2. Operations
The job of the 721st involved a sort of reverse spying for the Filipino military establishment on themselves. They provided us with schedules and frequencies of transmissions in certain areas, and we recorded the messages – Morse code groups by typewriter (mill) and voice on tape – and then the Filipinos checked for security violations by individual operators. These violations were nothing so dramatic as giving information to the enemy (nonexistent, anyway), but were usually on the order of one operator (op) saying so long to another op when he was being transferred or discharged, or the transmission of a message in the clear when it was supposed to be encoded. This was supposed to be a foolproof scheme to double-check on their communications security – but things proof against a fool are seldom of any help against a clever man.
Joe Morning was clever. If he thought he might be recording a violation, he would manage to lose the signal at just that moment. He claimed no desire to punish some hapless Pfc in another army making even less money than he. After the newness of the work wore off, I tended to agree with him, just so it didn't happen too obviously; but at first I stayed on his back once I found out what he was doing. It was to his credit, I suppose, that he admitted what he was doing without being accused.
The afternoon of the first day I discovered his game with the static and security violations. I was checking copy-sheets, filing the necessary carbons and placing the originals in the attaché case the Filipino officer would pick up at 1530. I noticed that most of the copy was quite good for the day-trick, when interference was heaviest, except for Morning's which was spotted with marks of ((((((GARBLED-GARBLED-GARBLED)))))) (((QSA NIL QSA NIL))) ((HERE NIL MORE HEARD – QSK 5 X 5)). I checked his next scheduled transmission on the extra console, and although the op had an unusual style of keying, he was so loud he might have been next door. Morning's copy was again spotty. I thought perhaps he might not be a good Morse op, but later in the afternoon I watched him copy, with two fingers, a Chinese Communist (Chi Com) propaganda station sending 35 words per minute clear text Spanish. Morning copied without a mistake, almost without effort; he was a fine op. Only Novotny might be better. Morning stayed with the Chi Com a few minutes into his next schedule (sked). When he finished with it, I mentioned something about the quality of his copy earlier in the day, hoping he would understand that I knew what he was doing.
"Well, Sgt. Krummel, I had both ends on that sked," he said, pointing to the copy I was holding, "and this one fellow's wife is expecting her first and the other guy's wife has had six kids, so he was telling him not to worry. They were talking in clear text, but it just didn't seem right to bust a guy because he gets excited about his wife having a kid. More people should care about their wives that way." He answered me as if there could be no question about it. (He had the ability of never sounding wrong – not in any pushy way, but purely in his self-possession and confidence that he knew the truth.) It pleased me that he had confessed without being accused, but it left me in the position of either letting him get away with it or being against expectant fathers.
"Okay, Morning, but watch that sort of thing or there will be more than a father to get busted." Already he had me on shifting ground. "I don't like waves, and I don't like trouble, and that kind of shit makes for stormy, stinky waters." Who was I kidding? I was hooked. I didn't know quite how much just yet.
"Sure. I will. I'm really sorry," he said frankly, "but that guy was so damned excited, so worried, I just couldn't get him in trouble." Morning smiled, and I remembered hearing the quivering urgency of his keying when I had listened and now understood those handfuls of dits and dahs he had so frantically been throwing on the air, then I smiled too.
"God, it's taken him eight years to make corporal, and with a kid he's going to need the extra money," Morning said, at ease now that he knew I wasn't going to push him. His voice was friendly; he was talking to me, not my stripes.
"I thought they were talking about kids?"
"Yeah, this time, but I knew from before. He has such an odd fist, I can always tell when he's working. I remember when he made corporal. He broke into clear text then too. But he doesn't usually do that. He's really a good op, Sarge."
"Remind me to give the net to someone who isn't a member of the family, Morning. Jesus."
"He's being transferred to an automatic Morse net next month." Morning couldn't keep from grinning, and he knew neither could I.
"Well, goddamn, I guess you Dear Abbys are going to miss him and his family troubles," I said to the Trick in general. "I'll see if the chaplain's office doesn't need some extra help. Or maybe I can let you all open a home for unwed mothers in your spare time."
"Need something exciting around this fucking place," Novotny growled, "and I reckon unwed mothers would be just the right thing." A few chuckles followed, then they turned back to their work, not yet sure of me. It isn't easy to trust the man who gives the orders.
"Sgt. Krummel, I'm really sorry about the trouble. But you get so damned bored around this place, and thinking of the guy on the other end of this business as a buddy makes things pass easier. No one likes to be a sneak and a tattletail to boot," Morning said. "But I am sorry."
"Forget it. And don't tell me about the Chinese spy you keep in business because his mother's sick. Don't tell me."
"If I don't tell you, how will you know?"
"I don't want to know. Anything."
There was never any more trouble. I kept Morning on the higher echelon nets where the ops were more careful and on the training nets where the ops were sloppy and mistakes and violations came every sked. In spite of the smoothness of that problem, Morning always had the ability to get me mixed up in his crap. Never again, I said, walking back to my desk, Never again. But I was already holding my breath, waiting for the waves. (Morning would have said that my involvement with him was as much my fault as his, which is true. He was my fault. But I took care of that in Vietnam.)
The operating section of our building was contained on a single ground floor room, with most of the space taken up by electronic equipment and desks, but with a small area left open for the trick chief's desk, coffee pot and weapons' rack. The Detachment officers, as opposed to the company officers, a major, two captains and four lieutenants, had offices, for some never explained reason, underground, reached by an outside stairwell. They occupied these holes only in the daylight and seldom bothered with the actual operation of the Det unless an unusual problem arose. I quickly learned that work on the ground floor could proceed untroubled by the "Head Moles" as they were called. This peace was increased by a warning system installed in the air-conditioning unit by the Trick radio-repairman, Quinn. When a badge was inserted into the key slot which opened the front doors, the compressor coughed shyly. With this early warning system the men relaxed in a way unusual for enlisted men so near officers. My only real duty was to be sure that the Sked Chart was met and copied in all the bullshit sessions, the word games and general gold-bricking which made up the bulk of the hours. I settled that quickly: "Any op I catch missing skeds loses his pass for seven days, no questions asked." I got everyone's pass except Quinn's the first two days, then signed the three-day passes for the Break as if I had forgotten. The Trick understood, but they weren't my Trick yet.
The Trick and I seemed to work well in the beginning – more credit to them than to me. They were a good group. Only Quinn and Peterson had not been to college, which might have been unusual for the Army as a whole, but was about the average for the 721st. None of the men were draftees dislodged from their life plans, but all had enlisted, probably because their lives were already out of joint. Only Collins had finished college; the others had flunked out or quit. Any one of them might, and did, cause God knows what trouble in Town, but only Franklin would at Operations. He was an unhappy kid who had gone to MIT on a math scholarship, then been ejected for peeing in a main lounge on Mother's Day. He never caused any real trouble because he, alone, thought my return to the Army a gallant gesture: a big, fat finger to the world. He liked that.