Griffin W.E.B. - The Corps 09 - Under Fire

Shortly after boarding the aircraft-half of the fuselage was devoted to cargo-they were told there was an unex-pected delay in the departure time, they were going to have to wait for some big shot, and since it was going to get hot as hell in the aircraft, those who wished could get off and wait in the shade offered by a hangar.

The lieutenant (j.g.) who gave them this word also re-minded them that anyone who missed the departure of the aircraft would be subject to far more severe penalty under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, 1948, than provided for simple absence without leave. Missing this flight would be construed as absence without leave to avoid hazardous service.

All of Aug9-2 got off the airplane and sat down in the shade on the concrete before the doors of an enormous hangar.

At 1525, the big shot they were holding the flight for showed up in a two-U.S.-Army-staff-car convoy. The first of the two glistening olive-drab 1949 Chevrolet staff cars had the single-starred flag of a brigadier general flying from a short staff mounted to the fender.

An Army sergeant jumped out and opened the door. A Marine brigadier general got out, and then a Marine cap-tain, and then a Navy lieutenant. The sergeant opened the trunk, and the Navy officer took a suitcase from it.

A Marine captain-wearing, like the other Marine offi-cers, a crisply pressed uniform-got out of the second staff car and went to the trunk. Then a-Jesus H. Christ, will you look at that?-well-dressed, quite beautiful American woman got out of the car and watched the captain take a suitcase from the trunk.

She walked with him as he walked to the brigadier gen-eral. They exchanged salutes. The general shook hands with the captain and the Naval officer. The captain touched the cheek of the goddamn beautiful woman, and then she threw herself into his arms, and he held her for a moment.

Then he and the naval officer walked to the airplane and went up the ladder. The general put his arm around the beautiful woman in a fatherly, comforting manner.

The Navy officer who'd told them they could wait in the shade appeared at the door of the airplane and waved at USMC Platoon Aug9-2 (Provisional), signaling them that it was now time for them to reboard the aircraft.

They did so.

McCoy leaned across Taylor and waved at Ernie, although he was reasonably sure that she couldn't see him.

"That's tough on you, isn't it, Ken?" Taylor asked, thoughtfully. "Having her here, and you commuting to the war?"

"What about the Air Force guys?" McCoy responded. "They do it every day: `How was your day, honey?' `Oh, I bombed a couple of bridges, shot up a convoy, took a little antiaircraft in my landing gear, and had to land wheels-up. Nothing special. How about you?' `My day was just awful. Ellsworth, Junior, kicked Marybelle Smith, Colonel Smith's little girl, and you have to call Mrs. Smith and apologize. The battery's dead in the car, and the PX doesn't know when they're going to get the right one. They want you on the PTA committee, and I didn't know how to tell them no-`"

He was interrupted by the roar of the engines as the pilot set the throttles to takeoff power, but Taylor had heard enough to laugh.

The R5D began its takeoff roll.

When McCoy decided that the roar of the engine had gone down enough for Taylor to hear him, McCoy said: "All we have to worry about now is (one) whether Jennings and the other guys and the stuff from Pusan made it to Sasebo, and (two) whether we'll be allowed to take them and it with us on the destroyer. I wish the general had been able to come to Sasebo. People usually find it hard to say `no' to gener-als."

"I wonder what the hell Howe's doing for so long in Ko-rea?" Taylor asked. Howe being in Korea was the reason Pickering had to stay in Tokyo.

McCoy shrugged.

"I don't know. But whatever it is, he thinks it's impor-tant. He's a good man."

"I think Jennings will be waiting for us at Sasebo," Tay-lor said. "The Marine guy at K-l... ?"

"Captain Overton," McCoy furnished.

Taylor nodded and went on: ".., told me that a lot, prob-ably most, of the Air Force and Navy transports that land at K-l don't fuel up there. They head for Sasebo, which is both the closest field for large aircraft, and has a pretty good off-the-tanker-and-into-the-airplanes fueling setup. K-l, you saw that, doesn't. They don't even have a decent tank farm for avgas...."

"You are a fountain of information I really don't give a damn about, aren't you, Mr. Taylor?"

"You care about this, Mr. McCoy, because the aircraft that fly from K-l to Sasebo to take on fuel are very often empty. That means Jennings will be able to find space for himself, the other jarheads, the camouflage nets, the ra-tions, the medical supplies, and whatever else he stole from the Army aboard one of these empty airplanes headed for Sasebo."

"I stand corrected, sir," McCoy said.

"And I don't think Her Majesty's Navy's going to give us any trouble about taking Jennings, et cetera, aboard the Charity with us," Taylor said. "But let's say they do..."

"In which case we're fucked. The Brits are going to give us lifeboats. You can't hide a lifeboat on Tokchok-kundo.

And that means the North Koreans will learn sooner or later, probably sooner, that there're two lifeboats on Tokchok-kundo and start wondering why."

"In which case-I admit this is a desperate measure- we get General Pickering to get us an airplane to fly the stuff back to Pusan, and ship it to Tokchok-kundo on the Wind of Good Fortune."

"I thought about that. There's a few little things wrong with it. If Pickering asks for an airplane, they'll want to know what for, and this is supposed to be a secret opera-tion. And who would sail it?"

"Her. Sail her. Either of those two Koreans we had aboard is capable of sailing her to Tokchok-kundo."

"Okay. Let's say we did that, and it worked. The Wind of Good Fortune couldn't make it to Tokchok-kundo until we'd been there-which means the lifeboats would have been there, exposed to the curious eyes of every sonofabitch in the Flying Fish Channel-three or four, maybe five days-"

"Hi," someone said. "I'm Howard Dunwood."

McCoy turned and found himself looking at the smiling face of one of the Marine officers he'd seen waiting in the shade of the hangar at Haneda.

Three weeks before, Howard Dunwood had had a reserved parking spot for his top-of-the-line DeSoto automobile- identified as being reserved for "Salesman of the Month"- at Mike O'Brien's DeSoto-Plymouth in East Orange, New Jersey.

He had been just about to leave the dealership for an early-afternoon drink at the Brick Church Lounge and Grill-he was actually outside the showroom, about to get in his car-when there came a person-to-person long- distance telephone call for him.

A week after that, Captain Howard Dunwood, USMCR, had reported to the Replacement Battalion (Provisional) at Camp Joseph J. Pendleton, California. On 9 August, Dun-wood had been given command of USMC Platoon Aug9-2.

High above the Pacific Ocean seventy-four hours later, as Trans-Global Airways Flight 1440 was nearing the end of its journey to Tokyo, Captain Dunwood had had the foresight aboard to slip into his utilities jacket pockets eight miniature bottles of Jack Daniels' sour mash whiskey.

You never know, he had reasoned, when a little belt would be nice.

He had consumed four of the miniatures at Camp Drake, two of them in the darkened auditorium during the motion picture portion of the chaplain's presentation. He had con-sumed two on the bus to Haneda, and the last two while in the shade of the hangar, waiting for the big shots to come so they could take off.

What the hell, the veteran of four World War II amphibi-ous invasions-including Tawara and Iwo Jima-had rea-soned, why not? I suspect they're going to be shooting at me in Korea, and you don't want to be half-shitfaced when people are shooting at you.