The Berets

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Peter-Paul lives in Europe, Stenday,” Lowell said, “to explain the accent.”

  “Oh,” Stenday said.

  One of the neat young German men came to the table.

  “I have a message for you, Herr Oberst,” he said. “I had no idea where you were.” The last was a reprimand.

  “I was safe in the hands of the MPs,” Lowell said. He ripped open the envelope the man handed him. It was a photocopy of a cablegram:

  DOTHAN ALA 3 JAN 1962

  VIC RCA

  C W LOWELL

  SCHLOSS GREIFFENBERG

  MARBURG AN DER LAHN WEST GERMANY

  POPPA SAYS COME HOME ALL IS FORGIVEN

  MAGGIE

  Poppa was obviously Major General Paul T. Jiggs. Maggie in the comic strip was married to Jiggs. Whatever it was, it was some sort of good news. He looked at his watch. It was nine-fifteen, or four-fifteen in the States. He was not going to risk Jiggs’s ire by getting him out of bed. He would have to wait until Charley had taken his pictures over the wall to find out what was really going on.

  The rest of the morning went very well. Charley was delighted to be able to photograph the minefields on the East side of the wall. He even took a few pictures of East Germans laying the mines. To Lowell’s surprise and relief, his son was outraged at the notion that people should be kept behind a wall.

  At half-past twelve he got through to Paul Jiggs at Fort Rucker. Jiggs had just walked into his office.

  “That report you had something to do with was rejected as unacceptable,” Jiggs said.

  “Damn!” Lowell said, bitterly. “How badly was it cut?”

  “It was returned for ‘reexamination,’” Jiggs said.

  “Oh. Christ. So that’s why I’m forgiven. I’m the reexaminer.”

  “Yes, you are,” Jiggs said. “Let me read you something, Craig. Quote: ‘I shall be disappointed if the army’s reexamination merely produces logistically oriented recommendations to procure more of the same, rather than a plan for employment of fresh and perhaps unorthodox concepts which will give us a significant increase in mobility.’ End quote.”

  “Read that again,” Lowell said. Jiggs did.

  “Not to mention any names, was there once a band named after the man who signed that?” Lowell asked.

  “I don’t know about a band—Oh. Yes. There was a band by that name.”

  Lowell was exultant. Secretary of Defense McNamara had not only rejected the cutback request for 250 airplanes as being inadequate, he had as much as ordered plans for an air-mobile division.

  “We won,” Lowell said. “Presuming he means it.”

  “He means it. How soon can you come home?”

  “Right away,” Lowell said. “Just as soon as I can get on a plane.”

  Peter-Paul von Greiffenberg Lowell’s only reaction to his father’s announcement was anger: His father’s departure would mean the end of his being Charley-the-photographer’s coolie.

  “Why don’t you ask Grandfather if I mightn’t stay?”

  Peter-Paul sulked on the Pan American flight to Frankfurt am Main. He was still feeling sorry for himself and annoyed with this near stranger who appeared at odd intervals in his life when he got in the Mercedes that would carry him back to Marburg an der Lahn.

  He did not look out the windows of the car, so he did not see his father waving good-bye to him.

  (Three)

  Pan American Flight 304

  Clipper City of San Francisco

  Above the Ruhr

  2130 Hours, 4 January 1962

  The Pan-American stewardess did the modesty squat in the aisle beside the next to the last double row of seats on the right. Lowell was slumped back in the chair, holding a legal pad against his knee. If McNamara wanted “unorthodox concepts,” unorthodox concepts he would get; and there was no reason they should not be drafted on an airplane. He looked at the stewardess in annoyance.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Lowell,” she said, flashing him what he thought of somewhat unkindly as the Stewardess Smirk.

  “Yes?”

  “When all the seats in first class aren’t taken, we usually move soldiers up from tourist.”

  He looked at her in some confusion. He had been deep in thought, trying to recall from memory the interlocking facts that affected the turning of a truck-transportable infantry division into a division capable of moving itself entirely by air. T-many troops could be moved by H-many Bell HU-1B helicopters. H-many Bell HU-1B helicopters required RWA-many rotary-wing aviators, plus M-many Maintenance Platoons, plus F-many fuel trucks plus SE-many spare engines. M-many Maintenance Platoons would require H-many more helicopters.

  That was a nice thing for Pan American to do, he thought. It would not occur to Lufthansa. But why tell me? Does she want me to give her a medal?

  She dropped her eyes to the empty seat beside her, on which he had placed his open attaché case.

  “Oh, sure,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “Thank you, sir,” she said.

  He closed the attaché case and put it under his seat. In every silvery cloud, he thought, there had to be a black lining. He was going to get as a seat partner some sergeant’s wife with a babe-in-arms or, worse, some finance corps officer who would regale him with the intimate details of the burden he had shouldered paying the troops on alien shores. In either event, he would not be able to get much work done.

  The soldier appeared three minutes later.

  The soldier deposited an attaché case on the seat and then took off the uniform tunic. The soldier had captain’s bars and a medical caduceus on her tunic, and a set of knockers that placed a severe strain on the buttons of her shirt.

  “Hello,” the captain said, displaying a mouthful of very uniform, very white teeth. The captain subjected her shirt buttons to another stress test when she reached up, unpinned, and then removed her uniform cap. The captain’s hair was an admirable shade of red.

  “Good evening,” Lowell said.

  The captain slipped into the aisle seat.

  “I’m a little embarrassed at Pan Am’s charity,” she said. “But the alternative was remaining a sardine.”

  “I’m delighted to have you,” Lowell said.

  “I would be annoyed,” she said, “if I had paid whatever it costs to ride up here, and someone appeared who was getting a free ride.”

  “We must all be prepared to make little sacrifices for the boys and girls in service,” Lowell said.

  The captain did not think that was especially funny. Her pale blue eyes, which were framed by dark red eyebrows, said so. But she said nothing aloud.

  There are several reasons why I am suddenly overwhelmed with lust, Lowell thought. For one thing, I haven’t been laid in nearly twenty-four hours. For another, there is somethingerotic about a female in uniform, something like the eroticism of women running around an apartment in a man’s shirt in lieu of pajamas. But what it really is is that I am excited about what McNamara wrote. That is probably the ultimate perversion.

  The captain decided to be gracious.

  “Were you in Germany long?” she asked.

  “A little over a week,” Lowell said.

  “Then you didn’t get to see very much, did you?” the captain asked.

  “I saw the wall,” Lowell said.

  The stewardess reappeared.

  “We have cocktails,” she said. “But you have to pay for them, I’m afraid.”

  “It will be my pleasure,” Lowell said.

  “You’ve made enough sacrifice for the boys and girls in service,” the captain said. “I’ll have a Scotch and water, please. And bring this gentleman whatever he’d like to have.”

  “His drinks come with his ticket,” the stewardess said.

  “Scotch,” Lowell said.

  “In that case,” the captain said, “bring him a double.”

  Lowell chuckled, and the captain smiled at him.

  When the drinks came, he raised his to hers.

  “Can w
e start all over again?” he said.

  “All right,” she said.

  “Tell me, Captain,” Lowell said, “how do you like nursing?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, smiling artificially, “I’ve never been a nurse.”

  “But I thought I saw a caduceus,” he said, confused.

  “You did,” she said, smiling at his discomfiture. “But there was no N on it.”

  “You’re a doctor?” he blurted.

  “That really surprises you, doesn’t it?” she asked.

  “I didn’t know the army had any female doctors,” he said.

  “They are trying very hard not to,” she said. “Would you like me to tell you how that works?”

  “Yes,” he said. “If you’re talking, I can’t get my foot in my mouth.”

  “There are two kinds of officers in the army,” she said. “Did you know that?”

  “Only two?”

  “There are regular officers and reserve officers,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  “But that’s not as simple as it sounds,” she said. “There aren’t enough regular officers to go around.”

  “Why not?”

  “They have sort of a club,” she said. “They don’t let a lot of people in the club. Like women.”

  “I thought there were women in the regular army.”

  “WACs,” she said. “Not medical corps officers. Or for that matter armor officers or infantry officers. Just WACs.”

  “I see.”

  “So what happens, to cut a long story short…this must be boring you out of your mind.”

  “On the contrary, I’m fascinated,” he said.

  She smells of soap, he thought. It was a delightful smell.

  “Because they don’t have enough spaces for regular officers to go around, what they do is have reserve officers. When on active duty, reserve officers are equal to regular officers. Did you ever read any Orwell?”

  “‘Some animals are more equal than others,’?” he asked.

  “Right,” she said. “It’s delightful to meet someone who reads books. I have been around people who don’t read, period.”

  “Soldiers, you mean?” he asked.

  “And officers,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  “As I was saying, about reserve officers and regular officers,” she went on, “since the medical corps doesn’t have women as regular army officers, and since the medical corps needs doctors, what they do is commission women as reserve officers and call them to active duty—temporarily—promising them the moon, plus two dollars.”

  “I see,” he said. “I’m getting the feeling that you’re not too wild about being in the army.”

  “Are you really?” she asked. “Well, what happens is that when a woman who is on active duty as a reserve officer completes her three years of service and wants to get out of the army, they suddenly realize they don’t have enough people in her specialty, so they declare her to be essential.”

  “Is that what happened to you?”

  “Uh-huh,” she said. “I was supposed to get out of the army this month. Now I have to stay another year.”

  “I see.”

  “What really burns me up is that if I wanted to stay in the army,” she said, “and applied for a regular commission, they would pat me on the head and say, ‘Sorry, little lady, the army is a man’s game, and you can’t play.’”

  “What is your specialty?”

  “I’m a psychiatrist,” she said. Then she saw the look on his face. “Why does that surprise you?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “You don’t look like a psychiatrist.”

  “Very funny,” she said. “But enough of this gay, idle chatter about girlish things. What were you doing in Germany? What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m an armor officer,” Lowell said. “Lieutenant colonel. Regular army.”

  She looked at him to make sure he wasn’t kidding.

  “Then what are you doing in first class, wearing a five-hundred-dollar suit and a thousand-dollar wristwatch?”

  “I’ve also read a book or two,” he said. “Observant little lady, aren’t you?”

  “Touché, Colonel,” she said. “But that doesn’t answer my question.”

  “I was sitting here minding my own business,” Lowell said. “When Pan American dumped a charity case in my lap.”

  “Oh, you do play nasty, don’t you?” she said. She seemed pleased.

  “You said it, little lady,” Lowell said. “The army’s a man’s game.”

  “If you call me ‘little lady’ one more time, I will pour my drink in your lap,” she said.

  “That would be assault upon a superior officer, and they would send you to Fort Leavenworth to make small rocks from big ones. That would be a good deal less pleasant than sitting in a comfortable chair, listening to people tell you all about their toilet training.”

  “You are such an all-around regular-army male supremacist sonofabitch,” she said, “that I think I like you.”

  “You’re just saying that to get me on your couch,” he said.

  “Your wife wouldn’t like that,” she said.

  “How do you know there is a wife?” he asked.

  “Are you saying there isn’t?”

  “How did a nice girl like you get to be a shrink?”

  “If you ever say shrink to me again, you will get the drink in your lap,” she said. “We were talking about your wife.”

  “No wife,” he said.

  “I get a lot of people your age who never married on my couch,” she said.

  “I didn’t say I had never been married,” he said. The stewardess walked past. Lowell snapped his fingers, caught her attention, and signaled for two drinks.

  “If you had done that to me, you would have gotten the drinks in your lap,” the captain said.

  “Did you ever wonder if you might perhaps have a ‘drinks-in-the-crotch’ fixation?” Lowell asked.

  “God!” she said, and then she laughed. “I suppose I asked for that.”

  She looked at him, and for a moment their eyes met. Then she flushed and looked away.

  “What happened to the wife?” she asked. “She fled screaming home to mother?”

  “She died,” Lowell said.

  She looked at him again, remorse on her face. She colored again, too, but this time she didn’t look away.

  “Let’s try it one more time,” she said. “Hello, there, my name is Barbara Gillis. Is this seat occupied?”

  “Please sit down, Doctor,” Lowell said. “I’m grateful for the company. My name is Craig Lowell.”

  “I’ve very pleased to meet you, Colonel Lowell,” she said, offering her hand.

  “I’m very pleased to meet you, Dr. Gillis,” he said. “Traveling far?”

  Her hand was soft and warm, and he let go of it reluctantly.

  “Fort Bragg, actually,” she said. “Do you know it?”

  “I get there from time to time,” he said. “Perhaps we could have dinner or something.”

  “Or something,” she said.

  XII

  (One)

  U.S.N.S. CARD

  10°30' North Latitude, 108°25' North Longitude

  (The South China Sea)

  1330 Hours, 10 January 1962

  The choppers, the Piasecki H-21s, the Bell H-13s, and the Sikorsky H-34s had taken off first, without problem. There had been one almost-incident with an H-34. A helicopter has the ability of taking off vertically and of remaining motionless with reference to the ground, once it is airborne. When during takeoff a helicopter pilot detects or senses that something is not going exactly as it should be going, he can raise the forward end of the rotor cone, which reduces or eliminates forward speed, and he can thereafter make a powered or unpowered descent—an autorotation—to the ground immediately under him.

  While taking off or landing, an experienced helicopter pilot is always aware of what is directly under him in case somethi
ng goes wrong. If he has to land, in other words, he wants to land on the runway, or the taxiway, or the grass beside the runway, and not in treetops or on top of parked aircraft.

  As one of the H-34s took off, a red Fuel Warning light on the instrument panel lit up. Very quickly and automatically, aware that he was then fifteen feet or so above the forward edge of the Card’s landing deck, the pilot raised the leading edge of his rotor cone and lost forward velocity. He then considered the problem. There are three reasons a Fuel Warning light will illuminate: (1) The fuel supply is near exhaustion; (2) there is some sort of problem in transferring the fuel from the fuel tanks to the engine; or (3) the goddamn light is broke.

  The pilot has personally supervised the fueling of his aircraft, taking particular pains to ensure that there was no water in the avgas. If there was some sort of problem with fuel transfer, the engine would be running roughly or would have stopped. The engine was running like a Swiss watch. Ergo, the goddamned Fuel Warning light was fucked up.

  It had taken the H-34’s pilot no more than three seconds from the time the Fuel Warning light had started flashing to reach this conclusion, and he spent another second looking at his co-pilot to see if he had any idea. When the pilot shrugged and made an I-haven’t-the-foggiest face, the pilot lowered the nose of the helicopter and resumed his takeoff procedure.

  He had completely forgotten that the airfield from which he had taken off was unlike any other airfields with which he had experience. This one was moving in the same direction as he was, at approximately twenty-five miles an hour.

  While he was holding the Sikorsky in a hover, in other words, the “airfield” with its armor-plated “island” was catching up with him at twenty-five miles per hour. Some of the seventy-five or so people on the Card’s deck held their breaths, some swore, and some averted their eyes in the time it took the pilot to make up his mind and resume horizontal motion.

  Once it was clear that the H-34 was not going to be swatted out of the sky by the aircraft carrier’s island, spewing flaming avgas over the deck and the people and aircraft on it, Major Philip S. Parker IV found himself chuckling. The two fat, dumb, and happy jackasses in the H-34 had no idea how close they had been to disaster. The proof of that came almost immediately, when the H-34 swung from side to side in a cheerful gesture of “so long.”