Behind the Lines

by W. E. B Griffin

  And unable to accept the facts, he’s now living out some fantasy where he is still a general, the U.S. Army in the Philippines still exists, and any moment The Aid will appear, galloping to our rescue like the cavalry in the movies.

  “Yes, Sir,” he said.

  “Things are a bit primitive around here at the moment,” Fertig said. “We hope to improve on them.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Please tell me how you came here, Lieutenant.”

  “One of my men, Sergeant Everly, Sir, was contacted by one of your men while he was on a patrol. He showed Sergeant Everly your ...”

  “Proclamation?” Fertig asked.

  “Yes, Sir. Your proclamation ... nailed to a telephone pole. He, Everly, brought it to me, and then your man led us here.”

  “What I was really asking, Lieutenant, was how you came to Mindanao. Presumably, you were formerly assigned to the 4th Marines on Bataan?”

  “On Corregidor, yes, Sir.”

  “And you somehow got off Corregidor and decided that it was your duty not to surrender when Corregidor inevitably fell?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Well, at least he knows that we lost Bataan and Corregidor.

  Fertig looked at him, obviously waiting for him to continue.

  “I was a pilot, Sir,” Weston heard himself saying. “I mean, I am an aviator. I was stranded in the Philippines and assigned to the 4th Marines as a supernumerary officer. My commanding officer ... my commanding officer sent me to Bataan looking for supplies....”

  Why is it important to tell this man what really happened? Am I looking for his approval? His forgiveness?

  “I was provided with five thousand dollars and a Spanish-speaking sergeant, Sir. I wasn’t ordered to desert, that was my decision. But I believe Major Paulson hoped I would not return; that I would try to get out of the Philippines, to Australia.”

  Fertig nodded.

  “We attempted to rent a boat,” Weston went on. “We found one. And then the Filipinos on the boat attempted to murder us.”

  “Banditry and piracy have a long history in the Philippines,” Fertig said. “What happened?”

  “We killed them,” Weston blurted, aware of that but unable to stop. “Everly killed the one who was trying to cut my throat, and then we ... killed the others. And threw their bodies into the sea.”

  “Where was that?” Fertig replied. He seemed neither surprised nor shocked.

  “Right off the Bataan Peninsula, Sir.”

  “It was just you and your sergeant at first? You picked up the others en route here?”

  “Yes, Sir, that’s about it.”

  “You’re apparently a resourceful officer, Lieutenant. It must have been difficult to obtain the necessary food and water, and of course the charts, to make a voyage such as you have made. You are to be commended.”

  “Sir, it wasn’t that way,” Weston confessed, uncomfortably. “We had neither rations nor charts.”

  “But?”

  “We found a cabin cruiser adrift in the passage between Lubang Island and ... I can’t remember the other island. A little one. Uninhabited.”

  “Ambil Island,” Fertig furnished. “I know the passage. Tell me about the cabin cruiser.”

  “It was, I think, a locally built copy of a Chris-Craft.”

  “Did it have a name?”

  “Yes, Sir. Yet Again.”

  The General looked pained. His eyebrows rose, and then he shrugged, in what Weston thought was sadness and resignation.

  “You’re very observant, Lieutenant,” the General said, his voice level. “Yet Again was a locally built copy of a Chris-Craft. It belongs—belonged apparently; past tense—to friends of mine. Joseph and Harriet Dennison. He was the Chrysler dealer in Manila. Was there any sign of them, by any chance?”

  “In the master cabin, Sir, there were two bodies. A middle-aged couple. The woman was in the bed. She was apparently killed when the boat was attacked by Japanese aircraft. There were bullet holes—”

  He was interrupted by a Filipino woman, who thrust at him a plate of pork chunks in rice and some kind of sauce. When he took it, she handed him a fork and a cup, made from bamboo.

  “The pork is very nice,” Fertig said. “The beer, unfortunately, seems to be proof that a civil engineer and a Navy Chief who don’t know what they’re doing should not try to brew beer.”

  Weston wolfed down the pork and rice.

  “There’s more,” Fertig said. “But I would advise waiting an hour or so. When you haven’t been eating normally ...”

  “That was fine, Sir. Thank you. It’ll hold me for a while.”

  “You were telling me about what you found on the Yet Again.”

  Weston tried to remember where he had broken off the story, and then resumed:

  “The woman was apparently killed in a strafing attack. The man shot himself in the temple. The boat was out of fuel.”

  Fertig closed his eyes and said nothing.

  Weston took a sip of the beer. It was warm and thick and reminded Weston of a disastrous attempt to make home brew in his fraternity house at college.

  “There was canned food aboard, Sir,” he went on, “and water. And charts. We took it all and started out for here.”

  “Leaving everything as you found it aboard the Yet Again?”

  “No, Sir. I mean we ... buried the bodies at sea. In blankets, weighted down with batteries. We didn’t burn the boat. Everly thought it would attract attention, and I agreed.”

  “Inasmuch as doing so, under the circumstances, obviously posed a risk to you, it was quite decent of you to ... bury ... the Dennisons, Lieutenant.”

  Weston could think of no reply to make.

  “I knew them rather well. Nice people. He was the exception to the rule that you never can trust anyone in the retail automobile business. Mrs. Fertig and I used to see a good deal of them at the Yacht Club.”

  “You were stationed in Manila, Sir?”

  “I was a civil engineer in Manila. I had the foresight to send Mrs. Fertig home when I entered the Army.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Though few others—including, sadly, the Dennisons—were willing to face that unpleasant fact, I knew there was no way we could really resist the Japanese when they came here. Roosevelt believes the Germans are the greater threat; our war effort will be directed primarily against them, the Pacific and the Japanese will be a secondary effort. There never was going to be The Aid that everybody was talking about.”

  “Sir, you said, ‘when you entered the army’?”

  “I was commissioned as a captain, Corps of Engineers, Reserve. With another chap, Ralph Fralick. He was commissioned a lieutenant, and we spent the early days of the war blowing things up—bridges, railroads, that sort of thing. Interesting experience, taking down in an hour what you had spent months—in several cases, years—building.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “The last I heard of Fralick, he was a captain, and he had his hands on a forty-foot boat, sail and diesel, and was headed for Indochina. When the end came, I was here. I decided that I did not want to be a prisoner; and since I have a hard head, I decided I could cause the Japanese more trouble by organizing a guerrilla operation here than trying to get out. If I had made it out—and the idea of trying to sail two thousand miles in a small boat to Australia seems iffy at best—I suspected that the Army would have a reserve lieutenant colonel, who is a civil engineer, supervise the construction of officer clubs.”

  Fertig looked into Weston’s eyes.

  Then he flipped up one of his collar points with the brigadier general’s star pinned to it.

  “Would you be wondering, by any chance, Lieutenant, about these?”

  “Yes, Sir. I was,” Weston said after a moment.

  “I’ve lived in the Philippines a long time, Lieutenant. I know the people, and I know—not as well as I know the Filipinos—the military mind. If I had signed my proclamation ‘Lieutenant Colonel, Co
rps of Engineers, Reserve,’ it would have been pissing in the wind. I think you’re proof of that, Lieutenant.”

  “Sir?” Weston asked, confused.

  “If my proclamation had announced that Lieutenant Colonel Fertig, CE, USAR, was the senior officer of U.S. Forces in the Philippines, would you have paid any attention to it? To put a point on it, would you have come looking for me?”

  “Sir, I was getting pretty desperate. I probably would have come,” Weston said uneasily. “At least to have a look.”

  “And if you found a lieutenant colonel, wearing a straw hat and a goatee, what do you think you’d have done? You’d have gone right back in the bush, perhaps? Avoiding the lunatic?”

  Weston shrugged uncomfortably.

  That’s exactly what I would have done.

  “Instead, you didn’t see me. You saw that general’s star, and that impressed you, right? I might look a little strange in my straw hat and beard, but the cogent fact, right, was that I was wearing a general’s star? And you gave me the benefit of the doubt?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Let me give you a little lecture in military law, Lieutenant Weston. Inasmuch as I am what the books call ‘the senior officer of the line present,’ which means that I am serving in one of the branches of the Armed Forces which engages in combat ... that includes the infantry, the cavalry, the artillery, the engineers, the air corps, and oddly enough, even the signal corps, but excludes the medical corps, the chaplain’s corps, the finance corps, et cetera.... You following me?”

  “Yes, Sir, I think so.”

  “Inasmuch as I am a lieutenant colonel of the line, the Congress of the United States, in its wisdom, has given me command over all lieutenant colonels of the line, regular or reserve, junior to me, by date of rank, and every other officer in an inferior grade—a lieutenant commander in the Navy, for example, or, should one wander in here, a full bird colonel of the medical corps. Or, to put a point on it, a Marine Corps first lieutenant who has in fact wandered in here.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Weston said because he could think of nothing else to say.

  “My order to you that as of this moment you and your men are under my command is perfectly valid.”

  “Yes, Sir, I suppose it is.”

  “You took it a lot easier when you thought I was a brigadier general, didn’t you? No question. Just ‘Yes, Sir, General’?”

  That’s not wholly true. But he’s made his point.

  “Yes, Sir, General,” Weston said with a smile.

  “I had a Moro silversmith hammer these out for me,” Fertig said, flipping one of his silver-starred collar points again, “because the Filipinos I intend to recruit will follow a general. They would not follow a lieutenant colonel. And I did not wish to deliver my little lecture about the small print in military law to every American serviceman I come across.”

  “I understand, Sir.”

  “In the absence of any other officer able or willing to assume command of American Forces in the Philippines, I have done so. I’ll deal with the subject of my self-promotion with my superior headquarters at some later time.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Any questions, Lieutenant Weston?”

  “No, Sir.”

  “That’s strange. I thought an intelligent, curious young man like you would be interested to know the current strength of United States Forces in the Philippines.”

  “Yes, Sir. I am.”

  “Right now, the officer corps is three officers strong. It consists of myself, and you, and Captain Charles Hedges. He is my chief of staff. At the moment, he’s out looking for a radio and mobile rations, which means swine that can be taken along with us under their own power should the Japanese get too close for comfort.”

  “And enlisted men?”

  “Counting the ones that came in with you, sixteen Americans. So far as the Philippine Element of USFIP is concerned, I have eleven commissioned officers and approximately 225 enlisted men. Sometime in the near future, we hope to equip each of the enlisted men with a firearm. At the moment, approximately half are armed with machetes.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Reliable intelligence has reached our G-2 Section—which at the moment means me—that there are other small units such as yours who have declined to surrender, here on Mindanao and elsewhere in the islands. Efforts are being made to contact them and place them under the command of USFIP.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “Reliable intelligence indicates that two such units, with a total strength of 165, are on their way here from Cebu at this moment. More are expected shortly. It is my belief that USFIP will grow rapidly in size, like a snowball rolling down a hill in Vermont.”

  Weston smiled at the analogy.

  “One of our problems is officers,” Fertig said. “Of your men, are there any you could in good conscience recommend for a direct commission?”

  “Everly,” Weston said without hesitation.

  “Just the one?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “You are authorized to offer him a commission as a second lieutenant, infantry, U.S. Army Reserve. If he accepts, I will swear him in.”

  “He’s what they call an Old Breed Marine, General,” Weston said, smiling. “A China Marine. I don’t know what he’ll think about becoming an Army lieutenant.”

  Fertig ignored the reply.

  “Our second problem is establishing radio communications with Australia. I don’t suppose that you are a radioman, or any of your men?”

  “No, Sir. But I have a degree in Electrical Engineering.”

  “Interesting! Fascinating! That would ordinarily be enough for me to name you Signal Officer of USFIP,” Fertig said. “But I already have one. Or will shortly, as soon as I commission him. Probably this afternoon, after you have a word with your man Everly. I’ll commission them together. He’s currently a private soldier named Ball. But he’s a radio operator.”

  There was a disconcerting aura about the whole conversation, at once amusing and frightening. It was simultaneously insane and utterly practical.

  It might sound insane, but obviously, this man intends to do exactly what he says he’s going to do. And there is a method to his madness.

  “When our reinforcements attach themselves to us,” Fertig said, “obviously it would be best if they didn’t quite understand how recently our officers were commissioned. Or received their assignments in the command structure. Or promoted.”

  “I take the General’s point,” Weston said.

  “I would hate to think that you were mocking me, Weston.”

  “No, Sir,” Weston replied immediately and sincerely. “That was not my intention, General.”

  Fertig looked into his eyes again.

  “Good. It would be awkward if I thought my G-2, an officer I personally promoted to captain, was mocking me. It would suggest he did not have faith in me.”

  “Has the General given any consideration to the assignment of Lieutenant Everly?” Weston asked.

  “For the time being, he should be your deputy,” Fertig said seriously. And then a smile curled his lips. “Maybe between—what was it you said?—an Old Breed China Marine and an airplane-less pilot, we can come up with a half-decent intelligence officer.”

  “We’ll try, Sir,” Weston said.

  “Do have a razor in your kit, Weston?”

  “No, Sir.”

  “Then you may use mine. I think one bearded officer is enough for USFIP.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir.”

  “You may go in my quarters, Captain, and have a shave. And then I suggest you have a word with your man Everly,” Fertig said.

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” Weston said, and stood up. “By your leave, General?”

  “That’s the first time anyone said ‘aye, aye’ to me. Nice. You are dismissed, Captain.”

  Weston saluted, did an about-face, and then walked into General Fertig’s quarters.

  Inside the house, Weston found, neatly laid out o
n a rattan table, a round, magnifying mirror in a chrome frame, a leather-covered box holding seven old-fashioned straight razors, a leather strop, a shaving brush, and a wooden jar of shaving soap. The soap was gray, obviously not what originally filled the jar.

  There are two ways to look at this, Weston thought, amused. One way, United States Forces in the Philippines is so fucked up we don’t even have soap. On the other hand, USFIP is resourceful enough to make its own soap, and the goateed madman on the porch is confident enough to be worried about the appearance of his officers.

  And since I have never held a straight razor in my hand before, I am liable to die for my country of a slit throat, acquired while I was attempting to set a good example for the enlisted men.

  There was a battered aluminum bowl half full of water. He dipped the shaving brush into it, attempted to make suds in the soap dish, and was astonished at his success. The bubbles were gray, but they were bubbles.

  He painted his cheek with them and, very carefully, began to hack away at his beard.

  Fertig’s Filipino sergeant came into the house while he was working on his chin and stood silently watching him while he finished shaving.

  Then he handed Weston a campaign hat. Pinned on it were the double silver bars of a captain. They were unquestionably of local manufacture; the marks of a silversmith’s hammer were clear.

  Weston put on the battered, broad-brimmed hat and looked at himself in the mirror. The hat was several sizes too small. But if he pushed it forward on his head, it would probably stay on, and it even gave him sort of a rakish appearance that he did not find hard to take.

  That made him think of something. He went into the baggy pocket of his. cotton trousers and pulled out a tied-together handkerchief. In addition to other small items he hadn’t needed for a long time, including golden dress-shirt studs, it held a small, gold USMC Globe and Anchor. At one time he’d worn it on a fore-and-aft cap that he had last seen on The Rock.