Close Combat

by W. E. B Griffin

  BEST PERSONAL REGARDS, FRANK

  END PERSONAL FROM SECNAV TO BRIGGEN PICKERING

  BY DIRECTION:

  DAVID HAUGHTON, CAPTAIN, USN ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT TO THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY

  TOP SECRET

  * * *

  [SIX]

  The Foster Lafayette Hotel

  Washington, D.C.

  2015 Hours 28 October 1942

  “I’m a little disappointed with this thing,” First Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, said. As he spoke, he re moved the accompanying ribbon from the oblong blue box that contained his Distinguished Flying Cross and held it in his fingers.

  “What do you mean, ‘disappointed’?” First Lieutenant Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR, asked.

  “The British do it right,” Pick said. “Don’t you watch English movies? When Tyrone Power gets the British DFC for sweeping the skies of the dirty Hun, you can see the sonofabitch for miles; it’s striped; it looks like a ‘Danger High Voltage’ sign. This thing looks like something you get for not catching the clap for three consecutive months.”

  “Pick,” Miss Ernestine Sage groaned, “you’re disgusting!”

  McCoy laughed. “He’s a little drunk is all.”

  “‘A little drunk’ is the understatement of the week,” Ernie said.

  “How are the girls going to know I’m a hero with this No Clap ribbon? How will I get laid?”

  “Jesus, watch your mouth, Pick!” McCoy snapped.

  “That’s never been a problem with you before,” Ernie said. “Why should it be now?”

  He fastened his eyes on her. “You may have a point, Madam,” he said solemnly. He turned his eyes to McCoy. “How come you didn’t get a medal?”

  “For what?”

  “For paddling your little rubber boat ashore from the submarine. Now that took balls!”

  “Shut up, Pick,” McCoy snapped.

  “What are you talking about, Pick?” Ernie said seriously. “And you shut up, Ken!”

  “That’s classified, damn it!” McCoy said.

  “Why is it classified? It’s history. And, anyway, Ernie doesn’t look very Japanese to me.”

  “What little rubber boat, Pick?” Ernie demanded.

  “I’ll never forget it. There he was on a sunny South Pacific beach, surrounded by cannibals. He’d paddled there in his little rubber boat from a submarine.”

  “Oh, damn it!” McCoy said, and walked across the room to the bar, passing en route Lieutenants Dunn and Easterbrook, who were sitting side by side on a couch, sound asleep.

  “If he wasn’t so mad,” Ernie said, “I’d think you were trying to be funny.”

  “As God is my witness, there he was, teaching the cannibals close-order drill.”

  “What were you doing there, Pick?” Ernie asked suspiciously.

  “He was the copilot of the plane that picked us up,” McCoy said from the bar. “Now can we change the subject?”

  “Why didn’t you get a medal?” Ernie asked McCoy. “And why did I have to hear this from him?”

  “You don’t get medals for doing what you’re supposed to do, all right?” McCoy said. “And everything he told you is supposed to be classified.”

  “That’s what I thought when they gave me this thing,” Pick said. “I didn’t do a goddamn thing a lot of other people didn’t also do, and they didn’t get medals. Dick Stecker, for example.”

  “Stecker will probably get one,” McCoy said. “He’s an ace too, isn’t he?”

  “A mummy ace,” Pick said.

  McCoy glared at him.

  “Don’t give me the evil eye, Mister McCoy. You saw him. Wrapped up like Tutankhamen.”

  There was a knock at the door. It was one of the assistant managers.

  “I thought you would like to see this, Mr. Pickering,” he said, and handed him a thin stack of newspapers. “There’s several copies.”

  “Thank you,” Pick said.

  He accepted the stack of newspapers and handed one to McCoy and Ernie. It was The Washington Star, and there was a four-column picture of Bill Dunn as Secretary Knox was pinning his Navy Cross on him. A headline accompanied the picture: “GUADALCANAL DOUBLE ACE AWARDED NAVY CROSS.”

  Pick took his copy and walked to the couch and draped it over Lieutenant Dunn’s head. By the time he reached the bar, Dunn was in the process of sweeping the newspaper away. Once he finished that, he rose to his feet wide awake and started toward Pickering.

  “I have a great idea!” he said.

  “Look what woke up! Read the newspaper.”

  “You come home with me,” Dunn said.

  “Read the goddamned newspaper.”

  “What are you going to do, just stay here?”

  “I thought that I’d hang around with the Killer,” Pick said. “Maybe pick up some girls or something.”

  “Goddamn you!” McCoy said.

  “What you’ve heard about Alabama isn’t true. We wear shoes and have indoor plumbing and everything,” Dunn said.

  “I’m not going to be here,” McCoy said. “I’m on my way to Parris Island in the morning.”

  “You don’t want to stay here alone, Pick,” Ernie said. “Come with me. Mother and Daddy would love to see you.”

  “With all respect, I’ll pass on that,” Pick said. “Wouldn’t I be in the way, Bill?”

  “Hell, no. Come on, Pick. I want you to.”

  Pick shrugged. “OK. Thank you. Now go read the newspaper,” Pick said.

  “Why?” Dunn asked. But he took the newspaper McCoy offered him.

  Dunn looked at his photograph.

  “Goddamn!”

  “That will be printed all over the country,” Ernie said. “You’re famous, Bill.”

  “Goddamn it, this is going to ruin my…social…life! I knew if I stayed in the goddamned Marine Corps long enough, they’d get around to screwing that up, too!”

  “What in the world are you talking about?” Ernie asked.

  “Tell her, Lieutenant,” Pick said. “She’s one of us. She’ll understand.”

  “I think what I need is a drink,” Bill Dunn said.

  XII

  [ONE]

  The Officers’ Club

  Main Side

  U.S. Naval Air Station

  Pensacola, Florida

  1545 Hours 30 October 1942

  With a feeling that he’d accomplished, in spades, what he’d set out to do, Lieutenant Colonel J. Danner Porter, USMC (elevated to that rank three weeks previously), marched out of the club. He was accompanied by Captain James Carstairs, USMC, who followed Colonel Porter, a few steps to his rear.

  It had come to Colonel Porter’s attention that certain of his instructor pilots, in direct violation of written orders to the contrary, had taken up the habit of visiting the club during the afternoon hours.

  Colonel Porter devoutly believed that when the duty hours were clearly specified—in this case from 0700 to 1630—his officers would perform military duties, not sit around the O Club in their flight suits swilling beer and killing time until 1625, when they could sign out for the day at Flight Training Operations.

  In Colonel Porter’s opinion, it didn’t matter at all whether or not they had completed their scheduled training flights. There were other things they could do: prepare for the next day’s operations, for example, or counsel their students, or spend a little time studying the training syllabus to evaluate their performance and that of their students against the specified criteria.

  When he looked in on the Club a few minutes earlier, he found nine of his Marine flight instructors in the small bar, where officers were permitted to drink when they weren’t in the prescribed uniform of the day. (He saw at least as many Navy flight instructors in there as well, but that was besides the point. The Navy was the Navy and The Marine Corps was The Marine Corps. If the Navy was willing to tolerate such behavior, it was the Navy’s business, not his.) Colonel Porter knew all nine by sight. While he stood at the door and calle
d off their names, Captain Carstairs wrote them down.

  As soon as the clerks could type them up, each of the nine officers would receive a reply-by-endorsement letter. This would state that it had come to the undersigned’s (Colonel Porter’s) attention that, in disobedience to Letter Order so and so, of such and such a date, the individual had been observed in the Officers’ Club during duty hours consuming intoxicating beverages. The officer would “reply by endorsement hereto” exactly why he had chosen to disregard orders.

  Those letters would become part of the officer’s official records and would be considered by promotion boards. Colonel Porter regretted the necessity of having to place a black mark against an officer’s record; but this was The Marine Corps, and Marine officers were expected to obey their orders.

  It was at this moment—when he was at the peak of the savoring of his own effectiveness—that Colonel Porter’s pleasure came suddenly crashing down: Walking up to the Officers’ Club under the canvas marquee were a pair of Marine officers. They were not, technically speaking, his Marine officers (as the nine in the bar were his); but they were Marine officers, or at least they were wearing Marine officers’ uniforms, with Naval Aviators’ wings of gold. And so, in that sense, he was responsible for them.

  Why me, dear Lord? he thought to himself. Why me?

  The pair were a disgrace to the Corps.

  Their violations of the prescribed uniform code were many and flagrant: Their covers, for instance, were at best disreputable…at worst insulting to good order. Though the prescribed cover was the cap, brimmed, these two were wearing fore-and-aft caps. The taller of the two officers wore his on the back of his head, while the smaller actually had his on sidewards (to look at him, he was so young he was probably fresh from Basic Flight Training—maybe at Memphis?).

  The knot of the tall officer’s field scarf was dangling at least an inch away from his collar, the top two buttons of his blouse were unbuttoned, and he was eating a hot dog. This last meant there was no way he could render the hand salute (unless he dropped the hot dog). For he was holding the hot dog in his right hand, while in his left he was carrying a disreputable-looking equipment bag.

  The small officer, meanwhile, looked like a goddamned wandering gypsy. In one hand he was carrying a cigarette; in the other, an even more disreputable-looking issue equipment bag. Both lower bellows pockets of his blouse were bulging. The left held a newspaper, and the right almost certainly contained a whiskey bottle in a brown paper bag. And God alone knows what else; the pocket’s seams are straining.

  “Afternoon, Colonel,” the little one greeted him, smiling. He had a Rebel twang that was almost a parody of a southern accent. It came out, “Aft’noon, Cunnel.”

  “A word, gentlemen, if you please,” Colonel Porter said. The two stopped. Colonel Porter stepped close enough to confirm some of his suspicions: Neither had been close to a razor for at least twenty-four hours. And they both reeked of gin.

  “What can we do for you, Colonel?” the small one continued. It came out, “Whut kin we do foah you, Cunnel?”

  “You can follow me inside, if you will, please, gentlemen.”

  “I’ll be damned, it’s Captain Mustache,” the tall one said, more than a little thickly.

  “What did you say, Lieutenant?” Colonel Porter snapped.

  “This officer is known to me, Sir,” Captain Carstairs said; he wore a perfectly trimmed pencil-line mustache. “The last name is Carstairs, Lieutenant…as you might have recalled under more favorable circumstances. You are apparently confusing me with Captain Mistacher.”

  “Whatever you say. How have you been?”

  Captain Carstairs gave the tall Lieutenant a tight, sharp-edged smile. And Colonel Porter took that as a sign of disapproval.

  They were now inside the lobby of the Officers’ Club. A large, oblong table was in the center of the room.

  “Step up to the table, please, Lieutenant,” Colonel Porter said. “As you unload the contents of your pockets, Captain Carstairs will record exactly what you have jammed in there.”

  “Little Billy,” the tall one said. “I think we are on the Colonel’s shit list.”

  “You are an officer, presumably—” Colonel Porter said icily, only to be interrupted by the smaller, younger one.

  “I was getting that feeling myself, Pick,” he agreed solemnly, in his slurred Southern drawl.

  “—and I don’t like your language.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering said, and saluted. Officers of the Naval Service do not salute indoors.

  “You are drunk, Lieutenant!”

  “I would judge that an accurate assessment of my condition,” Pick said, carefully and slowly pronouncing each syllable.

  “Close your mouth! You will speak only when spoken to!”

  “Excuse me. I thought you were talking to me.”

  “You unload your pockets,” Colonel Porter said to Lieutenant Dunn.

  The brown bag turned out to contain gin, not whiskey.

  “What is your unit, Lieutenant?” Colonel Porter asked as Dunn put his hand back in his pocket.

  “Suh, ah have the distinct honah and priv’lidge of serving with VMF-229, Suh,” Dunn said, trying his best to stand to attention.

  Dunn laid an oblong, four-by-six-inch blue box on the table; then two more identical boxes. And then he reached for other items.

  No wonder he was about to burst the seams on that pocket. Holy God, they look like medal boxes!

  Colonel Porter picked one of them up and opened it. It was the Distinguished Flying Cross.

  “Is this yours, Lieutenant?”

  “No, Suh. That one belongs to Lieutenant Pickering. He left it on the airplane, and I picked it up for him.”

  Porter opened another of the boxes. It held another DFC. He opened the third box, which contained the Navy Cross.

  “Is this yours or his?” Colonel Porter asked softly.

  “Those two are mine, Suh,” Dunn said. “Mr. Frank Knox, hisself, gave them to me yesterday.”

  “What are you two doing here?” Porter asked.

  “Just passin’ through, Cunnel,” Dunn said. “We came in on the courier flight. And just as soon as I kin find a telephone, ah’m going to call mah Daddy and have him come fetch us. Ah live over on Mobile Bay.”

  “Captain Carstairs,” Colonel Porter said, “you will assist these gentlemen in any way you can. I suggest that you offer them coffee and something to eat. You will stay with them until they have transportation. If that turns into a problem, you will arrange transportation and accompany them to their destination.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” Captain Carstairs said.

  “That’s right nice of you, Cunnel,” Bill Dunn said. “Could I offah you a small libation?”

  “Thank you, no. Good afternoon, gentlemen,” Colonel Porter said, and marched out of the Officers’ Club.

  “Nice fella, for a cunnel,” Bill Dunn said.

  “I know who you are,” Captain Carstairs said, with a sympathetic shake of his head and the tight, small smile that Colonel Porter noticed earlier; but there was a warm glint in his eye. “You’re Dunn. I saw your picture in the newspaper this morning.”

  “God-damn!” Dunn said. “Pick, didn’t I tell you that was going to happen?”

  “Well, you’re going to have to change your attack. Try pinning the goddamn medals on. Maybe that will work.”

  “You think so?” Dunn asked hopefully.

  Captain Carstairs grabbed each officer by the arm and propelled them away from the bar and toward the dining room.

  [TWO]

  Live Oaks Plantation

  Baldwin County, Alabama

  1205 Hours 31 October 1942

  Mrs. Alma Dunn walked into the large kitchen and sat down at the table, then picked up a biscuit and took a bite. She pointed to glasses sitting in front of her son; they were half full of a thick red liquid.

  Lieutenant William C. Dunn, wearing a khaki s
hirt and green trousers, was sitting across the table from Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, who was similarly attired. The table was loaded with food, none of which seemed particularly appetizing to either of them.

  “Is that tomato juice or a Bloody Mary?” Mrs. Dunn asked.

  “Bloody Mary,” her son answered.

  “Kate, would you fix me one, please?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Kate said. Kate was a tiny black woman; she looked to Pick Pickering to be at least seventy, and to weigh about that many pounds.

  “I hope you both feel awful,” Mrs. Dunn said. “You were pretty disgusting when you rolled in here last night.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Dunn,” Pick said.

  “You should be,” she said matter-of-factly.

  Bill Dunn’s mother did not look at all like Pick’s mother, Mrs. Patricia Pickering. Mrs. Dunn was a large, young-looking woman, whose sandy blond hair was parted in the middle and arranged in a kind of pigtail at the back. She was wearing a tweed skirt and a sweater, with just a hint of lipstick. And her only jewelry was a small metal pin, which showed three blue stars on a white background. Mrs. Patricia Pickering, in contrast, was svelte and elegant; Pick could never remember seeing her, for instance, without her four-carat emerald-cut diamond engagement ring. Yet she, too, wore a similar pin, with two blue stars. The number of stars on the pins signified how many members of the wearer’s immediate family were in the military or naval service of the United States.

  But they’re the same kind of women, Pick thought. They’d like each other.

  “God is punishing us, Mother. You don’t have to trouble.”

  “What was the occasion?”

  “It isn’t every day you get to meet the President of the United States,” Bill Dunn said.

  “The President? When you came in here, you said you got your medal from Mr. Knox. And you’re in hot water about that, too, by the way. The Senator called your daddy.”

  “Senator Foghorn’s mad they gave me a medal?”

  “Don’t be a wise-ass, Billy. He saw your picture in the Washington papers. Senator Whatsisname from California…”

  “Fowler, Mrs. Dunn,” Pick furnished.