He walked up and stood beside him.
“Lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it?” Dillon said.
“There’s coffee, if you want some,” Stecker replied, and then walked a few feet away; he returned with a canteen cup and gave it to Dillon.
Dillon walked to the coffee pot at the end of the serving line and waited until the KP ladling out coffee sensed someone standing behind him, looked, and then offered his ladle.
The coffee was near boiling; Dillon could feel the heat even in the handle of the cup. If he tried to take a sip, he would give his lip a painful burn. This was not the first time he had stood in a rain-soaked uniform drinking burning-hot coffee from a canteen cup.
But the last time, he thought, was a long goddamned time ago.
“What brings a feather merchant like you out with the real Marines?” Stecker asked.
“I’m making a movie, what else?”
Stecker looked at him.
“Really? Of this?”
“What I need, Jack, is film that will inspire the red-blooded youth of America to rush to the recruiting station,” Dillon said. “You think this might do it?”
Stecker laughed.
“Seriously, what are your people doing?”
Dillon told him about the movie he had in mind.
“I suppose it’s necessary,” Stecker said.
“I’d rather be one of your staff sergeants, Jack,” Dillon said. “I was a pretty good staff sergeant. But that’s not the way things turned out.”
“You were probably the worst staff sergeant in the 4th Marines,” Stecker said, smiling, “to set the record straight. I let you keep your stripes only so I could take your pay away at poker.”
“Well, fuck you!”
They smiled at each other, then Stecker said bitterly: “I’d like to make the bastards who sent us this mess, packed this way, see your movie.”
“They will. What my guys are shooting—or a copy of it, a rough cut—will leave here for Washington on tomorrow’s courier plane.”
“No kidding?”
“Personal from Vandergrift to the Commandant,” Dillon said.
“Somehow I don’t think that was the General’s own idea.”
“No. But Lucky Lew Harris thought it was fine when I suggested it.”
Stecker chuckled. “I guess that explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“I saw General Harris for a moment this morning,” Stecker said. “I asked him how things went when you took Goettge to Australia. He said, ‘very well. I’m beginning to think that maybe your pal Dillon might be useful after all. He’s really not as dumb as he looks.’ ”
“Christ, I better go buy a bigger hat,” Dillon said. “How much did he tell you about what’s going on?”
“You mean about the airfield the Japs are building?”
Dillon nodded.
“That we better go try to stop them, whether we’re ready or not.”
“And we’re not ready, right?”
Stecker waved his hand up and down the Quay.
“What do you think?”
“Well, there’ll at least be the rehearsal in the Fiji Islands.”
“And because we’re not even prepared for a rehearsal, that will be fucked up. And we’ll go nevertheless.”
“What’s going to happen, Jack?”
“You know what the Coast Guard motto is?”
“ ‘Semper Paratus’?” Dillon asked, confused.
“No. Not that one, anyhow. What the Coast Guard says when a ship is in trouble. They have to go out. Nothing’s said about having to come back.”
“You think it’s that bad?”
“Even after Wake Island and what happened to the 4th Marines in the Philippines, half the people in the Division think the Japs are all five foot two, wear thick glasses, and will turn tail and run once they see a real Marine. Not only the kids. A lot of the officers, who should know better, think this is going to be Nicaragua all over again.”
“Jesus, you really mean that?”
“Yeah, but for Christ’s sake, don’t tell anybody I said so.”
“Of course not,” Dillon said.
“Are you going to go?”
“Sure, of course.”
“You’re not going to inspire ... what did you say, ‘red-blooded American youth’? ... to rush to the recruiting station with movies of dead Marines floating around in the surf.”
Dillon didn’t reply for a moment. Then he said, “Straight answer, Jack: I’m not going to show them movies of dead Marines. I’m going to find me a couple, maybe three, four, good-looking Marines who get themselves lightly wounded, like in the movies, a shoulder wound ...”
“A shoulder wound is one of the worst kinds, nearly as bad as the belly, you know that.”
“I know that, you know that, civilians don’t know that,” Dillon replied. “... and maybe have a medal to go with it” he went on, taking the thought forward. “Then I’m going to bring them to the States and send them on a tour with movie stars. People will be inspired to buy War Bonds. Red-blooded American youth will rush to Marine recruiting stations.”
Stecker turned to look at Dillon, who saw the contempt in his eyes.
“Most heroes I’ve known are as ugly as sin and would lose no time grabbing one of your movie stars on the ass,” Stecker said. “What are you going to do about that?”
“Present company included, I suppose,” Dillon said. It was a reference to Stecker’s World War I Medal of Honor. “I’d love to have you on a War Bond tour. Do you suppose you could arrange to get yourself shot in the shoulder, Jack? After you do something heroic?”
“Fuck you, Jake.”
“Like I said, Jack, I’d much rather be going to Guadalcanal as one of your staff sergeants. It didn’t turn out that way, so I try to do what the Corps wants me to do as well as I can.”
Stecker met his eyes.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
He handed Dillon his empty canteen cup.
“I am now going out in the rain again,” he said. “Somebody once told me that a good Marine officer doesn’t try to stay dry when his men are getting wet.”
“Nobody has to tell you what a good Marine officer should or should not do,” Dillon said.
“What the hell is that?”
“It was intended as a compliment.”
“Don’t let it go to your head, Major, but I almost wish you were one of my staff sergeants,” Stecker said, and then he touched Dillon’s arm and walked out from under the fly tent and into the rain.
(Three)
HEADQUARTERS, VMF-229
MARINE CORPS AIR STATION
EWA, TERRITORY OF HAWAII
7 JULY 1942
If Captain Charles M. Galloway, commanding officer of VMF-229, had been called upon to describe his present physical condition, he would have said that his ass was dragging. He was bone tired and dirty. He had been flying most of the morning. He was wearing a sweat- and oil-stained cotton flying suit. His khaki flight helmet and goggles were jammed into the left knee pocket of the flying suit, and his fore-and-aft cap stuck out of the right knee pocket. He carried his leather flying jacket over his shoulder; his index finger was hooked in the leather loop inside the collar.
He needed a long shower and some clean clothes, he knew, and he would dearly like to have a beer. But beer was out of the question: He would probably put another two hours in the air this afternoon, and you don’t drink—not even a lousy beer—and fly.
The door to the Quonset hut which housed both the squadron office and the supply room of VMF-229 was padlocked when Charley Galloway walked up to it. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was just after 1200.
PFC Alfred B. Hastings, Galloway decided angrily, had elected to have his luncheon, and fuck the phone, let it ring. He immediately regretted his anger. Hastings, who had transferred into VMF-229 with Tech Sergeant Big Steve Oblensky, had been promoted from being Oblensky’s runner to Squa
dron Clerk. His only qualification for the job was that he could type, but he had proved to be a quick learner of the fine points of Marine Corps bureaucracy and had been doing a good job. Galloway knew how late at night the kid worked, and obviously he had to eat sometime.
Galloway dipped his hand into the open flap of his flight suit and came out with his dog tag chain. It held his dog tags and four keys—one to his BOQ room; one to the Ford; one to the padlock on the squadron office door; and one to the padlock on the safe in the squadron office. He opened the lock and went inside.
The handset of the telephone was out of the cradle. Not by accident. PFC Hastings had been told by Technical Sergeant Oblensky that it was better to have the brass annoyed that you were on the phone when they called than pissed because there was no answer when it rang—clear proof that the rule that Squadron Offices would be manned around the clock was being violated.
Captain Galloway walked to the squadron safe, knelt by it, unlocked the padlock, opened the door, and reached inside and took a bottle of Coke from an ice-filled galvanized iron bucket, which at the moment was all the safe held. He knocked the cap off by resting the lip on the edge of the safe and hitting it with the heel of his hand.
He walked to his desk, sat down in the battered, but surprisingly comfortable, office chair Oblensky had scrounged somewhere and then had reupholstered, leaned back in it, swung his feet on the desk, and took a pull at the neck of the Coke. After a moment, he burped with satisfaction.
On his desk, neatly laid out, was a half-inch-thick stack of papers. From experience, he knew that just about every sheet there would require his signature—on the original and the standard four onion skins. Whatever it was, it would have to wait.
His hands were dirty, oily; it would offend the high priests of the bureaucracy if an official document with oily fingerprints on it appeared in their IN baskets for movement to the OUT basket and forwarding to higher headquarters.
He looked at the handset of the telephone and after a moment leaned forward and hung it up. By the time he had rested his back against his chair and raised the Coke bottle to his lips, it rang.
He leaned forward and picked it up.
“VMF-229, Captain Galloway, Sir.”
“You guys must live on the phone,” his caller said. “I been calling for an hour.”
“Well, it’ll keep your index finger in shape,” Galloway said. “Who’s this?”
“Lieutenant Rhodes, at NATS Pearl. I got a couple of warm bodies for you.”
“I don’t suppose there’s any way you could get them a ride over here?”
“No. Not today, anyway. That’s why I called.”
“What kind of warm bodies?”
“Two intrepid birdmen, fresh from the States. They went into Hickam Field, and the Air Corps sent them here.”
“Instead of here. That figures.”
“You going to come get them? Or should I put them in the transient BOQ?”
“I’ll send somebody for them. Thanks very much.”
“Anytime.”
Galloway put the phone back in its cradle and talked out loud to himself: “I will not send somebody for them, because I don’t have anybody to drive a vehicle to send for them ... even if I had a vehicle, which I don’t.” He thought that over, and added, “Shit!”
He drained the Coke and dropped the bottle with a loud clang into the object he now knew—as a commanding officer charged with responsibility for government property—was not a wastebasket but a “Receptacle, Trash, Office, w/o Liner Federal Stock Number Six Billion Thirteen.” Then he swung his feet back onto the floor, burped again, and stood up. He looked at the telephone, took the handset out of the cradle, and laid it on the desk.
He went to PFC Hastings’s desk and left him a note. “1205 I went to pick up some replacements at NATS. CMG.”
Then he went out of the Quonset hut, closed the padlock, and walked to his Ford. Regulations required that officers leaving installations be in the properly appointed uniform of the day. An exception was made only for officers who were actually engaged in preparing for flight duty, or who were returning from such duty; these men were permitted to wear uniforms appropriate for such duty. Captain Charles M. Galloway decided that he met the criteria for exception. He had been flying, and he was preparing to fly again.
He took his fore-and-aft cap from the knee pocket of his flight suit, put it on, and then slipped his arms into the leather flight jacket and zipped that up. Then he got behind the wheel of the Ford and drove off.
The Marine MP on duty outside the Navy Air Transport Service terminal eyed Galloway suspiciously as he pulled up in the yellow Ford.
“I’ve got two warm bodies inside,” Galloway said when the MP walked up to the car. “Can I leave this here a minute?”
“No, Sir,” the MP said. “That would be against regulations. But on the other hand, if I checked around inside, which would take me about two minutes, I wouldn’t see it, would I?”
“Thanks,” Charley said, and got out of the car.
He smiled when he saw the two warm bodies, the intrepid birdmen fresh from the States, sitting on wooden benches inside the terminal. He knew both of them.
And when they saw him, they both stood up. First Lieutenant James G. Ward, USMCR, smiled and waved. First Lieutenant David F. Schneider, USMC, just about came to attention.
If he outranked Jim Ward, Galloway thought, he would bark “attention” and announce that he was “Lieutenant Schneider reporting for duty as ordered with a party of one.”
“Welcome to sunny Hawaii,” Galloway said, extending his hand. “How was the flight?”
“Long,” Jim Ward said.
“Very nice, thank you, Sir,” Lieutenant Schneider said.
Oh, that’s the way he’s decided to play this. He probably sat with his thumb up his ass for a long time, trying to figure the best way to behave when reporting to a squadron commanded by an ex-sergeant.
“I’ve got a car outside. You can flip a coin to see who gets to sit in the rumble seat. Need any help with your gear?”
“I can manage, thanks,” Ward said.
“No, Sir. Thank you, Sir,” Schneider said.
He led them outside.
“Great car!” Jim Ward said. “I always wanted one of these. Yours?”
“Yeah. I bought it when I was with VMF-211, tore it apart, and rebuilt it.”
Captain Galloway suspected that Lieutenant Schneider was not nearly as enthusiastic about a nine-year-old yellow Ford roadster as Lieutenant Ward was. And he saw that Schneider was almost visibly relieved when Ward settled himself in the rumble seat with their luggage. Riding in the rumble seat of a nine-year-old yellow Ford roadster was not the sort of thing that Lieutenant Schneider felt was appropriate for a Marine officer, especially one who had entered the service from Annapolis.
Galloway got behind the wheel.
“Following the sacred military custom of ‘do as I say, not what I do,’ ” he said, “be advised that wearing flight suits off the flight line is a no-no. A couple of the guys have got themselves written up by the MPs and Shore Patrol.”
“What happens then?” Ward asked.
“I reply by endorsement that the offenders have been hung, then drawn and quartered. It’s a pain in the ass. We have only one kid for a clerk, and he’s not all that good with a typewriter. So don’t get caught.”
“Got you,” Jim Ward said. He leaned forward from the rumble seat and thrust an envelope, a thick one, firmly sealed with scotch tape, at Galloway.
“What’s this?”
“A little note from Aunt Caroline,” Jim Ward said.
“You hang onto it,” Galloway said. “I’m greasy and so is the flight suit. I was about to take a shower when they called and said you were here.”
“We could have waited,” Schneider said.
“I figured to hell with it,” Galloway said. “I’m going to fly again this afternoon anyway.”
“We have planes?�
�� Ward asked eagerly.
“Wildcats,” Galloway said. “New Wildcats. And if you talk nicely to Sergeant Oblensky, he will have your name painted on it, and you can send a picture home to Mommy.”
“Who is Sergeant Oblensky?” Ward asked.
“The maintenance sergeant. Best one in the Air Group. At the moment, he’s also the first sergeant, the mess sergeant, the supply sergeant, and the motor sergeant.”
“How is that, Sir?” Schneider asked.
“Because we don’t have anybody else to be the first sergeant, the mess sergeant, the supply sergeant, or the motor sergeant. I’m working on it, so far with a monumental lack of success.”
“I see,” Schneider said.
“Where we’re going now is to Ewa, where I will show you MAG-113 Headquarters,”—Marine Air Group 113; a MAG is the next superior headquarters to a squadron, the aviation equivalent, so to speak, of an infantry battalion—“then the BOQ, and then our squadron office. Then we’ll go to the flight line, where I’ll get out. You will then drive back to MAG-113. The Skipper—Lieutenant Colonel Clyde D. Dawkins—always wants a personal look at the new meat. When he’s finished with you, go to the BOQ and get yourself set up there. And then go to the squadron office, where PFC Hastings will do all the necessary paperwork on you. I’ll meet you there, and we can go to the club for our one daily beer and supper. OK?”
“Sounds fine to me,” Ward said.
“The penalty for dinging your skipper’s little yellow car is death by slow castration,” Galloway said. “A word to the wise, so to speak.” They chuckled.
“I suppose your flight physicals are up to date?”
“Yes, Sir,” they chorused.
“OK. Make sure Hastings gets a copy. And your orders, too, of course. Then in the morning, we’ll go flying. Local area checkout if nothing else. There are two IPs. Me and a Lieutenant name of Bill Dunn. He got a Betty and a Zero at Midway. Good pilot. Pay attention to what he says. I do.”
“He’s almost halfway to being an ace,” Ward thought aloud.
“Before you fly away on dreams of glory,” Galloway said, “he also took a 20mm round in his window at Midway that damned near made him a soprano, and he totalled the airplane when he set it down. Most of the pilots of VMF-211 who took off for Midway didn’t come back. Bear that in mind, too.”
Battleground Page 29