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

He seriously considered resigning-he had no interest in the infantry or artillery, which seemed his other options. If he no longer could fly, what good to the Corps could he be? But a full bull colonel he had a lot of respect for told him the Corps needed unusually bright, well-educated officers in procurement, logistics, or intelligence even more than it needed yet one more aviator. So he decided to put off resigning for a couple of years to see what happened.

The Corps sent him back to college for six months for a crash course in the German language, and then sent him to the U.S. Embassy in Berlin as an Assistant Naval Attache. His promotion to captain came along when it was due, and he was not blind to the fact that a six-room apartment on Onkle Tomallee in Berlin-Zehlendorf was considerably more comfortable than a BOQ in Quantico.

He came home in 1940 and did an eighteen-month tour in Headquarters, USMC, essentially studying German tactics for review by G-3. And in November, 1941, he was promoted to Major (in the reserve; he was still only a Captain on the numerical list of regular Marine Corps Officers). When war came, he expected to be assigned some sort of duties which would take advantage of his European experience, but that didn't happen.

They sent him to Princeton to serve as President of the Officer Selection Board for the area, and to modify (that is to say, condense) the Platoon Leader's Training Program at the university. He was led to believe that the decisions he made about what could be cut from the pre-war program would set the pattern for other programs across the country.

He didn't like the prospect of sitting out the war in Princeton, but he was able to resign himself to it, particularly in the belief that his assignment probably would not last long. The projected growth of the Corps boggled the mind... they were now talking of hundreds of thousands of Marines- divisions of Marines. And certainly, they would need an officer of his rank and experience doing something besides selecting potential officers.

He expected to be reassigned, in other words. But the suddenness of the event, and the assignment itself, were startling.

At 1615 that afternoon, Lieutenant Colonel Rickabee ushered Major Dailey into the office of Brigadier General Horace W.T. Forrest, USMC, Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence. To Dailey's surprise, Rickabee was not only not in uniform, he had a large revolver "concealed" in the small of his back under his seersucker jacket.

Dailey noticed on General Forrest's desk both his Officer's Service Record and another file, marked SECRET, and DAILEY, GEORGE F.

He could not remember afterward what questions General Forrest put to him, and thus not his answers, but he remembered clearly how the interview ended:

"He'll do," General Forrest announced. "You brief him. I'm too busy, and I don't want him contaminated by those bastards in G-l."

"Aye, aye, Sir," Colonel Rickabee said, smiling, and then signaled for Dailey to leave. When he came out of General Forrest's office, Dailey saw that he was carrying both the files that the General had apparently been reading.

In the unmarked (but obviously government owned) car they drove back from Eighth and "I" Streets to Rickabee's office on the Mall, Rickabee gave him the first inkling of the billet that General Forrest had now officially given him.

"You know the good news-bad news routine?" Rickabee asked.

"Yes, Sir."

"The good news is that you are, effective today, a lieutenant colonel and on leave. The bad news is that when you come off your leave you will be in San Diego, about to board an airplane for Pearl Harbor. Your ultimate destination is Brisbane, Australia, where you will be the Marine liaison officer between CINCPAC-Admiral Nimitz-and The Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area-General MacArthur."

"Why is that bad news, Sir?"

"Haven't you ever heard that primitive cultures always shoot the bearers of bad news?" Rickabee said.

Despite what General Forrest said about contamination, Lieutenant Colonel Dailey was briefed by a team of officers of the Office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Personnel. The lieutenant colonel in charge told him (and Dailey believed him, and could not help but be flattered by the statement) that G-l had been looking all along for a suitable assignment for him... God knew the Corps needed experienced officers; but, until the day before, there had been "a G-2 Hold" on his records; and as long as that was there, he could not be reassigned without G-2 concurrence; and that had not been given.

"We didn't even propose you for this billet, frankly," the lieutenant colonel said. "We thought it would be a waste of time with the G-2 Hold. So, wouldn't you know, G-2 proposed you to us. We're delighted, of course. And I suppose I will have to take back all the unpleasant things I've been saying about G-2."

The G-l lieutenant colonel went on to describe the bad feeling between General MacArthur's and Admiral Nimitz's headquarters. This was recently brought to a head when SHSWPA (Supreme Headquarters, South West Pacific Area) formally charged that CINCPAC had been denying MacArthur information he was entitled to have; or at least was delaying it until it was too late to act upon.

"That brought the Secretary of the Navy in on this, Dailey," the lieutenant colonel said. "He sent word down that he didn't want MacArthur to have grounds to even suspect that anything was being kept from him; he ordered that an officer be assigned to Brisbane to do nothing but pass information between CINCPAC and SHSWPA; and he specified a Marine. We thought of you right away, of course, with your diplomatic experience... but with that G-2 Hold?" he shrugged. "Anyway, here you are."

Lieutenant Colonel Dailey took a seven-day leave, spending it with his mother in Greenwich, Connecticut. And then returned to Washington, where Colonel Rickabee informed him that he would travel at least as far as Pearl Harbor with a briefcase chained to his wrist.

"Two birds with one stone," Rickabee explained. "And it will free the seat the officer courier would normally occupy."

At Anacostia Naval Air Station, Dailey asked Rickabee about the G-2 Hold. He did that just before he got on the plane to San Diego, reasoning that it was too late for Rickabee to do anything about it, even if he did make him mad.

"I presume the G-2 Hold situation has been resolved, Colonel," he said. "May I ask what it was, specifically?"

"I see that our friends in personnel have diarrhea of the mouth again," Rickabee said.

"What I'm asking, Colonel, is whether there is some sort of cloud over me."

"No. I assure you there is not."

"Then may I ask why there was a hold?"

"Am I to suspect, Colonel," Rickabee replied, "that your conscience is bothering you vis-…-vis your relationship with Fraulein Ute Schellberger?"

"I wondered if that was a matter of official record," Dailey confessed. For an instant it all seemed perfectly clear. That's why he was sent to Princeton. If there was anything worse for a young officer on attach‚ duty than getting drunk and pissing in the Embassy's potted palms, it was getting involved with a German blonde.

"Well, it bothered the FBI some, frankly," Rickabee said. "But then I told them that so far as the Corps was concerned, we would have been worried if a red-blooded young bachelor Marine officer far from home had not been fucking the natives, and that we were convinced you had not become a National Socialist."

"Christ!" Dailey had said.

Rickabee smiled at him.

"I can't tell you how relieved I am to hear that," Dailey said.

"You didn't hear anything from me, Colonel," Rickabee said. "Understood?"

"Understood."

"And now you are wondering, naturally, how come you were given this assignment? And are too polite, or too discreet, to ask?"