W.e.b. Griffin - The Corps II - CALL TO ARMS

"That's how come he got wounded in the Philippines, right?" she challenged.

"He wasn't supposed to be where he was when he was hit," Pickering said.

"You know that wound is still… what's the word? He's still bleeding."

"Suppurating," Pickering furnished. "They'll take care of him, Ernie. Really."

"I got that speech, too," she said. "They give you a thirty-day convalescent leave, not chargeable against your regular leave. And then ten days later, they call you up, and say, 'Come back, otherwise we lose the war.'"

"On the other hand, there is an adequate supply of people like myself," Pickering said, "who are-in the hoary Naval Service phraseology-available to be 'put in harm's way.'"

She looked at him for a moment, her face serious.

"You're afraid, aren't you, Pick?" she asked. When he didn't reply, she went on. "Did I make you mad by asking?"

"Shitless, Ernie," Pickering said. "In the quaint cant of the Marine Corps, I am scared shitless. Not only do I have a very active imagination, but I have been associated with your boyfriend long enough to understand from him that there is very little similarity between war movies and the real thing."

She reached across the table and took his hand.

"Oh, Pick!" she said sympathetically.

"I have volunteered for flight training," he went on, "not with any noble motive of sweeping the dirty Jap from the sky, but because, cold-bloodedly, I have decided it will be a shade safer than being a platoon leader. And because, presuming no one will see that I have been wetting my pants in the airplane, it will keep me out of the war, with any luck, for six months, maybe longer. Just about all the guys in our class in Quantico are getting ready to go overseas. Some of them have already gone."

"Then why the hell did you enlist?" she asked.

"Daddy was a Marine," he said, dryly. "Could I disappoint Daddy?"

She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek.

"You're a nice guy, Pick," she said.

"I can't imagine why I told you this," he said.

"I'm glad… proud… you did," Ernie Sage said.

"Wasted effort," he said. "I should have saved it for some female who would be moved to inspire the coward in the time-honored way."

"You sonofabitch," Ernie Sage said, chuckling. And she freed her hand. But only after she had kissed his knuckles tenderly.

(Four)

When the Congressional Limited stopped at Newark, Second Lieutenant Kenneth J. McCoy, USMCR, got off and walked up to the platform to the two cars immediately behind the locomotive.

The doors to the cars had not been opened, and he had some trouble figuring out how to open them himself before he could get on.

The moment he stepped into the car itself, one of the corporals saw him, jumped to his feet, and bellowed, "Attention on deck!"

"As you were," McCoy said quickly. Fifty-odd curious faces were looking at him.

"Who's in charge?" McCoy asked.

"Staff Sergeant Koznowski, sir," the corporal said. "He's up in front."

It had been Lieutenant McCoy's intention to find the man in charge and "borrow" Ernie Zimmerman, to take him back to the dining car and buy him breakfast, or at least a cup of coffee. His motive was primarily personal; Ernie Zimmerman was an old buddy whom he had last seen in Peking. But there was, he realized, something official about it. He knew where the Corps could put Zimmerman to work, doing something more important than he was now, escorting boots to Parris Island: Zimmerman spoke Chinese.

But before he had made his way down the aisle of the first car, the Congressional Limited began to roll out of the station, and McCoy knew he would be stuck in these coaches until the train stopped again.

Zimmerman saw him passing between the cars, and by the time McCoy had entered the second car, the boots were standing up. Or most of them. There were half a dozen, McCoy saw, who were confused by the order, "Attention on deck!" and were looking around in some confusion.

"As you were!" McCoy said loudly, and smiled when he saw that that command, too, was not yet imbedded in the minds of the boots.

A fleeting thought ran through his mind: He, too, had taken this train on his way to boot camp at Parris Island, but by himself, not with a hundred others to keep him company.

And then the staff sergeant he had seen with Zimmerman walked up to him.

"Staff Sergeant Koznowski, sir," he said.

"I wanted a word with Sergeant Zimmerman, Sergeant," McCoy said. "If that would be all right with you."

"Yes, sir," Koznowski said.

"Zimmerman and I were in the Fourth Marines," McCoy said, as Zimmerman walked up to them.

"Yes, sir," Koznowski said. "Zimmerman told me."

And then Staff Sergeant Koznowski took a good look at Second Lieutenant McCoy and decided that Zimmerman had been bullshitting him. There was a Killer McCoy in the Corps, a tough China Marine who had killed two Eye-talian Marines when they had gone after him during the riots and who had left dead slopeheads all over the Peking Highway when they had been foolish enough to try to rob a Marine truck convoy Killer McCoy had been put in charge of.

Stories like that moved quickly through the Corps. Koznowski had heard it several times. And Koznowski now recalled another detail. It had been Corporal Killer McCoy. And nobody got to make corporal with the 4th Marines in China on the first hitch. This pleasant-faced, boyish-looking second lieutenant wasn't old enough to have been a corporal in the China Marines, and he sure as hell didn't look tough enough to have taken on three Eye-talian marines by himself with a knife.

"Zimmerman was telling me, sir," Staff Sergeant Koznowski said, with a broad, I'm-now-in-on-the-joke smile, "that you was Killer McCoy."

Second Lieutenant McCoy's face tightened, and his eyes turned icy. "You never used to let your mouth run away with you, Zimmerman," he said, coldly furious.

Zimmerman's face flushed. "Sorry," he said. Then he raised his eyes to McCoy's. "I didn't expect to see you in an officer's uniform."

Very slowly, the ice melted in McCoy's eyes. "I didn't expect to see you on a train in New Jersey," he said. "How'd you get out of the Philippines?"

"Never got there," Zimmerman said. "I come down with malaria and was in sick bay, and they never put me off the ship. It went on to Diego after Manila, and I was in the hospital there for a while. Then they shipped me here."

"You all right now?" McCoy asked.

"Yeah, I'm on limited duty. They're shipping me to the motor transport company at Parris Island."

"The story I heard," Koznowski said, "was that Killer McCoy was a corporal."

The ice returned to McCoy's eyes. He met Koznowski's eyes for a long moment until Koznowski, cowed, came to a position of attention.

Then he turned to Zimmerman and said something to him in Chinese. Zimmerman chuckled and then replied in Chinese. Koznowski sensed they were talking about him.

McCoy looked at Koznowski again. "I was a corporal in the Fourth Marines, Sergeant," he said. "Any other questions?"

"No, sir."

"In that case, why don't you go check on your men?" McCoy said.

"Aye, aye, sir," Staff Sergeant Koznowski said. Fuck you! he thought. He walked down the aisle. Then he thought, I'll be a sonofabitch. He really is Killer McCoy. I'll be goddamned!

"What about your family, Ernie?" McCoy asked, still speaking Chinese.

"Had to leave them in Shanghai," Zimmerman said. "I gave her money. She said she was going home."

"I'm sorry," McCoy said.

"I wasn't the only one," Zimmerman said. "Christ, even Captain Banning couldn't get his wife out. You heard he married that White Russian?"

McCoy nodded.

Captain Edward J. Banning had been the Intelligence Officer of the 4th Marines in Shanghai. Corporal Kenneth J. McCoy had worked for him. McCoy thought that Banning was everything a good Marine officer should be.