Brotherhood Of War: The Lieutenants Part 17

"Let's get that straight right now," the general said, raising his voice so that everybody could clearly hear him. "We are here to play polo, not fight a war. You are ordered to forget that you are playing with a man who can, with a snap of his fingers, ruin your military careers. There will be no rank on the field. You will consider yourselves sportsmen first and soldiers second. I will address you by your: Christian names, and you will call me" he paused "sir." He got the laughter he expected, and turned to the next man in the rank.

"Frank Dailey, sir," he said.

"You played much polo, Frank?" the general asked. "You rated ?"

"One goal, sir," Frank Dailey said.

He went down the line, going through essentially the same questioning. He came to the end of the line, to a tall, muscular, rather handsome young man.

"Craig Lowell, sir," the young man said.

"No offense, Craig, but you don't look old enough to have played much polo. I don't suppose you're rated, are you, Son?"

"Three goals, sir," Craig Lowell said.

"Where did you play, Craig?" the general asked, gently.

"West Palm, sir, Ramapo, Houston, Los Angeles."

"You know Bryce Taylor?"

"Yes, sir, I do," Craig Lowell replied.

"And how is he, these days?" the general asked,idly.

"Rather poorly, sir, I'm afraid," Lowell said. "I think he may even be dead. My grandfather wrote he'd spoken to Mrs. Taylor."

"You come with me and keep me company, Craig," the general said. "While I get out of my s.h.i.+rt." The general winked at MacMillan. G.o.dd.a.m.n, he had at least a three-goal rated player. With Fat Charley, who was rated at two before the war, and that ugly man halfway down the line, he just might be able to field a team that could take the frogs. A three-goal player was more than he had hoped for.

The general was rated at seven.

The general bounded up the folding metal stairs of a van.

The inside was plush, ornate. The general had crossed Europe in this vehicle. His rolling home and command post. There was coffee steaming in a pot, a jug with ice water, a plate of sandwiches covered with a towel.

"Help yourself, Craig," he said. "And tell me the bad news about Bryce."

The general pulled off the leather-jacket, and the pink uniform s.h.i.+rt beneath it, and a sleeveless silk unders.h.i.+rt under that. He pulled on a GI T-s.h.i.+rt, on which had been neatly lettered, front and back, with the numeral 1.

Craig Lowell told him what he had learned from his grandfather about the terminal illness of Bryce Taylor.

"What did you say your grandfather's name was?" General Waterford asked.

"Geoffrey Craig, sir."

"Oh," Waterford said. "You're a Craig."

"My mother's name is Craig," Lowell said.

"That's right, you're a Lowell. The Cabots speak only to the Lowells, and the Lowells speak only to G.o.d. Boston, right?"

"No, sir," Lowell. said. "New York."

"But you have the Harvard accent," the general said.

"I went to Harvard, sir."

"Yes," the general said, pleased with himself. "Of course you did." Then he turned to look at MacMillan. "I want you to find out about my old friend Bryce Taylor, Mac," the general said: "(A) If he's dead. If he is dead, write a nice letter of condolence. Get the address from Craig here.

(B) If he's still alive, find out where and in what condition, and what I can do.

"Yes, sir," MacMillan said.

"Where do you usually play, Craig?" the general asked, unzipping his fly, tucking the T-s.h.i.+rt in, and grunting as he fastened the tight trouser band against his. middle.

"Three, sir."

"0K, we'll try it that way. Go tell the others to mark their s.h.i.+rts. But you'll play number three against me. Tell Fat Charley he's number one with you. We need to get some of that high living fat off him."

"Yes, sir," Craig Lowell said. He walked back out of the van and crossed the field. A sergeant had led four ponies up the van. They weren't much, in Lowell's judgment, as a string.

But they were the best available, and they had been reserved for the general. What were left-over for the-others to play were worse.

They played two "fool-around chukkers," as the general put it, and then they played a game, six chukkers. Blues, led by the general, won 7-4.

The general accepted a large gla.s.s of heavily sweetened iced-coffee, and drank it quickly. He was in a very good mood.

'Gentlemen," he said, "MacMillan has arranged accommodations for us in one of the Bad Nauheim Kurhotels. Tbe Germans, among other odd notions, apparently believed that the foul water in this bucolic Doff had medicinal qualities.

"What we are going to do now is load into the staff cars, go have a bath, and get something to drink. Mac has imported the water to mix with the whiskey." The general and Fat Charley got into a Ford staff car.

MacMillan rode in front with the-driver; The others, with one exception, got into other staff cars. The procession started off.

"Stop the 'G.o.dd.a.m.ned car' the general shouted. The driver slammed on the brakes. The cars behind almost ran into his car. "Where the h.e.l.l is he going?" the general demanded rhetorically. He rolled down the window. "Craig, G.o.dd.a.m.nit, where are you going"? he shouted.

"To walk the horses, sir," Craig Lowell replied."

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it, we have enlisted men to do-that."

"General," MacMillan said, "I didn't have time, the way the general sort of rushed out there; on the field, to."

"What are you telling me, Mac?" the general asked, slowly.

"Sir, that's Private Lowell."

The general waved at Private Craig Lowell, rolled up the window, and gestured for the driver to move on. "Mac, G.o.dd.a.m.nit; you shouldn't have done that to me, I embarra.s.sed that boy."

"No excuse, sir," MacMillan said.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n it, 1 told you to round up; every polo player in the division, and in division support troops," the general said.

"Yes, sir. That's exactly what the general said."

"What the h.e.l.l is a three-goal polo player doing in the G.o.dd.a.m.ned ranks?" the general asked. "And he's a gentleman, too, Mac, G.o.dd.a.m.nit. He's a Lowell ,and a Craig. You heard what he said. For Christ's sake! What the h.e.l.l is he doing as a G.o.dd.a.m.ned private?"

"He's on the division golf team, General," Mac replied, taking the question literally.

"The golf team! The golf team!"

"Yes, sir," Mac said. "He's a jock."

"I didn't think you'd go rooting around in the G.o.dd.a.m.ned Form 20s, for G.o.d's sake. Sometimes, Mac, you're just too G.o.dd.a.m.ned efficient a dog robber."

"May I have the general's permission to explain, Sir?"

"You can try, Mac. Right now my first thought is to send you back there to help him shovel the horses.h.i.+t," the general said.

"With the general's permission, sir, it happened this way, When the general laid this requirement on me, I was faced with the problem of not knowing very much about polo."

"Or about much else, either," the general said.

"l asked around if anyone happened to know anything about polo. Lowell did, and he helped me out. He really knows a good deal about the game, General."

"I saw that," the general said. "If Fat Charley had been able to get his a.s.s out of dead low gear, the Reds would have won. He set you up half a dozen times, Charley, and you blew it."

"l'm a little out of shape, sir," Fat Charley said.

"That's the understatement of the week. Go on, Mac,"

"General, I brought Private Lowell along just to be prepared," MacMillan said. "All the other players are officers."

"Mac," the general said. "(A) In six weeks and two days, my polo team is going to play the team of the Deuxieme Division Mecanique of the French Army, under General Quillier. (B) Because the French do not socialize with enlisted men, my team will be made up solely of officers, (C) My team will win.

(D) My team cannot win without that Lowell boy as my number three."

"I believe I take the General's meaning, sir," Lieutenant MacMillan said.

(Five) Bad Nauheim, Germany 12 May 1946 After Private Craig W. Lowell, working with the German stable boys, had walked? the horses, he got in his privately owned black jeep and drove across town to the Constabulary golf course, where he was billeted ,in an attic room over the pro shop.

He fantasized about being stopped by one of the Constabulary MPs, or better yet, by one of the more chickens.h.i.+t young officers of the Constabulary.

"Trooper," he would be challenged. The Constabulary was playing cavalry, and soldiers were "troopers" not soldiers.

"Trooper, where the h.e.l.l did you get so dirty?"

"Actually," he could then reply, "I've been playing polo with General Waterford. And the provost marshal." He was not stopped. He parked the jeep behind the pro shop and climbed the narrow stairs to his tiny room. The only thing that could really be said for his special billet was that it was away from the barracks. He was left alone. If they wanted him, they had to send for him, and that. was generally-too much trouble, so some other "trooper" would be grabbed and given an .unpleasant task to perform.

He pulled-off his boots, and then stripped out of the sweat soaked breeches, s.h.i.+rt, and underwear. The general had run their a.s.ses off. If the others were as tired as he was, he thought with a certain satisfaction, the officers and gentlemen with whom he had played must really be dragging their a.s.sess. All of them except the general, he thought. The general was the only one who had not looked to be on the edge. of exhaustion when the jeep horn signaled the end of the last chukker.

Lowell had been as surprised to find that General Waterford was a first-rate polo player as the general had been surprised to learn that Craig was a private.

Naked, Lowell bent over and examined his inner legs. He was tall and well muscled, not like a football player, but with something of the same suggestion of great strength and endurance. He was chapped, slightly, or that was heat rash. Nothing serious.

He wrapped a towel around his middle and went down the stairs to the men's locker room and took a shower. He took his razor with him, and shaved udder the streaming hot water.

His beard was as light as his hair, but for some reason, more than eight hours' growth stood out on his skin as much as if it had been jet black. The Constab was big on clean-shaven troopers.

Lowell was mildly concerned about what would happen now that Major General Peterson K. Waterford had learned of his enlisted status. But he was more curious than worried. For one thing, he certainly hadn't tried to pa.s.s himself off as anything but a private. Lieutenant MacMillan knew he was a private.

If the general decided to send lightning bolts of rage, his target would be MacMillan. Privates were invisible to generals.

In any event Lowell thought it unlikely that MacMillan would be struck by a lightning bolt and toppled. Craig Lowell had realized-while eavesdropping on the conversations of majors and colonels at the nineteenth hole of the Bad Nauheim golf course-that they had erred in their a.s.sessment of Lt. MacMillan. It was generally believed that MacMillan was the jester in the court of King Waterford. A pleasant fool who had somehow won the Medal. MacMillan's third-person manner of speaking to the general and other very senior officers was probably close to the official division joke.

But it was Private Craig Lowell's a.s.sessment of MacMillan that if he wasn't the Eminence Gris behind the throne, then he was at least a Knight Companion of the Bath. Not a simple dog robber and not a jester. Lowell had nothing really concrete on which to base this opinion, except for a combination of small things. There was a certain look in the general's eye, a certain shading of his behavior, when, for some reason, MacMillan was not at his side, and a certain relaxation when he showed up.

Lowell also had gotten to know Mrs. Waterford. She was a tall, thin, gray-haired woman, not at all the counterpart of her flamboyant husband. When she called the golf club, she asked when it would be convenient for her to play. The two other generals' wives, Mrs. Deputy Commanding General, and Mrs. Chief of Staff, as well as the senior colonels' wives, Mesdames G-l, G-2, G-3, and G-4, even Mrs. Division Surgeon, called to announce when they intended to play.

Mrs. Waterford asked when she could play, and she generally played very early in the morning, and invariably with Mrs. Rudolph G. (Roxy) MacMillan, a redheaded, buxom woman with a hearty belly laugh. There were seven children between them. Mrs. Waterford was twice a grandmother.

The first time Lowell had met Mrs. Waterford, she had understandably come to the conclusion that he was German.

She had overheard him talking to the caddies in German. The only thing lower on the social scale than a private was a 'kraut.

"Good morning," Mrs. Waterford had said, graciously, in rather badly accented German in the belief he was a kraut.

"Isn't it a lovely morning?"

"A beautiful morning, Frau General," Lowell had replied, and then switched to English. "I'm Private Lowell, the caddy master."

"And you're also the best golfer in the division, according to Lieutenant MacMillan," she replied, without missing a stroke. "Do you think you could play with us? We could kill two birds with one stone. G.o.d knows, we need golf instruction. Mrs. MacMillan and I are ashamed to play with anybody but each other. And we both need practice in conversational, German."

"Oh, do we need you!" Mrs. MacMillan said. She put out her hand. "I'm Roxy MacMillan." By-the time they had finished the first round, Lowell decided he liked both of them very much. Mrs. Waterford was a lady who reminded him of his late grandmother, and Mrs. MacMillan was-he thought of the old-fas.h.i.+oned phrase his grandmother had used to describe nice people who were rather simple "a diamond in the rough." The role of golf in the army had surprised Lowell when he had first come to Bad Nauheim and the U.S. Constabulary. He had always thought golf to be the sport of the middle and upper cla.s.ses, not at all the sort of thing sergeants (who were the yeomen in the military social hierarchy) would do. But apparently, before the war, everybody in the army over the grade of corporal had been out there swatting b.a.l.l.s. He finally realized that it was because the government paid for the upkeep of the courses, and that in order to justify the expense, and thus their own playing, the bra.s.s had had to encourage the yeomen to get out there and knock the ball around.

Lieutenant MacMillan, whom Lowell at first had also pegged as one of the yeomen, played every Wednesday afternoon, usually with the Constabulary finance officer, Major Emmons. They were joined infrequently by the generil, but normally it was just MacMillan and Major Emmons. They played nine holes, and then spent a couple of hours at the nineteenth hole, eating hamburgers and drinking beer.

Several weeks after Lowell had begun to play with Mrs. Waterford and Mrs. MacMillan on a more or less regular basis, MacMillan had come up to Lowell when Lowell had been leaning against the wall of the caddy house and pro shop, devoutly hoping not to be pressed into service as a golf instructor. When MacMillan walked up to him, he handed Lowell a dollar in script.

"Get us a couple of beers and meet me in the locker room," he said. He spoke pleasantly enough, but it was a command, not an invitation.

When Lowell brought the beer into the locker room MacMillan was coming out of the shower, a towel wrapped around his middle. MacMillan turned his back, dropped the towel, and pulled on a pair of jockey shorts.

"I understand you've been giving my wife golf lessons," he said, his back still to Lowell.

"Yes, sir," Lowell replied.

"And German lessons," MacMillan pursued, as he turned around.

"Yes, sir."