by Don DeNevi
Pensively, Peter entered the lobby of the station, surprised by the traffic of passengers arriving and departing, carrying valises, grips, packages, bags, binders, satchels, and even picks and shovels and other equipment. Walking across the waiting room perusing the noisy activity, Timmy Timms was nowhere to be seen. Opening the ticket office door as ticket buyers waiting in line observed his brashness, Peter spotted the station master seated at the desk next to the cot he had slept on the night before. Inundated with paperwork that needed attention, Timmy paid little attention to the visitor. As the vendor continued selling tickets at his window stall, Peter asked,
“Tim, can I get a ticket on the first train to Northern California?”
Instantly, Timms turned, smiling,
“There you are! Been waiting for you all afternoon. Ray Johnston called after you left the camp and told me everything. I immediately booked you on the Southern Pacific bound for San Antonio where you’ll change trains for Los Angeles, Oakland, and Portland.”
In appreciative amazement, Peter, looking warmly into the eyes of the station master standing before him, pencil behind the ear, outstretched hand, and said,
“You really are a good friend, Mr. Timmy Timms.”
Startled by the sound of his own voice saying “that another rush of jumbled images and thoughts” for some strange reason crossed his mind.
“Why this sudden onslaught?” he asked himself. There was absolute silence. Timmy’s lips were moving, but there were no words. The moment was crazy. Joan’s beautiful face seemed to permeate his entire vision. Yet Pinoe entered, followed by Ellen, clutching a shiny Ka-Bar, screaming for his death. Then, Yosh tried to push everyone aside, but Pinoe slapped him down as he again uttered, “Billet-gun”, “wind-gun”, “willing-gun”, “bit-gun”, “bin-gun”, “bitter-gun”. What code was that? And, why, near death, would he try to enunciate such words? Oh, for solitude just now, in some lonely, wild Southwest geography, some vastness in Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas, to decipher and decode those words. To roam with his new friend Timmy Timms in a beautiful, quiet place to sort the bothersome, annoying puzzle out, to face the riddle. Timmy Timms would stare the conundrum down without bewilderment or confusion.
Yes, Timmy Timms. You, a McGehee, Arkansas stationmaster, honest and hardworking as all good men, would solve “brittle-gun”, whatever that meant.
“Silly-gun,” Timmy Timms, “bitter-gun”, “bitumen-gun”, Billy Lundigan.
Billy Lundigan?
William Lundigan?
Bill Lundigan? Pure insanity!
“No!” Peter screamed, “No!
No! No! No! Impossible!
Bill Lundigan?
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
-
The Return
With the last subdued light of sunset fading in the cloudless sky over the Russell Islands, Peter opened his eyes to a cherry-red hue silhouetting Pavuvu and Banika.
Gazing out a small forward window of the twin-engine C-47 aircraft that transported both cargo and passengers, he was grim and desolate. After long naps across the Pacific toward the runway on Banika, Peter’s mind began to stir, and scramble into a whirling kaleidoscope. Hours and hours of blue waters, endless white and gray clouds, and the steady churning propellers blending with mental pictures of the Ghoul’s murdered dead, Joan’s smiles, which always warmed him, and, above all, the eager eyes and handsome face of his best friend, Bill Lundigan, now incarcerated at Peter’s request in the 1st Division stockade on Banika, forced him to fathom the full measure of his relationships between Pinoe, Ellen, Schneidermann and Bill. Dealing with Bill was brutal and self-tormenting enough, but repeatedly reimagining Ellen’s death was inconsolable.
The 7,000-mile flight from McClellan near the San Francisco Bay Area to Honolulu, he flew on a Liberator of the Marine 494 Bombardment Group assigned to the Seventh Airforce. Then, within an hour, he was on the C-47 headed across the south for Banika-Pavuvu. Unlike the individual seats of the Liberator, the seats of the cargo plane ran along the side of the interior like a subway car. With indentations at intervals deep enough to hold a paratrooper’s parachute, he leaned back and slept, dozed, or napped the rest of the way. Most of the other passengers slept sitting with their heads in cupped hands.
Now, in the cool starlit night, the C-47 began a graceful descent to the airfield from the minimum approach altitude. Gear up, flap’s down, power maintained at the normal controllable speed, the cargo plane seemed to glide the last thousand yards onto the runway.Peter understood that like all planes of World War II, his C-47 was loaded for flight beyond the weight limit, which all aircraft manufactures wash their hands of. His C-47 was no exception.
With the dull sound of impact, Peter smiled slightly and soliloquized, “Perfect weather, wonderfully-built cargo transport, competent experienced pilots, successful flight, superb landing.”
Safely on the ground, everything was quiet.
Awaiting permission to disembark the aircraft, Peter sat quietly, gazing at the dozen or so Corsairs lined up and being readied for takeoff. Suddenly, through the night mist, a familiar black Buick was noticed peeling toward the C-47. A knowing smile beamed across the lieutenant’s face. Peter knew full-well it was the staff car assigned to Captain Oscar “Slim” Del Barbra, Chief, Military Police, USMC 1st Division.
Uneasily, he watched the Buick pull up to the airfield’s movable ramp being rolled toward the C-47’s exit door. Peter quivered. He looked forward to the warmth of welcome Captain Del Barbra and Second Lieutenant Guidi would give him. But, more than all else, he was riddled with the most puzzling question of all: Was his buddy a third party to murder, or, indeed, was he the primary Ghoul?
Anxiously, even apprehensively, Peter sat, feeling lonely, shadowed by doubt, and burden with uncertainties. Although he wanted to acknowledge and reciprocate the affectionate, intimate hugs of friendship from both Del Barbra and Guidi, he couldn’t, as he stepped from the plane and down the ramp. These were Marine officers who liked and respected him, yet as he stood before them by the ramp in the cold, breezy night, he was preoccupied.
Searchingly, Peter’s eyes met the captain’s, hoping beyond hope and reality that Corporeal Lundigan had somehow exonerated himself.
“Well, prodigy, you’ve been gone less than a handful of days, ostensibly for a week or two vacation, and upon your return a new assignment. Well, you’re ‘back home’, at least until you finally put the Ghoul in a coffin with rotting coconuts and land crabs.”
“Huh?” asked Toscanini, in a soft, tormented voice. “Captain, as exhausted and hungry as I am, I must see Bill tonight. There’s no rest until I do. Even if I have to awaken him and roll him off his stockade cot. He’s my friend, and I must know if he’s part of the Ghoul, or the Ghoul himself. Will you drive me over there, now?”
“Why, no need, lieutenant. The corporeal is gone. He scribbled you a note before he boarded.”
“Huh?” Peter repeated, bewildered, his eyes wide, searching, demanding, burning intently, penetrating Del Barbra’s.
“What?” he repeated, a smile beginning to creep across his lips. “How’s that?”
“Here’s the letter! He wrote it on the gangplank as he was boarding. You had me incarcerate him for reasons you didn’t fully explain. I did. When he was still a free man, and you were gone, a Ghoul killing of a nurse occurred. Then, while I had him in a cell under guard, another nurse was killed in the same way. He couldn’t be the Ghoul. Whatever reason you had to lock him up was off base. Still don’t know what you were thinking. But we know that Corporeal Bill Lundigan, who saved your life by shooting that Ghoul woman who was going to Ka-Bar your face is not the Ghoul.”
As Captain Del Barbra continued, Peter, stunned, but deliriously so, accepted the letter with a trembling hand.
“So, your friend is out there somewhere on his way to Honolulu and Stateside. I cut his orders yesterday, right after I released him. He followed me from his cell right back to my office. He’s
going to advance combat photography school. We’re all happy Bill is innocent. Your job, after you read his confidential letter to you, is to find the real Ghoul.”
In a virtual hallucinatory state, Peter, somewhat hesitantly, tore open Bill’s letter. Would it be angry? Insulting? Mocking? If so, Peter told himself, “I sure as hell deserve it - - to put him in a brig cell, my best friend who shot and killed a woman he may have been in love with who was about to slaughter me…”
As the captain and second lieutenant stood by, Peter read,
“You worthless fart.”
“Who knows if you’ll ever read this scrawled note, but if so, I need you to know this--you are my friend in this life, and the next, and the one after that and, hell, Peter, through the infinity of infinites. Simply put, you are my friend, whether I am yours.”
“I was jailed for more than seven days, apparently on your orders. No one will explain why. Pondering it, I can only surmise you consider me a part of the Ghoul, or even the Ghoul himself.”
“Matters not. I am no Ghoul, or knew of his activities. He left clues all around us, and we couldn’t see them. I was always on edge around Pinoe and a bit disquieted around Ellen who, I saw from the beginning loved you. But on the day of the big performance, I was for some reason more restless and fearful because sitting next to her I saw her so fidgety and jittery. Then Hope left to pee, you followed him, Pinoe followed you, and Ellen, without a glance or word to me who escorted her to the front row, jumped up after a moment and followed him. In a flash, I knew I had to be there for whatever was going on. As she entered the officers’ toilet house, I saw her pull a Ka-Bar from the large bag she always carried. When I saw her running toward your back, her Marine fighting knife held high, I pulled my .45 and shot her dead. Later, when I wanted to talk, you and Hope had been pulled away.”
Who knows if we’ll ever meet again? But as you always believed, loyalty is everything, Peter, you have mine.”
Peter handed the letter to Del Barbra who, with Guidi reading it over his captain’s shoulder, began to slowly read and digest it. Meanwhile, Peter stepped away and gazed up at the gloriously, glistening white stars in the South Pacific night sky.
“I put him aboard the USS DuPage (APA-41), which set sail at 0200 this morning for Hawaii. From there, he’s to board the USS Burleigh (APA-95) for San Diego and immediately report to the U.S. Naval Hospital for ‘treatment’, possibly surgery, of this spinal condition. You know as much as anyone about that injury from high school football which still has him limping slightly.”
“Yeah, he’s always been in pain from it. Glad he’s finally getting it done. I’ll reach him there,” Peter said soberly, still looking skyward. “How did you classify him?”
“Combat photographer, 3rd Battalion, 1st Mariners, 1st Marine Division, Corporal. His orders indicate his destination is the Joint Combat Camera Center at Fort Meade in Maryland to be trained as a Cinematographer for Combat Footage, the cameraman who films the most costly, dangerous fighting and battles for military analyses. Then, he’ll be attached to the 5th Division for our next operation, probably the invasion of Guam or Okinawa on our way to Tokyo. He’ll be assigned to the 5th’s Photographic Services Branch, which means he’ll always be filming from the forward points. The survival rate of such photographers is less than 25%.”
“I know. I know,” Peter said pensively, while nodding more to himself than to Captain Del Barbra. Slowly, his grim, uncompromising body posture and facial expression began to metamorphize into a relaxed embarrassment and heartfelt guilt. Peter’s softer side, sensitivity, kindness, and endearment, began to emanate.
As the Captain of the Military Police led Peter to the waiting Buick for transportation to his sleeping quarters, and Guidi assuming the wheel, Peter smilingly commented,
“The hero ham of an actor. I’m so, so relieved, although a nurse and sentry had to pay for the clarification with their lives. Bill is ‘Semper Fi’, thank God Almighty. Did you know that none other than Louie B. Mayer, boss of MGM, was furious with Bill for signing up to go to war after his studio spent so much money grooming him for the picture industry? Can you imagine that? Bill, like so many of our boys, felt it was his duty for his country to enlist and Hollywood was mad at him. How can a guy like that turn out to be a murder-mad murdering his own buddies? I should have known it couldn’t be him. I’m so angry with myself…”
With Guidi driving, Del Barbra on the passenger side of the front seat turned to Peter in the back seat and said,
“He’s such a popular radio and screen star, he’ll return more famous than ever. The ‘cheapies’ and lesser-known studios like RKO and Republic can use him. He’s better looking and a better actor than anything they have.”
“I liked him in ‘Salute to the Marines’ with Walter Berry,” interjected Second Lieutenant Guidi.
“Well, Bill’s a good man. You solve these last two murders quickly, your next assignment according to the scuttlebutt will put you near San Diego to visit Bill, who’ll probably still be in bed.”
“Unless the ‘one who acts in plays and movies’ is off somewhere with his hand-cranked 16-milimeter Bell & Howell Eyemo camera shooting half-inch frames on celluloid of combat.”
“Well, whatever pleases. We’ve got our own work to do. Just hope the Ghoul sleeps in tonight. It’ll save a life and a whole lot of work for us. Meanwhile, just for tonight, you’ll sleep in my office. Arrangements are being finalized for your own quarters with the general headquarters staff.”
“Anything to eat there?”
“We’ll stop at the officers’ mess before I take you up to the cot. I have to go back to my office to make the calls to ensure the 0700 meeting in the morning. Dr. Schneidermann has been the lead investigator since you left.”
Peter, leaning back on the soft cushioned seat of the Buick, continued looking out the window during the final minutes to Captain Del Barbra’s office. Finally, after a long moment of silence, he said, “I never appreciated Schneidermann’s snaky coldness.The new field of psychology and psychiatry is attracting the mentally ill. The sick of mind those on the borderline of insanity. Men become psychologists or psychiatrist for one of two reasons. Either they are fascinated, truly intrigued, by the depths of the unconscious, desiring to explore it in order to heal the ill. Or, struggling to grasp and know it so that he can understand and heal himself. Schneidermann, from the initial moment of meeting him, told me by his entire demeanor that he is among the latter group. I may be unfair, but my instinct, my intuition tells me he is little more than a fraud. I tell you both all this in absolute strict confidentiality. Not a hint from either of you that I don’t want to deal with our Dr. Schneidermann.”
As the Buick pulled up to general headquarters and Captain Del Barbra’s office, Peter was heard mumbling in the backseat.
“Schneidermann, what a laugh! He’s no Lundigan, this Schneidermann who always seemed brooding, rancorously ranking over some narcissistic hurt or injury from childhood. Compared to Lundigan; Schneidermann is... “son-of-a-gun,” “sprit-of-the-gun,” “I-need-a-gun,” Bill Lundigun, Lundigan, Schneidermann, Schneidermann, Schneidermann, The lisp . . . Dr. Schneidermann???”
. . to be continued . . . .
“Evil is evil and must be consumed in the flames of Hell, for there can be no reconciliation with it . . . Evil is the path by which we reach the good, the experience of freedom of the spirit and an inner victory over the temptation of non-being.”
Nikolai Berdyaev,
“Freedom And the Spirit,”
1935, p184.
AFTERWORD
The War in the South Pacific is long over, and, except for a rare battle reminiscence and occasional island-hopping history, forgotten.
Apropos is George Howe’s statement from his Christopher Award-Winning World War II novel, “Call It Treason” (1949), produced as the superb 20th Century-Fox feature film, “Decisions Before Dawn” (1951) when he wrote, “…a man is alive as long as he is remembered,
and killed only by forgetfulness…”
In all probability, no one today, including the few remaining veterans of the 1st and 5th Divisions, remembers the Ghoul, and the commotions he caused, if he indeed even existed. Today, some 75 years later, uncertainty shrouds The Ghoul, or Charlie the Choker, like a heavy shadow. Should a vague recollection exist, it is certainly one as “bitter as despair.”
For all the erasures of supposed Ghoul incidents, did he really exist? Was he invented? Divined? In that “Pavuvu Nocturne” article about the Mad Ghoul, or Charlie the Choker, which appeared in the August, 1947, issue of USMC “Leatherneck Magazine”, Corpsman Donald H. Edgeman wrote,
“The entire First Division evacuated Pavuvu in 1945, leaving ‘Charlie’ behind. Perhaps even now, he is stalking the jungles in a vain search for Marine victims and relishing the memory of all the disturbances he caused. But whether man or beast, this strangler of the night who defied grenades, machine guns, pistols, and clubs, may still revel in the knowledge that his mystery remains unsolved.
Other than a full chapter in Russell Davis’ 1961 book, “Marine At War,” and a few paragraphs in Craig M. Cameron’s 1994 epic, “American Samurai--Myth and Imagination In the Conduct of Battle in the First Marine Division, 1941-1951,” nothing about the mystery has appeared in print.
Infantryman Davis wrote in Chapter 8, “Rumor and the Mad Ghoul,” pages 167-168,
“The Ghoul did not last much longer. According to reports, there were guards on every company street (in Tent City), and the military police made patrols all through the night. The Ghoul was sighted a few times, but always from a distance, and he was always running - - perhaps from a guard. The report was that his hands almost touched the ground when he ran, and that he loped like an animal. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time before we got him. Even a Ghoul couldn’t beat the First Division permanently.”