THE CORPS VI - CLOSE COMBAT

by W. E. B Griffin

  About five minutes later, while Pickering was making himself a drink, there was a knock at the door. He went to open it, a little surprised at the quick service.

  But it was not room service. It was Second Lieutenant Robert F. Easterbrook, USMCR... as surprised to see Pickering as Pickering was to see him.

  "Easterbunny! I thought you were in Hollywood."

  "I thought this was Major Dillon's room."

  "Actually, it was Veronica Wood's, but when she and Dillon went to Los Angeles on business, Dunn and I moved in."

  "He's in Hollywood?"

  "That's the story for public consumption. If you really have to talk to him, he left a telephone number. A friend of his-maybe of hers-has a place on the water outside of town."

  "I hate to bother him," Easterbrook said.

  "Then, if it's not important, don't."

  "Maybe later. Can I have a drink?"

  Pick waved at the row of whiskey bottles on the bar. Easterbrook walked over to it and poured scotch in a glass.

  "I found out that Sergeant Lomax's widow lives here," he said. "I want to give her the Leica."

  "What Leica?"

  "Lomax had a Leica. When he got killed, I took it. Or Lieutenant Hale took it. And when he got killed, I took it from him. Now I want to give it back."

  "I wondered where that camera came from; I didn't think it was issued."

  Dunn walked into the sitting room, tucking his shirt into his trousers.

  Pickering spoke for Easterbrook, which was fortunate. For at that moment Lieutenant Easterbrook was incapable of speech-having swallowed all at once at least two ounces of scotch: "He found out that the widow of the sergeant who got killed lives here. He's going to return the sergeant's camera to her."

  "I don't envy that job," Dunn said.

  Easterbrook smiled weakly at him.

  The story he'd just related was not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. About the only true part of it was that he had found out that Sergeant Lomax's widow did live in Seattle.

  But the real reason he was in Seattle was to tell Major Dillon that he wanted to resign his commission. He shouldn't have been made an officer in the first place.

  For Christ's sake. I'm only nineteen years old! And they didn't send me to OCS.... If they did, I probably would have flunked out.... They just pinned a gold bar on me and told me I was an officer.

  He had suspected all along that the commission was a big mistake. But the first time he met the combat correspondents at Metro-Magnum Studios, he was goddamn certain it was.

  They looked at me and smirked. "Who the fuck is this kid? He's going to be our detachment commander? You've got to be kidding!" I could see it in their faces and the way they talked to me, like I was a goddamned joke. And I am, as an officer.

  Pick and Dunn are officers. Maybe it's because they 're older than I am and went to college, or maybe they were just born that way. But they can give people orders: there is something about them that says "officer," and people do what they say. And I bet that when I'm not around, between themselves, they laugh at Second Lieutenant Easterbunny, too. Why not? I'm a fucking joke.

  Those combat correspondents The Corps recruited are real journalists: they worked on real newspapers. The New York Times and the Louisville Courier-Journal, papers like those. There's even one from The Kansas City Star. He knows about the Conner Courier, that it's a shitty little weekly.... And what if he writes home and asks about me and finds out that I was nothing more than an after-school kid who helped out for sixty-five cents an hour?

  And I don't give a fuck about what The Corps says... that shit about you not having to respect the man, only the bar on his collar. That's bullshit. I've been around enough good officers-not just Dunn and Pickering, but on the 'Canal, where it counted-to know the first thing enlisted men look for in their officers is competence. If they don't think he knows what he's doing, it doesn't matter if he has fucking colonel's eagles on his collar, they won't pay a fucking bit of attention to what he's got to say.

  And not one of those combat correspondents at Metro-Magnum is dumb enough to see anything in me but what I am.... They're real reporters, for Christ's sake, trained to separate the bullshit from the real thing... which is a kid with a bar on his shoulder because some asshole like Macklin who doesn't know the first thing about what The Corps is really all about got a wild hair up his ass and pinned a gold bar on him.

  And unless I resign my commission, The Corps will send those poor innocent bastards off to combat under me. And they 're going to get killed because they don't teach at Parris Island or San Diego what a combat correspondent has to know to stay alive when you're in deep shit. And they certainly won't pay one fucking bit of attention to me if I try to tell them. I wouldn 't pay attention to me either, if I was one of them.

  What they need is somebody like Lomax. If that nasty sonofabitch hadn't got himself killed, they could have pinned a bar on him, and he could have done this. They would have listened to him, not only because he would have kicked the shit out of them, the way he did to me, but because he was a real newspaperman. Right here. On The Seattle Times.

  What the hell is his wife going to say to me when I give her his camera? ' 'How come you 're still alive and passing yourself off as an officer, you little shit; and my husband-a grown man, but only a sergeant-is dead?"

  What I should do is just keep the fucking Leica. She didn't expect to get it back, anyway. She told me that on the phone. But I don't have the balls to do something like that. I still think like a fucking Boy Scout. And Boy Scouts don't keep things that don't belong to them. And Boy Scouts should not lead men into combat. Me, an officer? Shit. I don't even know how to resign my commission! What do I do? Write somebody?... Who?... A letter, or what?

  "Easterbunny," Pickering said. "Go easy on the sauce. That's your third. I don't want you falling on your ass."

  "Sorry."

  "You don't have to be sorry, Easterbunny," Dunn said. "Just take it easy."

  They're tolerating me. Treating me like a kid. They know fucking well I have no right to be an officer.

  "Something bothering you, my boy?" Pickering asked. "In the absence of our beloved leader, would you like to pour your heart out to Lieutenant Dunn or myself?"

  "Have you perhaps been painfully pricked by Cupid's arrow, Easterbunny?" Dunn asked.

  "Go fuck yourself," Easterbrook said. "Both of you."

  "That does it," Pickering said, laughing. "Easterbunny, you have just been shut off. You never tell people who are larger than you to go fuck themselves."

  "What's the matter, Easterbunny?" Dunn asked. "Maybe we can fix it."

  "If Major Dillon's gone, Captain Galloway's in charge, right?"

  "Perhaps, technically, Lieutenant," Pickering said. "But in the real world, knowing that Captain Galloway is floating around on the wings of love, and that Macklin is..." ,

  "A feather merchant," Dunn supplied.

  "Well said. And that I am smarter than Little Billy here, I am running things. So if you have something on your mind, tell me."

  "I don't like that 'smarter than' crap," Dunn said. "If you're so smart, how come you got stuck with running this circus?"

  "I'm going to see Captain Galloway," Easterbrook announced, then walked somewhat unsteadily toward the door.

  "Easterbunny, Galloway will burn you a new asshole if you show up at his door shit-faced," Pickering said.

  Easterbrook looked at him. And then he opened the door and walked out into the corridor.

  He was almost at the elevator when it occurred to him that he would never see Captain Galloway unless he found out Captain Galloway's room number.

  There was a house telephone on a narrow table against the mirrored wall across from the bank of elevators. He picked it up and asked the operator for Captain Galloway's room number.

  "I will connect you, Sir."

  "I don't want to be connected. I want to know what room he's in."

  "I wil
l connect you, Sir," the operator persisted.

  In the mirror, Easterbrook saw the elevator door behind him open. Staff Sergeant Thomas M. "Machine Gun" McCoy stepped off. He was wearing his dress blues, and the Medal of Honor was hanging down his chest.

  He was closely followed by his gunnery sergeant escorts.

  "Well, I'll be goddamned," Sergeant McCoy said. "The ninety-day wonder is back. I thought we'd seen the last of you."

  Easterbrook tried to replace the handset in its cradle; he missed by two inches. He turned around.

  "Fuck you, McCoy," the Easterbunny said. "You're really an asshole, you know that?"

  Two strong hands grasped each of McCoy's arms.

  "Lieutenant, why don't you get on the elevator," one of the gunnery sergeants said.

  "Because I have just decided to tell this asshole what I really think of him. You're a fucking disgrace to The Marine Corps, McCoy."

  "You fucking little feather merchant!"

  "I was there, McCoy, when you got that fucking medal. Don't you call me a feather merchant!"

  "What do you mean, you were there?"

  "I mean I was on Bloody Ridge with the Raiders is what I mean, shit-for-brains. I know what happened. I saw what happened."

  "Shit, I didn't know you was there."

  "I was there with Lieutenant Donaldson. You remember Lieutenant Donaldson, McCoy? Now, there was one hell of a Marine officer. And you know what he said to me the first time you ignored your orders and stood up with your fucking machine gun?"

  "Lieutenant Donaldson got killed," McCoy said.

  "He said, 'If the Japs don't kill that sonofabitch, I will,' is what he said."

  "Donaldson was wounded," McCoy said, as if to himself.

  "Yeah, he was bad wounded. But he saw you get up when you were supposed to stay where the fuck he told you to stay."

  "And then some sonofabitch with more balls than brains started to carry him down the hill, and the Japs killed him, too. I seen them go down. That's when I stood up again."

  "I wasn't hit, you asshole. The Lieutenant was too heavy for me to carry. I fell down with him on top of me and couldn't get up. But I saw you, you sonofabitch, leave your hole and charge off like it was your own fucking war! Good Marines would have died if you hadn't been so fucking lucky. If I had a weapon then, I'd have killed you myself."

  Lieutenant Easterbrook suddenly felt a little woozy. He turned around and supported himself on the telephone table. When he looked at the mirror, he saw McCoy being hustled away by the gunnies. And when he looked at his own reflection he saw that tears were running down his cheeks.

  And then he knew he was going to be sick. He ran down the corridor to Dunn's and Pickering's room and hammered on the door until Pickering opened it. And then he ran into one of the bedrooms, and just made it to the toilet in time.

  "I hope that the wages of sin caught up with him before Captain Galloway saw him shit-faced," he heard Lieutenant Pickering say.

  And then his stomach erupted again.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  [ONE]

  The John Charles Fremont Suite

  The Foster Washingtonian Hotel

  Seattle Washington

  2145 Hours 13 November 1942

  Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, sat at the writing desk in the sitting room. A bottle of scotch was beside him. Several sheets of ornately engraved stationery were before him.

  He had started to write a long-overdue letter. When the knock at the door interrupted him, he'd gotten as far as:

  Dear Dad,

  I feel I have been shamelessly remiss in writing my favorite boy in the overseas service. I hope that you can understand that those of us on the home front are also making our sacrifices for the war effort, too. Would you believe that I've eaten chicken-in one form or another-for the piece de resistance eleven days in a row? And the shortages!..."

  He uttered a vulgarism and stood up and went and opened the door. One of "The Gorillas's Gunnies," as he thought of them, was standing there.

  Now what? What has that sonofabitch done now?

  "What's up, Gunny?"..

  "Mr. Pickering, is Mr. Easterbrook in here by any chance?"

  Thank God. I was afraid for a moment that I was about to be informed that Gargantua has pulled the arms off his plaything of the evening.

  "He is, Gunny. But to put it delicately, he is indisposed at the moment. To put a point on it, he got shit-faced, and he's sleeping it off."

  That's an understatement. After throwing up all over himself, and all over the bathroom, he went on a crying jag and announced that he intends to resign his commission and go back to the 'Canal as a corporal. "

  "Could I come in, Mr. Pickering?"

  "Sure. Come on in. I presume our gorilla has had his evening's rations, she has been sent safely back to the village, and our gorilla is safely in his cage."

  The gunny laughed.

  "Would you like a drink, Gunny?"

  "No, Sir. Thank you, Sir."

  "This must be serious. This is only the second time in my Marine Corps experience that a gunny has turned down good booze."

  "Well, maybe a little one, Mr. Pickering. I always hate to see good hootch go to waste."

  Pickering fixed him a drink and handed it to him.

  The gunny raised the glass and said, "The Corps."

  Pick was surprised at the toast, and strangely moved by it. He repeated the toast, "The Corps." And then he asked, "What do you want with Mr. Easterbrook, Gunny? Can I help?"

  "This is good booze," the gunny said. Then he met Pickering's eyes. "McCoy wants to apologize to Mr. Easterbrook, Sir. I think maybe it would be a good idea."

  Lieutenant Pickering quite naturally assumed that Staff Sergeant McCoy had spoken disrespectfully to Lieutenant Easterbrook; that he'd said it in the hearing of one or both of the gunnies; that they had been offended; and that they had subsequently "counseled" Staff Sergeant McCoy by bouncing him off the walls and the floor until he became truly repentant and wished to make any amends that were called for-including an apology.

  "What did the gorilla say to him, Gunny?"

  "Mr. Easterbrook ate McCoy a new asshole, Mr. Pickering."

  "What did you say?"

  "Would you believe McCoy crying, Mr. Pickering?"

  "No," Pick said. "I would indeed find that very hard to believe." A thought occurred to him, which he turned into a kind of accusation: "Was he drunk? He's supposed to have two beers and two drinks a day, and not a goddamned drop more."

  "Stone sober. But he bawled like a baby. He said that he thought Mr. Easterbrook was dead, and that Mr. Easterbrook was the bravest man he's ever seen."

  "Easterbrook?" Pick asked incredulously.

  "Did you know that Mr. Easterbrook was with the Raiders on Bloody Ridge?"

  "I knew he spent a lot of time with the Raiders," Pick replied, remembering the Easterbunny eating in VMF-229's mess-tired, dirty, and scared shitless. And remembering how he'd felt sorry for him and asked where he'd been.

  "Well, it looks like he was on Bloody Ridge when McCoy did whatever he did to get the Medal, and McCoy seen him try to carry some wounded officer down the hill. Saw him fall; thought he was killed. McCoy said that when Mr. Easterbrook stood up to carry this officer, he had to know he was going to get his ass killed, the way the Japs were laying in fire. But he did it anyway, trying to get this officer to a Corpsman."

  "Jesus H. Christ!"

  "And Mr. Easterbrook told McCoy that he seen what McCoy done.... I guess he left his position when he wasn't supposed to when he killed all them Japanese.... And Mr. Easterbrook told him if he'd had a weapon, he would have killed him himself."

  "How did this all come out?" Pick asked, sensing that what he was hearing was the truth.

  "We was bringing McCoy up in the elevator from the press conference. And when the door opened, there was Mr. Easterbrook. And McCoy called him a feather merchant, and... I guess Mr. Easterbrook had a couple of drinks a
nd decided he'd had enough of McCoy's shit. And he really went after him." The gunny paused, and then added, with admiration in his voice, "He really ate him a new asshole. Called him everything in the book... starting with asshole."

  "And this reduced McCoy to tears?"

  "Yes, Sir. Not by the elevator. When we got him back to the room. He really wants to apologize, Mr. Pickering. I think maybe it would be a good idea."

  "Where is our weeping hero?"