Four minutes later, Lieutenant Macklin appeared in the door to Lieutenant Colonel Neville’s office and beckoned for Galloway to come inside.
"Colonel Hershberger wishes to speak with you, Sergeant," he said.
Galloway picked up the telephone that was lying on its side on Neville’s desk. As he did so, he saw Neville pick up an extension and cover the mouthpiece with his hand.
"Sergeant Galloway, Sir."
"You didn’t waste any time stirring things up, did you, Charley?"
"I’m sorry about this, Sir."
"Tell me about the filthy airplane."
"They drained the oil from the port engine at Willow Grove, Sir. They spilled some. It got on the nacelle and wing and picked up crud when I moved the aircraft."
"Tell me about Willow Grove," Hershberger said. "Was that necessary?"
"I was attempting to avoid a storm I had reason to think might be in the Lakehurst area, Sir," Charley said. He stole a quick look at Neville, and saw that he hadn’t picked up on that.
"OK," Colonel Hershberger said, after a barely perceptible pause which told Charley that Hershberger had correctly interpreted his reply. "So tell me about the Texans."
"I don’t want two of them off my tail when I’m dropping parachutists, Colonel."
"Neville says you refused to fly with any Texans around you."
"No, Sir. I can keep my eye on one of them. Two are too dangerous."
"Anything else you want to say?"
"No, Sir."
"Get Colonel Neville back on the line, please, Charley."
"Sir," Charley heard his mouth run away with him, "the Colonel has been on an extension all the time."
"Hang your phone up, then, Charley," Colonel Hershberger said, pleasantly enough, after a moment. "I want a private word with Colonel Neville."
Charley put the telephone back in its cradle and started to leave the office. But Lieutenant Macklin hissed at him that he had not been dismissed. So Charley assumed the at-ease position facing Lieutenant Colonel Neville’s desk, and was thus witness to the conversation between Hershberger and Neville. Both sides were audible, because Colonel Hershberger seemed to be talking considerably louder to Colonel Neville than he had to Charley.
Both Lieutenant Macklin and Sergeant Galloway pretended, however, not to hear what Colonel Hershberger said. They both knew that it was an embarrassment for a senior officer to be referred to as a "pompous asshole" by an even more senior officer in the hearing of his subordinates. And it got worse: Colonel Hershberger went on to say-actually shout-that Neville was not only unfit to wear a lieutenant colonel’s silver leaf, but the Marine uniform, period. Any officer who calculatedly lied in order to get in trouble a good Marine sergeant who was just obeying his orders was worse than contemptible.
Lieutenant Colonel Neville’s replies to Colonel Hershberger were a number of brief and muted "Yes, Sirs."
When Lieutenant Colonel Neville finally hung up, Charley shifted from "at ease" to "parade rest" (head erect, eyes looking six inches above Colonel Neville, hands folded smartly together in the small of the back), and stayed that way for a very long sixty seconds.
Finally, Lieutenant Colonel Neville said, "That will be all, Sergeant. Thank you."
Charley Galloway popped to attention, did a smart about-face, and marched out of Neville’s office.
(Three)
PFC Stephen M. Koffler, USMC, participated in three parachute jumps on the day everybody involved was to remember for a very long time as "the day it happened."
They were his eighth, ninth, and tenth parachute jumps. His first five jumps had been performed as a student. Four of these had been during daylight, and the fifth at night, all onto what Lieutenant Colonel Franklin G. Neville had named Drop Zone Wake, in memory of the heroic Marine defense of Wake Island.
Drop Zone Wake was in fact an area between the runways in the center of the Lakehurst airfield. It was marked out with white tape and little flags on stakes.
According to what he had been told when he began the course, he would be rated as a Marine Parachutist after he had successfully completed his fifth jump, a night drop. That hadn’t happened. Lieutenant R. B. Macklin, who was the Deputy Commandant of the Marine Parachute School, had announced that Colonel Neville had decided to postpone the ceremony during which Parachutists’ wings would be awarded until 14 February. On that day, a team of civilian (from Life magazine) and Marine Corps journalists would be at Lakehurst, Lieutenant Macklin told them; Colonel Neville thought the journalists might want to photograph the ceremony.
Meanwhile, PFC Steve Koffler had changed his mind about wanting to be a Para-Marine. He was now convinced that volunteering for parachute duty was about the dumbest thing he had ever done in his life. Really dumb: there was a very good chance that he was going to get killed long before he got near a Japanese soldier.
He had begun to form that opinion long before he made his first jump. For starters, the physical training the trainees had gone through made the physical training at Parris Island look like a walk through a park.
Beginning right after reveille, the trainees had been led on a run around the airfield fence. Somebody said that the distance was 5.2 miles, and he believed it. And they made you run until you literally dropped. As often as Steve Koffler had run around the fence, he had never made it all the way without collapsing, and usually throwing up, too.
The running, he had been told, was to develop the muscles of the lower body. The muscles of the upper body were developed in several ways, primarily by doing push-ups. Steve Koffler had come out of Parris Island proud that he could do forty pushups. During parachute training, he had once made it to eighty-six before his arms gave out and he collapsed on his face onto the frozen ground.
But there were other upper-body conditioning exercises. Ten trainees at once picked up a log, about ten inches in diameter, and performed various exercises with it. Most of these involved holding the log at arm’s length above the head. And there was a device that consisted of pipes inserted through large pieces of wood, sort of a ladder mounted parallel to the ground. One moved along this like Tarzan, swinging by hand from one end to the other. The difference being that all Tarzan wore was sort of a little skirt over sort of a jockstrap; but the Para-Marine trainees wore all their field gear, including helmets, full canteens, and Springfield rifles.
There had also been a lot of classroom work. Steve and the others had a good deal of trouble staying awake in classes. Not only were they pretty worn out from all the upper- and lower-body-developing exercises, but the lesson material was pretty dull, too.
When you fell asleep, the penalty was for one of the sergeants to kick the folding chair out from under you; then you had to run around the building with your Springfield held at arm’s length over your head and shout at the top of your lungs, "I will not sleep in class." You did that until the sergeant finally decided you had enough-or you crashed to the frozen earth, unconscious or nauseated.
Steve Koffler would thus remember for the rest of his life a large amount of esoteric military data. For example, he now knew that his parachutes were manufactured by the Switlick Company of the finest silk that money could buy; that his main ‘chute was thirty-five feet in diameter and had twenty-eight panels (each of which was made up of a number of smaller pieces, so that if a rip developed, it would spread no farther than the piece where it started); and that his main ‘chute would cause him to fall through the air at a speed of approximately twenty feet per second. This meant he would strike the ground at approximately 13.5 miles per hour.