And then, in May of 1943, when by then Lieutenant Colonel Banning was "somewhere in the Pacific" there had been a telephone call from the Hon. Zachary W. Westmin-ister III (D., 3rd District, S.C.), a Citadel classmate.
"Matty, you sitting down?"
"No, actually, I'm not."
"Matty, ol' buddy, you better sit down."
It didn't sound as if ol' Zach was going to relate bad news about Eddie, but The Colonel had been worried nev-ertheless.
"I'm sitting, Zach, now get on with it."
"I just came from meeting with the President," Con-gressman Westminister began, "and I can only tell you a little...."
"Get on with it, goddamn it, Zach!"
"When you get off the phone, you go tell `Lisbeth to change the sheets in the guest room. Your daughter-in-law will shortly be arriving."
"My God!"
"And if you still have a crib in the attic, you better dust that off, too. She's coming with Edward Edwardovich Ban-ning in her arms."
"You're telling me there's a baby?"
"Edward Edwardovich-how `bout that?-Banning. Born August 1942, somewhere in Mongolia."
"Goddamn, Zach!"
"When I know more, I'll be in touch. The President just gave the order to put the two of them on a plane from Chunking."
Elizabeth Banning didn't say anything, of course-she was a Christian gentlewoman-but The Colonel knew that once the situation changed from Ed having married some White Russian in Shanghai who would probably never be heard from again, to having Ed's White Russian wife and their baby about to arrive at the house on the Battery, she naturally had concerns about what she would be like, how they would fit into Charleston society.
The former Maria Catherine Ludmilla Zhikov had come down the steps from the Eastern Airlines DC-3 looking far more like a photograph from Town & Country than a refugee who had spent seventeen months moving across China and Mongolia in pony-drawn carts, pausing en route for several days to be delivered of a son.
Her Naval Air Transport Service flight from China to the United States had been met at San Francisco by Mrs. Fleming Pickering, who transported her and the baby to the Foster San Franciscan hotel where the proprietors of the in-hotel Chic Lady clothing shop and the across-the-street Styles for the Very Young baby clothes emporium were waiting for her.
"I knew the moment I laid eyes on Luddy that she was a lady," Mrs. Elizabeth Banning said at the time-and many times later.
"If I had arrived in Charleston looking like I looked when I got off the plane in San Francisco," Luddy Banning said later-after The Colonel had gone to his reward, she herself had become "The Colonel's Wife" and Elizabeth Banning had acceded, much like Queen Elizabeth's mother, to the title "Mother Banning"-"Mother Banning would have had a heart attack. Thank God for Patricia Pickering."
Behind her back-not derisively or pejoratively- Luddy Banning was known as "the countess," not only be-cause she had a certain regal air about her, but also because a Citadel cadet doing a term paper on the organization of the Russian Imperial general staff had gone to The Colonel's Russian wife for help with it.
The colonel's Russian wife, while perusing one of the cadet's reference works, had laid a finger on the name of Lieutenant General Count Vasily Ivanovich Zhivkov, and softly said, "My father."
That announcement had taken no longer than twenty-four hours to become common knowledge among the cadets of the Citadel, another twenty-four hours to circu-late among the faculty, and another twenty-four hours to reach the houses along the Battery.
Luddy Banning descended the wide stairs and walked down the brick sidewalk through the cast-iron fence to the Buick and waited until Captain Kenneth R. McCoy, USMC-who was wearing a yellow polo shirt and khaki trousers-got from behind the wheel, then wrapped her arms around him.
"Our savior," she said, seriously.
"Ah, come on, Luddy!"
"You were our savior, you will always be our savior," she said. "Welcome to our home!"
She kissed McCoy twice, once on each cheek, and then went around the front of the Buick and embraced Ernie.
"How nice to see you again, Major McCoy," Mother Banning said, offering him her hand.
"It's Captain McCoy, ma'am," McCoy said. "It's good to see you, too."
"Well, I'll be damned," a male voice boomed from be-side the wide staircase. "Look what the tide washed up!"
Without realizing he was doing it-literally a Pavlovian reaction-McCoy saluted the tall, stocky, erect, starting-to-bald man, who had a blond eight-year-old boy strad-dling his neck.
"Colonel," he said.
"Goddamn, Ken, you of all people know me well enough to call me by my name."
He walked quickly to McCoy, his hand extended to shake McCoy's, then changed his mind and embraced him.
"It's good to see you," McCoy said.
"Come on in the house, Stanley'll take care of the bags and the car. I think a small-hell, large-libation is in or-der."
He looked at his wife, who was coming around the front of the car with her arm around Ernie McCoy.
"Hey, beautiful lady," he called. "Welcome to Charleston."
"Hello, Ed," Ernie said. "Thank you, it's good to be here."
They all went up the stairs as Stanley, the dignified black man, and a younger black man came down the stairs.
"I put the wine in the sitting room, Colonel," he said to Banning.
"Just the wine?"
"No, sir," Stanley said. "Not just the wine."
"Good man, Stanley."
"These glasses are... exquisite," Ernie said, as Ed Ban-ning poured champagne in her engraved crystal glass.
"They've been in the family a long time," Mother Ban-ning said. "We only bring them out for special people."
"Thank you," Ernie said.
"The general bought them in Europe before the war," Mother Banning said. "On his wedding trip."
Ed Banning saw the confusion on Ernie's face.
"Mother refers, of course, to the War of Secession," he said. "These glasses spent the war buried on the island, which always made me wonder if my great-grandfather had as much faith in the inevitable victory of the Confeder-acy as he professed at the time."
"Edward, what a terrible thing to say," Mother Banning said.
"Mother, as it says in the Good Book, the `truth shall make you free.'"
There was polite laughter.
"Speaking of the truth," Banning said. "Let me get this out of the way before we get down to serious drinking. The general called-Ken's and my general, Mother-and let me know what's going on. We're family, in my mind...."
"And mine," Luddy said. `This family wouldn't be here if it weren't for our savior."
"Hear, hear," Banning said. "Anyway, I want you both to know that what's ours is yours, anything we can do to help, we will, and we can either talk about it or not. Your choice."
"I'm going to cry," Ernie said.
"Drink your booze," Colonel Banning said, and then had another thought: "One more thing, Ken. Ernie Zimmerman, the best-dressed master gunner in the Marine Corps."
"What about him?"
"I wanted to ask you before I asked him and Mae-Su down from Beaufort. You want to see him?"
"Wouldn't that be an imposition?" Ernie asked. "Ken and I talked about going down there to see them on our way to California."
"You weren't listening, beautiful lady," Colonel Banning said. He turned to the butler, who was in the act of opening a second bottle of Moet et Chandon extra brut. "Stanley, see if you can get Mister Zimmerman on the horn for me, will you?"
"Mae-Su is my sister, Ernie," Luddy Banning said, in gentle reproof. "She is always welcome in our home."
Master Gunner Ernest W. Zimmerman, USMC, his wife Mae-Su, and their five children arrived at 66 South Battery two hours later. At Mae-Su's insistence, the entire family was dressed in a manner Mrs. Zimmerman felt was appro-priate to visit-as she described them privately to her hus-band1-"the ladies in Charleston."
&nbs
p; The four males of the family-Father, thirty-four; Peter, thirteen; Stephen, twelve; and John, seven-were wearing identical seersucker suits. The three females-Mae-Su, thirty-three; Mary, six; and Ernestine, three-were wear-ing nearly identical summer linen dresses.
The dresses and suits had all been cut and sewn by the Chinese wife of another Parris Island Marine-this one a staff sergeant drill instructor-who had gone to the Shang-hai Palace restaurant in Beaufort, South Carolina, hoping to find employment as a cook-for that matter, anything at all; she needed the income-on the basis that she had been born and raised in Shanghai.
The proprietor, Mae-Su Zimmerman, was not interested in a cook, but she was looking for a seamstress. The DI's wife-who had met her husband in Tientsin, China, right af-ter World War II-came from a family of tailors and seam-stresses. After passing two tests, first making, from a picture in the society section of the Charleston Post-Gazette, a dress for Mrs. Zimmerman, and then, from the Brooks Brothers mail-order catalog, a suit for Master Gunner Zimmerman, Joi-Hu McCarthy went into business with Mrs. Zimmer-man, who became a silent (40 percent) partner in Shanghai Custom Tailors & Alterations, of Beaufort, South Carolina.
Mrs. Zimmerman was also a silent partner in several other Chinese-flavored businesses in Beaufort as well as the proprietor of the local hamburger emporium, and the franchisee of Hertz Rent-A-Car.
The Ford station wagon in which the Zimmerman fam-ily appeared at 66 South Battery, properly attired for a visit to the ladies, belonged to Hertz of Beaufort.
Luddy Banning and Mae-Su Zimmerman embraced with understated, but still visible, deep affection. Mae-Su had been Luddy's midwife by the side of the dirt road in Mon-golia when she had given birth to Edward Edwardovich Banning.
In Cantonese, Mrs. Zimmerman inquired of Mrs. Ban-ning, "Does the Killer know we know?"
"My husband told them," Luddy replied in Cantonese.
"Sometimes I hate the U.S. Marine Corps," Mae-Su said.
"Me, too. But they are married to it," Luddy said.
The children were gathered and ushered up the stairs to-ward Mother Banning, who waited for them. She told them they all looked elegant, and gave each a kiss and a pepper-mint candy.
"The Colonel and the Killer are downstairs, Ernie," Luddy said to Master Gunner Zimmerman.
"How is he?"
"Better than I thought he would be when I heard," Luddy said.
"That don't look like no Marine master gunner to me," McCoy said when Zimmerman walked into what was known as "The Colonel's study," although it was in fact more of a bar than a study. "That looks like an ambulance chaser."
That was not exactly the truth. Despite the splendidly tailored Brooks Brothers-style seersucker suit, white button-down-collar shirt, and red striped necktie, there was something about Zimmerman that suggested he was not a member of the bar, but rather a Marine in civvies. He was a squat, muscular, barrel-chested man, deeply tanned, and his hair was closely cropped to his skull.
"Screw you, Captain, sir," Zimmerman said, walking to him, and grabbing his neck in a bear hug.
"How they hanging, Ernie?" McCoy asked, freeing him-self.
"A little lower every year," Zimmerman said.
"Help yourself, Ernie," Banning said, gesturing toward an array of bottles in a bookcase.
"Thank you, sir. What are you-"
"Famous Grouse," Banning said.
"What else?" Zimmerman asked, chuckling.
"And we have been marching down memory lane," Ban-ning said.
"Yeah? Which memory lane?"
"Guess who's at Pendleton?" Banning asked.
Zimmerman shrugged.
"Major Robert B. Macklin," McCoy said.
"No shit?"
"I saw his name on his office door when I was in the G-l building," McCoy said. "I didn't see him."
"That figures, G-l," Zimmerman said. "That chair-warmer is a real G-l type."
Banning and McCoy chuckled.
"Killer," Zimmerman went on, conversationally, "you really should have let me shoot that no-good sonofabitch on the beach on Mindanao."
Banning and McCoy chuckled again, louder, almost laughed.
"Jack NMI Stecker said I could," Zimmerman argued. "You should have let me."
"I was there, Ernie," Banning said. "What Colonel Stecker said was that you could deal with Captain Macklin in any way you felt you had to, if, if, he got out of line. As I understand it, he behaved in the Philippines...."
"That sonofabitch was never in line," Zimmerman said. "And now he's a goddamn major, and they're giving you me boot? Jesus H. Christ!"
"Ernie, I told Ken we wouldn't talk about... that... un-less he brought up the subject," Banning said.
"How are you not going to talk about it?"
"By not talking about it," Banning said.
"So what are you going to do? Take the stripes they offer you, or get out?" Zimmerman asked, ignoring Banning.
"Would you take the stripes, Ernie?" McCoy countered.
"I thought about that," Zimmerman said. "Christ, when we were in the Fourth in Shanghai, I was hoping I could make maybe staff sergeant before I got my twenty years in. But that was then, Ken. A lot's happened to us-especially you-since then. No, I don't want to be a sergeant again, having to kiss the ass of some dipshit like Macklin, or some nice kid who got out of the Naval Academy last year."
"Spoken like a true master gunner," Banning said, chuckling.
Master gunners are the Marine equivalent of Army war-rant officers. While not commissioned officers, they are en-titled to being saluted and to other officer privileges. They are invariably former senior noncommissioned officers with long service, and expertise in one or more fields of the military profession. Their pay and allowances, depending on their rank within the master gunner category, approxi-mates that of second lieutenants through majors.
"What did they offer you?" Zimmerman asked.
"I won't know that until I get back to Pendleton," Mc-Coy said.
"You give any thought to what you would do if you do get out?"
"Fill toothpaste tubes at American Personal Pharmaceu-tical," McCoy said. "I've got an in with the boss's daugh-ter. I don't know, Ernie. I'm going to think about it on the way to California. Right now, I have no goddamn idea."
"Colonel, you tell him about the island?" Zimmerman said.
"There hasn't been time," Banning said.
"Island?" McCoy asked. "What island? The one where your great-grandfather buried the champagne glasses?"
"As a matter of fact, yes," Banning said. "You know where Hilton Head Island is?"
"Across from Parris Island? To the south?"
"Right. They're starting to develop Hilton Head, you know, put in a golf course, nice houses, that sort of thing. The family's got some property on Hilton Head..."
"Like five thousand acres," Zimmerman interjected.
"... and south of Hilton Head," Banning went on, ignor-ing him, "the family has an island."
"You own that one? That's where you buried glasses?" McCoy asked.
"Buried what glasses?" Zimmerman asked.
"Yes, we own it," Banning replied, again ignoring Zim-merman. "And Luddy and I, and Mae-Su and Ernie, have been talking about developing that ourselves."
"Where are you going to get the money?"
"Well, I have some," Banning said.
"And Mae-Su's made us a real bundle, Killer," Zimmer-man said. "Mae-Su figures that if we start now, don't get ourselves over our ass in debt, put everything we make back in the pot, starting about 1960,1961, we'll be in a po-sition to make a killing."
"Why a killing?" McCoy asked. "Why 1960?"
"Mae-Su asked me what a Marine lieutenant colonel has in common with an Army lieutenant colonel and a Navy commander."
"None of the above can find their asses with both hands?" McCoy quipped. "OK. I'll bite, what?"
"They don't have any place to go when they retire. They don't own houses, most of them, and they're going to have to
have someplace to go, and they would like to be around their own kind. Plus, they have pretty decent pensions."
"And 1960, 1961, because that's when the first of the World War Two guys can start to retire at twenty years?" McCoy asked.
"Exactly. The buildup started in 1940," Banning said.
"So what are you going to do between now and 1960?" McCoy asked.
W E B Griffin - Corp 09 - Under Fire Page 13