The Corps 03 - Counterattack

by W. E. B Griffin

  "Hi!" she said. "Come in. I’m almost ready. I just stopped to make myself a drink. Nerves."

  "I didn’t know you drank," Pickering said.

  "There’s a lot about me you don’t know," Ellen said. She walked across the room to the bar. The light behind her revealed the outline of her body beneath the thin dressing gown. And certain anatomical details.

  "Old Grouse," she said, reaching for a bottle. "I know how you like it."

  She made a drink, and then held it out to him. Her upper leg parted the dressing gown as he, uncomfortably, walked to her to take the drink.

  "I don’t mind if you look," Ellen said.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "I said, I don’t mind if you look," she repeated. "I was beginning to think there was something wrong with me. The most fascinating man I’ve ever met, and he appears totally immune."

  "Ellen . . ."

  "Have a good look," she said. She tugged at the dressing-gown cord and it fell open. "Do I pass inspection?"

  "My wife is on her way up here," Pickering said.

  Oh, Goddamn it! What have I done now?

  "I’m sorry," she said evenly, after a moment.

  "You’d better get your clothes on."

  "Pity," she said, then put his glass of Scotch down and walked into one of the bedrooms. She stopped at the door and looked at him. The dressing gown was still open.

  "Fleming," she said, using his first name for the first time ever, "the last thing in the world I want is to cause you trouble with your wife."

  He nodded.

  "Thank you."

  She walked into the bedroom, took the dressing gown off, and tossed it toward the bed. Then she walked, naked, to the door and closed it.

  Jesus Christ! She must be drunk. I wonder if we can get through the next couple of hours without a major disaster.

  Fantastic teats!

  (Five)

  United States Navy Yard

  San Diego, California

  8 March 1942

  "Sir, I can pass you in, but not with these ladies," the Marine sergeant at the gate said, handing the identification card back to Captain Fleming Pickering, USNR.

  "Sergeant, this lady is on orders," Pickering said. "Ellen, show him your damned orders."

  Mrs. Ellen Feller took from her purse a thin stack of mimeographed orders and her identification card and handed them over the seatback to Pickering, who then passed them to the sergeant. The sergeant read the orders, looked at the ID card, compared the photograph on it with her face, and then handed it all back.

  "Sir, this lady can pass. But the other one-"

  " ‘The other one’ is my wife!" Pickering flared.

  "Sir, she doesn’t have any ID."

  "Flem," Patricia Foster Pickering said, aware that her husband was about to lose his. temper, "I’ll just wait here. You put Ellen on the ship and come back and pick me up."

  "Patricia, please butt out of this," Pickering said sharply.

  They had managed to get through lunch without a disaster. When Ellen came out of the bedroom to meet Patricia, she was modestly dressed, her hair was done up in a simple bun, and she wore no makeup.

  She thanked Patricia for the basket of fruit, apologized for not having been ready, and never again called him Fleming. She was a perfect lady at lunch. But he didn’t want to set the stage for something happening aboard the ship by being alone with her there.

  "Sergeant, please call the Officer of the Guard," Captain Pickering ordered.

  "Aye, aye, Sir."

  It took the Officer of the Guard three minutes to reach the gate in a Navy-gray Ford pickup. He found a Navy captain at the wheel of a glistening 1939 Cadillac Sixty-Two Special sedan, which did not have San Diego Navy Base identification. A civilian woman was next to him, a nice-looking lady wearing a diamond engagement ring that looked like it weighed a pound. Another woman was sitting in the back of the Cadillac. She was a little younger than the other one, but somewhat plain-not at all bad-looking, though. She had a Navy Department ID card and a set of orders giving her AAA travel priority to CINCPAC Headquarters in Hawaii.

  The Officer of the Guard was a first lieutenant; Pickering thought he looked like a regular. The Officer of the Guard saluted.

  "Good afternoon, Sir. May I help you?"

  "My name is Pickering, Lieutenant. This lady is my wife. The other lady is Mrs. Feller, who is to board the ... the President Fillmore. I don’t want to leave my wife here at the gate while I take Mrs. Feller aboard."

  "No problem at all, Sir," the Lieutenant said. "If you’ll just follow me in the pickup."

  Pickering looked at the sergeant who had denied him access.

  "Sergeant, when I was a Marine corporal, there was a saying that ‘a Marine on guard duty has no friends.’ Do they still say that?"

  "Yes, Sir, they do."

  "Your sergeant, Lieutenant, was the soul of tact," Pickering said.

  "I’m glad to hear that, Sir. If you’ll just follow me, Sir?"

  The little convoy moved out.

  In the Cadillac, Patricia Foster Pickering said, "What was that all about?"

  "That sergeant was just doing his duty. I didn’t want to get him in trouble."

  "Why should he?"

  "The Lieutenant obviously knows who I am," Pickering said.

  "Who you are? What a monumental ego! Am I missing something? Who are you?"

  "I mean that I work for Frank Knox. We’re in, aren’t we? And what does ego have to do with it?"

  In the cab of the pickup, the Marine Lieutenant said to the driver, "Take us down to the Millard Fillmore."

  "That’s that great big civilian liner, Sir?"

  "Yeah. They used to call it the Pacific Princess. As soon as I take that Captain up the gangplank, you find a telephone, call the Officer of the Day, and tell him that Captain Pickering just came into the yard, and that I’m escorting him aboard the Millard Fillmore. You get that name?"

  "Yes, Sir. Pickering. Who is he?"

  "He works for the Secretary of the Navy. He’s got the brass scared shitless. He showed up here yesterday for a private conference with the Admiral, after which the Admiral thought Pickering was going back to Washington. But he didn’t. He wasn’t on the courier plane. They passed the word that the Admiral was to be notified the moment anybody saw him anywhere."

  The pickup truck driver drove as close as he could to the great ship, and then stopped. The Lieutenant got out and walked to the Cadillac.

  "This is as close as we can get, Sir. If you’ll wait a moment, I’ll get someone to carry the lady’s luggage."

  "I’m not too old to carry a couple of suitcases," Pickering said.

  "Sir, they frown on officers, particular senior ones, carrying luggage."

  "Oh, hell. OK- Go get someone, then."

  "Aye, aye, Sir."

  Pickering got out from behind the wheel, walked to the edge of the wharf, and looked up at the stern of the ship. Her once-glistening white hull was now a flat Navy gray,president millard G. fillmore was painted in enormous letters across her stern. But if you looked closely, you could see where the raised letteringpacific princess san Francisco had been painted over.

  Her superstructure was still mostly white, although her funnels were also in Navy gray, probably so that the Pacific and Far Eastern logo on them could be obliterated. Pickering had learned from the Admiral the day before that they were carrying a work crew aboard in order to finish the painting and to make other modifications under way. Shipping space was so tight they could not afford to take her out of service for modifications any longer than was absolutely necessary.

  What I should be doing is standing on her bridge, preparing to take her to sea, not functioning as a make-believe Naval officer and high-class errand boy for Frank Knox.

  "It’s sad, seeing her in gray," Patricia said softly, at his elbow.

  "It has to be done, I suppose," he said. "Anyway, she’s now the Navy’s. Not ours."

  (Six)<
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  One by one, the umbilicals that tied the President Millard G. Fillmore to the dock were cut. Finally, only one gangplank remained, and there seemed to be no activity on that.

  From the boat deck, Ensign Barbara Cotter, NC, USNR, looked down at the small crowd of people on the dock. Ernie Sage was there, and her Ken McCoy, and Joe. They had waved excitedly at each other when Barbara had found a place for herself at the rail. But that was forty-five minutes ago; now they just forced smiles and made little waves at each other.

  Finally, three people appeared on the single remaining gangway, a Marine officer, a Navy captain, and a civilian woman.

  "Oh, my God!" Ernie Sage said. "Ken, that’s Pick’s father and mother."

  "Where?" McCoy asked.

  "The Navy guy and the woman coming down the gangway."

  "You want me to get their attention, or what?"

  "No!"

  "I know them. I met them when we graduated from Quantico."

  "If they see me here, Aunt Pat would feel obliged to tell my mother," Ernie said.

  "Just where do you think your mother thinks you are? She doesn’t know what you’re doing?" McCoy said.

  "Will you just leave it, please?"

  Right in front of them, two sailors pulled an enormous hawser free of a hawser stand, and it began to rise up along the steep side of the ship.

  Joe Howard looked down the dock. Nothing now held the President Millard G. Fillmore to the shore.

  "It’s moving," Ernie said.

  A rather small Navy band began to play "Anchors Aweigh."

  The President Millard G. Fillmore was an enormous ship and difficult to get into motion. When the band finished "Anchors Aweigh" and segued into "The Marine Hymn" there were only a few feet of water between the ship and the dock. Then, in deference to a battalion of U.S. Army Engineers aboard, the band played "The Caissons Go Rolling Along." By the time that was finished, twenty feet of water separated the shore and the ship.

  Then the ship added the power of her engines to that of the tugs; there was a swirl of water at her stern, and her stern moved farther away from the dock.

  The band began to play "Auld Lang Syne."

  Barbara Cotter and Joe Howard waved bravely at each other.

  "You OK, Joe?" Ken McCoy asked.

  "This is not the way it’s supposed to be," Joe Howard said. "I’m the goddamned Marine, and here I am on the goddamned shore, waving good-bye as my girlfriend goes overseas."

  The band stopped playing; and to the ticking of drumsticks on drum rims, they marched off toward a Navy-gray bus.

  First Lieutenant Joe Howard walked to the end of the dock and stood there watching until the President Millard G. Fillmore sailed out of sight.

  (Seven)

  Top secret

  Eyes Only-The Secretary of the Navy

  DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN

  ORIGINAL TO BE DESTROYED AFTER ENCRYPTION AND TRANSMITTAL TO SECNAVY

  Melbourne, Australia

  Saturday, 21 March 1942

  Dear Frank:

  Despite a nearly overwhelming feeling that this should be addressed "Dear Mr. Secretary, " I am complying with your orders to write this in the form of a personal letter; to include my opinions as well as the facts as I understand them; and to presume that I am your sole source of information regarding what is going on in this area of the world.

  This is written in my apartment in the Menzies Hotel, Melbourne, which I was able to get through the good offices of our (Pacific and Far East) agent here. It is my intention to deliver it, triply sealed, into the hands of the Captain of the USSJohn B. Lester, a destroyer which put in here for emergency repairs (now just about completed), and that is bound directly for Pearl Harbor. Using my letter of authority from you, I will direct Captain (Lt. Commander) K. L. White to deliver it into the hands of Mrs. Feller, or, if for some reason that is impossible, to burn it.

  His willingness to comply with those orders, it seems to me, depends on whether he accepts your letter of authority at face value. The whipping we have taken so far seems to me to have produced a lack of confidence here-perhaps even an aura of defeatism. What I‘m suggesting is that he may decide either to throw this whole thing away or to open it, or to do something other than what I am ordering him to do. Ellen Feller-if she gets this-will be able to determine whether or not it has been opened. I would very much appreciate your advising me of the receipt of this, including when, and to tell me if this is the sort of thing you would like to have me continue to do.

  Obviously, I did not get into the Philippines. Haughton’s message that MacArthur had been ordered to leave Corregidor was waiting for me when I arrived in San Francisco from San Diego on March 10. I left the next morning for Hawaii aboard a Navy Martin Mariner. At CINCPAC, I was told that the only way into the Philippines, either Corregidor or Mindanao, would be by submarine. I had just missed thePermit, which was scheduled to be at Corregidor on the 13th, and another "courier" submarine was not scheduled.

  I could not have reached Corregidor, in other words, until after MacArthur was gone. And it was made clear to me that it would be very difficult to leave the Philippines once I got there. Under those circumstances, I decided not to go. I visited the Special Detachment and told the commanding officer of your special orders to Mrs. Feller. He was very cooperative, and I feel there will be no problems with him.

  The next morning, I left Hickam Field, TH, aboard an Army Air Corps B-17 , one of a flight of four en route from Seattle to Vice Admiral Herbert F. Leary’s command in Australia. We arrived without incident early on March 13.

  I presented myself to Admiral Leary and showed him my letter of authority from you. He was obviously torn between annoyance at having someone from Washington looking over his shoulder and a hope that perhaps I could convince "those people in Washington" of the terrible shape things are in here.

  The only bright light in the whole area, he said, was that elements of Task Force 6814, including some Engineer troops, had the day before landed on Efate Island. If Admiral King’s order to recapture Rabaul as soon as possible can be carried out at all, it is essential for them to construct an air base on the island. I sensed that Leary is not overly confident that the Army can build such a field in a short time.

  Leary also told me that a radio message had come from Corregidor reporting that MacArthur, his wife, and small son, together with President Quezon and some others, had left Corregidor at sunset, March 11, bound for Mindanao. They were aboard four PT boats; and there had been no report on them since then. Leary said he was not yet concerned; the boats were under the command of a Lieutenant Buckley, whom he knows, and considers an extraordinarily competent officer.

  He was far more concerned to learn that the Japanese have occupied the island of Buka, 170 miles southeast of Rabaul, and that aerial reconnaissance has shown them unloading the engineer equipment for building an airfield.

  While I was in his office, he and I learned that MacArthur and his people had turned up safe. A radio came from General Sharp’s headquarters on Mindanao reporting that "the shipment was received" but that it would "require some maintenance." Leary and I decided (correctly, it turned out) that this meant the trip had been rough on MacArthur and/or Quezon and/or the others. MacArthur is, after all, sixty-two, Quezon is even older, and they had just completed a long voyage in small boats across rough seas.

  At this point Major General George S. Brett, the senior Army Air Corps officer here, entered the picture. Brett wanted Leary to dispatch four B-17s to Mindanao to pick up the MacArthur party and bring them here. Leary refused, citing as his reasons that the four planes had just flown from the United States and required maintenance; and that in any event, he needed them for operational use. He had just learned that the 20,000-odd Dutch troops on Java had surrendered, and in his opinion that had removed the last obstacle the Japanese had to overcome before invading Australia. He could not spare heavy bombers to carry passengers, no matter how important the passengers.
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  I was privy to this conversation. I think Leary knew what Brett wanted of him, and wanted me to hear it so that it would be reported to you.

  Brett was highly upset. Part of it, I think, was that he placed more importance on getting the MacArthur party out of Mindanao than Leary does; and part of it was the humiliation an Air Corps officer felt about asking a Navy officer for Army Air Corps airplanes, and then getting refused. Anyway, Brett stormed out, promising that the President would hear about this and make it right. Leary said he did not see the need for immediate action; Sharp has 30,000 effective troops, and Mindanao is not in immediate danger of being overrun. The MacArthur party, he feels, can be safely taken off by submarine. I was prone to agree with Leary.