Call to Arms

Chapter Nineteen

(One)

Aboard the Yacht Last Time San Diego Yacht Club 1900 Hours, 9 April 1942

Major Edward J. Banning, Captain Jack NMI Stacker, and Lieutenants McCoy and Burnes were sitting on teak-and-canvas deck chairs with their feet on the polished mahogany rail at the deck. Music and the smell of something frying came up from the portholes of the galley.

"You look deep in thought, Jack," Banning said.

"You really want to know what I'm thinking?" Stecker replied. "That there are two kinds of Marines. There is the one kind, the ordinary kind, the Campbell's Baked Beans with Ham Fat kind; and then there's the steak kind. That one"-he pointed at McCoy-"is the steak kind. I don't know how they do it, but they always wind up living better than other people."

He smiled at McCoy. "No criticism, McCoy. I'm jealous. Christ, this is real nice."

Banning chuckled. "I know what you mean, Jack," he said. "When all the other PFCs in the Fourth were playing acey-deucey for dimes with each other in the barracks, McCoy was playing poker for big money in the Cathay Mansions Hotel with an ex-Czarist Russian general, and he was living in a whorehouse the General owned."

"Jesus!" McCoy said. "Be quiet, Ernie'll hear you."

Stecker and Banning laughed.

"I didn't know you knew about that," McCoy said to Banning.

"I know a good deal about you that you don't know I know," Banning said, a little smugly.

"The first time I saw him, he was a corporal; but he was driving that big LaSalle," Stecker said, pointing down the wharf. "I was a technical sergeant before I drove anything fancier than a used Model A Ford."

"This seems to have developed a leak, Ken," Banning said, examining his bottle of Schlitz. "It's all gone."

"I'll get you another, sir," First Lieutenant Martin J. Burnes, USMCR, said quickly, taking the bottle from Banning's hand and scurrying down the ladder to the aft cockpit.

"There's another proof of your theory, Jack," Banning said. "When I was a second lieutenant, I did the running and fetching for first lieutenants."

Stecker chuckled.

"He's all right, Major," McCoy said. "Eager as hell. Gung ho!"

Marty Burnes returned almost immediately with four bottles of Schlitz.

"Here you are, sir," he said, respectfully, handing one of the bottles to Banning, and then passing the others around.

"Burnes," Jack Stecker said, "McCoy just accused you of being 'gung ho!' I keep hearing that phrase around here. What's that all about?"

"You never heard it in China?" Banning asked, and then before Stecker could reply, he went on. "Oh, that's right. You had your family with you. No sleeping dictionary. You weren't really a China Marine men, were you, Jack? No speakee Chinaman."

McCoy snorted.

"It's a Chinese phrase, sir," Burnes said, almost eagerly. "It means 'all pull together.'"

"What's that got to do with the Raiders?" Stecker pursued.

"Cooperate, sir, for the common good. Do something that has to be done, even if it's not your responsibility."

"Give me a for-example," Banning asked, politely.

"Oh, for example, sir," Burnes said, "suppose an officer is walking around the area, and he sees that a garbage can is knocked over. Instead of finding somebody, an enlisted man, to set it up, he would do it himself. Because it should be set straight, sir, for the common good of the unit."

Banning looked at McCoy and saw that his eyes were smiling.

Burnes sensed that the example he had given was not a very good one. "You can explain it better than I can, Ken," Burnes said. "You tell the major."

"First of all," McCoy said, in Cantonese, "it doesn't mean 'all pull together.' It means something like 'strive for harmony.' And while it strikes me, and probably strikes you, as the night soil of a very large and well-fed male ox, you can see from this child that the children have adopted it as holy writ. What's wrong with it?"

Burnes's eyes widened, first at the flow of Chinese, and then as Major Banning choked on his beer. He went to Banning and vigorously pounded his back until Banning waved him off.

"You all right, sir?" Burnes asked, genuinely concerned.

"I'm fine," Banning said. "It went down the wrong pipe."

"Well, Burnes," Stecker said. "We know who had those dictionaries, don't we? Nobody likes a wiseass second lieutenant, McCoy."

Ernie Sage came onto the forward deck skillfully balancing a tray in her hands. The tray held two plates of hors d'ouevres, one with bacon-wrapped chicken livers, the other with boiled shrimp and a bowl of cocktail sauce. She was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. The front of her T-shirt was emblazoned with a large, red Marine Corps insignia.

"Steak," Stecker said. "See my point?"

Ernie smiled nervously, wondering if that meant disapproval of the T-shirt.

Banning laughed.

"I'm not so sure all these hors d'ouevres are a good idea," Ernie said. "The steaks are enormous. Ken ran into some China Marine he knew working in the commissary."

Stecker laughed out loud in delight, and Banning shook his head.

Ernie smiled with relief; they did not disapprove of her shorts and T-shirt. But now that she thought about it, she did. It was a dumb idea, something she had done in hurt and anger. Her mother had called the day before, and they had gotten into it. The conversation had started out politely enough, but that hadn't lasted long. And her mother had played her ace: "I just hope you know how you're hurting your father's feelings, how it hurts him to have his friends seeing his daughter acting like… like nothing more than a camp follower."

"Nice to talk to you, Mother," Ernie said. "Call again sometime next year," and then she'd hung up.

But it had hurt, and she'd cried a little, and then she'd stopped that nonsense. But then she had been downtown, and she'd seen a half dozen real camp followers, the girls who- either professionally or otherwise-plied their trade in San Diego bars patronized by Marines. They had been wearing Marine Corps T-shirts, and Ernie had wondered if she was really like them, and then she'd decided it didn't matter whether she was or not, her mother thought she was.

And she'd gone into a store and bought the T-shirt.

"I'm glad that the steaks are enormous,, because so is my appetite," Banning said.

"Good," she said, smiling.

"Ernie, take these two with you, will you please?" Banning said. "I've got to have a quiet word with Jack Stecker."

When McCoy and Burnes had followed Ernie off the deck, Banning nodded after them.

"Very nice," he said.

"The hors d'ouevres, or McCoy's lady friend?" Stecker asked.

"Both," Banning said, "but especially her. She's all right, Jack."

"Yes, she is," Stecker said.

"I understand you've been greasing Evans Carlson's ways," Banning said.

"Oh, so that's what this all about," Stecker said.

Banning didn't reply directly.

"See a lot of him, do you?"

"Every other day," Stecker said.

"I've got a couple of questions I'd like to ask," Banning said.

"Let me save you some time, Major," Stecker said. "No, I don't think he's either crazy or a Communist."

"Why did you say that, Jack?" Banning asked.

"Isn't that what you wanted me to say? That he is? So they can relieve him and put these Raider battalions out of business?"

"No," Banning said. "As a matter of fact, it's not. I have it on the highest authority-relayed from General Holcomb himself-that Carlson is none of the unpleasant things he's being accused of."

Stecker met his eyes. "I'm really relieved to hear you say that," he said.

"There's some scuttlebutt that an officer has been sent out here to spy on Carlson," Banning said. "You pick up any of that?"

"Yeah, I've heard that," Stecker said.

"Do you think Carlson has?"

"Oh, I'm sure he has," Stecker said. "But I don't think he knows it's McCoy."

"McCoy?" Banning said.

"Come on, Ed, we've known each other too long to be cute," Stecker said.

"Please respond to the question," Banning said, formally. "What gave you the idea McCoy is in any way involved in this?"

"All right," Stecker said after a moment. "Because I happen to know that McCoy went from the Platoon Leader's Course at Quantico to work for Rickabee in Washington, and I took the trouble to find out that's not on his service record; his record says he was a platoon leader at Quantico until he came out here."

"You mention any of those theories of yours to Carlson?"

"No," Stecker said. "Frankly, I was tempted."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because I have been around the Corps long enough to know the shits going to hit the fan sooner or later, and I didn't want to get splattered," Stecker said. "And also because I like McCoy, and I knew this wasn't his idea."

"The shit has already hit the fan," Banning said. "General Paul H. Lesterby was retired; Colonel Thomas C. Wesley's been assigned to the supply depot at Murdoch, while the Commandant makes up his mind whether or not to court-martial him."

Stecker's face grew thoughtful. His eyebrows rose, he pursed his lips, and he cocked his head to one side. "The scuttlebutt I got on out," he said, "was that Lesterby had a mild heart attack and that Wesley finally was recognized for the horse's ass he's always been."

"Do you think Carlson believes that?"

"I suppose he does," Stecker said. "Why that line of questions?"

"Although he will do so if necessary," Banning said, "which is to say if he thinks-which means I tell him-that Carlson knows about the officer Lesterby sent out here, the Commandant would really rather not come out and formally apologize to Carlson."

"Carlson? He better worry about having to apologize to the President," Stecker said.

"If he thought it would be the best thing for the Corps, I think the Commandant would resign in the morning," Banning said. "I don't think that would be good for the Corps."

"Neither do I," Stecker said. "How the hell did you get involved in this? You used to be a good, simple, honest Marine."

"Well, Jack, I didn't volunteer for it," Banning said, a little coldly.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that," Stecker said. "I can't imagine why the hell I did. I'm sorry."

"Forget it," Banning said.

"To answer your question, Ed," Stecker said, "if Carlson is worried about having a spy in his outfit, he doesn't seem concerned. I think he would have said something to me if he did. Or, probably, now that I think about it, suspected that it was me. I don't think he thinks it's one of his officers, and I'm almost positive he doesn't suspect McCoy of anything."

Banning nodded.

"But if you want, I can ask him," Stecker said. "Discreetly, of course. I'm going to see him tomorrow at eleven hundred."

"No, this is it," Banning said. "I'm flying back to Washington at oh-nine-hundred. To report to the Commandant as soon as I get there."

"I really wish I could be more helpful," Stecker said.

"You've been very helpful," Banning said.

"So what happens to McCoy?" Stecker said.

"It would raise questions if he were suddenly relieved from the Raiders," Banning said.

"So who really pays for this idiocy is a nice young kid-a fine young officer," Stecker said bitterly. "Lesterby gets to draw his pension, and Wesley, too, and McCoy gets his ass blown away playing commando on some unimportant little island in the South Pacific."

"I thought you were all for Carlson and his Raiders," Banning said, surprised.

"I think the whole idea of Raiders is stupid from start to finish," Stecker said. "You didn't ask me that."

The smell of charring beef began to float up to the flying bridge.

Stecker sniffed. "Are we about finished?" he asked. "Oddly enough, after this conversation of ours, I still have an appetite."

Banning set his beer bottle down and stood up. "Thank you, Jack," he said.

When they went into the main cabin, they saw that the women had changed. Ernie Sage was now wearing a pale yellow cotton dress, which she wore with a single strand of pearls that Banning knew were real, and had cost what a Marine second lieutenant made in three months.

The table had been very elegantly set in the main lounge of the Last Tune. There was gold-rimmed bone china, crystal glasses, and heavy sterling. There were two bottles of wine on the table, and a reserve supply, plus a bottle of brandy, on a sideboard.

Banning reflected that Ernie Sage seemed to have grasped what was expected of the wife of a junior officer when entertaining in their quarters a field-grade officer. Except she wasn't married to Killer McCoy, and this yacht was not exactly what came to mind when you thought of the quarters of a second lieutenant living off the post. McCoy seemed to have read his mind. In Chinese, he asked, softly, "It's a long way from that one-room apartment of mine over the whorehouse in Shanghai, isn't it?"

Banning laughed. McCoy started to pour the wine. He did it naturally, Banning thought. He was perfectly at ease with it, and even with this elaborate arrangement of crystal, china, and silver. He wondered if McCoy himself knew how much he had changed since Shanghai.

"You know, I knew that Ken spoke Chinese-" Marty Burnes gushed.

"Two kinds, plus Japanese, and God only knows what else," Banning interrupted.

"But I didn't really believe it until I heard the two of you talking," Burnes concluded.

"The day I met him," Ernie said, "he took me to a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown in New York City. And spoke Chinese to them. I was awed."

"Knowing all those languages," Jack Stecker said innocently, "I wonder if the greatest contribution he can make to the Marine Corps is in the armory of the Second Raider Battalion."

Banning looked toward Stecker and found Stecker's eyes on his. He did not reply, but he had already made up his mind that one of the first things he was going to do when he got back to Washington was try to justify getting McCoy out of the Raiders. Stecker was of course right. Second Lieutenants who spoke Japanese and two kinds of Chinese were in very short supply and should not be expended while they were trying to paddle up to some obscure Japanese-held island in a rubber boat.

He looked away from Stecker and found Ernie Sage's eyes on him. She had nice eyes, he thought. Perceptive eyes. But what he saw in them now was sad disappointment that he had not responded to Stecker. And that meant, Banning decided, that Ernie Sage knew what McCoy was doing here.

The dumb, lovesick sonofabitch told her! He knew that was expressly forbidden. He isn't even married to her, for Christ's sake!

And then he was forced to face the shameful fact that Major Edward J. Banning, that professional intelligence officer of the U.S. Marine Corps, that absolute paragon of military virtue, had only a week before shown his credentials to a civilian female for no better reason than that he wanted to look good in her eyes.

Banning decided that if McCoy had told Ernie at least some of what he was really doing with the 2nd Raider Battalion at Camp, Elliott, he had done so with a reason, and only after thinking it over. The cold truth to face was that McCoy had almost certainly had a better reason for telling Ernie than he had for showing Carolyn his credentials.

Banning spent the night aboard the Last Time; and in the morning, McCoy drove him to the airfield, where a Navy Douglas R4D was waiting to fly the "IG from Washington" team back to Washington.

As he gave McCoy his hand, there was time to tell him what he had decided.

"You've done a good job here, Ken, in a rotten situation," Banning said. "I'm going to try to talk Rickabee into getting you out of here. I'm not sure he will, but I'm going to try."

(Two)

Headquarters, 2nd Raider Battalion

Camp Elliott, California

23 April 1942

Though it appeared loose and informal-everyone sat on the ground in the shade-and Colonel Carlson pointedly did not use the official term, there was a 2nd Raider Battalion officers' call in everything but name. Colonel Carlson probably did not like the official term, McCoy thought, because there was an implied exclusion of enlisted then from an official officers' call. But with the exception of a very few enlisted then (the sergeant major; the S-3 [Plans Training] and S-4 [Supply] sergeants; two of the first sergeants; and three gunnery sergeants, including Zimmerman), everybody at the meeting was an officer, and most of the battalion officers had been summoned and were present.

A week or so before, Captain Roosevelt gave a lecture on the Rules of Land Warfare, a subject that McCoy was more than casually familiar with. Because of the situation in China at the time, there had been frequent lectures on the Rules of Land Warfare in the 4th Marines. And as he listened to Roosevelt, McCoy reflected that he had been lectured on the Rules of Land Warfare so often that he knew most of them by heart. But McCoy did learn one thing during Roosevelt's lecture: Roosevelt used two terms McCoy had never heard before. Since he did not have an appetite to stand up and confess his ignorance, McCoy wrote the terms down, intending to look them up in a dictionary.

As it happened, the dictionary did not turn out to be necessary. When he asked Ernie about it, she questioned him about what he wanted to look up, and then she explained the meaning of de facto and de jure.

And now he realized that those terms fit this case: Carlson's meeting, with everybody sitting on the ground in the shade of the battalion headquarters building, was a de facto officers' call, even if Carlson was reluctant to make it a de jure officers' call.

The first item on the agenda was significant. Carlson told his officers and senior noncoms that, as of that day, the 2nd Raider Battalion had officially completed its stateside training, and that Admiral Nimitz (Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet) had so officially informed Admiral King, and had requested transportation for the battalion to Hawaii, where they would be trained in rubber-boat techniques and in making landings from submarines.

Additionally, Carlson continued, the advance element of the "competition" (which everyone knew meant the 1st Raider Battalion) had sailed from San Diego aboard the USS Zeilin 11 April, more than likely for Samoa, although that was just a guess, and in any event should not be talked about.

Then he told them that a report from Major Sam Griffith (As a captain, Griffith had been sent with Captain Wally Greene to observe and undergo British Commando training. He was regarded within the Marine Corps as an expert on commando, or Raider, operations) had "somehow come into hand."

"Griffith thinks our organization of the 2nd Raider Battalion is the way the entire Corps should go," Carlson said, with just a hint of smugness in his dry voice. "That is to say, six line companies and a headquarters company, as opposed to the competition's four line companies, a heavy-weapons company, and a headquarters company. And he has made that a formal recommendation to the Commandant."

There was a round of applause, and Carlson grinned at his men.

"And he agrees, more or less, with our organization (Each company consisted of two rifle platoons, plus a company headquarters. Each platoon, under a lieutenant, consisted of three squads. Each squad consisted of a squad leader, and a three-man fire-team, armed with a BAR, an Ml Garand, and a Thompson submachine gun) of the companies as well," Carlson went on. "He agrees more than he disagrees."

There was another round of applause.

And then, on the subject of mortars, Carlson told them that the decision by the brass had not been made, but that he hoped it would "go our way."

There were two mortars available, a 60-mm and an 81-mm. The 81-mm was the more lethal weapon. It was capable of throwing a nearly seven-pound projectile 3,000 yards (1.7 miles). It was standard issue in the heavy-weapons company of a Marine infantry battalion. On the other hand, the 60-mm's range, with a three-pound projectile, was just about a mile.

For a number of reasons (with which McCoy, who fancied himself a decent man with either weapon, agreed completely), Carlson was opposed to the Raiders carrying the 81-mm mortar into combat. For one thing, the kind of combat the Raiders anticipated would be close range, and the 60-mm was better for that purpose. More importantly, considering that the Raiders planned to enter combat by paddling ashore in rubber boats, a ready-for-action 81-mm mortar weighed 136 pounds. It would of course be broken down for movement, but the individual components-the tube itself, and especially the base plate- were heavy as hell, and were going to be damned hard to get into and out of a rubber boat. As would the ammunition, at seven pounds per round.

It was not, furthermore, a question of choosing either the 60-mm or the 81-mm. The TOE provided for both 81-mm and 60-mm mortars in each company; and that meant that if they did things by the book and took the 81-mm too, they would have to wrestle two kinds of mortars and two kinds of ammunition into and out of the rubber boats.

But Carlson told him that he thought he had come up with a convincing argument against the Raiders following standard Marine Corps practice requiring an 81-mm mortar platoon in each company: Such a platoon would exceed the carrying capacity of the APDs (Grandly known as High Speed Transports, the APDs, which were supposed to transport Raiders on missions, were in fact modified World War I-era "four-stacker" destroyers. Two of their four boilers and their exhaust stacks had been removed, and the space reclaimed converted to primitive troop berthing. They were "high speed" only when compared to freighters and other slow-moving vessels). If the 81-mm mortar platoon went along on the APDs, it would be necessary to split the companies between several ships. That obviously was a bad idea.

"But there are those," Carlson said, "close to the Deity in Marine Corps heaven who devoutly believe the Corps cannot do without the eighty-one-millimeters. So I have proposed that we drag them along with us-without personnel-in case we need them. In which case, they would be fired by the sixty-millimeter crews."

McCoy thought Carlson was absolutely right about the mortars, and he hoped that the brass would let him have his way. But he wondered if they actually would. He had not forgotten Chief Warrant Officer Ripley's disturbing remark about the "brass really having a hard-on for Carlson." He knew they hadn't changed that attitude because the Commandant had blown his stack about spying on Carlson. A lot of the brass, and even people like Captain Jack Stecker, thought the whole idea of Raiders was a lousy one. Which meant that a lot of people were still going to be fighting Carlson at every step. If Carlson said the moon was made of Camembert, they would insist it was cheddar.

"That will be all, gentlemen," Colonel Carlson said, a few minutes and a few minor items later. "Thank you. If there are no questions…"

There were questions. There was always some dumb sonofabitch who didn't understand something. But finally the questions had been asked and answered, and Carlson waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal. In a regular unit, the exec would have called attention and then dismissed them after the commanding officer had walked away. Doing it Carlson's way, McCoy thought, made more sense.

Colonel Carlson called out to him as McCoy started to get to his feet.

"McCoy, stick around please. I'd like a word with you."

"Aye, aye, sir," McCoy said.

Carlson went into the building, after motioning for McCoy to follow. When he went inside, the sergeant major waved him into Carlson's office. Captain Roosevelt was there.

"Stand at ease, McCoy," Carlson said, and searched through papers on his desk. Finally he found what he was looking for and handed it to McCoy. It was a TWX.