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

"The Army liked you, right, Lieutenant?" Ripley asked, dryly sarcastic. "And gave you all good stuff and none of their junk?"

"After the third, or fourth, or fifth time we gave them their junk back," McCoy replied, "they got tired. Or maybe they ran out of junk. But these weapons are all ours, and there is no junk."

Ripley believed him. His rule of thumb about judging officers, especially junior lieutenants, was to believe what their gunnys thought of them. And this gunny obviously thought highly of this second lieutenant.

The inspection of the armament and armory had taken the full afternoon allotted to it on the plan of inspection, but three and a half of the four hours were spent by McCoy and Zimmerman showing the warrant officer the exotic, nonstandard weapons Colonel Carlson had obtained using his special authority to arm the Raiders as he saw fit, and then listening to the warrant officer's sea stories about what it had been like in the 4th Marines in the old days, when he'd been there in '33-35.

Chief Warrant Officer Ripley had never before had the chance to closely examine three of the special weapons Carlson had acquired for the Raiders. One of them was the Reising caliber.45 ACP submachine gun. Invented by Eugene G. Reising, the closed-breech, 550-round-per-minute weapon had gone into production in December 1941. McCoy had learned the Army had received several hundred of them, and had told Colonel Carlson, and Carlson had promptly signed a requisition for two hundred of them.

"If we don't like them, we can always give them back, can't we, McCoy?".

Ripley had never even heard of the Reising before he found it in McCoy's special-weapons arms room. But he had heard a lot about the other two, though he'd never actually seen them: These were the brainchild of a Marine, Captain Melvin Johnson, USMCR, who (as a civilian) had submitted the first models to the Army Ordnance Corps in 1938.

The Johnson rifle was a self-loading.30-06 rifle with a unique rotary ten-shot magazine and an unusual eight-radial-lug-bolt locking system. Barrels could be replaced in a matter of seconds.

The Johnson light machine gun was a fully automatic version of the rifle, with a magazine feeding from the side; a heavier stock with a pistol grip; and a bipod attached to the barrel near the muzzle.

Warrant Officer Ripley was fascinated with them. And after a solemn examination, he pronounced the Reising to be "a piece of shit"; the Johnson rifle to be "twice as good as that fucking Garand''; and the Johnson machine gun ' 'probably just as good as the Browning automatic rifle." Lieutenant McCoy agreed with Ripley about the Reising; and he too thought that the Johnson rifle was probably going to be a good combat weapon (because its partially empty magazine could be reloaded easily; the en bloc eight-round clip of the Garand could not be reloaded in the rifle); and he thought the BAR was a far better weapon man the Johnson. But he kept his opinions to himself, deciding that he was in no position to argue with a chief Warrant officer, whose judgment was certainly colored by the fact that the Johnsons were invented by a Marine.

Second Lieutenant McCoy and Gunnery Sergeant Zimmerman were relieved, but not really surprised, when Warrant Officer Ripley showed them the clipboard on which was the pencil copy of his report. (A neatly typewritten report in many copies would be prepared later.) He had found their armory "Excellent" overall (one step down from the theoretical, never-in McCoy's experience-awarded "Superior"); and aside from "minor, readily correctable discrepancies noted hereon" there was no facet of their operation that would require a reinspection to insure that it had been corrected.

Gunnery Sergeant Zimmerman then produced a jug he just happened to come across where someone had hidden it behind a ceiling rafter, and they had a little nip.

"The brass'll keep at it for a while," Ripley said. "Between us China Marines, most of 'em got a real hard-on for Carlson. What the fuck is that all about?"

"I think it's because he got out of the Corps and then came back in," McCoy said. "And then got promoted."

"Carlson got out of the Corps?" Ripley said, obviously surprised. "I didn't know that. How come?"

McCoy shrugged his shoulders.

"I was with him in Nicaragua when he got the Navy Cross," Ripley said with a touch of pride in his voice. "The last I heard, he had the Marine detachment at Warm Springs. What'd he do, piss off the President?"

"I don't think so," McCoy said. "Otherwise the President's son wouldn't be the exec."

"No shit?" Chief Warrant Officer Ripley said. "That tall drink of water is really the President's son? I thought they were pulling my chain."

"That's him," McCoy said.

"I'll be goddamned," Ripley said.

"Is the brass going to fuck with your report? So they can stick it in Carlson?" McCoy asked.

"I call things like I see them," Ripley said indignantly. "You guys are more shipshape than most. And nobody fucks with my reports. Shit!"

"Well, this isn't the first time I heard that they're trying to stick it to Carlson," McCoy said. "And there are some real sonsofbitches around."

"When they handed me this shitty assignment-I'd rather be with the First Division; hell, I'd rather be here-the Commandant himself told me if anybody tried to lay any crap on me, I was to come to him personal."

(One)

Aboard the Yacht Last Time San Diego Yacht Club 1900 Hours, 9 April 1942

Major Edward J. Banning, Captain Jack NMI Stacker, and Lieutenants McCoy and Burnes were sitting on teak-and-canvas deck chairs with their feet on the polished mahogany rail at the deck. Music and the smell of something frying came up from the portholes of the galley.

"You look deep in thought, Jack," Banning said.

"You really want to know what I'm thinking?" Stecker replied. "That there are two kinds of Marines. There is the one kind, the ordinary kind, the Campbell's Baked Beans with Ham Fat kind; and then there's the steak kind. That one"-he pointed at McCoy-"is the steak kind. I don't know how they do it, but they always wind up living better than other people."

He smiled at McCoy. "No criticism, McCoy. I'm jealous. Christ, this is real nice."

Banning chuckled. "I know what you mean, Jack," he said. "When all the other PFCs in the Fourth were playing acey-deucey for dimes with each other in the barracks, McCoy was playing poker for big money in the Cathay Mansions Hotel with an ex-Czarist Russian general, and he was living in a whorehouse the General owned."

"Jesus!" McCoy said. "Be quiet, Ernie'll hear you."

Stecker and Banning laughed.

"I didn't know you knew about that," McCoy said to Banning.

"I know a good deal about you that you don't know I know," Banning said, a little smugly.

"The first time I saw him, he was a corporal; but he was driving that big LaSalle," Stecker said, pointing down the wharf. "I was a technical sergeant before I drove anything fancier than a used Model A Ford."

"This seems to have developed a leak, Ken," Banning said, examining his bottle of Schlitz. "It's all gone."

"I'll get you another, sir," First Lieutenant Martin J. Burnes, USMCR, said quickly, taking the bottle from Banning's hand and scurrying down the ladder to the aft cockpit.

"There's another proof of your theory, Jack," Banning said. "When I was a second lieutenant, I did the running and fetching for first lieutenants."

Stecker chuckled.

"He's all right, Major," McCoy said. "Eager as hell. Gung ho!"

Marty Burnes returned almost immediately with four bottles of Schlitz.

"Here you are, sir," he said, respectfully, handing one of the bottles to Banning, and then passing the others around.

"Burnes," Jack Stecker said, "McCoy just accused you of being 'gung ho!' I keep hearing that phrase around here. What's that all about?"