Semper Fi

by W. E. B Griffin

  It would now be necessary to enter Nanking, drop off supplies for the Christian & Missionary Alliance there, and pick up the Reverend Feller’s wife, her luggage, and their household goods. It was a hundred miles from where they normally turned off, a two-hundred-mile round trip, because it still made good sense to cross the Yangtze between Chiangyin and Chen-chiang.

  “It has been suggested, sir,” Lieutenant Macklin said to Captain Banning, “that at the turnoff point for Chiangyin we detach from the convoy one of the Studebaker automobiles, the wrecker, and the missionary truck with the Nanking supplies. The rest of the convoy would go onto Chiangyin and wait for the others to return from Nanking there. That would mean spending the night in Nanking.”

  There was no question in Sergeant Ernst Zimmerman’s mind who had made the suggestion, and he was not at all surprised when Captain Banning said, “That seems to make more sense than having the whole convoy make the round trip.” Banning continued, “Why don’t you have McCoy drive the civilian car? That would make sort of a Marine detachment, with the wrecker, to accompany the missionary vehicles.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” Lieutenant Macklin said.

  There was therefore, Sergeant Ernie Zimmerman concluded, some reason for McCoy to go to Nanking, as there was obviously some reason why McCoy had been given the convoy as kind of a primary duty. He had not been told what that reason was, and he had no intention of asking. If they wanted him to know, they would have told him. He believed the key to a successful career in the Corps was to do what you were told to do as well as you could and ask no questions. And to keep your eyes open so that you noticed strange little things, like the fact the regimental S-2 paid a lot of attention to a truck convoy that was really none of an intelligence officer’s business, and that the real man in charge of the convoys was not whichever officer happened to be sent along, but Corporal “Killer” McCoy.

  It took about an hour to decide—and mark on the three maps they would take with them—where the convoy would leave their normal route to visit the other five missions where they would be stopping.

  Then Lieutenant Macklin sent the enlisted men to the arms room to draw their weapons. Each Marine drew a Colt Model 1911A1 .45 ACP pistol with three charged magazines. Two PFCs drew Browning Automatic Rifles, caliber .30-06, together with five charged twenty-round magazines. Sergeant Zimmerman and Corporal McCoy drew Thompson submachine guns, caliber .45 ACP with two fifty-round drum magazines. Everybody else took their assigned Springfield Model 1903 rifles from the arms room. There was also a prepacked ammo load, sealed cases of ammunition for all the weapons, plus a sealed case of fragmentation grenades.

  There never had been any trouble on the Peking convoys. Sergeant Zimmerman, unaware that he was in complete agreement with the colonel, believed this was because the convoy detail was heavily armed.

  There were nine vehicles in the convoy when it rolled out of the First Battalion compound: four Marine Corps Studebaker ton-and-a-half trucks, with canvas roofs suspended over the beds on wooden bows; two Christian & Missionary Alliance trucks, also Studebakers, differing from the Marine trucks only in that they did not have a steel protective grill mounted to the frame; two gray Studebaker “Captain” sedans, with the Christian & Missionary Alliance insignia (a burning cross) and a legend in Chinese ideograms painted on their doors; and bringing up the rear was the homemade pickup/wrecker, stacked high with spare tires and wheels.

  Sergeant Zimmerman drove the wrecker. He usually rode in it as a passenger, but its normal driver was at the wheel of one of the missionary trucks. The second missionary truck was driven by a Marine who ordinarily would have been assistant driver on one of the trucks. Lieutenant Macklin drove one of the missionary Studebakers, and Corporal McCoy the other.

  As the trucks made their way through heavy traffic toward the Nanking Highway, the passenger cars left the convoy and went to the Hotel Metropole to pick up the missionaries. Zimmerman was not surprised when they had to wait by the side of the Nanking Highway for more than an hour for the missionaries. Missionaries were fucking civilians, and fucking civilians were always late.

  The first hundred miles went quickly. The Japanese Army kept the Nanking Highway and the rail line that ran parallel to it in good shape. Every twenty miles or so, near intersections, there were Japanese checkpoints, two or three soldiers under a corporal. But they just waved the convoy through. Long lines of Chinese, however, were backed up at every checkpoint.

  It was less a search for contraband, McCoy thought, than a reminder of Japanese authority.

  Just past Wuhsi, two and a half hours into the journey, the convoy rolled through another Japanese checkpoint, then turned off the highway onto a gravel road which led, fifty miles away, to the ferry between Chiangyin and Chen-chiang.

  Once they had reached the ferry, the Reverend Feller, Mr. Sessions, and Mrs. Moore got in the back seat of the Studebaker McCoy was driving, and (trailed by one of the missionary trucks) headed down the highway for Nanking.

  The rest of the convoy, led by Lieutenant Macklin in the other missionary Studebaker, started off toward Chiangyin. It was the rainy season, and, predictably, it began to rain buckets. The road turned slick and treacherous, and it took them nearly as long to make that fifty miles as it had to come from Shanghai to Wuhsi.

  (Three)

  Christian & Missionary Alliance Mission

  Nanking, China

  1630 Hours 14 May 1941

  Nanking was a curious mixture of East and West, ancient and modern. The tallest building in the city, for instance, was not a modern skyscraper but the Porcelain Tower, an octagon of white glazed bricks 260 feet tall, built five hundred years before by the Emperor Yung Lo to memorialize the virtues of his mother.

  Recently, from 1928 until 1937, Nanking had been the capital of the Republic of China. But in 1937 the Japanese had captured it in a vicious battle followed by bloody carnage. Their victory was soon known as “The Rape of Nanking.”

  There had nevertheless still been time for Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang government to make their modern mark on it. Outside of town was the Sun Yat-sen mausoleum, honoring the founder of the Chinese Republic. And within the city half a dozen large, Western-style office buildings were built on wide avenues to house governmental ministries. There was also a modern railroad station and a large airport.

  After “The Rape of Nanking,” in the correct belief that representatives of the foreign press (whom they could not bar from China) would all immediately head for Nanking, the Japanese had made a point of keeping Nanking peaceful. Only a handful of military units were stationed there, and they were on their good behavior. When, in the interests of furthering the Greater Japanese Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere it became necessary to slice off some heads, the persons designated were first removed from Nanking.

  The Christian & Missionary Alliance mission was in an ancient part of town, close to the Yangtze and within sight of the cranes on the docks. The mission covered a little more than two acres, which were enclosed by walls. Directly across from the gate a four-hundred-year-old granite-block building had been converted to a chapel. A wooden, gold-painted cross sat atop it.

  There were two large wooden crates in the courtyard of the mission, obviously the household goods of the Fellers. Captain Banning had told McCoy of his suspicions about their contents, and now he wondered idly if the captain was right. Then, more practically, he wondered how they were going to load the crates onto the trucks. The damn things probably weighed a ton.

  A woman who was almost certainly Mrs. Feller appeared in the courtyard as the truck and car drove through the gate. She was more or less what McCoy expected, a somewhat thinner, somewhat younger copy of Mrs. Moore—a well-scrubbed, makeup-free do-gooder. She even wore her hair the same way, braided and then pinned to the sides of her head. But unlike Mrs. Moore, McCoy noticed, she had good-looking legs, trim hips, and an interesting set of knockers.

  She kissed her husband like a nun kisses a relative. On th
e cheek, as if a little uncomfortable with that little bit of passion.

  When the Reverend Feller marched her over to the car and introduced her, McCoy was surprised that her hand was warm. He had expected it to be sort of clammy, like her husband’s.

  She had a boy show McCoy and PFC Everly (the tall, gangly hillbilly driving the missionary truck) where they were to sleep. Except for a Bible on a bedside table and a brightly colored framed lithograph of Jesus Christ gathering children around his knee, it was very much like McCoy’s billet in the First Battalion compound in Shanghai. A steel cot, bedclothes, a chair, and nothing else.

  Sessions came to the room shortly after the mission boy left them there.

  “Could I have a word with you, Corporal McCoy?” he asked.

  “Take a walk, why don’t you, Everly?” McCoy ordered.

  “Where am I supposed to go?”

  “See if you can scout up a decent-looking place for us to eat. Come back in fifteen minutes.”

  When he was gone, Sessions said, “Mrs. Feller has asked you to supper, McCoy.”

  “Everly and I will get something,” McCoy said.

  “She meant the both of you, of course,” Sessions said. “You’re welcome, you understand? She’s really a very nice person.”

  “Lieutenant, I didn’t come here to eat supper with missionaries,” McCoy said. “I’m going out on the town.”

  “In the line of duty, of course,” Sessions said, sarcastically.

  “The Corps’s paying for it,” McCoy said. “Why not?”

  “Yes, of course,” Sessions said. “Is there anything of interest here that I could credibly have a look at?”

  “There’s Kempei-Tai4 watching this place. They’re not going to think much if two Marines leave here to get their ashes hauled. They might get very curious if a newly arrived missionary did the same thing.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of going to a brothel,” Sessions replied, chuckling. “I was suggesting that it would be credible if the Fellers, while I was here, showed me the sights. And that while so doing, I might come across something of interest.”

  “If the Japs have German artillery, it’s not going to be here in Nanking,” McCoy said flatly. “And I think the less attention you call to yourself, the better it would be.”

  “McCoy, I am simply trying to do my job,” Sessions said, annoyed at what he considered McCoy’s condescension. He wondered what Captain Banning had told McCoy about him.

  “That’s all I’m trying to do, Lieutenant,” McCoy said. “Captain Banning said I was to do what I could for you, and that’s what I’m trying to do.”

  As the whores later confirmed, nothing was happening in Nanking. So at half past ten, McCoy decided that there wasn’t anything more to be gained from spending the night in the whorehouse. He put on his clothes, paid off his girl, and went to the room Everly had taken.

  “I’m heading back in,” he told Everly, who was standing there in the doorway a little dazzled by the interruption. He had wrapped a towel around his middle. It threatened to fall.

  “Do I have to?” he said.

  “Just be at the mission at five o’clock,” McCoy said, after a moment. Everly was a fucker, not a fighter; and he didn’t drink dangerously. There was little chance that he would get in trouble. On the other hand, if he spent the night in the whorehouse, it would give the Kempei-Tai agents who had trailed them something to do. And the report they would write would state that a Marine had hired a whore for the night and stayed with her.

  He returned to the mission and searched in vain through the small mission library for something that had nothing to do with Christianity. Then, disappointed, he retreated to his room, undressed to his skivvies, and took from his musette bag one of the copies of the Shanghai Post that had accumulated during his last trip to Shanghai. After he’d read it, he started in on the crossword puzzle.

  Someone knocked at the door. Certain that it was the boy, he called permission to enter in Chinese.

  It was Mrs. Feller, a very different Mrs. Feller from the tight-assed lady he had met that afternoon. She was wearing a cotton bathrobe over a silk gown; and her hair was free now, hanging halfway down her back. It was glossy and soft, as though she had just brushed it. Then he noticed—more than noticed—the unrestrained breasts under her thin night clothes…. The Reverend was about to get a little, after what presumably was a long dry spell.

  “Do you speak Chinese?” she asked, in Chinese.

  “Some,” McCoy said, in English.

  “I just wanted to see if you or the other gentleman needed anything,” she said.

  “No, ma’am,” McCoy said, chuckling. “We’re fine, thank you.”

  “Why are you chuckling?” she asked, smiling.

  “Hearing you call Everly ‘the other gentleman,’” McCoy said.

  “Where is he?” she asked.

  When McCoy didn’t reply, her face flushed.

  “Mrs. Moore told me an incredible story about you,” she said. “I can’t believe it’s true.”

  “What did she tell you?”

  “Now I’m sorry I brought this up,” she said. “I shouldn’t have.”

  He nodded his acceptance of that.

  “But do they call you ‘Killer’? Or were they just teasing my husband and Mr. Sessions?”

  “Some people call me that,” McCoy said. “I don’t like it much.”

  “But you’re just a boy,” she said, after deciding that the rest of the story was also probably—if incredibly—true.

  “I don’t like to be called a boy, either,” McCoy said. “I’m a corporal in the Marine Corps.”

  “I’m really sorry I brought the whole thing up,” she said.

  McCoy nodded.

  “Breakfast will be at six-thirty,” she said. “My husband wants to get on the way early. Is that all right with you?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he said. “We’ll be there. Thank you.”

  “Then I’ll say good night,” she said.

  He thought that he would really have liked to get a look at her teats. Chinese women, by and large, didn’t have very big teats, and it had been a long time since he had seen an American woman’s teats.

  Come to think of it, he had seen very few American women’s teats. Before he had come to China it had been a really big deal to get a look at a set of teats—not to mention actually getting laid. But getting laid in China was about as out-of-the-ordinary as blowing your nose. And in fact he had come to see there was no big difference between Chinese women and American (the story that their pussies ran sideward had turned out to be so much bullshit); but it would still be kind of nice to make it with a real American.

  He would, come to think of it, really like to jump Mrs. Feller, though he immediately recognized that dream as the same kind of fantasy as wishing he would make sergeant next week…out of the goddamned question for two hundred different reasons.

  He turned his attention back to the crossword puzzle.

  (Four)

  The Christian & Missionary Alliance Mission

  Nanking, China

  0830 Hours 15 May 1941

  The Christians of the mission put on a little farewell ceremony for Mrs. Feller. After maybe fifty Chinese had manhandled the wooden crates onto the bed of the Studebaker, they went to one side of the courtyard and stood in some kind of a formation. McCoy settled into the front seat of the car, and watched.

  Next came maybe fifty little Chinese kids dressed in middie-blouse uniforms (which reminded McCoy of the uniform of the Italian marines). They lined up in four ranks. Finally, the missionary equivalent of the officers appeared—all the white Christians and half a dozen suit-wearing Chinese Christians. They sat down on a row of chairs set up on a sort of platform against a wall. One of them rose and said a prayer. Then the Chinese kids sang a hymn in Chinese. McCoy recognized the melody but could not recall the words.

  One of the Chinese Christians gave Mrs. Feller a present. She thanked him, and they sang a
nother hymn, this time in English. The Reverend Feller then gave what was either a sermon or a very long prayer. Then came another hymn.

  All this time, McCoy was looking up Mrs. Feller’s dress. He hadn’t started out to do that. But the way she was sitting up on the platform, and the way he was looking out the Studebaker window, that’s where his eyes naturally fell. And then it got worse. He was originally looking at a lot of white thigh. But then she had uncrossed her knees, and put her feet flat on the little platform just far enough apart to show all the way up. And she wasn’t wearing any pants.

  He didn’t believe what he saw at first. Ladies didn’t go around without their underpants, and she was not only a lady, she was a lady missionary. But there was no question about it. She was sitting there with everything showing.

  And then Lieutenant Sessions came over and sat beside McCoy. The minute he did, Mrs. Feller crossed her legs.

  Did she suddenly remember how she was sitting? Or didn’t it matter, since only an enlisted man was getting an eyeful? Or was she playing the cockteaser with me, and stopped only because Sessions showed up?

  When the ceremony was finally over, and the officer-type Christians walked with Mrs. Feller to the Studebaker, McCoy did not get out from behind the wheel to open the door. He had a hard-on.

  Mister/Lieutenant Sessions, obviously anxious to get the show on the road again, opened the door and motioned for Mrs. Feller to get in.

  “If you don’t mind, Mr. Sessions,” Mrs. Feller said. “I’ll sit with Corporal McCoy. I get woozy if I ride in backseats.”

  She got in beside McCoy and smiled at him.

  “I’m sorry you had to wait,” she said.

  “No sweat,” McCoy said, devoting all of his attention to starting the engine.

  “I always wondered how you did that,” she said.

  “Did what?” he asked. In spite of his misgivings, curiosity forced him to look at her.

  She was holding up his hat press5 He had put his campaign hat in it when he’d got in the car. It was the rainy season, and humidity was hell on fur felt hats.