The Corps I - Semper Fi Read online

  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 Gunny (Gunnery Sergeant. A senior noncommissioned officer) 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 net 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 nightm
ares 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.' "

  Banning 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.

  McCoy said, "Aye, aye, sir."

  Banning felt a little sorry for him when he saw him climb into the cab of a Studebaker truck. While it was true that the danger of infection of the small caliber wound was over, it was also true that the little slug had caused some muscle damage, and the operation to remove the slug much more. What muscle fibers weren't torn were severely bruised. It was going to be a very painful trip over a long and bumpy road.

  Almost a month to the day later, the convoy returned.

  Two days later Lieutenant Macklin furnished Banning with a neatly typed-up report-a report that exceedingly dissatisfied him. Because he had acted with much too much caution, Macklin had not found out what Banning had told him to find out. And he had, for all his caution, been caught snooping by the Japanese.

  They hadn't actually caught Macklin in a situation where they could credibly claim espionage, they just found him

  somewhere that the officer in charge of a supply convoy should not have been.

  There were a number of legalities and unwritten laws involving the relationship between the Japanese Imperial Army in China and the military forces of the French, the Italians, the English, and the Americans. Captain Banning had come to China briefed on many of them. And his years in China had taught him much more. He had a pretty good sense by now of the rules of the game.

  What the Japanese had done when they caught Macklin was what they had done before.

  They had, as brother officers, courteously invited him to visit their headquarters. They then took him on an exhausting inspection of the area, with particular emphasis on the garbage dumps, rifle ranges, and other fascinating aspects of their operation. Then they brought him to the mess, where several profusely apologetic Japanese officers spilled their drinks on him while they got him drunk. At dinner they managed to spill in his lap a large vessel of something greasy, sticky, and absolutely impervious to cleaning.

  The idea was to make him lose face. As usual, they succeeded.

  Corporal Kenneth J. McCoy came to the S-2 office just after noon the day Banning received Macklin's report. He apologized for taking so long. But he explained that his gunnery sergeant had run him over to S-1 to take care of the paperwork that went with his promotion to corporal. This had not been taken care of when he had been shipped off to Peking.

  "How's your leg?" Banning asked. "Bother you on the trip?" He didn't seem bothered by McCoy's delay in reporting to him-or else he didn't believe the kid would have anything worth reporting.

  "It was rough on the way up, sir," McCoy said.

  "All right now, though?"

  "Yes, sir," McCoy said.

  "Well, whether or not you like it, McCoy," Banning said, "I'm going to have to use you as a clerk."

  "I thought that was probably going to happen," McCoy said.

  "I'm sorry you're not pleased," Banning said. "But that's the way it's going to have to be."

  "Captain, I've got something to say, and I don't know how to go about saying it."

  "Spit it out," Banning said.

  "The 111th and 113th Regiments of the 22nd Infantry Division are going to be moved from Sьchow to Nantung, where they are going to be mobilized."

  "Mobilized?" Banning asked, confused.

  "I mean they're going to get trucks to replace their horses.''

  "You mean motorized," Banning corrected, chuckling.

  "Yeah, motorized," McCoy said. "Sorry, sir. And then," he went on, "the 119th Regiment is going to stay at Sьchow, reinforced by a regiment, I don't know which one, of 41st Division. Then, when the 111th and 113th come back, the 119th'll go to Nantung and get their trucks, and the other regiment will go back where it came from. When the whole division has trucks, they're going to move to Tsinan."

  "You're sure of this?" Banning said, sarcastically.

  "A couple of whores told me," McCoy said. "And I checked it out."

  "Now, Corporal McCoy, why do you suppose Lieutenant Macklin's report doesn't mention this?"

  As he spoke, Banning almost kicked himself for coming to Macklin's defense. And yet he knew he couldn't really help himself: Macklin was an officer, and officers do not admit to enlisted men that any other officer is less than an officer should be. But more important, there was bad chemistry between himself and Macklin. And Banning felt guilty about it, guilty enough to protect the lieutenant when he really shouldn't be protected.

  Banning just did not like Macklin. He was a tall, dark-haired, fine-featured man, who fairly could be called handsome, and whose face seemed as bright and intelligent as it was handsome. The problem was that he was not nearly as bright as he looked-much less than he thought he was. The first time Banning had laid eye on him, he had pegged him as the sort of man who substituted charm for substance, someone who spoke very carefully, never causing offense, never in a position he couldn't escape from by claiming misunderstanding.

  "Well, I told you I didn't know how to say it," McCoy said. "I told him what I heard, and he laughed at me. But he's wrong. Whores know."

  The truth was, Banning knew, that whores did indeed know.

  "You said you 'checked it out,' " Banning said.

  "Yes, sir."

  "How?"

  "I checked it out, sir," McCoy replied.

  "You said that, and I asked you how."

  "Sir, you told me not to go snooping around the Japs, and I'm afraid you're going to think I did anyhow."

  "Why would I think that?" Banning asked.

  "Well," McCoy said uneasily, "I got pretty close to them." He paused and then blurted, "I went to Nantung, Captain."

  "You're telling me you went to Nantung? Without orders?"

  "There was a Texaco truck going in," McCoy said. "With a load of kerosene. I gave the driver fifty yuan to take me wi
th him. And then bring me back."

  "And what did you do, Corporal McCoy, when you were in Nantung?" Banning asked.

  The question seemed to surprise McCoy.

  "I told you," he said. "I went to a whorehouse. One that the Jap officers go to."

  "And there were Japanese officers in this brothel?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "And what did the Japanese officers think when they found a Marine Corps corporal in their whorehouse?" Banning asked. But before McCoy could reply, he went on: "They obviously did not see you, or you wouldn't be here. Did it occur to you, McCoy, that if they did see you, and they didn't slice your head off at the Adam's apple, I would have your ass if and when you came back?''

  "They saw me," McCoy said, "They thought I was an Italian that works for Texaco. One of them had been in Rome and thought he talked Italian."

  "Goddamn you, McCoy," Banning said. "You were ordered to leave the snooping to Lieutenant Macklin."

  "You said not to go near them," McCoy said. "I thought you meant I wasn't to get near the compound. I didn't. I went

  o a whorehouse. And you made it sound like finding out about the trucks was important."

  "And you're sure they didn't suspect you were a Marine?" Banning asked.

  Dumb fucking question. Banning. If they suspected he was a Marine, he wouldn't be here.

  "They thought I was Angelo Salini, from Napoli," McCoy said, both matter-of-factly and a little smugly. "I went to high school with a guy with that name."

  "And they told you about the trucks?" Banning asked.

  "No, sir," McCoy said. "We just had a couple of drinks and messed around with the whores. The whores told me about the trucks."

  Do I bring him up on charges for disobeying what was a direct order? Or do I commend him for his initiative?

  "And did the ladies tell you what kind of trucks?" Banning said. "Or how many?"

  "Just 'army trucks,' " McCoy said. "And since I couldn't go near the compound, I couldn't find out," McCoy said.

  "Why should I believe this whorehouse scuttlebutt?" Banning asked.

  "I don't know if you should or not, Captain," McCoy said. "But that's what I found out, and since Lieutenant Macklin wasn't going to report it, I figured I should."