“That doesn’t sound like a holiday,” the Graf said.
“No.”
“I think I’ll have some of that whiskey,” the Graf said. When he got close to Craig Lowell, he put his arm around his back and gave a little hug. It didn’t take a second, but it was for Generalleutnant Graf von Greiffenberg a remarkable display of affection.
Lowell laughed. The Graf looked at him curiously.
“Courtesy would require,” Lowell said, “that I ask you what you were doing in Helsinki. But I don’t think you want me to ask, do you?”
“I was seeing friends,” the Graf said smoothly. “May I ask why you’re going to Indochina?”
“I presume that’s a personal question?”
“Of course.”
“I think we’re going in there,” Lowell said. “We just sent a bunch of airplanes over there.”
“On an old aircraft carrier called the Card,” the Graf said. “It stuck in my mind because it was a rather odd name.”
“My, you do keep current, don’t you?” Lowell asked, lightly sarcastic. “What else can you tell me that I didn’t know?”
“How about a quote from MacArthur?” the Graf said. “‘Don’t get involved in a war on the Asian land mass.’”
“I like the other one better,” Lowell said. “‘There is no substitute for victory.’ I’m afraid we’re going to do the same thing we did in Korea. Spend a lot of money, kill a lot of people, and when the war is over, be just about where we were when we started.”
“I was in China as a young officer,” the Graf said. “A very young officer, come to think of it. I came away with the impression that there is no way western armies could win. It would be Russia times ten.”
He waved Lowell into one of four identical high-backed red leather armchairs facing a low table and settled himself in an opposing chair. They both put their feet on the table.
“The only chance we have is mobility,” Lowell said.
“I just came from Cologne by helicopter,” the Graf said. “Thirty-odd minutes. By road it’s two and a half hours. In this weather it would take four or five.”
“I didn’t hear a chopper,” Lowell said, surprised.
“It was French, I’m afraid,” the Graf said. “An Alouette.”
“Wait till you see what we have on the drawing boards,” Lowell said loyally. “And even starting to come off the line.”
“I’ve heard,” the Graf said. “Is that what they have you doing, Craig? War plans?”
“That’s a tactful way of putting it,” Lowell said. “I think of it more as paper-shuffling.”
“And do you think it will work?” the Graf asked.
“Will what work?”
“The substitution of aircraft and helicopters for trucks?”
“I’m afraid not,” Lowell said seriously. “The logistics to keep them in the air boggle the mind. But we have not heard, I don’t think, the last bugler sounding the charge.”
“Meaning what?”
“Despite reports to the contrary, cavalry is not dead.”
“I still don’t think I follow you,” the Graf said.
“That frightens me a little, Herr Generalleutnant Graf,” Lowell said, “if you, of all people, can’t see where we’re going.”
“Tell me,” the Graf said seriously.
“‘Good afternoon, gentlemen,’” Lowell said, half mockingly. “‘Our subject for the day is the role of cavalry in the modern army. There will be a verbal quiz following the lecture and a written examination on Friday.’”
Von Greiffenberg laughed.
“There have been from the earliest days three basic types of ground forces. These are the infantry, which takes and holds ground; the artillery, which bombards enemy positions prior to an infantry attack, or enemy forces when the enemy attacks; and the cavalry, whose primary characteristic is mobility. Mobility—originally with horses and later with tracked vehicles—gave the cavalry the ability to breach a weak point in the enemy lines and then to exploit that breakthrough by interrupting the enemy’s lines of supply.
“From time to time, throughout history, well-meaning people have upgefucht cavalry’s noble role.”
The Graf chuckled. He knew what upgefucht, a word coined by American GIs in Germany, meant.
“The first such upgefuching occurred when the noble cavalry warrior was encased in several hundred pounds of armor, which required an enormous horse just to carry him and reduced his speed to about that of the foot soldier. He could no longer rush about, breaching the enemy’s lines, and infantry soldiers found him an easy target. If all else failed, they could push him off his horse. Cavalry was dead.
“Nobody told the Americans this, however, and they used cavalry in their revolution—with great success. Cavalry was again alive and well, to the point where the Confederate cavalry of J. E. B. Stuart kept the Yankees from quickly winning the War Between the States for a longer period than the preponderance of forces indicated they should.
“In the American Civil War, too, the amateur soldiers came up with something that truly offended traditionalists. They bastardized artillery’s noble role. Everybody but the Americans—on both sides—knew that one put artillery in place and kept it there until the battle was over. But not knowing this sacred rule, American cavalrymen hitched teams of horses to artillery pieces and galloped all over the battlefield with them, using them where they were needed at that moment, including, it must be noted, in the advance.
“Comes Brother Gatling, shortly followed by Brother Maxim and Brother Browning, with their machine guns. Horses made a splendid target, and cavalry again was dead.
“Comes a limey, name of Winston Churchill, who sees the requirement for a means of warfare to overcome his current problem, which is sort of a stalemate. Both he and the Germans are running out of infantrymen to send into the mouths of machine guns. Churchill’s solution is a mechanical horse. It has tracks, which permit it to climb in and out of shell holes and across trenches. It has armor plate, which turns small-arms fire. It has the capability to move quickly about the battlefield and breach the enemy’s lines at his weak points. He calls this strange device a ‘tank.’
“After first making pro forma protestations that this device is the tool of the Devil and has no place in battle between Christian gentlemen, the Germans start building their own tanks. Too late. A name is needed for this new form of warfare, and since cavalry is obviously dead, someone decides that ‘armor’ has a nice ring to it. So the word is passed that cavalry is dead, and armor is born.
“Comes the second War to End All Wars. A German chap named Guderian, who understands the role of cavalry, attacks the French. Even though they have more and better tanks than he does, they do not understand the role of cavalry and think of their tanks as mobile pillboxes for support of the infantry. French tanks move at the speed of the French infantry. German tanks move like cavalry: They go as fast as they can move and to hell with their flanks. This, Herr Generalleutnant, is known as the Blitzkrieg, and shortly after Guderian puts it to work, the French are waving white flags.”
“That’s very good,” Von Greiffenberg said, laughing. “You’ve given this speech before, I take it?”
“Have I ever? But indulge me, I’m not through.”
“By all means.”
“On the American side we have some interesting generals. One of them is sort of a cavalryman by the name of Patton.”
“Sort of a cavalryman?”
“He was an infantry officer,” Lowell said, “but understood this was a mistake of judgment on his part. In his heart he was cavalry. He was quite a polo player, you know. Polo is not an infantry sport. Infantry takes walks in the woods.”
Von Greiffenberg chuckled.
“And who were the other ‘interesting’ American generals?”
“There were many, but for the purposes of this brief lecture, I will discuss only two. Both associated with the Second Armored Division. Ernest Harmon and his successor, I.
D. White. Both cavalrymen. White, by the way, as a young aide-de-camp, laid out the golf course at Fort Knox from the back of a horse; and he, too, was one hell of a polo player. The important point here is that Harmon and White fought the Second Armored as cavalry. And Patton used his armored forces in the Third Army as cavalry.”
“You really think that’s the case?”
“White took a real screwing,” Lowell said. “He should have gone in the history books as the first American general ever to take Paris and the first American general ever to take Berlin. He was outside Paris—Senlis, I think—when he was ordered to hold in place and let the Second French Armored pass through his lines for the honor of taking Paris. Later he had his first elements across the Elbe and was prepared to take Berlin when he was ordered to hold in place and let the Russians have it.”
“That must have hurt,” Von Greiffenberg said.
“Yeah, but I’m digressing. So far as I’m concerned, the greatest cavalry maneuver in history was Patton’s. In the Battle of the Bulge he disengaged two divisions, moved them a hundred miles through a blizzard, and had them attacking in forty-eight hours. That’s cavalry!”
“I agree, but I seem to be missing your point.”
“Since our tanks, our armor, had done so well, everybody jumped on the bandwagon and decreed that armor was the force of the future. They had disbanded cavalry during the war, and now they came out with a new insignia for armor. A tank. I. D. White, who was arguably the best if not the senior armor officer on active duty, insisted—rather violently, I’ve been told—that cavalry was not dead and demanded that cavalry sabers be superimposed on the new tank of armor insignia.”
“Was that White?” Von Greiffenberg asked, surprised.
“That was White,” Lowell said.
“I never heard that before,” the Graf said. “Odd. I should have thought Hasso von Manteuffel would have said something to me. He and White became close after the war, you know.”
“That was White,” Lowell repeated. “And now we’re finally at my point. The lecture is about over. It has no more come down from Mount Sinai graven on stone tablets that cavalry has to be mounted on horses or tracked vehicles than it has come down that infantry has to be armed with pointed sticks or machine guns. Cavalry is a technique, a philosophy, not a particular tool.”
“And you’re saying the new cavalry horse is the helicopter?”
“Absolutely,” Lowell said. “With what we have now, we can pick up a squad of troops and three days’ rations and ammunition, and deliver them at one hundred miles an hour, rested and ready to fight, anywhere in a hundred-mile radius. We’ve got helicopters on the drawing boards that can pick up a 155-millimeter cannon, its crew, and its basic load of ammunition, and in an hour set it down on a hilltop someplace a hundred miles away.”
“That sounds like artillery,” the Graf said.
“Mobile artillery was stolen from cavalry in the Civil War,” Lowell said. “It’s time we took it back.”
“You’re talking about a division, aren’t you? Maybe even divisions?”
“Absolutely,” Lowell said. “Air cavalry divisions. The whole thing air-transportable.”
“And you think they’ll work against a guerrilla army in Vietnam?”
“I don’t know,” Lowell said. “We’ll have to find out. I do know that conventional forces won’t. If we use conventional forces, we’ll have to carry the war to North Vietnam. Or even to China.”
“‘Don’t get involved in a war on the Asian land mass,’” Von Greiffenberg quoted again.
“I don’t think I’m personally going to get involved in a war anywhere,” Lowell said. “I am the consummate paper-shuffler…and lecturer.”
“You’ll get a command,” the Graf said.
“I am beginning to wonder if that isn’t wishful thinking,” Lowell said.
“Both Bob Bellmon and Paul Hanrahan have been named general officers,” the Graf said.
“And Bill Roberts,” Lowell said.
“And Paul Jiggs is a major general,” the Graf said. “You are not without friends.”
“There are a number of very powerful people in the army who think all of them are mad. Kennedy gave Hanrahan his star. He’d never have been recommended for it.”
“The point is, they have their stars,” the Graf said. “One day you will, I am sure.”
“The eternal optimist. Or do I look that down in the mouth?”
“Neither,” the Graf said. “A professional opinion.”
“I don’t believe that for a minute,” Lowell said. “But I like to hear it. Where’s the court?”
It was his son-in-law’s very rude term for the dozen displaced East Germans and Poles who were related to the Graf and now made their home in the schloss. They demanded of the servants the respect due their titles, and Lowell found this amusing.
“Most of them went to Bavaria,” he said. “Ludwig put it rather cleverly. He said that the only reason Hessians pretend to enjoy Christmas and New Year’s is because they know Lent will shortly follow.”
“Ludwig is the fat Pomeranian?” Lowell asked, laughing.
The Graf nodded. “The Graf von Kolberg.”
“Peter-Paul didn’t go with them?”
“There’s a good deal of you in Peter-Paul,” the Graf said. “He tends to make sarcastic comments when my relatives are all gathered around remembering better days. Peter-Paul is much more interested in the films than in the Almanac de Gotha.”
“The films?” Lowell asked. “Why did you say that?”
“It’s true. Is that so unusual?”
“I have been invited to a film festival in Berlin,” Lowell said. “I met an actress I know on the plane.”
“How many actresses do you know?” the Graf teased.
“One,” Lowell said. “That one.”
“The one named after the state,” the Graf said. “Tennessee, something? No, that’s the writer.”
“Georgia Paige,” Lowell said.
“That’s an extraordinary custom,” the Graf said. “Is there an actor or actress named ‘North Dakota’ or ‘Massachusetts’?”
“No, but there’s an actor named Rip Torn,” Lowell said. “And another one named Rock Hudson.”
“‘Rip Torn’?” the Graf parroted, laughing.
“You think Peter-Paul would like to go to this thing?” Lowell asked.
“I think he would prefer it to the alternatives,” the Graf said. “Which are staying here with you or going to Bavaria with me for New Year’s.”
“I gather I’m not welcome at the palace?”
“Don’t be silly. Of course you are. But it never entered my mind you’d want to go.”
“I don’t,” Lowell said. “But I’m not exactly at home at a film festival, either.”
“Peter-Paul would love it. If you could introduce him to a film star, he would be in ecstasy. And you—the both of you—should see the wall.”
“You’ve seen it?”
“I watched them put it up,” the Graf said. “In a morbid way, it’s rather fascinating. It’s an interesting insight into the working of their minds.”
“Kennedy should have ordered it torn down,” Lowell said.
“I don’t think so,” the Graf said. “There it stands, proof to the world that communism has provided such a better life for its people that they have to be kept in paradise by concrete walls topped with barbed wire.”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Lowell said. “I’m not sure if what you say isn’t an accidental by-product of weak knees.”
“There was nothing short of war that could be done to stop it,” the Graf said, as if surprised he had to explain this to Lowell. “The Russians are scrupulously observing their obligations to the Western Allies. American soldiers can pass freely back and forth.”
“Hello, Father,” a voice in the process of changing said from the door. Lowell looked and saw Peter-Paul.
“I don’t mean to say, of course,
that you and Peter-Paul should cross into East Berlin,” the Graf said seriously and very quickly.
Peter-Paul von Greiffenberg Lowell was a tall, slender fourteen-year-old, with a shock of light blond hair hanging over his forehead. His hair was too long on top, his father thought, and trimmed too short at the ears and neck.
There was a good deal of Ilse von Greiffenberg Lowell in him, in the cheekbones, in the eyebrows, and especially in the blue eyes.
Lowell swung his feet off the table and stood up. He held his arms out to his son, marveling at how much he had grown from the last time he had seen him. Peter-Paul von Greiffenberg Lowell walked across the room and extended his hand formally to his father. Lowell ignored it and wrapped his arms around the boy. The boy was stiff in his arms, and after a moment his father released him, feeling hurt and foolish.
“What were you doing in Kassel?” Lowell asked.
“I was there with friends,” Peter-Paul said.
“Doing what?”
“There was a festival of Humphrey Bogart films,” the boy said. “Are you familiar with the films of Humphrey Bogart?”
The little sonofabitch is being sarcastic.
“Yes, indeed,” Lowell said. “I’ve been told there is a film festival in Berlin.”
“December thirty-first to January five,” the boy said, nodding.
“Would you like to go?”
“It is an industry affair,” the boy said, “not open to the general public.”
“I asked if you would like to go?” Lowell said, aware his smile was strained.
“Your father has been invited, Peter-Paul,” the Graf said.
“By someone in the industry?” the boy asked. There was now a flicker of interest in his voice.
“Yes.”
“May I ask who?”
“Does that matter?” Lowell asked, somewhat sharply.
“It would affect how much of the festival one could get into see,” the boy said.
“Are you familiar with the films of Brian Hayes?” Lowell asked, mocking his son’s question of a moment before.
“And he has invited you?”
“He has invited us,” Lowell said.
“Phantastisch!” the boy said.
When he smiled, he looked very much like his mother.
The Berets Page 30
