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

Pickering walked around the nose of the Staggerwing to where Dunn was really stretching to insert a tie-down rope into a link on the wing.

"Bill, so you don't say anything in innocence.... What the Killer's going to do at Pendleton is make up his mind whether he wants to go back to the ranks."

"Jesus Christ!" Dunn said, in surprise. "I thought he at least would be the exception to the rule...."

"What rule?"

"Commissioned officers have to have a college degree," Dunn said. "I've lost four pilots in the last three months to that policy. But I thought they'd make an exception for somebody like McCoy."

Pickering had not heard about that policy.

But if I let Wee Willy think that's the reason the god damn Corps is giving him the boot, I won't have to get into the Killer's "There Will be a War in Korea in Ninety Days or Less" theory. Which, of course, I can't anyway.

"I guess not," Pickering said.

"Is he going to take stripes? Or get out?"

"I don't know. I don't think it would bother him to be a gunny, but Ernie..."

"Well, at least they don't have any kids to worry about," Dunn said.

"No, they don't."

Dunn looked at him thoughtfully.

"Pick, I can easily get a field-grade BOQ. If things would be awkward at the hotel."

"Don't be silly. There's plenty of room, and I think hav-ing you around will be good for both of them."

"What the hell is McCoy going to do outside the Corps? It's all he knows."

Pick Pickering threw up his hands in a gesture of help-lessness.

Then the two of them started to walk toward Base Ops.

Lieutenant Colonel Dunn was having thoughts vis-a-vis Major Pickering he did not-could not-share with him.

I love Pick, I really do. But the cold truth is that he is a lousy field-grade officer. A superb pilot-a natural pilot- and as far as courage goes, he makes John Wayne look like a pansy.

But, my God, he's a Marine major, and he lands at a Navy field barefooted and dressed like a Hawaiian pimp in an airplane that he once flew under the Golden Gate Bridge-I got that incredible tale from George Hart, so it's absolutely true.

I will, therefore, not tell Major Pickering that we have an old comrade-in-arms at Camp Pendleton who just might be able to turn the G-l around about reducing Mc-Coy to the ranks, and failing that, will certainly make his passage through the separation process at Pendleton as painless as possible.

If I told Pick, he'd hop in a cab, go out to Pendleton, in his Hawaiian pimp's shirt and bare feet, march into the general's office, and begin the conversation. "Clyde, you won't believe what a fucking dumb thing the Corps has done this time..."

Well, maybe it wouldn't be that bad, but it would be out-rageous and thus counterproductive, and therefore I will not tell him what I'm going to do.

Not, of course, that there's much chance that I will be able to do anything at all.

[FOUR]

OFFICE OF THE DEPUTY COMMANDING GENERAL

CAMP PENDLETON, CALIFORNIA

1520 8 JUNE 1950

Captain Arthur McGowan, USMC, aide-de-camp to the Deputy Commanding General, a tall, slim, twenty-nine-year-old, put his head inside the general's door.

"General, Colonel Dunn's on the horn," he said.

"I was getting a little worried," Brigadier General Clyde W. Dawkins, USMC, replied. He was a tall, tanned, thin, sharp-featured man who had just celebrated his fortieth birthday.

He signaled with his index finger for Captain McGowan to enter the office, close the door behind him, and listen to the conversation on the extension telephone on a coffee table.

General Dawkins waited until McGowan had the phone to his ear before he picked up his own.

"I was getting a little worried, Bill," General Dawkins said. "Your ETA was noon. Where are you?"

"At the Coronado Beach, sir."

"I sort of thought you would be at Miramar," General Dawkins said.

The Miramar Naval Air Station was the other side of San Diego-about fifteen miles distant.

"Bill," the general went on before Dunn could answer, "you're not going to tell me Pickering's involved in this lit-tle operation of yours?"

"No, sir. But I'm in the suite. So's Pick. And until three minutes ago, so was Killer McCoy. And his wife."

General Dawkins was familiar with "the suite" in the Coronado Beach Hotel. Its fifteen rooms occupied about half of the fourth floor of the beachfront hotel, and was permanently leased to the Trans-Global Airways division of the Pacific and Far East Shipping Corporation.

At one time, before World War II, it had been leased to the Pacific and Far East Shipping Corporation for the use of the masters and chief engineers of PandFE vessels, and to house important passengers of the PandFE passenger fleet.

During World War II, on a space-available basis, its rooms had been made available to Marine and Navy officers with some connection to PandFE, or the Pickering family per-sonally. That, in turn, had evolved into "the suite" becoming the unofficial quarters of Marine aviators, especially those who had served with VMF-229 on Guadalcanal, when they were assigned to-or passing through-one or another of San Diego's Marine and Navy installations.

General Dawkins had many fond memories of the suite, and usually the first one that came to mind was of the harem of stunningly beautiful girls at one wartime party who had gathered like moths at a candle flame around Ty-rone Power and MacDonald Carey, both of whom had put their Hollywood careers on hold to serve as Marine avia-tors.

Sometimes he remembered the party where the star had been the actor Sterling Hayden, who'd been a Marine offi-cer, but in the OSS, not an aviator.

Now General Dawkins regarded the suite as a time bomb about to explode. The final evolution had been into where the Marine Reserve aviators stayed when in the area, at the invitation of Major Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR.

Although it had not come to General Dawkins's official attention, he had no reason to doubt the rumors that, espe-cially during the two weeks of summer training many Ma-rine Corps Reserve aviators attended in the San Diego Area, considerable quantities of intoxicating spirits were consumed by them in the suite, in the company of young ladies who, despite their beauty, were not the type one took home to meet one's mother. Or one's wife.

"No kidding?" General Dawkins said. "Give him my best regards. McCoy, I mean."

"Actually, sir, I'm calling about McCoy."

"First things first, Bill," Dawkins said. "There is at this moment in Hangar 212 at Miramar eight crates...."

"Yes, sir, I know."

"I don't know, and don't want to know, what they con-tain."

"Sir, they will be picked up first thing in the morning. My Gooney-Bird lost the oil pump in the port engine, and was delayed in Kansas City. Its ETA here-North Island- is 0500 tomorrow morning. Figure an hour to fuel it, and I'll have it on the deck at Miramar at 0630, and with any luck at all, I'll be wheels-up from Miramar at 0730."

" `I'll be wheels-up'?" Dawkins parroted. "You'll be flying the Gooney-Bird?"

The Gooney-Bird was R4D, the Navy/Marine version of the Douglas DC-3 twin-engine transport.

"Yes, sir. I came out here in a Corsair. One of my kids will take that back."

"And you don't think anyone will wonder why a light colonel is flying a R4D?"

"I thought the Navy might be less prone to question a lieutenant colonel, sir," Dunn said.

That's probably true. But the real reason, Wee Willy, that you`ll be flying the R4D is because you don't want one of your officers catching the flak if this midnight requisi-tion of ours goes awry; you`ll take the rap. You're a good officer, Dunn.

"If you're not wheels-up by 0830, give me-or Art McGowan-a heads-up, and I'll start the damage control."

"General, I really appreciate-"