He raised his mallet, heard his trumpeters sound the charge again, then swung his mallet and connected. He looked up to see the ball heading straight for the unprotected goal. He spurred his pony into pursuit.
Major General Peterson K. Waterford appeared to have lost his stirrup. He fell forward against the neck of his mount, as if he had lost his balance. The pony, still at the gallop, went through the goalposts.
The bell rang. Good goal.
The general"s pony, at the last moment before running into the nearest of the Stinsons, veered to the right. General Peterson K. Waterford was unhorsed. He fell heavily to the ground, landing on his shoulder, skidding on his face.
His number three, Lieutenant Lowell, made what appeared to be an impatient shake of his hand, twisting his wrist free of the pallet loop. He reined in his galloping mount and was off the animal before it recovered from its abrupt stop. He ran the ten feet to General Waterford, knelt beside him, and rolled him over on his back. He saw that although General Waterford"s eyes were on him, they didn"t see him.
General Quillier was next to arrive, dismounting as quickly as had Lowell. He took one look at General Waterford"s eyes and crossed himself. Then some of the others came up, with Fat Charley nearly last. And finally, on foot, red-faced, puffing from the exertion, Captain Rudolph G. MacMillan.
QUARTIER GENERAL DE L"ARMEE DE L"OCCUPATION DE ALLEGMAGNE 4 JULY 1946.
TO: HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES ARMY FORCES, EUROPE FOLLOWING FROM BADEN-BADEN.
MAJOR GENERAL PETERSON K. WATERFORD DIED SUDDENLY AT 1508 HOURS PRESUMABLY HEART ATTACK MORE FOLLOWS.
MACMILLAN, CAPT.
OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE HQ USFET WAR DEPT WASH A TTN CHIEF OF STAFF INFO HQ U.S. CONSTABULARY.
IN RECEIPT UNCONFIRMED REPORT SIGNED MACMILLAN CAPT mat MAJOR GENERAL PETERSON K. WATERFORD DECEASED 1508 HOURS THIS DATE AT BADEN-BADEN.
CLAY,GENERAL.
OPERATIONAL IMMEDIATE HQ USFET WAR DEPT WASH ATTN CHIEF OF STAFF INFO HQ U.S. CONSTABULARY.
DEATH OF MAJOR GENERAL PETERSON K. WATERFORD CONFIRMED AS OF 1530 HOURS. GENERAL W ATERFORD SUFFERED CORONARY FAILURE WHILE PLAYING POLO AT BADEN-BADEN. MRS.
WATERFORD PRESENT. FURTHER DETAILS WILL BE FURNISHED AS AVAILABLE.
CLAY,GENERAL.
(Six) Bad Nauheim, Germany 4 July 1946 HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES CONSTABULARY APO 109 US FORCES.
GENERAL ORDERS NUMBER 66.
4 July 1946 The undersigned herewith a.s.sumes command of the United States Constabulary as of 1615 hours this date.
Richard M. Walls Brigadier General, USA General Walls had been known as "the Wall" when he had played football for the Academy because there had been few people ever able to push past him on the football field. He had weighed 220 pounds then. He was, twenty-five years later, ten pounds heavier. He was the Constab" s artillery commander, and upon official notification of the demise of the commanding general, he had acceded to temporary command by virtue of his date of rank.
He was at the headquarters airstrip when the first L-5 Stinson from Baden-Baden arrived. Captain MacMillan hauled himself out of the front seat of the little airplane, straightened his uniform, and marched over to the Chevrolet staff car. He saluted crisply.
General Walls did not smile when he returned MacMillan"s salute.
"All right, MacMillan," he said. "Let"s have it."
"The general seemed all right through the first three chukkers, sir," MacMillan said. "In the last few moments of the fourth chukker, he appeared to have lost his balance, and then he fell off the horse. When I reached him, sir, he was dead."
"Mrs. Waterford?"
"Mrs. Waterford was among the spectators, sir. As soon as possible, sir, I had the frogs TWX USFET."
"Subject to Mrs. Waterford"s approval, of course, Captain, it is my intention to hold a memorial service for General Waterford at 1400 hours tomorrow."
"Yes, sir."
"How is Mrs. Waterford bearing up?"
"Very well, sir. Fat Charley. . . Colonel Lunsford is with her. They were cla.s.smates, sir, as I"m sure the general knows."
"I have spoken with General Clay," General Walls said.
"The Air Corps has made available a C-54 to take Mrs. Waterford to the States. And the general"s remains, if that is her wish."
"I believe Mrs. Waterford wishes the general to be buried at West Point, sir," MacMillan said.
"You"ve already asked, have you? You are an efficient sonofab.i.t.c.h, aren"t you, MacMillan?" General Walls said. "All right, Captain, here it is. As a token of my respect for General Waterford, and my personal regard for Mrs. Waterford, you may consider yourself in charge of all arrangements until the general"s remains leave the command."
"Thank you very much, sir."
"And then find yourself a new home, Captain," the general said.
"Sir?"
"You hear well, Captain," the general said. "General Waterford may have found you amusing, or useful, but I don"t."
"Would the general care to be specific?" MacMillan, standing now at rigid attention, asked.
"The list of your outrages, MacMillan, is a long one. What comes to mind at the moment is that golf player you arranged to have commissioned. Shall I go on?"
"No, sir, that won"t be necessary."
"I won"t have someone like you in any outfit I command.
In my judgment, medal or no G.o.dd.a.m.ned medal, you are unfit to wear an officer"s uniform. You are a scoundrel, MacMillan. A commissioned guardhouse lawyer. Is that clear enough for you?"
"Yes, sir, the general has made his point."
(One) Drop Zone Carentan Fort Bragg, N.C. 5 July 1946 Major Robert F. Bellmon, a.s.sistant Branch Chief, Heavy Drop Loads Division of the Airborne Board, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, was regarded by his peers, and by the four Bird colonels and sixteen lieutenant colonels senior to him, with suspicion and even contempt. He had been reduced to major in one of the first personnel cutbacks "without prejudice" but everyone knew that not all officers promoted beyond their age and length of service had been reduced in grade.
But even if he had just been caught in a rollback and was a good armor officer, what was such a good armor officer doing volunteering for airborne? Why would armor permit a good armor officer to go to Parachute School and then on to Ranger School? The answer was clear, and the proof was his a.s.signment to the Airborne Board as the armor specialist.
There was nothing that anyone could put a finger on to prove their suspicions of Bellmon -he certainly did his work well enough- but two things about him were perfectly clear.
There was nothing that airborne was planning to do that wouldn"t be known to Fort Knox immediately. He was armor"s spy in the airborne camp. That was perfectly clear. Airborne had their spies at Knox, too. That was the way the game was played. The second thing that was clear was that Bellmon was not, and would never be, one of them.
He went through the things that were expected of him: membership in the Airborne a.s.sociation, wearing his parachutist"s wings when no other qualification badge adorned his uniform, and as sort of a symbolic gesture that he wasn"t really armor, having himself detailed to the General Staff Corps for the duration of his a.s.signment to the Board.
They suspected, however, and they were correct, that he was laughing at them.
Major Bellmon thought a lot of things in the army were laughable. He had once gotten himself in trouble as a young captain by laughing out loud at the uniform General George Patton had designed for armor troops. He had once enraged one of the members of Eisenhower"s SHAEF staff by p.r.o.nouncing Shayfe as Sheef, and then going onto explain that a sheaf was something somebody who lisped put on when he wished to diddle somebody.
A photograph had been circulated among senior airborne officers. The commanding officer of the Parachute School at Fort Benning, as a courtesy to a field-grade officer, had sent a photographer aloft in the C-47 to chronicle Major Bellmon"s fifth (qualifying) jump. Instead of grim determination and great seriousness, the photographer had returned with a print of Major Bellmon going out the door holding his nose, his eyes tightly shut, his right hand over his head. . . a small boy jumping into deep water.
And he was amused now, although he kept his thoughts to himself. He was sitting in a jeep (another of his idiosyncrasies was that he drove his own jeep; the a.s.signed driver had to perch in the back seat) at Drop Zone Carentan. Other jeeps and trucks were gathered at the edge of the drop zone. There were a half dozen; officers and twenty-five enlisted men. They all wore field jackets. The Airborne Board, like the Armor Board, the Artillery Board, and the Infantry Board, was a subordinate command of Army Ground Forces. The insignia of Army Ground Forces was a circle with three horizontal bands of color, blue for infantry, gold for armor, and red for artillery.
But since all the personnel of the Airborne Board were airborne qualified, they sewed above this insignia a patch lettered Airborne. All this amused Major Bellmon.
A captain walked over to the jeep.
"The aircraft is airborne at Pope Field, Major," he said.
"Thank you," Bellmon said.
The test today was to drop, from a specially modified C113 aircraft, an M24 light tank. The tank was- firmly chained to a specially built-platform, which in turn was chained to the floor of the C-113. When the aircraft appeared over the drop zone, the chains fastening the tank platform to the floor of the aircraft would be removed. A drogue parachute would be deployed from the rear of the airplane. When its canopy filled, it would pull the tank on its platform out of the rear of the aircraft. Then three enormous cargo parachutes would be deployed. They would, in theory, float the tank and its platform to the ground. On ground contact, the platform was designed to absorb shock by collapsing. The chains holding the tank to the platform would then be removed, and the tank driven off.
One of the weaknesses of a vertical envelopment was that you couldn"t drop the necessary tanks, large-bore artillery, or engineer and other heavy equipment. This weakness was in the process of being rectified. Bellmon thought they had as much chance of solving the problem as they did of becoming ballet dancers.
Three minutes after the captain announced the aircraft was airborne, Bellmon got out of his jeep and walked to the drop zone. He saw that there were still and motion-picture cameras in place. And an ambulance. And even a three-man tank crew, to drive the tank away once it had landed.
He walked over to the tank crew. They came to attention.
"Stand at ease," he said. "How are you?"
"Good morning, Major," they chorused.
"What are you giving in the way of odds?" Bellmon asked.
"Not a f.u.c.king chance in h.e.l.l, sir," the tank commander said.
"Oh, ye of little faith!" Bellmon said.
The airplane, a twin-boom, squatish aircraft whose boxlike fuselage had given it the name "Aying Boxcar," appeared in the distance. It approached and made a low-level pa.s.s. Someone set off a smoke grenade to indicate the direction and velocity of the wind. The aircraft made a low, slow turn and approached again, descending to a precise 2,000 feet alt.i.tude over the ground.
Bellmon raised his binoculars to his eyes and watched. The drogue chute came out the tail. Then the tank on its wooden platform. One by one, three huge cargo chutes filled with air and snapped open. The tank swung beneath them.
"Well, that much worked," Major Bellmon said.
One of the three parachutes began to flutter, and then lost its hemispherical shape.
"Sonofab.i.t.c.h ripped," one of the tank crewmen said. "I coulda told them that." A second parachute ripped. The tank, which had been suspended horizontally, now hung from only one chute and was heading for the earth vertically. The third chute failed.
There was absolute silence as the tank plummeted toward the ground, trailing three shredded parachutes. It landed on its rear with one loud crash, and then fell over, right side up.
"I don"t think you"ll be needed today, fellas," Major Bellmon said. He walked quickly away. He sensed that the tankers were about to be hysterical, and he didn"t want to be in the position of having to make them stop. He walked to his jeep, got behind the wheel, and drove out to where the tank had fallen.
The tank cannon had been in its travel position: turned to the rear and locked in place over the engine compartment.
Some force, either of being jerked out of the airplane, or the opening shock of the cargo chutes, had torn it free from the mount. When the tank had hit, the high-tensile-strength steel in the gun barrel had been bent in a "U."
It was too much for Major Bellmon. As he reached for the jeep"s ignition switch, he started to snicker, then to giggle, and finally he laughed out loud. It took him a long time to get the jeep started and moving.
"Get on the horn, Tommy," he said to the driver, as the jeep turned onto the dirt road leading back to Fort Bragg. "And tell them we"re on our way back in."
The driver turned to the radio, mounted above the right rear wheel well, and communicated with the Airborne Board.
"Major," he said, in a moment. "The post commander wants to see you as soon as possible."
"The post commander?"
"Yes, sir."
"Do you think somebody already told him that I was laughing?" Major Bellmon asked.
Post headquarters was in one of a line of three-story brick buildings that Bellmon remembered from before the war as enlisted men"s barracks. He parked his jeep, told the driver to get himself a cup of coffee, and entered the building from the rear.
The commanding general"s office overlooked the post theater and senior officer"s brick quarters. Bellmon, after announcing himself to the general"s secretary, peered out the window of the anteroom to see what was playing at the movies, convinced that it would be at least fifteen minutes before the general would see him.
"Come on in, Bob," the general said, behind him. That was unusual, too. Normally an aide would tell him that the general would see him. The general did not welcome visitors personally. "Where the h.e.l.l have you been anyway?" the general asked, touching his arm as they entered the office.
Bellmon started to snicker.
"Something funny?"
"Forgive me, sir," Bellmon said. "They were dropping an M24. It landed right on the tube, and bent it into a "U." I guess I have a perverse sense of humor." The general didn"t reply to that.
"The reason I asked, Bob, is that you had a call from the chief of staff, and n.o.body could find you."
"Sir," Bellmon said, "if I"ve caused you any inconvenience."
"Not my chief of staff, Bob. The chief of staff."
"I don"t understand, sir."
"When he couldn"t get you, he got me. It is thus my sad duty, Bob, to inform you that Major General Peterson K. Waterford died suddenly at 1500 hours, German time, yesterday. We were old friends. I"m sorry."
"Do you know what happened, sir?"
"Heart attack," the general said. "Playing polo against the French. At his age."
"Jesus Christ!"
"I thought perhaps you would like to tell Barbara yourself. I"d be happy to. . ."
"I"ll tell her, sir," Bellmon said. "Thank you."
"I"ve alerted Caroline. I thought I would give you a few minutes with Barbara and then send her in."