Brotherhood Of War: The Lieutenants Part 27

"No, sir."

"Captain Young, of my staff, will accompany you through your out-processing. If you have no further questions, that will be all, Lieutenant."

"Yes, sir." Lowell saluted, did an about-face, and marched out of Colonel Webster's office.

Captain Roland Young, Adjutant General's Corps, who had rather relished the notion of personally running this disgrace to the uniform the h.e.l.l out of the Constab, was annoyed and frustrated when he led Lowell into the corridor outside the adjutant general's office and found the provost marshal waiting for them. He could hardly tell the provost marshal to f.u.c.k off, even if the word was out that the provost marshal, like other members of Waterford' s palace guard, was in hot water himself.

"I've sent a jeep for IIse," the provost marshal said to Lowell. "They should have her here in a couple of minutes."

Captain Young thought that Colonel Webster would be very interested to here that the provost marshal, in direct contravention of Constab (and for that matter, Theater) regulations, had ordered the transport of a German female in an official army vehicle.

"Thank you, sir," Lowell said. What the h.e.l.l was he going to do about Ilse?

"What is the lieutenant's schedule, Captain?" Fat Charley asked.

"The lieutenant, sir, is to report to Rhine-Main no later than 1800 hours," Captain Young said.

"Amazing how efficient you paper-pushers-can be when you want to," Fat Charley said.

Captain Young thought that Colonel Webster would be interested in that sarcastic remark, too.

"Is there anything I may do for the colonel, sir?" Captain Young asked. "There's not much time to go through the processing."

"I don't have anything else to do, Captain," Fat Charley said. "I think I'll just tag along with you." The saddest part, Fat Charley thought later, was that in Lowell's room in the Bayrischen Hof, the two of them had looked like Romeo and Juliet. She cried and Lowell was teary eyed, and they exchanged promises. They even dragged him into it. He offered to forward letters to Lowell, and to receive them for Ilse from Greece. And he a.s.sured Lowell, man to man, that he would keep an eye on her.

He would keep an eye on her, all right. He was convinced that what that eye would see-despite her tearful promises, despite the three hundred dollars Lowell had borrowed from him and handed over to her, despite what she probably believed herself at the moment-was that in two weeks she would be sharing some other junior officer's bed.

(Eight) Rhine-Main Air Base Frankfurt am Main, Germany 11 July 1946 Military Air Transport Flight 624, a pa.s.senger-configured C-54, landed at Rhine-Main twenty-two hours after takeoff from McGuire Air Base at Fort Dix, and after fuel stops at Gander, Newfoundland, and Prestwick, Scotland.

There was a welcoming delegation of officers and their ladies for the officers who were being a.s.signed to Germany, and Transportation Corps people to handle those who were going beyond. Frankfurt. Felter's khaki uniform was mussed, and he needed a shower, but dean uniforms and a bath were not among the facilities offered.

Felter was informed that the Athens plane was scheduled for departure at 1800 hours. It was 1500, three in the afternoon, German time. That meant he had at least three hours to kill. He could take the shuttle bus running from Rhine-Main to the Hauptbahnhof in Frankfurt, have a couple of hours in Frankfurt, and return to Rhine-Main with plenty of time to make the flight.

The last time he had seen Frankfurt, he thought as the bus took him into town, it had still been smoldering, and he had been riding in the sidecar of a "liberated" Wehrmacht motorcycle.

When he got off the bus, he saw a while-and-black GI sign on a German hotel, the Am Bahnhof, identifying it as a bachelor officer's quarters. It followed that a BOQ in a hotel would have a mess. There had been an in-flight lunch between McGuire and Gander (a balogna sandwich, an apple, and a container of milk) and another (identical) between Gander and Prestwick.

He had had nothing to eat since Prestwick.

He had just about reached the door of the bahnhof when a nattily attired MP stepped in front of him and saluted.

"One moment, please, sir," he said. "May I see your identification, please?" Felter handed it over.

"Would the lieutenant please come with me, please?" the MP said.

"What's this all about?"

"You are being detained, sir, for being in violation of USFET uniform regulations."

"I'm in transit," Felter said.

"Would the lieutenant please come with me, sir?" the MP said; and with movements as stiff as the Chocolate Soldier, he indicated the bahnhof. Inside the bahnhof was an MP station commanded by a first lieutenant.

The MP lieutenant wore parachutist's wings and the insignia of the 82nd Airborne Division. Felter remembered that the 82nd had left in Europe one regiment, the 508th, to guard the headquarters of the Army of Occupation. He now noticed that the lieutenant wore crossed rifles, not crossed pistols. He was an airborne infantry officer pressed into service as an MP.

"Lieutenant, you're a mess," the paratrooper said to him.

"Have you got some sort of excuse?"

"I'm en route from Bragg to Greece," Felter said.

That caused some interest. For a moment. Felter thought he was going to be able to straighten this whole thing out.

"What were you doing at Bragg?"

"Ranger School," Felter said.

The lieutenant looked significantly at Felter's bare chest.

Felter reached in his pocket and took his parachutist's wings from a collection of coins and held them up and smiled.

The lieutenant did not smile back.

Lieutenant Felter signed an acknowledgment that he was in receipt of a copy of a delinquency report, AG Form 102, the original of which would be sent through official channels to his commanding officer. He was delinquent in that he was in an unauthorized uniform, cotton khaki, where wool 00 shade 33 or tropical worsted with blouse was specified. He was, moreover, without a necktie. He was not wearing qualification insignia (parachutist's) as required. In the Comments section, it was further pointed out that the uniform he was wearing was mussed and unmilitary, and that the subject officer was not freshly shaven.

A telephone call was made, and some senior military policeman decided that the thing to do with .him, since he was in transit, was to transport him back to Rhine-Main, and turn him over to the air base duty officer, who could keep an eye on him until his plane left.

A Ford staff car was dispatched for that purpose.

It was, Felter thought, the first time that he'd been on report since he was a plebe.

The MP lieutenant marched him into the pa.s.senger terminal, where he telephoned for the duty officer , and then waited until he . showed up and could sign for the "detainee," as if the detainee were a package. Then Felter was led to a small waiting room which held two other officers, a field artillery captain and an armored second lieutenant, tall, blond, muscular, in a superbly fitting uniform. He looked entirely too good to be true. He looked, Sanford Felter thought, like a model hired to pose for a recruiting poster.

"Keep your eye on this one, too, Captain," the duty officer said. "See that he gets on the Greasy G.o.ddess." The captain nodded, but did not speak until the duty officer had left.

Then he said, "Sit down next to him; Lieutenant," and indicated the too handsome, too perfect lieutenant.

Felter did as he was told. The two lieutenants examined one another, and formed first impressions. While there were exceptions, of course, Felter had come to believe that officers who looked like movie stars seldom lived up to their appearance. Moreover, from the moment Major Bellmon had let him listen in to the telephone call at Bragg, when the officer Bellmon was speaking to thought that Bellmon wanted him shanghaied to Greece, Felter had come to understand that so far as most people in the army were concerned, an a.s.signment to Greece was one step above being cas.h.i.+ered.

There was something in the field artillery captain's att.i.tude that suggested that whatever had seen him a.s.signed to the U. S. Army Military Advisory Group, Greece, it was not of his choosing, nor to his liking. He had, Felter was sure, been shanghaied. It was an easy step from there to conclude that the second lieutenant in the custom-tailored uniform and the handmade jodhpurs was also being shanghaied. It was not at all unusual for second lieutenants, even West Pointers, to go wild when they first became officers. Drinking generally got them, but there were variants of this. Fast cars, women, gambling.

Or a combination of all those things and more. Even before he learned his name, it was Sanford Felter's first judgment of Craig W. Lowell, that Lowell had done something to outrage the system, and had been banished.

Lowell's a.s.sessment of Felter was equally not flattering.

Felter was not physically impressive. His hair was already thinning. His khaki uniform was baggy on him. He was, Lowell concluded, one of those Jewboys, who had scored 110 on the Army General Cla.s.sification Test and qualified for Officer Candidate School. He had somehow managed to get through OCS (when there was a shortage of second lieutenants, it was difficult to flunk out) and had been commissioned. Once a.s.signed as an infantry officer, he had obviously been unable to cut the mustard, and they had gotten rid of him.

"Felter," Felter finally said, putting out his hand to Lowell.

"Lowell," Lowell replied, shaking his hand. Felter saw the field artillery captain get up and walk to the window, obviously to spare himself the business of introductions. He turned to look at Lowell again.

"I think you have just been snubbed," Lowell said.

Felter chuckled. "Where are you from?" he asked.

"New York," Lowell said.

"I'm from Newark," Felter volunteered.

"What did you do wrong?" Lowell asked.

"According to the DR," Felter said, "I have violated every known uniform regulation. And, in addition, went unshaved."

"I meant before," Lowell. said. "Why are they sending you to Greece?"

"Actually, I volunteered for the a.s.signment," Felter said.

Lowell didn't reply; Felter understood that Lowell didn't believe him.

"What about you?" he asked.

"Apparently things are terribly f.u.c.ked up in Athens," Lowell said. "And General Clay decided I was the only man who could straighten things out." Felter chuckled.

"What about you, Captain?" Lowell called across the room.

"What shocking breach of military behavior did you commit?"

"When I have something to say to you, Lieutenant," the captain flared, "I'll let you know. Now you just sit there, and keep your G.o.dd.a.m.ned mouth shut."

Lowell insolently clapped his hand over his mouth.

"Are you looking for trouble, Lieutenant?" the captain flared.

"What are you threatening, Captain?" Lowell said. "That You'll have me sent to Greece?" The captain glared at him.

"Just shut the f.u.c.k up," he said, finally.

"Yes, sir," Lowell said, and started to say something else.

Felter shook his head, "no." Lowell said nothing else.

A jeep came for them thirty minutes later, and carried them far down a taxiway to a Douglas C-47, which bore the insignia of the European Air Transport Command. Below the c.o.c.kpit window was a well-executed painting of a' nearly nude, large breasted female and the words THE GREASY G.o.dDESS II.

The aircraft had its nylon-and-pole seats folded against the walls of the fuselage to accommodate a half dozen large crates strapped to the floor. Forward, behind the door to the c.o.c.kpit, was a pile of canvas mail bags. Running down the center of the fuselage ceiling was the cable to which static lines were hooked, and the red and green lights used to signal the. jumpmaster were mounted by the door. The plane was equipped to drop parachutists. Felter wondered, idly, if it had been used for that purpose in the war.

The crew chief asked for their names, and wrote them on the manifest. He handed a copy of it to a ground crewman. He walked forward; and almost immediately, the plane shuddered as the engines were started. The crew chief came back, closed the door, and spoke to them briefly.

"When we get up, you can probably find a mail bag soft enough to sleep on," he said. He steadied himself by putting a hand, palm up, against the ceiling. The Gooney-Bird was already taxiing to the runway.

They refueled late at night in Naples, and then flew on through the blackness to Athens.

VII.

(One) Athens, Greece 12 July 1946 They landed at Elliniko Airfield as dawn broke. They were met at the airport by an American sergeant who wore British Army boots and who carried a Thompson submachine gun slung over his shoulder. He led them to the first British Army truck either of them had ever seen. The captain got in the front seat and they got in the back of the truck and were driven into Athens. Peering awkwardly out the back, Lowell saw a water. "We're on the coast," he announced. "What is that, the Mediterranean ?"

Felter shook his head. "That's the Saronikos Koplos," he said.

"The what?" Lowell asked, chuckling.

"Saronikos Kolpos," Felter repeated. "Greece is sort of a peninsula here between the Ionian Sea and the Aegean. At the bottom is the Sea of Crete. What we're looking at is the Saronikos Kolpos."

"Lieutenant, sir," Lowell said, now actually laughing, "you are a f.u.c.king fountain of information." Despite himself, Felter smiled at Lowell. Lowell was obviously a f.u.c.k-up, and Felter accepted as gospel that an officer was judged by his a.s.sociates. He had intended to treat Lowell with correct remoteness-in other words ignore him, let him sense he didn't want to become a buddy. But he could not do that, and neither could he bring himself to pull rank on the handsome young second lieutenant.

"I know what that is," Lowell said a few minutes later, pointing out the rear of the truck at the Acropolis. "That's the Colosseum."

"Acropolis, stupid," Felter corrected him.

"Acropolis, Colosseum, what's the difference?"

"Culture as we know it comes from this one," Felter said, not really sure if he was having his leg pulled or not. "And they fed you Christians to the lions in the other one."

"I'll be G.o.dd.a.m.ned!" Lowell said, in mock awe.

They pa.s.sed the Grande Bretagne Hotel, then drove to the rear of it and stopped. They entered the building through a rear door around which had been erected a sandbag barrier. A major was waiting for them. He showed them the dining room and told them where to find him after they had had breakfast.

Breakfast in the elegant but seedy dining room of the Grande Bretagne was coffee, bread, reconst.i.tuted dried scrambled eggs, and very salty bacon from 10-in-l rations.

Afterward, they sought out the major, who turned them over to a florid-faced, middle-aged lieutenant colonel of artillery who didn't bother to disguise his disappointment in them. He told them they would receive their a.s.signments later that day, after they had been "in-processed." They were given some additional immunization injections and provided with a bottle of pills by an army doctor, a young captain, who warned them not to so much as brush their teeth in water that had not had a pill dissolved in it.

They were given a brief lecture by a major of the Signal Corps on the role of the United States Army Military Advisory Group, Greece. A captain of the Adjutant General's Corps, an old one, twice as old as the starchy little p.r.i.c.k who had rushed Lowell out of the Constab with such relish, took from them their next of kin and home address, and provided them with a printed.

LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT.

The elderly AGC captain didn't say anything, just raised his eyebrows, when Craig Lowell elected to leave all his worldly goods to a fraulein named Ilse, in Germany. Fraulein Ilse, it was the captain's solemn judgment, would not be the only fur-line to be enriched by the death of some kid whose cherry she had copped. f.u.c.k it, it was their life, and their money, and in the captain's judgment, there wasn't all that much difference between a kraut c.u.n.t and some greedy G.o.dd.a.m.ned relative in the States.

However he had to tell Lowell there was no way the army would let him leave his GI insurance to a German lady; beneficiaries not next of kin had to be U.S. citizens.

They were then taken to the fourth floor of the Grande Bretagne, where a ballroom had been converted into a supply and arms room. They were issued British Army helmets, the notion being that the silhouette of standard U.S. Army helmets was too close to that of the Wehrmacht and Red Army helmets with which some of the communist guerrillas were equipped.

There was no mistaking the silhouette of a British Army helmet.

It resembled a flat-chested woman, the captain of ordnance in charge of the arms room told them.

They were given their choice of weapons.

There were Ml Garand .30-06 rifles and .303 British Lee Enfields and 7.93 mm German Mausers, even a few 7.62 mm Russian Moissant Nagants. There were U. S. .30 caliber carbines, M 1 and M2. There were .45 ACP Thompson submachine guns and 9 mm British Sten submachine guns. There were standard issue .45 automatics, .455 Webley revolvers, .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolvers, 9 mm Luger pistols, and even a half dozen .32 ACP Browning automatic pistols. These were made in Belgium but bore the n.a.z.i swastika on their plastic grips right below the place where the words BROWNING BRaS OGDEN UTAH USA had been stamped in the slide.

"Things are a little f.u.c.ked up," the ordnance officer, an old leathery-faced chief warrant officer, told them. "Eventually, the Greeks will have all U.S. Army stuff, and there won't any problem. But right now, what the troops have is English and captured kraut stuff. Lugers, Mauser rifles, Schmeisser machine pistols. Now that's the thing to get your hands on, if you can. Best G.o.dd.a.m.n machine pistol ever made. Naturally, none of them ever get back this far, and when they do, the bra.s.s grab them. The Sten gun isn't worth s.h.i.+t.