Jaguar Convertible, Guards Red in Color, Two Doors, twelve cylinders.
“Nice wheels, ma’am,” the sergeant said.
“It’s a nice car,” Marjorie agreed.
He examined everything else.
“It run all right? I read in Car & Driver they have electrical problems a lot.”
“Not so far,” Marjorie said.
The sergeant examined all the documents.
“It all looks fine,” he said. “All I’ll need is a dollar and a quarter for the sticker, and your AGO card.”
The Adjutant General’s Office issues identification cards to military personnel and their dependents. It is sealed in plastic, and bears the owner’s photograph, date of birth, and rank, or in the case of dependents, the rank of the soldier, who is known as the sponsor. It is necessary to make use of Army facilities, such as the hospital, the dental clinic, and the post exchange.
“I don’t have an AGO card,” Marjorie said.
That was not the truth. She had an AGO card in her purse. It listed her name as Marjorie W. Bellmon and stated that her sponsor was Major General Robert F. Bellmon.
The sergeant looked at her strangely.
“I just got married,” Marjorie said.
That was the truth. She was still having trouble believing it.
“You got to have it, ma’am,” the sergeant said, not unkindly. “Not only for the sticker, but to get in the PX, the hospital, places like that.”
“Where do I get one?”
“For that, you’re going to have to go to the AG,” he said. “On the main post. A big sign out in front says, HEADQUARTERS XVIII AIRBORNE CORPS AND FORT BRAGG. ”
She knew where it was. Her father had once been G-3 of XVIII Airborne Corps.
“You’re going to have to have your wedding certificate,” the sergeant said. “It won’t take long. All they have to do is take your picture with a Polaroid camera, and your thumbprint, and type up the card and put it in plastic. Then you can come back here, and you can get your sticker.”
Marjorie left the building and got in the Jaguar and drove to the headquarters of XVIII Airborne Corps & Fort Bragg. It was a three-story brick building. She knew it had been built as a hospital before the war.
She found a parking space with some trouble, and as she was getting out of the car, a military police car pulled in beside her. She was searching in the sturdy plastic-reinforced envelope marked “Personal Papers” when an MP knocked on the window.
She rolled it down.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” the MP said. “You visiting the post?”
“No. We’ve just been assigned here.”
“You don’t have a visitor’s sign,” he said. “You’re supposed to stop at the MP shack at the main gate and get one.”
“I didn’t know that,” she said.
That was the truth.
Then she remembered that whenever she had been at Bragg before, on the times she’d come to see Jack, the Jaguar had had his red Fort Rucker sticker on it. It didn’t now. When she’d “cleared the post” for him at Rucker and taken off the temporary blue sticker, she’d spent fifteen minutes with steel wool and lighter fluid taking off his red sticker.
The Jaguar had no sticker at all, and the MP was just doing his job.
“Yes, ma’am,” the MP said. “Can I see your driver’s license and AGO card, please?”
There was a terrible temptation to give him the AGO card in her wallet. MPs are often sympathetic and understanding to the dependents of major generals.
She resisted it. She was no longer Miss Marjorie Bellmon, dependent daughter of Major General Robert F. Bellmon; she was now Mrs. Jacques Portet, dependent wife of First Lieutenant Portet.
“The driver’s license I have,” she said. “I’m here to get my AGO card. When I have that, I’m going to get the sticker for the car.”
“Lost card?”
“I just got married,” Marjorie said.
“You got orders or something, ma’am?”
She handed over Jack’s orders and her driver’s license.
He took a pad and started writing on it.
“Nothing to worry about, if you’re telling me the truth,” the MP said matter-of-factly. “This’ll come down through channels to the Special Warfare Center, and they’ll check to see if you applied for a sticker within seventy-two hours—”
“I got here last night,” Marjorie said.
“Yes, ma’am,” the MP said. “—of reporting on post, and if you did, they’ll endorse it back, and there won’t be no problem. And I don’t think they’ll give you any trouble for not getting a visitor’s pass.”
He extended the pad to her.
"Sign there on the bottom by the X,” he said. “All you’re doing is acknowledging getting the citation.”