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

"Aye, aye, Sir."

Paulson had given a good deal of thought about the wisdom of sending an interpreter with Weston. On the one hand, it would reduce any suspicions about Weston's generator-parts-finding mission. On the other, there was no way to predict how the interpreter, a buck sergeant who'd come to the Philip-pines with the 4th Marines from Shanghai, would react when he found out Weston was not going to return to The Rock.

In the end, he decided in favor of sending the sergeant with Weston. Wes-ton might be able to handle the sergeant. If so, the sergeant, with his knowledge of Spanish, and because he was an Old Breed China Marine, might be very useful when Weston took off.

"And I think you'd better take this with you," Paulson said, taking from the well of his desk a Thompson.45 caliber submachine gun and two extra stick magazines. "You never know when you might need it."

"Aye, aye, Sir. Thank you, Sir," Weston said.

He slung the Thompson's web sling over his shoulder, then put one maga-zine in each of his trouser side pockets.

"Don't shoot yourself in the foot with that, Mr. Weston," Paulson said, meeting his eyes. "In other words, take care."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

"Move out, Mr. Weston," Paulson said. "Get your show on the road."

Weston said nothing for a long minute. Then he saluted.

Paulson returned the salute and then extended his hand.

"Good luck, Jim," Paulson said.

"Good luck to you, Sir," Weston said. Then he came to attention. "By your leave, Sir?"

Paulson nodded.

Weston made the about-face movement and marched away from Paulson's desk. Paulson watched him go down the lateral tunnel and then turn into the main tunnel. Then he turned his attention to the papers on his desk.

[TWO]

Kindley Field

Fortress Corregidor

Manila Bay

Commonwealth of the Philippines

0920 Hours 1 April 1942

Sergeant Percy Lewis Everly, USMC, had spent most of the morning thinking very seriously about desertion.

Everly, who was twenty-six years old, six feet tall, sharply featured, and weighed 145 pounds, was in charge of a two-gun, water-cooled.30 caliber Browning machine-gun section of Headquarters Company, 4th Marines. This was set up to train its fire on Kindley Field, a rectangular cleared area toward the seaward end of Corregidor. The area had been cleared years before to serve as a balloon field. Everly had seen that on the map. The map didn't say what kind of balloons it was supposed to serve, whether barrage balloons, designed to interfere with aircraft attacking the island fortress, or observation balloons, from which the tip of the Bataan Peninsula two miles away could be observed.

There had been no evidence of either kind of balloons, although Everly had come across the rusted remains of what could have been a winch for bal-loon cables.

Everly, in his washed thin khakis, web pistol belt, and steel helmet, looked skeletal. Part of that, of course, was because they were on one-half rations, and everybody had lost a lot of weight. But Everly, who from time to time had been called "Slats," was never heavy, never weighed more than 160 pounds.

The machine guns were set up in bunkers made from sandbags, sand-filled fifty-five-gallon drums, and salvaged lumber. They would probably provide some protection against small-arms fire and even hand grenades, but Everly knew the guns weren't going to get much protection from mortar fire or artil-lery.

When the field telephone buzzed, Everly took it from its leather case and pressed the butterfly switch.

"Sixteen," he said.

"Everly?" a voice Everly recognized as the company clerk's asked.

"Yeah."

"The first wants you here. Now."

"On my way," Everly said, and put the telephone back in its case.

He had a good idea what the First Sergeant of Headquarters Company, 4th Marines, wanted with him. Because he spoke Spanish, he was in some demand as an interpreter if one of the officers had business on Bataan.

Everly walked, stooping, across the bunker to where Corporal Max Schirmer, a short, no longer plump twenty-three-year-old, was sleeping on a bunk of two-by-fours and salvaged commo wire, and touched his arm.

"You've got it," Everly said when Schirmer opened his eyes. "They want me at the CP."

Schirmer nodded, then sat up and shook his head to clear it. When Everly was satisfied that Schirmer was really awake, he left the bunker and headed up the dirt path toward the Company Command Post.

Everly had been a Marine for almost eight years. If the war hadn't come along, he would have been discharged, at the conclusion of his second four-year hitch, on 25 May 1942. But a whole year before that, on 27 May 1941, when the 4th Marines were still in China, President Roosevelt had proclaimed "an unlimited state of national emergency," one result of which had been the extension of all enlistments in The Marine Corps "for the duration of the emer-gency, plus six months."

But that had really not meant much to Everly. He liked The Marine Corps, and he could not imagine doing anything but being a Marine. If his enlistment hadn't been extended, he would have shipped over, sewn a second four-years-service hash mark on the sleeves of his uniform, and gone on being a Marine.

The only thing the date 25 May 1942 meant to Everly now was that- unless he did something about it, and soon, and the only thing he could think of doing was to desert-when it came around, and it was going to come around next month, he'd either be dead, or wishing he was dead.

Everly was pretty sure in his mind about three things: (1) Bataan was about to fall; (2) "The Aid' was not coming, at least not in time to do any good; and because it wasn't, (3) soon after Bataan fell, Fortress Corregidor was going to fall.

Bataan was a peninsula on what Everly thought of as the bottom of Luzon Island. It sort of closed off Manila Bay.

Fortress Corregidor was an island in Manila Bay two miles off the tip of Bataan, about thirty miles from the capital of the Philippines, Manila. Maps of Corregidor looked to Everly like the drawings Mr. Hawkings used to make of human sperm on the blackboard at Zanesville High School during what was called "Masculine Hygiene."

Everly graduated from Zanesville High School on 22 May 1934, went into The Corps two days later, and had not been back to Zanesville, or even to West Virginia, since. His father, a coal miner, died when Everly was fourteen, and his mother two years later. Since no relatives were either able or willing to take him in, the State boarded him out for two years with a "foster family." Both the State and his "foster mother" took pains to make sure he understood he would be on his own the minute he was eighteen.

He went to the post office in Wheeling one day in the first weeks of his senior year, intending to Join The Navy and See The World, as the recruiting posters offered. But the Navy wouldn't have him, for reasons he no longer remembered, nor would the Army. But the Marine recruiter said he would ac-cept his application, send it in, and see what happened.

A month later, there was a letter with a bus ticket and meal vouchers. He went back to Wheeling and took a physical examination and filled out some more forms; and two weeks after that, there was another letter, this one from Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps in Washington, D.C., telling him he had been accepted for enlistment, and that since he was a minor, he would have to have his parents' permission to enlist, form enclosed, signature to be notarized.

He got his "foster father" to sign it and mailed it off. But it came back saying that since Everly was a Ward Of The State Of West Virginia, it would have to be signed by the Responsible Official. That turned out to be the Judge of Probate. The Judge signed the form and told him he thought he was doing the smart thing, shook his hand, and wished him good luck.