Battleground

by W. E. B Griffin

  “We’ve been a little wary about getting into that,” Oblensky said. “The only thing we did was change our life insurance. She gets mine, and I get hers, if anything happens. I changed my home of record to her brother’s, in Chicago. And we didn’t say we was married. You can leave your insurance to a friend.”

  “Let me look into this, Steve.”

  “Don’t rock the fucking boat, Charley,” Oblensky said.

  “I won’t, trust me.”

  “I guess I have to, don’t I?” Oblensky said. “You don’t seem very pissed off that Hot Pants is fucking Lieutenant Dunn.”

  Just in time, Galloway stopped himself from saying, “I met somebody special in the States.”

  I can’t tell him about Caroline. If I told him that I actually met a woman from a background like that, that she drove across the country with me, that we stayed at the Andrew Foster Hotel as the guests of Andrew Foster, he would think it was one hundred-percent bullshit, probably concocted because he had just told me Hot Pants O‘Malley is now screwing this guy Dunn. If he believed there really was a woman named Caroline who drove out to the West Coast with me, he would be sure she was some tramp I met in a bar. He would not believe the suite in the Andrew Foster at all. Not that he thinks I’m an imaginative liar, but because all of that belongs to a world that he can’t even imagine.

  Instead, Galloway said, “You seem pissed off about it.”

  “Pussy’s in short supply in Hawaii, as you damned well know. A girl like that, she can do great things for morale. But it seems to me that if she wants to pass it around, she could find somebody who’s not afraid to fight to pass it out to.”

  Oh, shit! I can’t let him get away with that!

  After a moment, Oblensky sensed the tension.

  “I say something wrong?” he asked.

  “Yeah, Steve, you did,” Galloway said. “Did you really think I would just sit here, as your commanding officer, and let you accuse one of your officers—one of my officers—of cowardice?”

  “Everybody knows he ran away from Midway,” Oblensky said.

  “No, goddamnit, everybody doesn’t know that. Colonel Dawkins doesn’t know, I don’t know, and you goddamned sure don’t know. You keep your mouth shut about Lieutenant Dunn. Not only in front of me, but everywhere.”

  Oblensky looked at him in surprise, but said nothing.

  “There is an expected reply from a non-com when an officer gives him an order,” Galloway said, coldly.

  Oblensky wet his lips. There was a just perceptible pause before he said, “Aye, aye, Sir.”

  That was pretty chickenshit of you, Charley Galloway, pulling rank on him that way, Galloway thought. And then he thought: Fuck him. He was wrong. And that’s why they give officers rank, to use it. And then he had a final, more than a little satisfying, even a little smug, thought: I didn’t handle that badly at all. Maybe I just can hack it as an officer, a squadron commander.

  (Two)

  OFFICER’S CLUB

  PEARL HARBOR NAVAL BASE

  OAHU, TERRITORY OF HAWAII

  1630 HOURS 27 JUNE 1942

  Uniform Regulations of the United States Naval Base, Pearl Harbor, specified the white uniform for wear after 1700 hours in social situations, e.g., while dining in the Main Officer’s Club. But because there were exigencies of the service which brought officers to Pearl Harbor without their whites—such as for example the fact that there was a war on—there was a caveat: The words “whenever possible” had been added.

  It was a loophole through which most Marine and many Naval aviators leapt en masse. White uniforms were expensive to begin with, they soiled easily and often permanently, and as a general rule of thumb they could be worn only once before requiring a trip to the laundry/dry cleaners.

  When Captain Charles M. Galloway came into the Main Officer’s Club, he saw at the bar another Marine officer dressed as he was. They were both wearing a tropical worsted uniform, shirt, trousers, and the khaki necktie that the Corps called a “field scarf—for reasons Galloway never understood. ”TWs“ were not only more comfortable than whites, they did not require very extra careful movement of cup or fork to the mouth, and could often be worn three times before a visit to the dry cleaners.

  That has to be Lieutenant William C. Dunn, Galloway thought. He’s a first john aviator, “a good looking kid,” as Colonel Dawkins called him, and he is rubbing knees with Mary Agnes O‘Malley.

  As he walked to the bar, Charley noticed that Dunn was wearing his wings, but no ribbons. He was entitled to wear the Purple Heart after the Japs almost turned him into a soprano.

  As soon as Lieutenant (j.g.) Mary Agnes O‘Malley, Nurse Corps, USN, recognized Charley, she discreetly withdrew the knee she’d draped over Lieutenant Dunn’s and smiled at Galloway. There was, Charley thought, more than a little hint of naughty invitation in her eyes.

  “Well, look at what the tide threw up on the beach!” she cried, and got off the bar stool.

  Just looking at her, you’d never guess what she likes to do—have done to her—in the sack. I wonder if she’s doing that to Dunn? Or got him to do it to her?

  “Hello, Mary Agnes,” Galloway said. She stood on her tiptoes and gave him her cheek to kiss, managing in the maneuver to rub her breasts against his abdomen.

  “Charley, this is Lieutenant Bill Dunn,” Mary Agnes said, touching Dunn’s shoulder with her hand. “Bill, this is Captain Charley Galloway.”

  “Hello, Dunn,” Charley said, offering his hand.

  “Good evening, Sir.”

  Christ, you can cut that Rebel accent with a knife! He sounds like he thinks there’s no “e” in “evening” and that “Sir” is spelled “Suh.”

  “I sort of hoped you would be here,” Galloway said. “So I would have my chance to hold my very first officer’s call.”

  It was an attempt at humor, and it failed.

  “Yes, Sir,” Dunn said, adding, with absolutely no suggestion of invitation in his voice, “Would you join us for a drink, Sir?”

  “Oh, of course, he will,” Mary Agnes said. “Charley and I are old friends, aren’t we, Charley?”

  “Absolutely,” Charley said. He caught the bartender’s eye. “Another round here, please. I’ll have whatever the lieutenant’s drinking.”

  “I’ll just get in the middle,” Mary Agnes said. “Move over a stool, Bill.”

  Dunn shifted to the adjacent stool; Mary Agnes sat on the one he vacated; and Galloway slid onto the one where she had been sitting. It was still warm from her body, which served to trigger a remarkably clear image of what that bottom looked—and felt—like when not covered with the crisp white of a Navy Nurse’s dress uniform.

  Galloway looked past Mary Agnes at Dunn.

  “I left a message for you at the BOQ,” he said. “Did you get it?”

  “Yes, Sir. Hangar Three at 0730. I’ll be there, Sir.”

  “I talked Colonel Dawkins out of Technical Sergeant Oblensky,” Galloway said. “You know him, I guess? Big Steve?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “I told him to find us someplace for a squadron office ...” Galloway said.

  “Yes, Sir,” Dunn said, when Galloway paused momentarily to take a breath.

  “... and I’d be surprised if he didn’t have us one by 0730 tomorrow,” Galloway finished.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  He doesn’t like me. I wonder why? I don’t think Hot Pants is likely to have told him much about us, if anything. Maybe because he heard I used to be a flying sergeant? And he’s not thrilled by having an ex-sergeant for a CO?

  “When I was a flying sergeant in VMF-211,” Galloway said, “I got to know Oblensky pretty well. He’s what they call ‘The Old Breed’; he’s been in the Corps since Christ was a corporal. Damned good man.”

  “So I’ve heard, Sir,” Dunn said.

  The bartender delivered the drinks.

  “Here’s to old friends,” Mary Agnes said, raising her glass. “The best kind.”

>   “How about here’s to VMF-229?” Galloway said. “And particularly to its pilots, both of whom are here with you?”

  “All right,” Mary Agnes said agreeably; and then realizing what Charley meant, she added, “Is that right? All the pilots there are is you two?”

  “That’s right,” Galloway said and then added to Dunn, “But there was a radio this afternoon ...” He stopped, took a sheet of yellow paper from his hip pocket, handed it to Dunn, and continued, “... with these names on it. They’ll be in the next couple of days.”

  Dunn took the sheet of teletype paper, read it, and handed it back.

  “Know any of those people?” Galloway asked.

  “I knew a Dave Schneider, went through Advanced with him at Pensacola, but they sent him on to multiengine. Not an F4F pilot.”

  “It’s probably the same guy,” Galloway said. “He was learning to fly R4Ds when I met him.”

  Galloway had met Lieutenant David Schneider on a very important day in his life. Not only was it the first time he had been permitted to fly since he had landed the Wildcat on Sara’s deck, but it was the day he met Mrs. Caroline Ward McNamara.

  Headquarters, USMC had laid an important mission on Quantico. They were to furnish an R4D to drop parachutists at the Marine Corps Parachute School at Lakehurst, New Jersey. It was important because Major Jake Dillon, a legendary Hollywood press agent who had come back into the Corps when the war started—he had once been a staff sergeant with the 4th Marines in Shanghai—had arranged for Time-Life to do a major story on what were being called “ParaMarines.”

  Colonel Robert T. “Bobby” Hershberger, of the 1st Marine Air Wing, decided that he could not entrust flying the plane to the only two pilots he had who were checked out in the R4D. Lieutenants David Schneider and James L. Ward simply didn’t have the necessary experience. On the flight line, however, wrench in hand, removed in disgrace from flight status, was a Tech Sergeant named Charley Galloway who not only had several hundred hours in R4Ds but had graduated from the U.S. Army Air Corps School for dropping people and equipment by parachute from R4Ds.

  After a somewhat heated telephone conversation with Brigadier General D. G. McInerney, during which both officers said things they immediately regretted, it was decided that the situation required Galloway’s restoration to flight duty for the Lakehurst mission. It was either that or run the risk of allowing a new R4D with MARINES lettered on the fuselage and a load of parachutists aboard to crash in flames before Time’s, Life‘s, and The March of Time’s still and motion picture cameras.

  Lieutenants Schneider and Ward were called into Colonel Hershberger’s office and told that they would fly the mission with Technical Sergeant Galloway, who would be Pilot-in-Command.

  Lieutenant Schneider, who was an Annapolis graduate and a career officer, was very unhappy to find himself under the orders of a Flying Sergeant. And he did nothing to conceal his unhappiness. On the other hand, Lieutenant Ward, who was a reservist, was not knocked out of joint because he had to learn from someone who knew more than he did, whatever his rank. And far more importantly, Ward had a just-divorced aunt named Caroline Ward McNamara, to whom he introduced Technical Sergeant Galloway in Philadelphia.

  “Schneider’s an absolute asshole,” Dunn said. “Annapolis. The reason he hates this war is because they have to let civilians into the Corps to fight it. Civilian savages pissing on the Corps’s sacred potted palms, so to speak ...”

  Then Dunn saw the look on Galloway’s face and stopped.

  “My mouth ran away with me, Sir, I’m sorry.”

  The test of a truly intelligent man, Galloway remembered hearing somewhere, is the degree to which he agrees with you.

  “The thing about Lieutenant Schneider, Lieutenant Dunn,” Galloway said sternly, “is that he not only is a skilled, knowledgeable pilot, but, in my judgment, he is one of those rare people who are natural fliers. With those characteristics in mind, I asked Lieutenant Schneider to join VMF-229, even though he is personally an absolute asshole. Fortunately for you—and for me too—you outrank him.”

  Dunn’s eyes widened, and then for the first time he smiled.

  “Yes, Sir, that thought has occurred to me.”

  We’re going to get along, Galloway thought, this Rebel kid is all right.

  Mary Agnes swung around on the stool so that she faced Galloway and her knee pressed against his leg.

  “Why don’t we carry our drinks into the dining room and find a table?” she asked. “They’ve got a band in there, and I’d like to dance.”

  “On the table?” Galloway asked.

  Her knees pressed harder against his leg, and her hand came down to rest on it.

  “No,” she said, giving his leg a little squeeze. “With you, silly.”

  (Three)

  THE ELMS

  DANDENONG, VICTORIA, AUSTRALIA

  1730 HOURS 28 JUNE 1942

  When the telephone rang, Captain Fleming Pickering, USNR, was in the library of The Elms, sitting in a high-backed red leather armchair, jacketless, his shoes off, his tie pulled down, and his feet on a footstool. He was just about ready to take his first sip of his first drink of the day.

  He eyed the instrument with distaste; it was sitting out of reach on a narrow table across the room. It had been a busy day, and it was his considered judgment that anything anyone on the phone wanted could wait until tomorrow morning.

  The telephone kept ringing. There was a staff of four at The Elms: a housekeeper, a maid, a cook, and a combination yardman, chauffeur, and husband to the housekeeper. They were all personal employees of Captain Pickering. The house was leased from a Melbourne banker Captain Pickering knew from before the war.

  The Vice-chairman of the Board of the Pacific & Far Eastern Shipping Corporation (that is to say, Mrs. Fleming Foster Pickering) had arranged for the salary and expense allowance of Chairman of the Board Fleming Pickering to continue while he was on “military leave” from his duties. After having been assigned quarters (a small, two-room hotel suite to be shared with a portly Army Colonel who snored) Captain Pickering had decided that since he damned well could afford something more comfortable, there was no reason not to leave the colonel to snore alone.

  Besides, he rationalized, he needed a place where he could discreetly meet people in connection with his duties. The brass hats of MacArthur’s Palace Guard could give lessons in plain and fancy gossiping to any women’s group he was familiar with. The gossip was at the least annoying, but it could also spread information that deserved to be sat upon, and at worst it could cost people their lives.

  “Christ,” Pickering asked rhetorically, vis-à-vis his domestic staff, “where the hell are they all?”

  He hauled himself out of the chair and walked across the two-story library in his stocking feet and picked up the telephone.

  “Captain Pickering.”

  “Major Banning, please.”

  It was an American voice.

  “I’m sorry, Major Banning isn’t here at the moment. I expect him within the hour. Can I take a message?”

  “Am I correct, Captain, that you’re an American officer?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “This is Commander Lentz, Captain, of Melbourne NATS.”

  It took Pickering a moment to decode the acronym: Naval Air Transport Service. Next it occurred to him—after a moment spent digesting the superior tone of the commander’s voice—that the NATS officer had jumped to the wrong conclusion: Lentz thinks I’m a Marine captain, and thus inferior in rank, rather than what I really am, an exalted four striper.

  “How may I help you, Commander?”

  “We’ve got an enlisted man down here, Captain, one of your sergeants ...”

  Bingo, I was right. He thinks I’m a Marine. Actually, I wish to God I was.

  “... he just came in from Hawaii on the courier plane. He’s headed for some outfit called Special Detachment 14. Ordinarily, I would have sent him over to the transient detachment, but h
e’s traveling on a Six-A priority, so I tried to find this Special Detachment 14 ...”

  “He’s there now, Commander? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “You people really ought to make an effort to keep us up to date on your phone numbers,” Commander Lentz said. “I spent an hour on the telephone before I managed to get through to some sergeant, who said Major Banning could be reached at this number.”

  “Tell the sergeant I’ll be there in about thirty minutes to pick him up,” Pickering said.

  “You’re going to come get him yourself?”

  “Certainly,” Pickering said. “I think it behooves those of us who are Naval officers to concern ourselves with the welfare of the enlisted men of our sister service, don’t you, Commander?”

  Commander Lentz was not stupid.

  “Yes, Sir,” he said. “Of course I do, Sir. Sir, it won’t be necessary for the Captain to come himself. I’ll arrange transportation if the Captain will give me an address.”

  “I’ll be there in thirty minutes, Commander. I know where you are,” Pickering said and hung up. His annoyance at having to drive into town was easily overwhelmed by his pleasure at having pricked the Commander’s balloon of self-importance.

  He was sitting on the footstool in front of the red leather chair tying his shoes when Mrs. Hortense Cavendish, the housekeeper, came in. She was a plump, gray-haired, motherly woman in her late fifties.

  “I’d hoped to be back before you got here,” she said.

  “No problem.”

  “I bought a couple of nice, fresh barons of lamb,” she said. “I know you like to feed Major Banning well when he comes. And Charley and I were in the country buying them, which is why we weren’t here.”

  “I’ve got to go into town,” Pickering said. “There was another young Marine for Major Banning on the courier plane. I’m going to fetch him.”

  “Couldn’t Charley fetch him?”

  “I’ll get him,” Pickering said. “What this boy needs after flying from the States is a hot meal, not a wild ride through Melbourne on the wrong side of the road with a crazy Australian at the wheel.”