The Colonels, page 32
part #4 of Brotherhood of War Series
“He said, speaking from between clenched jaws,” Lowell said. “Porter, we have a public relations guy, don’t we?”
“We have a Vice President for Public Relations, yes,” Porter Craig said.
“I want him to do something for me,” Lowell said.
“I don’t think I’m going to like this,” Porter Craig said. “Why do you suppose that is, Craig?”
“I want him to get an address for me, and then send some flowers.”
“I knew it. Another actress, Craig?”
“No. This one is a reporter for Time-Life. Send her a couple of dozen roses…”
“A couple of dozen roses? Do you have any idea what roses cost this time of year?”
“No,” Lowell confessed. Porter Craig told him. “That much? Jesus! That would be a bit much. Send her something cheaper. With a card reading, ‘No offense intended, Craig Lowell.’ Will you do that for me, Porter?”
“What did you do to her, Craig? Perhaps a couple of dozen roses might not be enough.”
“Send her a dozen roses,” Lowell said. “And the card with that message.”
“I presume the lady has a name? And that you’re going to tell me what it is?”
“Her name is Cynthia Thomas,” Lowell said.
“Very interesting,” Porter Craig said. “How do you spell ‘Thomas’?”
Lowell spelled it for him.
“I have to tell you, Craig,” Porter said, “I find this very interesting…”
“Don’t make a production of this, Porter,” Lowell said. “She’s just a girl I met in passing…”
“I know…like two ships, passing in the night…”
“And she got the wrong idea about me,” Lowell said.
“You had your hands up her skirt looking for mushrooms, right?”
“Fuck you, Porter, just send the goddamned flowers,” Lowell said, and hung up.
(Two)
Fort Rucker, Alabama
15 February 1959
CONFIDENTIAL
HEADQUARTERS
The Army Aviation Center & Fort Rucker, Ala.
Fort Rucker, Alabama 36361
15 October 1959
1. Reference is made to TWX, Hq DA, Subj: “USASWS Recruiting Team,” dated 11 Oct 59 and to DA Circular 23—103, “Special Forces Requirements and Qualifications.”
2. A USASWS Personnel Recruiting Team is presently at Fort Rucker. Certain personnel have been selected for interview by Lt. Col. R. G. MacMillan of the USASWS. Commanders will insure that personnel selected will be available at the time and place directed. No requests for waiver of this DA mandated personnel action will be entertained.
3. Other personnel, meeting the criteria outlined in DA Circular 23—103, who wish to be interviewed by the USASWS Personnel Recruiting Team are encouraged and will be released from duty to do so. Appointments may be obtained by contacting Lt. Davis or M/Sgt Wojinski at Ext. 2408 or 2440.
BY COMMAND OF MAJOR GENERAL JIGGS
Charles M. Scott, Jr.
Lt. Colonel, AGC
Adjutant General
CONFIDENTIAL
(Three)
The U.S. Army Special Warfare School
Fort Bragg, North Carolina
21 February 1959
The commandant of the U. S. Army Special Warfare School was up over his ass in paper, and Sergeant Major Taylor had to wait at the open door for a full minute before Colonel Hanrahan sensed his presence and looked up.
“The building’s on fire?” Hanrahan asked. “How long have you been standing there, Taylor?”
“Not long, sir,” Sergeant Major Taylor said. “You looked busy, Colonel.”
“What’s up?”
“There’s an officer, an aviator, out here asking to see you, sir,” Taylor said.
“What’s he want?”
“He said he wants to enlist,” Taylor said.
“Send him to the adjutant,” Hanrahan said.
“He asked to see you, sir.”
“Tell him to see the adjutant,” Hanrahan said.
“Yes, sir,” Taylor said, and backed away from the open door.
A minute later, he was back.
Hanrahan looked up impatiently.
“He said that I was to say he’s a friend of Major Lowell, sir,” Sergeant Major Taylor said.
“Tell him ‘hooray for you’ and send him to the adjutant,” Hanrahan snapped. Taylor turned. “Wait a minute,” Hanrahan called. “Send him in.”
A very large, very black captain in a sweat-stained flight suit marched into Hanrahan’s office, saluted crisply, and said: “Captain Parker, Philip S., sir, requesting an audience with the colonel, sir.”
“An audience, Parker? I’m not the Pope,” Hanrahan said. “Stand easy and tell me what trouble Lowell’s in now.”
“None that I know of, sir,” Parker said. “He’s in Germany, visiting his son.”
“What’s on your mind, Parker? I’m not trying to get rid of you, but I am busy as hell.”
“I’d like to join up,” Parker said.
“Then you apply,” Hanrahan said. “You must know that, Captain.”
“Sir, Colonel MacMillan turned me down.”
“Then you’re turned down,” Hanrahan said. “Surely Mac gave you his reasons.”
“Only that it wasn’t for me, sir.”
“When did all this happen?”
“Two days ago, sir, at Rucker.”
“They pulled your records, Mac interviewed you, and turned you down? Is that it?”
“I was not selected for interview, sir,” Parker said. “And I technically don’t meet the requirements of DA Circular 23—103, sir.”
“Then you’ve wasted your time coming here, and are wasting my time standing here,” Hanrahan said.
“Mac admitted to me at lunch, sir,” Captain Parker said, “that the provisions of DA 23—103 can be waived. That he had that authority, from you.”
“If you’re a friend of Mac’s, then you know Mac sometimes talks too much,” Hanrahan said.
“May I make my pitch, Colonel?” Parker asked.
“You’ve got 120 seconds,” Hanrahan said, after a pause.
“Sir, I’m a regular army officer out of Norwich. My family…”
“You can skip all that,” Hanrahan said. “Our friend Lowell has told me all about you.”
“Sir,” Parker went on, “I have been a captain more than eight years. I am not on the new major’s list. I am currently an instructor pilot. I am apparently in as much of a dead-end job in aviation as I was before I went to aviation.”
“And you see us as a path to promotion?”
“I think I could make a contribution here, sir.”
“How?”
“I’m a good combat commander, sir,” Parker said.
“I understand you have a habit of shooting people who don’t behave the way you think they should,” Hanrahan said.
“I was acquitted of that charge, sir,” Parker said.
You were acquitted of it, but you know as well as I do that’s why you haven’t been promoted, why you won’t be promoted.
“Do you regret having shot that officer?”
“I was accused of murdering two officers, sir. There were two incidents.”
“I asked you if you were sorry about that?”
“I am sorry it was necessary, sir,” Parker said.
“You’re not parachute qualified?” Hanrahan asked.
“No, sir.”
“If you’re flying, you’ve passed a tougher physical than ours,” Hanrahan said. “But no foreign languages?”
“Just what I got in college, sir. I can read and write German, but I can’t say I’m fluent.”
“And you’re over twenty-nine, which is our maximum age for an officer in your grade?”
“I’m thirty, sir.”
“You’re fixed and rotary wing qualified?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you want to throw that away? What I mean by that is that it’s fairly obvious that army aviation is going to grow, and you’re an old-timer, so to speak. You’re asking the army to simply throw away the fortune it’s cost to train you, so that you can come here.”
“I repeat, sir, I think I could make a contribution here.”
“And also maybe get promoted?” Hanrahan asked, sarcastically.
“Yes, sir,” Parker said. “That’s my motivation. I can see no future for myself as an aviator. If they haven’t promoted me, they obviously aren’t going to give me an aviation command.”
“You seem pretty sure of that,” Hanrahan said, coldly. “Are you feeling sorry for yourself? Taking your ball and going home?”
Parker came to attention.
“I beg the colonel’s pardon for wasting his time, sir. With the colonel’s permission, I will withdraw, sir.”
“Sergeant Major!” Hanrahan called.
Taylor came into the office.
“Sir?”
“Take this officer with you,” Hanrahan said. “Get him a cup of coffee. And then get his serial number and so on, and arrange to have him transferred.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you, sir,” Parker said.
“When they stand you in the door of the airplane and tell you to jump,” Hanrahan said, “or when we run your ass off around here, trying to change a flabby flyboy into a Green Beret, you may have second thoughts.”
“I hope not, sir,” Parker said.
“You ever watch Groucho Marx on television, Captain?” Hanrahan asked.
The question obviously surprised Parker.
“I’ve seen him, sir. Yes, sir.”
“You know the part when somebody says the magic words, and the rubber duck comes down?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You said the magic words, Captain Parker. What you said should be the motto of this outfit. ‘We do a lot of nasty things we regret are necessary.’”
Parker didn’t reply.
“You are dismissed, Captain,” Colonel Hanrahan said.
(Four)
New York City
1235 Hours, 2 March 1959
When Lowell had called Porter Craig from the Rhine-Main airport in Frankfurt to ask for a letter of credit, he had refused Porter’s offer to send a car to meet him at Kennedy.
“It’s quicker, I’ve learned, to catch a cab,” he had said. “I get in at 11:05, so figure half past twelve.”
“Half past twelve for where?”
“I’d really rather not go downtown, Porter,” Lowell had said. “All I’m asking is that you meet me someplace with the letter of credit. How about the Century?”
“What are you going to buy now?”
“The Graf came through where you failed me, Porter. I have a car waiting for me at the Mercedes place, at Park and 58th Street.”
“The showroom’s there. I think the garage is on Eighth,” Porter Craig said.
“I was told to go to the place on Park Avenue.”
“You want to have lunch up there?”
“At the Mercedes place?”
“Actually, I was thinking of the Plaza,” Porter Craig said.
“God, no,” Lowell said. “We’d look like a gigolo and his pimp.”
“Where, then?”
“The Century,” Lowell said. “There are no women in the bar there.”
“I sent the flowers, by the way, to your lady friend,” Porter said.
“The Century,” Lowell said, “at half past twelve.”
And then he’d hung up and walked into the boarding area at Rhine-Main in Frankfurt, where they were calling his name.
When he got out of the cab at the Century, he was wearing a trench coat with a black Persian lamb collar and a matching hat, which was shaped something like an overseas cap, but several inches taller. The Graf had a similar outfit, and to Lowell—with several drinks in him after a lunch in Frankfurt am Main—buying such a coat and hat for himself seemed like a splendid idea. Now, he wasn’t so sure.
He was paying the cabbie when a chauffeur appeared at his elbow.
“I’ll take care of those for you, Mr. Lowell,” he said.
Lowell smiled automatically and looked beyond him. There was a Lincoln limousine at the curb. The passenger compartment windows and the divider were of dark glass and he couldn’t see in.
“Mr. Craig’s car?” Lowell asked.
As if in answer, the curbside door swung open, and there was a glimpse of Porter Craig beckoning to him.
He walked to the car and leaned down to look in.
“Aren’t we going in?”
“Kitchen’s closed today for some reason,” Porter said. “I just found out.”
Lowell got in the car and closed the door.
“This thing looks like a hearse,” he said.
“And I was so hoping you’d be pleased,” Porter Craig said, lightly sarcastic.
“I am, I am,” Lowell said.
“Nice flight?” Porter asked. He was a large, pudgy man, balding, in a nearly black gray suit. Lowell had often thought that Porter Craig looked like what a banker should look like. He looked respectable, honest, trustworthy, and smart.
“Ugly stewardess,” Lowell said. “I thought they had a rule they had to be young and good looking?”
“I thought your heart was spoken for,” Porter said, obviously pleased with himself. “After all, you did send her a dozen long-stemmed roses.”
“Good God, I told you there was nothing to that,” Lowell said.
“So you did.”
“Where are we going to eat? All I had on the plane was a couple of rolls and coffee.”
“I thought Jack and Charlie’s,” Porter said.
“21? I thought that responsible bankers should not be seen in there during business hours.”
“It’s on 52nd Street. You’re going to 58th. It’s on the way.”
“I don’t mind if you don’t,” Lowell said. “My appearance there won’t cause a run on the banks.”
The chauffeur slammed the trunk, and then got behind the wheel. Lowell picked up the telephone.
“Will you lower that divider, please? I feel like a corpse back here.”
The divider whooshed down.
“I like your hat,” Porter said. “Très chic!”
“You’re in a jolly mood today, aren’t you, wise-ass?” Lowell said.
“It’s because I’m so thrilled to see you, cousin.”
“It’s because I didn’t go to the office and check the cash,” Lowell said.
A doorman came out from the cast-iron fence at 21 and opened the door.
“Good afternoon, sir,” he said to Lowell, and then spotted Porter Craig. “How are you, Mr. Craig?”
“Give us an hour or so, Tom,” Porter said to the chauffeur and looked at his watch.
“If you’re on a first-name basis here,” Lowell said, “I think I will check the cash drawer.”
A maître d’hotel Lowell did not recognize greeted Porter Craig warmly and showed them to a table set for four. A waiter and a wine steward appeared immediately, but no busboy to take away the extra two place settings.
“I would like a Bloody Mary,” Lowell ordered. “With lots of tomato juice and no Worcestershire.”
“Yes, sir,” the waiter said.
Porter ordered a martini.
“They announce they make the best Bloody Mary in the world here,” Porter said.
“If I get one with Worcestershire, it goes back,” Lowell said. “What’s with you and the martini? I thought you drank those only when you’d just dispossessed a really needy widow.”
“Oh, this is rather an occasion for me,” Porter said, gaily.
Lowell was as good as his word. His Bloody Mary came with Worcestershire, and he called over the maître d’ and handed it to him.
“I ordered this without Worcestershire,” he said.
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” the maître d’ said.
“Good,” Lowell said.
The maître d’hotel hurried away.
“My,” Porter said, “you certainly know what you want, don’t you?”
“Porter, this surplus bonhomie of yours is making me suspicious. What have you set me up for?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Porter said.
Lowell looked at him and snorted. And then Porter stood up.
“Clem,” he called, “over here!”
“Who the hell is Clem?” Lowell demanded.
Porter was beaming. Someone approached the table. A hand came over Lowell’s shoulder to shake Porter Craig’s.
“Clem, I don’t think you’ve met my cousin Craig Lowell, have you?” Porter said. “Craig, this is my old friend, Clemens Thomas.”
Lowell got to his feet and put out his hand and found himself looking into the surprised and angry face of Cynthia Thomas.
“I believe you do know Miss Thomas, Clem’s sister?” Porter Craig said. His pudgy face was a map of delight.
“We’re old pen pals,” Lowell said.
“I’m going,” Cynthia Thomas said, furiously. “This was a shitty thing for you to do, Clem.”
Heads turned.
“Very funny, Lowell,” Cynthia went on. “Screw you again!”
She turned on her heel and stormed to the door.
Lowell went after her. He caught her at the hatcheck counter and spun her around.
“I didn’t want you to go away thinking I set this up, lady,” he said. “My asshole of a cousin has got a sick sense of humor.”
She shook free of his hand and then looked into his face. Her eyes were even bluer than he remembered.
Her brother rushed up.
“My God, Cyn,” he said. “He did send flowers, after all. Come on back.”
“Did you send the flowers?” she asked Lowell. “Or was that something these two thought was clever?”
“I sent the flowers,” Lowell said. “Or I had Porter send them.”
“So your wife wouldn’t see the bill?” she asked.
“My wife is dead, Miss Thomas,” Lowell said.
“Oh, Jesus,” she said. “I’m sorry, Lowell.”
She reached out and found his hand. It was vibrant, he thought. He caught himself caressing it, and let it go.
“Let’s go eat,” Cynthia said, reaching for it again. “They say you can order anything you want in here. Let’s see if they have some arsenic for these two.”
