Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [6]
It came to that time of night when a shot of rye and a quick snooze was needed. He stretched out on the couch and covered his burning eyes. He thought of how he mentioned his father to young O’Sullivan today. Was it strange at all? With each passing day he was reaching back to his beginnings to find answers....
Andrew Jackson Hansen was second in line for the throne, the family farm, and as he put it, “didn’t give a lusty crap for farming.” He became the first of the Hansen family to strike out with his father’s reluctant blessings. He supported himself through the University of Iowa, in a classical way, waiting on tables, mopping halls. In the summer he lumberjacked some in Wisconsin and was a roustabout in the tent shows which pocked the Midwest after the turn of the century.
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