Semper Fi

by W. E. B Griffin

  The gunnery sergeant of Headquarters Company, First Battalion, 4th Marines, was a salty old sonofabitch who drew the line at some fucking Chink having access to the weapons. His men would fucking well clean their own pieces.

  The assignment of Staff Sergeant O’Dell and Corporal McCoy to the same room was a matter of convenience. They did not like each other. And sometimes the only time they spoke was when they met, once a month for the scheduled inspection. The only thing they had in common was that neither of them had responsibility for the company supervision of subordinates. The six other enlisted men assigned to battalion S-4 were supervised outside the office by the assistant S-4 corporal, Corporal Williamson.

  After his promotion and return from the first “Get Him out of Sight” trip to Peking, Corporal McCoy had been officially transferred from Dog Company to Headquarters Company and assigned to the motor pool.

  Whether—as some reasoned—it had been decided to continue to keep him out of sight of the Italians, or whether—as others reasoned—that to get right down to it McCoy didn’t know his ass from left field about being a motor pool corporal, he had been given the more or less permanent assignment of riding the supply convoys to Peking.

  That kept him out of town more than he was in Shanghai. The result was that since he didn’t have a shack job and since he was gone so often, the first sergeant and the gunny had decided there was no sense in putting him on duty rosters if more often than not he wouldn’t be around when the duty came up.

  And then after sometimes three or four weeks spent bouncing his ass around in the cab of a Studebaker truck, it seemed only fair to give him liberty when he was in Shanghai.

  For all practical purposes, then, he didn’t have any company duties when he wasn’t off with one of the supply convoys. And it was understandable that he didn’t want to hang around the billet waiting for some odd job to come up. When he was in Shanghai he stood the reveille formation. After that nobody saw him until reveille the next morning. He needed an apartment. You couldn’t spend all day in bars and whorehouses.

  Most of his peers found nothing wrong with the way McCoy was playing the game. Most of them had themselves made one or more trips away from Shanghai in truck convoys. For the first couple of hours, maybe even the first couple of days, it was okay. But then it became nothing but a bumpy road going on for fucking ever, broken only by meals and piss calls. And the meals were either cold canned rations or something Chink, like fried chunks of fucking dog meat.

  But there were a few—generally lower-ranking noncommissioned officers with eight or more years of service—who held contrary opinions: The Goddamned Corps was obviously going to hell in a handbasket if a candy-ass sonofabitch with Parris Island sand still in his boots gets to be a corporal just starting his second fucking hitch, for Christ’s sake, instead of having his ass shipped in irons to Portsmouth for cutting up them Italian marines.

  What his peers did not know—and what McCoy was under orders not to tell them—was that not only did he have an apartment with a telephone but that the Corps was paying for it. The less the other enlisted men knew about the real nature of McCoy’s S-2 duty, the better. Getting him out of the billets would help. And there was another secret from the troops, shared only by the colonel (who had to sign the authorizations), Captain Banning, and the finance sergeant: McCoy had been given a one-time cash grant of $125 for “the purchase of suitable civilian clothing necessary in the performance of his military duty” and was drawing “rations and quarters allowance.”

  Corporal Kenneth J. McCoy’s apartment was on the top floor of a three-story building in P’u-tung. It was not at all elaborate. And it was small, one large room with a bed in a curtained alcove, and a tiny bathroom (shower, no tub) in another. There was no kitchen, but he had installed an electric hot plate so that he could make coffee. And he had an icebox to cool his beer.

  But there was a tiny balcony, shielded from view, large enough for just one chair, on which he could sit when he had the time and watch the boat traffic on Soochow Creek.

  There was a restaurant in the adjacent building. If he wanted something to eat, all he had to do was put his head out the window and yell at the cook, and food would be delivered to him. He often got breakfast like that, yelling down for a couple of three-minute eggs and a pot of tea. And sometimes late at night, when he was hungry, he’d call down for some kind of Chinese version of a Western omelet, eggs scrambled with onions, bits of ham, and sweet pepper.

  He rarely ate in the NCO mess of the 4th Marines, although the chow there was good. It was just that there were so many places in Shanghai to eat well, and so cheaply, that unless he just happened to be near the mess at chow time, it didn’t seem worth the effort to take a meal there.

  The building on the other side was a brothel, the “Golden Dragon Club,” where he had run an account for nearly as long as he’d been stationed in Shanghai. It was through his friend Piotr Petrovich Muller he had found the apartment. Piotr had known the proprietor of the Golden Dragon in the good old days, back in Holy Mother Russia.

  The man had an unpronounceable name, but that didn’t matter, because he liked to be called “General.” He claimed (McCoy was sure he was lying) that he had been a General in the Army of the Czar.

  When he had first moved into the apartment, McCoy had played “Vingt-et-Un” with the General long enough for the both of them to recognize the other was not a pigeon to be plucked. They had become more or less friends afterwards, despite the differences in their age and “rank.”

  Most of the items on the monthly bill the General rendered were for services not connected with the twenty-odd girls in the General’s employ. The General’s people cleaned McCoy’s apartment and did his laundry. And then there were bar charges and food charges. The girls themselves were more than okay. Mostly they were Chinese, who ranged from very pretty to very elegant (no peasant wenches in the General’s establishment), but there were a few Indochinese and two White Russians as well.

  McCoy actually believed that the General, who exhibited a certain officer-type arrogance, had most probably been an officer, if not officially a general, in the Czarist Army. Something like captain or maybe major was what he probably had been when, like so many other White Russian “generals,” he had come penniless and stateless to Shanghai twenty years before. McCoy didn’t like to think how the General had survived at first—probably as a pimp, possibly by strong-arm robbery—but he was now inarguably a success.

  He had an elegant apartment in one of the newer buildings, to which he sometimes invited McCoy for a Russian dinner. He drove a new American Buick, and he had a number of successful business interests now (some of them perfectly legal) in addition to the Golden Dragon.

  There were eight sets of khakis hanging in the wardrobe when McCoy, naked, and still dripping from his shower, walked across the room and opened it. They were not issue. His issue khakis hung in his wall locker at the barracks. These uniforms were tailor-made. The shirts had cost him sixty cents, American, and the trousers ninety. The field scarves2 had been a nickel, and the belt (stitched layers of khaki) a dime. The belt was not regulation. Regulation was web. But McCoy knew that the only time anything would ever be said about it was at a formal inspection, and he hardly ever stood one of those anymore.

  Neither were his chevrons regulation. Regulation chevrons were embroidered onto a piece of khaki and then sewn onto the shirt. McCoy’s chevrons (and those of the gunnery sergeant) had been embroidered directly onto their shirts. If it was good enough for the gunny, McCoy had reasoned, it was good enough for him. And now that he had made corporal, he knew that the shirts would be worn out long before he would make sergeant.

  The shirt and trousers were stiffly starched. They would not stay that way long. It was already getting humid. Shanghai was as far south as New Orleans, and every bit as muggy. Before long the starch would wilt, and it was more than likely that he would have to change uniforms when he went to the compound, which is whe
re he had to go after he introduced himself to the Reverend Feller, who was staying at the Hotel Metropole. He did not wish to give the assholes in Motor Transport any opportunity to spread it around that Killer McCoy had shown up in a sweaty uniform looking like a fucking Chinaman.

  When he was dressed, with his field scarf held in place with the prescribed USMC tie clasp, there was no longer any question that he would need another uniform before the day was over. He decided that it made more sense to take one with him than to use one of the issue uniforms in his billet. He could change in the motor pool head and avoid going to the barracks at all.

  Carrying an extra uniform on a hanger, he left the apartment and trotted down the stairs. He did not lock the apartment. The way that worked was that there were some Westerners whose apartments were robbable, and some whose apartments were not. It had nothing to do with locks on doors and bars over windows. The trick was to get yourself on the list of those whose apartments were safe. One way to do this was to have it known that you were friendly with a Shanghai policeman, and the other was to be friendly with the chief of the tong whom the association had granted burglary privileges in your area.

  McCoy’s apartment was twice safe. When he was in town, he continued to gamble regularly with both Detective Sergeant Lester Chatworth of the Shanghai Police, and (not at the same time, of course, but when the local celebrity honored the Golden Dragon with his presence) with Lon Ci’iang, head of the Po’Ti Tong.

  On the crowded street, he stopped first to buy a rice cake, and then flagged down a rickshaw.

  He told the boy, a wiry, leather-skinned man of maybe twenty-five, to please take him to the Hotel Metropole, and the boy swung around to look at him in unabashed curiosity. It always shocked the Chinese to encounter a white face who spoke their language.

  When the rickshaw delivered him in front of the Hotel Metropole, there were several Europeans (in Shanghai, that included Americans), among them a quartet of British officers, standing on the sidewalk there. The civilians looked at him with distaste, the officers with curiosity. When McCoy saluted crisply, one of the officers, as he returned the salute with a casual wave of his swagger stick, gave him a faint smile.

  He is giving me the benefit of the doubt, McCoy thought, deciding that I wouldn’t be coming here unless I were on duty. The civilians just don’t like a place like this under any circumstances fouled by the presence of a Marine enlisted man.

  He went to the desk and asked for the room number of the Reverend Mr. Feller. Captain Banning had been specific on the telephone about that. The missionary named Sessions was really a Marine lieutenant, but McCoy was to deal with a Reverend Feller and not the lieutenant.

  As he crossed the lobby to the elevators, one of the bellboys offered to relieve him of the spare uniform, but McCoy waved him away.

  The elevators were contained within an ornate metal framework, and the cage itself was glassed in. As it rose, it gave McCoy a view of the entire lobby: the potted palms, the leather couches and chairs, the hotel guests, the men already in linen and seersucker suits, and the women in their summer dresses. He could see the outlines of underwear beneath some of the dresses; and in the right light, some of the women—the younger ones mostly—showed ghostly, lovely legs.

  McCoy saw few European women. He hadn’t, he thought, spoken to a European woman in over six months, the only exceptions being the General’s two Russian whores, and they didn’t really count.

  He walked down the wide, carpeted corridor to 514, and knocked at the door.

  “Who is it?” an American female voice called after a moment.

  “Corporal McCoy, ma’am,” he called out. “Of the Fourth Marines. I’m here to see Reverend Feller.”

  “Oh, my!” she said. He heard in the tone of her voice either displeasure or fright that he was here. He wondered what the hell that was all about.

  The door opened.

  “I’m Mrs. Moore,” she said. “Please come in. I’ll have to fetch the Reverend. He’s with Mr. Sessions.”

  She was a large woman, big boned, just on the wrong side of fat. She was, McCoy judged, maybe forty. With the well-scrubbed, makeup-free face of a woman who took religion seriously. She had light brown hair, braided and pinned to the side of her head. And she wore a cotton dress, with long sleeves and buttons fastened up to the throat. Hanging from her neck was a four-inch Christian cross, made of wood.

  “Thank you,” McCoy said.

  “Are you the man who was originally supposed to come?” she asked.

  “I don’t think I understand you,” McCoy said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’ll go fetch the Reverend Feller,” she added, smiling uneasily at him. She slid past him to the door, as if she were afraid he would pick her up, carry her into the adjacent bedroom, throw her on the bed, and work his sinful ways on her. The thought amused him, and he smiled, which discomfited her further.

  He decided he’d have a word with the people in the convoy to watch what they said and did with her around. If somebody said “fuck,” she would faint. Then her husband would bitch to the lieutenant in civilian clothes, and he would make trouble.

  A minute later, the Reverend Glen T. Feller entered the room. He wore a broad, toothy smile, and his hand was extended farther than McCoy believed was anatomically possible.

  He was of average height, slim, with dark hair plastered carefully to his skull, and a pencil-line mustache. He was immaculately shaven, and McCoy could smell his after-shave cologne.

  “I’m the Reverend Feller,” he said. “I’m happy to meet you, Corporal, and I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you came.”

  “No problem, sir,” McCoy said. The Reverend Feller’s hand was soft, clammy, and limp. McCoy was a little repelled, but not surprised. It was the sort of hand he expected to find on a missionary.

  Mrs. Moore moved around them, so as to stand behind the Reverend and put him between herself and McCoy.

  There was a rap at the door, and then “Mr.” Sessions entered the room.

  Even in the civilian clothes, McCoy decided, this guy looks like he’s an officer. But like a regular platoon leader, not a hotshot intelligence officer from Headquarters, USMC, in Washington.

  “You’re Corporal McCoy?” Sessions asked, surprised. “The one they call ‘Killer’?”

  “Some people have called me that,” McCoy said, uncomfortably.

  “You’re not quite what I expected, Corporal, from the way Captain Banning spoke of you,” Sessions said.

  Well, shit, Lieutenant, neither are you.

  “Well, I’m McCoy,” he said.

  He was aware that Mrs. Moore was looking at him very strangely; he decided she had heard all about the Italian marines.

  “How long have you been in the Corps, Corporal?” Lieutenant Sessions asked.

  “About four years,” McCoy said.

  “There aren’t very many men who make corporal in four years,” Sessions said. “Or as young as you are.”

  McCoy looked at him, but said nothing.

  “How old are you, Corporal?”

  “Twenty-one, sir,” Corporal Killer McCoy said.

  “Presuming Captain Banning was not pulling your leg, Ed,” the Reverend Feller said, laughing, “we must presume the Killer’s bite is considerably worse than his bark.”

  I don’t like this sonofabitch, McCoy thought.

  “Killer,” the Reverend Feller said, “we place ourselves in your capable hands.”

  “I said some people call me that, Reverend,” McCoy said. “I didn’t mean you could.”

  “Well, I’m very sorry, Corporal,” the Reverend Feller said. He looked at Sessions, as if waiting for him to remind Corporal McCoy that he was speaking to a high-ranking missionary. When Sessions was silent, Feller said, “I don’t want us to get off on the wrong foot. No hard feelings?”

  “No,” McCoy said.

  (Two)

  Motor Pool, First Bn, 4th Marines

  Shanghai, China<
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  14 May 1941

  The Christian & Missionary Alliance vehicles had been taken from the docks to the motor pool of the First Battalion, 4th Marines, where they were carefully examined by Sergeant Ernst Zimmerman, who was the assistant motor transport supervisor and would be the NCOIC3 of the Peking convoy.

  The vehicles were greased and their oil was changed. And just to be on the safe side, Ernie Zimmerman changed the points and condensors and cleaned and gapped the spark plugs. Zimmerman, at twenty-six, was already on his third hitch, and had been in China since 1935.

  He was a phlegmatic man, stocky, tightly muscled, with short, stubby fingers on hands that were surprisingly immaculate considering that he spent most of his duty time bent over the fender of one vehicle or another doing himself what he did not trust the private and PFC mechanics to do.

  He lived with a slight Chinese woman who had born him three children. She and the children had learned to speak German. Though he understood much more Chinese than he let on, Zimmerman spoke little more than he had the day he’d carried his sea bag down the gangway of the Naval Transport U.S.S. Henderson more than six years before.

  At 0700 hours, two hours before the convoy was to get underway, a meeting was held in the motor pool office, a small wooden building at the entrance to the motor pool. The motor pool itself was a barbed-wire-fenced enclosure within the First Battalion compound.

  Present were Lieutenant John Macklin, who would again be the officer in charge of the convoy; Sergeant Zimmerman; Corporal McCoy; and the eight other enlisted men of the convoy detail. They had just spread maps out on the dispatcher’s table when they were joined by Captain Edward Banning.

  The usual route the convoy traveled could not be followed on this trip, because of the necessity to stop at the six Christian & Missionary Alliance missions. The first deviation would be to Nanking. Normally they turned off the Shanghai-Nanking highway onto a dirt road just past Wuhsi. Fifty miles down that road was the ferry across the Yangtze River between Chiangyin and Chen-chiang.