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

And the final proof that she was a lady and not an Easy Woman came during the one time she raised her eyes from The Saturday Evening Post to look at him. It was clear from her facial expression that he was of absolutely no interest to her at all.

But despite all this, he found her exciting and desirable. This struck him with particular urgency after she stood to take off her suit jacket: The light then was such that her torso was silhouetted by the sun; the absolutely magnificent shape of her breasts had, for ten seconds or so, been his to marvel at.

And when she sat down and crossed her legs, there was a flash of thigh and slip, of lace and soft white flesh; and instantly, in his mind's eye, she was as naked as the lady in the club soda ad, sitting on a rock by a mountain lake.

At that instant the sexual depressant effects of saltpeter were flushed from his system as if they were never there, and Old Faithful popped to a position of attention that met every standard of the Guide Book for Marines for stiffness and immobility.

Had the opportunity presented itself, Sergeant John Marston Moore, USMCR, would cheerfully have gone with her then... even if the price was the loss of all his money, contraction of syphilis, gonorrhea, all other social diseases, and any chances he had after the war to meet Miss Right and have a family of his own.

He tried, very hard, not to let her know he was watching her. This involved adjusting his head so that he could see her reflection in a mirror on the club car wall. Despite his care, she did catch him looking at her once; in a flash, he desperately spun around in his chair.

A little later, he managed to catch another reflection of her in the glass of his window, but that was nowhere near as satisfactory as the mirror reflection.

Between Baltimore and Philadelphia, she spoke to him. Her voice was as deep, soft, throaty, and sensual as he knew it would be.

"Excuse me," she said, waving The Saturday Evening Post at him. "I'm through with this. Would you like it?"

"No!" he said abruptly, with all the fervor the Good Marine had shown in the training film when the Easy Woman offered him a cigarette laced with some kind of narcotic. "It'll make you feel real good," she'd told him breathily.

"Sorry," the woman said, taken aback.

You're a fucking asshole, Moore, J. Out of your cotton-picking fucking mind!

"I don't read much," he heard himself say.

The absolutely beautiful woman smiled at him uneasily.

"Excuse me," Sergeant John Marston Moore, USMCR, said. They he got up and walked to the vestibule of the car, where he banged his forehead on the window, and where he stayed until the train pulled into the 30th Street Station in Philadelphia.

The woman got off the train there. Fortunately, Moore decided, she didn't see him hiding in the vestibule corner. He exhaled audibly with relief. And then, for one last look at the beautiful older woman as she marched down the platform and out of his life forever, he stuck his head out the door.

She was standing right there, as the porter transferred her luggage into the custody of a Red Cap.

He pulled his head back as quickly as he could.

When it began to move again, and the train caught up with her on the platform, she looked for and found Sergeant John Marston Moore. She smiled and waved.

And smiled again and shook her head when, very shyly, the nice-looking young Marine waved back.

"North Philadelphia," the conductor called, "North Philadelphia, next."

(Two)

U.S. MARINE BARRACKS

U.S. NAVY YARD

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA 18 JUNE 1942

While the staff sergeant who dealt with Sergeant John Marston Moore, USMCR, could not honestly be characterized as charming, in comparison to the sergeants who had dealt with Moore at Parris, he seemed to be.

"You're Moore, huh?" he greeted him. "Get yourself a cup of coffee and I'll be with you in a minute."

He gestured toward a coffee machine and turned his attention to a stack of papers on his crowded desk. The machine was next to a window overlooking the Navy Yard. As he drank the coffee, Moore watched with interest an enormous crane lift a five-inch cannon and its mount from a railroad flatcar onto the bow of a freighter.

He found the operation so absorbing that he was somewhat startled when the staff sergeant came up to him and spoke softly into his ear.

"You could have fooled me, Moore," he said. "Even with that haircut, you don't look like somebody who was a private three days ago."

Moore was surprised to see that the staff sergeant was smiling at him.

"Thank you," Moore said.

"I checked your papers out pretty carefully," the staff sergeant said. "Everything's shipshape. Shots. Overseas qualification. Next of kin. All that crap. Once you get paid, and after The Warning, all you have to do is get on the airplane at Newark airport on Friday morning."

" `The Warning'?" Moore asked.

"Yeah, The Warning," the staff sergeant said. "Come on."

He gestured with his hand for Moore to follow him. He stopped by the open, frosted glass door to a small office and tapped on the glass with his knuckles.

A captain looked up, then motioned them inside.

"Sergeant Moore, Sir, for The Warning."

"Sure," the captain said, and looked at Moore. "Sergeant, you have been alerted for overseas movement. It is my duty to make sure that you understand that any failure on your part to make that movement, by failing to report when and where your orders specify, is a more serious offense than simple absence without leave, can be construed as intention to desert or desertion, and that the penalties provided are greater. Do you understand where and when you are to report, and what I have just said to you?"

"Yes, Sir," Sergeant Moore replied.

"Where's he going?" the captain asked, curiously.

The staff sergeant handed the captain a sheaf of papers.

"Interesting," the captain said.

"Ain't it?" the staff sergeant agreed. "Look at the six-A priority."

"I'd love to know what you do for the Corps, Sergeant Moore," the captain said. "But I know better than to ask."

That's good, Moore thought wryly, because I have no idea what I'm supposed to do for the Corps.

The captain then surprised him further by standing up and offering Moore his hand.

"Good luck, Moore," he said.

Moore sensed that the good wishes were not merely sincere, but a deviation from a normal issuing of The Warning, which he now understood was some sort of standard routine.

"Thank you, Sir."

The staff sergeant handed the captain a stack of paper, and the captain wrote his signature on a sheet of it.

That's a record that I got The Warning, Moore decided.

The staff sergeant nudged Moore, and Moore followed him out of the office. They went to the Navy Finance Office where Moore was given a partial pay of one hundred dollars.

The staff sergeant then commandeered an empty desk and went through all the papers, dividing them into two stacks. Moore watched as one stack including, among other things, his service record, went into a stiff manila envelope. The sergeant sealed it twice: He first licked the gummed flap and then he put over that a strip of gummed paper.

He surprised Moore by then forging an officer's name on the gummed tape: "Sealed at MBPHILA 18June42 James D. Yesterburg, Capt USMC"

Yesterburg, Moore decided, was the captain who had given him The Warning and then wished him good luck.

"Normally, you don't get to carry your own records," the staff sergeant said, handing him the envelope. "But if you do, they have to be sealed. There's nothing in there you haven't seen, but I wouldn't open it, if I was you. Or unless you can get your hands on another piece of gummed tape." Moore chuckled.

"These are your orders," the staff sergeant said as he stuffed a quarter-inch-thick stack of mimeograph paper into another, ordinary, manila envelope. "And your tickets, railroad from here to Newark; bus from Newark station to the airport; the airplane tickets, Eastern to Saint Louis, Transcontinental and Western to Los Angeles; and a bus ticket in LA from the airport to the train station; and finally your ticket on the train-they call it "The Lark"-from LA to 'Diego. In 'Diego, there'll be an RTO office-that means Rail Transport Office-and they'll arrange for you to get where you should be. OK?" "Got it," Moore said.