Ian Slater: Arctic Front

“Superior son of a bitch,” muttered Freeman. Probably figured his memo wouldn’t be understood by anyone who hadn’t gone “up” to Oxford and “read philosophy.”

“Well,” Freeman had told his boss, General of the U.S. Army James Grey, “I’ve read my Hobbes and my Bugs Bunny. I know what that limey son of a bitch means, General. He’s claiming I see man’s natural condition as one of war.”

“Now, Douglas,” Grey had told him. “Don’t go getting yourself all riled up.”

“Well,” Freeman had replied, pulling on his leather gloves tighter, flexing his fist. “Limey bastard’s right. I do. Peace is war by other means, General. When you cut through the thin veneer of civilization, only thing that keeps the goddamn yahoos from running this world is strength of arms. Question is, whose arms? Ours or some Commie son of a bitch who’d take whatever freedom the IRS has left us? Lord — didn’t we learn anything from what happened to Gorbachev? While every Tom, Dick, and Jane Fonda in the West were going ga-ga over Gorby all those Marxist-Leninist pals of his were just going along for the ride — till he fell ‘ill. ’ Then by God look what we got. Suzlov and now Chernko and his pals. Same old gang. Remember, General, we all wanted peace. The British lion sheathed her claws. The American eagle clipped talons and beak. And the Russian bear — why he was just so darned happy about it he hugged ‘em both to death.”

“Go home, Douglas,” Grey had told him. “Enjoy your ocean view. You’ve done yourself and First Army proud. The country’s grateful. You ever doubt that, look at those rows of decorations you have — from every corner of the world. But you’re smart enough to know that the peace — whether it’s another form of war or not, Douglas — will be fought in board rooms and with diplomacy, God help us. The brigadier’s right, Douglas, ‘it’s not your cup of tea.’ “

Freeman grimaced. Even though he knew they were right the very thought of sitting in the bleachers while other players took the field and the glory was anathema to him. He knew it was pride—”pride right through,” as he remembered Henry the Eighth had said of Cardinal Wolsey — but Douglas Freeman saw his pride as a God-given hubris —as natural as salt in the blood, as undeniable as the steel blue of his eyes and his graying hair. It was the fuel that drove his consuming ambition: to be the greatest commander in the history of the United States — in the history of the world — an ambition that had burned fiercely within him as a boy, long before his first glimpse of the plain at West Point. Intellectually, politically, he understood Washington was correct to recall him now the battle was over and peace secured; but in his heart the tunes of glory would always call, the snare drum’s roll the sweetest music.

He remembered watching Apocalypse Now, at the armored school at Fort Hood, to which he and other officers had returned fresh from their victories in the Iraqi war. The gung-ho colonel in the film had confidently whipped away the yellow cravat of the Air Cavalry from his throat and, hands on nips, announced to a terrified subaltern, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.” Everyone in the theater had laughed derisively. Everyone except Freeman. He didn’t like the smell of napalm in the morning or any other time — it plugged his sinuses — but he knew what that colonel had meant, what he felt. He, too, loved the smell, the sting of battle that shot adrenaline to his chest. Only then did he feel fully alive. Some men he knew were born with the same feeling and spent their lives hypocritically denying it in deference to the civilized world, but Freeman made no apology, believing his destiny, his responsibility, was to put it to good purpose, to preserve the civilized world — to defend his America against all those who sought to destroy her. Yet now, his career having finally rounded the corner, “heading into the straight,” as his father would have said, the race was suddenly over, his purpose fulfilled in the clash of armor around Minsk and Moscow that had brought the Russian surrender. Suddenly he was adrift, his past glory flat as the twilight sea. Glory was like sex, he mused — having just had it you felt you’d never need it again. Then an hour later…

Outside his fog-shrouded house on the Monterey beachfront, a bungalow design with a six-foot-high, chocolate-brown fence running around it to ward off the encroaching dune grass, a crowd of well-wishers had gathered. One of the signs read “Welcome home, General Freeman”; another, “Freedom’s Freeman!” Instead of her usual gradual braking, the corporal was forced to hit the brakes hard as the crowd surged forward unexpectedly, revealing a long, yellow tape, which at first she had thought was a yellow ribbon of remembrance. She now saw it ran clear around the house. Freeman could smell the fresh tang of the sea. Three army Humvees were parked about ten yards apart, right of the crowd by the curb, one of the vehicles sprouting its.50 caliber machine gun on a swivel mount immediately behind the six-man cabin. A California highway patrolman, in khaki cap and uniform, and one of the MPs from the Humvees looked as if they were arguing. Left of them a man in white shorts and T-shirt, his left hand on the lip of the curb which was overrun by dune grass, lay sprawled in the gutter. The white shorts were red with blood.

Now Freeman saw more policemen pushing the crowd back as the man was photographed from different angles. For a second the general thought he saw his wife, Doreen, in the crowd but it was difficult to tell with so many people, a hundred or more, milling and flowing about the house. A man in jeans and wildly colored Hawaiian shirt tried to duck under the yellow tape near the curb, holding up a newspaper with a picture of Freeman at the surrender ceremony at Minsk. A patrolman pushed him back behind the tape.

“So much for crowd control, Corporal,” joked Freeman.

“Yes, sir.”

Whether it was the sight of the army Humvees or the strange excitement of the crowd that tensed up his lumbar muscles Freeman didn’t know, but it hurt like hell, and for a moment he was back in the Dortmund-Bielefeld pocket just after he’d given the order for the breakout, the “end run” that had outflanked the enemy and ultimately brought Chernko and his STAVKA to its knees. After leaving his headquarters near Munster the concussion from a 122-millimeter Soviet shell had knocked his Humvee right off the road, lifting the vehicle and flinging it into a ditch. His back took most of the impact against the Humvee’s steering column and the driver’s steel helmet.

The pain was still with him and bone deep. Determined not to show signs of what doctors insisted on calling “discomfort” to make themselves feel better, Freeman hauled himself quickly out of the Chevrolet, asking the corporal to answer the car’s cellular phone that was bipping annoyingly in the back as Freeman alighted. It was a small detail, opening the door himself, but the kind that newspapers, hungry for copy, used to define what they called the “hands-on, no-nonsense Freeman style.” The reporters didn’t realize that the general opening the door for himself was more a sign of his impatience to get things done than it was disdain for ceremony.

As he emerged from the car the fog lifted, the sun’s dying rays catching the edge of his decorations’ strips, the blue-red-blue of his Silver Star vibrant in the fading light.

Following the Kremlin’s surrender, President Mayne thought he had finished with the White House’s subterranean “simulation room.” Now, two floors below his oval office, he found himself once again walking past the Marine guards into the “bunker,” its fluorescent light, oppressive as usual, illuminating the huge map stand with its clusters of blue and red pins showing the disposition of Allied and Russian forces at the moment of Moscow’s unconditional capitulation. Glancing at the alert board, however, he saw there’d been a change. All Allied forces had been placed in DefCon II— “attack believed imminent.” Press aide Trainor, who had been normally gung-ho even in the worst moments of the war, looked drained, as pale as the bluish white light. The silence among the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Allied liaison officers was deafening. Trainor handed the president the message. It was from SACEUR — Supreme Allied Commander Europe — Lieut. Gen. William Merton, and read: