“Holy fucking Christ!” the motor sergeant said, “what the fuck was that?”
“Excuse me?” Lieutenant Howard said. “Were you speaking to me, Sergeant?”
The motor sergeant, still wholly confused, looked at Lieutenant Howard suspiciously.
“If the chaplain,” Joe Howard said, still straight-faced, “heard a fine noncommissioned officer such as yourself using such language, Sergeant, he would be very disappointed.”
The sergeant’s wits returned.
“What the fuck did you do, Lieutenant?” he asked. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“You’re not really suggesting that an officer and gentleman, such as myself, would do anything to disturb your peace and quiet, are you, Sergeant?”
“No, Sir, I’m sure the Lieutenant wouldn’t do nothing like that,” the motor sergeant said, “but I used to know a wiseass armorer corporal at Quantico who had a sick sense of humor.”
Howard laughed. “Les, you looked like you were coming out of your skin.”
“You shouldn’t do things like that to an old man like me.”
“I’m trying to keep you young, Les.”
“Christ, you got a letter,” the motor sergeant said.
“Huh?”
“Mail clerk brought it over,” the motor sergeant said. “He called over here yesterday, looking for you. Said the letter had been there three days. I told him you would be here this morning. Wait till I get it.”
He rooted in a drawer and came out with a small envelope and handed it to Howard. There was no stamp on the envelope, just a signature. As a member of the armed forces of the United States serving overseas, the sender was given the franking privilege.
Howard’s heart jumped when he saw the return address. He tore the envelope open and resisted the temptation to sniff the stationery; he thought he detected a faint odor of perfume.
He was afraid to read the letter. He hadn’t heard from Barbara since she’d sailed, and was beginning to wonder if he ever would. His fear grew when he saw how short the letter was, and how it began:
Special Naval Medical Unit
Fleet Post Office 8203
San Francisco, California
My Dearest Joe,
Well, here I am. I can’t tell you where.
We have been told that, because we are officers and can be trusted not to write home things that would interest the enemy, our mail will not be censored. It will be, however, subject to “random scrutiny.” What that means, I think, is that the senior nurses here will open outgoing letters they think will be interesting, in terms of intimacy. Consequently, I will not write the things I would like to write. I don’t consider what we have to be a spectator sport, and I don’t want a bunch of dried-up old maids giggling over my correspondence.
On the way over here, I had a lot of time to think about us, and you are constantly in my thoughts here “somewhere in the South Pacific.” There is not much for us to do, except prepare for what we all know is going to happen.
I have carefully considered what happened between us, and I’ve given a lot of thought to our different backgrounds. I am fully aware that the both of us behaved very foolishly, and that any marriage counselor worthy of hanging out his shingle would have to conclude that the odds against us getting married in the first place, much less making a success of it, are very long indeed.
Having said that, I have concluded that meeting you was the best thing that’s happened to me in my life. Until you, I really had no idea what being a woman really meant. I will not be alive until I feel your arms around me again.
I love you. Today. Tomorrow. Forever.
May God protect you, Barbara
PS: Picture enclosed, so you don’t forget what I look like.
Joe Howard had trouble focusing his eyes on Barbara’s picture; they seemed to be full of tears.
He put the letter back into its envelope and carefully put it into his pocket.
“Thanks very much, Les,” he said.
“Ah, hell, Lieutenant,” the motor sergeant said. Then he raised his voice, and the tenor changed. “Well, get off your ass, asshole,” he said to the dispatcher, “and go get the Lieutenant’s truck.”
(Five)
Headquarters
Special Detachment 14
Camp Elliott, California
18 April 1942
The Quonset hut was so called because it had been invented at the Quonset Point Naval Station. It was originally envisioned as an easy-to-erect shelter—sort of a portable warehouse—not as barracks. The huts were built out of curved sheets of corrugated steel, which formed the sides and roof in a half-circle. And there was a wooden floor, the framework of which visibly traced its design to forklift pallets.
When they were to be transported, the curved sheets of corrugated steel could be nestled together. Then they, and the framework which supported them, could be steel-banded together on top of the plywood floor and its underpinning. So packed, they took up little cubic footage, and could be erected quickly at their destination by unskilled labor using simple tools.
Quonset huts had sprouted like mushrooms over the rolling hills of Camp Elliott. Many of these had been put to use as barracks in lieu of tents, “until adequate barracks could be erected.”
Major Edward J. Banning followed Major Jack NMI Stecker up to one of them and stepped through the door behind him in time to hear someone call “Ten-hut.”
The hut was furnished with two folding metal chairs, two small folding wooden tables, on one of which sat a U.S. Army field desk, and a telephone. There were eight Marines in the forty-foot-long room. They were now all standing erect, at attention; but most of them, obviously, had a moment earlier been sprawled on mattresses on the floor. Their duffel bags, some of them open, were scattered around the floor. Their stacked ’03 Springfield rifles were at the far end of the room.
Banning wondered idly why Jack Stecker didn’t put them at rest, and then he belatedly realized that Jack was deferring to him, as the commanding officer.
“At ease,” Banning said. He smiled. “My name is Banning. I have the honor to command this splendid, if brand-new, military organization.”
There were a couple of chuckles, but most of them looked at him warily. That was understandable. Reporting aboard an ordinary rifle company was bad enough. The unknown is always frightening; and you naturally wonder what the new company commander and first sergeant will be like, how you will be treated, where you will be going, and what you will be doing. Reporting in here posed all those questions, plus those raised by the words “classified”; “involving extraordinary hazards”; and “the risk of loss of life will be high.”
And there wasn’t much he could do to put their minds at rest. This was one of those (in Banning’s judgment, rare) situations where the necessity for secrecy was quite clear. It was even possible that the Japanese didn’t know of the very existence of the Coastwatchers. Sometimes, not often, the Japanese were quite stupid about things like that; this might be one of them. If the Japanese did not yet know about the Coastwatchers, then every effort, clearly, should be made to keep them from finding out, as long as possible. They inevitably would, of course. When that happened, the less they learned the better.
All I can do is try to get these people to trust me. I can’t even tell them where we’re going, much less what we’re going to be doing, until we’re on the ship. Or maybe not even then. Not until we get to Australia. If we go over there on a troopship, I can’t afford to have everybody else on the ship talking, and talk they would, about that strange little detachment with the strange mission.
Banning had long ago learned that enlisted Marines trust their officers on a few occasions only: first, when the officer knows more about what’s expected of them than they do; second, when he will not ask them to do something he will not do himself; and, third, perhaps most important, when he is genuinely concerned with their welfare.
There were two staff sergeants, five buck serg
eants, and a corporal. Banning went to each man in turn and shook his hand. He asked each man his name, what he had been doing up to now in the Corps, and where he was from.
“Who’s senior?” Banning asked, after he’d met them all.
One of the staff sergeants took a step forward.
“Richardson, right?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Well, for the time being, Sergeant, you’ll act as First Sergeant. Your first orders are to get some bunks and bedding to go with those mattresses.”
Staff Sergeant Richardson looked uncomfortable.
“Problem with that, Sergeant?”
“Sir, the warehouse is a hell of a ways from here, and we don’t have any motor transport.”
“You seem to have managed to draw mattresses and get them here without transport,” Banning said.
That made Sergeant Richardson look eyen more uncomfortable. Banning glanced at Major Stecker, whose eyes looked mischievous again. And then Banning understood: somewhere on the post, much closer than the issue point for bedding, another Marine Corps unit was dealing with the problem of eight missing mattresses.
That was clearly theft, or at least unauthorized diversion of government property—in either case a manifestation of a lack of discipline. On the other hand, getting mattresses to sleep on when the Corps didn’t provide any could be considered a manifestation of initiative, which was a desirable military quality.
“Well, I’ll look into the problem of transportation, Sergeant. What I would like to do, right now, is have a look at everybody’s service record, and then I’d like to talk to you one at a time.”
“Yes, Sir,” Staff Sergeant Richardson said, visibly relieved that the subject of the source of the mattresses seemed to have been passed over.
“Sergeant, has Lieutenant Howard been over here today?” Jack Stecker asked.
“Yes, Sir. He was here about oh-six-hundred to make sure we were going to get breakfast. He said he would be back”—he raised his wrist to look at his watch—“about now, Sir. He said he would be back before you got here, Sir.”
As if on cue, there came the sound of tires crunching and an engine dying. A moment later, Lieutenant Joe Howard came through the door.
“Good morning, Sir,” he said to Stecker. “Sorry to be late. I had a little trouble getting wheels from the motor officer.”
“Major Banning,” Stecker said. “This is Lieutenant Joe Howard.”
“How do you do, Sir?” Howard said.
Banning liked what he saw. Like others before him, he thought that Joe Howard looked like everything a clean-cut, red-blooded, physically fit young Marine officer should look like. And then he remembered what Jack Stecker had said about Howard having found, and stayed in, a safe hole during the attack at Pearl Harbor.
I’m in no position to be self-righteous about that. When the Jap barrages began, I would have swapped my soul for a safe hole to hide in.
“I’m happy to meet you, Howard,” Banning said, putting out his hand and raising his voice just enough to make sure everyone in the hut heard him. “Major Stecker speaks very highly of you. I’ve known him a long time, and he doesn’t often do that.”
Lieutenant Howard looked as uncomfortable as Staff Sergeant Richardson had a moment before.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” Stecker said. “I can’t miss that plane. Howard can drive me.”
He put out his hand to Banning. “Good luck, Ed. Send a postcard.”
“Take care of yourself,” Banning said. “Say hello to Elly.”
“I will,” Stecker said, and then turned to the men watching curiously. “Listen up,” he said. “You guys have fallen in the you-know-what and come up smelling like roses. Major Banning is one hell of Marine. He probably wouldn’t tell you, so I will: He’s already been in this war, wounded and evacuated from the 4th Marines in the Philippines. Before that, he was with the 4th Marines in China. When he tells you something, it’s not coming out of a book, it’s from experience. So pay attention and do what he says, and you’ll probably come out of what you’re going to do alive. Good luck. Semper Fi.”
And then, without looking at Banning again, Stecker quickly walked out of the Quonset hut. Banning found himself alone with his new command; they were now looking at him almost with fascination.
That was a hell of a nice thing for Jack Stecker to do, Banning thought.
“Well, Sergeant Richardson,” he said, “now that we have wheels, we can get bedding. Take half the men and the truck and go get it.”
“Aye, aye, Sir.”
“And when you’ve finished, take the mattresses here back where you got them.”
“Aye, aye, Sir.”
“Try not to get caught,” Banning said.
“Yes, Sir.”
“I want to talk to each of you alone,” Banning said, after Richardson and the men he took were gone. “I’ll start with you, Sergeant. The rest of you wait outside.”
The first man, the other staff sergeant, a thirty-year-old named Hazleton, was a disappointment. By the time he finished talking with him, Banning was sure he had volunteered for a mission “where the risk of loss of life will be high” because he was unwelcome where he was. That he had, in other words, been “volunteered” by his first sergeant or company commander. For all of his last hitch before the war, he had been the assistant NCO club manager at Quantico. Rather obviously, he had been swept out of that soft berth when the brass was desperately looking for noncoms to train the swelling Corps.
And at 2nd Joint Training Force, where the broom had swept him, Hazleton had been found unable to cut the mustard. When the TWX soliciting volunteers had arrived, his company commander had decided it was a good, and easy, way to get rid of him.
Banning was not surprised. That was the way things went. No company commander wanted to lose his best men. Lieutenant Colonel Rickabee had warned Banning that was going to happen, and he had made provision to deal with it. The staff sergeant’s name would be TWXed to Rickabee, and shortly afterward there would be a TWX from Headquarters USMC, transferring the staff sergeant out of Special Detachment 14.
Banning wondered how many of the others would be like the staff sergeant. With one exception, however, none were. To Banning’s surprise, the others were just what he had hoped to get. They were bright—in some cases, very bright—young noncoms who were either looking for excitement or a chance for rapid promotion, or both.
Unfortunately, none of them spoke Japanese, although four of them had apparently managed to utter enough Japanese-sounding noises to convince their first sergeants that they did. That wasn’t surprising either. Japanese linguists were in very short supply. Officers who had them would fight losing them as hard as possible. Nevertheless, Rickabee had promised to pry loose as many as he could (maybe four), and send them directly to Melbourne.
The last man Banning interviewed, the only corporal who had so far arrived, was the second disappointment. Corporal Stephen Koffler had come to Special Detachment 14 from the Marine Corps Parachute School at Lakehurst Naval Air Station. It didn’t take more than a couple of minutes for Banning to extract from him the admission that he had “been volunteered.” The kid’s first sergeant had made what could kindly be called a pointed suggestion that he volunteer.
“Why do you think he did that, Koffler?”
“I don’t know, Sir. So far as I know, I didn’t do nothing wrong. But right from the first, Lieutenant Macklin seemed to have it in for me.”
“What was that name? Who ‘had it in’ for you?”
“Lieutenant Macklin, Sir.”
“Tall, thin officer? An Annapolis graduate?”
“Yes, Sir. Lieutenant R. B. Macklin. He told us he went to Annapolis. And he said that he had learned about the Japs from when he was in China.”
I’ll be damned. So that’s where that sonofabitch wound up! Doesn’t sound like him. You could hurt yourself jumping out of airplanes. But maybe that pimple on the ass of the Corps was “volunte
ered” for parachute duty by somebody else who found out what a despicable prick he is, and hoped his parachute wouldn’t open.
“I believe I know the gentleman,” Banning said. “Tell me, Koffler, what were you doing at the Parachute School? Some kind of an instructor?”
Even if this kid is no Corporal Killer McCoy, if he’s rubbed Macklin the wrong way, he probably has a number of splendid traits of character I just haven’t noticed so far. “The enemies of my enemies are my friends.”
“No, Sir. They had me driving a truck.”
“I don’t suppose you can type, can you, Koffler?”
There was a discernible pause before Corporal Koffler reluctantly said, “Yes, Sir. I can type.”
“You sound like you’re ashamed of it.”
“Sir, I don’t want to be a fucking clerk-typist.”
“Corporal Koffler,” Banning said sternly, suppressing a smile, “in case you haven’t heard this before, the Marine Corps is not at all interested in what you would like, or not like, to do. Where did you learn to type?”
That question obviously made Corporal Koffler just as uncomfortable as he’d been when he was asked if he could type at all.
“Where did you learn to type, Corporal? More important, how fast a typist are you?”
“About forty words a minute, Sir,” Koffler said. “I got a book out of the library.”
“A typing book, you mean? You taught yourself how to type?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Why?”
“I needed to know how to type to pass the FCC exam. You have to copy twenty words a minute to get your ticket, and I couldn’t write that fast.”
“You’re a radio operator?” Banning asked, pleased.
“No, Sir. I’m a draftsman.”
“A draftsman?” Banning asked, confused.
“Yes, Sir. That’s why I volunteered for parachuting.”
“Excuse me?”
“Sir, they wanted to keep me at Parris Island as a draftsman, painting signs. The only way I could get out of it was to volunteer for parachute training.”
Counterattack Page 37