The Corps V - Line of Fire

by W. E. B Griffin

  The U.S. Army 4th General Hospital was one of the very few facilities in Australia that had never been a major logistical problem. The Royal Melbourne Hospital was originally completed in late 1940. It was an enormous, fully equipped medical establishment that had simply been turned over to the United States Army for the duration of the war. The only thing it lacked was officer's billeting and an officer's club; but it was no problem to convert facilities originally intended for use by the medical school to those purposes. That was where Dillon and the two nurses were now sitting.

  "There's a pretty one, Jake," Lieutenant Miller said, nodding toward a tall, good-looking Marine first lieutenant coming into the room, walking with a cane. He wore parachutist's wings pinned on his tunic.

  "You stay away from that guy, honey," Dillon said, recognizing the officer.

  "Why do you say that, Jake?" Lieutenant (J.G.) Barbara T. Cotter, NNCR, asked, surprised.

  After a moment Jake Dillon said, "I don't know. There's something about that guy I don't like."

  "You know him?"

  Dillon nodded. "I met him once in the States. I just remembered where."

  "I thought your criterion was `handsome hero,' " Joanne Miller said.

  "Handsome, wounded hero,"' Jake corrected her and then looked at Barbara Cotter. "Handsome, honey, not pretty."

  "Sorry. It's just that I've never been out with a man when he was looking for handsome men," Barbara said, and both women laughed.

  "Thanks a lot, girls," Jake said. "Buy your own booze."

  "I guess the one at the end of the bar won't qualify, huh, Jake?"

  Barbara asked. Jake looked in the direction of her nod.

  An officer, an aviator, was standing at the bar looking down at his drink. He had a large bandage over his nose; the adhesive tape holding it extended to his jawline and temples. Under the bandage, his face was a large bruise from the lip line to above his eyes.

  "Jesus, what happened to him?" Dillon asked.

  "It's not as bad as it looks," Joanne said. "He slammed his face into a control panel. There were some fractures in the nasal passage area; they went in and straightened things out."

  "I know him," Jake said, surprise in his voice. "Excuse me." He got up and went to the young officer at the bar.

  "I'm Jake Dillon, Lieutenant. Don't we know each other?"

  The young officer looked at him.

  `No, Sir. I don't think so."

  "Lakehurst," Dillon insisted. "Charley Galloway? A light colonel-what the hell was his name?-jumped out of your airplane and his chute didn't open?" Recognition came.

  "Yes, Sir," Lieutenant Jim Ward said. "You were the press agent excuse me, public relations officer, right?"

  "I don't think press agent is a dirty word," Dillon said. "I thought it was you." They shook hands.

  "If you're alone," Dillon said, "I'm not. Want to join us?" He nodded toward the table where the girls were sitting.

  "That's the best offer I've had in a long time," Ward said.

  "The smaller one is taken," Dillon said.

  "I admire your taste."

  "Not by me, but taken," Dillon said.

  As they walked to the table, Dillon saw the parachutist officer glance at them, and then saw recognition in his eyes. He did not respond.

  "Ladies, I would love to introduce this wounded, handsome hero to you, but I just realized I've forgotten his name," Dillon said.

  "Jim Ward," Ward said.

  "He's a pal of a pal of mine," Dillon went on. "Captain Charley Galloway." The women rather formally shook hands with Ward.

  "We've met before too," Joanne said. "I passed the gas when they fixed your face. Are you supposed to be drinking?"

  "Well, I hadn't planned on driving anywhere," Ward said.

  "Speaking of Charley?" Dillon said.

  "He's on the `Canal," Ward said. "Commanding VMF229."

  "Christ, I wish I'd known that," Dillon said. "I just came out of Henderson." Ward looked at Dillon with an interest he had not shown before.

  "What were you doing on Guadalcanal?" he asked.

  "I suppose most people would say I was getting in the way," Dillon replied, and went on: "How's Charley doing?"

  "He was shot down. He floated around all night and then a PT boat picked him up. Aside from that, he's fine."

  "What happened to you?" Dillon asked.

  "I made a bad landing," Ward said. "And bumped my nose on the control panel."

  "He lost-temporarily, by the grace of God-the use of his right eye when his windshield was shot away," Joanne said matter-of-factly. "Plexiglas fragments. When he landed, his gear collapsed, and the airplane's nose hit the ground with such force that the seat was ripped loose. The main reason they sent him here was that they couldn't believe he walked away from that crash with nothing more than broken ribs and a broken nose."

  "Jesus," Dillon said.

  "I really hope your deep research into my background also came up with the fact that I'm single, available, and that dogs and old ladies like me," Jim Ward said.

  "So how are you?" Dillon asked.

  "Until about five minutes ago I was feeling sorry for myself," Jim Ward said.

  "Why?" Joanne asked.

  "Just before I came in here tonight, I was told that I couldn't go back to the squadron until my ribs healed, and that for the next three to four weeks I will be an assistant morale and welfare officer of the detachment of patients. Among other things I am to make sure the bingo games are honest."

  "Be grateful, for Christ's sake," Dillon said.

  Lieutenant Jim Ward looked directly at Lieutenant Joanne Miller.

  "Oh, I am now," he said.

  She looks uncomfortable, Dillon thought, but not displeased

  "Excuse me, Major," the officer wearing parachutist's wings and walking with a cane said, "but aren't you Major Dillon?"

  "That's right."

  "Correct me if I'm wrong, Sir, but haven't we met?"

  "Yeah. At Lakehurst," Dillon said. "We were just talking about that."

  "Why don't you pull up a chair, Lieutenant? And sit down?" Joanne Miller said.

  Why the hell did I do that? she thought. Because I wanted him to take the strain off his leg? Or because ol' I-bumped-my-nose=on-the-control-panel here is making a pass at me? Or because I don't like my reaction to the pass? I will not get emotionally involved with him or any of the others. I don't want to go through what Barbara's going through.

  "With the Major's permission?" the parachutist officer asked.

  "Yeah. Go ahead. Sit down," Jake said. "The ladies are Lieutenants Miller and Cotter. You remember Jim Ward?"

  "No, I can't say that I do," the parachutist said, glancing at Ward and dismissing him. "I'm Dick Macklin," he said to the women. "I'm very pleased to meet you." Dillon did not like the way Macklin was smiling at Barbara Cotter.

  He remembered now why it was he didn't like Lieutenant Macklin. Not specific details, just that when they had been at Lakehurst, Macklin had been chickenshit. He was perfectly willing to throw an enlisted man to the wolves so he would look good-a PFC or a corporal, Jake now remembered, although he couldn't come up with a face or a name.

  All good Marine officers have contempt for such officers. But in Jake Dillon's case, the contempt was magnified by his own experience with chickenshit officers. He had far more time in The Corps as a sergeant than he did as a field-grade officer and gentleman.

  If you make a pass at Barbara, I'll break your other fucking leg. Why did I tell this sonofabitch it was all right to sit down?

  As a matter of fact, if you make a pass at either one, I'll break your other fucking leg.

  "May I ask, Sir," Macklin said, "if you're a fellow patient?"

  "Just passing through," Dillon said.

  "On your way to Guadalcanal?"

  "No," Dillon said.

  "We had press people with us," Macklin said. He raised his stiff leg. "That's where I caught this. I went in with the first wave of parach
utists when we hit the beach at Gavutu."

  "Then we went in at about the same time," Dillon said, wearing a patently insincere smile. "I went in to Tulagi with Jack Stecker's 2nd Battalion of the Fifth."

  "Really?" Barbara Cotter asked. It was the first time Jake had said anything about what he had done at Guadalcanal.

  Without thinking about it, she'd decided that as a press agent, Jake had gone in after the beach had been secured.

  "Jack Stecker and I were sergeants in the Fourth," Dillon said. "He let me tag along."

  That's not surprising, Barbara thought.

  Jake was like Joe Howard. Both were Marine Mustangs (officers commissioned from the ranks); she knew the type.

  They felt somehow cheated if they weren't where the fighting was. This was admirable, unless of course you were in love with one of them, in which case they were damned fools.

  Barbara hadn't believed a word Dillon told her about Joe Howard being all right. What she didn't already know, or guess, about the Coast watchers and Joe's chances of survival, she had learned from Yeoman Daphne Farnsworth, Royal Australian Navy Women's Volunteer Reserve. Daphne not only worked with the Coast watchers, she had become involved with Sergeant Steve Koffler before the two Marines parachuted onto Buka.

  "What happened to you, Ward?" Macklin asked, obviously not wanting to swap war stories with Dillon.

  "I thought the guy said `stand up,"' Jim Ward said. "What he said was `shut up."

  "He got hurt flying out of Henderson with VMF-229. With Charley Galloway," Dillon said. "You remember Charley, don't you, Macklin?"

  "No, Sir," Macklin said, searching his memory.

  Jim Ward not only remembered Lieutenant Macklin from Lakehurst; he'd picked up on Dillon's contempt; and was just as annoyed as Dillon with Macklin's raised-leg, look-at-me-the-hero attitude.

  "Sure, you do," Ward said. "He was our instructor pilot on the Gooneybird. Tech Sergeant Galloway?"

  yes, of course." Captain Galloway, now," Jim Ward added. "My squadron commander."

  "Really?" Macklin asked.

  From the look on Macklin's face, Ward saw that he had struck home. Nothing else he could have said would so annoy a Regular Marine officer with a commission from Annapolis than to be told that a technical sergeant he had tried to push around now outranked him as an officer and a gentleman.

  Meanwhile, Lieutenant Richard B. Macklin might not have been a prince among men, or even a very decent human being, but he was no fool. He saw that his high hopes to get to know one of the nurses, perhaps even carnally, were not going to come to fruition.

  Although Dillon had claimed that the blonde with the big boobs was taken, she kept looking at Dillon with something like affection. And the other one kept stealing looks at the aviator.

  He had been done in, he realized, by the natural tendency of female officers to be attracted to field-grade officers and/or aviators. He didn't understand this-as far as he was concerned, it took far more courage to jump out of an airplane than it did to fly one-but that was unfortunately the way things were.

  "How long are you going to look like that?" Dillon asked Ward.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  Joanne Miller understood the question.

  "He ought to look more or less human in a week or ten days; at least the black-and-blue will have gone away," she said.

  "The ribs will take six weeks or so to heal."

  "I can fly now," Ward said. "I didn't want to come here and they shouldn't have sent me."

  That's not bullshit intended to impress the girls and me, Jake decided. This kid is a Marine.

  "Where are you from, Ward?"

  "Philadelphia. Or just outside. Jenkintown."

  "Right. Where Charley's girlfriend is from, right?"

  "She's my aunt," Jim Ward said.

  "What about you, Macklin? Where are you from?"

  "California, Sir. Near San Diego."

  "Where'd you go to school?"

  "The Naval Academy, Sir."

  Jake Dillon Productions, Jake thought, has just completed final casting of his epic motion picture, or at least newsreel feature epic, Wounded Marine Heroes of 1942.

  But I won't tell either of them just yet. Ward will be genuinely pissed when he hears what I'm going to do to him. And I suspect that Macklin will be so pleased I'm taking him out of harm's way that he'll piss his pants.

  He remembered a story going around the aid stations on Gavutu and Tulagi about the 2nd Parachute Battalion officer who'd taken a minor flesh wound to his calf and had to be pried, screaming and hysterical, from a piling on the seaplane wharf where he had been hit.

  There was absolutely no question in Jake's mind that that officer was now sitting at his table.

  Chapter Seven

  [One]

  FERDINAND SIX

  BUKA, SOLOMON ISLANDS

  0605 HOURS 7 SEPTEMBER 1942

  Sergeant Steven M. Koffler, USMC, woke suddenly and sat up, frightened. His guts were knotted and he had a clammy sweat.

  It was from a nightmare, he concluded after a moment, although he couldn't remember any of it.

  The feeling of foreboding did not go away. Something was wrong. There was enough light in the hut for him to see that Patience was gone. That was not unusual. Since she had moved in with him, she habitually rose before he did and was out of the hut before he woke.

  But then, slowly, it came to him, what was wrong. He heard no noise. There was always noise, the squealing of pigs, the crying of children, the crackling of a fire, even hymn singing.

  That image sent his mind wandering: They don't sing hymns here, like in church. It has nothing to do with God. It's just that "Rock of Ages" and "Faith of Our Fathers" and "God Save the King" and "Onward Christian Soldiers" and the other ones are the only music these people have ever heard. He corrected himself. Plus the Marine Hymn, which of course me and Lieutenant Howard taught them.

  Why can't I hear anything?

  He felt another wave of fear and reached for the Thompson.

  He checked the action and then stuck his feet in his boondockers and stood up.

  He went to the door of the hut and looked out. No one was in sight.

  Where the fuck is everybody?

  With his finger on the Thompson's trigger, he left the hut, took one quick look to confirm that no one was visible, then ran into the jungle behind the hut. He moved ten feet inside it, enough for concealment, and then he moved laterally until he found a position where he could observe the other huts.

  There was no one there. The fires had gone out.

  Even the fucking pigs are gone!

  The sonsofbitches ran off on me!

  Well, what the hell do you expect? he asked himself. If I wasn't here, they're just a bunch of fucking cannibals; the Japs don't give a shit about cannibals unless they're causing trouble. The worst thing the Japs would do would be to put them to work.

  With me here, they're the fucking enemy. The Japs would kill them, slowly, to show they're pissed off. And they'll do it so it hurts, to teach the other cannibals it's not smart to help the While Man. Like cutting off their arms and legs, not just their heads, and leaving the parts laying around.

  A chill replaced the clammy sweat.

  What the fuck am I going to do now?

  He was suddenly, without warning, sick to his stomach.

  When that passed, he had an equally irresistible urge to move his bowels.

  He moved another fifteen yards through the jungle and watched the camp for another five minutes. Finally he walked out of the jungle and started looking in the huts.

  The radio was still there.

  Why not? What the hell would they do with the radio?

  And he found some baked sweet potatoes, or whatever the hell they were, and some of the smoked pig.

  A farewell present? Merry Christmas, Sergeant Koffler? How the fuck long are those sweet potatoes and five, ten pounds of smoked pig going to last me?