Call to Arms

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Yes, sir.” McCoy said.

  “How’d you get your commission, McCoy?” Carlson asked.

  “When I came home from China, I applied for officer school and they sent me,” McCoy said.

  “You like being an officer?”

  “It pays better,” McCoy said.

  Carlson chuckled.

  “Most second lieutenants, faced with a malfunctioning Browning, would get a an armorer to fix it,” Carlson said. “Not dirty their hands on it themselves.”

  “Most second lieutenants wouldn’t have known what was wrong with it,” McCoy said.

  “I was hoping you would say you don’t mind getting your hands dirty if that’s the quickest solution to a problem.”

  “Yes, sir,” McCoy said. “That, too.”

  “I’ve been given command of a special battalion, McCoy,” Carlson said. “What we’ll be doing is something like the British Commandos. Amphibious raids on Japanese-held islands; probably, later, working behind Japanese lines. I’m recruiting officers for it.”

  “I heard something about that, sir,” McCoy said.

  “What did you hear?”

  “I heard suicide troops, Colonel,” McCoy said. “That you didn’t want married men.”

  “Well, let me correct that,” Carlson said. “Not suicide troops. Only a fool would volunteer to commit suicide, and the one thing I don’t want is fools. I don’t want married men because I don’t want people thinking about wives and children…because that would raise their chances of getting killed. I want them to think of nothing but the mission. If they do that, they stand a much better chance of staying alive. You follow the reasoning?”

  “Yes, sir,” McCoy said.

  “And the training is going to be tough, and there’s going to be a lot if it, and a married man would get trouble from his wife because he didn’t come home at night and on weekends. My philosophy is that well-trained men stand a better chance of staying alive. You follow me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  McCoy had seen enough of Lieutenant Colonel Evans F. Carlson to make a fast judgment, but one he was sure of. He judged that Carlson was a good officer. McCoy had noticed, for instance, that the officers and noncoms were now doing what they were supposed to be doing, instead of standing around bullshitting in the shade of the range building; and he was sure that Carlson had straightened them out. And McCoy was impressed with Carlson, the man. There was a quiet authority about him. He didn’t have to wave his silver lieutenant colonel’s leaf in somebody’s face to command respect.

  His eyes were soft, but intelligent. He certainly didn’t look crazy. Or even like he’d gone Chink. McCoy had no idea what a Communist looked like.

  McCoy was worried about the intelligent eyes. They made him think that there was very little that got by Lieutenant Colonel Carlson. He wondered how long it would be before Carlson began to suspect—if he didn’t already suspect—that the big brass would send somebody to keep an eye on him, to see if he was crazy, or a Communist, or whatever. And once he figured that out, it wouldn’t be a hell of a jump for him to figure out that the spy was Second Lieutenant McCoy.

  Shit! Why didn’t they send somebody else? I like this guy.

  (Two)

  Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

  17 January 1942

  The blind men evacuated from Corregidor aboard the Pickerel were taken from the wharf to the Naval hospital by ambulance.

  There they were given thorough physical examinations to determine if they had any medical condition that required immediate attention. None did. One of them—who had for some unaccountable reason regained his sight—even demanded immediate return to duty, but that was out of the question. He was told that because his shrapnel wounds had not completely healed, he would be evacuated to the United States with the others.

  Actually, it had been decided that this man’s case indicated the necessity of a psychiatric examination. His temporary blindness was psychosomatic in nature, and that was sometimes an indication of psychiatric problems. But telling him that was obviously not the thing to do; it might even aggravate the problem.

  The nine blind men and the one who had regained his sight were placed in the medical holding detachment for transport (when available) to the United States for further medical evaluation and treatment.

  The first available shipping space turned out to be aboard a civilian freighter under contract to the Navy. When this came to the attention of a senior medical officer, a Navy captain, he found the time to examine the ship, and he saw that its berthing space was temporary. Its number-two and number-three holds had been temporarily rigged with bunks consisting of sheets of canvas stretched between iron pipe. The head available to the sightless men was primitive, the ladders steep, and there were many places where a blind man could smash against sharp objects.

  The Navy doctor then went to see the personnel shipment officer on the staff of the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, to ask him if they couldn’t do a little better for the blind men in the way of accommodation.

  The personnel shipment officer was also a Navy captain. Aware that the doctor might actually outrank him, he didn’t stand him tall as he would have liked to do, but rather contented himself with a lecture, which touched on the fact that he was a busy man, that there was a war on, and that medical officers should really stick to medicine and leave the conduct of the Navy to line officers.

  This encounter was followed, as soon as the doctor could find a telephone, by a call to the Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet. The doctor had a little trouble getting the Commander in Chief onto the phone, but eventually he heard the familiar voice.

  “Did you really tell my aide,” the admiral asked, “that you’d boot his ass from here to Diego if he didn’t get me on the horn?”

  “Or words to that effect,” the doctor said.

  “What’s the problem, Charley?” the admiral said, suppressing a chuckle. The admiral had known the doctor for twenty years; they had once shared a cabin as lieutenants on the Minneapolis.

  “One of your chickenshit part-time sailors wants to send those poor bastards, the blind guys the Pickerel brought here from Corregidor, to the States on a cargo ship. The pasty-faced, candy-ass sonofabitch told me with a straight face there’s a war on and everyone has to make sacrifices.”

  “I gather you are referring to my personnel shipping officer?” the admiral asked, dryly.

  “I think his name is Young,” Paweley said. “Tall, thin sonofabitch. Came in the Navy the day before yesterday, and thinks he’s Bull Halsey, Junior.”

  “I’ll take care of it, Charley,” the admiral said. “How many of them are there?”

  “Ten.”

  “I’ll take care of it, Charley,” the admiral repeated. “Now you calm down.”

  “Sorry to bother you with this, Tom. I know you’re busy—”

  “Never too busy for something like this,” the admiral said.

  The next afternoon, the departure of the regularly scheduled courier flight to the United States was delayed for almost an hour. Already loaded and in the water, the Martin PBM-1 was ordered back to the seaplane ramp, where its seven passengers and six hundred pounds of priority cargo were offloaded.

  Nine blind men were loaded aboard under the supervision of a Marine captain. All of the seven passengers removed from their seats were senior in grade to the captain, and all had urgent business in the United States, and protest was made to the personnel shipment officer.

  It was to no avail. The personnel shipment officer, the previous afternoon, had had a brief chat with the Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet. No one had ever talked to him like that before in his life.

  (Three)

  USMC Recruit Training Depot

  Parris Island, South Carolina

  0845 Hours, 19 January 1942

  The motor transport officer, the officer charged with operating the fleet of trucks and automobiles for the recruit depot, was Fi
rst Lieutenant Vincent S. Osadchy. A lithe, deeply tanned twenty-eight-year-old, he was a mustang with eleven years in the Corps. He had been an officer three months, and the motor transport officer nine days. The previous transport officer, a major, as the TO&E (Table of Organization & Equipment) called for, had been transferred. He knew what he was doing. Osadchy, who didn’t, had been given the job until such time as an officer of suitable grade and experience could be found.

  Lieutenant Osadchy drove himself in a jeep from the motor pool to the brick headquarters building, not sure of his best plan of attack. Should he make a display of anger? Or should he get down on his knees before the personel officer and weep?

  The personnel officer was a major, a portly, natty man completely filling his stiffly starched khaki shirt. He wasn’t bulging out of it, nor really straining the buttons; but, Osadchy thought, there would not be room inside the shirt for the major and, say, a hand scratching an itch.

  “Hello, Vince,” the major said, smiling. “Can I offer you some coffee?”

  “Yes, sir,” Osadchy said. “Thank you. And if you have one, how about a weeping towel?”

  The major chuckled. He poured coffee from a thermos into a china cup and handed it to Osadchy.

  “I thought maybe you’d drop by,” he said.

  “Can I deliver a lecture on what it takes to operate a motor pool?”

  “By all means,” the major said.

  “Aside from vehicles,” Osadchy said, pronouncing the word “vee-hic-els,” “and tools and POL [petrol, oil and lubricants], it requires five or six good noncoms, corporals, or sergeants who know the difference between a spark plug and a transmission, and at least one, but preferably two or three, officers who know at least half as much as the noncoms.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” the major said, smiling warmly at him.

  “A month ago, our motor pool had both,” Osadchy went on. “And then the Corps transferred out all—not some, all—the non-coms who could find their ass with both hands without a map.”

  “Very colorful,” the major said, chuckling.

  “And then the Corps, in its wisdom, sent us one sergeant who had previously seen a truck with the wheels off. Actually a pretty good man, even if he just got out of the hospital. But then—the Corps giveth and the Corps taketh away—the Corps transferred the motor transport officer out.”

  “The Corps is having a few little personnel problems, Vince,” the major said. “It’s supposed to have something to do with there being a war on.”

  Osadchy had to smile, although he didn’t want to. He was afraid this would happen, that the major would hear him out, be as pleasant as hell, and give him no help whatsoever.

  “Which left the motor pool in the hands of an officer who knows as much about operating a motor pool as he does about deep-sea fishing. And of course the one sergeant who does know what he’s doing.”

  “And now the Corps says promote the sergeant to gunnery sergeant and transfer him, right? Is that the source of your unhappiness, Vince?”

  “Yes, sir,” Osadchy said. “Sir, don’t misunderstand me. Sergeant Zimmerman is a good man. I’d like to see him as a staff sergeant, or a technical sergeant. But gunny? I was a gunny. Zimmerman is not the gunny type.”

  “In other words, if you could have your way, Zimmerman would be promoted, but not to gunnery sergeant, and kept here?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I know, Vince,” the major said, “that you really believe that what I do here all day is think up ways to torment people like you—”

  “No, sir,” Osadchy protested.

  “So, you will doubtless be surprised to hear that when the TWX”—a message transmitted by teletype—“came down, and I reviewed both your situation and Sergeant Zimmerman’s record jacket, I came to the same conclusion. I TWX-ed back the day before yesterday, asking for reconsideration of the transfer. I said Zimmerman is critical here.”

  “And?” Osadchy asked.

  “And when there was no reply, I got the Old Man’s permission to call up and ask.”

  “And?” Osadchy asked.

  “Pay attention, Lieutenant,” the major said. “See for yourself how field-grade officers at the upper echelons of command are willing to grovel before the feet of their betters for the good of the command.”

  He picked up his telephone.

  “Sergeant Asher,” he said, “get a control number and then put in a call for me to Enlisted Assignment, G-One, Headquarters, Marine Corps. I want to speak to the officer in charge.”

  He put the telephone back in its cradle.

  “Sometimes, Vince,” he said, “it works. And sometimes it doesn’t. I haven’t called lately. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  It took a minute or two to put the call through. The conversation itself took just over a minute.

  “I understand, sir. Thank you very much,” the major said, then hung up and turned to Lieutenant Osadchy.

  “This time we weren’t lucky,” he said. “Both the decision to make Zimmerman a gunnery sergeant and to transfer him came from ‘higher authority.’ Since he carefully avoided saying what higher authority, I’m pretty sure he meant Intelligence. That make any sense to you?”

  “No, sir,” Lieutenant Osadchy said. “Zimmerman…Zimmerman’s not an intelligence type. He’s just a good China Marine motor sergeant.”

  “Well, that’s it, Vince,” the major said, “There’s nothing else I can do. I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks for the try, sir.”

  The major called in his clerk and told him to cut orders promoting Sergeant Zimmerman to gunnery sergeant with date of rank 31 December 1941, and then to cut orders transferring Gunnery Sergeant Zimmerman to the 2nd Separate Battalion, USMC, at Quantico, Virginia; effective immediately.

  (Four)

  San Diego, California

  0830 Hours, 19 January 1942

  The Martin PBM-1 flying boat made its approach to San Diego harbor straight in from the Pacific Ocean. Her twin sixteen-hundred-horsepower Wright R-2600-6 engines had been droning steadily for nearly eighteen hours. It was three thousand miles from Pearl to Diego, a long way in an airplane that cruised at 170 knots.

  When she was down to two thousand feet, and her speed retarded, her pilot ordered “floats down,” and the copilot operated the lever that caused wing-tip floats to be lowered from the high, gull-shaped wings.

  “Navy Four Two Four,” the tower called, “be on the lookout for one or more small civilian vessels east end landing area.”

  “Roger,” the copilot said. “We have them in sight. Four Two Four on final.”

  The Martin came in low and slow, touched down in a massive splash, bounced airborne, and then touched down again in an even larger splash and stayed down.

  “Four Two Four down at three-one past the hour,” the copilot reported.

  “Four Two Four, steer zero-thirty degrees, a follow-me boat will meet you and direct you to the seaplane ramp.”

  “Roger.”

  A gray Navy staff car and two ambulances, one a glistening Packard with chrome-plated flashing lights and siren on the roof, and the other a Dodge 3/4-ton, painted olive drab and with large red crosses painted on the sides and roof, waited for the PBM to taxi across the bay to the seaplane ramp.

  The PBM got as close to the seaplane ramp as her pilot intended to take her under her own power. He cut the engines. A sailor walked down the ramp into the water until it was chest high. He reached over his head and hooked a cable to a ring in the nose of the PBM. An aircraft tractor at the end of the ramp pulled the PBM out of the water by the cable far enough up the ramp so that it could back up to the PBM and hook up a rigid tow bar. Then it pulled it into the parking area.

  The doors of the ambulances opened, and doctors and corpsmen went to the hatch on the side of the flying boat’s fuselage. A doctor and two corpsmen entered the fuselage. And then Captain Ed Banning climbed out.

  A technical sergeant, a stocky man in his thirties, got ou
t of the staff car and walked to him, saluted, and asked, “Captain Banning?”

  Baning returned the salute.

  “I’ll go with the men in the ambulances,” Banning said.

  The technical sergeant handed him a sheet of teletype paper.

  PRIORITY

  SECRET

  HQ USMC WASH DC X 16 JANUARY 1942 X COMMANDING GENERAL X MARINE BARRACKS PEARL HARBOR HAWAII X INFO COMMANDING GENERAL MARINE BARRACKS SAN DIEGO X

  REFERENCE YOUR TWX SUBJECT ARRIVAL PEARL HARBOR CAPT EDWARD J BANNING USMC X PHYSICAL CONDITION PERMITTING SUBJECT OFFICER WILL PROCEED HQ USMC BY FIRST AVAILABLE AIR TRANSPORTATION X PRIORITY AAA2 AUTHORIZED X COMMGEN MARBAR PEARL WILL ADVISE COMMGEN MARBAR DIEGO AND HQ USMC ATTN G2 ETA CONUS AND ETA WASH X

  BY DIRECTION X

  H W T FORREST BRIG GEN USMC

  “How’d you know it was me, Sergeant?” Banning asked.

  “They called—a Captain Sessions called—this morning, after they heard you’d left Pearl, sir. Captain Sessions described you. And he said to tell you ‘Welcome home,’ sir.”

  Banning nodded.

  “We’ve got you a seat on the two thirty-five Western flight to Los Angeles, sir, connecting at five oh-five with a United flight to Washington. That’s if you feel up to it.”

  Banning nodded again, but didn’t reply. He didn’t trust his voice to speak.

  “It’s up to you, sir. We can reschedule you later, if you’re tired. My orders are to stick with you and do whatever has to be done.”

  Banning looked at the sergeant for a long moment, until he was reasonably sure that when he spoke he would display no more emotion than is appropriate for a Marine officer.

  “What has to be done, Sergeant,” he said, “if I am to get on civilian airplanes without disgracing the Corps, is to acquire a decent-looking uniform. And to do that, I’m going to have to get some money. How do I do that?”

  “That’s all laid on, sir,” the technical sergeant said. “Captain Sessions suggested that there might be a problem with your pay and luggage.”

  XII

  (One)

  San Diego, California

  0830 Hours, 19 January 1942