Counterattack

by W. E. B Griffin

  Two days after Corregidor fell, he cabled General Marshall (ignoring the implication that Marshall couldn’t figure this out himself) that the Japanese victory in the Philippines will free two infantry divisions and a large number of aircraft that they will probably use to take New Guinea, and then the Solomons. They will then cut his supply routes to the United States, which would mean the loss of Australia.

  MacA. proposed to go on the counterattack, starting with the recapture of Tulagi, and then establishing our own presence on Guadalcanal. In his mind (and in mine) he tried to be a good soldier and to “coordinate” this with South Pacific Area Headquarters. But he was (a) reminded that Guadalcanal and Tulagi are not “within his sphere of influence” and that (b) under those circumstances it was really rather presumptuous of him to ask for Navy aircraft carriers, etcetera, to conduct an operation in their sphere of influence, but that (c) he was not to worry, because Admiral Nimitz was already making plans to recapture Tulagi with a Marine Raider battalion.

  There is no way that one small battalion can take Tulagi; but even if they could, they cannot hold it long—if the Japanese establish bases, which seems a given, on either Guadalcanal or Malaita.

  What MacArthur wants to do makes more sense to me than what the Navy proposes to do, unless, as MacA. believes, the Navy’s primary purpose is to render him impotent and humiliated, so that the war here will be a Navy war.

  I fight against accepting this latter theory. But what I saw at—and especially after—Pearl Harbor, with the admirals pulling their wagons into a circle to avoid accepting the blame, keeps popping into my head.

  Respectfully,

  Fleming Pickering, Captain, USNR

  XII

  (One)

  The Elms

  Dandenong, Victoria, Australia

  22 May 1942

  “Oh, good morning! We didn’t expect you to be up so early,” Mrs. Hortense Cavendish said, with a smile, to Corporal Stephen M. Koffler, USMC, when she saw him coming down the stairway. “Why don’t you just go into the breakfast room, and I’ll get you a nice hot cup of tea?”

  “Good morning, thank you,” Steve said, smiling, but not really comfortable.

  Mrs. Cavendish was as old as his mother, and looked something like her, too. She was the housekeeper at The Elms, a three-story, twelve-room, red brick house set in what looked to Steve like its own private park fifteen miles or so outside Melbourne. It was called The Elms, Major Banning had told him, because of the century-old elm trees which lined the driveway from the “motorway” to the house.

  He also told him (You’ve come up smelling like a rose again, Koffler.) that the whole place had been rented by Captain Pickering, and, for the time being at least, he and the other members of Special Detachment 14 would be living there. He explained that the housekeeper was something like the manager of a hotel, in charge of the whole place, and was to be treated with the appropriate respect.

  At the moment, Corporal Koffler was the only member of Special Detachment 14 in residence. The day before, Major Banning had driven him out here in a brand-new Studebaker President, then had him installed in a huge room with a private bathroom. After that, Captain Pickering had come out and taken Major Banning to the railroad station in Melbourne. Banning was going “up north” to some place called Townesville, Queensland, where the Coastwatchers had their headquarters. He told Steve he had no idea when he would be back, but that he would keep in touch.

  Steve now understood that Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria were something like the states in America, but that was really about all he understood about Australia.

  From what Major Banning had told him, and from what he’d heard from the other guys, the Japs were probably going to take Australia. He had heard Major Banning talking to Lieutenant Howard back in ’Diego about it. Steve had long ago decided that if anybody would have the straight poop about anything, Major Banning would. Major Banning had told Lieutenant Howard that he didn’t see how anything could keep the Japs from taking Australia, as long as they took some island named New Guinea first. And he really didn’t see how the Japs could be kept from taking New Guinea.

  To tell the truth, the closer they got to Australia, the more nervous Koffler had become. More than nervous. Scared. He tried hard not to let it show, of course, in front of all the Army and Navy officers on the airplane (he was, after all, not only a Marine, but a Marine parachutist, and Marines aren’t supposed to be nervous or scared). But when the airplane landed, he would not really have been surprised if the Japs had been shelling or maybe bombing the place. That would have meant they’d have started fighting right away. He had cleaned and oiled his Springfield before they left Hawaii, just to be double sure.

  But it hadn’t been that way at all. There was no more sign of war, or Japs, in Melbourne than there was in Newark. Melbourne was like Newark, maybe as big, and certainly a hell of a lot cleaner. Except for the funny-looking trucks and cars, which the Australians drove on the wrong side of the road, and the funny way the Australians talked, sort of through their noses, you’d never even know you were in Australia.

  He’d spent his first night in a real nice hotel, and Captain Pickering had given him money, and he had had a real nice meal in a real nice restaurant. The steak was a little tough, but he had no call to bitch about the size of it—it just about covered the plate—and he had trouble getting it all down. Then he went to the movies, and they were playing an American movie. It starred Betty Grable, and he remembered seeing it in the Ampere Theatre in East Orange just before he joined the Corps. And that started him off remembering Dianne Marshall and what had happened between them. And between the movie and the memories, he got a little homesick…until he talked himself out of that by reminding himself that he was a Marine parachutist, for Christ’s sake, and not supposed to start crying in his goddamned beer because he was away from his mommy or because some old whore had made a goddamned fool out of him.

  The table in the breakfast room was big, and the wood sort of glowed. There was a bowl of flowers in the middle of it. When he sat down at it, he looked out through windows running from the ceiling to the floor; outside he could see a man raking leaves out of a flower garden. There was a concrete statue of a nearly naked woman in the garden, in the middle of a what looked like a little pond, except there wasn’t any water in the pond.

  Mrs. Cavendish followed him in in a moment, and laid a newspaper on the table. Right behind her was a maid, a plain woman maybe thirty years old, wearing a black dress with a little white apron in front. She smiled at Steve, then went to one of the cabinets in the room, and took out a woven place mat and silver and set it up in front of him.

  “What would you like for breakfast?” Mrs. Cavendish asked. “Ham and eggs? There’s kippers.”

  Steve had no idea what a kipper was.

  “Ham and eggs would be fine,” he said. “Over easy.”

  “We have tomato and pineapple juice.”

  “Tomato juice would be fine,” Steve said.

  “The tea’s brewing,” Mrs. Cavendish said. “It’ll just be a moment.”

  She and the maid left the room. Steve unfolded the newspaper. It was The Times of Victoria. The pages were bigger than those of the Newark Evening News, but there weren’t very many of them. He flipped through it, looking in vain for comics, and then returned to the first page.

  There were two big headlines: ROMMEL NEARS TOBRUK and NAZI TANKS APPROACH LENINGRAD. There was a picture of a burning German tank, and a map of North Africa with wide, curving arrows drawn on it.

  Steve wondered why there wasn’t anything in the newspaper about the Japs being about to invade Australia.

  He went through the newspaper, mostly reading the advertisements for strange brands of toothpaste, used motorcars, and something called Bovril. He wondered what Bovril was, whether you ate it, or drank it, or washed your mouth out with it, or what.

  The maid delivered his ham and eggs, cold toast in a little rack, tomato
juice, and a tub of sour orange marmalade. He had just about finished eating when the maid came in the breakfast room.

  “Telephone for you, Sir,” she said, and pointed to a telephone sitting on a sideboard.

  The telephone was strange. There was sort of a cup over the mouthpiece, and the wire that ran from the base to the handset was much thinner than the one on American phones; it looked more like a couple of pieces of string twisted together than like a regular wire.

  “Corporal Koffler, Sir,” Steve said.

  “Good morning, Corporal,” a cheerful voice said. “Lieutenant Donnelly here.” He pronounced it “leftenant,” so Steve knew he was an Australian.

  “Yes, Sir?”

  “I’m the Air Transport Officer, Naval Station, Melbourne. We have two things for you. Actually, I mean to say, two shipments. There’s several crates, priority air shipment, and we’ve been alerted that several of your people are scheduled to arrive about noon.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Your Captain Pickering said to send the crates out there by lorry, and that you’ll meet the aircraft. Any problems with that?”

  “No, Sir,” Steve said, an automatic reflex. Then he blurted, “Sir, I’m not sure if I can find…where the plane will be. Or how to get back out here.”

  Lieutenant Donnelly chuckled. “Well, you’ll be able to find your way about soon enough, I’m sure. In the meantime, I’ll just send a map, with the route marked, out there with the lorry driver. Do you think that will handle it?”

  “Yes, Sir. Thank you.”

  “The lorry should be there within the hour. Thank you, Corporal.”

  “Thank you, Sir.”

  Steve hung up and went looking for Mrs. Cavendish. He was going to need some place to store the crates, whatever they contained. She showed him a three-car garage behind the house, now empty, that was just what he was looking for. There were sturdy metal doors which could be locked, and there were no windows.

  The truck arrived forty-five minutes later. Steve, who had been looking out his bedroom window for it, saw that it said “Ford” on the radiator, but it was unlike any Ford Steve had ever seen. There were three people in the cab, all in uniform, and all female.

  They all wore the same kind of caps, something like a Marine cap, except the visor wasn’t leather. They wore the caps perched straight on top of their hair, and Steve thought they all looked kind of cute, like girls dressed up in men’s uniforms. Two of them wore gray coveralls. The third, who looked like she was in charge, wore a tunic and a shirt and tie and a skirt, with really ugly stockings.

  “Corporal Koffler?” she said, smiling at him and offering her hand. “I’m Petty Officer Farnsworth.”

  “Hi,” Steve said. She was, he guessed, in her early twenties. He couldn’t really tell what the rest of her looked like in the nearly shapeless uniform and those ugly cotton stockings, but her face was fine. She had light hazel eyes and freckles.

  “Good day,” the other two women said. In Australia that came out something like “G’die,” which took some getting used to. One of them looked like she was about seventeen, and the other one looked old enough to be the first one’s mother. Neither of them, Steve immediately decided, had the class of Petty Officer Farnsworth.

  “How are you?” Steve said, and walked over and shook hands with them.

  “After we unload your crates,” Petty Officer Farnsworth said, “Lieutenant Donnelly said I was to ask if you would like me to wait around and drive into Melbourne with you, to show you the way.”

  “Great!” Steve said.

  “Where would you like the crates?”

  “Let’s see what they are,” Steve said, and walked to the back of the truck. He saw three wooden crates, none of them as large as a footlocker. He couldn’t tell what they contained, and there was nothing stenciled on them to identify them.

  Petty Officer Farnsworth, who had followed him, handed him a manila envelope. “The shipping documents,” she said.

  He tore the envelope open. The U.S. Army Signal Center, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, had shipped, on AAAA Air Priority, by authority of the Chief Signal Officer, U.S. Army, to the Commanding Officer, USMC Special Detachment 14, Melbourne, Australia:

  1 EA SET, TRANSCEIVER, RADIO, HALLICRAFTERS MODEL 23C, W/48 CRYSTALS

  1 EA ANTENNA SET, RADIO TRANSMISSION, PORTABLE, 55-FOOT W/CABLES & GUY WIRES

  1 EA GENERATOR, ELECTRICAL, FOOT AND HAND POWERED, 6 AND 12 VOLT DC

  “Wow!” Steve said. He knew all about the Hallicrafters 23C, had studied carefully all of its specifications in the American Amateur Radio Relay League magazine, but he’d never seen one before.

  “Am I permitted to ask what they are?” Petty Officer Farnsworth asked.

  “Just about the best shortwave radio there is,” Steve said.

  “Lieutenant Donnelly said that I wasn’t to ask questions,” Petty Officer Farnsworth said, “about what you’re doing out here.”

  “You didn’t. You just asked what was in the boxes. There’s nothing secret about that.”

  She smiled at him.

  Nice teeth. Nice smile.

  “Where would you like them?”

  “Around in back,” Steve said. “I’ll show you.”

  When the crates had been unloaded, Petty Officer Farnsworth sent the truck back into Melbourne.

  “It will take us no more than forty-five minutes to get to the quay,” she said. “Which means we should leave here at eleven-fifteen. It’s now quarter past nine. Where can I pass two hours out of your way, where I will see nothing I’m not supposed to see?”

  “I don’t have anything to do. And there’s nothing out here for you to see. Would you like a cup of coffee?”

  “Tea?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “That would be very nice, Corporal,” Petty Officer Farnsworth said.

  Steve took her into the breakfast room, sat her down, and then went into the kitchen and asked for tea. They waited for several minutes in an awkward silence until one of the maids delivered a tea tray, complete to toast and cookies.

  “Where are you from in America?” Petty Officer Farnsworth asked.

  “Where the radios come from. New Jersey. How about you?”

  “I’m from Wagga Wagga, in New South Wales.”

  “Wagga Wagga?” he asked, smiling.

  “I think that’s an Aborigine name.”

  “That’s what you call your colored people?”

  “Yes, but as I understand it, they’re not like yours.”

  “How come?”

  “Well, yours were taken from Africa and sent to America, as I understand it, and the Aborigines were here when we English arrived.”

  “Sort of Australian Indians, in other words?”

  “I suppose. New South Wales, of course, is named after South Wales, in England.”

  “So is New Jersey,” he said. “Jersey is in England.”

  “I thought it was an island.”

  “Well, it could be. I never really paid much attention.”

  Petty Officer Farnsworth had an unkind thought. Corporal Koffler was a nice enough young man, and not unattractive, but obviously bloody goddamned stupid.

  Petty Officer Farnsworth was twenty-three years old, and she had been married for five years to John Andrew Farnsworth, now a sergeant with the Royal Australian Signals Corps somewhere in North Africa.

  Before the war, she and John had lived in a newly built house on his family’s sheep ranch. When John had rushed to the sound of the British trumpet—a move that had baffled and enraged her—his family had decided that she would simply shoulder his responsibilities at the ranch in addition to her own. After all, John’s father, brothers, and amazingly fecund sisters reasoned, she had no children to worry about, and One Must Do One’s Part While the Family Hero Is Off Defending King and Country.

  Petty Officer Farnsworth, whose Christian name was Daphne, had no intention of becoming a worn-out woman before her time, as the other women
of the family either had or were about to. She used the same excuse to get off the ranch as John had: patriotism. When the advertisements for women to join the Royal Australian Navy Women’s Volunteer Reserve had come out, she had announced that enlisting was her duty. Since John was already off fighting for King and Country, she could do no less, especially considering, as everyone kept pointing out, that she had no children to worry about.

  The RANWVR had trained her as a typist and assigned her to the Naval Station in Melbourne. She had a job now that she liked, working for Lieutenant Donnelly. There was something different every day. And unlike some of the other officers she had worked for, Lieutenant kept his hands to himself.

  Every once in a while she wondered if Donnelly’s gentlemanly behavior was a mixed blessing. Lately she had been wondering about that more and more often, and it bothered her.

  “Do all Marines wear boots like that?” she asked.

  “No. Just parachutists.”

  “You’re a parachutist?”

  He pointed to his wings.

  “Our parachutists wear berets,” she said. “Red berets.”

  “You mean like women?”

  My God, how can one young man be so stupid?

  “Well, I suppose, yes. But I wouldn’t say that where they could hear me, if I were you.”

  “I didn’t mean nothing wrong by it, I just wanted to be sure we were talking about the same thing.”

  “Quite. So you’re a wireless operator?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “Yes and no?”

  “Well, I am, but the Marine Corps doesn’t know anything about it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I didn’t tell them, and then when they gave everybody the Morse code test, I made sure I flunked it.”

  “Why?” Now Daphne Farnsworth was fascinated. John had written a half-dozen times that the worst mistake he’d made in the Army was letting it be known that he could key forty words a minute. From the moment he’d gotten through basic training, the Army had him putting in long days, day after day, as a high-speed wireless telegrapher. He hated it.