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

"You used to date a sergeant?" he blurted.

"My, aren't you the prig? Haven't you ever done anything you shouldn't?" she asked as she dabbed at the gummy residue of the second bandage. "I think we'll just leave the bandage off of that."

"I didn't mean to sound like a prig," he said. "I guess I was just a little surprised to... hear you volunteer that."

"Well, I didn't think you would tell anybody," she said. "You mean you never heard of Sergeant Charley Galloway?"

And then, all of a sudden, he realized that he had. He hadn't made the connection before because of the rank.

"I reported aboard VMF-211 after he left," Dunn said. "That Galloway?"

She chuckled.

"That Galloway," she confirmed.

"The scuttlebutt I heard was that he and another sergeant put together a Wildcat from wrecks of what was left on December seventh, wrecks that had been written off the books, and that he flew it off without authority to join the Wake Island relief force at sea."

"The Saratoga," she said. "Task Force XIV," she said. "They started out to reinforce Wake Island, but they were called back."

"I heard that he was really in trouble for doing that," Dunn said. "That they sent him back to the States for a court-martial. What was that all about?"

"He embarrassed the Navy brass," she explained. "First of all BUAIR." (The U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, which is charged with aviation engineering for the Marine Corps.) "They examined the airplanes after the Japanese attack and said they were total losses. But Charley and Sergeant Oblensky..." "Who?"

"Big Steve Oblensky. He was VMF-211's Maintenance Sergeant."

"I know him," Dunn said. "As far as I know, he still is."

"So after the brass said all of VMF-21 l's planes at Ewa were beyond repair, Big Steve and Charley got one flying; and then Charley flew it out to Sara, which was then a couple of hundred miles at sea. The whole relief force was supposed to be a secret, especially of course, where Sara was. So the brass's faces were red, and since the brass never make a mistake, they decided to stick the old purple shaft in Charley."

"Why did he do it?"

"Hell," Lieutenant (j.g.) O'Malley said, "the rest of VMF-211 was on Wake and had already lost most of their planes. Charley figured they needed whatever airplanes they could get. The only aircraft on Sara were Buffaloes. They could have used Charley's Wildcat, if the brass here hadn't called the relief force back."

Dunn grunted.

It had occurred to him that despite the smell of her perfume, her well-filled brassiere, and the other delightful aspects of her gentle gender, Lieutenant (j.g.) O'Malley was talking to him like-more importantly, thinking like-a fellow officer of the Naval Establishment, even down to an easy familiarity with the vernacular. It was somewhat disconcerting.

"We don't know if we're talking about the same man," he said.

"Probably, we're not," Mary Agnes O'Malley replied, matter-of-factly, "considering how pissed off the brass was at Charley. It's probably some other guy with the same name."

He sensed that she was disappointed.

She put the alcohol swab on the tray and picked up a pair of surgical scissors. Next she bent low over his midsection; and he sensed, rather than saw-her head was in the way, and he was unable to withdraw his eyes from her brassiere- that she was cutting the sutures.

The procedure took her a full ninety seconds. Sensing that she was concentrating, he did not attempt to make conversation.

She straightened, finally, and he was suddenly sure from the look in her eyes that she knew he had been looking down her dress.

She laid the scissors down and picked up surgical forceps and a pad of gauze.

"Now we pull the thread out," she said, and bent over him again. "It shouldn't hurt, so don't squirm."

"Okay."

The green surgical cloth was somehow displaced. He grabbed for it in the same moment she did. She got to it first and put it back in place. In doing so, her hand brushed against it.

"Christ, I'm sorry!" Dunn said.

"Don't be silly," she said professionally.

"I thought, I heard..." Bill blurted, "that when something like that happens, a nurse knows where to hit it to make it go down."

She chuckled, deep in her throat.

"I wouldn't want to hurt it," she said, matter-of-factly. "I think it's darling."

He felt a nipping sensation, and then a moment later, another one, and then a third. He realized that she was pulling the black sutures from his flesh.

She stood erect and wiped two short lengths of thread from her fingers with a cloth, and then a third from the forceps. She looked down at him.

"We're supposed to be very professional-I think the word is 'dispassionate'-when something like that happens," she said. "But the truth is, sometimes that doesn't happen. Especially when the patient is sort of cute."

Her fingers slid up his leg, found his erection, and traced it gently.

"You're going to be discharged tomorrow, which means that if you ask for one, they'll give you an off-the-ward pass until 2230."

She took her hand away, wiped the forceps with the gauze again, and bent over him. He felt another series of nips in the soft flesh of his groin, and then she stood up again.

"Cat got your tongue?" she asked.

"I don't suppose you could have dinner with me tonight?"

"I think that could be arranged," she said.

"Put your hand on it again."

"We'd both be in trouble if somebody saw us," she said, and then ran her fingers over him again.

"What time?"

"I go off at 1630," she said. "How about 1730 at the bar?"

"Fine."

"My roommate has the duty tonight," she said.

"She does?"

"If we have gentlemen callers, we're supposed to leave the door open," she said. "But I always wonder, when the door is closed, how anybody could tell if we have anybody in there or not."

"I can't see how they could tell," he said.

"Well, maybe you might want to get a bottle of scotch and pick me up at my quarters. We could have a drink, and then go to dinner. Or would you rather eat first?"

"What kind of scotch?"

"I'm not fussy," she said.

"You better stop that, or I'm going to...'"

She immediately took her hand away.

"We wouldn't want to waste it, would we?" she asked. "Now be a good boy and let me finish this. Before old Shit-for-brains wonders why it's taking me so long and sticks her nose in here."

(Four)

APARTMENT MC"

106 RITTENHOUSE SQUARE

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

22 JUNE 1942

Barbara Ward (Mrs. Howard P.) Hawthorne, Jr., slid the frosted glass door open and stepped out of her shower. She took a towel from the rack and started to dry her hair. Then she stopped and wiped the condensation from the mirror over the wash basin.

She resumed drying her hair as she examined herself in the mirror.

It's not at all bad looking, she thought, they're not pendulous, and the tummy is still firm, but ye old body is thirty-six years old. Nearly thirty-seven, not thirty-two, as you told John.

When he is thirty-seven-she did the arithmetic-you will be fifty-one. Fifty-one! My God, you 're insane, Barbara!

She finished drying herself, put the towel in the hamper, and went into the bedroom. There she took a spray bottle of eau de cologne and sprayed it on herself, and then she took a bottle of perfume, which she dabbed behind her ears and in the valley between her breasts. She pulled on her robe, walked back to the bathroom, and began to brush her hair, looking into the reflection of her eyes in the mirror.

Why did you put perfume on? There will be no one to smell it. Specifically, John has probably nuzzled you between the breasts for the last time. He is at this very moment ten thousand feet in the air over Western Pennsylvania, or Ohio, or someplace, on his way to the war. Even if he survives that, the chances of his coming back to you are very slim.