Command Decision

by William Wister Haines

  Brockhurst thought for a second that Dennis might refuse. For the briefest perceptible interval he appeared to be considering whether or not to obey. Then habit won. He turned swiftly to the Operations room. As he did Evans left the bar and stuck his head into the anteroom.

  “Let’s go, boys,” he said.

  2

  In response to Evans’s request there now appeared from the anteroom three stalwart young soldiers. They were heavily armed with cameras and they swaggered with the arrogance men always take from the possession of significant weapons. Congressmen and soldiers alike made way for them and stood uneasily, adjusting blouses and ties, moving forward or back, meekly eyeing lenses and flashlight bulbs and the businesslike preparations of the young men.

  In through the other door the Adjutant strutted with a sheaf of papers and a little box. Behind him, still sullen but cleanshaven now and clad in a be-ribboned blouse and freshly pressed pinks, came Captain Jenks. He hesitated for one nervous glance at Dennis but the Brigadier had stepped quietly into the background and did not speak.

  The Adjutant arranged himself and Jenks before Kane, who had taken up a position with both eyes studying the cameramen. The Congressmen maneuvered themselves into a happy position, facing the lenses through the opening between Jenks and Kane.

  “Is everything…?” queried Kane sharply.

  “You’re okay, General. Just pull that blouse down a little,” said the head cameraman.

  Kane smoothed the blouse around his hips, shot a quick glance around him, and cleared his throat.

  “Gentlemen, few experiences in life are more gratifying than according proper recognition to a man who has fought for his country. Will Captain Jenks please step forward?”

  Captain Jenks did. The soldiers raised their cameras, the room quieted with an expectant hush, and the Adjutant began to read from the paper in his hand.

  “Captain Lucius Malcolm Jenks, for outstandingly meritorious and heroic achievement…”

  “Excuse me, General,” interrupted Evans.

  “WHAT?…” Kane regarded the Sergeant with impatience.

  “Would the gentlemen from Congress like to put their glasses over here before the boys start photographing?”

  The gentlemen from Congress looked at their glasses as if they held snakes, before marching solemnly around to deposit them on the map table. The camera detail now made ostentatious motions to assure the whole company that no lens would record the spectacle of that table. As the Congressmen returned to their positions Malcolm stopped, with a sudden chuckle, and clapped Evans on the back.

  “You goin’ a long way in life, boy.”

  Stone and Field muttered a somewhat more subdued gratitude and followed Malcolm toward the perspective of the lenses. The Adjutant surveyed them all with an expression of pain and began again.

  Brockhurst did not follow the details of the citation. His first perceptive glance between Jenks and that little box in the Adjutant’s hand had filled in the last piece of the puzzle. He knew now how Dennis had done it. Briefly there stirred in him a hope that Dennis had extracted a promise of personal protection for himself as part of this diabolical bargain. His second thought rejected the idea.

  A man who had been thinking of himself would not have driven the bargain. Dennis had been safe before, safe behind military secrecy, safe in the bland, self-protecting unity of the services that would have explained away disaster by jets as calmly as they had explained away Pearl Harbor.

  Brockhurst watched him now, standing with silent composure through the enormity of the citation. Twice during the reading he saw Dennis glance briefly at his watch before returning his inscrutable, fixed stare toward the map. Not a flicker of feeling showed on his face as the Adjutant came to the end of his fulsome, rounded periods:—

  “…thereby reflecting great credit upon Captain Jenks and the Army Air Forces, in consideration of which and for his example, achievements and contributions to the advancement of American Aerial Bombardment, Captain Jenks is hereby awarded…”

  Kane lifted that famous jaw a trifle, glanced once more toward the cameras, and then, accepting the medal from the Adjutant, pinned it upon Jenks. An explosion of flashlight bulbs dazzled the room. Malcolm burst from the formation of Congressmen, threw his arm around his nephew, and accosted Kane eagerly.

  “By God, Gennel, this the proudes’ moment of ouah lives. Do you reckon…?”

  “Of course,” said Kane. “You have plenty of film, boys?”

  “Plenty. You better get a little closer, General.”

  The trio arranged themselves, Kane centered between the other two and clasping their hands for a new barrage.

  “You gettin’ this, Elmeh, boy?” asked Malcolm.

  “I’m beginning to get it,” said Brockhurst.

  They posed twice more before Kane’s roving, restless eyes noticed the other two Congressmen standing quietly together away from the cameras. He hurried over to them.

  “Gentlemen, no one of our great states has a monopoly on bravery. This command has personnel drawn from every state in the Union. It is my hope, and intention, that before you leave here each one of you may participate in one of these ceremonies.”

  The Congressmen kept their faces straight.

  “Well, General,” said Stone, “if one of our boys should happen…”

  “These things mean a lot to morale on the home front,” said Field.

  “You may rest assured, gentlemen…”

  Malcolm had led Jenks to the bar. He broke in loudly now, holding up a tumbler half full of whiskey.

  “Gentlemen, a toas’ to the boy who led his squadron…”

  He stopped, as the whole room stopped in every motion, frozen by the sibylline clatter of the teleprinter. There was the rasp of tearing paper, and again Haley was at the door, handing an inch-wide strip of paper to Dennis. The Brigadier looked at it intently for several seconds before reading aloud:—

  “‘No mistake this time. Scratch Schweinhafen for me. Ted.’”

  For a second more he stared at it silently and then before their eyes seemed to explode with exultation.

  “Jesus, Haley, he got it… he got it… HE GOT IT!”

  “Yes, sir,” said Haley. “Colonel Martin is a very determined man.”

  Throughout the whole room now the tension broke into a tumult of happy chatter. The others crowded forward for a look at the paper itself.

  “Signal him about his kid, Haley.”

  “It’s going out, sir.”

  Garnett raised a glass, his face jubilant and glowing with pride.

  “Gentlemen, the greatest combat leader in the Army Air Forces. Fill ’em up.”

  Only Malcolm seemed unaffected by the general elation. He was standing by Jenks at the bar, still holding the glass he had raised in abortive toast to his nephew, and his voice was petulant.

  “Gennel, was this heah Schweinhafen any fahtheh than my nephew’s mission to Posenleben?”

  Kane hesitated. “Well, perhaps a little farther in miles…”

  But Prescott had seen the General’s embarrassment.

  “Sir, I don’t like to delay the toasts but Colonel Martin has asked us to scratch Schweinhafen for him. It occurs to me that while the photographers are here…”

  He proffered a piece of red crayon. Kane seized it and strode happily toward the map while the photographers took up new positions. Then, as he was raising his arm, Kane caught himself.

  “Gentlemen, it would be a great thing for public confidence…”

  The last of his invitation was drowned in the stampede as the Congressmen swarmed to him now, straightening ties and putting down glasses. Prescott was maneuvering them into position when through the half-open door they heard a muffled: “Christ!” in Haley’s heavy voice. His face was streaming tears as he walked in and handed another inch of paper to Dennis.

  Dennis took one look; then the paper fell from his hand and he stepped away from the others, turning his back on them. I
t was Garnett who picked it up and made himself read aloud:—

  “Good luck, Casey. We’re on fire and going…”

  He stopped, staring at it strickenly. Only Malcolm could not stand the silence; his heavy panting burst into a scream.

  “Goin’…? Goin’ wheah? Finish it, cain’t you?”

  “That’s all there is.”

  “Awll…? Awll…?”

  They saw hysteria possess him but no one could stir as he walked over and whirled Dennis angrily around by the shoulder.

  “You mean to tell me he’s…?”

  “Shut up!”

  “Shut up? You standin’ theah an’ tellin’ me to shut up afteh you’ve done kilt…”

  Evans had started for him but not fast enough. They scarcely saw Dennis move but the impact of his fist thudded. Malcolm lifted as if in slow motion and then collapsed over backward with a resounding crash. As he hit the floor the whiskey in his hand spilled over him, darkening the lavender shirt with a widening ring of stain. He did not stir. Slowly the glass rolled off him and came to rest gently on the floor beside his unconscious body.

  The others stared dazedly but Evans snatched a camera. Training it on the prostrate Malcolm, he addressed Dennis quietly.

  “You want a picture of the battle damage, sir?”

  His voice broke the tension. Kane stepped over to Evans, grabbed the camera, and smashed it on the floor. He had opened his mouth to speak when the clatter of the teleprinter began to echo through the room again. Kane waited, his mouth hanging open. Dennis was staring down at the Congressman, face impassive as ever, his figure relaxed and steady. Brockhurst noticed a little trickle of blood coming out of the Brigadier’s hand. Looking more closely, he saw with surprise the end of a pair of regulation pilot’s wings protruding from the clenched fist.

  The teleprinter stopped and all eyes turned with conscious dread toward the sound of the tearing paper and approaching feet. This time Haley walked the message straight to General Kane.

  “Top secret relay from Washington for you, sir.”

  Kane read it, gulped, and gathered himself slowly.

  “I’m sorry about this, Casey.”

  Dennis did not answer. He had lifted his eyes from Malcolm to the map and was staring at it, oblivious of everything else. Kane walked over to him and, commanding his attention, read aloud:—

  “‘With immediate effect you will replace Brigadier General K. C. Dennis, commanding Fifth Bombardment Division, Heavy, with Brigadier General Clifton C. Garnett, returning General Dennis Washington most expeditious means of transportation.’”

  Dennis still showed no sign of having heard it. His eyes were fixed on the map. A drop of blood fell from the cut in his palm. Kane took another long look at him and placed an arm around his shoulder.

  “Casey, I’m going to recommend you for the Legion of Merit.”

  Chapter 14

  Elmer Brockhurst drove out the gate of the Fifth Division early that afternoon with a deeper emotion than he had brought there. He had come the day before with his eye on a story; his heart had been high with hope that he might help the boys, the army, by protecting them from the ruthlessness of General Dennis.

  He had remained to learn a new humility, to end his visit with an effort to protect General Dennis from the army. In his new humility he knew that he had been only partially successful. With the support of Field and Stone he had made Malcolm apologize to Dennis. Beyond that he had warned Malcolm against further persecution of Dennis. He had spoken with the power of the press and he knew that Malcolm understood, as Kane had understood and heeded Brockhurst’s blunt insistence that the party should leave the station at once.

  Against such men the power of the press was effective; for Dennis it was only a trifling, mechanical assistance, the most that Brockhurst or any civilian could now give. For armies and soldiers, as he had known in his heart, could not be helped, even against their own blindness, the blindness that could waste a man like Dennis. Never before had Brockhurst so entirely comprehended that war is waste; that armies are beyond help.

  2

  Evans entered the office that evening smoldering with a rage that fed on its own futility. Until that moment there had been work, more than enough work, in which to hide his thoughts and feelings. For the army is an inexorable continuity in which the death or transfer of one man is the beginning for another in a structure designed to survive mortality.

  Walking to the desk, he removed General Dennis’s name plate and replaced it with the new one. Its surfaces were still damp with oiling. The letters spelled Garnett’s name.

  Evans put the coffee to boil and then, by habit, looked at his watch. There probably wasn’t time but he did not care whether he got caught tonight or not. The mechanics of lighting a cigar would prolong his respite from reality a few seconds. He took out the cigar box and then burst into blasphemy at the last barren evidence of the congressional visit. The box was empty. He threw it into the stove and sat down, cornered with the emotions he had been dodging.

  Only once before in uniform had he known anything like the sickening finality of this ending. That had been the night his crew broke up after its last mission. Then, however, there had been the incredible realization of survival, the realization that he could not look upon the future as a man with a stake in it, with certain relation to everything in the world which he would continue to inhabit.

  This time he wanted to get away from the future but it had him fast. It had him because he was alive again and he was learning that to live is to suffer. He realized now that throughout his entire tour of duty and for some time afterward he had not truly been alive. He had merely functioned mechanically through an existence in which there was no hope, no despair, no feeling whatever. He had understood the odds and had not expected to survive. His existence had been narcotized by the assumption of a cynical indifference toward a world in which he no longer had a stake.

  This numbness had persisted into the early stages of his duty with General Dennis. Indeed the first evidence of its thawing had been the sense of concern he had felt over Brockhurst’s prophecy that the General would be fired. From that reawakening Evans had passed, in the last twenty-four hours, from amusement to a passionate sympathy and partisanship. Through Dennis he had touched again a high aspiration. With him he had known once more hope and fear, doubt, indignation, triumph, suspense, strife. For him he now felt the despair and frustrate fury with which he regarded everything around him. He had regained the world but it was the world of the army.

  Only later, much later, would it occur to a reawakened Evans that it was not the world of the army. It was the world the army had taken in involuntary receivership from the moral and spiritual bankruptcy of its people. It was the world of men like himself who had dodged the draft until danger was on them, of Malcolm and Jenks plotting political profit in the ruins, of Stone and Field dimly perceiving the trouble but impotent to cope with it, of Brockhurst selling the army’s secrecy for news copy as all men everywhere now sold it supplies for a living.

  Evans would ponder these things later; his reawakening was deep but like all birth shrouded in pain. For the present he knew only that he was still in the army. He would have to deal with this trouble in the army’s way. His immediate desire was to get as far from here as he could. Upon arrival he intended to put his new commander in his place at once and keep him there until the unimaginable day when he could tell him to kiss a civilian’s ass for a change.

  The opening of the door brought him to his feet. Garnett looked better in a woolen shirt. He had either shed some of his pomposity with that well-tailored blouse or the weight of the job was already squeezing it out of him. He was manifestly still nervous but Evans had learned to tolerate this in green commanders.

  “Coffee’s almost ready, sir,” he said.

  “I didn’t order coffee,” said Garnett.

  “You will, sir.”

  Garnett visibly checked a retort and sniffed the air before
replying. The familiar smell relaxed him a little.

  “Oh, very well, Sergeant.”

  He went over to his desk now and Evans could see him taking on confidence from the sight of the new name plate.

  “Everything in order here, Sergeant?”

  “Yes, sir. Benzedrine in top right drawer.”

  “Oh, Sergeant, can you get sleeping tablets here?”

  “I’ll see, sir. And you need cigars and whiskey.”

  “I almost never use them.”

  “It’s expected of you, sir.”

  “By whom?”

  “People who do. They’re standard equipment for brigadiers in this theater, sir.”

  Evans did not care what his successor had to smoke or drink but he intended to have no nonsense from Garnett and it was well to begin firmly. Garnett hesitated, manifestly considering the same problem of a firm beginning, but Evans won as he had known he would.

  “Oh… thank you, Sergeant. I guess you and I are going to be together for some time, Evans. Can you suggest anything else that I need?”

  “You need a new sergeant, sir,” said Evans.

  “Oh… oh, of course. You’re going with General Dennis?”

  “No, sir, he won’t take me.” Evans knew he was saying too much but the anger inside him forced the words out. “He says they use colonels for errand boys in Washington. I’m going to China.”

  Garnett digested this slowly before his face darkened.

  “So you’re going to China? You sound as if this war’s a Cook’s tour. What do you think this army is anyway, Sergeant?”

  “I’d rather not answer that question, sir. But I’ve done my twenty-five here. I’m entitled to rotation and War Department Circular six nine five three eight dash seven one says applications for the Fortieth Air Army from graduate gunners of this theater will be accepted. The circular and my papers are on your desk, sir.”

  “Oh…” Garnett realized that he was whipped. He began to perceive that the loss of Evans would save him many such whippings.