more Military Police jeeps, plus a jeep with the logotype of Stars and Stripes painted beneath the windshield, and carrying three men whose uniforms bore WAR CORRESPONDENT insignia. Everybody had a camera.
“What’s going on here?” several of them demanded at once.
“We’re about to unload some Red Chinese prisoners of war,” Pickering said, “who will be transported to the Dai Ichi Building for interrogation by General Willoughby.”
That produced a flood of questions—including “Who are you?”—all of which Pickering ignored.
“Lieutenant,” Pickering said to the MP lieutenant. “Permit the press to take pictures as the prisoners are taken off the airplane. The Geneva Convention prohibits the interview of prisoners without their permission, and I’m sure that permission will not be forthcoming. So keep them away from the prisoners. And keep the press here when the bus leaves.”
“Sir, I don’t know who you are,” the lieutenant said.
“That’s not important,” Pickering said. “I’m a general officer, and you’re a lieutenant. All right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I will need a ride in one of your jeeps,” Pickering said.
“Yes, sir.”
"General,” McCoy said. “I want to go to the Dai Ichi Building. ”
“Hart and Keller are going to take you to the hospital, Major, and I don’t want any argument. I’ll meet you there.”
“I really would like to see the prisoners go into the Dai Ichi Building, sir.”
“Even if I told you Ernie’s back in the hospital?” Pickering asked.
McCoy’s face showed his stunned reaction, but he didn’t say anything.
Pickering took pity on him.
“She’s all right, Ken. It’s probably another false alarm.”
“Then there’s no real reason I couldn’t go to the Dai Ichi Building, is there, sir?”
Pickering looked at him for a long moment.
“I guess you’ve earned that, McCoy,” Pickering said. “Lieutenant, I won’t need that ride. Why don’t you start off-loading the prisoners?”
“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant said.
“George, bring the car around for Major McCoy,” Pickering ordered, then climbed the stairs up to the Bataan after the lieutenant.
[FIVE]
ROOM 39A, NEURO-PSYCHIATRIC WARD U.S. NAVAL HOSPITAL SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA 1430 2 NOVEMBER 1950
In Tokyo, and in Korea, it was the middle of the night, and it was raining, a cold, steady drizzle. Halfway around the world, in San Diego, California, it was midafternoon on what Brigadier General Clyde W. Dawkins somewhat grumpily thought of as “another goddamn perfect Southern California day.”
In the back of his mind, there had been a faint, perhaps somewhat disloyal, hope that there would suddenly develop a thunderstorm of such proportions that a full-scale retreat parade would be out of the question. His last check of the weather, just before he got in his staff car at Camp Pendleton, had completely dashed that hope. The weather was perfect and it was going to stay that way.
Major Malcolm S. Pickering, USMCR, was not in his room when he pushed open the door and marched in.
The nurse on duty in the ward said, “General, if you had asked me, I could have told you he’s in the Officers’ Club.”
General Dawkins turned to Captain Arthur McGowan, his aide-de-camp.
“Go fetch him, Art. Bring him up here to his room,” he ordered.
Major Pickering appeared in his room ten minutes later, smiling happily.
“May the major express his deep appreciation for the general’s very timely interruption?” he asked.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Major Pickering reached into the pocket of his hospital bathrobe and brought forth a very thick wad of twenty-dollar bills, which he waved happily.
“Straight poker,” he said. “I was on a roll. I would never have been allowed to walk away from that table with everybody’s money had this splendid young officer”—he pointed at Captain McGowan—“not marched into the Ping-Pong room and announced, ‘General Dawkins’s compliments, Major. The general desires to see you at your earliest convenience.’ ”
Dawkins smiled and shook his head.
“Art, give us a minute alone, will you?” Dawkins said.
Pick waited until McGowan had left the room, then asked, “Why do I think I’m not going to like this?”
“Sit down, Pick, and don’t open your mouth until I give you permission. That’s an order. Say, ‘Aye, aye, sir.’ ”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Pick said, and sat down in the folding chair.
“At 1700 hours this date, there will be a retreat parade at Camp Pendleton . . .”
“Yes, sir?” Pick asked.
Dawkins held up his index finger, indicating he really wanted silence.
“. . . in which,” Dawkins went on, “approximately a regiment of Marines stationed at Camp Pendleton, plus approximately a heavy company—about six boot platoons—of new Marines who are graduating from the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, San Diego, as we speak, plus a company-sized