Charley Galloway did not telephone. Half an hour later, he walked up to the table, leaned down, said, "Hi, baby," to Mrs. McNamara, and kissed her on the lips.
He was wearing his fur-collared leather flight jacket over tropical worsteds. He had jammed a fore-and-aft cap in one pocket of the flight jacket, and thin leather flying gloves in the other. He almost needed a shave, and there was a light band around his eyes where his flying goggles had protected the skin from the oily mist that often filled a Wildcat cockpit. It was obvious that he had come to the club directly from the flight line.
"Where have you been, honey?" Caroline asked. "I was getting really worried."
"That’s a long story," he said.
"Charley," Jim Ward asked uncomfortably, "should you be in here?"
"He knows damn well he shouldn’t," Dave Schneider flared. "What the hell do you think you’re doing, Galloway?"
"Are you talking to me, Lieutenant?" Charley asked pleasantly. He shrugged out of the leather jacket and dropped it on the floor.
"Yes, I am."
"Then please use the words ‘Captain,’ and ‘Sir,’" Charley said. He faced Dave Schneider, smiled broadly, and pointed to the twin silver bars on each of his collar points.
"Jesus!" Jim Ward said. "Are they for real?"
"I got them from the Commandant himself, believe it or not," Charley said. "Together with a brief, but memorable, lecture on the conduct expected of me now that I was going to be an officer and a gentleman."
"What about the West Coast?" Caroline asked softly.
"I’m going to be given a fighter squadron, baby," Charley Galloway said. "As soon as I can get out to the Pacific and organize one. They’re going to fly me at least as far as Pearl. I’ve got six days to get to San Diego."
"Oh, God!"
"Can I go with you?" Jim Ward asked softly.
"With Aunt Caroline and me? Hell, no," Charley Galloway said indignantly. "Didn’t you ever hear that three’s a crowd?"
"That’s not what I meant, Captain, Sir."
"If, in the next three weeks or a month, you can scare up an IP here who is willing to check you out in that Wildcat I just brought up here, you can come along later. I’ve got authorization to steal five pilots from here," Galloway said. Then he faced Dave Schneider. "That’s an invitation to you too, Dave. You’re a real horse’s ass sometimes, but you’re not too bad an airplane driver."
(Five)
Melbourne, Australia
19 May 1942
The Martin PBM-3R Mariner made landfall on the Australian continent near Moruya, in New South Wales, seventy-five miles southeast of the Australian capital at Canberra. The PBM-3R Mariner was the unarmed transport version of the standard PBM Mariner, a deep-hulled, twin-engined gull-winged monoplane.
Aboard were a crew of six, nineteen passengers, and eight hundred pounds of priority cargo, including a half-dozen mail bags.
When the excitement of finally making landfall had died down-for most aboard, it was their first view of Australia- Captain D. B. Toller, Civil Engineer Corps, USN, permitted his curiosity to take charge. He walked to the forward part of the cabin, just below the ladder leading to the cockpit, and sat down beside a Marine Corps major.
"All right if I sit here?"
"Certainly, Sir."
"I’m Captain Dick Toller, Major," he said, offering his hand.
"Ed Banning, Sir."
"Well, we’re finally here. Or almost. This has been a long flight."
"Yes, Sir, it has. I’ll be glad to get off this thing and stretch my legs."
"Now, if I’m asking something I shouldn’t, just tell me to mind my own business," Captain Toller said. "But I’m really curious about something."
"Yes, Sir?"
"Him," Captain Toller said, nodding his head to a small area to the left of the ladder of the cockpit, where Corporal Stephen M. Koffler was curled up asleep, under blankets he had removed from his duffel bag. Koffler had rolled around in his sleep and wound up with his arm around his Springfield 1903 rifle. It looked as if he was holding it protectively, affectionately, as a child holds a teddy bear.
Banning chuckled.
"Corporal Koffler. He’s got the right idea. He slept from ‘Diego to Hawaii; and except to eat, he’s been asleep most of the way here."
"I saw you get on the plane at Pearl," Captain Toller said. "I mean to say, I saw a very annoyed lieutenant commander and an even more annoyed captain being told to give up their seats in favor of passengers with higher priorities. And then you two came aboard."
Banning didn’t reply. He was not particularly surprised by the question. The bumped-from-the-flight captain and lieutenant commander had glowered at him with barely contained indignation when they climbed down from the airplane into the launch and he and Koffler climbed aboard. Getting bumped by a Marine major was bad enough; but to be bumped by a Marine corporal with a higher priority was a little too much of a blow to a senior officer’s dignity.
It was a question of priorities. Lieutenant Colonel F. L. Rickabee had set up their travel; and he apparently had easy-and probably unquestioned-access to the higher priorities. Special Detachment 14 had occupied most of the seats on the Mariner from San Diego to Pearl. The Air Shipment Officer at Pearl had been almost apologetic when he explained that seats were in even shorter supply from Pearl onward, and that all he could provide on this flight were two seats. The others in Special Detachment 14 would have to follow later. A lot of people with high priorities had to get to Australia.
Banning had decided to take one of the two available seats himself, not as a privilege of rank, but because he was hand-carrying a letter from the Secretary of the Navy himself to Captain Fleming Pickering, and because he thought that, as commanding officer, he should get there as soon as possible. He had taken Koffler with him because he suspected that his most important personnel requirement immediately on reaching Australia would be for a typist. Koffler had boarded the Mariner carrying his portable typewriter as well as his rifle.
Banning had no intention of satisfying Captain Toller’s curiosity about Corporal Koffler’s presence on the Mariner. For one thing, it was none of Captain Toller’s business why Koffler was aboard the Mariner. And for another, it would only exacerbate the Captain’s annoyance if he told him the unvarnished truth.
"It’s a strange war, isn’t it?" Captain Toller went on, "when getting a major and his corporal to the theater of operations is of more importance to the war effort than getting a lieutenant commander and a captain there."
Banning resisted the temptation to, politely of course, tell the Captain to go fuck himself.
"Our orders are classified, Sir," Banning said. "But out of school, apropos of nothing at all, may I observe that there are very few people in the Naval Service, commissioned or enlisted, who were raised in Yokohama and speak Japanese fluently?"
Captain Toller nodded solemmly.
"I thought it might be something like that," he said. "I wasn’t trying to pry, Major, you understand. Just curious."
"Your curiosity is certainly understandable, Sir. But I think I’ve said more than I should already."
Captain Toller put his finger in front of his lips in the gesture of silence, and winked.
"Thank you, Sir," Banning said politely.
There was now a range of mountains off the right wing tip. When there was a break in their tops, Banning could see what was obviously a near-desert area on the far side. Below them, the terrain was either green or showed signs of fall cultivation.