The Corps I - Semper Fi

by W. E. B Griffin

  He made them make it payable in dollars. The Limeys were in a war, and he didn't want to take the chance that they'd tell him to wait for his money until the war was over when he went to cash it.

  He could goddamned well afford a Pullman berth from California to Philly, even if they wouldn't give him credit for the government rail voucher and he had to pay for the whole damned thing himself.

  McCoy had taken boot camp at Parris Island, and he'd shipped to China out of Mare Island, in San Francisco. So this was his first time in Diego. His initial impression of the place-or anyway of the part that he saw, which was the Marine Corps Recruit Depot-was that it was a hell of a lot nicer-looking, at least, than Parris Island, although he supposed that that didn't make a hell of lot of difference to boots. They probably had the same kind of semiliterate, sadistic assholes for DIs here that they did at Parris Island.

  There was a bullshit legend in the Corps that after you finished boot camp, you would understand why the DIs treated you like they did, how it had been necessary to make a Marine out of you, and how you'd now respect them for it. As he watched a Diego DI jab his elbow in the gut of some kid who wasn't standing tall enough, or who had dared to look directly at the DI, or some other chickenshit offense, McCoy remembered his own Parris Island DI.

  If I ever see Corporal Ellwood Doudt, that vicious shit-kicking hillbilly again, he thought, I'll make him eat his teeth, even if I have to go after him with a two-by-four.

  McCoy found the Post Transportation Office without trouble in a Spanish-looking building with a tile roof. He set his seabags down and presented his orders to a sergeant behind a metal-grilled window, like a teller's station in a bank.

  "You need a partial pay, Corporal?" the sergeant asked.

  "Let it ride on the books," McCoy said. "I was a little lucky on the ship."

  "Your luck just ran out," the sergeant said. "I hate to do this to you, Corporal, but you report to the brig sergeant."

  "What?"

  "They'll explain it over there," the sergeant said. "I just do what I'm told."

  "All I want from you is a rail voucher to Philadelphia," McCoy said.

  "You would have been smarter to pay your own way and put in for it when you got there. But you didn't. You came here, and my orders are to send the next three corporals who come in here over to the brig. There's a shipment of prisoners headed for Portsmouth. The guard detail needs a sergeant and three corporals. Now that you're here, they can go."

  "Give me a break. Forget I came in."

  "I can't," the sergeant said. "I got to send a TWX to Washington saying you're in the States. You read the orders."

  The brig sergeant was a forty-year-old gunnery sergeant, a wiry, tight-lipped man with five hash marks and a face so badly scarred that McCoy wondered how the hell he managed to shave.

  "What did you do. Corporal, fuck up in China?" he said, when McCoy gave him his orders.

  "Not as far as I know. Gunny," McCoy said. "I'm being transferred in grade."

  "Well, we got sixteen sailors headed for Portsmouth," he said. "Mostly repeat ship-jumpers, one deserter, one assault upon a commissioned officer, one thief, and three fags. You, plus a second lieutenant, a staff sergeant, and two other corporals are going to take them there. And all the time you thought the Corps didn't love you, right?"

  "There's no way I can get out of this?"

  "You're fucked, Corporal," the Gunny said. "You just lucked out.''

  In addition to the other corporals, the sergeant, and the lieutenant, the guard detail consisted of seven privates and PFCs. The other corporals and the sergeant were at least ten years older than McCoy. The lieutenant was McCoy's age, a muscular, crew-cut, tanned man who-to prove his own importance, McCoy thought-went right after McCoy.

  "You're a little young to be a corporal, aren't you? Have you had any experience with a detail like this?"

  "No, sir."

  "You've qualified with the shotgun?"

  "No, sir."

  "Why not?"

  "I don't know, sir."

  "What's your skill?"

  "Motor transport, sir."

  "They must be pretty generous with motor transport promotions in China," the lieutenant said.

  "I guess so, sir."

  "Frankly, I'd hoped to have a more experienced noncom," the lieutenant said. "One at least who has qualified with the shotgun."

  "I'm an Expert with the Springfield and the.45, sir. I think I can handle a shotgun."

  "You can't handle a shotgun, Corporal, until you're qualified with the shotgun," the lieutenant said, as if explaining something to a backward and unpleasant child. "I'll have the gunnery sergeant arrange for you to be qualified."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  A corporal drove McCoy to the range in a pickup truck. The same corporal watched him fire ten brass-cased rounds of OO-buckshot from a Winchester Model 1897 12-gauge trench gun at a silhouette target at fifteen yards. He then drove him back to the brig and told McCoy it was SOP to clean a riot gun whenever it had been fired. That meant it had to be detail stripped… McCoy couldn't just run a brass brush and then a couple of patches though the bore.

  As careful as McCoy was, he managed to spot his shirt, tie, and trousers with bore cleaner, which meant that he might as well use them for rags or throw them away, because no matter how many times you washed them, you couldn't get bore cleaner out of khakis.

  When he reported back to the lieutenant, the lieutenant told him that he had a soiled uniform.

  "Aye, aye, sir, I'll change it."

  "When you do change it, Corporal, make sure you have a shirt with regulation chevrons."

  "Sir?"

  "Get rid of those Tijuana stripes, Corporal."

  McCoy decided to take a chance; he had nothing to lose anyway.

  "Sir, embroidered-to-the-garment chevrons are regulation in China."

  "You're no longer in China, Corporal," the lieutenant said. "And I don't want to debate this with you. I expect to see you here at 0730 tomorrow in the correct uniform."

  "Aye, aye, sir."

  "And, Corporal, I've inquired; and regulations state that at my discretion the noncoms may be armed with the pistol. Since you say you are an Expert with the pistol, I think you had better draw one rather than arm yourself with a trench gun."

  "Aye, aye, sir," McCoy said.

  The 47th Motor Transport Company at Philadelphia, McCoy thought, had to be an improvement over what he was doing now. Otherwise he was going to belt some chickenshit sonofabitch like this before his discharge came and get dragged to Portsmouth with a trench gun pointed at his back.

  He went to the clothing store and bought three shirts and had regulation chevrons sewn to their sleeves. And then he fought down the temptation to get a hotel room in Diego. The way his luck was running lately, he'd get in a fight or something and get his ass in a crack.

  The duty NCO at the brig found a cot for him, and he slept there.

  In the morning, the lieutenant gave everybody detailed instructions and a little pep talk, then they went to the brig gate to take over the prisoners. The prisoners were in blue denim, with a foot-high "P" stenciled on the knee of the trousers and on the back of the jacket. They each carried a small cotton bag, which contained a change of underwear and socks, another set of "P"-marked denims, a toilet kit, less razor (since attempted suicide was a possibility, especially among the 'deviates,' they would shave themselves under the supervision of their guards), and their choice of either New Testament or Roman Catholic missal.

  They were handcuffed: the right wrist of one man to the left wrist of the man beside him. And their ankles were chained, which made them walk in a shuffle.

  On the brig bus, the lieutenant informed the guard detail that if a prisoner escaped, Marine Corps regulations stated that the guard responsible for that prisoner would be confined in his place.

  McCoy knew that was bullshit. But he wondered if the lieutenant really believed it or whether it was just one mor
e instance of an officer believing the troops in line were so stupid he could tell them anything he wanted.

  The brig bus delivered them to the San Diego railroad station.

  A U.S. Army Troop Car had been made available to the Marine Corps for the trip. It was attached to the train immediately behind the locomotive.

  McCoy marched his guard detail-their riot guns at port arms-and the fourteen handcuffed and shackled prisoners through the crowded concourse and down the platform to the Army Troop Car.

  He tried to tell himself that all he was doing was his duty, that these guys had fucked themselves up, that they had no one to blame but themselves for the mess they were in. But it didn't work. None of the fourteen prisoners was old enough to vote. Most of them looked not only frightened and humiliated but insignificant-like little boys. And so did most of their guards.

  He was going to have to have a quiet word with the guards on his shift to make sure that one of the little boys didn't without goddamned good reason turn his shotgun on another of the little boys.

  McCoy was relieved when they were all inside the Army car. He could not ever remember being so uncomfortable-so ashamed of himself was more like it-than when he had marched this pathetic little band through the station.

  The sergeant showed up just before the train pulled out to show McCoy and the other corporals where he and the lieutenant would be sleeping and to explain the arrangements the lieutenant had come to with the conductor regarding chow. The dining car would make available "sandwich meals" for the prisoners, which would have to be picked up by the guard detail.

  "When things settle down, maybe you corporals can get a meal in the dining car, but for now the lieutenant says he doesn't want you to leave the car."

  The lieutenant made four ritual appearances every day, at 0600, 1200, 1800, and 2400 hours. He stayed about ten minutes, making sure that every prisoner had eaten, washed, and shaved, and had washed his previous day's uniform and underclothing.

  McCoy managed to eat in the dining car only once. The waiters made it perfectly clear by lousy service and exaggerated courtesy what kind of shit they considered the guards to be. He didn't need any more reminding.

  He took every other meal in the U.S. Army Troop Car, which meant that he ate nothing but sandwiches and coffee all the way across the North American continent.

  It wasn't what he had dreamed about on the Pacific: a plush seat in a Pullman car and meals and drinks in the club car, as America the Beautiful rolls past the windows.

  But that, of course, was fantasy. This was reality. This was the fucking United States Marine Corps.

  (Two)

  Boston, Massachusetts

  1630 Hours 16 July 1941

  McCoy had to change trains at Boston for the Philadelphia train. He had plenty of time. The Boston Maine from Portsmouth had put him into Boston at five minutes to three. By quarter after three, he had a reserved seat on the club car. They'd given him a train voucher to Philly and two meal tickets at the Portsmouth Naval Prison, but he'd torn them into tiny pieces and thrown the pieces into a trash bucket.

  He didn't want a fucking thing to do with anything concerning the Portsmouth Naval Prison. Or, more importantly, with the Fucking United States Marine Corps. He had made that decision somewhere between Diego and Chicago and still wondered why he hadn't thought of it before. For his own sake. Not in connection with any dumb fucking ideas he had about doing something with Ellen Goddamn-the-Bitch Feller. He had five thousand fucking dollars. There was absolutely no reason he had to stay in the Marine Corps and put up with all the shit.

  He could buy his way out of the Corps and get a job. Things were better now, and he had a high school diploma. Maybe even go back to Shanghai and see if he couldn't work something out with Piotr Petrovich Muller, or the "General."

  Five thousand simoleons plus was a lot of money. Even if he spent whatever it cost for passage back to Shanghai; he would have enough left over not to have to worry about getting a job right that minute. He could look around, see what looked good, and move into that.

  So it was really a good thing in the end that the fucking Corps had sent him home as a fuck-up for doing what he was supposed to do, and even a better thing that he had gotten involved in the prisoner-escort detail. It had convinced him to get the hell out of the fucking Corps. Otherwise, he would have stayed in China sticking his neck out, and sooner or later the Japs would have done to him what they tried to do to Sessions.

  The prisoner-escort detail had gotten worse toward the end after they'd changed trains in Boston for New Hampshire, and really rough when they actually got to Portsmouth.

  There had been another bus with bars over the windows waiting for them along with three Marines carrying pistols in white web gear and three-foot-long billy clubs they kept slapping in the palms of their hands.

  All the prisoners were scared shitless, and two of them- one of the fairies and the great big guy who was going to do ten years before he was dishonorably discharged for slugging an officer-had actually cried.

  There was a little ceremony when the prison signed for the prisoners. Then one of them tried to ask a question and got the end of a billy club in his gut for it. Hard enough to knock the wind out of him and knock him down.

  And that fucking lieutenant just stood mere and made believe nothing had happened. He knew goddamned well it was a violation of Rocks and Shoals (The Disciplinary Code for the Governance of the Naval Services) to hit somebody with a billy club like that, but the chickenshit sonofabitch didn't do a thing about it.

  He was more concerned with important things like taking McCoy aside and telling him he was willing to admit a mistake about him and that he had probably been put off by McCoy's Tijuana chevrons. Anyhow, the lieutenant went on, he wanted to tell McCoy his deportment during the trip was all and more that could be expected of a good Marine noncom and that when he got back to San Diego he was going to write his commanding officer a letter of commendation.

  What that was going to mean after he got to this fucking truck company in Philly (and McCoy believed the chickenshit sonofabitch was serious about writing the letter) was that whenever some poor sonofabitch had to be transported to Portsmouth, that shitty detail would go to Corporal McCoy since he was so good at it. But fuck that. The first thing he was going to do when he got to the 47th Motor Transport Platoon was ask the first sergeant for the forms to buy himself out of the Corps.

  There was a bar in the station in Boston, and McCoy walked by it half a dozen times waiting for the Philly train without going in. He wanted a drink. He wanted lots of drinks, but he was going to wait until he was safe on the train-had left Portsmouth Naval Prison behind him for good- before he took one.

  The first time he noticed the guy looking at him was on the platform. He was a regular candy-ass, about his age, wearing a regular candy-ass seersucker suit; and McCoy thought he was probably a kid going home from college, except that it was now the middle of July, and colleges were closed for the summer.

  The candy-ass wasn't just looking at him, he was sort of smiling at him, as if goosing up his courage to talk to him. Christ, there were fairies all over. Goddamn-the-Bitch Ellen Feller's husband wasn't the only one. And he never would have guessed that hairy machinist's mate second on the Whaley was a cocksucker. And now here was this kid making eyes at him who looked like an Arrow Shirt Company advertisement for a choirboy Boy Scout.

  On the train the club car steward put McCoy in a velvet plush chair by a little table and handed him a menu. Fifty cents (not counting tip) was a hell of a lot of money for one lousy drink of Scotch whiskey; but he didn't give a fuck what it cost, he was entitled. He'd been thinking about this drink practically from the moment he went aboard that fucking fleet oiler in Shanghai. Just as the waiter was about to take his order, the guy who had been making eyes at him on the platform walked up.

  "This free?" he asked, putting his hand on the back of the velvet plush armchair on the other side of the table.


  "Help yourself," McCoy said.

  How am I going to get rid of this pansy without belting him?

  "Scotch," McCoy said to the waiter. "Johnnie Walker. Soda on the side."

  "Same for me, please," the pansy said.

  McCoy gave him a dirty look.

  "I'm about to be a Marine myself," the pansy said.

  "You're what?" McCoy asked, incredulously.

  "I'm about to join the Marine Corps," the pansy repeated.

  "I'm about to get out of the Marine Corps," McCoy said.

  "You are?" the pansy-who-said-he-was-about-to-enlist asked, surprised. "I thought all discharges were frozen."

  "I'm getting out," McCoy said firmly. He remembered hearing rumors of a freeze, or a year's extension, or something like that, but he hadn't paid a hell of a lot of attention.

  Jesus Christ! What if this candy-ass is right? Then what?

  "You sound as if you're not happy in the Marine Corps," the young pansy said.

  He doesn't talk like a pansy, and wave his hands like a woman, but then, neither did the machinist's mate second.

  "Do I?" McCoy replied, unpleasantly.

  "Then you're just the guy I want to talk to," the young man said. "The way the recruiters talk, it's paradise on earth. All the food you can eat, all the liquor you can drink, and all the prettiest girls throwing themselves at you."

  "You're really going in the Corps?" McCoy asked, his curiosity aroused'-and his suspicions diminished just a little by the pretty girls.

  "I'm really going in the Corps," the young man said. He put out his hand. "Malcolm Pickering," he said.

  McCoy took it.

  "Ken McCoy," he said. Pickering's grip was firm, not like a pansy's.

  The steward set their drinks on the table.

  "Put that on my tab," Pickering said.

  "I can buy my own drink," McCoy said.

  "Put the next round on your tab," Pickering said reasonably.

  McCoy nodded. He twisted the cap off the miniature bottle and wondered idly if putting it in its own little bottle was how they got away charging half a buck for one lousy drink. He picked it up and read the lable. It held 1.6 ounces. That brought it down to 37.5 cents an ounce, which was still a hell of a lot more than he was used to paying for liquor.