W E B Griffin - Corp 09 - Under Fire

by Under Fire(Lit)

  `Two things," Banning said. "One: Develop the property on Hilton Head. They're planning to sell houses, et cetera, to well-to-do people looking for a second home or a retire-ment home. We'll see how that's done, learn how to do it, and with a little luck make a little money, and invest that in the development of the other island."

  "What's `two'?" McCoy asked.

  "See if we can come up with some friendly investors, working partners," Banning said.

  "And you're loaded, Killer," Zimmerman said. "Think about it."

  "My wife is loaded," McCoy corrected him.

  "I'm as broke as any other marine gunner," Zimmerman said. "Mae-Su's made a lot of money. We're loaded. Not like you and The Colonel, but loaded."

  "It's more than the money, Ken," Banning said. "It would be something for you and Ernie to do, all three of us to do, when we hang up the uniform for the last time."

  "Like what?"

  "You know who's harder to cheat than an honest man?" Zimmerman asked, then answered his own question. "A China Marine, that's who. A graduate of the Bund School of Hard Knocks."

  "Most construction, Ken," Banning said, "is done by subcontractors. One firm puts in the sewers, another one the streets, another one the electricity, et cetera. What the builder, the contractor, has to do is make sure-"

  "They don't rob you blind," Zimmerman finished the thought for him. "And yeah, I do know what I'm talking about. When we built the last house in Beaufort, the one we're in now, I did the subcontracting. The first house we had, we got screwed by the numbers. This house, believe you me, we didn't."

  McCoy suddenly had a thought, from out of nowhere.

  When The Colonel said that General Pickering had called and told him what was going on, I presumed that he meant he told him everything. Why I got the boot from the Dai Ichi Building.

  But he didn't. He just told him that I was being involun-tarily relieved from active duty as an officer. And that's all that The Colonel told Ernie, because it was all he knew.

  They don't know what's going to happen in Korea.

  I don't know what's going to happen to me after what happens in Korea happens. If it happens before 30 May, will they keep me in the Corps as a captain? Or what? If they of-fer me, say, gunnery sergeant, and I take it, then what? Go to war as a gunnery sergeant in a line company? But if they of-fer me gunnery sergeant and I turn it down, and get out, they damned sure won't call me back as a captain.

  But I'm a Marine, and Marines are supposed to go-what's that line?-"to the sound of the musketry"-not the other way, to build houses on golf courses on islands for well-to-do people.

  "Why do I get the idea you're not listening to me?" Zim-merman asked, bringing him back to The Colonel's study.

  "I'm thinking, Ernie, I'm thinking," McCoy said.

  Then think of something.

  "Does The General know about this get-rich-quick scheme of yours?" he heard himself ask.

  "It's not a get-rich scheme, Ken-" Banning said, of-fended.

  "Fuck you, Killer," Zimmerman interrupted...

  "-and yes, he does. He said that whenever we're ready for an investment, to let him know."

  "I apologize for the wiseass remark," McCoy said. "I don't know why I said that."

  "Because you're a wiseass, and always have been a wiseass," Zimmerman said.

  "And with that profound observation in mind, we for-give you," Banning said. "Right, Ernie?"

  "Why not?" Zimmerman said.

  [TWO]

  "We have a small problem," Ernie McCoy said to her hus-band in the privacy of their room. "I couldn't figure out how to say `no' again."

  "No to who, about what?"

  "Apparently, Ernie and Ed are starting some kind of real estate development..."

  "They told me."

  "And Luddy thinks it would be just the thing for us when you get out of the Marine Corps."

  "And?"

  "They're going to propose at dinner that we go to the is-land-"

  "Which island? I think there's two islands."

  Ernie threw up her hands helplessly.

  "-to look at it."

  "General Pickering apparently did not tell them why I was sent home from Japan," McCoy said.

  "I picked up on that," Ernie said. "I almost blew that too, honey."

  " `Almost'?" he parroted.

  "They don't know," Ernie said.

  "Good. And we can't tell them, obviously."

  She looked at him curiously.

  "They would try to help," he explained. "Especially Ed Banning, and there's nothing he could do, except maybe get himself in trouble."

  "So what do we do?"

  "When Luddy proposes we go look at the island, we say, `Gee, what a swell idea!'"

  "They're not talking about much money," Ernie said. "A couple of hundred thousand."

  "You know how much I make in the Corps, made in the Corps. `A couple of hundred thousand dollars' is not much money."

  "You sign the Internal Revenue forms, you know what our annual income is," Ernie said. "Not to reopen that sub-ject for debate, I hope."

  They met each other's eyes for a moment, then Ernie went off on a tangent.

  "What I was thinking, honey, is that we don't have any place to go when... if... you get out of the Corps. Not about going in with them, but this Hilton Head Island place. It might be a nice place to build a house."

  "We could probably pick up a nice little place for no more than a couple of hundred thousand, right?"

  She didn't reply, but he thought he saw tears forming.

  "Baby, I'm sorry," he said.

  "It's all right."

  "I asked Zimmerman if he would go back to wearing stripes, and he said no, he wouldn't. I had already decided that I wasn't going to either, but it was nice to hear that I wasn't alone."

  "I told you that was your decision," Ernie said.

  "Yeah. I remember," he said.

  "And I meant it," she said.

  "I know, baby. But it wouldn't have worked. It just wouldn't have worked. For me, or for you."

  She nodded but didn't speak.

  "I don't know what's going to happen if I'm wrong," he said.

  "About `the worst-case scenario'?"

  He nodded.

  "I hope I am wrong," McCoy said. "I hope that there is no war, that I get separated 30 June, that-"

  "We could come back here and go in the real estate de-velopment business?"

  "Either that, or to Jersey, and the executive trainee posi-tion your father offered me."

  "He means well, sweetheart...."

  "I know, and for all I know, I might find Personal Phar-maceuticals a real challenge."

  "Ken, for the last goddamn time, that was Daddy's idea of trying to be a nice guy. If I had known he was going to propose that, I would have stopped him."

  "You told me that, and I believe it," he said. "But to get back to the point, the worst possible scenario may be what happens. If I'm out of the Marine Corps should that hap-pen..."

  "You're out, right? There's no way they can call you back in?"

  "There was a light colonel, a nice guy named Brewer, in the G-1 `s office at Pendleton. He had me in his office, and he let me know that he thought it was a dirty deal to `involun-tarily separate' me just because I don't have a college de-gree. Anyway, I asked a couple of questions, and the answer to one was that the Navy Department has the right to call someone back into the service in a national emergency up to a hundred and eighty days from the date of their separation "

  "Oh, God!"

  "After that, the separation becomes permanent. The thinking is, I suppose, that after six months, you've forgot-ten everything you knew. But for one hundred eighty days, I'd be subject to recall."

  "Maybe they wouldn't want you back."

  "Because I'm a troublemaker, and got a final fitness re-port from Captain Edward C. Wilkerson, USN, using words like `irresponsible' and `lacking basic good judg-ment'? Probably not to intelligence duties-I do
n't even have a security clearance anymore. Did I tell you that?"

  She shook her head, "no."

  "But I would be a former Marine captain, presumed to have the basic skills of any Marine captain. I don't think they'd give me command of a line company, but the Corps always needs motor officers, supply officers..."

  "That's so goddamned unfair!"

  "This is the `worse' that priest was talking about when we got married, `for better or for worse.'"

  "Oh, honey!"

  "So what we're looking at, to try to start something new in our life, baby, is 1 December 1950, not the end of this month. Between now and then, we'll just have to hold our breath."

  "We'll really be starting something new in our life about then," Ernie said. "If nothing goes wrong again this time."

  "Nothing will go wrong this time," McCoy said, with a conviction he didn't feel. "And with that in mind, what the hell, why not, what's a measly couple of hundred thou-sand, why don't we look for a place on Banning's Island where we can build a house? We can't just sit around wait-ing for the other shoe to drop. And maybe we'll get lucky."

  "Well, maybe not build a house," Ernie said. "Maybe just buy one, a small one, until we see what happens."

  [THREE]

  THE WILLIAM BANNING HOUSE

  66 SOUTH BATTERY

  CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

  1400 24 JUNE 1950

  Stanley loaded the basket of fried chicken and "other munchables" Mother Banning had prepared so that Ken and Ernestine-Mother Banning could not force herself to refer to Mrs. McCoy as "Ernie"-would have something to eat on the road, in the middle seat of the Buick station wagon, and then went up the wide staircase to the house to an-nounce that everything was ready.

  He had also loaded, in the back of the station wagon, two large, tall, cardboard tubes that The Colonel had pre-pared. One contained a plat of the Banning property on Hilton Head Island, showing the proposed subdivision, with a triple lot (A-301, A-302, and A-303) marked in red. The triple lot was on a high bluff over the Atlantic Beach- it would be necessary to construct a stairway to the beach, but what the hell, that was better than having the Atlantic Ocean come crashing through your living room in a once-in-a-century hurricane-and when the proposed golf course was built, would have a view of the fairways, far enough away from them to prevent golf balls from crash-ing into the house's windows.

  The second cardboard tube contained a preliminary plat for the proposed subdivision of Findlay Island, which was south of, one-sixth the size of, and shielded from the At-lantic Ocean by Hilton Head.

  The thinking was that the sooner they got things rolling on Hilton Head, the sooner there would be money to put into the development of Findlay Island. Moving cau-tiously, they would be ready in plenty of time for the wave of military retirees that would start in 1960, and grow for the five years after that.

  Colonel Banning had made it clear that he wasn't trying to sell anything, that it was just something Ken and Ernie should take a close look at, think about.

  There would be plenty of time to do that on the way to Camp Pendleton.

  Ken and Ernie had originally intended to spend only a day or two with the Bannings. Then they would have driven to Beaufort, South Carolina, outside Parris Island to spend another day-or part of one-with the Zimmermans. From there, they had planned to drive to St. Louis, Missouri, to spend a day-or part of one-with George Hart, and then from there to southern California.

  Instead, after two days in Charleston, they'd gone to Beaufort with the Bannings and spent three days there, in Zimmerman's surprisingly large and comfortable house on the water. Two days had been spent looking at the property on the islands, and on the third, the men had all put on their uniforms and taken a physical trip down memory lane to the U.S. Marine Corps Recruit Training Depot, Parris Island. Captain McCoy had taken his boot camp at Parris Island, and had been back only once since then, when, shortly after he'd returned from the Makin Island raid he'd been assigned to work for General Pickering, and had gone there to jerk Private George Hart out of a recruit platoon to serve as Pickering's bodyguard.

  The next day, the McCoys and the Bannings had re-turned to the house on the Battery in Charleston, and a farewell dinner prepared for them under the supervision of Mother Banning.

  With the time spent, they were now going to have to drive straight across the country to San Diego, and put off the visit to George Hart until after McCoy went through the separation process at Camp Pendleton.

  Mother Banning surprised her son by going down the wide staircase to the Buick-instead of standing, as she usually did, on the piazza, with her hands folded on her stomach when guests left-to kiss both Ernestine and Ken goodbye.

  "Drive carefully," Colonel Banning said. "And give this some serious thought, Ken."

  "Yes, sir, we will," Ken said, shook his hand, and got be-hind the wheel.

  At the end of the Battery, waiting for a chance to move into the flow of traffic, he said, "I wish I could."

  "Could what?"

  "Give it some serious thought. Doing what they're going to be doing looks like a lot more fun than filling toothpaste tubes."

  There was a break in the flow of traffic, and he eased the Buick into it.

  "Things will work out, sweetheart," Ernie said. "What is it they say, `it's always darkest before the dawn'?"

  He laughed, but it was more of a snort than a laugh.

  "What time is it, honey?" Ernie asked.

  He looked at his watch.

  "A little after 1400," he said.

  "You're going to have to get used to saying `two,'" she said.

  "I guess," he said, and added, "Mrs. McCoy, it is now a little after two p.m."

  Ernie chuckled.

  There is a fourteen-hour difference between Charleston, South Carolina, and the Korean Peninsula. In other words, when it was a little after two p.m. on 24 June 1950 in Charleston, South Carolina, it was a little after four a.m., 25 June 1950, on the Korean peninsula.

  The North Korean attack against the Ongjin Peninsula on the west coast, northwest of Seoul, began about 0400 with a heavy artillery and mortar barrage and small-arms fire delivered by the 14th Regiment of the North Korean 6th Division. The ground attack came half an hour later across the 38th parallel without ar-mored support. It struck the positions held by a battal-ion of the Republic of Korea Army's 17th Regiment, commanded by Colonel Paik In Yup.

  PAGE 27

  U.S. ARMY IN THE KOREAN WAR

  OFFICE OF THE CHIEF OF MILITARY HISTORY

  DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY

  WASHINGTON, D.C., 1960

  [ONE]

  THE COMMUNICATIONS CENTER

  THE PENTAGON

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  1710 24 JUNE 1950

  The first "official" word of the North Korean incursion of South Korea was a radio teletype message sent to the As-sistant Chief of Staff, G-2, Department of the Army in Washington by the military attach‚ of the U.S. Embassy in Seoul at 0905 Korean time 25 June 1950. It entered the Army's communications system a relatively short time af-terward, probably "officially"-that is to say, was "logged" in-in a matter of minutes, say at about 1710 Washington time 24 June 1950.

  25 June 1950 was a Saturday. While the Pentagon never closes down, most of the military and civilian personnel who work there during the week weren't there, and only a skeleton crew was on duty.

  There was a bureaucratic procedure involved. The mes-sage was classified Operational Immediate, the highest, rarely used, priority, and on receipt the senior officer on duty in the communications room was immediately noti-fied that an Operational Immediate from Korea for the G-2 had been received, and immediately sent to the Crypto-graphic Room for decryption.

  The signal officer on duty telephoned the duty officer in the office of the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, giving him a heads-up on the Operational Immediate, and informing him that he would deliver the message personally as soon as it was decrypted.

  In t
urn, the G-2 duty officer immediately telephoned the Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, and caught him at his quar-ters at Fort Myer, Virginia.

  The Army's chief intelligence officer told his duty offi-cer that he was just about out the door to attend a cocktail and dinner party at the Army and Navy Club in the District, but would stop by the Pentagon en route to have a look at the Operational Immediate from Korea.