Aboard the attack transport, the eight-man team (nine, counting Major Dillon) learned the names of the islands they were invading: Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Gavutu, in the Solomons. No one else had ever heard of them before, either.
Major Dillon and Staff Sergeant Marv Kaplan, a Hollywood cinematographer Dillon had recruited, went in with the 1st Raider Battalion, in the first wave of landing craft to attack Tulagi. At about the same time, Corporal Easterbrook landed with the 1st Marine Parachute Battalion on Gavutu, two miles away.
The Marine parachutists didn't come in by air. They landed from the sea and fought as infantry, suffering ten percent casualties. After Gavutu was secured, the Easterbunny went to Tulagi. There Major Dillon handed him Staff Sergeant Kaplan's EyeMo 16mm motion picture camera and announced tersely that Kaplan had been evacuated after taking two rounds in his legs, and that Easterbrook was now a Still and Motion Picture Combat Correspondent.
He also relieved Easterbrook of the film he had shot on Gavutu. One of the pictures he took there-of a Marine paratrooper firing a Browning Automatic Rifle with blood running down his chest-was published nationwide.
Three days later, he crossed the channel with Dillon to Lunga Point on Guadalcanal, where the bulk of the First Marines had landed. There they learned that one of the two officers and two of the six enlisted combat correspondents had been wounded.
Shortly afterward, Dillon left Guadalcanal to personally carry the exposed still and motion film to Washington. Easterbrook hadn't heard news of him since then, though there was some scuttlebutt that he'd been seen on the island a couple of days ago. But the Easterbunny discredited that. If Dillon was on Guadalcanal again, he certainly would have made an effort to see who was left of the original team. That meant Lieutenant Graves, Technical Sergeant Petersen, and Corporal Easterbrook. In the two months since the invasion, everybody else had been killed or seriously wounded.
Looking at those numbers, Bobby Easterbrook had concluded a month or so ago that it was clearly not a question of if he would get hit, but when, and how seriously. He had further concluded that when he did get hit, he'd probably be hit bad. Although it had been close more times than he liked to remember, so far he hadn't been scratched. The odds would certainly catch up with him.
All the same, since getting hit was beyond his control, he didn't dwell on it. Or tried not to dwell on it.... He kept imagining three, four, five-something like that-scenes where he'd get it. Sometimes, he could keep one or another of these out of his mind for as much as an hour.
He looked again at the weird R4D, glad at the moment for the diversion. "Holy shit!" he said again.
When the airplane first came to Henderson, he asked Technical Sergeant Big Steve Oblensky about it. The maintenance sergeant of VMF-229 was usually a pretty good guy; but that time Oblensky's face got hard and his eyes got cold, and he told him to butt the fuck out; if The Corps wanted to tell him about the airplane, they would send him a letter.
The Easterbunny pushed himself to his feet as the weird R4D, its unusual landing gear extended, turned on its final approach. He shot a quick glance at the sky, then held his hand out and studied the back of it. He'd come ashore with a Weston exposure meter, but that was long gone.
He set the exposure and shutter speed on his Leica 35mm camera to fl1 at 1/100th second. He'd also come ashore with a Speed Graphic 4 x 5-inch view camera, but that too was long gone.
He shrugged his shoulder to seat the strap of his Thompson.45 ACP caliber submachine gun, so it wouldn't fall off, and took two exposures of the R4D as it landed and rolled past the Pagoda, and then another as it taxied back to it.
As he walked toward the aircraft, he noticed Big Steve Oblensky driving up in a jeep. Jeeps, like everything else on Guadalcanal, were in short supply. How Oblensky managed to get one-more mysteriously, how he managed to keep it-could only be explained by placing Oblensky in that category of Marine known as The Old Breed-i.e., pre-war Marines with twenty years or more of service. They operated by their own rules.
For instance, Bobby Easterbrook had taken at least a hundred photos of Old Breed Marines wearing wide-brimmed felt campaign hats in lieu of the prescribed steel helmet. None of the brass, apparently, felt it worthwhile to comment on the headgear, some of which the Easterbunny was sure was older than he was.
Another sergeant was in the jeep with Oblensky, a gunnery sergeant, a short, barrel-chested man in his late twenties; another Old Breed Marine, even though he was wearing a steel helmet. Oblensky was coverless (in The Corps, the Easterbunny had learned, headgear of all types was called a "cover") and bare-chested, except for a.45 ACP in an aviator's shoulder holster.
"Why don't you go someplace, Easterbunny, and do something useful?" Technical Sergeant Oblensky greeted him.
"Let me do my job, Sergeant, OK?"
Three months ago, I would never have dreamed of talking to a sergeant like that.
"You know this feather merchant, Ernie?" Technical Sergeant Oblensky inquired.
"Seen him around."
"Easterbunny, say hello to Gunny Zimmerman."
"Gunny."
"What do you say, kid?"
"Except that he keeps showing up where he ain't wanted, the Easter-bunny's not as much of a candy-ass as he looks."
I have just been paid a compliment; or what for Big Steve Oblensky is as close to a compliment as I could hope for.
The rear door of the R4D started to open. Bobby Easterbrook put the Leica to his eye and waited for a shot.
First man out was a second lieutenant, whom the Easterbunny recognized as one of the VMF-229 Wildcat pilots. He was wearing a tropical-weight flight suit. It was sweat stained, but it looked clean. Even new.
That's unusual, the Easterbunny thought. But what's really unusual is that an R4D like this is being flown by pilots from VMF-229, which is a fighter squadron. Why?
Neither of the Old Breed sergeants in the jeep saluted, although the gunny did get out of the jeep.
"We got some stuff for the squadron," the Second Lieutenant said. "Get it out of sight before somebody sees it."
That put Oblensky into action. He started the jeep's engine and quickly backed it up to the airplane door. He took a sheet of canvas, the remnants of a tent, from the floor of the jeep, set it aside, and then climbed into the airplane. A moment later, he started handing crates to Zimmerman.
Very quickly, the jeep was loaded-overloaded-with crates of food. One, now leaking blood, was marked BEEF, FOR STEAKS 100 LBS KEEP FROZEN. And there were four cases of quart bottles of Australian beer and two cases of whiskey.
Oblensky and Zimmerman covered all this with the sheet of canvas, and then Oblensky got behind the wheel and drove quickly away.
Another officer, this one a first lieutenant, climbed down from the cargo door of the airplane; and he was immediately followed by a buck sergeant. They were wearing khakis, and web belts with holstered pistols, and both had Thompson submachine guns slung from their shoulders.
Gunny Zimmerman walked up and saluted. The Easterbunny got a shot of that, too. When the Lieutenant heard the click of the shutter, he turned to give him a dirty look with cold eyes.
Fuck you, Lieutenant. When you've been here a couple of days, you'll understand this isn't Parris Island, and we don't do much saluting around here.