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

"What do you mean?"

"In the Banana Republics, the guerrillas came from the native population. It was the brown man against white gringos. Is that right?"

"Yes, I suppose it is."

"In the Philippines, what would it be?"

"Oh, I see what you mean. You're asking would the Filipinos support an American guerrilla operation?"

Pickering nodded.

"Fleming, over the years, you've spent as much time in the Philippines as I have."

"I'm asking you."

"Unless American officers did something really stupid-and that's a real possibility-I think seventy-five percent, eighty-five percent of the Filipinos would help an American guerrilla operation."

Pickering nodded.

"Are you going to tell me why you're interested in this?" Stecker asked.

"There's a chap on Mindanao, a reserve officer who chose not to surren-der. His name is Wendell Fertig. He's trying to set up a guerrilla operation."

"And?"

"We know he's got some Marines with him. That seems to make it our business. We're looking into what, if anything, we can do for him, and what, if any, good he can really do against the Japs."

"Who's we?"

"Frank Knox, Chester Nimitz, and me. El Supremo doesn't seem to be at all interested."

There aren't very many people around, Stecker thought, who can so casu-ally refer to the Secretary of the Navy and the Commander-in-Chief Pacific, by their first names. Or refer, with obviously amused affection, to General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, South West Pacific Ocean Areas, as "El Supremo.

I probably should have insisted on obeying my orders, but the truth is, I'm glad he's going to keep this Colonel Mitchell off my back. And, in the final analysis, Flem Pickering is the senior Marine officer around here; I really don't have any choice.

Lieutenant Hart returned to the kitchen carrying a bottle of Courvoisier cognac and two crystal cognac snifters.

"Colonel Mitchell's compliments, Sir," he said. "He asked me to tell you that he stands ready to render any assistance to Colonel Stecker requested."

Pickering snorted.

"Shall I pour, Sir?" Hart said, smiling.

"Those snifters are for officers and gentlemen, Hart," Pickering said. "At the moment, what you have is just a couple of badly hung-over old Marines. Just pour about an inch of that stuff into our coffee, will you, please?"

=TOP SECRET=

SUPREME HEADQUARTERS SWPOA

NAVY DEPT WASH DC

VIA SPECIAL CHANNEL

DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN

ORIGINAL TO BE DESTROYED AFTER ENCRYPTION AND TRANSMITTAL

FOR COLONEL F.L. RICKABEE

USMC OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT ANALYSIS

BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA

MONDAY 9 NOVEMBER 1942

DEAR FRITZ:

I DON'T KNOW IF YOU'VE HEARD OR NOT, BUT LT COLONEL JACK NMI STECKER IS HERE IN BRISBANE. HE WENT TO STAFF SERGEANT KOFFLER'S WEDDING WITH ME, AS A MATTER OF FACT, AND IS AT THIS MOMENT MOVING HIS STUFF FROM THE ARMY BOQ INTO MY HOUSE. HE'S HERE TO SET UP FACILITIES FOR THE FIRST MARDIV WHEN THEY ARE RELIEVED FROM GUADALCANAL AND BROUGHT HERE FOR REHABILITATION AND REFITTING. ACCORDING TO STECKER, THEY ARE IN REALLY BAD PHYSICAL SHAPE; ALMOST EVERYBODY HAS MALARIA.

STECKER WAS RELIEVED OF HIS COMMAND OF SECOND BATTALION, FIFTH MARINES, AND IS NOW OFFICIALLY ASSIGNED TO SWPOA IN SOME SORT OF VAGUELY DEFINED BILLET. I AM UNABLE TO BELIEVE HE WAS RELIEVED FOR CAUSE, AND STRONGLY SUSPECT THAT IT IS THE PROFESSIONAL OFFICER CORPS PUSHING ASIDE A RESERVIST/UP FROM THE RANKS MUSTANG TO GIVE THE COMMAND TO ONE OF THEIR OWN. I CAN'T IMAGINE WHY GENERAL VANDEGRIFT PERMITTED THIS TO HAPPEN, BUT IT HAS HAPPENED, AND IT MAY BE A BLESSING IN DISGUISE FOR US.

I HAD A TALK WITH STECKER AFTER THE WEDDING, AND IT CAME OUT THAT HE HAS HAD EXTENSIVE EXPERIENCE WITH GUERRILLA OPERATIONS IN THE BANANA REPUBLICS, ESPECIALLY NICARAGUA, BETWEEN THE WARS. IT SEEMS TO ME THAT IF YOU KNOW HOW TO FIGHT AGAINST GUERRILLAS, IT WOULD FOLLOW THAT YOU KNOW HOW TO FIGHT AS A GUERRILLA... AND CERTAINLY TO KNOWLEDGEABLY EVALUATE HOW SOMEONE ELSE IS SET UP, AND EQUIPPED, TO FIGHT AS GUERRILLAS.

I HAVEN'T SAID ANYTHING TO HIM YET, BUT I KNOW HTM WELL ENOUGH TO KNOW THAT HE WOULD RATHER BE DOING SOMETHING EITHER WITH, OR FOR, THIS FELLOW FERTIG ON MINDANAO THAN ARRANGING TOURS OF PICTURESQUE AUSTRALIA OR USO SHOWS, WHICH IS WHAT THE CORPS WANTS HIM TO DO NOW. AND THERE IS NO QUESTION IN MY MIND THAT HIS CONTRIBUTION TO THIS EFFORT WOULD BE OF MUCH GREATER VALUE THAN WHAT HE IS DOING NOW. SO I WANT HIM TRANSFERRED TO US, WITH A CAVEAT: HE HAS ALREADY SUFFERED ENOUGH HUMILIATION (GODDAMN IT, HE HAS THE MEDAL OF HONOR; HOW COULD THEY DO THIS TO HTM?) AS IT IS, SO I WANT YOU TO TAKE EVERY PRECAUTION TO MAKE SURE THERE IS NO SCUTTLEBUTT CIRCULATING THAT HE HAS BEEN FURTHER DEMOTED BY HIS ASSIGNMENT TO US.

DO IT AS QUICKLY AS YOU CAN, AND I THINK YOU HAD BETTER SEND MCCOY OVER HERE, TOO, AS QUICKLY AS THAT CAN BE ARRANGED. I THINK THE SOONER WE GET SOMEBODY WITH CAPTAIN/GENERAL FERTIG, THE BETTER.

REGARDS,

FLEMING PICKERING, BRIGADIER GENERAL, USMCR

T O P S E C R E T

[TWO]

Naval Air Transport Station

Brisbane, Australia

0455 Hours 14 November 1942

First Lieutenant Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR, was not in a very good mood when the Consolidated PB2Y-3 Coronado splashed down in Brisbane Harbor; a drenching in the whaleboat that carried him ashore made his mood worse; and when he saw Second Lieutenant George F. Hart, USMCR, standing on the wharf, the golden cords of an aide-de-camp hanging from his epaulets, his mood grew worse still.

The sonofabitch hasn't been in The Corps long enough to be a goddamned corporal, and there he stands in an officer's uniform!

The flight from Pearl Harbor in the huge, four-engined flying boat was long and rough. A Medical Corps lieutenant commander got airsick thirty min-utes out of Pearl, threw up what looked like the remnants of an entire Hawaiian luau and two quarts of beer all over himself and the deck, and then spent the rest of the flight either moaning, dry-heaving, or rubbing his vomit-soaked uni-form in McCoy's face as he made his way-every fifteen minutes-to the head.

Before McCoy boarded the Coronado at Pearl Harbor, he had run into a zealous Navy lieutenant who wouldn't let him get on the airplane-AAAAA priority or not-until his shot record was up to date. McCoy's shot record re-corded that he had been injected with every inoculation against every disease known to the Navy Medical Corps. The record itself, however, was in Wash-ington. Ed Sessions had suggested that since he was going to be around for a while, it would make sense to have the contents of the shot record incorporated into all his official records.

Sessions hadn't gotten it back to him when the hurry-up call from General Pickering to go to Brisbane came in.

The idiot at Pearl actually wanted to give him the entire series of inocula-tions again. But a medical lieutenant commander at the hospital was more rea-sonable. He gave McCoy "credit" for all the shots given Marines in the States, but insisted that McCoy take the series prescribed for people headed for the Pacific and/or South West Pacific Ocean Areas-despite McCoy's protesta-tions that he had been in Australia only the month before, and had had the shots then.

So he suffered from the side effects of half a dozen inoculations-includ-ing a left buttock that felt as if it had been bitten by a poisonous snake. He couldn't sit on his sore left buttock without pain, and there was no way, on the pipe-and-cloth seats of the Coronado, to avoid sitting on it.

Before the Coronado took off from Pearl Harbor, there was a long flight on an Army Air Corps B-17 Flying Fortress from San Francisco. He spent that flight making himself as comfortable as possible on a pile of mail sacks.

McCoy climbed out of the whaleboat and then, carrying his bag, made his way up the stone steps cut into the wharf.