The Corps I - Semper Fi

by W. E. B Griffin

  (Three)

  Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

  21 August 1941

  Two cops came to the cell.

  "Okay, Joe Louis, on your feet!" one of them said, as the other signaled for the remotely operated door to be opened.

  One of the cops came in the cell and stood over Tommy McCoy as he put his feet in his work shoes. When Tommy finally stood up, the cop took handcuffs from a holder on his belt.

  "Put your hands behind you," he said.

  "Hey, I'm all right now," Tommy said.

  "Put your hands behind you," the cop repeated.

  As he felt the manacles snap in place around his wrist, Tommy asked, "What happens now?"

  The cop ignored him. He took his arm and sort of shoved him out of the cell, then out of the cellblock. They stopped at the property room and picked up their revolvers, then ripped open a brown manila envelope. They tucked his wallet, handkerchief, cigarettes, matches and change in his pockets, and led him out of the building to a parking lot in the rear.

  "When do I get something to eat?" Tommy asked.

  The cops ignored that question too.

  He wasn't so much hungry as thirsty, Tommy thought. He'd really put away the boilermakers the night before, and the only water in the cell had been warm, and brown, and smelled like horse-piss.

  What he really needed was a couple of beers, maybe a couple of boilermakers, to straighten himself out.

  They took him to the mill to the small brick building just inside the gate. It looked like a regular house but was the place where the mill security police had their office. In there was also a dispensary where they took people until the ambulance arrived.

  They led him into the office of the chief of plant security. He wasn't surprised to see him, but he was surprised to see Denny Walkowicz, Assistant Business Manager of Local 3341, United Steel Workers of America, a big, shiny-faced Polack.

  No one said hello to Tommy, or offered him a chair.

  "What's all this?" Tommy asked.

  "You broke his nose, you might like to know," the chief of plant security said. "He said you hit him with a beer bottle."

  "Bullshit," Tommy said.

  "What do they call that?" the plant security chief said.

  "We got him charged with 'assault with a dangerous object,' " one of the cops said.

  "That's all?"

  "Public drunkenness, resisting arrest," the cop said. "There's more."

  "Nobody's asked for his side of it," Denny Walkowicz said.

  "His side don't mean a shit, Denny. Let's not start that bullshit all over again."

  Another man came into the room. One of the fucking white-collar workers from Personnel. Little shit in a shiny blue suit.

  He had an envelope in his hand, which he laid on the table.

  "Denny Walkowicz stood up for you, McCoy, Christ only knows why," the plant security chief said. "Here's what we worked out. There's two weeks' severance pay, plus what you earned through last Friday. You take that."

  "Or what?"

  "Or they take you back to jail."

  "You're facing ninety days in the can, kid," Denny Walkowicz said. "At least, maybe a lot more. And it ain't only the time, it's a criminal record."

  "For getting in a fight?"

  "You don't listen, do you, McCoy?" the plant security chief said. "You hit a guy with a beer bottle, it's not like punching him."

  "I told you, I didn't use no bottle."

  "Yeah, you said that, but other people say different."

  "Well, fuck you!"

  "I'm glad you were here and the cops are to hear that, Denny," the chief of plant security said. " 'Using profane or obscene language to a supervisor or member of management shall be grounds for dismissal for cause,' " he quoted.

  "He's got you, McCoy," Denny Walkowicz said. "You gotta learn to watch your mouth."

  "Take him back to jail," the chief of plant security said, and then picked up the brown envelope and handed it back to the white-collar guy from administration. "Do what you have to," he said. "No severance pay."

  "Now wait a minute," Denny Walkowicz said. "We had a deal, we worked this out."

  "Nobody tells me, 'fuck you,' " the plant security chief said.

  Denny Walkowicz took the envelope back from the white-collar guy.

  "You," he said to Tommy McCoy, "keep your fucking mouth shut!"

  Then he led him out of the room, with the cops following.

  The cops took the handcuffs off him.

  "If it was up to me," the larger one said, "you'd do time."

  "Yeah, well it ain't up to you, is it?" Denny Walkowicz said.

  "If you're smart, McCoy, you won't hang around Bethlehem," the cop said. "You know what I mean?"

  As Denny Walkowicz drove Tommy to the boardinghouse in his blue Buick Roadmaster, he said: "You better pay attention to what the cop said. They're after your ass. It took three of them to hold you down, and you kicked one of them in the balls. They're not going to take that."

  "That was all the union could do for me?"

  "You ungrateful sonofabitch!" Denny Walkowicz exploded. "We kept you from going to jail!"

  Tommy went to bed the minute he got to his room. He slept the rest of the day, and except for going out for two beers and some spaghetti about ten that night, slept right around the clock.

  At ten- thirty the next morning, he went down to the post office and talked to the recruiter. The guy was especially nice to him after he told him his brother was a Marine, too. He told Tommy that if he enlisted for the duration of the present emergency plus six months, he could fix it for him to be assigned to the same unit as his brother. And when Tommy said that he had always wanted to be a pilot, the recruiter said he could arrange for that, too.

  Thomas Michael McCoy was sworn into the United States Marine Corps at 1645 hours that same afternoon. He was transported by bus to the U.S. Navy Yard, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the next morning. At Philadelphia, he learned that the recruiter had been something less than honest with him. He wasn't going to be trained as a pilot, but as an infantryman. And the corporal in Philadelphia told him he stood as much chance of being assigned with his brother as he did of being elected pope.

  But the corporal felt that professional courtesy to a fellow corporal required that he inform Corporal McCoy that his little brother was on the base awaiting transport to Parris Island. He called Post Locator, and they told him that Corporal McCoy had been the day before transferred to Marine Corps Schools, Quantico, Virginia.

  Then the corporal made the connection. This dumb Mick's brother was the China Marine in the campaign hat driving the LaSalle convertible, the one they were sending to officers' school. They sure as Christ made little apples were not two peas from the same pod, he thought.

  (Four)

  Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel

  Headquarters, United States Marine Corps

  Washington, D.C.

  29 August 1941

  The wooden frame building-designed for no more than five years' usage-had been built during the Great War (1917-18). The Chief of Company-Grade Officer Assignments stood waiting in one of the doorways to catch the eye of the Deputy Chief, Assignments Branch. The doorway sagged.

  The Chief of Company-Grade Officer Assignments, a balding, stocky man, had taken off the jacket of his cord suit and rolled up the sleeves of his sweat-soaked white shirt. Standing there with his suspenders exposed, he didn't look much like the captain of Marines he was. He held two documents at his side. One was that week's listing of actual and projected billet vacancies. The other was the service record of MACKLIN, John D., 1st Lt.

  The Deputy Chief, Assignments Branch, had been reading with great interest an interoffice memorandum which compared projected Company-Grade Officer Requirements for Fiscal Year 1942 against projected officer recruitment for Fiscal Year 1942 and was wondering where the hell they were going to dig up the 2,195 bodies that represented the difference between what they
needed and what they were likely to get. Finally he noticed the Chief of Company-Grade Officer Assignments standing in his door and motioned him inside with a wave of his hand.

  The Deputy Chief, Assignments Branch, who had also removed his jacket, was a major-although he looked, and sometimes felt, more like a bureaucrat than a Marine officer.

  "How would you like me to handle this, sir?" the Chief of Company-Grade officer assignments asked. He handed the major the documents in his hand.

  The major opened the service-record jacket of MACKLIN, John D., 1st Lt.

  There was a file of orders concerning the officer in question bound to the record jacket with a metal expanding clip. The order on top, which made it the most recent one, had been issued by the 4th Marines. Lieutenant Macklin, having been decreed excess to the needs of the command, was relieved of duty and would proceed to the United States of America aboard the U.S.S. Shaumont, reporting on arrival to Headquarters, USMC, Washington, D.C., for further assignment. A thirty day delay en route leave was authorized.

  Macklin was not really expected to physically report in Washington. His orders and his records would be sent to Washington. When Washington decided what to do with him, either a telegram or a registered letter would be sent to his leave address telling him where to go and when to be there.

  In a manila folder were copies of Lieutenant Macklin's efficiency reports, mounted in the same manner as his orders.

  "I wonder what he did?" the major asked, without expecting an answer, as he turned his attention to Lieutenant Macklin's most recent efficiency report. Officers were rarely decreed excess to the needs of a command. Commands, as a rule of thumb, generally sent a steady stream of justifications for the assignment of additional officer personnel to carry out their assigned missions.

  A civilian, reading the efficiency report, would probably have concluded that it was a frank, confidential appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of what a civilian would probably think was a typical Marine officer.

  He was described as a "tall, lean, and fit" officer of "erect bearing" with "no disfiguring marks or scars." It said mat Lieutenant Macklin was "slightly below" the avenge of his peers in professional knowledge; that he had "adequately discharged the duties assigned to him"; that there was "no indication of abuse of alcoholic beverages or other stimulants"; and that Lieutenant Macklin had "a tendency not to accept blame for his failures, but instead to attempt to shift the blame to subordinates." In this connection, it said that Lieutenant Macklin was prone to submit official reports that both omitted facts mat might tend to make him look bad, and "to present other facts in such a manner as to magnify his own contribution to the accomplishment of the assigned mission." It said finally that Lieutenant Macklin "could not be honestly recommended for the command of a company or larger tactical unit at this time."

  A civilian would doubtless mink mat here was a nice-looking erect young man, who was mostly competent, did what he was told to do, and had no problem with the bottle. If there was anything wrong with him at all, it was a perfectly understandable inclination to present only his best side to his superiors. If he could not be recommended to be a company commander at this time, well, he was young, and there would be a chance for that later. In the meantime, there were certainly other places where his "slightly below average professional knowledge" could be put to good use.

  In the Corps, Macklin's efficiency report was lethal.

  "Jesus, I wonder what the hell he did?" the major repeated.

  "The endorsing officer is Chesty Puller," the captain said. "Puller's a hardnose, but he's fair. And you saw how he endorsed it."

  " "The undersigned concurs in this evaluation of this officer,' " the major quoted.

  "So what do we do with him?" the captain asked.

  "Maybe he got too friendly with some wife?" the major asked.

  "I think he got caught writing a false report," the captain said.

  "In which he tried to shaft somebody…"

  "Somebody who worked with him, you saw that remark about 'shifting blame to subordinates?' "

  "And got caught," the major agreed. "That would tee Chesty Puller off."

  "So what do we do with him?"

  "Six months ago, I would ask when he planned to resign," the major said. "But that's no longer an option, is it?"

  "No, sir."

  "What's open?" the major asked.

  "I gave you the list, sir."

  The major consulted the week's listing of actual and projected billet vacancies for company-grade officers.

  "It says here there's a vacancy for a mess officer at the School Battalion at Quantico. I thought we sent that kid from the hotel school at Cornell down there? Ye Olde Round Peg in Ye Olde Round Hole?"

  "He developed a hernia," the captain said. "They sent him to the Navy hospital at Norfolk. It'll be more than ninety days before he's fit for full duty, so they transferred him to the Detachment of Patients."

  "I would hate to see someone who has graduated from the Cornell Hotel School assigned anywhere but a kitchen," the major said.

  The captain chuckled.

  "I've sort of penciled in when he's available for assignment, assigning him to the Marine Barracks here. He'd make a fine assistant officers' club officer."

  "Don't let him get away," the major said. "And in the meantime, I think we should send Lieutenant Macklin to Quantico, at least for the time being. All a mess officer does anyway-Cornell Hotel School graduates excepted-is make sure nobody's selling the rations."

  "Aye, aye, sir," the chief of company-grade officer assignments said. And then he thought of something else: "We've got another one, sir."

  "Somebody else with an efficiency report like that?" the major asked, incredulously.

  "No, sir. Another hotelier. Is that right?"

  The major nodded.

  "One of the kids starting the Platoon Leader's course listed his current occupation as resident manager of the Andrew Foster Hotel in San Francisco. That sounded a little odd for a twenty-one-year-old, so I checked on it."

  "And he really was?"

  "He really was. And not only because he's Andrew Foster's grandson."

  "Our cup runneth over," the major said. "Don't let that one get away, either. Maybe something can be done about the quality of the chow after all."

  "Aye, aye, sir," the captain repeated with a smile.

  Chapter Nine

  (One)

  U.S. Marine Corps Schools

  Quantico, Virginia

  29 August 1941

  The man at the wheel of the spotless Chevrolet pickup truck was Master Gunnery Sergeant Jack (NMI)( No Middle Initial) Stecker, USMC. Stecker was a tall, muscular, tanned, erect man of forty-one who looked the way a master gunnery sergeant, USMC, with twenty-five years in die Corps, was supposed to look.

  He was in stiffly starched, impeccably pressed khakis. A vertical crease ran precisely through the buttons of the shirt pockets to the shoulder seam on die front of the shirt. There were four creases on the rear One ran horizontally across the back of his shoulders. The other three ran down the back, one on each side, and one down the middle. There were a total of six pockets on his khaki shirt and trousers. Two were in use. Stacker's left hip pocket held his wallet; and his right shirt pocket held a small, thin notebook and a silver-plated Parker pen-and-pencil set. The other pockets were sealed shut with starch, and would remain sealed shut.

  The keys to his office, to his quarters, and to his personal automobile, a 1939 Packard Phaeton, as well as a Saint Christopher medal, were on a second dogtag cord worn around his neck.

  Stecker did not think it fitting that the uniform of a master gunnery sergeant, USMC, should bulge in any way. There was a handkerchief in his left sock. Sometimes, not often, when he knew he would be away from another source of smoking material for a considerable period of time, he carried a package of Lucky Strike cigarettes and a book of matches in his right sock. Mostly, he kept his smoking material in various convenie
nt places-the glove compartment of the pickup, his desk drawer, and sometimes (if he knew he was not going to have to remove his campaign hat) in the crown of the hat.

  Master Gunnery Sergeant Jack Stecker, USMC, turned off the macadam Range Road and slowed the Chevrolet pickup as he approached the barrier, a weighted pole, barring access to the ranges.

  As it often is in Virginia in late August, it was hot and muggy, and Jack Stecker had rolled the driver's-side window down. But as he approached the Known Distance Rifle Range close enough to hear the firing, he rolled the window up. The crack of.30-caiiber rifle fire does more than make your ears ring; it permanently damages your hearing if you get enough of it.

  A large red flag hung limply from a twenty-five-foot pole, signaling that the range was in use. A young Marine had been assigned to bar access to the range by unauthorized personnel, and to raise the barrier to pass authorized personnel. He was about twenty-one, his nose was sunburned, and he wore utilities, a World War I-style helmet, a web cartridge belt (from which hung a canteen and a first-aid packet), and had a U.S. Rifle, Caliber.30, Model 1903A3, slung over his shoulder by its leather sling.

  When Master Gunnery Sergeant Jack Stecker first saw him, the young man with the sunburned nose was standing five feet from the flagpole. And Jack Stecker had no doubt that the young man (who looked like a boot about to graduate from the Recruit Depot at Parris Island, but who was in fact an officer candidate about to graduate from the Platoon Leader's Course and become a commissioned officer, second lieutenant, in the Marines) had probably been leaning on the pole. He had also probably propped the Springfield against the flagpole.

  Stecker was not offended. What was important was that he had not caught him failing in his duties as a guard. He would have burned him a new asshole if he had caught him doing what he damned well knew he had been doing, but he had not.

  When the trainee, recognizing Master Gunnery Sergeant Stecker's Chevrolet pickup, had quickly raised the weighted pole barrier, he was rewarded for his efforts by a slight but unmistakable nod of Stecker's head. The trainee nodded back, and smiled shyly-and with some relief. He had been forced to make a decision, and it had turned out to be the right one.