Behind the Lines
Page 35
[FOUR]
TOP SECRET
FROM: CINCPAC HAWAII
1615 28NOV42
EYES ONLY-BRIG GEN FLEMING PICKERING USMC
DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN
ORIGINAL TO BE DESTROYED AFTER ENCRYPTION AND TRANSMITTAL
FOLLOWING PERSONAL FROM CINCPAC TO BRIG GEN PICKERING USMC
DEAR FLEMING:
(1) DEEPLY REGRET TO. INFORM YOU INFORMATION FROM COMMANDING GENERAL HAWAII DEPARTMENT USARMY AIRCORPS INDICATES MAJOR JAMES C. BROWNLEE III USMC DEPARTED HICKAM FIELD AS SUPERCARGO ABOARD USARMY AIRCORPS B17 TAIL NUMBER 42-455502 DESTINATION MIDWAY. AIRCRAFT ENCOUNTERED MECHANICAL DIFFICULTIES APPARENTLY RESULT OF SEVERE WEATHER APPROXIMATELY 250 NAUTICAL MILES NORTHEAST OF MIDWAY. PERSONNEL ABOARD OTHER B17 AIRCRAFT IN FLIGHT OF SEVEN REPORT 42-455502 CRASHED AND BROKE UP ATTEMPTING DITCHING OPERATION IN HEAVY SEAS APPROXIMATELY 0725 HOURS LOCAL TIME 22 NOVEMBER 1942.
NO SURVIVORS WERE SEEN AT TIME OF DITCHING, AND NAVY AND USARMY AIRCORPS AIRCRAFT WHICH FLEW TO CRASH SITE WHEN WEATHER CLEARED 23 NOVEMBER FOUND NEITHER SURVIVORS NOR CRASH DEBRIS.
(2) COMMANDING GENERAL HAWAII DEPARTMENT USARMY AIRCORPS HAS DETERMINED B—17 AIRCRAFT 42-455502 ITS CREW AND PASSENGER PERISHED IN THE LINE OF DUTY 0730 HOURS MIDWAY TIME 22 NOVEMBER 1942. INASMUCH AS AIRCORPS DOES NOT HAVE INFORMATION REGARDING MAJOR BROWNLEE’S UNIT, ROUTINE NOTIFICATION OF NEXT OF KIN, ET CETERA HAS NOT REPEAT NOT BEEN MADE. PLEASE ADVISE SOONEST HOW YOU WISH THIS TO BE HANDLED.
(3) REAR ADMIRAL DANIEL J. WAGAM OF MY STAFF DEPARTED PEARL HARBOR 1625 THIS DATE TO CONFER WITH SUPREME COMMANDER SWPOA. WHILE IN BRISBANE, HE WILL DISCUSS WITH YOU PROBLEMS CONNECTED WITH SUBMARINE AVAILABILITY. COMPLIANCE WITH 17 NOVEMBER DIRECTIVE FROM ADMIRAL LEAHY IN THIS REGARD WHICH I PRESUME YOU HAVE SEEN WILL BE VERY DIFFICULT FOR REASONS WAGAM WILL MAKE KNOWN TO YOU.
BEST PERSONAL REGARDS CHESTER
END PERSONAL FROM ADM NIMITZ BRIG TO GEN PICKERING
BY DIRECTION:
MCNISH, CAPTAIN USN
TOP SECRET
[FIVE]
Water Lily Cottage
Brisbane, Australia
0610 Hours 29 November 1942
Brigadier General Fleming Pickering found First Lieutenant Kenneth R. McCoy in the library, sitting before a typewriter at one of the desks, obviously deep in thought. Or frustration. The long, thin, black cigar in his mouth seemed cocked at an angry angle.
“Am I interrupting, Ken?” Pickering asked.
In one smooth continuous movement, McCoy rose to his feet, snatched the cigar from his mouth, and came to something like the prescribed position of attention.
“Good morning, Sir,” he said. He was, Pickering noticed, clean-shaven, his haircut was perfect, and he was wearing a fresh uniform. “No, Sir.”
“Typewriter giving you trouble?”
Pickering had sent Pluto out to buy typewriters for Water Lily Cottage on the open market, after getting them from the officer in charge of office equipment at SWPOA seemed more trouble than it was worth. The battered Underwoods Pluto found had cost approximately three times what they had cost new ten years before. Australia had been at war since 1940. Despite official price controls, shortages of practically everything but food had driven prices up.
“It’s seen better days, Sir.”
“I heard the typewriter, the noise, and thought you could probably use some coffee,” Pickering said, holding up a silver coffeepot in one hand and two coffee cups in the other. And then he told the truth. “I’d like to talk to you, Ken.”
“Yes, Sir?”
“But it will hold. Finish what you’re doing.”
“This will hold,” McCoy said. “It’s only a letter to Ernie.”
“ ‘Only a letter to Ernie’?” Pickering parroted. “That’s not important anymore?”
McCoy reached into his open collar and came out with a round silver medallion on a silver chain.
“I’m writing a thank-you for this,” he said. “I really don’t know what to say.”
“What is it?”
“It’s an Episcopal serviceman’s cross,” McCoy said. “It was in that package Sessions brought me.”
“You’re Episcopal?”
“I’m not much of anything. Most people hear McCoy, think it’s Irish, and that I’m Catholic. But I’m Scotch, and that’s Presbyterian, and I never had much to do with them.”
“Ernie’s Episcopal,” Pickering said. "So am I. Would you believe that Pick sang in the choir, that he was an altar boy?”
“Pick’s behind this,” McCoy said. “Charley Galloway’s girlfriend sent him one. Pick saw Galloway’s on the Buka Operation and decided he wanted one. He wrote and asked his mother for one. She told Ernie’s mother, Ernie’s mother told Ernie, and here is mine. It came in a little red velvet bag with ‘Tiffany & Company’ printed on it.”
“Well, I think it’s a very nice gesture. It can’t hurt, Ken.” He paused, and then went on. “You’re not religious? Is that the problem?”
“Oh, I believe in God, I suppose. But I think there’s a lot of guys in graves on Guadalcanal, and in the Philippines, who did a lot of hard praying just before they were blown away.”
“I have my problems with organized religion,” Pickering said. “But I’m a sailor. I don’t see how anyone who has counted the stars on a clear night on the high seas or watched the sun come up in the middle of an ocean can doubt the existence of a superior power.”
McCoy chuckled. “Me either. My problem is that I really don’t believe that God is all that interested in Ken McCoy, personally.”
“Did you pray when you were hit?” Pickering asked.
McCoy shook his head, no. “But I said ‘thank you’ when I got back to Washington and Ernie was waiting for me.”
“I said ‘thank you’ when El Supremo told me VMF-229 was relieved on the ’Canal, and that Pick had come through all right. And when you all came back from Buka in one piece.”
“Not when you got hit?” McCoy asked.
“You mean this time?” Pickering asked, and then went on before McCoy could reply. “I suppose I did. I probably did. I don’t really remember. At my age, you say ‘thank you’ for other people’s lives. I figure I’ve had my fair share and more.”
McCoy looked at him in curiosity.
“I didn’t really expect to come back from France,” Pickering said. “When I did, when I came out of the trenches for the last time, I figured whatever came afterward would be gravy. And it turned out that way.”
“It was bad in France, huh?”
“The artillery was terrible,” Pickering said evenly. “Especially when we were moving. But what really terrified me was the poison gas. I watched people die that way. I didn’t want that to happen to me. That thought scared me bad.”
McCoy nodded his understanding.
“I’m not particularly afraid of dying,” McCoy said. “What scares me is dying slowly, hanging upside down on a rope while some Jap uses me for bayonet practice.”
“They do that?”
“Sometimes they use their rifle butts to see how many bones they can break before the prisoner dies.”
Pickering nodded his understanding.
“You said you wanted to talk to me, Sir?”
The exchange of confidences was over.
“I’m going to have to ask you to go into the Philippines, Ken,” Pickering said.
McCoy nodded. “I figured that when I heard we lost the OSS major.”
“I think we have to do whatever we can to help Fertig and his people.”
“Yes, Sir. I agree.”
“I wish the other one had been on the B-17,” Pickering said.
McCoy chuckled.
“That thought occurred to me, too, General.”
“But he didn’t, and ...”
“I was going to come to you, Sir, and tell you that I thought I better go with them, even before I heard the B-17 went down.”
“It’s still a volunteer mission, Ken. You don’t have to go.”
“Who else is there?” McCoy replied.
“Is that why you’re having a hard time with your letter to Ernie?” Pickering asked. “You wrote and told her you would be coming home, and now you have to write and tell her you won’t be?”
McCoy met Pickering’s eyes.
“I was pretty vague about when I was coming home. Getting relieved seemed to be too good to be true.”
“I’ll have a word with Captain Macklin and tell him who’s really in charge.”
“I can handle Macklin.”
“Have you seen him?”
“No, Sir. I’ve been avoiding that.”
“How are you going to handle him?”
“If I have to, I’ll kill him.”
Pickering looked into McCoy’s eyes.
“It would be awkward if that was necessary.”
“I won’t, unless I have to.”
“Anything I can do?”
“I want Zimmerman, and I don’t want Koffler.”
“Because it would be unfair to Koffler?”
“Because he wants to be an officer, and I’m afraid he thinks the way he can do that is to be a hero. Heroes get people killed.”
“They’re working on Zimmerman. There’s an admiral coming in today from CINCPAC who wants to talk about the submarine. I don’t think we can get one for another week or ten days. Zimmerman certainly should be here by then.”
“It’ll take me another five, six days to get everything ready anyhow.”
“Pluto has been having trouble getting a radio operator from SWPOA. I’m going to El Supremo this morning to ask him personally. I think he’ll come through.”
McCoy nodded.
“I really hate having to ask you to go, Ken.”
“I really hate to go,” McCoy said. “But there’s no other solution that I can see.”
Pickering met McCoy’s eyes. They held for a moment, then Pickering nodded and started out of the library.
Over his shoulder, he called, “Tell Ernie I said hello.”
[SIX]
Cryptographic Center
Supreme Headquarters, South West Pacific Ocean
Area
0905 Hours 29 November 1942
When Major Hon Son Do slid open the tiny steel window in the steel door and saw Brigadier General Fleming Pickering’s face, he knew that something had happened that Pickering didn’t like at all.
He slid the bars out of place and pulled the heavy door inward.
“I didn’t expect to see you here, Sir.”
“I have just come from the throne of God,” Pickering said. “I humbly requested an audience with El Supremo, and, feeling gracious, he granted me one.”
When there was no elaboration on this, Pluto went to one of the two typewriters on the desk and jerked a sheet of paper from it.
“Is this about what you want, Sir?”
Pickering took the sheet of paper from him and read it.
TOP SECRET
SUPREME HEADQUARTERS SWPOA TIME TIME TIME
29NOV42
EYES ONLY—THE SECRETARY OF THE NAVY
VIA SPECIAL CHANNEL
DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN
ORIGINAL TO BE DESTROYED AFTER ENCRYPTION AND TRANSMITTAL TO SECNAV
DEAR FRANK:
I DEEPLY REGRET HAVING TO INFORM YOU THAT I HAVE JUST LEARNED FROM ADMIRAL NIMITZ THAT MAJOR BROWNLEE DIED IN THE CRASH OF AN AIRPLANE AS HE WAS COMING HERE. THESE ARE THE DETAILS AS I GOT THEM FROM ADMIRAL NIMITZ:
BROWNLEE DEPARTED HICKAM FIELD AS SUPERCARGO ABOARD USARMY AIRCORPS B17 TAIL NUMBER 42—455502. THE AIRCRAFT ENCOUNTERED MECHANICAL DIFFICULTIES APPARENTLY RESULT OF SEVERE WEATHER APPROXIMATELY 250 NAUTICAL MILES NORTHEAST OF MIDWAY. PERSONNEL ABOARD OTHER B17 AIRCRAFT REPORTED BROWNLEE’S B17 CRASHED AND BROKE UP ATTEMPTING DITCHING OPERATION IN HEAVY SEAS APPROXIMATELY 0725 HOURS LOCAL TIME 22 NOVEMBER 1942.
INASMUCH AS NO SURVIVORS WERE SEEN AT TIME OF DITCHING, AND NAVY AND USARMY AIRCORPS AIRCRAFT WHICH FLEW TO CRASH SITE WHEN WEATHER CLEARED 23 NOVEMBER FOUND NEITHER SURVIVORS NOR CRASH DEBRIS, COMMANDING GENERAL HAWAII DEPARTMENT USARMY AIRCORPS HAS DETERMINED ALL PERISHED IN THE LINE OF DUTY.
I PRESUME YOU OR DONOVAN WILL HANDLE NOTIFICATION OF NEXT OF KIN, AND OTHER ADMINISTRATIVE MATTERS.
CAPTAINS SESSION AND MACKLIN AND ALL EQUIPMENT ARRIVED HERE SAFELY, AND AT THIS TIME IT IS NOT BELIEVED MAJOR BROWNLEE’S TRAGIC DEATH WILL AFFECT THE MISSION.
BEST REGARDS,
FLEMING PICKERING, BRIGADIER GENERAL, USMCR
TOP SECRET
“Take out the ‘Dear Frank’ and make it ‘Dear Mr. Secretary,’ ” Pickering ordered, “and delete the ‘best regards.’ I don’t feel like calling the sonofabitch by his first name, and I don’t want to send him my regards.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“And send an information copy, Eyes Only, to Admiral Nimitz.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Pluto, in one word, what would be your reaction if someone told you that SWPOA doesn’t have a high-speed radio operator they can give us for the Fertig operation?”
“One word, Sir?”
“The one word that came to my mind was ‘bullshit,’ ” Pickering said.
“You got that from El Supremo?”
“Three minutes ago.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to have to send Koffler. What else can I do?”
“I can’t see where you have any other options, Sir.”
“I had the very unpleasant suspicion when I was in the Throne Room that very few tears would be shed by El Supremo and his cronies if our guys paddled away from the submarine and were never heard from again.”
Pluto decided that any response to that remark would be the wrong one.
“General, what about what Admiral Nimitz said, his 17 November directive about a submarine? From Admiral Leahy?”
“I never heard a word about it,” Pickering said. “Until I do, I am forced to draw the conclusion that either Knox or Donovan has decided I don’t have the Need to Know.”
“I’m sure this Admiral, Wagam, that Nimitz is sending will bring you in on it, Sir.”
“I wish I was sure, Pluto,” Pickering said. “Well, get those off as soon as you can. I’m going to go out to the house and weep on Jack Stecker’s shoulder.”
[SEVEN]
Company Grade Bachelor Officers’ Quarters
Supreme Headquarters, South West Pacific Ocean
Area
1105 Hours 29 November 1942
Captain Robert B. Macklin, USMC, was resting, his back against the headboard of the bed of the sparsely furnished room, half asleep, a three-month-old issue of The Saturday Evening Post open on his lap.
Before the war, this BOQ had been a second- or third-rate traveling salesmen’s hostelry. He couldn’t help making unfavorable comparisons between his room and the mess here with the rooms and mess at the Country Club, which was much nicer than even the hotel rooms and restaurants he’d been in all up and down the West Coast during the War Bond Tours.
Last night at the bar, he had drinks with an Army Chemical Warfare Service captain, and the captain told him the SWPOA Field Grade Officers’ BOQs were much nicer than the Company Grade. He knew, because until he was ranked out of it, he had been living in a Field Grade BOQ.
That encounter triggered several lines of thought: First, that when Major Brownlee finally showed up, perhaps he could pull a string or two and arrange for them both to live in a Field Grade BOQ. Second, he wondered how this OSS assignment would affect his own promotion to major. Major Brownlee’s quiet word in the right ear had seen his long-overdue promotion to captain come through almost overnight.
Next, Macklin found it hard to believe that whoever was in charge here would actually send him on this Philippines operation. For one thing, he had not really fully recovered from his wounds. For another, he had not gone through the OSS training program, and knew very little of what would be expected of him on such a mission—nor did
he yet possess the skills to do whatever it was he’d be required to do.
When that became obvious to whoever was in charge here, he felt he would almost certainly be kept in Australia to receive the necessary training—and to fully recover from his wounds—and would not be sent into the Philippines. It did not seem unreasonable to think that when the OSS force here was eventually augmented, since he was already here, he would be “an old hand,” and could take over as a training officer to train the newcomers. It seemed only fair that people who had not been in combat should be sent on missions before those who had seen combat—had been twice wounded in combat—were sent into harm’s way again. And he knew that Major Brownlee was concerned with his lack of training and his physical condition—the reason Brownlee took the one available space on the B-17 was that he thought he could take the physical stress of that flight better.
The knock at his door startled him. He sat fully up on the bed.
“Who is it?”
“Colonel Stecker’s compliments, Sir,” a young American voice replied.
Macklin lifted himself off the bed, opened the door, and peered around it. It was the boy-faced sergeant who spoke so flippantly to him on the quai three days before.
“What is it, Sergeant?”
“Colonel Stecker’s compliments, Sir. He sent me to fetch you.”
Who in the wide world is Colonel Stecker? That name never came up in any of the briefings.
“Who is Colonel Stecker?”