Behind the Lines

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “That’ll be all, Wendell,” King said. He put out his hand. “You’ve carried your weight around here. Thank you. See you after the war.”

  “It’s been a privilege serving under you, Sir.”

  Fertig saluted. King returned it.

  Fertig did as crisp an about-face movement as he could manage, and then marched toward the door. His throat was tight; he felt like crying.

  “Wait a minute,” General King called after him. Fertig turned.

  “I said there were several things on my mind,” King said. “I forgot one.”

  “Yes, Sir?”

  King motioned him to approach.

  “This used to be done with photographers, with a proudly beaming wife standing by, and would be followed by a drunk at the club at your expense,” King said. “No clubs, no photographers, and no wife, thank God, but congratulations nonetheless, Colonel.”

  He handed Fertig a lieutenant colonel’s silver leaf.

  “I’ll be damned,” Fertig said.

  “Well earned, Wendell,” King said, and shook his hand. “I’ll hold you to the party. In better times.”

  “I’ll look forward to it, Sir.”

  King grabbed Fertig’s shoulder, squeezed it, smiled, and then turned away from him.

  Fertig left the office and returned to Major Hurt’s desk.

  “Tell me about the boat,” he said.

  “It’s a small coaster,” Hurt replied. “Be at the pier at Mariveles at half past five. They expect you.”

  “Do I need orders, or...”

  “You’re traveling VOCG,” Hurt said—Verbal Order of the Commanding General. “Technically, you’re on temporary duty from Luzon Force to Mindanao Force. We don’t have authority to transfer anyone.”

  “OK.”

  “I’ll need your truck,” Hurt said. “So far as luggage is concerned, one item of luggage.”

  “I’ve got a suitcase and a footlocker.”

  “One or the other. Sorry.”

  “Well, then, I’ll leave the footlocker here with you. For safekeeping.”

  Hurt smiled.

  “I love optimists,” he said. “Sorry, there really is no room on the boat.”

  “If it’s all right with you, Hurt, I’ll take the footlocker to one of the ammo dumps. And then bring the truck back, of course. There’s some personal stuff in there I’d much rather see blown up than fall into the hands of some son of Nippon.”

  “May I offer you a piece of advice?”

  “certainly.”

  “You’re a lieutenant colonel now. You don’t have to ask a major for permission to do anything.”

  “I’ll try to remember that,” Fertig said. He put out his hand. “So long, Hurt. Take care of yourself.”

  “Yeah, you, too,” Hurt said. “And just for the record, I think you deserve that silver leaf.”

  “If there was anything left to drink around here, I’d think you’d been at it.”

  “If there was anything left to drink around here, I would be at it,” Major Hurt said. “Good luck, Colonel.”

  “See you after the war, Major.”

  II

  [ONE]

  Headquarters, 4th Marines

  Malinta Tunnel

  Fortress Corregidor

  Manila Bay

  Commonwealth of the Philippines

  0915 Hours 1 April 1942

  Major Stephen J. Paulson, USMC, a slightly built thirty-two-year-old from Chicago, who was acting S-1 (Personnel) Officer, 4th Marines, had been giving a good deal of thought—much of it uncomfortable, even painful—both to his own future and to the future of First Lieutenant James B. Weston, USMC.

  Paulson had been a Marine for eleven years, and a Naval Aviator for eight. But he had spent almost two years as an infantry platoon leader before going to Pensacola for flight training. So when push came to shove—by which he meant when the Japanese landed on Fortress Corregidor—he thought he could probably do some good, at least hold his own, as an infantry officer. Not in duties commensurate with the gold oak leaves on his collar points, nor even as a captain, commanding a company. But he remembered enough about leading a platoon to be useful when the Japs came.

  On the other hand, in his view, Lieutenant Weston would not. This was not a criticism of Weston, simply a statement of fact. Weston came into The Corps right out of the University of Iowa, went through a sort of boot camp for officers at Quantico, and immediately went to Pensacola for pilot training. He was an aviator, and a pretty good one, but he really wasn’t qualified to be a platoon leader.

  Not that that would matter to the overall efficiency of the 4th Marines. There were more than enough fully qualified infantry lieutenants and captains around, both among the officers who came to the Philippines when the 4th Marines were moved from Shanghai, and among those—like Paulson himself and Weston—who joined the regiment because they’d been in the Philippines filling billets that no longer existed.

  Before the war, Major Paulson had been Aviation Officer on the staff of the Commanding Officer, Marine Barracks, Cavite Naval Station, and had commanded a staff sergeant and a PFC. There had not been much for any of them to do, except on those rare occasions when a carrier with a Marine squadron aboard actually pulled into Cavite. Then there was frantic activity for several days, doing what he could to pry necessary parts and supplies loose from the steel grip of Navy supply officers; arranging for the sick to be admitted to shore medical facilities; and trying for the release from the brig of those Marines who had somehow run afoul of the Shore Patrol in time for them to sail with the carrier.

  In those days, he had spent a lot of his ample free time trying to come up with a good reason to ask for a transfer back to flying duties. That was a delicate area. Marine officers are supposed to go where they are sent and do what they are told to do, without complaining or trying to get out of it.

  Ordinarily, Paulson would not have tried to get himself out of Cavite. It was a three-year tour, and when it was over, he could expect a flying assignment. But he didn’t think the war he considered inevitable was going to wait for him to complete his tour, so he tried to get out of it. He had absolutely no success.

  A visiting colonel gave him a discreet word to the wise: Obviously, The Corps had to have someone ashore at Cavite, and he was selected; it was not acceptable behavior for a Marine officer to try to get out of an assignment he didn’t like.

  Lieutenant Jim Weston’s case was somewhat different from his own. After a two-year tour with a Marine fighter squadron, flying Brewster Buffalo F2-As, he had been selected for multiengine training. After transition training, he had been given a six-month assignment to a Navy squadron flying Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina twin-engine flying boats.

  The idea was to give him enough time under experienced Navy aviators so that he could return to The Corps and serve as a multiengine Instructor Pilot. That, in turn, meant someone had judged him to be a better-than-ordinary pilot, skilled and mature enough to become an IP ... and not, as Weston felt, because he hadn’t been able to cut the mustard as a fighter pilot.

  Three months into his “utilization tour” at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese attacked. Though many of the planes of the Navy squadron to which Weston was attached were destroyed on the ground, Weston flew, as copilot, one of the few remaining Catalinas to Cavite on a courier flight.

  The Japanese also attacked Cavite, destroying on the ground other Navy Catalinas, one of which had been flown to the Philippines by a Pearl Harbor—based lieutenant commander. When Lieutenant Weston’s Catalina landed at Cavite, the lieutenant commander judged that he could be of far greater value to the war effort back in Pearl Harbor than a lowly Marine lieutenant on loan to the Navy. And when the Catalina took off, he was at the controls and Weston was left behind, “awaiting transportation.”

  Weston hadn’t been in a cockpit since. There were few aircraft of any type left in the Philippines. When it became evident that his chances of return
ing to flying or of being evacuated to Pearl Harbor were negligible, he was assigned to the staff of the Aviation Officer—Pauison—of Marine Barracks, Cavite.

  When Cavite was blown up and left for the enemy, all remaining Marine personnel were transferred to the 4th Marines. Paulson was assigned to the personnel section, relieving a major who had served with the 4th Marines in China and whose infantry expertise could be put to better use, and Weston became his deputy.

  In Paulson’s view, there was not much left for the Acting Personnel Officer to do but wait for the Japanese to land on Corregidor; whereupon he would order the destruction of personnel records by thermite grenade, grab his rifle, and fight, until the end, as an overage, overranked platoon leader.

  There was only one alternative to this course of action, one that Paulson himself could not accept, but which, the more he thought about it, seemed to be a viable course of action for Lieutenant Jim Weston.

  Before the war, Paulson came to know a number of Army Air Corps pilots. One of them, an Army Air Corps major—also transferred to ground duty when there were no more airplanes for him to fly—approached him and announced that since the war here was about over and he had no intention of surrendering, he was going to head for the hills and hide out. From there, he would either try to escape to Australia, or maybe even fight as a guerrilla.

  “You want to come along, Steve?” he asked.

  Paulson gave the offer a good deal of thought before declining. For one thing, it would be AWOL, or perhaps even desertion. Something about that rubbed him the wrong way. The very word “desertion” made him consider that since he still had some contribution to make, even if only as a platoon leader, he would in fact be deserting the enlisted men at a time when they needed him most. Finally, although he didn’t like to face the fact, his health was shot. He had some sort of rash whose suppurating sores seemed to grow worse daily. His teeth were falling out. There was no way he could survive running around in the hot, physically debilitating jungles of the Philippines. He would become a burden to whomever he was with.

  Weston, however, was another matter. Although Paulson was sure he would try his best, the young pilot would be nearly worthless as a platoon leader. And maybe even worse, he could be a burden to those he was commanding. On the other hand, if Weston could somehow get out of the Philippines, he would be of great use to The Corps. There had been a pilot shortage before the war, and that shortage must, Paulson reasoned, be even more acute now.

  And even if Weston couldn’t escape from the Philippines, he was young, and—considering the circumstances—in good health. He could probably make himself useful to a guerrilla operation. For one thing, he had a degree in electrical engineering, which meant he probably knew something about radios. Any guerrilla force needed radios.

  The final consideration was very simple. If Weston stayed on Corregidor, one of two things was certain to happen: he would be killed, or he would be taken prisoner. It was equally certain that he would be more of a problem than an asset in the final fighting. If he went off into the hills, tried to escape to Australia, he would probably be killed. But he might not. He might escape. And if he did, he could make a contribution. Or he might be useful to some guerrilla commander (Paulson thought of his Air Corps friend, who one day simply vanished from Corregidor) and make a contribution that way.

  On The Rock, the alternatives to death and/or surrender were the subject of many careful, soft conversations between officers. Yet, as close as he and Paulson had become, Weston had never brought the subject up.

  Is this, Paulson wondered, because he’s been thinking about it, and is afraid I will order him to forget about it if he mentions it to me? Or because he thinks his duty is clear, to stay here and get killed or become a prisoner? And doesn’t want me to think he’s even thought about taking off?

  Finally—he later recognized this as one of the most difficult things he’d ever done in The Corps—Paulson brought the subject up to Weston himself, directly and somewhat forcefully. They were discussing Weston’s alternatives—as possibilities Weston could choose, one possibility being to try to escape. But then Paulson stopped and changed that from a choice to something close to an order. And Weston accepted it as an order.

  Because, Paulson wondered, he is a good Marine and obeys whatever order he is given, even one that frightens him? Or because he was on the edge of making that decision for himself, and my making it an order made it easier?

  By then—none of this took more than a few days, but things were disintegrating at a rapidly accelerating pace—it was harder and harder to leave the island. The boats, the only means of crossing the two miles of water from The Rock to Bataan, were disappearing ... partly as a result of enemy action, partly from lack of parts and maintenance, and partly, Paulson suspected, because they’d been “requisitioned” by people who were electing not to surrender when the end came.

  There seemed to be proof of that. The boats now carried guards to make sure they completed their intended trips. And getting permission to leave the island for any purpose now required the authorization of a colonel or better.

  Solving that was an emotional problem for Paulson, not a practical one. As a paper-pusher, he routinely signed colonels’ names to all sorts of documents, including permission authority to leave the island. Sometimes he added his initials to these, sometimes not.

  He did not think his memorandum ordering Weston to Bataan on a supply-gathering mission would be questioned. But writing it was still one of the most serious violations of the officer’s honor code: “willfully uttering a document known to be false.”

  At 0900, he sent a runner after Lieutenant Weston, whom he had loaned to the Army Finance Officer. Weston and a half-dozen other officers had spent the past three days making lists, in triplicate, of the serial numbers of all the one-hundred-, fifty-, twenty-, and ten-dollar bills in the possession of Army and Navy Finance Officers.

  When the lists were completed, the money would be burned, to keep it out of Japanese hands. Attempts would be made to get the lists somehow out of the Philippines.

  There’s no food, and no medicine, and damned little booze, Paulson thought with bitter amusement, but the Army and the Navy are loaded with dough.

  “You wanted to see me, Sir?” Weston asked.

  Paulson met the eyes of the young, unhealthily thin officer.

  “I’ve decided we should make one more attempt—you should make one more attempt—to find the parts for our generator,” Paulson said.

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” Weston replied, trying but not quite succeeding to keep his face expressionless.

  “Here’s your boat pass,” Paulson said, handing him the authorization.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “And the necessary funds,” Paulson went on. “You’ll have to sign for them.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir.”

  Weston’s eyes widened when he glanced into the envelope Paulson handed him. It was a thick stack of crisp, unissued fifty- and one-hundred-dollar bills. Far more money than was necessary to buy generator parts.

  “Five thousand dollars,” Paulson said. “Inflation seems to have come to this Pacific paradise.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Weston said as he leaned over to sign the receipt on Paulson’s desk.

  “There’s supposed to be a motor pool on shore,” Paulson said. “You are authorized, by your pass, to draw a vehicle. You may or may not get one.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “I’ve arranged for an interpreter to go with you. He’s supposed to be fluent in Spanish. Pick him up at the Headquarters Company CP.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir.”

  Paulson had given a good deal of thought about the wisdom of sending an interpreter with Weston. On the one hand, it would reduce any suspicions about Weston’s generator-parts-finding mission. On the other, there was no way to predict how the interpreter, a buck sergeant who’d come to the Philippines with the 4th Marines from Shanghai, would react when he found out Weston was not going
to return to The Rock.

  In the end, he decided in favor of sending the sergeant with Weston. Weston might be able to handle the sergeant. If so, the sergeant, with his knowledge of Spanish, and because he was an Old Breed China Marine, might be very useful when Weston took off.

  “And I think you’d better take this with you,” Paulson said, taking from the well of his desk a Thompson .45 caliber submachine gun and two extra stick magazines. “You never know when you might need. it.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir. Thank you, Sir,” Weston said.

  He slung the Thompson’s web sling over his shoulder, then put one magazine in each of his trouser side pockets.

  “Don’t shoot yourself in the foot with that, Mr. Weston,” Paulson said, meeting his eyes. “In other words, take care.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir.”

  “Move out, Mr. Weston,” Paulson said. “Get your show on the road.”

  Weston said nothing for a long minute. Then he saluted.

  Paulson returned the salute and then extended his hand.

  “Good luck, Jim,” Paulson said.

  “Good luck to you, Sir,” Weston said. Then he came to attention. “By your leave, Sir?”

  Paulson nodded.

  Weston made the about-face movement and marched away from Paulson’s desk. Paulson watched him go down the lateral tunnel and then turn into the main tunnel. Then he turned his attention to the papers on his desk.

  [TWO]

  Kindley Field

  Fortress Corregidor

  Manila Bay

  Commonwealth of the Philippines

  0920 Hours 1 April 1942

  Sergeant Percy Lewis Everly, USMC, had spent most of the morning thinking very seriously about desertion.

  Everly, who was twenty-six years old, six feet tall, sharply featured, and weighed 145 pounds, was in charge of a two-gun, water-cooled .30 caliber Browning machine-gun section of Headquarters Company, 4th Marines. This was set up to train its fire on Kindley Field, a rectangular cleared area toward the seaward end of Corregidor. The area had been cleared years before to serve as a balloon field. Everly had seen that on the map. The map didn’t say what kind of balloons it was supposed to serve, whether barrage balloons, designed to interfere with aircraft attacking the island fortress, or observation balloons, from which the tip of the Bataan Peninsula two miles away could be observed.