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

"My father would say, ‘Never be sorry for doing something you want to do.’ And you do want to go, Flem, don’t you?"

"Yes. I suppose I do."

"Don’t come home now. I’d say things I would later regret."

"OK."

"Give me an hour. Make it an hour and a half. Then come."

He heard the click as she hung up.

(Three)

Building "F"

Anacostia Naval Air Station

Washington, D.C.

30 January 1942

First Lieutenant Charles E. Orfutt, aide-de-camp to Brigadier General D. G. Mclnerney, stepped inside Mclnerney’s office, closed the door quietly behind him, and waited until the General raised his eyes from the paperwork on his desk.

"Sergeant Galloway is outside, Sir."

That the news did not please General Mclnerney was evident on his face. He shrugged, exhaled audibly, and said, "Give me two minutes, Charlie, and then send him in."

"Aye, aye, Sir," Orfutt said, and quietly left the office.

Precisely two minutes later, there was a polite knock at Mclnerney’s door.

"Come!"

Technical Sergeant Charles M. Galloway, USMC, in greens, marched into the office, stopped precisely eighteen inches from Mclnerney’s desk, and came to attention. Then, gazing twelve inches over Mclnerney’s head, he said, "Technical Sergeant Galloway reporting to the General as ordered, Sir."

General Mclnerney pushed himself backward in his chair, locked his fingers together, and stared at Galloway for a full thirty seconds before he spoke.

"Look at me," he said.

Oh, shit. Here it comes,Charley Galloway thought. He dropped his eyes to meet Mclnerney’s.

"Do you have any idea how much goddamned trouble you’ve caused?"

"Yes, Sir. I think so."

"You don’t look especially penitent, Sergeant."

"Sir, I’m sorry about the trouble I caused."

"But you think it was really caused by a bunch of chickenshit swabbies, and in your heart of hearts you don’t think you did anything wrong, do you?"

The old bastard can read my mind.

Galloway’s face went pale, but he didn’t reply.

"You’re thinking that you were almost a Marine Corps legend, is that it? That you’d be remembered as the guy who fixed up a shot-up fighter with his own hands, flew it without orders onto the Saratoga, and then on to Wake, and died gloriously in a battle that will live forever in the memory of man?"

Again, Galloway’s face paled momentarily, but he didn’t say anything.

That’s not true. I wasn‘t trying to be a fucking hero. All I was trying to do was get that Wildcat to Wake, where it was needed.

"What the hell were you thinking, Galloway? Can you at least tell me that?"

"I was thinking they needed that Wildcat on Wake, Sir."

"Did it occur to you that in the shape that Wildcat was, you could have done some real damage, crashing it onto the deck of the Saratoga?"

"Sir, the aircraft was in good shape," Galloway said.

"It had been surveyed, for Christ’s sake, by skilled BUAIR engineering personnel and declared a total loss." He was referring to the U.S. Navy Bureau of Aeronautics.

"Sir, the aircraft was OK," Galloway insisted doggedly. "Sir, I made the landing."

General Mclnerney believed everything Galloway was telling him. He also believed that if he were a younger man, given the same circumstances, he would-he hoped-have done precisely what Galloway had done. That meant doing what you could to help your squadron mates, even if that meant putting your ass in a potentially lethal crack. It had taken a large set of balls to take off the way Galloway had. If he hadn’t found Sara, he would have been shark food.

The general also found it hard to fault a young man who, fully aware of what he was going to find when he got there, had ridden-OK, flown -toward the sound of the guns. Purposely sailed, to put it poetically, into harm’s way.

And he also believed that Galloway had actually come very close to becoming a Marine Corps legend. Professionally-as opposed to parochially, as a Marine-General Mclnerney believed that it had been a mistake to recall Task Force 14 before, at the very least, it had flown its aircraft off to reinforce the Wake Island garrison.

That move came as the result of a change of command. Things almost always got fucked up during a change of command, at least initially. How much Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the former Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet, was responsible for the disaster at Pearl Harbor was open to debate. But since he was CINCPAC, he was responsible for whatever happened to the ships of his command. And after the Japanese had wiped out Battleship Row, he had to go.

Mclnerney privately believed-from his admittedly parochial viewpoint as an aviator-that the loss of most of the battleship fleet was probably a blessing in disguise. There were two schools in the upper echelons of the Navy, the Battleship Admirals and the Carrier Admirals. There was no way that the Battleship Admirals could any longer maintain that their dreadnoughts were impregnable to airplanes; most of their battleships were on the bottom at Pearl.

Conversely, the Carrier Admirals could now argue that battleships were vulnerable to carrier-borne aircraft, using the same carnage on Battleship Row at Pearl Harbor as proof of their argument. That just might give command of the naval war in the Pacific to the Carrier Admirals.

Mclnerney knew that it wouldn’t be an all-out victory for the Carrier Admirals over the Battleship Admirals. The battleships that could be repaired would be repaired and sent into action; those still under construction would be completed. But if it came to choosing between a new battleship and a new carrier, the Navy would get a new carrier. And the really senior Navy brass would no longer be able to push Carrier Admirals subtly aside in favor of Battleship Admirals.

No aircraft carriers had been sunk at Pearl. It might have been just dumb luck that they were all at sea, but the point was that none of them had been sunk. And since there were no longer sufficient battleships to do it, it would be the aircraft carriers that would have to carry the battle to the enemy. And when the discussions were held about how to take the battle to the enemy, the opinions of the Carrier Admirals would carry much more weight than they had on December 6, 1941.

Admiral Husband E. Kimmel had to go, and he knew it, and so did everybody else in CINCPAC Headquarters. From 1100 on December 7, Kimmel had had to consider himself only the caretaker of the Pacific Fleet, holding the authority of CINCPAC only until his replacement could get to Hawaii. As it actually turned out, he wasn’t even given that. He was relieved, and an interim commander appointed, while Admiral King and the rest of the brass in Washington made up their minds who would replace him.

They had settled on Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. Mclnerney personally knew Nimitz slightly, and liked him. Professionally, he knew him better and admired him. But Nimitz hadn’t even been chosen to be CINCPAC when the decision had been made to send three carrier groups to sea, two to make diversionary strikes, and the third, Task Force 14, to reinforce Wake.

The decision to recall it had come after the humiliated Kimmel had been relieved, and before Nimitz could get to Hawaii and raise his flag as CINCPAC.

Mclnerney believed the recall order did not take into consideration what a bloody nose the Americans on Wake had given the Japanese with the pitifully few men, weapons, and aircraft at their disposal. Commander Winfield Scott Cunningham, the overall commander on Wake, and the Marines under Majors Devereux and Putnam, had practically worked miracles with what they had.

The decision to recall Task Force 14 had obviously been made because it was not wise to risk Sara and the three cruisers. Mclnerney was willing to admit that probably made sense, given the overall strength of the battered Pacific Fleet; but there was no reason for not making a greater effort to reinforce Wake.