“Well, I figured out if they was so short of guys who could copy fifty, sixty words a minute—you don’t learn to do that overnight—they would be working the ass off those who could. Ooops. Sorry about the language.”
“That’s all right,” Daphne said.
Well, Daphne, you bitchy little lady, you were wrong about this boy. Not only is he smart enough to take Morse faster than John, but he’s smart enough not to let the service hear about it.
“My husband’s a wireless operator,” Daphne said. “With the British Eighth Army in Africa. He’s a sergeant, but he hates being a wireless operator.”
“I figured somebody as pretty as you would be married,” Steve Koffler replied.
Is that the distilled essence of your observations of life, or are you making a pass at me, Corporal Koffler?
“For five years.”
“You don’t look that old.”
“Thank you.”
“You know what I’d really like to do before we go into town?”
Rip my clothes off, and throw me on the floor?
“No.”
“I’d like to unpack that Hallicrafters. I’ve never really seen one. Could you read the newspaper, or something?”
“I think I’d rather go with you and see the radio. Or is it classified?”
“What we’re doing is classified. Not the radio.”
And now I am curious. What the bloody hell is going on around here? Marine parachutists? Villas in the country? “World’s best wireless” shipped by priority air?
(Two)
Townesville Station
Royal Australian Navy
Townesville, Queensland
24 May 1942
The office of the Commanding Officer, Coastwatcher Service, Royal Australian Navy (code name FERDINAND) was simple, even Spartan. The small room with whitewashed block walls in a tin-roofed building was furnished with a battered desk, several well-worn upholstered chairs, and some battered filing cabinets. A prewar recruiting poster for the Royal Australian Navy was stapled to one wall. On the wall behind the desk was an unpainted sheet of plywood, crudely hinged on top, that Major Ed Banning, USMC, immediately decided covered a map, or maps.
The Officer Commanding, Lieutenant Commander Eric A. Feldt, Royal Australian Navy, was a tall, thin, dark-eyed, and dark-haired man. He was not at all glad to see Banning, or the letter he’d brought from Admiral Brewer; and he was making absolutely no attempt to conceal this.
“Nothing personal, Major,” he said finally, looking up at Banning from behind the desk. “I should have bloody well known this would be the next step.”
“Sir?” Banning replied. He was standing with his hands locked behind him, more or less in the at-ease position.
“This,” Feldt said, waving Admiral Brewer’s letter. “You’re not the first American to show up here. I ran the others off. I should have known somebody would sooner or later go over my head.”
“Sir,” Banning said, “let me make it clear that all I want to do here is help you in any way I can.”
“Help me? How the hell could you possibly help me?”
“You would have to tell me that, Sir.”
“What do you know about this area of the world?”
Banning took a chance: “I noticed you drive on the wrong side of the road, Sir.”
It was not the reply Commander Feldt expected. He looked carefully at Banning; and after a very long moment, there was the hint of a smile.
“I was making reference, Major, to the waters in the area of the Bismarck Archipelago.”
“Absolutely nothing, Sir.”
“Well, that’s an improvement over the last one. He told me with a straight face that he had studied the charts.”
“Sir, my lack of knowledge is so overwhelming that I don’t even know what’s wrong with studying the charts.”
“Well, for your general information, Major, there are very few charts, and the ones that do exist are notoriously inaccurate.”
“Thank you, Sir.”
“I don’t suppose that you’re any kind of an expert concerning shortwave wireless, either, are you, Major?”
“No, Sir. I know a little less about shortwave radios than I do about the Bismarck Archipelago.”
There was again a vague hint of a smile.
“I know about your game baseball, Major. I know that the rule is three strikes and you’re out. You now have two strikes against you.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Sir.”
“Here’s the final throw—”
“I believe the correct phrase is ‘pitch,’ Sir.”
“The final pitch, then. What do you know of our enemy, the Jap?”
In Japanese, Banning said, “I read and write the language, Sir, and I learned enough about them in China to come to believe that no Westerner can ever know them well.”
“I will be damned,” Commander Feldt said. “That was Japanese? I don’t speak a bloody word of it myself.”
“That was Japanese, Sir,” Banning said, and then translated what he had said a moment before.
“What were you doing in China?”
“I was the Intelligence Officer of the 4th Marines, Sir.”
“And you went home to America before they were sent to the Philippines?”
“No, Sir, afterward.”
“Are we splitting a hair here, Major? You went home before the war started?”
“No, Sir. After.”
“You were considered too valuable, as an intelligence officer who speaks Japanese, to be captured?”
“No, Sir. I was medically evacuated. I was blinded by concussion.”
“How?”
“They think probably concussion from artillery, Sir. My sight returned on the submarine that took me off Corregidor.”
“Are you a married man, Major?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“How would your wife react to the news—actually, there wouldn’t be any news, she just wouldn’t hear from you—that you were behind the Japanese lines?”
“That’s a moot point, Sir. The one thing I have been forbidden to do is serve as a Coastwatcher myself.”
Feldt grunted. “Me too,” he said.
“My wife is still in China, Commander,” Banning said.
Feldt met his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Feldt grunted as he heaved himself to his feet. He raised the sheet of plywood with another grunt, and shoved a heavy bolt through an eyebolt so that it would stay up. A map, covered with a sheet of celluloid, was exposed.
“This is our area of operation, Major,” Commander Feldt said. “From the Admiralty Islands here, across the Pacific to the other side of New Ireland, and down to Vitiaz Strait between New Guinea and New Britain, and then down into the Solomon Sea in this area. The little marks are where we have people. The ones that are crossed out are places we haven’t heard from in some time, or know for sure that the Japs have taken out.”
Banning walked around the desk and studied the map for several minutes without speaking. He saw there were a number of Xs marking locations which were no longer operational.
“The people manning these stations,” Feldt explained, “have been commissioned as junior officers, or warrant officers, in the Royal Australian Navy Volunteer Reserve. The idea is to try to have the Japs treat them as prisoners of war if they are captured. There’s sort of a fuzzy area there. On one hand, if someone is in uniform, he is supposed to be treated as a POW if captured. On the other hand, what these people are doing, quite simply, is spying. One may shoot spies. The Japanese do. Or actually, they either torture our people to death; or, if they’re paying attention to the code of Bushido, they have a formal little ceremony, the culmination of which is the beheading of our people by an officer of suitable rank.”
Banning now grunted.
“My people,” Feldt went on, “are primarily former civil servants or plantation managers and, in a few cases, missionaries. Most of them
have spent years in their area. They speak the native languages and dialects, and in some cases—not all—are protected by the natives. They are undisciplined, irreverent, and contemptuous of military and naval organizations—and in particular of officers of the regular establishment. They are people of incredible courage and, for the obvious reasons, of infinite value to military or naval operations in this area.”
“I heard something about this,” Banning said. “I didn’t realize how many of them there are.”
“Supporting them logistically is very difficult,” Feldt went on, as if he had not heard Banning, “for several reasons. For one thing, the distances. For another, the nonavailability, except in the most extreme circumstances, of submarines and aircraft. And when aircraft and submarines are available, they are of course limited to operation on the shorelines; and my people are most often in the mountains and jungle, some distance from the shore. Landing aircraft in the interior of the islands is ninety percent of the time impossible, and in any case it would give the Japs a pretty good idea where my people are. The result is that my people are eating the food they carried with them into the jungle (if any remains), and native food, which will not support health under the circumstances they have to live under. If illness strikes, or if they accidentally break an ankle, their chances of survival are minimal.”
“Christ!” Banning said.
“In addition, the humidity and other conditions tend to render wireless equipment inoperable unless it is properly and constantly cared for. And these people are not technicians.”
Banning shook his head.
“And now, Major, be good enough to tell me how you intend to help me.”
“In addition to what you tell me to do,” Banning said, after a moment, “money, parachutists, and radios. I might also be able to do something about aircraft priorities.”
“Do you Americans really believe that money can solve any problem? I noticed you mentioned that first.”
“I’m not sure about any,” Banning replied. “But many? Yes, Sir, I believe that. I’ve got a quarter of a million dollars in a bank in Melbourne that can be used to support you, and I can get more if I need more.”
“That sounds very generous.”
“The Marine Corps wants access to your intelligence,” Banning said.
“You would have it anyway, wouldn’t you, via your Navy?”
“We would like it direct,” Banning said.
Feldt grunted.
“You said ‘parachutists’? Have you got parachutists?”
“I have one, Sir, already in Australia,” Banning replied. He did not say, of course, The notion of sending Koffler off on a mission like these is absurd on its face. Then he added, “I can get more in a short period of time.”
“What about wireless sets? I thought you said you didn’t know anything about that.”
“Sir, I don’t,” Banning said. “But some are on the way.”
“What kind?”
“Sir, I don’t know. I was told ‘the best there is.’”
“I would like to know what kind.”
“I’ll find out for you,” Banning said. “Just as soon as they show up. So far, the only asset I have in Australia is the money.”
“And, of course, you.”
“Yes, Sir. And my clerk,” Banning said, and added, “He’s the parachutist I mentioned. He’s eighteen years old. I can’t imagine sending him off to parachute onto some island. But, Sir, he knows about parachuting. He could tell us what we need, and probably what’s available in the States.”
Feldt either grunted or snorted, Banning wasn’t sure which. Then he turned and pulled the bolt out of the eyebolt and lowered the sheet of raw plywood so that it again covered the map.
“Tell me, Major Banning,” he said, “do you have a Christian name?”
“Yes, Sir. Edward.”
“And your friends call you that? Or ‘Ed’?”
“Ed, Sir.”
“And do you drink, Ed? Wine, beer, spirits?”
“Yes, Sir. Wine, beer and spirits.”
“Good. Having a Yank around here will be bad enough without him being a sodding teetotaler.”
“May I interpret that to mean, Sir, that I may stay?”
“On condition that you break yourself of the habit of using the word ‘Sir.’ Are you aware, Ed, that you use ‘Sir’ in place of a comma?”
“I suppose I do.”
“My Christian name is Eric,” Feldt said. “But to keep things in their proper perspective around here, Ed, I think you had better call me ‘Commander.’”
They smiled at each other.
“Let’s go drink our lunch,” Feldt said. “When we’ve done that, we’ll see what can be done about getting you and your savages a place to live.”
(Three)
Townesville Station
Townesville, Queensland
31 May 1942
Major Edward Banning, USMC, was on hand when his command, less the rear echelon (Corporal Koffler), disembarked from the Melbourne train. USMC Special Detachment 14 debarked after the last of the civilian and a half-dozen Australian military passengers had come down from the train to the platform.
The first Marine off the train was Staff Sergeant Richardson, the senior NCO, who either didn’t see Major Banning or pretended not to. He took up a position on the platform facing the sleeper car. Then, one by one, quickly, the others filed off and formed two ranks facing Staff Sergeant Richardson. They were carrying their weapons at sling arms. Most of them had Springfields, but here and there was a Thompson submachine gun.
They were not, however, wearing any of their web field equipment, Major Banning noticed. They were freshly turned out, in sharply creased greens, their fore-and-aft caps at a proper salty angle. Two or three of them seemed a bit flushed, as if, for example, they had recently imbibed some sort of alcoholic beverage.
Staff Sergeant Richardson fell them in, put them through the dress-right-dress maneuver, and did a snappy, precise, about-face. At that point, First Lieutenant Joseph L. Howard descended the sleeping-car steps.
He too either did not see Major Banning or pretended not to. He marched before Staff Sergeant Richardson, who saluted him crisply.
“Sir,” Staff Sergeant Richardson barked, “the detachment is formed and all present or accounted for.”
Lieutenant Howard returned the salute crisply.
“Take your post, Sergeant,” he ordered.
Salutes were again exchanged. Then Staff Sergeant Richardson did a precise right-face movement, followed by several others that ultimately placed him in line with, and to the right of, the troop formation. At the same time, Lieutenant Howard did an equally precise about-face movement and stood erectly at attention.
Major Banning understood his role in the ceremony. He dropped his cigarette to the ground, ground his toe on it, and then marched erectly until he faced Lieutenant Howard.
Howard saluted.
“Sir,” he barked, “Special Detachment 14, less the rear echelon, reporting for duty, Sir.”
Banning returned the salute.
He looked at his men, who stood there stone-faced, even the two or three who he suspected had been at the sauce.
“At ease!”
The detachment assumed the position.
“Welcome to Townesville,” Banning said. “And let me say the good news: your drill sergeants would be proud of you. You would be a credit to any parade ground.”
There were smiles and chuckles.
“The bad news is that it’s about a mile and a half from here to our billets, and there are no wheels.”
Now there were grins on all their faces.
“May I respectfully suggest that the Major underestimates his command, Sir?” Joe Howard said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Banning asked.
“If the Major would be good enough to accompany me, Sir?” Howard asked.
“Where?”
“To the rear of the train,
Sir,” Howard said.
“All right,” Banning said.
“First Sergeant,” Lieutenant Howard ordered formally, “take the detachment.”
Staff Sergeant Richardson marched up in front again, and a final salute was exchanged.
Banning and Howard walked to the end of the train, where he stopped at a flatcar. Whatever it carried was covered with a canvas tarpaulin.
“They call these things ‘open goods wagons’ over here, Sir,” he said. “That caused a little confusion for a while. We kept asking for flatcars, and they didn’t know what the hell we were talking about.”
“What’s in here? The radios?”
“I think the radios are in the last car, Sir,” Howard said.
He put his fingers in his mouth and whistled shrilly, then gestured. Half a dozen Marines handed their weapons to the others and came trotting down the platform.
An officer and a gentleman is not supposed to whistle like that, Banning thought, so it’s a good thing there’s nobody here but me to see it.
The Marines clambered up on the flatcar and started to remove the tarpaulin. Large wheels were revealed.
“You stole a truck,” Banning accused Howard.
“No, Sir. That truck was issued to us. It’s perfectly legal.”
The tarpaulin was now almost off, revealing a Studebaker stake-bodied truck. In the bed of the truck was a 1941 Studebaker automobile. On the doors of both the truck and the car were neatly stenciled the Marine Corps emblem and the letters USMC.
“Is that the car from The Elms?” Banning asked, and then, without giving Howard a chance to reply, continued, “You sure that’s not stolen, Joe?”
“I checked on it myself, Sir, when Richardson showed up with them.”
“Them?”
“We have two trucks and three cars, Sir. I mean, counting the one you already had. I left that in Melbourne with Koffler. I figured you’d need it when you went back there.”
Banning saw that the automobile was stuffed with duffel bags.
Well, that explains why they weren’t carrying them over their shoulders when they got off the train.
“How do you propose to get that truck off the flatcar?” Banning asked.
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