PUBLIC AFFAIRS
OFFICE HEADQUARTERS, U.S. MARINE CORPS
WASHINGTON, D.C.
1530 HOURS 22 SEPTEMBER 1942
Brigadier General J. J. Stewart summoned his deputy into his office and handed him a sheet of green paper.
"Take a look at this, will you?" he fumed.
INTEROFFICE MEMORANDUM
DATE: 22 September 1942
FROM: Assistant Chief of Staff, Personnel
TO: Director Public Affairs Office Hq, USMC
HAND CARRY
SUBJECT: Dillon, Major Homer J. , USMCR, Temporary Assignment Of
1. Effective immediately, subject officer is placed on temporary duty for an indefinite
period with the office of Management Analysis, Hq USMC.
2. All records of subject officer now under the control of the Public Affairs Division
will be hand-carried to the Office of management within twenty-four (24) hours.
3. Discussion of this assignment or requests for reconsideration thereof is not desired.
BY DIRECTION OF THE COMMANDANT:
Alfred J. Kennedy
Major General, USMC
Assistant Chief of staff, G-1
After General Stewart's deputy read the memorandum, he looked at General Stewart, but he didn't say anything.
"How the hell they expect me to do my job if they keep stealing my officers, I don't know," General Stewart said.
"Who the hell am I going to get to run the war bond tour' I've got a goddamned good mind to take this to the Commandant!" In the end, of course, he did not. He was a good Marine officer, and good Marine officers accept the orders they are given without question or complaint.
[Three]
SEA BREEZE MOTEL
MARY ESTHER, FLORIDA
24 SEPTEMBER 1942
Lieutenant K. R. McCoy, in a T-shirt and swimming trunks, opened the door to room 17 in response to an imperious knock.
He found himself facing a stout woman in her late forties, wearing flowered shorts and a matching blouse under a transparent raincoat. On her head she had a World War I-style steel helmet, painted white, bearing an insignia consisting of' the letters CD within a triangle. A brassard around her right arm had a similar insignia, and she was armed with a policeman's nightstick, painted white.
While McCoy was reacting to the sudden appearance of the CD lady, she pushed past him into room 17 and slammed the door behind her. Before returning to his room, he had spent three hours on the beach doing his share of the damage to a case of PX beer. After that, he attended a steak broil at the Hurlburtt Field Officer's club, each table there had come furnished with four bottles of California Cabernet Sauvignon.
"I could see light!" the lady announced in righteous indignation. "Your drapes permitted light to escape!"
"Sorry," McCoy said.
"There are German submarines out there!" the lady declared. "Don't you people know there's a war on?"
" Where do you think it went when it escaped?" Lieutenant John Marston Moore, USMCR, asked from the bed where he was resting. "The light, I mean?" His voice was somewhat slurred, as if he had partaken of a considerable quantity of intoxicants.
"Shut up, Johnny," Miss Ernestine Sage said. She was wearing a bathing suit and a T-shirt. In three-inch-high red letters, US MARINES was stretched taut across her bosom.
The pride of the Mary Esther, Florida, Civil Defense Force stared at her; and then she looked around the room. Also in the room were Miss Elizabeth Lathrop, in a swimsuit and T-shirt reading US ARMY AIR CORPS, Sergeant George Hart, and two galvanized iron buckets filled with iced beer and several bottles of liquor.
"You girls should be ashamed of yourselves!"
"`Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,' " Lieutenant John Marston Moore announced sonorously, "as our blessed Lord and Saviour said on the road to Samara." Ernie Sage began to giggle.
"You keep those drapes drawn or I'll write you up!" the Civil Defense lady ordered furiously. "I mean it!"
"Yes, Ma'am," McCoy said. "We're sorry." He turned off the lights. The Civil Defense lady left the room to return to her appointed rounds. McCoy closed the door, locked it, and then turned the lights on again.
"You're really the life of the party, aren't you?" McCoy said to Moore, misquoting Where do you think the light went when it escaped? "The one thing we don't need is to get hauled off to the local police station."
"Yes, Sir," Moore said, sounding not at all remorseful.
"Sorry, Lieutenant, Sir."
"Are there really German submarines out there?" Ernie asked.
"Probably," McCoy replied. "They try to sink the oil tankers coming out of the Texas Gulf ports and whatever sails from,, New Orleans. But I don't think they're in this close to shore, There's just too many airfields along here. There was a story going around that they caught half a dozen Germans near the mouth of Mobile Bay. They were supposedly landed from a sub."
"Isn't that interesting?" Moore said.
McCoy flashed a cold look at him and Ernie saw it. Without a good deal of effort, she had already concluded that whatever Ken and the other two were doing down here had something to do with beaches.
When they were on the beach this afternoon, Moore and Hart had a steel cone and a square block of lead. They went up and down the beach, pounding the cone into the sand. And then at the Officer's Club Steak Broil-the club was right on the beach-Ken left the party for a "walk on the beach" with Lieutenant Mainwaring, the Marine officer who picked them up at the train station in Tallahassee and drove them here, and the Army Air Corps guy who gave Beth the T-shirt. They took the cone and lead block with them. They were gone forty-five minutes.