The Lieutenants

by W. E. B Griffin

  There was a rap on the door. Lowell’s finger tightened on the trigger before he realized if somebody was going to burst in to murder them in their beds, it was unlikely he would knock first. He took his finger off the trigger, but kept it inside the stamped metal loop of the trigger guard, and kept the rifle at his shoulder.

  “Duty officer!” a voice called.

  Felter jerked the door open. Light from the corridor flooded the room.

  The duty officer saw Lowell, and Felter, poised for action. He put his hands up, half mockingly, in surrender.

  “I guess you heard it,” he said. “Where did it come from?”

  “Next door, I think,” Felter said, lowering his pistol. Lowell had no idea where the sound had come from. The duty officer turned and walked further down the corridor. Felter went after him, and Lowell followed, feeling foolish, carrying the Garand at port arms.

  There was no answer to the duty officer’s knock at the field artillery captain’s door. He pushed it open.

  “Shit!” he said. He went into the room.

  Lowell looked over Sanford Felter’s head. The field artillery captain who had been kicked out of the Constab along with Lowell had lain down on his bed, put the muzzle of his .45 in his mouth, and blown the top of his head all over the brocade wallpaper of his room. His face bore a startled look. His eyes were wide open, as if he was looking at them.

  Craig Lowell barely made it back to his room and the toilet bowl before throwing up.

  He was still throwing up when the duty officer came into their room and picked up the telephone.

  “Sorry to bother you at this hour, Colonel, but I think maybe you’d want to come up to 707. That new captain just blew his head off.”

  He looked in at Lowell, sprawled sick and scared on the floor.

  “You all right?” he asked, and there was genuine concern in his voice.

  Lowell nodded his head.

  (Three)

  A sergeant came to their table in the dining room the next morning and told Felter that the adjutant wanted to see him.

  Felter and Lowell said good-bye, shaking hands.

  “Be careful,” Felter said. “For God’s sake, don’t do anything foolish.”

  “Same to you,” Lowell said.

  They were both aware of and surprised by the emotion they felt at parting.

  Felter started to ask Lowell one final time if he wanted him to tell the adjutant he spoke German, but he decided against it. He would make up his mind when he saw the adjutant.

  Thirty minutes later, Felter walked into the room where Lowell lay on the bed, waiting for word that it was time to leave. Lowell said nothing as Felter walked into the room. Felter went to the closet and took out his Valv-Paks.

  “The army, in its infinite wisdom, has decided to save your ass,” Felter said.

  “Goddamn you, I told you to keep your mouth shut,” Lowell said, angrily, sitting up on the bed.

  “I have just been appointed a replacement for the captain,” Felter said. “We’re both going to the 27th Royal Hellenic Mountain Division…whatever the hell that is.”

  (Four)

  It was almost exactly two hundred air miles from Athens to Ioannina on the northern shore of Lake Ioanninon. There the headquarters of the 27th Royal Hellenic Mountain Division was located. It was just over twice that distance by road. They averaged twenty-five miles per hour over the road in a Dodge three-quarter-ton weapons carrier. The road was mostly dirt, or more accurately, stones, and narrow; and it wound around one precipitous granite mountain after another. From time to time, they passed through small villages of whitewashed stone houses perched precariously to fit whatever flat space had been available when they had been built.

  They were twenty-six hours on the road, stopping overnight at Preveza on the Ionian Sea, because, as the sergeant driving the truck told them, the commies held the roads at night.

  Headquarters of the 27th Hellenic was in a two-story whitewashed stone building with walls eighteen inches thick. It was further reinforced to the level of the second floor by a mound of sandbags tapering toward the top. A pair of swarthy-skinned, unshaven Greeks wearing British Army uniforms were on guard outside. British .303 Lee-Enfield rifles were slung over the shoulders. They watched without expression as Felter and Lowell removed their bedrolls, their packs, their luggage, and the cases of ammunition from the back of the truck.

  A competent-looking American master sergeant in British woolen battle trousers, a crumpled GI khaki shirt, and British hobnailed boots waved them inside the building. He did not salute.

  “The colonel’ll be back for supper,” he said. “You want something to eat?”

  When they nodded, he said, “We have Greek and GI rations. The Greek gives you the shits until you get used to it. The GI rations make you sick, period.”

  A Greek woman with a scarf around her head and in a voluminous black shirt served them lamb stew on tin plates, black coffee, and a large chunk of dark bread.

  The colonel, when he showed up, turned out to be a wiry red-haired lieutenant colonel wearing the crossed flags of the Signal Corps.

  “My name is Hanrahan,” he said. “You’ll be working for me.” Then he switched to Greek and, watching them carefully, talked for about thirty seconds. Then he shook his head in disgust when it was obvious that neither of them understood a word he was saying.

  “That was too much to expect, I guess,” he said, in English. “There’s probably five thousand officers, Greek-Americans, who would give their left nut to come over here. And what do I get? No offense, gentlemen, but this is a fucked-up war.”

  He showed them a map. They were thirty miles from the Albanian border. Numbers on the map indicated the height of various mountain peaks from 5,938 feet to 8,192 feet. Lowell knew they were high, but he hadn’t thought that high.

  “Our mission,” Colonel Hanrahan said, “is to keep the bastards from shipping supplies from Albania into Greece. There’s no way in hell we can block every goat path, but we can block the roads. We do this from emplacements on hilltops, like something in the Lives of the Bengal Lancer. Little forts. They have machine guns for self-protection and mortars to cover the roads.

  “The way it’s set up is that I’m the advisor to the division. There are three regiments, each of them with three American officers—two majors and a captain. Each battalion has an advisor, supposed to be a lieutenant, but most of them are noncoms. And there are noncoms with some of the companies.

  “There’s nothing we can tell these people about fighting. They’ve really got a hard-on for the communists. Vice versa, of course. They learn quick, but most of them don’t know diddly shit about vehicles, jeeps, trucks, and especially tracked vehicles. That’s where you’ll come in, Lieutenant.”

  “Sir, I don’t know anything about tracked vehicles,” Lowell confessed.

  “That figures,” the colonel said. “And what’s your speciality, Lieutenant?”

  “I just finished Ranger School,” Felter said.

  “Great. We need Rangers here about as much as we need armored officers who don’t know anything about tracked vehicles.”

  “Sir, I can handle some tanks. Drive them, I mean,” Felter said. “I’ve had familiarization training.”

  Hanrahan looked at Felter with renewed interest.

  “Where did you get that?”

  “At West Point, sir.”

  “You went to the Academy?” Hanrahan was now really interested.

  “For two years, sir.”

  “Why did you march away from the Long Gray Line, Lieutenant?” Hanrahan asked, dryly.

  “I was commissioned as a linguist, sir.”

  “What languages?”

  “Slavic, mostly, Colonel. German. Some French.”

  “Greek?”

  “No, sir. I hope to learn it here.”

  “You will,” Hanrahan said. “I can use your Russian, Lieutenant.”

  Felter nodded, but said nothing.

 
; “I have nothing against West Pointers, Lieutenant,” Hanrahan said. “Despite the fact that I too am a product of Beast Barracks.”

  There was no reaction, though Hanrahan looked closely at Felter’s face.

  “We’re getting a steady supply of ammunition for the 81 mm mortars, and for the 4.2 inchers,” Colonel Hanrahan went on. “They fly it in by English seaplane, which can just about manage to land on the lake. We’re building up supplies of American small arms ammunition. And we’re starting to get some M1s. What I think I’m going to do with you guys is send you around to the companies, one at a time, with either a GI who speaks Greek, or a Greek who speaks English. You will instruct their officers and noncoms in the M1. They will instruct their men. When they know how to take it apart and put it together again, you bow out. They know all there is to know about shooting.

  “We got a couple of armored sergeants here…all the noncoms are good men, by the way. You guys just leave them alone, understand? The sergeants will teach you what they can about the M8 armored car, Lieutenant. Keeping them running is your job from here in. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir,” Lowell said.

  “Either of you have any questions?” the colonel asked.

  Lowell said nothing. The colonel looked at Felter. “You look as if you have something on your mind, Felter. Let’s have it.”

  “Sir,” Felter said. “I just wondered about you being Signal Corps.”

  “I’m detailed infantry, Lieutenant, if that’s what’s bothering you. But I’m Signal Corps. I came to Greece in 1942 as a second john to operate a radio station for the OSS. And I stayed. And when the war was over I went home. And now they’ve sent me back, because I know these people, OK?”

  “I didn’t mean to sound out of line, sir,” Felter said.

  “Felter, when I think you’re out of line, you’ll know it,” the colonel said. For the first time, he smiled at them. Lowell was warmed by it, and smiled back.

  “If you knew what I was thinking, Lowell, I don’t think you’d be smiling,” the colonel said. “For what I was thinking was that instead of the trained, combat-experienced, Greek-speaking officers I was promised, I just inherited two lieutenants, one even dumber than the other.”

  “I would say, sir,” Lowell said, “that that would be a reasonable statement of the situation.”

  “And I was smiling because it had just occurred to me that while Felter demonstrated his dumbness by asking what a flag waver is doing here, you were too dumb to notice anything was wrong.”

  But his smile was still warm.

  “If you can remember that,” he said, “that you are dumb, and keep your mouth shut and your eyes open until you see how things are, and if you can use that M1, you just might stay alive.”

  He reached into the drawer of his battered desk and came out with a strange-looking bottle and three small water glasses.

  “The cocktail hour, gentlemen,” he said. “The booze is known as uouzo. It tastes like licorice. After a while you get used to it.”

  He poured the liquid in glasses and handed each of them one.

  (Five)

  No. 12 Company, 113th Regiment, 27th Royal Hellenic Mountain Division consisted of a Greek captain, a pair of lieutenants, three sergeants, a half dozen corporals, sixty-three other ranks, and an Alabama-reared Greek-American sergeant. The force was just about equally divided between two rock fortresses on either side of a narrow road winding down a valley.

  The Greek-American sergeant, who gave his name as Nick, was a pudgy young man in his mid-twenties with curly blond hair. He wore no helmet or any other headgear. He wore GI OD trousers, a GI sweater, and over that a British battle jacket. Like everybody else, he wore hobnailed British boots. On the shoulder of the British battle jacket was the Greek cross, above which were superimposed, in Greek and English, the words America. He had a .45 automatic jammed into his waistband; and a Browning automatic rifle was slung over his shoulder.

  As the American sergeant walked over to the half-track in which Lieutenant Craig Lowell had driven up the mountainside, Lieutenant Lowell was quite as impressed with him as he had been with the corporal who had called him a “miserable pissant” on his first day of basic training.

  The difference, Lowell realized, was that I have been sent up here to command him. A chain of thought ran through his mind, triggered by the .30–06 caliber Browning automatic rifle the sergeant had slung over his shoulder.

  The BAR was actually a light machine gun which could empty its 20-round magazine in the time it took to fart.

  The weapon, in the hands of somebody who knew how to shoot it, was of the same quality as the Garand. In other words, one hell of a fine weapon. Private Lowell had taken a great deal of pleasure on the Fort Dix, New Jersey, rifle range in mastering the BAR; and his proficiency had both awed and annoyed the corporal who hated college boys generally and handsome college boys from Harvard in particular.

  The BAR was a heavy sonofabitch, not the sort of thing one carried fifty feet further than one had to. Sergeant Nick What-everhesaid was not carrying it around for the hell of it and certainly not to impress anybody. Furthermore, the sergeant had removed the bipod normally fitted to the barrel to steady the weapon when it was being fired. That suggested that he carried the BAR frequently and as a personal weapon. And that suggested two things: that the sergeant was really a soldier, and that there was something to shoot at.

  For the first time, he realized the absurdity of his position. He had no business being here as a private soldier, and absolutely none as an officer. He wondered why he wasn’t terrified. In fact, he was excited. They call that naiveté, he thought. Also known as stupidity.

  The sergeant touched his hand to his eyebrow in sort of a salute, and Lowell returned it as casually. He had one further thought: that is the kind of salute an experienced sergeant throws a second lieutenant fresh from Officer Candidate School. If this sergeant had any idea that I know about ten percent of what the bottom man in any OCS class knows, he would be thumbing his nose at me.

  The sergeant looked in the back of the half-track. There was a case of sixteen M1 rifles, plus cases of ammunition, cases of mortar shells, tin cans of .303 British ammunition, and cases of rations.

  “Are those M1s for us?” the sergeant asked.

  Lowell looked at the sergeant and wondered what would happen if he told him the truth: “See here, Sarge. Talk about fuck-ups. I don’t know the first fucking thing about being an officer. What I would like to do is have you take over, tell me what to do, and see if you can keep me from getting hurt.”

  “Are those for us, Lieutenant?” the sergeant asked again.

  “Right,” Lieutenant Lowell said, getting out of the truck. “The idea is that I’m to give basic instruction to the officers.” He didn’t sound as unsure of himself as he thought he would.

  “It’s about time we gave these guys something to fight with,” Nick said. “Come on in the CP; I’ll introduce you to the officers.” He took Lowell’s arm and led him into a bunker built of sandbags laid around enormous granite boulders.

  The commanding officer was an olive-skinned man with a flowing black mustache. There was a five-inch scar on his right cheek. He was the toughest-looking man Lowell had ever seen. This guy’s going to see right through me, Lowell thought. When the captain offered his hand, his calloused grip was like steel. Incongruously, he smiled at Lowell as if he was really glad to see him.

  The other officers were shy.

  The captain with the black mustache put his hand on Lowell’s shoulder and led him through the rear exit to the bunker. Outside was a mortar position, a 3.5 inch mortar with cases of ammo stacked for use. It was in a natural depression in the boulders, and like the bunker itself, reinforced with sandbags to fill in spaces between boulders. There were rifle-firing positions around its perimeter.

  Still smiling broadly, the captain unslung his Lee-Enfield rifle.

  “He says,” Nick translated, “that this is what they have
now, and would you care to try it?”

  “Thank you,” Lowell said, and took the Lee-Enfield and examined it. He had never seen one up close before he had seen them in the arms room in Athens.

  The broadly smiling captain rattled off something else.

  “He says he wants you to try it,” Nick said.

  “What am I supposed to shoot at?” Lowell asked.

  The captain seemed to understand that. He took the Enfield back, dropped into an almost prone position in one of the firing positions and aimed down into the valley. There was a small concrete kilometer marker beside the road. Lowell thought it must be at least two hundred yards away.

  With sign language, the captain indicated that that was what he meant. He lay down and very quickly pushed the safety off and fired. Lowell realized that around here people always carried a round in the chamber.

  A chunk flew off the kilometer marker. The captain got to his feet, rapidly worked the action of the rifle, and handed it to Lowell with another of his broad smiles, which by now Lowell suspected were anything but sincere.

  “I guess he wants to see if you know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Nick said.

  Lowell lowered himself into the firing position.

  I’m going to miss that goddamned thing, and then what the fuck am I going to do?

  He fired. There was a puff of dust in the middle of the road. He had missed by six feet.

  He furiously worked the action, chambering another round, and fired again. He missed again and was horribly humiliated. Both the American, Nick, and the Greek captain were smiling at him. He was supposed to be an expert, and he couldn’t hit a foot square target at two hundred yards. He looked at the Enfield’s sights, and realized he hadn’t the faintest idea how to change them.

  “Hand me my M1,” he said. When he put the Garand to his shoulder and pushed the safety off, he thought for the first time that he had not fired it. It was not zeroed. It would have been better to have kept the Enfield and try to hit the goddamned kilometer marker with Kentucky windage.