Jungle Rules (16 page)

“This fellow said that his grandfather also got executed by the Gestapo for plotting to assassinate Hitler. So that makes his raising and lowering of the Stars and Stripes at Belleau more believable, too.

“Last year, I went home on leave during early November, and participated in a little Marine Corps birthday celebration of sorts in Manhattan at this guy’s apartment. Now, even though he’s a German and all, he idolizes Marines. He wanted to join the Corps, but his father raised hell, so he stayed in college at Columbia. However, here I am in the Marine Corps, so Major Finney insists that I go with him to this guy’s apartment for the party.

“My boy’s got a life-size oil painting portrait of Frederick the Great hanging inside the doorway. The face on Frederick the Great and the puss on this cat look identical. So I’m pretty impressed. Then he hands us drinks in these two-hundred-year-old, sterling silver goblets with all kinds of ornate little silver sculptures encrusting the sides of them, and serves them to us off a sterling silver tray that matches the cups, also made more than two hundred years ago. The stuff that he poured tasted damned near the same as this raisin jack.”

“Stands to reason; raisins are grapes,” Kirkwood said.

“Well, here’s the good part. The story behind the liquor he served goes like this,” O’Connor continued. “It seems that the Battle of Belleau Wood took place in French wine country. After the war the farmers went back to growing their grapes there and making wine. They do it to this day.

“My German friend goes to Belleau, France, every year with his father, as a family custom, to pay homage to his grandfather’s memory, and to pay tribute to the Germans and Americans buried at the respective national cemeteries there. When he comes home he brings some of the wine and distilled spirits from the grapes these farmers grow at Belleau. The eau de vie or aqua vitae of Belleau Wood.

“Now, before we drank our toasts to the U.S. Marine Corps, the guy explains to us all this stuff about his grandfather, the German general, and his flag-raising, and how he admired the Marines at Belleau Wood. He also talks about how their blood soaked the land, and to this day mingles with the grapes that grow there. The eau de vie from Belleau he named Blood of Dead Marines. He has it bottled, and has even put on a private label: Blood of Dead Marines.

“Gentlemen, this raisin jack tastes like Blood of Dead Marines. So I propose that from this day hence, given the blood spilled by Marines in this far-off place, and given that this fine spirit came to life at the hands of good Marines, we should call it by that name: Blood of Dead Marines.”

“Terry,” Major Hembee said and laughed, “you’re so full of shit that my eyes crossed five minutes ago, but I have to admit, that is a dandy story, and a noble tribute to some outstanding rotgut. Blood of Dead Marines it is, then.
Semper fi,
gentlemen.”

“
Semper fi,
Major Danger,” O’Connor said, and tapped his canteen cup with Hembee’s and Kirkwood’s.

“Ben Finney, he’s still at the
Daily News
, right?” Kirkwood asked, sipping his drink. There’s a Marine there that draws the sports-page cartoons. Is that him?”

“No, that’s Bill Gallo,” O’Connor said. “Gallo, Finney, and my dad are all buddies, though. They were on Iwo Jima together, when my dad won the Navy Cross.”

“Hold up, one. He didn’t win it. He
earned
it,” Major Hembee said, correcting O’Connor. “You win a trophy for a footrace, but the Navy Cross, it’s a major form of tribute for a great sacrifice. It’s earned.”

“My bust, Major,” O’Connor said, blushing at his thoughtless choice of words. “Dad’s a stark, raving Democrat, but I know he would like you. He’s always pinging me on things like that, too. I called my trousers “pants” once, and he said, ‘Girls and women wear pants; men wear trousers.’ ”

“Enlisted Marine?” Hembee asked and smiled.

“Yes, sir, a sergeant. How’d you guess?” O’Connor said.

“Just a hunch,” the major said. “A sergeant with the Navy Cross from Iwo Jima impresses the hell out of me. I’d like to know your dad.”

“Enroll in a history course at the University of Pennsylvania and you’ll meet him,” O’Connor said. “He’s the professor. Now, you want to hear some long yardage on storytelling, just get my dad and Major Finney together with a pitcher of old Ben’s famous mint juleps, and those two can keep you up all night.”

“Mint juleps? Odd for a couple of Yankee gentlemen,” Kirkwood said.

“Oh, you don’t call Ben Finney a Yankee,” O’Connor said and laughed. “That’s as bad as me saying my dad won the Navy Cross. The good major is a classic southern gentleman, a Kentucky colonel, as a matter of fact, one of that state’s favorite sons. Kentucky colonel is an honor only bestowed by the governor of that great state. Ben Finney is from Kentucky, and makes a classic mint julep. In fact, Major Finney even taught Ernest Hemingway the proper way to build a mint julep.”

“Do tell,” Hembee said and chuckled. “This Blood of Dead Marines has loosened your tongue, Captain O’Connor. Please continue.”

“Just after the Second World War ended, old Ben got sent to France as a correspondent,” O’Connor rambled as Kirkwood now began to snore in the cool darkness of the evening, having finished his canteen cup of ninety-proof liquor. “One weekend, he went off into the countryside, touring on a bicycle, and stopped at this pension house or inn someplace north of Paris. He said he had no more than sat down in the place when a glass came sailing across the room and shattered on the stone wall.

“ ‘Can’t any of you frogs make a man a decent mint julep?’ this heavyset American guy with a salt-and-pepper beard bellowed from a table in the back. ‘Doesn’t anyone in this godforsaken country know how to make a mint julep?’

“Of course, Ben, coming from Kentucky, has always traveled with a quart bottle of Maker’s Mark, Kentucky bourbon whiskey in his valise, just in case of snakebite or some other emergency that would lend a good excuse for him taking a drink. So he snatched out his trusty bottle of Maker’s Mark and quickly ordered the barkeep to fetch some fresh-picked mint, along with a few other necessary ingredients, and he commenced to stir up a pitcher of genuine Kentucky mint juleps. The fellow was, of course, Ernest Hemingway.”

“Gentlemen, with that, and taking Captain Kirkwood’s snoring as a cue, I think that we need to ramble down to the hooch and hit the rack,” Major Hembee said, pulling himself from the lawn chair. “Screw the lid on that canteen of Blood of Dead Marines, Terry. Otherwise it could start a fire.”

Just as the major gave Kirkwood a slap across the sole of his boot, a flash as bright as daylight broke across the encampment, and a thunderous clap shook the air and the ground around the three officers.

“Incoming!” a voice shouted nearby.

Jon Kirkwood stood straight up, holding his M14, looking for an enemy target to engage.

“Slow down, Skipper,” Hembee said in a calm voice, taking Kirkwood by the shoulder. “We’ll just ease down to the operations bunker. Don’t want to do any shooting just yet.”

“What’s this, mortars?” O’Connor said, grabbing his rifle and hurrying behind the major and Kirkwood as they followed a trail into a nearby dugout covered in sandbags.

“Yeah, rockets, mortars, you name it,” Hembee said, calmly walking to a table where the staff sergeant he called Goose sat, his ear pressed to a field telephone as he quickly jotted notes on a legal pad.

“Sir,” Goose said, looking at the major now, “looks like they’re pretty much focused on the Americal positions. Could be they’re trying to divert us so they can hit the fuel dump.”

“Makes sense,” Hembee said. “We’ve got the reaction force deploying along that arc, in case.”

“What about the flank back this way?” Hembee asked.

“Pretty thin, but we still have some automatic weapons in place at two points that can cover it,” Goose said.

Hembee looked at Kirkwood and O’Connor and thought a moment before speaking.

“Care to get your feet wet?” the major then asked the two captains.

“We got our cherries broke this morning, sir,” Kirkwood said, “in case you’re looking to take our combat virginity.”

Hembee laughed loudly and put his arm around Jon Kirkwood.

“No, Captain,” the major said, hugging him with his arm, “I’m not trying to fuck you. I just have a little job and thought you might want to help.”

“Sure, Major Danger,” O’Connor said, slipping the sling of his M14 rifle over his shoulder.

“If you need some help, that’s a little different,” Kirkwood said, shouldering his rifle, too.

“I wouldn’t ask a couple of transient captains unless I felt that it was important,” Hembee said, and walked to a map of the two knolls that made up the terrain of Fire Support Base Ross.

“Charlie has hit the army units posted over here on the southwest side,” the major said, pointing on the chart with plastic overlays that showed gun and unit positions. “We’re back here, and pretty much out of danger. We’ve got our reserves, the reaction team, going hi-diddle-diddle to where the enemy seems to have hit hardest, what seems to be his main force. I’m just thinking we have a soft spot on this flank, and we have two machine guns at the corners, but not much in between. You game for sitting in a fighting hole, watching for Charlie to try to hit the wire down there?”

Kirkwood looked at the map and hesitated, but O’Connor snapped at the chance.

“Sure, Major, no sweat,” O’Connor said. He reached for a pouch of Beechnut laying on the field desk in the bunker and stuffed his mouth full.

“Good,” Hembee said, and then turned and shouted, “Rat, Elvis, Henry, get up here!”

Like mice dashing from a woodpile, the three men appeared within seconds, emerging from the busy corners of the combat command and operations bunker where operations, communications, and other associated Marines, jammed inside the subterranean confine, strived to get a handle on the attack.

“Get flak jackets and helmets for the two captains and then join them out on the flank,” Hembee said. “Kirkwood, you and O’Connor will man the fighting hole a few yards right of King Rat, Elvis, and Henry, who’ll haul out another M60 chopper. That’ll give us three .30-caliber machine guns along with individual weapons to cover that spot. We’ve got a field phone down in that hole. All you’ve got to do is pick it up and talk. You see anything start moving, get Goose on the horn. If you see any sappers going for the wire, start shooting. We’ll come running.”

While the two lawyers slipped on the helmets and flak jackets that Rat had brought them, Kirkwood took a long look at the three enlisted Marines already geared and ready, entrusted to the leadership of two green, boot officers. Then he glanced at O’Connor, beaming with his cheek bulging with tobacco and the straps on his steel helmet dangling like John Wayne playing Sergeant John M. Stryker on
The Sands of Iwo Jima
. He wondered if his partner and best friend had yet fully realized the risks and realities of stepping onto a combat line.

Chapter 5

AN EERIE YELLOW daylight settled over LZ Ross as a dozen glowing flares danced beneath miniature parachutes that drifted across the night sky, leaving contrails of white smoke above them. Just beyond the bristle of big guns where the Eleventh Marine Regiment’s artillery lay quiet, awaiting their inevitable fire missions once the American counterattack ensued and where the Seventh Marine Regiment’s 81-millimeter mortars busily thunked out a mixture of high-explosive, white phosphorus, and illumination rounds, the flickering lightning and ceaseless thunder from the incoming enemy 122-millimeter rockets and 60-millimeter mortars flashed and echoed across the encampment. Red and green tracers crisscrossed inbound and outbound paths on the fringes as the infantry companies hurriedly prepared to launch their retaliation, designed foremost to protect the support base’s helicopter refueling station. On the quieter side of LZ Ross, through the surrealistic nighttime’s amber luminance, the silhouettes of five men dashed from the ground and hurried down a trail toward a pair of unmanned supplementary fighting positions that overlooked an untroubled section of the base’s perimeter wire.

“You gentlemen going to make it okay?” King Rat said as he led the pair of lawyers to the first of the two holes covered by a low, plywood roof layered with sandbags and ringed with more sandbags for a parapet. “Just
crawl down that opening in the back here, and settle down. I doubt we see shit. I hope so anyway.”

“That your foxhole over there?” O’Connor said, seeing a similar-looking emplacement.

“Yeah,” Rat said, squatting and helping Kirkwood unload the luggage he carried. “You got a field phone right there on that dirt shelf in the front, between you two. Just pick it up and mash the button on the handset to talk. Goose come right back at you.”

“How long you think we’ll sit out here tonight, Sergeant?” Kirkwood then asked the black Marine who now sported a set of sergeant chevrons but who had not worn any rank insignia when he saw him earlier in the day.