Call to Arms

by W. E. B Griffin

  “You’ve been over to Aviation Training Reception?” the staff sergeant asked.

  “And they sent us here,” Stecker said.

  “We only billet permanent party here, Lieutenant,” the staff sergeant said.

  “Far be it from me, a lowly second lieutenant,” Stecker said, “aware as I am that there is nothing lower, or dumber, in the Corps, to suggest that either you or the commander who sent me here doesn’t know what he’s talking about, Sergeant, but that would seem to the case, wouldn’t you say?”

  Pickering chuckled. Stecker looked at him and winked.

  “Just a moment, please, sir,” the staff sergeant said, and went back into the detachment commander’s office. In a moment, a captain came out.

  Pickering and Stecker came to attention. Pickering winced inwardly. He had met the captain before…unpleasantly, in the San Carlos Hotel. His name was Carstairs…Captain Mustache.

  And obviously, from the way the captain looked at him, he remembered the incident, too.

  “As you were,” the captain said, and picked up the orders and glanced at them.

  “The both of you were sent here from Aviation Reception?” the captain asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Pickering and Stecker said, together.

  The captain looked for a number in a small, pamphlet-sized telephone book and dialed it up on the phone.

  “Commander,” he said, “this is Captain Carstairs at the Marine detachment. I have two second lieutenants here with orders for flight training who tell me that you sent them here for billeting.”

  Whatever the commander replied, it took most of a minute, after which Captain Carstairs said, “Aye, aye, sir,” and hung up. Then he turned to the sergeant. “Put them somewhere, two to a room.”

  Finally he turned to them.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, “when you are settled, I would be grateful if you could spare me a few minutes of your valuable time. Say in forty-five minutes?”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Stecker said, popping to attention. Pickering was a half second behind in following his lead.

  Captain Carstairs walked out of the room.

  The sergeant consulted a large board fixed to the wall. When Pickering looked at it, he saw it represented the assignment of rooms in the Bachelor Officers’ Quarters.

  “Put them in one-eleven-C,” the sergeant ordered, and then he walked out of the room.

  The corporal took a clipboard from a drawer in his desk and then said, “Please follow me, gentlemen.”

  They followed him out of the building over to what looked to be a brand-new, two-story frame barracks building. Inside he led them upstairs and down the corridor, stopping before a door.

  He ceremoniously handed each of them a key.

  “There is a dollar-and-a-quarter charge if you lose the key,” he announced.

  He waited for one of them to unlock the door; Stecker was the first to figure out what was expected of him.

  Inside they found that the room was not finished; unpainted studs were exposed. Between them could be seen the tar-paper waterproofing and the electrical wiring. The floor was covered with Navy gray linoleum.

  Otherwise, the place was furnished with two bunks, two desks, two upholstered armchairs, two side tables, and four lamps, one on each of the desks and side tables. A wash basin with a shelf and mirror shared one wall with a closet. A curtain, rather than a door, covered the closet entrance, but a real door led to a narrow room equipped with a water closet and a stall shower.

  The corporal walked around the room, touching each piece of furniture as he announced, “One bunk, with mattress and pillow; one desk, six-drawer; one chair, wood, cloth-upholstered; one table, side, with drawer; and two lamps, reading, with bulb. There are two curtains on the closet, you each sign for one of them.”

  He handed Stecker the clipboard and a pencil. Stecker signed his name on the receipt for the room’s furnishings and handed it back. The corporal then handed the clipboard to Pickering, who did the same.

  The corporal nodded curtly at them and left them alone.

  “What do you think?” Pickering asked, glancing around the room.

  “I think I’m going to find someplace off base to live,” Stecker said, “and leave you to wallow in all this luxury all by yourself.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “I think I have figured out what’s going on around here,” Stecker said.

  “Which is?”

  “Let me ask you a question first,” Stecker replied. “How come you’re going to flight school?”

  “I applied, and they sent me,” Pickering said.

  “You get passed over for first lieutenant?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re supposed to have two years’ troop duty before they send you to flight school,” Stecker said. “If you had two years’ service, unless you really fucked up, you’d be a first john.”

  “I was commissioned just after Thanksgiving,” Pickering said.

  “I was commissioned second January,” Stecker said.

  “Last week?”

  “Right.”

  “Quantico?”

  “Actually, at West Point,” Stecker said.

  “I thought West Point graduated in June?”

  “Not this year,” Stecker said. “They needed second lieutenants, so they commissioned us right after the Christmas leave. Six months early.”

  “I have no idea what this conversation is all about,” Pickering confessed.

  “We are discussing how and where we are going to live for the next six months,” Stecker said.

  “That implies there is an alternative to this,” Pickering said, gesturing at the bare studs and the crowded room. “One that we can legally take advantage of.”

  “I think there is,” Stecker said. “Would you care to hear my assessment of the situation? I have reconnoitered the area, and carefully evaluated the enemy’s probable intentions.”

  Pickering chuckled again. “You remind me of my buddy at Quantico,” he said. “He knew his way around, too. He’d done a hitch as an enlisted man in China before they sent him to the Platoon Leader’s course.”

  “A China Marine,” Stecker said. “I did a hitch with the Fourth Marines myself.”

  “Bullshit,” Pickering blurted. “You’re not that old.”

  “I was eleven when we went there,” Stecker said, smugly. “I was born in the Corps. My father was the master gunnery sergeant of the Fourth Marines.”

  “And now he’s a captain, right?” Pick demanded, suddenly. “He won the Medal of Honor in the First World War?”

  “How’d you know that?” Stecker asked.

  “They were sticking it to my buddy when we went through Quantico,” Pick said. “Captain Jack NMI Stecker showed up like the avenging angel of the Lord, banged heads together, boomed, ‘go and sin no more,’ and left in a cloud of glory.”

  “That sounds like my old man,” Stecker said. “He’s one hell of a Marine. I’m surprised you know about the Medal, though. He never wears it.”

  “He wasn’t wearing it,” Pick said. “But I asked my buddy who he was, and he told me about him.”

  “How did he find out?”

  “I told you, he’s another China Marine,” Pickering said.

  “They stick together,” Stecker said. “The Medal got me in the Point. Sons of guys who won it get automatic appointments to service academies if they want one. My brother went to Annapolis, but I was sick of being the little brother following him everywhere, so I went to West Point.”

  “How come you didn’t go in the Army, then?” Pick asked.

  “I will consider how recently you have been a Marine, and forgive you for asking that question,” Stecker said. “The Army?” he added incredulously.

  “You said you had reconnoitered the area?” Pickering asked, chuckling.

  “Would you like the full report, or just the conclusions I have drawn?” Stecker asked.

  “I think I’d better hear th
e full report,” Pickering said. “I don’t want to do anything that will get me thrown out of flight school.”

  “Okay,” Stecker said. “It does not behoove a second lieutenant to act impulsively.”

  Pickering chuckled again. He liked this boy-faced character.

  “The lecture begins with a history of Naval aviation,” Stecker said solemnly. “Which carries us back to 1911, which was six years before my father joined the Corps, and ten years before I was born.”

  Pickering was aware that he was giggling.

  “The flight school was established here, with two airplanes…and if you keep giggling, I will stop—”

  “Sorry,” Pickering said.

  “We career Marines do not like to be giggled at by reservists,” Stecker said. “Keep that in mind, Pickering.”

  Pickering laughed, deep in his throat.

  “As I was saying,” Stecker said, “flight training has continued here ever since. Pensacola is known as the Mother-in-Law of Naval Aviation.”

  “I heard that,” Pickering said.

  “You do keep interrupting, don’t you?” Stecker said, in mock indignation.

  Pickering threw his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

  “Between wars, Pensacola trained three categories of individuals as Naval aviators,” Stecker went on, seriously. “Commissioned officers of the Navy and Marines; enlisted men of the Navy and Marines; and Naval aviation cadets.”

  “Enlisted men? As pilots, you mean?”

  “Since the question is germane, I will overlook the interruption,” Stecker said. “Yes, enlisted men. There was argument at the highest levels whether or not flying airplanes required the services of splendid, well-educated, young officers such as you and me, Pickering, or whether a lot of money could be saved by having enlisted men drive them. The argument still rages. For your general fund of Naval information, there are a number of Naval aviation pilots—petty officers—in the Navy, and ‘flying sergeants’ in the Corps. And while we are off on this tangent, most Japanese pilots, and German pilots, and a considerable number of Royal Air Force pilots, are enlisted men.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Pickering said.

  “Much as I would like to add to your obviously dismally inadequate fund of service lore by discussing the pros and cons of enlisted pilots,” Stecker said, “we have to face that salty captain with the mustache in”—he looked at his watch—“thirty-two minutes, and I respectfully suggest you permit me to get on with my orientation lecture.”

  “Please do,” Pickering said, unable to contain a chuckle.

  “Marine and Navy officers who applied for flight training had to have two years of service before they could come here. Since promotion to lieutenant junior grade or first lieutenant was automatic after eighteen months of service, this meant that even the junior officer flight student wore a silver bar, and there were some who were full lieutenants—or captains, USMC—and even a rare lieutenant commander or major.

  “Rank hath its privileges, and it is presumed that anyone with two years of service as a commissioned officer does not need round-the-clock off-duty supervision. Officer flight students are given their training schedule and expected to be at the proper place at the appointed time. What they do when they are off duty is their own business.”

  “And that includes us?” Pickering asked.

  Stecker put his index finger in front of his mouth and said, “Ssssh!” Then he went on: “The enlisted flight students are selected from the brightest sailors and Marines in the fleet. They pose virtually no disciplinary problems for Pensacola. And, like the officers, it is not necessary for Pensacola to teach them that a floor is a deck in the Navy, or that patting the admiral’s daughter’s tail is not considered nice.”

  A remarkably detailed image of Martha Sayre Culhane’s tail popped into Pickering’s mind.

  “The third category, Naval aviation cadets, is a horse of an entirely different hue. In addition to teaching them how to fly, Pensacola must also teach them what will be expected of them once they graduate and are commissioned. Actually, before they come here, they have been run through an ‘elimination program’ at a Naval air station somewhere, during which they have been exposed to the customs and traditions of the Naval service, including close-order drill, small-arms training, and things of this nature; and, importantly, they are given enough actual flight training to determine that they were physically and intellectually capable of undergoing the complete pilot training offered at Pensacola.”

  “As fascinated as I am by your learned discourse,” Pickering said, “so what? What has this got to with this cell they’ve put us in?”

  “There was a fourth category of students,” Stecker said. “Newly commissioned ensigns and second lieutenants. Such as we, Pickering. Since it came down from Mount Sinai graven on stone that ensigns and second lieutenants cannot find their ass with both hands, they were run through courses intended to teach them not to piss in the potted palms at the Officers’ Club and otherwise to behave like officers and gentlemen.”

  “‘Was’?” Pickering asked.

  “For a number of reasons, including complaints from the fleet and the Fleet Marine Force that Aviation was grabbing all the nice, bright ensigns and second lieutenants the fleet and the Fleet Marine Force needed, they stopped sending new second lieutenants here. If you want to become a Naval aviator in the future, you will have to start as an aviation cadet, or have completed two years with the fleet or with troops in the Corps.”

  “But we’re here,” Pickering asked, now genuinely confused.

  “That’s precisely the point of my lecture,” Stecker said. “We have fallen somehow through the cracks; there has been a hole in the sieve. I know why I’m here…I qualified for aviation training last fall, before they decided to send no more second lieutenants through Pensacola. My guess is that the word didn’t reach the Navy liaison officer at West Point. All he knew was that there was a note on my record jacket that I was to be sent here when I got my commission. And when I got my commission, he cut the orders. But what about you? How’d you manage to get here? You should be running around with an infantry platoon in the boondocks at Quantico, or at Camp Elliott.”

  Pickering decided it was the time and place to be completely truthful.

  “I should be working in the Officers’ Club at the Marine Barracks in Washington,” he said. “That’s where they sent me when I graduated from the Platoon Leader’s Course at Quantico.”

  “Why?” Stecker asked.

  “I grew up in the hotel business,” Pickering said. “I worked for Foster Hotels. I know how to run a restaurant-bar operation.”

  “That would seem to be pretty good duty.”

  “I didn’t join the Corps to run a bar for the brass,” Pickering said.

  “How’d you get out of it? And manage to get yourself sent here?”

  “I had some influence,” Pickering said. “With a general.”

  “Which general?” Stecker asked. Pickering sensed disapproval in Stecker; his eyes were no longer smiling.

  “McInerney,” Pickering said. “Brigadier General McInerney. You know who he is?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” Stecker said. “He and my father were in France together in the First World War. Belleau Wood.”

  “Then maybe my father knows your father,” Pickering said. “That’s where my father met McInerney. They were both corporals. McInerney got me assigned as his aide to keep me out of the Officers’ Club, and then he sent me down here.”

  Stecker nodded absently, and Pickering sensed that he was making a decision.

  “This is how I see it,” Stecker said, finally. “They don’t know what to do with us. The easiest thing is what they’ve done, nothing. Let us go to flight school, which is easier than writing letters to Headquarters, USMC, and asking what to do with us. And since there are probably just the two of us, and one of us is a regular, I don’t think they’re going to start up a series of ‘don’t piss in
the potted palms’ classes just for us. Because it’s easier for them, they’ll treat us as if we were officers sent here as first lieutenants or captains from the Fleet Marine Force.”

  “All of which means what?”

  “Until somebody tells us we’re restricted to post, as officers and gentlemen we can assume we’re not restricted to the post. And I don’t think they’re going to appoint somebody to come all the way over here at midnight every night to see if we’re in our bunks.”

  “You mean, we just go tell that corporal ‘thanks but no thanks, you can keep your room’?”

  “How are you fixed for money?” Stecker asked.

  “All right,” Pickering replied.

  “If we try to check out of the BOQ,” Stecker said, “Captain Mustache is likely to think it over and order us to stay here. And if he does that, it’s also going to start him thinking about ‘don’t piss in the potted palms’ lectures and sending the OD over to see if we’re in bed. The whole Boy Scout routine. You follow my reasoning?”

  “Yes,” Pickering said.

  “We’ll just have to forget collecting the allowance in lieu of quarters,” Stecker said.

  “I understand,” Pickering said.

  “One other potential problem,” Stecker said. “Have you got a car?”

  Pickering nodded.

  “Well, let’s go hear what Captain Mustache has to say. He can blow this whole idea out of the water. But if he says what I think he’ll say, I think we can pass the next six months in relative comfort. We started drawing flight pay the moment we reported in…why not spend it?”

  On the walk back to the Marine detachment office, Stecker saw Pickering’s Cadillac convertible.

  “How’d you like to have that to use for pussy bait?” he asked.

  Pickering smiled, but said nothing about the ownership of the car.

  Captain Mustache put them at ease before his desk when they reported to him, but he did not offer them seats.

  “I’ve been on the phone about you two,” he said. “What you are are exceptions to the rule, pebbles that shouldn’t have dropped through the sieve but did. Both of you should be running around in the boondocks at Quantico with a rifle platoon. But you’re here, and it has been decided that it’s easier to leave you here.”