W Griffin - The Corps I - Semper Fi

The MP at the gate, spotting the enlisted man's sticker on the windshield and the stiff-brimmed campaign hat on the driver, waved the LaSalle convertible through, but McCoy slowed and stopped anyway.

The MP walked up to the car.

"Where's the nearest gas station, garage, whatever, with a steam cleaner?" McCoy asked.

The MP thought it over.

"There's a Sunoco station's got one," he said. "Turn left when you hit U.S. 1."

"Much obliged," McCoy said, and let the clutch out as he rolled up the window.

The Sunoco station's steam cleaner wasn't working, but they had something even better, a machine McCoy had never seen before. It was designed to clean dirt- and grease-encrusted parts. A nonexplosive solvent poured out of a flexible spout, like water from a faucet, over a sort of sink. Thirty minutes' work with a bristle brush and there was no Cosmoline left on either the action or the stock of the Garand, period.

An hour after he had gone out of the Main Gate, McCoy drove the LaSalle back through it and stopped.

"Found it," he called to the MP. "Thanks."

"Anytime," the MP said.

There was time before Corporal Pleasant reappeared in the barracks to take a shower. The water was cold. The college boys, McCoy decided, had tried hot water. All it had done was leave a layer of Cosmoline on the shower floor. Everyone was still furiously rubbing rifle parts with rags.

McCoy tied rags around his feet, showered, removed the rags, threw them in the pile, and put on clean dungarees.

Then he disassembled the Garand, laid the parts on his bunk, then crawled under the bunk and lay down to await Corporal Pleasant.

Five minutes later, someone called "attention," and McCoy started to roll out from under the bunk. He was halfway to his feet when Pleasant, storming purposefully down the aisle, spotted him getting up.

As he came to attention, Pleasant leaned the brim of his campaign hat into his face.

"Anyone tell you to get in the sack, asshole?" Corporal Pleasant inquired.

"No, sir!" McCoy said.

"Then what were you doing in the sack, asshole!"

"Sir, I wasn't in the sack, sir!"

Corporal Pleasant, seeing the disassembled Garand on the bunk, was forced to face the fact that there was not room for the asshole to have been in the bunk, too.

He leaned over the bunk and picked up the first part he touched, which happened to be the magazine follower.

"You call this clean, asshole?" he demanded, before he had chance to examine it at all.

"Yes, sir," McCoy said. "I believe that's clean, sir!"

Corporal Pleasant shoved the magazine follower under McCoy's nose, and in the very moment he demanded, "You call that clean, asshole?" he thought: I'll be a sonofabitch, it's clean!

"Yes, sir!" McCoy shouted.

"What's the serial number of your piece, asshole?"

"Sir, 156331, sir!"

Corporal Pleasant stood eyeball to eyeball with Platoon Leader Candidate McCoy for a moment.

"Assemble your piece, and then get your ass outside, asshole!" he ordered. "There is a light on a pole outside the orderly room. Guard it until I relieve you!"

"Yes, sir!" McCoy said.

Ten minutes later, Corporal Pleasant marched up to the light pole outside the orderly room.

McCoy came to port arms.

"Halt! Who goes there?" he demanded.

"Who the fuck do you think?" Corporal Pleasant replied, and then ordered: "Follow me."

He walked to the rear of the building, and opened the door of a 1939 Ford coupe.

"Get in," he said.

McCoy got in the seat beside him. Pleasant reached over the back of the seat and came up with two beer cans.

"Church key's in the ashtray," he said.

"Thank you," McCoy said, and opened his beer.

"You're McCoy, right? 'Killer' McCoy?"

"I'm McCoy."

"There's three Marines in there with the assholes," Pleasant said. "I wasn't sure which was who."

McCoy didn't reply.

"You going to give me trouble, McCoy?" Pleasant asked.

Strange question. Why should he think I might give him trouble? And why the beer? This sonofabitch doesn't have the balls to be a universal prick. He's only going to be a prick to those he's sure won't fight back. And for some reason, he's a little bit afraid of me. He called me "Killer." Does this dumb sonofabitch think I'm going to stick a knife in him?

"No," McCoy said. "Why should I?"

"How did you get that rifle clean?" Pleasant asked.

There was a time for truth, McCoy decided, but this wasn't it.

"Lighter fluid," he said.

"You must have used a quart of it," Pleasant said. "What you really need is gasoline."

"Lighter fluid works better than a rag," McCoy said.

"It also made you stand out from the others," Pleasant said. "That's not smart."

"I wasn't trying to be smart," McCoy said.

Corporal Pleasant looked at him for a long moment, and then nodded his head, accepting that.

"That wasn't the first Cosmolined rifle you ever cleaned, was it?" he asked rhetorically. "I guess I would have done the same thing."

McCoy didn't reply.

"There's two stories going around about you, McCoy," Pleasant said. ' "The first is that you killed a bunch of Chinamen in China. The second is that you have friends in high places who got you into this course. Anything to them?"

"There was some shooting in China," McCoy said. "It was in the line of duty."

"And have you got a rabbi?"

"Have I got a what?"

"Somebody important, taking care of you?"

"Not that I know about," McCoy said. "I applied for this, and I got accepted."

Pleasant snorted, as if he didn't believe him.

"Let me spell things out for you, McCoy," he said. "You stay out of my hair, and I'll stay out of yours. But there's two things you better understand: I don't give a shit about any rabbi. And there's people who think you belong in Portsmouth, not here."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Pleasant," McCoy said.

"The hell you don't," Pleasant said.

He put his beer to his mouth, draining the can, and then squeezed it.

"Finish your beer, McCoy," he said. "And go back to the barracks." He got out of the Ford coupe and walked away.

McCoy finished his beer slowly. He was sorry, but not surprised, that what had happened in China was apparently common knowledge. The Corps was small, and Marines gossiped as bad as women, especially when it was interesting, like a Marine shooting a bunch of Chinese. He figured that some other China Marines had come home and gone to see Gunny Stecker, another old China Marine, and told him what had happened at the ferry. And Gunny Stecker had connected it with him, and that was how Pleasant had heard about it.

But he couldn't figure out who his "rabbi" was supposed to be, or who the people were who thought he belonged in Portsmouth, instead of in the Platoon Leader's Program.

Ten minutes after Corporal Pleasant left him, McCoy got out of the Ford, put the U.S. Rifle, Caliber.30, Ml in the position of right shoulder arms, and in a military fashion marched back to the barrack, took off his utilities and climbed in the sack.

(Three)

Marine Corps Schools Quantico, Virginia 12 October 1941

The six weeks passed quickly. As McCoy suspected, the training was a repeat of Parris Island boot camp. It was necessary to turn the college boys into Marines, before they could be turned into Marine officers. That meant they had to be taught immediate, unquestioning obedience in such a way that it would become a conditioned reflex.

Thus: If a Platoon Leader Candidate did not immediately and unquestioningly respond to whatever order Corporal Pleasant or another of the Drill Instructors issued, there was immediate punishment.

If, for example, the young gentlemen did not respond to an order to fall out on the company street with the proper speed and enthusiasm, they were required to fall out again and again and again until Corporal Pleasant was satisfied.