Command Decision

by William Wister Haines

  “Sir,” said Dennis implacably, “if it were a few casualties we wouldn’t be discussing it.”

  Kane relapsed into silence and Brockhurst felt a darkening presentiment. He knew that decisions like this one were not made on the abstract merits of the case. Dennis was sustaining the inequality of his position by sheer moral force because Kane was afraid of the moral force that sustained Dennis. But Brockhurst knew that men with power to do it destroy what they fear. Kane had the power.

  And yet in this he was misjudging Kane as many men did. For Kane’s mind, as always, was working far above the levels of the present decision. He was acutely aware of that moral force in Dennis, aware of his own vacillation in the face of it. But he was thinking that what was troublesome at his level might be invaluable at another. If they had had a man of this determination in the last Congressional hearing, instead of that mealymouthed Lester whose brilliance never lost a point or won a fight…

  Of course Dennis was young but Kane knew that this war would be the end of him and most of the old gang. They’d have to retire while their temporary ranks held. There wouldn’t be another bonanza like this in their lives. Dennis would not retire. With one more star and a good war record a man like that could fight the navy. He had everything except caution.

  Time was with Dennis and the young men now. They had the best war in history in their hands. If he could preserve Dennis, if he could fuse just enough caution into that power and passion…

  The opening of the door broke his reverie. He looked up with a clearing snap of his head to see a young major hurrying proudly with a weather map in his hand.

  Chapter 10

  Major Davis interrupted the conference with an unscientific sense of personal importance. He knew the impropriety of this feeling but could not resist it. For weary months he had been summoned and dismissed, like a bellhop. This time he bore information that warranted a voice in affairs. Haley had warned him that Kane himself was in the room. Davis had rejoiced in reminding Haley that there was no data indicating correlation between Kane’s whereabouts and incipient Polar Turbulence. Dennis had told him to report change instantly. He had change to report. His confidence was confirmed, upon entrance, by the instant, complete attention he could always command from Dennis… for a minute.

  “Excuse me, sir. You said if anything special…”

  “Of course. Go right ahead, Major.”

  “We’ve a flash from Iceland, sir. Only preliminary but it does indicate a most interesting condition. A cold mass of a rather exceptional nature has formed eccentrically…”

  “Never mind the genealogy,” said Dennis. “What’s it going to do?”

  It was always like this. Davis compressed his indignation.

  “Blanket the Continent, sir, if…”

  “When?”

  “On present indications late Monday afternoon unless…”

  “When will it close my bases?”

  “Best estimate now, sir, is any time after fifteen hundred Monday.”

  Davis held his tongue now. They could chew that one over and then ask him. But Dennis did not ask him. He burst out savagely.

  “I always said God must love Willi Messerschmitt.”

  He brooded through a black silence and then, remembering Davis, nodded brief, absent-minded dismissal.

  “Bring confirmations or further changes as they come in.”

  Davis retired with a frustrate and highly unscientific inner imprecation that the Army Air Forces and all their generals could go to hell.

  Kane watched the closing of the door with an uneasiness he could only hope he was not showing. His mind had been made up even before he heard the weather. In the long run he knew that the Allies would win this war, jets or no jets. He had resolved to save Dennis for the permanent wars among the services. A man of his force was too valuable to be destroyed by misfortune in a temporary foreign campaign. He told himself now that the only question remaining was how to whip Dennis without breaking his spirit. Even to himself he did not yet admit a deeper uncertainty as to whether he could, in a showdown, whip Dennis at all. As if aware of this himself, the Brigadier was already challenging him again.

  “There goes our summer, sir. We’ll make it now or bite off our nails waiting for another chance.”

  “Casey, I’m sorry, but two more days of prohibitive losses just now…”

  Dennis exploded.

  “God damn it, sir, it’s not a theory any longer. Can’t you see why we’re having these losses? Do you think the Germans would fight like this if they weren’t scared of our bombardment?”

  Martin saw Kane himself shake with this blast. But he checked himself and spoke to his aide.

  “Homer, make a note of that, for the Chief.”

  Prescott whipped out a notebook, bent over the map table, and fixed his shocked eyes upon Dennis. The Brigadier, as if conscious of the narrowness of this momentary reprieve, paused for a minute before continuing with an earnest, low-voiced sincerity more moving than any vehemence.

  “We’ve scarcely scratched Germany yet, sir, but look what we’re doing to their Air Force. We’re doing what no other weapon in this war has done or can do. We’re making it fight, on our initiative, where it can’t refuse in order to rest and rebuild. We are tearing it up over Germany. The German Air Force has been the balance of power in this whole war, ever since Munich. It took their Ground Forces everywhere they’ve been. It beat the Polish Air Force in three days, the Norwegian in three hours; it forced the Maginot Line and beat the French in three weeks…”

  “Homer,” said Kane, “be sure you’re getting this.”

  “The Royal Air Force,” continued Dennis, “won a brilliant battle from it but it was a defensive battle, over England. The German Air Force rested a little and then knocked off Yugoslavia and Greece for practice, captured Crete, dominated the Mediterranean, chased the Russians to Moscow and the Volga, and got close enough to that Caspian oil to smell it. They blockaded the North Cape and very nearly cut the Atlantic life line to England itself. Peterson would have done it if Goering had given him two groups instead of one Staffel. And even after that they took Rommel to the gates of Alexandria.

  “Now where is that German Air Force, sir? Already we’ve made them convert bomber groups to fighters, we’ve made them switch their whole production, procurement, and training programs. We’ve made them pull operational groups off the Russians and away from Rommel to put them over there, across the Channel, against us…”

  He walked over and banged the map with his fist and his voice was rising again now.

  “Now the Russians have been able to mount and sustain a counteroffensive. Our own people, in the Med, have air superiority and they’re advancing with it…”

  “Get every word of this, Homer,” breathed Kane.

  “Well, get this too, Homer,” rasped Dennis. “The Germans know all of this better than we do. They’ve been willing to loosen their grip on their costliest conquests and break the whole balance of their Air Force for just one thing… to defend Germany itself from us. They’ve done it because they know something else. They know that fighters, Spits and Hurricanes, saved England from either decisive bombardment or invasion. Now they’ve got a better fighter than those were. They intend to make Europe as impregnable as the British made England. And they’re going to do it, just as surely as we sit here with our fingers in our asses and let them!”

  Prescott coughed discreetly through the enveloping silence.

  “Do you want that in too, sir?”

  Kane did not hear Prescott. He had been listening to Dennis. It was the burning sincerity of the plea which had illuminated again for him the old dream. He was seeing in fact the old vision of Air Power itself, the vision he had followed, the vision for which he and his kind had planned and pleaded and promised.

  And yet it remained a glittering gamble. Kane knew far better than Dennis how bitterly the levels above him were torn with their own disunities, political, strategic, nati
onalistic, now that they had achieved the suppression of air power to an auxiliary level. He knew the quarrels and compromises, the delays and disagreements, the wary stalemates between military strategy and international policy, the sacrifices of lives to save faces and of faces to save the fears that were older than any passing war.

  Kane looked past the waiting Dennis to the map now, but even as his quickening eyes swept toward Germany they hung on the chalk marks on the loss column of the Ops board. He shook his head heavily and clearly heard Prescott repeat his frightened question.

  “No, not that part exactly, Major. Just the sense of it. Casey, I agree with you entirely, my boy, but we’ve simply got to wait till we’re a little stronger.”

  “Sir,” said Dennis, and they could all see him controlling himself with evident effort now, “wars are lost by waiting. If it were a question of potential strength there wouldn’t be any wars. It isn’t like that. Decisions are won by the margins available at critical times and places. The Allies waited, at Munich. The French and British waited, behind the Maginot Line. The Germans waited, for a little more relative strength to invade England. The Russians waited, until they had to take on the German armies without an ally in the field. We waited, for more strength to coerce Japan.

  “Now we’re forcing the fighting, at terrible disadvantages of distance, defenses, and weather… on a margin so thin we cross ourselves before counting losses… with a bomber that thirty-millimeter cannon will make obsolete. But we’re doing it. We have, now, the advantage of the offensive, precariously, but we’ve got it. Advantage is cumulative. If we stop now and wait for the cycle to swing again we’ll be waiting for them to put a roof on the Continent. I’m not trying to tell you that Operation Stitch will win the war. But no battle anywhere in this war has been won without aerial supremacy. Operation Stitch is the price of that.”

  He stopped. The muffled drumming of the motors outside and the clacking of the teleprinter in the Ops room filled part of the silence; the rest of it hung heavily over them all. Kane knew now that Dennis was not going to yield. He could relieve him, of course. But Dennis believed these things and would say them elsewhere, anywhere, even in Washington itself if Kane sent him back there. On the other hand, if Washington itself decided to relieve him… Kane shook his head and rose with quick decision, the others springing up after him.

  “Will you gentlemen wait in the anteroom, please.”

  He saw Garnett’s angry flush at being included with the other ranks but he offered no modification of the order. After a second Garnett followed the others out, closing the door himself.

  “Casey, I’m taking Cliff back to my headquarters with me at once and releasing the Division to your discretion.

  “Thank you, sir,” said Dennis quietly.

  Kane hesitated, wishing to say more, remembering that the spoken word cannot be unsaid. Dennis did not need things spelled out for him, but his own deep, haunting anxiety made Kane speak against his wiser instincts.

  “Casey, you realize what can happen?”

  “Perfectly, sir.”

  “Well, I hope it doesn’t. Good luck, my boy.”

  He was turning toward the door when Evans stepped in from the Ops room, reluctantly extending a sheet of teleprint paper.

  “Top Secret relay from General Kane’s headquarters for the General, sir.”

  2

  After observing Dennis’s defense of Goldberg that evening Sergeant Evans had gone to the Top Secret Files and read the plan labeled Operation Stitch. One perusal of it confounded him. The army, or at least the Fifth Division, did have a sensible, logical plan. Evans was dazed until he remembered what was going on in the next room. That confirmed it all. This plan was so good that it was requiring the exertions of a major general to resist its use.

  Evans had shaken his head, wondering why Dennis had not already been court-martialed. And yet Kane was evidently vacillating. Against all previous experience, Evans himself had begun to hope when the reality of the clattering teleprinter spelled out the message he now handed General Kane.

  Standing by at attention he watched Kane wilt visibly through a quick reading of it before handing on the message to Dennis.

  “It’s from Les Blackmer, Casey.”

  Dennis read aloud slowly: “Impossible contact Chief yet. Considered opinion here implores moderation and low losses during critical three days next especially in view of Part Two which follows. Two; you are again advised imminent visit three high-ranking members House of Representatives Military Affairs Committee, arriving Prestwick probably this night. Contact Embassy at once. Representative Malcolm will particularly wish to see his nephew, Captain Lucius Malcolm Jenks 0-886924371 your command. Suggest his assignment special escort duty this visit and must remind how opportune would be decoration Captain Jenks if eligible either presently or prospectively end Washington signal Casey for God’s sake find General Kane and tell him wise men from west already Prestwick arriving Croydon daylight Embassy frantic signed Saybold for Kane.

  Dennis lowered the paper slowly. But Kane did not wait to hear.

  “Sorry, Casey. You will put maximum sorties and tonnage on the safest naval target you can find, under fighter cover, tomorrow. I’ll take Jenks with me in my car and make… er… medical arrangement.”

  “Sir, this is impossible.”

  “Nothing’s impossible, Casey. We’re doing it.”

  Dennis wheeled on Evans. “Sergeant, get those two officers…”

  Evans sprang for the door. Kane did not speak until it had closed. His voice was regretful but firm.

  “The charges will be quashed. We’ll have a formal presentation for the visiting firemen here tomorrow, timed so they can lunch afterward and then watch the return of the mission. You will instruct any plane sufficiently damaged to jeopardize landing to use one of the other stations. I’ll have a citation written for Jenks in my office tonight….”

  He looked up indignantly as the door opened and two officers wearing medical insignia appeared. Their faces were puffy and their blouses ruffled from sleep but the elder saluted smartly.

  “Dayhuff and Getchell reporting as ordered, sir.”

  “General Kane,” said Dennis. “Major Dayhuff is my Division Medical Officer. Captain Getchell is flight surgeon of Jenks’s group.”

  “Well…” Kane did not extend his hand.

  “Major, tell General Kane exactly what you told me.”

  “General Kane, there is no satisfactory medical explanation of Captain Jenks’s conduct. He acknowledges this and says he expects no medical exoneration.”

  Thoroughly alert now, Kane studied the doctors closely. A presentiment was warning him to caution, as it had warned him earlier in the evening, against a showdown with Dennis. He spoke more civilly, feeling his way.

  “Mightn’t that in itself be an indication of neurosis?”

  “Doctors can be wrong, sir. In our opinion he’s normal.”

  “Have you made a formal record of this?”

  “Not yet, sir. We shall.”

  “Do you think this is simple fear… cowardice, Major?”

  “No, sir. Any man in his right mind is afraid to fly these missions. The cowards welcome a medical excuse not to. This man apparently doesn’t want one.”

  “Have you any idea of why he refused to fly?”

  Dayhuff nodded a graying head to his junior. Captain Getchell chose his words with slow, conscientious care.

  “We don’t consider this a medical matter, sir. But Captain Jenks has mentioned some of his ambitions to me, in fact to anyone who would listen. He has been very frank to say that he intends to make something out of this war.”

  “How?”

  “Politically, I believe, sir. At first Jenks made a noticeable effort to be popular in the Group but the effect was… well, contrary to his hopes. His operational training phase was not harmonious. By the time we entered combat status he was distrusted by the others and very resentful. When the men rode him he used
to say that not only they but the whole army would come begging to his door someday and then they’d learn something about who ran the country.”

  “Mightn’t that, in itself, indicate… er… instability?”

  “Sir,” said Dayhuff, “if we took to diagnosing ambition for an aberration we’d be busier than we are.”

  “Thank you very much, gentlemen,” said Kane.

  They saluted and withdrew. As they went Dennis noted that Evans had re-entered with them and overheard the conversation. He dismissed the Sergeant with an abrupt nod of his head.

  “Casey,” asked Kane thoughtfully, “are these doctors our own?”

  “No, sir. Civilian reservists.”

  “Hmmm. Of course we can get Jenks to our own people…”

  “One of these men is from Mayo and the other from Hopkins, sir. They will sign the report.”

  Dennis had hoped that he would not have to do this. He knew now that he would and he was a little surprised at the calmness that possessed him.

  It had been like this when he was testing. All through the preparation there were doubt and nervousness and tension. Then, with the take-off, those things dropped behind. It became very simple. A man did all he could first to eliminate needless risk. Then he forced the intended risk until something broke… sometimes the plane, sometimes the man, sometimes the prevailing boundaries of gravity and momentum. Dennis had done it before; he was going to do it again now. He studied Kane’s troubled irresolution as calmly as he had once studied his instruments before nosing down.

  “Umm. We’ve got to do something, Casey.”

  “I know a way, sir.”

  “What?”

  “If Jenks had been acting under direct, secret orders to hold himself in readiness for this escort duty and to discontinue flying missions until he had performed it, he would have been justified in refusing the mission without explanation. If the right orders, suitably dated, had been delayed, in channels, in this headquarters…”