The Corps 03 - Counterattack

by W. E. B Griffin

To tell the truth, the closer they got to Australia, the more nervous Koffler had become. More than nervous. Scared. He tried hard not to let it show, of course, in front of all the Army and Navy officers on the airplane (he was, after all, not only a Marine, but a Marine parachutist, and Marines aren’t supposed to be nervous or scared). But when the airplane landed, he would not really have been surprised if the Japs had been shelling or maybe bombing the place. That would have meant they’d have started fighting right away. He had cleaned and oiled his Springfield before they left Hawaii, just to be double sure.

  But it hadn’t been that way at all. There was no more sign of war, or Japs, in Melbourne than there was in Newark. Melbourne was like Newark, maybe as big, and certainly a hell of a lot cleaner. Except for the funny-looking trucks and cars, which the Australians drove on the wrong side of the road, and the funny way the Australians talked, sort of through their noses, you’d never even know you were in Australia.

  He’d spent his first night in a real nice hotel, and Captain Pickering had given him money, and he had had a real nice meal in a real nice restaurant. The steak was a little tough, but he had no call to bitch about the size of it-it just about covered the plate-and he had trouble getting it all down. Then he went to the movies, and they were playing an American movie. It starred Betty Grable, and he remembered seeing it in the Ampere Theatre in East Orange just before he joined the Corps. And that started him off remembering Dianne Marshall and what had happened between them. And between the movie and the memories, he got a little homesick . . . until he talked himself out of that by reminding himself that he was a Marine parachutist, for Christ’s sake, and not supposed to start crying in his goddamned beer because he was away from his mommy or because some old whore had made a goddamned fool out of him.

  The table in the breakfast room was big, and the wood sort of glowed. There was a bowl of flowers in the middle of it. When he sat down at it, he looked out through windows running from the ceiling to the floor; outside he could see a man raking leaves out of a flower garden. There was a concrete statue of a nearly naked woman in the garden, in the middle of a what looked like a little pond, except there wasn’t any water in the pond.

  Mrs. Cavendish followed him in in a moment, and laid a newspaper on the table. Right behind her was a maid, a plain woman maybe thirty years old, wearing a black dress with a little white apron in front. She smiled at Steve, then went to one of the cabinets in the room, and took out a woven place mat and silver and set it up in front of him.

  "What would you like for breakfast?" Mrs. Cavendish asked. "Ham and eggs? There’s kippers."

  Steve had no idea what a kipper was.

  "Ham and eggs would be fine," he said. "Over easy."

  "We have tomato and pineapple juice."

  "Tomato juice would be fine," Steve said.

  "The tea’s brewing," Mrs. Cavendish said. "It’ll just be a moment."

  She and the maid left the room. Steve unfolded the newspaper. It was The Times of Victoria. The pages were bigger than those of the Newark Evening News, but there weren’t very many of them. He flipped through it, looking in vain for comics, and then returned to the first page.

  There were two big headlines:rommel nears tobruk andnazi tanks approach Leningrad. There was a picture of a burning German tank, and a map of North Africa with wide, curving arrows drawn on it.

  Steve wondered why there wasn’t anything in the newspaper about the Japs being about to invade Australia.

  He went through the newspaper, mostly reading the advertisements for strange brands of toothpaste, used motorcars, and something called Bovril. He wondered what Bovril was, whether you ate it, or drank it, or washed your mouth out with it, or what.

  The maid delivered his ham and eggs, cold toast in a little rack, tomato juice, and a tub of sour orange marmalade. He had just about finished eating when the maid came in the breakfast room.

  "Telephone for you, Sir," she said, and pointed to a telephone sitting on a sideboard.

  The telephone was strange. There was sort of a cup over the mouthpiece, and the wire that ran from the base to the handset was much thinner than the one on American phones; it looked more like a couple of pieces of string twisted together than like a regular wire.

  "Corporal Koffler, Sir," Steve said.

  "Good morning, Corporal," a cheerful voice said. "Lieutenant Donnelly here." He pronounced it "leftenant," so Steve knew he was an Australian. "Yes, Sir?"

  "I’m the Air Transport Officer, Naval Station, Melbourne. We have two things for you. Actually, I mean to say, two shipments. There’s several crates, priority air shipment, and we’ve been alerted that several of your people are scheduled to arrive about noon."

  "Yes, Sir."

  "Your Captain Pickering said to send the crates out there by lorry, and that you’ll meet the aircraft. Any problems with that?"

  "No, Sir," Steve said, an automatic reflex. Then he blurted, "Sir, I’m not sure if I can find . . . where the plane will be. Or how to get back out here."

  Lieutenant Donnelly chuckled. "Well, you’ll be able to find your way about soon enough, I’m sure. In the meantime, I’ll just send a map, with the route marked, out there with the lorry driver. Do you think that will handle it?"

  "Yes, Sir. Thank you."

  "The lorry should be there within the hour. Thank you, Corporal."

  "Thank you, Sir."

  Steve hung up and went looking for Mrs. Cavendish. He was going to need some place to store the crates, whatever they contained. She showed him a three-car garage behind the house, now empty, that was just what he was looking for. There were sturdy metal doors which could be locked, and there were no windows.

  The truck arrived forty-five minutes later. Steve, who had been looking out his bedroom window for it, saw that it said "Ford" on the radiator, but it was unlike any Ford Steve had ever seen. There were three people in the cab, all in uniform, and all female.

  They all wore the same kind of caps, something like a Marine cap, except the visor wasn’t leather. They wore the caps perched straight on top of their hair, and Steve thought they all looked kind of cute, like girls dressed up in men’s uniforms. Two of them wore gray coveralls. The third, who looked like she was in charge, wore a tunic and a shirt and tie and a skirt, with really ugly stockings.

  "Corporal Koffler?" she said, smiling at him and offering her hand. "I’m Petty Officer Farnsworth."

  "Hi," Steve said. She was, he guessed, in her early twenties. He couldn’t really tell what the rest of her looked like in the nearly shapeless uniform and those ugly cotton stockings, but her face was fine. She had light hazel eyes and freckles.

  "Good day," the other two women said. In Australia that came out something like "G’die," which took some getting used to. One of them looked like she was about seventeen, and the other one looked old enough to be the first one’s mother. Neither of them, Steve immediately decided, had the class of Petty Officer Farnsworth.

  "How are you?" Steve said, and walked over and shook hands with them.

  "After we unload your crates," Petty Officer Farnsworth said, "Lieutenant Donnelly said I was to ask if you would like me to wait around and drive into Melbourne with you, to show you the way."

  "Great!" Steve said.

  "Where would you like the crates?"

  "Let’s see what they are," Steve said, and walked to the back of the truck. He saw three wooden crates, none of them as large as a footlocker. He couldn’t tell what they contained, and there was nothing stenciled on them to identify them.

  Petty Officer Farnsworth, who had followed him, handed him a manila envelope. "The shipping documents," she said.

  He tore the envelope open. The U.S. Army Signal Center, Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, had shipped, on AAAA Air Priority, by authority of the Chief Signal Officer, U.S. Army, to the Commanding Officer, USMC Special Detachment 14, Melbourne, Australia:

  1 EA SET, TRANSCEIVER, RADIO, HALLICRAFTERS MODEL 23C, W/48 CRYSTALS

&nb
sp; 1 EA ANTENNA SET, RADIO TRANSMISSION, PORTABLE, 55-FOOT W/CABLES A GUY WIRES

  1 EA GENERATOR, ELECTRICAL, FOOT AND HAND POWERED, 6 AND 12 VOLT DC

  "Wow!" Steve said. He knew all about the Hallicrafters 23C, had studied carefully all of its specifications in the American Amateur Radio Relay League magazine, but he’d never seen one before.

  "Am I permitted to ask what they are?" Petty Officer Farnsworth asked.

  "Just about the best shortwave radio there is," Steve said.

  "Lieutenant Donnelly said that I wasn’t to ask questions," Petty Officer Farnsworth said, "about what you’re doing out here."

  "You didn’t. You just asked what was in the boxes. There’s nothing secret about that."

  She smiled at him.

  Nice teeth. Nice smile.

  "Where would you like them?"

  "Around in back," Steve said. "I’ll show you."

  When the crates had been unloaded, Petty Officer Farnsworth sent the truck back into Melbourne.

  "It will take us no more than forty-five minutes to get to the quay," she said. "Which means we should leave here at eleven-fifteen. It’s now quarter past nine. Where can I pass two hours out of your way, where I will see nothing I’m not supposed to see?"

  "I don’t have anything to do. And there’s nothing out here for you to see. Would you like a cup of coffee?"

  "Tea?"

  "Oh, sure."

  "That would be very nice, Corporal," Petty Officer Farnsworth said.

  Steve took her into the breakfast room, sat her down, and then went into the kitchen and asked for tea. They waited for several minutes in an awkward silence until one of the maids delivered a tea tray, complete to toast and cookies.

  "Where are you from in America?" Petty Officer Farnsworth asked.

  "Where the radios come from. New Jersey. How about you?"

  "I’m from Wagga Wagga, in New South Wales."

  "Wagga Wagga?" he asked, smiling.

  "I think that’s an Aborigine name."

  "That’s what you call your colored people?"

  "Yes, but as I understand it, they’re not like yours."

  "How come?"

  "Well, yours were taken from Africa and sent to America, as I understand it, and the Aborigines were here when we English arrived."

  "Sort of Australian Indians, in other words?"

  "I suppose. New South Wales, of course, is named after South Wales, in England."

  "So is New Jersey," he said. "Jersey is in England."

  "I thought it was an island."

  "Well, it could be. I never really paid much attention."

  Petty Officer Farnsworth had an unkind thought. Corporal Koffler was a nice enough young man, and not unattractive, but obviously bloody goddamned stupid.

  Petty Officer Farnsworth was twenty-three years old, and she had been married for five years to John Andrew Farnsworth, now a sergeant with the Royal Australian Signals Corps somewhere in North Africa.

  Before the war, she and John had lived in a newly built house on his family’s sheep ranch. When John had rushed to the sound of the British trumpet-a move that had baffled and enraged her-his family had decided that she would simply shoulder his responsibilities at the ranch in addition to her own. After all, John’s father, brothers, and amazingly fecund sisters reasoned, she had no children to worry about, and One Must Do One’s Part While the Family Hero Is Off Defending King and Country.

  Petty Officer Farnsworth, whose Christian name was Daphne, had no intention of becoming a worn-out woman before her time, as the other women of the family either had or were about to. She used the same excuse to get off the ranch as John had: patriotism. When the advertisements for women to join the Royal Australian Navy Women’s Volunteer Reserve had come out, she had announced that enlisting was her duty. Since John was already off fighting for King and Country, she could do no less, especially considering, as everyone kept pointing out, that she had no children to worry about.

  The RANWVR had trained her as a typist and assigned her to the Naval Station in Melbourne. She had a job now that she liked, working for Lieutenant Donnelly. There was something different every day. And unlike some of the other officers she had worked for, Lieutenant kept his hands to himself.

  Every once in a while she wondered if Donnelly’s gentlemanly behavior was a mixed blessing. Lately she had been wondering about that more and more often, and it bothered her.

  "Do all Marines wear boots like that?" she asked.

  "No. Just parachutists."

  "You’re a parachutist?"

  He pointed to his wings.

  "Our parachutists wear berets," she said. "Red berets."

  "You mean like women?"

  My God, how can one young man be so stupid?

  "Well, I suppose, yes. But I wouldn’t say that where they could hear me, if I were you."

  "I didn’t mean nothing wrong by it, I just wanted to be sure we were talking about the same thing."

  "Quite. So you’re a wireless operator?"

  "Yes and no."

  "Yes and no?"

  "Well, I am, but the Marine Corps doesn’t know anything about it."

  "Why not?"

  "I didn’t tell them, and then when they gave everybody the Morse code test, I made sure I flunked it."

  "Why?" Now Daphne Farnsworth was fascinated. John had written a half-dozen times that the worst mistake he’d made in the Army was letting it be known that he could key forty words a minute. From the moment he’d gotten through basic training, the Army had him putting in long days, day after day, as a highspeed wireless telegrapher. He hated it.

  "Well, I figured out if they was so short of guys who could copy fifty, sixty words a minute-you don’t learn to do that overnight-they would be working the ass off those who could. Ooops. Sorry about the language."

  "That’s all right," Daphne said.

  Well, Daphne, you bitchy little lady, you were wrong about this boy. Not only is he smart enough to take Morse faster than John, but he’s smart enough not to let the service hear about it.

  "My husband’s a wireless operator," Daphne said. "With the British Eighth Army in Africa. He’s a sergeant, but he hates being a wireless operator."

  "I figured somebody as pretty as you would be married," Steve Koffler replied.

  Is that the distilled essence of your observations of life, or are you making a pass at me. Corporal Koffler?

  "For five years."

  "You don’t look that old."

  "Thank you."

  "You know what I’d really like to do before we go into town?"

  Rip my clothes off, and throw me on the floor?

  "No."

  "I’d like to unpack that Hallicrafters. I’ve never really seen one. Could you read the newspaper, or something?"

  "I think I’d rather go with you and see the radio. Or is it classified?"

  "What we’re doing is classified. Not the radio."

  And now I am curious. What the bloody hell is going on around here? Marine parachutists? Villas in the country? "World’s best wireless" shipped by priority air?

  (Two)

  Townesville Station

  Royal Australian Navy

  Townesville, Queensland

  24 May 1942

  The office of the Commanding Officer, Coastwatcher Service, Royal Australian Navy (code nameFerdinand) was simple, even Spartan. The small room with whitewashed block walls in a tin-roofed building was furnished with a battered desk, several well-worn upholstered chairs, and some battered filing cabinets. A prewar recruiting poster for the Royal Australian Navy was stapled to one wall. On the wall behind the desk was an unpainted sheet of plywood, crudely hinged on top, that Major Ed Banning, USMC, immediately decided covered a map, or maps.

  The Officer Commanding, Lieutenant Commander Eric A. Feldt, Royal Australian Navy, was a tall, thin, dark-eyed, and dark-haired man. He was not at all glad to see Banning, or the letter he’d brought from Admiral Brewer; and he was
making absolutely no attempt to conceal this.

  "Nothing personal, Major," he said finally, looking up at Banning from behind the desk. "I should have bloody well known this would be the next step."

  "Sir?" Banning replied. He was standing with his hands locked behind him, more or less in the at-ease position.

  "This," Feldt said, waving Admiral Brewer’s letter. "You’re not the first American to show up here. I ran the others off. I should have known somebody would sooner or later go over my head."