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

That opinion is obviously not shared by the JCS. I don’ t know how Ghormley took it in Auckland, but I was with MacA. when a copy of the JCS cable of 10 July ordering Ghormley to "seize Guadalcanal and Tulagi at once" reached here. He thinks, to put it kindly, it was a serious error in judgment.

It wasn’t until the next day (11 July) that the other infantry regiment (the 1stMarines) and the artillery (11th) of the 1stMarine Division reached Wellington, N.Z. Now they are expected to unload, sort, and combat-load their equipment and otherwise get set for an amphibious landing in twenty days.

The same day, as you know, we learned that Imperial Japanese Headquarters has called off its plans to seize Midway, New Caledonia, and Samoa. Under those circumstances, no one here can see the need for "immediately" landing at Guadalcanal.

Last Thursday (16 July), a courier brought a copy of Ghormley’s operation plan (OPPLAN 1-42). There are three phases: a rehearsal in the Fiji Islands; the invasion of Guadalcanal and Tulagi; and the occupation of Ndeni Island in the Santa Cruz Islands. MacA.‘s reaction to it was that it is as good as it could be expected to be, given the circumstances.

MacA. made B-17 aircraft available to the 1stMarine Division for reconnaissance , and they flew over both Guadalcanal and Tulagi on Friday. On Saturday we learned that the aerial photographs taken differ greatly from the maps already issued-and there is simply no time to print and issue corrected ones.

I’m going to leave here first thing in the morning for New Zealand, and from there will join the rehearsal in the Fijis. I don’t know what good, if any at all, I can do anyone. But obviously I am doing no one any good here.

Respectfully,

Fleming Pickering, Captain, USNR

top secret

(Two)

Supreme Headquarters

Southwest Pacific Area

Brisbane, Australia

1705 Hours 21 July 1942

It was the first time Pickering had been to the Cryptology Room in Brisbane. He found it in the basement, installed in a vault that had held the important records of the evicted insurance company. There was a new security system, too, now run by military policemen wearing white puttees, pistol belts, and shiny steel helmets. The security in Melbourne had been a couple of noncoms armed with Thompson submachine guns, slouched on chairs. They had come to know Captain Fleming Pickering and had habitually waved him inside. But the MPs here not only didn’t know who he was, but somewhat smugly told him that he was not on the "authorized-access list."

Finally, reluctantly, they summoned Lieutenant Pluto Hon to the steel door, and he arranged, not easily, to have Pickering passed inside.

Hon waved Pickering into a chair, and then typed Pickering’s letter to Navy Secretary Frank Knox onto a machine that looked much like (and was a derivative of) a teletype machine. It produced a narrow tape, like a stock-market ticker tape, spitting it out of the left side of the machine. Hon ripped it off, and then fed the end of the tape into the cryptographic machine itself. Wheels began to whir and click, and there was the sound of keys hitting paper. Finally, out of the other end of the machine came another long strip of tape.

When that process was done, Lieutenant Hon took that strip of paper and fed it into the first machine. There was the sound of more typewriter keys, and the now-encrypted message appeared at the top of the machine, the way a teletype message would. But there were no words there, only a series of five-character blocks.

Hon gave his original letter and both strips of tape to Pickering; then, carrying the encrypted message, he left the vault for the radio room across the basement. Pickering followed him.

"Urgent," Hon said to the sergeant in charge. "For Navy Hawaii. Log it as my number"-he paused to consult the encrypted message-"six-six-oh-six."

Pickering and Hon watched as a radio operator, using a telegrapher’s key, sent the message to Hawaii. A few moments later there came an acknowledgment of receipt. Then Hon took the encoded message from the radio operator and handed it to Pickering.

In a couple of minutes, Pickering thought, that will be in the hands of Ellen Feller. He wondered if her receiving a message from him triggered any erotic thoughts in her.

He followed Hon back to the Cryptology Room. Hon turned a switch, and there was the sound of a fan. Pickering dropped his letter, the two tapes, and the encrypted printout into a galvanized bucket, and then stopped and set it all afire with his cigarette lighter. He waited until it had been consumed, and then reached in the bucket and broke up the ashes with a pencil.

It wasn’t that he distrusted Hon, or any of the others who encrypted his letters to the Secretary of the Navy. It was just that if he personally saw to it that all traces of it had been burned, there was no way it could wind up on Willoughby’s, MacArthur’s, or anyone else’s desk.

"I wish I was going with you," Pluto Hon said.

Pickering was surprised. It was the first time Pluto had even suggested he was familiar with the contents of one of Pickering’s messages. He was, of course-you read what you type-but the rules of the little game were that everyone pretended the cryptographer didn’t know.

"Why?"

"It’s liable to be as dull here as it was in Melbourne," Pluto said.

"I could probably arrange to have you dropped onto some island behind Japanese lines," Pickering joked. "They’re short of people, I know."

"I already asked Major Banning," Pluto replied, seriously. "He said I could go the day after you let him go. ‘We also serve who sit in dark basements shuffling paper.’ "

"It’s more than that, Pluto, and you know it," Pickering said, and touched his shoulder.

"Good night, Sir," Lieutenant Hon said.

Pickering walked back through the basement, then up to the lobby and to the security desk, where, after duty hours, it was necessary to produce identification and sign in and out.

"There he is," a female voice said as he scrawled his name on the register.

I am losing my mind. That sounded exactly like Ellen Feller.

He straightened and turned around.

"Good evening, Captain Pickering," Ellen Feller said.

"I hope you have some influence around here, Captain," Captain David Haughton said, as he offered Pickering his hand, smiling at his surprise. "We have just been told there is absolutely no room in the inn."

"Haughton, what the hell are you doing here?" Pickering asked. He looked at Ellen Feller. "And you, Ellen?"

"I’m on my way to Admiral Ghormley in Auckland. They’re servicing the plane. Ellen’s for duty."

"For duty?" Pickering asked her. "What do you mean?"

"I was asked if I would be willing to come here," Ellen Feller said. "I was."

Jesus Christ, what the hell is this all about?

"The boss arranged it," Haughton said. "In one of your letters you said something about not having a secretary. So he sent you one. Yours."

"You don’t seem very pleased to see me, Captain Pickering," Ellen said.

"Don’t be silly. Of course I am," Pickering said.

"Your billeting people are being difficult," Haughton said. "I tried to get Ellen a room in the hotel . . . Lennon’s?"

"Lennon’s," Pickering confirmed.

"And they say she’s not on their staff, and no room."

"I can take care of that," Pickering said.

"I tried to invoke your name, and they gave me a room number. But the door was opened by a fat Army officer who said he hadn’t seen you since Melbourne."

"I’ve got a cottage just outside of town. We can stay there tonight, and I’ll get this all sorted out in the morning. Christ, no I won’t either. I’m leaving first thing in the morning. But I’ll make some phone calls tonight."