for yourself. What this is, is a dog and pony show, intended to inspire the Supreme Commander to lean on the Joint Chiefs to come up with the necessary funding to buy lots of these machines. Apparently, the Joint Chiefs are first not very impressed with these machines, and even if they do everything the Army Aviation people say, the Joint Chiefs will believe that if it flies, it should belong to the Air Force.”
“So they’re staging a dog and pony show for you? And you’re supposed to work on General MacArthur?”
“No. They’re working on the Supreme Commander directly, ” Almond said. “He gets the show. When I got his revised ETA, I was also informed that the Bataan will taxi here after it lands to afford General MacArthur the opportunity to see these vehicles, and to have his picture taken with them.”
Howe shook his head in amazement.
“Yeah,” General Almond said. “Following which General MacArthur will turn over the liberated city of Seoul to President Syngman Rhee.”
“I spent last night with Colonel Chesty Puller’s Marine regiment,” Howe said. It was a question.
“Seoul is liberated enough, General,” Almond responded, “to the point where I feel the ceremony can be conducted with little or no risk to the Supreme Commander or President Rhee. I would have called this off if I didn’t think so.”
“I understand,” Howe said.
“With a little luck, the artillery will fall silent long enough so that we can all hear General MacArthur’s remarks on this momentous occasion,” Almond said evenly.
Howe smiled at him.
“Well, here we are,” Almond said as the Chevrolet stopped before the bullet-riddled hangar.
Major Alex Donald, the X Corps’ assistant Army Aviation officer, walked briskly up to it, opened the door, and saluted.
General Howe got out first, his presence clearly confusing Major Donald. Then General Almond slid across the seat and got out.
“Good morning, sir,” Major Donald said. “Everything is laid on, sir.”
“Good,” Almond said. “General Howe, this is Major Donald.”
They shook hands.
Howe spotted Captain Howard C. Dunwood, USMCR, standing close to the closed hangar doors with eight other Marines.
“Good morning, Captain,” Howe said.
“Good morning, sir.”
“Baker Company, 5th Marines, right?” Howe asked.
“Yes, sir.”
Both Captain Dunwood and General Almond were visibly surprised that General Howe was possessed of that information. Almond admitted as much.
“How did you know that?” he asked.
Howe winked at him.
“Well, Donald, let’s have a look at these machines before the Supreme Commander gets here,” Almond said.
[THREE]
As the staff car carrying Generals Almond and Howe started down the road beside the runway, McCoy paused long enough to wonder where they were going, then turned and motioned to Jeanette Priestly to get out of the Russian jeep.
He had given a lot of thought to Jeanette and to her relationship with Pickering.
Pick Pickering—a really legendary swordsman, of whom it was more or less honestly said he had two girls and often more in every port—had taken one look at Jeanette Priestly just over two months before and fallen in love with her.
And vice versa. The second time Jeanette—known as the “Ice Princess” among her peers in the press corps because no one, and many had tried, had ever been in her bed or pants—had seen him she had taken him to bed.
Everyone knew that “Love at First Sight” was bullshit, pure and simple, that what it really meant was “Lust at First Sight” and had everything to do with fucking and absolutely nothing to do with love.
Everybody knew that but Major Kenneth R. McCoy, USMCR. He knew there was such a thing as love at first sight because it had happened to him.
The first time he had seen Ernestine Sage he had known he would love her forever even though the chances of having her in his bed, without or with the sanction of holy matrimony, had ranged from zero to zilch, and he damned well knew it.
Ernie was from Pick’s world. Her mother and Pick’s mother had been roommates at college. Her father was chairman of the board of—and majority stockholder in— American Personal Pharmaceuticals. Everyone thought that Pick and Ernie would marry.
There was no room in Ernestine Sage’s life for a poor Scots-Irish kid from Norristown who had enlisted in the Marine Corps at seventeen, been a corporal with the 4th Marines in Shanghai, and was now a second lieutenant primarily because he had learned how to read and write two kinds of Chinese, Japanese, and even some Russian and the Marine Corps was short of people like that, and thus willing to commission them, temporarily,