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

"There's no argument over the importance of Rabaul, just when and how to take it. The Navy wants to start with Tulagi and move to Rabaul gradually. The Army agrees that it would be easier to take Tulagi first than it would be to take Rabaul, but argues that as we move northward to Rabaul afterward, all our operations would be under attack from Rabaul-based bombers. And, further, as soon as the Japanese see what our obvious plans are, they would have time to reinforce Rabaul with both ground and air forces."

"So what's going to happen?" Banning asked.

"Theoretically, the matter is still under consideration by the Joint Chiefs of Staff," Pickering said drily.

" 'Theoretically'?" Banning asked.

"King apparently thinks he will prevail when the decision is made by the President. He's ordered Nimitz to prepare to attack in the Solomons, with or without MacArthur's support. Nimitz relayed that order to Ghormley. So the First Marines are either about to start making up the Operations Orders for the invasion of Guadalcanal, or they already have them now."

"How do you know that?"

"Don't ask, Major," Pluto Hon said softly. "You really don't want to know."

"What do you think's going to happen, Captain?" Banning asked.

"Franklin Roosevelt hates MacArthur, and he loves King and the U.S. Navy. He is probably going to rationalize his decision to go with King by deciding that Marshall's agreement with MacArthur on this is based on Marshall hating the Navy even more than he hates MacArthur. Logic will have little to do with it."

"Jesus!" Banning said softly.

"And of course," Pickering added, "Admiral King is certainly going to walk into the Oval Office and dramatically throw the aerial photographs the Air Corps took of this field on Guadalcanal onto the presidential desk. It will be an effective cap to his argument."

"Isn't it?" Banning asked.

"If we had Rabaul, the Japs could not supply an airfield on Guadalcanal," Pickering said. "And it seems to me that if a B-17 could take pictures of the field on Guadalcanal, B-17s could bomb it, too."

Banning looked as if he was going to say something, but had then decided against it. He held his glass up.

"May I have another of these, Sir?"

"Sure, Ed," Pickering said. "You don't have to ask. Help yourself." Then he added: "But in any event, the more information we have about the field on Guadalcanal, and the sooner we get it, the better."

Banning, halfway across the room to the liquor, stopped and turned.

"At this moment, as I am about to help myself to another belt of your splendid booze, and about to sit down to a baron of lamb - Mrs. Cavendish told me about the lamb - at least four Coastwatchers are slopping through some of the nastiest mountain jungle in the world to get us that information, Captain."

Pickering grunted. And then he said, "Christ, I'd like to sit all four of them-plus Lieutenant Howard and Sergeant Koffler-down to dinner with King, MacArthur, and the other prima donnas."

Banning chuckled. "Chunk of fire-blackened wild pig, cold rice, and washed down with a nice canteen cup of Eau de chlorine, "42."

Pickering laughed. "Yeah," he said.

(Two)

HEADQUARTERS, 1ST MARINE DIVISION

WELLINGTON, NEW ZEALAND

0815 HOURS 29 JUNE 1942

"Gentlemen," Major General A. A. Vandergrift's aide-decamp announced, "the commanding general."

The thirty-odd officers in the room, almost all of them field grade, the half dozen senior non-commissioned officers, and the one PFC (there to operate a slide projector), came to attention.

Major General Vandergrift strode into the room.

"Take your seats, gentlemen," he said conversationally, as he stepped behind a rather crude lectern. A bedsheet had been thumbtacked to the wall behind him.

"This won't take long," Vandergrift began when the noise of folding chairs scraping on the floor had died down. "We have a lot to do, and precious little time to do it in, and we can't afford the luxury of wasting any time at all. I have just returned..."

He stopped and looked directly at Major Jake Dillon, who was seated in the last row of folding chairs.

"Major, I certainly don't mean to embarrass you, but what are you doing in here?"

"Sir," Brigadier General "Lucky Lew" Harris said, as he got to his feet, "I asked Major Dillon to attend."

Vandergrift's eyebrows rose in surprise.

"Then I suppose we can presume Major Dillon is cleared for TOP SECRET," Vandergrift said, "which is how this meeting is classified, and that he has a Need to Know."

"Yes, Sir," General Harris said.

He suspected, correctly, that the only reason General Vandergrift had not asked Major Dillon, more or less politely, to get his ass out of the room was that Vandergrift paid more than lip service to the military adage that an officer should not be reprimanded or, especially, humiliated, in front of his juniors. Vandergrift was not going to ask his Deputy, before the General and Special Staff officers of the Division, "just what the hell did you do that for?"

He probably won't even ask me later, privately. He knows that I know he's displeased. He ordered me to keep Dillon away from him. I wonder if I should tell him about Dillon's orders, which require us to let him stick his goddamned nose in wherever he pleases?

"As I was saying," Vandergrift resumed, "I have just returned from meeting with Admiral Ghormley, COMSO-PAC, at his headquarters in Auckland. Admiral McCain, who is COMAIRSOPAC, was also there." (Commander, Air, South Pacific.)

The room was now absolutely quiet.

"Admiral Ghormley has ordered me to prepare the division, less the 7th Marines, which, as most of you know, is on Samoa, for combat in the Solomon Islands on 1 August. For those of you who don't already know, the 1st Marines and our artillery-the 11th Marines-are presently at sea and due to arrive here by the tenth of July. We will be augmented by the 2nd Marines, which will ship out of 'Diego on one July; by the 1st Raider Battalion, now en route; and by 3rd Defense Battalion, which is in Hawaii. When they will ship out of Hawaii isn't known; shipping is in critically short supply. We will probably also have the 1st Parachute Battalion. Because there are no transport aircraft for them, they will function as regular infantry."

There were muted sounds of surprise, audible exhaling and shaking heads. The people in the room were professionals. They knew the division's state of preparedness and its logistical problems. All that added up to the almost unarguable fact that the Division was simply not ready to enter combat in less than two months.

"Son," General Vandergrift addressed the junior Marine present, "would you put map one up on the screen, please?"

The overhead lights went out, and a white beam of light erupted from the slide projector against the bedsheet on the wall, and then a black-and-white map appeared.

"This, obviously, is Guadalcanal," General Vandergrift said, standing in front of the map and pointing to the island that always reminded Lucky Lew Harris of a tape worm. He had been infested with tape worms several times during his Marine service in Latin America. They had left an indelible, unpleasant memory with him.

"While our intelligence, putting it kindly, ranges from lousy to nonexistent," General Vandergrift went on, "we have reason to believe the Japanese are building an airfield here, on the Northern side of the island, near Lunga point."

He paused, and then said, "The comment vis-…-vis our intelligence was not intended as a criticism of Colonel Goettge. I meant to say that there is very little intelligence available to anybody over here, including Admiral Ghormley and General MacArthur."

"Not that MacArthur would give it to the Marines if he had it," someone muttered.