The Berets

by W. E. B Griffin

  “I told him I would have his first sergeant approve TPA to jump school at Benning for him and Wagner. That means they would both get eight cents a mile and ration money in lieu of a plane ticket voucher and a meal ticket. Craig doesn’t give a damn about the money, but that’s not only a lot of money to Wagner, but he gets to take his sister along free. And without it looking like charity.”

  “He doesn’t have a car, does he?” General Hanrahan asked.

  “Private Craig is presently with the proprietor of Bragg Boulevard Motors,” Ellis said, “who, after Sergeant Major Taylor telephoned him, was kind enough to drive out here to demonstrate a creampuff Volkswagen he happened to have for sale.”

  “You know this guy, Taylor?”

  “Yes, sir. He retired out of here. I did a tour with him with the Seventh Group in Bavaria.”

  “And will this creampuff Volkswagen make it to Benning?” Hanrahan asked.

  “It went through Post Inspection a week before he took it on trade,” Taylor said. “And I told him it had to make it to Benning and back.”

  “Well, that solves that,” Hanrahan said. “I gather that Private Craig did not give you the urge to knock his teeth down his throat?”

  “I think he’s a good kid,” Ellis said. “I had to pull the story of what happened to him out like a wisdom tooth, but once he told me, I believed him. The sergeant was going to knock him around for the hell of it, and he picked on the wrong guy. I knew a sergeant like that once.”

  “And did you break his jaw?” Hanrahan asked.

  “I think he has since been very careful about who he calls a ‘greasy spic,’” Ellis said.

  “Well, to repeat,” Hanrahan said, “another of life’s little problems solved.”

  “There is one small problem, General,” Taylor said.

  “Which is?”

  “Post Finance won’t pay TPA and ration money in advance.”

  “Why not?”

  “They say it’s a post regulation: They’ve had bad experience with people getting the advance and then spending it on something else. I also think they don’t like to pay it in advance because the advance is an estimate, and they have to do more paperwork when the travel is completed.”

  “You talked to the finance sergeant?” Hanrahan asked. Taylor nodded. “And the finance officer?”

  “One of the assistants,” Taylor said. “A major.”

  With one hand Hanrahan reached for his telephone and pulled it to him; with the other he opened his desk drawer for the post telephone directory.

  “Six Two One One Nine,” Taylor said.

  Hanrahan dialed 62-119 and told the sergeant who answered that he was General Hanrahan, and if the finance officer wasn’t tied up, he would like a word with him.

  A clever sergeant first class from Group Signal had rigged General Hanrahan’s telephone with an amplifier and a speaker, so that both ends of a telephone conversation could be heard all over his office when he threw the switch. He threw the switch.

  “Good afternoon, General. How may I be of service?”

  “Colonel, I know you’re a busy man, and I hate to bother you,” Hanrahan said.

  “No bother at all, sir. How can I be of help?”

  “You could save your time and mine, Colonel, if you could manage to convince your sergeant that when my sergeant major calls over there, he presumes that he’s calling for me.”

  “Is there some sort of problem, General?”

  “I don’t know the details, because I don’t want to take the time to learn them,” Hanrahan said. “What I do know is that your sergeant told my sergeant major that something my sergeant major wants done—which is to say, something I want done—can’t be done because it’s against post regulations.”

  “I wish I had the details, sir, I could make a more intelligent response.”

  “I don’t think you have the time, Colonel, any more than I do, to concern yourself with the details. You and I both know that post regulations concerning finance don’t apply to the Special Warfare Center, that in effect you are my finance officer and thus charged with providing what finance services army regulations and I require.”

  “Yes, sir,” the finance officer said.

  “So far I have found those services perfectly adequate, Colonel,” Hanrahan said.

  “General, I’m sure this is a simple misunderstanding.”

  “On the part of your sergeant, you mean?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, I have every confidence that you’ll be able to straighten out any misunderstandings he has by the time my sergeant major calls back, and that hereafter neither you nor I will have to concern ourselves with the petty details of getting a couple of enlisted men a travel advance.”

  “Yes, sir,” the finance officer said. “Thank you, General, for bringing this to my attention.”

  “If there’s anything the Special Warfare Center can ever do for you, Colonel, give a holler.”

  “Thank you very much, General.”

  “Good afternoon, Colonel,” Hanrahan said, and hung up.

  “Wipe the smile off your face, Taylor,” Hanrahan said. “You should have been able to handle that yourself.”

  “Sir,” Taylor said, “I was just marveling at what an amazing difference one little word makes.”

  “What word?”

  “‘General,’” Taylor said.

  Hanrahan considered that a moment. “You have been reading my mind, again, as a good sergeant major should,” Hanrahan said. “Anything else?”

  “One thing, sir. About the beer for the mess halls?” Taylor said.

  “What’s the problem there?”

  “Sir, we just got the check from the PX. It’s beer-bust time. I was about to suggest that instead of buying beer to celebrate your promotion, you might consider a cow roast.”

  “A what?”

  “There’s a couple of guys, Mexes—”

  “Mexican-Americans, if you please, Sergeant Major,” Ellis said. “Or we minority-group members will rise in rebellion.”

  “There’s a couple of Texans,” Taylor said, “in Dog Company who get whole cows and roast them over fires. We can’t use the PX money for that—we have to spend that through the PX—but if the general was willing to spring for a couple of cows—”

  “The word, I believe, is ‘steers,’” Hanrahan said.

  “—then we could use the PX check to buy beer, beans, and whatever else goes with it.”

  “Go ahead,” Hanrahan said. “That seems like a good idea. You want the money now?”

  “I’ll get a bill, sir.”

  “Could I come?”

  “Yes, sir, of course. I thought Sunday afternoon?”

  “Fine,” Hanrahan said.

  “I’ll get the word out, sir,” Taylor said.

  “That’s it?” Hanrahan asked.

  “Yes, sir,” they chorused.

  “You done good, you two,” Hanrahan said. “Why does that worry me?”

  They saluted and left the office.

  They were both pleased with themselves. Lieutenant Ellis had got Lowell’s cousin off on the right foot and handled the problem of Wagner’s poverty as neatly as it could have been done.

  And by recruiting the two Mexes in Dog Company to roast their cows, Sergeant Major Taylor had frustrated General Hanrahan’s foolish intention to spend a lot more money than he could afford by buying every sonofabitch in a green hat two beers. The Mexes would roast free (they normally charged $200) two cows and fix the other food, and Hanrahan would not have to cash in any war bonds or float a loan at the bank in order to throw a party for his troops to celebrate his promotion. Nor would he ever suspect what had happened.

  These kinds of things, they believed, were what aides-decamp and sergeants major were supposed to do.

  (Four)

  The Officer’s Mess

  Subic Bay Naval Station

  Commonwealth of the Philippines

  1730 Hours, 24 December 1961r />
  If he stayed at the bar, Major Philip Sheridan Parker IV thought, he would certainly get drunk. He had just finished a twelve-minute telephone call with his family. He would have talked a great deal longer, even at $3.90 per minute, but from where he sat scrunched down in a phone booth, he was looking directly at a poster reminding one and all: OTHERS ARE WAITING!

  Others were indeed waiting. All the army personnel on the Card, as well as most of her crew, had come ashore and headed for telephones. The lines were tied up. He had placed the call at 1445, and it hadn’t come in until 1715. He had spent the time reading even more ancient copies of Time, Life, and National Geographic than were available on the carrier.

  For no particular reason he chuckled and said “Jesus!”

  “What did you say, Phil?” Major Jack Walsh asked.

  “What I was thinking was that if I stay here, I am going to get drunk.”

  “Funny, that thought ran through my mind too,” Walsh said, and signaled to the bartender for drinks. “Merry Christmas, Major Parker.”

  “I don’t really want that, Jack,” Phil said.

  “When in Rome…” Walsh said. “The navy lives well, don’t they?”

  “Yes, indeed,” Parker agreed. The club was elegant and luxurious. “I guess the reasoning is that they don’t get to come on land very often. I don’t like the navy.”

  “Try to keep it a secret until we get where we’re going, will you?” Walsh kidded. “We have to get back on that thing.”

  “I meant, I don’t think I’d like to be a sailor.”

  “I don’t know,” Walsh said. “They certainly treat their officers better than we get treated.”

  “There has be a reason for that,” Parker said. “And I don’t think it’s the milk of human kindness.”

  “I don’t think I would want to be a navy enlisted man,” Walsh said thoughtfully. “Did you see the troop quarters?”

  “I understand that compared to smaller boats—ships—these are the height of luxury,” Parker said.

  “I heard that,” Walsh said.

  “What I was really thinking a while back—while I was waiting for the damned call to go through—is that, Civil War aside, this is one of the few places where we really got our ass whipped. The Japs took this away from us.”

  “What’s that got to do with the Civil War?”

  “Both sides were American in the Civil War, Jack,” Parker said. “Hadn’t you heard?”

  “Oh,” Walsh said.

  “Somebody, some soldier like us,” Parker said, “had to blow this place up so the Japs couldn’t use it, then wait around to be locked up. And not that long ago—twenty years.”

  “You’re really full of the old Christmas spirit, aren’t you?” Walsh asked. “Any other cheerful yuletide thoughts?”

  “I’m going back to the ship before I do get full of Christmas spirit,” Parker said. “You coming?”

  “You haven’t drunk your drink,” Walsh said.

  “You drink it. If I do, I will try to run them out of booze,” Parker said, and pushed himself off the stool.

  He walked to the wharf, where a boat was waiting to ferry people out to the USNS Card, which sat, brilliantly lit up, out in the harbor. Even at that distance, it was enormous. Parker had spent a lot of time roaming around the ship (when he was stopped by sailors and asked if they could be of help—translation: What the hell are you doing down here, Mac?—he pretended that he hadn’t seen the signs restricting access to authorized personnel). It was so big as to be incomprehensible. If sailors thought differently than soldiers, that was understandable. They lived in different worlds.

  The boat—it was called a barge—that carried him out to the USNS Card was divided into sections. In the back—aft—there was a cabin with plastic upholstered seats for officers. Up front—forward—exposed to the elements, there were wooden benches for sailors. Chief petty officers, the navy equivalent of army master sergeants, rode standing up in the back rather than up front with the other sailors. When they reached the ships, the officers would get off first, then the chief petty officers, then the sailors.

  The navy was heavy with tradition, and by and large, Parker decided, it was a good thing. The army had little tradition, and Army Aviation and Special Forces had none that he could see. On the other hand his grandfather had retired as a full bull colonel, after command of a regiment, and it wasn’t until after War II that the navy had finally allowed colored sailors to be more than mess stewards.

  The army had an officer of the day, one of the warrant officer pilots, standing at the head of the ladder up the side. The ladder didn’t reach all the way up the flight deck, only to a door on the hangar deck.

  “You’re back early, Major,” the warrant said to him, tossing a casual salute and checking his name off on a clipboard roster.

  “It was either come back now or come back later and be hoisted aboard in a sling,” Parker said.

  “I get off at 0600,” the warrant said. “And then I have shore leave. What sort of trouble do you think I can get myself into from six o’clock on Christmas morning until 1600?”

  “I’m sure you’ll think of something,” Parker said.

  He went to the flight deck. A marine guard stopped him at the door. Because there had been several incidents of sailors taking souvenirs from the army aircraft (the instrument panel eight-day Waltham clocks were popular), and after a heated argument with the Card’s civilian captain, it had been decreed that only personnel with business with army airplanes would be allowed on the flight deck. There was a list of fifteen officers who were authorized to visit their airplanes whenever they wanted, and the marine guard was doing his duty. He not only checked to see that Major Parker’s name was on the list, but insisted on checking Parker’s ID card.

  A difference in discipline, Parker thought. The marine guard was a black guy, and there was no question whatever in Parker’s mind that the black marines were very much aware that there were four black army officers, one major, one captain, and two warrants. The marine guard knew that the very large black man with the major’s leaves standing in the door was Major P. S. Parker. An army guard, black or white or brown, would have passed him without question. Not the marine. The marine did exactly what he was told to do.

  Was this better, Parker wondered, or did it tend to make enlisted men hesitate to make their own decisions? There was an old army saw that said when in doubt, attack. He wondered if navy and marine enlisted men would attack when in doubt, or just stand there waiting for orders.

  He made his way through the closely parked airplanes and helicopters to the bow of the ship, careful not to trip over the cables that tied the aircraft to the deck. The door in the side of the fuselage of a Piasecki H-21D was slightly ajar.

  Was the ship’s crew collecting souvenirs again? Or had it just been left ajar after the last of the twice-daily inspections? He opened it far enough so that it would close when he slammed it, then changed his mind and climbed aboard.

  He made his way up the steeply slanting floor to the cockpit, and he started to slip into the pilot’s seat. There was a small puddle of water on the deck, and he slipped on it, falling hard but harmlessly into the seat. The on-deck aircraft were hosed down twice a day with a fresh-water spray to keep the salt water off them, and this bird apparently leaked. Although he didn’t think any real harm in that, he thought he would mention it to the maintenance chief in the morning.

  This was his world, the cockpit of a chopper, and it was somehow comforting to sit where he was sitting. He sat there for ten minutes, and then got up and carefully made his way back onto the deck. He went back inside the ship and made his way to the wardroom and had a cup of coffee and two sugar-coated doughnuts. Finally he went to his stateroom.

  He would not be able to sleep yet, he thought, so he opened the little safe built into the wall of the cabin and took out a report to study it.

  He had taken it out for a very strange reason. He wanted to look at the sign
ature block again. The report had been prepared eight months before, and Major Parker had been provided with only part of it: two copies, classifed Secret, of Inclosure 18. Inclosure 18 was entitled “An Appraisal of Special Aviation Requirements in the Event of the Deployment of Special Forces in the Highlands.” In the signature block was “Craig W. Lowell, Major, Armor.”

  The report was probably very good, accurate, and thorough, for Lowell was very good at that-sort of thing. But that wasn’t the reason Phil Parker had taken it out. The truth of the matter was that he was lonely and homesick and even a little afraid, and Craig’s signature in front of him made him feel a little less lonely, homesick, and afraid.

  He wondered where Craig was spending Christmas Eve.

  Between the silken thighs of some long-legged wench who would reek of expensive French perfume, he concluded.

  That thought cheered him. He put the report back in the safe and went back to the wardroom. There was a warrant officer, a weird redheaded guy who hung around there, always looking for somebody to play chess. Playing chess seemed like a very good way to pass the evening.

  IX

  (One)

  An Lac Shi

  Kontum Province

  Republic of South Vietnam

  2325 Hours, 24 December 1961

  For almost two years Captain Van Lee Duc, Commanding the Ninth Company, Fifty-third Regiment, People’s Liberation Army, had had a working relationship with Song Lee Do, Mayor of An Lac Shi, a middle-sized village eleven miles west of Kontum.

  Song Lee Do had ensured that his constituents had paid their taxes to the Provisional Government of the People’s Liberation Army. The taxes were one bag in five of the village’s rice stocks. These stocks included not only what the village’s farmers had raised themselves but also what had come from the Agency for International Development in hundred-pound bags painted with the legend PRODUCT OF LOUISIANA, USA. Below the legend was the picture of a pair of hands shaking in partnership.

  Similarly, the village of An Lac Shi, through the agency of Mayor Song Lee Do, had contributed one pig in five to the cause of National Liberation; one chicken in five; one bunch of carrots in five; one head of cabbage in five; and so on. The burden had not been intolerable, Captain Van Lee Duc believed. It was the duty of every Vietnamese to make some sacrifice to the cause of national liberation. What he was asking of An Lac Shi was far less than other commanders were asking of other mayors of other similarly situated villages.