these USO shows?”

“Even if all I can do is look, General,” the sergeant replied, “that's better than nothing.”

“OK, so I'm wrong,” the general said.

“General,” the G-2 sergeant said. He was a thin man in his early thirties. “You know what pisses the troops off? The way the women wind up with the officers. I mean, in the messes.”

“Well, damn it, that's not my fault. They tell us where to feed them,” the general said. He pointed to the TWX. “Hell, they even tell us who we have to assign as escort officers. Did you see that, Harrier? Paragraph 23. Or somewhere along in there.”

General Harrier found Paragraph 23 on the long sheet of teleprinter paper.

“What do you think about that?” the general asked. Harrier handed the TWX to the G-3, who, it occurred to him, had been too polite either to ask for it, or to read it over Harrier's shoulder.

“Sorry, Charley,” General Harrier said, and then responded to the general's question. “I presume, General,” he said, “that the press of urgent military duties has, regrettably, made our aides unavailable for anything else, no matter how worthy an enterprise.”

“What do you propose?” the general asked.

“Let the special service officer handle it,” Harrier said. “Let him go himself, if it comes to that.”

“No,” the general said. “Do you know that they actually run an after-operations critique on these things? And if we didn't give up one of the aides, there would be a paragraph in there saying we had failed to comply with paragraph such and such, and some chair-warming sonofabitch with nothing better to do would have us replying by indorsement stating our reasons. It will be less trouble to send them an aide.”

“Yes, sir,” Harrier said.

“Just keep those people away from me, Harrier, while they're here,” the general said.

“Away from you, sir?”

“Another paragraph in there ‘strongly recommends' that the commanding generals entertain them at dinner. As of right now, General, entertaining visiting movie stars and band leaders is the responsibility of the chief of staff.”

“Yes, sir,” Harrier said.

“Just get them in here, and out of here, with no waves,” the general said.

“Yes, sir,” Harrier said. “Sir, the chief of staff has always believed it is his duty to bring to the corps commander's attention facts of which the corps commander may not be aware.”

“Such as?”

“Does the same Georgia Paige register with the general, sir?”

“That the one who goes around without a brassiere?” the general asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“What about her?”

“Does the corps commander really wish to forego the opportunity to reconnoiter that anatomical terrain personally?”

The general laughed.

“The chief of staff is herewith advised,” he said, “that in his heart of hearts, the corps commander is like any nineteen-year-old trooper in the Corps. If he can't have it, he doesn't want to have it waved in his face.”