The Generals (13 page)

“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.

“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.

“Let’s go have a look, Colonel,” General Lemper said.

“Colonel Lowell has been loading tanks with drag lines from the Engineer Light Equipment Company,” Colonel Sapphrey said to his friend Colonel Ambler.

“I didn’t think they’d handle that much weight,” Colonel Ambler said.

“They’re not supposed to,” General Lemper said, as he pushed open the door.

He found Lowell four buildings away. The group arrived just as, with a sharp crack, a hydraulic line on a large yellow warehouse forklift burst, spraying purple hydraulic fluid into the air.

At the moment the line burst, the lift’s forks were eight feet in the air, suspending a six-by-six over a flat car. When the lines failed, the six-by-six dropped like a stone onto the flatcar, a vertical drop of about five feet. It bounced wildly on its springs.

“Aw, shit!” the corporal driving the forklift said bitterly, wiping hydraulic fluid from his face. “Another one!”

General Lemper wondered why the truck had been raised so high in the first place. Then he saw why. There was a line of six-by-sixes on the rail-car loading platform of one of the QM warehouses. A ramp had been built for them out of railroad ties. The forklifts were taking the trucks down from the loading platform, rather than up from the ground. The greatest strain on the hydraulic hoses came when the loaded forks were raised. By taking the trucks down from the loading platform, the forks had to be raised only a foot or so in order to clear the wheels. They would have had to be raised to five feet if the trucks had been picked up from the ground.

The forklift driver backed the lift away from the flatcar. There was a screeching noise as the forks dragged across the flatcar; and then when the tips cleared the flatcar, the forks crashed to the ground.

Colonel Ambler looked at General Lemper as if pleasantly anticipating an angry order to cease and desist.

General Lemper watched the forklift with the ruptured lines back around the corner of the building, dragging the forks along the ground. Lemper followed it.

A repair operation had been set up. Mechanics drenched with hydraulic fluid were replacing ruptured hydraulic hoses. Other mechanics were changing tires using one now-tireless forklift as a jack.

Lowell was overseeing this operation, his hands on his hips. As General Lemper walked over to him, he saw dark spots on both his tunic and trouser legs. It was not a criticism of his appearance. The spots had obviously been caused by hydraulic fluid. Since the stuff didn’t come out, Lieutenant Colonel Lowell’s very expensive, tailor-made uniform was ruined. And so, Lemper saw, were his boots.

“What are you going to do, Colonel, when you run out of forklifts you can cannibalize?”

Lowell turned around and saluted crisply.

“Good morning, sir,” he said, and then answered the question: “I sent a sergeant on a scrounging mission, sir. He seemed quite confident of success.”

Lemper introduced the officers with him. They eyed Lowell suspiciously.

“Colonel Sapphrey is concerned, Colonel, with reports that we have been dispatching empty boxcars,” Lemper said.

“Yes, sir, I have been,” Lowell said. “One of the holdups was the switching around of cars; segregating, I suppose, is the word. It takes forever with trains.”

“So I’ve learned,” Lemper said. “What was your solution to that? Just ignoring the cars you couldn’t use?”

“Not exactly, sir,” Lowell said. “I had a talk with a couple of the railroad engineers and conductors. They came up with a solution to the problem, and I put it into action.”

“And what was that solution, Colonel?” Colonel Sapphrey asked.

“New Orleans has got a really efficient car distribution center, or so they told me. It’s supposed to be the fastest place in the country to make up trains. So I’ve sent them the job. They’re going to make up trains, some for New Orleans, some for Mobile, some for Miami, and then make up trains of the empty cars and send them back here.”

“Just like that?” Colonel Sapphrey said. “You sent them the job? Just who do you think you are? And what makes you think they’ll oblige you once the trains you’ve ordered to New Orleans get there?”

“Well, I sent Mr. Wojinski with one of the train men, some sort of a district supervisor, I didn’t get his exact title, but he understands our problem and is willing to help. Between them, I’m sure it’ll work.”

“We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?” Colonel Sapphrey said.

“When will these people get to New Orleans?” General Lemper asked. “When will you know for sure?”

“I would have heard by now if there were problems, sir. They’ve been there six, probably seven hours. The first trains from here should be arriving in New Orleans about now.”

“How did you get them to New Orleans?” Lemper asked.

“They flew, sir.”

Lemper was mildly annoyed. To keep his staff people from flying in all directions, he had ordered that no aircraft be dispatched out of the local area except with his express permission.

“I’m surprised my aviation officer gave you an airplane,” he said.

“He loaned me a couple of pilots, sir,” Lowell said. “They went in my airplane.”

“You have an airplane assigned to you?” Lemper asked.

“No, sir, I meant
my
airplane. I own one.”

“How much permanent damage are you doing to these forklifts?” Lemper asked.

“They’re pretty tough, sir,” Lowell said. “I don’t think very much.”

“In my judgment,” Colonel Ambler said, “after the abuse to which they are being subjected, they’ll require complete depot-level overhaul.”

“I would have to defer to your judgment, Colonel,” Lowell said, politely.

“Gentlemen,” General Lemper said, “I would suggest that Colonel Lowell has more important things to do than chat with us.” Then he gave in to the impulse: “Carry on, Colonel.”

“Right you are, sir,” Lowell said, with just a hint of a phony English accent.

General Lemper quickly turned, so the others would not see his smile.

When he got back to his office, he called Major General Paul T. Jiggs, J-3, Joint Assault Force, at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida.

“Stu, Paul,” he said when Jiggs came on the line. “Got a minute to chat?”

“In other words, you have a few comments vis-à-vis Craig Lowell that you would rather not make official? How mad are you, Stu?”

“Mad isn’t the word. Embarrassed.”

“You’re not mad?”

“The Transportation Corps is mad; the Quartermaster Corps is mad; and I suspect if I talked to the Engineer, he would be mad. But I’m embarrassed. Lowell has got us off the dime. That shouldn’t have been necessary.”

Paul Jiggs and Stu Lemper were a year apart at the Point, Jiggs having graduated a year earlier. They had been friends for a long time.

“As long as you’re off the dime, that’s all that counts,” Jiggs said. There was more than a hint of criticism in the sentence, Lemper thought.

“Yes, it is,” Lemper said. “I would hate to see this affect my taking the division to Cuba, Paul.”

“That hasn’t come up,” Jiggs said. “Don’t worry about that.”

“You have to send somebody to help me do what I should have been able to do myself, and I worry.”