The Corp - Counterattack Part 1

Counterattack.

The Corp.

Griffin, W.E.B.

Chapter One.

(One) Pearl Harbor Oahu Island, Territory of Hawaii 7 December 1941

The j.a.panese Carrier Task Force charged with the destruction of the United States Pacific Fleet began launching aircraft approximately 305 nautical miles north of Pearl Harbor.

These aircraft proceeded in a single stream until they were about 12S miles from Pearl Harbor, where the stream split in two. Fifty miles from Oahu, the left column of the attacking force divided again into three more streams.

The first two streams of the left column turned right and headed for Pearl Harbor, across the island. The third stream continued on course until it had flown beyond the tip of Oahu, then turned toward the center of the island and made its approach to Pearl Harbor from the sea. It began its attack at 0755 hours.

Meanwhile, the right stream of j.a.panese aircraft had divided in two as it approached Oahu. One stream crossed the coastline and made for Pearl Harbor, on the other side of the island. The second continued on course past the island, and then turned back to attack Pearl Harbor from the open sea. Its attack began at 0900.

All of these attacks went off smoothly and as planned. And at 1030, the Task Force radioed a coded message to Imperial j.a.panese Naval Headquarters. The code was "Tora, Tora, Tora." It signified success.

Fortunately for the Americans, the j.a.panese success was not unqualified. The surprise attack had found all of the battles.h.i.+ps of the United States Pacific Fleet at anchor, and had sunk or severely damaged most of them. But two U.S. aircraft carriers, seven cruisers, and their screening vessels were at sea, in three task forces, and were not harmed.

When the first j.a.panese bombs fell at Pearl Harbor, Staff Sergeant Joseph L. Howard, USMC, of Headquarters Company, 1st Marine Defense Battalion, was asleep. He shared a room with a mess sergeant, who was on duty, and who could be counted on to bring a thermos of coffee and some doughnuts back to their room when the mess had finished serving breakfast.

Staff Sergeant Howard was twenty-four, young for his rank. He was six feet one inches tall, weighed 185 pounds, and was broad-shouldered and slim-waisted. He had sharp features, intelligent eyes, and wore his light brown hair just long enough to part. At one time it had been seriously proposed that Staff Sergeant Howard be used as a model for the photographs in a new edition of the Handbook for Marines.

The Handbook for Marines was issued to every enlisted Marine; many officers-including most company-grade officers- also had copies. Among its many ill.u.s.trations were photographs of a Marine modeling the various service uniforms. A Good Marine was supposed to look like that. Similarly, there were photographs showing the correct way to execute the manual of arms and the various movements in close-order drill.

Staff Sergeant Joe Howard in one of his perfectly fitting uniforms, with his erect carriage and broad shoulders, looked exactly like the Perfect Marine.

Joe Howard had been a Marine for seven years and six months.

He had enlisted right out of high school, on what was called a "baby cruise," a term of enlistment which extended to his twenty-first birthday; the regular term of enlistment was four years. At that point (he turned twenty-one on August 14,1937), he was given the choice of being transferred to the Fleet Reserve-in effect discharged-or s.h.i.+pping over for a regular, four-year enlistment.

For most of his "baby cruise," Howard served with the Marine detachment on board the battles.h.i.+p Arizona, and he won promotion to private first cla.s.s at the recommendation of her captain, who had been impressed with his bearing and appearance when Howard had served as his orderly. After leaving Arizona, he was a.s.signed to the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

At the Navy Yard, a salty old gunnery sergeant took a liking to him, had him a.s.signed to the arms locker as an armorer, and taught him how to shoot. Really shoot. Not only well enough to qualify for the extra pay that went with the Expert Rifleman qualification badge, but well enough to shoot compet.i.tively. He almost made it onto the East Coast Rifle Team (one step down from the U.S. Marine Corps Rifle Team), and he was fairly confident that he could make it the next time around.

Gunny MacFarland also got him a job as an off-duty bartender in the officers' club, working Friday and Sat.u.r.day nights and for the luncheon buffet on Sunday. That thirty cents an hour added enough to his PFC's thirty dollars a month, supplemented by his five-dollar-a-month Expert Rifleman's pay, to permit him to buy a Ford Model A.

In August of 1937 he had to choose between getting out of the Corps and taking his chances on civvy street, where jobs were hard to come by, particularly if you didn't have a trade, or s.h.i.+pping over, which meant a dollar and a dime a day, plus uniforms, three square meals a day, and a place to sleep out of the rain. That's what Joe had told his mother.

But there was more to it than that. Not only were there other material advantages, like being paid to do something you liked to do-shooting, and the opportunities for travel that went with being a compet.i.tive rifle shooter, and things like that-but there was also the chance to make something of himself. And just being a Marine.

Gunny MacFarland told him that with his record, and providing he kept his nose clean, it was almost a sure thing that he would make corporal before his second hitch was up, maybe even sooner than that, say in two years.

Joe Howard knew that Gunny MacFarland was bulls.h.i.+tting him to get him to s.h.i.+p over. In two years he would be twenty-three. There were very few twenty-three-year-old corporals in the Marines. In 1937 the Corps had an authorized strength of only twenty-five thousand officers and men, which meant that n.o.body moved up in rank very fast. His chances of making corporal on his second hitch were almost nonexistent.

But it was more than a little flattering to have MacFarland bulls.h.i.+t him in order to get him to s.h.i.+p over and stay in the Corps. MacFarland was one h.e.l.l of a Marine, and to know that MacFarland wanted him to stay in the Corps meant that MacFarland thought he had at least the potential to be a good Marine.

Besides, if Howard s.h.i.+pped over, there was nothing in it for MacFarland, either. He wasn't a recruiting sergeant. And nothing made MacFarland ask Joe over to his quarters for Sunday-night supper, sort of taking him into the family. Mrs. MacFarland even made him a birthday cake with candles when Joe turned twenty.

There really had not been much of a choice between going back to Birmingham, Alabama, and maybe getting lucky and getting a job in a steel mill, or s.h.i.+pping over in the Corps, even if MacFarland was bulls.h.i.+tting him about making corporal.

The same month he s.h.i.+pped over, PFC Howard met the Major General Commandant of the Marine Corps, Thomas Holcomb. More or less for the h.e.l.l of it, thinking that it was at least practice, Joe Howard got into his civilian clothes one Sunday, drove his Model A across New Jersey to a place called Sea Girt, and entered a civilian rifle match run by the National Rifle a.s.sociation on the New Jersey National Guard's rifle range.

You had to pay three dollars and fifty cents to enter, plus, he found out when he got there, another five dollars to join the NRA if you were competing as a civilian, as he was. So he was out eight-fifty, plus the cost of gas and wear and tear on the Model A, plus the loss of the dollar and a half he would have made working the Sunday brunch at the officers' club.

He'd just about decided that coming to Sea Girt was one of the dumber things he'd done lately, when he checked the score-board and saw that he was leading in the one-hundred- and three-hundred-yard matches. All that was left was the twenty-round timed fire at five hundred yards. If he took that, they'd give him a loving cup. He wasn't sure if it was silver, or just silver-plated, but he could probably get at least five dollars for it in a hockshop. And if it really was silver, he might even make a couple of bucks over his expenses.

When he fired the five-hundred-yard timed fire, Joe Howard tried very hard. It was some of the best shooting he had ever done, and luck was with him. The wind was light, and right down the range. He took the match by fifteen points, and he put eleven of the twenty rounds in the X-ring.

The only picture he had ever seen of Thomas Holcomb, Major General Commandant of the Marine Corps, was the photograph of the General in full uniform, medals and all, which hung at various places in every Marine Corps installation. He hadn't paid much attention to it.

So Joe did not recognize the civilian big shot who handed him the loving cup, a more or less chubby guy, sweating in his vested cord suit and flat-brimmed straw hat. For that matter, he didn't even look closely at the man until he made an odd remark: "That was fine shooting, son. Congratulations. If you don't have any other plans, the Marine Corps always has a place for someone who can shoot like that."

The comment brought laughter from the other big shots.

The confusion on Joe Howard's face as Major General Commandant Holcomb shook his hand and simultaneously handed him the loving cup was evident. One of the big shots thought an explanation was in order.

"General Holcomb is Commandant of the Marine Corps, son. He was kind enough to come down here from Spring Lake to make the presentation of the awards."

For three years, Joe Howard, as a Pavlovian reflex, had come to attention when greeting any officer, from second lieutenant up. At that instant he popped to attention. Because the handle of the eighteen-inch-tall silver loving cup was in his left hand, however, this proved a little difficult.

His movement caught Commandant Holcomb's eye, and he turned to look at the young man.

"Sir," PFC Howard boomed in the manner he had been taught, "PFC Howard, Joseph L., Marine Barracks, Philadelphia."

"Carry on," General Holcomb said, and then added, with a smile, to the other big shots, "Why am I not surprised?"

He then walked off with the other big shots, but Joe Howard saw him say something behind his hand to a young man with him, who was also in civilian clothing. The young man nodded, took a notebook from his pocket, and wrote in it.

There was no doubt whatever in Joe's mind that his name had been taken down. He had had his name taken down before-always in connection with something he had done wrong, or for something he had omitted. So he decided that it was probably against some regulation for him to enter a civilian NRA match.

When he thought more about it, he decided his particular sin had been to go to the armory and take his rifle, a 1903 Springfield .30-06 with a Star Gauge barrel, and use it to compete in a civilian match.

Star Gauge Springfields were capable of extraordinary accuracy, far beyond that of standard-issue Springfields. They were so called because the Army's Frankford a.r.s.enal, after checking their dimensions ("gauging them") and determining that they met a set of very strict standards, had stamped their barrels near the muzzle with a star.

With a sinking feeling in his stomach, Joe realized that if some other Marine came to his armory and asked to check out one of the Star Gauge Springfields so he could fire it in a civilian match, there was no way he would let him do it without written permission from some officer.

And he hadn't been caught using a Star Gauge Springfield in a civilian match by just some officer, but by the Major General Commandant of the Marine Corps!

On the way back to Philadelphia, Joe considered confessing his sins right off to Gunny MacFarland, but chickened out. The Gunny would really be p.i.s.sed; the one thing he could not stand was stupidity. And it was also likely that the Gunny, being the Gunny, would try to accept the responsibility for his stupidity himself.

That wouldn't be right. Taking the Star Gauge Springfield had been his idea, Joe decided, and he would take whatever came his way because of it.

Nothing happened on Monday. Or on Tuesday, or Wednesday. And by Thursday Joe began to think that just maybe nothing would happen. Maybe he would get away with it, even though the officer in civvies had taken down his name.

On Friday, just before lunch, he was summoned by the Sergeant Major and told to report to the Commanding Officer.

"Sir, PFC Howard reporting as ordered to the commanding officer!"

"Stand at ease, Howard," said the Commanding Officer, a paunchy, middle-aged major, and then handed him a sheet of teletype machine paper.

Headquarters US Marine Corps Wash DC 27 August 1937

To: Commanding Officer US Marine Barracks US Navy Yard Phila Penna Info: Commanding Officer US Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island SC

1.The following is to be relayed to PFC Joseph L. Howard, and suitable notation made in his service record: "Reference your winning 1937 New Jersey State Rifle Match. Well Done. Thomas Holcomb Major General Commandant.

2.You are directed to issue necessary orders transferring PFC Howard to US Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island SC for duty as rifle instructor. PFC Howard is to be encouraged to try out for USMC Rifle Team.

By direction of the Major General Commandant: S. T. Kralik, Lt Col USMC

When he had graduated from Boot Camp at Parris Island, Joe Howard had devoutly hoped he would never again see the place. While he was willing to grant that he had come to Parris Island a candy-a.s.s civilian and had left at least looking and thinking vaguely like a Marine, he had painful and bitter memories of the place and of his drill instructors.

It was different, of course, when he went back, but he still didn't like the place.

He ran into one of his drill sergeants at the gas station, and was surprisingly disappointed when the sergeant told him that he didn't remember him at all. And he was equally surprised to realize that not only did the drill sergeant not look as mean and salty as he had in his memory, but that he was in fact not nearly as sharp looking as some Marines Joe had come to know later. He was just an average Marine, doing his job.

Howard didn't get along too well, at least at first, with the other guys teaching basic marksmans.h.i.+p or the ones on the rifle team. He came to understand that was because he hadn't followed the established route to the Weapons Committee. They were supposed to select you; he had been thrust upon them by the Major General Commandant.

It got better after he qualified for the Marine Corps Rifle Team, and even better when he shot third overall at the National Matches at Camp Perry, Ohio, in the summer of 1938. And in September of 1938, he came out number three on the list for promotion to corporal. He had made it less than a year after s.h.i.+pping over, and a year before Gunny MacFarland had bulls.h.i.+tted him he might make it.

Almost as soon as he'd sewed his chevrons on, he started trying to think of some way to get out of Parris Island. He applied for transfer to the 4th Marines in China, and was turned down. He could, they said, enlist for the 4th Marines the next time he s.h.i.+pped over, but right now the Corps wanted him at Parris Island, teaching recruits how to shoot.

Then, out of the blue, he found himself at the U.S. Army Infantry Center at Fort Benning, Georgia. The Army Ordnance Corps had come up with a new rifle, the M-l, known as the Garand after the man who had invented it. It was self-loading, which meant that it was almost automatic. It used the forces of recoil to extract the fired cartridge from the chamber and then to load a fresh one from the magazine. The magazine held eight rounds. The Marines were invited to partic.i.p.ate in the service test of the weapon, and they sent a provisional platoon to Fort Benning in charge of a master gunnery sergeant named Jack NMI (No Middle Initial) Stecker from the U.S. Marine Corps Schools base at Quantico.

A third of the platoon were taken from regular Marine units; a third came right out of boot camp; and the final third were people recognized to be outstanding marksmen. Corporal Joe Howard had been a.s.signed to this last group.

Master Gunnery Sergeant Jack NMI Stecker had won the Medal of Honor in France in 1918, and was something of a legend in the Corps. Joe figured that probably had something to do with his being put in charge of the Fort Benning detail; it looked like a good detail, the sort of detail a man would be given who was ent.i.tled to wear the blue ribbon with the silver stars sprinkled on it.

When Corporal Joe Howard reported to Gunny Stecker, he was surprised to see that Stecker was not wearing his Medal of Honor ribbon. The only things pinned to his blouse were his marksmans.h.i.+p medals. Not surprisingly, he was Expert in every small-arms weapon used by the Corps. Joe later found out, not from Stecker, that Stecker had taken High Overall at Camp Perry in 1933 and 1936; he was a world-cla.s.s rifleman.

But Master Gunnery Sergeant Stecker was more than just impressive. Best of all, he got Corporal Howard out of Parris Island. A couple of days before they left Fort Benning, Stecker called him in and asked him what he thought of the M-l Garand.

It was almost holy writ in the Corps that the finest, most accurate rifle ever made was the '03 Springfield. Even among the expert riflemen who had fired the Garand at Benning, the weapon was known as a Mickey Mouse piece the Army had dreamed up; it would never come close to being as good a rifle as the '03.

But Joe Howard had come to believe that the Garand was a fine weapon even off the shelf, and that with some fine-tuning by an armorer it would be capable of greater accuracy than the '03. He told Gunny Stecker just that.

"That makes it you and me against the Marine Corps, son," Gunny Stecker replied. "You happy at Parris Island?"

Joe told him the truth about that, too: he didn't like what was generally considered to be a great berth for a brand-new, very young corporal-as opposed, say, to being in a Marine detachment on a man-of-war, or in a line company in a regiment somewhere-and he had been trying to get out of it.

"Would you be interested in coming to Quantico and working on the Garand? The basic detail would be teaching riflery to kids in the Basic Officer Course, and college kids who come for training in the summer. But when you're not doing that, there would be time to work on the Garand."

"I'd love it, Gunny," Joe replied. "But they won't let me go from Parris Island."

"Why not?"

Joe told him about his getting sent there by the Major General Commandant.

"I'll see what I can do," Stecker said.

Two weeks after he reported back into Parris Island, Joe was put on orders to U.S. Marine Corps Schools, Quantico, Virginia.

The next year was good duty. Aside from maybe once a month catching Corporal of the Guard, and maybe once every I other month catching Junior Charge of Quarters at Headquarters, Marine Corps Schools, Joe Howard was subject to no other details.

He was either teaching brand-new officers how to fire the '03, which he liked, or running people through the Annual Rifle Firing; but that didn't take all that much time. There was plenty of time to see what could be done with the Garand.

Putting several thousand rounds through M-1s taught him what was basically wrong with the weapon, and how to fix it.

The primary problem was the barrel. When it was heated up by firing, it expanded and jammed into the stock. The result was that in rapid fire the later rounds through it (the twentieth, say) would strike a couple of inches-sometimes much more-from where the first round had struck.

The fix for that was to make the barrel free-floating. You had to carefully whittle wood away from the inside of the stock so that the barrel didn't get bent by the stock when it heated up.

The sights left a little to be desired, too. Joe learned to fix that by machining from scratch a new rear sight aperture, or "peep sight hole," that was smaller than the original, and by taking a couple of thousandths of an inch off the front sight. He also did some work on the gears that moved the rear sight horizontally and vertically, smoothing them out, making them more precise. And he tinkered with the trigger group, smoothing the sear so the let-off could be better controlled, and with the action itself, smoothing it to improve functioning. In the process, he learned where and how much lubricant was required. Finally, he mated barrels which had demonstrated unusual accuracy to his specially worked-over actions and trigger groups.

There were soon a half-dozen M-1s in the Arms Room just as accurate as any Star Gauge Springfield. One of these was informally reserved for Corporal Howard, and one other for Master Gunnery Sergeant Jack NMI Stecker.

Joe Howard made a nice little piece of change that year proving to visiting riflemen during informal sessions on the range that the M-l Garand wasn't really the Mickey Mouse Army piece of s.h.i.+t everybody said it was.

And three times Gunny Stecker had handed him money- once ninety dollars-which the Gunny said was his fair share of what he had taken away from visiting master gunnery sergeants and sergeants major who also had an unfounded faith in the all-around superiority of the Springfield, and who were foolish enough to put their money where their mouths were. A Garand fine-tuned by Corporal Joe Howard, in the hands of a marksman like Gunny Stecker, was hard to beat.

In the late summer of 1940, after France had fallen to the Germans and Congress had authorized the first of what were to be many expansions of the Corps, there were a flock of promotions-promotions that came to many men long before they thought they had any chance of getting them. Joe Howard became a sergeant then. Six months later, a veteran ordnance sergeant a.s.signed to the just-formed 1st Defense Battalion at the Navy Base at Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, became terminally ill. Soon afterward, someone in personnel remembered that Master Gunnery Sergeant Jack NMI Stecker at Quantico had a really bright and competent ordnance buck sergeant working for him.

That the kid had worked for Gunny Stecker for two years, and been promoted during that time, was all-around recommendation enough; people who didn't measure up to Gunny Stecker's high standards didn't get promoted, they got themselves s.h.i.+pped someplace else. On the same order that Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps ordered Sergeant Joseph L. Howard to the 1st Defense Battalion at Pearl, it promoted him to staff sergeant.

When the j.a.panese attack began, even as he listened to the sound of exploding bombs and the roar of low-flying aircraft, it was very difficult for Joe Howard to accept that what was happening actually was happening.