Call to Arms

Chapter Thirteen

{One)

Saufley Field

Pensacola Navy Air Station 20 February 1942

There was no doubt in the mind of Lieutenant Junior Grade Allen W. Minter, USNR, that Second Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, had a good deal more time in aircraft cockpits than his record showed; or, off the record, than he was willing to admit.

That made Pickering a liar. Not only a liar, but a good liar. Of course it was possible to put that more kindly, to say that he was a good role player. One could possibly maintain-or at least imagine-that Pickering was playing the role of someone who knew nothing about flying or aircraft, but who was eager to learn, and was a very quick learner.

From the moment Minter first took him out to the flight line, Pickering asked both the natural and the dumb questions Minter expected of a student whose flight records had "NONE" written in the "PREVIOUS FLYING EXPERIENCE" block. And he appeared to listen with rapt attention-as if he was hearing it all for the first time-while Minter pointed out the parts of the N3N Yellow Peril and explained their function.

And Minter was perfectly willing to accept that Pickering was learning for the first time that the thing that sat upright at the back of the Yellow Peril was the vertical stabilizer, and that the back part of it moved when the rudder pedals were pressed; that in the sea of air it served the same function that the rudder of a boat served in the water.

And Pickering seemed absolutely fascinated to learn that while the altimeter did indeed indicate the height of the aircraft above sea level, it did so seven seconds late. In other words, because it took some time for the change in air pressure to work upon the membrane of the barometric altimeter, the altimeter reported what the altitude had been seven seconds ago, not what it was at the moment.

It was only when he took Pickering up for the first time that Minter began to smell a rat.

Instructor pilots were given some latitude in teaching their students. Lieutenant Minter did not believe the way to turn an eager young man into a pilot was to take him up and scare the shit out of him, and/or make him sick to his stomach.

He believed that it was best to start out very simply, to show the student that a very slight rearward pressure on the stick would cause the nose of the Yellow Peril to rise, and that a very slight downward pressure would put the Yellow Peril in a nose-down attitude.

As the student understood and become familiar with one movement, he could be taught another. Eventually, he would reach the point where he would understand what coordinated control movement was necessary to make the aircraft perform any maneuver it was capable of.

Slow and easy was better, in Lieutenant Minter's professional judgment, than throwing things at a student too fast and scaring hell out of him. He would have the hell scared out of him soon enough.

On the first flight, Minter demonstrated climbing and descending, and then gentle turns to the left and right, pointing out to his new student that what one tried for was to make the turn without either gaining or losing altitude. In order to do that, one tried to keep one's eye on the vertical speed indicator, which indicated (faster than the altimeter responded) the deviation, and the rate of deviation (in thousands of feet per minute, up or down) from the altitude where the aircraft started when its needle was in the center of the instrument.

As he was demonstrating, Minter cautioned Pickering that not much movement of the controls was required to move the airplane around, and that most student pilots tended to overcontrol, to move the controls farther and more violently than was necessary.

And then when Minter turned the controls over to Pickering and told him to go up, and then down, the first thing he thought was that he had a student who paid attention to what he was told. He did not overcontrol. And he had a gentle, sure touch on the joystick and rudder pedals.

The first time Pickering tried to make a 360-degree turn to the right, for instance, the needle on the vertical speed indicator didn't even flicker. And when he came out of the turn and straightened up, he wasn't more than two degrees off the course he had been on before he began to make the turn. The whole maneuver was smooth as silk.

Much too smooth for somebody trying it for the first time. Q.E.D., Pickering knew how to fly. Ergo, Pickering was a liar, for he had told the U.S. Navy that his PREVIOUS FLIGHT

EXPERIENCE was "NONE."

Viewed one way, it was an innocent little joke that Lieutenant Pickering was playing on the Navy and Lieutenant Junior Grade Allen W. Minter. Viewed another way, it was a serious breach of discipline. Pickering was a commissioned officer, and the code was quite clear: Officers told the truth. An officer's word was his bond. An officer who knowingly affixed his signature to a document he knew contained an untruth was subject to court-martial and dismissal from the service.

In the beginning, Lieutenant Minter decided that he would give Lieutenant Pickering the benefit of the doubt. Pickering seemed to be a nice enough guy, and he hadn't been in the service for very long, and he was young; and maybe he didn't understand that what he probably thought of as a little joke was something that could get his ass kicked out of Pensacola. Minter had heard that officers dismissed for cause from the service no longer got to go home, but were immediately pressed into service in the ranks. Unless it was really necessary, he didn't want to be responsible for sending Second Lieutenant Pickering to the Marine boot camp at Parris Island as a private.

When they landed, he conversed pleasantly with Pickering, told him that he had done remarkably well (which caused Pickering to beam), and gave him every opportunity to admit that he'd had at least a little pilot training before today. Pickering responded that Captain Carstairs had taken him for a ride when he'd first come to Pensacola, but that was it.

Minter then went over Pickering's records very carefully. He could have made a mistake, he told himself. But he had not. The record said "NONE" in the "PREVIOUS FLIGHT EXPERIENCE" block. And Pickering had signed the form.

Minter next sought out Captain James L. Carstairs, who had the administrative responsibility for Pickering, as well as for the other Marine second John, Stecker. Minter did not like Carstairs, which was his natural reaction to the fact that Carstairs did not like him. Carstairs was a Marine. Not only a Marine but a regular, out of Annapolis. Carstairs was tall, good-looking, and mustachioed. A regular fucking recruiting-poster Marine.

As a class, officers like Carstairs did not particularly like people like Minter, who joined the Navy right out of the University of Ohio to get flight training, and who planned to get out of the service just as soon as possible to take a job with an airline. And who were, moreover, just a little plump, and who did not look like the tall, erect, blue-eyed Naval aviators in the recruiting posters.

But he made a point of finding Captain Carstairs at the bar of the officers' club during happy hour. "Hello, Captain," he said.

"Well, if it isn't Lieutenant Dumpling," Carstairs said. Minter let that ride. "I took your two second lieutenants up for the first time this morning," he said, signaling the bartender to bring two beers. "Did you really?" "One of them, Pickering, seems to have a really unusual

flair."

"Does he really?"

"Either that or he's got time, bootleg or otherwise," Minter said.

"What does his record say?"

"It says no previous flight experience," Minter said.

"Then we must presume, mustn't we, that he has none," Carstairs said.

"He tells me you had him up," Minter pursued. "What did you think?"

"Nothing special," Carstairs said. "He struck me as your typical red-blooded American boy burning with ambition to earn his wings of gold," Carstairs said.

"You don't know anything about him, except what's in his records?" Minter asked.

Carstairs looked at Minter, and then over his shoulders, as if to make sure no one could overhear him.

"I have heard," Carstairs said, confidentially, "that when Henry Ford runs a little short of cash, the first person he thinks of for a loan is Pickering. Is that what you mean?"

"Oh, come on, Carstairs, I'm serious," Minter said impatiently.

For a moment, Minter thought that Carstairs was going to jump his ass for calling him by his last name. But instead, Carstairs flashed him a broad smile.

"But my dear Dumpling, I am serious," Carstairs said. "You do know he lives in the penthouse of the San Carlos Hotel?"

"No, I didn't," Minter confessed, wondering if Carstairs was pulling his leg about that, too.

Carstairs shook his head in confirmation.

"If that's so," Minter blurted, "what's he doing in the Marine Corps?"

"Why, Dumpling, he's doing the same thing as you and me. Remembering Pearl Harbor, avenging Wake Island, and making the world safe for democracy. I'm really surprised that you had to ask."

Minter, not without effort, kept his temper and his mouth shut, finished his beer, and left.

The next morning, when it was time to take Pickering up again, he was just about ready to call Pickering on lying about and concealing his previous flying experience. And then he decided, fuck it.

He still wasn't sure whether or not Carstairs had been telling the truth in the officers' club bar about Pickering being rich and living in the San Carlos penthouse. It was equally credible that Carstairs was pulling his leg, making a fool of him.

What really counted was that Pickering seemed like a nice kid; and the Marines needed good pilots. Despite the black-and-white code of conduct expected of officers, what was really important was what he had been ordered to do, which was to turn Pickering into a pilot of sufficient skill to be promoted to Squadron-2. Minter told himself that he was an instructor pilot, not an FBI agent, and that saying you had no previous flying experience when you did was not a sin of the first magnitude.

He flew with Pickering for two hours, and then with Stecker for two hours. When he dismissed them to have lunch before going to ground school during the afternoon, he thought that he had proof that he was teaching Stecker, but that Pickering was just going through the motions of learning something he already knew. But it didn't seem important.

The next day, the two of them had ground school in the morning and flight training during the afternoon. Minter took Stecker up first, and spent two hours having him practice the skills necessary to get an aircraft off the ground, to make turns, and then to get it back on the ground again. He spent the last half hour with Stecker shooting touch-and-go landings, with Stecker following him through on the controls.

He did essentially the same thing when he gave Pickering his two hours, except that he devoted the last hour to touch-and-goes, and the last fifteen minutes of that to having Pickering actually make the landings and takeoffs.

But when the two hours were up, and he had permitted Pickering to taxi the Yellow Peril from the runway to the parking ramp himself, instead of ordering him to shut it down, he climbed out of the forward cockpit, knelt on the wing root beside the rear cockpit, and looked intently into Pickering's face.

"I can't think of any reason why you shouldn't take it up yourself, Pickering, can you?"

Pickering smiled. "No, sir," he said.

"Then do so, Lieutenant," Minter ordered, and got off the wing root.

Pickering had some trouble, Minter saw, taxiing the Yellow Peril back to the runway. And for a moment he really thought Pickering was about to collide with another Yellow Peril on the center line of the runway.

Just enough trouble to give Minter pause to consider that maybe he had done the wrong thing, that just maybe Pickering really didn't have any experience, and that he should not be sending him up to solo with the absolute minimum of five hours' instruction.

But then the tower flashed the green lamp at Pickering's Yellow Peril, giving him permission to take off. The Yellow Peril began to move down the runway. The tail wheel came off the ground smoothly and when it should have, and a moment later, very smoothly, the Yellow Peril was airborne.

And Pickering followed the orders he had been given for his first solo flight: Take off, enter the landing pattern, and land. That's all.

Except when he was in the line of Yellow Perils waiting for their turn to land, he swung the Yellow Peril from side to side. Just once. It was a gesture of joy and exuberance. Minter decided that he would not mention it once Pickering was back on the ground, as he was now ninety-five percent sure he soon would safely be.

The landing was as smooth as Minter expected it to be. But what surprised him was the look on Pickering's face when he taxied to the parking ramp and shut the Yellow Peril down. It was the same look-mingled awe, relief, pride, and even a little disbelief-that Minter had learned to expect from other young then who had really just made their first solo flight.

And when he'd climbed down from the Yellow Peril he looked at Minter and said, "Jesus Christ, that's something, isn't it?"

"That really was your first time, wasn't it?" Minter blurted.

"Yes, sir," Pickering said. The question obviously confused him.

"Don't let it go to your head, Pickering," Minter said. "The University of California did a study that proved conclusively that any high-level moron can be taught to fly."

(Two)

Gayfer's Department Store

Pensacola, Florida

20 February 1942

Second Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, could see Martha Sayre Culhane two aisles away. She was standing before triple full-length mirrors as she held a black dress to her body and examined her reflection thoughtfully.

Martha wore a light brown sweater and a brown tweed skirt. A single coil of pearls around her neck had shifted so that it curled around her left breast. And she was wearing loafers and bobby socks.

She was, Pick thought, the most exquisitely feminine creature he had ever seen. Just looking at her made his throat tight and dry, and his heart change its beat.

She was across a two-aisle no-man's land of ladies' lingerie-glass counters stacked high with underpants and brassieres and girdles and slips. Headless-torso dummies had been placed here and there on the counters, dressed in more or less translucent brassieres and pants.

The intimate feminine apparel made Pick uncomfortable. And so did being where he was, and why. Without being aware that he was doing it, he closed his eyes and shook his head.

Martha nodded, as if making a decision, and then stepped away from the triple mirror and out of Pick's sight.

He moved an aisle away and saw her enter a dressing room and close its curtain. "May I help you, Lieutenant?" a female voice said, behind him, startling him.

"No," he said. "No, thank you. Just browsing."

He looked at the counters immediately around him. He had moved to the expectant-mother section. The dummies here displayed nursing brassieres.

She must think I'm crazy! Obviously, I am.

The hem of the curtain over Martha's dressing room was eighteen inches off the floor. He saw Martha's tweed skirt drop to the floor. Then she stepped out of it and scooped it up. And then, over the top of the curtain, he could see her hands and arms as she pulled the sweater off over her head.

He could imagine her now, in his mind's eye, standing behind the curtain wearing nothing but her string of pearls and her brassiere and her underpants.

He closed his eyes and shook his head again, and when he opened them he could see her hands as she stepped into the black dress and pulled it up.

And then a moment later, she came out and went back to the triple minors and looked at herself again. She had not zipped up the black dress, and he could see the strap of her brassiere stretched taut over her back.

And then he walked toward her, taking long, purposeful strides that shortened and grew hesitant as he came close.

"Surprise, surprise," he said, as jovially as he could manage. "Fancy running into you here!"

"I don't know why you're surprised, Pick," Martha said, looking directly at him. "You followed me from the air station."

He felt his face color.

"I soloed today," he blurted. "A couple of hours ago."

"Good for you," she said.

"Christ!" he said, furious and humiliated.

"I didn't mean that the way it sounded," Martha said. "Congratulations, Pick. Really. I know what it means, and I'm happy for you."

"I want to celebrate," Pick said.

"You should," Martha said. "It's a bona fide cause for celebration."

"I mean, with you," Pick blurted.

"I was afraid of that," she said.

"I thought maybe dinner, and then…"

She shook her head, and held up her left hand with her wedding and engagement rings on it.

"It sometimes may not look like it, Pick, but I'm in mourning."

"You go out with Captain Mustache," Pick blurted.

She laughed a delightful peal of laughter.

"Is that what you call him?" Martha said. "Marvelous! You better pray he doesn't hear you. Jimmy is very proud of his mustache."

"You go out with him," Pick persisted.

"That's different," Martha said. "He's a friend."

"And I can't be your friend?"

"You know what I mean," Martha said. "Jimmy was our friend. He was best man at the wedding."

"I'll settle for being your friend," Pick said.

"You don't take no for an answer, do you?" Martha said.

"Usually, I take anything less than 'oh, how wonderful' for no," Pick said.

"Well, Mr. Pickering," Martha said, "I'm truly sorry to disappoint you, but not only will I not go out with you, but I would consider it a personal favor if you would stop following me around and staring at me like a lovesick calf."

"Jesus!"

"I'm a widow, for God's sake," Martha went on furiously. "I'm just not interested, understand? I don't know what you're thinking-"

She stopped in mid-sentence, for Second Lieutenant Pickering had turned and fled down the aisle.

Martha told herself that there was really no reason for her to be ashamed of herself for jumping on him that way, or to be sorry that she had so obviously and so deeply hurt his feelings.

She was a widow, for God's sake.

Greg, my wonderful Greg, was killed only two months and twelve days ago. Only a real bitch and a slut would start thinking about another man only two months and twelve days after her husband, whom she had loved as much as life itself, had been killed. And if that handsome, arrogant sonofabitch was any kind of a gentleman he would understand that.

Martha Sayre Culhane vowed that she would never again think of the terrible hurt look in Pick's eyes when she told him off. It would not bother her, she swore, for she would simply not think about it.

Let him look at some other girl,, some other woman, with those eyes. That would get him laid, and that, certainly, was all he was really after anyway. He had probably stood in front of a mirror and practiced that look.

Goddamn him, anyway! What did he think she was?

She went back in the dressing room and took the black dress off. She did not buy it.

She went from Gayfer's Department Store to the bar at the San Carlos. She waited for Jimmy Carstairs to come in. By the time he came in, she was feeling pretty good.

When she woke up the next morning, she remembered two things about the night before. She'd had a scrap with Jimmy Carstairs, who had refused to let her drive herself home. And that once-or was it twice?- she had tried to call Pick on the house phone. He had had no right to walk away from her like that before she had finished telling him off, and she had been determined to finish what she had started.

There had been no answer in the penthouse, even though Martha remembered letting the telephone ring and ring and ring.

(Three)

San Diego Navy Base, California

21 February 1942

Although it was surrounded by a double line of barbed-wire-topped hurricane fencing, the brig at Diego was not from a distance very forbidding. It looked like any other well-cared-for Naval facility.

But inside, Lieutenant Commander Michael J. Grotski, USNR, thought as he waited to be admitted to the office of the commanding officer, it was undeniably a prison. Cleaner, maybe, but still a prison. Until November 1941, Lieutenant Commander Grotski had been engaged in the practice of criminal law in his native Chicago, Illinois. He had spent a good deal of time visiting clients in prison.

"You can go in, Commander," the natty, crew-cutted young Marine corporal in a tailored, stiffly starched khaki uniform said as he rose from his desk and opened a polished wooden door. Above the door was a red sign on which was a representation of the Marine insignia and the legend "C. F. KAMNIK, CAPT. USMC BRIG COMMANDER."

The "C," Commander Grotski knew, stood for "Casimir." He had come to know Captain Kamnik pretty well. They were not only two good Chicago Polack boys in uniform, but they had both once served as altar boys to the Reverend Monsignor Taddeus Wiznewski at Saint Teresa's. Monsignor Wiznewski had installed a proper respect for what they, were doing in his altar boys by punching them in the mouth when Mass was over whenever their behavior fell below his expectations.

They had not been altar boys at the same time. Captain Kamnik was six years older than Lieutenant Commander Grotski. And he had enlisted in the Marine Corps when Grotski was still in the sixth grade at St. Teresa's parochial school. But it had been a pleasant experience for the both of them to recall their common experience, and to find somebody else from the old neighborhood who was a fellow commissioned officer and gentleman.

"Good morning, Commander," Captain Kamnik said as he rose up behind his desk and grinned at Grotski. "How can the Marine Corps serve the Navy?"

"Oh, I just happened to be in the neighborhood and I thought I would drop in and ruin your day."

"Let me guess," Kamnik said, first closing the office door and then going to a file cabinet. From this he took out a bottle of Seagram's. Seven Crown. Then he continued, "You are about to rush to the defense of some innocent boy out there, who has been unjustly accused."

"Close, but not quite," Grotski said, taking a pull from the offered bottle and handing it back. Kamnik took a pull himself, and then put the bottle back in the filing cabinet. Technically, it was drinking on duty, one of many court-martial offenses described in some detail in the Rules for the Governance of the Navy Service. But it was also a pleasant custom redolent of home for two Polack former altar boys from the same neighborhood.

Kamnik looked at Grotski with his eyes raised in question.

"You have a fine young Marine out there named McCoy, Thomas Michael," Grotski said.

It was evident from the look on Kamnik's face that he had searched his memory and come up with nothing.

"McCoy?" he asked, as he went to his desk and ran his finger down one typewritten roster, and then another. "Here it is," he said. "ex-Marine. He's on his way to do five-to-ten at Portsmouth." Portsmouth was the U.S. Naval Prison.

"Not anymore, he's not," Grotski. "You have his file?"

"Somewhere, I'm sure. Why?"

"You're going to need it," Grotski said, simply.

Captain Kamnik walked to the door and pulled it open.

"Scott, fetch me the jacket on a prisoner named McCoy. He's one of those general prisoners who came in from Pearl. On his way to Portsmouth."

"Aye, aye, sir," the corporal said.

Kamnik turned to Grotski.

"You going to tell me what this is all about?"

"After you read the file," Grotski said. "Or at least glance at it. I'll throw you a bone, though: I have the feeling the commanding general of the joint training force in Diego is more than a little pissed at me."

"Really? You don't mind if I'm happy about that?"

"I'm flattered," Grotski said.

Corporal Scott entered the office a minute later, carrying a seven-inch-thick package wrapped in water-resistant paper and sealed with tape. On it was crudely lettered, "McCoy, Thomas Michael."

The package contained a complete copy of the general court-martial convened in the case of PFC Thomas M. McCoy, USMC, 1st Defense Battalion, Marine Barracks, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, to try him on charges that on the twenty-fourth day of December 1941, he had committed the offense of assault upon the person of a commissioned officer of the U.S. Navy in the execution of his office by striking him with his fists upon the face and on other parts of his body.

The record showed that PFC McCoy was also charged with having committed an assault upon a petty officer of the United States Navy in the execution of his office by striking him with his fists upon the face and on other parts of his body, and by kicking him in the general area of his genital region with his feet.

The record showed that PFC McCoy was additionally accused of having been absent without leave from his assigned place of duty at the time of the alleged offenses described in specifications 1 and 2.

The record showed that in secret session, two-thirds of the members present and voting, a general court-martial convened under the authority of the general officer commanding Marine Barracks, Pearl Harbor, T.H., had found PFC McCoy guilty of each of the charges and specifications; and finally that, in secret session, two-thirds of the members present and voting, the court-martial had pronounced sentence.

As to specification and charge number 1, PFC McCoy was to be reduced to the lowest enlisted grade, suffer loss of all pay and allowances, and be confined at hard labor for a period of five to ten years at Portsmouth or such other Naval prison as the Secretary of the Navy may designate, and at the completion of his term of imprisonment, be dishonorably discharged from the Naval service.

As to specification and charge number 2, PFC McCoy was to be reduced to the lowest enlisted grade, suffer loss of all pay and allowances, and be confined at hard labor for a period of three to five years at Portsmouth or such other Naval prison as the Secretary of the Navy may designate, and at the completion of his term of imprisonment, be dishonorably discharged from the Naval Service.

As to specification and charge number 3, PFC McCoy was to be reduced to the lowest enlisted grade, suffer loss of all pay and allowance, and be confined at hard labor for a period of six months in the U.S. Navy brig at Pearl Harbor, or such other place of confinement as the Commanding General, Marine Barracks, Pearl Harbor, T.H., may designate.

"Another of your innocent lambs, I see, Commander," Captain Kamnik said.

"Lovely fellow, obviously," Grotski said.

"So what about him?"

Grotski handed a single sheet of paper to Kamnik.