THE CORPS VI - CLOSE COMBAT Read online

  "I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt," Dawkins answered. "I believe they're trying." His mouth curled into a small smile. "You don't think Guadalcanal is 'exotic'?"

  "I was young then, Skipper. I didn't know the difference between 'exotic' and 'erotic' "

  Dawkins touched his arm. "You better get something to eat."

  "The minute I start to eat, the goddamned radar will go off."

  "Probably," Dawkins said.

  This, Dawkins thought, is where I'm supposed to say something reassuring. Or better, inspiring. Hell of a note that a MAG commander can't think of a goddamn thing reassuring or inspiring to say to one of his squadron commanders.

  He thought of something:

  "When Galloway comes back, I'll lay three to one he comes with stuff to drink."

  "If he comes back," Dunn said. "What odds are you offering about that?"

  "He'll be back, Bill," Dawkins said, hoping his voice carried more conviction than he felt.

  [THREE]

  =TOP SECRET=

  FROM: MAG-21 1750 11OCT42

  SUBJECT: AFTER-ACTION REPORT

  TO: COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, PACIFIC, PEARL HARBOR INFO: SUPREME COMMANDER SWPOA, BRISBANE COMMANDANT, USMC, WASH, DC

  1. UPON RADAR DETECTION AT 1220 11OCT42 OF TWO FLIGHTS OF UNIDENTIFIED AIRCRAFT APPROX

  140 NAUTICAL MILES MAG-21 LAUNCHED;

  A. EIGHT (8) F4F4 VF-5

  B. FIFTEEN (15) F4F4 VMF-121

  C. SIX (6) F4F4 VMF-223

  D. FIVE(5)F4F4VMF-224

  E. FIVE (5) F4F4 VMF-229

  F. THREE (3) P40 67TH FIGHTER SQUADRON USAAC

  G. NINE (9) P39 67TH FIGHTER SQUADRON USAAC.

  2. VF-5 AND VMF-121 NO CONTACT.

  3. DUE TO INABILITY EXCEED 19,000 FEET WITH AVAILABLE OXYGEN EQUIPMENT USAAC AIRCRAFT

  MADE NO INITIAL CONTACT.

  4. AT 1255 11OCT42 REMAINING FORCE MADE CONTACT AT 25,000 FEET WITH 34 KATE REPEAT 34

  KATE BOMBERS ESCORTED BY 29 ZERO REPEAT 29 ZERO FIGHTERS APPROXIMATE 20 NAUTICAL MILES

  FROM HENDERSON FIELD.

  5. ENEMY LOSSES:

  A. NINE (9) KATE

  KUNTZ, CHARLES M 1/LT USMC TWO (2)

  MANN, THOMAS H JR 1/LT USMCR TWO (2)

  DUNN, WILLIAM C 1/LT USMCR ONE (1)

  HALLOWELL, GEORGE L 1/LT USMCR TWO (2)

  KENNEDY, MATTHEW H 1/LT USMCR (2)

  B. FOUR (4) ZERO

  DUNN, WILLIAM C 1/LT USMCR ONE (1)

  MCNAB, HOWARD T/SGT USMC (2)

  ALLEN, GEORGE F 1/LT USMCR ONE (1)

  C. IN ADDITION, SHARPSTEEN, JAMES CAPT USAAC 67 USAAC FS DOWNED ONE (1) KATE

  STRAGGLER.

  6. MAG-21 LOSSES:

  A. ONE (1) F4F4 CRASHED AT SEA. PILOT RECOVERED.

  B. ONE (1) F4F4 CRASHED ON LANDING, DESTROYED.

  C. THREE (3) F4F4 SLIGHTLY DAMAGED, REPAIRABLE.

  7. DUE TO CLOUD COVER REMAINING ENEMY FORCE COULD NOT SEE HENDERSON FIELD, BOMB LOAD

  DROPPED APPROXIMATELY FOUR NAUTICAL MILES TO WEST. NO DAMAGE TO FIELD OR EQUIPMENT.

  DAWKINS, CLYDE W LTCOL USMC COMMANDING

  =TOP SECRET=

  [FOUR]

  Henderson Field Guadalcanal,

  Solomon Islands

  0615 Hours 12 October 1942

  As the Douglas R4D (the Navy/Marine Corps version of the twin-engine Douglas DC-3) turned smoothly onto its final approach, the pilot, who had been both carefully scanning the sky and taking a careful look at the airfield itself, suddenly put his left hand on the control wheel and gestured with his right to the copilot to relinquish control.

  The lanky and (like nearly everyone else in that part of the world) tanned pilot of the R4D was twenty-eight-year old Captain Charles M. Galloway, USMCR-known to his subordinates as either "The Skipper" or "The Old Man."

  The copilot was a twenty-two-year-old Marine Corps second lieutenant whose name was Malcolm S. Pickering. Everyone called him "Pick."

  As Pick Pickering took his feet off the rudder pedals, he took his left hand from the wheel and held both hands up in front of him, fingers extended, a gesture indicating, You've got it.

  I didn't have to take it away from him, Charley Galloway thought as he moved his hand to the throttle quadrant. His many other flaws notwithstanding, Pickering is a first-rate pilot. More than that, he's that rare creature, a natural pilot.

  So why did I take it away from him? Because no pilot believes any other pilot can fly as well as he can? Or because I am functioning as a responsible commander, aware that high on the long list of critically short materiel of war on Guadalcanal are R4D airplanes. And consequently I am obliged to do whatever I can to make sure nobody dumps one of them?

  He glanced over at Pickering to see if he could detect any signs on his face of a bruised ego. There were none.

  Is that because he accepts the unquestioned right of pilots-in-command to fly the airplane, and that copilots can drive only at the pleasure of the pilot?

  Or because he is a fighter pilot, and doesn't give a damn who flies an aerial truck, all aerial truck drivers being inferior to all fighter pilots?

  Galloway made a last-second minor correction to line up with the center of the runway, then flared perfectly and touched down smoothly. The runway was rough. The landing roll took them past the Pagoda, the Japanese-built control tower, and then past the graveyard. There the hulks of shot-up, crashed, burned, and otherwise irreparably damaged airplanes waited until usable parts could be salvaged from them to keep other planes flying.

  Where, Galloway thought, Pickering can see the pile of crushed and burned aluminum that used to be the Grumman Wildcat, his buddy, First Lieutenant Dick Stecker, dumped on landing... and almost literally broke every bone in his body.

  Galloway carefully braked the aircraft to a stop, then turned it around and started to taxi back down the runway.

  "You still want to turn your wings in for a rifle?" Galloway asked.

  Pickering turned to look at him.

  He didn't reply at first, taking so long that Galloway was suddenly worried what his answer might be.

  "I was upset," Pickering said, meeting his eyes, "when I saw Stecker crash. If I can, I'd like to take back what I said then."

  "Done," Galloway said, nodding his head. "It was never said."

  "I did say it, Skipper," Pickering answered softly. "But I want to take it back."

  "Pickering, they're short of R4D pilots. I'm an R4D IP"-an Instructor Pilot, with the authority to classify another pilot as competent to fly an R4D. "As far as I'm concerned, you're checked out in one of these. I'm sure there'd be a billet for you on Espiritu Santo."

  "If that's my option, Captain," Pickering said, "then I will take the rifle. I'm a fighter pilot."

  "It takes as much balls to fly this as it does a Wildcat," Galloway said.

  "More. These things don't get to shoot back," Pickering said.

  Galloway chuckled, then said, "Just to make sure you understand: I wasn't trying to get rid of you."

  Pickering met his eyes again for a long moment.

  "Thank you, Sir," he said.

  [FIVE]

  Corporal Robert F. Easterbrook, USMCR, was nineteen years old, five feet ten inches tall, and weighed 132 pounds (he'd weighed 146 when he came ashore on Guadalcanal two months and two days earlier). And he was pink skinned-thus perhaps understandably known to his peers as "Easterbunny." Easterbrook was sitting in the shade of the Henderson Field control tower, the Pagoda, when the weird R4D came in for a landing. It had normal landing gears, with wheels; but attached to all that was what looked like large skis. None of the other Marine and Navy R4Ds that flew into Henderson were so equipped.

  "Holy shit!" he said to himself, and he thought: That damned thing is back! I've got to get pictures of that sonofabitch.

  Twelve months before, Corporal Easterbrook had been a freshman at the University of Missouri, enrolled in courses known informally as "Pre-Journalism.''

  It had been his int
ention then to work hard and attain a high enough undergraduate grade-point average to ensure his acceptance into the University of Missouri Graduate School of Journalism. Later, with a Missouri J School diploma behind him, he could get his foot on the first rung of the ladder leading to a career as a photojournalist (or at least he'd hoped so):

  He would have to start out on a small weekly somewhere and work himself up to a daily paper. Later-much later-after acquiring enough experience, he might be able to find employment on a national magazine... maybe Collier's or the Saturday Evening Post, or maybe even Look. It was too much to hope that he would ever see his work in Life or Time-at least before he was old, say thirty or thirty-five. As the unquestioned best of their genre, these two magazines published only the work of the very finest photojournalists in the world.

  On December 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Bobby Easterbrook had gone down to the post office and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve for the Duration of the War Plus Six Months. He now regarded that as the dumbest one fucking thing he had ever done in his life,

  Even though his photographic images had appeared in the past two months not only within the pages, but on the covers, of Look and Time and several dozen major newspapers, that success had not caused him to modify his belief that enlisting in The Crotch was the dumbest one fucking thing he had ever done in his life.

  In fact, he'd concluded that the price of his photojournalistic success and minor fame-he'd been given credit a couple of times, USMC PHOTOGRAPH BY CPL R. F. EASTERBROOK, USMC COMBAT CORRESPONDENT-Was going to be very high. Specifically, he was going to get killed.

  There was reason to support this belief. Of the seven combat correspondents who had made the invasion, two were dead and three had been badly wounded.

  In June 1942, the horror of boot camp at Parris Island still a fresh and painful memory, the Easterbunny had been a clerk in a supply room at the Marine Base at Quantico, Virginia.

  He'd got that job after telling a personnel clerk that he had worked for the Conner Courier. That was true. During his last two years of high school, he'd worked afternoons and as long as it took on Fridays to get the Courier out.

  When he talked with the personnel clerk, he implied that he'd been a reporter/photographer for the Conner Courier. That was not exactly true. Ninety-five percent of the photographic and editorial work on the Conner Courier (weekly, circ. 11,200) was performed by the owner and his wife. But Mr. Greene had shown Bobby how to work the Courier's Speed Graphic camera, and how to develop its sheet film, and how to print from the resultant negatives.

  Still, the only words he wrote that actually appeared in print were classified ads taken over the telephone, and rewrites of Miss Harriet Comb's "Social Notes." Miss Combs knew everything and everyone worth knowing in Conner County, but she had some difficulty writing any of it down for publication. Complete sentences were not one of her journalistic strengths.

  The personnel corporal appeared bored hearing about the Easter-bunny's journalistic career... until it occurred to him to ask if Private Easterbrook could type. "Sure."

  That pleased the corporal. The Corps did not at the moment need journalists, he told Private Easterbrook, but he would make note of that talent-a "secondary specialty"-on his records. What The Corps did need was people who could type. Private Easterbrook was given a typing test, and then a "primary specialty" classification of clerk/typist.

  Becoming a clerk/typist at least got him out of being a rifleman, Private Easterbrook reasoned-his burning desire to personally avenge Pearl Harbor having diminished to the point of extinction while he was at Parris Island.

  He'd been kind of looking forward to a Marine Corps career as a supply man-with a little bit of luck, maybe eventually he'd make supply sergeant-when, out of the clear blue sky, at four o'clock one afternoon, he'd been told to pack his seabag and clear the company. He was being sent overseas. It wasn't until he was en route to Wellington, N.Z., aboard a U.S. Navy Martin Mariner, a huge, four-engine seaplane headed for Pearl Harbor, that he was able to begin to sort out what was happening to him.

  He learned then that the Marine Corps had formed a team of still and motion picture photographers recruited from Hollywood and the wire services. They were to cover the invasion of a yet unspecified Japanese-occupied island. Just before they were scheduled to depart for the Pacific, one of the still photographers had broken his arm. Somehow Easterbrook's name-more precisely, his "secondary specialty"-had come to the attention of those seeking an immediate replacement for the sergeant with the broken arm. And he had been ordered to San Diego.

  The team was under the command of former Hollywood press agent Jake Dillon-now Major Dillon, USMCR, a pretty good guy in Easterbrook's view. Genuinely sorry that the Easterbunny was not able to take the ordinary five-day leave prior to overseas movement, Major Dillon had thrown him a bone in the form of corporal's stripes.

  Aboard the attack transport, the eight-man team (nine, counting Major Dillon) learned the names of the islands they were invading: Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Gavutu, in the Solomons. No one else had ever heard of them before, either.

  Major Dillon and Staff Sergeant Marv Kaplan, a Hollywood cinematographer Dillon had recruited, went in with the 1st Raider Battalion, in the first wave of landing craft to attack Tulagi. At about the same time, Corporal Easterbrook landed with the 1st Marine Parachute Battalion on Gavutu, two miles away.

  The Marine parachutists didn't come in by air. They landed from the sea and fought as infantry, suffering ten percent casualties. After Gavutu was secured, the Easterbunny went to Tulagi. There Major Dillon handed him Staff Sergeant Kaplan's EyeMo 16mm motion picture camera and announced tersely that Kaplan had been evacuated after taking two rounds in his legs, and that Easterbrook was now a Still and Motion Picture Combat Correspondent.

  He also relieved Easterbrook of the film he had shot on Gavutu. One of the pictures he took there-of a Marine paratrooper firing a Browning Automatic Rifle with blood running down his chest-was published nationwide.

  Three days later, he crossed the channel with Dillon to Lunga Point on Guadalcanal, where the bulk of the First Marines had landed. There they learned that one of the two officers and two of the six enlisted combat correspondents had been wounded.

  Shortly afterward, Dillon left Guadalcanal to personally carry the exposed still and motion film to Washington. Easterbrook hadn't heard news of him since then, though there was some scuttlebutt that he'd been seen on the island a couple of days ago. But the Easterbunny discredited that. If Dillon was on Guadalcanal again, he certainly would have made an effort to see who was left of the original team. That meant Lieutenant Graves, Technical Sergeant Petersen, and Corporal Easterbrook. In the two months since the invasion, everybody else had been killed or seriously wounded.

  Looking at those numbers, Bobby Easterbrook had concluded a month or so ago that it was clearly not a question of if he would get hit, but when, and how seriously. He had further concluded that when he did get hit, he'd probably be hit bad. Although it had been close more times than he liked to remember, so far he hadn't been scratched. The odds would certainly catch up with him.

  All the same, since getting hit was beyond his control, he didn't dwell on it. Or tried not to dwell on it.... He kept imagining three, four, five-something like that-scenes where he'd get it. Sometimes, he could keep one or another of these out of his mind for as much as an hour.

  He looked again at the weird R4D, glad at the moment for the diversion. "Holy shit!" he said again.

  When the airplane first came to Henderson, he asked Technical Sergeant Big Steve Oblensky about it. The maintenance sergeant of VMF-229 was usually a pretty good guy; but that time Oblensky's face got hard and his eyes got cold, and he told him to butt the fuck out; if The Corps wanted to tell him about the airplane, they would send him a letter.

  The Easterbunny pushed himself to his feet as the weird R4D, its unusual landing gear extended, turned on i
ts final approach. He shot a quick glance at the sky, then held his hand out and studied the back of it. He'd come ashore with a Weston exposure meter, but that was long gone.

  He set the exposure and shutter speed on his Leica 35mm camera to fl1 at 1/100th second. He'd also come ashore with a Speed Graphic 4 x 5-inch view camera, but that too was long gone.

  He shrugged his shoulder to seat the strap of his Thompson.45 ACP caliber submachine gun, so it wouldn't fall off, and took two exposures of the R4D as it landed and rolled past the Pagoda, and then another as it taxied back to it.