Behind the Lines

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Well, right now, I’ve been trying to make sure that the Navy doesn’t steal everybody who speaks an Oriental language from the Draft Board for the Navy; that The Corps gets at least a few of them. I’ve spent the last week at the Armed Forces Induction Center in New York.”

  “I mean, ordinarily.”

  “Whatever General Pickering tells me to do.”

  “You’re his assistant in charge of repairing mess kits, right?”

  “Yes, Sir. That’s about it.”

  “You’re wasting your time, Daddy,” Ernie said. “I live with him, and he won’t tell me anything either.”

  You had to say that, “I live with him,” didn’t you?

  Maintaining a smile with some difficulty, Sage said, “I don’t mean to pry, Ken. Would asking you how long you’re going to be around be prying?”

  “No, Sir. I’ll be around a long time, I think. Four, five, maybe even six months.”

  Well, I suppose, if you’re young, and in uniform, five or six months is a “long time.”

  “And then?”

  “They haven’t told me.”

  “And if they had, he wouldn’t tell us,” Ernie said, adding intensely, “I really hate this goddamn war!”

  “You are not too big to be told to watch your mouth, young lady.”

  “What would you prefer, that I call it ‘this noble enterprise to save the world for democracy’?”

  “That has a nice ring to it,” McCoy said.

  “Oh, go to hell!” Ernie said.

  Ken McCoy did, in fact, know where he would be going in four to six months—he’d been told the week before; it was classified TOP SECRET. And he had been really impressed with what he would be doing, and with the long-range planning for the war the upper echelons of the military establishment were now carrying on.

  The Joint Chiefs of Staff intended to bomb the home islands of the Empire of Japan. Though the islands from which the planes would fly to attack Tokyo and other Japanese cities were now firmly in Japanese hands, the big brass was so sure that the war in the Pacific would see their capture that they had turned their attention to the details.

  One of the details was weather information. Without accurate weather predictions—including something called “Winds Aloft,” which McCoy had never heard of before last week-long-range bombing of Japan would not be possible.

  The ideal place to locate a weather-reporting station would be as close to Japan as possible. Since locating a weather station near Japan was out of the question, the next-best place—for reasons not explained to McCoy—was the Gobi Desert in Mongolia.

  Until he had time to think about it, he was genuinely surprised that United States military personnel were presently in the Gobi Desert, which was about as far behind the enemy lines as it was possible to get. Though there were a few soldiers and sailors, the majority of them were United States Marines who had been stationed in Peking and elected not to surrender to the Japanese when the war began. They had made for the Gobi Desert for reasons that were not entirely clear but that certainly included avoiding capture.

  They had taken with them a number of ex-China Marines, Yangtze River Patrol sailors, and members of the Army’s 15th Infantry who had taken their retirement in China and considered themselves recalled from retirement. There were supposed to be sixty-seven of them.

  They had established radio contact through American forces in China, and were now in direct contact with Army and Navy radio stations in Hawaii, Australia, and the continental United States. They were ordered to maintain contact and to avoid capture, but not informed of the plans being made for them.

  Once they could be trained in a number of skills, including parachuting, it was planned that an initial reinforcement detachment would be sent to the Gobi Desert. In their number would be radio operators, meteorologists, cryptographers, and other technicians.

  Their ability to collect, encrypt, and transmit weather data from the Gobi would be tested, as would the efficacy of predicting weather from the data furnished.

  Inasmuch as the personnel in the Gobi were predominantly Marines, and the Marines were part of the Navy, the Navy had been given overall command of the operation. The meteorologists, cryptographers, and communications personnel would be sailors. But the Secretary of the Navy, with the concurrence of the President’s Chief of Staff, had given the Marine Corps Office of Management Analysis responsibility for staging the operation.

  The Deputy Chief of Management Analysis had in turn named Major Edward Banning as Officer in Charge, with Lieutenant Kenneth R. McCoy as his deputy. Nothing had been said to McCoy, but he knew that Banning held a MAGIC clearance, and thus could not be put in risk of capture, so Banning would not make the mission. He also felt quite sure that he himself would not become Officer in Charge by default; command of the mission would not be entrusted to a lowly lieutenant. Consequently, sometime between now and the time the mission left the United States, a field-grade officer would be assigned.

  But between now and then, he knew he would be in charge, turning to Banning only when he ran into a problem he could not handle himself. It would give him, as he had told Ernie and her father, four to six months in the States. And he was sure he could arrange his schedule to spend a good deal of time with her.

  Starting, he thought, almost immediately. He was about to go through the Marine Corps Parachutist’s School at Lakehurst, New Jersey. While he was there, he could go into New York City every night and every weekend. But he would also have to periodically return to Lakehurst to check on the progress of the others learning how to parachute themselves and their equipment from airplanes.

  The thought of parachuting into Mongolia was a little unnerving, but he told himself it was probably a good deal safer than being a platoon leader on Guadalcanal. The real problem with the Mongolian Operation was that once he went in, it would be a long time before he could even think of getting out, perhaps not until the end of the war. But there was nothing he could do about that.

  [THREE]

  The Congressional Country Club

  Fairfax County, Virginia

  1 November 1942

  Technically, the status of Major James C. Brownlee III, USMCR, at the Office of Strategic Services Reception and Training Station—the pressed-into-service Congressional Country Club—was “Agent, awaiting assignment.”

  That meant he had successfully completed the training program and passed the “Final Board”—a group of five senior OSS officers who had considered his military background, the comments of his training officers at the Country Club, and then called him in for an hour-long session to finally make the determination whether or not he was the sort of man who could successfully function behind the enemy’s lines.

  Jim Brownlee, a tall, blond, slender, twenty-seven-year-old who wore spectacles, had always wanted to be a Marine. While at Princeton, he participated in the Marine Corps Platoon Leader’s Program, which was rather like the Army’s Reserve Officer Training Corps. During the academic year, it exposed young men who thought they might like to be officers to courses with a military application. And then, during summer vacations, it gave them six weeks of intensive training in basic military subjects—“The Three M’s,” marching, marksmanship, and map reading—at USMC Base Quantico, Virginia, and Parris Island Recruit Depot, South Carolina.

  Jim Brownlee intended to apply for a commission in the Regular Marine Corps; but his eyes did not meet the Marine Corps’ criteria for the regular service. Instead, on his graduation from Princeton in June 1937, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant, USMCR. After that, he went through the Basic Officer Course at Quantico, and was released to inactive duty.

  He joined Marine Corps Reserve Battalion 14, based in New Orleans, Louisiana, as a platoon leader, even though this meant an overnight train ride—at his own expense—each way once a month from his home in Palm Beach, Florida, for the weekend training program. After two years of service with the battalion, he was promoted first lieutenant.


  When he was not training with The Marine Corps, he was Vice President, Domestic Transportation, for the Brownlee Fruit Company (founded by his grandfather, Matthew J. Brownlee). The firm imported bananas—their own production and brokered—from Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, and El Salvador. His father was currently President, and his older brother, Matthew J. Brownlee III, was Vice President, Production.

  What his title meant was that his father had put him to work under an experienced longtime traffic manager, as a way to learn the business. Bananas were off-loaded from Brownlee ships at Port St. Lucie, Florida; Mobile, Alabama; and New Orleans, Louisiana. His job was to ensure the smooth flow of the bananas either to regional distribution centers or to the ultimate retailers.

  He liked the challenge of quickly and economically moving vast amounts of bananas—they are, of course, highly perishable—from the off-loading port to their destinations, while keeping them as fresh as possible. At the same time, the intricacies of interstate motor freight laws, tariffs; and the like were rather fascinating.

  Since the whole idea was to teach him the business, he also spent a good deal of time in Central America with his brother. Matthew, who was fifteen years older than he was, devoted his attention pretty much equally to showing Jim the plantation operations and trying to prevent him from giving in to what the Episcopal Church terms the sinful lusts of the flesh with dark-skinned native girls.

  On 15 October 1940, President Roosevelt ordered the mobilization of Marine Reserve Battalions, which did not surprise Jim Brownlee. On April 9, Germany had occupied Denmark and invaded Norway. The next month, Germany invaded Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who had promised “Peace In Our Time,” resigned 11 May, and Winston S. Churchill took his place.

  What was left of the British Army after the German Blitzkrieg across France was evacuated from Dunkirk on 4 June; and just over a week later, the German Wehrmacht goose-stepped down the Champs Élysées. On 22 June, the French surrendered to the Germans.

  In July, a Marine lieutenant colonel who spoke to Jim’s reserve battalion in New Orleans brought them up to date on the military picture as the Marine Corps saw it. He mentioned that as of 30 June, the total strength of the USMC was 1,732 Officers and 26,545 Enlisted Men.

  He didn’t say that the Marine Reserve was about to be mobilized, but he did say that there were obviously not enough Marines in uniform for the present circumstances.

  Jim Brownlee reported for active duty with his reserve battalion to Marine Base Quantico, Virginia on 1 November 1940. Within a week of their arrival, the battalion was broken up, and its members were scattered all over the world, wherever Marines were serving.

  A Marine Personnel Officer, a major whom Jim correctly suspected was curious how a twenty-four-year-old had become a vice president of a large corporation, questioned him at some length about his duties, and then sent him to see a full colonel, who was the G-4 (Supply) Officer at Quantico.

  The Colonel questioned him even more intensively about his knowledge of what the Marine Corps called “Transport.” Apparently satisfied with the answers, he told Jim he had been looking for someone with his qualifications, and as of that moment he could consider himself assigned to the G-4 Section as an Assistant Transportation Officer.

  Jim’s protests that he was trained as an infantry platoon leader were met with the observation that in the Colonel’s experience good Marine officers went where they were sent and did what they were told to do, without complaint.

  The year between Jim’s call to active duty and Pearl Harbor went quickly, and he took a certain satisfaction from his work. He was more than a little surprised to learn how much truck operators serving the Marines had been able to get away with before he laid his expert eye on the invoices they had tendered.

  He received during that year three letters of commendation for his official file and a wholly unexpected promotion to captain.

  The attack on Pearl Harbor surprised him, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, he did not think the Japanese had the technical capability to strike with such strength at such a great distance. For another, though a surprise attack on the United States was possible, in his view, he thought it would probably come on the Panama Canal, either from the Germans in the Atlantic or the Japanese in the Pacific, or conceivably both.

  On 8 December, he applied for transfer to duty with troops. His letter came back within a week, denied. He applied again thereafter on a monthly basis, and on a monthly basis his request was denied. In April 1942, he was promoted major. The ceremony was held in the office of the Commanding General. After offering his congratulations, he said he hoped it would mean the end of the monthly requests for transfer.

  In May 1942, a memorandum from Headquarters USMC crossed Major Brownlee’s desk. Applications were being solicited from officers for a nonspecified duty of an intelligence nature. Preference would be given to those with fluency in one or more foreign languages, and/or who had spent time outside the continental United States.

  He submitted his application and promptly forgot about it, sure that it would suffer the same fate as his requests for transfer to duty with troops.

  Two weeks later, his orders came through. He was transferred to something called the Office of Strategic Services and ordered to report within forty-eight hours to the National Institute of Health Building in Washington, D.C.

  There he was interviewed by another board of officers. This one consisted of three men in civilian clothing; two of them spoke Spanish. At the conclusion of the interview, one of the Spanish speakers shook his hand, offered his name, and said, “Please give my best regards to your brother. But don’t tell him where, or under what circumstances, we bumped into each other.”

  That same afternoon, Jim Brownlee was transported in a Buick station wagon to the former Congressional Country Club to begin training.

  The training was difficult, but not nearly so difficult for Major Brownlee as it was for some of his fellow trainees who had entered the OSS directly from civilian life—he had taken pains to keep himself in shape at Quantico and thereafter. Two fellow trainees had never held a weapon in their hands before coming to the Country Club.

  As the training proceeded, he began to wonder where he would be assigned. He gradually came to the conclusion that because of his fluency in Spanish, it would either be in Spain or somewhere in South America. In Spain, the policy of the United States Government was to keep Generalissimo Franco, known as “El Caudillo,” neutral. If South America, he rather suspected he would be in Argentina, where the military-dominated government was in everything but name an ally of the Germans. It was common knowledge around the Country Club that both the OSS and the FBI were deeply involved in Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

  There was a decent library at the Country Club, and Jim Brownlee spent many of his evenings trying to learn as much as he could about the history and politics of South America. He felt he would be given an assignment shortly after he completed the training and then got past the Final Board.

  That didn’t happen. Despite his “Agent, awaiting assignment” status, no assignment was forthcoming. What did happen was that someone in the office realized that he was the senior Marine officer present at the Country Club, and consequently, that administrative responsibility for all Marine Corps personnel assigned to the OSS was logically his.

  At first, in what he believed was the interim between the completion of his training and his assignment, he didn’t mind at all. For one thing, it gave him something to do, and he rather liked guiding fellow Marines through the rocks and shoals of Country Club training.

  But then he began to worry if the same sort of thing that happened to him at Quantico was happening to him at the Country Club. Good administrators were hard to find. And more and more Marines had been accepted by the OSS.

  The last thing in the world he wanted was to be sort of a Marine Mother Hen. He wanted to get out on assignmen
t and do something more concrete against the enemy than shepherd other Marines through training. He was no closer now to being what he thought of privately as a “fighting Marine” than he had been at Quantico.

  This awareness was made even more painful with the arrival at the Country Club of First Lieutenant Robert B. Macklin, USMC. Macklin was not only a rather handsome man, but his uniform—and his person—were adorned with the symbols of what Jim Brownlee wanted rather desperately to be, a Fighting Marine. Macklin wore the ring of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. Colored ribbons on the breast of his well-fitting uniform indicated that he had seen service in the Pacific, and that he had twice been wounded. His face was scarred from one wound; and his slight limp, which he tried but failed to hide, suggested that the wound that caused it had been more severe than the one on his face.

  He wore the wings of a parachutist. And when asked, he revealed that he had been wounded with the USMC 2nd Parachute Battalion storming the beach at Gavutu during the invasion of Guadalcanal. Brownlee had heard that the Marine paratroopers at Gavutu were literally decimated—one out of ten Paramarines were killed or wounded.

  “I really have only one question, Lieutenant,” Brownlee said. “With all the service you’ve seen, I should have thought by now that you would be at least a captain.”

  “The Major will note,” Macklin replied, demonstrating impeccable military courtesy, “that my service records have been misplaced.”

  “Yes, of course,” Brownlee said. “I’m sure they’ll turn up.”

  Lieutenant Robert B. Macklin devoutly hoped they would not. He was delighted when a master gunner in Officer Personnel at Eighth and “I” informed him that his records were missing but they were going to send him to the OSS anyway, and “hope they turn up.”

  With a little bit of luck, they wouldn’t ever turn up, which meant The Corps would have to “reconstruct” a new set. With just a little more luck, the “reconstructed” records would not contain a copy of the devastating Officer’s Efficiency Report he had received from Captain Edward Banning, the S-2 of the 4th Marines in Shanghai.