Brotherhood Of War: The Lieutenants Part 5

"And do you have some notion that you will be able to cover yourself with glory?" The general had pushed himself back in his chair, tilting it.

"No, sir."

"But you would like to get in, personally, on the. fall of the Thousand Year Reich, is. that it? You have a personal involvement?"

"If the general is making reference to my Jewish faith, no, sir."

"Then what the h.e.l.l is it?" the general snapped, impatiently.

"Sir, I have decided that what I would learn in the active army during the last stages of the war would be more valuable in my military career than what I would learn here, as a cadet."

"Has it occurred to you, Felter, that your idea has been considered, and discarded, by a number of your superiors? It is their considered judgment, with which I fully agree, that the best place for a cadet at this time is at the academy."

"Yes, sir."

"But you don't agree?" Now there was sarcasm in his tone. "No, sir."

"You know what's going to happen to you, don't you? You're going to be sent to an infantry replacement training center, run through basic training, and put into the pipeline. Three months from now, maybe less, you'll be a rifleman in a line company." Cadet Corporal Felter did not reply.

"I asked you if you knew what this resignation means to you, Felter," the general said, coldly. "Please pay me the courtesy of a reply."

"Sir, I very much dislike having to dispute you, sir," Felter said, forcing himself to meet the general's eyes.

"G.o.dd.a.m.n you, you arrogant little pup, dispute me" the general said.

"Sir," Felter said. "According to regulations, when a cadet who has completed 'two or more years at the Academy enters the ranks, he will be given constructive credit for basic training, sir,' and will be eligible for further a.s.signment."

"I presume you're sure of that," the general said. "I-confess I didn't know that. But all that means is that they will hand you an Ml -and a bayonet that much sooner. G.o.dd.a.m.n it, Son, the army has invested two years in you. We don't want you killed off as a G.o.dd.a.m.ned private."

"Sir, I have reason to believe that I qualify for one or two procurement programs."

"What kind-of procurement programs?"

"There is a critical shortage of interpreters in German and Polish and Russian. There is a critical shortage @f POW interrogators with fluency in the same languages. I'm not sure I meet the criteria, for a POW interrogator, but ram sure that I am qualified as an interpreter. If the shortage still exists when I go in the ranks, I think it is reasonable to presume that I would be a.s.signed such duties."

"And if they hand you a- rifle and tell you go stick the bayonet in somebody?"

"That is the worst possible projection, sir," Felter said. "But even in that event, I believe that service as an infantry rifleman would be of more value to me in my future career than spending the next year as a cadet and missing active service, sir."

"You keep talking about your career, Felter. You are resigning your appointment. How is that going to affect your career?"

"I intend to apply for readmission to the Academy following the war, sir, under the regulations providing for the admission of regular army enlisted men.""And what makes you so sure that they'd let you back in?"

"I don't feel that active service would be a bar to readmission, sir," Felter said.

"There used to be an offense, Felter, called silent insolence.

That remark came pretty close to it."

"I beg the general's pardon. No insolence was intended'"

"This whole G.o.dd.a.m.ned resignation is insolent!" the Commandant of Cadets snapped.

"It is not so intended, sir."

"OK, Felter. I'm calling your bluff. I will give you precisely sixty seconds to reconsider your resignation. You may consult your watch."

Felter raised his wrist, watched as the sweep second hand completed a circle from seventeen seconds past the minute. Then he put his hand back to his side.

"Corporal, I now give you an opportunity to withdraw your resignation," the commandant said, formally, but not unkindly.

"Thank you, sir, but no, sir," Felter said.

"Report to your battalion tactical officer," the general-said. "Tell him that your resignation is being processed, and that you will remain a.s.signed to your company pending further action. You will not, repeat not, go on Christmas leave."

"Yes, sir."

"You are dismissed, Mister Felter," the general said.

Cadet Corporal Sanford T. Felter rendered the rifle salute, did an about-face, and marched out of the Commandant of Cadets' office. His stomach hurt, and-he was afraid that he was going to be sick to his stomach.

The Commandant of Cadets put Cadet Corporal Felter's personal and academic records together in a neat stack, and then he asked his secretary to ask the General's secretary if the General could give him a couple of minutes. "The General" was the Commandant, the United States Military Academy at West Point, and the Commandant of Cadets immediate, and only superior at the Point. He was a lieutenant general. The Commandant of Cadets was aware that there was something actually ludicrous in a situation where a twenty-year-old cadet corporal had backed a major-general into a corner, where he had to go ask a lieutenant general what to do.

When the Commandant of Cadets' secretary called back a minute later to say that the Genera1 was free to see him, he picked up Felter's records and walked down the portrait-lined corridor of the building to the office of the Commandant, the United States Military Academy.

"Would you like coffee, Charley, or something a little stronger?" the Commandant asked, when he had waved him into his large, rather elegantly furnished office. The Commandant was a tall, thin, very erect man whose uniform hung loosely over his shoulders. He was known to the Corps of Cadets behind his back as either the Hawk or the Vulture.

"Strong, please, sir," the Commandant of Cadets said. "I guess the little sonofab.i.t.c.h got to me. There aren't many people 1 can't stare down."

"And you were probably thinking, Charley, 'If 1 can't 'go, why the h.e.l.l should you get to go?"

"Christ, 1 suppose so," the Commandant of Cadets said. 'What did you do in the war, Daddy? Why, 1 wiped noses and changed diapers at the Academy, that's what Daddy did.

The Commandant chuckled. He handed him a scotch and water.

"Thank you, sir," he said.

"Plus, of course," the Commandant said, "he's right." "You really think so?"

"SO do you," the Commandant of West Point said. "You don't, you can't, learn about war sitting in a cla.s.sroom."

"Christ, the whole cla.s.s of '46 will try this, once it gets out."

"Not necessarily," the Commandant said.

"I think they will," the Commandant of Cadets said. "h.e.l.l, 1 would."

They're not eligible for direct commissions," the Commandant said. "Felter is."

He didn't say anything about a direct commission," the Commandant of Cadets said, visibly surprised. "That's the first 1 heard about that."

He probably figured that would really make you blow your top. But the fact is, he is eligible for a direct commission-as a linguist-interrogator. Two years of college, and fluency in one, or preferably more languages on the short list. He speaks Russian, Polish, and German."

"If he gets a-direct commission, he could never come back here," the Commandant of Cadets said.

"I disagree with you there. We're already starting to pick up bright young reserve officers to run them through here. If he's right, he could come back."

"Right about what, sir?"

"That the war will shortly be over," the Commandant said. He may be wrong. This may be a lot longer war than we think it will be. We're getting the s.h.i.t kicked out of us in the Bulge, Charley."

"Yeah, while you and I sit here drinking scotch whiskey, and watching that little Jew manipulate the system."

"If 1 thought he was manipulating it for his personal benefit, I would personally see to it that he wound up in a line company," the Commandant of West Point said. "But what I think we have here, Charley, is a perfectly bona fide case of devotion to duty."

"What do you want me to do, General? Discharge him from the Corps of Cadets and turn him over to his draft board?"

"No," the Commandant said. "What I want you to do, Charley, is to change the training schedule."

"Sir?"

"I want the reveille formation on 2 January 1945 to be in full dress. I want the band there, not just the drums and the bugles. I want the color guard. I want Felter there in pinks and greens. You, in your pinks and greens and all your decorations, will hold the Bible while I, wearing mine, swear him in. I want an adjutant, an officer not a cadet, to read his 'orders in a very loud voice. 'Second Lieutenant Whatever his name is Felter-will immediately proceed to the Overseas, Replacement Depot, Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, for priority air-shipment to a division in. the field. Have him sent somewhere flashy, maybe the 82nd Airborne, or the Big Red One, or one of the armored divisions. You follow me, Charley?"

"Yes, Sir," the Commandant of Cadets said. "I see what you're doing."

"I want the flags flying, and the band playing' Army Blue,'" the Commandant of the United States Military Academy said. "When the the Corps of Cadets marches by, at eyes right, I want every G.o.dd.a.m.ned eye to be wet with emotion and green with envy. If 1 thought 1 could get away with it, I'd have the bugler sound the charge."

(Two) First Lieutenant Wallace T. Rogers, Infantry (USMA '43) was Cadet Corporal Sanford T. Felter's tactical officer. A tactical officer is mixture of disciplinarian, mother hen, and observer of the cadets committed to his charge. He was having as much trouble with the resignation of Corporal Felter as was the Commandant of Cadets.

Lieutenant Rogers had volunteered for the airborne, and upon grad_uation had been sent to the Parachute School at Fort Benning, Georgia; and upon gradua~ionfrom there, he'd been sent to the Airborne Center at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where, on his very first jump as a platoon commander, he had been blown off the drop zone and into a stand of pine trees. He'd suffered a.compound fracture of his left leg, just above the ankle.

On his release from the Fort Bragg Army Hospital to limited duty, he had been a.s.signed to the United States Military Academy at West Point as a tactical officer.

His cla.s.smates, his friends, were in combat, commanding troops-around the world, and here he was baby-sitting the cadets, And now Felter was trying to pull this resignation business.

Lieutenant Rogers, moreover, was aware that he did not like Cadet Corporal Sanford T. Felter. He was even willing to admit that there just might be an element of anti-Semitism in his dislike, but he really believed that it wasn't anti-Semitism but a personality clash based on chemistry. He just didn't like Felter's type.

Rogers was tall, Felter was short. Rogers was muscular, Felter was skinny. Rogers had had to really crack the books, Felter seemed to have a mind like a camera. He saw or heard something once, and thereafter could effortlessly call it forth from his memory. Rogers was gregarious, Felter was a loner. Rogers was a team player, Felter, as tHis resignation business proved was completely immune to peer group pressure.

Wallace T. Rogers, aware of his personal feelings toward Cadet Corporal Sanford T. Felter, leaned over backward to make sure that not only did he treat Felter exactly as he treated the other cadets, but that Felter would never suspect thAt Rogers considered him to be a wise-a.s.s Jewboy who had no business being in the Corps, or in the regular army.

When the word from the Commandant of Cadets had made its way "down the chain of command to the company" instead of sending the charge of quarters to fetch Felter, Lf Rogers told the CO he was going to see Felter in his room.

Felter's door was open, and Felter was in the process of b.u.t.toning himself into his greatcoat. He sensed the presence of Lieutenant Rogers, turned, and snapped to attention.

"Rest." Rogers said, immediately, and smiled. "1 seem to have caught you as you were leaving."

"Sir, I was going to the telephone."

"Then I'm glad I caught you, Felter," Rogers said, smiling. "I just got the word from the Commandant of Cadets. You are authorized Christmas leave."

"Yes, sir;" Felter said. "Thank you, sir. Sir, may I ask if there is some reason they changed their minds?"

"They didn't say, Felter. I can guess."

"Please do, sir."

"Well, I don't imagine with everything shut down for the holidays, that very much can be done about your resignation. And the commandant probably realized there was no reason you shouldn't be granted leave."

"Yes, sir," Felter said. "That Seems" logical. "Thank you, sir. "

Felter decided that what it really was, was that the Commandant of Cadets was giving him another chance to think it over, that after his leave he would be given another chance to withdraw his resignation.

"You're going to have to hustle to make the 4~48, Felter,"

Lieutenant Rogers said.

"yes, sir."

"Get your gear, and I'll run you to the station in my car."

"Thank you very much, sir."

There was no time for Felter to call home and tell them he would be late. He called home from Grand Central Station. His mother answered the telephone and told him that Sharon and his father had gone to Pennsylvania Station in Newark to meet him, and hadn't come back yet. He told his mother that He had missed the first train and would be home in about an hour.

On the train ride down the Hudson River to New York, he had considered again what, if anything, he should tell his parents, and more importantly, Sharon, of his intended resignation. He decided again to tell them nothing about it until he knew for sure what would happen. There was no point in going through the explosion that would follow his announcement until he had to. He had no intention of debating the issue with them.

Felter took the Hudson tube from Manhattan to Newark attracting curious stares in his long, gray, bra.s.s-b.u.t.toneq greatcoat and brimmed cap with the brim precisely one inch over his eyebrows; and again there were stares on the bus from the station to the Weequahic section of Newark. There weren't that many West Point cadets anywhere, and there was only one in the Weequahic section of Newark.

Nice, upwardly mobile young Jewish boys from Weequahic tried to get in Yale and Harvard, not the United States Military Academy. Although some had rushed to the recruiting stations after Pearl Harbor, and there were as many blue-starred flags hanging from windows to announce a son or a father in the service in Weequahic as there were anywhere else, Sandy Felter was aware that he was probably the only individual in Weequahic who did not plan to take off his uniform as soon as the war was over.

When she saw him get off the bus, Sharon came out of the Old Warsaw Bakery, on Aldine Street, and let him hug her. The greatcoat was so bulky that he really couldn't feel any of her except the warmth of her back under his hands.

Inside the bakery over the cash register, there was a picture of him as a plebe in a small frame with two little American flags crossed over it. It rather embarra.s.sed him. He knew the only reason his parents were happy that he was at West Point was because it kept him out of what his father called the trenches. His father had been a Polish conscript in World War I.

When he saw Sharon, and smelled her, and tasted her, he wondered if he had done the right thing. If he stayed, he would live. The war was going to be over. He and Sharon could be married the day he graduated, and then he would have the four years of his obligated service to convince her that being a regular army officer was just as good and just as prestigious a way of life as a lawyer's or a doctor's or some other professional's. Right now, Sharon, her parents, and his thought he was still behaving like a child.

He had, he realized, made the right decision about not telling them about resigning. It would have ruined Christmas. They were Jews, Polish and Russian Jews on Sandy Felter's side, and Czech and German Jews on Sharon's, but they celebrated Christmas anyway. Not in a religious sense of course, but with a Christmas tree and the exchange of presents and all sorts of Christmas baked goods from the old country. There was even a roast goose for Christmas dinner.

He couldn't ruin that.

On Christmas Day after dinner, when both he and Sharon were feeling the wine they'd had with the goose, Sharon's mother caught them kissing on the back stairs. He didn't know how long she had watched them before she made her presence known, but he hadn't seemed all that angry-even though Felter knew that Sharon's mother had taken great pains to make sure they weren't alone in circ.u.mstances "where something could happen." They even had to take Sharon's brother with them to the d.a.m.ned movies.

Whenever he could get Sharon alone for a moment to kiss her, he considered again that if he stayed at the Point, in eighteen months he could marry Sharon, and they wouldn't have to take her little brother with them anymore. He didn't believe that Sharon had the same thing happen to her that happened to him (his nuts ached), but he suspected, knew somehow, that she wanted to make love with him as much as he wanted to do it with her.

If he went off to the war, he was not only going to break his mother's and his father's heart, but he was liable to get killed, and then he would have died without ever having done it with Sharon.

On 28 December 1944, the field-grade duty officer at West Pojnt telephoned the residence of Thaddeus. Felter (formedy Taddeus Felztczy) in Newark, N.J., asked to speak to Cadet Corporal Felter, and told him, after he came on the line, that his leave had been cancelled and that he was to report back to the Academy as soon as possible.