THE CORPS VI - CLOSE COMBAT

by W. E. B Griffin

  See what you can find out, and advise me. And tell me if I'm wrong in thinking that if there are Marines with Fertig, then it becomes our business.

  Finally, with me here, Moore, who is on the books as my aide-de-camp, is going to raise questions if he spends most of his time, as he has to, in the dungeon, instead of holding doors for me and serving my canap‚s. Is there some way we can get Sergeant Hart a commission? He is, in faithful obedience to what I'm sure are your orders, never more than fifty feet away from me anyway.

  I would appreciate it if you would call my wife, and tell her that I am safe on the bridge and canap‚ circuit in Water Lily Cottage in Beautiful Brisbane on the Sea.

  Regards,

  Fleming Pickering, Brigadier General, USMCR

  =SECRET=

  [FOUR]

  Office of the Brig Commander

  US Naval Base, San Diego, Cal.

  0815 Hours 18 October 1942

  There was, of course, an established procedure to deal with those members of the Naval Service whose behavior in contravention of good order and discipline attracted the official attention of the Shore Patrol.

  Malefactors were transported from the scene of the alleged violation to the Brig. Once there, commissioned officers were separated from enlisted men and provided with cells befitting their rank.

  As soon as they reached a condition approaching partial sobriety, most of these gentlemen were released on their own recognizance and informed by the Shore Patrol duty officer that an official report of the incident would be transmitted via official channels to their commanding officers. They were further informed that it behooved them to return immediately and directly to their ship or shore station.

  The enlisted personnel were first segregated by service: sailors in one holding cell, Marines in another, and the odd soldier or two who'd somehow wound up in San Diego, in a third.

  Then a further segregation took place, dividing those sailors and Marines whose offense was simply gross intoxication from those whose offenses were considered more serious.

  In the case of the minor offenders, telephone calls would be made to Camp Pendleton, or to the various ships or shore-based units to which they were assigned, informing the appropriate person of their arrest. In due course, buses or trucks would be sent to the Brig to bring them (so to speak) home, where their commanding officers would deal with them.

  Those charged with more serious offenses could count on spending the night in the Brig. Such offenses ran from resisting arrest through using provoking language to a noncommissioned, or commissioned, officer in the execution of his office, to destruction of private property (most often the furnishings of a saloon or "boardinghouse"), to assault with a deadly weapon.

  In the morning, when they were more or less sober and, it was hoped, repentant, they were brought, unofficially, before an officer. He would decide whether the offender's offense and attitude should see him brought before a court-martial.

  A court-martial could mete out punishment ranging from a reprimand to life in a Naval prison.

  Although none of the malefactors brought before-him believed this, Lieutenant Max Krinski, USNR, most often tilted his scale of justice on the side of leniency. This was not because Lieutenant Krinski believed that there was no such thing as a bad sailor (or Marine), but rather that he believed his basic responsibility was to make his decisions on the basis of what was or was not good for the service.

  Lieutenant Krinski, a bald-headed, barrel-chested, formidable-appearing gentleman of thirty-eight, had himself once been a Marine. In his youth, he served as a guard at the U.S. Naval Prison at Portsmouth. He did not, however, join the Marines to be a guard. More to the point, he quickly discovered that all the horror stories were true: Prisoners at Portsmouth were treated with inhuman brutality and sadism.

  Although he was offered a promotion to corporal if he reenlisted, he turned it down, left the service, and returned to his home in upstate New York. After trying and failing to gain success in any number of careers (mostly involving sales), he took and passed the civil service examination for "Correctional Officers" in the Department of Corrections of the State of New York.

  His intention was to go to college at night and get the hell out of the prison business; but that didn't work out. On the other hand, as he rose through the ranks of prison guards (ultimately to captain), the work became less and less distasteful.

  In 1940, a Marine Corps major approached him and asked if he was interested in a reserve commission. As he knew, Marines guarded the Portsmouth Naval Prison; but the major made that point specific. This made it quite clear to Krinski that The Marine Corps was seeking Captain Krinski of the Department of Corrections, rather than former PFC Krinski of the Marine Detachment, Portsmouth Naval Prison. He declined the Marine major's kind offer.

  But if war came, he realized, he could not sit it out at Sing Sing. He approached the Army, but they were not interested in his services. (He still hadn't figured out why not.) And so when he approached the Navy, it was without much hope.... Yet they immediately responded with an offer of a commission as a lieutenant (junior grade), USNR, and an immediate call to active duty.

  If war should come, the Navy explained to him, they would be assigned responsibility for guarding prisoners of war, and they had few suitably qualified officers to supervise such an operation.

  But shortly after he entered active duty, it was decided that prisoners of war would be primarily an Army responsibility. Not knowing what to do with him, the Navy sent him to San Diego to work in the Brig. Three months later, he was named Officer-In-Charge. And two months after that, just as the war came, he was promoted to full lieutenant.

  In Lieutenant Krinski's judgment, there were a few bad apples who deserved to be sent to the horrors of Portsmouth. But most of the kids who came before him would not be helped at all by Portsmouth discipline. And sending them there would not only fuck up their lives, but deprive the fleet or The Marine Corps of a healthy young man whose only crime against humanity was, for example, to grow wild with indignation when he discovered that the blonde with the splendid teats was not (pre-sexual union) going down the boardinghouse corridor to get a package of cigarettes (to better savor her post-sexual consummation time with him), but off in search of another Iowa farm boy... taking his four months' pay with her.

  Instead of delivering them to confinement pending court-martial, Lieutenant Krinski would counsel these kids (eleven years spent counseling murderers, rapists, armed robbers, and others of this ilk had given him a certain expertise) and send them back to their units.

  This morning, unhappily, he realized he had a different kind of case entirely. And that didn't please him. Handcuffed to one of the steel-plank cots in the detention facility, he had a twenty-year-old Marine whose deviation from the conduct demanded of Marines on liberty could in no way be swept (so to speak) under the rug. This was one mean sonofabitch... or at least as long as you took at face value the report of the arresting Shore Patrolmen (augmented by the reports of their fellow law enforcement officers of the San Diego Police Department). Krinski had no reason to doubt any of these.

  Though the Marine was obviously drunk when the alleged incidents occurred, that was no excuse.

  At any rate, according to the documents Krinski had before him, this character began the evening by offering his apparently unflattering, and certainly unwelcome, opinion of a lady of the evening. She was at the tine chatting with a gunnery sergeant in one of the bars favored by Marine noncommissioned officers.

  The discussion moved to the alley behind the bar, where the gunnery sergeant suffered the loss of several teeth, a broken nose, and several broken ribs, the latter injury allegedly having been caused by a thrown garbage can.

  That was incident one. Incident two occurred several hours later when a pair of Shore Patrolmen finally caught up with him. At that time, he took the night stick away from one of them and used it to strike both Shore Patrolmen about the head and chest, rend
ering them hors de combat.

  Incident three took place an hour or so after that in the Ocean Shores Hotel. This was an establishment where it was alleged that money could be exchanged for sexual favors. There was apparently some misunderstanding about the price arrangement, and the Marine showed his extreme displeasure by causing severe damage to the furniture and fittings of the room he had "taken" for the night. Mr. J. D. Karnoff, an employee of the establishment, known to many (including Lieutenant Krinski) as "Big Jake," went to the room to inform the Marine that such behavior was not tolerated on the premises and that he would have to leave. When Big Jake tried to show this upstanding Marine to the door, he was thrown down the stairs, and suffered a broken arm and sundry other injuries.

  Incident four occurred when six Shore Patrolmen, under the command of an ensign, came to the Ocean Shores. These men were accompanied by two officers of the San Diego Police Department. This force ultimately subdued the Marine and placed him under arrest, but not before he kicked one of the civilian law enforcement officers in the mouth, causing the loss of several teeth, and accused the ensign of having unlawful carnal knowledge of his mother.

  It was Lieutenant Krinski's judgment that Marine staff sergeants should know better than to beat up gunnery sergeants; assault Shore Patrolmen with their own nightsticks; throw bouncers down stairs; kick civilian policemen in the mouth; and accuse commissioned officers of unspeakable perversions-especially while they were engaged in the execution of their office.

  Having completed his unofficial review of the case, Lieutenant Krinski shifted into his official function. He called in his yeoman and told him to prepare the necessary documents to bring the staff sergeant before a General Court-Martial.

  "Charge this bastard with everything," Lieutenant Krinski ordered. "And do it right. I don't want him walking because we didn't cross all the 't's or dot all the `i's."

  An hour later, Lieutenant Krinski's yeoman told him that he had a call from some Marine captain in Public Affairs.

  "What does he want?"

  "He didn't say, Sir."

  "Lieutenant Krinski," he growled into the telephone.

  "I'm Captain Jellner, Lieutenant, from Marine Corps San Diego Public Affairs."

  "What can I do for you?"

  "I'm looking for someone."

  "This is the Brig, Captain."

  "I know. I've looked everyplace else. I'm clutching at straws, so to speak."

  "You have a name?"

  "McCoy, Thomas J., Staff Sergeant."

  "I've got him, and I'm going to keep him."

  "Excuse me?"

  "He's going up for a General Court-Martial, Captain. I hope they put him away for twenty years."

  "McCoy, Thomas J., Staff Sergeant?" Captain Jellner asked incredulously.

  "That's right."

  "Good God!"

  "You know this guy?"

  "Yes, I do. And he's on his way to Washington, Lieutenant. To receive the Medal of Honor."

  "He was. Now he's on his way to Portsmouth."

  "Did you hear what I just said? About the Medal of Honor?"

  "Yes I did, Captain. Did you?"

  "I strongly suspect that someone senior to myself will be in touch with you shortly, Lieutenant. In the meantime, I would suggest that you-"

  "This sonofabitch is going to get a General Court-Martial. I don't give a good goddamn who calls me," Lieutenant Krinski said, and hung up.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  [ONE]

  Noumea, New Caledonia

  1115 Hours 18 October 1942

  The Admiral's Barge is the boat that transports naval flag officers from shore to ship, from ship to shore, or between men-of-war. The traditions connected with it-its near-sacred rituals-predate aircraft by centuries.

  Originally, flag officers were thought to possess a close-to-regal dignity ("Admiral" comes from the Spanish phrase "Prince of the Sea"). Such dignity required that they be able to descend from the deck of a man-of-war to an absolutely immaculate boat manned by impeccably uniformed sailors.

  Today, an Admiral was arriving at Noumea by aircraft. Unhappily, it was going to be impossible to provide this Admiral anything like a dignified exit from his aircraft via Admiral's Barge. For one thing, there was no real Admiral's Barge available, only a fairly ordinary whaleboat. For another, the weather was turning bad, the bay was choppy, and the huge four-engined PB2-Y was rocking nervously in the waves.

  But tradition dies hard in the U.S. Navy, and this was a three-star Vice Admiral arriving on an inspection tour. And so an effort had to be made. Before boarding the whaleboat at the wharf, the two greeting officers had changed from tieless open khaki shirts and trousers into white uniforms. And the crew had been ordered to change from blue work uniforms into their whites. And then when the only three-star Vice Admiral's flag available was found to be too large for the flag staff on the whaleboat, a suitably taller staff had to be jury-rigged.

  It could only be hoped that the Admiral would understand their problems and not let the absence of the honors he was entitled to color his judgment of their entire operation.

  The door in the fuselage swung out, and a muscular young lieutenant commander in khakis stepped into the opening. The coxswain carefully edged the whaleboat closer to the door; it wouldn't take much to ram a hole in the aluminum skin of the PB2-Y.

  The Lieutenant Commander jumped into the whaleboat. And as he landed, he lost his footing; but, with the help of two boat crewmen, he quickly regained it.

  A pair of leather briefcases, four larger pieces of luggage, and a long, cylindrical, leather chart case were tossed aboard the whaleboat by a hatless gray-haired man who was also wearing khakis. Then he, too, jumped aboard. He did not lose his footing.

  It was at that point that both dress white-uniformed greeting officers noticed the three silver stars on each collar of the gray-haired man's open-necked khaki shirt.

  "Welcome to Noumea, Admiral," the senior officer, a captain, said.

  "Thank you," the Admiral said.

  "Admiral, the Admiral instructed me to give you this immediately," the Captain said, handing the Admiral a manila envelope.

  "Thank you," the Admiral repeated as he sat down in the whaleboat. He tore the envelope open, took out a sheet of paper, read it, and then handed it to the muscular Lieutenant Commander.

  The Lieutenant Commander read it.

  URGENT

  UNCLASSIFIED

  FROM: CINCPAC 0545 180CT42

  TO: CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS WASH DC

  COMMANDER, SOUTH PACIFIC AREA, AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND

  SUPREME COMMANDER SWPOA, BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA

  INFO: ALL SHIPS AND STATIONS, USNAVY PACIFIC

  EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, VICE ADMIRAL WILLIAM F. HALSEY, USN, IS ANNOUNCED AS COMMANDER, US NAVY FORCES, SOUTH PACIFIC, VICE ADMIRAL ROBERT L. GHORMLEY, USN, RELIEVED.

  CHESTER W. NIMITZ, ADMIRAL, USN, CINCPAC.

  "I'll be damned," the Lieutenant Commander said. He handed the sheet of paper back.

  Vice Admiral William F Halsey jammed it in his trousers pocket. "I was thinking the same thing," he said.

  [TWO]

  Personnel Office

  Marine Corps Recruit Depot

  San Diego, California

  1550 Hours 18 October 1942

  "Major, there's just nothing I can do for the corporal," the major in charge of the personnel office said to Major Jake Dillon. "If I could, I would, believe me."

  "Welcome home, Easterbunny," First Lieutenant Kenneth R. McCoy said bitterly.

  "You said something, Lieutenant?" the Major snapped. He did not like the attitude of the young officer, and wondered just who he was.

  "I was just thinking out loud, Major," McCoy said. "So what happens to him now?"

  "We'll send him over to the casual barracks until we receive orders on him, locate his service records...."

  "I'm prepared to sign a sworn statement that his records were lost in combat," Dillon said. "How about tha
t?"

  "In that case, we would begin reconstructing his records."

  "How long would that take?" Dillon asked.

  "It depends. Perhaps a month, perhaps a little less, perhaps a little longer."

  "And in the meantime, Sir," McCoy said, "... until you can reconstruct his records... the corporal would be pulling details in the casual barracks, without any money? Is that about it?"