Call to Arms

by W. E. B Griffin

  He closed the door to the office after them.

  “He’s pretty good at that, Casimir,” he said. “Do you think maybe he was an altar boy, too?”

  “Jesus!” Kamnik said, and then spotted the sergeant of the guard. “Wait outside please, Sergeant,” he ordered.

  When he looked at Grotski, Grotski was grinning broadly.

  “Now what?”

  “It’s what is known as psychological warfare,” he said. “I’ll let him keep it up a while until I’m sure he is in the right state of mind, and then I’ll offer him a chance to redeem himself.”

  “How?” Kamnik ordered.

  “You ever hear of a Lieutenant Colonel Carlson?” he asked.

  Kamnik shook his head. “No.”

  “Well, he’s apparently on the general’s shitlist, too. Some kind of a nut. He’s being given some kind of commando outfit. The general said when I got McCoy out of here, he thought it would be nice if McCoy volunteered for it. I had the feeling he wouldn’t be all that unhappy if McCoy got himself blown away as one of Carlson’s commandos.”

  “And you think he’ll volunteer?”

  “I’m not going to let him off his knees until he does,” Commander Grotski said.

  XIV

  (One)

  The San Diego Yacht Club

  1400 Hours, 28 February 1942

  The Yellow Cab dropped Second Lieutenant Kenneth J. McCoy, USMCR, wearing dungarees, at the end of Pier Four at the yacht club. The driver was not accustomed to carrying dungaree-clad Marines—for that matter Marines period—to the yacht club. And he watched curiously as McCoy walked down the pier and finally crossed the gangplank onto the Last Time. Then he shrugged his shoulders and drove off.

  McCoy slid open the varnished teak door to the lounge and stepped inside.

  Ernie Sage and Dorothy Burnes were there, listening to the radio. Dorothy was sitting uncomfortably in one of the armchairs, draped in a tentlike cotton dress. Ernie Sage, wearing very brief shorts and a T-shirt, jumped up from one of the couches when she saw him.

  “What are you doing home so early?” she asked as she crossed the room to him. She grabbed his ears, pulled his face to hers, and kissed him wetly and noisily on the mouth. “Not that I’m not glad to see you, as you can see.”

  Dorothy laughed.

  “They gave me the afternoon off,” McCoy said.

  “You should have called me, I would have come for you,” Ernie said. She put her arm around him and pressed against him, confirming his suspicion that there was nothing but Ernie under the T-shirt.

  “It was quicker catching the bus,” he said.

  “And how did you get here?”

  “In a cab.”

  “And what did that cost?”

  “Buck and a half, with the tip.”

  “Mr. Moneybags,” Ernie said.

  Ernie’s attitude toward money—she was a real cheapskate—was another of the things about her that continually surprised him. With the exception, maybe, of Pick Pickering, she was the richest person he had ever known, but she was really tight about some things, like his taking a taxicab. It really bothered her.

  He reached down and pinched her tail under the shorts, confirming that there was nothing but her under there, either.

  She yelped in mock protest and jumped away from him.

  “You want something to eat? A beer? A drink? Anything?”

  “I thought you would never ask,” McCoy said. “About anything.”

  “You better watch him.” Dorothy laughed. “You would be amazed the kind of trouble that sort of thing can get you into.”

  “How goes it, Dorothy?” McCoy asked.

  “How do you think?” Dorothy replied, patting her stomach. “I’m beginning to think it has to be triplets.”

  “Well?” Ernie asked.

  “Well, what?”

  “You want something to eat? Or to drink?”

  “That wasn’t the original offer,” McCoy said.

  “It must be something the Corps puts in their food,” Dorothy laughed.

  “Well?” Ernie pursued.

  “What I need now is a shower,” McCoy said, and started across the lounge to the passageway to the cabins.

  “Why did they give you the afternoon off?” Ernie said. “I thought you were supposed to get transferred today?”

  “I was,” he said. “And tomorrow they’re sending me to Northern California.” He saw the look on her face, and quickly added, “Just for a couple of days.”

  Then he entered the passageway to avoid further explanation.

  Ernie was in their cabin when he came naked out of the bathroom. She had a plate in one hand and a bottle of Schlitz in the other.

  “Sardines on saltines,” she said. “And Schlitz. And I could be talked into anything, too, if that was a bona fide offer.”

  And then she looked at him, and her face colored, and she laughed, deep in her throat.

  “And I see it was,” she said.

  “You do that to me,” he said. “I think it’s something you put in the sardines.”

  “I wish I knew what it was,” she said as she put the tray and the beer down on the bedside table. “We could give the formula to my father on a royalty basis and get rich.”

  She pushed the shorts down off her hips and then pulled the T-shirt over her head.

  “Oh, baby,” McCoy said huskily as she walked to him and put her arms around him.

  “Are you going to tell me what you’re going to do in Northern California?” Ernie asked, her face against his chest.

  “I’ve got to call,” he said. “You can listen.”

  “Before, or after?”

  “After,” he said.

  “You don’t know how lucky you are you gave the right answer,” Ernie said as she pulled him backward onto the bed.

  “Colonel Rickabee.” The voice came over the telephone flat and metallic.

  “Sir, I’m sorry, I asked for Captain Sessions,” McCoy said.

  “What’s the matter, McCoy?” Rickabee replied. “You don’t like me?”

  Ernie, who was lying half on top of McCoy, giggled, and then she moved higher up so that she could hear better.

  When there was no reply from McCoy, Colonel Rickabee said, “What is it exactly that you feel you can tell Sessions and can’t tell me?”

  “Nothing, sir,” McCoy said.

  “Good!” Rickabee said, gently sarcastic.

  “I went over to the Second Raider Battalion today, sir.”

  “How did it go?”

  “It went smoothly, sir. I was further assigned to Baker Company, as a platoon leader, but that’s not what they’re going to have me doing.”

  “What happened, McCoy? Take it from the beginning. Tell me about the red flags, and the a cappella choir singing the Internationale.”

  “Nothing like that, sir,” McCoy said, chuckling.

  “Did you see Colonel Carlson?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Captain Roosevelt?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Was either of them howling at the moon?”

  Ernie giggled so loudly that Rickabee heard her.

  “Is there someone with you?” he asked, now deadly serious. “I presume you are using a secure line?”

  “The line is secure, sir,” McCoy said.

  “Okay, once again. Take it from the beginning.”

  “The adjutant was waiting for me when I showed up to take the reveille formation, sir. He said he had my orders transferring me to the Raiders, and there was no sense complaining about them, because the battalion commander had already gone to the Second Joint Training Force personnel officer trying to keep me.”

  “Another of many ways Colonel Carlson is endearing himself to the rest of the Corps,” Rickabee said dryly, “is by kidnapping their best people. Go on.”

  “So they sent me over to the Second Raider Battalion in a truck,” McCoy said. “And I reported to the adjutant. And he sent me in to rep
ort to Colonel Carlson.”

  “Roosevelt?”

  “I didn’t see him until later, sir.”

  “Go on.”

  “Colonel, it was just like my reporting in to the Third Battalion,” McCoy said. “Colonel Carlson shook my hand and welcomed me aboard. Told me I was joining the best outfit in the Corps, and that it was a great opportunity for me, a great challenge…the usual bullshit.”

  “I hope Carlson didn’t sense your cynicism,” Rickabee said. “You are supposed to be bright-eyed and eager, McCoy.”

  “Colonel, he makes sense,” McCoy said. “I wasn’t making fun of him. What I was trying to say was that it was like reporting in anywhere else.”

  “As opposed to what?”

  “I read that letter, sir, the one Roosevelt wrote, where he wanted to have ‘leaders’ and ‘fighters’ and the rest of that Red Army stuff.”

  “And there was none of that?” Rickabee asked.

  “Not what I expected, sir.”

  “Explain.”

  “First, he talked about what the Raiders were supposed to do. I mean, the raid business, shaking the Japs up by hitting them where they didn’t expect to get hit. The Commando business. And then he said that the mission was so important that the Corps had given him top priority for personnel and equipment, and that meant the personnel—”

  “Let me interrupt,” Rickabee said. “Do you think he believes the Corps thinks the Raider mission is so important that he has carte blanche?”

  “Sir?”

  “That he can have anything, do anything, he wants?”

  “He sure sounded like he did. But on the other hand, you could hardly expect him to say anything else.”

  Rickabee snorted. “Go on.”

  McCoy mimed wanting a cigarette. Ernie leaned across him to the bedside table and picked up his Lucky Strike package and Zippo. In the process, she rubbed her breast across his face. McCoy wondered if it had been an accident, and realized, pleased with the realization, that it had not been.

  “Then he said because he had such high-class enlisted men, it would be possible to treat them differently.”

  “How differently?” Rickabee asked softly.

  “I want to say ‘better,’” McCoy said. “But that’s not quite it. He said they can be given greater responsibility…. Colonel, what I think he was saying is that he thinks you can get more out of the men if they’re making the decisions. Or some of the decisions. Or if they think they’re making the decisions.”

  “You sound as if you’re a convert,” Rickabee said, dryly.

  “When Colonel Carlson says it, it doesn’t sound so nutty as when I try to tell you about it,” McCoy said.

  “Anything specific?” Rickabee asked.

  “He said that he’s been both an enlisted man and an officer, and that what really pissed him off as an enlisted man was when the officers had special privileges and rubbed them in the enlisted men’s faces, and that he wasn’t going to let that happen in the Raiders.”

  “Interesting,” Rickabee said.

  “I think I know what he means, Colonel,” McCoy said. “He doesn’t want to burn down the officers’ club. All he’s saying is that if you’re in the field, and the men are sleeping on the ground, the officers should not have bunks and sheets.”

  “Neither do I,” Rickabee said. “That doesn’t sound like the revolution.”

  “I’m beginning to think, Colonel, that if Roosevelt hadn’t written that nutty ‘fighters’ and ‘leaders’ letter—”

  “But he did,” Rickabee interrupted. “And if he hadn’t, there probably would be no Raider battalions.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did Colonel Carlson say anything else out of the ordinary? Anything unusual?”

  “No, sir.”

  “How long were you with him?”

  “About fifteen minutes, sir. Then he sent me down to the company.”

  “Baker Company, you said?”

  “Yes, sir. Captain Coyte, Ralph H.”

  “What about him?”

  “Looked like a real Marine to me. Seemed to know what he was doing. And like a nice guy.”

  “And he gave you a platoon?”

  “Yes, sir, but I never got there. He was still feeling me out. I hadn’t been there ten minutes, when Captain Roosevelt showed up.”

  “What did he want?”

  “He told Captain Coyte that he was going to borrow me. He told him I used to be in a heavy-weapons company in the Fourth Marines and knew about weapons, so he was going to send me up to some Army ordnance depot near San Francisco to make sure the Army didn’t give us all junk when we drew weapons.”

  “Okay,” Colonel Rickabee said. “That makes sense.”

  “And then he gave me the rest of the day off.”

  “What did you think of Roosevelt?”

  “I liked him, too,” McCoy said. “He acts like a Marine.”

  “And he wasn’t walking around with a copy of the Communist Manifesto in his pocket?”

  “No, sir.” McCoy chuckled.

  “Well, it looks like you’re in, and nobody’s suspicious,” Rickabee said. “So all you have to do is keep your mouth shut and your eyes open.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want to make the point, McCoy, that we want to hear about anything unusual, anything unusual.”

  “Yes, sir,” McCoy replied. “The weapons are a little unusual, sir.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Well, what I’m going to draw—try to draw—from the Army, are shotguns and carbines.”

  The U.S. Carbine, Caliber .30, M1 was an autoloading shoulder arm with a fifteen-round magazine. It fired a pistol-sized cartridge, and was intended to replace the .45 Colt automatic pistol. The later M2 version was fully automatic, and there was later a thirty-round magazine.

  “That’s just the sort of thing I mean,” Rickabee said. “By shotguns, I presume you mean twelve-gauge trench guns?”

  “Yes, sir. From the First World War. And carbines. I’ve never even seen a carbine.”

  “Well, then, if you’re the weapons expert, it will be a case of the blind leading the blind, won’t it?” Rickabee said.

  “I guess so,” McCoy said.

  “Anything else?”

  “Roosevelt told me that they’re going to give everyone a knife and a pistol,” McCoy said.

  “I heard about that,” Rickabee said. “Anything else?”

  “I ran into Gunnery Sergeant Zimmerman.”

  “You knew he was being sent out there, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, sir. Captain Sessions told me.”

  “Sessions felt,” Colonel Rickabee said, “and I agreed, that it might be handy for you to have somebody out there you could trust. Another set of eyes.”

  “Zimmerman thinks that the Raiders are a great idea,” McCoy said.

  “You didn’t tell him what you’re doing out there, did you?”

  “No, sir, of course not.”

  “Then leave it that way, McCoy. Zimmerman can be an extra set of eyes and ears in the ranks for you.”

  “I understand, sir,” McCoy said. “He wouldn’t understand that. I’m not so sure I do.”

  “And that’s all?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I relay herewith the best wishes of Captain Ed Banning,” Rickabee said.

  “Thank you, sir,” McCoy said. “He’s with you in Washington?”

  “Actually, he’s in the Naval hospital in Brooklyn,” Rickabee said.

  “What’s wrong with him?” McCoy asked quickly.

  “He was blind for a while,” Rickabee said. “You didn’t know that?”

  “No, sir,” McCoy said, shocked.

  “Well, it was apparently psychosomatic,” Rickabee said. “Which means no evident physical damage. He can see now, but the medics want to check him out carefully.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay, that seems to be it. Check in with me when you come back from S
an Francisco. Let me know how you made out with the Army. And anything else that comes to mind.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  “So long, McCoy,” Colonel Rickabee said. “Keep up the good work.”

  The line went dead.

  McCoy put the handset back in its cradle, and then looked at Ernie.

  “Any questions?” he asked.

  “Sergeant Zimmerman’s here?” Ernie asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Why don’t you have him to dinner?” Ernie said.

  “It doesn’t work that way,” McCoy said. “Officers don’t socialize with enlisted men.”

  “You’re a snob,” she said. “Who would ever know?”

  “What would Marty Burnes think?” McCoy said, teasingly.

  “Fuck him, it’s our boat,” Ernie said.

  McCoy chuckled. “Fuck him?” he parroted. “When I met you, you didn’t use words like that.”

  “When I met you, I was a virgin,” Ernie said. “Cussing like a Marine is not the only bad habit I learned from you.”

  She lowered her head to his chest and nipped his nipple, and then she jumped out of bed and went into the bathroom.

  McCoy picked up the telephone again and called Camp Elliott and spoke with the sergeant major of the Second Raider Battalion. He told him that if it were possible, he would like to have Gunnery Sergeant Zimmerman go with him to Northern California.

  “We were in the Fourth Marines together, Sergeant Major, and he knows about weapons,” McCoy said.

  “And, with respect, sir,” the sergeant major said, chuckling, “you old China Marines stick together, don’t you?”

  “Let me tell you, sometime, Sergeant Major, how it was in the Old Corps.”

  “Do that,” the sergeant major, who was twice McCoy’s age, said, laughing. “I’ll have Zimmerman at the motor pool when you get there, Lieutenant.”

  (Two)

  U.S. Navy Hospital

  Brooklyn Navy Yard

  2 March 1942

  The headshrinker was wearing a white medical smock with an embroidered medical insignia on the breast, but there was no name tag with his rank on it. And since the Navy did not wear rank insignia on the collar points of their white shirts, Banning could not tell what rank he was. He could have been anything, to go by his age, from a junior grade lieutenant to a lieutenant commander.