In Zimmerman's opinion, busting McCoy would be sufficient punishment. He would be humiliated and taught a lesson.
And then in a couple of months they could start thinking about promoting him again.
The facts were that he had been a good corporal and would almost certainly have been a good sergeant.
Good sergeants are hard to find, Zimmerman thought. Sending him to the brig for thirty days will teach him nothing he doesn't already know, and it might make his attitude worse.
With a little bit of luck, maybe the sergeant major, or maybe even one of the officers, will ask me what I think should be done to McCoy. Or maybe even I can take a chance and just tell the sergeant major what I think.
Zimmerman went into battalion headquarters, walked up to sergeant major's desk, and stood waiting while the sergeant or went very carefully over a paper that had been typed up or the Colonel's signature.
He finally finished and looked up at Zimmerman.
He smiled.
"How are you, Ernie?" he asked. "How's the ass these days?"
"I sit on the edge of chairs."
"Your Purple Heart came through," the sergeant major said.
"You are now a certified wounded hero."
Is that what this is about? Maybe he hasn't heard about McCoy yet.
"Did you send for Zimmerman?" a voice called from the office. On its door a sign hung, EVANS
CARLSON, LTCOL, USMC, COMMANDING.
"He just this second came in, Sir," the sergeant major called back.
Colonel Carlson appeared at his office door. He was lean and tanned, and he was wearing sun- and wash-faded utilities.
"Morning, Gunny," he greeted him. "How's the... damaged area?"
Zimmerman popped to attention.
"Morning, Sir," he said. "No problem, Sir."
"Get yourself a cup of coffee, if you'd like, and come on in. Something's come up."
"Aye, aye, Sir," Zimmerman said.
Though he didn't really want it, he took a cup of coffee. The reason was that he considered the offer-the suggestion-an order, coming as it did from the Colonel. At the same time, the friendliness of the Colonel's gesture made him a little uncomfortable.
Colonel Carlson often made him uncomfortable. Zimmerman was on the edge of being an Old Breed Marine. He hadn't been to Nicaragua or any of the other banana republic wars, but he had been in The Corps seven years, most of that time in China, and in all that time he had never met another lieutenant colonel-for that matter, a major or a captain-who treated enlisted men the way Colonel Carlson did.
It was sort of hard to describe why. It wasn't as if Carlson treated the enlisted men as equals, but neither did he treat them the way they were treated elsewhere in The Corps, the way Zimmerman had been treated for seven years.
Colonel Carlson talked to enlisted Marines-not just the senior staff noncoms, but the privates and the corporals, too- like they were people, not enlisted men. Like he was really interested in what they had to say.
The motto of the Raiders was "Gung Ho!" Most people in the Raiders, even the ones who had been in China and had picked up a little Chinese, thought that meant "Everybody Pull Together." Zimmerman knew better. He spoke pretty good Chinese, three kinds of it. What Gung Ho really meant was more like
"Strive for Harmony." When they were training for the Makin Raid back at Camp Elliott, outsidèDiego, Zimmerman talked about that with McCoy-Lieutenant McCoy, the Killer, not Sergeant Shit for Brains McCoy, now behind bars in Honolulu.
The Killer spoke even better Chinese than Zimmerman did, plus Japanese and German and Polish and Russian. So he knew what Gung Ho really meant, but he told Zimmerman to keep it to himself.
"What I think is really going on, Ernie," the Killer told him, "is that the Colonel is terrifically impressed with the way the Chinese do things. The Chinese communists, I mean."
"You're not telling me he's a communist?" It would not have surprised Zimmerman at all if the brass had sent Killer McCoy to the 2nd Raider Battalion to see if he thought Colonel Carlson was a communist.
"No. I don't think so. But there are people in The Corps who do."
"Then how come they gave him the Raider Battalion if they think he's a communist?"
"There are also a lot of people who don't think he's a communist, like Captain Roosevelt's father, for example." Captain Roosevelt was Executive Officer of the 2nd Raider Battalion. His father was Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States of America. As a Captain, Colonel Carlson had commanded the detachment of Marines assigned to protect the President at White Sulphur Springs, where the President often went to swim with other people crippled by infantile paralysis.
"We're sort of special Marines, Ernie, Raiders, " the Killer said. "The Colonel thinks that the kind of discipline the Chinese communists have would work better for us than the regular kind."
"We're Marines, not fucking Chinese communists," Zimmerman protested. "Does he really want to do away with ranks and have just leaders and fighters and technicians, and no saluting, and no officers' mess, and the other bullshit that I been hearing?"
"I think he's been talked out of that," McCoy said. "But I know he wants to make sure the enlisted men use their initiative. There's nothing wrong with that, is there?"
"What does that mean, ùse their initiative'?" You tell some PFC to fill sandbags and make a wall of them, he does it because you're a sergeant and he's a PFC and PFCs do what sergeants tell them to do. The Colonel figures he'll get a better wall if the sergeant tells the PFC they need a sandbag wall because that will keep people from getting their balls blown off... and then the sergeant helps the PFC make it.
Understand?"
"Sounds like bullshit to me."
"That's what I thought when I first heard about it," the Killer said. "But now I suppose I've been converted. Anyway, Ernie, it doesn't make any difference what you think."
"It don't?"
"You're a Marine, a gunny. Marine gunnies do what they're told, right?"
"Fuck you, Ken," Zimmerman said, chuckling.
"That's `fuck you, Lieutenant, Sir,' Sergeant," the Killer replied.
The funny thing, Zimmerman realized, was that over the months he too had become converted to the Colonel's way of doing things. It seemed to work. Everybody in the Raiders did "pull together" or "strive for harmony," depending on how well you spoke Chinese and translated "Gung Ho!" That was very much on his mind on Makin, when things were going badly and he wouldn't have given a wooden nickel for their chances of getting off the fucking beach alive.
He came across Captain Roosevelt then, and the first thing he thought was that only in the United States of America would the son of the head man have his ass in the line of fire. Then he changed that to "only in The Marine Corps" and finally to "only in the Raiders." Zimmerman realized that he was now a genuine fucking true believer Gung Ho Marine Raider... he was also a guy who had spent five and a half of his seven years in The Corps in the Fourth Marines in Shanghai, where officers were officers, and enlisted men were enlisted men.
He was not at all comfortable when he stood in Colonel Carlson's office door and the Colonel waved him into a chair without even giving him a chance to report to the commanding officer in the prescribed manner.
"I didn't know you'd done any time with Marine Aviation, Zimmerman," the Colonel said.
"I never did," Zimmerman said, so surprised that he added "Sir" only after a perceptible pause.
Curious," Colonel Carlson said and handed him a teletype message.
PRIORITY
CONFIDENTIAL
HQ FLEET MARINE FORCE PACIFIC
1405 30 AUG 1942
To: COMMANDING OFFICER 2ND USMC RAIDER BATTALION
Info: COMMANDING OFFICER 2 1ST MARINE AIR GROUP
1. ON RECEIPT THIS MESSAGE FOLLOWING NAMED ENLISTED MEN ARE DETACHED
COMPANY "A" 2ND
RAIDER BN AND ASSIGNED HQ 21ST MARINE AIR GROUP.
ZIMMERMAN, ERNEST
W 286754 GYSGT
MCCOY, THOMAS M 355331 SGT
2. CO 2ND RAIDER BN WILL ARRANGE TRANSPORT BY MOST EXPEDITIOUS MEANS, INCLUDING AIR, FROM
PRESENT STATION TO RECEIVING UNIT. PRIORITY AAA IS AUTHORIZED.
BY DIRECTION: C.W. STANWYCK LTCOL USMC
"The Twenty-first MAG is on Guadalcanal," Colonel Carlson said.
"Yes, Sir, I know."
"Then this doesn't surprise you, Gunny? You knew about it?"
"No, Sir. I mean, no, Sir, I didn't know anything about this."
"I'm curious, Gunny," Carlson said, conversationally. "If this question in any way is awkward for you to answer, then don't answer it. But would you be surprised to learn that Lieutenant McCoy had a hand in this somewhere?" The question obviously surprised Zimmerman. He met Carlson's eyes.
"Sir, nothing the Kill- Lieutenant McCoy does surprises me anymore. But I don't think he's behind this. I think I know where it come from."
"You did know, didn't you, Gunny, what Lieutenant McCoy was doing, really doing, when he was assigned here?" Zimmerman's face flushed.
"I had a pretty good idea, Sir," he said uncomfortably.
"Lieutenant McCoy is a fine officer," Carlson said, "defined first as one who carries out whatever orders he is given to the best of his ability, and second as a gentleman who is made uncomfortable by deception.
You know what I'm talking about, Gunny?"
"Yes, Sir. I think so, Sir."
"I saw Lieutenant McCoy in the hospital just before they flew him home. He told me then what he'd really been doing with the Raiders. I then told him I had been aware of his situation almost from the day he joined the Raiders." Zimmerman looked even more uncomfortable.
"I told him I bore him no hard feelings. Quite the contrary. That I admired him for carrying out a difficult order to the best of his ability. If certain senior officers of The Corps felt it necessary to send in an officer to determine whether or not the commanding officer of the 2nd Raider Battalion was a communist, then it was clearly the duty of that officer to comply with his orders."
"The Killer never thought for a minute you was a communist, Sir," Zimmerman blurted.
Carlson smiled.
"So I understand," he said. "And I hope you have come to the same conclusion, Gunny."
"Jesus, Colonel!"
"I also told Lieutenant McCoy that whatever his primary mission was, he had carried out his duties with the Raiders in a more than exemplary manner, and that I considered it a privilege to have had him under my command."
"Yes, Sir."
"The same applies to you, Gunny. I wanted to tell you that before you ship out."
"Colonel," Zimmerman said, the floodgates open now, "the Killer told me he arranged for me to be assigned to the Raiders in case he needed me for something he was doing. He didn't tell me what he was doing, and the only thing I ever did was take some telephone messages for him. I didn't even know what the fuck they meant."
"Hence my curiosity about your transfer," Colonel Carlson said. "You said, didn't you, a moment ago, that you thought you knew what was behind the transfer?"
"Yes, Sir. I mean, I don't know for sure, but what I think is... when they were forming VMF-229 at Ewa, they was having trouble with their aircraft-version Browning.50s. A tech sergeant named Oblensky, an old China Marine, was. He come to me and McCoy-Sergeant McCoy-and me went over there and took care of it for him."
"And you think Sergeant-Oblensky, you said?"
"Yes, Sir. Big Steve Oblensky."
"-was behind this transfer?"
"Yes, Sir. He goes way back. He's too old now, but he used to be a Flying Sergeant. He was in Nicaragua, places like that, flying with General McInerney. He knows a lot of people in The Corps, Sir."
Brigadier General D. G. McInerney was not the most senior Marine Aviator, but he was arguably the most influential.
"And you think that based on Sergeant Oblensky's recommendation, General McInerney, or someone at that level, convinced Fleet Marine Force Pacific that MAG-21 needs you and Sergeant McCoy more than the 2nd Raider Battalion does?"
"Yes, Sir. That's the way I see it."
"I think you're probably right, Gunny," Colonel Carlson said, standing up and offering his hand to Zimmerman. "We'll miss the two of you around here, but I'm sure you'll do a good job for MAG-21."
Zimmerman got quickly to his feet and took Carlson's hand.
"I don't suppose I got anything to say about this transfer, do I, Sir?"
"Yes, of course you, do. You've been given an order, and when a good gunny gets an order, he says, Àye, aye, Sir."
"Aye, aye, Sir."
"Good luck, Gunny. And pass that on to Sergeant McCoy, please, "
"Aye, aye, Sir." Zimmerman did an about-face and marched to the office door. As he passed through it, he suddenly remembered that Sergeant McCoy was at the moment behind bars in Honolulu charged with drunkenness, resisting arrest, and Christ only knows what else.
(Two)
ARMED FORCES MILITARY POLICE DETENTION FACILITY
HONOLULU, OAHU, TERRITORY OF HAWAII
31 AUGUST 1942
Sergeant Thomas M. McCoy, USMCR, had not been provided with a pillow or any other bedclothes for his bunk, a sheet of steel welded firmly to the wall of his cell.
He had remedied the situation by making a pillow of his shoes; he'd wrapped them in his trousers. And his uniform jacket was now more or less a blanket, He was very hung over, and in addition he suffered from a number of bruises and contusions. The combined force of Navy and Marine Corps Shore Patrolmen, augmented by two Army Military Policemen, had been more than a little annoyed with Sergeant McCoy at the time of his arrest.
They had used, with a certain enthusiasm, somewhat more than the absolute minimum force required to restrain an arrestee. Sergeant McCoy's back, hips, buttocks, thighs, and calves would carry for at least two weeks long thin black bruises from nightsticks, and both eyes would suggest they had encountered something hard, such as a fist or elbow.
When the door of his cell, a barred section on wheels, opened with an unpleasant clanking noise, Sergeant McCoy had been awake long enough to reconstruct as much as he could of the previous evening's events and to consider how they were most likely going to affect his immediate future in The Marine Corps.
Even the most optimistic assessment was not pleasant: He would certainly get busted. Depending on how much damage he'd done to the Shore Patrol-the bloody gashes on the fingers of his right hand suggested he'd punched at least one of the bastards in the teeth-there was a good chance he would find himself standing in front of a court-martial, and would probably catch at least thirty days in the brig, maybe more.
On the premise that the damage was already done and that nothing else could happen to him, he ignored whoever it was who had stepped into his cell. When whoever it was pushed on his shoulder to wake him, he ignored that, too.
"Wake up, McCoy," the familiar voice of Gunnery Sergeant Zimmerman said as his shoulder was shaken a little harder.
The doesn't sound all that pissed, McCoy decided. And then there was another glimmer of hope: Zimmerman ain't all that bad compared to most gunnies. Maybe I can talk myself out of this.
He straightened his legs. That hurt.
Those bastards really did a job on me with their fucking nightsticks.
He pushed himself into a sitting position and looked at Zimmerman, a slight smile on his face.
He saw that Zimmerman had a seabag with him and that Zimmerman was in greens, not utilities.
That's probably my bag. He looked and saw his name stenciled on the side.
"You look like shit," Zimmerman said.
"You ought to see the other guy, Gunny."
"Anything broke?"
"Nah," McCoy said.
"I got your gear," Zimmerman said, kicking the seabag.
"Shave and get into clean greens. I'll be back in five minutes.
It stinks in here."
"How the hell am I
supposed to shave? There's no water or nothing in here."
"Big, tough guy like you don't need any water or shaving cream." Zimmerman turned around and struck one of the vertical cell bars with the heel of his balled fist. It clanked open. The moment Zimmerman was outside the cell, it clanked shut again.
Exactly five minutes later he was back. McCoy had changed into a clean set of greens.
"Where we going, Gunny?"
"I told you to shave."
"And I told you there's no water, no mirror, no nothing, in here. How the fuck... ?" Zimmerman hit him twice, first in the abdomen with his fist, and then when he doubled over, in the back of his neck with the heel of his hand.
McCoy fell on the floor of the cell, banging his shoulder painfully on the steel bunk and nearly losing consciousness. He was conscious enough, though, to hear what Zimmerman said, almost conversationally: "I thought I already taught you that when I tell you to do something it ain't a suggestion."
McCoy heard the sound of Zimmerman's fist striking the cell bar again, then he saw the cell door sliding open, and then closing again.
After a moment McCoy was able to get into a sitting position, resting his back against the cell wall. He took a couple of deep breaths, each of which hurt, then he pulled his seabag to him, unfastened the snap from the loop, and dug inside "or his razor.
(Three)
UNITED STATES NAVAL AIR STATION
LAKEHURST, NEW JERSEY
1705 HOURS 31 AUCUST 1942
Second Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, glanced over at his traveling companion, Second Lieutenant Richard J. Stecker, USMC, saw that he was asleep, and jabbed him in the ribs with his elbow.
Pickering, a tall, rangy twenty-two-year-old with an easygoing look, was considered extraordinarily handsome by a number of females even before he had put on the dashing uniform of a Marine officer.
Stecker, also twenty-two, was stocky, muscular, and looked-on the whole-more dependable. They were sitting in adjacent seats toward the rear of a U.S. Navy R4D aircraft. To judge from the triangular logotype woven into the upholstery of its seats, the R4D had originally been the property of Delta Air Lines.
"Hey! Wake up! I have good news for you!"
Line of Fire Page 7