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

When they saw the Buick station wagon pull to the curb, both "Mother" Banning and her daughter-in-law, "Luddy," rose from the rocking chairs in which they had been sit-ting. Mother Banning folded her hands on her stomach. Luddy Banning clapped hers together, producing a sound like a pistol shot, and then, a moment later, a dignified, gray-haired black man in a gray cotton jacket appeared from in-side the house.

"Ma'am?"

"Stanley, our guests have arrived," Luddy Banning said.

"Please inform the colonel, and send someone to take care of their car and luggage."

"Yes, ma'am."

Mother Banning and Luddy Banning were the mother and the wife, respectively, of Colonel Edward J. Banning, USMC, who was both commanding officer of Marine Bar-racks, Charleston, and Adjunct Professor of Naval Science at his alma mater, officially the Military College of South Carolina, but far better known as the Citadel.

Colonel Banning was a graduate of the Citadel, (`26) as his father (`05), grandfather (`80). and great-grandfather (`55) had been. On April 12, 1861, Great-Grandfather Matthew Banning had stood where Mother and Luddy Ban-ning now stood on the piazza and watched as the first shots of the War of the Secession were fired on Fort Sumter.

He had then gone off as a twenty-five-year-old major to command the 2nd Squadron of the 2nd South Carolina Dragoons. When released from Union captivity in 1865, the conditions of his release required him to swear fealty to the United States of America, and to remove the insignia of a major general from his gray Confederate uniform. For the rest of his life, however, he was addressed as General Banning, and referred to by his friends as "The General."

Grandfather Matthew Banning, Jr., had answered the call of his friend Theodore Roosevelt and gone off to the Spanish American War as a major with the First U.S. Vol-unteer Cavalry. Family legend held that Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Banning had been one of the only two First Volun-teer Cavalry officers actually to be astride a horse during the charge up Kettle and San Juan Hills. There was a large oil painting of that engagement in the living room of the house on the Battery, showing Brevet Lieutenant Colonel Banning and Colonel Theodore Roosevelt leading the charge. For the rest of his life, he was addressed as Colonel and referred to by his friends as "The Colonel."

Matthew Banning III elected to accept a commission in the Cavalry of the Regular Army of the United States on his graduation from the Citadel in June 1905, the alternative be-ing going to work for his father in one or another of the Banning family businesses. He had been a first lieutenant for twelve years when the United States entered World War I in 1917. When the Armistice was signed the next year, the sil-ver eagles of a full colonel of the Tank Corps were on the epaulets of his tunic, and a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts were on the chest.

With The Colonel still running the family businesses, Colonel Banning III remained in service after the war, even though it meant accepting a reduction from colonel to ma-jor. By 1926, he had been repromoted to colonel, and on the parade ground at the Citadel had sworn his son, Ed-ward J. Banning, into the United States Marine Corps as a second lieutenant upon his graduation from the Citadel.

Like his father before him, Matthew Banning III had been addressed as Colonel for the rest of his life, and re-ferred to by his friends as "The Colonel."

The Colonel lived long enough (1946) to see his first grandson, and his son-with the eagles of a Marine colonel on his epaulets-assigned as a Professor of Mili-tary Science at the Citadel.

For a while, the likelihood of either thing happening had seemed remote. For one thing, Edward Banning had not married as the next step after graduating from the Citadel, as had all his antecedents.

He was thirty-six, a captain serving with the 4th Marines in Shanghai, before he marched to the altar, and that only days before he went to the Philippines with the 4th Marines, leaving his White Russian bride in Shanghai at the mercy-if that word applied at all-of the Japanese.

Captain Banning was blinded by Japanese artillery in the Philippines and evacuated by submarine. His sight re-turned, and he was given duties he would not talk about, but which The Colonel understood meant Intelligence with a capital I.

Once, on the piazza of the house on the Battery, just be-fore he went-for the fourth or fifth time-to the war in the Orient, then Major Banning confided in The Colonel that, realistically, he held little hope that he would ever see his wife again. There had been no word of her at all.

And then, in May of 1943, when by then Lieutenant Colonel Banning was "somewhere in the Pacific" there had been a telephone call from the Hon. Zachary W. Westmin-ister III (D., 3rd District, S.C.), a Citadel classmate.

"Matty, you sitting down?"

"No, actually, I'm not."

"Matty, ol' buddy, you better sit down."

It didn't sound as if ol' Zach was going to relate bad news about Eddie, but The Colonel had been worried nev-ertheless.

"I'm sitting, Zach, now get on with it."

"I just came from meeting with the President," Con-gressman Westminister began, "and I can only tell you a little...."

"Get on with it, goddamn it, Zach!"

"When you get off the phone, you go tell `Lisbeth to change the sheets in the guest room. Your daughter-in-law will shortly be arriving."

"My God!"

"And if you still have a crib in the attic, you better dust that off, too. She's coming with Edward Edwardovich Ban-ning in her arms."

"You're telling me there's a baby?"

"Edward Edwardovich-how `bout that?-Banning. Born August 1942, somewhere in Mongolia."

"Goddamn, Zach!"

"When I know more, I'll be in touch. The President just gave the order to put the two of them on a plane from Chunking."

Elizabeth Banning didn't say anything, of course-she was a Christian gentlewoman-but The Colonel knew that once the situation changed from Ed having married some White Russian in Shanghai who would probably never be heard from again, to having Ed's White Russian wife and their baby about to arrive at the house on the Battery, she naturally had concerns about what she would be like, how they would fit into Charleston society.

The former Maria Catherine Ludmilla Zhikov had come down the steps from the Eastern Airlines DC-3 looking far more like a photograph from Town and Country than a refugee who had spent seventeen months moving across China and Mongolia in pony-drawn carts, pausing en route for several days to be delivered of a son.

Her Naval Air Transport Service flight from China to the United States had been met at San Francisco by Mrs. Fleming Pickering, who transported her and the baby to the Foster San Franciscan hotel where the proprietors of the in-hotel Chic Lady clothing shop and the across-the-street Styles for the Very Young baby clothes emporium were waiting for her.

"I knew the moment I laid eyes on Luddy that she was a lady," Mrs. Elizabeth Banning said at the time-and many times later.

"If I had arrived in Charleston looking like I looked when I got off the plane in San Francisco," Luddy Banning said later-after The Colonel had gone to his reward, she herself had become "The Colonel's Wife" and Elizabeth Banning had acceded, much like Queen Elizabeth's mother, to the title "Mother Banning"-"Mother Banning would have had a heart attack. Thank God for Patricia Pickering."

Behind her back-not derisively or pejoratively- Luddy Banning was known as "the countess," not only be-cause she had a certain regal air about her, but also because a Citadel cadet doing a term paper on the organization of the Russian Imperial general staff had gone to The Colonel's Russian wife for help with it.

The colonel's Russian wife, while perusing one of the cadet's reference works, had laid a finger on the name of Lieutenant General Count Vasily Ivanovich Zhivkov, and softly said, "My father."