Command Decision (4 page)

To orient himself, Davis studied the large, conventional 1 × 250,000 military map of England and Northern Europe. He had seldom seen this particular one on which targets were marked before attack. With a start he noted now a new little triangle of three black marks, deep in Germany. One of them had already been crossed through with savage red crayon on the plexiglass covering. It was yesterday’s target; the inference was unmistakable. Humanly Davis had been irritated by his exclusion from any part in Plans except weather itself. He forgot himself in momentary astonishment at the location of those marks. Beside him Haley picked up a piece of red crayon and eyed one of them.

“Time for an improvement, isn’t it, sir?”

“Improvement?” the General’s mind was on weather.

“Colonel Martin said ‘Primary plastered,’ sir.”

The crayon was touching the plexiglass when the General stopped Haley. He was smiling but his voice was firm.

“Let’s let Ted do that.”

“Of course, sir,” said Haley apologetically.

Davis was ready now and began with an exposition of the prospects along the coastal fringe but Dennis stopped him short.

“Never mind the coastal fringe. What about here?” His knuckles rapped the little triangle of black marks.

“My God, sir. Three days running in there?”

Too late, Davis remembered that he was not a part of Plans. The General did not raise his voice but it bit like a drill.

“Major, I’m consulting you about the weather.”

Evans could feel his hackles rise at the General’s tone and was glad those eyes were not on him. For Davis he felt no sympathy. He had sweated out too many of weather’s mistakes to pity a fool who spoke out of turn about troubles that were not his. He saw Davis recoil a little, gather himself, and run through a rapid recital of the available facts and his opinion.

“I’m not sure Kane’s people will agree, sir, but…”

“But you yourself think it will be all right in here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And over the bases for landing?”

“Yes, sir. I’m sure of that.”

“Bring anything else as you get it.”

Davis went out, disgruntled. Dennis turned on Haley.

“Have
you
anything from Headquarters?”

This, Evans knew, also meant Kane’s, which was the next step up in the progression. Previously Evans had thought of everything above the headquarters of his own squadron as one homogeneous malevolence. Now he realized that Dennis was talking about his boss, presumably the one who might fire him. Evans kept his ears tuned.

“They’re releasing all divisions to commanders’ discretion for tomorrow, sir. General Kane is reported so busy in that London conference that he will be unable to pass on the weather personally.”

The Sergeant had a swift impression that Dennis and Haley might have smiled at each other if Dennis had not suddenly glanced over to where he was standing quietly at ease.

“Any squawk from Washington yet?”

“Not yet, sir.” This time they both smiled, as everyone did at mention of Washington, but the smiles were brief.

“Send Captain Jenks in.”

“Want me with you, sir?”

“No. I’ll try him alone again.”

Evans thought Haley looked relieved, though faintly disapproving. But all the witnesses in the army wouldn’t help that one. Evans scuttled toward the anteroom door, anxious to take delivery on his whiskey and eager to avoid Haley until the time when he could set out for the Magruders’. As he was going out he heard Dennis check Haley again at the door.

“Has that cable come for Ted?”

There was upwards of fifteen thousand men in the Division and every one of them felt a sense of personal concern over the kid Colonel Martin was sweating out. Prevailing opinion was that Mrs. Martin and the doctors were going to be seriously inconvenienced by the parachute; there were some, however, who said that they would never know what was happening until the new Martin phoned them that he had been forced down and was waiting in the nearest bar.

“No, sir,” said Haley. “I’ve even checked with message center London. Mrs. Martin must be late.”

“She’s ten years late,” said the General wearily.

Haley and Evans both hesitated until it was plain that he had not been talking to them. After a second they went out.

2

Alone, Dennis removed the coffee cup from his desk and threw the cigar into the stove. Then he sat down with the Jenks file before him but he did not open it. The roots of this case went to something deeper than that file. He was going to have to dig it out of the boy himself, if there were time, if he could.

Dennis had not wasted a second cursing the misfortune that had brought this up at the most critical juncture, so far, of the Fifth Division’s war. These things always happened in armies sooner or later. This one had happened to the Fifth Division this morning. Dennis intended, if it were militarily possible, to keep it in the Division and save the boy. From the visible evidence it did not look possible.

Captain Jenks entered, marching correctly before a frightened guard. Dennis noted that the men in the guardhouse had been too literal about close arrest; they might have allowed Jenks to shave and change out of those flying coveralls. He returned the guard’s salute, instructed him to wait outside, and studied Jenks narrowly through the brief interval of the guard’s exit. The boy was scared but that young, rather strong face still had rigidity and restraint. No man flew nineteen missions without learning a lot about fear. This boy would still fight. Dennis took pains to make his voice as even as he could.

“Jenks, have you thought this over?”

“I thought it over this morning,” said Jenks.

Dennis noticed the absence of any “sir.” This boy knew he was beyond the help of manners.

“You’ve had more time.”

“I don’t need more time.”

There was always the chance that a few hours of solitude would produce a change. Dennis had already risked eleven hours for the chance. Jenks knew as well as he did that there were only thirteen hours left but he had not changed.

“Damn it, boy, do you realize that this is serious?”

“Yes, for both of us.”

“What are you hinting at?”

“I’m not getting killed to make you a record,” said Jenks. “I’ll tell the court, so, too, and the whole damned world.”

“What else will you tell them?”

“That you lost forty bombers, four hundred men, by deliberately sending us a hundred and sixty miles beyond fighter cover yesterday. This morning, when we’re entitled to a milk run, you order us a hundred and eighty miles beyond the fighters.”

“Why do you think you’re entitled to a milk run?”

“After yesterday’s losses? Besides, I can read a calendar.”

Dennis knew now that the boy was going to fight to the end, as anyone would fight for his own life. He was working toward his one chance. Dennis couldn’t tell yet whether it was transparency or purpose that had made him expose this chance a little, almost as if to show its strength. Under the letter of the law he was doomed and he was not going to fight the law. He was going to fight Dennis himself.

“What’s the calendar got to do with it?”

“You big boys think flak fodder like us can’t even read, don’t you? Where does the Air Corps get all those lovely new statistical records for sorties and tonnages that General Kane announces every month? They get ’em on milk runs, the last three or four days.”

“So you would have gone on an easy one today?”

“I’m entitled to it.”

Inwardly Dennis was torn between immediate relief and a darkening sense of the ultimate hopelessness of this. There had been from the first the possibility that he was dealing with a sincere, stubborn, martyr. The boy might have been risking personal fate to lighten for the others the severity of their official sentence.

“Eleven other crews took this for their last mission.”

“That’s their business,” said Jenks. “If you big shots are entitled to a record racket so am I.”

His brief immediate relief faded into a heavier sadness. The contingency he had probed would have been troublesome; this was going to be tragic.

“Did it never occur to you, Jenks, that there might be another reason for these particular record missions?”

“What?”

“Destroying something that can kill a lot more than four hundred boys.”

For the first time Jenks shifted uneasily on his feet.

“Everything in Germany is made to kill people. Why can’t we hit targets under fighter cover like General Kane promised?”

“He didn’t promise that.”

Jenks hesitated. Dennis knew now that he was cracking the case the boy had worked out for himself in the guardhouse. Jenks made a further effort to sound reasonable, persuasive.

“Well, everyone who knows the army knew what General Kane meant in the press interview after that rat race over Bremfurt six weeks ago. That day we lost nineteen and the whole Air Corps turned itself inside out explaining. Yesterday we lost forty and today will be worse…” Jenks hesitated. Then, as if realizing the irrelevance of all this, he lowered his voice insinuatingly.

“How do you think the public is going to like this?”

Dennis had to fight down that feeling in the pit of his stomach. They were coming to the end of it. Possibly the boy’s corruption did derive from the prevarications of the army’s press and public relations policy. But Dennis had to deal with his behavior. He spoke curtly.

“The public isn’t my business.”

Jenks misread his short silence for intimidation.

“What would the press say if they knew you ordered both these attacks on your own authority when General Kane was absent from weather conferences at his headquarters?”

“That isn’t your business. You were ordered to go. After learning the target, you refused.”

He saw Jenks stiffen under the gaff of the stripped, naked truth and then slowly go limp. His voice became defensive.

“I’ve been to plenty tough targets.”

Dennis tapped the file. “You aborted from the two toughest missions prior to yesterday.”

“For mechanical malfunctions.” Jenks was breathing hard.

“One engineer’s examination said: ‘Possibly justifiable.’ The other one said: ‘Defect not discernible.’”

“It was plenty discernible to me… and my copilot will tell you the same thing, unless he’s prejudiced.”

“He should be. He’s flying your seat today. And you’re a Squadron Commander with a D.F.C. That just makes it worse.”

“For somebody,” said Jenks, but it was only an echo of bravado. Dennis had shattered him purposely to make him see the hopelessness of his case, to find, if it were humanly possible, some reason for this in the wreckage.

Dennis had thought himself familiar with every form of fear. He had seen them all, from the strait-jacket cases to the ones who simply sat alone, in lounge and bar and mess, waiting consciously for the inevitable moment when their own paralyzed reflexes would give them final release. He still did not think this was simple fear. He had not thought so from the first. Something was eluding him here as it would elude the court. No court would even bother to search behind such utterly damning facts. And yet the man had flown nineteen missions. Wearily, Dennis began again.

“Jenks, if you’ve got any legitimate reason whatever…”

The anteroom door crashed open and the General looked up with impatience to see Evans holding it ajar. Even before he could voice a rebuke the Sergeant spoke warningly.

“Major General R. G. Kane and party, sir.”

Chapter 3

General Kane seldom visited the operating echelons of his command. He would have considered any need to do so a symptom of weakness in the subordinate commander involved, a condition remediable by instant replacement. Instead he ruled with painstaking attention from desk and telephone. Like every commander he bridged a gulf between upper and nether regions, connecting and explaining them to each other. Policy and Plans came down: results went up. His duty was to execute the former and answer for the latter.

Officially his status between the worlds he linked was rigidly neutral. But no man became a major general without realizing that the practical division of his two worlds was simple. Below him were troubles, above him opportunities.

Kane had moved upward through life because his eyes were fixed upward. But they had never been blind to the fact that men must climb on something solid. He had always fought fiercely, on his own level and above it, for the subordinates he wanted. When he got them he made it his business to see that they liked working for him.

This transitory war with Germany had not changed either Kane or the conditions of life that had made him. It had only expanded both his troubles and his opportunities. He remained vigilant of his key subordinates, who, sharing in the bonanza that had elevated him, were now mostly brigadiers.

But the lieutenant generals, the admirals, the Embassy, the press, the Prime Minister, and Kane’s Allied opposite numbers were in London. There the battle lines of the permanent wars, between the army and the navy, between the army and its troublesome stepson of the air, between service and civilians, had been extended from Washington. And there, for most of every day and late into the night, Kane fought the wars he knew best.

The luxury of liking or disliking people he had long since abandoned as an extravagance beyond the military life. But he had deliberately incurred the wrath of three lieutenant generals to get Dennis for himself.

Dennis could not only operate a division, he could have operated an air army. He was young but so was the war. There were men with three stars who would have traded records with him. Kane had spent long hours with his most private card index before making the decision. It was finally his conclusion that of all the coming men in the army he wanted firmly placed before turning his back on the fickleness of Washington, Dennis was foremost.

Professionally it had been a hard decision. Final choice had lain between Dennis and Garnett, who had been strongly urged upon him. The two men were opposites. Garnett’s very real talent for staff work and planning had taken him indoors to fight the navy and Congress, while Dennis, by preference, was still flying and commanding small echelons. Among the other factors, Kane had had to weigh operational against diplomatic capability.