“Why don’t you let me clean that up, Commander,” he said.
Wilson handed him the ring without looking at him, his expression revealing that he was back on board Winston that terrible night. Marsh took it down to the communal bathroom and held it under hot water to rinse the dried blood off. Then he went to his room, found an old toothbrush, and went back to scrub it some more. The features of the academy and class crests were well worn, almost indistinguishable. The stone was a piece of dull jade that had a crack running across the face. By some quirk of the ring’s fit, the captain’s full name, engraved in spidery script, was perfectly legible inside the band.
Marsh tried to imagine the captain’s wife’s reaction when this memento arrived in the mail. Or maybe it wouldn’t—maybe the exec would send it to one of the captain’s classmates in San Diego, who would then personally bear it to the widow. And what did this say about the exec? He’d probably climbed up to the wreckage of the bridge to see if anyone had survived that final salvo. Surrounded by horrors, he’d still had the compassion and presence of mind to remember the captain’s widow.
Big man.
When Marsh returned the ring, the exec asked him how he was doing.
“Hobbling as before, sir,” Marsh said, “but better than a lot of us.”
“Yes, indeed,” Wilson said. “Listen, one of the court’s members called, told me about your going back on board to get those guys out. How come I never heard about that?”
“Just like I never heard about you going back up to the bridge, Commander,” Marsh said.
The XO blinked and then smiled. “Funny what we do when those dire straits show up, isn’t it. Anyway, you’ll be getting a medal recommendation.”
It was Marsh’s turn to smile. “Just what you need, XO,” he said. “More paperwork.”
“That kind of paperwork I don’t mind doing, Marsh,” he said. He held up the ring. “This, though…”
* * *
Marsh went from the base to the hospital by way of the officers’ club for supper. Somehow the O-club manager had managed to keep a supply of fresh fruits and vegetables coming in from the island farms, and Marsh tried to eat there at least once a day. He wasn’t the only officer there who was hobbling around. They kept a supply of canes at the front door so that the crips wouldn’t go lurching into tables. Marsh actually needed two. He asked the manager if he could “borrow” a couple of canes. The manager said he couldn’t let him do that, looked around, and then told him to bring them back before he sailed again.
The club was crowded as usual, with seemingly as many men at the bar as in the dining rooms. Marsh had never had much capacity for booze, so he joined some of the other Winston officers at a corner table in the dining room, where they traded stories about the court. Then he noticed that the hubbub of conversation out in the dining room behind him had subsided, as if maybe Nimitz himself had come into the dining room.
“For the luvva Mike,” Billy Renton, one of the engineering officers, said. “Would you get a look at her!”
Marsh turned in his chair and almost fell out of it. Crossing the dining room toward the buffet was a small group of Navy nurses and doctors. In the center of the group was Glory Hawthorne, dressed in the uniform of a Navy nurse and still the most beautiful woman in the whole world. Marsh was staring, as was every man in the dining room, for the few seconds that it took for them to cross to the lanai and the buffet tables. Then they passed out of sight, even as his memories came flooding back.
Glory Hawthorne.
His roommates at the academy had been William “Tommy” Lewis and Mick “Beast” McCarty. The three of them had been pretty close after plebe year, to the point that, when they did date, or drag, as it was called, they sortied out into Annapolis in a group. None of them had had any money to speak of, so group operations made a lot of sense. Tommy had produced Glory Hawthorne as his date one weekend, and for the next two and a half years Beauty and the Beast had done their level best to snake her away from Tommy. She’d been a stunner even then, in her early twenties and a nursing student at Penn, and she played all three of them like the goggling male fish they were. She was two years older than Tommy, as tall as he was, with shining black hair, a face that belonged in Hollywood, and a body that belonged in bed.
Tommy was the Steady Eddy of their little band and as handsome as Marsh was homely. Beast, the star athlete, naturally made several runs but inevitably bounced off Glory’s cool and elegant reserve. Marsh mostly sat on the sidelines and stared longingly at her. Tommy eventually won the match and Glory’s heart. They were married right after graduation, in July of 1932. That had been nearly ten years ago, and Marsh hadn’t seen either of them since they were married.
On December 7 of the previous year, however, Marsh had found out that Tommy had been the main propulsion assistant in USS Arizona. Now he was one of the 1,177 casualties entombed in her wreckage. Marsh remembered seeing his name on the casualty lists and wondering if he and Glory were still married. It had never occurred to him that she might be out here in the war zone. He considered going over to their table out on the lanai to say hello but then decided not to. She probably wouldn’t have recognized him in his current hobbling state, and that would have been really embarrassing. He would have looked like any other awkward bore trying to meet the beautiful lady. Maybe, he thought, he’d see her again on one of his hospital visits.
* * *
A month later Marsh was surprised by two events: a promotion to lieutenant commander and a Silver Star medal, along with a Purple Heart. The promotion was early by prewar, Depression-era standards, but not these days. He knew that it was more a reflection of American losses in the Solomons and elsewhere than anything special about his own career to date.
The Pacific Fleet commander had decided to break up some of the crews of the cruisers lost at Savo. Normally, if the bulk of a crew could be taken off a sinking ship, they’d be sent elsewhere to new construction as an already cohesive unit. That simply was not possible after the grievous losses at Savo, so along with his promotion came orders to assume duties as the executive officer in a brand-new destroyer, the USS Evans, then fitting out at the Boston naval shipyard. By then he was more than ready to get away from Pearl. He never did run into Glory Lewis.
FOUR
“Okay, guys, there it is. Henderson International. I’m seein’ no smoke, no big fires, no Zeros, so stand by to break.”
Mick clicked his radio mike twice in sequence with the other five planes in the mixed section. There it was indeed, Henderson Field, on the godforsaken island of Guadalcanal. They were flying southeast down the coast about to break into the pattern for a right-hand approach. To the west was a high hill of jungle-covered rock called Mount Austen, and beyond that was the Kavo Range. The field itself looked like a dark red scar framed by light green jungle. A second scar was emerging out of the tropical bush parallel to the first.
“Where’s the Pagoda?” someone asked.
“They took it down,” the section leader responded. “Japs were using it as an aim point on the field. They got artillery last night, and they’re sayin’ hang left of centerline when you go in.”
That much was obvious, Mick thought. He could see the black craters all over the field, some of which had already filled with silver saucers of water. There were Seabees bulldozers out on the main runway, pushing red dirt into the holes.
“They gonna clear those dozers?” someone else in the flight asked.
“Negative,” the section leader said laconically. “Steer around ’em, best you can. Try not to ground-loop; it tears up the runway and irritates the Seabees.”
Steer around the bulldozers, Mick thought. Wahoo. That ought to be interesting in the middle of a rollout, especially with four five-hundred-pounders strapped to his wings. He was the only Navy pilot in the gaggle. Everyone else was a Marine. They probably thought this would be fun. He got his flaps and gear down and waited to follow the flight leader into the break. He wa
s flying an unmarked Dauntless Avenger, minus the machine gunner in the back. They’d come off the Hornet two hours ago, flying in as replacements for the aircraft destroyed by last night’s shore bombardment, courtesy of what the Marines were calling the Tokyo Express coming down the Slot from Rabaul.
Mick was now officially an orphan. When the Yorktown went down at Midway, her embarked squadrons were either assigned to other carriers or, in some cases, having lost too many planes, broken up. Mick had been tagged, probably at Oxerhaus’s instigation, to go into the aviation motor pool, as the orphans called it, at the Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station on Oahu. The orphans were aviators whose planes had gone down with their carrier, or whose squadrons were now unemployed until new fleet decks came out from the west coast. Mick’s injuries had given him a bit of a break at Pearl, but not for long. The extended slugfest on Guadalcanal was nearing its climax, and they needed planes and pilots out there. Any unclaimed orphan who could drive a bomber or a fighter would do, and so when two Marine Corps colonels had come down from Makalapa like a press gang to the naval base, Mick had raised a bandaged arm and said he was a Dauntless pilot and he was bored.
“Got just the thing for that,” one of the colonels called out. “When can you suit up?”
* * *
“Mark break,” the flight leader called and banked his plane hard right to begin his final approach to the northwest. Mick waited his turn and then joined the spiraling column of planes swooping down onto the Marsden-matting runway. The only thing really dangerous about this landing, not counting craters and itinerant bulldozers, was the fact that he was sporting those five-hundred-pound armor-piercing bombs. If he’d been coming back aboard a carrier, he would have jettisoned any remaining bombs before committing to his final approach, but the air boss on Hornet had been adamant: For some unknown reason someone desperately wanted some AP ordnance at Guadalcanal. Mick had been instructed to land with the bombs on board and intact. He wasn’t entirely sure what the Marines wanted with AP bombs; they’d be wasted in the jungle mud of the islands, but, as ordered, here he was.
His windshield filled with the sight of a huge black thundercloud that was obliterating the afternoon sun out over what the ship-drivers were calling Iron Bottom Sound to the northwest. He steadied out on final, belatedly ran through the landing checklist in his head, and then put the thing down on the steel runway, watching for errant bulldozers through all the dust from the plane ahead. He tried to forget about the bombs. They weren’t armed, he kept telling himself. Their safe and arming plugs were stowed in the backseat. If a bomb came off it would mostly just scare the shit out of the dozer crews.
He rolled out and then taxied behind a pockmarked follow-me jeep to a hardstand, where he shut the barge down. A flight crew swarmed over the plane as he climbed down, asking about any mechanical gripes and whether or not the fifties were armed. A small truck came out to take down the four heavy bombs. He handed over the S&A plugs and then walked across the parking ramp to a large tent marked OPERATIONS. There was a big generator roaring away by the side of the tent. Inside, a bunch of Marines were sitting at tables made from bamboo poles and the tops of ammunition crates. Some were obviously radio operators, others were pounding typewriters, and another half dozen were yelling into hand-cranked field telephones. At the very back of the tent stood a tall, lanky officer wearing a cowboy hat and the gold oak leaves of a Marine Corps major.
“You the Navy guy?” he called out.
“Yes, sir,” Mick said, walking back to shake hands. “Mick McCarty, barge driver first class, reporting for duty.”
“Aw-right,” the major said. “Bring us some puncher bombs?”
“I did.”
“Good man,” the major said. He was sporting a broad Texas accent, and his sidearm was a large, ivory-handled six-gun. “You were at Midway?”
“I was,” Mick said.
”Do any good work for Jesus there?”
“Got a thousand-pounder down the forward elevator of a Jap fleet carrier,” Mick said.
“You’ll do to ride,” the major said. “First things first—lemme show you where the club is.”
They walked out of the Ops tent across a moonscape of craters, red dirt, oil-soaked sand, blasted trees, and piles of materiel covered in tattered canvas tarps. The major walked with an odd gait, almost as if some crucial part of his brain had lost comms with his legs. He led Mick to another tent, this one with a small sign out front saying O-CLUB. The sign had two bullet holes in it. There was a large crater, easily twenty feet across, right in front of the tent, filled with water. Once inside, Mick found himself in the frontline Marine Corps version of a bar. The chairs were all mortar ammo crates, some of them still containing shells. The tables were empty cable reels. The bar was the wing of a destroyed aircraft, burned at one end and exhibiting several shrapnel holes, supported by two fifty-five-gallon aviation gasoline drums. Mick hoped they were empty. Behind the wing, the booze was stored in steel chests.
“What’s your pleasure, suh?” the major asked.
“Whiskey,” Mick said. Leave it to the Jarboons, he thought. Set up a perimeter, post sentries and scouts, kill all the nearby Japs, and then get an O-club organized. The Navy would still have been writing the op order.
The major produced a bottle of sour mash and two canteen cups. They sat down at one of the mortar crate tables, and the major poured out.
“Your good health, Lieutenant,” he intoned. “Now tell me: What the hell you doing here?”
Mick tipped his cup in a salud and got himself some hair of the dog. He heard a train of dozers go by outside, clattering like tanks. In the distance it sounded like some artillery pieces were going to work at the end of the airfield.
“I’m a carrier dive bomber,” he said. “Reasonably good at my trade. I’m also a regular Navy lieutenant. Not so good in that department.”
The major poured some more whiskey. “Whose dick you waltz on?” he asked.
“Air boss on the Yorktown, to name one,” Mick said, “but that was before she got sunk. Don’t know if he made it off, but if he did, he’ll still be pissed.”
The major nodded. “And before that?”
“Well, sir,” Mick said, “who can remember all that shit.”
The major chuckled. “How’d you get sent out here?”
“Volunteered.”
“Oh, my,” the major said. “We don’t indulge in that vice around here.”
“I suspect that my options were limited,” Mick said. “That Marine colonel from CincPacFleet said it would be an adventure. He didn’t lie, did he?”
The major grinned at him. “No, suh, he did not. Most definitely, he did not lie. This place is every bit the adventure of a lifetime, especially when the Japs come around offshore at night with their big naval guns. It’s all the adventure a man could want, even for two lifetimes.”
“Are you a pilot, Major?” Mick asked.
“Oh, yes, I am,” the major said. “I’m the executive officer of what we call the combined air forces here on our little piece of paradise, otherwise known as the Cactus Air Force. The CO went med-down with malaria, so I’m also acting CO. Now ask me how I got here.”
“You’re a Marine major,” Mick said. “You volunteered, of course.”
“Hah,” the major said. “You got me. Now ask me why.”
“Why?”
“I have a brain tumor, that’s why. I have a cancer, or at least all those Navy docs think so. They said there was nothing they could do for me in the way of guttin’ and cuttin’. Furthermore, I am certainly going to die.”
“Does it hurt?” Mick asked.
The major stared at him for a moment. “You know,” he said, “that’s the first intelligent question anyone’s ever asked about my condition. The answer is no, it doesn’t hurt. But I thank you for askin’.”
“So you figure, if you’re gonna die, why not do it for glory and apple pie? Instead of lying in some hospital, shitting your sheets.”
“Pre-cisely, Lieutenant. For glory and apple pie. And for the chance to kill as many of these Jap sonsabitches as humanly possible, seein’ as they killed my younger brother at Kaneohe on Mr. Roosevelt’s day of infamy. And you know what? Killing Japs on this island is pleasant work. When they come, they come in hordes—and they die in hordes. Actually, though, that’s not why you’re here.”
“But I like to kill Japs.”
“Don’t we all, suh, don’t we all. But: We need a guy like you to help us kill ships, not a buncha yella-bellied, buck-toothed, rice-crappin’ squirm-worms out there in the high weeds. I’m talkin’ big ships. Heavy cruisers. Battleships, sometimes. We need someone knows how to plant him a big AP bomb right where it hurts on a big ship.”
“I can help you, there, Major.”
“Day or night?”
Mick finished his whiskey and put the tin cup down. “Day, no problem. Night? Never tried that.”
“Night’s when they come, though,” the major said. “Night’s when they come, and that’s when the glorious Yew-nited States Navy seems to be either going elsewhere or adding to the litter in Iron Bottom Sound out there. All our fine carriers and such move their precious asses out of harm’s way when them Dalai Nipponese come down the Slot, hissin’ and spittin’. That leaves us helpless jungle bunnies sitting here while those big bastards cruise offshore and shoot the place all to hell. It’s bodaciously noisy, too. Man cain’t hardly sleep.”
“And you want to go up at night? Do some dive-bombing, what, in the moonlight? With no visible horizon?”
“Exactomundo, pardner,” the major said. “As you will find out, it beats the hell out of being down in the bunker, wondering if the next round’s gonna come through all those grass-reinforced balsa-wood logs.”
Pacific Glory Page 6