The Corp - Counterattack Part 33

"I think it's a good idea. It may not do much real damage, but it will hurt the j.a.panese ego, and probably make them keep a much larger home defense force than they have at home; and it's probably going to do wonders for civilian morale here. That's probably worth the cost."

"What cost?"

"I talked to Jimmy Doolittle. He used to be vice-president of Sh.e.l.l. Very good guy. He left me with the impression he doesn't really expect to come back."

"Jesus!"

"There are lieutenant colonels and then there are lieutenant colonels," Pickering said.

"You're talking about the one you buried?"

"You accused me of being cold-blooded."

"OK. I apologize."

"I wish I was," Pickering said. "Cold-blooded, I mean."

"I was going to use my knowledge of Jimmy Doolittle and the B-25s to dazzle you, and get you to tell me about the Marine Raiders."

"Same sort of thing, I think. Roosevelt is dazzled by all things British, and thinks we should have our own commandos. We have to have some kind of military triumph or the public's morale will go to h.e.l.l."

"You think that's all it is? A public-relations stunt, for public morale?"

"I think there's more, but I don't find anything wrong with doing something to b.u.t.tress public morale. And Roosevelt's at least putting his money where his mouth his. His son Jimmy is executive officer of one of the Raider battalions, the 2nd, now forming at San Diego."

"Tell me about it," Senator Fowler said. "You say you were out in San Diego?"

"After dinner. I didn't have any lunch."

"You buying?"

"Why not?"

They ate in the hotel's Grill Room, lamb chops and oven-roast potatoes and a tomato salad, with two bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon.

"Did I tell you," Pickering said, as he selected a Wisconsin Camembert from the display of cheeses, "that the 26th Cavalry in the Philippines just shot their horses? They needed them for food."

"Jesus Christ, Flem!" the Senator protested.

"Why don't I feel guilty about eating all this? Maybe you're right, d.i.c.k. Maybe I really am cold-blooded."

"I don't know whether you are or not, but that's the last you get to drink. I know you well enough to know there are times when you should not be drinking, and this is one of those times."

After dinner, Captain Fleming Pickering, USNR, returned to his suite, took a shower, had a nightcap-a large brandy-and went to bed.

Something happened to him that had not happened to him in years. He had an erotic dream; it was so vivid that he remembered it in the morning. He blamed it then on everything that had happened the day before, plus the Camembert, the wine, and the cognac.

He dreamed that Mrs. Ellen Feller, the missionary's wife, had come into his bedroom wearing nothing but the black lace underwear she had been wearing the day he met her, and then she had taken that off, and then he had done what men do in such circ.u.mstances.

(Two) Office of the Chief of Staff Headquarters, 2nd Joint Training Force San Diego, California 21 February 1942 Captain Jack NMI Stecker, USMCR, knocked at the open door of Colonel Lewis T. "Lucky Lew" Harris's office and waited for permission to enter.

"Come," Colonel Harris said, throwing a pencil down with disgust on his desk. "Why the h.e.l.l is it, Jack, that whenever you tell somebody to put some simple idea on paper, he uses every big word he ever heard of? And uses them wrong?"

"I don't know, Sir," Stecker smiled. "Am I the guilty party?"

"No. This piece of c.r.a.p comes from our beloved adjutant. They're worse than anybody, which I suppose is why we make them adjutants." He raised his voice: "Sergeant Major!"

The Sergeant Major, a very thin, very tall, leather-skinned man in his late thirties, quickly appeared at the office door.

"Sir?"

"Sergeant Major, would you please give this to the Adjutant? Tell him I don't understand half of it and that it needs rewriting. Tell him I said he is forbidden to use words of more than two syllables."

"Aye, aye, Sir," the Sergeant Major said, chuckling, winking at Stecker, and taking the clipped-together sheaf of papers from Colonel Harris's desk. "Sir, I presume the Colonel knows he's about to break the Adjutant's heart? He really is proud of this."

"Good," Harris said. "Better than good. Splendid! Tell him I want it in the morning. Anybody who writes c.r.a.p like that doesn't deserve any sleep."

"Aye, aye, Sir," the Sergeant Major said, smiling broadly, and left the office.

"Close the door, Jack," Colonel Harris said. Stecker did so. When he turned around, there was a bottle of Jack Daniel's bourbon and two gla.s.ses on Harris's desk. "A little something to cut the dust of the trail, Jack?"

"It's a little early for me, Sir."

"We're wetting down a promotion," Harris said. "And now that I am about to be a general officer, I will decide whether or not it's a little early for you."

"In that case, General, I would be honored," Stecker said.

"I said 'about to be a general.' Not 'am.' You listen about as closely as that G.o.dd.a.m.ned Adjutant. You're going to have to watch that, Jack, now that you're a field-grade officer."

"Sir?"

"Now I've got your attention, don't I?" Harris said, pleased with himself. He handed Stecker an ex-Kraft Cheese gla.s.s, half-full of whiskey.

"Yes, Sir."

"Mud in your eye, Major Stecker," Colonel Harris said.

"I'm a little confused, Sir," Stecker said, as he raised the gla.s.s to his mouth and tossed the whiskey down.

"General Riley was on the horn just now," Harris said. He drained his gla.s.s and returned the bottle to the drawer before going on. "He said that my name has gone to the Senate for B.G., and presumably, as soon as they can-if they can-gather enough of them, sober enough to vote, for a quorum, the orders will be cut."

"It's well deserved," Stecker said sincerely.

"I'm glad you think so," Harris said softly. "Thank you, Jack."

Harris touched Stecker's arm in what was, for him, a gesture of deep affection.

Then the tone of his voice changed.

"But we were talking about your promotion, weren't we, Major Stecker? You owe me a big one for this, Major."

"I didn't realize that I was even being considered," Stecker said.

"Let me tell you what happened," Harris said. "You ever know a guy named Neville? Franklin G. Neville?"

"Yeah. The last I heard, he was on a tailgate a.s.signment as a Naval attache somewhere."

"In Finland. Well, he came back, got involved with parachute troops of all things, and made lieutenant colonel. A couple of days ago, he jumped out of an airplane at Lakehurst without a parachute, or at least with one that didn't work, and killed himself."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Well, they need a replacement for him. I remain to be convinced that paratroops have any place in the Corps, but we have them. I think if the Army came up with an archery corps, some wild-eyed sonofab.i.t.c.h in Headquarters would start buying bows and arrows and claiming it was our idea in the first place."

He looked at Stecker for a little appreciation of his wit, and found instead concern-perhaps even alarm-in his eyes.

"No, Major Stecker," he said, chuckling. "You are not going to the Para-Marines, or whatever the h.e.l.l they call them. You are going to the 1st Division at New River, North Carolina, to replace the guy who is going to jump into-pun intended-the shoes of the late Colonel Neville."

"You had me worried for a moment," Stecker confessed.

"I could see that," Harris said. "Here's what happened: General Riley asked me if I had a major I could recommend to take this guy's place in the 5th Marines. He's the Exec of Second Battalion. I told him no, but that I did have a captain I knew for a fact could find his a.s.s with either hand . . ."

"Battalion Exec? Christ, I don't know . . ."

"Come on, Jack. When I was a battalion commander, I had a master gunnery sergeant who made it pretty clear that he thought he could run the battalion at least as well as I could. His name was Jack Stecker."

"That att.i.tude goes with being a gunny," Stecker said. "I'm not sure how it really works."

"Well, you're about to find out," Harris said. "The original idea... Riley is one of your admirers, Jack, did you know that?"

Stecker shook his head.

"Well, he is. The original idea was to send you there as a captain. But then, genius that I am, it occurred to me that, A, you're junior as h.e.l.l, and that, B, if I had the battalion, I would a.s.sign an ex-master gunnery sergeant, now a captain, as a company commander."

"I'd like to have a company," Stecker said. "You know that."

"Yeah, well, we have nice young first lieutenants who can be trained to do that. By a battalion exec who knows what it's like in a battalion. So I told this to the General, and he said, 'Well, I guess we'll have to make him a major before we cut the orders sending him to New River.' "

"How's the Battalion Commander, and, for that matter, the Regimental Commander, going to like having somebody shoving Jack Stecker down their throats? They're bound to have somebody in mind."

"Well, they'll probably hate it at first, to tell you the truth. But after they are counseled by the a.s.sistant Division Commander, I'm sure they will come to understand the wisdom of the decision."

"Why should he do that? I don't even know, off the top of my head, who the 1st Division ADC is."

"As soon as they can sober up enough senators for a quorum, his name will be Brigadier General Lewis T. Harris," Harris said.

Stecker, smiling, shook his head.

(Three) Office of the Chief of Nursing Services United States Naval Hospital San Diego, California 27 February 1942 "You wanted to see me, Commander?" Ensign Barbara Cotter, NC, USNR, asked, sticking her head into the office of Lieutenant Commander Jane P. Marwood, NC, USN.

"Come in, Cotter," Commander Marwood said. Commander Marwood, whom Barbara Cotter thought of as "that skinny old b.i.t.c.h," was in blues. She was a very small woman, and thin. With the three and a half gold stripes of a lieutenant commander on her jacket cuffs, and several ribbons over her breast, Barbara Cotter thought she looked like a caricature of a Naval officer, almost like a woman dressed up for a costume party.

Barbara saw that Lieutenant Commander Hazel Gower, NC, USN, her newly promoted immediate supervisor, was also in the office, standing up and looking out the window.

I'm in some kind of trouble, otherwise good ol' Hazel wouldn't be here. I wonder what I'm supposed to have done?

And then she had an even more discomfitting thought: I wonder how long this is going to take?

She was supposed to meet Joe Howard in forty-five minutes. She would be pressed for time as it was, going through the controlled-drug inventory with the nurse who would come on duty, and then getting out of her whites, grabbing a quick shower, dressing, and then meeting him at the main entrance.

She had been thinking about Joe-and about herself and Joe-when she'd been summoned to Commander Marwood's office. She had come to the conclusion that she was in love with him. In love, as opposed to infatuated with, s.e.xually or otherwise. The emotion was new to her. She had been infatuated before. This was different.

Viewed clinically, of course, Barbara Cotter knew it was probably just s.e.x alone, and nothing more than that. He was a healthy young male, and she was a healthy young female. There was nothing Mother Nature liked better than to turn on the chemical transmitters and receptors of a well-matched pair. She had a way of convincing both parties that the other was a perfect specimen, in all respects, of the opposite s.e.x, and of turning off that portion of the brain that might question the notion that the two of them were experiencing an emotion never felt by anyone before.

What Mother Nature was after was propagation of the species, and Mother was totally unconcerned with the problems that might cause. Such as her family's reaction to someone like Joe, and that there was a war on, and that she was in the United States Naval Service.

But none of that really mattered to Barbara. The only thing that mattered was that when she was with Joe, in bed or out of it, she felt complete and content, and that when they were separated, she felt incomplete and miserable.

She had felt incomplete and miserable all week. Joe had gone somewhere in northern California with an officer and a sergeant from the 2nd Raider Battalion at Camp Elliott. They'd gone to some Army depot to get weapons for the Raiders.

She had been unpatriotically overjoyed with the realization that Joe was what he called an "armchair commando," a Marine officer who commanded only a desk, and was not about to be sent off to fight the j.a.panese. And that when he was in San Diego, he was free just about every night and every weekend, and not running around in the boondocks day and night, practicing war.

And in forty minutes he would meet her at the main entrance, and they would get in her car and drive over to the Coronado Beach Hotel, and because the bar looked so crowded, they would go upstairs and have a drink before dinner in the Pacific & Far Eastern Suite, which translated to mean that half an hour after she met Joe, forty-five minutes from now, they would be in one of the wide and comfortable beds in their birthday suits.

And now this, whatever the h.e.l.l this is all about!

Barbara walked over and stood before Commander Mar-wood's desk.

I don't care what she thinks I've done, what good ol' Hazel has told her I've done. I will plead guilty, swear I will never do it again, and beg forgiveness. Just so I can meet Joe!

"Yes, Ma'am?"

"Apparently, Cotter," Commander Marwood said, "the Navy has decided there is a slot where you may practice your special skills."

What the h.e.l.l is she talking about?

"Ma'am?"

"There has been a TWX from the Surgeon General's office," Marwood said. "Actually, two of them. The first of them requested a list of the nurses in San Diego with experience, or special training, in psychiatric service. I provided your name. The second TWX put you on orders."

"Excuse me?"

"This is your formal notification, Miss Cotter, of your selection for overseas service. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

"No, Ma'am."