Once an Eagle

  “No, you don’t! Halt your command,” he shouted. “Halt your command!”

  There were now several fights going on inside the wall. Two infantry men had pulled a trooper from his horse and all three were rolling in the dirt; another soldier was sitting down holding his shoulder.

  “All right,” Damon called, going over to the combatants. “Break it up, now!” Sergeant Bowcher was pulling them apart. Another infantryman was crawling away through a perfect forest of horses’ legs.

  The troop’s captain, a tall, wasp-waisted man with black mustaches and a thin hooked nose, shouted some commands, danced up to the umpire and saluted. “Murdoch, Troop C. I shall accept their surrender.”

  “You will not,” the umpire retorted. “I’d say it’s very much the other way around.”

  The Captain stared down at him. “What’s that you say?” Horses were still milling all around the buildings. Bowcher had broke up the fist fight, and the dismounted trooper was looking for his horse. “These people,” the cavalryman demanded, “—what the hell are they doing here, anyway? Way out here?”

  “Let me read you something, Captain.” The umpire took a piece of paper out of his blouse pocket and unfolded it. “Quote. The Orange Forces will execute a diversionary feint in conjunction with the main landing at oh-eight-thirty hours in the vicinity of the Oliveira Farm, with the end in view to securing their left flank and interdicting the superseded Monterey-Seaside Highway.” He replaced the paper. “This force has been deployed here for nine minutes.”

  The troop commander scowled. “Very well. We’ve overrun them.”

  “I think not. In point of fact, Captain, you’ve been all but wiped out.” He opened his notebook. “I am ruling that you have just sustained eighty percent casualties.”

  “Eighty!” The troop commander struck his thigh. “That’s preposterous …”

  “Is it? Where was your route security? You came up that road at a fast trot without outposts or point. Why, Captain? Look at Orange’s field of fire, look at his automatic weapons.” He pointed to the gun positions, the gunners, dappled in the sparse shade of the eucalyptus trees. “I am forced to rule that your troop is eliminated as an effective fighting force.”

  The Captain swore, glaring at the umpire, then at Damon. “It wouldn’t have happened like this in a real combat situation, I can tell you that …”

  “No,” the umpire said quietly, watching him. “You’d have just murdered one hundred and fifty good men.”

  The Captain swung his horse around in a fury. “All right,” he snapped, “—what do you want with us now? What do I do?”

  Damon stepped up to him. “One moment, Captain. Your mount, please.”

  “Eh?” Murdoch looked as if Damon had asked him for his breeches.

  “Dismount your troop, please. We want your horses.”

  “What? That’s insane—what do you want with them?”

  “We’re going to ride them.”

  “You’re going to—?”

  “That’s right. Ride them.”

  The Colonel sat down on the sidecar and began to laugh, bent over, his hands on his knees.

  “Sir,” Damon said. “They’re ours. I need them.”

  “That’s rot!” Murdoch shouted. “I appeal this—Colonel, I appeal this!”

  The Colonel finally stopped laughing and looked up at the cavalryman. “The Orange commander is within his rights. Dismount your troop. They’re his—if he wants them.”

  “Now, wait!” Murdoch protested. “That’s out!—if we’re dead so are our mounts …”

  “Not necessarily. I rule”—the umpire made a quick little notation—“that forty-five horses are unwounded and recoverable by the Orange forces.”

  “All right,” Damon called. “Who can ride? Who’s ever been on a horse? All who can ride step forward.”

  There was a great commotion. Soldiers climbed into the saddles, laughing and calling to one another, while the dismounted troopers glared at them.

  “This is more like it, Major,” Jackson said. “Riding in style … Where to?”

  A powerfully built private named Stankula was lying half across a saddle, his legs flailing in the air; Bowcher and Chip Booth were laughing at him wildly.

  “Stankula,” Damon said, “you’re from Brooklyn—you’ve never been on a horse in your life.”

  Stankula grinned, still struggling ineffectually. “Ain’t anything to it, is there? Just climb on and stay on.”

  Damon laughed. “All right. Someone show him how. If he falls off, he stays off.—Hines, I want you to hold here, with the machine guns. Set up a two-way block in case of any retreating White forces.”

  “Right, Major.”

  He swung into the saddle of Murdoch’s mount. The umpire called to him: “Major, I am ruling that you have sustained two percent casualties. Your orders, please.”

  “Oh. Yes. I am detaching my weapons platoon to hold a block on the road. With the remainder of my command I propose to advance, mounted and on foot, via Torre Canyon and Pilarcitos Ridge to Hill 83, flanking Del Monte Heights.”

  “I see.” The Colonel jotted something down in his notebook. “Very well. De l’audace, toujours de l’audace…” Laughing he went over to his umpire-circuit field jack. “Good luck, Major.”

  “Our team is red—hot,” Colonel Westerfeldt chanted. Standing in the center of the tent he did a shuffling two-step, slapped his belly lightly and repeated: “Our team is red—hot!” He was a big man with a heavy, bearlike body and a full, genial face and was easily the most popular officer in the division. “Collins!” he shouted.

  A thin, dark-haired soldier stepped inside the tent flap and said: “Sir?”

  “You found Colonel Wilhelm yet?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well, keep at it. He’s got to be around here somewhere. Doubt if even Dutch took off before we secured the problem.” Turning back to Damon and Lieutenant Colonel MacFarlane he struck a sententious, martial pose. “Now I called you gentlemen over here for a very important conference. Yessir.” Bending over a chest at the foot of his cot he took out a handsome leather case, unfastened half a dozen straps and extracted a bottle and four nested brass cups. “The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of many things: of flanks and mounts and landing boats, and looping double wings… ” He cocked an eye at Damon, who grinned.

  “Pretty damn clever, Westy,” MacFarlane said; he was short and powerfully built, with a low forehead and square, bulldog face. “Is that a Westerfeldt original?”

  “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 br
oad, 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 t
hrough 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: