The Corps V - Line of Fire

by W. E. B Griffin

  But there, goddammit, is one of those dunce caps on a pole.

  What do they call them? Wind socks. Airports have wind socks.

  This must be an airport.

  A moment later the Beech touched down.

  "Where the hell are we?"

  "Home sweet home, my son," Pickering said solemnly. "As you may have noticed, we have cheated death again."

  "Where the hell are we?"

  "This is my parents' place."

  "You have your own goddamned airport?"

  "Plus a barn that can be used as a hangar," Pick said. "And into which, I devoutly hope, we can get this thing before the military spots us from the air."

  "You better hope we can."

  "I am always a pessimist," Pickering said. "But I think we got away with it this time, George."

  "They're going to catch you eventually," Hart said.

  "By then I'll be on Guadalcanal," Pickering said softly.

  "And even if they do catch me, I will swear that I was alone.

  So relax, George." Three minutes later they were closing the doors of a large barn.

  [Four]

  THE MEN'S BAR

  THE ANDREW FOSTER HOTEL

  SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA

  1930 HOURS I I SEPTEMBER 1942

  Wearing a superbly tailored double-breasted blue pinstripe suit with a rosebud pinned to his lapel, Andrew Foster walked into the bar and found what he was looking for, two young men in tweed sports coats, gray flannel slacks, white buttondown-collar shirts, and loafers. He walked to them.

  "Good evening, gentlemen," he said. "I wondered if you had an opportunity to see the newspaper." He laid The San Francisco Chronicle on the bar.

  "Good evening, Grandfather," Malcolm S. Pickering said.

  "I know you've talked to George on the telephone, but I don't think you've actually met, have you? George, this is my grandfather."

  "How do you do, Sir?" George Hart said with a weak smile.

  He'd just seen the headline-MYSTERY AIRPLANE FLIES UNDER GG BRIDGE. It was accompanied by a somewhat-out-of-focus photograph of a Stagger Wing Beech flying up the Golden Gate no more than a hundred feet off the water.

  "How do you do, Sergeant?" Andrew Foster said-causing the heads of half a dozen Navy and Marine officers, three them wearing Naval Aviator's wings, to turn in curiosity. The men's bar of the Andrew Foster was not often frequented by enlisted men.

  The bartender quickly appeared.

  "What can I get you, Mr. Foster?" The name intensified the curiosity of the officers. They had heard that the old man sometimes showed up in the men's bar and bought the next round for anyone in uniform.

  And here he was.

  "A little Famous Grouse, Tony, please," the old man said, and then changed his mind. "Bring the bottle."

  "Yes, Sir."

  "I've been wondering what happened to you," Andrew Foster said. "I understand you have had a very interesting afternoon."

  "Fascinating," Pick agreed. "Well, we went out to the house, Grandfather."

  "You had no trouble getting there?"

  "Not a bit, Sir."

  "Nothing's broken, or anything like that?"

  "No, Sir."

  "I just had a talk with Richmond Fowler," Andrew Foster said. "He said to tell you that he would do what he could, because of your father; but he could make no promises."

  "I see."

  The waiter delivered a quart bottle of Famous Grouse, held it over a glass, and poured. It was nearly full before Andrew Foster said, "Thank you." He took a large swallow, then turned to his grandson.

  "Pick, damn it, I've covered for you before, but this! My God, even for you, this is spectacular!"

  "Yes," Pick said, wholly unrepentant. "I rather thought it was myself."

  "Why?"

  "It seemed like a marvelous idea at the time, didn't it, George?"

  "No, it didn't," George said.

  "Did it pass through your mind what your father's reaction to this is going to be when he finds out about it?"

  "No. But on the other hand, Dad's in no position to say anything to me about it."

  "Meaning what?" the old man snapped.

  "Meaning that Dad swam the Golden Gate. That was considerably more dangerous than flying up it and under the bridge."

  "Christ, will you shut up!" Hart said, aware that their conversation was now the subject of a good deal of attention.

  Almost immediately, he was sure that there was reason for his concern. A lieutenant, in greens and wearing wings, walked up to them.

  "Lieutenant Pickering, I believe?" he said.

  "Well, if it isn't Lieutenant Stecker, the pride of Marine Aviation. I didn't expect you until tomorrow."

  "I came out a day early," Lieutenant Stecker said. "I'll tell you about it later." Hart sensed the question had made Stecker uncomfortable.

  The proof came when Stecker pulled the newspaper to him, visibly glad for a chance to change the subject.

  "I saw this in the airport," he said. "What kind of an idiot would do something like that?"

  "As George Washington said to his daddy," Pick said happily, "I cannot tell a lie."

  "Will you shut the hell up!" Hart snapped.

  "Holy Christ! Really?" Stecker said.

  "He's kidding, of course," Hart said.

  "He kiddeth not. Oh, excuse me. Lieutenant Stecker, may I present my grandfather, Mr. Foster? And Sergeant Hart?"

  "How do you do, Lieutenant?" Andrew Foster said.

  "I think we ought to get out of here," Hart said.

  "I think the sergeant is right," Andrew Foster said.

  "I'm having a fine time right where I am," Pick said.

  "Listen to me, you jackass," Stecker flared. "You will either leave here under your own power or I will coldcock you and carry you out." Pick looked at him a moment.

  "For some strange reason, I think you're serious."

  "I'm serious."

  "Thank you, Lieutenant," Hart said.

  "Let's go," Stecker said.

  Pick met his eyes for a moment and then shrugged. "I'm outnumbered."

  They walked out of the bar.

  Halfway across the lobby, Andrew Foster said, "I think you had better either get out of the hotel or go to Sergeant Hart's room. In case someone is looking for you."

  "They won't know where to even start looking for me until sometime tomorrow."

  "Where's your room, Sergeant?" Stecker asked.

  Hart pulled the key from his pocket.

  "Eleven-fifteen," he said.

  "Let's go," Stecker said, and took Pick's arm and propelled him toward the bank of elevators.

  "I don't know why you're pissed," Pick said to Stecker in Hart's room-a three-bedroom-plus-sitting-room suite. "You weren't there. Even if they catch me and stand me before a firing squad, you're not involved."

  "You had no goddamned right to involve the sergeant in this," Stecker said. "Jesus Christ, it's a court-martial offense to be wearing civilian clothing! Not to mention the insanity of your flight under the goddamned bridge!"

  "George, we have just heard from the Long Grey Line," Pick said.

  "The what?"

  "Lieutenant Stecker is not only a professional officer and gentleman, but a West Pointer. They believe, as a matter of faith, that enlisted men have no brains and have to be cared for like children."

  "Oh, fuck you, Pick!" Stecker flared. "I was raised as the dependent of an enlisted man."

  "George is not going to get into any trouble," Pick said.

  "Says you," Stecker said. "Sergeant, where did you meet this... child in an officer's uniform?"

  "Lieutenant," Hart said. When he had his attention, he handed him his credentials. "Even if anybody asks, there's no problem about the civilian clothing. This says I can wear it." Stecker looked carefully at the credentials.

  "Are you on duty now?" he asked.

  "More or less."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It mean
s he works for my father, and he came out here to reassure me."

  "Reassure you about what?"

  "Dad's in the Army Hospital in Washington, with malaria, exhaustion, and Christ only knows what else."

  "Why didn't you let me know?" :,I didn't want to worry you." `How is he?"

  "He'll be all right," Hart answered.

  "And that's what caused this insanity? Relief that your father's going to be all right?"

  "What insanity?" Pickering asked innocently. "I was under the impression that any red-blooded Marine Aviator would jump at the chance to fly under that bridge. What are you, Stecker, some kind of a pansy?" Stecker looked at him. Finally he shook his head.

  "Hand me the bottle," he said. "I think I will get stinko."

  "Not until you tell me why you're out here a day early," Pickering said. "Is there some angry Pennsylvania Dutch farmer looking for you with a knocked-up daughter in tow?"

  "Give me the goddamned bottle," Stecker said.

  Pickering gave it to him.

  "My mother was driving me nuts," he said, finally, after he'd taken a pull from the neck. "It wasn't her fault, of course.

  ... Fuck it. It doesn't matter."

  "What?" Pickering asked softly.

  "She's already lost one son in this fucking war. My father's on goddamned Guadalcanal, and now I'm going there. I couldn't stand the way she looked at me. So I came out early.

  "I suppose that makes me the candidate for prick of the year."

  "I'm sorry," Pickering said.

  "I'll tell you what," Stecker said. "I did not come out here to-"

  "To what?"

  "You really flew under the bridge?"

  "I really flew under the bridge."

  "You had enough time in that airplane to feel that confident?"

  "Yeah, sure I did. How long were we up there. would you say, George, before we went under the bridge?"

  "About twenty-five minutes."

  "How much total time is what I'm asking."

  "Twenty-five minutes. I just told you." Hart could tell from the look on Pickering's face that he was telling the truth.

  "Lieutenant," he said, "can I have that bottle, please?"

  "If he gives you the bottle, George, the next thing you know you'll want to go out chasing fast women."

  "I know you disapprove, that you will be faithful until death to Saint Martha, the virtuous widow, but what's wrong with that for Hart and me?" Stecker said.

  "Now that I think about it," Pickering said, "nothing. Not for any of us."

  "Really?" Stecker asked. "What about the sainted widow?"

  "Live today, for tomorrow we die, right?"

  "Oh, Jesus!" Stecker said.

  "Or go to jail," Hart said. "Whichever comes first."

  "You guys want me to call some women or not?" Stecker handed him the telephone.

  "Do you want fast women, or fast fast women?" Pickering asked.

  "Just as long as they don't talk too much before they take off their clothes," Stecker said.

  "I know just the girls," Pickering said, and told the operator to give him an outside line.

  [Five]

  HEADQUARTERS

  FIRST MARINE DIVISION

  GUADALCANAL

  12 SEPTEMBER 1942

  When Lieutenant Colonel "Red Mike" Edson returned from the Tasimboko raid on 8 September, his professional assessment then was that several thousand Japanese were in the area, probably newly arrived and well equipped. This was confirmed on the afternoon of 12 September.

  Lieutenant Colonel Sam Griffith picked up a Springfield rifle and led two volunteer riflemen on a patrol into the rain forest and up the ridge inland from Henderson Field. Griffith's first combat experience in the war had been with the British Commandos, to whom he had been attached as an "observer." Griffith returned to report that a large force of Japanese was approaching, almost certainly several thousand of them. It was unsettling news. But worse, the force was both well led and in excellent physical condition: This was almost certainly the group that had elected not to attack Edson's battalion at Tasimboko. And now they were nearby. Only a well-led force in excellent physical condition could have moved through the rain forest and across the steep ridges from Tasimboko in less than four days.

  Edson recalled General Vandergrift's words to him after the Tasimboko raid: "Conservation of force for future action is often a wise choice." That translated to mean they were facing a fellow professional, rather than what they had been facing before, an officer whose rank let him assume command of a motley force of hungry, demoralized, and poorly equipped troops.

  Edson also remembered the message General Vandergrift had shown him from Lieutenant General Harukichi Hyakutake to the 17th Army.

  "The operation to surround and recapture Guadalcanal will truly decide the fate of the control of the entire Pacific." The Japanese, Edson and Griffith concluded, were about to go into action on Guadalcanal.

  It was later learned that the forces that landed in the vicinity of Tasimboko (an advance element of 750 officers and men during the night of 31 August was followed the next night by 1200 officers and men) were elements of the 124th Infantry regiment. Following the Imperial Japanese Army custom of naming an elite force after its commander, the unit was designated the Kawaguchi Butai. Its commander was Major General Kiotake Kawaguchi. Guadalcanal was not to be General Kawaguchi's first encounter with Americans. He and Kawaguchi Butai had spent April mopping up the last remnants of American resistance on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines.

  General Kawaguchi's orders from General Hyakutake were to retake the airstrip (Henderson Field) as a first priority. Once that was accomplished, the Americans could no longer send aircraft aloft to intercept Japanese aviation and Naval forces.

  Then throwing them back into the sea would be a relatively easy matter.

  On 12 September, of course, Edson had no way of knowing about any of this. His only information was what he'd suspected-which Griffith now confirmed-that he was about to get involved in a battle with several thousand fresh and probably well-led Japanese troops.

  He did what experience had taught him. He ordered several strong patrols to set out at first light to gather more information about the enemy; and he summoned an officer's call to explain the situation to his command.

  Edson's situation map showed the disposition of his forces along a T-shaped ridge about a mile south of the Henderson Field runway. The cross of the T was clear, broken ground with four spurs, two on each side of the ridge that formed the 1000-yard-long base.

  Baker and Charley companies of the Raiders were on the line. Able and Dog companies were in reserve, close to the line.

  Raider headquarters and elements of Easy Company (Heavy Weapons) were several hundred yards back from the front, on the base of the T.

  Remnants of the badly hurt Parachute Battalion were mixed in with the Raiders. Baker Company, Parachutists, down to seventy men, was next to Baker Company, Raiders. The parachutists of Able and Charley companies were in the wooded area near the bottom of the base of the T. And what was left of the Parachute Battalion command post was near Edson's CP.

  It was generally agreed that the Japanese would probably attack toward Henderson Field from their positions south of the ridge down the long axis of the base of the T.

  Marine fields of fire were discussed. It was finally concluded that given the limited resources, all that could be done had been done. They would just have to wait until morning and see what happened.

  At about 2100, just as Colonel Edson was about to dismiss his officers, the Japanese attacked. Japanese artillery located east of Alligator Creek opened fire. A moment later a parachute flare burst in light over the south end of Henderson Field.

  Moments after that, Japanese Naval gunfire began to land on the ridge.

  By morning, what had been somewhat impersonally identified as "the ridge" would be forever known as "Bloody Ridge."

  Chapter Nine