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

"And for me to go home."

"Right."

"I don't want to go home. I want to stay here with you, forever."

"That's obviously out of the question."

He sat up. She tried to hand him the cup and saucer. He avoided it.

She touched the top of his head.

"You are really very sweet," she said.

He tilted his head back to look up at her. She smiled.

He reached up for the cord of her robe.

"Don't do that."

He ignored her.

The robe fell open when he pulled the cord free.

He put his arms around her and his face against her belly.

He heard her take in her breath, and her hand dropped to the small of his neck.

"Oh God!" she said.

Her navel was next to his mouth and he kissed it.

"I'm going to spill the coffee."

"Put the coffee on the floor and take the robe off."

"And if I do, then will you go?"

"No."

She dropped to her knees and put the cup and saucer on the floor, shrugged out of the robe, and then turned her face to him and kissed him.

"Oh, Baby, what am I going to do with you?"

"I don't know about that," he said. "But I know what I'm going to do to you."

He put his hands on her shoulders and moved her onto the bed and looked down at her.

"God, you're so beautiful!" he said.

"So are you," she said.

And then he surprised her very much by pushing himself off the bed. She raised her head to look at him. He walked to the other side of the bed and sat down and reached for her telephone.

"Father," he said into it. "Uncle Bill and I have had a long talk and a lot to drink, and I think it would be best if I stayed over with him at the Union League, rather than driving."

There was a pause, and then Sergeant John Marston Moore, USMCR, said: "You're going to have to understand, Father, that I'm no longer a child. I can drink whatever and whenever I wish."

There was another pause.

"There's something else, Father. My orders have been changed. I have to leave tomorrow afternoon. When Mother's awake, please tell her that I'll be out there sometime before noon to pack. I have to see Mr. Schuyler at First Philadelphia, first."

One final pause.

"I think you know why I have to see Mr. Schuyler, Father," John said.

A moment later, he took the receiver from his ear and looked at it.

It was clear to Barbara Ward (Mrs. Howard P.) Hawthorne, Jr., that John's father had hung up on him. There was pain in his eyes when he turned from putting the receiver in its cradle and looked at her.

"Oh, Baby," she said. "Whatever that was, I'm sorry."

"Do you think you could manage to call me 'Darling,' or 'Sweetheart,' or something besides 'Baby'?... I'll even settle happily for 'John.'"

She held her arms open.

"Come to me, my darling," she said.

He didn't move.

"I thought you wanted me to leave."

She put her arms down and pulled the sheet up and held it over her breast.

She found his eyes and looked into them and said, "I want what's best for you."

"You're what's best for me."

"You really have to leave tomorrow? Which is really, now, today?"

"No. Thursday."

"Then why... ?"

"I want to be with you until I go."

She took her eyes from his and lowered her head and fought the tears. Then she raised her eyes to his again and opened her arms again and said, "Come to me, John, my darling, my sweetheart."

And this time he went to her.

Chapter Six

(One)

HEADQUARTERS

MARINE AIR GROUP TWENTY-ONE (MAG-21)

EWA, OAHU ISLAND, TERRITORY OF HAWAII

1325 HOURS 19 JUNE 1942

Lieutenant Colonel Clyde G. Dawkins, USMC, Commanding MAG-21, was a tall, thin, sharp-featured man who wore his light brown hair so closely cropped that the tanned and sun-freckled flesh of his scalp was visible.

He was wearing a stiffly starched khaki shirt with a field scarf tied in a tiny knot. A gold collar clasp held the collar points together and the knot in the field scarf erect. He had heard somewhere that the collar clasp was now frowned upon; but that brought the same reaction from him as the suggestion from Pearl Harbor that since Navy Naval Aviators were now discouraged from wearing their fur-collared leather flight jackets when not actually engaged in flying activities, it behooved him to similarly discourage Marine Naval Aviators from wearing their flight jackets when not actually on the flight line: He said nothing; thought, Fuck You; and wore both a collar clasp and his leather flight jacket almost all the time, fully aware that if he did so, the Marine Naval Aviators of MAG-21 would presume it was not only permissible but encouraged.

He was not at all a rebel by nature. He did not relish defying higher authority, even when he knew he could get away with it. But he was a practical man, and the wearing of flight jackets by aviators seemed far more practical and convenient than forcing his officers to waste time taking off and putting on their uniform tunics half a dozen times a day. And the gold collar clasp, in his judgment, struck him as a splendid means to keep an officer's collar points where they belonged, even if some people in The Corps thought of it as "civilian-type jewelry." An officer with one of his collar points in a horizontal attitude looked far more slovenly than one with his collar points fixed in the proper attitude with a barely visible piece of "civilian jewelry."

The officer standing somewhat uncomfortably before Lieutenant Colonel Dawkins's desk had performed well in the Battle of Midway. His name was Captain Thomas J. Wood. He was young and newly promoted; he was wearing a fur-collared flight jacket and a collar clasp; and he was standing with his hands clasped together behind him in the small of his back.

But there was something about him-an impetuosity, an indecisiveness-that Dawkins did not like. Dawkins believed that a good officer made decisions slowly, and then stuck by them.

"It's time to fish or cut bait, Tom," Dawkins said, not unkindly.

"Uh... Sir, I decline to press charges."

"So be it," Dawkins said.

"Sir, I saw what I saw, but I can't..."

"That will be all, Captain," Dawkins said. There was now a hint of ice in his voice. "You are dismissed."

The captain came to attention.

"Yes, Sir," he said. He did an about-face and started to march out of the room.

"Ask Major Lorenz to come in, please," Dawkins called to him.

"Aye, aye, Sir."

Major Karl J. Lorenz, who was the Executive Officer of MAG-21, walked into the office. Lorenz looked, Dawkins often thought, like a recruiting poster for the Waffen-SS-in other words like an Aryan of impeccable Nordic-Teutonic heritage, blond-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned, and lithely muscular.

"You wanted me, Skipper?" he asked.

"Close the door, please," Dawkins said.

Lorenz did so.

"After some thought," Dawkins said, "he declined to press charges."

"Huh," Lorenz said thoughtfully. "Probably a good thing, Sir. It would have been hard to make those charges stick."

"Not a good thing, Karl," Dawkins said.

"You think we should have tried him?" Lorenz asked, surprised.

"I think before young Captain Wood started running off at the mouth, he should have made up his mind whether or not he was prepared to carry an accusation of cowardice through."

"Oh," Lorenz replied. "Yes, Sir, I see what you mean."

"He doesn't really know any more than I do-and I wasn't there-if Dunn ran away from that fight or not. Cowardice in the face of the enemy... that's the worst accusation that can be made."

"I presume you told Wood that?"

"No. I didn't want to influence his decision, one way or the other."

"Can I ask what you think?"

"I already told you, I don't think Wood-really knows. Or, if you were asking, do I think Dunn ran?"