The Generals (15 page)

“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 it 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.”

(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 en 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.

He was at five hundred feet, making two hundred knots. He saw the one-in-five tracers spraying the forest. He took his finger off the trigger and watched the warning lights panel. The
HYDRAULIC FAILURE
lights remained off. But Major Parker was an experienced, which is to say cautious, pilot. He decided not to pull up and make a steep 180°, so he could dive again quickly on the mortar positions. Instead he’d make a wide, slow turn at his present altitude, and then make a final strafing run. That would exhaust his ordance, and the Skyraiders would be on target by then.

He was in a slightly nose-down position when the
HYDRAULIC FAILURE
lights came on again, and this time they stayed on.

When he tried to raise the nose after the run—gently, not an attempt to zoom up dramatically—he found he had neither rudder nor aileron control. The Mohawk was headed for the ground, and there was nothing whatever he could do about it.

“We’re going to have to eject,” he announced, reasonably calmly, “and right now.”

Then he pressed the microphone switch.

“Mayday, mayday, Army One Oh Four has lost all hydraulics. Am ejecting at this time. I hope you guys have got me on the radar.”

Major Parker looked at his copilot and nodded. Then, very frightened, he reached over his head and pulled down a device which both covered his face against the shock of ejection and triggered the mechanism. He felt the blast as explosive bolts sent the cockpit canopy off into the windstream. There was a brief moment when he felt the airstream, and then, as a 20-mm blank shell in the Martin-Baker ejection seat went off, he felt the blow to his back and buttocks as the seat was blown free of the aircraft.

It was even worse than he had anticipated, and he had worried a lot about actually having to eject.

He felt himself spinning through the air, sensed his parachute deploying, felt the seat separate from him, and then there was a pop as the canopy of the parachute opened and he was swinging back and forth under it.

In the last moment before his feet struck the tops of the canopy of trees in the forest, he saw—chilled and horrified—his copilot. His chute had not deployed. Waving his arms as if this somehow would brake his fall, the copilot disappeared into the treetops.

(Three)
Fort Riley, Kansas
0930 Hours, 21 February 1963

The situation was unusual. Army Regulations prescribed that a notification team (an officer of grade equal to, or superior to, that of the casualty; a chaplain of the appropriate faith; and a medical officer, if available) would call upon the immediate next of kin. If the casualty was married, the parents were no longer next of kin. Major Philip S. Parker IV was married.

But in this case, by the direct order of the Deputy Commanding General, CONARC, a notification team would call upon the casualty’s parents. And not the regularly assigned Fort Riley notification team alone. The commanding general had been informed that a Lieutenant Colonel Lowell and party would arrive at Fort Riley at approximately 0930 hours, and would be afforded every courtesy in their mission.

Inasmuch as the Deputy Commanding General, CONARC, was personally involved, the commanding general of Fort Riley decided that it was appropriate for him to be at the airfield when the aircraft carrying Lieutenant Colonel Lowell and party arrived. He had ordered the notification team, of course, to be on hand with an extra staff car and orders to be wholly cooperative. But if this Lieutenant Colonel Lowell was important enough to be sent by the deputy CONARC commander personally, he was important enough to be met by the Riley CG.

He was surprised when the aircraft that landed turned out to be a civilian Aero Commander. And when the door opened, he was surprised again that the first person out turned out to be a tall, sharp-featured black woman in a knee-length mink coat.

She turned around, and two children, a boy and a girl encased in hooded nylon jackets against the cold, stepped to the ground. Then an officer, out of uniform in old-fashioned and now proscribed pinks and greens, got out. The general was so surprised at the old uniform that it was a moment before he saw that the wearer of the uniform was also wearing his medals—a solid mass of them covering his breast—not just the ribbons. There was a 2nd Armored Division patch on his sleeve, and the stars of a major general on his epaulets.

And then he recognized the general. He had been in North Africa as a young major when General Harmon was commander of the 2nd Armored Division.

The general brushed by his notification team and saluted.

“Welcome to Fort Riley, General,” he said. “I regret the circumstances.”

“Thank you,” General Harmon said. “May I present Dr. Parker? Dr. Parker is Major Parker’s wife.”

She nodded and made a failing stab at a smile.

“This is Colonel Lowell,” Harmon said, gesturing to the officer coming out of the door of the Aero Commander. Colonel Lowell was in uniform, and his breast too was covered with medals, not ribbons. An enormous gold medal, the size of a coffee cup saucer, was pinned to a purple sash running diagonally across his chest. The general had never seen one like that before.

Lowell saluted, a crisp gesture. Good-looking officer, the general thought. He wondered where he had gotten the expensive civilian airplane.

“Riley is completely at your disposal, General,” the general said. “I believe you once commanded here?”

“Yes,” Harmon said. “Thank you.”

“This is our notification team,” the General said.

Harmon looked them over.

“I appreciate your interest, gentlemen,” he said, in his gravelly voice, “but I don’t think we’ll need you. If you, General, on the other hand, can spare the time from your duties to accompany us, I would be grateful.”

“Certainly, sir.”

“We have to make a rest stop for the children,” Harmon said. “There used to be facilities in that hangar.” He pointed.

“Yes, sir,” the general said.

“If I may ride with you, General,” Harmon said. “Colonel Lowell can ride with Dr. Parker.”

“Yes, sir, of course,” the general said.

The day was clear and bright, after several days of snow. The surface of the snow at the Parker farm was unbroken, save for a field to the left of the rambling wooden farmhouse, where Colonel Philip S. Parker III, Retired, had been exercising his Labradors.

They were easily seen from the road. The Labradors were black against the snow, and Colonel Parker was wearing a bright red tufted kapok nylon jacket.

When Colonel Parker saw the two staff cars turn off the highway into the drive, he started walking toward the house. By the time he got there, the staff cars had stopped before the house on the circular driveway. An American flag hung list-lessly from a thirty-foot pole.

When he saw Toni and the children, he had a very good idea what was going on. When he saw Ernie Harmon and Craig Lowell wearing their medals, as well as the Fort Riley commanding general, there was little question at all.

Lowell saluted as Parker approached. Parker nodded, but did not return it. Only military personnel in uniform were entitled to salute.

“Gentlemen,” Colonel Parker said. “Please come directly to the point of your visit.”