"All things considered, Major Pickering," Lieutenant Patterson said, "I very much regret ever having met you."
Major Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, who was also wearing foul-weather gear and an inflated life jacket, and was strapped into a second bosun's chair, smiled, shrugged, held out both hands in front of him, and said, "Jeez, Doc, I thought you liked me."
There was laughter from the dozen Marine aviators who were on hand to watch Good Ol' Pick get transferred to the destroyer.
Another Marine aviator in a flight suit walked up to them.
"I don't suppose it occurred to any of you guys that you might be in the way down here," Lieutenant Colonel William C. Dunn, USMC, said.
Lieutenant Colonel Dunn was not in a very good mood. He had just finished what he considered the most unpleasant duty laid upon a commanding officer.
And it was still painfully fresh in his mind:
USS BADOENG STRAIT (CVE-116)
MARINE AIR GROUP 33
AT SEA
16 OCTOBER 1950
MRS. BARBARA C. MITCHELL
APARTMENT 12-D, "OCEANVIEW"
1005 OCEAN DRIVE
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
DEAR BABS:
BY NOW, I'M SURE THAT YOU HAVE BEEN OFFICIALLY NOTIFIED OF DICK'S DEATH.
I THOUGHT THAT YOU WOULD BE INTERESTED IN WHAT I CAN TELL YOU OF WHAT HAPPENED.
WE WERE IN A SIX-CORSAIR FLIGHT OVER NORTH KOREA, NEAR HUNGNAM, ON THE EAST COAST OF THE KOREAN PENINSULA. OUR MISSION WAS IN SUPPORT OF THE I REPUBLIC OF KOREA CORPS, WHICH IS IN PURSUIT OF RETREATING NORTH KOREAN ARMY FORCES.
WHAT WE WERE CHARGED WITH DOING WAS INTERDICTING NORTH KOREA TROOPS TO BOTH SLOW THEIR RETREAT AND HIT THEM AS HARD AS WE CAN. WHEN THE SOUTH KOREANS DID NOT HAVE A TARGET FOR US, WE MADE SWEEPS OVER THE AREA, LOOKING FOR SUITABLE TARGETS OURSELVES.
ON THE AFTERNOON OF 14 OCTOBER, I DIVIDED THE FLIGHT INTO THREE TWO-CORSAIR ELEMENTS, WITH MYSELF AND MY WINGMAN, LIEUTENANT STAN SUPROWSKI, IN THE LEAD AND FIVE HUNDRED FEET ABOVE THE SECOND ELEMENT, WHICH WAS CAPTAIN JACK DERWINSKI, WHOM I KNOW YOU KNOW, AND WHO WAS A CLOSE FRIEND OF DICK'S. LIEUTENANT SAM WILLIAMS WAS FLYING AS JACK'S WINGMAN. THEY WERE FIVE HUNDRED FEET ABOVE THE THIRD ELEMENT, WHICH WAS DICK, WITH CAPTAIN LESTER STEPPES FLYING ON HIS WING.
A LITTLE AFTER TWO-THIRTY, FROM MY GREATER ALTITUDE, I WAS ABLE TO SEE A COLUMN OF TROOPS MIXED WITH SOME TRUCKS AND OTHER VEHICLES. TO MAKE SURE THEY WERE NOT FRIENDLY FORCES, I PASSED THE WORD THAT I WOULD MAKE A PASS OVER THEM, AND THAT IF THEY WERE INDEED THE ENEMY, THE OTHERS WERE TO ATTACK, STARTING WITH SUPROWSKI, WHO WAS NOW A THOUSAND FEET BEHIND ME, AND THEN THE OTHER TWO ELEMENTS.
I MADE THE PASS, AND RECEIVED SOME SMALL-CALIBER FIRE, WHEREUPON I GAVE THE ORDER FOR THE OTHERS TO ATTACK.
I THEN PULLED UP, MADE A 180-DEGREE TURN, AND SHORTLY THEREAFTER WAS FLYING A THOUSAND FEET OR SO BEHIND DICK AND CAPTAIN STEPPES AT NO MORE THAN TWO HUNDRED FEET OFF THE DECK. I COULD SEE DICK AND LESTER'S TRACER AMMUNITION STRIKING THE ENEMY COLUMN.
AND THEN, TO MY HORROR, I SAW DICK GO IN. ACTUALLY, IT HAPPENED SO QUICKLY THAT THE FIRST SIGN OF TROUBLE I SAW WAS THE FIREBALL OF DICK'S AIRCRAFT.
THERE IS NO QUESTION WHATEVER IN MY MIND THAT HE DIED INSTANTLY, AND IT IS ENTIRELY LIKELY THAT DICK WAS STRUCK AND KILLED BY ANTIAIRCRAFT MACHINE-GUN FIRE BEFORE HIS CORSAIR CRASHED.
ON MY FIRST PASS OVER THE CRASH SITE—SECONDS LATER— THERE WAS NOTHING TO BE SEEN BUT THE FIREBALL. ON SUBSEQUENT PASSES, AFTER THE FIRE HAD BURNED ITSELF OUT, I WAS FORCED TO CONCLUDE THAT NO ONE COULD HAVE SURVIVED THE CRASH.
ON RETURNING TO THE BADOENG STRAIT, I WAS ABLE TO MAKE CONTACT WITH A MARINE UNIT ON SHORE WHICH HAS ACCESS TO AN H-19 HELICOPTER, AND THEY ARE AS THIS IS WRITTEN IN THE PROCESS OF GETTING DICK'S REMAINS. I KNOW THEY WILL DO THEIR VERY BEST, NOT ONLY AS FELLOW MARINES, BUT BECAUSE AMONG THEM IS A MASTER GUNNER WHO KNEW DICK IN NORTH CAROLINA, AND HELD HIM IN BOTH HIGH ESTEEM AND AFFECTION.
AS SOON AS I LEARN ANYTHING ABOUT THIS, I WILL IMMEDIATELY LET YOU KNOW.
I DON'T THINK I HAVE TO TELL YOU HOW ALL THE. MARINES IN MAG33 FELT ABOUT DICK. HE WAS A SUPERB PILOT, AND A FINE MARINE OFFICER, AND WE SHALL ALL MISS HIM VERY MUCH.
THIS WILL PROBABLY OFFER LITTLE IN THE WAY OF CONSOLATION, BUT I HAVE JUST BEEN NOTIFIED THAT MY RECOMMENDATION FOR THE AWARD OF THE DISTINGUISHED FLYING CROSS HAS BEEN APPROVED. THAT WILL BE HIS THIRD AWARD OF THE DFC.
IF THERE IS ANYTHING I CAN DO TO BE OF SERVICE AT ANY TIME, PLEASE LET ME KNOW.
SINCERELY,
William C. Dunn
WILLIAM C. DUNN
LIEUTENANT COLONEL, USMC
COMMANDING
Dunn walked up to Pickering.
"Jesus, Billy," Pickering said. "How about cutting a little slack? The guys just came to see me off."
Dunn didn't respond directly. He thrust a large oilskin envelope at Pickering. "Can I rely on you to get this in the mail as soon as you get to Japan?" he asked.
"Depends on what's in it," Pick said.
"My condolence letter to Babs Mitchell."
Pick's smile faded. "Sure," he said, and took the envelope and stuffed it inside the foul-weather gear.
Dunn walked to the open door and peered out.
He saw that while weather conditions could not—yet—be accurately described as a storm, there were strong winds, five- to eight-foot swells, and it was raining, sometimes in gusts.
He saw that as the Mansfield and Badoeng Strait moved through the sea, with an intended space of fifty feet between them, they did not move up and down in unison. Only when the Mansfield, moving upward, for example, was exactly on a level with the Badoeng Strait, moving downward, was the cable stretched between them fairly level.
At all other times, it formed a loop, with one of the vessels at the top of the loop and the other at the bottom.
In addition, if the seas caused one vessel to lean to port and the other to starboard, the cable would be subject to a stress capable of snapping it as they moved apart unless additional cable was released from the winch. Conversely, if the vessels leaned toward each other, the lower part of the loop tended to go into the water, unless the cable was quickly winched in.
Dunn pulled his head in and looked at Chief Petty Officer Felix J. Orlovski, who had been in the Navy longer than many of his sailors were old.
"How are we doing with this, Chief?"
"We're about to make a test run, sir," the chief said, and pointed upward to the cable. A third bosun's chair was hooked to it.
"What's that strapped inside?" Dunn asked.
"The doc's medical bag, sir, and some weights to bring it to two hundred pounds. You want me to go ahead, sir?"
Dunn nodded, and Chief Orlovski bellowed, "CHAIR AWAY!"
The chair began to move between the ships. When it was almost exactly in the middle between them, the two vessels leaned toward each other. The loop in the cable dropped the bosun's chair to the surface of the sea, where it sank briefly beneath it.
When the two ships leaned away from each other, the loop straightened and the bosun's chair rose out of the water. As it continued to move toward the Mansfield, everyone watching the "transfer" could see that Lieutenant Patterson's medical bag and the weights that had been in the seat were no longer there.
Major Pickering said, "I am offering three-to-five the doc never makes it"— there was appreciative laughter from the pilots—"in which case, the colonel's going to have to think of some better way to get me off this vessel."
More laughter.
Dunn looked coldly at Pickering but said nothing.
He had been giving Pickering a lot of thought ever since the Air Force pilot had relayed McCoy's "Bingo, heads up" message.
His first reaction had been personal: joy and relief that Pickering had not perished in some desolate rice paddy or at the end of some North Korean's bayonet. That was understandable. They had been close friends since Guadalcanal, when, flying VMF-229 Grumman Wildcats off of Fighter One, Second Lieutenant Pickering had been
First Lieutenant Dunn's wingman.
His second reaction, he'd originally thought, was sort of cold-blooded professional. Pickering's return to the Badoeng Strait after everyone—including himself—had decided he wouldn't come back at all was going to do a great deal to restore the sagging morale Dick Mitchell's death had caused among his pilots.
The first unkind or unpleasant thought had come when the Army pilot had flown the black H-19A out to the Badoeng Strait. For one thing, he had heard and believed that helicopters—particularly new ones, and the H-19A was as new as they came—were notoriously unreliable. Somebody who knew what he was talking about had told him that if it were not for the helicopter's ability to land practically anywhere—or, for that matter, to flutter without power to the ground in what they called an "autorotation"—they would be banned as a general hazard to mankind.
It was well over one hundred miles from Socho-Ri to where the Badoeng Strait cruised in the Sea of Japan. Finding the ship itself was risky. And if the H-19A had engine trouble, the "can land anywhere" and "autorotation" safety features would be useless at sea. It could flutter to the sea intact, of course, but then it would immediately begin to sink.
Dunn hadn't thought the H-19A would have life jackets—much less a rubber lifeboat—aboard, and he checked, and it didn't. Everybody on board would have died if they hadn't been able to make it to the Badoeng Strait.
And that was only the beginning of the problem. The Army aviator who had flown the machine had never landed on an aircraft carrier before. Dunn had admired his courage, and later his flying skill, but he had thought that if it hadn't been for Pick trying to become the first Marine locomotive ace, he wouldn't have been shot down, and no one would have had to risk their lives to save his ass.
That Pick had not been brought up short by a direct order to stop flying all over the Korean landscape looking for a locomotive to shoot up instead of what he was supposed to do, was what was known at the Command and General Staff College as a failure of command supervision. Major Pickering's asshole behavior had been tolerated, not stopped, by his commander, whose name was Dunn, William C.
Phrased another way, what that meant was that Colonel Billy Dunn was really responsible for all the lives risked, and all the effort spent, to save Pick Pickering's ass, because if he had done his job, Pick would not have been shot down trying to become the first locomotive ace in the Marine Corps.
"You ready, Doc?" Chief Orlovski asked.
"As ready as I'll ever be," Patterson replied.
"CHAIR AWAY!" Orlovski bellowed.
Dr. Patterson, in disturbingly quick order, felt himself being hauled up vertically, then moving horizontally off the Badoeng Strait, then sinking suddenly toward the Sea of Japan, then felt his feet being knocked out from under him as they actually encountered the Sea of Japan, then rising vertically and sideways at once, and then having strong male arms wrapped around him, and then dropping with a thump to the deck as someone released the bosun's chair from the cable.
Major Pickering turned to Lieutenant Colonel Dunn.
"I really don't want to do that, Billy," he said.
"Shut up, Pick," Dunn said, not very pleasantly.
Two sailors, supervised by a chief petty officer, began to attach Major Pickering's chair to the cable.
"As a matter of fact," Major Pickering said, "I'll be goddamned if I'll do that." He looked over his shoulder, saw Chief Orlovski, and ordered: "Get me out of this thing, Chief."
Pick started to unfasten the straps, and was startled to find Colonel Dunn's hand roughly knocking his fingers away from the buckle.
"Hook him up, Chief," Dunn ordered. "He's going."
"I am like hell!" Pick protested.
"You're going, Pick," Colonel Dunn said. "Goddamn you!"
"In my delicate condition, I really think it's ill-advised," Pick said lightly, and added, "I really would prefer to wait for weather that will permit me to fly off this vessel, as befitting a Marine officer, aviator, and gentleman, if that's all right with you, Colonel, sir."
"No, it's not all right with me, you self-important sonofabitch," Dunn said furiously. "Your delicate condition is your own goddamn fault. And we both know it." Dunn turned to Orlovski: "Snap it up, Chief!"
"What the hell is wrong with you, Billy?" Pick demanded.
"There's not a damn thing wrong with me. Your problem is that you have never, not fucking ever, really understood you're a Marine officer who does what he's ordered to do."
"What brought this on?" Pick asked, genuinely surprised at Dunn's tone.
"You really don't care how much trouble your childish behavior has caused, do you? Or how many good people have put their necks out to save you from the consequences of your sophomoric showboating, do you?"
"Jesus Christ!" Pick said softly.
"Haul him away, Chief!" Dunn ordered coldly.
Chief Petty Officer Felix J. Orlovski bellowed, "CHAIR AWAY!"
Ninety seconds later, after a brief but thoroughly soaking dip in the Sea of Japan, Major Pickering was sitting on the deck of the USS Mansfield.
A ruddy-faced chief bent over Pickering to help him out of the bosun's chair.
"I'm really sorry you got dunked, Major," he said, obviously meaning it. "It was the last goddamn thing I wanted to have happen to you."
"Chief, the skipper says the major is to go to his cabin," a voice said.
Pickering moved his head and saw a full lieutenant standing beside the chief.
"You all right, sir?" the lieutenant asked.
"I'm fine," Pick said.
The chief and the lieutenant hauled him to his feet and gently led him through a port into the Mansfield's superstructure.
Pick felt the Mansfield lean as she turned away from the Badoeng Strait.
[FOUR]
USAF Airfield K-16
Seoul, South Korea
175O 16 October 195O
Major William R. Dunston, TC, USA, was waiting in the passenger section of base operations at K-16 when the 1500 courier flight from Haneda arrived.
He saluted somewhat sloppily when Pickering walked into the building, trailed by Banning and Hart.
Pickering restrained a smile when he saw that Dunston, who was not what could be described as a fine figure of a man, and additionally was wearing mussed, somewhat soiled fatigues and could have used a haircut, had failed the First Impressions Test of Colonel Edward J. Banning, USMC.
"Bill, this is Colonel Ed Banning," Pickering said.
"Welcome to the Land of the Morning Calm," Dunston said. "Your reputation precedes you."
"Does it really?" Banning said a little stiffly.
Pickering thought: What's ruffling Banning's feathers? Dunston's appearance? Or that he hasn't used the word "sir"?
"Yeah," Dunston continued, "when the Killer heard you were coming, he told me all about you."
Pickering saw that Hart was also amused by the exchange.
"Where is Major McCoy?" Pickering asked.
"I don't really know," Dunston said. "When I got the heads-up from Keller, I got on the horn to Socho-Ri, and Zimmerman said they got the three clicks a little after three this morning."
" 'The three clicks'?" Banning asked.
"Meaning they got ashore okay. . . . Should we be talking about this in here?"
"Good point. Let's go outside," Pickering said.
Dunston led them to the end of a line of parked vehicles.
"What the hell is this thing?" Pickering asked.
"This is the Killer's Russian jeep," Dunston said. "He took it away from an NK colonel. He had it over in Socho-Ri, but when he sent Jennings here, he sent the Russian Rolls with him and said to keep it here."
"Is that what you call it, the Russian Rolls?" Pickering asked, chuckling.
"Who's Jennings?" Banning asked. It was almost an interruption.
"Tech Sergeant," Dunston said. "He and Zimmerman and the Killer were in the Marine Raiders. Good man. He's been with
us since Pusan."
"You know McCoy hates to be called Killer, don't you, Major?" Banning asked.
"Yeah, well, I guess I'm one of the privileged few who can," Dunston said. "We're pretty close, Colonel."
Pickering saw that Banning found that hard to accept.
Dunston got behind the wheel, and Pickering got in beside him.
"Nobody can hear us here," Pickering said when Banning and Hart had climbed over the back into the rear seat. "What about McCoy? Where is he?"
"Well, they—the Killer and two of my Koreans—went ashore a few miles north of Chongjin," Dunston said. "The Wind of Good Fortune got the three clicks a little after three this morning."
"Your Koreans?" Banning asked.
"The Wind of Good Fortune is the flagship of our fleet, Colonel," George Hart offered quickly. "It's a diesel-powered junk."
He did that, Pickering thought, because he sensed that Dunston has had enough of Banning's attitude and was about to snap back at Banning. What the hell is wrong with Ed Banning?
Banning's glance at Hart did not suggest anything close to gratitude.
"My Koreans, Colonel," Dunston said coldly, "are what few agents I have left of the agents I had before the war. McCoy's Koreans are the ones he's borrowed from Colonel Pak at I ROK Corps. We tell them apart that way."
"Three clicks?" Pickering asked, more to forestall another question from Banning than for information. He had made a guess—as it turned out, the right one—about what three clicks meant.
"You push the mike button three times, General, but don't say anything," Dunston said. "It means you're safely ashore."
"Ashore a few miles north of where?" Banning asked.
"Chongjin," Dunston said. "It's a town—"
"On the Sea of Japan, about sixty miles from the Chinese and Russian borders," Banning said impatiently. "I know where it is. What's he doing there?"
"Vandenburg got him some radios from the Army Security Agency," Dunston said. "He's going to listen to what he calls low-level Russian radio traffic."
"I was under the impression the ASA was responsible for intercepting enemy communications," Banning said.
"That's their job," Dunston agreed a little sarcastically.
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