When they got back to Fort Bragg, maybe, Karl-Heinz said. The car would probably not break down before they got there. But Geoff was right: The car needed work. Therefore, since going back to Bragg in it was the highest priority, it should be saved for that purpose. They would no longer use it to take Ursula home each night from the NCO club. He would ride with her on the bus, and then come back out to the post.

The very first night that Karl-Heinz rode into Columbus on the bus with Ursula, the engine of the Volkswagen failed. It took Geoff fifteen minutes to find the engine oil drain plug on the bottom of the engine, and another five minutes and skinned knuckles to get the damned thing out. But only five laps around the parking lot before the engine seized. He'd tell Karl-Heinz it was vibration that did it.

Master Sergeant Martinez, the ex first sergeant from the First Division (who, although neither of them suspected it, had been told by Sergeant Major Taylor to keep an eye on PFC Wagner and Private Craig), kindly dragged the Volkswagen into Columbus behind his Buick station wagon.

While Geoff had been on KP, Karl-Heinz had been installing a rebuilt engine from Sears, Roebuck. He had determined that exchanging the failed engine for a rebuilt one would be cheaper than rebuilding the one that had failed.

Karl-Heinz was charging Geoff ninety percent of what Sears, Roebuck wanted for insta fling the rebuilt engine, and was honest enough to tell Geoff that he was glad to have the work. He knew that Ursula was buying him a little Christmas present, and now he could buy her one. She was probably going to give Geoff a present, too, Karl-Heinz said.

Geoff had spent more time in the PX, selecting a present for Ursula, than he had ever previously spent selecting presents. He finally settled on a one-of-a-kind portable FM radio. That way she could listen to good music. It cost $119.95. He also bought a "$10.95 reduced from $29.95, slightly damaged" electric can opener. He took both back to Building T-2007 where he spent twenty careful minutes with a razor blade and a can of lighter fluid moving the "$10.95 reduced from $29.95, slightly damaged" price sticker from the can opener to place on the radio where she would find it. He had thrown the can opener away.

In the morning, at 1115 hours, Karl-Heinz and Ursula Wagner would motor to the post to the mighty purr of the replacement engine. They would take Christmas dinner in the mess, where for eighty cents they would be served the army's ritual fourteen-course Christmas banquet literally everything from soup to nuts, via roast turkey and baked ham. They would then take Private Craig into Columbus with them for "coffee and cake." There he would give Ursula the $10.95 FM radio and Karl-Heinz a Swiss army knife he had admired; and Ursula would give him whatever she was going to give him; and just maybe, carried away with the Christmas spirit, she might actually let him kiss her.

Dressed in clean underwear, smelling of Lifebuoy, Private Craig took the blanket off his pillow and slipped between the sheets. He rearranged his pillow and the blanket so that it would support his head and began to read Time magazine.

He sensed, a few minutes later, that somebody important, a cad reman or even an officer, had come to the second floor of Building T-2207. The conversations in the three small knots of people in the almost deserted squad bay died. There was an expectant, almost frightened hush. It had to be a cad reman Geoff decided. No one had called "Attention." What did the sadistic sonofabitch want on Christmas Eve?

The visitor, wearing a camel's hair overcoat over his shoulders like an actor and a green Tyrolean hat with what looked like a shaving brush stuck in its band, looked around the room, found Geoff and sat down on the bunk beside him.

"Hello, there, young man," he said cheerfully. "Jumped out of any good airplanes lately?"

Geoff chuckled. "I haven't yet; that's next week."

"In bed a bit early, aren't you?"

"I've been on "So I have been informed."

"Am I supposed to leap to my feet under the circumstances?"

"No, just kissing my ring will suffice."

"And what do I call you, under these circumstances?"

"The circumstances being Christmas Eve, which has apparently escaped you, you may call me Cousin Craig."

"How did you know I was here?"

"I just spoke to your mother; my annual Christmas Eve next of-kin telephone call. When I asked where you were, she said, tears choking her voice, that not only had the beastly army refused to let you off for Christmas, but it was denying her baby access to a telephone."

"Christ, I didn't call!" Geoff remembered.

"So I have been led to understand," Lowell said. "Put your clothes on; we'll get you on the horn."

Geoff pulled his legs out from under the blankets and started to put on fatigues.

"Have you got civilian clothes?" Lowell asked.

"It's permitted, you know," Lowell said.

"There hasn't been time to get any from home or to buy any here," Geoff said.

"Well, then, Class A's," Lowell said.

"Why, where are we going?"

"I thought I would take you away from all this," Lowell said dryly. "After we got to my motel and call your mother, we'll go down to Rucker. I can't offer a Christmas tree and roast turkey, but I thought you might settle for steaks and booze."

"I can't do that," Geoff said.

"Yes you can," Lowell said. "I've fixed it with the army."

"That's not what I mean," Geoff said. "I've made other plans."

Lowell looked at him and smiled.

"You say that with such determination that there must be a female involved," he said.

"Yes," Geoff said.

"Well, you can tell me all about her on the way to the motel," Lowell said. "I promised your mother I would put you on the phone."

When they went outside the barracks, a captain wearing an OD brassard and a sergeant were standing nervously beside a silver Volkswagen.

"Go sign out," I..owen. ordered. "I'll wait."

As Geoff went to the orderly room door he heard the captain say "Good evening, sir."

"Merry Christmas," Lowell said.

"Is there some way I can help the general, sir?" the captain asked.

"I'm not the general," Lowell said. "He just loaned me his car. Actually, he loaned me his wife's car."

"Well, then, sir," the captain said, "is there some way I can help you, sir?"

"Well, I had planned to entertain that poor lonely soldier away from home at Christniai," Lowell said, "but he has already found some female to do that for him."

The captain chuckled. "You scared hell out of the sergeant, sir. He saw the bumper sticker and called me."

"I'm sorry about that, Captain," Lowell said. "Having to be on duty on Christmas Eve is bad enough without having a general sneaking around."

Geoff signed the sign-out book and came back out of the orderly room. He looked at the bumper. It bore both Fort Benning and Fort Rucker bumper stickers. The Rucker sticker was number six, the Benning number twenty-eight. Both stickers had the single star of a brigadier general.

When they were in the car, Geoff said, "I wondered what you were doing with a Volkswagen."

"Never look a gift Volkswagen in the trunk," Lowell said. "It belongs to a friend of mine, Bill Roberts."

"What are you doing here?" Geoff asked. "At Benning, I mean. You didn't come here because of me?"

"I'm shuffling paper," Lowell said. "Unfortunately, I'm very good at that."

"I don't know what that means," Geoff confessed.

"I am preparing a lengthy document, which will be signed by General Roberts and favorably endorsed, we hope, by General Howard, which will recommend to the Secretary of Nfense how the army should use airplanes in the next war."

"Oh," Geoff said. "Why is that unfortunate?"

"Because those who write about it seldom get to do it," Lowell said. And then he went on quickly, as if anxious to change the subject: "When General Roberts went home for Christmas this afternoon, he left me the keys to his car."

"You're going to spend Christmas in a motel here?" I feel sorry for him, Geoff realized. He really wanted me to go with him, because he is going to be as alone on Christmas as he thought I was going to be.

"No. I've got my airplane here. I'm going home myself. Home being Ozark, Alabama, outside Fort Rucker. I was going to take you with me and bring you back in time for duty on Thursday morning."

"I haven't thanked you for getting me out of the stockade," Geoff said, changing the subject.

"When they have you running around in the Florida swamps, eating snakes, you may wish you were back in the stockade," Lowell said.

"Why Special Forces? Why did you do that for me?" Geoff asked.

"For you or to you?" "Either." "Are you miserable in Special Forces, the lady aside?" "No. So far it's been interesting." "You want a straight answer to that question?" "Please."

"For one thing, sounding like a guidance counselor at St. Mark's, I thought that getting through Special Forces training would make a man out of you," Lowell said.

"Or kill me in the process," Geoff said, chuckling.

"To coin a phrase, it separates the men from the boys," Lowell said. "And then I had a selfish interest."

"I don't know what you mean by that," Geoff said.

"There's an old saying; Kipling said something like it, which I forget. The modern version is Soldiers and dogs, keep off the grass." Ten years from now, when you're in your office at 13 Wall Street and you read in the WSJ that our Senator is about to take the army off the gravy train, I want you to remember the good people you met when you were a soldier. Underpaid and overworked and literally prepared to lay down their lives. And, remembering them, I want you to get mad enough to call the sonofabitch up and really tell him where to head in." "Is that what you do?"

"I get your father, kicking and screaming in protest, to do it for me," Lowell said. "They pay more attention to him than they do to me. I'm just one more soldier they want to keep off the grass."

"You really like the army, don't you?" Geoff said. "It's not what Dad says."

"What does Dad say?" "That you just don't like banking." "I donL't like banking," Lowell said. "He's right about that." "And you do like the army?" "I'm not sure you'll understand this, Geoff," Lowell said. "Try me."

"The toughest thing a decent man has to do in life is send another decent man somewhere where he's probably going to get killed," Lowell said. "That's called command. And the most satisfying thing a man can do in life is to be a commander."

"I don't think I understand that," Geoff confessed a moment Ister.

"I didn't think you would," Lowell said. "Tellme about the lady."

"Why?" Geoff said, unwilling to end the conversation. "Why is that satisfying?"

Lowell down geared the Volkswagen. They were approaching the Fort Beaning Gate. The MP on duty, who had been casually waving cars through, saw the general officer's sticker, popped to rigid attention and saluted.

Lowell absentmindedly returned it. "I don't know," Lowell said thoughtfully. "It's probably got something to do with the fact that we are far less removed from the savage than we like to think we are. AU I know is once you experience it, you'll do anything to have it again."

"You've been a commander." It was more of a statement than a question.

"Once, when I was about your age, in Greece. And a couple of years later, in Korea."

"And that's it? That's why you put up with all this bullshit?"

"Tell me about the lady, Geoff," Lowell said. "We have exhausted the previous subject."

Geoff knew that he had somehow disappointed his cousin. And he sensed that in saying what he had, Craig Lowell had opened a door that was rarely opened. Now that it was closed again, it would not soon be reopened.

He wished that he had been unable to understand.

"She's the sister of a friend of mine," Geoff said. "She's German."

"German German, or what?"

"German German," Geoff said. "They escaped from East Germany."

"And you're stuck on her?"

"I never felt this way before."

"It will go over like a lead balloon with your parents," Lowell said. "Can you handle that? Or isn't it that serious?"

"What's wrong with Germans?" Geoff snapped, and then remembered. "Your wife was German, wasn't she?"

"Yes, she was," Lowell said. "The family, with the possible exception of your mother, was united in the belief that ilse, who was eighteen when I married her, was a conniving European slut who had latched on to a meal ticket."

"They'll jump in on Ursula, then. They don't have a pot to piss in."

"Does she know that you're... comfortable'?"

"No."

"One final profound philosophical observation as we approach the end of our journey," Lowell said, turning into a Ramada Inn. "One of the advantages someone like you has in being in the army as a private soldier is that you're likely to come in contact with a girl who will look at you as a private soldier, not as Craig, Powell, Kenyon and Dawes, Jr."

Geoff looked at him as he stopped the Volkswagen in front of a motel building.

"Yeah," he said.

"I keep this room all the time," Lowell said. "I'll give you a key."

"She's not that kind of a girl."

"All I said was, you can use it if you want to," Lowell said.

"When did your wife die?" Geoff asked.

"God was in his heaven, and all was right with the world," Lowell said. "I was commanding the task force that made the breakout from the Pusan perimeter. An hour before I was to link up with the people who had landed at Inchon, my battalion commander caught up with me in an LA. I was convinced the sonofabitch was going to steal my glory. I was wrong. I got the glory and the DSC. What Jiggs wanted to see me about was a TWX he had just got from Germany. The TWX said that Ilse had been killed twenty-four hours before in an automobile accident."