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

Zimmerman had personally stripped down and inspected ninety-six of the fuckers-half of them brand new, and half of them worn-out junk-that they'd got from the Army and that McCoy had sent him after.

But most of the officers loved the Thompsons. Though if they couldn't talk themselves into one of those, they wanted carbines. Maybe there was something to what McCoy had said, that the carbine was intended to replace the pistol. But he was about the only one that ever said that. Everybody else wanted it because they thought it would be a lot easier to haul around than a Springfield or a Garand.

And then there were the knives. Every sonofabitch and his brother in the Raiders was running around with a knife, like they were all Daniel Boones and they were going to go out and scalp the Japs, for Christ sake.

McCoy was the only Marine Zimmerman ever knew who had ever used a knife on anybody. There had been some guys in Shanghai who'd gotten into it with the Italian Marines during the riots with Springfield bayonets, but that was different. Bayonets weren't sharp, and they had been used almost like clubs, or maybe small, dull swords. And so far as Zimmerman remembered hearing, none of those Italian Marines had died.

Two of the four Italian Marines who had jumped McCoy in Shanghai had died. McCoy had opened them up with his Fairbairn, which was a knife invented by a Limey captain on the Shanghai Municipal Police. It was a sort of dagger, razor sharp on bow edges, and built so that the point wouldn't snap off if it hit a bone. McCoy's wasn't a real Fairbairn, but a smaller copy of one run up by some Chinese out of an old car spring. It was about two-thirds as long as the real one. The real Fairbairn was too big to hide inside your sleeve above your wrist and below your elbow; McCoy's Baby Fairbairn was.

McCoy was now carrying his Fairbairn. When Zimmerman had asked him why, McCoy had first said, "Because Carlson told me to." And then he jumped all over his ass, saying he had a big mouth and that he should have kept it shut about what happened in Shanghai. Zimmerman had told him, truthfully, that he hadn't said a goddamned word about that, but he wasn't sure McCoy believed him.

Well, everybody in the goddamned Raiders knew about it now, and was calling him "Killer," the officers to his face, and the others behind his back. Until they stopped it, a lot of the kids were even trying to go around with their knives strapped to their wrists. That didn't work, but they thought it was salty as hell.

All this salty knife and submachine-gun bullshit was fine in training, Zimmerman thought; but if the Raiders ever got to do what everybody thought they were going to do-sneak ashore in little rubber boats from destroyers-converted-to-transports onto some Jap-held island and start, like John Wayne and Alan Ladd in some bullshit movie, to cut throats and shoot up the place-they were going to find out it was a hell of a lot different from what they thought.

Only once in his life had Gunnery Sergeant Ernst Zimmerman found himself in a situation where armed then were really trying to kill him. Forty or fifty Chinese "bandits," who were working for the Japs, had ambushed him and a Marine officer named Sessions when they had become separated from the rest of a motor supply convoy.

He hadn't shit his pants or tried to hide or run or anything like that. He'd just stood there with a.45 in a hip holster and just absolutely forgot he had a weapon, until McCoy had come charging up like the goddamned cavalry taking Chinese down with a Thompson. Even then he hadn't done anything. McCoy had had to scream at him, "Shoot, for Christ's sake!" before he took the.45 out and started to use it to save his own ass.

Zimmerman didn't think that would happen again-after he had "woken up," he had done what had to be done-but he wondered how these Raiders who were swaggering around Camp Elliott with their knives and carbines and Thompsons were going to react when they found themselves facing some Jap who was as big as they were, and who wasn't wearing thick glasses and didn't have buck teeth and was about to shoot them or run them through with a bayonet.

Baker Company's gunnery sergeant, Danny Esposito, appeared at the table with a pitcher of beer in one hand and a mug in the other. He was a large, heavy, leather-skinned man of thirty (either a Spaniard or an Italian, Zimmerman wasn't sure which), and he was wearing greens.

"You saving this table?" he asked.

"Sit down," Zimmerman said.

"You ready?" Gunnery Sergeant Esposito asked, holding his pitcher of beer over Zimmerman's mug.

"Why not?"

Esposito topped off Zimmerman's mug, and then sat down. Zimmerman pushed the piece of waxed paper with the peanuts over to him. Esposito scooped some up, tossed them in his mouth, and nodded his thanks.

"Scuttlebutt says that if somebody's got a worn-out Thompson and wants one of the new ones," Gunnery Sergeant Esposito said, "you're the man to see."

"You want a Thompson?" Zimmerman asked evenly.

"One of my lieutenants," Esposito said. "I put a hundred rounds through a Garand, and I sort of like it. It ain't no Springfield, of course, but I'm getting two-, two-and-a-half-inch groups."

"The Garand is a pretty good weapon," Zimmerman said. "People don't like it 'cause it's new, that's all."

"What about the Thompson? Can you help me out?"

"I'll see what I can do," Zimmerman said. "That why you come looking for me?"

"What makes you think I come looking for you?"

"You're all dressed up," Zimmerman said.

Esposito shrugged and drained his beer mug and refilled it before he replied.

"I was hoping maybe I'd run into you, Zimmerman," he confessed.

"You did," Zimmerman said.

"Out of school?" Esposito asked.

Zimmerman nodded.

"You're pretty tight with Lieutenant McCoy," Esposito said.

"We was in the Fourth Marines together," Zimmerman said.

"He's all right."

"Scuttlebutt says he had you to dinner," Esposito said. "On some yacht, where he's shacked up."

"That's what the scuttlebutt says?" Zimmerman replied.

"What do you know about his brother?"

"Not much," Zimmerman asked.

"I got an old pal at the Diego brig," Esposito said.

"What'd he do?" Zimmerman said.

"I said 'at,' not 'in,'" Esposito said, before he realized that Zimmerman was pulling his leg. "Shit, Zimmerman!"

"What about your pal at the brig?"

"He says McCoy-PFC McCoy was in there," Esposito said. "You know anything about that?"

Zimmerman shook his head. "No."

"He was supposed to be on his way to Portsmouth to do five-to-ten for belting an officer."

"That's what you heard, huh?" Zimmerman said.

"I also found out when he reported in here, he had just had full issue of new uniforms, and he's got a brand-new service record."

"What does that mean?"

"It means I got the straight poop from my friend at the brig," Esposito said. "If they vacate a general court-martial sentence and turn somebody loose, they give him a new service record. And since general prisoners don't have uniforms, except for dungarees with a 'P' painted on them, they give them a new issue."

"If I was you, Esposito," Zimmerman said, "I wouldn't be running off at the mouth about this."

"Because of Lieutenant McCoy, you mean?"

"Because if the Corps gave him a new service record, it means the Corps wants him to have a clean slate. Don't go turning over some rock."

"How would your friend Lieutenant McCoy react if I kicked the shit out of his little brother?"

"Why would you want to do that?" Zimmerman asked.

"For one thing, he's a wisenheimer," Esposito said. "For another, he thinks he's a real tough guy. He beat the shit out of two of my kids. No reason, either, that I can get out of anybody, except that he wanted to show people how tough he is. And he's running off at the mouth, too. About his brother, I mean. What's with the shack job on the yacht? Is that true? And while I'm asking questions, what's the real poop about Lieutenant McCoy?"