Once an Eagle

  She shivered. “It’s terrible, actually,” she muttered. “When you lie here and think of it. Barbaric and awful …”

  “Yes. It certainly is. But here I am. Commanding a division that must kill the enemy—a clever, resourceful, very brave enemy, make no mistake about that—or be destroyed. To be soft on them is to risk the death of all those people over there across the road; and ultimately the loss of the war … Yes, I’m hard on them. On my staff officers, too. Too hard, maybe. But I don’t see any other way.”

  “No,” she said after a little pause, “I don’t suppose there’s any other way.”

  She sat up in bed, her hands locked over her knees, and he watched her: the strong short nose, the firm chin and fine, high brow, silhouetted against the moonglow. He wanted her again—he was faintly amused at this sudden adolescent ardor. She had been largely silent during their love-making: her engagement was all interior, and deep. She had said so little, she had meant so much—she had restored him. Restored to duty. To equilibrium. He moved his hand slowly down the slope of her neck and the slope of her shoulder and over her breast and back. She turned and smiled at him, shyly pleased.

  “I’m in love with you,” he said.

  She took his hand and pressed it to her. “Oh, darling.”

  “I’m afraid I’m in love with you,” he repeated.

  “I’m glad that you’re afraid.”

  Down in the tents across the road voices were raised in argument, an increasing clamor, overborne finally by one voice, wild and declamatory, echoed by a distant cheering. Someone making a speech, he thought; running for emperor of Dizzy Spa. King of the Salamanders.

  “I don’t approve of this, you know,” he said suddenly. She frowned, and he saw she misunderstood his words. “I mean it’s only my rank that’s brought this about.” He gestured. “They can’t meet girls here, take them back to their tents. Why should I?”

  Her lips parted in the slow, indulgent smile. “Oh, Sam—you’re such a chief justice … You should because for once you’re lucky. Because we needed each other and wanted each other. Isn’t that good enough for you? Everybody can’t be equal in everything all the time. Some people seize a moment for life, for love—and some don’t. Sam”—she raised her long, supple hand and clenched it until it quivered in the air between them—“you can’t live like this—all tied up like this. Month after month. You’ll go to pieces if you try.”

  He nodded. “I know. It’s true … I only meant—I guess I meant I don’t know where we can go: this thing between us.”

  She shook her hair back with an easy, indolent sweep of her head. “Let’s just go along from here. Whatever you want it to be, it’ll be. That’s all right with me.”

  “You mean that?”

  “Darling, I look on all the time between us as a wonderful present I never expected. I feel I’m lucky just to have laid eyes on you.”

  She was in love with him: utterly, irretrievably. He felt a surge of pure delight—and then a sharp twinge of apprehension. It’s the way I fell in love with Tommy, he thought.

  “I suppose you’ve found out by now,” he said.

  “Found out what?”

  “Where I stopped. Your theory.”

  “Oh. Yes. I think I know.”

  “When was it?”

  “Oh—when you were in France. Some cold rainy night in France.”

  He gazed at her in dismay. “But I never told you about—that …”

  “I know you didn’t. But that’s when … But I like your theory better.”

  “Which one was that?”

  “That people stop and start up again. That’s what you’ve done—it’s the hardest thing of all. You’ll always do that.”

  Yes, he thought, and it’ll always cost me. But I’d rather have it that way.

  He drew her to him again. She lay back on the cot, which squeaked shrilly and then was still. The moonlight threw a long, milky quadrangle across the tent floor.

  9

  The door swung open violently. Major Prengle stepped inside and said in a high, clear voice pitched perfectly between presumption and deference: “Gentlemen, General Massengale.”

  Ben Krisler rose to his feet with the others, the chairs scraping on the polished teak floor. Lieutenant General Courtney Massengale, followed by the Corps staff, passed quickly along the outside wall to the head of the table and said, “At ease, gentlemen. Be seated, please.”

  Krisler sat down again, conscious of the tart twinge of pain in his ankle, narrow as a knifeblade. He stuck his leg out under the table and picked up his cigarette. Here on Walewa Heights the trade winds blew clean and cool, whistling softly through the screens. The walls of the Staff Conference Room were nicely plastered, a warm dove-gray, and the end wall was draped with heavy maroon cloth. A home away from home, he thought wryly. The building was the old Dutch governor’s residence, which had been used by Takura and his staff some months before. American planes had demolished one wing and riddled the rest of the structure, but the base engineers had repaired it cleverly; and sitting here at the beautifully polished narrawood table with its faintly ovoid sides it was almost possible to believe that nothing had ever happened—no war, no Japanese occupation, no grinding island campaign. Beyond the long windows the Bismarck Sea lay like a smooth green mat under a flawless sky; and on the far horizon rose the two smoky mounds of Benapei and Tokun, twin stepping stones to the Philippines.

  Staff Sergeant Hartje said, “No smoking. General’s orders,” and Krisler reluctantly tamped out his cigarette in the brass ashtray made from the base of a Japanese 79-millimeter shell. Massengale had paused to talk to Admiral Farnham. Krisler watched the white, handsome face with its high cheekbones, the smooth silver hair, a trifle long, that swept back from the widow’s peak high on the forehead. The effect was incongruous—like an athlete stern and wise far beyond his years, or an aged man kept magically, supernally young. Krisler stared at him rudely, studying the three stars on the starched collar, the pale, faded look of the khaki shirt. Real salty. How had he managed that—soaked it in brine nights? Five would get you fifty he’d dyed his hair white to impress MacArthur.

  Bucky Warren came in, late as usual, all full of piss and vinegar, with his pilot’s cap looking as if he’d slept on it, and said: “Hello Ben, you sadsack sourball son of a bitch. How they hanging?”

  He grinned and answered, “Just the way you left them.” The exchange made him all at once aware of his nervousness, and he glanced at Sam who was sitting on his left, penciling a letter order draft. The Divisional Commander threw him a somber look, and Krisler knew he was wondering the same thing: why hadn’t Captious Court come in loaded down with maps?—if this was to be the big moment? It was just like Massengale—get everybody on edge and then stand around chewing the fat with Bliss Farnham as casual as all get-out. Dizzy sadistic bastard. He fretted with the pad and pencil in front of him, chafed his thumb and forefinger against the single star on his collar. Flag rank. Thanks to Sam. Here he was, in the inner sanctum, on the edges of that remote and awesome world where the thundering decisions were made … and he’d one hell of a lot rather be back with the Regiment. It was confusing. You wanted to move up if you could, the rewards were gratifying—there was no change so great as the leap from colonel to BG—writing Marge about it had been fun, and so was the booze party the gang had given him. But the higher you went the farther away you were pushed from the things that meant the most. He missed the moments with Frenchy and Jimmy Hoyt and Stan Bowcher, the arguments at mess, the bets, the needling and horsing around.

  And now, of all the lousy breaks the poor old shat-upon Double Five had to draw, they’d had to pull Captious Courtney for Corps Commander. After all these years. Ours but to sanctify …

  “Well, Gentlemen.” Massengale was at the head of the table now. Ryetower, his chief of staff, had taken the vacant chair to his right. Massengale himself remained standing, watching them all; that quick, piercing glance that held the faintest
glint of—what? malice? challenge? amusement? Then he smiled, a swift upward movement of his lips. “I trust you realize I haven’t called you all here idly.” Turning he said, “All right, Edward,” and Prengle and Sergeant Hartje stepped up to the wall behind him and drew the heavy maroon curtains.

  There it was, under its acetate overlay, incisive and bold; a ragged parallelogram marked with bays and streams and a thin, faltering road net. With its crested northern promontory flanked by a semicircular bay and a long peninsula at the south studded with smaller off-shore islets, it looked very much like a screaming cockatoo with stubby wings flying frantically north-northeast, its long tail shedding bits of feather. Staring at it Krisler thought, I knew it. Of all the stunts: of all the cheap, phonied-up routines! He shot a glance at Sam again; but the Nebraskan’s face was expressionless.

  “Gentlemen,” Massengale was saying crisply, “we have drawn Palamangao, as you can see for yourselves. This is of course the first operation for the Twenty-ninth Corps, and it behooves us to make of it a memorable occasion—one which our comrades-in-arms will honor and our enemy abhor. Palamangao is, as you all know, the largest and most important of the Visayan Group, and the vinculum between the Luzon and Borneo operations which are to follow. Consequently I have given our task the code name PALLADIUM, after the Trojan aegis, which Ulysses and Diomedes had to carry away from Troy before that mighty city could fall.” He paused, picked up a pointer with a fine ivory tip, and stepping up to the map tapped a long and relatively unbroken section of coastline just above the cockatoo’s tail. “The initial landing will be here, at Babuyan. Designation, Blue Beaches 1 and 2. General Damon’s Division will land at oh-six-thirty on the twenty-second, driving inland to successive phase lines Green, Orange, Blue and Red, here. Objectives are the villages of Ilig, Fotgon and Umatoc, the severing of the Kalao-Dalomo highway, and principally the seizure of the airstrip at Masavieng. At oh-eight-hundred on the twenty-third, General Swanson’s division will assault here”—he pointed to a large oval bay above the bird’s left wing—“on White Beaches 1 and 2, with successive phase lines as indicated, its objectives the occupation of Dalomo and the cutting of the Reina Blanca-Fotgon highway, and a link-up with the Fifty-fifth Division near Masavieng and the airstrip. General Bannerman’s division will be in Corps floating reserve, to be deployed as circumstances dictate. The bulk of the Japanese forces, all reports indicate, are concentrated here at Masavieng, and here, southwest of Reina Blanca.”

  For a moment he paused, studying their faces. “What we are going to effect is a classic, a Cannae battle: a double envelopment between the two assault forces. Once their union has been effected, the combined force will wheel east and south around the mountain chain here, and drive on to the east coast at Kalao, Apremanay, and Warminster. And the campaign will be ended.” He lowered the pointer. “Well, that’s the rough cut. Are there any questions of a general nature?”

  “Sir?” Porky Bannerman asked.

  “Yes, Paul?”

  “How’d that name Warminster get in there?”

  There were some chuckles here and there around the table and Massengale smiled. “Some renegade remittance man, I assume. I suggest we put G-2 to work on that right away.” He handed the pointer to Sergeant Hartje and sat down easily. “All right. Now to the maddening specifics. Colonel Fowler has the definitive material on enemy troop concentrations. I imagine it would be a good idea to hear that now, see what we’re facing.”

  Fowler, a slender, bespectacled man, arranged some papers in front of him and began to read rapidly and intently: “The basic island garrison consists of the Ninety-fourth Keibitai, elite naval units, Admiral Ochikubo commanding. Army units currently identified are the Eighteenth Expeditionary Force, consisting of the Thirty-ninth and Ninety-second divisions, General Murasse, sent in from Manchuria to reinforce the basic island garrison, and more recently the Eighty-third Division, transferred from China, Lieutenant General Kolusai commanding. There are also three independent regiments, the Forty-eighth, Seventy-first, and One twenty-second. Estimated strength of all units is thirty-eight thousand. The naval forces—”

  Oh my Christ, Krisler thought crossly—why not make it $39.95? a real bargain. He stole another look at Sam, whose mouth was drawn down faintly at the one corner he could see. Yes: not fooled either. Boy, it took talent on the part of these G-2 types to be so infernally, eternally wrong. It was a standard joke around the Division: of any intelligence estimate, double it and add twenty percent—which was invariably correct. He drew a cigarette out of his shirt pocket and rolled it back and forth between his fingers. All this showmanship and theatrical window dressing. What kind of a way to run an operation was this? Customarily the field orders came down from Corps first, to allow time for study, and then the conference was held. There was something unpleasant and disconcerting about the way Massengale had done this—the sly unveiling, the preamble, this goofy code name. What you wanted was a solid, slam-bang word like BOLERO or ANVIL or COUGAR, not some fancy monicker full of mythological connotations. He glowered at Fowler’s pigeon lips and longed for the rude, phlegmatic honesty of Thiemann—now, alas, bumped up to command of the Hawaiian Department …

  Fowler droned on and on. Benapei and Tokun seemed very far away, sunk in the ocean haze. Idly he watched the faces around the long table. Porky Bannerman, plump and cherubic and absorbed, just out from Bragg with his spanking new 49th Division, eager to show he was as tough as anybody on the beach. A general in every war since 1812. Massengale had been on old Bannerman’s V Corps staff in France—and now Porky was a DC under Massengale. Turn about, of a sort. Had Massengale twitched all kinds of wires in Washington to bring that off? or had Porky requested it when he learned Massengale was being given a corps command out here? Anything could be swung if you had the right talent for playing drop the soap. Anyway, here he was—and it was no coincidence.

  Swanny—deliberate, a little stuffy, nursing his ulcer, still resentful over the Lolobiti operation, when Thiemann had reamed him out for not taking Komfane when he had the chance. Pulling at his lower lip, already worrying about replacements, CP locations, supply areas, unable to see the great north woods for the superabundance of trees. But he was good with troops, and what else mattered? The staff could pass the God damn papers around.

  Farther down the table the Navy brass, sitting shoulder to shoulder, with the air of rich men at a small town PTA social; secure in their gold-braided conviction that the Pacific war was their war, their theater for decisions—still convinced, despite the terrific bloodletting of Tarawa and Saipan and Guam that the golden road to Tokyo lay through the thousand atolls. None so blind … Tug Murtaugh, in charge of the Support Force, glowering like a toy mastiff under his wiry brows, looking as if he wanted to tear every Japanese carrier apart with his bare hands and eat it; beside him Bliss Farnham, who would be in command of the Expeditionary Force, examining his fingernails with that effete, supercilious manner: an almost ludicrously deceptive exterior that gave no hint at all of the iron nerve that had never faltered down at Soputa Point, with the transports half unloaded and the Syracuse going down by the stern and the Zeros coming in from every point of the compass and the air intelligence people wringing their hands. People could still fool you.

  Across from him Bucky Warren, with his handsome, square-jawed face—why were all these fly-boy brass so eternally goodlooking?—with his crash bracelet hanging from one wrist and on the other a black-faced chronometer that could probably do everything but send out press releases. Well, he was an improvement on Prince Hal, who’d gone back to a desk job in Florida. They said he was slated for a B-29 command soon. Good: the Navy could have him all to themselves to row with. Hell, the whole air strategy was insane anyway. The Micronesia bases had bled half a dozen divisions white, and what would it accomplish? They’d find out they’d lose so many bombers in the Tokyo raids they’d have to seize some of the Bonins in order to nail down fighter strips to escort the monsters. And bombing wou
ldn’t make the Japs give up any more than it had the British in ’40 or the Germans now. That old bromide. But it was so convenient, so clean and final-sounding …

  And then Sam, beside him, his face mournful and impassive, looking a lot more rested after the months of training schedule. His boy was dead. His only boy. And everything all gone to hell between him and Tommy. God damn women, anyway—they only crudded everything all up with sentimental notions of pedestals and undying devotion and incessant attentiveness and Christ knew what else. War did it, probably. No, it cut deeper than that—they’d got it all mangled up with hussars and crinolines and perfumed hankies and What Every Woman Knows. Which wasn’t very God damn much. “Honey,” Marge had actually written him once, “it buoys me up so to know you’re thinking of me out there every free moment of the day.” My God—there were whole days during an operation he never thought of her at all, and a damn good thing, too. All you needed was that kind of horse’s-ass distraction.

  He sighed, and scratched his itching scalp. Well, that wasn’t fair to the old gal: she was worried about Joey now. Going out to Manton Eddy’s division, east of Paris. A shavetail fresh out of the Point, going up to the line, just the way he had. What a long time ago that seemed. But Joey was different, he was like Marge—easygoing, no sweat, roll with it. He’d never carried any wild chip on his shoulder: he wouldn’t take any unnecessary chances, he’d make out all right …

  Bryson was up now, doing his stuff, maundering on about ammunition and rations estimates, and the 600 tons to be landed the first day, and the absolute necessity for 30 days’ supply; his furrowed brow shiny with sweat, his chin vanishing into his collar. What the hell did he think—that everybody was going to be sitting on the beach in a tight little circle, cheering him on as he unloaded? God, it was stupid, sending corps staffs out here, all wrapped up like Christmas goodies: stupid and insulting. Here they sat in this bloody palace—Frenchy had nicknamed it the Petty Trianon and the sobriquet had stuck—loaded down with all the rank they could carry, overweight and overpaid, eager to be in on The Big Moment. Meanwhile the hours slipped away, awash in papers and walla-walla. Ours but to ossify.