W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps VII - Behind the Lines

"Proclamation?" Fertig asked.

"Yes, Sir. Your proclamation... nailed to a telephone pole. He, Everly, brought it to me, and then your man led us here."

"What I was really asking, Lieutenant, was how you came to Mindanao. Presumably, you were formerly assigned to the 4th Marines on Bataan?"

"On Corregidor, yes, Sir."

"And you somehow got off Corregidor and decided that it was your duty not to surrender when Corregidor inevitably fell?"

"Yes, Sir."

Well, at least he knows that we lost Bataan and Corregidor. Fertig looked at him, obviously waiting for him to continue. "I was a pilot, Sir," Weston heard himself saying. "I mean, I am an avia-tor. I was stranded in the Philippines and assigned to the 4th Marines as a supernumerary officer. My commanding officer... my commanding officer sent me to Bataan looking for supplies...."

Why is it important to tell this man what really happened? Am I looking for his approval? His forgiveness?

"I was provided with five thousand dollars and a Spanish-speaking ser-geant, Sir. I wasn't ordered to desert, that was my decision. But I believe Major Paulson hoped I would not return; that I would try to get out of the Phil-ippines, to Australia." Fertig nodded.

"We attempted to rent a boat," Weston went on. "We found one. And then the Filipinos on the boat attempted to murder us."

"Banditry and piracy have a long history in the Philippines," Fertig said. "What happened?"

"We killed them," Weston blurted, aware of that but unable to stop. "Ev-erly killed the one who was trying to cut my throat, and then we... killed the others. And threw their bodies into the sea."

"Where was that?" Fertig replied. He seemed neither surprised nor shocked.

"Right off the Bataan Peninsula, Sir."

"It was just you and your sergeant at first? You picked up the others en route here?"

"Yes, Sir, that's about it."

"You're apparently a resourceful officer, Lieutenant. It must have been difficult to obtain the necessary food and water, and of course the charts, to make a voyage such as you have made. You are to be commended."

"Sir, it wasn't that way," Weston confessed, uncomfortably. "We had neither rations nor charts."

"But?"

"We found a cabin cruiser adrift in the passage between Lubang Island and... I can't remember the other island. A little one. Uninhabited."

"Ambil Island," Fertig furnished. "I know the passage. Tell me about the cabin cruiser."

"It was, I think, a locally built copy of a Chris-Craft."

"Did it have a name?"

"Yes, Sir. Yet Again. "

The General looked pained. His eyebrows rose, and then he shrugged, in what Weston thought was sadness and resignation.

"You're very observant, Lieutenant," the General said, his voice level. "Yet Again was a locally built copy of a Chris-Craft. It belongs-belonged, apparently; past tense-to friends of mine. Joseph and Harriet Dennison. He was the Chrysler dealer in Manila. Was there any sign of them, by any chance?"

"In the master cabin, Sir, there were two bodies. A middle-aged couple. The woman was in the bed. She was apparently killed when the boat was at-tacked by Japanese aircraft. There were bullet holes-"

He was interrupted by a Filipino woman, who thrust at him a plate of pork chunks in rice and some kind of sauce. When he took it, she handed him a fork and a cup, made from bamboo.

"The pork is very nice," Fertig said. "The beer, unfortunately, seems to be proof that a civil engineer and a Navy Chief who don't know what they're doing should not try to brew beer."

Weston wolfed down the pork and rice.

"There's more," Fertig said. "But I would advise waiting an hour or so. When you haven't been eating normally..."

"That was fine, Sir. Thank you. It'll hold me for a while."

"You were telling me about what you found on the Yet Again."

Weston tried to remember where he had broken off the story, and then resumed:

"The woman was apparently killed in a strafing attack. The man shot him-self in the temple. The boat was out of fuel."

Fertig closed his eyes and said nothing.

Weston took a sip of the beer. It was warm and thick and reminded Weston of a disastrous attempt to make home brew in his fraternity house at college.

"There was canned food aboard, Sir," he went on, "and water. And charts. We took it all and started out for here."

"Leaving everything as you found it aboard the Yet Again?"

"No, Sir. I mean we... buried the bodies at sea. In blankets, weighted down with batteries. We didn't burn the boat. Everly thought it would attract attention, and I agreed."

"Inasmuch as doing so, under the circumstances, obviously posed a risk to you, it was quite decent of you to... bury... the Dennisons, Lieutenant."

Weston could think of no reply to make.

"I knew them rather well. Nice people. He was the exception to the rule that you never can trust anyone in the retail automobile business. Mrs. Fertig and I used to see a good deal of them at the Yacht Club."

"You were stationed in Manila, Sir?"

"I was a civil engineer in Manila. I had the foresight to send Mrs. Fertig home when I entered the Army."

"Yes, Sir."

"Though few others-including, sadly, the Dennisons-were willing to face that unpleasant fact, I knew there was no way we could really resist the Japanese when they came here. Roosevelt believes the Germans are the greater threat; our war effort will be directed primarily against them, the Pacific and the Japanese will be a secondary effort. There never was going to be The Aid that everybody was talking about."

"Sir, you said, 'when you entered the army'?"

"I was commissioned as a captain, Corps of Engineers, Reserve. With an-other chap, Ralph Fralick. He was commissioned a lieutenant, and we spent the early days of the war blowing things up-bridges, railroads, that sort of thing. Interesting experience, taking down in an hour what you had spent months-in several cases, years-building."

"Yes, Sir."

"The last I heard of Fralick, he was a captain, and he had his hands on a forty-foot boat, sail and diesel, and was headed for Indochina. When the end came, I was here. I decided that I did not want to be a prisoner; and since I have a hard head, I decided I could cause the Japanese more trouble by organizing a guerrilla operation here than trying to get out. If I had made it out-and the idea of trying to sail two thousand miles in a small boat to Australia seems iffy at best-I suspected that the Army would have a reserve lieutenant colonel, who is a civil engineer, supervise the construction of officer clubs."

Fertig looked into Weston's eyes.

Then he flipped up one of his collar points with the brigadier general's star pinned to it.

"Would you be wondering, by any chance, Lieutenant, about these?"

"Yes, Sir. I was," Weston said after a moment.

"I've lived in the Philippines a long time, Lieutenant. I know the people, and I know-not as well as I know the Filipinos-the military mind. If I had signed my proclamation 'Lieutenant Colonel, Corps of Engineers, Reserve,' it would have been pissing in the wind. I think you're proof of that, Lieutenant."

"Sir?" Weston asked, confused.

"If my proclamation had announced that Lieutenant Colonel Fertig, CE, USAR, was the senior officer of U.S. Forces in the Philippines, would you have paid any attention to it? To put a point on it, would you have come look-ing for me?"

"Sir, I was getting pretty desperate. I probably would have come," Wes-ton said uneasily. "At least to have a look."

"And if you found a lieutenant colonel, wearing a straw hat and a goatee, what do you think you'd have done? You'd have gone right back in the bush, perhaps? Avoiding the lunatic?"

Weston shrugged uncomfortably.

That's exactly what I would have done.