Battleground Read online

  Dunn for the first time met Dawkins’s eyes.

  “Now, you may ask any questions you may have,” Dawkins said.

  “Thank you, Sir,” Dunn said after a moment. “No questions, Sir.”

  “Unsolicited advice is seldom welcome, Dunn, but nevertheless: Do what you can to ignore the gossip. Eventually, it will die down. You now have that clean slate everyone’s always talking about, new squadron, new skipper. If I were Captain Galloway, I’d be damned glad to be getting someone like you.”

  “Colonel, I really don’t remember a goddamned thing about how I got back to the field,” Dunn said.

  I believe him.

  “The important thing is that you got back,” Dawkins said.

  “Sir, where is VMF-229?”

  “Right now, it’s on a sheet of paper in Major Lorenz’s OUT basket,” Dawkins said. “When you get out of here, check into the BOQ. When Captain Galloway gets here, or something else happens, we’ll send for you. Take some time off. I was about to say, go swimming, but that’s probably not such a hot idea, is it?”

  “No, Sir,” Dunn said.

  For the first time, Dawkins noticed, Dunn is smiling. I think it just sank in that he’s not going to be court-martialed, and maybe even that someone doesn’t think he’s a coward.

  “Check in with the adjutant, or the sergeant major, once a day,” Dawkins said.

  “Aye, aye, Sir.”

  Dawkins put out his hand.

  “Congratulations, Lieutenant, on your decoration,” he said. “And good luck in your new assignment.”

  “Thank you, Sir.”

  Major Lorenz offered his hand.

  “If you need anything, Dunn, come see me, or give me a call. And congratulations, too, and good luck.”

  “Thank you, Sir,” Dunn repeated.

  (Three)

  U.S. NAVAL HOSPITAL

  PEARL HARBOR, HAWAII, TERRITORY OF HAWAII

  1535 HOURS 19 JUNE 1942

  Lieutenant Colonel Dawkins and Major Lorenz left the room, closing the door after them. Dunn lowered his head to look at his Purple Heart Medal—he had seen the ribbon before, but not the actual medal—then unpinned it and held it in his hand and looked at it again. It was in the shape of a heart and bore a profile of George Washington.

  He picked up the box it had come in and saw that it contained both the ribbon and a metal pin in the shape of the ribbon, obviously intended to be worn in the lapel of a civilian jacket.

  “You’re a real fucking hero, Bill Dunn,” he said wryly, aloud. “You have been awarded the ‘Next Time, Stupid, Remember to Duck Medal.’ ”

  He chuckled at his own wit. Then he put the medal in the box, snapped the lid closed, walked to the white bedside table, and put it in the drawer. As he was closing the drawer, the door opened again.

  Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Mary Agnes O‘Malley, Nurse Corps, USN, entered the room, carrying a stainless steel tray covered with a wash-faded, medical green cloth.

  “Hi,” she said and smiled at him.

  Lieutenant Dunn was strongly attracted to Lieutenant (j.g.) O‘Malley, partly because she was a trim, pert-breasted redhead, and partly because he had heard that she fucked like a mink. He’d heard it so often at the bar in the Ewa Officer’s Club that it had to be something more than wishful thinking.

  “Hi,” he replied.

  He thought she looked especially desirable today. When she put the cloth covered tray down on his bedside table, she leaned far enough over to afford him a glimpse of her well-filled brassiere, and the soft white flesh straining at it.

  Despite her reputation, Lieutenant (j.g.) O‘Malley had so far shown zero interest in Dunn. In his view there were two reasons for this. First, since someone as good looking as Lieutenant (j.g.) O’Malley could pick and choose among a large group of bachelor officers, she would naturally prefer a captain or a major to a lowly lieutenant. Second, but perhaps most important, he knew that his reputation had preceded him: She had certainly heard the gossip that he had run away from the fight at Midway. To a young woman like Lieutenant (j.g.) O‘Malley—for that matter, to any young woman—a lowly lieutenant with a yellow streak was something to be scorned, not taken to bed.

  “What did the brass want?” she asked.

  “The war is going badly,” he said. “They came for my advice on how to turn it around.”

  “I’m serious,” she said, gesturing for him to get on the bed. “What did they want?”

  “They gave me my ‘You Forgot to Duck Medal.’ ”

  “What?”

  “Colonel Dawkins gave me the Purple Heart,” Dunn said. “And my new assignment. Why should I get in bed?”

  “Because I’m going to remove your sutures,” she said. “Or some of them, anyway. Where’s your medal?”

  “In the table drawer.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “You’ve never seen one before?”

  “I want to see yours.”

  You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.

  He went to the bedside table and took the box out and handed it to her.

  She opened it and looked at it and handed it back.

  “Very nice. You should be proud of yourself.”

  “All that means is that I got hit,” he said.

  “You realize how lucky you were that it wasn’t worse, I hope?”

  Does she mean that the 20mm didn’t hit me in the head? Or that it didn’t get me in the balls?

  “Yeah, sure I do,” he said.

  “Get in the bed and open your robe,” she said.

  “I’m not wearing my pajama bottoms.”

  She tossed him the faded green medical cloth.

  “Cover yourself,” she said. “Not that I would see something I haven’t seen before.”

  He got on the bed, arranged the cloth over his crotch, and opened the robe.

  She pulled on rubber gloves, an act that he found quite erotic, dipped a gauze patch in alcohol, and then proceeded to mop his inner thighs.

  He yelped when, without warning, she pulled the larger bandage free with a jerk.

  “Still a little suppuration,” she observed, professionally. “But it’s healing nicely. You were really lucky.”

  Without question, that remark makes reference to the fact that I didn’t get zapped in the balls.

  As she scrubbed at the vestiges of the tape that had held the bandage in place, he got another glimpse down the front of her crisp white uniform at the swelling of her bosom. He could smell the perfume she’d put down there, too. With dreadful inevitability he almost instantly achieved a state of erection.

  Lieutenant O‘Malley seemed not to notice.

  “Where are they sending you?” she asked, as she jerked the smaller bandage free.

  “VMF-229,” he said.

  “Where’s that? Or is that classified?”

  “Colonel Dawkins said that right now it’s in the exec’s desk drawer,” Dunn said. “It was activated today. Right now it’s me and a captain named Galloway, who’s en route from the States.”

  “Galloway?” she asked. “Does he have a first name?”

  Dunn thought a moment. “Charley, I think he said. Mean anything to you?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I used to date a Tech Sergeant Charley Galloway. He was a pilot. I wonder how many Charley Galloways there are in the Marine Corps?”

  Socialization between commissioned officers and enlisted personnel was not only a social no-no in the Naval Service but against regulations, and thus a court-martial offense. The announcement startled him.

  “You used to date a sergeant?” he blurted.

  “My, aren’t you the prig? Haven’t you ever done anything you shouldn’t?” she asked as she dabbed at the gummy residue of the second bandage. “I think we’ll just leave the bandage off of that.”

  “I didn’t mean to sound like a prig,” he said. “I guess I was just a little surprised to ... hear you volunteer that.”

  “Well, I di
dn’t think you would tell anybody,” she said. “You mean you never heard of Sergeant Charley Galloway?”

  And then, all of a sudden, he realized that he had. He hadn’t made the connection before because of the rank.

  “I reported aboard VMF-211 after he left,” Dunn said. “That Galloway?”

  She chuckled.

  “That Galloway,” she confirmed.

  “The scuttlebutt I heard was that he and another sergeant put together a Wildcat from wrecks of what was left on December seventh, wrecks that had been written off the books, and that he flew it off without authority to join the Wake Island relief force at sea.”

  “The Saratoga, ” she said. “Task Force XIV,” she said. “They started out to reinforce Wake Island, but they were called back.”

  “I heard that he was really in trouble for doing that,” Dunn said. “That they sent him back to the States for a court-martial. What was that all about?”

  “He embarrassed the Navy brass,” she explained. “First of all BUAIR.” (The U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, which is charged with aviation engineering for the Marine Corps.) “They examined the airplanes after the Japanese attack and said they were total losses. But Charley and Sergeant Oblensky ...”

  “Who?”

  “Big Steve Oblensky. He was VMF-211’s Maintenance Sergeant.”

  “I know him,” Dunn said. “As far as I know, he still is.”

  “So after the brass said all of VMF-211’s planes at Ewa were beyond repair, Big Steve and Charley got one flying; and then Charley flew it out to Sara, which was then a couple of hundred miles at sea. The whole relief force was supposed to be a secret, especially of course, where Sara was. So the brass’s faces were red, and since the brass never make a mistake, they decided to stick the old purple shaft in Charley.”

  “Why did he do it?”

  “Hell,” Lieutenant (j.g.) O‘Malley said, “the rest of VMF-211 was on Wake and had already lost most of their planes. Charley figured they needed whatever airplanes they could get. The only aircraft on Sara were Buffaloes. They could have used Charley’s Wildcat, if the brass here hadn’t called the relief force back.”

  Dunn grunted.

  It had occurred to him that despite the smell of her perfume, her well-filled brassiere, and the other delightful aspects of her gentle gender, Lieutenant (j.g.) O‘Malley was talking to him like—more importantly, thinking like—a fellow officer of the Naval Establishment, even down to an easy familiarity with the vernacular. It was somewhat disconcerting.

  “We don’t know if we’re talking about the same man,” he said.

  “Probably, we’re not,” Mary Agnes O‘Malley replied, matter-of-factly, “considering how pissed off the brass was at Charley. It’s probably some other guy with the same name.”

  He sensed that she was disappointed.

  She put the alcohol swab on the tray and picked up a pair of surgical scissors. Next she bent low over his midsection; and he sensed, rather than saw—her head was in the way, and he was unable to withdraw his eyes from her brassiere—that she was cutting the sutures.

  The procedure took her a full ninety seconds. Sensing that she was concentrating, he did not attempt to make conversation.

  She straightened, finally, and he was suddenly sure from the look in her eyes that she knew he had been looking down her dress.

  She laid the scissors down and picked up surgical forceps and a pad of gauze.

  “Now we pull the thread out,” she said, and bent over him again. “It shouldn’t hurt, so don’t squirm.”

  “Okay.”

  The green surgical cloth was somehow displaced. He grabbed for it in the same moment she did. She got to it first and put it back in place. In doing so, her hand brushed against it.

  “Christ, I’m sorry!” Dunn said.

  “Don’t be silly,” she said professionally.

  “I thought, I heard ...” Bill blurted, “that when something like that happens, a nurse knows where to hit it to make it go down.”

  She chuckled, deep in her throat.

  “I wouldn’t want to hurt it,” she said, matter-of-factly. “I think it’s darling.”

  He felt a nipping sensation, and then a moment later, another one, and then a third. He realized that she was pulling the black sutures from his flesh.

  She stood erect and wiped two short lengths of thread from her fingers with a cloth, and then a third from the forceps. She looked down at him.

  “We’re supposed to be very professional—I think the word is ‘dispassionate’—when something like that happens,” she said. “But the truth is, sometimes that doesn’t happen. Especially when the patient is sort of cute.”

  Her fingers slid up his leg, found his erection, and traced it gently.

  “You’re going to be discharged tomorrow, which means that if you ask for one, they’ll give you an off-the-ward pass until 2230.”

  She took her hand away, wiped the forceps with the gauze again, and bent over him. He felt another series of nips in the soft flesh of his groin, and then she stood up again.

  “Cat got your tongue?” she asked.

  “I don’t suppose you could have dinner with me tonight?”

  “I think that could be arranged,” she said.

  “Put your hand on it again.”

  “We’d both be in trouble if somebody saw us,” she said, and then ran her fingers over him again.

  “What time?”

  “I go off at 1630,” she said. “How about 1730 at the bar?”

  “Fine.”

  “My roommate has the duty tonight,” she said.

  “She does?”

  “If we have gentlemen callers, we’re supposed to leave the door open,” she said. “But I always wonder, when the door is closed, how anybody could tell if we have anybody in there or not.”

  “I can’t see how they could tell,” he said.

  “Well, maybe you might want to get a bottle of scotch and pick me up at my quarters. We could have a drink, and then go to dinner. Or would you rather eat first?”

  “What kind of scotch?”

  “I’m not fussy,” she said.

  “You better stop that, or I’m going to ...”

  She immediately took her hand away.

  “We wouldn’t want to waste it, would we?” she asked. “Now be a good boy and let me finish this. Before old Shit-for-brains wonders why it’s taking me so long and sticks her nose in here.”

  (Four)

  APARTMENT “C”

  106 RITTENHOUSE SQUARE

  PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

  22 JUNE 1942

  Barbara Ward (Mrs. Howard P.) Hawthorne, Jr., slid the frosted glass door open and stepped out of her shower. She took a towel from the rack and started to dry her hair. Then she stopped and wiped the condensation from the mirror over the wash basin.

  She resumed drying her hair as she examined herself in the mirror.

  It’s not at all bad looking, she thought, they’re not pendulous, and the tummy is still firm, but ye old body is thirty-six years old. Nearly thirty-seven, not thirty-two, as you told John.

  When he is thirty-seven—she did the arithmetic—you will be fifty-one. Fifty-one! My God, you’re insane, Barbara!

  She finished drying herself, put the towel in the hamper, and went into the bedroom. There she took a spray bottle of eau de cologne and sprayed it on herself, and then she took a bottle of perfume, which she dabbed behind her ears and in the valley between her breasts. She pulled on her robe, walked back to the bathroom, and began to brush her hair, looking into the reflection of her eyes in the mirror.

  Why did you put perfume on? There will be no one to smell it. Specifically, John has probably nuzzled you between the breasts for the last time. He is at this very moment ten thousand feet in the air over Western Pennsylvania, or Ohio, or someplace, on his way to the war. Even if he survives that, the chances of his coming back to you are very slim.

  What he got was what he wanted
, a willing playmate in bed for four days. But when he comes back, what he is going to want is a quote nice unquote girl his own age, not some middleaged woman who he picked up—or vice versa—in a bar.

  He says he loves you ...

  And he probably really thinks he does, because he would not say something like that unless he meant it. But what he is really doing is mistaking lust, and a little tenderness, for love.

  He’s not much used to love, that’s for sure. From everything he told me, his father is really a despicable human being. He got no love from him. Or anything like tenderness, either, for that matter. Nor from his mother, either, I don’t think. I got the idea that, in the Moore house, hugging and kissing were unseemly.

  And while I am not all that experienced in the bed department myself, it was perfectly obvious that he can count his previous partners on the fingers of one hand. He had an enthusiasm factor of ten and an experience factor of one. Maybe minus one.

  I am absolutely convinced that no one ever did to him some of the things ...

  So why did you do them?

  He probably can hardly wait to get back to the boys.

  “So how was your leave?”

  “Great. I met this older woman. Not bad looking. But talk about hot pants! Talk about blow jobs! I’m telling you, she couldn’t get enough, wouldn’t let me alone. Once she did it while I was sleeping. ”

  I did do it to him while he was sleeping, and I loved it. Which goes to show, therefore, that beneath your respectable facade, you are an oversexed bitch.

  Or, more kindly, just your normal, run-of-the-mill, unsatisfied housewife, whose husband has been off gamboling with a sweet young thing for the past five months. Or maybe longer. Only he and the sweet young thing know for sure.

  After she finished brushing her hair and rubbing moisturizer into her face, she took a paper towel and wiped the mirror clean of vestigial condensation, and then went into the bedroom. She lay on the bedspread and turned on the radio; then she turned it off and went into the living room and took the bottle of scotch—from where John had left it—from the mantelpiece and carried it into the kitchen and poured two inches of it into a glass.