[FOUR]
Office of the Secretary of the Navy
Navy Department
Washington, D.C.
1515 Hours 28 October 1942
Having decided the presentation ceremony was of sufficient importance to justify his personal attention, Brigadier General J. J. Stewart had arrived at Secretary Knox’s office thirty minutes earlier, on the heels of the still and motion picture photography crew.
Those to be decorated, however, had not yet shown up. And so General Stewart’s temper flared once again at Captain O. L. Greene. The first time Captain Greene provoked his anger (at least in regard to the present circumstances) was after he’d returned from meeting the plane from California at the airport. When he came back from the airport, Greene reported that the three young officers did not, as they were supposed to, accompany him to the VIP Transient Quarters at Eighth and I, where they were to be installed.
“I told them about the quarters, General,” Greene explained, “but Pickering, the officers’ escort, told me he’d already made arrangements for the officers. Sergeant McCoy and the two gunnies are in the transient staff NCO Quarters. I gave the officers’ escort the schedule.”
By then, of course, it had been too late to do anything about the escort officer running around loose with Dunn and Easterbrook. So he’d limited his expression of displeasure to suggesting to Captain Greene that the next time he was given specific instructions, it would well behoove him not to let a lieutenant talk him out of following them.
Now he wished he’d given in to the impulse to ream Captain Greene a new anal orifice back when it might have done some good. In fifteen minutes, the Secretary of the Navy was going to invest Lieutenant Dunn with the Navy Cross, the nation’s second-highest award for valor, and no one had the faintest goddamn idea where Dunn was.
The Secretary’s conference room had been turned into something like a motion picture set for the presentation. The conference table itself was now pushed to one side of the room; a dark-blue drape suspended from iron pipe was put up as a backdrop; lights were set up and tested; and two motion picture cameras-an industry-standard 35mm Mitchell and a 16mm Eyemo as a backup-were in place. It then took the master sergeant in charge of it all an extraordinary amount of time to arrange the flags against the backdrop-the National Colors, and the flags of the Navy Department, The Marine Corps, and the Secretary of the Navy.
But that delay was as nothing in comparison with the one that really mattered.
And then, as General Stewart glared impatiently-for the umpteenth time-at his wristwatch, the door to the Secretary’s conference room opened and three Marine officers walked in.
“General,” the tallest of the three barked crisply, “Lieutenant Pickering reporting with a detail of two, Sir.”
The other first lieutenant, who was also wearing the wings of a Naval Aviator (and thus he had to be the Navy Cross decoratee), seemed for some reason to find this very amusing.
But General Stewart did not dwell on that. He was pleased with what he saw. The three of them were not only shipshape, with fresh shaves and haircuts, but fine-looking, clean-cut young officers in well-fitting uniforms. It could very easily not have been so. When these pictures appeared in movie newsreels and in newspapers across the country, The Corps would look good.
There was only one minor item that had to be corrected. But even as this thought occurred to General Stewart, the master sergeant took care of it:
“Lieutenant,” he said, “this time you’re on the other side of the lens. Why don’t you let me hold that Leica for you?”
Lieutenant Easterbrook pulled the strap of his Leica camera case over his head and turned it over to the master sergeant.
It was at that point that General Stewart realized that a civilian had entered the room. And then, a moment later, he realized just who that civilian was.
“Good afternoon, Senator,” he said.
“Good afternoon.”
“I’m General Stewart…” General Stewart began, but got no further.
Captain David Haughton put his head in the door and interrupted him: “Senator, if you don’t mind, the Secretary…”