That the kid had worked for Gunny Stecker for two years, and been promoted during that time, was all-around recommendation enough; people who didn’t measure up to Gunny Stecker’s high standards didn’t get promoted, they got themselves shipped someplace else. On the same order that Headquarters U.S. Marine Corps ordered Sergeant Joseph L. Howard to the 1stDefense Battalion at Pearl, it promoted him to staff sergeant.
When the Japanese attack began, even as he listened to the sound of exploding bombs and the roar of low-flying aircraft, it was very difficult for Joe Howard to accept that what was happening actually was happening.
He had been conditioned to regard Pearl Harbor as America’s mighty-and impregnable-fortress in the Pacific. In his view, if war came, the Japanese would probably attack Wake Island and Guam, and some of the other islands, and maybe even (Joe thought this highly unlikely) the Philippines. But Hawaii? Never. Not with Pearl Harbor and its row of dreadnought battleships, and its cruisers and aircraft carriers. And with the Army Air Corps fighters and bombers, not to mention the Navy and Marine Corps fighters and torpedo bombers afloat and ashore.
No goddamn way!
If the Japs were really stupid enough to try, say, invading Guam, Pearl would be the fortress from which the mightiest naval force the world had ever known would sail (carrying a Marine landing force aboard, of course) to bloody the Japs’ noses and send the little bastards back to their rice paddies and raw fish with a lesson they wouldn’t soon forget.
But, incredibly, when he looked out his barracks window, there was smoke rising from Battleship Row, and the sound of heavy explosions, and the same thing over at the seaplane base. And finally, when he saw a dozen Japanese aircraft in perfect formation-four three-plane vees-making low-level torpedo and strafing runs against Battleship Row, he realized that the impossible was indeed happening.
He couldn’t do a goddamned thing to help the battleships, but he damned sure could do something at the seaplane hangars, where there were Marine-manned .50-caliber water-cooled Browning machine guns on antiaircraft mounts.
Because access to ammunition and the fully automatic weapons was limited to commissioned officers, he wasn’t supposed to have a key to the arms locker, but he did; he was a good Marine Sergeant and knew which regulations should be violated. He went to the ammo locker and opened it up. By the time the first Marines came for ammo for the .50s, and to draw Browning Automatic Rifles and air-cooled .30-caliber Browning machine guns, and ammo for them, he was ready for them-long before the first officer showed up.
When an officer finally came and saw that most of the weapons and ammo had already been issued, he didn’t ask any questions about how come the locker was open. Joe Howard didn’t think that he would.
With nothing to do at the ammo locker, the officer went off to make himself useful somewhere else. That left Joe there alone with nothing to do either. After thinking about it a moment, he decided he couldn’t just sit this goddamned attack out in an ammo bunker; so he took the last BAR and eight twenty-round magazines for it and ran outside.
A Ford ton-and-a-half truck came racing up with a buck sergeant driving and a PFC in the cab beside him.
"Have you got any belted fifty?" the buck sergeant demanded. "I can’t get in our goddamned locker!"
"Come on!" Joe said, turning back toward the locker to show him where it was.
And then he looked over his shoulder to see if the sergeant was following him.
The sergeant was still sitting behind the wheel, but the top of his head was gone, and the windshield and the inside of the truck were smeared with a mass of blood and brain tissue.
Staff Sergeant Howard threw up.
Then he ran to the truck, grabbed the handle, pulled the door open, and dragged the buck sergeant’s body out onto the ground. Blood spurted from somewhere and soaked Joe Howard’s T-shirt and trousers.
After that he looked into the truck cab. The PFC was slumped in the seat, his head wedged back against the cushion, his eyes wide open but unseeing, his chest ripped open, blood streaming from the wound.
Joe Howard leaned against the truck fender and threw up again and again, until there was nothing in his stomach and all that came was a foul green bile.
And then he went back into the arms locker and huddled behind the counter, shaking, curled up, with his arms around his knees. He stayed there for he didn’t know how long, except that when he finally came out, the attack was over, and the Ford ton-and-a-half had somehow caught on fire and burned, and the PFC inside was nothing but a charred lump of dead meat.
(Two)
Oahu Island, Territory of Hawaii
0845 Hours 7 December 1941
Technical Sergeant Charles M. Galloway, USMC, a good-looking, sum, deeply tanned, and brown-haired young man of twenty-five, lay naked on his back, his head propped up with pillows, in a somewhat battered but sturdy and comfortable bed in one of the two bedrooms of a hunting lodge in the mountains.
He had a Chesterfield cigarette in one hand. The other hand was wrapped around a large glass of pineapple juice, liberally laced with Gordon’s London Dry Gin.
Ensign Mary Agnes O’Malley, Nurse Corps, USN, a slim, five-foot-four-inch, red-haired, pert-breasted woman, similarly undressed, knelt on the bed, about to begin another game of what she called "ice cream cone." This involved the dribbling of creme de cacao on certain portions of the body, and then removing it with the tongue. Until the previous day, Charley Galloway had never heard of-or even, in his sometimes wild fantasies, thought about-the kind of thing she was doing; but he was learning to like it.
The other bedroom of the hunting lodge, which was actually a simple, tin-roofed frame cabin, was occupied by Technical Sergeant Stefan "Big Steve" Oblensky, USMC, and Lieutenant Florence Kocharski, Nurse Corps, USN.
Big Steve, who was Polish and in his forties, was a great bull of a man. But Lieutenant Kocharski was big enough to be a match for him, which is to say that she was Valkyrie-like, in her late thirties, and also Polish. Several months before, she’d been attracted to Big Steve when she’d met him at the Naval Hospital at Pearl Harbor. He’d come in for his annual physical examination, and the examination had kind of expanded and become more physical.
And vice versa. So strongly that the two of them had chosen to ignore the cultural and, more important, the legal prohibition against socialization between commissioned and enlisted members of the Naval Service.
Florence Kocharski was a full lieutenant, about to make lieutenant commander; Big Steve expected to make master sergeant any day. Both of them had been around the service long enough to know about keeping indiscretions a hundred miles from the flagpole. A hundred miles was an impossibility on Oahu, but a hunting cabin in the hills was a reasonable approximation. (It was owned by an old pal of Big Steve’s who had retired and gone to work for Dole.)
But to get to the cabin required an automobile. Lieutenant Florence Kocharski didn’t have one, and Big Steve Oblensky was six months away from getting his driver’s license back, after having been caught driving drunk. But not to worry: T/Sgt. Charley Galloway had a lovingly maintained yellow 1933 Ford V-8 convertible. Big Steve had been able to borrow Charley’s car without any trouble the first time. He and Charley both knew that Big Steve would return the favor somewhere down the pike.