The Corps I - Semper Fi

by W. E. B Griffin

  When he first recognized the pickup as Master Gunnery Sergeant Stecker's, he hadn't been sure whether Stecker expected him to raise the barrier immediately, or to bar Stecker's path until he had satisfied himself that Master Gunnery Sergeant Stecker indeed had official business on the range.

  He had decided in the end that the safest course was to presume that whatever Master Gunnery Sergeant Stecker wanted to do on the Quantico reservation was official business and that it was not his role to question him about it.

  It had not been difficult to differentiate Master Gunnery Sergeant Stecker's pickup from the perhaps fifty identical 1940 Chevrolet pickups on the Quantico reservation. Stecker's personal pickup was very likely the cleanest, most highly polished pickup in the Marine Corps, perhaps in the world.

  When Master Gunnery Sergeant Stecker telephoned the motor sergeant to announce that he was through for the day with his transport, a motor pool corporal went to Base Headquarters to fetch it. He then drove it to the motor pool, where he examined the odometer to see how many miles Stecker had driven that day. He then filled out the trip ticket with probable, if wholly imaginary, destinations to correspond with the miles driven. It was universally recognized that Master Gunnery Sergeant Stecker had more important things to do with his time than fill out forms like a fucking clerk.

  With that done, the vehicle went through prescribed daily maintenance. The fuel tank was filled; the tire pressure checked; and the oil level and radiator water replenished. The vehicle was then turned over to whatever enlisted men had run afoul of Rocks and Shoals; had gone to Office Hours; and were now performing punitive extra duty in the motor pool.

  They washed the vehicle with soap and water, every inch of it, inside and out-except for the glove compartment, which was off limits. When the vehicle was washed and dried, it was swept out with whisk brooms, making sure there was no dust or sand in the cracks of the rubber covering of the running board or between the wooden planks of the bed. The vehicle was then inspected by the motor transport corporal. If the wax polish seemed to need touching up, the pickup was waxed. When it was finally judged likely to meet Master Gunnery Sergeant Stecker's standards, it was parked overnight inside, in the hoist section of the garage.

  In the morning, a motor transport corporal drove the pickup to Base Headquarters, where he parked it in a space marked FOR OFFICIAL VISITORS ONLY, so that it would be available should Master Gunnery Sergeant Stecker need transport.

  When the first Trucks, one-quarter ton, four-by-four, General Purpose (called "Jeeps") had been issued to Quantico, it had been proposed to Master Gunnery Sergeant Stecker that one be assigned to him, with a driver, for his use. Stecker had somewhat icily informed the motor transport sergeant that even though he could doubtless spare someone to spend most of his duty day sitting around with his thumb up his ass waiting to drive somebody someplace, he certainly could find real work for him to do that would be of value to the Corps.

  Master Gunnery Sergeant Stecker had other reasons to refuse the assignment of a jeep and driver. One of them was that a driver would come to know where he went, and why, and talk about it at night in the barracks. The less the men knew where he went and what he did, the better. Neither could Master Gunnery Sergeant Stecker see any reason why he should exchange a perfectly satisfactory vehicle, which came with nicely upholstered seats and roll-up windows, for a small open truck with thin canvas-covered pads to cushion his bottom.

  There was absolutely nothing that Stecker could find wrong, which is to say unmilitary, in finding comfort wherever it might be found. In his twenty-five years of service, he had been acutely uncomfortable on more occasions than he liked to remember. And there was no question whatever in his mind that he would be made acutely uncomfortable again- possibly, the Corps being what it was, as soon as tomorrow.

  It was not necessary to train to be uncomfortable. That came naturally, like taking a leak.

  When Master Gunnery Sergeant Stecker reached the Known Distance rifle range itself, he put wax plugs in his ears to protect them from the damaging crack of riflefire, and then got out of his pickup and approached the Range Tower. Pretending not to see the range officer, a young lieutenant who was in the tower itself, he examined the firing records, checked over two weapons that had failed to function, and the general police of the area; then discreetly inquired of the range sergeant how the new range officer was working out.

  "He's all right, Gunny," the range sergeant said. "Better than most second lieutenants» to tell you the truth."

  Stecker nodded. Then, with hands folded against the small of his back and the range sergeant trailing him, he marched to one end of the firing line, pausing now and again when the targets were marked or to stand behind one prone rifleman and his coach. Then he reversed course and marched to the other end. He found nothing that required correction. He really hadn't expected to. Except for the general truth that the way to keep things running smoothly was to keep your eye on them, there had really been no reason for him to "have a look" at the range.

  Then he returned to the pickup and drove back to his office.

  There was a glistening LaSalle convertible in one of the "Official Visitor" parking spaces. Stecker had almost bought a LaSalle convertible. Although he considered his Packard Phaeton to be a fine piece of machinery, sometimes he wished he had gone to the LaSalle. It wouldn't have cost nearly so much money, and it was, under the skin, a Cadillac. And there would not have been so many eyebrows raised at a Master Gunnery Sergeant driving a LaSalle.

  The question was how could an enlisted man, even one in the highest enlisted grade, afford the monthly payments on a Packard Phaeton? The answer was that mere were no monthly payments. He had paid cash on the barrel head for it. And the reason cash was available to pay for it was that shortly after he had married, when he was a twenty-one-year-old sergeant, he had gone out on payday and got tanked and blown most of his pay in a poker game.

  Elly gave him what he later came to call "her look." Then she put it to him simply: Not only was he a damned fool, but she was in the family way, and if the marriage wasn't going to work, it would be better if they faced it and called it off. Either she would handle the money from now on, or she was going home to Tatamy the next day.

  She then put him on an allowance, like a little boy, and kept him on it even later, when he'd gotten more stripes. When the kids were big enough, she'd gotten her teacher's certificate and gone to work. And it wasn't just her making the buffalo on the nickels squeal before she parted with one; Elly put the money to work.

  Right from the first, she had started buying and selling things. She would read the "Unofficial" section of the Daily Bulletin looking for bargains for sale. She didn't only buy things to use (like kid's clothes and from time to time a nice piece of furniture), she bought things to resell. And she was good at buying things and selling them. She told him once that she had a twenty-five percent rule: She wouldn't buy anything unless she could buy it for twenty-five percent less than what somebody was asking for it, and she wouldn't sell it for less than twenty-five percent more than she had paid for it.

  So the boy's college fund kept growing. Elly was determined from the beginning that the boys would go to college. And then, as the fund grew, her determination changed to "the boys would go to a good college."

  In '34, when the Depression was really bad (Jack Stecker was a staff sergeant then), the bank had foreclosed on her brother Fritz's house in Tatamy. Elly took a chance and put in a bid at the sheriff's auction. Most everybody else in Tatamy had been laid off from Bethlehem Steel, too, and not many people wanted an old three-family row house anyway. So she got it at a steal and without the down payment really making a big dent in the boys' college fund.

  Fritz went on living in what had been his apartment, and his oldest son and his family in another-neither of them paying rent, because they were out of work-but the third was rented out for nearly enough money to make the mortgage payment.

  Jack Stecker had
n't said anything to her, because he always considered the boys' college money to really be Elly's money, and if she wanted to help her family out when they were in a bind, he understood that, too.

  He came later to understand that what Elly had really done was put the money to work, and that if it also made things a little easier for her brother and nephew, fine, but that wasn't the reason she had bought the house.

  Neither Fritz nor his kid paid any rent until they got called back by Bethlehem Steel, Fritz in '37, his kid not until '39. When Fritz complained that paying back rent was a hell of a thing for a sister to ask of her own brother, Elly told him that she was charging him two percent less than the bank would have charged him, that he knew damned well that the bank would not have loaned a laid-off steel worker a dime, and that he and his family would have been put out on the street.

  Then she offered to sell him the house back at what an appraiser called the "fair market value." And she would carry the mortgage herself. So they had the house appraised and added what Fritz and his son owed for back rent to that, and Fritz was paying it off by the month at six percent interest. Not to Elly anymore. Elly had sold the mortgage to the Easton Bank Trust Company. And that money had gone into the boys' college fund.

  And then, as it turned out, they didn't need the boys' college fund at all. He'd gone home one afternoon and saw her with "her look." But Elly waited until he had changed out of his uniform, taken his beer from the icebox, and listened to the "Burns Allen" program on the radio. Then she made room for herself on the footstool and handed him a paperbound book.

  "You ever see this?" she asked.

  Sure, he'd seen it. It was the catalog of the United States Naval Academy.

  "You ever read it?" she asked.

  "I glanced through it," he said, somewhat defensively. It was difficult for a master gunnery sergeant, USMC, to admit to anyone, including his wife, that there was any aspect of the Naval Service of the United States with which he was not intimately familiar.

  "God, Jack," Elly said, disgusted. "You sometimes are a really thick-headed Dutchman!"

  She handed him the catalog, open, with a passage marked in red ink.

  ' 'Additionally, an unlimited number of appointments are available noncompetitively to sons of winners of the Medal of Honor.''

  Jack Stecker never wore the Medal, but it was in the strongbox, together with a copy of the citation, and a non-yellowing photograph of General "Black Jack" Pershing hanging it around his neck.

  In the name of the American people, the Congress of the United States awards the Medal of Honor to Sergeant Jack NMI Stecker, USMC, for valor in action above and beyond the call of duty in the vicinity of Belleau Wood, near Chateau-Thierry, France, during the period June 6 to June 9, 1918. CITATION: Sergeant (then Corporal) Stecker, in command of a squad of United States Marines participating in an assault upon German positions on June 6, was grievously wounded in the leg. When it became necessary for American forces to temporarily break off the attack and reform prior to a second attack, Sergeant Stecker refused evacuation and, despite his wounds, established himself in a position from which he could bring rifle fire to bear upon the enemy.

  During the nights of June 6 through June 8, without regard to either his wound or the great risk to his life posed by incessant small arms and artillery fire, Sergeant Stecker searched the area between the lines of the opposing forces (commonly referred to as "no-man's land") for other U.S. Marines who had also been unable or unwilling to withdraw to safe positions.

  Not only did Sergeant Stecker save the lives of many of these wounded men by administering first aid to them, but, inspiring them by his personal example of valor in the face of overwhelming odds, formed them into a 24-man-strong fighting force and established a rifle and machine-gun position from which, when the second, successful assault was launched on June 9, he laid a withering fire on German positions which otherwise would have been able to bring fire to bear on attacking American Forces with a resultant great loss of life.

  During the fighting involved during the second assault, Sergeant Stecker was wounded twice more, and suffered great loss of blood and excruciating pain. Despite his wounds and pain, Sergeant Stecker remained in command, inspiring his subordinates with his courage and coolness under fire until he lost consciousness.

  Sergeant Stecker's valor and dedication to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Marine Corps and the Naval Service.

  Entered the Naval Service from Pennsylvania.

  So the boys had gone to service academies, Jack Jr. to Annapolis, and Richard to West Point. Jack was an ensign on the Battleship Arizona in the Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor, and Richard would graduate next June and take a commission as a second lieutenant of Marines.

  Elly had waited until she was sure the boys were set, then she had used some-not much-of what was now "the retirement fund" to buy him the Packard Phaeton. He was entitled, she said, and you only live once.

  Three people were waiting outside Master Gunnery Sergeant Jack Stecker's office when he reached it: a staff sergeant, a PFC, and a corporal. He nodded at them, said, "Be with you in a minute," and went inside. When his clerk delivered his coffee, he would tell Stecker what they wanted.

  He knew the staff sergeant; he was from Post housing, and that was personal, so it could wait. And he supposed the PFC was carrying some kind of message, and that could wait too. But the corporal was completely unfamiliar to Stecker, and he was a little curious about him.

  The coffee (black, brewed no more than thirty minutes before; Stecker could not stand stale coffee) was delivered in a white china mess-hall mug within sixty seconds of his sitting down behind his desk.

  "Sergeant Quinn's here about your quarters," Stecker's clerk, a corporal, said. "The PFC was sent by the first sergeant of 'B' Company. Your wife called and said if you could come home early that would be nice. And the colonel says he'd like to see you when you have time, nothing important."

  "And the China Marine?" Stecker asked.

  "You mean the corporal?" the clerk asked. Stecker nodded, barely perceptibly. "How do you know he's a China Marine?"

  "What does he want?" Stecker asked, deciding that he would not mention the young corporal's embroidered-to-his-shirt chevrons, one of the marks of a China Marine.

  "Wouldn't say," the clerk said. "Wants to see you. I seen him drive up. You see that LaSalle convertible when you come in?"

  "Send the corporal in," Stecker said.

  (Two)

  Corporal Kenneth J. "Killer" McCoy walked into the room, looked at Stecker, and said, "Thank you, Gunny."

  Stecker liked that. The kid hadn't tried to kiss his ass with "Good afternoon, Sergeant, I'm sorry to bother you" or some candy-ass remark like that. But he was polite, and recognized that Master Gunnery Sergeants were busy men, and that he appreciated this one giving him a little bit of his time.

  Stecker liked what else he saw. Aside from the embroidered-to-the-garment chevrons and the khaki fore-and-aft cap this young corporal looked the way Stecker liked his young corporals to look. Neat, trim, and military. And as far as the China stripes were concerned, if he had his way everybody would wear them.

  "When did you ship home from China?" Stecker asked.

  "It shows, does it?" McCoy said, smiling.

  "Yeah," Stecker said. "Could you use some coffee?"

  "Sure could," McCoy said.

  "Doan!" Stecker raised his voice. "One Java!"

  "Reporting in, are you?" Stecker guessed, and then guessed again: "With a problem?"

  "I've got until midnight tomorrow," McCoy said.

  "Between now and midnight tomorrow," Stecker said, "get yourself a campaign hat."

  McCoy chuckled.

  "That's funny?"

  "I just came from the Navy Yard in Philly," McCoy said. "The first thing the first sergeant said to me there was 'get rid of the campaign, hat.' "

  "That was there, this is here," Stecker said. "What were you
doing in Philly? You ship home the long way around?"

  "I shipped home to Diego on a tincan," McCoy said. "Diego shipped me to Philly via Portsmouth."

  "Prisoner-chasing?" Stecker asked, and when McCoy nodded, went on: "Then you must just have bought the LaSalle."

  He enjoyed the look of surprise on the kid's face, but left him wondering until after Doan delivered the coffee and left. "My clerk doesn't miss much," he said.

  "Just bought it," McCoy said.

  "Like it?"

  "Except that it drinks gas, I like it fine," McCoy said.

  "What kind of a rice bowl did you have going for you in China?" Stecker asked, and again enjoyed the look of surprise on the kid's face. "To bring home enough money to buy a car like that?"

  "I spent a lot of time on back roads, drawing ration money," McCoy said.

  "Motor transport?"

  "Sort of," McCoy said.

  "What do you mean, 'sort of?"

  "That's my skill," McCoy said.

  "And you made corporal on one hitch, driving a truck?"

  "Yeah," McCoy said.

  "Why don't I believe that?" Stecker asked.

  "I don't know," McCoy said. 'it's the truth."

  "You must have got along pretty good with the motor officer," Stecker said. The translation of that was, "You must have had your nose pretty far up his ass."

  "Most of the time, I worked for an officer at regiment," McCoy said.

  "I did a hitch, '35-'37, with the Fourth Marines," Stecker said. "I guess I still know some of the officers. Who did you work for?"

  "Captain Banning," McCoy said.

  Stecker was very pleased to hear that. It reconfirmed his first judgment of the young corporal. (His second, more negative judgment sprang from questions about his making corporal in one hitch in motor transport.) Ed Banning was the China Marines' S-2. If this kid had been made a corporal by Banning, that was a whole hell of a lot different from making it as an ass-licker.