Colonel Carlson appeared at his office door. He was lean and tanned, and he was wearing sun- and wash-faded utilities.
"Morning, Gunny," he greeted him. "How's the... damaged area?"
Zimmerman popped to attention.
"Morning, Sir," he said. "No problem, Sir."
"Get yourself a cup of coffee, if you'd like, and come on in. Something's come up."
"Aye, aye, Sir," Zimmerman said.
Though he didn't really want it, he took a cup of coffee. The reason was that he considered the offer-the suggestion-an order, coming as it did from the Colonel. At the same time, the friendliness of the Colonel's gesture made him a little uncomfortable.
Colonel Carlson often made him uncomfortable. Zimmerman was on the edge of being an Old Breed Marine. He hadn't been to Nicaragua or any of the other banana republic wars, but he had been in The Corps seven years, most of that time in China, and in all that time he had never met another lieutenant colonel-for that matter, a major or a captain-who treated enlisted men the way Colonel Carlson did.
It was sort of hard to describe why. It wasn't as if Carlson treated the enlisted men as equals, but neither did he treat them the way they were treated elsewhere in The Corps, the way Zimmerman had been treated for seven years.
Colonel Carlson talked to enlisted Marines-not just the senior staff noncoms, but the privates and the corporals, too- like they were people, not enlisted men. Like he was really interested in what they had to say.
The motto of the Raiders was "Gung Ho!" Most people in the Raiders, even the ones who had been in China and had picked up a little Chinese, thought that meant "Everybody Pull Together." Zimmerman knew better. He spoke pretty good Chinese, three kinds of it. What Gung Ho really meant was more like "Strive for Harmony." When they were training for the Makin Raid back at Camp Elliott, outside `Diego, Zimmerman talked about that with McCoy-Lieutenant McCoy, the Killer, not Sergeant Shit for Brains McCoy, now behind bars in Honolulu.
The Killer spoke even better Chinese than Zimmerman did, plus Japanese and German and Polish and Russian. So he knew what Gung Ho really meant, but he told Zimmerman to keep it to himself.
"What I think is really going on, Ernie," the Killer told him, "is that the Colonel is terrifically impressed with the way the Chinese do things. The Chinese communists, I mean."
"You're not telling me he's a communist?" It would not have surprised Zimmerman at all if the brass had sent Killer McCoy to the 2nd Raider Battalion to see if he thought Colonel Carlson was a communist.
"No. I don't think so. But there are people in The Corps who do."
"Then how come they gave him the Raider Battalion if they think he's a communist?"
"There are also a lot of people who don't think he's a communist, like Captain Roosevelt's father, for example." Captain Roosevelt was Executive Officer of the 2nd Raider Battalion. His father was Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States of America. As a Captain, Colonel Carlson had commanded the detachment of Marines assigned to protect the President at White Sulphur Springs, where the President often went to swim with other people crippled by infantile paralysis.
"We're sort of special Marines, Ernie, Raiders, " the Killer said. "The Colonel thinks that the kind of discipline the Chinese communists have would work better for us than the regular kind."
"We're Marines, not fucking Chinese communists," Zimmerman protested. "Does he really want to do away with ranks and have just leaders and fighters and technicians, and no saluting, and no officers' mess, and the other bullshit that I been hearing?"
"I think he's been talked out of that," McCoy said. "But I know he wants to make sure the enlisted men use their initiative. There's nothing wrong with that, is there?"
"What does that mean, `use their initiative'?" You tell some PFC to fill sandbags and make a wall of them, he does it because you're a sergeant and he's a PFC and PFCs do what sergeants tell them to do. The Colonel figures he'll get a better wall if the sergeant tells the PFC they need a sandbag wall because that will keep people from getting their balls blown off... and then the sergeant helps the PFC make it. Understand?"
"Sounds like bullshit to me."
"That's what I thought when I first heard about it," the Killer said. "But now I suppose I've been converted. Anyway, Ernie, it doesn't make any difference what you think."
"It don't?"
"You're a Marine, a gunny. Marine gunnies do what they're told, right?"
"Fuck you, Ken," Zimmerman said, chuckling.
"That's `fuck you, Lieutenant, Sir,' Sergeant," the Killer replied.
The funny thing, Zimmerman realized, was that over the months he too had become converted to the Colonel's way of doing things. It seemed to work. Everybody in the Raiders did "pull together" or "strive for harmony," depending on how well you spoke Chinese and translated "Gung Ho!" That was very much on his mind on Makin, when things were going badly and he wouldn't have given a wooden nickel for their chances of getting off the fucking beach alive.
He came across Captain Roosevelt then, and the first thing he thought was that only in the United States of America would the son of the head man have his ass in the line of fire. Then he changed that to "only in The Marine Corps" and finally to "only in the Raiders." Zimmerman realized that he was now a genuine fucking true believer Gung Ho Marine Raider... he was also a guy who had spent five and a half of his seven years in The Corps in the Fourth Marines in Shanghai, where officers were officers, and enlisted men were enlisted men.
He was not at all comfortable when he stood in Colonel Carlson's office door and the Colonel waved him into a chair without even giving him a chance to report to the commanding officer in the prescribed manner.
"I didn't know you'd done any time with Marine Aviation, Zimmerman," the Colonel said.
"I never did," Zimmerman said, so surprised that he added "Sir" only after a perceptible pause.
Curious," Colonel Carlson said and handed him a teletype message.
PRIORITY
CONFIDENTIAL
HQ FLEET MARINE FORCE PACIFIC
1405 30 AUG 1942
To: COMMANDING OFFICER 2ND USMC RAIDER BATTALION
Info: COMMANDING OFFICER 2 1ST MARINE AIR GROUP
1. ON RECEIPT THIS MESSAGE FOLLOWING NAMED ENLISTED MEN ARE DETACHED COMPANY "A" 2ND
RAIDER BN AND ASSIGNED HQ 21ST MARINE AIR GROUP.
ZIMMERMAN, ERNEST W 286754 GYSGT
MCCOY, THOMAS M 355331 SGT
2. CO 2ND RAIDER BN WILL ARRANGE TRANSPORT BY MOST EXPEDITIOUS MEANS, INCLUDING AIR, FROM
PRESENT STATION TO RECEIVING UNIT. PRIORITY AAA IS AUTHORIZED.
BY DIRECTION: C.W. STANWYCK LTCOL USMC
"The Twenty-first MAG is on Guadalcanal," Colonel Carlson said.
"Yes, Sir, I know."
"Then this doesn't surprise you, Gunny? You knew about it?"
"No, Sir. I mean, no, Sir, I didn't know anything about this."
"I'm curious, Gunny," Carlson said, conversationally. "If this question in any way is awkward for you to answer, then don't answer it. But would you be surprised to learn that Lieutenant McCoy had a hand in this somewhere?" The question obviously surprised Zimmerman. He met Carlson's eyes.
"Sir, nothing the Kill- Lieutenant McCoy does surprises me anymore. But I don't think he's behind this. I think I know where it come from."