The Hunting Trip (28 page)

—

“So, what do
we do with the
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now?” the commanding general of the Berlin Brigade asked, after he had himself perused the UCMJ 1948 and concluded it must have been written by the same
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pantywaists to whom he had previously alluded.

“General, we could take him to East Berlin, throw him out of the truck, and let the Russians deal with him,” the Quartermaster Corps lieutenant colonel said. “Maybe they'd send him to Siberia.”

“Frankly, that's the sort of stupid
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suggestion I would expect from a
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Quartermaster Corps officer,” the general replied.

“May I ask why the general thinks my suggestion is stupid?”

“Because, stupid, if we turned the
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over to the Russians, they'd probably give the
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another medal. Colonel O'Shaughnessy of the German-American Gospel Tract Foundation told me they've already given the traitorous
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the Order of Karl Marx, Second Class, with pearls and rubies.”

“I take your point, sir.”

“May I suggest, General,” the Corps of Military Police lieutenant colonel suggested, “that we bust the
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down to
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Recruit, pay grade E-1, and then send him to the Quartermaster Corps, where he could stack one-hundred-pound sacks of potatoes, or rice, eight or more hours a day, to the point of exhaustion, day after day in a dark warehouse?”

“That's almost as stupid a suggestion as the previous stupid suggestion,” the general replied. “May I tell you why?”

“Please do so, sir. I will take notes.”

“For one thing, Colonel, the Quartermaster Corps has enough problems with its
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enlisted men as it is, and for another, since the
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UCMJ 1948 was written by
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pantywaists we can't bust the
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down to Recruit, pay grade E-1.”

“Pardon the stupid suggestion, sir.”

“Having said that,” the general said, “there was something in your stupid suggestion that may offer some hope. I refer to what you said, I quote, ‘eight or more hours a day, to the point of exhaustion, day after day, in the dark.' Surely there must be somewhere else in the U.S. Army where we could send this
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and cause that to happen to him.”

“Sir, if I may make a suggestion?” Second Lieutenant J. Thomas Smith, Jr., Phil's defense counsel, asked.

“Why not?” the general replied.

“The U.S. Army School of Infantry Excellence at Fort Benning, Georgia.”

“Huh!” the general exclaimed. “Go on, Lieutenant.”

“If we sent the
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—I mean, my client, who would be the accused if it wasn't for the strictures of the UCMJ 1948—there for infantry training, what would happen?”

“I have no
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idea,” the general confessed.

“The United States Infantry Noncommissioned Officer Academy is a subordinate unit of the U.S. Army School of Infantry Excellence at Fort Benning, as is the U.S. Army School for those newly graduated from the U.S. Military Academy officers, of which I am a recent proud graduate.”

“Bully for you, but so what?” the general asked.

“The Infantry Noncommissioned Officer Academy trains privates first class to be corporals, corporals to be sergeants, sergeants to be staff sergeants, and staff sergeants to be technical sergeants.”

“Good for them,” the general said. “So what?”

“Each course takes six months, during which the trainee, who is referred to as a candidate, undergoes five months of rigid physical training eight or more hours a day, to the point of exhaustion, day after day, in the dark. The other month is dedicated to shining the soles of their boots and learning how to shoot guns, and that sort of thing.”

“How interesting. But what has that to do with our
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, who is already a technical sergeant, pay grade E-6, because we can't bust his
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down to Recruit, pay grade E-1?”

“Sir, my client, the
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, is not an
infantry
technical sergeant. Which means if we were to send him there, he would have to start at the bottom, and take the course prescribed for PFCs aspiring to be corporals . . .”

“Goddamn it, you're a genius! Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're saying is that if we send this
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to Benning, he starts out taking the Corporal's Course, which includes five months of rigid physical training eight or more hours a day, to the point of exhaustion, day after day, in the dark. And when he finishes that, he starts the Sergeant's Course . . .”

“Which includes five months of rigid physical training eight or more hours a day, to the point of exhaustion, day after day, in the dark, yes, sir.”

“Where's that
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Adjutant General's Corps officer?” the general snapped.

The officer in question popped to his feet, stood at attention, and said, “Sir, I am here awaiting to cheerfully and willingly obey any orders the general might have for me.”

“Immediately cut orders sending the
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to Fort Benning, Georgia, for attendance at that school the lieutenant talked about.”

Phil explained to Brunhilde what his orders meant. He was detached from the Berlin Brigade and transferred to and would proceed to the U.S. Army School of Infantry Excellence at Fort Benning, Georgia, for the purpose of training as an Infantry Noncommissioned Officer. Travel by military air transportation in uniform was directed. No days of Delay En Route Leave were authorized. The simultaneous travel of his dependent wife, an indigenous bride who had no security clearances of any kind, was authorized. He confessed that he had no idea what HG&PPL meant.

[ TWO ]

Fort Benning, Georgia

Monday, November 28, 1949

T
heir flight, aboard a USAF plane, had taken a long time. It first stopped in Giessen, Germany, where it took aboard a load of stoves, garbage cans, and other items being returned to what the Army called The Zone of the Interior for refurbishment. Then it flew to Naples, Italy, to pick up two one-hundred-pound bags of Strozzapreti—which means “priest-strangler”—a Tuscan pasta of which the wife of the assistant deputy chief of staff of the USAF was especially fond.

From there it had flown to Prestwick, Scotland, where it picked up in the duty-free store two cases of fourteen-year-old Famous Pheasant Scotch whisky, an intoxicant of which the second assistant deputy secretary of Defense was especially fond.

From Prestwick, the airplane flew across the wide, wide Atlantic Ocean at 275 knots per hour, landing in Goose Bay, Labrador. There it refueled before taking off for Washington, D.C., where it dropped off the Famous Pheasant and the Strozzapreti
.
Then it flew on to Fulton County Airport, near Atlanta, where the flight terminated.

The pilot announced that he would have preferred to terminate at Atlanta Airport, or at Lawson Army Airfield, which was on the Fort Benning reservation, but authorities there refused permission to do so as they classified the plane as an aerial disaster about to happen.

Fulton County Airport is near Fort McPherson, Georgia, which is built on the former site of the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary and is named after Major General James Birdseye McPherson. Phil and Brunhilde took a taxicab to Fort McPherson, where he inquired about available transportation to his final destination.

“Yes, we do. Weekly service. Free. Unfortunately, this week's bus left ten minutes ago.”

Earlier, while in the taxicab on the way to Fort McPherson, Phil had happened to notice that right outside the gate to Fort McPherson there was a business enterprise known as Kenny McLain's Previously Owned Motor Cars, and that a sign announced, “We Love Servicemen!!!”

Reasoning that if Mr. McLain was so stupid that he actually believed that any serviceman would believe Kenny McLain loved him, he could probably be talked out of a car at a price close to what it was actually worth. So he went there.

Thirty minutes later, Phil had negotiated the price of a ten-year-old Ford station wagon down to $900. At that point, Brunhilde asked if she might join the conversation. Ten minutes after that, after handing Mr. McLain $600, they drove off the lot in the ten-year-old Ford station wagon.

The Ford was of course not the Cadillac that Phil had grown accustomed to, but it did make it, forty-five minutes later, to their ultimate destination. He knew they were there, because behind an enormous, manicured lawn there was a sign:

There was another much smaller sign on the enormous manicured lawn, stuck into the ground as “Keep Off the Grass!” signs are often stuck, that immediately caught Phil's attention:

Fifteen minutes after that, Phil was interviewed by an enormous fellow noncommissioned officer, a master sergeant, who had the friendly face of a constipated alligator, and was wearing a “shooter's vest.”

Shooter's vests are sleeveless garments that shooters wear. They have two pockets, one on each side, capable of holding a box of twenty-five shotgun shells. There is enough room left over for the shooter to sew embroidered patches testifying to the shooter's marksmanship skills thereon.

To Master Sergeant Percy J. Quigley's vest were sewn embroidered patches identifying him as a shotgun instructor and as someone who had gone one hundred straight. There were two of these. The first, on the left, which apparently had been on Master Sergeant Quigley's vest for some time as it was frayed and faded, read, “1st Award—100 Straight.” The second patch, on the right, was essentially identical to the first, except it read “2nd Award—100 Straight” and appeared to be almost brand-new. Phil decided this suggested Master Sergeant Quigley had first gone one hundred straight some time ago . . . say,
five or six years ago . . . and had duplicated his superb marksmanship more recently, say, the day before yesterday.

“As I drove onto the post to report for duty to the Noncommissioned Officer Academy of the U.S. Army School of Infantry Excellence, I happened to notice your sign.”

“Where are you reporting in from?” Master Sergeant Quigley said. “I ask because the minute I get a shooter trained, the
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Adjutant General's Corps sends the
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overseas, and I hate to waste my expert instructor's time on some
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who will be here at the USAAMU today and gone tomorrow.”

“I was serving in Berlin, Master Sergeant.”

“Doing what?”

“I was assigned to the German-American Gospel Tract Foundation.”

“Chaplain's assistant, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“And what makes you think you could qualify for even the Junior Varsity of the USAAMU Skeet Team?”

“Frankly, I don't know if I could. But as a boy, I had a Sears, Roebuck single shot Economy Special that I loved dearly. I always thought that if I had some good instruction, I might learn how to really shoot.”

“You ever see one of these before, Sergeant?” Master Sergeant Quigley inquired, holding up a Remington Model 1100 Skeet Special shotgun.

Phil of course knew the weapon. It was similar to the ordinary Model 1100 with which he had won the First Annual Berlin Brigade Brandenburg Gate Skeet Shoot, and identical to the one with which the Berlin Brigade commander had tried to hammer the fire hydrant on Pariser Platz into the cobblestones.

“Yes, I have.”

“You ever fire one?”

“No, I haven't.”

This was the truth. After he'd won the Diamond Grade Browning with full factory engraving, a gold trigger, and selective ejectors that had come with his winning of the First Annual Berlin Brigade Brandenburg Gate Skeet Shoot, there had been no reason to fire any kind of a Remington.

“Well, let me show you how it works,” Master Sergeant Quigley said, and proceeded to do so.

Afterward he took Phil to the USAAMU Skeet Range. After learning from Master Sergeant Quigley that he would have to break at least seventeen “birds” to earn a place on the USAAMU Junior Varsity, Phil fired and broke sixteen.

“Well, I guess that blows my chances of winning a place on the USAAMU Junior Varsity Skeet Team,” Phil said. “Thank you for allowing me to try.”

“Actually, that wasn't at all bad for a beginner. Tell you what, Sergeant Williams. Consistency counts. So I'm going to let you have another shot. Shots. Twenty-five more shots. If you can break sixteen birds again twice in a row, you're on the USAAMU Junior Varsity.”

Phil broke seventeen. Twice in a row.

“God
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” Master Sergeant Quigley exclaimed. “Am I a good judge of a potential good shot, or am I a good judge of a potential good shot? Let me see your orders, Sergeant, and tell me about the blonde in your beat-up old station wagon.”