LD Sledge

Command Influence

Prologue

The trial was about to start. The courtroom was filled with the kind who go to hangings, hungry for blood. The facts of this case were just what those bottom feeders loved. The military didn’t like their adjudications exposed to the light of day, but there was standing room only. The crowd buzzed and speculated about the lurid charges against Sergeant Nolan. Scattered in the crowd were a half dozen reporters who feed on this kind of sorry business. They all wanted to see Nolan swing.

Riggs McCall, lead attorney for the defendant and my co-counsel, looked like a coiled rattler. I was shocked at the transformation in him when he walked into the courtroom. He seemed taller, and deadly. I had never see him like that. But I had undergone changes in myself since I met him just five months before. It could easily have been years.

The counsel table faced a panel of officers sitting in padded swivel chairs behind a long table. In the middle was a full bird Colonel, flanked by two light colonels who in turn were flanked on each side by majors, who were flanked by captains at each end. Their expressions were as hard as stone.

To the left, the Law Officer, the senior ranking officer who acted as a judge over the proceedings sat behind a high enclosure.

Lambrusco, prosecuting attorney, surrounded by his two assistants, like jackals hunched over the kill, had staked out the favorable position near the law officer and the witness box.

I was irrevocably deep in this whole mess, and it was anybody’s guess what the next two or three days would bring.

My whole future was entwined with Riggs and this trial. My carefully planned rise to political power, perhaps a bid for the presidency itself, even my father’s banking business relationship with the Defense Department was in danger of crumbling if the trial did not go well. And going well meant a conviction, and I was helping defend this poor bastard. How did I get into this mess?

CHAPTER ONE

When I first met Riggs McCall, he scared hell out of me. I knew immediately I had to keep my distance. He was trouble simply because he was cocky, self assured and would get “in your face” in a heartbeat and that was the wrong attitude for a Lieutenant in the U. S. Army. Having acquaintances like that didn’t fit my long term plans in using the Army as a stepping stone for my political future.

The fact he didn’t give a damn showed not only in the way he carried himself and how he wore his officer’s hat at a jaunty slant over his brow like fighter pilots did during the Second World War, but more the knowing smirk that tugged at the corners of his mouth and the faint light of mockery that somehow illuminated his pale blue eyes.

We met on the first day I reported for duty at Fort Lucky, Louisiana in November, 1961. I had no idea then how involved our lives would become, nor for how long. I did know, however, we were very different; I didn’t want much to do with him at all. That could rub off on me and I had other plans than being friends with a maverick.

Long before I got to Fort Lucky, I had learned that a second lieutenant, lawyer or not, (and I was) is a soldier first and lawyer second. He keeps his mouth shut, his pants zipped, and he salutes nearly anything that moves. Basic training is not just hardening and training in survival and killing skills, but an education in proper military-political etiquette. Kiss ass, and when you’re not doing that, be as invisible as possible, and keep your head down at all times.

Boot camp and basic training operate like one of those food processors. They chop you up and pour you out in a nice blend. You look like everybody else and you had better act like everybody else whether you think like them or not. This is where Riggs’s problems began, and why they continued. He was a country boy with little sophistication. He had no basic training when he came into the army, being brought in under an emergency program because of a shortage of Army lawyers; he almost went straight to his post assignment from law school. He hadn’t learned to blend in, even if he could have in the first place. He never kept his head down, and he was always getting hit.

I had been more fortunate, indoctrinated in lessons Riggs never had. Exclusive private schools in Dallas, Virginia Military Institute (VMI), and then Cum Laude from University of Texas with a law degree. My father was president of the largest bank in Dallas, and my parents both made sure that I had the best and that I was the best.

I had reached my Dad’s six foot two in the twelfth grade. He referred to us as "long tall Texans". On the day of graduation from law school, as I stood outside the hall in my cap and gown, I finally felt as tall as he was. He shook my hand, beaming, and said, "Son, play the game. Rise and fall with the tide. You are part of a team you’re going to learn about as you go. You’ve been groomed for greatness."

I never had any doubt about being the best and I never questioned who the team was and what game the team was playing. I should have.

*******

Fort Lucky sits in the big piney woods in the northeast quadrant of Louisiana. About twenty-five miles wide at the northern boundary and twenty miles on the eastern and western sides, the huge reservation contained thousands of acres of dry sandy hills, high pines, swamps, and miles of thick, raspy-leaved, ground-hugging vine called kudzu. Lucky is twenty-four miles from the nearest off-post real beer but that was the least of its problems. Rattlesnakes on the ground and red wasps in the bushes gave the ground soldier trainee plenty to think about.

The Lucky Cantonment was built during the First World War and renovated as Fort Lucky during the second. The buildings were still primitive, one and two-story temporary barracks, with some cinder-block structures, heated by steam from coal-burning furnaces. They shipped the coal in from Wyoming rather than tap one of the world’s largest pools of natural gas, the Monroe Gas Rock, a few miles away.

Lucky was a particularly inappropriate name, subject to all manner of ribald humor. They borrowed it in a time of intense patriotism from a nearly forgotten Confederate general, Ananias Z. Lucky, a former Methodist bishop whose own luck ran out before the Union guns at Cold Harbor, Virginia.

Thus, right from the beginning, Lucky was the antithesis of its name, and those unlucky enough to get assigned there for more than temporary basic training all agreed that if God should give the world an enema, Lucky was the locus where the instrument would be inserted–anus munde. I readily agreed with this conclusion when I first drove through its streets and reported in at post headquarters.

The billions in cold war appropriations for military build-up had just touched Lucky when I got here. New billets for married officers and enlisted personnel were under construction, and a spanking new seven-story hospital stood gleaming just beyond the renovated post exchange and commissary. There was new equipment, and a sense of apathetic frenzy, if that makes sense. Every cloud on the horizon took on the shape of a mushroom. We knew war was inevitable, and this kind of war would be awesome, leaving nobody untouched. None of my friends wanted to have children.

As for me, I didn’t ask or want to be at Lucky and had never expected this duty assignment. Right after graduating from Law School in Austin, I passed the bar and they gave me my ticket to the courtroom. I framed the license issued by the Texas Supreme Court authorizing me to practice law. It was my passport to the other side of mediocrity, and, like an icon ready to hang on the wall of my first office, it lay on the back seat of my ragtop Pontiac as I drove to my first assignment.

Every young man faced conscription into the Army unless he joined the marines, navy or air force or was deferred for some reason. I had been deferred for as long as I was in school. After getting a degree in engineering from Virginia Military Institute (VMI) I went straight into law school at UT. When I graduated from law school, I was offered several choices: first, I could use my ROTC commission as an infantry second lieutenant, with six months in the reserve on active duty; second, the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, JAG, the legal branch, held out a first lieutenant’s commission as a carrot, but a three-year obligation went with it. If it had not been for these two options, I would have had a third choice, if you could call it that–because this was during the Cold War when all young able-bodied young men were eligible for the draft. The draftee served two years active duty as an enlisted man.

I chose the first. I wanted to get back home as soon as possible to start my life in politics. A tour of six months would get me back quickly, and the amenities offered an officer were surely more favorable than three years sharing barracks with a bunch of young draftee privates or being an army lawyer in some Staff Judge Advocate Office. I could do six months "standing on my head," and a favorable military record would help my future plans. I knew, with my family connections, within three years of law school I could easily be a State representative and in three more a Texas Congressman with an eye to U.S. Senator in ten. I knew where I was headed. My father and his friends had practically assured me of smooth sailing on the seas politicana. But the easy tides became a tidal wave at Fort Lucky and I was swept away in the storm almost immediately.

For once my plans didn’t work out exactly as anticipated. I was called to active duty during the Berlin crisis in June, 1961, the day after Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what can you do for your country." My big surprise was that my six months obligation had been scrapped in favor of three years active duty and later was even extended to three years. If I hadn’t exercised my option, my draft board would have sent its tidings instantly on graduation. As many of my buddies in law school soon realized, the ink didn’t dry on their certificates before their draft boards began to reel in the line that had been snagged for their four years of undergraduate schooling and then for three more of law school. The breath of the world’s mightiest fighting force was warm on our young necks.

My military schooling at VMI gave me a good understanding of the army way of life and wearing the uniform was second nature. I had finished my summer program at Fort Jackson, South Carolina and on graduation had completed the Basic Officers Orientation Course at Fort Benning, Georgia, before reporting to active duty. I went to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, for basic for engineers. I went from basic to jump school at Fort Campbell, Kentucky where I was certified as a paratrooper.

I was prepared for anything.

**********

Lucky’s two story whitewashed headquarters sat in the center of a circular park, with streets, like spokes, leading out from the center of the hub. Manicured lawns surrounded the immaculate building. The delicate zoysia grass had been turned to a light brown by the frosts. Snapping flags flew vigorously in the cold winds of November. Instantly I felt, and later grew to barely tolerate, what seemed to be the collective personality of the post, a pervasive sullen attitude that floated like a dismal shroud over the area. You could feel it from the hard-eyed MP guards at the front gate, the infantry training areas, through the helicopter and air training base at Louzon Field, to the rows of military barracks and parade grounds spotted throughout the base.

Places have collective personalities that can be identified by feelings that grow from those who live there. Lucky ranges between a high of spitting antagonism to a chronic sulking apathy. There is a palpable, stifling resentment, and it is reflected in the cheerless faces of the men and women who live and serve here.

I parked my car in the paved lot near the Big House, the headquarters building. The little gold bar on my shoulders meant nothing much to anybody, particularly if you were not from West Point or if your daddy was not RA, regular army. But I was an officer nonetheless, and now, after being in the army for a few months, I was accustomed to enlisted men old enough to be my father, and far more experienced than I, saluting me and calling me sir. One of these grizzled old sergeants passed me under the spreading oaks that led up to the big house door. He snapped a brisk salute and barked: "Good morning, Sir," with heavy emphasis on the sir, and kept walking. I returned his salute. The corporal on guard at the door also saluted me.

I was to sign in with the Officer of the Day at the front desk just inside the big double doors at the entrance. The first thing you do when you arrive at any new post assignment is to check in at Headquarters and the OD will dispatch you to your unit, noting the time of your arrival, giving directions to your assignment. When the OD, an energetic Captain named Daniels, saw my name tag and orders, he walked briskly to his desk at the other side of the room and made a phone call–to check in with my unit, I thought. When he returned, rather than dispatch me back out to report in, he ordered a young private to escort me to another office in the building.

I was hurried up two sets of stairs, through a series of offices and corridors and finally entered a neat little waiting room attended by a pert, middle-aged lady. She smiled at me over her reading glasses when I identified myself and told her I had just arrived on the post. She dialed a number on her rotary phone, said a few words, then led me to a door on the right.

The simple plate on the door read, "Major General Brandon Stewart." There were two silver stars mounted on the plate above his name.

I had not known that I was to meet the Old Man, but when I entered the room I found myself in the presence of the commanding general of Fort Lucky himself.

*******

Dad always told me to go to the top man first. The top at any military post was usually found at the officers club among wives and wanna-be generals, because that’s where things really get done in the peacetime army. Intending to follow his advice, I knew it would be a cinch to cut through the country club butter of officer’s clubs. I was raised in country clubs. Small talk was my item. But that would take strategic planning and tactical timing. This sudden short cut had not been included in my initial battle plans.

On the other hand, earning a diplomatic faux pas for ignoring strict protocol on one’s first day on post by not going directly to one’s unit portended consequences not in keeping with well-laid plans to conquer Lucky on one’s own terms. But here, during my first hour on duty at Lucky, I found myself facing a huge bear of a man behind an acre-wide desk across the broad expanse of a bare hardwood floor. This man commanded the lives of tens of thousands of men at any given time, including mine. Somehow I must have made a serious blunder by allowing myself to be escorted to this, the loftiest of chambers on this post.

Cigar smoke permeated the room, and had for a long time, judging by the depth of it. Windows had been closed for winter, cigars had been smoked, left smoldering in trays, chewed and half smoked stubs forgotten and abandoned dead about the room, now every pore in the leather chairs and every cell of the wood furniture, floor and ceiling took on the acrid reek of smoke.

The heavy dark-haired general behind the desk frowned over the unlighted cigar stub he wore between his thin lips. Two small brown eyes aimed at me like twin gunbarrels as I was ushered through the door. He returned my best and snappiest salute with more a wave of his brow than a salute.

"Come on in, Lieutenant," he said, extending a hammy hand. I leaned forward and he enveloped mine in a crushing grip.

The smile froze on my face until he released my mangled fingers and waved me to a submissively low chair in front of his massive desk. His back was to double westside windows, which made me squint to see his face in the dark silhouette. His already dominant persona was magnified intensely by this throne-like positioning.

I felt, and acted, appropriately impressed and obsequious enough. He, in turn, was obviously pleased at my crisp uniform and the gleaming crossed Infantry rifles on my lapels. The winged silver parachute on my chest meant that I had finished jump school, and the little pewter-hued medal of a cross within a laurel wreath, from which hung two tiny pewter plates, proved that I had qualified as expert, or superior, in firing the rifle and pistol. These decorations entitled me to share the rarified air breathed by men of war. As sacred symbols of the dedicated ground soldier, they said it all. The only thing missing was the ranger patch, earned after going through the intense physical survival and combat schools for rangers. I wanted that patch, and would get it. The Army would pay for it.

I had gone to jump school because it was fun, and the chance to do those things again in civilian life wouldn’t appear. It took only a short time after my basic schools anyway. But there was method in my madness, for one thing was sure: being a certified paratrooper paved a golden four-laned highway through the quagmire of military socio-politics. The look on the faces of officers and enlisted men unequivocally proved that I possessed the key to the inner circle of military acceptance when they saw these small decorations. There was always a small smile and the flow of I-see-you-brother.

The expression on this big general’s face was one of near love, as he took in the cluster of miniature trophies on my chest. The holy triumvirate: crossed rifles, the winged parachute, and expert medals. Keys to the kingdom of military ease.

"You sure as hell don’t look like a damned lawyer," the general snorted. He grinned and tried to light the black stub snagged between his big teeth.

I just grinned back, as if we both had some kind of secret. After a moment of silence he began to laugh, and opened a folder laying on his desk before him.

"Your personnel file, Madison."

I probably registered surprise, and I remember losing a bit of my studied aplomb as I stretched upward to see what he had in his hands. It was not logical that he, the commanding general of this largest of infantry training posts, should have my file, particularly at this time and place.

"You sure you don’t want to forget that damned law bullshit and get a regular army commission?" Without waiting for an answer, he continued, "I’ll recommend it, and you’ll be let into the real Army, not that chickenshit reserve."

This was time to hold out the bait, so I answered, allowing a twinkle in my eye, as if lightly moving an evasive pawn in response to his bold gambit: "Well, I don’t know for sure right now, sir. I haven’t had much real army life yet, since my experience has mainly been schools. I want to see what’s offered."

He eyed me through the flame of the match he held close to fire up the black stub in his mouth. Never taking his eyes from me, he chewed on the shredded end and swallowed the bits of tobacco leaf and juice, puffing to keep the stump of a cigar alive. After a moment, he snorted a laugh and said, "You got what it takes, Madison–as I can see right here in your record–to get my job."

The CO of the post doesn’t interview every fresh second lieutenant who hits the post, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to tell this man that the army was just a temporary inconvenience for me. Instead, I would throw out a lazy line and let my bait float on the water to see what happened.

"I am not going to rule it out, sir. The Army offers lots of opportunity and I hope to decide while I am here."

He pushed himself up from his chair, and looked down at me from at least six feet two. His bulk seemed to fill the space behind the desk.

"I know a little about you Madison. You got politics in your blood. Remember Ike was president, and a good military record can put a man where he wants to be. But you got to be more’n a prima donna."

I nodded as he walked around the desk to stand beside me. I stood, knowing that a junior should never sit while a senior was on his feet, even though there was nothing in the books about it. He stood near me and we were nearly the same height and I was able to look him straight in the eyes. He smelled like the room.

Seeing he was testing me, and maybe trying to get under my skin, I deliberately stiffened–slightly. Further reaction on my part would have indicated defiance and any less would have suggested insecurity. I had been born to diplomacy, for I could swing easily to the precise body position, facial expression and tone of voice that would create any needed effect. I did it then.

"Sir, I plan to earn my keep, and more."

"Thought I’d get a rise outa you. Nah. You’re no prima-donna, boy. You got the makin’s of a damn good soldier, and from what I see you can play the game."

"Thank you, sir," I said, not knowing what else to say. I was still somewhat baffled at the presence of my personnel file on his desk, but I wasn’t going to blow anything by asking questions.

"What do you plan to do while you’re at Lucky, Madison?"

It was no time to give lengthy speeches, like some candidate for office. His military mind wouldn’t appreciate bullshit, but probably would appreciate stock, non-committal answers, for that was the ass-kissing way and he knew I knew it, and I was willing to do it. That was one of the tests. I answered with a quick "Be a good soldier, sir." I was still trolling my bait and he was taking a look.

Nodding knowingly, without taking his hard eyes from mine, his lips worked into a small smile around the cigar.

"Madison, you smart bastard. I know you already. I’ve seen your type. You want the best. You’re like me. Don’t hold out, thinking that you can get something you couldn’t get otherwise. But I don’t mind you playing the game. I’ll be watching you."

He crushed my hand again, studying my discomfort at his close proximity and the fact that my fingers were being mauled.

"Before you go to your unit, you better get over to the staff judge advocate’s office and meet some of them lawyer buddies of yours. They could use some of your savvy."

He grinned, and I could feel him mentally dismissing me.

Quickly, I snapped to rigid attention, holding my salute stiffly, waiting for him to give his responding salute. The lower ranking personnel never releases the salute until the senior’s salute is executed fully.

General Stewart paused, watching me as I held my joined fingers tensed by my right eyebrow, allowing my hand a slight tremor as the drill teams do to show they are hard at attention. He slowly raised his hand in salute, a calculating expression on his broad face.

"Thank you, and good day, sir."

"Good day to you, lieutenant."

I about-faced and left the room, thinking the SOB knew exactly what I was doing.  For an SOB like me, the thought was more than a little disconcerting.