The Corps IV - Battleground Page 30

  When all the priorities had been established and fine tuned, the ships of the invasion force were ready to be "combat-loaded." This followed the logic of "Last On, First Off": Once The Division was on the Solomon Islands beaches, the supplies needed first would be loaded on last.

  Doing this was proving far more difficult than it sounded- the combat-loading planning for an amphibious invasion has been described as a chess game that cannot be won.

  One major problem the 1st Marine planners faced- though it was by no means their only major problem-was that since the ships were not originally combat-loaded back in the States, the supplies had to be removed from the holds of the ships and sorted out before they could be reloaded.

  This problem was compounded by the Wellington Longshoreman's Union, which had very strong views about how ships should be unloaded and loaded; and by whom; and on what days during what daylight hours. They had come to an understanding with management regarding the role of longshoremen in the scheme of things only after long hours on the picket line and extensive negotiations over many years. They had no intention of giving up these hard earned prerequisites for anything as insignificant as a war with the Japanese Empire.

  The Americans solved the labor problem by using a cut-the-Gordian-knot approach: American Marines were unloading the ships around the clock, seven days a week. At the same time, they let it be known that armed Marines were posted at various spots around the Quay, with orders to shoot at anyone or anything interfering with unloading and loading of the ships.

  Jake hoped the threat would suffice. While it wouldn't have bothered him at all if half the longshoremen in Wellington got shot between the eyes, the flack in him was concerned with how "MARINES MASSACRE THIRTY NEW ZEALAND LONGSHOREMEN IN LABOR DISPUTE" headlines would play in the papers in the States.

  Technically, it was not his problem, since he was not the PIO for the 1st Marine Division. But he was over here to "coordinate public information activities," and he suspected that if there was lousy publicity, he would get the blame.

  While the supplies were being off-loaded for sorting, another major problem had come up: There was no way to shelter the off-loaded supplies from the dismal New Zealand July winter weather (the seasons were reversed down under). It was raining almost constantly.

  For openers, the supplies for the First Marine Division- not only rations but just about everything else, too-were civilian stuff. The quart-size cans of tomatoes, for example, had been bought from the Ajax Canned Tomato Company, or somesuch. These cans had been labelled and packed with the idea in mind that they would wind up on the shelves of the "Super-Dooper Super-Market" in Olathe, Kansas. They had paper labels with pictures of pretty tomatoes attached to the metal with a couple of drops of cheap glue. There were six cans to a corrugated paper carton. The carton was held together with glue; and a can label was glued to the ends.

  As soon as the cases were off-loaded from the cargo holds of the ships onto Aotea Quay and stacked neatly so they could be sorted, the rain started falling on them. Soon the cheap glue which held the corrugated paper cartons together dissolved. That caused the cartons to come apart. Not long after that, instead of neatly stacked cartons of tomato cans, there were piles of tomato cans mingled with a sludge of waterlogged corrugated paper that had once been cartons.

  And then the rain saturated the paper labels and dissolved the cheap glue that held them on the cans...

  The people in charge of the operation had put a good deal of thought and effort into finding a solution to the problem. But the best they had come up with so far was to cover some of the stacks of cartons with tarpaulins; and when the supply of tarpaulins ran out, with canvas tentage; and when the tent-age ran out, with individual shelter-halves. (Each Marine was issued a small piece of tentage. When buttoned to an identical piece, it formed a small, two-man tent. Hence, "individual shelter-half")

  As he walked down the Quay, Jake Dillon saw this wasn't going to work: There were gaps around the bases of the tarpaulin-covered stacks. The wind blew the rain through the gaps, and then the natural capillary action of the paper in the corrugated paper cartons soaked it up like a blotter. Moisture reached the glue, and the glue dissolved. The cartons collapsed, and then the stacks of cartons.

  Major Jake Dillon found Major Jack NMI Stecker standing behind the serving line in a mess fly tent-essentially a wall-less tent erected over field stoves. A line of Marines was passing through the fly tent, their mess kits in their hands. As soon as they left the fly tent, rain fell on their pork chops and mashed potatoes and green beans.

  It was the first time in Dillon's memory that he had ever seen Jack Stecker looking like something the cat had dragged in. He looked as bedraggled as any of his men. In China with the 4th Marines, Master Gunnery Sergeant Jack Stecker used to come off a thirty-mile hike through the mud of the Chinese countryside looking as if he was prepared to stand a formal honor guard.

  He walked up and stood beside him.

  "Lovely weather we're having, isn't it?" Dillon said.

  "There's coffee, if you want some," Stecker replied, and then walked a few feet away; he returned with a canteen cup and gave it to Dillon.

  Dillon walked to the coffee pot at the end of the serving line and waited until the KP ladling out coffee sensed someone standing behind him, looked, and then offered his ladle.

  The coffee was near boiling; Dillon could feel the heat even in the handle of the cup. If he tried to take a sip, he would give his lip a painful burn. This was not the first time he had stood in a rain-soaked uniform drinking burning-hot coffee from a canteen cup.

  But the last time, he thought, was a long goddamned time ago.

  "What brings a feather merchant like you out with the real Marines?" Stecker asked.

  "I'm making a movie, what else?"

  Stecker looked at him.

  "Really? Of this?"

  "What I need, Jack, is film that will inspire the red-blooded youth of America to rush to the recruiting station," Dillon said. "You think this might do it?"

  Stecker laughed.

  "Seriously, what are your people doing?"

  Dillon told him about the movie he had in mind.

  "I suppose it's necessary," Stecker said.

  "I'd rather be one of your staff sergeants, Jack," Dillon said. "I was a pretty good staff sergeant. But that's not the way things turned out."

  "You were probably the worst staff sergeant in the 4th Marines," Stecker said, smiling, "to set the record straight. I let you keep your stripes only so I could take your pay away at poker."

  "Well, fuck you!"

  They smiled at each other, then Stecker said bitterly: "I'd like to make the bastards who sent us this mess, packed this way, see your movie."

  "They will. What my guys are shooting-or a copy of it, a rough cut-will leave here for Washington on tomorrow's courier plane."

  "No kidding?"

  "Personal from Vandergrift to the Commandant," Dillon said.

  "Somehow I don't think that was the General's own idea."

  "No. But Lucky Lew Harris thought it was fine when I suggested it."

  Stecker chuckled. "I guess that explains it."

  "Explains what?"

  "I saw General Harris for a moment this morning," Stecker said. "I asked him how things went when you took Goettge to Australia. He said, 'very well. I'm beginning to think that maybe your pal Dillon might be useful after all. He's really not as dumb as he looks.' "

  "Christ, I better go buy a bigger hat," Dillon said. "How much did he tell you about what's going on?"

  "You mean about the airfield the Japs are building?"

  Dillon nodded.

  "That we better go try to stop them, whether we're ready or not."

  "And we're not ready, right?"

  Stecker waved his hand up and down the Quay.

  "What do you think?"

  "Well, there'll at least be the rehearsal in the Fiji Islands."

  "And because we're not even
prepared for a rehearsal, that will be fucked up. And we'll go nevertheless."

  "What's going to happen, Jack?"

  "You know what the Coast Guard motto is?"

  " 'Semper Paratus'?" Dillon asked, confused.

  "No. Not that one, anyhow. What the Coast Guard says when a ship is in trouble. They have to go out. Nothing's said about having to come back."

  "You think it's that bad?"

  "Even after Wake Island and what happened to the 4th Marines in the Philippines, half the people in the Division think the Japs are all five foot two, wear thick glasses, and will turn tail and run once they see a real Marine. Not only the kids. A lot of the officers, who should know better, think this is going to be Nicaragua all over again."

  "Jesus, you really mean that?"

  "Yeah, but for Christ's sake, don't tell anybody I said so."

  "Of course not," Dillon said.

  "Are you going to go?"

  "Sure, of course."

  "You're not going to inspire... what did you say, 'red-blooded American youth'?... to rush to the recruiting station with movies of dead Marines floating around in the surf."

  Dillon didn't reply for a moment. Then he said, "Straight answer, Jack: I'm not going to show them movies of dead Marines. I'm going to find me a couple, maybe three, four, good-looking Marines who get themselves lightly wounded, like in the movies, a shoulder wound..."

  "A shoulder wound is one of the worst kinds, nearly as bad as the belly, you know that."

  "I know that, you know that, civilians don't know that," Dillon replied. "... and maybe have a medal to go with it" he went on, taking the thought forward. "Then I'm going to bring them to the States and send them on a tour with movie stars. People will be inspired to buy War Bonds. Red-blooded American youth will rush to Marine recruiting stations."

  Stecker turned to look at Dillon, who saw the contempt in his eyes.

  "Most heroes I've known are as ugly as sin and would lose no time grabbing one of your movie stars on the ass," Stecker said. "What are you going to do about that?"

  "Present company included, I suppose," Dillon said. It was a reference to Stecker's World War I Medal of Honor. "I'd love to have you on a War Bond tour. Do you suppose you could arrange to get yourself shot in the shoulder, Jack? After you do something heroic?"

  "Fuck you, Jake."

  "Like I said, Jack, I'd much rather be going to Guadalcanal as one of your staff sergeants. It didn't turn out that way, so I try to do what the Corps wants me to do as well as I can."

  Stecker met his eyes.

  "Yeah," he said. "I know."

  He handed Dillon his empty canteen cup.

  "I am now going out in the rain again," he said. "Somebody once told me that a good Marine officer doesn't try to stay dry when his men are getting wet."

  "Nobody has to tell you what a good Marine officer should or should not do," Dillon said.

  "What the hell is that?"

  "It was intended as a compliment."

  "Don't let it go to your head, Major, but I almost wish you were one of my staff sergeants," Stecker said, and then he touched Dillon's arm and walked out from under the fly tent and into the rain.

  (Three)

  HEADQUARTERS, VMF-229

  MARINE CORPS AIR STATION

  EWA, TERRITORY OF HAWAII

  7 JULY 1942

  If Captain Charles M, Galloway, commanding officer of VMF-229, had been called upon to describe his present physical condition, he would have said that his ass was dragging. He was bone tired and dirty. He had been flying most of the morning. He was wearing a sweat- and oil-stained cotton flying suit. His khaki flight helmet and goggles were jammed into the left knee pocket of the flying suit, and his fore-and-aft cap stuck out of the right knee pocket. He carried his leather flying jacket over his shoulder; his index finger was hooked in the leather loop inside the collar.

  He needed a long shower and some clean clothes, he knew, and he would dearly like to have a beer. But beer was out of the question: He would probably put another two hours in the air this afternoon, and you don't drink-not even a lousy beer-and fly.

  The door to the Quonset hut which housed both the squadron office and the supply room of VMF-229 was padlocked when Charley Galloway walked up to it. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was just after 1200.

  PFC Alfred B. Hastings, Galloway decided angrily, had elected to have his luncheon, and fuck the phone, let it ring. He immediately regretted his anger. Hastings, who had transferred into VMF-229 with Tech Sergeant Big Steve Oblensky, had been promoted from being Oblensky's runner to Squadron Clerk. His only qualification for the job was that he could type, but he had proved to be a quick learner of the fine points of Marine Corps bureaucracy and had been doing a good job. Galloway knew how late at night the kid worked, and obviously he had to eat sometime.

  Galloway dipped his hand into the open flap of his flight suit and came out with his dog tag chain. It held his dog tags and four keys-one to his BOQ room; one to the Ford; one to the padlock on the squadron office door; and one to the padlock on the safe in the squadron office. He opened the lock and went inside.

  The handset of the telephone was out of the cradle. Not by accident. PFC Hastings had been told by Technical Sergeant Oblensky that it was better to have the brass annoyed that you were on the phone when they called than pissed because there was no answer when it rang-clear proof that the rule that Squadron Offices would be manned around the clock was being violated.

  Captain Galloway walked to the squadron safe, knelt by it, unlocked the padlock, opened the door, and reached inside and took a bottle of Coke from an ice-filled galvanized iron bucket, which at the moment was all the safe held. He knocked the cap off by resting the lip on the edge of the safe and hitting it with the heel of his hand.

  He walked to his desk, sat down in the battered, but surprisingly comfortable, office chair Oblensky had scrounged somewhere and then had reupholstered, leaned back in it, swung his feet on the desk, and took a pull at the neck of the Coke. After a moment, he burped with satisfaction.

  On his desk, neatly laid out, was a half-inch-thick stack of papers. From experience, he knew that just about every sheet there would require his signature-on the original and the standard four onion skins. Whatever it was, it would have to wait.

  His hands were dirty, oily; it would offend the high priests of the bureaucracy if an official document with oily fingerprints on it appeared in their IN baskets for movement to the OUT basket and forwarding to higher headquarters.

  He looked at the handset of the telephone and after a moment leaned forward and hung it up. By the time he had rested his back against his chair and raised the Coke bottle to his lips, it rang.

  He leaned forward and picked it up.

  "VMF-229, Captain Galloway, Sir."

  "You guys must live on the phone," his caller said. "I been calling for an hour."

  "Well, it'll keep your index finger in shape," Galloway said. "Who's this?"

  "Lieutenant Rhodes, at NATS Pearl. I got a couple of warm bodies for you."

  "I don't suppose there's any way you could get them a ride over here?"

  "No. Not today, anyway. That's why I called."

  "What kind of warm bodies?"

  "Two intrepid birdmen, fresh from the States. They went into Hickam Field, and the Air Corps sent them here."

  "Instead of here. That figures."

  "You going to come get them? Or should I put them in the transient BOQ?"

  "I'll send somebody for them. Thanks very much."

  "Anytime."

  Galloway put the phone back in its cradle and talked out loud to himself: "I will not send somebody for them, because I don't have anybody to drive a vehicle to send for them... even if I had a vehicle, which I don't." He thought that over, and added, "Shit!"

  He drained the Coke and dropped the bottle with a loud clang into the object he now knew-as a commanding officer charged with responsibility for government pro
perty-was not a wastebasket but a "Receptacle, Trash, Office, w/o Liner Federal Stock Number Six Billion Thirteen." Then he swung his feet back onto the floor, burped again, and stood up. He looked at the telephone, took the handset out of the cradle, and laid it on the desk.