Once an Eagle (76 page)

“It is. Thought it up only this noon. I think it's pretty good myself.” He rose with a grunt. “Alice says I'm getting fat. That's insulting, by God. Sam, am I getting fat?”

“I've never seen you looking thinner, sir.”

They all laughed and Westerfeldt cried: “Ah-ha! That's a two-edged thrust, I perceive.” His fine blue eyes twinkled with amusement. “After all, look at old Hunter Liggett—he went all the way up to army command on two hundred and forty pounds. By God, his luncheons! They were the talk of the First Corps. Remember?”

A young second lieutenant named Chase entered the tent, and paused.

“Yes?” Westerfeldt said. “What is it, Hank?”

Chase saluted. “It was that report you wanted on those poison-oak cases, sir.” His eye fell on the bottle and cups. “I'm sorry, sir. I'm intruding—”

“Nonsense! Come on in and sit down. You're in luck. We're just about to pour a libation to the god of army landing exercises.” Standing at the folding table he filled the cups with care, and handed them to the other three. “Hank, you can have one, too.”

“Thank you, Colonel.”

“I believe in coincidence and timing. If Colonel Wilhelm comes in though, you've got to give yours to him.” He raised his cup. “Here's love and luck,” he said; he drank and licked his lips. “I want to tell you: General Bonham was by here a little while ago. He's very pleased, very pleased indeed.” He rubbed his broad, fleshy nose, chuckling. “Couldn't get over that escapade of yours, Sam. He's an old Redleg, you know—tickled him pink and purple to see the horse arm discomfited.”

“That was certainly a stroke, Sam,” MacFarlane said.

“You made the God damn maneuvers,” the Colonel went on, “that's all you did. Watch 'em change the rules about the capture and use of enemy mounts … You never were with cavalry, were you?”

Damon grinned. “The closest I ever got to a horse in line of duty was currying mounts at Early in '16.”

“That's what I thought. How'd you ever get the idea?”

“I don't know, Colonel. It just popped into my mind.” He took another sip of his drink. Was that true? Yes, substantially—there had been his anger at Murdoch's stupidly and vindictively leading that charge, knowing he was rushing blank ammunition, and all that milling around inside the wall—and out of it the idea had come … Half an hour later they'd taken Hill 83 from a somnolent, astonished battery; and the fat had been in the fire. Atkins, terrified at this sudden hole in his right flank, had panicked, committed his reserve in two futile assaults on the hill, suffering immense losses. After that he'd steadied down and fought a skillful delaying action out toward the Reservation; but by then he'd had nothing left. Only the umpires' decision to conclude the problem had saved the Whites from an annihilating double envelopment. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail …

“—I wish it was still going on,” Chase was saying to Westerfeldt in his high, clear voice. “The problem, I mean.”

“Why's that, my bucko?”

“Well, you learn so much from carrying things out. It stops being theoretical.”

“All right.” The Colonel heaved himself to his feet and going over to the map board pulled the piece of cheesecloth from it. “Tell you what: the problem's still going on. It's fourteen hundred hours and you're in command. What do you do?”

The boy went up to the map. “Well, I'd send Third Battalion along the road there, behind the beach—”

“Wrong!” Westerfeldt picked up his cup and drained it. “White's artillery still commands that stretch and there is virtually no concealment for two hundred-odd yards. Right, gentlemen?” The two battalion commanders nodded assent. “Persist in that course, my bucko, and you'll collect an ass full of arrows.”

“Oh no, wait—Major Damon's force,” Lieutenant Chase said.

“Now you're talking. What do you want to do with them?”

“Well, I'd send them wide around Hill 107, here, and then wheel left through this stand of oaks.”

“Splendid!” The Colonel beamed at him. “Only thing—these little wavy lines, here. See 'em? That's a steep climb, hand-over-hand, uphill. You wouldn't get very far … Aside from that, your plan is masterful.”

There was a deep, sustained groan from under the table and Westerfeldt leaned down and began to scratch an enormous dog under its loose jowls. “Hello old Pompey boy,” he said. “Hey is that old Pompey boy is he hey old rough-and-rugged trooper boy. Ready for anything. Is he now.” Grinning down he scratched its scruff. “He's all footsore and weary from all the heavy campaigning. Yessir.” The animal dropped his shaggy head on his front paws and sighed. “By the way, gentlemen, General Bonham requests the pleasure of our company—and stuffed wallets—for poker this evening. Not you, Hankus,” he said to young Chase. “Your face, I regret to say, lacks the necessary guile for the deed. That comes, however, with age.” He chuckled richly, and poured them all another drink. His full, genial face with its Roman nose and rounded jaw made him resemble one of the last of the Bourbons, chaffing a young courtier in the privacy of his own chambers. “Look at Major Damon: the devil himself doesn't know what's going through
his
mind … ”

“It's the truth,” MacFarlane said with his quick, blunt laugh. “Sad Sam. He looks asleep half the time.”

“Yes—and all the while he's scheming up a way to beat you. Slats Hatcher down at Gaillard told me you had the spittingest, raunchiest company he ever saw on Luzon. Said they'd have flapped their arms and jumped off the barracks roof if you'd asked them. How'd you do it?”

“They were a good outfit,” Damon answered.

“Oh hell, don't kid a kidder, Sam. There's more to it than that.”

Damon grinned. “Well—God knows I had enough practice at the company level.”

The others laughed and Westerfeldt said, “By gar, that's the truth. How'd you feel giving up all that time-in-grade just to become the youngest major in the whole game?”

“I was willing to make the exchange, sir.”

“I'll bet you were. I've been around this man's army for a long, long time—and I've yet to see a man turn down either a promotion or a decoration. Yessir.
Four things greater than all things are—Women and Horses and Power and War.
Who said that, Chase?”

The Lieutenant blinked at him—said quickly: “Tennyson, sir?”

“
Wrong!
One more mistake today and we'll have to make you laundry officer. You won't like that very much, will you?”

“No sir, I won't.”

“Tennyson! Is that what they teach you kids these days?—Kipling, Henry my boy,
Kipling
—he knew more about soldiering than all the rest of them combined. More about a lot of other things, too …” The Colonel got to his feet and stretched arduously. “Well, I don't know about you gentlemen, but I for one am going to shower down and get spruced up, and then I'm going over to pay my respects to Wee Willie Atkins and see if I can cheer him up a little. He must be mighty cast down right about now. It'll be Canton Island for Wee Willie for sure. Or maybe Ascension.” He finished his drink. “And then how's for some golf, Mac?”

“Raring to go,” MacFarlane answered.

“All right. Soon as I get back we'll go over. Sam, how come you never learned to play golf?”

“I guess I just never seemed to find the time for it, Colonel.”

“You should have. Why with your baseball swing, you'd be a natural. They've got a course over there at Pebble Beach that's a thing of beauty and a joy forever.—You won't forget tonight now, will you, Sam?”

“I'll be there, Colonel.”

His own tent was empty. Standing at its entrance he watched through his glasses the confused bustle at the pier, where they were still unloading the trucks and supplies. To the right, a thousand yards down the beach, where the main landing had been, a group of sailors and engineers were gingerly trying to ease a bulldozer down the ramp from boat-rig A perched on the bow of a fifty-foot launch.

Abruptly he went over to his cot, pulled a pad out of his dispatch case and started writing without pause.

 

Dear Dad:

 

Well, we got through it—more or less. That is to say we got the troops ashore, and some of the artillery, and a few of the tanks. But we had four near drownings, and½ doz minor injuries. The surf, while heavy, was not prohibitive: I can imagine occasions when it would be substantially worse. And I'd hate to imagine what would have happened if a few of von Boehn's machine gunners had been dug in there along the dunes, behind a lot of wire. In fact, I don't need to imagine. Simulated conditions, they say. Sure, of course—but the trouble is that too much of it is simulated: the whole damned operation is so far removed from hard-and-fast actualities it borders on the fantastic.

To begin with, soldiers ought to know how to swim. There are a dozen things an able-bodied young American of 1940 should know how to do: drive and make minor repairs on a car, shoot a rifle and pistol, ride a horse or a bicycle, speak and read two foreign languages, send and receive with signal flags, Morse, etc. etc. (You've heard me on this, I know—Tommy loves to kid me mercilessly on this point, adding wonderfully esoteric talents such as riding camels, entrechat, poison blow gun, and so forth and so on.) Anyway, a man on the water who can't swim is only half a man. All troops should be
required
to swim a distance of 100 yards in full clothing, and wade 300 yards through hip-deep water with full combat pack.

Our training schedule was ridiculous. As you can imagine. My guess would be that a minimum of 6–8 wks is necessary for the training of troops for amphib assault. Cargo nets are no good. What we need is a broad, square-meshed landing net, and long hours of practice in climbing and descending—particularly dropping into the craft. What happens is: the launch rises and falls; everyone gets scared and stops, and everything jams up.

The SCR-131 is inadequate for amphib ops, to put it mildly. (In point of fact we could have lost the entire maneuvers because of their faulty performance—and almost did so. We had NO radio communication for 4 hrs.) We ought to have the 171s, at least—or preferably something still lighter—and they ought to be thoroughly waterproofed. These were not.

But the most pitiful inadequacy of all is in the ldg craft itself. Motor whaleboats and launches are simply not the answer: they won't beach or retract well, it's impossible to get out of them in any order or dispatch, they offer no protection or covering fire. What we need is a shallow-draft boat built like a lighter, almost a sea-sled, with an armored bow and two machine gun tubs forward, that would skid right up on the beach and hold there, and drop two ramps. Or maybe a bow that became its own ramp, like that experimental craft you wrote about that Higgins is building … Of course what we could
really
use is a squat, broad, open-cockpit tank with lots of armor, a 37-millimeter gun and two mgs up fwd, that could run screw-driven through the water and then waddle right up the beach on its engines, like a big, tough turtle. Is anything like that being considered back there, where all the great decisions are being decided?

 

He broke off, set the pad aside and took off his shoes. From down the row there was a shout, and then a lot of boisterous laughter. There was more talk he couldn't hear, and after that several voices rose in song, off-key:

 

“Hey, we'll hang Old Glory from the top of the pole,

And we'll all sign over—in a pig's ass hole! … ”

 

Listening he smiled, remembering the days at Early. The war had come, at least to Europe: a funny war of threats and elaborate casemates where the combatants lived like firemen, or sailors, reading the papers and drinking vin rouge or Schnapps. But that wouldn't last long …

He picked up the pad again and went on writing rapidly:

 

Anyway, we won the game—or so the umpires decided—and old Westy's in fine fettle (he told us Gen. Bonham was very pleased with the way things went). And now there'll be a lot of bourbon and golf and poker and all-around good fellowship at odd hours. Which is all well and good. But what's being lost sight of here is that we are woefully unprepared for any kind of amphibious operation anywhere at all.

We had a lively Christmas up at Beyliss—wish you could have been with us. Your grandson, you'll be delighted to hear, now smokes a Kalmia briar pipe, quotes W. H. Auden, and was never up before eleven, to my knowledge. (He's also something of a lady killer, to hear Peggy.) He finally condescended to a chat with me between social obligations—he went to some pains to explain to me that the current European conflict is nothing more than the logical ascension to power of mass man, and that our best course, as a nation of clear-thinking individualists, was to pass by on the other side and let them beat one another's brains out. This was a bit disconcerting, but it was such a welcome change from LAST Xmas when poor old Europe was in the grip of colonial imperialism's last gasp, that I listened to him gratefully. (Growth is change, but is change growth?) I do hope to CHRIST he isn't going to turn into an Ivy League esthete: sherry flips and white shoes and oxford button-down; too good for this world.

Well, that's a bit too harsh, I guess. I'm tired. (What was it old Ely used to say? A tired officer is a pessimistic one.) I know the boy's got good stuff in him (how could he help but have that!) and it'll shake down with time. Peggy is growing up with a rush: boys are no longer hateful gangling beasts, a Magnavox portable phonograph is the key to all the kingdoms of heaven, and Gene Krupa is groovy. (WHO is Gene Krupa???) Tommy has recovered from that miserable siege of eczema and is carrying on like the wonderful, valiant girl she is