W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps IV - Battleground

One of Captain Fleming Pickering's first reports from Australia to Secretary of the Navy Knox had informed him both of the existence of the Coastwatcher Organization and of the barely concealed hostility between it and the U.S. Navy. He recommended, strongly, that Knox establish a special unit-not subordinate to "Pearl Harbor brass hats"- to work with the Coastwatchers.

Properly handled, Pickering wrote, the Coastwatcher Establishment would be of enormous value. Knox responded by charging Marine Corps Intelligence with the responsibility of working with the Coastwatchers. The orders to the again purposefully obfuscatorily named Marine Office of Management Analysis had been to set up an outfit, with whatever priorities and funds were required, to do what Captain Fleming Pickering thought should be done. Special Detachment 14 had been the result.

There was a more or less standing requisition from Major Ed Banning for two kinds of specialists: radio technicians and Japanese-language linguists. What Banning wanted, the Marine Office of Management Analysis tried very hard to send him.

"Think?" Captain Sessions asked. "Does he speak Japanese or not? And assuming he wasn't in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade?"

"He's an officer candidate," Rutterman said. "They started sending a bunch of them through Boot Camp at Parris Island."

"So? What's the problem?"

"For one thing, he's five months, maybe a little more, away from being available for assignment. After he finishes Parris Island, he has to go through Officer Basic School at Quantico. And by that time, we'd have to fight for him anyhow; they'd want to send him to a Division. And Banning needs him now."

"So we take him and send him to Banning now," Sessions said. "As an enlisted man." He heard what he had said, and added: "That sounds a little ruthless, doesn't it? But Banning really needs linguists. 'For the good of the Corps,' all right?"

"Those guys who enlisted as officer candidates have a deal, Captain," Rutterman said. "They either get the bar, or they get discharged."

"And then what?" Sessions asked.

"They report him to his draft board, and he goes in the Army."

"What about a direct commission?"

"Two weeks ago, that would have been the answer; but now the word is every second John goes through Basic School at Quantico. No exceptions. We'd only pick up a couple of weeks, if we could get a slot for him at Quantico. Of course, if we did that, got him a direct commission, he would belong to us, and we could probably keep him."

"Damn!" Sessions said. "And there are some other questions. Is he for real? Can he get a security clearance?"

"He's got a security clearance. Permanent SECRET. The FBI ran a complete background investigation on him when he first applied for the officer candidate program. Before they called him for active duty."

"So it would be reasonable to presume that his story that he lived in Japan for-how many years?"

"Ten, in all."

"... checked out. And if that's the case, maybe he really does read and write Japanese."

"Yes, Sir."

"I think I better go see the Colonel," Sessions said. "And you better come with me."

The Colonel was Lieutenant Colonel F.L. Rickabee, USMC, who was carried on the Table of Organization and Equipment of Headquarters, United States Marine Corps, as a Management Analyst in the office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Logistics. This had absolutely nothing whatever to do with his actual duties.

Colonel Rickabee, a tall, slight man who was in civilian clothing and didn't, truth to tell, look much like a Marine on a recruiting poster, heard out Captain Sessions and Technical Sergeant Rutterman.

"Ed, there's a courier plane to Parris Island at ten o'clock. Get on it. Go see this young man. First see if he really is fluent in Japanese. If he is, offer him instant sergeant's stripes and five-day delay en route home leave if he waives his current rights as an officer candidate. Tell him we'll arrange a commission for him later. If he gets on his high horse, Rutterman here will personally take him to 'Diego or 'Frisco and load him on the first plane for Australia as a private. Questions?"

"Sir, where are you going to get the authority to promote him to sergeant?" Sessions asked.

"The same place I got the authority to put him on the next plane to Major Banning. Banning desperately needs linguists. This linguist Rutterman found just may keep some Marines alive if I can get him to Banning. If I have to explain that to General Holcomb personally, I will. Questions?"

Captain Sessions was aware that two mornings a week, Lieutenant Colonel Rickabee went to Eighth and "I" Streets, S.E., in Washington. There, with the sliding doors to the Commandant's Dining Room closed, he took breakfast alone with the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps, newly promoted Lieutenant General Thomas Holcomb. If the Commandant was out of town for longer than a couple of days, Rickabee either went wherever he was, or had a private meeting with whoever was running the Marine Corps in Holcomb's absence.

"No, Sir," Sessions said, and then had a second thought. He glanced at his watch. "Sir, it's five past nine. I'm not sure I can make that ten hundred courier."

Colonel Rickabee looked thoughtful for a moment, and then dialed a telephone number from memory.

"Charley, Fred Rickabee. I'm sending an officer, Captain Ed Sessions, to Parris Island on your ten o'clock courier plane. See that it doesn't leave until he gets on it, will you?"

There was a pause, and then Rickabee said, "I don't care who gets thrown off, Sessions goes. And when he comes back, he'll be bringing a private with him. Questions?"

There was another pause.

"I've always been an unreasonable prick, Charley, you know that," Rickabee chuckled. He put the phone in its cradle and looked at Captain Sessions. "Questions?"

"No, Sir."

"Good job, Rutterman," Rickabee said, "finding this guy."

Then he dropped his eyes to the papers, most of them stamped TOP SECRET, on his desk, and shut Captain Sessions and Technical Sergeant Rutterman off from his attention.

(Two)

HEADQUARTERS, 2ND TRAINING BATTALION

UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS RECRUIT DEPOT

PARRIS ISLAND, SOUTH CAROLINA

1555 HOURS 15 JUNE 1942

"Colonel Westman for you, Sir," Major H.B. Humphrey's clerk, a small, stocky, young Corporal in tailored khakis, announced, putting his head in the door.

"Thank you," Humphrey said, reaching for the telephone on the desk of his office. The desk, like the building, was new. The building was so new it smelled of freshly cut pine. The interior walls of the hastily thrown up structure had not been finished; between the exposed studs the tar paper under the outer sheeting was visible.

Photographs of the chain of command-President Roosevelt, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, and the Commanding General of Parris Island-hung from bare studs. These photos were as much de rigueur for a battalion commander's office as the National Colors, the Marine Corps flag, and the battalion colors.

In addition to the desk and its chair, the office was furnished with a small safe, a filing cabinet, and two folding metal chairs.

"Major Humphrey, Sir," he said to the telephone.

He wondered what the hell Colonel Westman wanted. Westman was the Parris Island G-2 Intelligence Officer. There was very little that a training battalion had to do with Intelligence. For that matter, Humphrey had wondered idly more than once what the Parris Island G-2 did at all. The function of a G-2 in the Marines was to provide the Corps with whatever information he could lay his hands on about the enemy. There was no enemy anywhere close to Parris Island.

"One of your boots has attracted the attention of some people who sit pretty close to the divine throne, Humphrey," Colonel Westman announced without any preliminaries. "A man named Moore. John Marston Moore. An officer candidate. You know him?"