The Corps V - Line of Fire

by W. E. B Griffin

  "I took him out of the Naval Hospital in Philadelphia, Teddy," McCoy explained. "That was dumb. He's not nearly as healthy as he thinks he is. He took some nasty mortar hits on the `Canal."

  "He going to be all right?"

  "Hung over," McCoy said. "Teddy, we'll be taking Hart with us. Same deal as before, with Moore. I want him to disappear from his company and I don't want anybody talking about it."

  "You got it, Ken."

  "I don't know what's going on," Staff Sergeant Hungleberry said.

  "That's right, you don't," Sergeant Major Osgood said.

  "What you're going to do now is take Hart to collect his stuff and then bring him back here. If anybody asks any questions tonight, refer them to me. I'll fix things with the brass in the morning."

  "OK," Hungleberry said, doubtfully.

  "What about the other guys, Ken?"

  "I'll make my manners with the G-2 first thing in the morning, and I want to see them as soon as possible after that."

  "Aye, aye, Sir. You going to need any help with him?"

  "I was thinking of giving him a cold shower," McCoy said.

  "Fuck your cold shower," Lieutenant John Marston Moore said. And then he was nauseated again.

  [Three]

  TASIMBOKO, GUADALCANAL

  0530 HOURS 8 SEPTEMBER 1942

  In early September, intelligence from Native Scouts attached to the First Marine Division reported several thousand Japanese in the vicinity of the village of Tasimboko, twenty miles down the coast from Henderson. Previous intelligence had placed the Japanese strength at no more than three hundred.

  The inclination was to disbelieve this report, since it had not come from an established source and there were no confirming data from other sources. But arguing for it was the reputation of the Native Scouts. They had originally been part of the Royal Australian Navy Coastwatcher Establishment. Not only were they men of incredible courage, they had never been wrong before.

  On 6 September 1942, an operations order was issued by Headquarters, First Marine Division, ordering the formation of a provisional battalion. After formation it would proceed by sea from Lunga Point to a beach near Taivu Point, from where it would stage a raid on the village of Tasimboko. The primary purpose of the raid was to confirm or deny the presence of several thousand Japanese and to destroy whatever Japanese materiel came into their hands.

  The provisional battalion consisted of elements of the 1st Raider Battalion and the 1st Parachute Battalion. These "elements" were all that was left of them after the invasion. The parachute battalion had taken severe losses.

  Lieutenant Colonel "Red Mike" Edson was senior to the 1st Parachute Battalion commander, and thus he was placed in command.

  Transport from the port of departure (the beach near First Marine Division headquarters) to the raid site was to be by high-speed transport. This was something of a misnomer.

  High-speed transports were World War I destroyers with half their boilers removed; the space was converted to troop berthing. Removal of the boilers had lowered the vessels' speed to approximately that of an ordinary transport, but the ex-destroyers had retained most of their armament.

  When the high-speed transports appeared offshore, it was immediately evident that there were not enough of them to carry the entire provisional battalion. And so hasty amendments were made to the operations order. These called for the 1st Raider Battalion to board the transports, invest and secure the beach near Tasimboko, and then hold in place until the transports could return to Lunga Point, board the 1st Parachute Battalion, and transport them to the raid area.

  The Raiders began to land east of Tasimboko at dawn.

  Largely because Gunnery Sergeant Joseph J. Johnston took one glance at him and decided that the large, muscular, mean looking sonofabitch was just what he needed, Sergeant Thomas McCoy's reception at Company A, 1st Raider Battalion, was considerably warmer than it had been at Headquarters, 21st Marine Air Group.

  For one thing, Able Company was considerably under strength. It took losses during the initial invasion a month before when the 1st Raider Battalion, under Lieutenant Colonel "Red Mike" Edson, landed near Lunga Point on Tulagi, a small island twenty-odd miles across SeaLark Channel from Guadalcanal.

  And they'd gotten no replacements. Like every other Marine on Guadalcanal, Sergeant Johnston was very much aware that the goddamn Navy sailed away from the beaches with a hell of a lot of Marines, equipment, ammunition, and heavy artillery still in the holds of the transports. And even if some available bodies were ashore, it was unlikely that Colonel Edson would have asked for them: They would have been bodies, not Raiders. Raiders were special to begin with, and they'd been molded into something really special by their training and their first combat.

  There had been additional losses since the invasion, most of them due to what The Corps called "noncombat causes." That translated to mean there were a great many very sick Raiders, brought down by tropical disease, mostly malaria, but including some diseases the surgeons and corpsmen had never heard of, much less seen before.

  In Sergeant Johnston's opinion, the "rest" they gave the 1st Raiders before they were brought across SeaLark Channel to Guadalcanal had not restored them to what they were before.

  What it did was keep a great many more people from getting sick.

  So Company A-for that matter, the entire 1st Raider Battalion-was understrength. And the available Marines were on the edge of sickness or near exhaustion (or both) from the lousy chow, the high heat and humidity, and all the necessary manual labor they had to perform.

  But there was one particular personnel shortage Sergeant Johnston was especially aware of. He was a great admirer of one particular weapon in The Marine Corps arsenal, the Browning Automatic Rifle-a combination rifle and a machine gun that fired the same.30-06 cartridge.

  The weapon, known as the BAR, was considerably lighter than the standard.30 caliber Browning machine gun; but like a machine gun, it was capable of full automatic fire: As long as you held the trigger back and there were cartridges in the magazine, the weapon would continue to fire.

  Cartridges were held in a 20-round magazine that was quickly replaceable when emptied. In fact, it was easier and quicker to change a BAR's 20-round magazine than it was to recharge with a stripper clip the nonreplaceable five-shot magazine of a Springfield rifle.

  The BAR was commonly equipped with a bipod, two metal legs fixed to the barrel near the muzzle. They permitted accurate fire at great distance. And it had a well-earned reputation for reliability. The trouble was that at about sixteen pounds, it was twice as heavy as the Springfield rifle. The heavy weight, coupled with the recoil, meant that few men indeed could fire the BAR from the shoulder. Sergeant Johnston was one of them; and when he saw Sergeant Thomas McCoy, one of his first thoughts was that he was looking at somebody else who just might be able to do it.

  "Your jacket says you made the Makin Island raid."

  "I made the fucker, Sergeant."

  "What'd you do?"

  "I had a Boys." The Boys Rifle was developed by the Royal Army after World War I as an antitank weapon. It was a.55 caliber bolt-action rifle, which in size-it weighed thirty-six pounds was to the BAR what the BAR was to the Springfield. It was a weapon Sergeant Johnston admired as other men might admire a Rolls-Royce or a Renoir.

  "You had a Boys? We're talking about the same weapon? A British.55 caliber Boys?"

  "I had a fucking Boys," Sergeant McCoy said with quiet pride.

  Sergeant Johnston had heard that Lieutenant Colonel Evans Carlson, who commanded the 2nd Raider Battalion, had authorized his men to arm themselves with any weapon they wished. This was the first proof he'd had of that.

  "You do any good with it?"

  "I shot up a fucking Jap airplane," McCoy replied. "Put a dozen rounds in the sonofabitch. It tried to take off, got fifty feet in the air, and fucking blew up." That would explain the Bronze Star for valor that Sergeant McCoy's records recorded, Sergean
t Johnston realized. There was no mention of any specific act, but there wouldn't be if he had shot down an airplane with a Boys.

  "I guess you can use a BAR all right, huh?"

  "Yeah, sure."

  "Off hand?" Very few men could fire the BAR off hand-in other words, standing up and holding the BAR like a Springfield.

  "Yeah, sure."

  "Tell you what, McCoy," Sergeant Johnston said. "I got what you might call a provisional heavy weapons squad I think might be just the place for you."

  "What's a provisional heavy weapons squad?"

  "Twelve guys instead of eight. Two BARS. Two guys with Springfields.

  The rest carry Thompsons and ammo bandoliers for the BARS."

  "Yeah, maybe. I think I'd like that," McCoy replied.

  Sergeant Johnston did not, however, take Sergeant McCoy at his word. He checked his knowledge of the BAR, which proved to be adequate, and then he tested his marksmanship with it. Sergeant McCoy turned out to be a fucking artist firing the BAR.

  When Sergeant Johnston saw Sergeant McCoy walking across the beach at Tasimboko, his BAR suspended at waist height from his shoulder, trailed by two Marines loaded down with BAR magazines, firing the sonofabitch in two- and three shot bursts with all the finesse of a fucking violin player, he began to suspect that giving the provisional heavy weapons squad to Sergeant McCoy had been a correct command decision.

  Twenty minutes later, when one of the ammo bearers returned in the dual role of ammunition replenishment and runner, there was proof positive:

  "Sergeant McCoy took out a Jap outpost," the guy said "and then we took a Jap artillery battery. He wants to know what you want him to do now."

  "Get your ass back up there and tell him to dig in. We're about to get some air support." Five minutes later the air support arrived. It consisted of those funny-looking Army Air Corps P-400 fighters, accompanied by Marine SBD bombers.

  By the time the bombing and strafing ended, the transports had returned and landed the elements of the 1st Parachute Battalion. And so a general advance on the village was ordered.

  It was necessary to ask for additional air support to drive the defenders from the village, but by quarter to ten it was secure.

  The intelligence report of the ex-Coastwatcher Establishment Native Scouts proved to be accurate.

  The Marines of the provisional battalion spent almost two hours destroying Japanese materiel, almost certainly recently landed. It included several landing craft, one 37mm cannon (McCoy had captured it early on), four 75mm cannon, radios, and large stocks of ammunition and medical supplies.

  At 1230 hours, the Marines were ordered to return to the beach to reboard the transports. They took with them two of their own dead and six wounded. They left behind twenty-seven dead Japanese and an uncounted number of Japanese wounded.

  Lieutenant Colonel "Red Mike" Edson stood at the sandbagged entrance to the command post of the Commanding General, First Marine Division, until General Alexander Archer Vandergrift sensed his presence. When Vandergrift looked at him, Edson saluted, and then went into the CP.

  "How did it go, Mike?"

  "Two KIA, six WIA, two seriously."

  "I'm sorry."

  "The Native Scouts were right, Sir."

  "They usually are."

  "We destroyed a large amount of materiel. Here's a list, Sir." He handed the list to Vandergrift, who read it and then looked at him.

  "Large quantities of medical supplies would seem to indicate a large force, wouldn't you say?"

  "Yes, Sir. And that much ammo translates to a lot of weapons, too, Sir. I took what documentation I could find to G-2 to get it translated, but there's no question in my mind that what we captured was not what the Japanese here took with them into the boondocks when we landed." Vandergrift nodded but did not reply.

  "There's several thousand Japs in that area, General. What I don't understand is why they didn't attack us."

  "Conservation of force for future action is often a wise choice," Vandergrift said. "I would guess that after he saw, how you landed your force in two segments, the Japanese commander decided that you didn't intend to stay. Therefore there was no point in expending assets to throw you back in the sea."

  "Yes, Sir."

  "He can better use those assets here," Vandergrift said, pointing to the map. "Either trying to knock Henderson Field out of operation, or even taking it. I don't like those 75mm cannon. If you captured four, I think we better count on a lot more."

  "Yes, Sir. I thought about that."

  "Take a look at this, Mike," Vandergrift said, and handed him a sheet of paper with TOP SECRET stamped on it top and bottom.

  "`The operation to surround and recapture Guadalcanal will truly decide the fate of the control of the entire Pacific,'" Edson read aloud.

  "From Lieutenant General Harukichi Hyakutake to the 17th Army," Vandergrift said. "Odd how the minds of brilliant men run in the same paths, isn't it, Mike?"

  "May I ask where you got this, Sir?"

  "No, you may not."

  "General, there's a rumor going around that we've broken the Japanese codes."

  "Mike, you've got a major flaw," Vandergrift said coldly.

  "You don't know how to take no for an answer."

  "Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir."

  "You can consider this an order, Colonel. You will tell no one, repeat, no one, that I showed you that document."

  "Aye, aye, Sir." Vandergrift met Edson's eyes long enough to convince him that he had made his point, paused long enough to curse himself for showing him the MAGIC intercept in the first place, and then allowed his facial muscles to relax.

  "So how were the men?"

  "They're tired, General, and I think undernourished."

  Vandergrift nodded.

  Are you putting anyone in for a decoration?"

  "No, Sir," Edson said. "There were no `conspicuous acts of gallantry' that I know about. Maybe later. But I am going to make one buck sergeant a staff sergeant."

  "What did he do?"

  "Well, I was up pretty close to the line when we got our air support-which was right on the money, General-"

  "I'm glad to hear that."

  "-and when the strafing and bombing lifted, I looked around, and marching down this little path in the boondocks was this great big guy with a BAR. He had it suspended from his neck and was firing it from the hip. He had two Marines with spare magazines running to keep up with him. And he was smiling from ear to ear. It looked like a World War One movie with Douglas Fairbanks."

  "Really?"

  "I figure any man who can smile when he's hauling a BAR around deserves to be a staff sergeant."

  "I concur, Colonel," Vandergrift said with a smile.

  [Four]

  THE FOSTER LAFAYETTE HOTEL

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  0755 HOURS 9 SEPTEMBER 1942

  Captain Edward L. Sessions, USMC, was standing inside the lobby of the hotel when the LaSalle convertible pulled up at the curb.

  He quickly put his brimmed cap on and walked to the curb, reaching it just as the doorman pulled the car door open.

  "Good morning," he said. "Let me get in the back." There were three people in the front seat, two of whom he knew, Lieutenants McCoy and Moore. The man he had come to see, Private George Hart, was at the wheel.

  McCoy slid forward on the seat, permitting Sessions to squeeze into the back.

  All three of them looked as if they had driven through the night, which was of course the case.

  "Let's go somewhere and get a cup of coffee," Sessions said, sitting on the forward edge of the rear seat, trying to get a better look at Hart.

  "Turn right on Pennsylvania Avenue," McCoy ordered.

  "There's a place we can go a couple of blocks away."

  "Aye, aye, Sir," Hart replied.

  He was very much aware that in the normal course of events he should have been on the drill field at Parris Island at this hour, not at the wheel of a LaSalle converti
ble, driving past the White House.

  "Long ride?" Sessions asked.

  "You said it," McCoy said, "and we ran into a patriotic Virginia highway cop who took this new 35-mph speed limit very seriously. He said he was really surprised that Marines of all people, they should know better-would be speeding."

  "Get a ticket?"

  "No." McCoy chuckled. "Hart still had his badge. Professional courtesy. He let us go."

  "You were a detective, I understand, Hart?"