“Captain McCoy,” Pick said. “If you would be so kind, go into Base Ops and call us a cab while the colonel and I tie down the airplane. We have to eat, and the food is much better at the Coronado Beach than in the O Club here.”
Pickering walked around the nose of the Staggerwing to where Dunn was really stretching to insert a tie-down rope into a link on the wing.
“Bill, so you don’t say anything in innocence. . . . What the Killer’s going to do at Pendleton is make up his mind whether he wants to go back to the ranks.”
“Jesus Christ!” Dunn said, in surprise. “I thought he at least would be the exception to the rule. . . .”
“What rule?”
“Commissioned officers have to have a college degree,” Dunn said. “I’ve lost four pilots in the last three months to that policy. But I thought they’d make an exception for somebody like McCoy.”
Pickering had not heard about that policy.
But if I let Wee Willy think that’s the reason the god damn Corps is giving him the boot, I won’t have to get into the Killer’s “There Will be a War in Korea in Ninety Days or Less” theory. Which, of course, I can’t anyway.
“I guess not,” Pickering said.
“Is he going to take stripes? Or get out?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think it would bother him to be a gunny, but Ernie . . .”
“Well, at least they don’t have any kids to worry about,” Dunn said.
“No, they don’t.”
Dunn looked at him thoughtfully.
“Pick, I can easily get a field-grade BOQ. If things would be awkward at the hotel.”
“Don’t be silly. There’s plenty of room, and I think having you around will be good for both of them.”
“What the hell is McCoy going to do outside the Corps? It’s all he knows.”
Pick Pickering threw up his hands in a gesture of helplessness.
Then the two of them started to walk toward Base Ops. Lieutenant Colonel Dunn was having thoughts vis-à-vis Major Pickering he did not—could not—share with him.
I love Pick, I really do. But the cold truth is that he is a lousy field-grade officer. A superb pilot—a natural pilot— and as far as courage goes, he makes John Wayne look like a pansy.
But, my God, he’s a Marine major, and he lands at a Navy field barefooted and dressed like a Hawaiian pimp in an airplane that he once flew under the Golden Gate Bridge—I got that incredible tale from George Hart, so it’s absolutely true.
I will, therefore, not tell Major Pickering that we have an old comrade-in-arms at Camp Pendleton who just might be able to turn the G-1 around about reducing McCoy to the ranks, and failing that, will certainly make his passage through the separation process at Pendleton as painless as possible.
If I told Pick, he’d hop in a cab, go out to Pendleton, in his Hawaiian pimp’s shirt and bare feet, march into the general’s office, and begin the conversation. “Clyde, you won’t believe what a fucking dumb thing the Corps has done this time . . .”
Well, maybe it wouldn’t be that bad, but it would be outrageous and thus counterproductive, and therefore I will not tell him what I’m going to do.
Not, of course, that there’s much chance that I will be able to do anything at all.
[FOUR]
OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY COMMANDING GENERAL CAMP PENDLETON, CALIFORNIA 1520 8 JUNE 1950
Captain Arthur McGowan, USMC, aide-de-camp to the Deputy Commanding General, a tall, slim, twenty-nine-year -old, put his head inside the general’s door.
“General, Colonel Dunn’s on the horn,” he said.
“I was getting a little worried,” Brigadier General Clyde W. Dawkins, USMC, replied. He was a tall, tanned, thin, sharp-featured man who had just celebrated his fortieth birthday.
He signaled with his index finger for Captain McGowan to enter the office, close the door behind him, and listen to the conversation on the extension telephone on a coffee table.
General Dawkins waited until McGowan had the phone to his ear before he picked up his own.
“I was getting a little worried, Bill,” General Dawkins said. “Your ETA was noon. Where are you?”
“At the Coronado Beach, sir.”
“I sort of thought you would be at Miramar,” General Dawkins said.
The Miramar Naval Air Station was the other side of San Diego—about fifteen miles distant.
“Bill,” the general went on before Dunn could answer, “you’re not going to tell me Pickering’s involved in this little operation of yours?”
“No, sir. But I’m in the suite. So’s Pick. And until three minutes ago, so was Killer McCoy. And his wife.”
General Dawkins was familiar with “the suite” in the Coronado Beach Hotel. Its fifteen rooms occupied about half of the fourth floor of the beachfront hotel, and was permanently leased to the Trans-Global Airways division of the Pacific & Far East Shipping Corporation.
At one time, before World War II, it had been leased to the Pacific & Far East Shipping Corporation for the use of the masters and chief engineers of P&FE vessels, and to house important passengers of the P&FE passenger fleet.
During World War II, on a space-available basis, its rooms had been made available to Marine and Navy officers with some connection to P&FE, or the Pickering family personally. That, in turn, had evolved into “the suite” becoming the unofficial quarters of Marine aviators, especially those who had served with VMF-229 on Guadalcanal, when they were assigned to—or passing through—one or another of San Diego’s Marine and Navy installations.
General Dawkins had many fond memories of the suite, and usually the first one that came to mind was of the harem of stunningly beautiful girls at one wartime party who had gathered like moths at a candle flame around Tyrone Power and MacDonald Carey, both of whom had put their Hollywood careers on hold to serve as Marine aviators.
Sometimes he remembered the party where the star had been the actor Sterling Hayden, who’d been a Marine officer, but in the OSS, not an aviator.
Now General Dawkins regarded the suite as a time bomb about to explode. The final evolution had been into where the Marine Reserve aviators stayed when in the area, at the invitation of Major Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR.
Although it had not come to General Dawkins’s official attention, he had no reason to doubt the rumors that, especially during the two weeks of summer training many Marine Corps Reserve aviators attended in the San Diego Area, considerable quantities of intoxicating spirits were consumed by them in the suite, in the company of young ladies who, despite their beauty, were not the type one took home to meet one’s mother. Or one’s wife.
“No kidding?” General Dawkins said. “Give him my best regards. McCoy, I mean.”
“Actually, sir, I’m calling about McCoy.”
“First things first, Bill,” Dawkins said. “There is at this moment in Hangar 212 at Miramar eight crates. . . .”
“Yes, sir, I know.”
“I don’t know, and don’t want to know, what they contain. ”
“Sir, they will be picked up first thing in the morning. My Gooney-Bird lost the oil pump in the port engine, and was delayed in Kansas City. Its ETA here—North Island— is 0500 tomorrow morning. Figure an hour to fuel it, and I’ll have it on the deck at Miramar at 0630, and with any luck at all, I’ll be wheels-up from Miramar at 0730.”
“ ‘I’ll be wheels-up’?” Dawkins parroted. “You’ll be flying the Gooney-Bird?”
The Gooney-Bird was R4D, the Navy/Marine version of the Douglas DC-3 twin-engine transport.
“Yes, sir. I came out here in a Corsair. One of my kids will take that back.”
“And you don’t think anyone will wonder why a light colonel is flying a R4D?”
“I thought the Navy might be less prone to question a lieutenant colonel, sir,” Dunn said.
That’s probably true. But the real reason, Wee Willy, that you’ll be flying the R4D is because you don’t want one of your officers c
atching the flak if this midnight requisition of ours goes awry; you’ll take the rap. You’re a good officer, Dunn.
“If you’re not wheels-up by 0830, give me—or Art Mc-Gowan—a heads-up, and I’ll start the damage control.”
“General, I really appreciate—”
“Save that until you’re back at Beaufort,” Dawkins said. “Save it until two weeks after you’re back at Beaufort.”
“General, even with cannibalizing, I can only get fifty-five percent of my Corsairs in the air—”
“I seem to recall, Colonel, your mentioning this before,” Dawkins interrupted him. “And, to save a little time here, ensuring that you will be wheels-up at Miramar with these crates aboard by 0830 tomorrow, let’s change the subject.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell me about the Killer,” Dawkins said.
“He’s being reduced to the ranks,” Dunn said.
“That goddamn college-degree nonsense again?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Oh, Jesus, Bill.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I’ve had a shot at it, but I don’t think I’ll be able to do much good. All I get is the same speech—there’s no money, we have to reduce the number of officers, and one of the elimination criteria is education.”
“Yes, sir. And actually, I think it’s too late to help the Killer. He was ordered home from Japan, to Pendleton, for separation not later than 30 June.”
“We’re going to wind up with an officer corps consisting mainly of college graduates who can’t find their ass with both hands,” Dawkins said, bitterly.
“General, what I was hoping you could do is spare the Killer as much of the separation nonsense as possible. It has to be a humiliation for someone like the Killer to be told the Corps doesn’t want him as an officer anymore.”
“What the hell is he going to do as a civilian?” Dawkins asked, rhetorically.
“Well, in the sense he doesn’t need a job, he’s a lot better off than some of the people caught in the reduction.”
It took Dawkins a moment to sort that out.
“Oh, yeah, that’s right. His wife has money, doesn’t she?”
“Her father is chairman of American Personal Pharmaceutical, ” Dunn said. “I understand there are two majority stockholders: Ernie McCoy’s father, and Ernie McCoy.”
“That much, huh? I’d heard something, but I had no idea she had that kind of money.”
“And even if that wasn’t true, the Pickerings, father and son, would make sure the Killer doesn’t go hungry.”
“And I think we can presume that when General Pickering heard the Corps was giving the Killer the boot, he did his best to see that it wouldn’t happen.”
“I’m sure he did, sir.”
“And couldn’t help, either,” Dawkins added, bitterly.
“It doesn’t look that way, sir.”
“So what can I do for the Killer, Bill?”
“Maybe have a word with the G-1, sir. Speed him through the process.”
“Done, Bill,” General Dawkins said.
“Thank you, sir.”
“When does he report in here?”
“He’s on his way out there right now, sir.”
“Then I’d better get off my ass, hadn’t I? Make sure you’re wheels-up by 0830, Bill, or we’re both liable to be reporting to the G-1 for involuntary separation.”
“I’ll do my best, sir. And thank you, sir.”
“Have a nice slow flight across the country, Colonel,” General Dawkins said. He hung up the telephone and turned to his aide. “Get the car, Art.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
[FIVE]
OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT CHIEF OF STAFF, G-1 HEADQUARTERS CAMP PENDLETON, CALIFORNIA 1545 8 JUNE 1950
The usual practice when one of Camp Pendleton’s general officers had business to transact with the G-1 was that the G-1, who was a full colonel, went to their offices. Thus, the G-1, Colonel C. Harry Wade, USMC, was surprised to hear someone bark, “Ten-hut on deck,” a command given only when someone senior to the senior officer on duty—in this case Colonel C. Harry Wade—came into the building.
Wade looked through his open office door to see what the hell was going on and saw Brigadier General Clyde Dawkins marching purposefully toward his office, trailed by his aide-de-camp.
Colonel Wade rose quickly to his feet.
“Got a minute for me, Harry?” General Dawkins asked, as he entered Wade’s office.
“Good afternoon, General,” Wade said. “Of course, sir. Can I offer you some coffee?”
“No, thanks,” Dawkins said. “I’m coffee-ed out. Art, will you close the door, please?”
Captain McGowan closed the door.
“I’m not sure, Harry,” General Dawkins said, “whether this is what you could call ‘for the good of the Corps,’ or personal. But I’m here.”
“How can I help, sir?”
“This goddamn college-degree nonsense has just gotten one more damned good Marine officer.”
“We’ve talked about that, General,” Wade said. “If this is a special case, I’ll get on the horn to Eighth and Eye. But I think I can tell you what they’re going to say.”
“Yes, I think I know, too,” Dawkins said. “I think it’s too late for anything to be done about this.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Does ‘Killer McCoy’ mean anything to you, Harry?”
“I’ve heard about him. He made the Makin Island raid, didn’t he? With Major Jimmy Roosevelt?”
“The Makin Island raid, and a hell of a lot else,” Dawkins said. “During the war, the Killer spent more time behind enemy lines than most people you and I know spent in the Corps.”
“Yes, sir. I know who he is. I’ve never met him.”
“You’re about to,” Dawkins said. “He’s on his way out here from Diego for involuntary separation. He’s a captain. He used to be a major. They took that away from him, and now they want to send him back to the ranks.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Colonel Wade said. “You could tell me this college-degree thing is stupid, but you’d be preaching to the choir.”
“I want his passage through your separation process greased,” Dawkins said. “And I don’t want him to suspect it was greased because somebody feels sorry for him.”
Wade did not reply directly.
“What the hell can a man like that do on civvy street?” he asked, as if of himself.
“I just found out he’s the opposite of hurting for money,” Dawkins said. “For whatever consolation that might be. His wife owns a large chunk of American Personal Pharmaceuticals, and the rest of it is apparently owned by her father.”
“In other words, he’s in the Corps because he wants to be,” Wade said.
“Exactly,” Dawkins said. “And now he’s getting the boot. I want that exit to be as painless as possible.”
“With your permission, sir,” Wade said, “I’d like to get Lieutenant Colonel Brewer in here. He’s in charge of involuntary officer separations.”
Dawkins thought that over for a moment.
There was no question in his mind that Colonel Wade would relay his desires to the lieutenant colonel. But it would take only another couple of minutes of his time, and the lieutenant colonel would have no question in his mind what the Deputy Commanding General wanted.
“Good idea, Harry,” Dawkins said.
Colonel Wade walked to his office door and opened it, and spoke to his administrative assistant.
“Sergeant, run over to Colonel Brewer’s office and tell him I’d like to see him right now.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“And if he has a file on a Captain McCoy, tell him to bring that with him.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Three minutes later, Lieutenant Colonel Brewer entered Colonel Wade’s office, carrying a large manila folder on which was lettered “MCCOY, K. R. CAPT USMCR.”
He was visibly surprised to
find the deputy commanding general resting his rear end on Colonel Wade’s desk.
“You know the general, of course, Brewer?”
“Yes, sir,” Lieutenant Colonel Brewer said. He had met Dawkins for no more than two minutes when reporting aboard Camp Pendleton.
“That’s McCoy’s file?” Dawkins asked.
“Yes, sir.”
He offered it to Dawkins, who took it.
“The general is interested in seeing that Captain Mc-Coy’s separation from the Corps be conducted as expeditiously as possible,” Colonel Wade said.
“Yes, sir. I understand.”
“You understand what?” Dawkins said.
“Sir, Captain McCoy’s reputation precedes him,” Lieutenant Colonel Brewer said.
“You bet your life it does,” Dawkins said, “but there is something in your tone of voice, Colonel . . .”
“Sir?”
“What exactly do you know about Captain McCoy?” Dawkins asked.
“Well, sir, from what I understand of Captain McCoy, he was lucky to be retained on active duty as an officer as long as he was.”
“Anything else?” Dawkins asked, softly.
“Sir, as I understand the situation,” Colonel Brewer began, slowly, having sensed that he was marching on very thin ice, and having absolutely no idea why that should be, “Captain McCoy was commissioned from enlisted status in the early days of World War Two when the Corps was desperately seeking officers.”
“And we commissioned practically anybody who could see lightning and hear thunder?” Dawkins asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Anything else?” Dawkins asked.
“Well, sir, it’s come to my attention that he’s . . . uh . . . in a financial position where he would be better off to spend his last twenty-nine days in the Corps on duty, rather than on leave. So that he could be paid for his unused accrued leave on separation, sir.”
“And what would you have Captain McCoy doing on his last twenty-nine days of active service, Colonel?”
“Well, sir, as I’m sure you know, there’s always something an officer can do. Inventory supply rooms. The Exchange. That sort of thing.”
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