Call to Arms

by W. E. B Griffin

  On 3 December 1941, the USS Enterprise launched at sea twelve Grumman F4F fighters, of Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-211, under Major Paul Putnam, USMC. They landed on the Wake Island landing strip that afternoon, and steps were immediately taken to begin bulldozing revetments for the aircraft.

  On Sunday, 7 December 1941 (Saturday, 6 December 1941 in Hawaii) Major Devereux gave his command the day off. His Marines swam in the surf, played softball, and many of them—most of the young, recently recruited enlisted men—hurried to complete letters home. The letters would be carried to civilization aboard the Pan American Philippine Clipper moored in the lagoon, which would take off at first light for Guam.1

  Reveille sounded at 0600, 8 December 1941. While the Marines had their breakfast, the Pan American crew prepared the Philippine Clipper for flight.

  At 0650, the radio operator on duty at the air station communications section, attempting to establish contact with Hickam Field, Hawaii, began to receive uncoded messages, which did not follow established message-transmission procedures, to the effect that the island of Oahu was under attack. He informed the duty officer, who went to Major Devereux.

  At 0655, the Philippine Clipper rose from the lagoon and gradually disappeared from sight in the bright blue morning sky.

  When he was told of the “Oahu under attack” message, Major Devereux attempted to contact Commander Cunningham by telephone, but there was no answer.

  When he hung up the telephone, it immediately rang again. It was the communications shack; there was an urgent message from Hawaii, now being decoded.

  “Has the Clipper left?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Call it back,” Devereux ordered, and then sent for his field music—his bugler.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Sound ‘call to arms,’” Major Devereux ordered.

  Admiral Husband Kimmel’s Pacific Fleet, and the navy base at Pearl Harbor, had been grievously wounded by the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941, but that is not the same thing as destroyed. The battleship force of the Pacific Fleet had been essentially wiped out at its moorings (“Battleship Row”) at Pearl Harbor, together with a number of other men-of-war and supply ships, and there had been great loss of aircraft and matériel.

  But the Fleet was not totally lost, nor were its supplies.

  There were three aircraft carriers available—the Saratoga, the Enterprise, and the Lexington—as well as a number of cruisers, plus a large number of smaller men-of-war.

  On December 13, 1941, Admiral Kimmel (who expected to be relieved at any minute as the Navy, and indeed the nation, searched for somebody on whom to blame the Pearl Harbor disaster) ordered Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher to reinforce Wake Island.

  Fletcher put out the same day from Pearl Harbor with the aircraft carrier Saratoga; the cruisers Minneapolis, Astoria, and San Francisco; nine destroyers; a fleet oiler; and the transport Tangier.

  Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-211, equipped with Grumman F4F-3 Wildcats, was aboard the Saratoga (in addition to Saratoga’s own aircraft), and the 4th Defense Battalion, USMC, was aboard the Tangier. The relief force carried with it nine thousand shells for Devereux’s old five-inch battleship cannon, twelve thousand three-inch shells for his antiaircraft cannon, and three million rounds of belted .50-caliber machine-gun ammunition.

  The aircraft carrier Enterprise, and its accompanying cruisers and destroyers, was ordered to make a diversionary raid on the Japanese-held Marshall Islands. The carrier Lexington and its accompanying vessels put to sea to repel, should it come, a second Japanese attack on the Hawaiian Islands.

  At 2100 hours, 22 December 1941, a radio message was flashed from Pearl Harbor, ordering the Saratoga Wake Island relief force back to Hawaii. It had been decided at the highest echelons of command that Wake Island was not worth the risk of losing what was in fact one third of U.S. Naval strength in the Pacific. When the message was received, the Saratoga was five hundred miles (thirty-three hours steaming time) from Wake.

  At shortly after one in the morning of December 23, 1941, Japanese troops landed on Wake, near the airstrip.

  That afternoon, his ammunition gone, his heavy weapons out of commission, and greatly outnumbered, Major Devereux was forced to agree with Commander Cunningham that further resistance was futile and that surrender was necessary to avoid a useless bloodbath.

  Major Devereux had to roam the island personally to order the last pockets of resistance to lay down their arms.

  Four hundred seventy officers and men of the Marine Corps and Navy and 1,146 American civilian workmen entered Japanese captivity.

  I

  (One)

  Wake Island

  1200 Hours, 18 December 1941

  Ensign E. H. Murphy, USN, had planned the flight of his Consolidated Aircraft PBY5 Catalina to Wake Island with great care. It wasn’t a question only of finding the tiny atoll, which of course required great navigational skill, but of reaching Wake when there was the least chance of being intercepted by Japanese aircraft.

  His Catalina was a seaplane (though the PBY5-A, fitted with retractable gear, was an amphibian) designed for long-range reconnaissance. Its most efficient cruising speed was about 160 MPH, so it had little chance of running away from an attacker. The high-winged, twin-engine Catalina had three gun ports, one on each side of the fuselage mounting a single .50-caliber machine gun, and one in the nose with a .30-caliber machine gun.

  If Ensign Murphy’s Catalina encountered one of the Japanese bombers that had been attacking Wake on an almost daily basis, all the Japanese would have to do was slow down to his speed, and, far out of range of his .50-caliber machine guns, shoot him down at his leisure with his 20-mm machine cannon.

  It was a five-hour flight from Guam. Murphy took off at first light in the hope that he could be at Wake before the Japanese began their “scheduled” bombing attack.

  Hitting Wake on the nose was skill; finding it covered with a morning haze was good luck. He landed in the lagoon and taxied to the Pan American area. Commander Cunningham’s requisition of Pan American’s Philippine Clipper had been almost immediately overridden by Pacific Fleet, which had plans for the use of the aircraft itself, and it had flown on to Guam, carrying hastily patched Japanese bullet holes in its fuselage.

  Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-211 was down to two Wildcats, although Major Putnam told Ensign Murphy that he hoped to get a third Wildcat back in the air within hours with parts scavenged from wrecked airplanes.

  Murphy carried with him official mail for Commander Cunningham and Major Devereux, including the last known position of the Saratoga relief force, but the Navy had not risked one of its precious few Catalinas solely to deliver messages. Many Catalinas had been destroyed on December 7, and what planes were left were in almost constant use.

  But there was on Wake one of the Marine Corps’ few highly skilled communications officers, Major Walter L. J. Bayler, USMC, who had previously been assigned to the USS Wright and had come to Wake with Commander Cunningham. Bayler’s services were desperately needed on Midway Island and the decision had been made to send for him, even at the great risk of losing him, and the Catalina carrying him, in the attempt.

  Bayler spent the afternoon of December 20 collecting official documents (including casualty lists) from Cunningham and Devereux, and then personal messages from the Marines of the garrison, for delivery, when it could be arranged, to their families.

  The next morning, Ensign Murphy lifted the Catalina from the Wake lagoon and pointed the nose toward Pearl Harbor, eight hours and 1,225 miles distant. The Catalina was the last American aircraft to visit Wake Island until the war was over.

  At Pearl Harbor, mechanics swarmed over the Catalina to ready it for another flight. Three hours after it landed, it was airborne again with another flight crew, this time bound for the Philippines, where the Japanese were approaching Manila, and demolition at the Cavite U.S. Navy Base had already begun.

  The Catalina remained in the
Philippines only long enough to drop off its passengers—a Navy petty officer who was a Japanese linguist, and an Army Ordnance Corps major, a demolitions expert—and its mail bags. It loaded aboard the outgoing cargo, mail bags, and its Pearl Harbor-bound passengers while it was taking on fuel. These were a U.S. Foreign Service officer, an Army colonel of Artillery, and a Marine Corps second lieutenant.

  Manila Bay was choppy, and the Catalina smashed heavily into unyielding water several times before the pilot was finally able to get it into the air. When they’d reached cruising altitude, he went back into the fuselage to see if any damage had been done to the aircraft—in particular to the floats—and to the passengers. He found the Army colonel and the Foreign Service officer doing what they could to bandage the Marine Corps second lieutenant.

  Although it had not been visible under the lieutenant’s uniform when he boarded the Catalina, his body was bandaged. The bone-jarring bounces of the Catalina as it had taken off had ripped loose four or five of the two dozen or so stitches holding an eight-inch gash in the young Marine officer’s side together. There was some bleeding, and he was obviously in pain, but he refused, rather abruptly, the pilot’s offer of a syringe of morphine.

  They rigged a sort of bed for him out of life preservers and blankets, but that was all that could be done for him until the seaplane reached Pearl Harbor.

  An hour out of Pearl, the young Marine went forward to the cockpit. The pilot was surprised to see him.

  “Feeling better?” he asked.

  The young Marine nodded.

  “In a couple of minutes, I’ll radio ahead, and they’ll have medics meet us,” the pilot said.

  “I thought maybe you’d do that,” the young Marine said. “That’s why I came up here. Don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, unless I get put in a hospital, my orders will carry me to Washington,” he said. “I can get myself rebandaged there.”

  “You may not make it to Washington, in your shape.”

  “Then in San Francisco, or Diego, wherever they land me. Do me a favor, just don’t say anything.”

  “Suit yourself,” the pilot said, after a moment’s thought.

  “Thank you,” the young Marine officer said, and he went back into the fuselage.

  Curious, the pilot took his flight manifest out and looked at it. It gave no identification beyond, “McCoy, Kenneth J. 2nd Lt USMCR,” but then the pilot noticed that Second Lieutenant McCoy was listed first on the manifest. Passengers were listed in order of their travel priority, which meant that McCoy had a higher priority than even the Foreign Service big shot.

  The pilot was curious about that, and said so to the copilot.

  “He’s a courier,” he said. “Didn’t you see the briefcase?”

  The pilot shook his head. “No.”

  “He had it when he came on board, chained—actually handcuffed—to his wrist.”

  “I didn’t notice,” the pilot said.

  “And when he took off his jacket, he had a .45 stuck in his belt, and a knife strapped to his arm.”

  “I wonder what’s in the briefcase?” the pilot said.

  “I don’t know,” the copilot replied, adding, “but I don’t think I’d want to try to take it away from him.”

  (Two)

  The Willard Hotel

  Washington, D.C.

  1215 Hours, 26 December 1941

  “Peacock Alley,” which ran through the Willard Hotel from Fourteenth Street to Pennsylvania Avenue, was where, since before the Civil War, the elegant ladies of the nation’s capital (and, some said, the more expensive courtesans) and their elegant gentlemen had strutted…like peacocks.

  It was ornately decorated, still with Victorian elegance, and along the alley were small alcoves, furnished with tables and chairs where conversations could be held in private. The cynics said that more politicians had been bought and sold in the alcoves of Peacock Alley than in all the smoke-filled rooms in the United States combined.

  Thomas C. Wesley, a tall, fifty-year-old, portly, ruddy-faced full colonel of Marines, got out of a 1941 Chevrolet staff car on Pennsylvania Avenue and entered the building. He removed his overcoat and hat and put them in care of the cloakroom. He tugged at the skirt of his blouse and checked the position of his Sam Browne leather belt, and then walked slowly down Peacock Alley all the way to the stairs leading down into the lobby, obviously looking for someone. When he didn’t find him, he stationed himself halfway along the corridor and waited.

  At just about the same time, a tall, thin, somehow unhealthy-looking man entered the Willard from Fourteenth Street. He was wearing a gray snap-brim felt hat, which he removed (exposing his balding head) as he came through the revolving door. He headed across the old and battered, but still elegant, lobby toward Peacock Alley shrugging awkwardly out of his gray topcoat. By the time he saw Colonel Wesley, he had it draped none too neatly over his left arm.

  Colonel Wesley nodded stiffly, perhaps even disapprovingly, when he saw the tall, thin, unhealthy-looking man in the badly fitting blue pinstripe suit.

  “Rickabee,” he said.

  “Colonel,” Rickabee said, then looked around Peacock Alley until he found an empty table and two chairs in one of the alcoves and made a gesture toward it. Lieutenant Colonel F. L. Rickabee was carried on the Table of Organization of Headquarters, USMC, as “special assistant to the Public Affairs Officer,” although his real duties had nothing to do with public relations.

  Colonel Wesley marched to the alcove and sat down, leaving to Rickabee the other chair, which faced the wall. Rickabee moved the chair so that he, too, could look out into Peacock Alley.

  “It’s been some time, Rickabee, hasn’t it?” Colonel Wesley said, and then, before Rickabee had a chance to reply, said what was actually on his mind: “Are you people exempt from the uniform requirements?”

  “It’s left to General Forrest’s discretion, sir, who wears the uniform and who doesn’t. The general feels I’m more effective in mufti.”

  Brigadier General Horace W. T. Forrest, USMC, was Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, USMC.

  “General Forrest explained the situation to you?” Colonel Wesley asked.

  “He said that you and General Lesterby had been handed a very delicate problem by the Major General Commandant, and that I was to do what I could to help. How can we help you, sir?”

  “He thought you might be interested in this,” Colonel Wesley said, taking an envelope from his lower blouse pocket and handing it to Rickabee.

  There was no question in Lieutenant Colonel Rickabee’s mind who “He” was. Colonel Thomas C. Wesley was one of a handful of officers at the absolute upper echelon of the Marine Corps. They were somewhat derisively known as “the Palace Guard,” because of their reputation for doing the bidding of, and protecting from all enemies, foreign and domestic, the Commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps.

  “Captain James Roosevelt has been good enough to offer some suggestions on how he believes the Marine Corps should organize its own version of a Communist Route Army,” Colonel Wesley said dryly.

  “I thought he was working for Colonel Wild Bill Donovan,” Rickabee said.

  “Not any longer,” Wesley said. “He now works for Lieutenant Colonel Evans Carlson.”

  Rickabee took from the envelope a thin sheath of carbon sheets. They were the fifth or sixth carbon, he concluded. They were just barely readable.

  A waiter appeared.

  “Nothing for me, thank you,” Colonel Wesley said.

  “I’ll have a Jack Daniel’s,” Lieutenant Colonel Rickabee said. “No ice, and water on the side.”

  He sensed Colonel Wesley’s disapproval.

  “The way I handle drinking on duty, Colonel,” Rickabee said, “is that for the first twenty-four consecutive hours I have the duty, I don’t touch alcohol. After that…”

  “Do what you like, Rickabee,” Colonel Wesley said.

  Rickabee returned to reading, very car
efully, the sheath of carbon copies Wesley had given him. Finally, he finished and looked at Wesley.

  “Very interesting,” he said. “Where did you get this?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say,” Wesley said.

  “You think he’s actually going to submit it?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “And apparently you don’t think that General Vogel is going to call him in for a little chat and point out that it’s just a touch pushy for a reserve captain to tell him, much less the Commandant, how the Corps should be run?”

  “I believe the letter will be forwarded to the Commandant,” Wesley said. “I’m interested in your reaction to it.”

  “You are, or He is? Does He know you’re showing this to me?”

  Colonel Wesley nodded his head, signifying, Rickabee decided, that Wesley was running an errand.

  “I would really like to know where you got this, where He got it,” Rickabee said.

  “I can assure you, Colonel,” Wesley said, “that it is authentic.”

  “I’d still like to know how it came into His hands,” Rickabee insisted. “That could be very important.”

  “The document was typed, from a handwritten draft, by a clerk, a corporal, who thought the sergeant major should see it. He made six, instead of five carbons. The sergeant major sent it on to…sent it on here.”

  “To you or to Him?” Rickabee asked.

  “To Him,” Wesley said.

  The waiter, an elderly black man, delivered Rickabee’s bourbon on a silver tray.

  “I believe I will have one,” Colonel Wesley said. “The same, with ice…. This is obviously a very delicate situation,” he continued, when the waiter had gone.

  “Well, there’s one way to handle it,” Rickabee said. “I know several people at San Diego who would be happy to run Carlson over with a truck. Better yet, a tank.”

  Wesley was not amused; it showed on his face.

  “Then you think that Colonel Carlson has a hand in this?” he asked.

  “That seems pretty obvious,” Rickabee said. “Have you read his reports, Colonel? Or his books?”