The Corps II - CALL TO ARMS

by W. E. B Griffin

  Rocky quickly realized that telling the personnel clerk that he could type had been a mistake. He had joined the Corps to kill Japanese, to pay the buckteethed bastards back for Pearl Harbor and Wake Island, not to sit at a fucking typewriter in a fucking office, filling out fucking requisition forms.

  At the reveille formation one day, there had been a call for volunteers to serve in something called the 2nd Separate Battalion. The first sergeant told them the 2nd Separate Battalion was going overseas as soon as they finished their training. So Rocky volunteered. That was what he wanted, getting overseas, and out from behind the typewriter.

  "Well, lad," the first sergeant of Baker Company said, smiling at him the day he reported aboard, "I'm damned glad to see you. You can really type forty-five words a minute?"

  A minute after that, not smiling, the first sergeant of Baker Company pointed out to PFC Rockham that he was in the Marine Corps, and the Marine Corps didn't give a flying fuck what he wanted to do. He would do what the Corps told him to do, and if he was smart, he would do it wearing a fucking smile. He was now Baker Company's company clerk, and that was fucking if.

  When Rocky wrote home that he had been made a corporal, he didn't add that he was the company clerk of Baker Company, 2nd Raider Battalion, USMC; just that he was in the Raiders and hoped to soon be killing Japs.

  Rocky stopped the jeep, and walked over to the lieutenant who was taking the march for the Old Man. He saluted and delivered his message.

  "Go get him, Gunny," the lieutenant ordered.

  Gunny Esposito turned around.

  "McCoy!" he bellowed. "Up here! On the double!"

  PFC Thomas M. McCoy, still breathing heavily, still red-faced, pushed himself off the ground and trotted to where Gunny Esposito stood with the lieutenant and Rocky Rock-ham.

  "Throw your gear in the vee-hicle," Gunny Esposito said, "and go with Corporal Rockham."

  "Where'm I going, Gunny?"

  "In the vee-hicle with Corporal Rockham," Gunny Esposito explained.

  When they were bouncing back down the hill, McCoy asked Rockham where he was going.

  "Able Company," Rockham said. "You been transferred."

  "What the fuck for?"

  "Who the fuck knows?" Rockham asked rhetorically. "First sergeant give me your service record, told me to collect you and your gear and take you over to Able Company."

  PFC McCoy naturally concluded that Zimmerman, that fat, mean cocksucker, was responsible. He had seen Zimmerman three, four times since the night Zimmerman had taken him from the Slop Chute and worked him over. And it was always the same thing. Zimmerman would motion for him to come over to wherever he was standing.

  "I hear you been keeping your mouth shut and your nose clean," Zimmerman had said. "Maybe you aren't as dumb as you look, brig bunny."

  When Rockham dropped him off at the Able Company orderly room, with his sea bag, his records, and all his gear, McCoy put the bag and his field gear by the side of the door, and then he complied with the order painted on the door to "KNOCK, REMOVE HEADGEAR, WAIT FOR PERMISSION TO ENTER."

  "Come!" a voice called.

  McCoy stepped inside.

  "You're McCoy," the company clerk announced. The company clerk was a little fucker with glasses.

  "I was told to report here," McCoy said.

  The first sergeant looked up from his desk. He was a mean-looking sonofabitch, a tall, skinny Texan.

  "You got your gear, I hope?" the first sergeant asked. When McCoy nodded, he motioned to McCoy to hand him his service record.

  He opened the envelope, took out all the records it contained, and picked out the service record itself, leaving the clothing forms and the shot records and all the other documents on the table. Then he stood up and walked through a door under a sign reading "MERWYN C. PLUMLEY, 1ST Lt, USMC, COMMANDING," carrying the service record with him.

  He was inside maybe two minutes before he opened the door and stuck his head out.

  "McCoy, report to the commanding officer."

  McCoy walked to the open door and followed the protocol. He rapped twice on the doorjamb with his knuckles, waited until he was told to come in, and then he marched in. He stopped eighteen inches from Lieutenant Plumley's desk, coming to attention; and then, looking six inches over the officer's head, he barked, "Sir, PFC McCoy reporting to the company commander as ordered, sir."

  "Stand at ease, McCoy," Lieutenant Plumley said. McCoy spread his feet and put his hands in the small of his back. Now he could look at Lieutenant Plumley. When he did, he saw that Plumley was examining him very carefully.

  "Gunnery Sergeant Zimmerman has been talking to me and to First Sergeant Lowery about you, McCoy," Lieutenant Plumley said.

  Well, that fucking figures!

  "When the lieutenant talks to you, McCoy, you say 'Yes, sir,'" First Sergeant Lowery snapped.

  "Sorry, sir," PFC McCoy said.

  "Tell me, McCoy," Lieutenant Plumley said, "why you did so badly with the BAR in Baker Company?"

  What the fuck is that all about?

  "Sir, I qualified with the BAR," McCoy said.

  "Marksman," Lieutenant Plumley said. "Only Marksman."

  Record firing scores qualified a marine as Marksman, Sharpshooter, or Expert. Marksman was the lowest qualifying score, and extra pay was given those qualifying as Expert.

  "Sir," McCoy blurted, "the BAR I had was a piece of shit, one of them worn-out ones we got from the Army."

  "And you think you could do better if you had a better weapon?"

  "Yes, sir," McCoy said.

  "So does Gunnery Sergeant Zimmerman," Lieutenant Plumley said.

  "He's sure big enough," First Sergeant Lowery said. There was a faint hint of approval in his voice. McCoy looked at him in surprise.

  "Gunnery Sergeant Zimmerman, as you know, McCoy," Lieutenant Plumley said, "has been temporarily assigned other duties. But when we deploy, he will come back to the company. He is naturally interested in what he will find here when he comes back."

  "Yes, sir," McCoy said.

  "We're short a couple of squad leaders," Lieutenant Plumley said. "And when the first sergeant and I discussed this with Gunnery Sergeant Zimmerman, he recommended that you be transferred from Baker Company and be given one of those billets."

  "Sir?" McCoy was now completely baffled. He was sure he hadn't heard right.

  "Gunny Zimmerman has recommended that you be given one of the squad-leader billets. It carries with it a promotion to corporal," Lieutenant Plumley said. "That's why I was curious when I saw that you'd only made Marksman when you fired for record."

  "Yes, sir," McCoy said.

  "If the first sergeant could arrange for you to requalify, with a weapon in first-class condition, do you think you could do better than Marksman?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Well, then, we'll do it this way. We will assign you temporarily as a BAR fire-team leader," Lieutenant Plumley said. "Sergeant Lowery will arrange for you to requalify. If you make Sharpshooter-I would hope Expert-I'll give you your corporal's stripes. Fair enough?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Do you have anything else, First Sergeant?"

  "No, sir."

  "Then that will be all for now, Sergeant," Lieutenant Plumley said. "I would like a word with McCoy alone."

  "Aye, aye, sir," First Sergeant Lowery said, and walked out of the office, closing the door behind him.

  Plumley looked at McCoy.

  "There's something about me I think I should tell you, McCoy," he said. "I don't listen to scuttlebutt. I don't like scuttlebutt."

  'Yes, sir."

  "If someone comes to me with a clean service record, so far as I am concerned, he has a clean record. So far as I am concerned, you have reported aboard with a clean record. Do you take my point?"

  "Yes, sir," McCoy said.

  Lieutenant Plumley smiled and reached across the desk with his hand extended.

  "Welcome aboard, McCoy," he said. "You come recommende
d by Gunny Zimmerman, and therefore I expect good things of you."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "You're dismissed, McCoy," Lieutenant Plumley said.

  McCoy came to attention, did an about-face, and marched out of the office.

  First Sergeant Lowery was waiting for him in the outer office.

  "Come on, I'll show you where you'll bunk," he said. Outside the orderly room, he picked up McCoy's field gear and carried it for him.

  Halfway to the barrack, he laid a hand on McCoy's arm.

  "I understand you're pretty good with your fists, McCoy."

  "I guess I'm all right," McCoy said.

  "You use your fists in Able Company, McCoy, and I'll work you over myself. And compared to me, what Zimmerman did to you will be like being brushed with a feather duster."

  McCoy looked at him.

  "You understand me?" First Sergeant Lowery asked.

  "Yeah, I understand you."

  First Sergeant Lowery smiled, and patted McCoy, a very friendly pat, on the shoulder.

  "Good," First Sergeant Lowery said. "Good."

  (Three)

  The New York Public Library

  1415 Hours. 26 March 1942

  Carolyn Spencer Howell had expected Major Edward Banning to join her for lunch. But when he hadn't been there, and after she had finally given up on him and gone to eat, she knew she had to come to terms with the reality of what had happened.

  The conclusion she drew was that she had made a grand and glorious ass of herself. That, for reasons probably involving the moon, but certainly including the fact that she was a healthy female with normal needs, as well as the fact that Ed Banning was a good-looking healthy male, she had played the bitch in heat. And she'd done everything a bitch in heat does but back up to the male, rub her behind against him, and look over her shoulder to see what was keeping him from doing what she wanted done.

  She had even performed the human version of that. Before they kissed in the elevator, she had with conscious and lascivious aforethought pressed her breasts against him.

  All this morning Carolyn relived with -surprise and embarrassment her shamelessly lewd behavior with him in her apartment. The reason she thought of nothing else all morning was that until the reality dawned on her, she had wondered how she would behave when he returned from Brooklyn.

  The last thing he said to her when she left him at the subway entrance was that he would go change his uniform and come back. He even kissed her. Rather distantly, she thought even at the time, but a kiss was a kiss. Once she reached the library, mere had been time to consider what she had done: She had allowed one of the patrons to buy her a drink, following which she had taken him directly to bed.

  Her worrying started when she began to imagine how she was going to be able to look him in the eye when he came back from Brooklyn. But after he hadn't returned by eleven (when she thought she would take him into the staff lounge, which you could do for a "friend," and give him a cup of coffee and maybe a Danish), she began to worry, to give her imagination free rein.

  By noon, one theory of the several that had occurred to her seemed to stand the test of critical examination. The point of this one was that he was not entirely a sonofabitch. He had at least been decent enough to tell her he was married. And she was now convinced that he was indeed a Marine officer.

  Yet he had been very vague about what exactly he did as a Marine officer, and where he did it. And in fact, now that she had time to think about it, it no longer seemed entirely credible that he was in New York on leave simply because his family was gone and he had no place else to go, and New York seemed as good a place as any to take a holiday.

  If he was so bored with his leave, why was he on leave?

  And viewed with the cold and dispassionate attitude that she believed she had reached by one o'clock-when it was apparent that he was not going to come-his melodramatic story of the White Russian wife left on the pier in Shanghai clearly served two purposes. First, it told her he was married, so don't get any ideas. And second, it clearly infected the heart of the librarian with terminal nymphomania and inspired her to perform sexual feats right out of the Kama Sutra. He had probably enormously embellished the original tale as soon as he had realized how much of it she was so gullibly willing to swallow.

  Over lunch (preceding which she had a Manhattan to steady her nerves and keep her from throwing the ashtray across the room), she remembered what her father told her when she told him she was going to divorce Charley: "Everybody, sooner or later, stubs their toe. When that happens, the thing to do is swallow hard and go on to what happens next."

  And so, by the time she walked back in the library, Carolyn was at peace with herself. She accepted the situation for what it was, and she was already beginning to see small shafts of sunlight breaking through the black cloud. All she had done was make a fool of herself, and thank God, no one knew about it. Except, of course, Henry the Doorman; and he was just the doorman. In her state of temporary insanity, she could have introduced Banning to her colleagues in the library. With her state of rut in high gear, it would have been clear to any of her colleagues that she had more of an interest in Major Ed Banning than as a fellow lover of books.

  And being absolutely brutally honest about it, she hadn't come out of the encounter entirely empty-handed. Obviously, she had wanted to be taken to bed, and Ed had certainly done that with great skill and finesse. She would not need such servicing again any time soon.

  Now she would simply put Major Ed Banning out of her mind.

  And then, there he was, in the Central Reading Room. He was sitting at a table close to the counter. He quickly rose up, with a worried look on his face, when he saw her approach him.

  "Hello," he said.

  "Hello," Carolyn said.

  "I thought you would be interested to know that you don't work here," he said.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "I called up and asked to speak to you-"

  "You did?"

  He's obviously lying. After some thought, he has decided to come back for another drink at the well.

  "And a woman said there was no one here by that name," Ed Banning said.

  "Oh, really?"

  "So I called back, thinking I would get somebody else, and I got the same woman, and she said, in righteous indignation, 'I told you there is no Mrs. Powell on the staff.'"

  My God, he doesn't even know my name!

  "It's Howell," Carolyn said. "With an 'H.'"

  "Well, that explains that, doesn't it?" Ed Banning said. And then he looked at her and blurted, "I was afraid that maybe you had told her to say that, that you just wished I would go away."

  "No," Carolyn said, very simply.

  "I got my orders," Ed said. "That's why I was delayed. That's what I was trying to tell you on the telephone."

  "Where are you going?" she asked.

  "The West Coast," he said.

  "When are you going?"

  "Two April," Ed said. "That's a week from today."

  "Oh," she said.

  "Are you free for dinner?" Ed asked.

  "Dinner?"

  "I don't want to intrude in your life, Carolyn," Ed Banning said. "But I had hoped that we could spend some time together."

  "Oh," she said.

  "Dinner?" he asked again, and when there was no immediate reply, "Maybe tomorrow night?"

  My God, he's afraid I'll say no.

  "What are your plans for this afternoon?" Carolyn asked.

  "I have to go to Brooks Brothers," Banning replied.

  "Brooks Brothers?" She wasn't sure she had heard correctly.

  "When I replaced my uniforms, I didn't buy as much for the tropics as I should have," he said.

  "Meaning you're headed for the tropics… the Pacific?"

  "Meaning that I realized this morning that I don't have enough uniforms," he said.

  Is that the truth? Or does he know he's on his way to the Pacific and doesn't want to tell me?

&
nbsp; "That's all you have planned?" Carolyn asked.

  "That's it."

  "For this afternoon, or for the rest of the week?"

  "For the week," Ed Banning said.

  "I thought maybe you'd be going home or something," she said.

  "I thought I told you," he said. "Like a lot of Marines, the Corps's home."

  Carolyn looked into his eyes.

  "Wait for me in the lobby," she said. "It'll take me about five minutes to tell my boss I'm going, and to get my coat."

  When she went outside, he was at the bottom of the stairs, standing by one of the concrete lions that seem to be studying the traffic on Fifth Avenue passing the library. It was snowing, and there was snow on the shoulders of his overcoat and on his hat.

  She went quickly down the stairs and put her hand under his arm, and then she absolutely shocked herself by blurting, "Hi, sailor, looking for a good time?"

  He touched her gloved hand for a moment and smiled at her.

  "Have any trouble getting the afternoon off?" he asked.

  "I told my boss I was just struck with some kind of flu," Carolyn said, "that'll keep me from work for a week."

  "Can you get away with it?" he asked.

  "Sure," she said. "Now, aside from Brooks Brothers, what would you like to do?"

  His eyebrows rose. She nudged him with her shoulder.

  "Aside from that, I mean," she said.

  He shrugged.

  "Is there some reason you have to stay in the city?" Carolyn asked, as they started to walk across Fifth Avenue to Forty-first Street.

  "No," he said. "The only thing I have to do is get on the Twentieth-Century Limited on two April at seven fifty-five in the evening. Why do you ask?"

  "How do you feel about snow?" she asked.

  "I hate it," he cheerfully admitted.

  "How about snow outside?" Carolyn pursued. "On fields. Unmarked, except maybe by deer tracks?"

  "Better," he said.

  "With a fireplace inside? Glowing embers?"

  "A loaf of bread, a glowing ember, and thou?"

  "Beside you in the wilderness," Carolyn said. "I have a place in Bucks County. Overlooking the Delaware. An old fieldstone canal house."