W.E.B. Griffin: THE CORPS VI - CLOSE COMBAT

DISCRETION

BY DIRECTION SECNAV

HOUGHTON, CAPT USN

EXECUTIVE ASSISTANT TO SECNAV

=TOP SECRET=

General Vandegrift read the message, looked at Banning, then read the message again.

"Very interesting," he said. When Banning didn't reply, Vandegrift added, "Are you going to tell me what this is all about, Banning?"

Banning looked uncomfortable.

"Sir, I think it's right there. I don't like to speculate...."

"Speculate," Vandegrift ordered, softly but sharply.

"Sir, is the General aware of General Pickering's mission when he was here before?"

"You mean, here on Guadalcanal? Or in the Pacific?"

"In the Pacific, Sir."

"It was bandied about that Pickering was Frank Knox's personal spy."

"Sir, it is my understanding that General Pickering was dispatched to the Pacific to obtain for Secretary Knox information that Secretary Knox felt he was not getting through standard Navy channels."

"You're a regular, Banning," Vandegrift said. "I shouldn't have to tell you about going out of channels." He paused. "About my personal repugnance to going out of channels."

"Sir, may I speak frankly?"

"I expect you to, Major."

"Sir, with respect, you don't have any choice. I am here at the direction of the Secretary of the Navy. I respectfully suggest, Sir, that if the Secretary of the Navy elects to move outside the established chain of command, he has that prerogative."

"Would you say, then, Major, that the contents of this message are not known to the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific?"

"I would be very surprised if it was, Sir."

"And the reference..." Vandegrift said, then paused and looked at the message again, "... the reference to their confidence in my discretion, and yours, means that we are not expected to tell them about it?"

"I would put that interpretation on that, Sir," Banning said.

"When this comes out, Banning, as it inevitably will, my superiors will conclude that I went over their heads. I would draw the same conclusion."

"Sir, I can only respectfully repeat that we have received an order from the Secretary of the Navy."

"In which I see the hand of Fleming Pickering," Vandegrift said. "I think this was Pickering's idea, not Mr. Knox's."

Banning didn't reply for a moment. There was no doubt in his mind that the whole thing was Fleming Pickering's idea. For one thing, the Secretary of the Navy almost certainly had no idea who one obscure major named Edward Banning was.

"Sir, I respectfully suggest-"

"I know," Vandegrift interrupted him. "It doesn't matter whose idea it was, Knox has signed on to it. Right? And we have our orders, right?"

"Yes, Sir," Banning said, uncomfortably.

"The reference..." Vandegrift began, and again stopped to look at the message in his hand, "... to 'all intelligence available to you and your staff.' I presume that includes MAGIC intercepts?"

"Sir," Banning said, now very uncomfortable. "I'm not at liberty..."

"Pickering was here, as you know. I know about MAGIC."

"Sir-"

Vandegrift held up his hand, shutting him off, and then went on, "... and thus I should have known better than to put that question to you. Consider it withdrawn."

Banning was visibly relieved.

"General," he said, "I have access to certain intelligence information, the source of which I am not at liberty to disclose. More important, not compromising this source of intelligence is of such importance-"

Vandegrift held up his hand again, silencing him. Banning stopped and waited as Vandegrift visibly chose the words he would now use.

"Let's go off at a tangent," he said. "The last time I was in Washington, I had a private talk with General Forrest. Perhaps he was out of school and shouldn't have told me this, but we're very old friends, and I flatter myself to think he trusts my discretion...."

Jesus Christ, did Forrest tell him about MAGIC? I find that hard to believe!

Major General Horace W. T. Forrest was Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2 (Intelligence), of The Marine Corps.

"Anyway, General Forrest told me a story about the British being in possession of a coding machine..."

The Enigma machine. I can't believe Forrest told him about that, either.

"... which permitted them to decode certain German codes..."

I'll be damned, he did!

"... and that one of the German messages intercepted and decoded was the order from Berlin to the Luftwaffe to destroy Coventry," Vandegrift went on. "Which posed to Prime Minister Churchill the difficult question, 'Do I order the Royal Air Force to prepare to defend Coventry? Which will probably save Coventry, and a large number of human lives, civilian lives. But which will also certainly let the Germans know we have access to their encoded material. Or do I let them destroy Coventry and preserve the secret that we are reading their top-secret operational orders?' "

"I'm familiar with the story, Sir."

"Yes, I thought you might be," Vandegrift said. "Coventry, you will recall, was leveled by the Luftwaffe, with a terrible loss of life. I presume the English are still reading German operational orders, and that the Germans do not suspect that they are."

"Yes, Sir."

"I believe Churchill made the correct decision. Do I make my point, Major?"

"Yes, Sir."

"I will not inquire into the source of your intelligence, nor will I act upon anything you tell me."

"Yes, Sir," Banning said.

"Go on, please, Major," Vandegrift said.

"Lieutenant General Harukichi Hyakutaka has assumed command of Japanese operations on Guadalcanal," Banning said.

Hyakutaka commanded the Japanese Seventeenth Army.

Vandegrift looked surprised.

"I was about to say, I know that. But you mean he's here, don't you? Physically present on Guadalcanal?"

"Yes, Sir. He arrived 9 October."

"He's a good man," Vandegrift said, almost to himself. It was not an opinion of Hyakutaka's character. Rather, it was one professional officer's judgment of the professional skill of another.

"Sir, would it be a waste of your time if I recapped the situation as I understand it?"

"No," Vandegrift said. "Go ahead."

"It is our belief, Sir, that until very recently, neither the Japanese Imperial General Staff itself, nor the Army General Staff, nor the Japanese Navy, has taken seriously our position on Guadalcanal. This is almost certainly because of a nearly incredible lack of communication between their Army and their Navy. For example, Sir, we have learned that until we landed, the Japanese Army was not aware that their Navy was building an airfield here."

"That's hard to believe," Vandegrift said. "But on the other hand, sometimes our Army doesn't talk to our Navy, either."

"As bad as that gets, Sir, it's nothing like the Japanese," Banning said. "Neither, Sir, was the Japanese Army made aware of the extent of Japanese Navy losses at Midway, not until about two weeks ago. Because they presumed that their Naval losses there were negligible, the Japanese Army concluded that we would not be able to launch any sort of counter-offensive until the latter half of 1943."

"And then we landed here," Vandegrift said.

"Yes, Sir. And even when we did, they were unwilling or unable to believe that it was anything more than a large-scale raid. The Makin Island raid times ten, or times twenty, so to speak. This misconception was reinforced when Admiral Fletcher elected to withdraw the invasion fleet earlier than was anticipated."

"Admiral Fletcher," Vandegrift said evenly, "apparently believed that he could not justify the loss of his ships in a Japanese counterattack."

"The Japanese interpretation, Sir, was that following the Battle of Savo Island, and our loss of the cruisers Vincennes and Quincy-"

"And the Australian Canberra..."