something else: reverence. He saw what he was doing as divinely inspired. He was doing God's Will. It would be the Just Man who enforced both the Law and the Word, living to standards set by the Book and in the flesh by heroes like Earl Swagger; in their honor, he would live a life of exemplary conduct and?
'Of course,' said the sergeant, 'you might still want to check with the Historical Section and see what was going on in the Second Marines that week.'
After a night in a motel comprising three hours of desperately dead sleep and three hours of fitful turning, Carlo took the cab back to the Arlington Annex to find the G3 (Operations) Division of HQ USMC. Operations was in another of the shambling wooden buildings that were the center of the Marine empire. The building showed hard use: it needed paint and air-conditioning and a general sprucing up; or it needed tearing down.
He walked in, introduced himself and showed his badge, and was accorded a professional respect he somehow felt he had yet to earn. The FBI connection worked here too, and he went without trouble to the second floor, to the Historical Section. In here, a narrative of the Second World War was being officially compiled by a number of civilians and Marine retirees. He was eventually turned over to a man in civilian clothes who was missing an arm, referred to by everyone as Captain Stanton.
'What I need,' he explained, 'is the regimental record?I guess it would be a logbook or something?of the Second Marines, during the third week of January in 1942. Specifically, Company B, Third Battalion.'
'They were mostly still stateside then,' said Captain Stanton. 'Probably still at New River. Sometime in there they would have moved to the West Coast. They didn't deploy until July for the 'Canal.
'I understand that, sir. I just have to see what was going on in the regiment that particular week. That company, that battalion if possible.'
'Okay,' said the captain. He retreated to the stacks, while Carlo waited, his suit rumpled, feeling sweaty and somehow uncomfortable. The office smelled of cigarette smoke and dead heroes. In stalls men consulted volumes, maps, made phone calls and took notes. Light streamed through the sunny windows, illuminating clouds of smoke and dust; the atmosphere seemed alive with particles and gases. Was this all that was left of all those young men who'd gone ashore on the beachheads of the Pacific, so many of them dying virgins, shot down in warm water or in cloying sand, never having felt the caress of a woman or the joy of watching a son take a first step? Now, they were here: in a large government-green office, full of old journals and files in cabinets and maps, wheVe their sacrifice and heroism was reduced to words to be published in dusty volumes that nobody would ever read.
Wake-Island
Manila
Guadalcanal
Betio
Saipan
Gilberts
Marianas-Tarawalwo
Okinawa
It all came to this, the lighting of cigarettes, the rumpling of paper, the tapping of the typewriters, the scratching, so dry, of pen on paper. There should be a Marine in dress blues, playing taps endlessly to salute the boys of the broken palms and blazing sunsets and long gray ships and jungles and coral reefs and volcanic ash. This room housed it all, and somehow there should be more, but this is all there was. It was another reliquary of the bones of martyrs, some of them so young they didn't know what the word martyr meant.
'Henderson? You okay?'
He looked up to see Captain Stanton, holding a thick volume under his one good hand.
'Yeah, sorry.'
'You were sort of talking to yourself.'
'I'm sorry. They deserve so much more than this room.'
'Yes, they do. That's why we have to get it all written down, so that it'll be recorded forever. Anyhow, here's the logbook of the Second Marines, January through April, 1942.'
Together, they paged through it, finding old orders, directives from command and staff meetings, training schedules, disciplinary records, and a narrative of day-by-day operations. It was the collective diary of thousands of men preparing for a desperate, endless war at the end of the world.
'15 Jan 41: 2nd Marines receives deployment orders from HQ-USMC for Camp Pendleton, California, prior to shipment overseas in Pacific Battle Zone. Operations ordered to commence planning of the redeployment.'
Then, for the week of January 17 through January 24, 'Elements of 2nd Marines in transit to West Coast'; it continued until early February.
'They were on the move for three weeks?' asked Carlo.
'Son, a Marine regiment is part of a division, which is a formidable amount of men. We're talking about a headquarters element, three infantry regiments of about 3,100 men each, an artillery regiment, an engineer regiment, a tank battalion, a special weapons battalion, a service battalion, a medical battalion and an amphibious tractor battalion. They were understrength, of course, but a division carried a paper strength of 19,514 men. So we're calking about a unit that's folded into a larger unit of at least twelve to thirteen thousand men. Plus all the vehicles and equipment, including the guns. It all has to work together. It's no small thing.'
Carlo sat there. A worm began to gnaw at his brain. He rubbed his hand against his eye but it would not go away.
'I'm trying to envision this.'
'Envision chaos. Barely organized, confusing, messed up, full of mistakes. You're moving a large body of men and equipment. It's 1942, the war has just begun. Everybody's in a panic, nobody knows what's going to happen next. You're working on a railroad system that's just been converted to troop-carrying duties. It demands coordinating with the railways, assembling trains, picking routes, routing the trains in and around other military traffic and civilian traffic, the coming of blackouts, the beginning of wartime regulation and austerity. The logistics are a nightmare. It's a mess, and none of the officers or NCOs have any real experience in it. Up till then the Marine Corps has pretty much moved only at the battalion level. Now you're moving in units of 12,000 men.'
Carlo nodded, let it sink in.
'I take it you were there.'
'In 1942 at that time I was a staff sergeant in the First Marines. We were also at New River but we didn't move west until July. Our baptism of fire came later, at Bougainville. It would help if I knew what this was about.'
'It's a security clearance and a problem has come up. I'm trying to account for a sergeant's location in the third week of January. I already know he wasn't UA or on temporary duty or leave. He was officially with the regiment at that time.'
'That should settle it, then.'
'What were the routes taken west, do you recall?'
'Ah, there were many trains, many routes, depending. Since we were staging for the Pacific at Pendleton, outside of Diego, we usually went a southern route. Let's see. In my case, the train went from New River through Nashville, down to Little Rock, on to Tulsa, down through New Mexico and Albuquerque. We were hung up at Albuquerque a week due to a coal shortage, and then on into Diego.'
Little Rock!
'Goddamn!'
Goddamn!
It was the first time in his life of virtue and service that he could remember swearing.
'You look like I just hit you between the eyes with a poleax, son.'
'Let me ask you this. Is this theoretically possible? A guy has been in ten years. He's a sergeant. He's been around, in China, Nicaragua and the Zone. He's well-liked, even beloved. He knows all the other sergeants and all
