The Corps I - Semper Fi

When the Marine Band had finally marched off, the perimeter guard near them, a lance corporal, left his post.

When he came to Pickering and McCoy, he saluted snappily.

"Good evening, sir!" he barked.

"Good evening," McCoy heard himself say.

Something bothered him. After a moment, he realized what it was. When the kid had tossed him the highball, he had done so automatically. The kid had seen a couple of officers, and he had saluted them. There had been nothing in his eyes that suggested he suspected he was saluting a China Marine corporal in a lieutenant's uniform.

I really am an officer, McCoy thought. Until right now, it was sort of play-acting. But now it's real. When that kid saluted me, I felt like an officer.

Well, this is the place to have it happen, he thought. At the Marine Barracks in Washington after a formal retreat parade, with the smell of the smoke from the retreat ca

(Four)

On Saturday, Pickering and McCoy drove around Washington. Pickering was at first amused at the notion of playing tourist, but then he realized it wasn't so bad after all. He saw more of Washington with McCoy than he'd seen during the entire summer he'd spent bellhopping at the Lafayette.

And he came to understand that McCoy was doing more than satisfying an idle curiosity: He was reco

They spent most of Sunday at the Smithsonian Institution. And again, Pickering was pleased that they had come. He was surprised at the emotion he felt when he saw the tiny little airplane Charles Lindbergh had flown to Paris and when he was standing before the faded and torn flag that had flown "in the rockets' red glare" over Fort McHenry.

At half- past ten on Sunday night (Pickering was still not fully accustomed to thinking in military time and had to do the arithmetic in his head to come up with 2230), Second Lieutenants M. Pickering and K.J. McCoy presented their orders to the duty officer at the Marine Barracks and held themselves ready for duty.

"Your reporting in early is probably going to screw things up with perso

"We're in a hotel in town," Pickering said. "Okay. Probably even better. As you'll find out, the Corps is scattered all over town. What hotel?" "The Lafayette," Pickering said.

"Very nice," the officer of the day said. "What's the room number?"

"I don't know," Pickering said and started to smile. "Then how do you know where to sleep when you get there?" the officer of the day asked, sarcastically.

"Actually, we're in the bridal suite," Pickering said. And then, quickly, he added: "In the maid's room off the bridal suite."

At 0915 the next morning, the telephone in the maid's room of the bridal suite rang. It was a captain from perso

"You drop me there," McCoy said. "I can walk back here. Anacostia's to hell and gone."

Pickering found Building F without difficulty. It was one of several buildings immediately behind the row of hangars. Three minutes later, to his considerable surprise, he was standing at attention before the desk of Brigadier General D.G. Mclnerney, USMC. Unable to believe that a brigadier general of Marines would have thirty seconds to spare for a second lieutenant, he had simply presumed that whatever they were going to have him do here, his orders would come from a first lieutenant.

General Mclnerney looked like a general. There were three rows of ribbons on his tunic below the gold wings of a Naval Aviator. He didn't have much hair, and what there was of it was cut so close to the skull that the bumps and the freckles on the skin were clearly visible.

The general, Pickering decided as he stood at attention, was not very friendly, and he was unabashedly studying him with interest.

"So you're Malcolm Pickering," General Mclnerney said finally. "You must take after your mother. You don't look at all like your dad."

Pickering was so startled that for a moment his eyes flickered from their prescribed focus six inches over the general's head.

"You may sit, Mr. Pickering," General Mclnerney said. "Would you like some coffee?"

"Yes, sir," Pick Pickering said. "Thank you, sir."

A sergeant appeared, apparently in reply to the pushing of an unseen buzzer button.

"This is Lieutenant Pickering, Sergeant Wallace," General Mclnerney said. "He will probably be around here for a while."

The sergeant offered his hand.

"How do you do, sir?" he said.

"Lieutenant Pickering's father and I were in the war to end all wars together," General Mclnerney said, dryly.

"Is that so?" the sergeant said.

"And the lieutenant's father called me and, for auld lang syne, Sergeant Wallace, asked me to take care of his boy. And of course, I said I would."

"I understand, sir."

Pickering felt sick and furious.

"I think we can start off by getting the lieutenant a cup of coffee."

"Aye, aye, sir," Sergeant Wallace said. "How would you like your coffee. Lieutenant?"

"Black, please," Pickering said.

"Aye, aye, sir."

"You get fixed up all right with a BOQ?" General Mclnerney inquired. "Or are you perhaps staying in a hotel? A Foster hotel?"

"I'm in the Lafayette, sir."

"I thought you might be," General Mclnerney said. "I mean, what the hell, if your family owns hotels… how many hotels does your family own, Lieutenant?"

"There are forty-two, sir," Pick said.

"What the hell, if your family owns forty-two hotels, why not stay in one of them, right? There's certainly no room service in the BOQ, is there?"

"No, sir."

The coffee was delivered.

"Thank you, Sergeant," Pickering said.

"Certainly, sir," Sergeant Wallace said.

"I guess it took a little getting used to, not having someone to fetch coffee for you. At Quantico, I mean?" General Mclnerney asked.

"Yes, sir," Pickering said.

"Well, at least here, you'll have Sergeant Wallace and several other enlisted men around for that sort of thing. It won't be quite like home, but it will be a little better than ru

"Yes, sir," Pickering said.

"It's not quite what the Corps had in mind for you," General Mclnerney said, "but I've arranged for you to be my junior aide-de-camp. How does that sound?"

"Permission to speak frankly, sir?" Pickering asked.

"Of course," General Mclnerney said.

"My father had no right to ask you to do anything for me," Pickering said. "I knew nothing about it. If I had any idea that he was even thinking about something like that, I would have told him to keep his nose out of my business."