Deadly Assets (37 page)

Keep reading for an exciting preview of W.E.B. Griffin's (writing as William E. Butterworth III) new novel

THE HUNTING TRIP

 

[ Four ]

U.S. Army Reception Center

Fort Dix, New Jersey

Monday Morning October 7, 1946

On Phil's first day in the Army, he was issued about fifty pounds of uniforms and given inoculations against every disease known to medical science. In the morning of his second day, he was given the Army General Classification Test, known as the AGCT, to see where he would best fit into the nation's war machine.

In the afternoon, he faced a Classification Specialist, who took one look at Phil, his AGCT score, and then arranged for him to take the test again.

“Secondary school dropouts” are not supposed to score 144 on the AGCT test. All it took to get into Officer Candidate School was an AGCT score of 110. The second time Phil took the test, this time under supervision to make sure no one was slipping him the answers, he scored 146.

The next morning, he faced another Classification Specialist, this one an officer, who explained to him the doors his amazing AGCT score had opened for him in the nation's war machine. Heading the list of these, the captain told Phil, was that he could apply for competitive entrance to the United States Military Academy at West Point. If accepted, he would be assigned to the USMA Preparatory School, and on graduation therefrom be appointed to the Corps of Cadets at West Point.

That suggested to Phil that he was being offered the privilege of jumping from the frying pan into the fire. He had had experience with a military academy, specifically the Bordentown Military Academy, and it had not been pleasant. He had been sent home after seven weeks of military service, so to speak, after having been found guilty of having talked a fellow cadet, PFC Edwin W. Bitter, into stuffing three unrolled rolls of toilet tissue down the muzzle of the saluting cannon. When the cannon had fired at the next morning's reveille formation, it looked for a minute or so as if Southern New Jersey was experiencing a blizzard in early October.

On the Greyhound bus back to north New Jersey later that October day, ex–Cadet Private P. W. Williams had been enormously relieved that his military service was over.

Another option, the captain explained, was for Phil to apply for the Army Security Agency. The ASA was charged with listening to enemy radio communications, copying them down, and if necessary, decrypting them. Personnel selected to be “Intercept Operators,” the captain said, had to have the same intellectual qualifications as officer candidates, that is to say an AGCT score of 110 or better.

Reasoning that places where radio receivers were located were probably going to be inside, and that Intercept Operators would probably work sitting down, Phil selected the ASA for his career in the nation's war machine.

He was given yet another long form to fill out, this one asking for a list of his residences in the last twenty years, and other personal information. He had no way of knowing of course that ASA Intercept Operators were required to have Top Secret security clearances, or that the form was the first step in what was known as the “Full Background Investigation Procedure,” which was necessary to get one.

The next day, Phil was transferred from the Reception Center to a basic training company.

There he and two hundred fellow recruits were issued blankets, sheets, a pillow and pillowcase, a small brown book entitled
TM9-1275 M-1 Garand Manual
, and an actual U.S. Rifle, Cal. 30, M-1 Garand.

They were told that until graduation day, when they actually became soldiers, they would live with their Garands. And yes, that meant sleeping with it. And memorizing its serial number.

The idea was for the recruits to become accustomed to the weapon. They wouldn't actually fire it until the sixth week of their training. Until then, they would in their spare time, after memorizing the serial number, read
TM9-1275
and learn how the weapon functioned.

The first indication that Phil had empathy for Mr. Garand's invention—or vice versa—came that very evening at 8:55 p.m., or, as the Army says that, twenty fifty-five hours.

At that hour, Sergeant Andrew Jackson McCullhay, one of Phil's instructors, walked down the barracks aisle en route to the switch that would turn off the lights at twenty-one hundred.

As he passed the bunk to which PVT WILLIAMS P had been assigned, he saw something that both surprised and distressed him. PVT WILLIAMS P had somehow managed to completely disassemble his U.S. Rifle, Cal. 30, M-1 Garand. All of its many parts were spread out over his bunk.

In the gentle, paternal tone of voice for which Basic Training Instructors are so well known, Sergeant McCullhay inquired, “
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
head, what the
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
have you done to your
EXPLETIVE DELETED
!!
rifle?”

“Sergeant, sir,” PVT WILLIAMS P replied, “I have disassembled it.”

“So I see,” Sergeant McCullhay replied. “Now show me,
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
head, how you're going to get your
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
Garand back together before I turn the
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
lights off in four minutes and fifteen
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
seconds.”

“Yes, sir, Sergeant,” PVT WILLIAMS P replied, and proceeded to do so with two minutes and five seconds to spare.

“I'll be a
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!,
” Sergeant McCullhay said. “
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
head, you're a
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
genius!”

“Yes, sir, Sergeant,” PVT WILLIAMS P said.

He had already learned the most important rule of all in the Army:
Never Argue with a Sergeant.

Sergeant McCullhay was genuinely impressed with the speed with which PVT WILLIAMS P had reassembled his stripped Garand, especially after he timed himself at the task. When, that same night, he told his buddies at the sergeants' club what he had seen, they didn't believe him.

One of his fellow noncommissioned officers made a challenge: “I've got ten
EXPLETIVE DELETED
!!
dollars that says your kid can't completely disassemble and reassemble a
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
Garand in less than five minutes.”

As a result of this challenge—it was a challenge, not a “bet” or a “wager,” as betting and wagering are violations of Army Regulations and those who do so are subject to court-martial—PVT WILLIAMS P was awakened after midnight by Sergeant McCullhay.

He and the Garand rifle with which he had been sleeping were taken to McCullhay's room in the barracks where five noncommissioned officers were waiting to challenge Sergeant McCullhay's assertions
vis-à-vis
the speed with which PVT WILLIAMS P could dis- and re- assemble a Garand.

After PVT WILLIAMS P had done so, which made Sergeant McCullhay fifty dollars richer than he had been earlier in the evening, the sergeant was in a very good mood.

“You can get in your bunk now,
EXPLETIVE DELETED
!!
head,” he said. “And you can skip the Zero Five Hundred Roll Call and Physical Training. I wouldn't want you to hurt your beautiful
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
hands doing
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
push-ups.”

[ Five ]

U.S. Army Reception Center

Fort Dix, New Jersey

Monday, November 18, 1946

During the next five weeks, whenever and wherever Sergeant McCullhay could find gullible souls wishing to challenge what he claimed for PVT WILLIAMS P's dis- and re-assemble times for the Garand, PVT WILLIAMS P did so.

On the side of three different roads during fifteen-mile hikes. Half a dozen times in the Regimental Mess Hall. Once in the back of the Regimental Chapel while the chaplain was warning the trainees about loose women. And once while wearing a gas mask in the tear gas chamber.

But then it was actually time for the trainees to fire the U.S. Rifle, Cal. 30, M-1 Garand.

This took place on one of the one-hundred-yard KD ranges. Some weeks later, PVT WILLIAMS P learned that KD stood for “Known Distance.”

There were twenty firing positions on the range and, one hundred yards distant from them, twenty bull's-eye targets. The targets were on frames that rose and fell on command from behind an earthen berm.

The procedure was explained in detail before the trainees were issued the one round of ammunition,
Cartridge, Rifle, Cal. .30, Anti-Personnel
,
w/168 grain projectile
, with which they would fire their first shot.

Once twenty shooters were in the prone position, with a
Strap, Leather, Rifle
attaching them firmly to their rifles, and had a cadre-man lying beside them, the range officer would issue over a loudspeaker several commands:

“The flag is up!”

Whereupon a red flag in the target area would be hauled to the top of a flagpole.

“The flag is waving!”

Whereupon another flag, this one checkered, would be waved in the target pit, and the bull's-eye targets would be raised.

“The flag is down! Commence firing!”

Whereupon the checkered flag would drop out of sight and the shooters were free to fire.

This required that the cadre-man hand his shooter the one cartridge he was trusted to have, and for the shooter to then insert the cartridge into the chamber of his Garand, and then to close the action of the Garand, which would make the Garand ready to fire once the safety on the front of the trigger guard was pushed out of the way.

The trick here was to get one's thumb out of the way after depressing the magazine guide in the open action of the Garand before the bolt slammed closed.

PVT WILLIAMS P had no problem with this, but eleven of the twenty shooters on the line already had what was known as “M-1 Thumb,” a physical injury, the symptoms of which were a black (or missing) thumbnail, and smashed tissue in the thumbnail area.

After the cartridge was chambered, the shooter was to disengage the safety by pushing it forward in the trigger guard. Then he was to align his sights on the bull's-eye, take a deep breath, exhale half, check his sight alignment, and then slowly, gently squeeze the trigger until the weapon fired. He then, after inspecting the now-open chamber of his rifle to make sure it was indeed open, would lay his weapon down and wait for further instructions.

When the sixty seconds allotted for the firing of the trainees' first shots had expired, the range officer would announce, repeating the command twice, to make sure everyone heard him: “The flag is down! Cease firing!”

Whereupon the red flag would come down from its pole, and the targets disappear downward into the berm, where they would be marked.

If the bullet had struck any part of the target at all, including the frame, a “peg” would be inserted in the bullet hole. This was a ten-inch black dot exactly the size of the bull's-eye in the center of the target. When the target was raised, the shooter could see where his bullet had hit.

In case the target pullers could find no bullet hole anywhere, they would raise and wave a red flag, called “Maggie's Drawers,” to tell the shooter he had completely missed the target.

When the range officer completed the series of commands ending with “Commence firing,” the cadre-man next to PVT WILLIAMS P handed him the cartridge he was to fire with a little paternal, or perhaps brotherly, advice: “
EXPLETIVE DELETE
D!!
head, if you
EXPLETIVE DELETED
!!
up your
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
thumb loading this, I will kick your
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
from here to
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!
Trenton.”

Sergeant Andrew Jackson McCullhay feared that “M-1 Thumb” would keep PVT WILLIAMS P from being able to manipulate M-1 parts with the extraordinary facility that was making him so much money.

PVT WILLIAMS P loaded his rifle without harm to his thumb, lined up the sights, and squeezed the trigger. The recoil, while not pleasant, was not nearly as bone-shattering as Sergeant McCullhay had led him to believe it would be. He checked to see that the action was indeed open, and then laid the rifle down.

The sixty-second firing period expired.

The range officer proclaimed the flag to be down, and ordered “Cease firing!”

The targets dropped down behind the berm.

One by one, they rose again.

The first several to rise had pegs on them, which showed where the bullet had stuck. Some were actually within a foot or so of the bull's-eye, but most were scattered all over the target. Two marksmen had shot the frame.

PVT WILLIAMS P's target rose, but he could see no peg on it, and he braced for the shaming Maggie's Drawers, which would soon flutter to announce his lousy marksmanship to the world.

No Maggie's Drawers fluttered before his target, although they proclaimed the shame of seven other marksmen.

“What the
EXPLETIVE DELET
ED!!
?”Sergeant McCullhay asked rhetorically, and then raised his voice. “Tell the
EXPLETIVE DELETE
D!!
in the pit to mark
EXPLETIVE DELETED
!!
Number Seven.”

A minute or so later, the range officer appeared at Firing Point Number Seven.

“The pit reports Number Seven is in the X Ring,” he reported. “Obviously a fluke. Have your shooter fire again.”

This time PVT WILLIAMS P had the entire flag-is-up-and-down procedure all to himself. He was given a cartridge, loaded it without damage to his thumb, lined up the sights, et cetera, et cetera, and in military parlance, “squeezed off another round.”

This time the pit again reported “In the X Ring.”

PVT WILLIAMS P had no idea what the X Ring was, but he was shortly to learn that it was sort of a bull's-eye within the bull's-eye, a three-inch circle in the center of the ten-inch bull's-eye.

“I'll be a
EXPLETIVE DELETED!!,
” Sergeant McCullhay exclaimed.