Call to Arms

by W. E. B Griffin

  “Griffith thinks our organization of the 2nd Raider Battalion is the way the entire Corps should go,” Carlson said, with just a hint of smugness in his dry voice. “That is to say, six line companies and a headquarters company, as opposed to the competition’s four line companies, a heavy-weapons company, and a headquarters company. And he has made that a formal recommendation to the Commandant.”

  There was a round of applause, and Carlson grinned at his men.

  “And he agrees, more or less, with our organization2 of the companies as well,” Carlson went on. “He agrees more than he disagrees.”

  There was another round of applause.

  And then, on the subject of mortars, Carlson told them that the decision by the brass had not been made, but that he hoped it would “go our way.”

  There were two mortars available, a 60-mm and an 81-mm. The 81-mm was the more lethal weapon. It was capable of throwing a nearly seven-pound projectile 3,000 yards (1.7 miles). It was standard issue in the heavy-weapons company of a Marine infantry battalion. On the other hand, the 60-mm’s range, with a three-pound projectile, was just about a mile.

  For a number of reasons (with which McCoy, who fancied himself a decent man with either weapon, agreed completely), Carlson was opposed to the Raiders carrying the 81-mm mortar into combat. For one thing, the kind of combat the Raiders anticipated would be close range, and the 60-mm was better for that purpose. More importantly, considering that the Raiders planned to enter combat by paddling ashore in rubber boats, a ready-for-action 81-mm mortar weighed 136 pounds. It would of course be broken down for movement, but the individual components—the tube itself, and especially the base plate—were heavy as hell, and were going to be damned hard to get into and out of a rubber boat. As would the ammunition, at seven pounds per round.

  It was not, furthermore, a question of choosing either the 60-mm or the 81-mm. The TO&E provided for both 81-mm and 60-mm mortars in each company; and that meant that if they did things by the book and took the 81-mm too, they would have to wrestle two kinds of mortars and two kinds of ammunition into and out of the rubber boats.

  But Carlson told him that he thought he had come up with a convincing argument against the Raiders following standard Marine Corps practice requiring an 81-mm mortar platoon in each company: Such a platoon would exceed the carrying capacity of the APDs.3 If the 81-mm mortar platoon went along on the APDs, it would be necessary to split the companies between several ships. That obviously was a bad idea.

  “But there are those,” Carlson said, “close to the Deity in Marine Corps heaven who devoutly believe the Corps cannot do without the eighty-one-millimeters. So I have proposed that we drag them along with us—without personnel—in case we need them. In which case, they would be fired by the sixty-millimeter crews.”

  McCoy thought Carlson was absolutely right about the mortars, and he hoped that the brass would let him have his way. But he wondered if they actually would. He had not forgotten Chief Warrant Officer Ripley’s disturbing remark about the “brass really having a hard-on for Carlson.” He knew they hadn’t changed that attitude because the Commandant had blown his stack about spying on Carlson. A lot of the brass, and even people like Captain Jack Stecker, thought the whole idea of Raiders was a lousy one. Which meant that a lot of people were still going to be fighting Carlson at every step. If Carlson said the moon was made of Camembert, they would insist it was cheddar.

  “That will be all, gentlemen,” Colonel Carlson said, a few minutes and a few minor items later. “Thank you. If there are no questions…”

  There were questions. There was always some dumb sonofabitch who didn’t understand something. But finally the questions had been asked and answered, and Carlson waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. In a regular unit, the exec would have called attention and then dismissed them after the commanding officer had walked away. Doing it Carlson’s way, McCoy thought, made more sense.

  Colonel Carlson called out to him as McCoy started to get to his feet.

  “McCoy, stick around please. I’d like a word with you.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” McCoy said.

  Carlson went into the building, after motioning for McCoy to follow. When he went inside, the sergeant major waved him into Carlson’s office. Captain Roosevelt was there.

  “Stand at ease, McCoy,” Carlson said, and searched through papers on his desk. Finally he found what he was looking for and handed it to McCoy. It was a TWX.

  ROUTINE

  HEADQUARTERS USMC WASH DC 1545 21 APR 1942

  COMMANDING OFFICER

  2ND RAIDER BN

  CAMP ELLIOTT CALIF

  THERE EXISTS THROUGHOUT THE MARINE CORPS A CRITICAL SHORTAGE OF OFFICER PERSONNEL FLUENT IN FOREIGN LANGUAGES. RECORDS INDICATE THAT 2ND LT KENNETH R MCCOY PRESENTLY ASSIGNED COMPANY B 2ND RAIDER BN IS FLUENT IN CHINESE JAPANESE AND OTHER FOREIGN LANGUAGES. UNLESS HIS PRESENT DUTIES ARE CRITICAL TO THE 2ND RAIDER BATTALION IT IS INTENDED TO REASSIGN HIM TO DUTIES COMMENSURATE WITH HIS LANGUAGE SKILLS.

  YOU WILL REPLY BY THE MOST EXPEDITIOUS MEANS WHETHER OR NOT SUBJECT OFFICER IS CRITICAL TO THE MISSION OF YOUR COMMAND.

  BY DIRECTION

  STANLEY F. WATT COLONEL USMC OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT CHIEF OF STAFF FOR PERSONNEL

  “You don’t seem especially surprised, McCoy,” Colonel Carlson said in Cantonese.

  “No, sir,” McCoy answered, in the same language. “Major Banning told me there was a shortage of people who could speak Chinese and Japanese.”

  Carlson smiled, and nodded at Roosevelt. “The Big Nose doesn’t know what we’re talking about, does he?”

  Chinese often referred to Caucasians as “Big Noses.”

  “No, sir,” McCoy said, now in English.

  “Then in English,” Carlson said.

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” Captain Roosevelt said.

  “Well, McCoy, are you critical to the Raiders?” Carlson asked.

  “I don’t know, sir,” McCoy said.

  “Well, let me put it this way, then, Lieutenant,” Carlson said. “In your opinion, can you make a greater contribution to the Corps doing what you’re doing with the Raiders, or doing whatever Major Banning has in mind for you to do? And I don’t think there is any more question in your mind than there is in mine that Ed Banning is behind that TWX.”

  “Straight answer, sir?”

  “I certainly hope so,” Carlson said.

  “I think I can do more here, sir,” McCoy said.

  “Huh,” Carlson snorted. “Go buy yourself a bigger hat, Lieutenant McCoy. I am about to designate you as Critical to the Second Raiders.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “Not even the Big Nose is critical,” Carlson said, in Cantonese, and smiled benignly at Captain Roosevelt, who smiled back. “Only you and me, McCoy.”

  McCoy grinned back.

  Still in Cantonese, Carlson went on: “I don’t think you need to know the name of the island, yet, McCoy, so I won’t give it to you. But for our first mission, we are going to conduct a raid on a certain island. That’s subject to change, of course, but I have a hunch it won’t. The reason I’m telling you this much is that it is currently projected that we will be transported in submarines, rather than the converted destroyers. That will limit the force to no more than two hundred people. I want you—alone, don’t confer with anyone else—to start thinking how we’ll have to structure that force, and equip it.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” McCoy said, in English. “Does that mean I will go with the assault force, sir?”

  “Uh-huh,” Carlson said. “I thought you’d want to go.”

  “Oh, yes, sir,” McCoy said.

  And then he thought, Oh, shit! What the hell have I done?

  XX

  (One)

  The San Carlos Hotel

  Pensacola, Florida

  8 August 1942

  Second Lieutenant Richard J. Stecker, USMC, was in direct violation of the uniform regulations of the U.S. Navy Air Stati
on, Pensacola, which, in addition to specifying in finite detail what a properly dressed officer would wear when leaving the post, took pains to specifically proscribe the wearing of flight gear except immediately before, while participating in, and immediately after aerial flight.

  He was wearing a gray cotton coverall, equipped with a number of zippered pockets. This was known to the Naval Service as “Suit, flight, aviator’s, cotton, tropical,” and to Stecker, who had copied Pick Pickering’s description, as “Birdman’s rompers.” Sewn to the breast of the rompers was a leather patch, stamped in gold with Naval aviator’s wings and the words “STECKER, R.J. 2ND LT USMC.” Pick said they did that so that professional Marines could look down and see who the Marine Corps said they were.

  The flight suit was dark with sweat. Enormous patches of it spreading from the back and the armpits and the seat nearly overwhelmed the dry areas. The patches were ringed with white, remnants of the salt taken aboard in the form of salt pills and then sweated out.

  Stecker was aware that he was learning bad habits from Pick Pickering. Or, phrased more kindly, that Pickering had given him insight into the functioning of the Naval establishment that had not previously occurred to him. Previously, he had obeyed regulations, no matter how petty, because they were regulations and Marine officers obeyed regulations. He had in fact cautioned Lieutenant Pickering (a friendly word of advice from a professional Naval establishment person to a temporary officer and gentleman): “You’re gonna get your ass in a crack if they catch you driving home in your flight suit,” he’d told him.

  Lieutenant Pickering had not only been unrepentant, but had patiently pointed out to Lieutenant Stecker the flaws in his logic.

  “First of all, I don’t intend to get caught. I drive through the woods, not past the Marine guard at the gate. Secondly, I think the MPs have better things to do than establish roadblocks to catch people wearing flight suits. And I come into the hotel through the basement, not the lobby. I think the chances of my getting caught run from slim to none. But, for the sake of argument, what if I’m caught? So what?”

  “You’ll find yourself replying by endorsement,”1 Stecker argued.

  “And I will reply by endorsement that since officers who live in quarters on the post can go from the flight line to their quarters in their rompers, I thought I could go directly to my quarters so attired. And that if I have sinned, I am prepared to weep, beat my breast, pull out my hair, and in other ways manifest my shame and regret.”

  “You can get kicked out of here.”

  “Oh, bullshit! We’re nearly through this fucking course. They might throw us out for showing up on the flight line drunk, or something else serious like that. But so much time and money has been invested in us, and they need pilots so bad, they’re not going to throw anybody out for wearing rompers off base.”

  And he was right, of course.

  Lieutenant Stecker had spent three hours that afternoon between six and ten thousand feet over Foley, Alabama. He had been at the controls of a Grumman F4F-3 wildcat, engaged in mock aerial combat with an instructor pilot.

  The Wildcat had been rigged with a motion picture camera. The camera was actuated when he activated the trigger that would normally have fired the six .50-caliber Browning machine guns with which the Wildcat was armed.

  The film was now being souped, and they would look at it in the morning. Dick Stecker knew that in at least four of the engagements, the film from the gun camera would show that he had successfully eluded his IP and then gotten on his IP’s tail and “shot him down.”

  It had been almost—not quite, but almost—pleasant tooling around at six, seven thousand feet with the twelve hundred horsepower of the Wright XR-1830-76 moving the Wildcat at better than three hundred knots. And, although he had consciously fought getting cocky about it, it had been satisfying to realize that he had acquired a certain proficiency in the Wildcat. The odds were that in about two months, certainly within three, he would be flying a Wildcat against the Japanese.

  When the training flight was over, however, it was not at all pleasant. He opened the canopy before he had completed his landing roll at Chevalier Field. By the time he had taxied to the parking ramp, the skin of the aircraft was too hot to touch, and he was sweat-soaked. The temperature had been over one hundred degrees for three days, and the humidity never dropped out of the high nineties.

  He actually felt a little faint as he walked to the hangar, carrying a parachute that now seemed to weigh at least one hundred pounds. His IP came into the hangar red-faced and sweat-soaked, and went directly to the water cooler, where he first drenched his face in the stream, and then filled a paper cup and poured it over his head.

  The post-flight critique was made as brief as possible. Then the IP had walked to his car in his rompers and drove off. That left Stecker with a choice: He could be a good little second lieutenant who obeyed all the rules. Or he could do what he ended up doing. What he did was get in his car and drive through the woods to the Foley Highway and then to the hotel.

  He parked the car behind the hotel and entered through the basement. He planned to use the service elevator, but it wouldn’t answer his ring, so he had to summon a passenger elevator.

  With my luck, he thought, the elevator will stop in the lobby, answering the button-push of the base commander, who will be accompanied by the senior Marine Corps officer assigned to Pensacola.

  But the elevator rose without stopping to the top floor, and there was no one in the small foyer when the door opened. Stecker crossed quickly to the penthouse door, put his key in, and opened it. A wave of cold air swept over him. The basement of the building was not air-conditioned, and the allegedly air-conditioned elevators seldom were.

  Stecker emitted a deep, guttural groan of relief.

  Then he worked the full-length zipper on the rompers to its lower limit and spread the sweaty material wide. When the cold air struck his lower chest, he groaned appreciatively again.

  Then he walked into the penthouse and found it was occupied.

  The occupant was a female. The female was clothed in brief shorts and a T-shirt decorated with a red Marine Corps insignia. And she was smiling at him. Not a friendly smile, Stecker quickly relized, but a “see the funny man, ha ha” smile.

  “What am I expected to say in reply to your groans?” Ernie Sage asked. “You Tarzan, me Jane?”

  “Not that I really give a damn,” Dick Stecker said, “but how did you get in here?”

  “I told them I was Pick’s sister,” Ernie said. “Where is he?”

  “I’m Dick Stecker,” Dick said.

  “How about this to start a conversation, Dick Stecker?” Ernie said. “‘Your fly’s open.’”

  “Oh, Jesus,” he groaned and dived for it.

  “To quickly change the subject, you were telling me where Pick is,” she said.

  “He took off about an hour after we did,” Stecker said. “He should be here in about an hour.”

  “Took off for where?”

  “Local,” Stecker said. “Training flight. Mock dogfights.”

  She turned and went to the bar, returned with a bottle of beer, and handed it to him.

  “You look like you could use this,” she said. When she saw the surprise on his face, she added, “Yes, I did make myself right at home, didn’t I?”

  “You didn’t say who you were?”

  “Just another Marine camp-follower,” she said. “Mine has gone overseas, so I figured I’d better latch on to another.”

  “Ah, come on,” Stecker said.

  “I’m Ernie Sage,” she said. “I’m the closest thing Pick has to a sister.”

  “Oh, sure. The one he’s always talking to on the phone. In California.”

  “Used to,” she said. “My second lieutenant’s gone. Now I’m back in New York.”

  “I’m Dick Stecker,” Stecker repeated.

  “I know,” she said. “I know your father. I like him; Pick likes you. Our acquaintance is
off to a flying start.”

  “What brings you here?” Stecker asked.

  “I have been holding Pick’s hand about the Sainted Widow for months. Now it’s his turn to hold mine for a while.”

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  “Can you miraculously transport me to Camp Catlin?”

  “I never even heard of it,” Stecker said.

  “That’s surprising,” Ernie said. “According to Pick, you’re a walking encyclopedia of military lore.”

  “Where is it?”

  “It’s in—on?—Hawaii. And if you can’t miraculously transport me there, why don’t you take a shower? I can smell you all the way over here.”

  “Do you always talk like that?” Stecker asked, shocked but not offended.

  “Only to friends,” Ernie said. “And any son of Captain Jack NMI Stecker, any friend of Pick’s, et cetera et cetera…”

  “I’m flattered,” Stecker said.

  “And well you should be,” Ernie said. “Go bathe; and when you come out, you can give me a somewhat more accurate picture of the Sainted Widow than the one I got from Pick.”

  “How do you know the one you got from Pick isn’t accurate?”

  “No one, not even me, is that perfect,” Ernie said. She pointed toward one of the bedrooms. “Go shower.”

  Stecker took a shower, and put on a khaki uniform. When he came out, Ernie Sage was leaning on the glass door leading to the patio.

  “How much further along are you than Pick?” she asked, smiling at him.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’re wearing wings,” Ernie said. “I thought you got those only when you’re finished training.”

  “When you finish the school,” he said. “We got rated the first of the month.”

  “Then you’re finished?”

  “Yes, we are. Now we’re getting trained in F4F-3s.”

  “I thought—Pick told me—they were going to send you to Opa-something for that?”

  “Opa-locka,” Stecker said. “Farther down in Florida. They usually do. But they have some F4F-3s, and qualified IPs here…and Pick and I make up a class of two, so we stayed here.”