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

The Officer of the Guard was a first lieutenant; Pickering thought he looked like a regular. The Officer of the Guard saluted.

"Good afternoon, Sir. May I help you?"

"My name is Pickering, Lieutenant. This lady is my wife. The other lady is Mrs. Feller, who is to board the ... the President Fillmore. I don’t want to leave my wife here at the gate while I take Mrs. Feller aboard."

"No problem at all, Sir," the Lieutenant said. "If you’ll just follow me in the pickup."

Pickering looked at the sergeant who had denied him access.

"Sergeant, when I was a Marine corporal, there was a saying that ‘a Marine on guard duty has no friends.’ Do they still say that?"

"Yes, Sir, they do."

"Your sergeant, Lieutenant, was the soul of tact," Pickering said.

"I’m glad to hear that, Sir. If you’ll just follow me, Sir?"

The little convoy moved out.

In the Cadillac, Patricia Foster Pickering said, "What was that all about?"

"That sergeant was just doing his duty. I didn’t want to get him in trouble."

"Why should he?"

"The Lieutenant obviously knows who I am," Pickering said.

"Who you are? What a monumental ego! Am I missing something? Who are you?"

"I mean that I work for Frank Knox. We’re in, aren’t we? And what does ego have to do with it?"

In the cab of the pickup, the Marine Lieutenant said to the driver, "Take us down to the Millard Fillmore."

"That’s that great big civilian liner, Sir?"

"Yeah. They used to call it the Pacific Princess. As soon as I take that Captain up the gangplank, you find a telephone, call the Officer of the Day, and tell him that Captain Pickering just came into the yard, and that I’m escorting him aboard the Millard Fillmore. You get that name?"

"Yes, Sir. Pickering. Who is he?"

"He works for the Secretary of the Navy. He’s got the brass scared shitless. He showed up here yesterday for a private conference with the Admiral, after which the Admiral thought Pickering was going back to Washington. But he didn’t. He wasn’t on the courier plane. They passed the word that the Admiral was to be notified the moment anybody saw him anywhere."

The pickup truck driver drove as close as he could to the great ship, and then stopped. The Lieutenant got out and walked to the Cadillac.

"This is as close as we can get, Sir. If you’ll wait a moment, I’ll get someone to carry the lady’s luggage."

"I’m not too old to carry a couple of suitcases," Pickering said.

"Sir, they frown on officers, particular senior ones, carrying luggage."

"Oh, hell. OK- Go get someone, then."

"Aye, aye, Sir."

Pickering got out from behind the wheel, walked to the edge of the wharf, and looked up at the stern of the ship. Her once-glistening white hull was now a flat Navy gray,president millard G. fillmore was painted in enormous letters across her stern. But if you looked closely, you could see where the raised letteringpacific princess san Francisco had been painted over.

Her superstructure was still mostly white, although her funnels were also in Navy gray, probably so that the Pacific and Far Eastern logo on them could be obliterated. Pickering had learned from the Admiral the day before that they were carrying a work crew aboard in order to finish the painting and to make other modifications under way. Shipping space was so tight they could not afford to take her out of service for modifications any longer than was absolutely necessary.

What I should be doing is standing on her bridge, preparing to take her to sea, not functioning as a make-believe Naval officer and high-class errand boy for Frank Knox.

"It’s sad, seeing her in gray," Patricia said softly, at his elbow.

"It has to be done, I suppose," he said. "Anyway, she’s now the Navy’s. Not ours."

(Six)

One by one, the umbilicals that tied the President Millard G. Fillmore to the dock were cut. Finally, only one gangplank remained, and there seemed to be no activity on that.

From the boat deck, Ensign Barbara Cotter, NC, USNR, looked down at the small crowd of people on the dock. Ernie Sage was there, and her Ken McCoy, and Joe. They had waved excitedly at each other when Barbara had found a place for herself at the rail. But that was forty-five minutes ago; now they just forced smiles and made little waves at each other.

Finally, three people appeared on the single remaining gangway, a Marine officer, a Navy captain, and a civilian woman.

"Oh, my God!" Ernie Sage said. "Ken, that’s Pick’s father and mother."

"Where?" McCoy asked.

"The Navy guy and the woman coming down the gangway."

"You want me to get their attention, or what?"

"No!"

"I know them. I met them when we graduated from Quantico."

"If they see me here, Aunt Pat would feel obliged to tell my mother," Ernie said.

"Just where do you think your mother thinks you are? She doesn’t know what you’re doing?" McCoy said.

"Will you just leave it, please?"

Right in front of them, two sailors pulled an enormous hawser free of a hawser stand, and it began to rise up along the steep side of the ship.

Joe Howard looked down the dock. Nothing now held the President Millard G. Fillmore to the shore.

"It’s moving," Ernie said.

A rather small Navy band began to play "Anchors Aweigh."

The President Millard G. Fillmore was an enormous ship and difficult to get into motion. When the band finished "Anchors Aweigh" and segued into "The Marine Hymn" there were only a few feet of water between the ship and the dock. Then, in deference to a battalion of U.S. Army Engineers aboard, the band played "The Caissons Go Rolling Along." By the time that was finished, twenty feet of water separated the shore and the ship.

Then the ship added the power of her engines to that of the tugs; there was a swirl of water at her stern, and her stern moved farther away from the dock.

The band began to play "Auld Lang Syne."

Barbara Cotter and Joe Howard waved bravely at each other.

"You OK, Joe?" Ken McCoy asked.

"This is not the way it’s supposed to be," Joe Howard said. "I’m the goddamned Marine, and here I am on the goddamned shore, waving good-bye as my girlfriend goes overseas."

The band stopped playing; and to the ticking of drumsticks on drum rims, they marched off toward a Navy-gray bus.

First Lieutenant Joe Howard walked to the end of the dock and stood there watching until the President Millard G. Fillmore sailed out of sight.

(Seven)

Top secret

Eyes Only-The Secretary of the Navy

DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN

ORIGINAL TO BE DESTROYED AFTER ENCRYPTION AND TRANSMITTAL TO SECNAVY

Melbourne, Australia

Saturday, 21 March 1942

Dear Frank:

Despite a nearly overwhelming feeling that this should be addressed "Dear Mr. Secretary, " I am complying with your orders to write this in the form of a personal letter; to include my opinions as well as the facts as I understand them; and to presume that I am your sole source of information regarding what is going on in this area of the world.

This is written in my apartment in the Menzies Hotel, Melbourne, which I was able to get through the good offices of our (Pacific and Far East) agent here. It is my intention to deliver it, triply sealed, into the hands of the Captain of the USSJohn B. Lester, a destroyer which put in here for emergency repairs (now just about completed), and that is bound directly for Pearl Harbor. Using my letter of authority from you, I will direct Captain (Lt. Commander) K. L. White to deliver it into the hands of Mrs. Feller, or, if for some reason that is impossible, to burn it.

His willingness to comply with those orders, it seems to me, depends on whether he accepts your letter of authority at face value. The whipping we have taken so far seems to me to have produced a lack of confidence here-perhaps even an aura of defeatism. What I‘m suggesting is that he may decide either to throw this whole thing away or to open it, or to do something other than what I am ordering him to do. Ellen Feller-if she gets this-will be able to determine whether or not it has been opened. I would very much appreciate your advising me of the receipt of this, including when, and to tell me if this is the sort of thing you would like to have me continue to do.