He immediately applied for training as a Naval aviator, which may have had something to do with his relief from the Pennsylvania four months later and his transfer to the Marine Detachment, Peking, China, for duty with troops.
Second Lieutenant Culhane traveled from Pearl Harbor to Tientsin, China aboard the USS Chaumont, one of two Navy transports that endlessly circled the world delivering and picking up Navy and Marine personnel from all comers of the globe.
In Peking, Greg Culhane served as a platoon leader for eighteen months, along with the additional duties customarily assigned to second lieutenants: He was mail officer; athletic officer, custodian of liquor, beer, and wine for the officer's mess; venereal disease control officer; and he served as recorder and secretary of various boards and committees formed for any number of official and quasi-official purposes.
In April 1939, he boarded the Chaumont again and returned to the United States via the Cavite Navy Base in the Philippines; Melbourne, Australia; Port Elizabeth, South Africa; Monrovia, Liberia; Rio de Janeiro and Recife, Brazil; and Guantanamo, Cuba.
Second lieutenant Greg Culhane reported to the United States Navy Air Station, Pensacola, Florida, on June 10,1939, nine days after the date specified on his orders. His class had already begun their thirteen-month course of instruction.
The personnel officer brought the "Culhane Case" to the attention of the deputy air station commander, Rear Admiral (lower half) (The Navy rank structure provides four grades of "flag" officers corresponding to the four grades of "general" officers of the Army and Marine Corps. The lowest of these grades, corresponding to brigadier general, is rear admiral (lower half). But where brigadier generals wear only one star, rear admirals (lower half) wear two silver stars, as do rear admirals (upper half) and major generals. The result of this inconsistency is a good deal of annoyance on the part of brigadier and major generals of the Army and Marine Corps) James B. Sayre, USN, for decision.
When he had not shown up, the training space set aside for the young Marine officer had been filled by one of the standby applicants. There were two options, the personnel officer explained. One was to go by the book and request the Marine Corps to issue orders returning Lieutenant Culhane to the Fleet Marine Force. The second option was to keep him at Pensacola and enroll him in the next flight course, which would commence 1 September.
"There's a third option, Tom," Admiral Sayre said. "For one thing, it's not this boy's fault that the Chaumont was, as usual, two weeks late. For another, I notice that he came here just as soon as he could after the Chaumont finally got to Norfolk; he didn't take the leave he was authorized. And finally, he's only nine days late. What I think is in the best interests of the Navy, as well as Lieutenant Culhane, is for me to have a word with Jim Swathley and ask him to make the extra effort to let this boy catch up with his class."
"I'll be happy to talk to Captain Swathley, sir, if you'd like," the personnel officer said.
"All right then, Tom, you talk to him. Tell him that's my suggestion."
"Aye, aye, sir."
Admiral Sayre had not considered it necessary to tell the personnel officer that he had been a year behind Greg Culhane's father at the academy, nor that in 1919-20 (before he had volunteered for aviation) he had served under Admiral Culhane with a tin-can squadron.
But as soon as the personnel officer had left his office, he had asked his chief yeoman to get Mrs. Sayre on the line, and when she came to the phone, he told her that Andy Culhane's boy had just reported aboard, and from the picture in his service jacket as well as from the efficiency reports in the record, Greg Culhane was a fine young Marine officer.
"I wonder why he went in the Marines?" Jeanne Sayre said absently, and then without waiting for a reply, she asked, "I wonder if Martha remembers him? They were just little tykes the last time… Well, we'll just have to have him to dinner. I'll write Margaret Culhane and tell her we're keeping an eye on him."
The engagement of Martha Ellen Sayre, the only daughter of Rear Admiral and Mrs. James B. Sayre, USN, to First Lieutenant Gregory J. Culhane, USMC, elder son of Vice Admiral and Mrs. Andrew J. Culhane, USN, was announced at the traditional Admiral's New Year's Day Reception.
It was a triple celebration. Admiral Sayre announced jovially at midnight when he was getting just a little flushed in the face: It was the new year, 1941, and that was always a good excuse for a party; he had finally managed to unload his daughter, who was getting to be at twenty-one a little long in the tooth; and her intended, even if he was a Marine, could now afford to support her, because as of midnight he had been made a first lieutenant.
Greg and Martha Culhane were married in an Episcopal service at the station chapel at Pensacola on July 1, 1941, the day after he was graduated as a Naval aviator. It was a major social event for the air station, and indeed for the Navy. Seventeen flag and general officers of the Navy and Marine Corps (and of course their ladies) were in the chapel for the ceremony. And twelve of Greg's buddies (nine Marines and three swabbies) from flight school, in crisp whites, held swords aloft over the couple as they left the chapel.
Despite secret plans (carefully leaked to the enemy) that the young couple would spend their wedding night in Gainesville, they actually went no farmer than a suite in Pensacola's San Carlos Hotel. And the next morning, they drove down the Florida peninsula to Opa-locka, where Greg had been ordered for final training as a fighter pilot.
That lasted about two months. They had a small suite in the Hollywood Beach Hotel, which was now a quasi-official officers' hotel. Martha spent her days playing tennis and golf and swimming, and Greg spent his learning the peculiarities of the Grumman F4F-3 fighter.
In September, Greg was ordered to San Diego on orders to join Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-211. Martha drove to the West Coast with him, and she stayed until he boarded ship for Pearl Harbor. Then she left their car in storage there and returned to Florida by train. She didn't want a fight with her parents about driving all the way across the country by herself, and besides, it would be nice to have the Chevrolet Super Deluxe coupe there when Greg came back to San Diego.
Greg flew his brand-new Grumman F4F-3 Wildcat off the Enterprise to Wake Island on December 3, 1941. He wrote her that night, quickly, because he had to make sure the letter left aboard a Pan American China Clipper. Among other things, he told her that Wake had been unprepared for them, and that Marine and civilian bulldozer operators were working from first light until after dark to make revetments.
Greg also wrote that he loved her and would write again just as soon as he had the chance.
The next news she had about Greg was a letter to her father from Commander Winfield Scott Cunningham, the senior Naval officer on Wake Island. Cunningham had once worked for Admiral Sayre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
Commander Cunningham wrote his old commanding officer that as soon as word of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor had reached Wake Island, he had ordered Major Paul Putnam, VMF-211's commanding officer, to lead a flight of four F4F-3s on a scouting mission for Japanese naval forces. The remaining eight fighter planes and the squadron itself prepared for combat.
This had posed some problems, he continued; there was more to that job than simply filling the aircraft fuel tanks and loading ammunition for the guns. Aviation fuel, presently in large tanks, had to be put into fifty-five-gallon drums and the drums dispersed. And much of the.50-caliber machine-gun ammunition had to be linked, that is to say removed from its shipping containers and fitted with metal links to make belts of ammunition.
All hands had then gone to work, officers and enlisted then alike, bulldozing revetments and taxiways; filling sandbags; pumping fuel; and working the.50-caliber linking machines.