The Captains (25 page)

At that moment, he hated Captain Lowell, who was taking his troops into battle, while he had to stay behind to wage war with the chair-warmers at Eighth Army.

(Five)
57th U.S. Army Field Hospital
Giessen, Germany
23 September 1950

Major T. Jennings Wilson, QMC, Chief, Winter Field Equipment, U.S. Army General Depot, Giessen, had been awake in his private room on the top floor of the hospital since daybreak, even before they brought him his breakfast.

He was horribly hung over, and it hurt him to breathe. He'd either broken some ribs when he slammed into the steering wheel, or at the very least, given himself one hell of a bruise. His knees were sore, too. They had probably slammed against the dashboard. Goddamned kraut!

Major Wilson had searched his memory. He was a little confused. Christ, anybody would be confused, but he didn't think they'd taken a blood sample, so he was probably safe from a charge that he was drunk. He didn't remember things clearly from the moment of the crash until he sort of came to in the X-ray room.

He did remember some things. He remembered getting out of the Oldsmobile, after the crash and looking at the Jaguar long enough to see that the woman driving it was dead, and that the car had kraut license plates. That was going to cause him trouble. There weren't that many krauts with enough money to drive Jaguars, and that meant it was the kind of kraut who would probably sue the shit out of him in a German court, before German judges. Did the German courts have juries? If they did, obviously there would be German jurors, who would not only find him guilty, but sock him with a million dollars' worth of damages.

Fuck it, that's what you bought insurance for. That was the insurance company's problem, not his. His problem was getting through this without seeing his career go down the toilet. The army got hysterical when you got in a wreck involving a German national. It was bad for German-American relations, and the army was going ape-shit lately about German-American relations. The bullshit they were passing out was that the U.S. Army was a “guest” of the German people.

Bullshit. The U.S. Army was here because they'd beat the Germans in War II.

He went over and over in his mind what had happened, and by the time the MPs showed up, he was reasonably sure that he was home free. Oh, there were going to be problems, of course. He was going to need a new car. The Olds was demolished; the whole fucking front end was gone. And he knew he could count on trouble with the insurance company. They were going to have to pay for this, of course, but then, sure as Christ made little apples, they were going to cancel his insurance. Or jump his premiums.

And he'd probably given Dolores fits. He remembered that the doctor who had examined him had said that his wife had been notified and told that she should wait until today to see him, that they wanted to keep him under observation for twenty-four hours. Dolores sometimes went off the deep end when something like this happened. She wouldn't understand that it was just one of those things that happens sometimes. He was sorry about the kraut woman, naturally. Nobody likes to be involved in a fatal accident. It was a goddamned shame, and he was sorry about it, but things like this happened, and it seemed to be his turn to have it happen to him.

He knew the MPs would get involved. They investigated every accident. And when it was a bad one, like this one, they sent Criminal Investigation Division, CID, agents to do the investigating. CID agents were MP sergeants who wore civilian clothes, the army equivalent of police detectives.

Major Wilson was not surprised, either, that the CID agents who came into his room were wearing officer's pinks and greens. All they wore was officer's U.S. insignia on the lapels. No insignia or rank or branch of service. Just the officer's uniform permitted to civilian employees in Civil Service Grade GS-7 or better. What the hell, pinks and greens looked good, and if he had been an MP sergeant, he'd probably have done the same thing.

“Major Wilson?” the older of the two CID agents asked.

“That's right,” Major Wilson replied.

The credentials of a CID agent, a leather folder carrying a badge and a plastic-covered ID card, were flashed in his face.

“I'm Lieutenant Colonel Preston, Major Wilson,” the older of the two CID agents said. “And this is Agent MacInerney.”

Major Wilson wondered, fleetingly, if he really was a light colonel, or whether that was some sort of technique they used, making believe they ranked you to get you off balance. He decided it didn't matter. What was important for him was to handle these two very carefully.

“How do you do, sir?” Major T. Jennings Wilson said, politely.

“I guess you know why we're here, Major,” Preston said. “To talk to you about the collision yesterday afternoon.”

“I understand,” Major Wilson said.

“And I'm sure you're aware of your rights under the 31st Article of War? I mean, I'm sure you know that you don't have to say anything to us that would tend to incriminate you? Or, for that matter, that you don't have to talk to us at all?”

“Yes, of course,” Major Wilson said. “I'll answer any questions you have, Colonel. Any that I can.”

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Preston said. “I guess the best way to go about this, if you don't mind doing it this way, would be for you to just tell us what happened, in your own words. Would that be all right with you?”

“I'll do my best, sir,” Major Wilson said.

“And the best place to start, of course,” Preston said, “is at the beginning. I understand you were in Bad Hersfeld. Is that so?”

“Yes, sir,” Major Wilson said. “I was in Hersfeld for the past two days. I was with the G-4 of the 14th Constabulary. I'm chief of the Winter Equipment Division of the Depot, and I was up there trying to get a line on the requirements of the 14th for the upcoming year.”

“I see,” Preston said. “And you were coming back here when this happened?”

“I almost made it,” Wilson said, wryly. “Yes, sir, that's right.”

“When did you leave Hersfeld?”

“After lunch,” Major Wilson said.

“Have you got an approximate time?”

“Oh, say, and I really don't remember, precisely, 1400, something like that. It was really a working lunch.”

“And you drove straight through? You didn't stop anyplace?”

“I drove straight through.”

“Then you made pretty good time, didn't you? The collision took place at 1630, according to the German police.”

That idle question worried Major Wilson. Of course he had made good time. And the only way to make good time was to speed. What were these bastards up to? Were they going to divide the miles traveled by the time it took, and then charge him with speeding? He had heard they were capable of chickenshit like that. But then he thought that through. To do that, they would need witnesses to swear that he had left at a precise time, and he didn't think anybody could truthfully swear to the time he'd left the club in Hersfeld.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I guess I did. There was hardly any traffic on the roads.”

“Tell me what you remember about the accident,” Preston suggested.

“Well, truthfully,” Major Wilson said, “not much. It all happened so quickly.”

“You remember where it happened?” Preston asked.

“Yes, of course. About four, five miles out of Giessen. There's a series of curves in the road there, S's, I guess you'd call them. You really have to take them slowly. Well, as best as I recollect, Colonel, I was in the second or third curve, when all of a sudden this kraut comes around the curve in the other direction, coming out of Giessen, I mean to say, going like the hammers of hell. A Jaguar. You know how those krauts, the ones with enough money to drive a car like a Jaguar, drive.”

“Go on.”

“Well, that's all there is to tell. I tried to get out of her way, but she was on my side of the road, and there was nothing I could do.”

“You say the Jaguar was speeding?”

“Going like hell,” Major Wilson said.

“What about you?”

“Hell, I know that road, sir. I wasn't going more than thirty-five or forty.”

“Had you been drinking, Major?”

“To tell you the truth, I had a couple of drinks over lunch at the club in Hersfeld. I know, duty hours and all that, but I'd put in a tough day and a half.”

“A ‘couple' is two,” Preston said.

“I think two is all I had, sir,” Major Wilson said.

“The collision, Major Wilson, is under investigation by both the army and the German police.”

“Well, I'm not surprised,” Major Wilson replied.

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, the obvious reason. They get an American officer in front of a German court, an American carrying all the insurance they make us carry, and they can walk away with a bundle. You could hardly call it a trial by my peers.”

“You'll be tried by your peers, Major. I think you can count on that.”

“Well, that's good news,” Major Wilson said. “I'll take my chances before an American court-martial any time. We know how crazy these krauts drive.”

“I don't think I'm making myself clear,” Preston said. “You're going to face a civil suit in the German courts. And criminal prosecution by a court-martial.”

“I don't understand, sir.”

“Your story doesn't wash, Major,” Preston said. “For openers, we already have statements from the waiter of the officer's club in Hersfeld. You had five drinks, not two, at lunch. And then at a quarter to four, you stopped at the Gasthaus zum Golden Hirsch in Kolbe and drank two bottles of beer, to wash down two drinks of Steinhager. They remember you clearly because you were offensive when they had no American whiskey to offer.”

“I deny that, of course,” Major Wilson said.

“Let me go on,” Preston said, icily. “The Jaguar wasn't speeding. We know that for two reasons. One, we know that the Jaguar entered the highway approximately one hundred yards from the point of impact. There is an intersection there with a back road, which leads, as you probably know, to the commissary and PX at the QM Depot. The Jag had taken that road. We have witnesses. Two, the gear shift lever of the Jag was locked into second gear by the impact. A Jag won't do more than thirty-five or forty, wide open, in second gear. And we can't prove it, of course, but we consider it unlikely that a woman with a child beside her is going to run her car flat out.”

Without really thinking what he was saying, Major Wilson said: “Those krauts drive crazy, and everybody knows it.”

“You're wrong about that, too, Major,” Preston said. “The woman you killed when you came around that turn at between sixty-five and seventy miles per hour, on the wrong side of the road, isn't what you can really call a ‘kraut.' She was a naturalized American citizen. And she was the wife of an American officer named Lowell, who's in Korea.”

Major Wilson looked at Preston with horror in his eyes.

“I hope they hang your ass, Wilson,” Preston said.

“Colonel…” the other CID agent said, trying to shut him up.

“I'd like to prosecute you myself, you shitheel,” Preston said, having lost his temper beyond redemption. “They won't let me. But you better get yourself a good defense counsel, because I'm going to do whatever I can to send you to Leavenworth.”

The other CID agent took Preston's arm and pushed him out of the room. Major T. Jennings Wilson looked at the closed door for a moment, and then he leaned over the side of the bed and threw up.

(Six)
Near Osan, South Korea
25 September 1950

The L-5 came out of the mountains just behind Ch'ongju, and flew over the main supply route running through the valley, now jammed with lines of trucks and artillery. It flew around the mountains to Ch'onan. By then the build-up, as the supply line stretched, was less visible. Instead of backed-up traffic, there were small convoys of trucks, some accompanied by tanks, some quite alone. Here and there fires burned. There had been some resistance. The colonel wasn't sure how much of the smoke was from battle, or from what the North Koreans had set afire as they retreated.

Less frequently, in the crisp early morning skies, he could make out the sites of obvious battles. There were smoldering Russian T-34 tanks down there. Once they had learned how to handle them, the T-34s had stopped being invincible. After Ch'onan, the main supply route ran through the coastal valley which went all the way up to North Korea, past Inchon, where on September 15, nine days before General Ned Almond had led the X Corps ashore.

The colonel looked at his map. Twenty kilometers, about fourteen miles, to P'yongt'aek, and again that far from P'yongt'aek to Habung-ni. When he looked out the window, he saw a burning M46, but a hundred yards beyond it, not only the smoldering hulks of four T34s but the bodies of their crews. There had been a fight there, one that would never be recorded in the history books, because the war had passed it.