recognized only a few of them—seemed to attest to that. Judging by just the number of them, this master gunner had been in every war since the American Revolution, and wounded in all of them.
One of the medals on his chest she did recognize was the Purple Heart, awarded for having been wounded in action. She had seen enough of them pinned on hospital gowns here in the ward to know what that was. The master gunner’s Purple Heart medal was just about covered with little things—Lieutenant Hills had forgotten what they called the little things—pinned to it. But she knew that each one of the little things meant a different award of the Purple Heart for getting wounded in action.
Lieutenant Hills saw that he was carrying a small canvas bag in his left hand, as a woman carries a bag. She wondered what was in it.
Then she realized that she had no idea how master gunners were addressed.
Do you call them “Master Gunner,” as you would call a major “Major”? If not, then what?
“May I help you, sir?” Lieutenant Hills finally asked, even though she knew that as a lieutenant j.g. she outranked the master gunner and therefore he was not entitled to be called “sir.”
“Major Pickering,” the master gunner said.
“What about Major Pickering?” she asked.
“Where is he?”
I think he was supposed to say, “Where is he, ma’am?”
“He’s in 404,” Lieutenant Hill said. “But he’s on Restricted Visitors. If you want to visit him, you’ll have to go to . . .”
The master gunner nodded at her, then turned and marched down the corridor toward room 404.
“Just a minute, please,” Lieutenant Hills called after him as firmly as she could manage. “Didn’t you hear me? Major Pickering is on Restricted Visitors. You have to have permission of the medical officer of the day—”
When she realized she was being totally ignored, she stopped in midsentence.
She came from behind the nurses’ station counter and looked down the corridor in time to see the gunner enter room 404.
Master Gunner Ernest Zimmerman, USMC, marched to the foot of the cranked-up hospital bed in which Major Malcolm S. Pickering was sitting and looked at him without speaking.
“Look what the goddamn tide washed up!” Pick cried happily. “I’ll be goddamned, Ernie, it’s good to see you!”
“You won’t think so in a minute, Pick,” Zimmerman said. “Can you handle some really shitty news?”
There was a just-perceptible pause, long enough for his bright smile to vanish before Pickering asked, “Jesus Christ, not the Killer?”
“Not the Killer,” Zimmerman said.
“Dad? Has something happened to my father?”
Zimmerman opened the straps on his canvas bag and extended it to Pickering.
“What’s this?” Pick asked, but looked, and then reached inside without waiting for an answer.
He came out with a fire-blackened object that only after a moment he recognized as a camera.
“Jeanette’s camera,” Zimmerman said, and then when Pick looked at him curiously, went on: “I picked it up yesterday near where the plane went in.”
“Jeanette’s?” Pick asked. “What plane?”
“An Air Force Gooney Bird headed for Wonsan,” Zimmerman said. “It clipped a mountain and blew up. Nobody got out.”
“Jeanette was on the Gooney Bird?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re sure?” Pick asked softly.
“Yeah.”
“How can you be sure? How did you get involved?”
“From the top?”
“From the fucking top, Ernie,” Pickering said, struggling to keep his voice from breaking as a tear slipped down his cheek. “Every fucking tiny little fucking detail.”
Lieutenant Hills went back behind the nurses’ station aware that she had two choices. She could ignore what had happened, or she could report it. She had just decided to ignore the breach of orders—
What harm was really being done? It wasn’t, after all, as if Major Pickering was at death’s door. What they were trying to do for him was fatten him up, and making sure the dysentery wouldn’t recur. And having a visitor might make him feel better. He looked so unhappy, which was sort of funny because he was just back from escaping from the enemy, and you’d think that would make someone happy.
—when she was forced to reverse it. The hospital commander, Captain F. Howard Schermer, MC, USN, was now standing at her nurses’ station.
With him was a very pretty, very pregnant young woman.
“Good afternoon, sir,” Lieutenant Hills said.
“This is Mrs. McCoy, Lieutenant,” Captain Schermer said. “She is to be the exception to the Restricted Visitors on Major Pickering. They’re old friends, and she just came from Tokyo to see him.”
Schermer had received a telephone call that morning from Major Pickering’s father, who was a