The Generals

by W. E. B Griffin

  “I was acting as I believed the general would wish to me act, sir,” Harke said.

  “Did you listen to what you just said? It’s an admission that you really believe if I had been here, and didn’t get all the assets I thought I needed, that I would have jumped in an airplane and left my command with the balloon about to go up and rushed off to DCSOPS and told them those nasty boys in JAF were picking on me. For Christ’s sake, Ken, you’re an officer. When an officer gets an order he doesn’t like, he salutes and says ‘Yes, sir’ and tries his damnedest to carry it out.”

  “Am I to understand that General Boone believes I should be relieved, sir?” Harke said.

  “I’m sure he thinks you should, but if you’re really asking did he tell me to relieve you, no. He left that decision to me. To be truthful, Ken, I would relieve you if I had somebody to replace you. But I don’t. Until this Cuban thing is over, I need you. You will not be relieved for the moment.”

  “In that circumstance, sir,” Harke said, angrily, “I can see no alternative but to respectfully demand, since you do not trust me, that I be relieved of my duties.”

  Now Howard’s face tightened in anger.

  “‘Demand’?” he quoted furiously. “‘Demand’? For Christ’s sake! Sitting in my chair really went to your head, didn’t it?”

  Howard stopped, and it was a moment before he trusted himself to go on.

  “General,” he said, finally, speaking calmly and perhaps even a bit more slowly than normal, “the question of your trustworthiness and misapplication of the authority entrusted to you came up in another connection. General Boone asked me if I wasn’t carrying my animosity toward Special Forces a little far. I told him that not only did I bear Special Forces no animosity, but that I had no idea what he was talking about. It was then I learned that in direct violation of my instructions to do nothing with the Special Warfare Center without my express permission you took it upon yourself to exclude them from this Cuban business. And you did that in a sneaky manner, by permitting General Hanrahan to go off hunting without telling him what was going on, and then ‘by not being able to get in touch with him.’”

  “Sir—”

  “Be silent!” Howard snapped. “It was my intention to permit you to retire gracefully, General, in consideration of your past service, and because it does the Army no good when it becomes known that it has been necessary to relieve a general officer. I have now concluded neither I nor the Army can afford that gesture. You stand relieved, sir. Get out of my headquarters, and get out within the next three minutes, and on your way out, take your Colonel Minor with you. You might suggest to him that when Hanrahan writes and I endorse his efficiency report, it might well behoove him, too, to plan for immediate retirement.”

  General Harke, white-faced, marched stiffly up the aisle and out of the War Room.

  General Howard’s stomach churned. He looked at his cigar, and then lit it with a shaking hand.

  Then he picked up the telephone beside him, and dialed a number from memory.

  “General Howard for General McKee,” he said. General McKee, the 82nd Division commander, came immediately on the line.

  “I don’t want to discuss this, Mac, and I don’t want you to play games with me. I just relieved Ken Harke, and I need a chief of staff, right now. You can’t have the job because I need you where you are, and I don’t want your chief of staff. Now, who can you give me?”

  He knew, as he had known on the trip from Benning to Bragg (realizing then that he might have to relieve Harke), that he had just the man for the job, but couldn’t have him. One of Paul Jiggs’s protégés, a lieutenant colonel named Lowell. Lowell would have been an ideal chief of staff. The problem was that he was a lieutenant colonel; the TO&E called for a major general. While Howard could dip to a promotable full colonel, he could not have an officer as junior as a lieutenant colonel.

  Thirty minutes later, a young colonel, who had begun the day fully expecting that he might today parachute into Cuba in the command of his regiment, was ordered to report to XVIII Airborne Corps Headquarters. His bitter disappointment at being denied command of his regiment in a combat jump was only partially alleviated by his realization that there was probably no quicker way for a colonel to become a brigadier general than to do a good job in the next week or ten days as Chief of Staff, XVIII Airborne Corps.

  (Three)

  Headquarters

  2nd Armored Division

  Fort Hood, Texas

  0645 Hours, 24 October 1962

  “General,” the post transportation officer, Colonel L. L. Sapphrey, said, “Major Gubbins has brought something to my attention that I thought I should bring to your attention, sir, as soon as possible.”

  Major Gubbins was the 2nd Armored Division’s transportation officer. He had, General Lemper thought, obviously carefully arranged for Colonel Sapphrey to make his pitch for him. Colonels have more influence with generals than majors. He thought that was a clever thing for Gubbins to do, and wondered if Sapphrey had done it because he had been tricked into it, or because he was as annoyed with Lieutenant Colonel C. W. Lowell as Gubbins obviously was. There was no question in General Lemper’s mind that Lowell was at the root of whatever it was.

  There had been a telephone call from Major Gubbins the previous afternoon: “Does the general know that the Engineer Light Equipment Company has been off-loaded? At the orders of a Lieutenant Colonel Lowell?”

  “No, I didn’t,” General Lemper had said.

  “Does the general approve?” Gubbins had asked.

  “I think we have to presume that Colonel Lowell had his reasons,” Lemper had said.

  He had no idea what Lowell was up to, but he had decided to give him twenty-four hours. That twenty-four hours was just about up.

  “General,” Colonel Sapphrey said, “these are the reports from the yardmaster.” He waved a sheaf of paper. “In the twelve-hour period from 1200 yesterday until 2400, at the orders of Colonel Lowell, one hundred and eighty-two railcars, mixed flat, box, and tanker, have been ordered unladen to New Orleans.”

  “Let me see that,” General Lemper said. As much trouble as they had getting railcars, something sounded wrong about sending any of them away unladen. And 182 railcars was a lot of railcars.

  The yardmaster’s report consisted of long columns of car numbers and some sort of a code General Lemper didn’t understand.

  “I don’t understand this,” he said.

  “I understand the same pattern is continuing, sir, in the period between the end of this yardmaster’s report and now,” Colonel Sapphrey said.

  “Can you look at this, Sapphrey, and tell me how many tanks have left?”

  “Yes, sir,” Sapphrey said. “It will take me a moment, sir.”

  Two minutes later, he reported that, if the figures could be believed, 217 tanks had left the yards on the trains in question.

  “And there would be more, you would say, Colonel, in the time since the end of this report?”

  “I would presume so, sir.”

  Lemper doubted that figure. As a logistic rule of thumb, under ideal conditions, he had always figured ten minutes per tank before the train was ready to roll. Six tanks per hour, twelve hours, seventy-two tanks. Two sidings capable of handling that, 144 tanks. Lowell was supposed to have loaded 180% of that figure.

  “I think I’ll go have a word with Colonel Lowell,” General Lemper said. “Perhaps you gentlemen would like to accompany me?”

  The Fort Hood rail marshaling yard was beyond the troop housing area and the tank parks. Beside the two-lane macadam road that ran from the tank parks was a dirt road, capable of handling two-way tank traffic. Tanks, because of their weight, cannot travel on macadam roads without almost immediately destroying the macadam surface and the base beneath it. On the other hand, because tanks are tracked vehicles, they can move with ease along badly chewed-up dirt roads. General Lemper saw that the dirt tank road was badly chewed up, which was not surprising,
considering how many tanks were being moved along it, six feet apart, two abreast. The tanks were dusty, and muddy, and there was the smell of diesel fumes in the air.

  When he got to the rail marshaling yards themselves, he saw that the double column of tanks did not turn into the marshaling yards. He was curious about that. At first he thought both columns were moving straight ahead, but as he got closer he saw that the left column, closest to the rail yards, split off and disappeared in the direction of the two loading docks in the marshaling yards.

  The rest of the column continued on, reforming itself into two columns, and disappeared from sight down the road along the tracks that left the marshaling yards.

  General Lemper saw a sergeant giving arm signals to one tank to turn off into the marshaling yard, and then to the tank behind it to continue moving straight ahead.

  “Jerry, go straight,” General Lemper said to his driver, a young and natty sergeant. Next to him sat Lieutenant Bill Cole, General Lemper’s aide-de-camp, and Major Gubbins. Colonel L. L. Sapphrey sat beside the general in the back of the olive-drab Chevrolet.

  The double line of tanks continued for a quarter of a mile, where it merged, under the hand signals of a sergeant, into one column. On the other side of the column, General Lemper spotted the observation windows of a caboose. As he watched it, it jerked into motion. He heard the crashing sound of a train starting up, and then, ten or fifteen seconds later, the sound of couplers crashing together as they do when a train stops.

  The train itself was mixed flatcars and boxcars. There was nothing on the flatcars, and the doors of the boxcars were open. In perhaps half of the box cars, General Lemper could see jeeps, three-quarter-ton trucks, their cargo and water trailers, wooden crates, and palletized cargos. Soldiers in fatigues were also in these cars, either leaning against the open doors, or on the floor dangling their legs over the side. In one car he saw two sergeants sitting in folding aluminum-and-plastic-webbing lawn chairs, holding what looked very much like cans of Schlitz in their hands.

  Most of the boxcars were empty, and all of the flatcars were unladen. The reason for that became evident a moment later when they came to four drag lines, parked on the far side of the column of tanks and the railroad tracks.

  “Stop!” General Lemper ordered. He was out of the car the moment it halted.

  Colonel Sapphrey started to follow him, as did the officers in the front seat.

  “Stay,” General Lemper ordered, and gestured with his hand.

  Then he trotted along the column of tanks.

  He heard some soldier say, “Jesus, there’s the general.”

  He reached the end of the column of tanks.

  Its four-man crew was standing to one side.

  One of them spotted him.

  “Atten-hut!”

  “As you were,” General Lemper said.

  A heavily perspiring master sergeant was standing on the hood of a three-quarter-ton truck. His fists were held balled at waist level, with the thumbs sticking up.

  As General Lemper watched, he began to make a slow up-and-down movement with his hands. There was the sound of diesel engines revving, and a moment later the ponging sound of steel cables being put under strain. The master sergeant raised his balled fists, thumbs extended, to the level of his ears. There was another roar of diesel engines, and then creaking; and the tank beside General Lemper rose, somewhat unsteadily, six feet into the air.

  The master sergeant gave another arm signal, and the tank moved sideward. The master sergeant swung his hands before his face, palms now open, and the sideward motion stopped.

  A horn blasted behind General Lemper, startling him. He turned and saw another M48A5 moving up where the lifted tank had been. All he could see of the driver was his head sticking out of the hatch. The kid looked torn between fear of the consequences of having blown his horn at the division commander and delight that he had made the old bastard jump.

  General Lemper moved out of the way.

  When he looked again, the M48A5 on the end of the cables was touching down on the flatcar.

  The master sergeant crossed his hands, palms down, in a horizontal movement at the level of his waist. For the first time he noticed General Lemper. He came to attention, saluted crisply, and then climbed off the hood of the three-quarter-ton truck.

  “What are you waiting for, an invitation?” he snarled at the tank crew. They ran quickly to the flatcar, freeing the cable hooks from the hoist points on the tank. Lemper saw a sergeant first class, presumably the tank commander, signal the heavy equipment operators that the cables were free, and as the train began to move a moment later, the four hooks rose into the air.

  “Excuse me, sir,” the master sergeant said, walking quickly past him. Lemper turned to watch him. First he signaled the driver to cut his engine, and he made a signal for the crew to get out.

  “I’ll go over this one more time,” the master sergeant said. “When the hooks come down, grab them and put your weight on them. Otherwise they won’t come all the way down. Then hook them up and get out of the way. As soon as it’s on the flatcar, climb on and unhook them. Then chain the tank in place with your own chains. If you don’t have your own chains, there’s a six-by-six a hundred yards down that has chains. Any questions?”

  There were no questions. The master sergeant walked quickly back to the three-quarter-ton truck and climbed onto the hood again.

  Which explained why he was sweating so much, General Lemper thought.

  He raised his wrist and pushed a button on his stainless steel chronometer.

  The train crashed into movement again. Two boxcars passed. One was empty. The next was the one with the two sergeants sitting in their lawn chairs. The train crashed to a stop again when a flatcar was in place.

  General Lemper watched as three more tanks were loaded, and then pressed the chronograph button again. When he looked at it, the elapsed-time dial showed fifteen minutes, forty-eight seconds.

  Call it sixteen minutes, the general thought. They were loading tanks at a rate of one every four minutes. Fifteen an hour, presuming they had another train ready to roll up the tracks following this one. One point five times as fast, under lousy conditions, as what he considered to be a satisfactory loading time under ideal conditions.

  Presuming he was still in command when this was over, General Lemper decided the division was going to spend a good deal of time practicing loading up. And he was going to look like a horse’s ass when this got back to General Boone.

  He walked to the three-quarter-ton and waited for the master sergeant to climb down off the hood.

  “Very impressive, Sergeant,” he said, as he returned the sergeant’s salute.

  “We’re really loading the fuckers, General,” the master sergeant said, with quiet pride.

  “Keep it up,” Lemper said. “Do you know where I can find Colonel Lowell?”

  The sergeant looked distinctly uncomfortable.

  “Where is he, Sergeant?” Lemper insisted.

  “I believe the colonel went to ask the quartermaster to reconsider refusing to loan us his big forklifts, General,” the sergeant said, formally.

  “Do you know why Colonel Lowell wanted the forklifts?”

  “I think he wants to load six-by-sixes with them, sir. I mean, onto flatcars, not the six-by-sixes theirselves.”

  “He’d probably be at the quartermaster warehouses?”

  “Yes, sir, probably,” the master sergeant said. He was obviously impatient to get back to work.

  “Carry on, Sergeant,” General Lemper said.

  “Yes, sir,” the master sergeant said.

  Why the hell did I say that? “Carry on, Sergeant”? I sound like David Niven in a movie about the British Army in India. All I need is jodhpurs and a riding crop.

  He walked back to the staff car. The driver held the door open for him, and he got in beside Colonel Sapphrey.

  “What’s going on here, sir?” Colonel Sapphrey asked.

&n
bsp; “I’m not sure,” General Lemper said, “but I am a devout believer in the philosophy that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Jerry, take us to the QM warehouse area, please.”

  “Yes, sir,” his driver said, and made a U-turn so he could head back toward the post.

  “General,” Colonel O. Richard Ambler, the post quartermaster, said, “I asked Colonel Mize to ask you to call me when you had a moment free. I know how busy you are. I didn’t expect you to come over here.”

  Lieutenant Colonel W. W. Mize was secretary of the general staff.

  “And what, Colonel,” General Lemper asked, guessing correctly what that was all about, “has Colonel Lowell done to the Quartermaster Corps?”

  “Colonel Lowell stated that he was acting with your full authority, sir, and that I was free to raise any objections I wished after I had complied with his requests.”

  “That’s the way it is,” General Lemper said.

  “I checked, of course, with Colonel Mize,” Colonel Ambler said, “and he said that was his understanding of the situation. So I permitted Colonel Lowell to take our forklifts.”

  “And?”

  “He has already rendered seven of them inoperable, General. They are not designed to lift the weight of a loaded six-by-six.”

  “Anybody hurt?”

  “Not so far, sir.”

  “Where is Colonel Lowell now?”

  “He’s here, sir,” the quartermaster said.

  “Here, where?”

  “He has men from the Engineers loading six-by-sixes on flatcars, sir.”

  “I thought you said that the forklifts won’t handle the load?”

  “They will not, sir,” the quartermaster said. “Eventually, the hydraulic hoses just give way. Or the tires. The tires literally explode, sir.”

  “Eventually” means that Lowell is managing to load probably more than one six-by-six before the hydraulic hoses or the tires fail, General Lemper thought.