Armageddon Read Free Page B

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