And so Stecker was not at all surprised after the war started to see the Japanese winning victory after victory. What surprised him was how long it was taking them to mount a massive counterattack on Guadalcanal. Control of the Guadalcanal airfield (now named Henderson Field, after a Marine Aviator who had been killed in the Battle of Midway) was as important to them as it was to the Americans. And unlike the Americans, the Japanese had enormous resources of ships, aircraft, and men to throw into a counterattack.
For instance, when the American invasion fleet sailed off into the sunset, it carried with it the heavy (155mm) artillery of the First Marine Division. That meant the Japanese could bombard the airfield and Marine positions with their heavy artillery, without fear of counterbattery fire from the Americans, whose most powerful cannon was the 105mm howitzer.
And meanwhile, Guadalcanal was a tropical island, infested with malaria and a long list of other debilitating tropical diseases. These weakened the physical strength of the Marines from the moment they landed. That situation, made worse by short rations and the strain of heat and humidity, could easily get desperate. Already Stecker’s Marines were sick and exhausted.
As for the reason they were on the island in the first place, Henderson Field was operational and a second auxiliary airstrip had been bulldozed not far away, yet there had been no massive buildup of American air power. As soon as aircraft were flown in, they entered combat. Although Japanese losses were much heavier than American, the attrition of U.S. warplanes seemed to Stecker to have overwhelmed available reinforcements.
Stecker had a personal interest in Marine Aviation. His son, a Marine Aviator on VFM-229, had barely survived a crash landing in an F4F4 Wildcat. He had left the island a high-priority medical evacuee, covered in plaster and bandages. Despite all the painkilling narcotics the doctors thought he could handle, he was moaning in agony.
The prognosis was, eventually, full recovery. Stecker had his doubts.
A mud-splattered jeep came up to him.
“Major Stecker?” the driver asked.
The driver looked to be fifteen, Stecker thought, and was certainly no older than eighteen.
“Right,” Stecker said, and got in the front seat.
“Sorry to be late, Sir. I got stuck in the mud.”
Late? What does he mean, “late”? How long have I been standing there?
“It happens,” Stecker said.
[THREE]
There was no General’s Mess. Instead there was a plank table under a canvas fly, set with three places. Each place held a china plate and a china mug (“borrowed,” Stecker was sure, from the transport), and was laid out with the flatware that came with a mess kit: a knife, a fork, and a large spoon. Stecker wondered why the mess cook hadn’t “borrowed” some better tableware. But then it occurred to him that somewhere in the hold of one of the ships that sailed off into the sunset the day after they landed there was a crate marked HQ CO OFFICERS’ MESS filled with some decent plates and flatware.
He stood at the end of the table and waited for the Division Commander to arrive.
Vandegrift appeared a minute later, trailed by Brigadier General Lucky Lew Harris, who was shorter and stockier than his superior. Vandegrift was wearing utilities; Harris wore mussed and sweat-stained khakis.
Stecker came to attention.
“Good morning, Sir.”
“Good morning, Jack.”
“General,” Stecker said, nodding to Harris.
“Colonel,” Harris said.
Christ, Lew’s going over the edge, too. He called me “Colonel”; he, of all people, knows better than that.
A mess cook appeared. He was trying, without much success, to look as neat and crisp as a cook-for-a-general should look. He carried a stainless-steel pitcher and a can of condensed milk. He put the pitcher and the can of condensed milk on the table. And then he opened the can by piercing the top in two places with a K-Bar knife.
“Thank you,” General Vandegrift said. “I can use some coffee.”
“Sir, I can give you powdered eggs and bacon, or corned beef.”
“Corned beef for me, please,” General Vandegrift said. He picked up the coffee pitcher and poured coffee for himself and the others.
“Please be seated, gentlemen,” the General said.
Stecker and Harris sat down. The cook looked at them. Both nodded. The General had ordered corned beef; they would have corned beef.
The General raised his eyes to the cook.
“Is there any of the Japanese orange segments?”
“Yes, Sir. I was going to bring you some, Sir.”
Vandegrift nodded.
“Thank God for the Japanese,” Vandegrift said. He turned to look at Stecker.
“I suppose if you had something unusual to report, Jack, you would have already said what it is.”
“Fairly quiet night, Sir.”
Vandegrift nodded.
“Jack, we got a radio about a week ago asking us to recommend outstanding people for promotion. Officers and enlisted. We’re going to have to staff entire divisions, and apparently someone at Eighth and I thinks the cadre should be people who have been in combat.” (Headquarters, USMC, is at Eighth and I streets in Washington, D.C.)
“Yes, Sir. I agree. Are you asking me for recommendations, Sir?”
“I wasn’t, but go ahead.”
“Sir, I have an outstanding company commander in mind, Joe Fortin, and my G-3 sergeant is really a first-class Marine. Are you talking about direct commissions, Sir?”
“Before you leave,” Vandegrift said, not replying directly, “give those names to General Harris.”
“Aye, aye, Sir.”
“What Eighth and I wanted, Jack, was the names of field-grade officers, for promotion”—majors, lieutenant colonels, and colonels—“and staff NCOs for either direct commissions or for Officer Candidate School.” (Staff NCOs were enlisted men of the three senior grades.)
“Yes, Sir.”
He already told me that. And he’s certainly not asking me to offer my opinion of field-grade officers. If I’m not the junior major on this island, I don’t know who is. What’s he leading up to?
“A couple of names came immediately to mind, and we fired off a radio,” General Vandegrift went on. “And for once Eighth and I did something in less than sixty days.”
“Yes, Sir?”
The cook arrived with a plate of corned beef hash and three coffee cups, each of which held several spoonfuls of canned orange segments, courtesy of the Imperial Japanese Army.
He served the corned beef hash, left, and returned with another plate, this one holding bread that had apparently been “toasted” in a frying pan.
“General, we don’t have any jam except plum,” the cook said, laying a plate of jam on the table.
“Plum will be fine, thank you,” General Vandegrift said.
General Harris spread his toast with the jam, and took a bite.
“This must be American,” he said. “It’s awful.”
“Did you send for a photographer, Lew?” General Vandegrift asked.
“Yes, Sir. He’s standing by.”
“Well, let’s get him in here and get this over with.”
“Aye, aye, Sir,” General Harris said. He rose and walked out from under the canvas fly, returning a minute later with a Marine in sweat-stained, tattered utilities. He had a shoulder holster holding a .45 Colt across his chest, a Thompson submachine gun hanging from his right shoulder, and a musette bag slung over the left. He carried a small 35mm Leica camera.
“Good morning,” General Vandegrift said.
“Good morning, Sir,” Corporal Easterbrook replied.
“Will you stand up, please, Jack?” Vandegrift said as he got to his feet.
Now what the hell?
“You want to take off those major’s leaves, please, Jack?” Vandegrift said.
“Sir?”
“You heard the General, Colonel, take off those major’s lea
ves,” General Harris said.
I don’t believe this.
“Pursuant to directions from the Commandant of the Marine Corps, I announce that Major Jack (NMI) Stecker, USMCR, is promoted Lieutenant Colonel, USMCR, effective this date,” General Vandegrift said. “How do you want to do this, Corporal? Me pinning on the insignia, or shaking Colonel Stecker’s hand?”
“I’d like one of each, Sir,” Corporal Easterbrook said.
“Very well, one of each,” General Vandegrift said.
When they shook hands, General Vandegrift met Lieutenant Colonel Stecker’s eyes for the first time. “Congratulations, Jack. The promotion is well deserved.”
“Jesus!” Stecker blurted.
“I would hate to think that your first act as a lieutenant colonel was to question a general officer’s recommendation,” Vandegrift said. Then he looked at Corporal Easterbrook. “Is this all right, Corporal?”
“Colonel, if you would look this way, please?” Easterbrook said. When Stecker did that, he tripped the shutter.
[FOUR]
The Beach
Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands
0805 Hours 13 October 1942
Lieutenant Colonel Jack (NMI) Stecker was standing out of the way, on the highest ground (an undisturbed dune) he could find, watching the lines of landing craft moving between the beach and the transports standing offshore.
They were being reinforced.
After they waded the last few yards ashore, soldiers of the 164th Infantry Regiment were being formed up on the beach by their noncoms to be marched inland. At first, General Vandegrift had said at breakfast, these men would not be placed in the line as a unit. Rather, they were to be distributed among the Marine units already there; for they were desperately needed as reinforcements. At the same time, the Marines could guide them through their first experience under fire.
They’re not going to be much help, he thought. They’re not even soldiers, but National Guardsmen. Still, it’s a regiment of armed men, presumably in better physical shape than anyone here.
And armed with the Garand. Goddamn it! Why is The Marine Corps at the bottom of the list when it comes to good equipment?
As the soldiers in their clean fatigue uniforms waited to move inland, Marines in their torn and soiled dungarees came down to the beach to do business with them. Word had quickly spread that the soldiers had come well supplied with Hershey bars and other pogie bait. Though the Marines had no Hershey bars or other pogie bait, they did have various souvenirs: Japanese helmets, pistols, flags, and the like. In a spirit of inter-service cooperation, they would be willing to barter these things for Hershey bars.
Stecker smiled. He was aware that at least fifty percent of the highly desirable Japanese battle flags being bartered had been turned out by bearded, bare-chested Marine Corps seamstresses on captured Japanese sewing machines.
“Good morning, Sir,” a lieutenant said, startling Stecker. He turned and saw a young officer in utilities and boondockers, armed with only a .45 hanging from a belt holster. He was wearing a soft-brimmed cap, not a steel helmet.
The Lieutenant saluted. Stecker returned it.
The utilities are clean. He doesn’t look like he’s hungry or suffering from malaria. Therefore, he probably just got here. Maybe with these ships, they’re sending us a few individual replacements. He will learn soon enough to get a rifle to go with that pistol. And a helmet. But it’s not my job to tell him.
“Look at all the dogfaces with Garands,” the Lieutenant said. “Boy, the Army is dumb. They don’t know the Garand is a Mickey Mouse piece of shit.”
Well, I can’t let that pass.
“Lieutenant, for your general fund of military knowledge, the Garand—”
Lieutenant Colonel Stecker stopped. The Lieutenant was smiling at him.
Hell, I know him. From where?
“Ken McCoy, Colonel,” the Lieutenant said. “They told me I could probably find you here.”
“Killer McCoy,” Stecker said, remembering. “I’ll be damned. I didn’t expect to see you here.” He put his hand out. “And I’m sorry, you don’t like to be called ‘Killer,’ do you?”
Stecker remembered the first time he met McCoy. Before the war. He was then Sergeant Major Stecker of the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Virginia. McCoy was a corporal, a China Marine just back from the 4th Marines in Shanghai. He was reporting in to the Officer Candidate School.
Almost all officer candidates were nice young men just out of college. But as a test—for which few Marines, including Sergeant Major Stecker, had high hopes—a small number of really outstanding enlisted Marines were to be given a chance for a commission. It was a bright opportunity for these young men. So Stecker was surprised, when he first met him, that McCoy was not wildly eager to become an officer and a gentleman.
Soon after that, he found out that McCoy was in OCS largely because the Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, of the Marine Corps had let it be known that The Corps should put bars on McCoy’s twenty-one-year-old shoulders as soon as possible.
McCoy had an unusual flair for languages: He was fluent in several kinds of Chinese and Japanese and several European languages.
That wasn’t all he had a flair for.
While his sources didn’t have all the details, Stecker learned that McCoy was known in China as “Killer” McCoy—not for his success with the ladies, but because of two incidents where men had died. In one, three Italian Marines of the International Garrison attacked him; he killed two with his Fairbairn knife and seriously injured the third. In the second, he was in the interior of China on an intelligence-gathering mission, when “bandits” attacked his convoy (the “bandits” were actually in the employ of the Japanese secret police, the Kempe Tai). Firing Thompson submachine guns, McCoy and another Marine killed twenty-two of the “bandits.”
At Quantico, the lieutenants-to-be were trained on the Garand. When it came to Sergeant Major Stecker’s attention that Officer Candidate McCoy had not qualified when firing for record, he went down to have a look; for McCoy should have qualified. And so there had to be a reason why he didn’t. And Stecker found it: him. He was an officer who knew McCoy in China…. What was that sonofabitch’s name? Macklin. Lieutenant R. B. Macklin…. Macklin had something against Candidate McCoy; and it was more than just the generally held belief that commissioning enlisted men without college degrees would be the ruination of the officer corps.
Macklin actively disliked McCoy…more than that, he despised him. A small measure of his hostility could be gleaned at the bar of the officers’ club, where from time to time he passed the word that “Killer” McCoy was so called with good reason. He did not belong at Quantico about to be officially decreed an officer and a gentleman; he belonged in the Portsmouth Naval Prison.
Sergeant Major Stecker had no trouble finding two ex-China Marines who told him more about Lieutenant Macklin than he would like to know:
In China, in order to cover his own responsibility for a failed operation, Macklin tried to lay the blame on Corporal McCoy. The 4th Marines’ Intelligence Officer, Captain Ed Banning (Stecker remembered him as a good officer and a good Marine), investigated, found Macklin to be a liar, and wrote an efficiency report on him that would have seen him booted out of The Corps had it not been for the war. Instead, he wound up at Quantico.
…where the sonofabitch was determined to get McCoy kicked out of OCS. One of his first steps was to see that McCoy didn’t qualify on the range. And if that wasn’t enough, he was also writing McCoy up for inefficiency, for a bad attitude, and for violations of regulations he hadn’t committed.
And he actually went into the pits to personally score McCoy’s bull’s-eyes as Maggie’s drawers. Then I got in the act, and refired McCoy for record. The second time, with me calling his shots through a spotter scope, he scored High Expert. And that night all those disqualifying reports mysteriously vanished from his file.
Candidate McCoy graduated with his class a
nd was commissioned. And then he dropped out of sight. Stecker heard that he was working for G-2 in Washington; but later he heard that McCoy had been with the 2nd Raider Battalion on the Makin Island raid.
I wonder whatever happened to that sonofabitch Macklin?
“Congratulations on your promotion, Colonel,” McCoy said, without responding to the apology for being called “Killer.”
“I’m still in shock,” Stecker confessed. “It just happened. How did you find out?”
“General Vandegrift told me,” McCoy said. “He also told me what happened to your son. I was sorry to hear that.”
“What were you doing with the General?” Stecker wondered aloud. Lieutenants seldom hold conversations with general officers, much less obtain personal data from them about field-grade officers.
“I’m on my way to the States,” McCoy said. “I was told to see if my boss can do anything for him in the States.”
“Your boss is?”
“General Pickering.”
“What have you been doing here?”
“We replaced the Coastwatcher detachment on Buka,” McCoy said matter-of-factly.
Stecker had heard about that operation; and he was not surprised to hear that McCoy was involved, or that he was working for Fleming Pickering. “It went off all right, I guess?” Colonel Stecker asked.
“It went so smoothly, it scared me. Colonel—”
“I’m going to have trouble getting used to that title,” Stecker interrupted.
“It took a while, but I’m now used to being called ‘lieutenant,’” McCoy said. “I never thought that would happen. They wouldn’t have promoted you if they didn’t think you could handle it.”
“Or unless they’ve reached the bottom of the barrel so far as officers are concerned. One or the other.”
“What I started to say was that I’m going home via Pearl. Pick Pickering asked me to go by the Naval Hospital to see your son. I thought maybe you’d want me to tell him something, or…”
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