Behind the Lines

by W. E. B Griffin

  Lieutenant Macklin had given that efficiency report, and its potential effect on his career, a good deal of thought. Now that he had time to consider it, he was no longer surprised that Captain Edward J. Banning wrote all those despicable—and untrue—things about him. Under the circumstances, Macklin now realized, it was perfectly understandable that he did.

  For one thing, while Banning was a career officer, he did not graduate from the Academy. If memory served, Banning went to the Citadel. If not the Citadel, then to VMI or Norwich, one of those quasi-professional private military colleges that for some reason, most likely political, were permitted to commission their graduates into the Regular Service. It was common knowledge that Norwich, Citadel, and VMI graduates were jealous of those who went to Annapolis and West Point, and that whenever the opportunity presented itself, stuck knives into the unsuspecting backs of those who had that privilege.

  Furthermore, at the time, Banning’s own career was in jeopardy, and he had no one to blame for that but himself. While the Citadel, or wherever he actually went, wasn’t the Academy, Banning must have had the opportunity to learn what would be expected of him, in his personal life, as a Marine officer. Teaching potential officers what would be expected of them was one of the major reasons the Army and the Navy sent West Point and Annapolis graduates to serve on the staffs of the private military schools.

  Becoming involved, as Captain Banning did, with a Stateless Person, a Russian woman, was conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman, in fact, if not in the law. If the war hadn’t come along, it would have meant the end of Banning’s s career, and he must have known that.

  Banning, furthermore, should have known better than to become close to an enlisted man, particularly one like Corporal “Killer” McCoy. McCoy was typical of the enlisted men in the 4th Marines, a product of the lower classes, obviously without a decent education. For those people, service in the Marines meant three square meals a day, a cot, and the opportunity to frequently fornicate with the native women.

  There are reasons for the line drawn between officers and enlisted men. Banning certainly knew about the line and the reasons for it, and he chose to ignore it. At the same time, it was perfectly clear that McCoy knew all about Banning’s Russian mistress—and God only knows what other secrets Banning was hiding. That knowledge gave him a totally unacceptable advantage over an officer.

  And then there was the matter of Lieutenant Ed Sessions’s support of McCoy’s outrageous charges. So far as that was concerned ... it was, in fact, very disappointing. As a fellow graduate of the Academy, Sessions should have demonstrated at least a modicum of loyalty toward a fellow alumnus when that alumnus was under attack by an enlisted man. But Sessions not only knew that Banning was going to write his efficiency report but that Banning had gone off the deep end where Killer McCoy was concerned, and would take his enlisted buddy McCoy’s word against anyone else’s about what really happened. So he went along.

  The usual mechanism to keep personality conflicts out of efficiency reports was their review by a more senior officer. But that failed. Major Puller, the reviewing officer, already overworked preparing the 4th Marines’ move to the Philippines, had the choice between believing Banning, whom he knew, and an officer who wasn’t in their clique. It was as simple as that.

  His subsequent assignment as a mess officer at Quantico was, Macklin knew, a direct result of Banning’s efficiency report. That sort of duty does not fall to graduates of the Naval Academy. But he resolved then to do the best job he could.

  And then—and he still found this incredible—Corporal Killer McCoy showed up at Quantico as an officer candidate. The only officer candidate in his class from the ranks. The only one who had not spent two weeks in a college classroom, much less taken a degree.

  In the matter of his encounter with McCoy at Quantico, Macklin was willing to admit that he made an error in judgment. On the one hand, obviously, he owed it to The Corps to do whatever was necessary to keep such a man from being commissioned. On the other hand, he should have approached the appropriate officer at the school and told him what he knew of McCoy from personal knowledge—information that made the notion of commissioning him an officer absurd on its face.

  His personal knowledge would reveal that McCoy was not only insubordinate and untruthful, but the reason he was known in China as “Killer” was that he had become embroiled in a barroom, or brothel, encounter with Italian Marines; he’d stabbed two of them fatally. Some sort of technicality kept him from getting what he deserved—twenty years to life in the Portsmouth Naval Prison. But clearly a man with murderous instincts who wallowed in drunkenness and depravity was not qualified to be a Marine officer.

  At the time, however, doing something official did not seem to be the best course of action. His good intentions, his concern solely for the good of The Corps, it seemed at the time, might be misunderstood.

  If he had done something official, the question could very well have been raised, “Who is Lieutenant Macklin”? His service records would have probably been examined. And they contained, of course, Banning’s efficiency report. Until his performance of duty proved how unjust it was, the less frequently that efficiency report came to light, of course, the better.

  And, of course, as an officer and a gentleman, it was beneath him to bear Killer McCoy any ill will. It wasn’t, in the final analysis, McCoy’s fault that he was in Officer Candidate School. Banning had arranged for that, written him an absolutely unbelievable letter of recommendation.

  McCoy belonged in the ranks. In time, under the leadership of other officers, he would probably become a decent sergeant. So the thing to do was to get him back to the ranks. Failing to make it through Officer Candidate School, with his background, was to be expected.

  At the Club, he spoke to one of McCoy’s tactical officers. Without getting into specifics, he made it quite clear that commissioning Killer McCoy would be a disaster. That officer also believed it ill-advised at the very least to commission a high-school graduate; and he seemed sympathetic to the idea of returning McCoy to the ranks by seeing that he failed Officer Candidate School, if not academically, then in the areas of “potential leadership” and “character.”

  That probably would have worked. However, at the time it seemed a good idea that there be some failure on McCoy’s part on the military aspects of the course. Arranging for McCoy to fail the course’s marksmanship requirements seemed a good way to do that.

  Such a failure would do McCoy no lasting harm. As soon as he was back in the ranks, he would be given the opportunity to refire the standard course, and he could probably do that. In the meantime, he would be dropped from Officer Candidate School.

  But the Post Sergeant Major put his nose in where it properly had no place and challenged McCoy’s rifle range scores. McCoy fired again for record, and qualified as High Expert.

  Shortly afterward, Macklin was called into the office of Deputy School Commandant, where he was told it would be in his best interests to apply for a transfer. There was no question in Macklin’s mind that the Sergeant Major had gone to the Deputy Commandant, carrying tales about what he thought Macklin had been doing in the rifle range butts.

  His application for parachute duty was quickly approved. And from there things moved quickly. First, they grew worse with the transfer to the Pacific and the invasion of Guadalcanal. It was only by the grace of God that he wasn’t killed during the invasion. Quite literally, he missed death by inches.

  But then, in the hospital in Australia where he was sent for treatment of his wounds, things started to get better. He was selected to participate in the First War Bond Tour, as a wounded Guadalcanal veteran. He did so well dealing with the public that on the completion of Tour I, the public relations people asked that he be permanently assigned to supervise Tour II.

  The Marines sent on Tour II to encourage the civilian population to buy more war bonds and raise civilian morale were Guadalcanal aviation aces, pilots who had
shot down at least five Japanese aircraft. But Macklin did not find these men impressive. He privately decided that most of them were disgraces to the Marine uniforms they wore—they were undisciplined, regarded military courtesy as a joke, and spent most of the tour making unwanted advances to women and drinking themselves into oblivion—and that aviators themselves were highly overrated.

  It was one thing to get out of a clean bed and climb into an airplane and fly for several hours, and then possibly—but only possibly—engage in a minute or two of combat, before flying home to a hot meal and a dry bed. It was quite another to do what he had done—or would have done had he not been wounded in the opening minutes of the assault—to make an assault in a landing barge through heavy fire onto an enemy-held beach, to hear the crack of machine-gun fire and the scream of incoming artillery, and then to be called upon to lead men against a determined enemy.

  Those introspections had caused him to consider what would happen to him when Tour II was over. Thanks to that damned efficiency report, he was still a first lieutenant. In The Corps, first lieutenants command platoons. While he would of course go where he was sent, and do what he was told to do, the idea of commanding a platoon in the assault of some hostile shore seemed a waste of his professional talents and experience.

  He should be a teacher. He had been there. He could make a genuine contribution to The Corps, and probably save some lives, as a teacher, preparing men and officers for what they would find when it was their turn to go into combat.

  If he just waited for The Corps to order him someplace, it would more than likely be to one of the newly formed divisions, where he would be just one more platoon leader.

  He had been trying to think of some way to make the personnel people aware of his unusual talents and experience and the contribution he could thus make—he got so far as drafting several letters—when the memorandum vis-à-vis Special Assignment To Intelligence Duties came to hand.

  It seemed to be just what he was looking for. Not only did he have the qualifications and experience—there weren’t very many people around who could say they had intelligence-gathering experience in the Orient—but it seemed, with that in mind, that he could be utilized as an instructor. It was clearly a waste of assets to send someone like himself into, so to speak, the lines, when he could make a far greater contribution to the war effort by training others.

  When he was so quickly accepted, he thought perhaps his luck was changing. When he learned that his service records had been “misplaced,” he felt certain that Lady Luck was finally smiling at him.

  [FOUR]

  Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff G-1

  Headquarters, United States Marine Corps

  Eighth and “I” Streets, NW

  Washington, D.C.

  0945 Hours 2 November 1942

  “Good morning, Sir,” Master Gunner James L. Hardee, USMC, said to the tall, blond, bespectacled, and lost-looking major. “May I help you?”

  “God, I hope so, Gunner,” Major James C. Brownlee replied, smiling.

  “The difficult takes some time,” Gunner Hardee said, “the impossible usually turns out to be impossible.”

  Brownlee chuckled, and offered his hand.

  “My name is Brownlee,” he said.

  “Hardee, Sir. What can we do for you?”

  “I’m trying to get an officer promoted,” Brownlee said.

  “You and everybody else in The Corps,” Hardee said, waving toward a section of his office where two typists, working under the eagle eye of a staff sergeant, were typing mimeograph stencils. “That’s just about the end of last week’s promotions,” he went on. “Tomorrow, we start this week’s.”

  “I’m not in personnel,” Brownlee said. “So my ignorance of the process is complete and overwhelming.”

  “You’re not part of our happy family here at Eighth and ‘I’, Major?”

  “No, I’m not,” Brownlee said. “Tell me, Gunner, what does it usually take to get a first lieutenant promoted to captain?”

  “Well, presuming a first lieutenant can see lightning and hear thunder, isn’t under charges, and has twenty-four months in grade—and that’s about to drop—it’s now nearly automatic.”

  Hardee gestured again toward the hardworking typists.

  “I thought it was probably something like that,” Brownlee said. “Gunner, what it is is that I have sort of a responsibility for an officer, a first lieutenant ...”

  “Sort of a responsibility, Sir?” Hardee asked, confused.

  “The thing is, Gunner,” Brownlee said, a little uncomfortably, “I’m with a rather unconventional unit.”

  “Which one would that be, Sir?” Hardee asked. He was beginning to suspect that he was not going to enjoy this encounter.

  “I’m with the OSS, to put a point on it,” Brownlee said. “And the chain of command is a little fuzzy in the OSS.”

  Master Gunner Hardee was not an admirer of the OSS, about which he knew little except that the service records of a couple of hundred officers who had volunteered for it had crossed his desk. Hardee had nearly thirty years in The Corps. So far as he was concerned the officer personnel requirements of The Corps obviously should come first. And with the to-be-expected exceptions to that rule, like that sea lawyer “hero” Macklin a couple of days ago, here they were sending what looked to him like good officers to the OSS at a time when The Corps was up shit’s creek without a paddle trying to find officers to staff a Marine Corps that was growing larger than anyone ever thought it would.

  “So I hear,” Hardee said. “Exactly how can I help you, Major?”

  “I’m the senior Marine officer at the OSS reception center,” Brownlee said. “Yesterday, an officer, a first lieutenant Macklin ...”

  Oh, shit!

  “... was transferred in. I generally go over the records of people coming into the OSS—Marines, I mean—to make sure everything is shipshape.”

  “Yes, Sir?”

  “And I went over Lieutenant Macklin’s records. That’s not exactly true. His records have been misplaced. Or possibly lost. Probably at Guadalcanal.”

  In fact, Master Gunner Hardee knew, the service record of First Lieutenant Macklin, Robert B., USMC, was thirty feet away, filed under the R’s, in a file cabinet devoted to those officers “Absent, Sick In Hospital.” The reason he knew this to be true was that he himself had put them there, in a place where he—but no one else—could readily lay his hands on them.

  “Is that so?”

  “I suppose that happens all the time,” Brownlee said.

  “Yes, Sir. It’s not at all unusual.”

  “This officer is one hell of a Marine, Gunner.”

  One hell of an asshole of a Marine, is the way I hear it. “He was twice wounded at Guadalcanal, storming the beaches, during the invasion.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “As a matter of fact, he was one of the heroes The Corps sent back from over there for the War Bond Tour.”

  “Is that so?”

  “From what you’ve told me, Gunner, his promotion to captain should have come along by now, more or less automatically.”

  You and your fucking big mouth, Hardee!

  “You think so, Sir?”

  “Well, he’s got the twenty-four months in grade you mentioned, and then some. And, even though his records have been misplaced, I think we can give him the benefit of the doubt about not being under charges, can’t we?”

  “I’m sure we can, Sir.”

  “I had to be in Washington today, Gunner,” Brownlee said. “What I’d hoped I would be able to do here is see if we can’t find his records and get him promoted, as he deserves.”

  “As you said, Major, his missing records do pose a problem. I can tell you I’ll keep a sharp eye out for them, now that you’ve brought this to my attention.”

  “I’d really hate to go to the Inspector General with this, Gunner ...”

  Oh, shit! That’s all we need in here, the Inspector Gener
al running around trying to do right by this goddamned Marine hero!

  “... because of the administrative problems that would inevitably cause.”

  “I understand, Sir.”

  And if I have to “find” this asshole’s records, that would mean I would have to send them over to the OSS, where, after one look at this bastard’s efficiency reports, they’d boot him out so fast it would take two weeks for his asshole to Catch up with him.

  And it would also be pretty embarrassing for Colonel Wilson, personally and officially.

  “Major, how long are you going to be in Washington?” Master Gunner Hardee asked.

  “I’m going to leave about sixteen hundred.”

  “Do you suppose it would be possible for you to come by here, say, at fifteen hundred? Let me look into this myself and see what I can turn up.”

  “That would be great!” Major Brownlee said happily. “Thank you very much, Gunner.”

  “My pleasure, Sir.”

  As soon as Major Brownlee had left the office, Gunner Hardee went to the R section of the “Absent, Sick in Hospital” file cabinet. He briefly examined a service record it contained, made a note of Macklin’s full name and serial number, and then went to the comer of the room where the two typists were preparing mimeograph stencils of last week’s promotion list.

  He tapped the staff sergeant supervising the operation on the shoulder, and when he turned said, “One more for the captain’s list.”

  “It’s already done, Mr. Hardee.”

  “Do it again.”

  “Already printed and everything,” the staff sergeant pleaded.

  “Do it again,” Hardee repeated.

  “Aye, aye, Sir. Where’s the records?”

  “I’ll take care of his records, you just get his goddamn name on the goddamned orders!”