Counterattack

by W. E. B Griffin

  “I don’t know if there is one. I am curious what one of my sergeants is doing in here, sharing an expensive suite with a movie star, a field-grade officer, and a woman with rubies on her hand worth more money than he makes in a year.”

  “She’s good for him. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s in love with him. She keeps him on the straight and narrow.”

  “What about the field-grade officer?” McInerney said.

  “I thought that’s what this was about,” Dillon said. “I didn’t just come into the Corps, General. I just came back in the Corps. I know all about not crossing the line between officers and enlisted men.”

  “Then why are you crossing it?”

  “You did say, General, that this conversation isn’t official?”

  “Not yet. I’m trying to keep Charley Galloway out of trouble. You too, if that can be arranged.”

  “Well, if there’s going to be trouble about this, dump it on me. I invited Charley here, and when he said that might cause trouble, I told him we’d be careful, and that if something—like this—happened, I’d take the rap.”

  “What’s your interest in Galloway?”

  “I like him. We’re pals.”

  “He’s a sergeant and you’re an officer.”

  “I’m not really a major, I’m a flack wearing a Marine uniform.”

  “A what?”

  “A press agent. My contribution to the war effort is getting people like Monique Pond to go to New River so she can flash her boobs at the cameramen and get the Marine Corps in the newsreels. Charley, on the other hand, is one hell of a Marine. He told me about flying the Wildcat out to the carrier off Pearl Harbor. But instead of commanding a fighter squadron, the Corps has him flying a bunch of brass hats and feather merchants around in a VIP transport airplane. So what we have here is an officer who should be an enlisted man, and a sergeant who should be an officer. So we hang around together. My idea, not his.”

  “What you’re doing, both of you,” General McInerney said, “is important.”

  Why did I say that? I don’t believe it.

  “General, I told Charley I would take the heat if something like this came up. I really would be grateful if you let me do that.”

  “Major Dillon,” General McInerney said, after a long moment during which a few connections went click in his mind, “I really have no idea what you’re talking about. The reason I asked to have a word with you, when I saw you come in here alone, was that I know you are in charge of the public-relations activities marking the bringing of the 1st Marine Division to wartime strength at New River tomorrow. I want to know if there is anything, anything at all, that Marine Corps Aviation can do to insure that the ceremonies are a rousing public-relations success.”

  Dillon’s eyebrows rose thoughtfully.

  “I can’t think of a thing, Sir,” he said.

  “And to make sure there is absolutely no problem at all flying the VIPs back and forth to New River, I wanted to tell you that I have personally assigned one of our finest enlisted pilots, Technical Sergeant Galloway, to the mission. If he has not reported to you yet, I am sure he will do so momentarily. I remind you that, as an officer, you are responsible for seeing that the Sergeant is properly quartered and rationed. If there are questions regarding how and where, in the necessarily extraordinary circumstances, you elect to do that, refer whoever raises them to me.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir.”

  “That will be all, Major Dillon. Thank you.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Dillon stood up and started to leave. He had taken three steps when McInerney called his name.

  “Yes, Sir?”

  “Just between a couple of old Marines, Dillon, I don’t like flying my goddamned desk, either.”

  (Two)

  The Commandant’s House

  United States Marine Corps Barracks

  Eighth and “I” Streets, S.E.

  Washington, D.C.

  2230 Hours 9 May 1942

  A glistening black 1939 Packard 180 automobile pulled into the driveway and stopped before the Victorian mansion. Mounted above its front and rear bumpers it had the three silver stars on a red plate identifying the occupant as a lieutenant general of the United States Marine Corps.

  The driver, a lean, impeccably turned-out Marine staff sergeant, got quickly out from behind the wheel, but he was not quick enough to open the rear door before Thomas Holcomb, the first Marine ever promoted to lieutenant general, opened it himself. The Commandant was home.

  “Early tomorrow, Chet,” General Holcomb said to his driver. “Five o’clock.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir.”

  The general’s senior aide-de-camp, a very thin lieutenant colonel, slid across the seat and got out.

  “Goodnight, Chet,” General Holcomb said.

  “Goodnight, Sir.”

  “I don’t see any need for you to come in, Bob,” General Holcomb said to his aide. “I’m for bed.”

  The porch lights came on. General Holcomb’s orderlies had seen the headlights.

  “General,” the aide said, “I took the liberty of telling Captain Steward to be prepared to brief you on the Coral Sea battle. He’s probably inside, Sir.”

  “OK,” Holcomb said wearily. He was tired. It had been a long day, ending with a long and tiring automobile ride back to Washington from Norfolk, where there had been an interservice conference at Fortress Monroe. Whatever had happened in the Coral Sea had already happened; he didn’t have to learn all the details tonight. But young Captain Steward had apparently worked long and hard preparing the briefing, and it would not do right now to tell him it wasn’t considered important.

  Besides, I’ll have to take the briefing sooner or later anyway, why not now and get it over with?

  The Commandant raised his eyes to the porch, intending to order, as cheerfully as he could manage, that the orderly put on the coffeepot. There was someone on the porch he didn’t expect to see, and really would rather not have seen.

  “Hello, Doc,” he called to Brigadier General D. G. McInerney. “Did I send for you?”

  “No, Sir. I took the chance that you might have a minute to spare for me.”

  Good God, a long day of the problems of Navy Ordnance and the Army’s Coast Artillery Corps is enough. And here comes Marine Aviation wanting something!

  “Sure. Come on in the house. I was about to order up some coffee, but now that you’re here, I expect Tommy had better break out the bourbon.”

  “Coffee would be fine, Sir.”

  “Don’t be noble, Doc. God hates a hypocrite.”

  “A little bourbon would go down very nicely, Sir.”

  “I’m about to be briefed on a battle in the Coral Sea. You familiar with it?”

  “Only that we lost the Lexington, Sir.”

  “Yeah. Well, you can sit in on the briefing,” Holcomb said. He led the small procession into the house, handed his uniform cap to an orderly, and then went into the parlor.

  “Good evening, Sir,” Captain Steward said. Holcomb saw that Steward had come with all the trappings: an easel, covered now with a sheet of oilcloth bearing the Marine Corps insignia; a large round leather map case containing a detailed map; and a dozen folders covered with TOP SECRET cover sheets—probably the immediate, radioed after-action reports themselves.

  “Hello, Stew,” he said. “Sorry to keep you up this late. You know General McInerney.”

  “Yes, Sir. Good evening, General.”

  “Is there anything in there General McInerney is not supposed to hear?”

  “No, Sir. General McInerney is on the Albatross list.”

  The Albatross list was a short list of those officers who were privy to the fact that the Navy codebreakers at Pearl had broken several of the most important Japanese naval codes.

  That’s a pretty short list, General Holcomb remembered now, a goddamned short list, and for very good reason. If the Japanese don’t find out we’re reading their mail, it’s hard to overes
timate the importance of the broken codes. But the more people who know a secret, the greater the risk it won’t stay a secret long.

  “How is that, Doc?” Holcomb asked evenly. “Why are you cleared for Albatross?”

  “General Forrest brought me in on that, Sir.”

  The Commandant considered that for a moment, and decided to give Brigadier General Horace W. T. Forrest, Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, the benefit of the doubt.

  If Forrest told Doc, he must have had his reasons.

  The Commandant turned to one of the orderlies. “Coffee ready?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Well, bring it in, please. And a bottle of bourbon. And then see that we’re not disturbed.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir.”

  “While we’re waiting, Stew, why don’t you pass around those after-actions. That’s what they are, right?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Captain Steward divided the half-dozen documents with the TOP SECRET cover sheets between Generals Holcomb and McInerney. Before they had a chance to read more than a few lines, the orderly pushed in a cart with a coffee service, a bottle of bourbon, glasses, and a silver ice bucket. It had obviously been set up beforehand.

  “Tommy must have been a Boy Scout,” Holcomb said. “He’s always prepared. We’ll take care of ourselves, Tommy. Thank you.”

  The orderly left the room, closing the sliding doors from outside.

  Holcomb closed his folder.

  “Let’s have it, Stew. I can probably get by without reading all that.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Captain Steward went to the easel and raised the oilskin cover. Beneath it was a simple map of the Coral Sea area. A slim strip of northern Australia was visible, as was the southern tip of New Guinea. Above New Guinea lay the southern tip of New Ireland and all of New Britain. Rabaul, which was situated at the northern tip of New Britain, was prominently labeled; it had fallen to the Japanese and was being rapidly built up as a major port for them.

  To the east were the Solomon Islands. The major ones were labeled: Bougainville was the most northerly; then they went south through Choiseul, New Georgia, Santa Isabel, Tulagi, Guadalcanal, Florida, and Malaita, to San Cristobal, the most southerly.

  “Keep it simple, Stew, but start at the beginning,” the Commandant ordered.

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” Captain Steward said. “In late April, Sir, we learned, from Albatross intercepts, details of Japanese plans to take Midway Island, and from there to threaten Hawaii, with the ultimate ambition of taking Hawaii, which would both deny us that forward port and logistic facility and permit them to threaten the West Coast of the United States and the Aleutian Islands.

  “Secondly, they planned to invest Port Moresby, on the tip of Eastern New Guinea. From Port Moresby they could threaten the Australian continent and extend their area of influence into the Solomon Islands. If they succeed in this intention, land-based aircraft in the Solomons could effectively interdict our supply lines to Australia and New Zealand.”

  I’ve heard all this before, and I’m tired. But I’m not going to jump on this hardworking kid because I’m grouchy when I’m tired.

  “Via Albatross intercepts we learned that there would be two Japanese naval forces. Vice-Admiral Takeo Takagi sailed from the Japanese naval base at Truk in command of the carrier striking force, the carriers Zuikaku and Shokaku, which represented a total of 125 aircraft, and its screening force.

  “The second Japanese force, under the overall command of Vice-Admiral Shigeyoshi Inouye, and sailing from their base at Rabaul on New Britain, included the carrier Shoho and several cruisers, transports, and oilers.

  “On 3 May, elements of this second force, which had apparently sailed from Rabaul several days earlier, landed on Tulagi, a small island here in the Solomons”—Steward pointed with what looked like an orchestra leader’s baton—“approximately equidistant between the three larger islands of Santa Isabel, Malaita, and Guadalcanal. They immediately began to construct a seaplane base.

  “Based on the Albatross intercepts, Admiral Nimitz ordered Task Force 17, with Admiral Fletcher flying his flag aboard the carrier Yorktown, into the area. At the same time, Admiral Nimitz ordered Task Force 11, with Admiral Fitch flying his flag aboard the carrier Lexington, and Task Force 44, a mixed force of U.S. and Australian cruisers, under Admiral Crace, to join up with Task Force 11.

  “Admiral Fletcher ordered a strike on the Japanese invasion force on Tulagi, which was carried out at 0630 hours 6 May. The after-action reports on the success of that attack, which are in the folder marked ‘Tulagi,’ have had to be revised.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” the Commandant asked sharply.

  “Sir, there are Australian Coastwatchers on Tulagi. Their radioed reports of the damage inflicted differed from that of the personnel involved in the attack. Admiral Nimitz feels that inasmuch as the Coastwatchers are on Tulagi, theirs are the more credible reports.”

  “In other words,” the Commandant said angrily, “the flyboys let their imaginations run wild again, but the Coastwatchers produced the facts.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Captain Steward said uncomfortably.

  “Nothing personal, Doc,” the Commandant said.

  “I know why it happens, Sir,” McInerney said evenly. “But that doesn’t excuse it.”

  “Why does it happen? I’m really curious, Doc.”

  “I think it has to do with movement, Sir. Perspective. Two, or three, or four pilots report, honestly, what they have seen. But because they are looking at what they all see from different places, both in terms of altitude and direction, no two descriptions match. For example, one aircraft shot down, or one seaplane destroyed in the water, becomes three airplanes shot down, or four seaplanes destroyed, because there are four different reports from people who are, in fact, reporting honestly what they saw. You need a pretty good G-2 debriefing team to separate the facts. Or consolidate them.”

  The Commandant grunted. “Bad intelligence is worse than no intelligence.”

  “I agree, Sir,” McInerney said.

  “We sent a special unit over there to work with the Coastwatchers,” the Commandant said. “Did you know about that?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Is that going to help this, do you think?”

  “Sir, I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the value of the Coastwatchers. They will get us, quickly, valid intelligence from the islands, particularly about Japanese air activity, but also of course about ship movement. If we know as soon as it happens what the Japanese are launching against us, what type of aircraft, and how many, we can launch our own aircraft in time to have them in the air when and where it is to our advantage. As opposed to detecting the enemy with patrolling aircraft, or worse, learning about the attack only when it begins, which catches us on the ground. Or when we’re in the air almost out of fuel.”

  The Commandant grunted.

  “I recommended to General Forrest,” McInerney went on, “that he—we—should do whatever it takes, whatever it costs, to get our people tied in to the Coastwatchers. And I want some of our own people as quickly as possible to get onto the islands as Coastwatchers. I think I was preaching to the convinced, but he said he intended to do just that. But if you were asking, Sir, whether it will do anything about the confusing reports we get from pilots, I don’t think so. We’re just going to have to work on that. It’s inexperience, Sir, rather than dishonesty.”

  “I didn’t mean to insult your people, Doc. You know that.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “OK, Stew. Pardon the interruption.”

  “After the attack on Tulagi, Sir, Task Force 17 moved south to join up with Task Forces 11 and 14. They did so at 0930 6 May, and together steamed westward to intercept the Port Moresby invasion force.

  “At 1030 hours, 6 May, Army Air Force B-17 aircraft from Australia bombed the carrier Shoho and her covering force, apparently without effect.

  “Th
e next day, 7 May, at 1135 hours, aircraft from the Lexington spotted the Shoho again. They attacked and sank her. Three of Lady Lex’s aircraft were lost in the attack.”

  “But they got the Jap carrier? That wasn’t one of these perception problems General McInerney is talking about?”

  “No, Sir. In addition to the pilot’s after-action reports, there has been confirmation of the loss via Albatross intercepts.”

  “OK. Go on.”

  “At noon, 7 May, Japanese bombers and torpedo bombers flying off Admiral Takagi’s carriers, the Zuikaku and Shokaku, found the fleet oiler Neosho, escorted by the destroyer Sims. The Sims was sunk and the Neosho damaged. The last word on that is that she will probably have to be scuttled.

  “Just before noon the next day, Japanese aircraft from Admiral Tagaki’s carriers attacked the combined Task Force. Both Yorktown and Lexington were damaged. Yorktown’s damage was minimal, but Lexington was badly damaged, and she was scuttled at 1956 hours 8 May.”

  “Damn!” the Commandant said.

  “At that point, Admiral Nimitz ordered Task Forces 11 and 17 to withdraw to the south. Task Force 44, the cruiser force, steamed westward to intercept the Port Moresby invasion force.

  “By that time, Albatross intercepts indicated that Admiral Inouye had called off ‘Operation Mo,’ which was the Port Moresby invasion, but inasmuch as this information could not be made available to Admiral Crace, his Task Force patrolled the Coral Sea south of New Guinea until word from the Coastwatchers confirmed the withdrawal of the Japanese invasion force.”

  “That’s it, then, Stew?” the Commandant asked.

  “Sir, the radio messages are in the folders, and I have precise maps—”

  “No, thank you. That was first-class, Stew. I know how hard you had to work to get that up in the time you had. I appreciate it.”

  Captain Steward beamed.

  “My pleasure, Sir,” he said.

  “Now go get some sleep,” the Commandant said. “And you too, Bob,” he added to his aide. “I’m going to have a quick drink with General McInerney and then hit the sheets myself.”

  The Commandant waited until Captain Steward and his aide had gathered up all the briefing material before speaking.