the meantime— this is an order, Pick—I don’t want you saying anything to anybody about this.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Pick said. “If that got out, the Corps would look pretty goddamn stupid.”
“The order to give you the Navy Cross, I am reliably informed, came from the President, personally,” Dawkins said. “Anything to say about that?”
“Only that I really don’t understand any of this, sir,” Pick said.
“Okay. I’ll look into it and get back to you,” Dawkins said. He smiled at Pick. “This Chinese fire drill aside, I’m really glad that you made it back, Pick. You were gone so long that we were all really getting worried.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“As soon as they’ll let you, my wife wants you to come out to the base for dinner.”
“I accept, thank you. I’m not entirely sure about you, sir, but I’m sure Mrs. Dawkins qualifies.”
“Qualifies for what?”
“When they give me a pass out of this place, it has to be in the company of a responsible person.”
Dawkins looked at him a moment, shaking his head as if in disbelief.
“Captain McGowan,” he said. “We have just had proof that this officer belongs in the Neuro-Psychiatric Ward. No sane Marine major would say such a thing to a very senior officer such as myself. Even if he did on more than one occasion save my tail while we were off winning World War Two all by ourselves.”
“Yes, sir,” Captain McGowan said.
“You understood, Pick, that it was an order you are not to mention this Navy Cross business to anyone, right?”
“Yes, sir. Not a problem, sir. The only visitor I expect is my mother, and I wouldn’t tell her something like that. And I don’t expect any more visitors. The fewer people who know where I am, the better.”
“Hey, you have absolutely nothing to be embarrassed about being in here. Despite what Billy Dunn said when his mouth ran away with him, I’m sure he is as proud of the way you evaded capture for so long as I am. And so are just about all of the pilots who know what you must have gone through. What you did—proving it can be done—is probably going to keep a lot of other shot-down pilots from giving up.”
“The general’s right, Major,” Captain McGowan said.
“I’m always right, Art,” Dawkins said. “I’m a general. Write that down.”
Pick and McGowan chuckled.
Dawkins pushed himself out of the folding chair and extended his hand to Pick.
“Welcome home, Pick,” he said. “We’ll see you soon.”
[TWO]
HEADQUARTERS X U.S. CORPS WONSAN, NORTH KOREA 0620 30 OCTOBER 1950
“Jade, Jade,” Major Alex Donald said into his microphone. “How do you read?”
“Jade reads aircraft calling five by five,” a metallic voice responded.
“Jade, this is Army four zero zero three.”
“Go ahead, four zero zero three.”
“Jade, four double zero three is approximately three miles from your field. Be advised four double zero three is a Sikorsky H-19 helicopter painted black in color. I say again, an H-19 painted black in color.”
The control tower at Jade—the landing strip serving X Corps Headquarters—took a good thirty seconds to respond, and when it did there was a new voice on the radio.
“Four zero zero three, Jade reads a black H-19. Confirm.”
“Four double zero three confirms. Please take necessary action to ensure strip defense does not engage. I say again, make sure no one shoots at us.”
“Four zero zero three. Do not approach at this time. Action requested will take five or more minutes. Jade will advise when you may approach.”
“Thank you, Jade,” Donald said, looked at Major Kenneth R. McCoy in the copilot’s seat, and released the microphone switch.
Major Donald was genuinely concerned about the strip defense. He had set it up himself. There had been virtually no enemy aerial attacks on American ground forces, or for that matter even enemy aerial observation of American positions. But that didn’t mean there were never going to be any.
He had, therefore, when he had been the Assistant X Corps Army Aviation Officer, spent a good deal of time thinking, planning, and setting up airfield defense. The basic weapons of the defense he had planned and set up were .50-caliber Browning machine guns, four of them, in a mount permitting simultaneous fire by one man, on White half-tracked armored cars.
There were “multiple-fifties” located at each end of the strip. The other two were positioned, depending on where the strip was located, so that they could fire on attacking aircraft without firing into the rather extensive X Corps headquarters tents or buildings.