W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps V - Line of Fire

"He doesn't like to be called that," Rickabee said.

"To hell with him, I'm a general, I'll call him whatever I want to," Pickering said. "Besides, I am literally old enough to be his father."

"McCoy's brother apparently was quite a hero on Bloody Ridge. An INS reporter has dubbed him `Machine Gun McCoy." Dillon's boss, a Brigadier General named Stewart, in Public Relations at Eighth and Eye, found out about our McCoy and wants to make public relations about him. When they started asking us questions, we gave them the runaround, and General Stewart sent Dillon to straighten us out. Moore recognized Dillon-"

"Jake met him at my house in Australia," Pickering interrupted.

"-and brought him into my office."

"So what do we do about McCoy? You want me to call this General-Stewart, you said?-and get him off our back?"

"I thought perhaps you would be willing to call General Forrest. That would keep us out of it entirely. And it would give you a chance to talk to him."

Major General Horace W. T. Forrest was Assistant Chief of Staff, Intelligence, Headquarters, USMC.

"Why do I suspect an ulterior motive, Rickabee? Why didn't you just call Forrest?"

"I thought it might be of value, General, to remind General Forrest that you are not just a nightmare of his."

"You really think it's that bad?"

"My job is to see things as they are, General. Let me put it this way: I suspect that General Forrest secretly hopes that your recovery will take some time, maybe until the war is over. He has not come to see you, you may have noticed, or even had his aide call your aide to ask about your condition."

"In that case, get the sonofabitch on the phone," Pickering said. "After you tell me what to say to him."

"The General has been made aware of the problem, Sir. Another general officer, who has no need to know why, has to be discouraged from asking about one of your officers. I'm sure the General will know how to deal with the situation."

"I haven't the foggiest idea... " Pickering said, and stopped.

Rickabee was already picking up the telephone.

"General Pickering for General Forrest," Rickabee said, and then handed Pickering the telephone.

"Forrest."

"Pickering, General."

"Well, what a pleasant surprise, General. I understand you've been a little under the weather."

"I'm feeling much better, General."

"Ready for duty, General?"

"I've placed myself on limited duty, General, until I can get the doctors to agree with my prognosis."

"Well, General, you really don't want to rush things. You'd better listen to the doctors."

"I have a little problem, General. I thought I could ask you help with it."

"Anything within my power, General."

"It has to do with General Stewart-"

"Public relations type, that Stewart?"

"That's right, General."

"Well, you and I, General, are really not in the public relations business, are we?"

"That's precisely the problem, General. General Stewart apparently has an interest in putting one of my officers into the public eye."

"Who would that be, General?"

"Lieutenant McCoy, General."

"Oh, yes. I know McCoy. What the hell does Stewart want with him?"

"It seems that McCoy's brother did something spectacular on Guadalcanal, General. General Stewart is having him returned for publicity purposes. He found out that Sergeant McCoy's brother is my McCoy and wants to involve him."

"Give him the runaround, General."

"General Stewart is a determined man, General. He sent a major to see Colonel Rickabee."

"Give the major the runaround. I was under the impression that Rickabee was pretty good at that sort of thing."

"Colonel Rickabee is, General. But the Major is about as determined as General Stewart. Which is why I'm asking for your help, General."

"I'll deal with General Stewart, General. Put it out of your mind."

"Thank you very much, General."

"As soon as you feel up to it, General, have your aide call mine and we'll set something up. You and I really have to sit down and have a long talk."

"That's very kind of you, General. I'll do that."

"Good to finally have the chance to talk to you, Pickering," General Forrest said, and the line went dead.

Pickering put the telephone back in its cradle and looked at Rickabee.

"How'd I do?"

"General officers are expected to do very well, General. You didn't let the side down."

"If I were Forrest, I wouldn't like me either," Pickering said.

"I wouldn't like it a goddamn bit if somebody I never heard of, who got his commission in a damned strange way, showed up as one of my senior subordinates."

"General, President Roosevelt is the Commander in Chief. There should be no questioning of his orders by a Marine."

"I don't think Forrest is questioning the legality of the order, but I suspect he has some question about its wisdom."

"Who was it, General-Churchill?-who said, `War is too important a matter to leave to the generals'?"

"I think it was Churchill," Pickering said. "But that leaves me sort of in limbo, doesn't it? As a general who really shouldn't be a general?"

"That question, General, is moot. And who was it that said, `Yours not to reason why, et cetera, et cetera'?"

"I have no idea, but I take your point." There was a knock at the door. And then three Army enlisted men in hospital garb appeared. Two of them were pushing a table with a Bell and Howell motion picture projector on it and the third was carrying a screen.

"I believe the General wishes that set up in the sitting room," Rickabee said. "Is that correct, General?"

"That is correct, Colonel," General Pickering said.

[Five]

When Sergeant George S. Hart entered The Corps, he brought one thing with him that few of his fellows had when they joined-a familiarity with violent death.

As a cop, he'd seen-and grown accustomed to-all sorts of sights that turned civilians' stomachs, civilians being defined by cops as anyone not a cop. He'd seen bridge jumpers after they'd been pulled from the Mississippi; people whose dismembered bodies had to be pried from the twisted wreckage of their automobiles; every kind of suicide; people whose time on earth had been ended by axes, by lead pipes, by rifle shots, pistol shots, shotguns.

Even before he joined the force, he'd been present in the Medical Examiner's office while the coroner removed hearts, lungs, and other vital organs from open-eyed cadavers and dropped them like so much hamburger into the stainless-steel scale hanging over the dissection table. All the while, the coroner would exchange jokes with Hart's father.

But none of this had prepared him for the motion picture film Major Jake Dillon brought with him from Guadalcanal.

There were five large reels of film.

"You understand, Fleming," Dillon said to The General (for that was how Hart had begun to look at Fleming Pickering The General, not the General), "that this is a really rough cut.

All my lab guys did was soup it and splice the short takes together. This is the first time anyone has had a look at it." After Major Dillon told him to kill the lights in The General's sitting room and started to run the film, it was sort of like being in a newsreel theater with the sound off.

The film began with a picture of a small slate blackboard on which the cameraman had written the date, the time, the location, the subject matter, and his name.

For example:

5 August `1942 1540

Aboard USS Calhoun

En route to Guadalcanal

1st Para Bn Prepares for Invasion

Cpl HJL Simpson, USMCR

Then there were Marines; most of them were smiling. They were standing or sitting around, cleaning their weapons, sharpening knives, working ammunition-linking machines for machine gun belts, or writing letters home, stuff like that.