W E B Griffin - Corp 10 - Retreat, Hell!

by Retreat, Hell!(Lit)

  "You read anything about where we are, what we're doing, or the Big Black Birds, anything, burn the letter."

  Presumably, everybody's service records were with the 5th Marines. That meant that no one was getting paid. No one had been paid since they went to Sasebo from Pusan, before the Inchon invasion.

  It didn't matter, practically. There was nothing on which to spend money, or for that matter anywhere to spend it. And the Beaver-and trucks-brought in a steady stream of supplies, including creature comforts, cigarettes, cigars, shaving cream, and the like, and of course beer, all of which was free. There had even been a shipment of utilities, underwear, winter clothing, and boots.

  In the just over an hour between the heads-up from The House and the ar-rival of the Beaver, Captain Dunwood made up his mind. The first thing he was going to do when Major McCoy got out of the airplane was ask for a minute of his time.

  He didn't know exactly what he was going to say, but he would think of something.

  He could always think of something to say. Being able to think on his feet, say the right thing, was what had made him "Salesman of the Month" at Mike O'Brien's DeSoto-Plymouth Agency in East Orange, New Jersey, month after month.

  Major Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR, climbed down somewhat awkwardly from the right side of the Beaver and surveyed his staff-Captain Dunwood and Mas-ter Gunner Zimmerman-who were on hand to greet him.

  "You're back?" Zimmerman asked. "What's with the leg?"

  "I'm all right," McCoy said. "We brought two pigs and three crates of chick-ens, which have made a real mess of the airplane. Get it cleaned up before that-'shit' is the word-has a chance to dry."

  "Okay," Zimmerman said.

  "Use Koreans; I need to talk to the Marines. Your Marines, Dunwood."

  "Yes, sir," Dunwood said. "Sir, may I have a minute or two?"

  "Just as soon as I finish talking to your Marines," McCoy said. "Get them under the camouflage."

  "Aye, aye, sir," Dunwood said. "I just need a couple of minutes, sir."

  "When I'm finished talking to your Marines," McCoy said, not very pleasantly.

  "Yes, sir."

  Jesus Christ, is he going to tell us, "Thank you. And give my regards to the 5th Marines when you get back there"?

  "Can everybody hear me?" Major McCoy asked five minutes later, as he stood on the landing-gear strut of one of the H-19s under the camouflage netting.

  There were murmurs that he could be heard.

  "I don't really know where to begin," McCoy said. "Okay. Say what's on my mind. One of the first things I learned when I came in the Corps was never to volunteer for anything. So what I'm looking for here is volunteers."

  There was laughter.

  "Major, we heard you was shot?" a voice called.

  "I took a piece of shrapnel," McCoy said. "I was almost a soprano, but aside from that, I'm okay."

  He looked around the Marines gathered in a half-circle around him.

  "From here on, what I say is Top Secret," he said. "If the wrong people hear what I'm about to say, people will die. I want that clearly understood."

  There had been murmurs and whispered conversation. Now there was silence.

  "X Corps has landed farther north," McCoy began. "Their orders are to strike northward, past the Chosin Reservoir, to the Manchurian border. There is a very good chance the Chinese are going to come into the war just as soon as we get close to the border.

  "I think there are several hundred thousand of them. I don't think many people agree with me. I know they don't. But that's what I believe. So what I need to do is put people out ahead of our forces-both 1st MarDiv and the Army's 7th Infantry Division-to find out where the Chinese are, so that our people at least have some warning.

  "The way to do that, I think, is to insert people, listening posts, in enemy territory. That's what you've been practicing to do. There are lots of problems with this, starting with the fact that if the Chinese detect you there, that'll be it. We can't risk losing one or both of the Big Black Birds trying to rescue peo-ple. The two we have is all there is.

  "And I can't either send you on missions like these as Marines, even as vol-unteers. Marines don't abandon people to the enemy. We're going to have to do just that. And since this whole thing is secret, we can't afford to have some well-meaning Marine wanting to live up to 'we're Marines, we don't leave peo-ple, dead or alive, behind,' and asking questions we can't answer."

  "So what are you asking, Major?" a voice called.

  "The rules don't apply to Marines serving in the CIA," McCoy said. "So I need people to volunteer for the CIA."

  Now there were murmurs.

  Captain Dunwood, who had been standing to one side of the half-circle, walked toward the center.

  "Sir?"

  McCoy silenced him with a hand raised, palm outward.

  "There will be no pressure on anybody to volunteer. I'm not sure I would. But now that the cat's out of the bag-and this isn't a threat-what happens now is that we're all in the bag. Mail will come in, but none goes out, except for a final letter saying you'll be out of touch for a while. And when this is over, those who don't think going into the CIA makes sense will be sent to the States. If there's a leak, Naval Intelligence will find out, and there'll be court-martials. But if you keep your mouth shut, no one will even know you were asked to volunteer."

  "Sir?" Dunwood said again.

  McCoy glared at him.

  "You have something to say, Captain?"

  "Yes, sir. Sir, the thing is, some of us, the noncoms and me, and the noncoms and the Marines, having been trying to think of a way to ask you how we could transfer to the CIA."

  "It's not all air-delivered live pigs and cold beer, Captain. You're aware of that?"

  "Yes, sir, we know that."

  "And when you finally get back to the Corps, if you get back to the Corps, some sonofabitch is going to ask where you were when he was fighting the war, and you won't be able to tell him. You understand that, too?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Those of you who would like to go into the CIA, give your names to Cap-tain Dunwood," McCoy said.

  There was a sudden mass movement to get close to Captain Dunwood.

  McCoy jumped off the landing strut and went into the passenger com-partment of the H-19.

  Zimmerman quickly moved-almost ran-from where he had been stand-ing to the helicopter and climbed inside.

  He found McCoy leaning against the fuselage wall. There were tears on McCoy's cheeks.

  "When this fucking leg hurts, it fucking hurts," McCoy said. "I didn't want to let them see me."

  "Your leg, my ass," Zimmerman said. "What did you expect, Killer? Those guys are Marines."

  Chapter Sixteen

  [ONE]

  Room 39A, Neuro-Psychiatrie Ward

  U.S. Naval Hospital

  San Diego, California

  O83O 3O October 195O

  The room assigned to Major Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, was furnished with a hospital bed, a white cabinet to the left of the bed, a white table to the right, a plastic-upholstered chrome armchair, and a folding metal chair.

  When the door swung open, Major Pickering was sitting in the armchair with his slippered bare feet resting on the folding chair. He was reading Time magazine.

  He glanced up from the magazine and started to get to his feet.

  "As you were," Brigadier General Clyde W. Dawkins, USMC, a tall, tanned, thin, sharp-featured forty-year-old, said, and reinforced the order by making a pushing motion with his right hand.

  Major Pickering ignored both the order and the signal and stood up.

  "Good morning, sir," Pick said.

  Dawkins smiled, turned, and waved another officer, a captain, festooned with the regalia of an aide-de-camp, into the room.

  "Captain McGowan," General Dawkins inquired, "looking at that ugly, skinny officer, would you believe he had half the Marines in Korea looking for him?"

  "Sir, I understand there's a shortage
of pilots," Captain Arthur McGowan, a tall, slim twenty-nine-year-old, who wore the ring of the United States Naval Academy, said with a smile.

  Dawkins saw Pick's face.

  "Not funny?"

  "No, sir."

  Dawkins nodded.

  "How are you, Pick?" he asked, putting out his hand. "It's good to see you."

  "It's good to see you, sir," Pick said, shaking it.

  "That doesn't answer my question."

  "Sir, as of today, I have been promoted to Loony Category Two, which means I no longer have to give the nurse a list of what I need from the Ship's Store. And they are going to give me a partial pay."

  "You look like hell," Dawkins said. "But your legendary fast lip is obviously still functioning well."

  "No disrespect was intended, sir."

  "I wish you'd sit down," Dawkins said.

  "Aye, aye, sir," Pick said, and sat down.

  "Art," Dawkins said as he turned the folding chair around and sat backward in it. "Flash your smile at the nurse and see if you can't get us some coffee."

  "Yes, sir," McGowan said. "How do you take yours, Major?"

  "Black, please," Pick said.

  McGowan left the room.

  "Billy Dunn tell you I was here?" Pick asked.

  "Actually, the news came from a little higher up in the chain of command. How is Billy?"

  "He was fine, the last time I saw him. More than a little disgusted with me- and justifiably so-but fine."

  "I have no idea what you're talking about, Pick," Dawkins said.

  "Just before the bosun's chair moved me from the Badoeng Strait to the de-stroyer Mansfield-"

  "You mean while you were under way?" Dawkins asked.

  "Yes, sir."

  "I've seen that, but I've never done it," Dawkins said. "I don't like the no-tion of being dangled over the ocean like that. How was it?"

  "Not very pleasant, sir. Sir, may I go on?"

  "Sorry, Pick. You were saying?"

  "I was saying that Colonel Dunn told me what he thought of me," Pick said. "What he said was that I was a self-important showboating sonofabitch whose current troubles were my own fault, that I had put the necks of a lot of good people at risk because of my showboating, and that I have never really under-stood that I'm a Marine officer."

  Dawkins looked at him for a moment in surprise.

  "My first reaction is that Billy must have had a very bad day," Dawkins said.

  "Just before I got in the bosun's chair, Billy handed me a letter to mail from Japan he'd written to the wife-correction, the widow-of one of his guys who had just plowed in," Pick said. "Dick Mitchell. Writing those letters is always tough for Billy. But that wasn't what was bothering him."

  "What was?"

  "Me. Everything he said about me was absolutely true."

  "You want to explain that?"

  "What I was doing when I went in was shooting up locomotives," Pick said.

  "So what?"

  "I was doing this because it amused me," Pick said. "I thought it would be amusing to become the first Marine Corps locomotive ace in history."

  Dawkins looked at him without saying anything.

  "I had three steam engines painted on the fuselage of my Corsair," Pick went on, "under the impressive row of Japanese meatballs from War Two. I even wrote the Air Force asking if they had a record of how many steam engines had been shot up in War Two, and if so, by who, to see who and what I was com-peting against."

  "Jesus!" Dawkins said.

  "Billy, of course, thought this was bullshit, dangerous bullshit, and told me to stop. And of course I ignored him, a senior officer. Proving his point that I have never understood that I am a Marine officer."

  "What happened when you went in?"

  "You mean, what put me on the ground?"

  Dawkins nodded.

  "I made a run at a train," Pick said. "Came in over the end of it, right on the deck, and worked my fire up the length of it. Sometimes, if there's gas on the train, you can set it off with tracer rounds; we were loading one tracer in five rounds. I don't remember any gasoline explosion, but I saw the loco-motive go up just before I passed over it and began my pull up. Immediately, large and small parts of the locomotive punctured my beautiful Corsair in Lord knows how many places. I lost power, hydraulics, et cetera, et cetera. There was a rather large rice paddy convenient, so I set it down, got out, and got maybe one hundred yards away-maybe a little farther-before it caught on fire and blew up. The landing wasn't really all that bad. I dumped a Corsair on Tinian just before the war was over-couldn't get the right gear down-that was re-ally a hell of a lot worse."

  The door opened and Captain McGowan returned with three china cups of coffee.

  "Be careful," he said. "It's hotter than hell."

  "Thank you, Art," Dawkins said, then turned back to Pick. "Were you on fire?"

  "No, sir."

  "I thought maybe the antiaircraft, tracers, or exploding shells might have got you."

  "No, sir. No ack-ack."

  "And you're sure you weren't on fire?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "How badly were you hurt in the crash?"

  "Not at all, sir."

  "How close did you come to the village?"

  "Sir?"

  "Was there a village where you went in?"

  "No, sir."

  "Give me the citation, Art," Dawkins ordered. McGowan went into his tunic pocket and came out with an envelope. Dawkins took a sheet of paper from it and read it.

  "Where were the Marines-the grunts-when all this happened?" Dawkins asked.

  "I was nowhere near the lines, sir. I guess I was four, maybe five miles into enemy territory."

  "And the weather? What was the weather like?"

  "It was good weather, sir."

  "Just about everything you have told me, Major Pickering," Dawkins said, "is inconsistent with this."

  "What is that, sir?"

  "It's the citation to accompany your Navy Cross," Dawkins said, meeting his eyes.

  "What Navy Cross, sir?" Pick asked, visibly confused.

  "The one the President is going to pin on you," Dawkins said. "Or if he can't fit you into his busy schedule, and the commandant is similarly occupied, and the commanding general of Camp Pendleton can't make it, I will pin on you."

  "May I see that, sir?"

  Dawkins handed it to him, and Pick read it.

  As he did, he shook his head and several times muttered an obscenity.

  "This- is somebody else's citation," he said, finally, as he handed the sheet of paper back to Dawkins. "It has to be. The weather-I told you-was good. Ceiling and visibility were unlimited. I was not flying close support for the grunts. There was no antiaircraft. I was not on fire, and if there was a village or a school, I didn't see either. Jesus, what a fuckup!"

  "I don't think there's more than one Major Malcolm S. Pickering in the Corps, Pick, and that's the name on the citation," Dawkins said.

  "General, that's not my citation. I did nothing to deserve any kind of a medal. I probably should have been court-martialed for what I was doing."

  "I'll look into this," Dawkins said. "In the meantime-this is an order, Pick-I don't want you saying anything to anybody about this."

  "Aye, aye, sir," Pick said. "If that got out, the Corps would look pretty god-damn stupid."

  "The order to give you the Navy Cross, I am reliably informed, came from the President, personally," Dawkins said. "Anything to say about that?"

  "Only that I really don't understand any of this, sir," Pick said.

  "Okay. I'll look into it and get back to you," Dawkins said. He smiled at Pick. "This Chinese fire drill aside, I'm really glad that you made it back, Pick. You were gone so long that we were all really getting worried."

  "Thank you, sir."

  "As soon as they'll let you, my wife wants you to come out to the base for dinner."

  "I accept, thank you. I'm not entirely sure about you, sir, but I'm sure Mr
s. Dawkins qualifies."