platoons had the same purpose, to get replacements to the First Marine Brigade (Provisional) in Pusan, South Korea, as expeditiously as possible. The size of Aug9-2 had been determined by the number of seats available on Trans-Global Airways Flight 1440, San Francisco to Tokyo, with intermediate stops at Honolulu, Hawaii, and Wake Island.
Platoon Aug9-2 had been formed at 0715 in the morning, and had departed Camp Pendleton by Greyhound Bus for San Francisco at 0755. Travel was in utilities. The trip took a little more than ten hours, including a thirty-minute stop for a hamburger-and-Coke lunch outside Los Angeles.
There was just time enough at the airfield in San Francisco for the members of Aug9-2 to make a brief telephone call to their families. Most of them did so, and although each member of Aug9-2 had been admonished not to inform their family members of their destination until they reached it, with the exception of one officer, a second lieutenant, all of them told their family members they were in San Francisco about to get on an airplane for Tokyo and eventually South Korea.
Why the hell not? Who did the goddamn Crotch think it was fooling? What was the big goddamn secret? Where else would the goddamn Crotch be sending people except to goddamn Korea?
The flight aboard Trans-Global Airways Flight 1440 was a pleasant surprise. It was a glistening—apparently not long from the assembly line—Lockheed Constellation. There was a plaque mounted on the bulkhead just inside the door, stating that on June 1, 1950, the City of Los Angeles had set the record for the fastest flight time between San Francisco and Tokyo.
The seats were comfortable, the stewardesses good-looking and charming. Almost as soon as they were in the air, the stewardesses came by asking for drink orders. Drinks were complimentary.
One of the staff sergeants of Aug9-2, who three weeks before had been a maritime insurance adjuster in Seattle, and often flew to Honolulu on Trans-Global and other airlines, was surprised that Trans-Global was passing out free booze in tourist class, and asked about it.
“I don’t really know,” she said. “I heard something that the president of the company was a Marine, or something. All I know is that all our military passengers get complimentary refreshments.”
The military passengers in tourist class also got the same meal—filet mignon, baked potato, and a choice of wine—that was being served in first class. The civilians in the back got a chicken leg and no wine.
Still, with the fuel stops in Hawaii and Wake Island, it was a hell of a long flight to Tokyo, and all of Aug9-2 got off the plane at Haneda on 12 August tired, needing a bath and a shave, and in many cases, more than a little hung-over.
They were taken by U.S. Army bus to Camp Drake, outside Tokyo, for processing, which included a review of the inoculation records; their service record; an opportunity for those who didn’t have it to take out an insurance policy that would pay their survivors $10,000 in the case of their death; zeroing their individual weapons; issuance of 782 gear and a basic load of ammunition; and two hour-long lectures.
One of the lectures, by an Army captain, told them what they could expect to find, in a military sense, once they got to Korea. It surprised none of them, for they had all read the newspapers.
The goddamned Army was getting the shit kicked out of it, and—what else?—had turned to the goddamn U.S. Marine Crotch to save its ass.
The second lecture, by a Navy chaplain, told them what they could expect to find in Korea in a sexually-transmitted -diseases sense. It included a twenty-minute color motion picture of individuals in the terminal stages of syphilis, and of other individuals whose genitalia were covered with suppurating scabs.
At 1200 15 August 1950, Marine Corps Platoon Aug9-2 (Provisional) was fed a steak-and-eggs luncheon, causing many of its members to quip cleverly that the condemned men were getting the traditional hearty last meal.
Then they were loaded on an Army bus that took them back to the Haneda Airfield. There, they were told, they would board a Naval Air Transport Command Douglas R5D, which would depart at 1400, and after several intermediate stops—Osaka, Kobe, and Sasebo—would deposit them at K-1 Airfield, Pusan, South Korea, where they would be met by a Marine liaison officer who would get them to the First Marine Brigade (Provisional), where Aug9-2 would be disestablished, and they would be assigned billets in the brigade