W.E.B. Griffin - The Corps 03 - Counterattack

When he got back to The Elms, he saw there was only one light on, on the second floor. That meant Lieutenant Howard and his girlfriend had gone to bed. Together.

Jesus, talk about good luck! Having your girlfriend right here.But then he considered that. Maybe it would be better if she wasn‘t here, especially since she knows what’s going to happen tomorrow. The minute they were alone, she probably started crying or something, and that would be hard to deal with. And then he considered that again. At least they could put their arms around each other and not feel so fucking alone.

Steve went into the library. He thought he would write his mother. But when he was sitting at the little writing table with a sheet of paper in front of him, he realized that was a lousy idea.

What the hell can I write? "Dear Mom, I’m fine. How are you? I’ve been wondering when I’m going to get a letter from you. Nothing much is happening here, except that I’m living in a mansion outside Melbourne; and tomorrow or the next day they’re going to jump me onto an island called Buka. I don’t even know where it is."

I can’t even write that. This whole thing is a military secret

He thought about going into the kitchen and maybe making himself an egg sandwich, but decided against it; the last time he’d done that, he’d awakened Mrs. Cavendish, and he didn’t want to do that tonight.

He went up the broad staircase to the second floor, and down the corridor to his room.

Tomorrow night, or maybe the night after that, I’ll be sleeping in the goddamned jungle with bugs and snakes and Christ knows what else. I should have known a good deal like this couldn’t last- a room of my own, with a great big bed all for myself.

He pushed open the door to his room and turned on the light.

Yeoman Daphne Farnsworth was in his bed, with the sheet pulled up around her chin.

"Jesus Christ!" Steve said.

"I saw you drive off in the car," Daphne said. "I didn’t know when, or if, you would be back, so I decided to go to bed and worry about getting into Melbourne in the morning."

"I was looking for you," he said. "When I couldn’t find you downstairs, I thought you had probably tried to hitch a ride into Melbourne."

"Oh," she said.

"I’m going to jump onto some island called Buka."

"I know. I heard."

"How come you took your bag out of the car?" Steve blurted. "I mean, you must have-"

"I know what you mean," she said, very softly.

"Jesus!"

"I didn’t want you to be alone tonight," Daphne said. "If that makes you think I’m some kind of a wh-"

"Shut up!" he said sharply. "Don’t talk like that!"

"And I didn’t want to be alone, either," she said.

"Once, in the car," Steve said, "we were talking about something, and you leaned close to me and put your hand on my leg, and I could smell your breath and feel it on my face, and I thought my heart was going to stop. . . ."

They looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment.

Finally, softly, reasonably, Daphne said, "Steve, since you have to be at the airfield at half past six, don’t you think you should come to bed?"

(Two)

Port Moresby, New Guinea

0405 Hours 8 June 1942,

When Flight Sergeant Michael Keyes, RAAF, went to the tin-roofed Transient Other Ranks hut to wake him, Sergeant Steve Koffler, USMC, was awake and nearly dressed, in greens that still carried the stripes of a corporal.

Lieutenant Howard had tried to fix it so they could be together overnight, but the Aussies hadn’t let them. Steve had told Howard not to worry about it. He thought Howard had enough to worry about, like making his first jump, without having to worry about him having to sleep by himself.

"Briefing time, lad," Sergeant Keyes said.

"OK."

"First, breakfast, of course. The food here is ordinarily bloody awful, which explains the stuff we brought with us."

"I’m not really very hungry."

"Well, have a go at it anyway. It’s likely to be some time before steak and eggs will be on your ration again."

"Some time," shit. By tonight I’m probably going to be dead.

"I guess I better put this on now, huh?" Steve said, holding up an RAAF flight suit, a quilted cotton coverall.

"Yes, I think you might as well," Keyes said.

Steve put his legs into the garment and shrugged into it. There were the chevrons of a sergeant of the United States Marine Corps on the sleeves, and the metal lapel insignia of the Corps on the collar points. Staff Sergeant Richardson had taken care of that yesterday in Townesville, when Steve and the crew of the Lockheed Hudson were packing the Hallicrafters set and loading it into the airplane.

He had also given Steve a Colt Model 1911A1.45 pistol. Steve suspected that Staff Sergeant Richardson had given him his own pistol; only the officers and a couple of the staff sergeants had been authorized pistols. He thought that had been a very nice thing for Staff Sergeant Richardson to do.

Steve had decided the best-really the only-way to take his Springfield along was to drop it with the antenna set; it and his web cartridge belt and two extra bandoliers of .30-06 ammunition and a half-dozen fragmentation grenades had been wrapped in cotton padding, and then that bundle had been strapped to the antenna parts.

Now that Richardson had given him the pistol, at least when he got on the ground he would have a weapon right away. There was no telling how quickly he could get the Springfield out of the antenna bundle. If he could find it at all.

Steve took a couple of foil-wrapped Trojans from a knee pocket in the flight suit, ripped one of them open with his teeth, unrolled it, and then tied it around the top of his boots. Then he bloused the left leg of the flight suit under it.

As he repeated the process for the right leg, Flight Sergeant Keyes said rather admiringly, "I wondered how the hell you did that to your trousers."

"They call it ‘blousing,’" Steve said.

He strapped Staff Sergeant Richardson’s pistol belt around his waist, and then tied the thong lace around his leg through an eyelet at the bottom of the holster.

"Ready," he said.

"Good lad," Keyes said. "We have to get hopping."

They left the tin-roofed hut and walked across the airfield to the mess. Based on his previous experience-in the movies- with what war should look like, Port Moresby was what Steve had expected to find when he got off the Martin Mariner in Melbourne. The people here went around armed, and they wore steel helmets. There were sandbags all over the place, at the entrances to bomb shelters, and around buildings, and to protect machine-gun positions. This place had been bombed.

Their airplane, the Lockheed, had been pushed into a revetment with sandbag walls. There were other airplanes, none of which was very impressive. There were three bi-wing English fighter planes, for instance, that looked as if they were left over from the First World War.

In the mess hut, Sergeant Keyes took his arm and guided him into an anteroom under a sign that said,officers. Lieutenant Howard and the rest of the airplane crew were there: the pilot, who was a "flying officer," and the navigator, who was a sergeant, and the gunner, who was a corporal. Steve decided that in the RAAF, if you were a flyer, you got to eat with the officers.

But he quickly learned that wasn’t the reason Sergeant Keyes had taken him in the Officers’ Room.

"Good morning, Sergeant," a voice said behind him. "About ready to get this show started?"

Startled, Steve looked over his shoulder. There was another RAAF officer, an older one, with a bunch of stripes on his sleeve, standing by the door.

He’s at least a major, or whatever the hell they call a major in the RAAF.

"Yes, Sir," Steve said.