As he watched the several hundred young men wolf down the steak and eggs, he had privately and personally been disturbed with his judgment that within a week one of five of them would likely be maimed or dead.
So he was of course pleased that that had been avoided. In a week, they would be back at Hood, all alive and in one piece. On the other hand, since they had not taken Castro out when the odds were in American favor, it was very likely that the confrontation had only been delayed, and that when it became necessary later to mount an invasion of Cuba, the casualties would be even higher.
He had the somewhat cynical thought that the sacred tradition that military officers scrupulously avoid politics was in effect not because of the necessity of the separation—like that between church and state—between the state and the military, but rather because officers with any knowledge of history or geo-politics could not avoid holding politicians, of whatever persuasion, in deep contempt.
(Two)
The Officers’ Open Mess
Headquarters, Continental Army Command
Fortress Monroe, Virginia
1915 Hours, 12 November 1962
The post-operation critique of the aborted invasion lasted through four eight-hour sessions at Monroe. Mistakes had been made. The way to avoid a repetition of these mistakes was to get them out in the open and determine how they could be avoided in the future.
At 1630, when the final meeting broke up, there were several matters to be discussed, privately between Boone and the Chief of Staff. By the time that was over, and General Boone had driven the Chief of Staff to the airfield and seen him aboard his L-23 for the return flight to Washington, it was almost 1900. Boone then went to the Officers’ Club where he hoped to be able to have a word with Major General Stu Lemper. As they left the conference room, Boone had overheard Triple H Howard invite Lemper to have a beer. Though he wasn’t at all sure they would still be there—general officers usually do their drinking in their quarters, not in the O Club—he hoped they might.
There was an uncomfortable parallel for Boone between the critique and what Communists called “self-examination.” Lemper had been forced to get up and confess his sins, and had, in some detail, explained what had gone wrong.
Things had gone wrong, but that was not the same thing as saying that what had gone wrong was Lemper’s fault, and he suspected correctly that Triple H Howard was going to make this point, backed up by Paul Jiggs, over a beer in the O Club. Boone believed it his duty to make the same point. Lemper was a good man, and he had done all that could be expected of him.
He found Generals Howard, Lemper, and Jiggs sitting at a table in the bar. None of the adjacent tables was occupied. A covey of general officers sitting together over drinks had the same effect on their juniors as a trio of lepers.
The three of them stood up when he walked to the table.
“Is this a private gathering, or can any bull-thrower join in?” Boone asked.
“We’re glad to have you, sir,” Triple H Howard said.
A red-jacketed waiter—a moonlighting noncom—came up quickly.
“Since I’m buying,” General Boone said, “give them whatever they want, Sergeant, so long as it’s cheap. I’ll have a Scotch, no ice, and a glass of soda on the side.”
When the drinks had been delivered, and the waiter had gone (not too far, but out of hearing), General Boone said: “Before we start talking about women, Stu, and in case this hasn’t been made previously clear, I think you did a hell of a job. I want you to understand that I’m aware of the problems you had, and that I think you handled them splendidly.”
“That’s very kind of you, sir, to say so,” Lemper said. “But the bottom line is that it took me too long to get off the dime.”
“Don’t argue with me,” Boone said. “I’m a general.”
They laughed. A little too loud, Boone thought. They had been socking it away for an hour and a half. Whiskey, not beer.
“I have just been explaining to General Lemper, sir,” Triple H Howard said, “about the battle than can never be won.”
“Which one is that?”
“Against the mongrels that nip at your heels,” Howard said.
Boone thought he understood what Howard was talking about.
“You think calling a Harke a mongrel is appropriate?” he asked, just a little stiffly.
“I was talking about DCSPERS*, sir,” Howard said, undaunted. “What happened between General Harke and myself is between General Harke and myself. It was not under discussion.”
“The Chief of Staff discussed it with me,” Boone said. “He believes that you were a bit harsh dealing with the problem.” He paused a moment, and then went on: “I told him that I supported your decision, that I would have done the same thing, under the same regrettable circumstances.”
“Thank you, sir,” Howard said.
“What about DCSPERS?” Boone asked.
“I was explaining to Stu why he can’t have Colonel Lowell.”
“Regarding Colonel Lowell,” General Boone said. “I owe you an apology, Paul. When I sent him down to help Stu, I did so with great reservation.”
“Oh, ye, of little faith!” General Jiggs said. “How could any officer trained personally by me fail to be anything but superior in every respect?”
“He did one hell of a job for me,” General Lemper said. “That’s why I want him.”
“And you can’t have him?” Boone asked. “And Triple H Howard is blaming DCSPERS?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Never trust anyone who jumps out of airplanes, Stu,” General Boone said. “The landing jolt scrambles their brains. They need people like Lowell to read and write for them. DCSPERS probably has nothing to do with it.”
“Unfortunately, sir,” Howard said, seriously, “the general errs. DCSPERS has everything to do with this.”
“Tell me how ‘the general errs,’” Boone said.
“Well, just before this thing started, I received an extraordinary communication from DCSPERS. They had discovered, with great glee, I must add, Colonel Lowell’s shameful secret.”
“I’m afraid to ask what that is,” Boone said.
“Colonel Lowell was not graduated from an accredited college or university. Graduation from an accredited college or university is a prerequisite for a commission in the Regular Army. Therefore, the validity of Colonel Lowell’s commission is in question.”
“You’re serious,” Boone said. Howard nodded. “I thought you told me, Paul, that he had graduated from the Wharton School of Business?”
“Yes, sir, he did. Magna cum laude.”
“Then how did he get into graduate school without a bachelor’s degree?”
“I guess they make exceptions for people who own banks,” Jiggs said.
“That’s absurd,” Boone said. “Is DCSPERS serious about this?”
“Yes, sir,” Howard said. “I discussed it with DCSPERS personally.”
“Then what’s behind it?” Boone said.
“Equal treatment of all officers under Army Regulations, is the way he put it,” Howard said. “If they grant an exception, everyone will want an exception. I am sure, of course, that it has nothing whatever to do with the fact that Lowell was nominated for lieutenant colonel by the President after having been twice passed over by DCSPERS’s promotion boards.”
“They’re not actually suggesting his commission should be vacated?” Boone asked, coldly.
“No, sir. What they want is for Colonel Lowell to be enrolled in the Boot Strap Program.”
“What the hell is that?”
“It is a program under DCSPERS in which officers who for some reason or another do not have the required formal education are given the opportunity to get it. They are placed on TDY for up to a year, sent to college, and the Army pays for it.”
“They want to send a lieutenant colonel with that much service back to college?” Boone asked, incredulously. “On duty?”
“They do i
t all the time, General, or so I have been informed,” Howard said.
“I’ll look into this,” Boone said.
“With all respect, sir, I have already carried the appeal to the highest court, and it has been denied,” Howard said.
Boone’s eyebrows went up in question, and he made a “come on” gesture with his hands.
“I told DCSPERS that I thought he was out of his mind, and that if necessary I would personally go to the Secretary of the Army with it. I need Lowell for the Howard Board. He then informed me that considering Lowell’s ‘unusual status,’ he had already brought the matter to SECARMY, and SECARMY had agreed that there could be no exceptions.”
“Unusual status meaning his work on the Howard Board?” Boone asked.
“That and his political influence, I think,” Howard said. “And then I went to the court of highest appeal. McNamara.”
“Directly?” Boone asked.
“He—unofficially, of course—keeps a pretty close eye on the Board,” Howard said. “He drops in from time to time. And one time when he dropped in, I found the opportunity to bring this to his attention. He was not very sympathetic. He told me he was reluctant to step in and countermand SECARMY, and then he warmed to the subject, and told me if he had his druthers, Lowell would resign from the Army and go to work for DOD* as a civilian. He left me with the impression, sir, that he thinks Lowell is a fool for being an officer in the first place, when he has the choice to be either a banker or a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, and that if he persists in indulging himself playing soldier, he will have to play by the rules.”
“If he turned you down, he’d turn me down,” Boone said. “What does Lowell have to say about this?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Howard said. “I haven’t told him about it. Now, of course, I’m going to have to tell him.”
“What do you think, Paul—he’s your protégé—he’ll do?”
“One of two things, sir. He’ll either cheerfully obey his orders or tell us to go piss up a rope. I just don’t know. If I were him, I’d be furious. And it’s not as if he has to stick around so he can qualify for a pension in his old age.”
“Well, we’re not going to beg anyone to stay in the Army,” Boone said. “But is there some way we can sugarcoat the pill?”
“I was thinking of that, sir,” Jiggs said. “I thought about calling General Harmon at Norwich*, and explaining the situation to him.”
“Good idea,” General Boone said. “I think Ernie Harmon will be as appalled as I am that a light colonel with a combat record like Lowell’s has to turn into an undergraduate. Would you like me to have a talk with Lowell?”
“No, sir,” Howard said. “If there’s anybody who could talk him into enduring this humiliation for the good of the service, it would be Paul.”
“You’re probably right,” Boone agreed. “Make the point to him, Paul, that stars have a price. In his case, that’s going to mean going to Vermont and wearing a collegiate beanie. And a smile, as if he likes it.”
VI
(One)
Soc Trang (Mekong Delta)
Saigon, Republic of Vietnam
0305 Hours, 19 February 1963
It had been raining all night, a steady, drenching, windswept downpour. The Marines guarding the flight line walked their posts with the muzzles of their M-14 rifles pointing downward. They wore helmets (against which the rain drummed not unpleasantly) and what the Marines called “utilities,” which were a Marine version of Army fatigues; and a poncho, a plasticized cloth with a hooded hole in the center for the head and snaps along the edges. These could be closed to form sleeves or snapped together with another poncho to form a shelter half or a tarpaulin.
The ponchos were as impermeable to air as they were to water, and within half an hour of putting one on, a wearer could expect to be nearly as wet from his own sweat as he would have been from the rain. Under the right conditions, the sentries could be seen giving off steam.
All the aircraft on the flight line with one exception were Marine versions of the Army’s Sikorsky H-34 helicopter, a single-rotor, larger version of the Sikorsky H-19. The exception was an Army airplane, an OV-1 Mohawk. This one was equipped with a side-looking radar antenna hung below its fuselage and with other sensing devices. The Mohawk would participate that day as the electronic eyes and ears for a Marine operation: A mixed force of ARVN soliders and Marines were to be transported to an island in the delta, where Intelligence said there was a cache of Vietcong weapons, food, and other supplies.
Somebody had fucked up, and there was no JP-4 fuel for the Mohawk’s twin turboprop engines when the plane arrived. Some ass was eaten, some embarrassed telephone calls made, and a six-by-six tanker with an escort of armed jeeps was dispatched from the nearest source of JP fuel.
It arrived at 0300, was duly challenged by the sentry, who then got in the cab with the GI driver and his Vietnamese assistant and rode down the flight line to the Mohawk. Under the circumstances, it was perhaps understandable that he elected to stay in the closed cab of the fuel truck and catch a quick smoke while the fuel truck guy and the flight line chief fueled the Mohawk. (JP-4 was diesel fuel, sort of; you couldn’t smoke around fuel trucks when they were fueling the Sikorskys with av-gas, but fueling a Mohawk with JP-4 in a driving rain was something else.)
Nobody was going to blow up the Mohawk while people were working on it.
The Vietnamese assistant fuel truck driver, in order to make sure that no fuel somehow leaked into the aircraft fuselage, opened an inspection port in the starboard wing near the root, and shined his flashlight inside.
When he was sure that no one was looking, he reached inside his poncho and took from it a clever American tool, which he had stolen two weeks before. It was a battery-powered electric drill. He had already chucked a drill into it, the kind used by the American technicians who repaired the electronic components of the Mohawk’s black boxes. It drilled very tiny pin holes.
With it, in the time he thought he had available without being caught, he drilled holes in whatever hydraulic lines he could identify by their color. The holes were so tiny that the purple hydraulic fluid within the lines did not even drip out, but simply formed tiny beads at the holes. Even if they were spotted during the preflight, it would be supposed that they were nothing more than the expected leaking (“oozeage”) from connections to the hydraulic system.
Then the Vietnamese assistant fuel truck driver stuck the battery-powered drill back into his trousers under his poncho, closed the inspection port, and went to see of what other use he might be.
(Two)
Coordinates Fox Three Baker, Baker Six Whiskey
AirNav Chart 407 (Mekong River)
Republic of South Vietnam
1015 Hours, 19 February 1963
Charley had not left his cache of weapons and supplies unguarded. The Marines on Island 237 were taking mortar fire from the mainland to the west.
This information had twice been relayed to superior headquarters, once by the Marine officer in command on the ground, and again by the pilot of the Mohawk accompanying the operation. For forty-five minutes he had been flying an endless oblong pattern: a mile west to east, a steep 180° turn, a mile east to west, and then another steep 180° turn. The roll of somewhat sticky paper spilling out of the black box in front of the copilot had not only pinpointed the presence of objects on the west bank, but counted them. Because the objects were radiating at 102° Fahrenheit it had concluded that these were individual human beings and made the appropriate symbol on the printout. The black boxes had also detected the position of the mortars, and by judging the duration and temperature of the gas ejected from their muzzles had determined that the mortars were four M-1937 82-mms and two M-1938 107-mms. The appropriate symbols were placed on the printout. All the data had been simultaneously transmitted by radio to superior headquarters, which had taken the appropriate action.
A six-plane flight of Douglas “Skyraiders” was e
n route to coordinates Fox Three Baker, Baker Six Whiskey, where they would bring the Vietcong mortar positions under attack by rockets, machine guns, and napalm.
The trouble, the Mohawk pilot, Major Philip S. Parker IV, concluded, was that the Skyraiders were six to eight minutes away. Six to eight minutes was a very long time when you were on the receiving end of a heavy mortar barrage.
Under the agreement worked out—semi-officially—between the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force, armed Mohawk aircraft were permitted to engage enemy targets only when they had been first attacked. Armed Mohawks were expressly forbidden to engage the enemy unless that response was necessary for self-defense.
“I’ve got it,” Major Parker said to his copilot. “Let’s go make them keep their heads down.”
He flipped off the automatic stabilization system and flipped up the toggle switch (under a red protective cover) that energized the machine guns in the pods beneath each wing.
He was not aware of course that each time he had energized the Mohawk’s hydraulic system during the steep 180° turns, the fluid in the system had come out of the hydraulic lines through barely visible holes with force enough to vaporize it.
The HYDRAULIC FAILURE warning lights had blinked on and then off as he made the recovery from his first strafing run. He’d seen them, but hadn’t paid much attention. Warning lights tended to blink on and off. It was only when they stayed on that there was genuine cause for concern.
The HYDRAULIC FAILURE warning lights came on again as he lined up for his second strafing run, went off again, and then came on again and stayed on.
“Shit, we’ve got hydraulic failure lights,” the copilot said.
Whatever was wrong with the hydraulic system, Parker decided, could wait until he had finished the strafing run. As he pressed the trigger on his stick, the lights went off, and he relaxed again.
The Generals Page 14
