The Colonels, page 5
part #4 of Brotherhood of War Series
Fayetteville, North Carolina
1945 Hours, 28 December 1958
The five Hanrahans—father, mother, two sons, and the baby, a daughter aged ten—came down the ladder from Piedmont Flight 223, a turboprop Convair, into the surprisingly bitter cold. They were mussed, tired, and groggy.
They shuffled into the terminal.
There were two signs just inside the terminal. One pointed to the baggage pickup area, and the other had an arrow pointing at a shallow angle toward a telephone booth. The legend on the sign said: TELEPHONE FOR INCOMING MILITARY PERSONNEL FOR FORT BRAGG.
“Paul, go with your mother and help with the bags,” Colonel Paul T. Hanrahan said. “I’ll call and get us some wheels.”
Patricia Hanrahan, holding the hands of her youngest children, marched off to the baggage pickup area while her oldest child walked tiredly behind her. In seventy-some hours, they had traveled 10,000 miles, and they were still some distance from bed. They hadn’t eaten since lunch, and both Kevin and Rosemary were getting whiny.
Hanrahan went to the telephone booth, closed the door, and sat down. He expected a pay telephone, but the booth offered instead a dialless desk telephone firmly bolted to a tiny shelf. There was a sign on the wall. He studied it:
MILITARY PERSONNEL REPORTING TO FORT BRAGG ON TRAVEL ORDERS:
Between 0730—1630 Hours, Weekdays:
Officers: Call Ext. 3546.
EM: Call Ext. 3606.
Between 1630—0730 Hours, Weekdays:
Officers: Call Ext. 3202.
EM: Call Ext. 3290.
Saturdays, Sundays, and Holidays:
All Personnel Call Ext. 4333.
He said, aloud: “I’ll have to figure that out.”
He found a battered package of cigarettes in his mussed suit jacket, and searched for a match. Then he read the sign again.
“Is this a holiday or isn’t it?” he asked aloud. And then he said, “Fuck it,” and stood up and opened the door and left the telephone booth.
He looked around for more signs, and found the one he was looking for: “RENTAL CARS THROUGH THE CORRIDOR.”
He went through the corridor and looked at the rental car booths, passing over Hertz and Avis for Econo-Car. They probably charged just as much as Hertz or Avis, he thought, but maybe not.
There were three people in line ahead of him.
As Hanrahan waited, he kept looking toward the baggage pickup area. It was entirely possible, he thought, that Fayetteville would have baggage handlers of extraordinary zeal who would get the bags to Patricia before he expected they would. If so, she wouldn’t know where the hell he was.
Finally, it was his turn.
“I’d like a car, please,” he said.
The girl took out a sheath of forms.
“Do you have an Econo-Car card, sir?”
“Do I have a what?”
“One of our credit cards,” she explained impatiently.
“No.”
“American Express, Visa, Air Travel?”
“No.”
“Then there will be a one hundred dollar deposit, sir.”
“OK,” he said.
That wasn’t all there was to it. She wanted his driver’s license, too, and when he presented his New York State operator’s permit, it was two years out of date. He gave her his Adjutant General’s Office identification card (AGO card), which identified him as a lieutenant colonel of the regular army, and explained to her that according to the laws of the State of New York, military personnel returning from service outside the country have thirty days in which to renew expired driver’s licenses.
She had to check on that. While she was calling her superiors at Econo-Car in Raleigh, Paul, Jr., found him, and delivered the latest bulletin. They now had their luggage, except for one piece which had apparently not been loaded on the plane in Atlanta. It would be delivered the next day. And Rosemary had shit in her pants.
“Don’t say that word,” Paul Hanrahan said.
“Mother wants to know how long it’s going to take them to send a car.”
“I’m renting one,” he said. “Tell your mother that.”
There was one other problem. He didn’t know where he was going.
When the Econo-Car girl came back, visibly surprised to have been informed that his driver’s license was indeed valid, he asked her about a motel.
“The biggest is the Fayetteville Inn,” she said. “On Bragg Boulevard.”
“Could we call them, and ask if there’s room?”
“You’ll find a pay telephone in the main lobby, sir,” the girl said. “Thank you for renting from Econo-Car.”
He didn’t call first. When he found his family, Rosemary was weeping from her humiliation.
“It was that whatever-it-was they gave us on the plane from San Francisco,” Paul Hanrahan said. “It almost got me, too.”
“She stinks,” Kevin said.
“Shut up, Kevin,” Paul Hanrahan said. “We’re on our way to a motel.” To Patricia, he explained: “I’m too beat to go out to the post.”
She nodded her understanding.
They loaded everybody in a Chevrolet. Kevin was right. Rosemary, sitting beside her father, stank.
It was fifteen minutes from the airport to Bragg Boulevard and another five before he found the Fayetteville Inn, a large motel with a complex of two-story buildings.
He went in. They could give him a room with two double beds and put a cot in it for only six times what it would have cost him to go to Fort Bragg and put up in the officer’s guest house, a barracks converted into apartments to provide temporay accommodation for newly arriving officers and their families.
The cot was delivered while Patricia was cleaning up Rosemary in the bathroom. When she came out, he saw that her chest was beginning to swell under her little girl’s undershirt.
You’re getting old, Hanrahan. The last of your children is really growing up. And you were just too old and tired to comply with your orders.
“Well, let’s go someplace and get some dinner, and then hit the sack.”
“You promised,” Kevin, hurt and angry, challenged.
“What did I promise?”
“You said that when we got here, I could have a hamburger.”
“If nothing else, I am a man of my word. A hamburger joint it is.”
“Her stomach…” Patricia said.
“She can have something else,” Hanrahan said.
“I want a hamburger, too,” Rosemary said.
They went out and got in the rented Chevrolet. A mile from the Fayetteville Inn, he found a large hamburger joint, a white concrete building with an enormous tin hamburger outlined with neon lights on its roof.
It was called the ParaBurger. Fort Bragg, N.C., was the home of the paratroops.
When they walked inside and he smelled the burning ground beef and the onions, his mouth watered and he was amused at himself. They crowded into one of the booths, and a waitress promptly arrived to take their order. Kevin ordered a Super ParaBurger with french fries and a chocolate ice cream soda. That meant that Kevin was probably going to run to form, gulp too much food down, and then throw it up. All the same Paul didn’t even warn the kid to take it easy.
The hamburger joint in a sense was really coming home, and he didn’t want to be a spoilsport.
A great bull of a man came to the booth. He was florid faced and crew cut, and the skin of his neck hung in folds. He wore a plaid sports coat with a blue shirt collar spread on it, and he was towing a tall, skinny woman with a nervous smile.
“Colonel Hanrahan?” the man asked.
“Yes,” Hanrahan said, forcing a smile, getting to his feet, and offering his hand.
“Sergeant Wojinski, sir,” the bull of a man said. “I thought it was you, Colonel.”
“It’s good to see you again, Sergeant,” Hanrahan said.
But it would have been better at some other time.
“I’m sure the colonel doesn’t remember me…”
You’re familiar; I’ve seen that bullneck before. But where? Greece!
“You were with the 119th Regiment, 27th Royal Hellenic,” Colonel Hanrahan said.
“Well, goddamn, Colonel, I’m flattered,” Sergeant Wojinski said. “That was a couple of wars ago.”
“I remember you,” Hanrahan said, “very well.”
“Colonel, could I let you meet my wife?” Wojinski blurted.
“How do you do, Mrs. Wojinski?” Hanrahan said.
“We didn’t want to bother you, or nothing,” Mrs. Wojinski said, “but Ski says, ‘that’s the colonel, I know goddamn well it is,’ and I couldn’t stop him.”
“I’m very glad you didn’t,” Hanrahan said. “And this is my wife, Patricia, and Paul, Jr., Kevin, and Rosemary.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, I’m sure,” Mrs. Wojinski said. “You have a real nice family, Miz Hanrahan.”
“Thank you,” Patricia Hanrahan said, with a smile. “Won’t you sit down?”
“Thanks just the same, but we was just leavin’,” Mrs. Wojinski said.
“Another time, then,” Hanrahan said. “I’ll probably see you out at the post, Ski. We’re just reporting in. Where are you?”
“Special Warfare School, sir,” Wojinski said.
“Well, then, I will see you. That’s where I’m going.”
Wojinski gave him a funny look.
“You got any idea what you’ll be doing there, Colonel?” he asked.
“I’ll be running it, Ski,” Hanrahan said.
“Commanding officer?”
“They call it ‘commandant,’” Hanrahan said.
“Colonel, I’m glad to hear that,” Wojinski said. “Real glad.”
“I was, too, Ski,” Hanrahan said. “I only found out a couple of days ago. On our way here, as a matter of fact.”
“Well, then, sir, I will see you out at the post,” Wojinski said. “It was nice to see you and to meet Mrs. Hanrahan, and I hope we didn’t butt in or anything.”
“Don’t be silly,” Hanrahan said.
(Four)
Master Sergeant Stefan Wojinski, whose intention it had been to grab a burger or something and then go bowling (just to get off the fucking post), instead drove immediately back to Fort Bragg, onto the main post, and into a small area of brick cottages behind the barracks.
He got out of his Buick, bounded up the stairs, and hammered with a massive fist on a door.
A tall, crew-cut man in his middle thirties, his civilian shirt stretched tight across his chest, opened the door. He was Master Sergeant Edward B. Taylor, Sergeant Major of the U.S. Army Special Warfare School.
“I thought you said you were going bowling,” he said.
“You dumb sonofabitch,” Wojinski said. “You and your ‘candy-ass political colonel with connections in the White House.’”
“What the hell are you talking about, Ski?” Sergeant Major Taylor asked, patiently.
“Your ‘absolutely straight poop’ is full of shit, is what I’m talking about. I just met our new commanding officer.”
“And?”
“It’s Paul Hanrahan, Shit-between-the-ears.”
“You know him, then?”
“I was with him in Greece,” Wojinski said. “They don’t come no better.”
“And how do you know he’s taking over?”
“He told me, that’s how,” Wojinski said.
“And he’s a good man?”
“You bet your fucking ass, he is. I seen him work.”
“Come on in, Ski, I’ll give you a beer,” the sergeant major said.
The Wojinskis followed Taylor into the kitchen of his quarters, where he opened the refrigerator and passed out bottles of Miller’s High Life and the church key to pop the top.
Mrs. Taylor, a small, firmly bodied redhead, came into the kitchen.
“I thought you were going bowling,” she said, yawning. “Give me one of those, honey, will you?”
Her husband got another bottle of beer and handed it to her. But he looked at Wojinski as he did.
“My poop is straight, Ski. I saw the orders. He was assigned, DP, as commandant. You know what that means?”
“No, I don’t. All I’m telling you is that Colonel Paul Hanrahan’s as good as they come.”
“DP means ‘Direction of the President,’ Ski. He was personally assigned by the President. More likely, since the President has other things on his mind, by somebody who can put a piece of paper in front of the President and have him put his signature on it without asking too many questions. This guy has friends in very high places, Ski.”
(Five)
The Fayetteville Inn
Fayetteville, North Carolina
0930 Hours, 29 December 1958
Patricia Hanrahan sat on the bed and ran her fingers down her husband’s face, finally tickling him under the chin. She noted that the stubble on his chin was no longer pure red; it was turning gray.
He grimaced, making her chuckle, and then his eyes popped open.
“Good morning,” she said.
He looked at his watch.
“I let you sleep,” she said. “You were beat. How do you feel?”
He looked around the room. The children were nowhere in sight.
“Like taking you up on that offer you made in Honolulu,” he said.
She gestured frantically toward the bathroom. One of the children was obviously in there.
“Sorry about that,” she said.
“I’ve got to get up and get a uniform pressed,” he said.
She pointed to a clothes rack, where a uniform covered with dry cleaner’s plastic wrap was hanging.
“Done,” she said. “And I made Paul shine your boots.”
“I bet he loved that,” Hanrahan said.
“He must be sick,” she said. “He didn’t even complain.”
“You’ve been busy,” he said.
“Busy, busy. I even have half-bought a Volkswagen.”
“Where’d you find that?”
“There was a stack of ParaGlides in the restaurant,” she said. “With classifieds. A captain going to Germany’s got one.”
“The ParaGlide,” he said, referring to the semiofficial newspaper published for Fort Bragg personnel. “God, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen one of those.”
“Who would have ever thunk,” Patricia said, smiling, “that Second Lieutenant Hanrahan would one day come back here wrapped in the glory of a full colonel.”
“Glory,” he mocked, gesturing around the room.
“The wife, the one with the Volkswagen, is coming to show it to me,” Patricia said. “If it’s not falling apart, I think we should buy it. You want to look at it before I give her a check?”
“You’ll be driving it,” he said. “If you want it, buy it.”
She nodded.
“Who’s in there?” he said, nodding toward the bathroom.
“Rosemary,” she said. “The boys found pinball machines in the lobby.”
“Rosemary,” he called, raising his voice, “you have thirty seconds to get out of there.”
Patricia waited until he’d come out of the bathroom, his face ruddy from his shave. She watched as he sat down on the bed and put on the glossy pair of Corcoran jump boots, laced them up, and pulled his trousers on over them. She waited until she saw a look of concern on his face, and then tossed him a small, square cellophane-wrapped package.
“Don’t ask where I got them,” Patricia said. “I’ll see if I can’t get you some rubber bands today.”
“I do believe you’re blushing,” he said, as—concealing what he was doing from Rosemary, who was watching television—he broke open the package of rubber prophylactics, unrolled them, twisted them, and tied them around the top of his jump boots. Then he tucked the hem of his trousers under the rubbers, “blousing” them.
After that he put on his shirt, tied his tie, and took the tunic from its hanger.
“Even the eagles,” he said. “You done good, Patty.”
“And the crossed rifles,” she said. “Don’t miss the rifles.”
“Where the hell did you get them?”
“I went down to Blood Alley and banged on the door of one of those junk stores until they opened it for me. I’d hate to tell you how much they cost.”
“Thank you,” he said.
She waited until he had put on the tunic and his hat before she went and kissed him.
“Congratulations, Colonel,” she said. “You look very nice with those eagles.”
He squeezed her buttocks and she yelped, and Rosemary turned from the TV and said, “Daddy!”
(Six)
Fort Bragg, North Carolina
1015 Hours, 29 December 1958
The office of the commanding general of Fort Bragg, N.C., was on the ground floor of the two-story brick building (originally built as a barracks) directly across from the main post theater.
Paul Hanrahan walked in, and the sergeant major stood up.
“Good morning, sir,” he said.
“My name is Hanrahan, Sergeant,” he said. “I’m reporting in.”
“We’ve been expecting you, sir,” the sergeant said. “Can I offer you a cup of coffee, Colonel?”
“Thanks, no,” Hanrahan said.
The sergeant pushed a lever on his intercom, and lowered his head toward it.
“Colonel Hanrahan is here, sir.”
There was no reply, but in a moment a stocky lieutenant colonel wearing parachutist’s wings and the insignia of the General Staff Corps came out of an inner office, his hand extended.
“Welcome to Fort Bragg and the Airborne Center, Colonel Hanrahan,” he said. “My name is Field, and I’m SGS.” (Secretary of the General Staff)
“Thank you, Colonel,” Hanrahan said. “It’s good to be home.”
“Sergeant Major, would you see if the general is free?”
The sergeant major left the room, and returned immediately.
“The general will see you, Colonel Hanrahan,” he said.
He held open a door, and then trotted ahead of Hanrahan to open a second one.
“Come on in, Colonel,” a voice called.
Hanrahan marched in, stopped three feet from the general’s desk, and raised his hand in a crisp salute.
