His first woman was a hootchy-kootchy dancer who took a fancy to him during the sophomore vacation. A. J. thought about her off and on for many years.
By World War I he had earned his degree and was teaching history, economics, and political science at River Ridge Military Academy in Michigan to upper-economic-strata boys who couldn’t have been less interested in history, economics, and political science. He joined the Army.
When his father died, a revered old man in that part of Iowa, the farm went to Tom Jefferson Hansen, who had always been cut out for that life. He ran it prosperously to this day with his sons.
The end of the war found A. J. Hansen at the rank of Captain and deeply involved in a program which sent food to starving Europe and later to Russia. He remained in the Army, cursing that his administrative and organizational ability kept him from ever receiving a fighting command.
In fact his only battles were with the Congress, Army brass, and a civilian public which largely considered the military as social lepers and fascists between wars.
Within the Army, Andrew Jackson Hansen had committed the initial sin of not being a graduate of West Point and therefore not a member of the West Point Protective Association. Secondly, in the regular Army it was standard practice to stud a male heir so that he might carry on the tradition of that Long Gray Line.
A. J. married a lovely woman from the Midwest who neither lushed nor shacked during his long tours of duty away from home and presented him with three daughters, none of whom turned out to be “army brats” and all of whom happily married nonmilitary men.
Despite his blatant disregard for tradition and an inability to keep his mouth closed at the discreet moment, Hansen’s genius in new programs and his unflinching acceptance of the role of whipping boy kept him at the right hand of the chiefs of staff.
In 1938 Colonel Hansen became an overnight sensation heading a committee to draw up the Army’s manpower needs. His report called for the immediate integration of Negro draftees and volunteers into all combat units.
A fellow officer from Georgia on the committee loyally reported this to some fellow generals from Virginia, Georgia, and Mississippi before Hansen was to go to Congress with the report.
“Andy. We aren’t going to stand by and let you push this nigger thing with the Congress,” a well-known artillery officer from Alabama warned as spokesman for the purity group. “Would you want a nigger officer leading your own son into combat?”
Hansen replied that it was a problem of semantics as he had no sons and he delivered the manpower report to Congress.
This not only infuriated the southern officer corps dedicated to the preservation of a white, Aryan army, but also the southern senators and congressmen who passed upon army promotions.
When the noise had simmered down Hansen found himself exiled to one of those remote posts where the Army punishes its mavericks and gives them time to reflect sins, pay penance.
His numerous requests for transfer to command a combat regiment went unanswered. By the time Pearl Harbor was attacked the powers-to-be figured Hansen had paid for his crime ... besides he was badly needed for a new program.
The program was G-5, Military Government.
In the beginning, G-5 trained lawyers at the University of Virginia. After the landings in North Africa if became apparent that military government law could not stop epidemics, do police work, counter-intelligence, mend broken roads and sewers.
Hansen searched both in and out of the Army for former mayors and city managers, for doctors, port and sanitation engineers, and bankers, newspapermen, linguists, and food experts and transportation and communications people, and made them officers.
At the Hore-Belisha Barracks at Shrivenham, England, he assembled two thousand experts with their British and French counterparts. Although they were older men, they worked as strenuously as paratroopers. They were assigned future German cities and towns in A, B, and C units according to size.
And in London at Queen Mother’s Gate fifty hand-picked men worked and lived under rigid security. These men broke down and studied every detail of the Nazi and German structure. Decisions came after laborious, detailed appraisal and went into the manuals often only after hot arguments.
Hansen stretched his squat body, blinked his eyes open, and returned at half pace to his desk.
How damned lucky, he thought, we have been able to fight our wars, pack up and go home. This was the true heart of the matter now. The military had been given the responsibility of G-5. Yet, American generals have never had to worry about combining a military victory with a political victory. Their minds could only think and plan the destruction of the enemy. Lord give me the strength to fight our own people as well as the Germans.
Chapter Four
SEAN WORKED FAR INTO the night, even after General Hansen had retired. He pondered on the revisions of PREROGATIVES OF MILITARY GOVERNMENT COMMANDERS IN GERMANY until they were within the framework of top policy. To hell with it, Sean thought. He’d ask Hansen to transfer him into a combat unit. But the general was even more alone than he, and battling greater forces. There was that instinct between men that told him Hansen needed him.
There would be little the German people would have to answer for beyond the misery they had created for themselves. Some reparations, some personal suffering, but nothing to compare with the tears and the blood they had caused. Already the damned lawyers had determined there was a difference between “criminal” Nazis and “noncriminal” Nazis.
Sean penciled through his passage on hostages and wrote instead: “When we enter Germany the purpose of Military Government is to expedite Allied victory. We will rule firmly but fairly, keeping in mind American tradition of not using brutality on the enemy civilian population. Military Commanders shall use armed force only in the event of resistance. Failure of the German population to carry out orders will be combated by imprisonment, fines or loss of food ration in extreme cases.”
Sean jerked the paper from the typewriter. “Gott bless the gutt kind Amerikan soldiers,” he cursed, ripped the paper up and threw it into the wastebasket He rubbed his temples. “Oh God, Liam, what shall I do?”
Did his brother cry out from the grave for revenge? Did Liam really want an answer for his death? Even when Liam had been bloodied by a bully and Sean and Tim sought to avenge him Liam said, let him go, don’t hurt him. Can’t you see, he attacked me because he was scared and confused?
Fight back, Tim said. Fight back, Liam. Too many people will drink your blood if they know you won’t fight back.
Liam said, revenge for the sake of revenge is immoral.
What do you remember most when it all fuses in blurs at two o’clock in the morning and when it all must be remembered in a few golden moments? Tim, Liam, Sean in the caves below Sutro Baths. The ocean pounding against the rocks. The water leaping up, trying to defy gravity. Liam O’Sullivan reading Eugene O’Neill’s Beyond the Horizon to his two older, spellbound brothers....
“Oh, Liam. Your life was too good for them to take. Twenty-two-year-old boys shouldn’t die in lonely places called Kasserine Pass ...”
The omnipresent map of Germany hung over Sean’s head. He stared at it. took the torn paper from the wastebasket, and retyped it, and then he went on to the next section.
WEHRMACHT: GERMANY’S REGULAR ARMY.
Policy: The Wehrmacht has fought a conventional war against American forces. However, atrocities against civilian populations have been catalogued by counter-intelligence. Particular brutality has been evidenced against the Greeks, Slavic peoples and Jews. Military Government must determine to what extent the Nazis dominated the Wehrmacht. In those areas under Wehrmacht command where atrocities were committed we must hold the Wehrmacht commander responsible as a war criminal.