The Captains (52 page)

“And you just happen to have lost two of your students, is that it?” Phil Parker asked.

“Well, I'm sorry this has been a wild-goose chase for you, Colonel,” Lowell said. “But before I would become an aerial taxi driver, I would resign.”

“There are nineteen officers at Fort Sill at the moment on the waiting list,” Roberts said, undaunted. “Ready and willing to take flight training.”

“Then why do you want us?” Phil Parker asked.

“Because, in your case, Captain Parker, you have been identified to me as a solid and stable officer, from a long line of soldiers, who was given a raw deal in Korea.”

Parker didn't reply. Roberts looked at Lowell.

“And you, Lowell, I want you because of what's written in your Counterintelligence Corps dossier.”

“I don't understand,” Lowell replied.

“You have political influence at the highest levels,” Colonel Roberts said, “and you will continue to have it, no matter which party holds temporary power, because you are, through inheritance, not because you did anything at all to earn it, obscenely rich.”

“I have never attempted to use my financial position,” Lowell said, slowly and distinctly, so that Parker, recognizing this as a sign of fury, looked at him with concern, “in any way whatsoever to seek special privilege in the army.”

“You were relieved of your duties at the Bordentown Military Academy, Major, by the Vice Chief of Staff, at the request of the senior senator from New York.”

“I was presented that as a
fait accompli
,” Lowell said. “My cousin arranged that. He doesn't want me in New York.”

“I believe that,” Roberts said. “But nobody else will. And I notice you didn't complain that you were receiving special treatment.”

“Oh,
shit!
” Lowell said. “I should have known something like this would pop up.”

“It's not the end of the world,” Roberts said.

“If you know about it, Colonel,” Lowell said, “it will be all over the fucking army.”

“Your political influence is one thing that makes you attractive to me,” Roberts said. “I was not overly impressed with that grandstanding ride you took out of Pusan. You're lucky you didn't get the whole task force wiped out.”

“Colonel,” Lowell said, “don't talk to me about Task Force Lowell. I was there, and you weren't, and that was the proper use of tanks in that situation.”

“You enjoy command, don't you?” Roberts asked. “Pity you'll never get another one in armor.”

“You seem a good deal more sure of that that I am, Colonel,” Lowell said.”

“Don't take my word,” Roberts said. “But what about Paul Jiggs? Would you take this? Or Bob Bellmon's?”

“You've been talking to them?”

“They've been trying to sell you to me, Major. And you're doing a very good job of unselling yourself, political influence or no political influence.”

Lowell just looked at him. Their eyes locked. Finally, Roberts picked up the telephone. “Operator, get me Colonel Paul Jiggs, at the National War College, in Washington, D.C.”

Lowell reached over and broke the connection.

“I'm a little surprised that Colonel Jiggs would bring up the political business,” he said.

“I shouldn't tell you this, because you're arrogant enough,” Roberts said. “But I finally seem to be getting through the layer of smart-ass, and I'll take a chance. Jiggs said that you're a splendid combat commander, a splendid S-3, and a three-star wise-ass. He said that with luck, you may grow out of being a smart-ass, and that I'm going to need both commanders and planners, and that I'm not going to get many to volunteer.”

“What you're suggesting is that I could get a command in army aviation,” Lowell said. “Of what? A reinforced platoon of Piper Cubs?”

“How about a company of rocket-armed helicopters?”

“You're a dreamer, Colonel,” Lowell said. “The air force won't stand still for that.”

“I see entire divisions, entirely transported and supported by army aircraft,” Roberts said. “That's what I dream.”

“A vast armada of L-19s, Beavers, and H13s filling the sky,” Lowell said, sarcastically.

“I told you to watch your lip,” Phil Parker said.

“That's my brain talking, not the booze,” Lowell said.

“OK,” Roberts said. “Paragraph Four. Conclusions. Where you stand now, Major Lowell, is as an officer far too young for the grade you hold, with an efficiency report that will hang around your neck the rest of your career. There is no way,
no way
, that you will
ever
command a tank battalion, and you're smart enough when you're sober to know that. And when your time comes to be considered for lieutenant colonel, if you last that long, and the choice is between you and some officer whose efficiency report does not state he acts impulsively and cannot be recommended for command, you know who will be promoted.”

“You've been reading my efficiency reports, too, huh? You get around, don't you, Colonel?”

“Yeah, I do,” Roberts said. “I'm generally as unpopular with my peers as you are with yours.”

“Who's going to promote an officer who spent ten years flying a Piper Cub?” Lowell asked.

“In ten years, I don't intend that the army will be flying Piper Cubs,” Roberts said. “And when they start picking
aviation
battalion commanders, they'll have to pick them from aviators. By your own statements, you consider most army aviators mediocrities and misfits. Against that kind of competition, you just might not have to go from being the youngest major in the army to the oldest, Lowell.”

“What's in it for you, Colonel?” Lowell replied.

“I told you. Both Bob Bellmon and Paul Jiggs have been touting you as the best G-3 type I can get. That and the political influence.”

“You keep saying ‘I,'” Philip Sheridan Parker said. “You sound like you own army aviation.”

Roberts gave him a cold look.

“Right now, I'm one of the three officers on active duty who were in the first class, the ‘Class Before One,' before they numbered the classes for liaison pilots. The other two are about to retire. To the considerable surprise of my classmates, who to a man felt that I had thrown away my career, I have been promoted with them. Right now, I'm one of the very few people with the vision to see an air-mobile army. Yeah, Captain, I guess you could say I have a certain possessive feeling toward army aviation.”

“You really think you can get away with it?” Lowell asked.

“I hope I can,” Roberts said. “I work pretty hard at it.”

“What do you think, Phil?” Lowell asked.

“He sure do talk it up, don't he?” Captain Philip Sheridan Parker IV said, in a thick Negro accent. “He make a
fine
casket salesman. He make it sound like you
need
the solid bronze.”

“I've got to do a lot of things I don't like to do,” Roberts burst out, furiously. “But I don't have to take being mocked by assholes like you two.”

“Colonel, you have really sprung something on me I didn't expect,” Lowell said. “I'd like to think it over. When do you have to know?”

“Right goddamned now,” Roberts said, still red in the face and furious.

“I saw my father on the way out here,” Phil Sheridan said. “He said that I was making the same mistake a lot of people were making.” Confused, both Lowell and Roberts looked at him. “He said that armor wasn't cavalry, and he said that there will always be a place on the battlefield for cavalry.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Roberts asked.

“He said it didn't come down from Mount Sinai engraved on stone that cavalry has to be mounted on a horse,” Parker said. “What you said before, Craig. About arming helicopters? What the hell is that, a fast-moving lightly armed force, unrestricted by roads, but cavalry?”

“You think the man has a point?” Lowell asked.

“What happens to me next?” Parker asked. “There aren't many field-grade motor officers around. Count me in, Colonel.”

“Don't be impetuous,” Lowell said. “This needs some thought. If we fuck this up, Philip my lad, we would really be finished. How soon do you need an answer, Colonel?”

“Right goddamned now,” Roberts said. “I need two bodies at the airfield at 0800 tomorrow. Yours or somebody else's.”

“Well, in that case,” Lowell said. “I think I'd better have another martini.”

“What the hell kind of an answer is that?” Colonel Roberts demanded.

“It mean,” Captain Philip Sheridan Parker said, again in his thick Negro accent, “look out aviation! Here come duh Duke and King Kong!”

Roberts was still mad. “I hope you two bastards don't think you're doing me a favor,” he said. But he got up and put out his hand to both of them.

(Two)

Antoinette didn't seem impressed one way or the other when they came down from their meeting with Colonel Roberts and told her that they were about to soar off into the wild blue yonder, starting at 0800 the next morning. But when they tapered off from the martinis into wine spritzers, she became what Lowell thought of as a royal pain in the ass.

When Harriet finally went home, she got even worse. And then, surprising the both of them, she made a pitcher of martinis, and when asked about the pitcher, said she was in a good mood to drink at least one pitcherful, and possibly two.

“Would you tell me why you're being such a bitch?” Phil Parker asked.

She finished the martini she was drinking before she replied.

“Why am I being such a bitch?” she said. “Right. Good question.”

“You're drunk, for Christ's sake!” Phil said to her.

“In vino veritas,” Antoinette said.

“Ergo sum,” Lowell said.

“E pluribus unum,” Parker said. He and Lowell laughed.

“Screw you, Phil!” Antoinette snapped, furiously. And then she started to cry.

“What the hell is the matter?” Phil asked, half angry, half concerned.

“Well, excuse me, kiddies,” Lowell said. “Little Craig is going to go tuck it in.”

“You stay!” Antoinette ordered.

“What the hell have I done?” he asked, but he sat back down.

“I've had enough of this,” she said.

“Of what, honey?”

“Of being a damned camp follower.”

“I'm sorry you feel that way,” Phil said.

“I'm not like that redheaded tramp of yours, Craig.”

“Harriet? Hey, Slim, if Harriet is the problem, it's solved. I've had about all of her I can stand myself,” Lowell said. “And now may I go to bed?”

“No,” she said. “That's not what I mean. What I mean to say is that I can't go on like I am. I have to make up my mind.”

“About what?” Phil asked.

“Every time I come out here, I convince myself that I'll be able to talk you out of the army, and get you home to Boston. And every time, nothing happens.”

“Nothing will, Toni,” Parker said softly. “I'm a soldier. That's what I do.”

“And I'm a doctor,” she said. “That's what I do.”

“And ne'er the twain shall meet?” Phil said.

She looked at him, and with tears streaming down her cheeks, nodded her head.

“I've had enough of this maudlin bullshit,” Lowell said, and got up.

“Watch it, Craig!” Parker said, angrily.

“Either she loves you and wants to marry you and bear your children, or she doesn't. It's as simple as that. You two can fight about it all night for all I care, but for Christ's sake, if she gets hysterical, throw some water on her. I need my sleep.”

He stormed out of the room and went upstairs.

Five minutes later there was a knock at his door. Captain Philip S. Parker IV and Miss Antoinette Elaine Ferguson, M.D., wished him to be the first to know that they were to be joined in holy matrimony.

“In a couple of weeks, Craig. Just a little ceremony. My folks and Toni's, and that's about all. You, too, of course.”

“But not Harriet?”

“No,” Toni said, and leaned over and kissed him. “Not Harriet.”

“I suppose this means I'll have to find someplace else to live, doesn't it?” Lowell said.

“This is your home, dummy,” Parker said.

“I'll make you a good deal on it,” Lowell said, “if you agree to rent me a room. This one.”

(Three)
Fort Sill, Oklahoma
14 January 1953