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

"Let me tell you what happened," Harris said. "You ever know a guy named Neville? Franklin G. Neville?"

"Yeah. The last I heard, he was on a tailgate assignment as a Naval attach? somewhere."

"In Finland. Well, he came back, got involved with parachute troops of all things, and made lieutenant colonel. A couple of days ago, he jumped out of an airplane at Lakehurst without a parachute, or at least with one that didn’t work, and killed himself."

"I’m sorry to hear that."

"Well, they need a replacement for him. I remain to be convinced that paratroops have any place in the Corps, but we have them. I think if the Army came up with an archery corps, some wild-eyed sonofabitch in Headquarters would start buying bows and arrows and claiming it was our idea in the first place."

He looked at Stecker for a little appreciation of his wit, and found instead concern-perhaps even alarm-in his eyes.

"No, Major Stecker," he said, chuckling. "You are not going to the Para-Marines, or whatever the hell they call them. You are going to the 1stDivision at New River, North Carolina, to replace the guy who is going to jump into-pun intended-the shoes of the late Colonel Neville."

"You had me worried for a moment," Stecker confessed.

"I could see that," Harris said. "Here’s what happened: General Riley asked me if I had a major I could recommend to take this guy’s place in the 5thMarines. He’s the Exec of Second Battalion. I told him no, but that I did have a captain I knew for a fact could find his ass with either hand . . ."

"Battalion Exec? Christ, I don’t know . . ."

"Come on, Jack. When I was a battalion commander, I had a master gunnery sergeant who made it pretty clear that he thought he could run the battalion at least as well as I could. His name was Jack Stecker."

"That attitude goes with being a gunny," Stecker said. "I’m not sure how it really works."

"Well, you’re about to find out," Harris said. "The original idea... Riley is one of your admirers, Jack, did you know that?"

Stecker shook his head.

"Well, he is. The original idea was to send you there as a captain. But then, genius that I am, it occurred to me that, A, you’re junior as hell, and that, B, if I had the battalion, I would assign an ex-master gunnery sergeant, now a captain, as a company commander."

"I’d like to have a company," Stecker said. "You know that."

"Yeah, well, we have nice young first lieutenants who can be trained to do that. By a battalion exec who knows what it’s like in a battalion. So I told this to the General, and he said, ‘Well, I guess we’ll have to make him a major before we cut the orders sending him to New River.’ "

"How’s the Battalion Commander, and, for that matter, the Regimental Commander, going to like having somebody shoving Jack Stecker down their throats? They’re bound to have somebody in mind."

"Well, they’ll probably hate it at first, to tell you the truth. But after they are counseled by the Assistant Division Commander, I’m sure they will come to understand the wisdom of the decision."

"Why should he do that? I don’t even know, off the top of my head, who the 1stDivision ADC is."

"As soon as they can sober up enough senators for a quorum, his name will be Brigadier General Lewis T. Harris," Harris said.

Stecker, smiling, shook his head.

(Three)

Office of the Chief of Nursing Services

United States Naval Hospital

San Diego, California

27 February 1942

"You wanted to see me, Commander?" Ensign Barbara Cotter, NC, USNR, asked, sticking her head into the office of Lieutenant Commander Jane P. Marwood, NC, USN.

"Come in, Cotter," Commander Marwood said. Commander Marwood, whom Barbara Cotter thought of as "that skinny old bitch," was in blues. She was a very small woman, and thin. With the three and a half gold stripes of a lieutenant commander on her jacket cuffs, and several ribbons over her breast, Barbara Cotter thought she looked like a caricature of a Naval officer, almost like a woman dressed up for a costume party.

Barbara saw that Lieutenant Commander Hazel Gower, NC, USN, her newly promoted immediate supervisor, was also in the office, standing up and looking out the window.

I’m in some kind of trouble, otherwise good ol’ Hazel wouldn‘t be here. I wonder what I’m supposed to have done?

And then she had an even more discomfitting thought: I wonder how long this is going to take?

She was supposed to meet Joe Howard in forty-five minutes. She would be pressed for time as it was, going through the controlled-drug inventory with the nurse who would come on duty, and then getting out of her whites, grabbing a quick shower, dressing, and then meeting him at the main entrance.

She had been thinking about Joe-and about herself and Joe-when she’d been summoned to Commander Marwood’s office. She had come to the conclusion that she was in love with him. In love, as opposed to infatuated with, sexually or otherwise. The emotion was new to her. She had been infatuated before. This was different.

Viewed clinically, of course, Barbara Cotter knew it was probably just sex alone, and nothing more than that. He was a healthy young male, and she was a healthy young female. There was nothing Mother Nature liked better than to turn on the chemical transmitters and receptors of a well-matched pair. She had a way of convincing both parties that the other was a perfect specimen, in all respects, of the opposite sex, and of turning off that portion of the brain that might question the notion that the two of them were experiencing an emotion never felt by anyone before.

What Mother Nature was after was propagation of the species, and Mother was totally unconcerned with the problems that might cause. Such as her family’s reaction to someone like Joe, and that there was a war on, and that she was in the United States Naval Service.

But none of that really mattered to Barbara. The only thing that mattered was that when she was with Joe, in bed or out of it, she felt complete and content, and that when they were separated, she felt incomplete and miserable.

She had felt incomplete and miserable all week. Joe had gone somewhere in northern California with an officer and a sergeant from the 2ndRaider Battalion at Camp Elliott. They’d gone to some Army depot to get weapons for the Raiders.

She had been unpatriotically overjoyed with the realization that Joe was what he called an "armchair commando," a Marine officer who commanded only a desk, and was not about to be sent off to fight the Japanese. And that when he was in San Diego, he was free just about every night and every weekend, and not running around in the boondocks day and night, practicing war.

And in forty minutes he would meet her at the main entrance, and they would get in her car and drive over to the Coronado Beach Hotel, and because the bar looked so crowded, they would go upstairs and have a drink before dinner in the Pacific and Far Eastern Suite, which translated to mean that half an hour after she met Joe, forty-five minutes from now, they would be in one of the wide and comfortable beds in their birthday suits.

And now this, whatever the hell this is all about!

Barbara walked over and stood before Commander Mar-wood’s desk.

I don’t care what she thinks I’ve done, what good ol’ Hazel has told her I’ve done. I will plead guilty, swear I will never do it again, and beg forgiveness. Just so I can meet Joe!

"Yes, Ma’am?"

"Apparently, Cotter," Commander Marwood said, "the Navy has decided there is a slot where you may practice your special skills."

What the hell is she talking about?

"Ma’am?"

"There has been a TWX from the Surgeon General’s office," Marwood said. "Actually, two of them. The first of them requested a list of the nurses in San Diego with experience, or special training, in psychiatric service. I provided your name. The second TWX put you on orders."