Under Fire

by Griffin, W. E. B.

  “Oh, really?” the captain said. “You’ve heard, McCoy, that Major Pickering went down?”

  “Yes, sir, I have.”

  “We all feel bad about that,” the captain said.

  He shook his head, then went on: “It would probably be useful, Captain, if we knew why you wanted the photographs, ” the captain said.

  “Sir,” McCoy said. “The problem there is that I can’t take the risk of another aviator going down with that knowledge.”

  “Obviously, it has to do with an amphibious operation in the Inchon area,” the captain said. “On our way here—before the First Marine Brigade was diverted to Pusan—I was given a preliminary alert that such an operation—”

  “Operation Blueberry,” his executive officer furnished.

  The captain flashed him a displeased look and then went on: “—was being planned. And then it was called off. Since you come here asking for photographs of the Flying Fish Channel islands, it would then seem logical to me that the operation is back on, or another operation with the same purpose is being planned. My point, Captain, is that if I can figure that out, so can the enemy.”

  This guy doesn’t like getting his marching orders from a lowly captain. If I were the captain of an aircraft carrier, I wouldn’t either.

  McCoy didn’t respond directly. Instead, he dipped into the cavernous pockets of his utilities, came out with a map, and laid it on the captain’s chart table.

  “My superiors feel, sir,” he said, “that during routine reconnaissance flights—or flights seeking to engage targets of opportunity—along the coastline here, photographs could be taken of the Flying Fish Channel, and the islands along it, without unduly raising the enemy’s suspicions.”

  “Captain, as you’re doubtless aware, the First Marine Brigade is already engaged in the Pusan area,” the captain said. “The aircraft aboard the Badoeng Strait are charged with close air support of the brigade. What if there is a conflict between what the brigade needs and your photographic mission?”

  “Sir, I would hope that this requirement would not conflict with the requirements of the brigade—”

  “But if it does?” the captain asked, not very pleasantly.

  “This mission, sir, requires photographs as I have described at least once in every twenty-four-hour period until further notice,” McCoy said.

  “Even if that means the brigade doesn’t get what it asks for?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How am I to explain that to General Craig?”

  “General Craig is aware of this operation, sir.”

  “In detail?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And, if I understand you correctly, Captain, I am not to be made ‘aware’ of the details of this operation?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Those are your orders? Not to tell me?”

  “Sir, I was told that only General Craig was to be informed of the details.”

  “Captain, I’ll be very frank. If those orders you have just shown me were not signed by the Commander-in-Chief, I’d tell you to go to hell,” the captain said. He turned to his executive officer: “See that it’s done, Mr. Grobbley.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  The captain started to walk out of his sea cabin. The others watched him uncomfortably until someone on the bridge called out, “Captain on the bridge!” then Lieutenant Colonels Unger and Dunn—the two Marine aviators— bent over the map McCoy had spread on the captain’s chart table.

  “Charley,” Dunn said. “We’ll just have to squeeze this into the schedule. It can be done.”

  Lieutenant Colonel Unger snorted.

  Dunn raised his eyes to McCoy.

  “How do we get the pictures to you, McCoy?”

  “The first ones, sir, on the COD flights to K-1. In a sealed envelope, classified Top Secret, to be delivered to the Marine liaison officer at K-1. He’ll be expecting them, and I’ll get them, somehow, from him.”

  Dunn nodded.

  “In a week, sir,” McCoy went on, walking to the chart table, then pointing, “maybe less, they’ll have to be air-dropped onto one of the Tokchok-kundo islands, here. I’ll get the signal panel display to you. And there will be ground-to-air radios.”

  “You’re going to be on those islands, are you?” Dunn asked.

  McCoy didn’t reply.

  “The colonel asked you a question, Captain,” Lieutenant Colonel Unger said, unpleasantly.

  “Which question, obviously,” Dunn said, “Captain McCoy is not at liberty to answer. Easy, Charley.”

  “I don’t like diverting aircraft from the brigade for any purpose,” Unger said.

  “And I know Captain McCoy doesn’t like it any more than you do,” Dunn said. “You said you wanted to see me privately, McCoy?”

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  “Why don’t we go to my cabin?” Dunn suggested. “And get out of the captain’s sea cabin?”

  He gestured for McCoy to precede him into a passageway.

  The Badoeng Strait—and the Sicily—on which the Marine air wing had been transported from the United States and from which the wing was now operating, were officially “escort carriers,” often called “Jeep carriers.” They were smaller than “a real carrier,” and everybody believed they were in service because they were far cheaper to operate than “real” carriers.

  While they were perfectly capable of doing what they were doing now, they were smaller all over, which also meant “the creature comforts,” such as officers’ staterooms, were fewer in number and less spacious than those on a “real carrier.”

  Even senior officers often had to share their staterooms with another officer. There was a cardboard sign in a slot on the door of the stateroom to which Dunn led McCoy, white letters stamped on a blue background. It read:

  LT COL W. C. DUNN, USMC MAJ M. S. PICKERING, USMCR

  Dunn pushed the door open and motioned for McCoy to precede him inside, then gestured for him to sit in one of the two chairs in the stateroom. He closed the door and leaned against it.

  “Taking care of his gear is another little task Pick left behind for me to take care of,” Dunn said, pointing to a packed canvas bag sitting on one of the bunks.

  McCoy didn’t reply.

  “It has been decided that Major Pickering will become a Marine legend,” Dunn said. “An ace, a hero of Guadalcanal and other places, a reservist who rushed to the sound of the guns when they blew the trumpet, who flew the first Marine combat sortie of this war, and died nobly in the glorious traditions of the Corps while engaging a target of opportunity. The sonofabitch should have been court-martialed for disobeying a direct order, and I’m the sonofabitch who should have court-martialed him.”

  McCoy looked up at him.

  Tears were running unashamedly down Lieutenant Colonel Dunn’s cheeks.

  “What happened?” McCoy asked.

  Dunn went to the desk and took from it an envelope and handed it to McCoy. There were three eight-by-ten-inch color photographs in it. At first glance, McCoy thought they were three copies of the same photograph, but then he saw there were differences. In each, Pick, smiling broadly, was pointing up at the cockpit of his Corsair. But Pick was dressed differently in each photo. In one of the photos, he was wearing a .45 in a shoulder holster; in the others he was not. And he was wearing different flight suits. Then McCoy saw what he was pointing at.

  Below the cockpit canopy track there was the legend "Major M. S. Pickering, USMCR,” and below that, nine “meat balls,” representations of the Japanese battle flag, each signifying a downed Japanese aircraft.

  And then, on one photograph, below the meatballs, there was a rather clever painting of a railroad locomotive blowing up.

  There were two blowing-up locomotives painted on the fuselage in the second picture, and three in the third.

  “The sonofabitch told me he was going to be the first ‘locomotive ace’ in the history of Marine aviation,” Dunn said. “He even wrote a lett
er to the Air Force asking if they had kept a record of who had blown up how many locomotives in the Second War.”

  “Jesus Christ!” McCoy said.

  “He was like a fourteen-year-old with a five-inch fire-cracker on the Fourth of July after he got the first one,” Dunn said. “The first time, debris got his ADF, and there were holes all over his wings. That should have taught him something. It didn’t.”

  “That’s what he was doing when he got shot down?”

  “In direct disobedience of my order not to go locomotive hunting. Said direct order issued after he got his second locomotive, the debris from which took out the hydraulics to his left landing gear, which made it necessary for him to crash-land on the deck. I ordered him (a) not to go locomotive hunting—”

  “You don’t consider them important targets?” McCoy asked.

  “There’s plenty to shoot at out there. The idea, McCoy, is to fly over the area, and establish contact with the ground controller. He knows what needs to be hit. If he doesn’t have an immediate target you wait—they call it ‘loiter’— until he has a mission. If the controller didn’t have a mission, Pick then went locomotive-hunting.”

  McCoy didn’t reply.

  “Sure, locomotives, trains, are legitimate targets. We regularly schedule three-plane flights to see what’s on the railway. When three planes attack a train, their antiaircraft fire, ergo sum, is divided between the three airplanes. A single plane gets all the antiaircraft, which multiplies the chances of getting hit by three. Pick knew all this, and . . .” He stopped. “I (a) ordered him not to go locomotive hunting; (b) if he happened on a train, he was not to attack it without permission, and not try himself. The train’s not going to go anywhere in the time it would take to have a couple of Corsairs join up. . . .”

  “I get the picture,” McCoy said. “It sounds like Pick.”

  “My God, Ken, he’s not twenty-one years old anymore, fresh from Pensacola, thinking he can win the war all by himself. He was a goddamn major, a squadron commander, supposed to set an example for the kids. He set an example, all right. When he didn’t come back, the pilots in his squadron were ready to take off right then and shoot up every locomotive between Pusan and Seoul. Remember that football movie? Ronald Reagan? ‘Get one for the Gipper! ’ Now they want to ‘Bust one for the skipper’!”

  Dunn exhaled audibly.

  “I don’t know how the hell I’m going to stop that,” he went on. “What we are supposed to do here is provide close air support, on demand, for the brigade. Not indulge some childish whim to see a locomotive explode, as if Korea is a shooting gallery set up for our personal pleasure.”

  “You said ‘was,’ Billy,” McCoy said. “You think he’s dead?”

  Dunn shrugged.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “As he himself frequently announced, ‘God takes care of fools and drunks, and I qualify on both counts.’ ” He paused again. “I think he probably survived the crash. When I thought about it, that was the seventh Corsair he’s dumped. What happened afterward, I don’t know. The North Koreans obviously went looking for him. If they found him . . .”

  “If he survived, and was captured alive, they might want to see what they can find out about Marine aviation from a Marine major,” McCoy said. “What worries me is that they might make the connection between Major Pickering and Brigadier General Pickering . . .”

  “I didn’t think about that,” Dunn said.

  “. . . who is the Assistant Director of the CIA for Asia,” McCoy went on. “I don’t think there are many North Korean agents reading The Washington Post for their order of battle, but the Russians certainly do. That information was in Moscow within twenty-four hours of the time that story was printed. Did the Russians already pass it on to the North Koreans? I don’t know.”

  “Is there some way you can find out? If he’s a prisoner, I mean. An extra effort?”

  “When I get back to Pusan, and when I get to Tokchok-kundo, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Two questions,” Dunn said. “If you can’t answer them, fine. You’re going to . . . What was it you said?”

  “The Tokchok-kundo islands,” McCoy furnished. “Yeah, but keep that to yourself.”

  “How can you find out?”

  “I have some sources, maybe,” McCoy said. “Money— gold—talks, and I have some gold. All I can do is play it by ear.”

  “How’s the general taking this?”

  “Like a Marine,” McCoy said.

  “What does that mean? This Marine wept like a baby when Hotshot Charlie went down.”

  “He got the message, and stuck it in his pocket, and we finished the business at hand—setting up this operation— and then he took me into his bedroom and showed me the message.”

  “Tell him I’m sorry, Ken. Really sorry. It’s my fault.”

  “No, it isn’t, Billy. It’s nobody’s fault except maybe Pick’s. And if he got the train, then maybe there was ammo on it that won’t be shot at the brigade.”

  Dunn met his eyes, but didn’t say anything for a long moment.

  “What happens now? You, I mean?”

  “I don’t suppose there’s some other way except that Avenger to get back to Pusan?”

  “You didn’t find that fun?”

  “It scared hell out of me,” McCoy said.

  Dunn picked up the telephone on his desk and dialed a one-digit number.

  “Colonel Dunn for the captain, please,” he said to whoever answered, then: “Captain, Dunn. I’d like permission to take Captain McCoy back to Pusan to set up the photo delivery procedure.” He paused. “Aye, aye, sir,” he said, and broke the connection with his finger.

  “That was quick,” he said. “What the captain said was ‘Get that sonofabitch off my ship; I don’t care how’.”

  He dialed another number.

  “Colonel Dunn. Get a COD Avenger ready for immediate takeoff. I will fly.”

  He hung up.

  He turned to McCoy.

  “There’s an enlisted crew chief,” he said. “He rides in the aft position in the cockpit. I can’t order him out of there, but I can suggest if he lets you ride upstairs, he probably won’t have to clean puke out of the cargo hold.”

  [FOUR]

  USAF AIRFIELD K-1 PUSAN, KOREA 2155 4 AUGUST 1950

  The runway lights went off even before Lieutenant Colonel Dunn turned the Avenger onto a taxiway. There really wasn’t much chance of a North Korean attack on K-1, but on the other hand, the possibility existed, and runway lights would be as useful to an attacking aircraft as they would be to one landing.

  A Jeep, painted in a checkerboard pattern, and with a FOLLOW ME sign and a large checkerboard flag mounted on its rear, came out and led the Avenger to Base Operations. Dunn parked the airplane and shut it down, and he and McCoy climbed down from the cockpit.

  The crew chief, a slim, nineteen-year-old, blond crew-cutted aviation motor machinist’s mate, came through the small door in the fuselage.

  “Thanks for letting me ride on top,” McCoy said.

  “Anytime, Captain,” the Navy crew chief said.

  “Thank you, sir, for the ride,” McCoy said.

  “I’ll go see the Marine liaison officer with you,” Dunn said.

  “I’ve already spoken with him, sir,” McCoy said. “But thank you.”

  “But you’re a captain, and I’m a lieutenant colonel,” Dunn said. “It has been my experience that Marine captains pay more attention to lieutenant colonels than they do to other captains. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Yes, sir. I suppose that’s true. Thank you, sir.”

  “This won’t take long,” Dunn said to the crew chief. “Why don’t you see if anything important fell off, or is about to.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” the crew chief said, smiling.

  As Dunn and McCoy walked to the Base Operations building, a Marine with a Thompson submachine gun stepped out of the shadows and walked up to them and saluted.

  “Good e
vening, sirs,” he said. “Captain McCoy, sir?”

  McCoy returned the salute.

  “I’m McCoy.”

  “Technical Sergeant Jennings, sir. Mr. Zimmerman sent me to meet you.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In a warehouse on the pier, sir. With the others.”

  “You’ve got wheels?” McCoy asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’ll be with you in a minute,” McCoy said.

  There was someone else waiting for McCoy. When they entered the tiny room assigned to the Marine liaison officer, there was a plump army transportation corps major sitting backwards in a folding metal chair talking across a small wooden desk to the Marine liaison officer, whose folding chair was tilted back against the wall.

  Both got up when McCoy and Dunn entered the room.

  “Captain McCoy?” the Army major said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m Captain Overton, sir,” the Marine officer said to Dunn.

  Dunn nodded at him and looked curiously at the Army major.

  “My name is Dunston, McCoy,” the major said, and first handed McCoy a sheet of radio teletypewriter paper, and then before McCoy could unfold it to read it, extended a small, folding leather wallet, holding it so he could read it. It was the credentials of a CIA agent.

  McCoy nodded, then said, “You better show that to Colonel Dunn.”

  Somewhat reluctantly, the major did so, while McCoy read the sheet of paper.

  URGENT

  SECRET

  4 AUGUST 1950

  FROM STATION CHIEF, TOKYO

  MESSAGE TOKYO 4AUG50 05

  TO STATION CHIEF, PUSAN

  CAPTAIN K. R. MCCOY, USMCR, AND MASTER GUNNER E. ZIMMERMAN, USMC, OF THE PERSONAL STAFF OF THE CIA ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR ASIA ARE IN KOREA IN CONNECTION WITH A CLASSIFIED MISSION.

  BY AUTHORITY OF BRIG GEN FLEMING PICKERING, USMCR, CIA ASST DIR ASIA, SHOULD EITHER OF THESE OFFICERS CONTACT YOU FOR ANY ASSISTANCE IN CONNECTION WITH THEIR MISSION, YOU WILL FURNISH THEM WITH WHATEVER THEY ASK FOR FROM ASSETS UNDER YOUR CONTROL.

  IF YOU ARE UNABLE TO PROVIDE WHAT THEY REQUEST, STATION CHIEF TOKYO WILL BE ADVISED BY URGENT RADIOTELETYPE, CLASSIFIED TOP SECRET, OF WHAT YOU ARE UNABLE TO PROVIDE, WHY, AND WHAT YOU HAVE DONE AND ARE DOING TO ACQUIRE THE UNAVAILABLE REQUESTED SUPPORT.