The Guardhouse Murders

by Don DeNevi

  Sitting quietly, virtually oblivious to a young marine rifleman who was sound asleep in Navy pajamas in the seat, Peter felt sickeningly cold. His consciousness was seared again by the final moments of Schneidermann’s execution, the expressive nod now sculpted on his memory until his own death.

  Suddenly, the quiescent kid stirred. Then, all at once, he yawned, opened his eyes, stretched, smiled at Peter, and asked in a barely audible whisper,

  “Have we just arrived at Hickam? Strange, I don’t feel like I have to pee…”

  For the first time in more than a week, Peter, who had felt so empty, sad, and gloomy, chuckled,

  “Hardly. We haven’t even left these depressing, lethargic 50 Russell Islands, where you expect one funeral dirge after another.”

  The PFC said nothing as he stood up in the aisle of the C-47 and folded the blanket.

  “I know you, Lieutenant. In fact, the whole world, if truth be known, knows you. I saw you leave with Mr. Hope for the officers’ latrine when the Ghoul tried to kill him. Watched, in fact, as all of you in that first row up and headed off.”

  “How so?”

  “I was in the third row and near the aisle. I sort of knew something was up.”

  “Very observant.”

  “Saw it the moment I found my assigned seat. I even said ‘hello’ as I shoved my sack under the seat, but you were staring out the window and you didn’t even look at me. You feeling alright?”

  There was a moment’s pause as Peter turned back to the window.

  “Sorry, seatmate. For awhile now I’ve been feeling singularly unresponsive to everything, emotion, thought, the Guadalcanal’s panoramas, the vast ocean below us.”

  “No problem with me. I know you, as everyone else does, as Lieutenant Peter Toscanini, USN, Medical Corps, the savior of the greatest comic in the world. My name is Lawrence Angelo, a Texas boy from, and you can see by my stripes how high up I am. Private First Class. So, watch yourself, Hero of the USMC 1st Division, or I’ll order you to the brig.”

  “Yes, sir, PFC Angelo. By the way, how old are you? You may be lean and lanky; so are twelve-year-olds. My guess is that at the most you’re 15.”

  “No, sir, almost 18,” PFC Angelo blushed. “For such an unwarranted remark, I’m ordering you to the brig.”

  “Oh, if you only knew how soon enough, I’ll be there. Actually, I was within feet of one this morning. I’ll explain when time permits.”

  “No. Explain now. We probably have 25 hours to go, without stopovers. So, tell me. I’m dying to know.”

  “Well, it might help me get this crud off my chest. O.K. Here’s the story.”

  “While there was great rejoicing among our 16,000 Marines about the execution of the Mad Ghoul, or Charlie the Choker, at 1000 hours yesterday morning, I was reeling from a depressive ambivalence.”

  “Imposing the ultimate penalty by court-martial upon an American soldier convicted of nine counts of premeditated murder didn’t bother me. I was simultaneously conflicted because I was not only directed to stand as the official US Navy witness, and, incidentally the first execution I had ever observed, but also primarily by the condemned officer’s smiling nod. He glanced directly at me a few seconds prior to the discharged volley from the firing squad.”

  “Hours later that afternoon, while boarding the C-47 Skytrain, R4D troop carrier, idling prior to departure from the main Guadalcanal airfield tarmac, I was still numb, the blood in my somber face drawn, leaving my skin ashen. Somewhat dazed as I wearily walked up the ramp to the aircraft’s double-wide doors to present the attendant with my official Corps travel orders, I was aware my forehead was still damp from perspiring most of the day. Handing over the large envelope without comment, my knuckles and teeth clenched, my mind was withering. I yearned to take my seat, hopefully next to a window, and nap.”

  “Earlier that morning, with the normal late-October wind-driven showers waning, me, the great Lieutenant Peter Albinoni Toscanini, subdued, somewhat apprehensively, arrived in the enclosed, unpaved, muddy courtyard quadrangle behind the General Headquarters of the 1st Division on Banika, the second largest of the Russell Group. Lining up shoulder-to-shoulder with 65 other Marine and Naval officers several feet behind strategically stationed armed Military Police along the path to the post to which the condemned man was to be tied for the execution.”

  “As silence fell over the large assemblage of designated officials assigned to observe the military court-imposed death-by-shooting penalty remained at ease, not a word was spoken. Lost in thought, everyone awaited motionless, some subdued, others aloof, or trembling with expectation for the execution party to emerge at any moment from the reinforced basement of the headquarters makeshift brig with the Mad Ghoul, open-shirted, hands tied tightly behind his back.”

  “I was weary from the tumult of the past few weeks, the trial by court-martial, the meticulous, thorough presentations of evidence, the daily burdensome interviews with Stuart Schneidermann, the physician-psychiatrist, assigned to the 1st Division, who was the Ghoul himself. I was especially sickened by the reading of the death sentence itself. I admit, I was nauseated, languid, by the cold, systematic, methodical, efficient killing of a man, that was to take place, cruel, even if it was of a murderous, and inhuman person.”

  “Yet, as I too, awaited the opening of the basement door and the procession to begin, I reflected with pain and indignation that nine unsuspecting, trusting sentries and nurses had lost their lives, not in combat for their country, but for a yet undefined, inexplicable psychological evilness that is as inbred in mankind as long as history itself, but only recently recognized.”

  “Death of the Mad Ghoul, or Charlie the Choker, by firing squad was not the result of a military ad hoc committee verdict decreeing the death sentence. The proceedings of a Special Court-Martial against Schneidermann had been brief, but thorough, and uncompromising. Basing the warrant for execution on ‘The Manual for Court-Martial, U.S. Army, 1928’s Article 92’, and the clause ‘…with malice aforethought (either premeditated or unpremeditated), willfully, deliberately, feloniously, unlawfully kill…’, nine charges, one specification per Marine death, were levelled, resulting in a swift, competent verdict. The military court did not allow Schneidermann the privilege of choice in carrying out the sentence, death by the gallows or by a dozen sharpshooters.”

  Now, as the vibrant orange-red rays of early morning flooded through the C-47’s cabin windows over the Coral Sea, Peter sat silently and stiffly in sharp-cut profile in his bucket seat.

  Gazing out the small sunlit cabin window of the fully camouflaged “Gooney Bird”, Peter recalled the pilot, co-pilot, radio operator, and navigator inspecting the aircraft’s two Pratt & Whitney Twin WASP 14-cylinder air-cooled 1,200 hp engines revving their various speeds for takeoff. He also recalled the Henderson Field complex, its varying types of fighter and bomber aircraft atop the rain-puddled tarmac, landing strips, some 3,000 feet long; others 5,000 feet long, and the taxiways.

  Impressing him the most were the numerous Gruman F4F-4 Wildcat fighters lined up wing-to-wing, as were dozens of SBD Douglass Dauntless Dive Bombers and P-40 fighters.

  With the four-man crew on board and safely tucked inro the cockpit preparing the final stages for departure, and the ground crew of mechanics listening nervously for troubling sounds from the engines, parachutes were distributed to the passengers, including those on stretchers, who promptly placed them under their seats or blankets. With that, and the final engine inspection completed, the pilots, who had double and triple checked the cockpit panels, taxied the C-47 onto the main runway for liftoff.

  Unless PFC Lawrence Angelo or anyone else for that matter, asked him directly about the Ghoul’s execution, Peter vowed at that moment to never again mention the story of the multiple-murderer of fellow Marines. He was sick to his stomach at the mere mention of his involvement with Pinoe, Ellen, and Dr. Schneidermann. The general court-martial and its multitudinous particulars were bad enough. The s
pecific details and minutiae of systematically putting a human being to death, regardless of that person’s malignant evilness was repugnant--certainly necessary, but for him, beyond repulsion.

  Peter knew, of course, the Ghoul would be in integral part of his mind for the rest of his life. But, somehow, unless pressed by higher authority, he would resist, nay, deny the fragments to legalized military killing: the construction by four Seabee engineers of a heavy 10ft. x 10ft. wooden backstop; the 8 ft. death post to tie the convicted man; the unarmed six-man MP detail led by Captain Del Barbra to escort Schneidermann, hands behind his back fastened to a thick leather belt; the rejection of two chaplains flown to Banika for the purpose of spending the final hour with the condemned prior to being led to the post; the placement of a dozen USMC sharpshooters upon recently-completed platforms on the 12-foot protective wall surrounding General Headquarters; observing Captain Del Barbra whisper something to Schneidermann and having the condemned officer snicker in disgust; Del Barbra then leading the death party with the convicted man in the middle at the ‘slow-step’ up the stairs from the basement and down the execution path lined by USMC and Army officers; watching Lieutenant Bobby Ellison following the entourage serving as official recorder, then followed by three officers, each carrying a small, black valise, each identical to the other; the 12-member firing squad already lined up at attention with their M-1’s 75 feet from the post; the two chaplains waiting at the post, lips moving in silent prayer, heads bowed; Captain Del Barbra waving the chaplains aside as the escort guard bound the condemned man to the post with heavy leather straps; asking in a loud voice if Schneidermann had a final statement to make, and the bound man, straps around chest and shoulders, refusing to respond; the placement of two additional straps to the knees and ankles; Schneidermann refusing a black hood sewn by the medical staff to be placed over his head; ordering for the last time the chaplains to “move aside”; then almost immediately, the command by Del Barbra, “Ready…Aim…Fire”; one M-1 loaded with a blank, the other eleven had live rounds, so that the recoil of the blank cartridge would tell the rifleman he was the one who hadn’t killed the Ghoul.

  Peter flinched in recalling the details of what was standard execution procedures already in use in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and France for crimes of rape and individual murders. Unfortunately, the young lieutenant didn’t close his eyes in time when the Ghoul’s body stiffened, blood slashed and pieces of Schneidermann’s back sticking to the board panel and post as the Ghoul in a horrible contortion drooped forward limply.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  -

  “Private First Class”

  Soon after sunrise the following morning, with the reliable C-47 cruising in gentle motion at 90 mph toward Noumea on New Caledonia of the New Hebrides, Peter struggled to emerge from his brief but uninterrupted sleep.

  As he gradually lifted his eyebrows, then yawned and stretched, the young Lieutenant, fully reposed and somewhat refreshed, grinned as he glanced over at PFC Lawrence “Larry” Angelo still curled up in his hospital pajamas under the coarse Navy blanket in sound slumber.

  “Damn, the kid has been at it for almost 12 hours now,” he reflected.

  Early the night before, during the initial stages of the flight stateside over San Cristobal Island, the Indispensable Reef, and, to the east, Espiritu Santo, the occasional rolling and pitching bumpy passage at less than 10,000 feet “…certainly is commensurate with the myriad of emotions regarding Joan and the Ghouls searching relief somewhere in the nooks and crannies of my mind.”

  Turning and gazing out the troop carrier’s window amid the unabated, familiar humming drone of the twin engines, Peter, expecting late autumn’s glum equatorial overcast, was pleased to observe a glorious morning idyll. Stretching from the southern Coral Sea to the Hawaiian Islands and beyond, the vastness of the indigo Southwestern Pacific Ocean with calm, effervescent wavelet crests was bathed in morning sunlight. “Coupled with a cloudless, azure sky,” he weighed for a moment, “the boundless emptiness of the sea and the cloudless upper atmosphere sky will only meet, it being so clear today, beyond eternity, nay, beyond infinity. No haze, no clouds, nothing. Just light blue air, dark blue water.”

  As Peter continued consuming the illimitable sky and vastness of the South Pacific sea, his brain relaxed, allowing his refreshed mind to clear a bit. Slowly evaporating were the weeks of weighing, wearying sadness due to his subconscious preoccupation of holding Joan in his arms again, smelling her flesh, feeling her pounding blood, and gently touching the living warmth of her golden skin.

  Ellen, Pinoe, and Schneidermann were roasting in the hells of their unrepenting graves, but Joan Ikeda?

  Suddenly, a thin, squeaky voice from under a blanket in the seat next to Peter whispered hoarsely,

  “Are we about to land in Frisco?”

  “Yup. There’s the Golden Gate Bridge now,” the lieutenant chuckled, showing himself back, allowing PFC Angelo to look through the window.

  “Aw, you jest me,” Larry accused, mockingly.

  After a pause, Peter smiled, “Yes, private-first class, I suppose I am that.”

  On a south-by-west course, the C-47 was not allowed to fly higher than 12,000 to 13,000 feet. Meanwhile, Larry, wide-awake and full of energy after a long, prolonged sleep, chatted gaily as though he were back home riding down Main Street in his jalopy, PFC Angelo giggled and laughed and babbled gibberish nonstop for minutes on end.

  Finally, Peter turned back to gaze at the vista, struggling, meanwhile, to retain his composure. Not that he was irritated or annoyed. It was because “the young kid” reminded him of himself back on South Center Street in Stockton, California. Wholesome, healthy, and well-rested, PFC Angelo was full of himself just then. And Angelo’s rejoicing while the rest of the cabin’s wounded remained silent and appeared hungry and miserable, triggered remembered events and moments with Joan.

  “I see no wounds or bandages, private first-class. Only an arm in a sling. They sending you stateside because you broke the fingernail on your pinky?”

  “Hardly,” Larry laughed, glancing at his right hand. “I’m being sent to some rest-and-relaxation camp on one of the outer Hawaiian Islands because the new psychiatrist who took over the Ghoul’s place when he was caught diagnosed my condition as ‘battle exhaustion’. Heck, the whole 1st and 5th Divisions are tired, not just me. I feel a little guilty about it, but it means real milk, real eggs, roasted refrigerated meats, genuine coffee, fresh-baked pies every night…” he responded slowly and sadly. “But actually, I would rather be with my buddies headed somewhere in the Palu Islands.”

  “What happened specifically? What were you given by the medics?”

  “Well, the first time I had been in action four straight days and I was supposed to have exhibited ‘anxiety’ symptoms from blasts near me, hour after hour, mortal blasts, not shell blasts. I don’t recall or know what they wrote down, but they took my history, gave me some pills, someone said they were three to five grains of Sodium Amytal, and put to bed.”

  After a short pause, the PFC continued, “I didn’t run like a lot of guys mentally confused under shellfire. So, they placed me in a tent for two days sedation and three days rehabilitation.”

  “Did you feel better?”

  “Are you stupid, Lieutenant? Hell, yes, I felt better. But they watched me carefully. I joined in the final stages of operations for Cape Gloucester in early February of this 1944 year, and instead of resting and refitting, a week later we had to engage the last Jap remnants on Eniwetok Atoll with the Tactical Group 1, V Amphibious Corps.”

  “You functioned normally there?”

  “Not really. They said I became so confused in the fighting I didn’t know what I was doing…that I became shaky and weak. That I froze in my foxholes. That I became so completely demoralized I couldn’t do anything except shake and cry. One officer, during the steady shelling of our unit, shouted I was a mental ‘retard’. Even though I was injected with a lot of ph
enobarb, my nerves were bad. Sure, I lost my equipment and M-1. But what was wrong with that? I didn’t break under the constant shelling, jeopardize the platoon. But I was tired. So, they evacuated me as an exhaustion case. And, here I am, happy to rest and relax, and sad to be away from my friends.”

  Peter remained silent, continuing to gaze out upon the immeasurable ocean. As Larry looked at his hands, the Lieutenant pondered the plight of such war victims. Combat stress? Who doesn’t feel its effects sooner or later?

  Finally, Peter asked,

  “How old are you, kid?”

  “19. I, eh, well, to tell the truth, almost 18, in another two months.”

  “Well, the war in the Pacific is almost over, I would say. Maybe another eight or ten months. My hunch is that you’ll sit the rest of it out in Hawaii, say, for six months, then be sent home. Where you from?”

  “Southern California, a little community nestled in the hills of North Pasadena. But do you really think the war will be over soon, in less than a year?”

  “Sure do. Look. We have only a few months to go before it’s 1945. Tinian and Guam were just declared secured. All organized Japanese resistance on both those advanced islands is over. Our Marine Corps alone has jumped to almost 33,000 and our enlisted men and women to 442,816! Amazing, don’t you think? We’ve landed on Saipan in the Marianas. We’ve gotten, this year alone, 1944 Roi-Namur, Kwajalein, all of New Britain, the Marshalls, Guam, Parry Island, Emirau, St. Matthias Islands, and most important of all, Rabual, the largest, most heavily defended Naval base in all the Pacific. And, to top all these islands, we’ve started straying and bombing the Palaus, Okinawa, and Iwo Jima. We’re on Japan’s doorstep. Now, there’s a whole lot of fighting left to be done, but all-in-all, the war is practically over. That is it; the Japanese surrender and we don’t have to invade Japan itself, the mother homeland, trying to take those four or five huge islands will be a huge task. We’ll lose at least a million men in that struggle which will add on another three years. If that’s the way it was meant to be, none of us will be alive when it’s over. My God, I pray to whomever will listen, the war must end before our first boys land on the beaches up there.”