Scholarly Pursuit

Scholarly Pursuit

by

Robert James Allison

Copyright © 2004 by Robert James Allison

ISBN 978-1-59088-425-6

Published by First Suitor Enterprises at Smashwords

February 2013

Cover photos:

The author at Fort Ord, CA, circa 1971

CIA K-9 Boris (U.S. Government works)

All rights reserved

Names, characters, and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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Dedication

To the members of the

United States Armed Forces Military Police

Chapter One

Mary Benton was a feisty little thing, five-feet-seven inches tall and just under one hundred and thirty pounds. Despite her size, or lack of it, down at the military police (MP) station they liked to say that Mary was as mean as a snake and twice as fast. She didn’t dispute that, after all, she was a small woman among large men and, for the most part, the only woman. Mary was actually pleased by the comment, since she took it to mean that she was accepted among the men and the very few women that she worked with as MPs.

Mary took a seat in the front row of the briefing room. The rest of the fifteen members of 1st platoon were filtering in now and she liked to be right up front. The briefing room wasn’t large, but it was adequate. It was furnished with a bunch of old school desks, the type with a writing area that folded down on the side when not in use. The walls were covered with a plaster stucco material, painted white. Everything inside a military building seemed to be painted white and everything on the outside seemed to be painted some shade of green. The military, especially the army, was in a real rut she decided.

She had no more taken her seat when the patrol supervisor strolled into the room. Sergeant First Class Peterson slammed his stack of folders on the single desk at the front of the room and got everyone’s attention. A second later, Lieutenant Marsh strolled in and Peterson yelled, Attention!

Now anyone with half a brain knew that the lieutenant was going to come in right after the patrol supervisor and that they should be ready for that eventuality, including Private First Class Johnson, but he was new and Mary decided, not too smart. Johnson, contrary to everyone else in the room, had already pulled his writing platform up and dropped it into position across his lap. When the lieutenant came in everyone jumped up, but Johnson couldn’t get up, at least not all the way and he made quite a picture trying to stand up with a school chair clinging to his lap. Not to mention the noise he made dragging the chair with him as he tried to stand.

The lieutenant and the patrol supervisor looked at Johnson and then at each other and just rolled their eyes in mutual disgust.

As you were, the lieutenant yelled, as Johnson thankfully stopped struggling and dropped back down to a sitting position, his chair letting out an almost human groan.

No one laughed, but it was a struggle not to, and the smirks abounded.

At a nod from the lieutenant, Sergeant Peterson commenced to give the briefing. Okay folks, welcome to the night shift, the specialist is passing out the latest Al Qaeda hit list and everyone gets a deck of the famous ‘Iraqi Most Wanted’ cards. The intelligence community thinks there may be one or two of them who slipped out at the end of the war through Syria and made it to Europe, so keep your eyes open. As he spoke, one of the desk clerks moved among the MPs passing out packets to everyone.

The sergeant continued, Benton.

Yes, Sergeant, Mary answered.

Tell us about the brawl you had last Saturday.

Wasn’t my brawl, Sarge and it’s all in my report, she replied, squirming slightly in her chair.

Yeah, but we want to hear the details, your reports are good, very thorough, but the story loses something when you write it down, we like to hear you tell it first hand. You got a knack for it.

Mary didn’t like being singled out like this, but she was fairly called and had no choice. She said simply, It was a Turk.

So?

Well you’ve heard that old saying, Sarge, meaner than a Turk on a Saturday night. He was Turk and it was Saturday night.

The lieutenant tried to hide his smile as the sergeant persisted with a straight face, Spill it, Benton.

"Okay, well… we… that is me and a couple of the Polizei were making spot checks of the downtown bars. We hit the Tangerine about 10:00 p.m. and were just making a nice easy walk through, when all of a sudden this guy at the bar starts yelling and throwing glasses at the bar maid. I guess he took exception to something she said, well anyway one of the Polizei, German Police for the benefit of PFC Johnson who probably doesn’t know that’s what Polizei stands for. Hesitating a few seconds with a broad smile, just for effect, she then continued, so as I was saying, one of the Polizei, Hans Schmidt, he walks up to the guy, grabs him by the left arm and spins him around. Now this guy’s on crutches, got a full leg cast on his right leg clean up to his hip. He pivots with the crutch under his left arm and lo and behold with his right hand he hauls a knife out of that cast. I mean a real down-to-earth knife, not no Cracker Jack box pen knife, this knife was 14 inches long if it was an inch. He starts whipping that baby around right at Hans’ face and old Hans he starts back peddling, to the tune of four steps a second, but this guy hobbles right after him. You could hear the wind whistling around the blade of that knife every time he made a pass at Hans’ head with that baby. The rest of the patrons are scattering like a grenade just landed in the middle of the place.

"Hans’ partner, Fritz, sees the knife come out and moves in behind this Turk. Fritz makes a grab for that spring-loaded rubber baton those Polizei carry in a pocket on their right leg, you know the one I mean, the one that they swing once but it hits you four times before it stops. Well anyway he must have missed and got the wrong pocket ‘cause he comes up with his spare machine pistol clip, you’ve seen ‘em, 12 inches long and they hold a 100 rounds of nine-millimeter cartridges. Well, instead of puttin’ it back and getting the baton out he just hauls off and lays that sucker up alongside that Turk’s head. Dropped him colder than a cucumber, but it broke the magazine and nine-millimeter rounds scattered all over the place. Took us near an hour to find them all.

Anyway, then this guy’s old lady comes flying across the room, screaming like a banshee and jumps right on Fritz’s back, gets him around the neck and proceeds to put the choke on him. Fritz is turning blue, Hans is still back peddling, not wanting anything to do with a woman the likes of this one, so me being a woman, too, I figured to even the odds. I grabbed my military police club and tapped her on the head, just to get her attention. That gives Fritz the chance to toss her over his head and she winds up on top of her hubby, who is just as cold as he was when he hit the floor. There’s blood and nine-millimeter rounds all over the place, people making for the exit like somebody yelled fire. I cuff the old lady and Fritz cuffs the cucumber. The meat wagon comes and hauls them off. That’s about it, Sarge.

Both Sergeant Peterson and the lieutenant were trying hard now to suppress smiles, Mary could really tell a story. Finally he said to Mary, You left out the 14 stitches the guy’s wife got from your tap on her head.

Fourteen was it? No kidding? Well she was choking Fritz, I mean he was code blue, I had to back him up. He would have done the same for me. Somebody make a complaint against me, Sarge?

No, as a matter of fact Hans and Fritz requested you again tonight. They liked your style, but the next time you go to get somebody’s attention, do it a little lighter will you? Back in the States we’d be getting sued over that.

Mary knew that to be the truth, but over here in Germany, there usually wasn’t a problem, it was pretty much a police state and when the Polizei said jump, most people couldn’t wait to jump out of the way. Okay, Sarge, sure. It was just a reflex, as blue as old Fritz was, I wasn’t sure I’d get a second lick at her, so I made the first one count.

Sergeant Peterson let that pass, but he wasn’t done with her just yet and continued, Sergeant Benton, that’s the fifth fight you’ve been in, in as many weeks. You’ve seen more action in the last six months than half the MPs in Germany all rolled into one.

Can’t help it, Sarge, things just happen to me. I always seem to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Yeah, sure. Oh and by the way Corporal Williams is getting out of the hospital tomorrow, they say he’ll only have a slight limp the rest of his life.

Who?

Corporal Williams, you remember him. He’s the marine whose leg you broke in two places a couple of months ago.

Aw, Sarge, you know that wasn’t me. That was Fritz again, he kicked my squad car door shut on that poor sap’s leg. I was just standing in front of my car taking down some information for my report and I heard a scream. I turned around and seen this guy thrashing around, in the back of my squad car, like a chicken with its head cut off and his leg hanging out the bottom of the door. Fritz was standing there with Hans chuckling and when I asked the interpreter what had happened he said that the guy tried to escape and Fritz kicked the door shut on him. According to the interpreter, Fritz didn’t realize the guy’s leg was hanging out the door at the time he kicked it, or so he said. I was hot, you know it took me near 24 hours straight to get that report done.

Yeah, Benton, but it wasn’t real clear in your report just how that marine got his leg out the door in the first place. You had him handcuffed with his hands behind his back, a seat belt on him and the rear doors of squad cars only open from the outside. Funny how he got that door open and stuck his leg out like he did, huh?

Mary lowered her voice a little, winked at the sergeant and replied, Just between us girls, Sarge, I think Fritz opened that door for him and when he stuck his leg out Fritz kicked the door shut, just to be mean. That marine was a mean sucker anyway, Sarge, he beat his wife half to death and it took three of us 30 minutes of wrestling around on his kitchen floor just to get the cuffs on him. I guess Fritz figured he needed a little payback, but honest I had no part in it.

Peterson replied deadpan, Benton, you ought to write a book, you get into the weirdest situations I’ve ever heard of and you always come out smelling like a rose. Turning now to the rest of the MPs he finished, Okay girls, let’s hit the streets and try not to follow Sergeant Benton’s example.

Except for Mary’s stories at the briefing, the night was uneventful for Mary and the rest of the patrols. A dead night and she was glad when her shift was over so that she could get some sleep. She was just starting nine days of 12-hour shifts and she didn’t miss any opportunities to sleep.

~*~

The next evening, Mary was on her way to the MP station in her little Volkswagen bug, she didn’t think they even made them anymore, at least not this model. It was older than she was and she knew the parts were hard to come by, but it was transportation. She didn’t have far to come from her little apartment to the MP station, located in downtown Butzbach, in the center of a little military kaserne. That was the German name for military post or barracks and everyone used it instead of post. Most single soldiers stayed in the barracks next to the MP station, but since she was a sergeant she had the option of living off post and she had found a very inexpensive small apartment not that far from the kaserne.

Mary wheeled her car into the parking lot to the side of the MP station and found a parking spot well away from the traffic, because she didn’t trust MPs and their driving, and though her car wasn’t much she didn’t want any more dents in it than it already had. Besides there was a nice grade to the road here and she could park heading down the grade, which was a necessity. Her bug had no starter or at least it hadn’t worked for a long time, but fortunately it was a stick shift. She always had to park on a hill so that she could turn on the ignition, release the brake, roll down the hill, and pop the clutch to turn the engine over. She liked a hill that was long enough to pop the clutch three or four times just in case. Once in a while she couldn’t find a long enough hill and didn’t get the car started before reaching the bottom. She hated that, because then she had to elicit help to push the car back up and try it again. The help always got a kick out of her asking for help and that really irritated her.

Another slight quirk with her bug was that it had no reverse so she had to get out and push it if she needed to back up, that made parallel parking a real challenge so she tried to avoid crowded streets. The bug wasn’t real heavy on level ground, but occasionally she had to elicit help to back up, too. All the MPs laughed at her car, but it was more than most of them had and when someone needed a ride somewhere, they quit laughing. It was paid for, too, which was a good thing, because the insurance was bad enough and gas was impossible. Gas was so high in Europe that military personnel were issued gas ration coupons and they had to be used sparingly, only 100 liters per month and that didn’t amount to much gas, about 26 gallons. After your coupons were used up you were on your own and gas was not cheap, some months it could push $2.50 a liter or right at $10.00 a gallon.

Once out of her car, she immediately put her battle dress uniform (BDU) cap on, tucked her blonde hair up under it and reached in the back seat for her belt, holster, and nine-millimeter service issue automatic pistol. Flinging the belt and holster around her slim hips, she adjusted the weight and then stuck her military police club into its ring holder on the left side of her belt. She always chuckled when she thought of that military police club, because in training during the introductory class on the club, they always told them its proper name was ‘military police club’ not ‘Billy club’ because then it could only be used on Billy; and not ‘night stick’ because then it could only be used at night; it wasn’t a ‘baton’ either, those were only for parades. It was funny at the time, but seemed kind of stupid now. They had a little humor for the nomenclature, too, in the military everything has an official nomenclature, and the military police club was no different. They said the military police club was hand-operated, muscle-fed, and air-cooled. Now that she still thought was funny, and very true.

She strolled across the lot to the side door of the station. Just short of the door the duty officer popped out and Mary smartly saluted with a crisp, Evening, sir!"

Lieutenant Marsh returned the salute and said, Evening, Sergeant Benton, you on my shift again?

Yes, sir.

Good, see you at the briefing.

Yes, sir, she responded and pulled open the door to the station. Lieutenant Marsh was close enough to have held the door open for her, but she didn’t want that and he knew it. Mary was just one of the guys down here, no special treatment was asked and none was offered, just the way she liked it.

She jerked off her cap as she entered the station. Just inside the door to her right was another door and there were two steps up to an elevated area known as the ‘desk’ where the duty officer, desk sergeant, two clerks, and the radio operator worked. She didn’t turn that way, the desk was off limits to patrol personnel, unless specifically requested to be there. Instead, she turned left through an opposite door and entered the squad room, which was where all the MPs gathered before their shift began. This was where they got their briefing on the days events, cars and people to look for and criminal activity suspected to be afoot, as well as the routine stuff about what activities were planned in the area that shift and what problems they might cause; what extra security was needed and where. Germany was an unusual place to be an MP or Europe for that matter, the kasernes were small places with very little in the way of military personnel, most stayed in the towns, and frequented the bars, or gasthauses, as the Germans called them. That meant that the MPs had to patrol the streets of the towns and did very little patrolling on the kaserne. As a result the MPs worked closely with the German police and that made for interesting nights.

Hey, Benton, looking fine, was the first thing Mary heard and she quickly identified the speaker, Private First Class ‘jerk’ Johnson, as she referred to him and not behind his back either. Mary went for the juggler.

That’s Sergeant Benton to you, PFC and you had better be talking about my boots, because if you’re talking about anything else I’ll see you patrolling the docks at Bremerhaven on the North Sea in January. It’s so cold up there you’ll see chunks of ice as big as houses float by the dock. You won’t be able to work more than 30 minutes at a time no matter how many clothes you put on and if you fall into the water you’ll have just 20 seconds to get out before you freeze to death. I’ve been there!

Johnson responded, just a little too harsh to suit Mary, Hey, you ain’t the commander, you don’t assign me anywhere.

Two other MPs standing across the room, but well within earshot, looked on with anticipation, they knew Mary quite well.

PFC Johnson, you’re new here, so I’m going to cut you some slack, but not much. I may not be the commander, but I know him and he likes me, which is more than I can say for you. You’d best keep a civil tongue in your head, because one word from me and you’ll be right where I say you’ll be. Failing that, I’ll just have to stomp you for general principles and don’t you kid yourself that I can’t do it either. Now you think I’m fooling, you just try me soldier, you don’t have what it takes to play with me. I don’t play, I’m mean and I’m nasty and it’s near my time of the month. Mary was stretching the truth just a little bit there, she knew the commander, and he knew her, but only in passing. Whether or not he liked her was another matter, she made it a habit of avoiding officers when at all possible. The rest of her statement was quite true though, especially the part about being mean and nasty when she wanted to be.

Johnson clapped his mouth shut so hard it could probably have been heard on the desk and Mary just turned her back on him, looking at the two other MPs who were standing alongside the room smiling. Mary knew Johnson couldn’t see her face and she winked broadly at both of them, but didn’t smile. They smiled even broader, but said nothing, nor even acknowledged that Mary had silently communicated with them.

She crossed the hall and stepped up on the ‘desk’. Off limits, yes, but she didn’t pay a lot of attention to some regulations, especially when she had a reason. The ‘desk’ area was ‘L’ shaped. To her front was the desk sergeant who sat peering out over the lower part of the station’s front room and just beyond him, in a little sound-proofed cubicle, sat the radio operator. On her left, also able to peer out over the station floor were three desks in a row. The first was the duty officer’s desk and then two other desks containing the clerks who typed reports and maintained the incident logs. Mary crossed to the clerk with the desk blotter on his desk and rifled through the pages. The desk blotter was a log of all activity and she wanted to know what had been going on during the day while she had been off, before the patrol supervisor told her. She liked to stay one step ahead of everyone. No one really minded Mary being on the desk, she didn’t make a nuisance of herself, she conducted her business and left.

Hey, Sergeant Benton, Staff Sergeant Mason, the desk sergeant for the shift due to be relieved in a few minutes yelled from across the desk area and continued, new meat down there in the ready room or did you just get up on the wrong side of the bed?

Mary shot back with a straight face, Don’t you worry yourself about what side of the bed I got up on, or sleep on for that matter, Sarge, and meat’s meat to me, old or new, no matter. I call ‘em the way I see ‘em, always have, always will.

Finished checking the blotter, she waved a hand at Mason, gave him a big smile and left the desk.

~*~

Mason just smiled knowingly. Mary had told the whole truth, she pulled no punches and she could take them as well as throw them. Everyone liked her, at least all the MPs. There were a few soldiers around who had made the mistake of crossing her or taking her for some puffball. She had set them straight and they weren’t real fond of her, but then that was true for most MPs. Mason knew and everyone else knew about Mary’s propensity to give people a hard time and it became a game with all the MPs to see who could get one up on her, so far no one had, she always had a scathing response for everything. Anyone who took Mary on verbally or physically had their work cut out for them.

She really could be mean and nasty if she wanted to be. Still, everyone vied for her attention, good or bad, because she was the cutest thing on two legs anywhere near this MP station.

~*~

When Mary entered the squad room again, Johnson had nothing to say and he was obviously trying to pretend she wasn’t even in the room. He had been relatively mild since last night when she had told her story about the bar fight.

Smiling inwardly, Mary admitted she had nothing against Johnson, but he was pretty new and he could act the real jerk when he engaged his mouth before his brain. She figured it was her duty as a non-commissioned officer to set him straight and teach him to engage his brain before his mouth, before he ran into somebody out there on the street who didn’t back water just because he had on an MP brassard and pistol.

Mary, did you shoot for qualification while we were off? Specialist Fourth Class Dash, one of the earlier observers of Mary’s tirade, asked amiably.

You know I did, Dash, what’s your point? she said shortly.

Oh just wondered if you still hold the company pistol record’s all.

No, I don’t, she replied tersely. Got the shaft, my pistol jammed on the last magazine and they wouldn’t give me any alibis. Got 46 out of 50 though with a jammed clip, how about you, Dash, did you manage to get your minimum 35 again, without shooting your foot off?

Specialist Dash cringed at her retort. How do you know about that? he asked rhetorically and continued, that happened six months before you even got to this unit. Wasn’t my fault anyway, not really, how was I to know that the armorer had loaded eight rounds into that last magazine instead of the usual seven.

You should have checked to make sure your weapon was clear before you dropped the muzzle, she shot back.

I just thought it was a malfunction. That’s why I pulled the trigger again after dropping the muzzle, to make sure the hammer wasn’t in the cocked position when I holstered it, he almost whined. And I didn’t hit my foot.

Yeah, but at the time you were sure you had. Everyone there said you were so scared you had to go change your drawers. Heard you got to run five miles a day for a month straight and had to take a 50-hour refresher course on range safety. I’ll bet that got your attention.

I haven’t made a safety violation on the range since, that’s for sure, but how did you know about all that?

Mary just smiled at him. She had her sources and knew her way around the military better than most of the officers around here. She had been in the army now for three years and had just made sergeant. She had been in the military police for not quite two years since, to be in the military police, you had to be 19 and she had been just shy of 18 when she had entered the army. Her dad, a former MP himself, had consented to her enlistment despite her age, knowing she was older and more mature than her years. Not being old enough to be an MP she had begun her army career as a clerk and as soon as she reached her nineteenth birthday she had applied for military police training, been accepted, and graduated with flying colors. Just shy of 21 years old now, Mary was as cute as a button with medium-length blonde hair and a figure to match her spunkiness, but in her case looks were deceiving. Mary gave everyone she could find a hard time about anything she could think of, and it didn’t matter to her that she was outranked, within reason. After all, she wasn’t stupid.

Originally, she had joined the army for the educational benefits, but it didn’t take her long to realize that she liked it, really liked it. Especially the Military Police Corps, it was a high-polish, high-disciplined outfit and that was right up her alley. When she had nothing better to do she shined her boots, her holster and all of her gear, there was nothing shabby about Mary’s uniform, on or off duty. She took pride in looking better than everyone else and in executing drill commands faster and smoother than the rest of her MP Company.

Her current station in Butzbach, Germany was, she decided, a good place to be. The weather was about like she was used to back in northern Tennessee, a little cooler and more rain or snow, depending upon the time of year, but the scenery year ‘round was real cool. The old look of Germany was pretty much the same as all Europe and she loved the old stone construction, the cobblestone streets, and the quaint little bergs in the country. She felt fortunate to be seeing these sights. How many women her age could say they had seen Europe or at least part of it, and for free, too? Well, not totally free. She paid a price. She was far from home and friends, living in a society not quite as free as the one she was raised in and working 12-hour shifts, nine days straight and then three days off. She felt the experience of seeing and living in a European country with all the history that went along with it was worth it though.

There was no man in Mary’s life, none to write home about anyway. There was no disputing that she was a living doll, especially when in civilian clothes, but even in her BDUs she looked pretty good to most of the guys. A few had approached her and a few had been lucky enough to get to spend some time with her, off duty, but none peaked her interest to any degree. It wasn’t that she didn’t like men, she did, but she wasn’t one to dwell on them or the fact that she didn’t have one steady. She was military through and through, an MP to the last, and men could be a distraction, a nice distraction maybe, but a distraction just the same. So she could take them or leave them, and mostly she left them, after all, her boots could always use some extra time.

The briefing was pretty quick tonight, PFC Johnson actually remembered not to put his writing shelf up before the lieutenant came in and the sergeant did not ride Mary at all. A few minutes after the briefing, they all hit the streets. Everyone took to their assigned vehicles, made an initial radio check with the radio operator, and checked their emergency equipment to see if it was operating.

Most of the patrols were two-man patrols, but since Mary was a non-commissioned officer and very capable of taking care of herself, she patrolled alone. She also was not stuck in any one particular district. Aside from the patrol supervisor, who wasn’t always on the streets, she was the only non-commissioned officer on patrol and so she was a rover, which meant she could enter any district, at any time, and get called to any place in the Butzbach area.

Hans and Fritz wanted her to go with them again on the bar checks, so she headed for the Polizei district headquarters building to make contact. Every Polizei headquarters had an English-speaking interpreter on hand to handle complaints and phone calls from Americans and each MP station had a German-speaking interpreter to handle complaints and calls from Germans. Sometimes an interpreter would go along on joint patrols if one was available, if not, they went without one and it usually worked out. Cops spoke the same language all over the world; they didn’t need to talk to one another all the time. They communicated in a different way, ‘cop speak’, Mary called it, you backed up your partner and he backed you up—the day you didn’t or he didn’t you had better quit, because you were as good as dead.

Rarely was the night uneventful when patrolling jointly with Hans and Fritz. Those two had a way of stirring up trouble even when there wasn’t any. What amazed her most was how fast they could get out of that little Volkswagen patrol car of theirs. They were both well over six feet tall and when they climbed