Bayonet Skies

by John F. Mullins

  He refused to let it bother him. Time enough to get pissed off, when he got to Munich.

  “Germans want to get him for inciting to riot,” the MP captain said. “Along with aggravated assault and battery, assault with a deadly weapon, resisting arrest, and about a dozen other charges. Lucky they let us have him. He’d be staring out between the bars of a Munich jail for a long time. Frankly, I think they’re overreacting, but you know the Germans. They don’t like us too much anyway.”

  “Christ, what did he do?”

  “Not that much really. Punched out some fat burgher. Then when the security guards came he tried to take them on too. The ADW charge is for when he smacked one of them in the head with a beer stein after the guy tried to use a nightstick on him. Near as I can tell, when the police finally came he didn’t really give them a lot of trouble, except for calling them Nazis. Thus the resisting arrest charge. They worked him over pretty good before we got him. You know I’m going to have to send this Delinquency Report up to USAREUR, don’t you?”

  “No way around that?” Jim knew that when CINCUSAREUR, Commander in Chief, U.S. Army Europe, got the report Jerry’s career was effectively over.

  “No way. They’re super-sensitive about any American-German incident. Like the Krauts are doing us a favor, letting us stay here, instead of it being the opposite. Sorry.”

  “Okay.” Jim sighed. “Where do I sign?”

  Jerry had, indeed, been worked over. One eye was puffed shut, and he walked with a limp. Taking deep breaths caused obvious pain. Jim helped him into the car.

  “Okay,” he said as they pulled away from the city, “you want to tell me your side?”

  “Nothing much to tell, Dai Uy. Guilty as charged. Fat fuck pissed me off, so I dropped him.”

  “And just what did the fat fuck do to piss you off?” Jim persisted. He knew there had to be a story behind this, and he was desperate to find something that would help exonerate his NCO.

  Jerry snorted, then winced with the pain. He was silent for a moment, then, “You know what that son of a bitch tried to tell me, sir?”

  “That you’re ugly? Hell, you didn’t have to come to Munich to hear that.”

  Jerry tried to laugh, winced again. Then grew serious again. “We were talking, laughing. He said he’d been in the German Army during the war. On the Russian front, of course. I sometimes think the Western Campaign must have been the easiest one in history, what with all the Germans being on the Eastern Front. What’d they have at Normandy? A platoon of Boy Scouts?

  “Anyway, I told him I was a soldier too. At Bad Tölz. And the son of a bitch said, well then you understand.”

  “Understand what?” Jim asked.

  “That’s what I wondered. When I asked, he said the Special Forces had to understand what the Germans had to go through, because they had been accused of war crimes too. And that, of course, there were no real war crimes. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. So I asked him, what about Dachau and Auschwitz? And he said that nobody had actually died in those places, that the story of the Holocaust had been cooked up by the Allies in order to justify what they wanted to do to the Germans. Which was to keep them from their rightful place in the world. So I punched him.”

  Jim had heard the claim before. And each time it angered him more. There was a whole group of Germans out there who, it seemed, had learned nothing from the worst war in world history, people who still believed that Germany had a historic mission to rule the world.

  Still, his anger could be as nothing to Jerry’s. Jerry Hauck was half Jewish, half Sioux Indian. As he sometimes joked, lucky enough to be a member of both groups of people upon whom genocide had been attempted in the last hundred years. His father had grown up on a reservation, watching the last of his people and his culture succumb to alcohol and assimilation. His mother’s parents and most of the rest of her family had perished in one of the concentration camps the German had claimed didn’t exist.

  They were silent for the remainder of the trip, Jim searching his mind for a way out of the problem, Jerry undoubtedly pondering the various injustices of the world. Jerry, Jim often thought, suffered too much. Not for himself, necessarily, but for anyone else who found himself oppressed anywhere in the world. In Vietnam he had regularly stolen food from military convoys to give to the Montagnard villagers he had adopted. When one of his indigenous troops was killed he made very sure that the family was well taken care of, many times taking money out of his own pocket when he thought the official death gratuity too skimpy. And, Jim thought, God only knew what was going through his mind now that those same people were being shot wholesale. If he was suffering, Jerry must have been being ripped apart.

  Then a strategy to save Jerry came to him. It would be risky, and probably wouldn’t do a hell of a lot for his career, but that was okay. He didn’t have much of a career anyway.

  “Jerry,” he said, as they neared the gates of the Kaserne, “I want you to go to your BEQ, and I want you to stay there. The only time I better hear of you coming out is to go to the messhall. Else I’ll make what those Kraut cops did to you look like a love pat. Understand?”

  Jerry, who had been on the receiving end of the captain’s “counseling sessions” before, signaled his agreement. All he wanted to do right now was go to bed and try to heal up anyway. And wonder what he was going to do when they threw him out of the Army.

  “You wanted to see me, Captain Carmichael?” the battalion commander asked, shortly after Monday morning formation.

  “Yes, sir.” He told the colonel about Jerry Hauck’s transgression, leaving nothing out. Including the reasons, as he saw it, it had happened. Then he said, “I’d like you to give SFC Hauck an Article 15.”

  “Are you out of your goddamned mind!” The colonel clearly thought he was. An Article 15 was the highest form of nonjudicial punishment in the military. As such, any commander could administer it. Since, technically, team leaders were just that, leaders, and not officially in command, Lieutenant Colonel Grimstead was the appropriate official to administer it.

  However, the colonel’s attitude clearly showed that he knew what Jim was trying to do. If he gave Sergeant Hauck an Article 15, the NCO would already be punished. And thus they couldn’t court martial him and throw him out of the Army. Which would leave Colonel Grimstead in a very ticklish position with CINCUSAREUR. Not to mention with Colonel Casey, who had just that morning told him of his intention to finally get rid of the troublemaker.

  “No sir. At least I don’t think so. SFC Hauck deserves an Article 15. Nothing more. You’ve heard the story. The German deserved it, and probably a lot more. Sergeant Hauck is a hell of a fine soldier. He’s got four more years to retirement. Let him have it.” Jim was almost pleading by now.

  The battalion commander started on what Jim knew would be a long, boring, and totally irrelevant speech about the responsibilities of the United States Army and its men to the host country of West Germany, and how NCOs had to live up to the highest standards, and so forth. Jim cut him off.

  “Do those standards include not fucking your subordinate’s wife?” he asked.

  Grimstead was suddenly and uncharacteristically quiet. “And what do you mean by that?” he asked finally. The blowhard tone had left his voice. It was down to business.

  Jim pushed on. “Remember a small gasthaus just outside Lenggries? An afternoon in March last year? You coming downstairs with Joanne Whaley? Someone turning away so you couldn’t see his face? That was me, sir. So don’t give me any shit about standards. Now, are you going to give that Article 15, or am I going to have to go to the USAREUR IG and see if they want to give me a talk about standards?”

  “You son of a bitch,” Grimstead said, getting up and starting around the desk. “I’ll whip your goddamned ass!”

  “Oh, that’ll solve a hell of a lot. We duke it out here in the office, you whip my ass or I whip yours, and we’ve still got the problem. Admit it. You’re fucked. But you can at least plead i
gnorance if you do what I want. I’ll tell whoever asks that I didn’t give you all the facts in the matter, led you to think it was less serious than it was. You go on screwing Joanne, and I’ll keep my NCO, and sooner or later everyone will forget all about it.”

  Grimstead subsided in his seat. After a moment a small smile played about his lips. “You’re a devious son of a bitch, Carmichael,” he said.

  “I’ve been told that, sir.”

  “Siddown. I’ll give him the Article 15. You’re probably right. Hauck does deserve it. Lots of us deserve a lot more than we get. You think I’m a clown, don’t you?” he asked suddenly.

  “I know you do,” he said when Jim didn’t answer immediately. “Most of the other officers do too. Sometimes I wonder about it myself. Why I always feel so fucking useless. Could be I’m in a useless job, with nothing to do and nobody who gives a shit. Could be I’m a boring old fart anyway, and this just makes it worse. Could be I felt the need to be a young man just once again, even if it was between the thighs of a little slut. You ever feel useless, Jim?”

  “Fucking nearly every day, sir,” he replied.

  “Hell, you don’t need to call me sir,” said Grimstead. “I feel like we’re coconspirators now. That ought to call for first names.” He grinned. “Why do you feel useless? You’ve got a beautiful wife, soon have a kid; your career sucks, but so does everybody else’s here in this wonderful fucking peacetime Army. So why do you feel useless?”

  “You hit on the point. This wonderful fucking peacetime Army. Couple of years ago we were doing something. It might have been wrong, we might not have done it right; hell, for all I know maybe we shouldn’t have done it at all. But we were doing something. Now we’re practicing for something that will never come. Sort of like dry-humping.”

  Grimstead laughed. “That’s a good analogy,” he said. “I’ll remember it. Well, get Hauck in here and we’ll go through this charade. And if he fucks up again, neither you, nor I, nor God himself can help him. Your responsibility, Jim. I hope you’re ready for it.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Grimstead gave SFC Hauck the maximum allowable punishment under the provisions of Article 15 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. He was restricted to quarters for three months, banned from the NCO Club, and the colonel assured him that the paperwork would become a permanent part of his records. It was not enough to keep him from being promoted sometime in the future, but made it highly unlikely. Still, he would be allowed to stay in the Army.

  “Thanks, Captain,” Jerry said later in the team room.

  “Don’t thank me,” Jim said coldly. “There are a lot of good people who’ve put their asses on the line for you for a long time now, and frankly I’m beginning to wonder if you’re worth it.”

  A look of pain, frightening in its intensity, crossed Jerry’s face. He said nothing.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen now,” Jim continued. “First of all, you’re going to get some help with your drinking problem. You’re to set up an appointment with the counselor immediately, and you’ll do everything she says. You’re not to drink, at all. You’re restricted from the club officially, and that means the Rod and Gun Club too. If I get any reports you’ve been seen in a gasthaus off the Kaserne, I’ll increase the restrictions so that the only time you’ll be able to leave is when you’re on official duty. Is all that clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Hauck said, his face now set in grim lines. “Will that be all, sir?”

  “And don’t pull that bullshit on me!” Jim exploded. “We’ve been together too long for you to go into that officer/NCO mode. You need help with the alcohol. Like probably 50 percent of the people on this Kaserne. Difference between them and you is that it inevitably gets you in trouble. So you’re going to straighten that problem out. Christ, Jerry, don’t fight me on this.”

  After he had gone Jim sat thinking, what right do I have to come off as so holy? What I said about at least 50 percent of the people here needing help was true. Including me. The combination of cheap alcohol, boredom, and frustration was deadly. Maybe I should be the one seeing the counselor. But that was almost a sure kiss of death for an officer. Soon the word would get around, and you would be regarded as just a little bit off-center, not able to handle your own problems, the attempt to get help being regarded a sign of weakness. In a perverse way the system was far better disposed toward those who had an alcohol problem than those who were trying to get rid of it.

  The next couple of weeks were spent in normal garrison duty. Up at five, a quick cup of coffee, and to the battalion area for physical training. It usually consisted of twelve repetitions of the “daily dozen,” the standard Army calisthenics, and then a four-mile run. To spice up the standard fare, different events were often scheduled, like running up and back down the Brauneck Mountain. Only two miles up, but running steadily uphill was a killer. Few made it all the way to the top. Or there would be organized athletics: combat volleyball, pushball, grass drills. Injuries were common. The Special Forces soldier is by nature aggressive; has to be. Games were played with the intensity and commitment of combat. It was not uncommon to send five or six people to the dispensary after a particularly good game of pushball.

  Other days they would swim, endless laps in the Olympic-sized pool in the field house. Or go on rucksack marches, up and down the mountains so close outside the Kaserne. Those soldiers coming from Fort Bragg, which since the end of the involvement of the Special Forces in Vietnam had slacked off considerably on training and readiness, were in for a shock once they got to Bad Tölz. They could be seen behind the formation on the runs, puking and reeling from fatigue, falling farther and farther behind. But soon the fat around their middle would melt away, and they would be there ready to harass the next group of new guys. Nobody doubted that there was a need to be in shape. It was just so easy to fall out of the habit when not forced to do it. In this they were, as in other things, reflective of the society from which they came. Jim was often amused to see in the media the depiction of the Special Forces soldier as some sort of fanatic jock, a loner who spent all his time pumping iron and biting the heads off snakes. Such a person existed, he knew, but did not last long in the SF, where teamwork was all.

  After PT a quick shower, some breakfast, then on to the normal daily tasks. A lot of time was spent in maintaining proficiency in one’s own military specialty, and a lot more in cross-training. All detachments had to be skilled in cross-country and high-mountain skiing, since most people agreed that the only real way to get to the wartime operations areas would be on the ground. Everyone went to the ski schools; first to those given by the detachments, then to the more specialized courses conducted in the Winter Warfare Schools of France, Italy, Spain, and West Germany.

  It kept them busy. Jim thanked whatever powers might be for that. Otherwise his personnel problems would have been much worse.

  No one was content. Like him, they knew that they were preparing for a war that would never come. And they saw what was happening in the United States, a progressive gutting of the Army that most felt would end only when another war did come. One that they would not be ready for.

  Twice a week, after duty hours, he went to college courses given by the University of Maryland. All officers were supposed to have a college degree. It looked bad on your records if you didn’t. He had never figured out how having a degree made you a better combat leader, but that didn’t matter. Much to his surprise, once he started he found that he enjoyed it. He had always been a good student, able to grasp complex material, and now excelled at the classwork. In particular, the history classes fascinated him. Human existence, he saw, had been a regular progression of wars. There was always someone, somewhere, who wanted what the other person had. And was willing to kill him for it. And the ones who got killed were the ones who were not prepared to fight back. It made him sad for his country.

  He would probably have achieved higher grades were it not for his propensity for arguing with the teachers. Some of the
m, the older ones, were okay. The younger ones seemed to have been infected with the attitude that whatever the United States did, it was wrong. From his readings he knew that this was called the revisionist theory of history. While he knew that some history needed debunking, particularly that dealing with the Indian Wars, he doubted that all of it was untrue. And told the teachers so. They, being used to dealing with young, impressionistic students, were not happy with being called to task. So it reflected on his grade.

  He often shared his frustrations with Alix, who laughed and called him an inveterate troublemaker. “Can’t you see, darling,” she said after one particularly nasty fight with a young man Jim suspected, rightly, of staying in college so that he could avoid the war, “that it’s a matter of cooperate and graduate? None of this matters. You’re not going to change their minds. Nothing could do that. They may or may not believe strongly in their positions, but it would be too embarrassing to admit they’re wrong. So you’re only hurting yourself.”

  “So what I should do is just nod my head like one of those plastic puppies in the rear window of a redneck’s car, and agree to this bullshit?”

  She nodded. “And they’ll go away, and you’ll have your degree, and make major like you should. Ow!” she said as the baby gave her a particularly vicious kick.

  “See there, he agrees with me.” Jim laughed. “You’re raising another little troublemaker.”

  “God help us,” she sighed. She flipped over, her signal for a massage. He kneaded the tight muscles in her neck until they relaxed, moved down to the shoulders. He loved giving her a massage, feeling her soft skin move beneath his fingers, hearing the soft grunts of pleasure. She had told him once that it was what had decided her that she should marry him, the massage he gave her on the almost deserted beach at Big Sur, long before there was anything else physical going on between them. They’d had such fun then. Few responsibilities, going to class and studying Russian during the day and then practicing it on her at night, loving the faces she made when he mispronounced the words, long nights of love in her apartment in Carmel overlooking the sea. Now it was all career, and work, and worry.