The Corps 03 - Counterattack Page 8

  The ships in the center of the Task Force, the Saratoga, the Tangier, and the oiler, had been making course changes regularly, zigzagging across the Pacific so as to present as difficult a target as possible for any enemy submarine that might be stalking the Task Force. The cruisers and destroyers had been making course changes that were more frequent and of greater magnitude than those of the carrier and the ships following in its wake. The destroyers had been weaving in and out between the larger ships like sheepdogs guarding their flock.

  Joe Howard had grown used to changes in course-the slight tilting of the deck, the slight change in the dull rumble of the engine, the change in the pitching and rolling of the Tangier - to the point where he paid almost no conscious attention to them.

  But now, as he made his way aft along the portside boat deck, looking for Lieutenant Gripley, he slowly came to realize that this course change was somehow different. He stopped, putting his hand on the damp inboard bulkhead to steady himself.

  For one thing,he thought, it’s taking a lot longer than they normally do.

  And then he understood. The Tangier, and thus all of Task Force 14, was not changing course, but reversing course.

  What the hell is that all about?

  The Tangier’s public-address system, which never seemed to shut up, was now absolutely silent. If something was up, it certainly would have gone off, accompanied by harshly clanging bells, calling General Quarters.

  He decided that nothing had happened, except that his imagination was running away with him.

  He began moving aft again, telling himself that after he found Lieutenant Gripley, he would go to the guardroom and have a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee.

  When he reached the rear of the boat deck, there was someone leaning on the railing beside the ladder to the main deck. At first he thought it was the guard posted there, and that he had deserted his post at least to the point of taking off his steel pot and assuming an unmilitary position. He was considering how badly to ream him when he saw the guard, steel pot in place, standing at parade rest.

  Whoever was leaning on the rail was an officer-not Lieutenant Gripley, but somebody else.

  When he got close, he saw that it was the Executive Officer of the 4thDefense Battalion. And when he heard Joe’s footsteps, he first turned his head, and then stood erect.

  "Sergeant Howard, Sir. Sergeant of the Guard."

  "Yes," the Exec said absently. "How are you tonight, Sergeant?"

  It was not the expected response.

  "Just getting a little air, Sergeant," the Exec continued. "Stuffy in my cabin."

  "Yes, Sir," Joe said.

  "Trying to get my thoughts in order, actually," the Exec said.

  "Sir?" Joe asked, now wholly confused.

  The Exec straightened.

  "Sergeant," he said. "At 2100 tonight, there was a radio from Pearl Harbor. Task Force 14 is to return to Pearl."

  "Sir?"

  "Task Force 14 is ordered to return to Pearl. We have already reversed course."

  "But what about Wake Island?"

  "It would appear, Sergeant," the Exec said throatily, huskily, speaking with difficulty, "that Major Devereux and his men are going to have to make do with what they have."

  "Jesus Christ," S/Sgt. Howard blurted. He knew, perhaps as well as anyone, what few arms and how little ammunition, and how few Marines, were at Major James P. S. Devereux’s command.

  "Orders are orders, Sergeant," the Exec said, and pushed his way past Joe Howard. There was not much light, but there was enough for Joe to see that tears were running down the Exec’s cheeks.

  Goddamn them!Staff Sergeant Howard thought. How the hell can they turn around, knowing that unless we can reinforce Wake, the Japs will take it, and all those guys will be either dead or prisoners? Who the hell could be responsible for such a chicken-shit order?

  And then he thought: Who the fuck are you kidding? If we’d gone to Wake, when the first shot was fired, you’d be hiding behind the nearest rock, curled up like a fucking baby, and crying, the way you behaved on December seventh.

  (Two)

  Lakehurst Naval Air Station

  Lakehurst, New Jersey

  1605 Hours 1 January 1942

  PFC Stephen M. Koffler, USMC, heard his relief coming, the crunch of their field shoes on the crusty snow, the corporal quietly counting cadence, long before he saw them. Koffler was eighteen years and two months old, weighed 145 pounds, and stood five feet seven inches tall.

  The relief was marching across the front of the enormous airship hangar; and Koffler’s post, Number Four, was a marching post, back and forth, along the side of the hangar.

  Permission had been granted to the guard to carry their Springfield 1903 caliber .30-06 rifles at sling arms, muzzle down. The idea was to keep snow out of the muzzle.

  PFC Koffler unslung his piece and brought it to port arms. The moment he saw the corporal turn the corner, he issued his challenge: "Halt, who goes there?"

  He had learned how to do this and a number of other things peculiar to the profession of arms generally, and to the United States Marine Corps specifically, at the United States Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Parris Island, South Carolina, during the months of October and November and in the first weeks of December, but the first time he had done it for real was here in Lakehurst.

  There were five rounds in the magazine of his rifle, and a total of forty more in the pockets of the "Belt, Web, Cartridge" he was wearing around his waist. His bayonet was fixed to the muzzle of his rifle. Sometimes, walking back and forth alongside the dirigible hangar, he had forgotten it was there and bumped into it with his lower leg.

  "Corporal of the Guard," the corporal called.

  "Advance, Corporal of the Guard, to be recognized."

  The Corporal of the Guard ordered the guard detail to halt. When they had done that, he took another half-dozen steps toward PFC Koffler.

  "Giblet," PFC Koffler challenged.

  "Gravy," the Corporal of the Guard replied, giving the countersign.

  When he had first been told the night’s challenge and countersign, PFC Koffler had been more than a little surprised. Somebody around here apparently had a sense of humor. There had been none of that at Parris Island, not with something as important as guard duty.

  Not that what he was doing here at Lakehurst wasn’t serious. The hangar had been built to house dirigibles before PFC Stephen Koffler was born, back when the Navy had thought that enormous rigid airships were the wave of the future. It now held half a dozen Navy blimps, used to patrol the waters off New York harbor for German submarines. A blimp was a nonrigid airship, like a balloon. Last night in the guardhouse, PFC Koffler had heard that the first Navy nonrigid airship had been called the "A-Limp," and the second model the "B-Limp." That’s where the name had come from.

  There were German submarines out there, and it was quite possible that German saboteurs would attempt to destroy the blimps in their hangar. There were a whole lot of Nazi sympathizers in New York’s Yorktown district. Before the war, they used to hire Madison Square Garden for their meetings.

  Guarding the dirigible hangar and its blimps was not like guarding the recruit barracks at Parris Island. PFC Koffler had taken his responsibilities seriously.

  "PFC Koffler, Post Four, Corporal," Koffler said. "All is well."

  They went through the formalized ritual of changing the guard. The first Marine in the line behind the corporal marched up and held his Springfield at port arms while Koffler recited his Special Orders, then the Corporal of the Guard barked "Post," and PFC Koffler marched away from his post and took up a position at the rear of the relief guard.

  This was his last tour. He’d gone on duty, "stood guard mount," at 1600 yesterday afternoon, and been assigned to the First Relief. He’d gone on guard at 1600, walked his post for two hours, and been relieved at 1800. Four hours later, at 2200, he had gone on again and walked his post until midnight, which was New Year’s. Then he’
d had another four hours off, going back on at 0400 until 0600. Another four hours off until ten, then two hours more until noon, then four hours off, and then this, the final tour, two hours from 1400 to 1600.

  It had not entered his mind to feel sorry for himself for having to walk around in below-zero weather on New Year’s Day, any more than it had entered his mind on Monday, when he’d gotten off the Sea Coast Limited train that had carried him from Parris Island, South Carolina, to Newark, that if he got on the subway, he could be home in thirty minutes.

  It had been instilled in him at Parris Island that he no longer had any personal life that the Corps did not elect to grant him. He was not a candy-ass civilian anymore, he was a Marine. He could go home only when, and if, the Corps told him he could. You were supposed to get a leave home when you graduated from Parris Island, but that hadn’t happened. There was a war on.

  Maybe he could get a leave, or at least a weekend liberty, while he was going to school at Lakehurst. Or when he graduated. If he graduated. He wasn’t holding his breath. For one thing, the sergeant major on Mainside at Parris Island, where he’d been transferred after graduating from Boot Camp, had really been pissed at him. They had gone through the records looking for people with drafting experience, and they’d found him and transferred him to Mainside to execute architectural drawings for new barracks. He hadn’t joined the Corps to be a draftsman. If he’d wanted to be a draftsman, he would have stayed with the Public Service Corporation of New Jersey, where he had been a draftsman trainee in the Bus and Trolley Division.

  There’d been an interesting notice on the bulletin board. Regulations said you had to read the bulletin board at least twice a day, so it wasn’t his fault he’d seen the notice. The notice had said that volunteers were being accepted for parachute duty. And that those volunteers who successfully completed the course of instruction at Lakehurst would receive an extra fifty dollars a month in pay. That was a lot of money. As a PFC, his total pay was forty-one dollars a month, thirty-six dollars plus five dollars for having qualified as Expert on the firing range with the Springfield.

  So he had applied, which immediately pissed off the Sergeant Major, who needed a draftsman. "Let some other asshole jump out of goddamned airplanes," the Sergeant Major yelled at him. The Sergeant Major was so pissed and he made so much noise that one of the officers came out to see what was going on.

  "Well, you’ll have to let him apply, Sergeant Major," the officer said, "if he wants to. Put on his application we need him here, but let him apply."

  Stephen Koffler felt sure that was the last he would ever hear of parachute school, but three days later the Sergeant Major called him into his office to tell him to pack his fucking gear and get his ass on the train, and he personally hoped Koffler would break his fucking neck the first time he jumped.

  He never even left Pennsylvania Station when he got off the Sea Coast Limited at Newark. He just went downstairs from the tracks to ask Information about when the New Jersey Central train left for Lakehurst. They told him it would be another two and a half hours. While he was waiting, he got asked three times for his orders, twice by sailors wearing Shore Patrol brassards, and once even by fucking doggie MPs. Steve Koffler was already Marine enough to be convinced that the goddamned Army had no right to let their goddamned MPs ask a Marine anything.

  When he got to Lakehurst, a truck carried him out to the Naval Air Station. And then the Charge of Quarters, a lean and mean-looking sergeant, told him where he could find a bunk, but that he’d have to do without a mattress cover, a pillow, and sheets because the supply room was locked up. He might even have to wait until after New Year’s.

  In the morning, he had a brief encounter with the First Sergeant, who was lanky and mean-looking like the Charge of Quarters, just older. The First Sergeant said that he really hadn’t expected him, and that he thought the new class would trickle in over the next couple of days, but now that he had reported in, he should get his gear shipshape and be ready to stand guard mount at 1600.

  Koffler spent the day getting ready for guard, pressing his green blouse and trousers and a khaki shirt and necktie, which he now knew was not a necktie but a "field scarf." He restored the spit-shine on his better pair (of two pairs) of field shoes, and cleaned and lightly oiled his 1903 Springfield .30-06 rifle.

  It had been pretty goddamned cold, walking up and down alongside the dirigible hangar, but there was hot coffee in the guardhouse when you’d done your two hours; and the Sergeant of the Guard had even come out twice with a thermos of coffee and fried-egg sandwiches, an act that really surprised Koffler, based on his previous experience with both sergeants and guard duty at Parris Island.

  After the guard that was just relieved marched back to the guardhouse and turned in their ammunition, every round carefully counted and accounted for, Steve Koffler took a chance and asked the Sergeant of the Guard a question. He seemed like a pretty nice guy.

  "What happens now? I mean, what am I supposed to do?"

  "If I was you, kid, I’d make myself scarce around the billet. There’s always some sonofabitch looking for a work detail."

  "You mean we’re not restricted to the barracks?"

  "No. Why should you be? You just get out of Parris Island?"

  "Yeah."

  "It shows," the Sergeant said.

  "Where should I go to get away from the barracks?"

  "You can go anyplace you can afford to go. It’s about an hour on the train to New York City, but you better be loaded, you want to go there."

  "How about Newark?"

  "Why the hell would you want to go to Newark?"

  "I live just outside, a town called East Orange."

  "You just came off Boot Camp leave, right?"

  "No."

  "What do you mean, ‘No’?"

  "I mean I didn’t get any leave. When we graduated, they sent me to Mainside, and then they sent me here."

  "No shit? You’re supposed to get a leave, ten days at least."

  "Well, I didn’t get one."

  "I find out you’ve been shitting me, kid," the Sergeant said, "I’ll have your ass."

  Then he picked up the telephone.

  "I hope you’re really hung over, you old sonofabitch," he said to whoever answered the phone.

  There was a reply, and the Sergeant laughed.

  "Hey, I just been talking to one of the kids who’s reporting in. I don’t know what happened, but they didn’t give him a leave out of Parris Island. He lives in Newark, or near it. Would it be OK with you if I told the CQ to give him a seventy-two-hour pass?"

  There was a pause.

  "He already pulled guard. We just got off."

  Something else was said that Koffler couldn’t hear.

  "OK, Top, thanks," the Sergeant of the Guard said, and hung up. "He was in a good mood. You get an extended seventy-two-hour pass."

  "I don’t know what that means," Steve Koffler confessed.

  "Well, you get one pass that runs from 1700 today until 1700 Sunday. That’s seventy-two hours. Then you tear that one up and throw it away, and go on the second one, which lasts until 0500 Monday. The First Sergeant says that nothing’s going on around here until then, anyway."

  "Jesus Christ!"

  "Now for Christsake, don’t do nothing like getting shitfaced and arrested."

  "I won’t."

  An hour later, PFC Stephen Koffler passed through the Marine guard at the gate and started walking toward the Lakehurst train station. He hadn’t gone more than a hundred yards when a Chrysler convertible pulled to the side of the road ahead of him, and the door swung open. The driver was a naval officer, a young one.

  "I’m going into New York City if that would be any help, son," he said.

  On the way to Newark, where the officer went out of his way to drive him into the city and drop him off at Pennsylvania Station, he told Koffler that he was a navigator on one of the blimps and had spent New Year’s Eve freezing his tail ten miles off the Jers
ey coast, down by Cape May, at the mouth of the Delaware River.

  Steve told him he had just arrived to go to the parachute school. And the officer replied that Steve had more balls than he did. There was no way anybody could get him to jump out of an airplane unless it was gloriously in flames.