The Corps 03 - Counterattack

by W. E. B Griffin

  He spun her about, and her eyes moved across the people at the tables around the dance floor.

  And fell on Lieutenant Hazel Gower, NC, USN, who was staring at her. She was with another nurse, the skinny little old bitch who had sent her to the Venereal Diseases Ward after Barbara told her she didn’t want to work in Obstetrics.

  "Let’s quit," Barbara said to Joe. "I’m a little dizzy."

  When they returned to the table, the wine was gone, and so was the Scotch in the wine cooler. These had been replaced by a tray of cheese and two brandy snifters.

  I don’t want that, either. But it’s his party and I don’t want to appear bitchy.

  "Did you order that?" she asked.

  He shook his head.

  "If you don’t want it, don’t drink it," he said.

  "It would be a shame to waste it," she said.

  A short time later, Joe said, "I don’t think I’ve ever had a better time in my life. I hate for it to end."

  "It has to. I’ve got a busy day tomorrow."

  "Sure. I understand. I didn’t mean . . ."

  Her hand reached for his again, and touched it, and this time she did not immediately withdraw it.

  "I’ve had a fine time, too. Really. I’m glad we came here."

  His hand closed on hers, and they held hands for a moment, and then he pulled his away.

  "I’ll get the check," he said, and started looking for the waiter. It took him some time to find him. After the waiter noticed Joe waving and started moving toward their table, she caught Joe glancing at her, and then averting his eyes.

  "Will there be something else, Sir? A pastry, perhaps?"

  "You want a piece of cake?" Joe asked, and she shook her head. "Just the check, please."

  "Excuse me, Sir?"

  "Can I have the check, please?"

  "Sir, that’ll go on the Pacific and Far East house ledger."

  "I’d like to pay for it," Joe said.

  "Sir, that would be ... difficult."

  "Let it go, Joe," Barbara said. "Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth."

  "OK," he said, hesitantly. "Thank you."

  "I hope you enjoyed your meal, Sir."

  He took her arm again as he led her from the room. They walked within ten feet of Lieutenant Gower and her friend. When Barbara smiled at her, Gower stared right through her.

  In the lobby just outside the dining room entrance, Barbara stopped.

  "Where’s the room the key goes to?"

  "I don’t know. It says 418."

  "Then it would seem reasonable to assume it is on the fourth floor, wouldn’t you say?"

  "I suppose."

  "And I think it would also be reasonable to assume that it would have a bathroom, wouldn’t you say?"

  "Sure. I’m sure it would."

  "Nature calls," she said. "And there, lucky me, are the elevators."

  "Would you like me to wait here?"

  "No."

  She walked ahead of him and got on the elevator.

  "Four, please," she said to the elevator operator.

  She didn’t look at him on the way up. He followed her into the corridor.

  She stopped and turned to him, and looked into his eyes.

  "If you don’t kiss me right now, I’m going to lose my nerve," she said.

  He didn’t move. He looked paralyzed.

  "Didn’t anybody ever tell you not to look a gift horse in the mouth?" Barbara said.

  He kissed her.

  And then they walked, arms around each other, down the corridor until they found suite 418. He had a little trouble fitting the key to the lock, but once they were inside, and after he kissed her again, everything went off without a hitch.

  Chapter Six

  (One)

  Building "F"

  Anacostia Naval Air Station

  Washington, D.C.

  0845 Hours 13 February 1942

  "General Mclnerney," Brigadier General D. G. Mclnerney answered his telephone, not taking his eyes off the thick stack of paper before him.

  "Colonel Hershberger, Sir."

  "Hello, Bobby, how are you? What can I do for you?"

  Colonel Robert T. Hershberger was Chief of Staff, 1stMarine Air Wing, Quantico, Virginia.

  "General, the General is gone. He’s at New River. I’m minding the store."

  The General was Brigadier General Roy S. Geiger, Commanding, 1stMarine Air Wing.

  "Got something you can’t handle, Bobby?"

  "General, I can handle this. What I would like is your advice on how to handle it."

  "Shoot. Advice is cheap."

  "I have a requirement to send one R4D, rigged for parachutists, to Lakehurst, to arrive NLT 0600, 14 February. That’s tomorrow."

  "I know. I laid that requirement on you."

  "And your Major made it pretty plain that this is a must-do."

  "It is."

  "And thirty minutes ago, I got a call from the Director of Public Relations, just checking to see that the aircraft was scheduled, and asking me if I could take particular care to see that the crew was ‘photogenic’"

  "The sonofabitch called me just a few minutes ago," General Mclnerney said. "He told me that the Commandant had ‘expressed enthusiastic interest in the project.’ You know what it is?"

  "Lifemagazine is sending a photographer. Photographers. Plural. To watch the parachute trainees jump out of the airplane."

  "Right. The idea, apparently, is that when the red-blooded youth of our nation see these heroic daredevils, they will rush to the nearest recruiting office to join up," General Mclnerney said dryly.

  "That being the case, I figured there was no way I could get out of sending my only R4D up there," Colonel Hershberger said.

  "If that’s why you called, Bobby, save your breath. I don’t know if General Holcomb really knows about whatever this public-relations operation is, but that requirement came down here from the Throne Room."

  "There are four people here qualified in the R4D," Hershberger said.

  "That’s all?" Mclnerney asked, surprised.

  "General, you may not have noticed, but people have been sending my pilots overseas."

  "I can do without the sarcasm, thank you very much, Bobby," Mclnerney said. "And you may not have noticed, but there’s a war on."

  Colonel Hershberger did not reply.

  "What’s the problem, Bobby?" Mclnerney said, more cordially. "It only takes two pilots to fly one of those things, doesn’t it?"

  "Two of the four pilots don’t look old enough to vote; and they have just finished the checkout. The check pilot, aware of the pilot shortage, was not as critical as he should have been."

  "How do you know that?" Mclnerney snapped.

  "I was the check pilot," Hershberger said. "Primarily because I am the only R4D Instructor Pilot here."

  "You said four pilots."

  "Well, he has two hundred-odd hours in the aircraft, and he went through the parachute-dropping course at Fort Benning."

  "Well, then, what the hell is the problem? Send him. And send the two kids with him to see how it’s done."

  "Aye, aye, Sir. I hoped the General would say that. The name of the only fully qualified pilot for this mission is Technical Sergeant Charles Galloway."

  General Mclnerney exhaled audibly.

  "Oh, you sonofabitch, Bobby," he said. "You sandbagged me."

  "The options, General, as I see them, are to send the two kids and pray they don’t dump the airplane, or drop the parachutists in the Atlantic or over Central Park, while Life’s cameras are clicking. Or fly it myself. I’ve never dropped parachutists. I can probably find Lakehurst all right, but it occurred to me that it would look a little odd to have a full bird colonel flying a mission like this. Or send Charley Galloway."

  "I told you about Galloway."

  "Yes, Sir, I know that he embarrassed the U.S. Navy by getting repaired an airplane that BUAIR said was beyond repair. And then he further embarrassed the U.S. Navy
’s security procedures by finding out where a Task Force was, and then flying the unrepairable airplane out to it. And I know the only excuse he offered for this outrageous behavior was that he thought Marines were supposed to fight the enemy."

  "It’s a damned good thing we’ve been friends for twenty-odd years, Bobby," Mclnerney said. "Otherwise, I’d have your ass for talking to me that way."

  "Doc, for God’s sake, I’m bleeding for pilots. Not only for this stupid public-relations nonsense, but all over. It makes absolutely no sense to have a pilot like Galloway sitting on the goddamned ground with a wrench in his hand when he could be, for example, teaching the kids how to fly the goddamned R4D."

  Mclnerney didn’t reply.

  "And if we hadn’t been friends for twenty years, Doc, and somebody else was sitting at your desk, I would have just sent him without asking, and said, ‘Fuck you, court-martial me,’ if anybody said anything about it."

  There was a long silence.

  Finally, Mclnerney said, "Got your mouth under control now, Bobby?"

  "Yes, Sir. Sorry, Sir."

  "Colonel Hershberger, you have my permission to restore Sergeant Galloway to flight status. You have my permission to have Sergeant Galloway fly this public-relations mission to Lakehurst. And you may utilize Sergeant Galloway in such other flying roles as you deem appropriate for someone of his skill and experience, except that he will not leave the Quantico local area without my express permission."

  "Aye, aye, Sir. Thank you, Sir."

  "And you tell that sonofabitch, Bobby, that if he so much as farts and embarrasses you, me, or Marine Aviation in any way, I personally guarantee that he will spend the rest of this war as a private in a rifle company."

  "Aye, aye, Sir."

  General Mclnerney slammed the handset into its cradle and returned his attention to the thick stack of papers on his desk.

  (Two)

  Lakehurst Naval Air Station

  Lakehurst, New Jersey

  14 February 1942

  Lieutenant Colonel Franklin G. Neville, USMC, who was thirty-seven years old, balding, barrel-chested, and carried 212 pounds on a six-foot-two-inch body, had seen the future and it was Vertical Envelopment.

  In 1937, as a very senior (and nearly overage-in-grade) captain, Neville was appointed Assistant Naval Attach?, United States Embassy, Helsinki, Finland. His previous assignment had been as an infantry company commander.

  When he was not selected to attend the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and was then asked if he would accept the Helsinki embassy assignment, Neville understood that his Marine Corps career was drawing to a close.

  If he was lucky, he might be promoted major while on the four-year embassy assignment. But promoted or not, he knew-in fact, he’d been unofficially informed-that in the spring of 1941, when his Helsinki tour was over, he would be retired.

  He’d also been told-and he believed-that he himself was in no way personally responsible for his coming retirement. He had, in other words, not been found wanting. He was a good officer who performed his assigned duties well. There was no record, official or whispered, that he was too fond of the bottle or of the ladies, or of any other sport inappropriate for a Marine officer.

  The bottom line was that there were only so many billets available for majors in the peacetime Marine Corps, either in the serving Corps or in the professional schools. And others competing for these spots were better qualified than he was. The rule was "up or out"-meaning that if an officer was not selected for promotion, he was either separated from the Corps or retired. Retirement was the fate of officers like Captain Neville, who had enough years of service to qualify for it.

  He’d understood the rules of the game when he’d accepted a regular Marine commission in 1919; and he had no complaints now-although, naturally, he was disappointed.

  Franklin G. Neville had entered the Marine Corps as a second lieutenant in June of 1916, on his graduation from Purdue University. He had come home from France a wounded, decorated captain, who had taken over command of his company when its commander had been killed at Belleau Wood.

  The Corps, and the war, had changed him. He no longer wanted to become a lawyer specializing in banking law, like his father. He now knew that any personal satisfaction he might find in the practice of law could not compare with the satisfaction he had known leading men in battle.

  His father never understood that. Worse, he shared with most of his peers the notion that a man served in the peacetime military only if he could do nothing else. And he was simply incapable of understanding why anyone would want to settle for the pittance paid regular officers when a financially rewarding career right there in St. Louis was available.

  Available, hell, it’s being handed to you on a silver platter, you damned fool!

  Estelle Wachenberg Neville, whom he had married five days before shipping out to France, had understood. And she had also brought into the marriage a substantial trust fund established for her by her maternal grandfather, who had been one of the original investors in the Greater St. Louis Electric Power Generation and Street Railway Company.

  So money was never a problem, except in the perverse sense that he and Estelle had had to be very careful not to let their relative affluence offend anyone. In fact, this did not turn out to be much of a drawback. Franklin didn’t think that a young lawyer in Saint Louis could drive a Harmon or a Pierce Arrow, or even a Cadillac, without offending someone senior to him. Not many in that hierarchy had a quarterly check from a trust fund.

  By the time the Helsinki assignment-his "tailgate" assignment-came along, there was no longer a requirement to be "discreet" about their affluence. So he and Estelle decided to go out in style. They left the boys behind in the States, at Phillips Exeter, to join them in the summers. And in Finland, Estelle found a furnished villa in Helsinki’s most aristocratic section, Vartio Island, about five miles from the embassy.

  The waters of Kallahden Bay were solidly frozen from February to April, permitting the Neville’s Packard 280 sedan (Estelle’s) and Auto-Union roadster (Franklin’s) to drive directly from the mainland to the front door. In the warmer months, a varnished speedboat carried them back and forth from the island to the shore.

  His Excellency the Ambassador was a political appointee, a deserving St. Louis Democrat who professed a closer friendship with both Estelle’s and Franklin’s parents at home than was the case. In point of fact, a letter from Estelle’s father indicated that so far as he was concerned, the Ambassador was a traitor to his class for supporting that socialist sonofabitch in the White House.

  Nevertheless, the polite fiction served both to keep the Naval and Army attaches off Franklin’s back and to open social doors that permitted Estelle to enjoy a role as hostess that she had been denied all those years.

  Between Franklin’s social contacts within the diplomatic-military community and Estelle’s with the diplomatic people and their neighbors on Vartio Island, it was a rare evening indeed when their butler served dinner to them alone at home.

  When the boys arrived in the summer (they spent the Christmas holidays with their grandparents in St. Louis), they were, as Estelle wrote home, "received by the best young people in Finland." They fished and sailed, and they danced and kept close company with a number of splendidly beautiful and astonishingly blond Finnish girls. In due course, Franklin found it necessary to have a serious man-to-man talk with them about how they would embarrass not just their mother but the United States of America if one of the young ladies should find herself in the family way. He then counseled them on the absolute necessity of faithful use of rubber contraceptives.

  In October of 1939, Captain Franklin G. Neville was promoted major. The promotion came as a surprise. He could not imagine that his immediate superior, Lieutenant Commander H. Raymond Fawcett, USN, the Naval Attach?, had been writing glowing efficiency reports on him. Fawcett’s disapproval (and/or jealousy) of the Nevilles’ lifestyle
was nearly visible. But still, it would be nice, when they went back to St. Louis, to be able to call themselves "Major and Mrs. Neville."

  In November of 1939, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics attacked Finland across the southeastern province of Karelia. Before the 1917 Revolution, Finland had been part of Tsarist Russia; specifically, it was a Grand Duchy thereof. When Finland declared its independence, the military forces of the Soviet Union were in no position to do anything about it.