The Corps I - Semper Fi

by W. E. B Griffin

  "I've seen the photographs," Sessions said.

  "I'm a little worried about the reaction of the missionaries to Corporal McCoy," Banning said.

  "Why do you say that?"

  "As a general rule of thumb, Lieutenant Sessions," Banning said, "I have found that most missionaries consider the Marines the tools of Satan. Our enlisted men fornicate with Chinese women, and our officers support the sinful repression of the natives. Now the Japanese enlisted men rape the Chinese women, and Japanese officers order the heads sliced from Chinese they judge unenthusiastic about the Greater Japanese Co-Prosperity Sphere. But that doesn't bother the missionaries, for the Japanese are heathens, and that sort of thing is to be expected of them."

  "The Reverend Feller does not quite fit that picture, Captain," Lieutenant Sessions said. "He really hates the Japanese."

  "Oh?"

  "During his previous service here, he saw enough of the Japanese to see them for what they are. He was present at the rape of Nanking, for example, and believes that the promise of China can only be realized after the Japanese are expelled. He recognizes that can only happen with our assistance."

  "I presume he knows that we're neutral in this war?" Banning asked, dryly.

  "Apparently, he believes we're going to get in it sooner or later," Sessions said. "And in the meantime is anxious to help, even when that means a personal sacrifice."

  "What does that mean?"

  "It would have been far more convenient for him to remain in the United States and simply send for Mrs. Feller."

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

  "The Reverend Feller was summoned home for conferences with his superiors. While he was there, his church decided that he would not be returning to China."

  "You mean he got fired?"

  "No. He was given a bigger job. His wife remained in China when he went to the United States. She could have returned to the United States by herself, which would have been far more convenient for all concerned. But he elected instead to make the voyage over here 'to settle his replacement in his job,' to help me in my mission, and to take Mrs. Feller back with him. This was all really unnecessary, but he did it anyway."

  "A real self-sacrificing patriot, huh?" Banning said, wondering what the Reverend's real purpose was. There were stories of missionaries accumulating chests of valuable Chinese antiques, so many stories that all of them could not be discounted. And what better way to carry valuable antiques out of China than under protection of the U.S. Marine Corps?

  "I don't think that's quite fair, sir," Sessions said.

  Banning didn't want to get into a discussion of missionary antiques, and changed the subject.

  "Christ, I hope both the Reverend and you are wrong about us getting into a war with the Japs," he said.

  Sessions looked at him in surprise. It was not the sort of remark he expected from a Marine officer.

  "Lieutenant," Banning said, patiently, "certainly you can understand what a logistic horror it would be to attempt to field one division over here. This isn't Nicaragua. China could swallow the entire World War I American Expeditionary Force without a burp."

  "I've thought about that, sir," Sessions said.

  Banning looked at Sessions with annoyance. Another Always-Agree-with-the-Superior-Officer ass-kisser like Macklin. Then he changed his mind. Sessions was just saying what he was really thinking.

  "Have you?" Banning asked.

  "Eventually, we may have to face that logistic horror," Sessions said. "I really thought we were going to take action when the Japanese sank the Panay."

  (The U.S.S. Panay, a gunboat of the Yangtze River Patrol, was attacked and sunk, with many Americans killed and wounded, by Japanese aircraft in 1937).

  "Tell me more about the Reverend Feller," Banning said. There was no point in discussing whether a force large enough to do any good could be deployed in China with an officer who had just gotten off the boat.

  "He is willing to help us in any way he can," Sessions said, "consistent, of course, with his religious principles."

  Banning thought, but did not say, that there was very little then that the good Reverend would be able to do. The principles of religion seemed to disagree almost entirely with the principles and practice of gathering intelligence. The more he thought about it, the more he thought it was likely that the Reverend Feller's motive in returning to China had less to do with patriotism than it did with transporting a case, or cases, of Chinese antiques back to the States.

  "As a practical matter, Lieutenant," Banning said, "I am more concerned with the Reverend Feller's reaction to Corporal McCoy."

  "I don't think I follow you."

  "For one thing, on the way back and forth to Peking, McCoy spends a lot of time drunk, usually in brothels. I don't want the Reverend, or anyone else, interfering with that. Or anything else that McCoy might do."

  "I understand, sir," Sessions said immediately.

  Banning looked at him and was somewhat surprised to see that he did, in fact, understand why McCoy spent a lot of time in brothels.

  "Did the missionaries weather the trip well?" Banning asked. "How soon can they be ready to start?"

  "They're in the Hotel Metropole," Sessions said. "They can leave just as soon as their vehicles have been serviced."

  "I'll send McCoy over to the hotel in the morning," Banning said. "The Japanese will hear of it immediately, of course. But they won't think anything about it after I tell them that he will be taking your missionaries with him to Peking. What he'll do at the hotel is what he would be expected to do."

  "Which is?"

  "Get the missionary vehicles in condition to roll. Tell the Reverend Feller that it will be his responsibility to bring his vehicles here to be examined and to provide two extra wheels and four extra tires and tubes for each of them. That sort of thing."

  "Where is Feller going to get wheels and tires?"

  "You can buy anything you want in Shanghai," Banning said.

  "Wouldn't it make more sense to have Corporal McCoy get the wheels and tires for him? I have some funds…"

  "The only reason a corporal of Marines would go shopping for a missionary," Banning said, "would be if he were ordered to. And the Japanese would then wonder why the Marines were going out of their way to be nice to a couple of missionaries-why these missionaries were different from any of the others."

  Sessions winced, and exhaled audibly.

  "I've got a lot to learn, don't I?"

  "I'm sure that Corporal McCoy will be happy to point out the more significant rocks and shoals to you," Banning said.

  "The most dangerous shoal would be getting caught in a compromising position," Sessions said. "What would happen if the Japanese detain or arrest me and charge me with espionage?"

  "The thing to do, of course, is not get yourself arrested. And the way to do that is to listen to Killer McCoy. If he says -don't go somewhere, don't go somewhere."

  Chapter Three

  (One)

  The Metropole Hotel Shanghai, China 12 May 1941

  None of his peers was surprised when Corporal Kenneth J. "Killer" McCoy, USMC, took an off-the-compound apartment immediately after his return from the first "Get Him out Of Sight" trip to Peking.

  He was now a corporal, and most of the noncommissioned officers of the 4th Regiment of Marines in Shanghai had both a billet and a place where they actually lived. McCoy's billet, appropriate to a corporal, was half of a small room (not unlike a cell) in one of the two-story brick buildings that served the Headquarters Company, First Battalion, as barracks. It was furnished with a steel cot (on which rested a mattress, two blankets, two sheets, a pillow and a pillow case), a wall locker and a footlocker filled with the uniforms and accoutrements prescribed for a corporal of Marines.

  With the exception of an issue mirror mounted to the door, that was all. There was not even a folding chair.

  McCoy shared his billet with a staff sergeant assigned to the
office of the battalion S-4 officer (Supply). The two of them split the cost of a Chinese room boy (actually a thirty-five-year-old man) who daily visited the room, polished the floor, washed the windows, tightened the blankets on the bunks, touched up the gloss of the boots and shoes, polished the brass, saw that the uniforms and accoutrements were shipshape, and in every way kept things shipshape.

  Before inspections that Corporal McCoy and Staff Sergeant Patrick O'Dell were obliged to attend (and there was at least one such scheduled inspection every month, on payday) Chong Lee, the room boy, would remove from the wall locker and the footlocker those items of uniform and accoutrements that were required by Marine regulation and lay them out on the bunks precisely in the prescribed manner.

  To prepare for the monthly inspection of personnel in billets, it was only necessary for Staff Sergeant O'Dell and Corporal McCoy to go to the arms room and draw their Springfield Model 1903 rifles and the bayonets for them, ensure they were clean, and proceed to their billet.

  The gunnery sergeant of Headquarters Company, First Battalion, 4th Marines, was a salty old sonofabitch who drew the line at some fucking Chink having access to the weapons. His men would fucking well clean their own pieces.

  The assignment of Staff Sergeant O'Dell and Corporal McCoy to the same room was a matter of convenience. They did not like each other. And sometimes the only time they spoke was when they met, once a month for the scheduled inspection. The only thing they had in common was that neither of them had responsibility for the company supervision of subordinates. The six other enlisted men assigned to battalion S-4 were supervised outside the office by the assistant S-4 corporal, Corporal Williamson.

  After his promotion and return from the first "Get Him out of Sight" trip to Peking, Corporal McCoy had been officially transferred from Dog Company to Headquarters Company and assigned to the motor pool.

  Whether- as some reasoned-it had been decided to continue to keep him out of sight of the Italians, or whether-as others reasoned-that to get right down to it McCoy didn't know his ass from left field about being a motor pool corporal, he had been given the more or less permanent assignment of riding the supply convoys to Peking.

  That kept him out of town more than he was in Shanghai. The result was that since he didn't have a shack job and since he was gone so often, the first sergeant and the gunny had decided there was no sense in putting him on duty rosters if more often than not he wouldn't be around when the duty came up.

  And then after sometimes three or four weeks spent bouncing his ass around in the cab of a Studebaker truck, it seemed only fair to give him liberty when he was in Shanghai.

  For all practical purposes, then, he didn't have any company duties when he wasn't off with one of the supply convoys. And it was understandable that he didn't want to hang around the billet waiting for some odd job to come up. When he was in Shanghai he stood the reveille formation. After that nobody saw him until reveille the next morning. He needed an apartment. You couldn't spend all day in bars and whorehouses.

  Most of his peers found nothing wrong with the way McCoy was playing the game. Most of them had themselves made one or more trips away from Shanghai in truck convoys. For the first couple of hours, maybe even the first couple of days, it was okay. But then it became nothing but a bumpy road going on for fucking ever, broken only by meals and piss calls. And the meals were either cold canned rations or something Chink, like fried chunks of fucking dog meat.

  But there were a few-generally lower-ranking noncommissioned officers with eight or more years of service-who held contrary opinions: The Goddamned Corps was obviously going to hell in a handbasket if a candy-ass sonofabitch with Parris Island sand still in his boots gets to be a corporal just starting his second fucking hitch, for Christ's sake, instead of having his ass shipped in irons to Portsmouth for cutting up them Italian marines.

  What his peers did not know-and what McCoy was under orders not to tell them-was that not only did he have an apartment with a telephone but that the Corps was paying for it. The less the other enlisted men knew about the real nature of McCoy's S-2 duty, the better. Getting him out of the billets would help. And there was another secret from the troops, shared only by the colonel (who had to sign the authorizations), Captain Banning, and the finance sergeant: McCoy had been given a one-time cash grant of $125 for "the purchase of suitable civilian clothing necessary in the performance of his military duty" and was drawing "rations and quarters allowance."

  Corporal Kenneth J. McCoy's apartment was on the top floor of a three-story building in P'u-tung. It was not at all elaborate. And it was small, one large room with a bed in a curtained alcove, and a tiny bathroom (shower, no tub) in another. There was no kitchen, but he had installed an electric hot plate so that he could make coffee. And he had an icebox to cool his beer.

  But there was a tiny balcony, shielded from view, large enough for just one chair, on which he could sit when he had the time and watch the boat traffic on Soochow Creek.

  There was a restaurant in the adjacent building. If he wanted something to eat, all he had to do was put his head out the window and yell at the cook, and food would be delivered to him. He often got breakfast like that, yelling down for a couple of three-minute eggs and a pot of tea. And sometimes late at night, when he was hungry, he'd call down for some kind of Chinese version of a Western omelet, eggs scrambled with onions, bits of ham, and sweet pepper.

  He rarely ate in the NCO mess of the 4th Marines, although the chow there was good. It was just that there were so many places in Shanghai to eat well, and so cheaply, that unless he just happened to be near the mess at chow time, it didn't seem worth the effort to take a meal there.

  The building on the other side was a brothel, the "Golden Dragon Club," where he had run an account for nearly as long as he'd been stationed in Shanghai. It was through his friend Piotr Petrovich Muller he had found the apartment. Piotr had known the proprietor of the Golden Dragon in the good old days, back in Holy Mother Russia.

  The man had an unpronounceable name, but that didn't matter, because he liked to be called "General." He claimed (McCoy was sure he was lying) that he had been a General in the Army of the Czar.

  When he had first moved into the apartment, McCoy had played "Vingt-et-Un" with the General long enough for the both of them to recognize the other was not a pigeon to be plucked. They had become more or less friends afterwards, despite the differences in their age and "rank."

  Most of the items on the monthly bill the General rendered were for services not connected with the twenty-odd girls in the General's employ. The General's people cleaned McCoy's apartment and did his laundry. And then there were bar charges and food charges. The girls themselves were more than okay. Mostly they were Chinese, who ranged from very pretty to very elegant (no peasant wenches in the General's establishment), but there were a few Indochinese and two White Russians as well.

  McCoy actually believed that the General, who exhibited a certain officer-type arrogance, had most probably been an officer, if not officially a general, in the Czarist Army. Something like captain or maybe major was what he probably had been when, like so many other White Russian "generals," he had come penniless and stateless to Shanghai twenty years before. McCoy didn't like to think how the General had survived at first-probably as a pimp, possibly by strong-arm robbery-but he was now inarguably a success.

  He had an elegant apartment in one of the newer buildings, to which he sometimes invited McCoy for a Russian dinner. He drove a new American Buick, and he had a number of successful business interests now (some of them perfectly legal) in addition to the Golden Dragon.

  There were eight sets of khakis hanging in the wardrobe when McCoy, naked, and still dripping from his shower, walked across the room and opened it. They were not issue. His issue khakis hung in his wall locker at the barracks. These uniforms were tailor-made. The shirts had cost him sixty cents, American, and the trousers ninety. The field scarves (Neckties) had been a nick
el, and the belt (stitched layers of khaki) a dime. The belt was not regulation. Regulation was web. But McCoy knew that the only time anything would ever be said about it was at a formal inspection, and he hardly ever stood one of those anymore.

  Neither were his chevrons regulation. Regulation chevrons were embroidered onto a piece of khaki and then sewn onto the shirt. McCoy's chevrons (and those of the gunnery sergeant) had been embroidered directly onto their shirts. If it was good enough for the gunny, McCoy had reasoned, it was good enough for him. And now that he had made corporal, he knew that the shirts would be worn out long before he would make sergeant.

  The shirt and trousers were stiffly starched. They would not stay that way long. It was already getting humid. Shanghai was as far south as New Orleans, and every bit as muggy. Before long the starch would wilt, and it was more than likely that he would have to change uniforms when he went to the compound, which is where he had to go after he introduced himself to the Reverend Feller, who was staying at the Hotel Metropole. He did not wish to give the assholes in Motor Transport any opportunity to spread it around that Killer McCoy had shown up in a sweaty uniform looking like a fucking Chinaman.

  When he was dressed, with his field scarf held in place with the prescribed USMC tie clasp, there was no longer any question that he would need another uniform before the day was over. He decided that it made more sense to take one with him than to use one of the issue uniforms in his billet. He could change in the motor pool head and avoid going to the barracks at all.

  Carrying an extra uniform on a hanger, he left the apartment and trotted down the stairs. He did not lock the apartment. The way that worked was that there were some Westerners whose apartments were robbable, and some whose apartments were not. It had nothing to do with locks on doors and bars over windows. The trick was to get yourself on the list of those whose apartments were safe. One way to do this was to have it known that you were friendly with a Shanghai policeman, and the other was to be friendly with the chief of the tong whom the association had granted burglary privileges in your area.