The Corps IV - Battleground

by W. E. B Griffin

  "And?"

  "I don't know. I don't remember much."

  "You are credited with shooting down one of them. You don't remember that?"

  "Who says I shot down a Zero?"

  "I don't immediately recall."

  "The Skipper?"

  "Major Parks didn't make it back, I'm sorry to say."

  "Shit."

  "I was hoping that perhaps you might have seen him go in."

  "I saw somebody go down. His right wing, most of his right wing, came off. I don't know who it was."

  "When was that?"

  "I don't know. Toward the beginning."

  "That was the only time you saw one of ours go down?" "Yes"

  "You're sure?"

  "I told you, that was it. How many of ours went down?"

  "A good many, I'm sorry to have to tell you."

  "How many is a good many?"

  "We lost fifteen. Two Wildcats-not counting yours, although yours has been surveyed and is a total loss-and thirteen Buffaloes."

  "We only had nineteen Buffaloes with us."

  "In addition to yourself, Captain Carey, Captain Carl, and Lieutenant Canfield came back. Of Major Parks's flight, I mean."

  "You mean the rest are dead?"

  "Do you remember when you were hit?"

  "You mean everybody but the four of us is dead?"

  "I'm afraid so."

  "Oh, my God!"

  "Do you remember being hit?"

  "No. I remember the windshield going."

  "In other words you don't know who shot you down, whether it was a Zero or some other type aircraft?"

  "It had to be a Zero. I was in the Zeroes."

  "But you don't know for sure?"

  "I don't even know how I got back here."

  "You came back and made a wheels-up landing."

  "I found my way back here by myself?"

  "How else?" the Naval Intelligence debriefing officer asked, a tinge of sarcasm in his voice.

  "The last thing I remember is when I lost my windshield. And got hit."

  "You don't remember heading back here?"

  "The last thing I remember is trying to pull my goggles down after the windshield went."

  "You were apparently flying with the canopy open-"

  Christ, I forgot to close the canopy, too?

  "Was I?"

  "The shell, most likely a 20mm, apparently entered the cockpit from the side-"

  "Just one round?"

  "There were others. In the engine nacelle. Another just forward of the seat. But the one-the one which entered the cockpit-apparently exploded going through the windshield, from the inside out?"

  "Yeah," Bill said, understanding.

  "What they took out of your face and leg, legs, was debris from the windshield and control panel. Perspex and aluminum fragments."

  "Then it was a Zero."

  "Presumably." The Intelligence officer looked directly at him. "You have no memory of breaking off the engagement and heading back here?"

  "No."

  "Could you determine, do you have any memory of determining, from your instruments, or from a loss of control, that your aircraft was no longer airworthy?"

  "No," Bill said, and then, thinking aloud, "That's an odd question."

  "You were seen leaving the area."

  "So?"

  "The officer who saw you leave could not tell whether you had lost your windshield. You were too far apart."

  "Who was that?"

  "I don't think we'd better get into that."

  "But he thought I was running, right?"

  "Were you?"

  "I don't know."

  "That's not a very good answer, you realize?"

  "Sorry about that."

  "You don't seem overly disturbed at what could be an accusation of cowardice in the face of the enemy."

  "Fuck you, Lieutenant."

  "You can't talk to me that way!"

  "If I'm to be charged with cowardice in the face of the enemy, what's the difference what I say to you?"

  After a long pause, the Naval Intelligence Officer said, "I didn't say anything about you being charged with anything."

  "No witnesses, right? Everybody's dead?"

  "If you're through with my patient, Lieutenant," another voice said, from behind Dunn, "I'd like to put him aboard the PBY."

  "You're being flown to Pearl Harbor," the Intelligence Officer said to Dunn.

  "I'd prefer to stay with the squadron," Bill said.

  "You won't be flying for a while. Three weeks anyway," the voice behind him said.

  "And there's no squadron to stay with," the Naval Intelligence Officer said.

  "Moving is going to be painful," the voice behind him, now much closer, said. "I can give you some morphine, if you like."

  "How painful?"

  "You're pretty well stitched up, particularly on the legs. Any movement will be painful."

  "Then you'd better give me the shot," Bill Dunn said.

  Chapter Two

  (One)

  MENZIES HOTEL

  MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA

  1040 HOURS 8 JUNE 1942

  When the knock came at his door, Captain Fleming Pickering, USNR, was relaxing with his jacket off and his tie pulled down, tilting back in a chair, his feet on the windowsill of his seventh-floor suite, and balancing a cup of coffee on his stomach. Even that way he looked tall and distinguished; and it would have taken a moment of indecision before you concluded he was a man in his early forties. At first glance he appeared younger than that.

  Rooms-much less suites-in the Menzies Hotel, now the Headquarters of General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, South West Pacific Ocean Areas, were not ordinarily assigned to lowly Navy Captains. But Captain Pickering was not an ordinary officer, or for that matter, an ordinary man.

  Six months before, he had been Chairman of the Board, Pacific and Far East Shipping Corporation. He had been known as Captain Pickering then, too, preferring the title to the more grandiose Commodore which many ship owners adopt, whether or not they have ever gone to sea. Fleming Pickering had received his Master, Any Ocean, Any Tonnage, license from the U.S. Coast Guard when he was twenty-six. He was entitled to be called Captain.

  The Corporation he chaired was in many ways as singular as he was. PandFE did not for instance issue an annual stockholders' report detailing the financial condition of its assets (which included fifty-two ships and a good deal of real estate in the United States and abroad). The majority stockholders did not consider such a report necessary. Captain Pickering and his wife owned seventy-five percent of the outstanding shares, and controlled voting rights to the other twenty-five percent, which had been placed in trust for their only child.

  Captain Fleming Pickering, USNR, was, in other words, an important and influential man in his own right. But what made him unique, in the military pecking order, were the orders he carried in his pocket:

  THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  30 JANUARY 1942

  CAPTAIN FLEMING W. PICKERING, USNR, OFFICE OF THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY, WILL PROCEED BY MILITARY AND/OR CIVILIAN RAIL, ROAD, SEA, AND AIR TRANSPORTATION (PRIORITY AAAAA-1) TO SUCH POINTS AS HE DEEMS NECESSARY IN CARRYING OUT THE MISSION ASSIGNED TO HIM BY THE UNDERSIGNED.

  UNITED STATES NAVAL COMMANDS ARE DIRECTED TO PROVIDE HIM WITH SUCH SUPPORT AS HE MAY REQUEST. OTHER UNITED STATES AGENCIES ARE REQUESTED TO CONSIDER CAPTAIN PICKERING THE PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE OF THE UNDERSIGNED AND TO PROVIDE TO HIM APPROPRIATE SERVICES AND AMENITIES.

  CAPTAIN PICKERING HAS UNRESTRICTED TOP SECRET SECURITY CLEARANCE. ANY QUESTIONS REGARDING HISMISSION WILL BE DIRECTED TO THE UNDERSIGNED.

  FRANK KNOX

  SECRETARY

  Very soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Navy Secretary Frank Knox came to realize that the information about Naval operations in the Pacific he was getting-and would get-from regular Navy officers was understandably slanted to reflect well on the U.S.
Navy. These reports tended to gloss over any facts or opinions that might suggest that the Navy was less than perfect. What he needed, he concluded, was someone to report to him directly, and someone who not only was not a member of the Navy establishment, but who would know what he was looking at.

  Knox met Pickering through their mutual friend, Senator Richmond Fowler (Republican-California). He decided immediately that Pickering was the man he was looking for. It was less Pickering's nautical experience that appealed to him than Pickering's strongly stated conviction that after Pearl Harbor, Knox should have resigned and the admirals at Pearl Harbor should have been shot. It was in vino truth: The day Secretary Knox met him, Pickering was treating a sorely bruised male ego with large doses of Old Grouse Scotch whiskey. The PandFE Chairman, a much decorated Marine corporal in France during the First War, had just been told the Marine Corps could not use his services in World War II.

  Two weeks later, Knox offered Pickering a commission as his personal representative, with captain's stripes to go with it. To Knox's surprise, Pickering immediately accepted. Shortly thereafter he left for the Pacific.

  "Come!" Captain Pickering called; and carefully, so as not to spill the coffee, he looked over his shoulder.

  A youthful-looking Navy officer somewhat hesitantly stuck his head in the door.

  "Captain Pickering?"

  "Yes," Pickering said. "Come on in."

  His visitor's sleeves, Pickering saw with surprise, carried the stripes of a full commander. He didn't look old enough to be a commander, Pickering thought. Even more surprising was the manner in which the commander carried his large, apparently full briefcase. It was attached to his wrist by a chain and a handcuff.

  "You are Captain Pickering?" the young-looking commander asked.

  "Guilty," Pickering said. "Who are you?"

  "Sir, may I trouble you for some identification?"

  "Jesus," Pickering said, and carefully removing himself from the tilted back chair, went to his uniform jacket and took out a wallet. The breast of the jacket carried ribbons for both valor and for wounds received in action in what had now become the First World War. He offered the young commander his Navy Department identification card, and then, because he already had his hands on it, his local identity card.

  That one, with red diagonal stripes across the photograph and data blocks, told the Military Police he had been authorized unlimited access to all areas of MacArthur's headquarters. The red stripes seemed to awe people, Fleming had noticed. It should satisfy this young man.

  "Thank you, Sir, I just had to be sure."

  "I understand," Pickering said. "Now who are you?"

  The commander did not reply. Instead, he reached into an interior pocket of his uniform jacket and came out with an envelope. As he did so, Pickering saw the butt of a revolver and the straps of a shoulder holster.

  "This is for you, Sir," the commander said.

  "What is it?"

  "Captain, I suggest that when you've read that, you burn it as soon as you can," the commander said.

  Pickering tore the envelope open. Inside was another envelope. He opened that and took out a thin sheath of onion skin carbon copies of a typewritten document. There was no heading, and neither was there what he expected to find, in these circumstances, the words TOP SECRET stamped in red ink on the top and bottom of each page.

  "What the hell is this?" Pickering asked. "It doesn't even look like it's classified." When there was no immediate reply, he added, a little coldly, "And for the last time, Commander, who are you?"

  "I think you'll understand when you read it, Sir," the commander said. "Sir, I'm a friend of a friend."

  Pickering ran out of patience. Both his eyes and his voice were cold when he replied, "In case you haven't heard, Commander, I'm a friendless sonofabitch around here."

  While Pickering had established a good, even warm, relationship with MacArthur, the officers on MacArthur's staff were barely able to conceal their hostility toward a man who was not part of their clique; was not subject to their orders; and who could be accurately described as Frank Knox's spy.

  The commander baffled him with a warm smile. "That's not exactly the scuttlebutt I heard, Sir," he said, adding, "Our mutual friend is Captain David Haughton. If you don't mind, Sir, I won't give you my name. Then you can truthfully say you never heard of me."

  "OK, sure," Pickering said, far less icily. Captain David Haughton was Administrative Assistant to Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. If Haughton was involved, there was certain to be a satisfactory explanation for all this.

  "I'll say 'Good morning,' Sir," the commander said. "I hope to meet you-for the first time-while I'm in Melbourne."

  Now Pickering chuckled.

  "We can walk through the looking glass together, right?" he said.

  "Sir?" the commander asked, confused.

  "Alice in Wonderland? Lewis Carroll?"

  " 'Curiouser and curiouser,' Sir." the commander replied, now understanding.

  "I would say 'Good-bye,'" Pickering said, "but you're not here, right?"

  The commander smiled again and walked out of Pickering's suite. Pickering unfolded the sheets of onion skin and started to read them. The salutation was brief, and it was meaningful only to him. He was obviously FP. EF was Ellen Feller, who had been assigned as his secretary when he had been in Washington. But Ellen Feller was more than that, actually; for she'd been his administrative assistant, with the same relation to him as David Haughton had to Secretary of the Navy Knox. Ellen was now in Pearl Harbor, serving as his conduit to Knox, when she wasn't working as a Japanese language linguist in the ultrasecret Navy cryptographic office. The Commander, Pickering now guessed, was some sort of officer courier between Pearl Harbor and MacArthur; that would explain the pistol and the briefcase.

  FOR FP FROM EF

  This is a back channel summary prepared for PH by an officer here and sent to you on PH' s authority.

  A Midway-based PBY spotted the transport element of the Japanese assault force 700 miles West of Midway at 0900 3 June. B-17s were immediately dispatched from Midway. They later reported hits which still later proved to be wishful thinking. At 0145 4 June, another PBY hit a Japanese oiler with a single bomb as the Japanese moved closer.

  At 0555 4 June, Navy land based radar on Midway picked up reflections from a large aerial force about ninety miles away. Four Army Air Corps B-26 Marauders and six Navy TBF Avengers were launched from Midway against the carrier (s) which had presumably launched the Japanese aircraft.

  Marine fighters and dive bombers on Midway were airborne within ten minutes of the alert. Major Floyd Parks led seven Buffaloes and five Wildcats directly toward the Japanese aircraft. Captain Kirk Armistead led the remaining Wildcat and a dozen Buffaloes to a position ten miles away, where it was believed another flight of Japanese would be found.

  Thirty miles off Midway, Parks found a 108-plane Japanese force, divided into three waves of thirty-six planes each, and attacked. Several minutes later, Armistead joined up. They shot down sixteen horizontal bombers of the first Japanese echelon, and eighteen of the second echelon of dive bombers.

  Fifteen of the twenty-five Marine fighter pilots were shot down, including Major Parks. Only three of the pilots with Parks survived the attack. Thirteen Buffaloes and two of the four Wildcats went down. For all practical purposes, Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-221 has been wiped out.

  The Japanese force, although weakened, continued onto Midway and dropped its bombs. They destroyed the powerhouse on Eastern Island and the PBY hangars and some fuel tanks on Sand Island. Thirteen Americans were killed and eighteen wounded.

  Meanwhile, the Marine dive bombers sent to attack the Japanese aircraft carrier approached their target. Major Lofton R. Henderson led the first, faster, echelon of SBD Dauntless Dive Bombers, and Captain Elmer C. Glidden led the slower Vought SB2U-3 Vindicators.

  Apparently because neither he nor any of his pilots were really proficient in the Dauntles
s, Henderson ordered that greater accuracy would be obtained by glide (as opposed to dive) bombing. At 0800, from 8,500 feet, he began a wide "let down" circle. At 8,000 feet, Japanese fighters from the carriers attacked his force.

  Henderson' s plane was the first to take fire and begin to burn.

  Captain Glidden's echelon, arriving shortly afterward, began to dive bomb at five-second intervals. Of the sixteen planes in both echelons, eight were lost. Damage to the enemy was minimal.