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

She put her hand on him and pulled her face back to look up at him.

"Well," she said, "what should we do now, do you think?"

"I suppose we better dry each other off, or the sheets'll get wet," he said.

"To hell with the sheets," she said.

When she came out of the bathroom again twenty minutes later, he was nearly dressed. Everything but his uniform blouse.

When he puts the blouse on, and I put my slip and dress on, she thought, that will be the end of it. We will close our suitcases, send for the bellboy, have breakfast, and he will put me on the train.

"Don't look at me," Ernie said. "I'm about to cry, and I look awful when I cry."

She went to her suitcase and turned her back to him and pulled a slip over her head.

"I'm on orders to Fleet Marine Force, Pacific," McCoy said, "for further assignment as a platoon leader with one of the regiments."

She turned to look at him. "I thought you were an intelligence officer," Ernie said.

"Early next month, the Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific," McCoy went on in a strange tone of voice, ignoring her question, "will be ordered to form the Second Separate Battalion. It will be given to Lieutenant Colonel Evans F. Carlson-"

"What's a separate battalion?" Ernie interrupted. "Honey, I don't understand these terms…"

"You heard about the English Commandos?" McCoy asked. Ernie nodded. "The Corps's going to have their own. Two battalions of them."

"Oh," Ernie said, somewhat lamely. She was frightened. Her mind's eye was full of newsreels of English Commandos. There were shock troops, sent to fight against impossible odds.

"Colonel Carlson is going to recruit then from Fleet Marine Force, Pacific," McCoy went on. "He has been given authority to take anybody he wants. He's an old China Marine. I'm an old China Marine. He's probably-almost certainly- going to try to recruit me. He is not recruiting married men."

"And that's why you won't marry me?" Ernie said, suddenly furious. "So you can be a commando? And get yourself killed right away? Thanks a lot."

"Carlson's a strange man," McCoy went on, ignoring her again. "He spent some time with the Chinese Communists. There is some scuttlebutt that he's a Communist."

"Scuttlebutt?" Ernie asked.

"Gossip, rumor," McCoy explained. "And there is some more scuttlebutt that he's not playing with a full deck."

Ernie Sage had never heard the expression before, but she thought it through. Now she was confused. And still angry, she realized, when she heard her tone of voice.

"You're telling me… let me get this straight… that you're going to volunteer for the Marine commandos, which are going to be under a crazy Communist?"

"You can only volunteer after you're asked," McCoy said. "My first problem is to make sure I'm asked."

"And then you can go get yourself killed?"

"I didn't ask for this job," he said.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Nobody knows for sure whether Carlson is either a Communist or crazy," McCoy said.

"If there seems to be some question, why are they making him a commando?"

"When he was a captain, he was commanding officer of the Marine detachment that guards President Roosevelt at Warm Springs, Georgia. He and the President's son, who is a reserve captain, are good friends."

"Oh," Ernie said. "But what has this got to do with you? Common sense would say, stay away from all of this."

"Somebody has to find out, for sure, if he's crazy, or a Communist, or both," McCoy said.

Ernie suddenly understood. Ken McCoy had told her the military secret he wouldn't talk about in the car. But it was so incredible she needed confirmation.

"And that's you, right?"

He nodded.

"They made up a new service record for me," he said. "It says that after I graduated from Quantico, they assigned me to the Marine Barracks in Philadelphia, where I was a platoon leader in a motor transport company. There's nothing in it about me being assigned to intelligence."

"And this is what you wouldn't tell me yesterday?"

He nodded. "I'm trusting you," he said. "Even Pick doesn't know. I don't know what the hell they would do to me if they found out I told you. Or what Carlson and the nuts around him would do to me if they found out I was there to report on them."

Ernie smiled at him. "So why did you tell me?" she asked, very softly.

"I figured maybe, if you're still crazy enough to want to drive across the country with me, that is, it would be easier to put you on the train once we get there if you knew."

"That's not the answer I was looking for," Ernie said. "But it's a start."

"What answer were you looking for?" McCoy asked.

"That you love me and trust me," Ernie said.

"That, too," he said.

(One)

U.S. Navy Air Station Pensacola, Florida 9 January 1942

Second Lieutenant Richard J. Stacker, USMC, was an eager-faced, slightly built young man of something less than medium height who looked even younger than his twenty-one years and who was wearing a uniform that looked every bit as fresh off the rack as it in fact was.

It was not surprising, therefore, that the Marine corporal behind the desk at the Marine Detachment, Pensacola Naval Air Station, imagined that he was dealing with your standard candy-ass second John who couldn't find his ass with both hands.

"Yes, sir?" the Marine corporal said, with exaggerated courtesy. "How may I be of assistance to the lieutenant, sir?"

"They sent me over here for billeting, Corporal," Stecker said, and laid a copy of his orders on the desk.

The corporal read the orders, and then looked at Stecker, now more convinced than ever that his original assessment was correct.

"Lieutenant," he said tolerantly, "your orders say that you are to report to Aviation Training. This is the Marine detachment. We only billet permanent party."

"An officer wearing the stripes of a full commander told me to come here," Stecker said. "Do you suppose he didn't know what he was talking about?"

The corporal looked at Stecker in surprise. It was not the sort of self-assured response he expected from a second lieutenant. The tables had been turned on him; he was being treated with tolerance.

And then he saw the door swing open again behind the slight, boy-faced second John, and another Marine second lieutenant walked in. Taller, larger, and older-looking than the first one, but still-very obviously-a brand-new second John.

"Excuse me, sir," the corporal said to Stecker, then: "Can I help you, Lieutenant?"

"I was sent here for billeting," Second Lieutenant Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, said.

"Be right with you," the corporal said, then left his desk and went into the detachment commander's officer.

"Hello," Pick said to Stecker. "My name is Pickering."

"How are you?" Stecker said, offering his hand. "Dick Stecker."

"Have you been getting the feeling that you, too, are unexpected around here?" Pickering asked. "Or, if expected, unwelcome."

"We are screwing up their system," Stecker said. "I think what's happened-"

He stopped in mid-sentence as the corporal returned with a staff sergeant, who picked up the copy of Stecker's orders and read them carefully. Then he raised his eyes to Pickering, who understood that he was being asked for a copy of his orders. He handed them over.

"You've been over to Aviation Training Reception?" the staff sergeant asked.

"And they sent us here," Stecker said.

"We only billet permanent party here, Lieutenant," the staff sergeant said.

"Far be it from me, a lowly second lieutenant," Stecker said, "aware as I am that there is nothing lower, or dumber, in the Corps, to suggest that either you or the commander who

sent me here doesn't know what he's talking about, Sergeant, but that would seem to the case, wouldn't you say?"