Battleground

by W. E. B Griffin

  She was standing there, holding a cup of coffee out to him.

  I don’t even know her name!

  “Hi!” she said.

  “Hi,” he replied, looking into her eyes. “What’s that?”

  “Coffee,” she said.

  “Coffee?”

  “You said you had your father’s car. I don’t want you driving drunk.”

  “You’re throwing me out?”

  “I’m sending you home.”

  “Why?”

  “Didn’t we both get what we were looking for?”

  “We gave each other what the other needed would be a nicer way to put it.”

  “All right,” she said. “Yes, we did. I hope I did. I know you did. But now it’s time to come back to the real world.”

  “And for me to go home.”

  “Right.”

  “I don’t want to go home. I want to stay here with you, forever.”

  “That’s obviously out of the question.”

  He sat up. She tried to hand him the cup and saucer. He avoided it.

  She touched the top of his head.

  “You are really very sweet,” she said.

  He tilted his head back to look up at her. She smiled.

  He reached up for the cord of her robe.

  “Don’t do that.”

  He ignored her.

  The robe fell open when he pulled the cord free.

  He put his arms around her and his face against her belly.

  He heard her take in her breath, and her hand dropped to the small of his neck.

  “Oh God!” she said.

  Her navel was next to his mouth and he kissed it.

  “I’m going to spill the coffee.”

  “Put the coffee on the floor and take the robe off.”

  “And if I do, then will you go?”

  “No.”

  She dropped to her knees and put the cup and saucer on the floor, shrugged out of the robe, and then turned her face to him and kissed him.

  “Oh, Baby, what am I going to do with you?”

  “I don’t know about that,” he said. “But I know what I’m going to do to you.”

  He put his hands on her shoulders and moved her onto the bed and looked down at her.

  “God, you’re so beautiful!” he said.

  “So are you,” she said.

  And then he surprised her very much by pushing himself off the bed. She raised her head to look at him. He walked to the other side of the bed and sat down and reached for her telephone.

  “Father,” he said into it. “Uncle Bill and I have had a long talk and a lot to drink, and I think it would be best if I stayed over with him at the Union League, rather than driving.”

  There was a pause, and then Sergeant John Marston Moore, USMCR, said: “You’re going to have to understand, Father, that I’m no longer a child. I can drink whatever and whenever I wish.”

  There was another pause.

  “There’s something else, Father. My orders have been changed. I have to leave tomorrow afternoon. When Mother’s awake, please tell her that I’ll be out there sometime before noon to pack. I have to see Mr. Schuyler at First Philadelphia, first.”

  One final pause.

  “I think you know why I have to see Mr. Schuyler, Father,” John said.

  A moment later, he took the receiver from his ear and looked at it.

  It was clear to Barbara Ward (Mrs. Howard P.) Hawthorne, Jr., that John’s father had hung up on him. There was pain in his eyes when he turned from putting the receiver in its cradle and looked at her.

  “Oh, Baby,” she said. “Whatever that was, I’m sorry.”

  “Do you think you could manage to call me ‘Darling,’ or ‘Sweetheart,’ or something besides ‘Baby’? ... I’ll even settle happily for ‘John.’”

  She held her arms open.

  “Come to me, my darling,” she said.

  He didn’t move.

  “I thought you wanted me to leave.”

  She put her arms down and pulled the sheet up and held it over her breast.

  She found his eyes and looked into them and said, “I want what’s best for you.”

  “You’re what’s best for me.”

  “You really have to leave tomorrow? Which is really, now, today?”

  “No. Thursday.”

  “Then why ... ?”

  “I want to be with you until I go.”

  She took her eyes from his and lowered her head and fought the tears. Then she raised her eyes to his again and opened her arms again and said, “Come to me, John, my darling, my sweetheart.”

  And this time he went to her.

  VI

  (One)

  HEADQUARTERS

  MARINE AIR GROUP TWENTY-ONE (MAG-21)

  EWA, OAHU ISLAND, TERRITORY OF HAWAII

  1325 HOURS 19 JUNE 1942

  Lieutenant Colonel Clyde G. Dawkins, USMC, Commanding MAG-21, was a tall, thin, sharp-featured man who wore his light brown hair so closely cropped that the tanned and sun-freckled flesh of his scalp was visible.

  He was wearing a stiffly starched khaki shirt with a field scarf tied in a tiny knot. A gold collar clasp held the collar points together and the knot in the field scarf erect. He had heard somewhere that the collar clasp was now frowned upon; but that brought the same reaction from him as the suggestion from Pearl Harbor that since Navy Naval Aviators were now discouraged from wearing their fur-collared leather flight jackets when not actually engaged in flying activities, it behooved him to similarly discourage Marine Naval Aviators from wearing their flight jackets when not actually on the flight line: He said nothing; thought, Fuck You; and wore both a collar clasp and his leather flight jacket almost all the time, fully aware that if he did so, the Marine Naval Aviators of MAG-21 would presume it was not only permissible but encouraged.

  He was not at all a rebel by nature. He did not relish defying higher authority, even when he knew he could get away with it. But he was a practical man, and the wearing of flight jackets by aviators seemed far more practical and convenient than forcing his officers to waste time taking off and putting on their uniform tunics half a dozen times a day. And the gold collar clasp, in his judgment, struck him as a splendid means to keep an officer’s collar points where they belonged, even if some people in The Corps thought of it as “civilian-type jewelry.” An officer with one of his collar points in a horizontal attitude looked far more slovenly than one with his collar points fixed in the proper attitude with a barely visible piece of “civilian jewelry.”

  The officer standing somewhat uncomfortably before Lieutenant Colonel Dawkins’s desk had performed well in the Battle of Midway. His name was Captain Thomas J. Wood. He was young and newly promoted; he was wearing a fur-collared flight jacket and a collar clasp; and he was standing with his hands clasped together behind him in the small of his back.

  But there was something about him—an impetuosity, an indecisiveness—that Dawkins did not like. Dawkins believed that a good officer made decisions slowly, and then stuck by them.

  “It’s time to fish or cut bait, Tom,” Dawkins said, not unkindly.

  “Uh ... Sir, I decline to press charges.”

  “So be it,” Dawkins said.

  “Sir, I saw what I saw, but I can’t ...”

  “That will be all, Captain,” Dawkins said. There was now a hint of ice in his voice. “You are dismissed.”

  The captain came to attention.

  “Yes, Sir,” he said. He did an about-face and started to march out of the room.

  “Ask Major Lorenz to come in, please,” Dawkins called to him.

  “Aye, aye, Sir.”

  Major Karl J. Lorenz, who was the Executive Officer of MAG-21, walked into the office. Lorenz looked, Dawkins often thought, like a recruiting poster for the Waffen-SS—in other words like an Aryan of impeccable Nordic-Teutonic heritage, blond-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned, and lithely muscular.

  “You wanted me, Skipper?” he
asked.

  “Close the door, please,” Dawkins said.

  Lorenz did so.

  “After some thought,” Dawkins said, “he declined to press charges.”

  “Huh,” Lorenz said thoughtfully. “Probably a good thing, Sir. It would have been hard to make those charges stick.”

  “Not a good thing, Karl,” Dawkins said.

  “You think we should have tried him?” Lorenz asked, surprised.

  “I think before young Captain Wood started running off at the mouth, he should have made up his mind whether or not he was prepared to carry an accusation of cowardice through.”

  “Oh,” Lorenz replied. “Yes, Sir, I see what you mean.”

  “He doesn’t really know any more than I do—and I wasn’t there—if Dunn ran away from that fight or not. Cowardice in the face of the enemy ... that’s the worst accusation that can be made.”

  “I presume you told Wood that?”

  “No. I didn’t want to influence his decision, one way or the other.”

  “Can I ask what you think?”

  “I already told you, I don’t think Wood really knows. Or, if you were asking, do I think Dunn ran?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “I think we’re going to have to give him the benefit of the doubt. He says he doesn’t remember when, or under what conditions, he broke off the engagement. I don’t think he does. He lost his windscreen and he was wounded. The question is, when did that happen? Before or after he started back to Midway? He didn’t run before the fight. He got a Kate. There’s no question about that. And then he got a Zero. Again, confirmed beyond any question. And then the next time he’s seen, he’s on his way back to Midway. Close enough to be recognized beyond any doubt, but too far away for anyone to be able to state with certainty that he had, or had not, already lost his windshield.”

  “I realize, Sir, I haven’t been asked, but in those circumstances I would be prone to give him the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Ascribing Wood’s charges to post-combat hysteria?”

  “Something like that, Sir.”

  “Unfortunately, although he elected not to pursue them, Wood’s charges are going to be remembered by a lot of people for a long time—made worse in the retelling, of course.”

  “What are you going to do with Dunn, Sir?” Lorenz said, after a moment.

  “You and I are about to visit Lieutenant Dunn in the hospital; there I will express my pleasure that he will be discharged tomorrow, present him with his Purple Heart Medal, and inform him that he is now assigned to VMF-229. I think he will understand why it would be awkward for him to return to VMF-211. I hope he doesn’t ask me for an explanation.”

  “Two-twenty-nine, Sir?” Lorenz asked, surprised.

  Dawkins nodded. “Two-twenty-nine.”

  “Sir, we haven’t activated VMF-229 yet.”

  “It is activated,” Dawkins said and paused to look at his watch, “as of 1300 hours today. Its personnel consists of one officer, absent in hospital, and one officer, en route, not yet joined. See that the order is typed up.”

  “Who did you decide to give it to, Sir?”

  “A good Marine officer, Major,” Dawkins said, “is always willing to carefully consider the recommendations of his superiors.”

  “Sir?”

  Dawkins chuckled, opened a desk drawer, and handed Lorenz a sheet of yellow teletype paper.

  ROUTINE

  CONFIDENTIAL

  HQ USMC WASH DC 1445 14JUNE42

  COMMANDING OFFICER

  MAG-21 EWA TH

  CAPTAIN CHARLES M. GALLOWAY, USMCR, HAVING REPORTED UPON ACTIVE DUTY, HAS BEEN ORDERED TO PROCEED BY AIR TO EWA FOR DUTY AS COMMANDING OFFICER VMF-229. WHILE THIS ASSIGNMENT HAS THE CONCURRENCE OF THE COMMANDANT AND THE UNDERSIGNED YOU ARE OF COURSE AT LIBERTY TO ASSIGN THIS OFFICER TO ANY DUTIES YOU WISH.

  D.G. MCINERNEY BRIG GEN USMC

  “I will be goddamned,” Lorenz said.

  “I thought you might find that surprising,” Dawkins said.

  “The last time I saw Charley, I thought they were going to crucify him,” Lorenz said. “And I mean, literally. What the hell does that ‘concurrence of the Commandant’ mean?”

  “I think it means that Doc McInerney went right to the Commandant. They had Charley flying a VIP R4D around out of Quantico.” The R4D was the Navy designation of the twin-engine Douglas transport aircraft called DC-3 by the manufacturer and C-47 by the Army Air Corps. “What I think is that McInerney went to the Commandant and told him how desperate we are for people with more than two hundred hours in a cockpit. As furious as the Navy was with him, nobody but the Commandant would dare to commission him.”

  “The last I heard, they wouldn’t let him fly—hell, even taxi—anything. He was still a sergeant, and they had him working as a mechanic on the flight line at Quantico. But this sort of restores my faith in the Marine Corps,” Lorenz said.

  “ ‘Restores’ your faith, Major?” Dawkins asked wryly. “That suggests it was lost.”

  “Well, let’s say, the way the brass let the Navy crap all over Charley, that it wavered a little.”

  “Oh ye of little faith!” Dawkins mocked, gently.

  “When’s he due in?”

  Dawkins shrugged helplessly. “The TWX didn’t say,” he said. “And knowing Charley as well as I do, that means one of two things: He will either rush over here as fast as humanly possible, or else he will still be trying to find a slow ship the day the war’s over.”

  Lorenz laughed.

  Dawkins stood up.

  “Let’s go pin the Purple Heart on Lieutenant Dunn,” he said.

  (Two)

  U.S. NAVAL HOSPITAL

  PEARL HARBOR, OAHU ISLAND, TERRITORY OF

  HAWAII

  1505 HOURS 19 JUNE 1942

  When Lieutenant Colonel Dawkins pushed open the door to his room, First Lieutenant William C. Dunn was lying on his back on the bed; his bathrobe was open and his legs were spread; and he was not wearing pajama pants. Dunn was obviously not expecting visitors.

  What Dawkins could see, among other things, were several bandages in the vicinity of Dunn’s crotch. One of these was large, but most were not much more than Band-Aids. He could also see a half-dozen unbandaged wounds, their sutures visible, on his inner upper thighs. The whole area had been shaved and then painted with some kind of orange antiseptic.

  He was almost a soprano, Dawkins thought. Whatever had come through the canopy of Dunn’s Wildcat had come within inches of blowing away the family jewels. From the number of fragments, it was probably a 20mm, which exploded on contact.

  Soon after the door opened, Dunn covered his midsection with the flap of his hospital issue bathrobe; and then when he saw the silver leaf on Dawkins’s collar, he started to swing his legs to get out of bed.

  “Stay where you are, Son,” Dawkins said quickly, but too late. Dunn was already on his feet, standing at attention.

  “Well, then, stand at ease,” Dawkins said. “Does all that hurt very much?”

  “Only when I get a hard-on, Sir,” Dunn blurted, and quickly added, “Sorry, Sir. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “If I had been dinged in that area, and it still worked,” Dawkins said, “I think I would be delighted.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Dunn said.

  “Do you know who I am, Son?”

  “Yes, Sir. You gave us a little talk when we reported aboard.”

  “And this is my exec, Major Lorenz,” Dawkins said.

  Lorenz gave his hand to Dunn.

  “How are you, Lieutenant?”

  “Very well, thank you, Sir.”

  “Why don’t you let me pin this thing on you,” Dawkins said. “And then you get back in bed.”

  He took the Purple Heart Medal from a hinged metal box, pinned it to the lapel of Dunn’s bathrobe, and then shook his hand.

  “Thank you, Sir.”

  “That’s the oldest medal, did you know that?” Dawkins said. “Goes back to the Revo
lution. Washington issued an order that anyone who had been wounded could wear a purple ribbon—and in those days that meant a real ribbon—on his uniform.”

  “I didn’t know that, Sir,” Dunn admitted.

  “You have literally shed blood for your country,” Dawkins said. “You can wear that with pride.”

  Dunn didn’t reply.

  “Why don’t you get back in bed?”

  “I’m all right, Sir. And they have been encouraging me to move around.”

  “They tell me you’re being discharged tomorrow,” Dawkins said.

  “I was about to tell you that, Sir, and ask you what’s next.”

  “You’ve been assigned to VMF-229,” Dawkins said.

  “Pending court-martial, Sir?”

  “No charges have been, or will be, pressed against you, Dunn,” Dawkins said.

  “But they don’t want me back in the squadron, right, Sir?”

  “I ordered your transfer to VMF-229,” Dawkins said. “The commanding officer of VMF-211 had nothing to do with that decision.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Dunn said, on the edge of insolence, making it clear he did not believe that answer.

  Dawkins felt anger swell up in him, but suppressed it.

  “VMF-229 is a new squadron. It was activated today. Right now, you are half of its total strength. The commanding officer is en route from the States. I assigned you there because I wanted someone with your experience ...”

  “My Midway experience, Sir?” Dunn asked, just over the edge into sarcasm.

  “When I want a question, Son,” Dawkins said icily, “I will ask for one.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “You will be the only pilot in the squadron who has even seen a Japanese airplane, much less shot two of them down,” Dawkins said. “I want the newcomers to look at you and see you’re very much like they are. To take some of the pressure off, if you follow my meaning. Additionally, perhaps you will be able to teach them something, based on your experience.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “I’m personally acquainted with your new commanding officer, Captain Charley Galloway,” Dawkins went on. “I will tell him what I know about you, and the gossip. And I will tell him that I personally feel you did everything you were supposed to do at Midway, and then, suffering wounds, managed to get your shot-up aircraft back to the field.”