Close Combat

by W. E. B Griffin

  When he talked with the personnel clerk, he implied that he’d been a reporter/photographer for the Conner Courier. That was not exactly true. Ninety-five percent of the photographic and editorial work on the Conner Courier (weekly, circ. 11,200) was performed by the owner and his wife. But Mr. Greene had shown Bobby how to work the Courier’s Speed Graphic camera, and how to develop its sheet film, and how to print from the resultant negatives.

  Still, the only words he wrote that actually appeared in print were classified ads taken over the telephone, and rewrites of Miss Harriet Combs’s “Social Notes.” Miss Combs knew everything and everyone worth knowing in Conner County, but she had some difficulty writing any of it down for publication. Complete sentences were not one of her journalistic strengths.

  The personnel corporal appeared bored hearing about the Easterbunny’s journalistic career…until it occurred to him to ask if Private Easterbrook could type.

  “Sure.”

  That pleased the corporal. The Corps did not at the moment need journalists, he told Private Easterbrook, but he would make note of that talent—a “secondary specialty”—on his records. What The Corps did need was people who could type. Private Easterbrook was given a typing test, and then a “primary specialty” classification of clerk/typist.

  Becoming a clerk/typist at least got him out of being a rifleman, Private Easterbrook reasoned—his burning desire to personally avenge Pearl Harbor having diminished to the point of extinction while he was at Parris Island.

  He’d been kind of looking forward to a Marine Corps career as a supply man—with a little bit of luck, maybe eventually he’d make supply sergeant—when, out of the clear blue sky, at four o’clock one afternoon, he’d been told to pack his seabag and clear the company. He was being sent overseas. It wasn’t until he was en route to Wellington, N.Z., aboard a U.S. Navy Martin Mariner, a huge, four-engine seaplane headed for Pearl Harbor, that he was able to begin to sort out what was happening to him.

  He learned then that the Marine Corps had formed a team of still and motion picture photographers recruited from Hollywood and the wire services. They were to cover the invasion of a yet unspecified Japanese-occupied island. Just before they were scheduled to depart for the Pacific, one of the still photographers had broken his arm. Somehow Easterbrook’s name—more precisely, his “secondary specialty”—had come to the attention of those seeking an immediate replacement for the sergeant with the broken arm. And he had been ordered to San Diego.

  The team was under the command of former Hollywood press agent Jake Dillon—now Major Dillon, USMCR, a pretty good guy in Easterbrook’s view. Genuinely sorry that the Easterbunny was not able to take the ordinary five-day leave prior to overseas movement, Major Dillon had thrown him a bone in the form of corporal’s stripes.

  Aboard the attack transport, the eight-man team (nine, counting Major Dillon) learned the names of the islands they were invading: Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Gavutu, in the Solomons. No one else had ever heard of them before, either.

  Major Dillon and Staff Sergeant Marv Kaplan, a Hollywood cinematographer Dillon had recruited, went in with the 1st Raider Battalion, in the first wave of landing craft to attack Tulagi. At about the same time, Corporal Easterbrook landed with the 1st Marine Parachute Battalion on Gavutu, two miles away.

  The Marine parachutists didn’t come in by air. They landed from the sea and fought as infantry, suffering ten percent casualties. After Gavutu was secured, the Easterbunny went to Tulagi. There Major Dillon handed him Staff Sergeant Kaplan’s EyeMo 16mm motion picture camera and announced tersely that Kaplan had been evacuated after taking two rounds in his legs, and that Easterbrook was now a Still & Motion Picture Combat Correspondent.

  He also relieved Easterbrook of the film he had shot on Gavutu. One of the pictures he took there—of a Marine paratrooper firing a Browning Automatic Rifle with blood running down his chest—was published nationwide.

  Three days later, he crossed the channel with Dillon to Lunga Point on Guadalcanal, where the bulk of the First Marines had landed. There they learned that one of the two officers and two of the six enlisted combat correspondents had been wounded.

  Shortly afterward, Dillon left Guadalcanal to personally carry the exposed still and motion film to Washington. Easterbrook hadn’t heard news of him since then, though there was some scuttlebutt that he’d been seen on the island a couple of days ago. But the Easterbunny discredited that. If Dillon was on Guadalcanal again, he certainly would have made an effort to see who was left of the original team. That meant Lieutenant Graves, Technical Sergeant Petersen, and Corporal Easterbrook. In the two months since the invasion, everybody else had been killed or seriously wounded.

  Looking at those numbers, Bobby Easterbrook had concluded a month or so ago that it was clearly not a question of if he would get hit, but when, and how seriously. He had further concluded that when he did get hit, he’d probably be hit bad. Although it had been close more times than he liked to remember, so far he hadn’t been scratched. The odds would certainly catch up with him.

  All the same, since getting hit was beyond his control, he didn’t dwell on it. Or tried not to dwell on it…. He kept imagining three, four, five—something like that—scenes where he’d get it. Sometimes, he could keep one or another of these out of his mind for as much as an hour.

  He looked again at the weird R4D, glad at the moment for the diversion. “Holy shit!” he said again.

  When the airplane first came to Henderson, he asked Technical Sergeant Big Steve Oblensky about it. The maintenance sergeant of VMF-229 was usually a pretty good guy; but that time Oblensky’s face got hard and his eyes got cold, and he told him to butt the fuck out; if The Corps wanted to tell him about the airplane, they would send him a letter.

  The Easterbunny pushed himself to his feet as the weird R4D, its unusual landing gear extended, turned on its final approach. He shot a quick glance at the sky, then held his hand out and studied the back of it. He’d come ashore with a Weston exposure meter, but that was long gone.

  He set the exposure and shutter speed on his Leica 35mm camera to f11 at 1/100th second. He’d also come ashore with a Speed Graphic 4 × 5-inch view camera, but that too was long gone.

  He shrugged his shoulder to seat the strap of his Thompson .45 ACP caliber submachine gun, so it wouldn’t fall off, and took two exposures of the R4D as it landed and rolled past the Pagoda, and then another as it taxied back to it.

  As he walked toward the aircraft, he noticed Big Steve Oblensky driving up in a jeep. Jeeps, like everything else on Guadalcanal, were in short supply. How Oblensky managed to get one—more mysteriously, how he managed to keep it—could only be explained by placing Oblensky in that category of Marine known as The Old Breed—i.e., pre-war Marines with twenty years or more of service. They operated by their own rules.

  For instance, Bobby Easterbrook had taken at least a hundred photos of Old Breed Marines wearing wide-brimmed felt campaign hats in lieu of the prescribed steel helmet. None of the brass, apparently, felt it worthwhile to comment on the headgear, some of which the Easterbunny was sure was older than he was.

  Another sergeant was in the jeep with Oblensky, a gunnery sergeant, a short, barrel-chested man in his late twenties; another Old Breed Marine, even though he was wearing a steel helmet. Oblensky was coverless (in The Corps, the Easterbunny had learned, headgear of all types was called a “cover”) and bare-chested, except for a .45 ACP in an aviator’s shoulder holster.

  “Why don’t you go someplace, Easterbunny, and do something useful?” Technical Sergeant Oblensky greeted him.

  “Let me do my job, Sergeant, OK?”

  Three months ago, I would never have dreamed of talking to a sergeant like that.

  “You know this feather merchant, Ernie?” Technical Sergeant Oblensky inquired.

  “Seen him around.”

  “Easterbunny, say hello to Gunny Zimmerman.”

  “Gunny.”

  “W
hat do you say, kid?”

  “Except that he keeps showing up where he ain’t wanted, the Easterbunny’s not as much of a candy-ass as he looks.”

  I have just been paid a compliment; or what for Big Steve Oblensky is as close to a compliment as I could hope for.

  The rear door of the R4D started to open. Bobby Easterbrook put the Leica to his eye and waited for a shot.

  First man out was a second lieutenant, whom the Easterbunny recognized as one of the VMF-229 Wildcat pilots. He was wearing a tropical-weight flight suit. It was sweat stained, but it looked clean. Even new.

  That’s unusual, the Easterbunny thought. But what’s really unusual is that an R4D like this is being flown by pilots from VMF-229, which is a fighter squadron. Why?

  Neither of the Old Breed sergeants in the jeep saluted, although the gunny did get out of the jeep.

  “We got some stuff for the squadron,” the Second Lieutenant said. “Get it out of sight before somebody sees it.”

  That put Oblensky into action. He started the jeep’s engine and quickly backed it up to the airplane door. He took a sheet of canvas, the remnants of a tent, from the floor of the jeep, set it aside, and then climbed into the airplane. A moment later, he started handing crates to Zimmerman.

  Very quickly, the jeep was loaded—overloaded—with crates of food. One, now leaking blood, was marked BEEF, FOR STEAKS 100 LBS KEEP FROZEN. And there were four cases of quart bottles of Australian beer and two cases of whiskey.

  Oblensky and Zimmerman covered all this with the sheet of canvas, and then Oblensky got behind the wheel and drove quickly away.

  Another officer, this one a first lieutenant, climbed down from the cargo door of the airplane; and he was immediately followed by a buck sergeant. They were wearing khakis, and web belts with holstered pistols, and both had Thompson submachine guns slung from their shoulders.

  Gunny Zimmerman walked up and saluted. The Easterbunny got a shot of that, too. When the Lieutenant heard the click of the shutter, he turned to give him a dirty look with cold eyes.

  Fuck you, Lieutenant. When you’ve been here a couple of days, you’ll understand this isn’t Parris Island, and we don’t do much saluting around here.

  The Lieutenant returned Gunny Zimmerman’s salute, and then shook his hand.

  “Still alive, Ernie?” the Lieutenant asked.

  “So far,” Gunny Zimmerman replied.

  “Say hello to George Hart,” the Lieutenant said, and then turned to the sergeant. “Zimmerman and I were in the 4th Marines, in Shanghai, before the war.”

  “Gunny,” Sergeant Hart said, shaking hands.

  “You were in on this?” Zimmerman asked, with a nod in the direction of the weird airplane.

  “I couldn’t think of a way to get out of it,” Sergeant Hart said.

  The Lieutenant chuckled.

  “I volunteered him, Ernie,” he said.

  “You do that to people,” the gunny said. “Lots of people think you’re dangerous.”

  “Dangerous is something of an understatement, Gunny,” Sergeant Hart said.

  The Lieutenant put up both hands in a mock gesture of surrender.

  I read this lieutenant wrong. If he was a prick, like I thought, he wouldn’t let either of them talk like that to him. And what’s this “4th Marines in Shanghai before the war” business? He doesn’t look old enough to have been anywhere before the war.

  Now a major climbed down the ladder from the airplane. He was dressed in khakis like the Lieutenant, and he was wearing a pistol. The Easterbunny took his picture, too, and got another dirty look from cold eyes.

  And then Major Jake Dillon climbed down. He was also in khakis, but he carried a Thompson, not a pistol; and he smiled when he saw him.

  “Jake,” the first Major said, and pointed to Corporal Easterbrook.

  “Give me that film, Easterbrook,” Major Dillon ordered.

  The Easterbunny rewound the film into the cassette, then opened the Leica, took it out, and handed it to Major Dillon. Dillon surprised him by pulling the film from the cassette, exposing it, ruining it.

  “This we don’t want pictures of,” Dillon said conversationally, then asked, “Where’d you get the Leica?”

  “It’s Sergeant Lomax’s,” Easterbrook replied. “It was Sergeant Lomax’s. Lieutenant Hale took it when he got killed, and I took it from Hale when he got killed.”

  Major Dillon nodded.

  “There’s some 35mm film, color and black-and-white, in an insulated container on there,” he said, gesturing toward the airplane. “And some more film, and some other stuff. Take what you think you’re going to need, and then give the rest to the Division’s public relations people.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir.”

  “I want to talk to you, to everybody, but not right now. Where do you usually hang out?”

  “With VMF-229, Sir.”

  “OK. See if you can locate the others, and don’t get far away.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir.”

  Technical Sergeant Big Steve Oblensky came up in the now empty jeep.

  Another face appeared in the door of the R4D. It was another one the Easterbunny recognized, the skipper of VMF-229, Captain Charles Galloway.

  “Ski,” he ordered, “take these officers to the Division CP, and then come back. There’s stuff in here to be unloaded, and I want this serviced as soon as you can.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” Tech Sergeant Oblensky said.

  The two Majors and the Lieutenant with the cold eyes climbed into the jeep and it drove away.

  Captain Galloway looked at Easterbrook, then asked conversationally (it was not, in other words, an order), “You doing anything important, Easterbunny, or can you lend us a hand unloading the airplane?”

  “Aye, aye, Sir.”

  “You, too, Hart,” Galloway said.

  Captain Galloway and the other VMF-229 pilot, the Second Lieutenant, started to unload the airplane. His name, the Easterbunny now remembered, was Pickering.

  II

  [ONE]

  Headquarters

  First Marine Division

  Guadalcanal

  0655 Hours 12 October 1942

  When the jeep driven by Technical Sergeant Big Steve Oblensky drove up, Major General Alexander Archer Vandegrift was about to climb into his own jeep.

  Vandegrift, the commanding general of the First Marine Division, and as such the senior American on Guadalcanal, was a tall, distinguished-looking man just starting to develop jowls. He was wearing mussed and sweat-stained utilities, boondockers, a steel helmet, and had a web belt with a holstered .45 1911A1 Colt pistol around his waist.

  The three officers in the jeep stepped out quickly, and one by one rendered a salute. Vandegrift, who had placed his hand on the windshield of his jeep and was about to lift himself up, paused a moment until they were through saluting, then returned it. Then, almost visibly making up his mind not to get in his jeep and to delay whatever he intended to do, he walked toward them.

  “Oblensky,” General Vandegrift ordered conversationally, “get a helmet. Wear it.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” Technical Sergeant Oblensky replied.

  “Hello, Dillon.”

  “Good morning, Sir.”

  “Your operation go OK?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Can I interpret that to mean we can count on that team of Coastwatchers?”

  “Yes, Sir. They’re operational, with a new radio and a spare.”

  “And the men that were there?”

  “Exhaustion and malnutrition, Sir. But they’ll be all right.”

  “Is that what you wanted to see me about?”

  “Yes, Sir. And Major Banning hoped you would have time for him.”

  Vandegrift looked closely and curiously at Major Edward J. Banning, concluding that there was something familiar about the stocky, erect officer, and that also suggested he was a professional. He offered his hand.

  “I have the feeling we’ve met, Majo
r. Is that so?”

  “Yes, Sir. When you were in Shanghai before the war.”

  “Right,” Vandegrift said, remembering: “You were the intelligence officer of the Fourth Marines, right?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “What can I do for you, Major?”

  “Sir, I’m here at the direction of General Pickering. Is there someplace…?”

  “We can go inside,” Vandegrift said.

  “Sir, you’re not going to need me for this, are you?” the Lieutenant asked.

  “No,” Major Banning replied.

  “I’d like to go see my brother,” the Lieutenant said.

  “Go ahead,” Banning said.

  “Where is your brother, Lieutenant?” Vandegrift asked.

  “With the 1st Raider Battalion, Sir.”

  “My driver will take you,” Vandegrift said. “But you can’t keep the jeep.”

  “Thank you, Sir. No problem, I can get back on my own.”

  The Lieutenant saluted, and walked toward the jeep. Vandegrift gestured toward his command post, then led the others inside to what passed, in the circumstances, for his private office.

  A sheet of tentage hung much like a shower curtain provided what privacy there was. Inside the curtained area was a U.S. Army Field Desk, a four-foot-square plywood box with interior shelves and compartments; its front opened to form a writing surface. It sat on a wooden crate with Japanese markings.

  “One of your officers, Dillon?” Vandegrift asked as he pulled the canvas in place and waved them into two folding wooden chairs. He was obviously referring to the Lieutenant he’d just lent his jeep to. “I heard about Lieutenant Hale being killed. I thought there would be a replacement for him.”

  “One of General Pickering’s officers, Sir,” Banning replied.

  “That’s Killer McCoy, General,” Major Dillon said.

  “That’s Killer McCoy?” Vandegrift replied, surprised. “I would have expected someone more on the order of Sergeant Oblensky.”

  “That’s the Killer, Sir,” Dillon said.