"Go on, tough guy, take it," the drill instructor said, and jabbed Hart in the stomach again with the butt of the trench knife.
Hart shook his head and blurted what came into his mind: "I don't have anything against you." The drill instructor's eyes examined him with renewed interest.
"Meaning you think you could hurt me?"
Again, Hart blurted what came into his mind: "I don't know. But I've got no reason to cut you."
There was a moment's silence.
"'Ten'hut!" the-drill instructor barked. "Fow-wud, Harch!
Double-time, Harch!" Hart's compliance was Pavlovian. He started double-timing across the parade ground. After a moment, he became aware that the drill instructor was double-timing a step or two behind him, just within his peripheral vision.
He came to the end of the parade ground, then crossed a narrow macadam road and moved between two barracks buildings.
"Column left, Harch!" the drill instructor ordered when they reached the far end of the long frame building. "Detail, halt!" Hart stopped and stood at attention. The drill instructor stepped in front of him.
What the fuck do I do now? Let him beat me up?
"Who taught you to fight?" the drill instructor demanded, and then, without waiting for a reply, "What did you do before you came in The Corps?"
"I was a cop"
"A cop?"
"A detective," Hart said.
"Where?"
"Saint Louis."
"Were you really going to break his arm?"
"He's a vicious, sadistic sonofabitch," Hart heard himself say. "Yeah, I was going to break his arm. Nobody calls me a motherfucker."
"He's on his way out of here," the drill instructor said.
"Before the war, there's no way an asshole like Warren would have made corporal, much less been assigned here. But he is here, and you just made him-made a DI-look like an asshole in front of the platoon. Maybe I should have let you break his arm we could have said it was an accident." Jesus Christ, he's talking to me like a human being.
"I'll fix it with the Captain somehow," the drill sergeant said, obviously thinking out loud. "If I can get you transferred to another platoon, can you keep your mouth shut about what happened?" He looked intently at Hart, as if finally making up his mind.
Hart nodded.
"Thank you," he said.
"Stick your thanks up your ass. I'm not doing this because I like you.
I'm doing it because it's the best thing for The Corps."
(Two)
ROYAL AUSTRALIAN NAVY COASTWATCHER ESTABLISHMENT
TOWNSVILLE, QUEENSLAND
30 AUGUST 1942 The letters USMC were stenciled on both sides of the hood of the gray 1941 Studebaker President, and a stenciled Marine Corps globe and anchor insignia were on each rear door.
The driver was a Marine, a tall, muscular man in his early thirties. He wore a green fore-and-aft cap adorned with the Marine insignia and the golden oak leaf of a major. Otherwise, he was substantially out of uniform. Instead of the forest green tunic prescribed for officers during the winter months in Australia, he wore a baggy, off-white, rough woolen thigh-length jacket that was equipped with a hood and was fastened with wooden pegs inserted through rope loops. The letters RAN, for Royal Australian Navy, were stenciled on the chest.
The passenger, a lean, sharp-featured man of about the same age, wore an identical duffel coat and a Royal Australian Navy officer's brimmed cap, the gold (actually brass) braid of which was both frayed and green with tarnish. There was no visible means to determine his rank.
Lieutenant Commander Eric Feldt, RAN, Commanding Officer of the Royal Australian Navy Coastwatcher Establishment, turned to Major Edward J. Banning, USMC, Commanding Officer of USMC Special Detachment 14, gestured out the window, and inquired, "Is that for you?" Banning, who had heard the engines, leaned forward to look out the window, and saw what he expected to see. A United States Army Air Corps C-47 had begun its approach to the landing field.
"I don't expect anyone," Banning said.
"But we couldn't expect the Asshole to let us know he was coming, could we?" Under practically any other circumstances, Major Ed Banning's sense of military propriety would have been deeply offended to hear a brother officer call another officer an anal orifice. And he would have been especially offended when the insult came from a foreigner, and the officer and gentleman so crudely characterized was a full colonel of the U.S. Marine Corps.
But at the moment, Major Banning was not at all offended. For one thing, he had a profound professional admiration and a good deal of personal affection for Commander Feldt. And for another, so far as Banning was concerned, Feldt's vulgar characterization fit to a T Colonel Lewis R. Mitchell, USMC, Special Liaison Officer between the Commander in Chief Pacific Ocean Areas (CINCPAC-Admiral Chester W. Nimitz) and the Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific (SWPOA-General Douglas MacArthur).
Banning knew far more about Colonel Lewis R. Mitchell than Mitchell would have dreamed possible, including the fact that Mitchell had been given his present assignment in the belief that he could do less damage to the war effort there than he had been causing as one of a half dozen colonels assigned to the Personnel Division at Headquarters, USMC.
"You really think it's Mitchell?"
"Who else would it be? That's a sodding Dakota, not a puddle-jumper. If it were your Nip, he'd be in a puddlejumper." The "your Nip" reference was to First Lieutenant Hon Song Do, Signal Corps, U.S. Army.
"I'm telling you for the last fucking time, Eric!" Banning flared furiously. "Don't you ever refer to Pluto as a Nip, mine or anyone else's!"
"Sorry," Feldt said, sounding genuinely contrite. It did not satisfy Banning.
"For one thing, he's a serving officer. For another, he's a friend of mine. And finally, for Christ's sake, he's Korean, not Japanese." Pluto Hon had made a good many trips by puddle-jumper from MacArthur's headquarters to Townsville to deliver to Banning classified messages that could not be entrusted to ordinary couriers. It was a long way to fly in a Piper Cub. Pluto Hon was a good man, a good officer, and he was not a fucking Nip.
"I'm really sorry, old boy," Feldt said. "That just slipped out"
"That's your fucking trouble!"
Feldt did not respond.
Banning decided he had gone far enough. In fact, he was chagrined that he had lost his temper.
"Well, what do you say?" he asked. "Should we go down to the field and see if that is the Asshole?"
"Sod him," Feldt said. "Let him walk."
"We'd just have to send one of the men back for him," Banning replied as he braked and prepared to turn around.
"And if one of my guys were out of uniform, say wearing one of these RAN sleeved blankets, the Asshole would have apoplexy."