Semper Fi Page 4

  The second name on the list was PFC Kenneth J. McCoy, Company “D,” 4th Marines.

  The Navy, and thus the Marine Corps, was governed by common law of the United States, and a pillar of that code of justice was that an accused was presumed innocent until proven guilty.

  The colonel had just been directed by Hq, USMC, to promote PFC McCoy to Corporal McCoy, an action that would be very difficult to explain to the colonel commanding the Italian marines and to the Consul General of the King of Italy at Shanghai. It would look as if the punishment for stabbing to death two Italians was promotion to corporal.

  Captain Banning wondered whether it was his duty to bring the problem to the colonel’s attention himself, or whether the S-1 would consider it part of his duty as personnel officer. Most likely, the problem would skip the G-1’s attention, Banning decided. The Colonel was going to be furious when he found out about this, and the S-1 knew it, too.

  He was still considering the problem, and half expecting his telephone to ring with a call from either the S-1 or the colonel’s sergeant-major, when his clerk knocked at the door, put his head in, and announced that Detective Sergeant Chatworth and two Chinese were in the outer office.

  As incredible as it sounded, had Chatworth turned up two witnesses? In so short a time?

  “Ask him to come in, please.” Banning said.

  Chatworth came in with two coolies. Banning’s heart sank again. The court-martial would not take the word of two coolies over that of two Italian marines.

  “Good morning, Captain,” Detective Sergeant Chatworth said. “May I present Constable Hang Chee and Senior Patrolman Kin Tong?”

  The two coolies bowed their heads.

  “Constable Hang and Patrolman Kin were fortunately in a position to see the McCoy incident from start to finish. Tell the captain what you saw, Hang.”

  Constable Hang spoke English very softly, but well. He reported that PFC McCoy had just stepped out of his rickshaw near the compound gate when he was beset by the five Italians and had no choice but to defend himself.

  “He was three blocks from the compound,” Banning said, “when four Italian marines overturned the rickshaw.”

  “Now that you mention it,” Constable Hang said, “that’s right. There were four Italian marines and the assault took place several blocks from the compound entrance.”

  It was clear to Banning that they had no more seen the fight than he had.

  “What’s going on, Sergeant Chatworth?” Banning asked.

  “You wanted witnesses, I found them,” Chatworth said. “Will a sworn statement suffice, do you think, or will these officers have to testify in court?”

  I don’t want McCoy to go to Portsmouth, either. But I am a Marine officer, and I can’t close my eyes and pretend I believe Chatworth’s Chinese.

  “I could not put these men on the stand,” Banning said, disliking Chatworth more than ever. “I think you misunderstood the purpose of my visit yesterday.”

  “You’re a bloody fool, then, Banning,” Chatworth said, coldly.

  “Good day, Sergeant Chatworth,” Banning said.

  “I’ll send the report of these officers concerning the incident they witnessed to you via the British Consulate,” Chatworth said. “It’ll take two, three days to get here, I’d suppose.”

  “I told you: as much as I might personally like to, I can’t put these men on the stand.”

  “Why not?” Chatworth asked.

  “Being very blunt, I’m not sure I believe your men. Goddamn it, I know I don’t believe them.”

  “That’s not really for you to decide, is it?” Chatworth said. “And, if you don’t let these men testify, wouldn’t that be ‘suppression of evidence’?”

  “Why the hell are you doing this?” Banning asked.

  “We’re just doing our duty as we see it,” Chatworth said, sarcastically. “I can only hope that you’re not one of those bloody fools who doesn’t know he’s in Shanghai and thinks he can go by the bloody book.”

  “How dare you talk to me that way?” Banning flared.

  “What are you going to do about it?” Chatworth asked calmly.

  “I tell you now, Sergeant Chatworth, that I intend to discuss this with Captain Fairbairn.”

  “Odd that you should mention his name,” Chatworth said. “Constable Wang and Patrolman Kin are members of Captain Fairbairn’s Flying Squad.”

  Banning’s temper flared. He reached for the telephone, actually intending to call Fairbairn. But reason prevailed. He instead had the operator connect him with the colonel.

  “Sir,” he said. “There has been a rather startling development. When PFC McCoy was attacked by the Italian Marines, the whole incident was witnessed by two Chinese police officers of Captain Fairbairn’s Flying Squad. They are prepared to testify that it was clearly a case of self-defense.”

  “That’s bloody well more like it,” Detective Sergeant Chatworth said.

  II

  (One)

  4th Marine Infirmary

  Shanghai, China

  6 January 1941

  PFC Kenneth J. McCoy, wearing issue pajamas and a bathrobe, was stretched out on his bed working at a crossword puzzle in the Shanghai Post when Captain Banning walked into his room. Banning saw that they had brought him his breakfast on a tray, and that he had eaten little of it.

  “As you were,” Banning said, as McCoy started to swing his legs out of the bed.

  McCoy looked at him warily.

  “I want a straight answer to this question, McCoy,” Banning began. “How well do you know a Sergeant Chatworth of the Shanghai Municipal Police?”

  McCoy, Banning noticed with annoyance, debated answering the question before replying, “I know him, sir.”

  “Good friend of yours, is he?” Banning pursued.

  “I wouldn’t say that, sir,” McCoy said. “I know him.”

  “Sergeant Chatworth has come up with two witnesses to support your allegation of self-defense,” Banning said. “They saw the six Italians attack you when you got out of the rickshaw at the compound gate.”

  McCoy’s eyebrows went up, but he said nothing.

  This is a very bright young man, Banning thought. Bright and tough, who knows when to keep his mouth shut.

  “The two witnesses were Chinese police officers of Captain Fairbairn’s Flying Squad,” Banning went on. “They have appeared before the adjutant and made sworn statements. The statements bring the number of Italian marines down to four, and say that your rickshaw was turned over where you said it was.”

  McCoy looked at Captain Banning without expression.

  “The statements are so much bullshit, of course,” Banning said, “and you know it.”

  “Sir, so were the statements of the Italians.”

  “The first thing I thought, McCoy, was that you and Chatworth were involved in something dishonest, and it was a case of one crook helping another. But I just came from seeing Captain Fairbairn, and he tells me that Chatworth is a good man. Off the record, he told me that if Chatworth was getting you out of the mess you’re in, that speaks highly for you, because he doesn’t normally do things like that.”

  “I don’t know, sir, what you expect me to say,” McCoy said.

  “You think I’m a sonofabitch, don’t you?”

  McCoy, his face expressionless, met Banning’s eyes, but he said nothing.

  “If I were in your shoes, and the officer appointed to defend me against a charge I was innocent of tried to talk me into pleading guilty, I’d think he was a sonofabitch,” Banning said.

  “You’re an officer, sir,” McCoy said.

  The implication of that, Banning thought, is that all officers are sonsofbitches. Do all the enlisted men think that way, or only the ones smart enough, like this one, to know when somebody’s been trying to fuck them?

  “And in this case, I was a sonofabitch,” Banning said. “I’m going to give you that, McCoy. It’s the truth. I am not exactly proud of the way I
handled this. It’s pretty goddamned shaming, to put a point on it, for me to admit that it took an English policeman to remind me that a Marine officer’s first duty is to his men. I’d like to apologize.”

  “Yes, sir,” McCoy said.

  “Does that mean you accept my apology? Or that you’re just saying ‘Yes, sir’?” Banning asked. “It’s important that I know. I would like a straight answer. Man to man.”

  “I didn’t expect anything else,” McCoy said. “And I’ve never had an officer apologize to me before.”

  “I guess what I’m really asking,” Banning said, “is whether you do accept my apology, or whether you’re just going to bide your time waiting for an opportunity to stick it in me.”

  “Am I carrying a grudge, you mean? No, sir.”

  “I really hope you mean that, McCoy, because you are going to be in a position to stick it in me,” Banning said.

  “Sir?”

  “When your friend Chatworth came up with witnesses to your innocence, the colonel decided that there was no reason to go ahead with your court-martial. It would have been a waste of time and money. In light of the new evidence, all charges against you have been dropped. As soon as the surgeon clears you, you’ll go back to duty.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” McCoy said. “Thank you, sir.”

  “But not to Dog Company,” Banning said. “The colonel has given you to me. You’re being transferred to Headquarters Company.”

  “I don’t understand,” McCoy said.

  “The colonel said that a man with your many talents, McCoy,” Banning said, dryly, “the typing and the languages—not to mention your ability to make friends in the international community—was wasting his time, and the Corps’ time and money, on a machine gun. A man like you, McCoy, the colonel said, should work somewhere where his talents could be better utilized. Like S-2.”

  “I don’t want to be a clerk,” McCoy said.

  “What you want, McCoy, is not up for debate,” Captain Banning said. “But for your general information, I don’t have any more choice in the matter than you do. What went unsaid, I think, was that the colonel wants me to make sure you don’t stick that knife of yours in anyone else.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “There’s more. As soon as you feel up to making the trip, you’re going to Peking for a while. A month, six weeks.”

  “Get me out of Shanghai?” McCoy asked, but it was more thinking out loud than a question.

  Banning nodded.

  “You’re a problem, McCoy,” Banning said. “The Italians want you punished. Now that we can’t do that, we want to get you out of sight for a while.”

  “Captain,” McCoy said, “the surgeon told me that if there was going to be infection, I would have it by now. There’s no reason for me to be in here.”

  “Do you feel up to going that far in a truck?” Banning asked.

  “I thought we moved people by water between here and Tientsin,” McCoy said.

  “From time to time, we send a truck convoy up there,” Banning said. “One is leaving on Thursday. Didn’t you hear that?”

  “The word is,” McCoy said, “that what the convoys really do is spy on the Japs.”

  “And that would bother you?”

  “No, Sir,” McCoy said. “That sounds interesting. I asked my Gunny1 how I could get to go, and he told me to mind my own business.”

  “Military intelligence isn’t what you might think it is from watching Errol Flynn or Robert Taylor in the movies,” Banning said.

  “I didn’t think it was,” McCoy said, evenly.

  “Are you familiar with the term ‘Order of Battle’?” Banning asked.

  “No, sir.”

  “It is the composition of forces,” Banning said. “What units are where and in what condition. By that I mean how they are armed, equipped, fed, whether or not they’re up to strength, whether or not there are any signs of an impending move. You understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “One of my responsibilities is to keep up to date on the Japanese Order of Battle,” Banning said. “One of the ways I do that is give the officer in charge of the Tientsin-Peking convoys a list of things to look for. That does not mean, I should add, breaking into a Japanese headquarters in the middle of the night to steal secret plans, the way Errol Flynn operates in the movies. My instructions to the officer are that his first duty is to not get caught being nosey.”

  “I guess the Japanese watch him pretty closely?”

  “Of course they do,” Banning said.

  “They’d be less likely to pay attention to a PFC,” McCoy said. “They judge our PFCs by the way they treat their own. And their PFCs can’t spit without orders.”

  “The low regard the Japanese have for their own enlisted men works both ways,” Banning said. “They would shoot one of our PFCs they caught snooping around, and then be genuinely surprised that we would be upset about it.”

  “Then the thing for our PFCs to do is not get caught,” McCoy said.

  “Didn’t you ever hear that the smart thing to do is never volunteer for anything?” Banning asked.

  “There’s always an exception to that,” McCoy said. “Like when you think it might do you some good to volunteer.”

  “Go on,” Banning said.

  “I think I’m going to be on the corporals’ promotion list,” McCoy said. “I also think what I did is liable to fuck me up with getting promoted. Maybe I could get off the shit-list by doing something like snooping around the Japs.”

  “You’re on the corporals’ list,” Banning said. “The promotion orders will be cut today. A separate order, by the way, hoping the Italians won’t find out about it and think that we’re promoting you for cutting up their marines. You will be a very young corporal, McCoy.”

  “Then maybe, if I volunteer for this and do it right,” McCoy said, “I can get to be a very young sergeant.”

  “And maybe you’d fuck up and embarrass the colonel and give him an excuse to bust you,” Banning said. “I don’t think busting you would make him unhappy.”

  “And maybe I wouldn’t,” McCoy said. “I’ll take that chance.”

  “Right now, McCoy, and understand me good, all you are to do when you go on the convoy is sit beside the driver. I don’t want you snooping around the Japanese unless and until I tell you what to look for. Do you understand that?”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” McCoy said. “I’m not going to charge around like a headless chicken and get you in trouble, Captain.”

  “As long as we both understand that,” Banning said.

  “Yes, sir,” McCoy said.

  “Unless you have any questions, then, that seems to be about it. I want you to stay in here until Wednesday, when you can go to your billet and pack your gear for the trip. You are not to leave the compound. And I think it would be a good idea if you didn’t sew on your corporal’s chevrons until you are out of Shanghai.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” McCoy said.

  “Any questions?”

  “Do I get my knife back?”

  “So you can slice somebody else up?” Banning flared.

  “I wasn’t looking for trouble with the Italians,” McCoy said. “But when it found me, it was a damned good thing I had that knife.”

  “Tell me something, McCoy,” Banning said. “Does it bother you at all to have killed those two men?”

  “Straight answer?”

  Banning nodded.

  “I’ve been wondering if something’s wrong with me,” McCoy said. “I’m sorry I had to kill them. But you’re supposed to be all upset when you kill somebody, and I just don’t feel that way. I mean, I’m not having nightmares about it, or anything like that, the way I hear other people do.”

  “It says in the Bible, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’” Banning said.

  “And it also says, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’” McCoy said. “And that ‘he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword.’”

  Bannin
g looked at him for a long moment before he spoke.

  “I’m not absolutely sure about this,” he said finally. “Your knife was evidence in a court-martial. But now that there’s not going to be a court-martial, maybe I can get it back for you.”

  “Thank you,” McCoy said. “I’d hate to have to buy another one.”

  (Two)

  On the way back to his office, Captain Banning wondered why in their meeting PFC/Corporal McCoy had not said “Yes, sir” as often as he was expected to—using the phrase as sort of military verbal punctuation.

  And he wondered why he himself, except that once, hadn’t called him on it. The fact, he concluded after a while, was that McCoy was neither intentionally discourteous nor insolent; and that the discussion had been between them as men, not officer and PFC. In other words, the kid had understood—either from instinct or from smarts—what was the correct tone to take with him.

  The more he saw of McCoy, the more he learned about him, the more impressed he became both with his intelligence (his score on the written promotion examination should have prepared him for that, but it hadn’t) and with his toughness. He was a very tough young man. But not entirely. Within, there was a soft center of young boy, who wished to sneak off and be a spy—for the pure glamour of it, and the romance.

  He could not, of course, permit him to snoop around the Japanese, both because he would get caught doing it (always an embarrassment with the Japanese) and because it was very likely that the Japanese would in fact “accidentally” kill him…or, if they wanted to send a message to the Americans, behead him with a sword, and then arrange for his head to be delivered in a box.

  Before the convoy left for Tientsin and Peking, Banning took McCoy aside and made it as clear as he could that he was to leave what espionage there was to Lieutenant John Macklin, who was the officer charged with conducting it. He was to go nowhere and do nothing that the other enlisted men on the convoy did not do.