Behind the Lines
Page 16
“Yes, Sir,” Admiral Leahy said.
“This sort of thing, guerrilla warfare, operating behind the enemy lines, is really in Bill Donovan’s basket of eggs,” the President said. “But that presumes Douglas’s willingness to talk to Donovan’s man, doesn’t it?”
“Unfortunately,” Knox said.
“After Pickering’s thoughts on that subject, it occurs to me that if I ordered him to take Donovan’s people, the first place Douglas would drag his feet would be in this case.”
Knox grunted.
“The result would be a disgruntled Douglas MacArthur, with this fellow Fertig dangling in the breeze? Is that your assessment?”
Leahy nodded agreement, and Knox repeated, “Unfortunately.”
“Is there any way around this? To avoid confronting MacArthur?”
Leahy nodded. “I would suggest that it might be best if I sent Admiral Nimitz a Special Channel Personal advising him of what we know so far, and informing him that we are looking further into the matter, and that any support he may be asked to supply be provided with the utmost discretion.”
“Don’t anger Douglas by not telling Douglas, in other words?” the President asked.
“Yes, Sir.”
“General Pickering is with Douglas,” the President said thoughtfully.
“I don’t think General Pickering has to know that I have communicated with Admiral Nimitz,” Leahy said. “If he doesn’t know ...”
“Then it wouldn’t slip out in conversation, would it?” the President said approvingly. “Frank, see what information you can develop, as quickly as possible, without annoying Douglas.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Going off at somewhat of a tangent, Frank,” the President said. “I suppose I thought of this because Pickering has a MAGIC clearance....”
“Yes, Mr. President?”
“I have been informed by Churchill that he plans to propose the establishment of a unified China-Burma-India command with Lord Louis Mountbatten named as its supreme commander.”
“Yes, Sir?”
“I’m not going to give it to him easily, but in the end, I will have to go along. When that happens, despite the reservations that Admiral Leahy has expressed both eloquently and in great detail—I won’t need to hear them again from you, Frank—we are going to have to bring the British in on MAGIC. That means we will have to send to India a liaison officer with a MAGIC clearance, and the necessary communications people.”
“General Pickering?” Knox wondered aloud.
“I think we should send Pickering for a visit, when the time comes, yes. But I was thinking of an officer to serve as the MAGIC man on Mountbatten’s staff. Think about that, would you? Someone who would not be dazzled by proximity to royal blood?”
Banning, Knox thought immediately. But he said nothing beyond “Yes, Mr. President.”
“Thank you for coming to see me, Frank. I know what a brutal schedule you have.”
“My privilege, Mr. President,” Knox said, aware that he had just been dismissed.
“Keep us up to date on this Fertig fellow, will you, Frank?” the President called as Knox reached the door.
“Yes, Mr. President.”
[TWO]
TOP SECRET
THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY WASHINGTON
VIA SPECIAL CHANNEL
DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN
ORIGINAL TO BE DESTROYED AFTER ENCRYPTION
AND TRANSMITTAL
SUPREME COMMANDER SWPOA
EYES ONLY BRIG GEN F.W. PICKERING, USMCR
1515 17 OCTOBER 1942
FOLLOWING PERSONAL FROM SECNAV FOR BRIG GEN PICKERING
DEAR FLEMING:
I JUST CAME FROM A MEETING WITH ADMIRAL LEAHY IN WHICH THE SUBJECT OF FERTIG AND GUERRILLA RESISTANCE IN THE PHILIPPINES CAME UP.
LEAHY BELIEVES THAT THE MATTER SHOULD BE INVESTIGATED FURTHER AND SPECIFICALLY BY OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT ANALYSIS, AND FURTHER THAT THE FEWER PEOPLE WHO KNOW ABOUT THIS THE BETTER.
HAUGHTON IS WORKING WITH RICKABEE ON THIS AND I WILL KEEP YOU ADVISED.
BOTH THE PRESIDENT AND LEAHY EXPRESSED THEIR CONCERN VIS-A-VIS MACARTHUR’S RELATIONSHIP OR LACK OF RELATIONSHIP WITH DONOVAN’S PEOPLE. THE POINT WAS MADE AND I THINK FAIRLY THAT THIS (GUERRILLA) SORT OF THING BELONGS IN DONOVANʹS BASKET.
BEST PERSONAL REGARDS
FRANK
END PERSONAL SECNAV TO BRIG GEN PICKERING
HAUGHTON CAPT USN ADMIN ASST TO SECNAV
TOP SECRET
[THREE]
Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff G-1
Headquarters, United States Marine Corps
Eighth and “I” Streets, NW
Washington, D.C.
0825 Hours 18 October 1942
Colonel David M. Wilson, USMC, Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff G-1 for Officer Personnel, looked up from his desk to see Master Gunner James L. Hardee, USMC, standing there with paper in his hands and a smile on his face. (Master gunner, a rank between enlisted and commissioned status, is equivalent to a U.S. Army warrant officer.)
“I gather there is something in your hand that requires my immediate attention, Mister Hardee?”
“I thought the Colonel would probably be interested in this application for transfer, Sir,” Hardee said.
Wilson put out his hand and Hardee handed him the typewritten letter.
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS PUBLIC RELATIONS OFFICE UNITED STATES POST OFFICE LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
16 October 1942
FROM: Macklin, Robert B., First Lieutenant USMC
TO: Headquarters USMC
Washington, D.C.
ATTN: MCPER-OP341-B
SUBJECT: Request For Consideration For Special Assignment
1. Reference is made to Memorandum, Headquarters, USMC dated 12 Sept 1942, Subject, ‶Solicitation of officer volunteers for Special Assignment To Intelligence Duties.″
2. The undersigned wishes to volunteer for such duty. The following information is furnished:
(a) The undersigned, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, is an officer of the regular establishment of the Marine Corps, presently on detached service with the USMC Public Relations Office, Los Angeles, Cal.
(b) The undersigned is performing supervisory duties in connection with War Bond Tour II.
Previously, the undersigned was a participant (e.g., one of the ‶Guadalcanal Veteransʺ) in War Bond Tour I.
(c) Prior to this assignment, the undersigned was assigned to the detachment of patients, U.S. Army General Hospital, Fourth Melbourne, Australia, while recovering from wounds suffered in action with the 2nd Parachute Battalion, USMC, on Gavutu during the invasion of Guadalcanal.
(d) Previous to the Gavutu invasion, the undersigned, a qualified parachutist with sixteen (16) parachute jumps, was on the staff of the USMC Parachute School, Lakehurst, N.J.
(e) Prior to the war, the undersigned served with the 4th Marines in Shanghai (and elsewhere in China) in a variety of assignments, including a number that involved intelligence gathering and evaluation.
(f) The undersigned has almost entirely recovered from the wounds suffered during the Guadalcanal campaign, and believes that he could make a greater contribution to the Marine Corps in a Special Intelligence assignment than he can in his presently assigned duties.
Robert B. Macklin
ROBERT B . MACKLIN
First Lieutenant, USMC
Colonel Wilson looked up at Gunner Hardee, then shook his head and smiled in mixed amazement and disgust.
“What the hell are these ‘special intelligence’ duties he’s volunteering for?” Wilson asked.
“We’ve been levied for two hundred ‘suitable’ officers for the OSS,” Hardee said. “There was a memorandum sent out looking for volunteers.”
“Reading this, you might get the idea this sonofabitch is just what the OSS is looking for,” Wilson said. “A wounded hero of the Guadalcanal campaign, a parachutist, and even ‘intelligence-gathering and eval
uation duties in China.’ ”
Normally full colonels do not offer derogatory remarks about lieutenants in the hearing of master gunners; but Colonel Wilson and Gunner Hardee went back a long ways together in The Corps, and both were personally familiar with the career of First Lieutenant Robert B. Macklin.
Macklin first came to their attention several weeks before, when the Chief of Public Relations asked for his permanent assignment to public relations. The Chief was delighted with Macklin’s performance on War Bond Tour One—he was a tall, handsome man, and a fine public speaker, just what Public Relations was looking for.
After reading his records, Colonel Wilson was happy to accede to the request, agreeing at that time with Gunner Hardee that it was probably the one place the bastard couldn’t do The Corps much harm.
Lieutenant Macklin, as he stated in his letter, did indeed serve with the 4th Marines in Shanghai before the war. His service earned him a really devastating efficiency report.
Then Captain Edward J. Banning, USMC, wrote that Lieutenant Macklin was “prone to submit official reports that both omitted pertinent facts that might tend to reflect adversely upon himself and to present other material clearly designed to magnify his own contributions to the accomplishment of an assigned mission.”
In other words, he was a liar.
Even worse, his 4th Marines efficiency report went on to say that Lieutenant Macklin “could not be honestly recommended for the command of a company or larger tactical unit.”
The reviewing officer—Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller, then a major, now a lieutenant colonel on Guadalcanal—concurred in the evaluation of Lieutenant Macklin. Colonel Wilson had served several times with Chesty Puller and held him in the highest possible regard.
Before the war, shortly after being labeled a liar on his efficiency report, an officer would be asked for his resignation. But that was before the war, not now. Macklin’s service record showed that when he came home from Shanghai, The Corps sent him to Quantico, as a training officer at the Officer Candidate School. He got out of that by volunteering to become a parachutist.
Macklin invaded Gavutu with the parachutists, as a supernumerary. Which meant that he was a spare officer, who would be given a job only after an officer commanding a platoon, or something else, was killed or wounded.
As his letter stated, Macklin was in the Army’s Fourth General Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, recovering from his wounds, when he was sent to the States to participate as a wounded hero in the first War Bond Tour.
Colonel Wilson got the whole story of Macklin’s valorous service at Gavutu from someone he’d known years before, with the 4th Marines in Shanghai, Major Jake Dillon. (In those days, Dillon had been a sergeant.)
At the start of the war, in a move which at the time did not have Colonel Wilson’s full and wholehearted approval, the Assistant Commandant of The Marine Corps arranged to have Dillon commissioned as a major, for duty with Public Affairs. The Assistant Commandant’s reasoning was that The Corps was going to need some good publicity, and that the way to do that was to get a professional, such as the Vice President, Publicity, of Magnum Studios, Hollywood, California, who was paid more money than the Commandant—for that matter, more than the President of the United States. And wasn’t it fortuitous that he’d been a China Marine, and Once A Marine, Always A Marine, was willing to come back into The Corps?
Colonel Wilson was now willing to admit that Major Jake Dillon did not turn out to be the unmitigated disaster he’d expected. For instance, Dillon led a crew of photographers and writers in the first wave of the invasion of Tulagi, and there was no question they did their job well.
Dillon was responsible for Lieutenant Macklin being sent home from Australia for the War Bond Tour.
“Most of the heroes I saw over there didn’t look like Tyrone Power,” Dillon said. “That bastard does, so I sent him on the tour.”
Dillon told Colonel Wilson that Macklin had managed to get himself shot in the calf and face without ever reaching the beach, and had to be pried loose from the piling he was clinging to, screaming for a corpsman, while the fighting was going on.
“You’ve got to admire his gall,” Gunner Hardee said. “I would have thought he’d be happy to stay in Public Relations.”
“I think the sonofabitch really thinks he can salvage his career,” Wilson said. “Tell me what would happen next if I endorsed this application favorably.”
“Yeah, that would get him out of The Corps, wouldn’t it?” Hardee said appreciatively. “But I don’t think it would work. The first thing we have to do is get an FBI check on him, what they call a Full Background Investigation. Then we send that and his service record over to the OSS. If they want him, they tell us; and we cut his orders.”
“What do you think would happen if his service record turned up missing? I mean, those things happen from time to time, don’t they? What if we just got this background investigation on him... he probably didn’t do anything wrong before he went to Annapolis... and his letter of application... with service record to follow when available?”
“I think the OSS might be very interested in a Marine parachutist who got himself shot heroically storming the beach on Gavutu.”
“And what will happen six months from now when his service record shows up and they see his efficiency report?”
“They might send him back,” Hardee said. “But by then, maybe they’ll have parachuted him into France or something.”
“The true sign of an intelligent man, Hardee, is how much he thinks like you do. Thank you for bringing this valiant officer’s offer to volunteer to my personal attention. And have one of the clerks type up a favorable endorsement.”
“Aye, aye, Sir.”
[FOUR]
Temporary Building T-2032
The Mall, Washington, D.C.
1125 Hours 19 October 1942
There were four telephones on the desk behind the pierced-steel planking wall on the ground floor of Building T-2032. When he heard the ring, Sergeant John V. Casey, USMC, who had the duty, reached out for the nearest one, a part of his brain telling him the ring sounded a little funny.
He got a dial tone, murmured “Shit!”, dropped the first phone in its cradle, and quickly grabbed one of the others. And got another dial tone. He dropped that phone in its cradle and grabbed the third. Another dial tone.
“Shit,” he repeated, now more amused than annoyed, and reached for the fourth telephone, which was pushed far out of the way. This was the one listed in the official and public telephone books for the Office of Management Analysis. It rarely rang. Hardly anyone in the Marine Corps—for that matter, hardly anyone at all—had ever heard of the Office of Management Analysis. Those people who knew what the Office of Management Analysis was really doing and had business with it had one or more of the unlisted numbers.
Thinking that this call was almost certainly a wrong number, or was from some feather merchant raising money for the Red Cross or some other worthy purpose, Sergeant Casey nevertheless answered the phone courteously and in the prescribed manner.
“Management Analysis, Sergeant Casey speaking, Sir.”
“I have a collect call for anyone,” an operator’s somewhat nasal voice announced, “from Lieutenant McCoy in Kansas City. Will you accept the charges?”
The question gave Sergeant Casey pause. He had no doubt that Lieutenant McCoy was Management Analysis’s Lieutenant McCoy; but the last he’d heard, McCoy was somewhere in the Pacific, so what was this Kansas City business? And the immediate problem was that he was calling collect. So far as Sergeant Casey could recall, no one had ever called collect before; it might not be authorized.
What the hell, he decided. I’ll say yes, and let McCoy straighten it out with the officers if he’s not supposed to call collect.
“We’ll accept charges, operator.”
“Go ahead, please,” the operator said.
“Who’s this?”
“Sergeant Casey, Sir
.”
“Can you get Major Banning on the line?”
“He’s not here.”
“What about Captain Sessions?”
“Hold one, Lieutenant,” Casey said, and considered that problem. The Management Analysis line was not tied in with any of the other telephones. He could not transfer the call by pushing a button. He solved that problem by calling one of the other lines, which was immediately picked up upstairs.
“Liberty 7-2033,” a voice he recognized as belonging to Gunnery Sergeant Wentzel said. What Sergeant Casey thought of as “the real phones” were answered by stating the number. That way, if the incoming call was a misdial, no information about who the misdialer had really reached got out.
“Gunny, Sergeant Casey. Is Captain Sessions around?”
“What do you want with him?”
“I got a collect call for him from Lieutenant McCoy on the Management Analysis line.”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to accept collect calls on that line.”
“I already did.”
“He’s here, put it through.”
“This number don’t switch.”
“Oh, shit!” Gunny Wentzel said, and the line went dead.
Almost immediately thereafter, Casey heard someone rushing down the stairs, obviously taking them two and three at a time. A tall, lithely muscular, not quite handsome officer in his early thirties came through the door. He was in his shirtsleeves.