The Corps II - CALL TO ARMS

by W. E. B Griffin

  And then the staff sergeant he had seen with Zimmerman walked up to him.

  "Staff Sergeant Koznowski, sir," he said.

  "I wanted a word with Sergeant Zimmerman, Sergeant," McCoy said. "If that would be all right with you."

  "Yes, sir," Koznowski said.

  "Zimmerman and I were in the Fourth Marines," McCoy said, as Zimmerman walked up to them.

  "Yes, sir," Koznowski said. "Zimmerman told me."

  And then Staff Sergeant Koznowski took a good look at Second Lieutenant McCoy and decided that Zimmerman had been bullshitting him. There was a Killer McCoy in the Corps, a tough China Marine who had killed two Eye-talian Marines when they had gone after him during the riots and who had left dead slopeheads all over the Peking Highway when they had been foolish enough to try to rob a Marine truck convoy Killer McCoy had been put in charge of.

  Stories like that moved quickly through the Corps. Koznowski had heard it several times. And Koznowski now recalled another detail. It had been Corporal Killer McCoy. And nobody got to make corporal with the 4th Marines in China on the first hitch. This pleasant-faced, boyish-looking second lieutenant wasn't old enough to have been a corporal in the China Marines, and he sure as hell didn't look tough enough to have taken on three Eye-talian marines by himself with a knife.

  "Zimmerman was telling me, sir," Staff Sergeant Koznowski said, with a broad, I'm-now-in-on-the-joke smile, "that you was Killer McCoy."

  Second Lieutenant McCoy's face tightened, and his eyes turned icy. "You never used to let your mouth run away with you, Zimmerman," he said, coldly furious.

  Zimmerman's face flushed. "Sorry," he said. Then he raised his eyes to McCoy's. "I didn't expect to see you in an officer's uniform."

  Very slowly, the ice melted in McCoy's eyes. "I didn't expect to see you on a train in New Jersey," he said. "How'd you get out of the Philippines?"

  "Never got there," Zimmerman said. "I come down with malaria and was in sick bay, and they never put me off the ship. It went on to Diego after Manila, and I was in the hospital there for a while. Then they shipped me here."

  "You all right now?" McCoy asked.

  "Yeah, I'm on limited duty. They're shipping me to the motor transport company at Parris Island."

  "The story I heard," Koznowski said, "was that Killer McCoy was a corporal."

  The ice returned to McCoy's eyes. He met Koznowski's eyes for a long moment until Koznowski, cowed, came to a position of attention.

  Then he turned to Zimmerman and said something to him in Chinese. Zimmerman chuckled and then replied in Chinese. Koznowski sensed they were talking about him.

  McCoy looked at Koznowski again. "I was a corporal in the Fourth Marines, Sergeant," he said. "Any other questions?"

  "No, sir."

  "In that case, why don't you go check on your men?" McCoy said.

  "Aye, aye, sir," Staff Sergeant Koznowski said. Fuck you! he thought. He walked down the aisle. Then he thought, I'll be a sonofabitch. He really is Killer McCoy. I'll be goddamned!

  "What about your family, Ernie?" McCoy asked, still speaking Chinese.

  "Had to leave them in Shanghai," Zimmerman said. "I gave her money. She said she was going home."

  "I'm sorry," McCoy said.

  "I wasn't the only one," Zimmerman said. "Christ, even Captain Banning couldn't get his wife out. You heard he married that White Russian?"

  McCoy nodded.

  Captain Edward J. Banning had been the Intelligence Officer of the 4th Marines in Shanghai. Corporal Kenneth J. McCoy had worked for him. McCoy thought that Banning was everything a good Marine officer should be.

  And he had heard from Captain Banning himself that Banning had married his longtime mistress just before the 4th Marines had sailed from Shanghai to reinforce the Philippines, and that she hadn't gotten out before the war started. He had heard that from Banning as they lay on a bluff overlooking the Ungayen Gulf watching the Japanese put landing barges over the sides of transports. But this was not the time to tell Ernie Zimmerman about that.

  "How'd you get to be an officer?" Zimmerman asked.

  "They got what they call a platoon leader's course at Quantico," McCoy said. "It's like boot camp all over again. You go through it, and you come out the other end a second lieutenant."

  "You look like an officer," Zimmerman said. It was more of an observation than a compliment, and there was also a suggestion of surprise.

  "With what I had to pay for these uniforms," McCoy said, "I damned well better."

  Zimmerman chuckled. "It got you a good-looking woman, at least," he said.

  McCoy smiled and nodded. But he did not wish to discuss Miss Ernestine Sage with Sergeant Ernie Zimmerman.

  "Ernie," he said. "If you like, I think I can get you a billet as a translator."

  "What I want to do is figure out some way to get back to China," Zimmerman said.

  "It'll be a long time before there are any Marines in China again," McCoy said.

  "I have to try," Zimmerman said. "That what they got you doing, McCoy? Working as a translator?"

  "Yeah, something like that."

  "I'm a motor transport sergeant, McCoy," Zimmerman said.

  "The Corps got a lot of those," McCoy said. "But not many people speak two kinds of Chinese."

  Zimmerman paused thoughtfully.

  "What the hell," he said finally. "If you can fix it, why not? I'd be working for you?"

  "I don't know about that," McCoy said. "But it would be a better billet than fixing carburetors at Parris Island would be.

  Chapter Three

  (One)

  Corregidor Island

  Manila Bay, Island of Luzon

  Commonwealth of the Philippines

  2115 Hours, 5 January 1942

  The United States submarine Pickerel, a 298-foot, fifteen-hundred-ton submersible of the Porpoise class, lay two hundred yards off the fortress island of Corregidor. There was a whaleboat tied alongside, from which small and heavy wooden crates were being unloaded and then taken aboard through the fore and aft torpedo-loading hatches. A second whaleboat could just be made out alongside a narrow pier on the island itself, where it was being loaded with more of the small, heavy wooden crates.

  Lieutenant Commander Edgar F. "Red" MacGregor, USN, commander of the Pickerel, was on the sea bridge of her conning tower. MacGregor was a stocky, plump-faced, redheaded thirty-five-year-old graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, and he was wearing khaki shirt and trousers, a khaki fore-and-aft cap bearing the shield-and-fouled-anchor insignia of the U.S. Navy, and a small golden oak leaf indicating his rank.

  When the last of the crates had been removed from the whaleboat alongside, and it had headed for the pier again, Commander MacGregor bent over a small table on which he had laid out two charts. One of them was a chart of Manila Bay itself, with the minefields marked, and the other was a chart of the South China Sea, which included portions of the islands of Luzon and Mindoro. On the "Luzon" chart was marked with grease pencil the current positions of the Japanese forces that had landed on the beaches of Lingayen Gulf on the morning of December 10,1941, and were now advancing down the Bataan Peninsula.

  To prevent its destruction, Manila had been declared an open city on December 26, 1941. Japanese troops had entered the city, unopposed, on January 2, 1942.

  Meanwhile, General Douglas MacArthur had moved his troops, Philippine and American, to Bataan, where it was his announced intention to fight a delaying action until help reached the Philippines from the United States.

  As Commander MacGregor observed the loading of his vessel, it was necessary again and again to force from his mind the thoughts that inevitably came to him. As a professional Naval officer, of course, he was obliged to view the situation with dispassionate eyes.

  The Japanese had, almost a month before, destroyed the United States' battleship fleet. The only reason the Japs hadn't sent the aircraft carriers to the bottom of Pearl Harbor as well was that the airc
raft carriers had been at sea when they had attacked.

  The professional conclusion he was forced in honesty to draw was that the U.S. Pacific Fleet had taken a hell of a blow, one that very easily could prove fatal, and that the "help" MacArthur expected-the reinforcement of the Philippine garrison-was wishful thinking. The United States was very close to losing the Philippines, including the "impregnable, unsinkable 'Battleship' Corregidor."

  The proof was that if anyone in a senior position of authority really believed that Corregidor could hold out indefinitely until "help" arrived, the Pickerel would at this moment be out in the South China Sea trying to put her torpedos into Japanese bottoms.

  Instead, she was sitting here, for all intents and purposes an unarmed submersible merchantman, taking aboard as much of the gold reserves of the Philippine Commonwealth as she could carry, to keep them from falling into Japanese hands when Corregidor fell.

  Commander MacGregor once again reminded himself that there was good reason for what the U.S. Navy had ordered him to do. And that he was a professional Naval officer. And that when he was given an order, he was obliged to carry it out, not to question it, or to entertain doubts about the ability of senior Naval officers. They had to bear the responsibility for getting the Navy into the kind of goddamned mess where a submarine was stripped of its torpedos and turned into a merchantman because control of the seas was in the hands of the enemy.

  He did not take his eyes from the chart of Manila Bay again until the second whaleboat had tied up alongside again. Then he looked down from the conning tower.

  "Christ!" he muttered. "Now what?"

  "Sir?" his exec asked politely.

  Commander MacGregor gestured impatiently downward.

  Two ladders, lashed edge to edge, had been put over the side. The wooden crates carrying the gold reserves of the Philippine Commonwealth were heavy, too heavy to be carried aboard by one man. They had been taken from sailors in the whaleboat by two husky sailors, each grasping one rope handle, who had then together climbed the slanting ladders, carefully, grunting with the effort, one rung at a time.

  What was coming aboard now was not a crateful of gold bars but a man in khaki uniform. He was being helped up the side-by-side ladders by another man in khaki uniform. He needed the help. His left shirt sleeve was empty. Commander MacGregor could not see whether the man had lost his arm or whether it was in a sling under his shirt. He could see that the man had bandages on his head, bandages covering his eyes.

  When the one-armed man with the bandaged head reached the deck, he was helped to his feet. After having received the necessary permission to come aboard, he tried to observe the Naval custom of saluting the officer of the deck and then the national colors.

  A Naval officer, Commander MacGregor decided.

  The attempt to adhere to Naval tradition failed. The blinded man's salute of the officer of the deck and the colors was directed into the bay.

  Commander MacGregor went quickly down from the conning tower to the deck. He could now see that the officer with the blinded man wore the silver eagle of a Navy captain. The blinded officer (MacGregor could not see that his arm was strapped against his chest, under his khaki shirt) was also a captain, but a captain of the United States Marine Corps, the equivalent of a U.S. Navy full lieutenant. MacGregor saluted the Navy captain.

  "Commander MacGregor, sir," he said. "I'm the skipper." The Navy captain returned the salute. "Captain," he replied, acknowledging Commander MacGregor's role as captain of his vessel, "this is Captain Banning. He will be sailing with you. Captain Banning, this is Captain MacGregor."

  The blinded Marine officer put out his hand.

  "How do you do, sir?" he said. "Sorry to inflict myself on you."

  "Happy to have you aboard, Captain," MacGregor said, aware that it was both inane and a lie. He certainly felt sorry for the poor bastard, but the Pickerel was not a hospital ship, it was a crowded submarine, with only a pharmacist's mate aboard. No place for a man who was not only wounded but incapable of feeding himself-or of seeing.

  "Captain Banning," the Navy captain said, "will sail with you. I now ask you how many other then in his condition you are prepared to take aboard."

  "Sir, I have only a pharmacist's mate aboard," MacGregor replied.

  The Navy captain said, "There are nine others suffering from temporary or permanent loss of sight. They will require no special medical attention beyond the changing of their bandages."

  "I'll have to bed them down on the deck," Commander MacGregor said.

  "You can, without jeopardizing your mission, take all of them?" the Navy captain asked.

  "Yes, sir."

  "They will come out with the next whaleboat," the Navy captain said. "Thank you, Captain. Have a good voyage."

  "Thank you, sir," MacGregor said.

  "Permission to leave the ship, sir?" the Navy captain asked.

  "Granted," MacGregor said.

  The Navy captain saluted MacGregor, then the colors, and then backed down the ladder into the whaleboat.

  "Chief!" Commander MacGregor called.

  "Yes, sir?" the chief of the boat, the senior noncommissioned officer aboard, said. He had been standing only a few feet away, invisible in the darkness.

  "Take this officer to the wardroom," MacGregor said. "See that he's comfortable, and then tell Doc to prepare to take aboard nine other wounded. Tell him they are… in the same condition as Captain Banning."

  "The 'same condition' is blind, Chief," Captain Banning said matter-of-factly. "Once you face it, you get used to it in a hurry."

  "Aye, aye, sir," the chief of the boat said to MacGregor, then put his hand on Captain Banning's good arm. "Will you come this way, please, sir?"

  MacGregor noticed for the first time that Captain Banning was wearing a web belt, and that a holstered Colt.45 automatic pistol was hanging from the belt.

  A blind man doesn't need a pistol, MacGregor thought. He shouldn't have one. But that guy's a Marine officer, blind or not, and I'm not going to lack him when he's down by taking it away from him.

  The chief torpedoman, who had been supervising the storage of the gold crates in the fore and aft torpedo rooms, came onto the deck.

  "All the crates are aboard and secure, sir," he said.

  "Let's have a look, Chief," MacGregor said, and walked toward the hatch in the conning tower.

  The substitution of gold for torpedos had been on the basis of weight rather than volume. The equivalent weight of gold in the forward torpedo rooms was a small line of wooden boxes chained in place down the center line. The torpedo room looked empty with the torpedoes gone.

  "We're taking nine blinded then with us, Chief," Commander MacGregor said. "Ten, counting that Marine captain. I said they would have to bed down on the deck. But we can do better than that, with all this room, can't we?"

  "I'll do what I can, Skipper," the chief torpedoman said.

  "Let's have a look aft," MacGregor said.

  Ten minutes later, the Pickerel got underway, her diesels throbbing powerfully.

  Launched at the Electric Boat Works in Connecticut in 1936, the Pickerel had been designed for Pacific Service; that is, for long patrols. Since she was headed directly for the Hawaiian Islands, fuel consumption was not a problem. With at least freedom from the concern, Commander MacGregor ordered turns made for seventeen knots. Although this greatly increased fuel consumption, he believed it was justified under the circumstances. The farther he moved away from the island of Luzon into the South China Sea, the less were the chances he would be spotted by the Japanese.

  There was time, until dawn-too much time-for Commander MacGregor to consider that he was now what he trained all his adult life to be, master of a United States warship at sea, in a war; but that, instead of going in harm's way, searching out the enemy, to close with them, to send them to the bottom, what he was doing was sailing through enemy-controlled waters, doing his very best to make sure the enemy didn't see him.

&n
bsp; The one thing he could not do was fight. He hated to see night begin to turn into day. He had been running at seventeen knots for seven hours. And he had thus made-a rough calculation, not taking into consideration the current-about 120 nautical miles. But as he had been on a north-northwest course, heading into the South China Sea as well as up the western shore of Luzon, he wasn't nearly as far north as he would have liked to be.

  He was, in fact, very near the route the Japanese were using to bring supplies and reinforcements to the Lingayen Gulf, where they had made their first amphibious landing in the Phillipines three days after they had taken out almost all of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.

  There would be Japanese ships in the area, accompanied by destroyers, and there would be at least reconnaissance aircraft, if not bombers. This meant he would have to spend the next sixteen hours or so submerged. Since full speed submerged on batteries was eight knots, he would not get far enough on available battery power to make it worthwhile; for it would not get him out of the Japanese shipping lane to the Lingayen Gulf. But he had to hide.

  "Dive," Commander MacGregor ordered. "Dive! Dive! Dive!" the talker repeated.

  The lookouts, then the officer of the deck, then the chief of the boat, dropped quickly through the hatch.

  The captain took one last look through his binoculars as water began to break over the bow, and then dropped through the hatch himself.

  The roar of the diesels had died; now there was the whine of the electric motors.

  MacGregor issued the necessary orders. They were to maintain headway, that was all; as little battery energy as possible was to be expended. They might need the batteries to run if they were spotted by a Japanese destroyer. He was to be called immediately if Sonar heard anything at all, and in any event fifteen minutes before daylight. Then be made his way to his cabin.

  Captain Banning was sitting on a Navy-gray metal chair before the fold-down desk. MacGregor was a little surprised that the Marine officer was not in a bunk.

  "Good morning," MacGregor said. "You heard? We're submerged."