Joe didn’t see anything he could say to that, so he just nodded. By the time they’d left the station and gone out into the potent Pensacola sun, he found a couple of words: “Thanks, buddy.” He’d left family behind in San Francisco. Now he realized he’d come back to family, too.

PLATOON SERGEANT LESTER Dillon had been a Marine for twenty-five years. He’d seen a hell of a lot in that span. He’d gone over the top half a dozen times in France in 1918 in the desperate fight that hurled the Kaiser’s men back from their final drive on Paris and toward their own border once more. The last time, a German machine gun took a bite out of his left leg. He’d celebrated the Armistice flat on his back in a military hospital.

Since then, he’d been in Haiti and in Nicaragua and at the American legation in Peking. He’d served aboard two destroyers and two cruisers. If he hadn’t joined the Corps, he didn’t know what he would have done with his life. Ended up in trouble, probably. He was a big sandy-haired guy with cold blue eyes in a long, sun-weathered face, and he’d never been inclined to take guff from anybody. If he’d stayed a civilian, he might have knocked somebody’s block off and done a stretch-or maybe more than one stretch-in the pokey.

Now he sat in San Diego twiddling his thumbs and waiting for the rest of the country to get off the dime. He was ready to hit the beach on Oahu tomorrow. The Navy wasn’t ready to get him there yet, though, or to make sure that the Japs didn’t strafe him or drop bombs on his head or otherwise make life difficult for him.

But things were starting to move. Camp Elliott held so many Marines, it was bursting at the seams. The Navy had bought an enormous rancho up the coast from San Diego. What would be Camp Pendleton would have enough room to train troops even on the scale this war would require. But Pendleton wasn’t ready yet. The contractors swore up and down that it would be come September, which did nobody any good right this minute.

He sat in the enlisted men’s club nursing a Burgie and smoking a Camel. Across the table from him sat Dutch Wenzel. The other platoon sergeant had almost as much fruit salad on his chest as Dillon did. He was three or four years younger than Les, a little too young to have seen France, but he’d done plenty of bouncing around since. He took a pull at his bourbon and soda. A White Owl sent a thin plume of fragrant smoke up from the ashtray in front of him.

“It’s a bastard,” Dillon said. “We could tear the Japs a new asshole if we could just get at ’em.”

Benny Goodman lilted out of the radio. Wenzel paused to savor the clarinet solo and to blow a smoke ring. “Army didn’t,” he observed.

“Yeah, well, that’s the Army for you.” Like any Marine worth his salt, Les Dillon looked down his nose at the larger service.

“Little yellow bastards aren’t bad.” Wenzel liked playing devil’s advocate.

“Fuck ’em. You were in China, too, right?” Dillon didn’t need to wait for the other man to nod. The Yangtze service ribbon was blue in the center, with red, yellow, and blue stripes on either side. “Okay, you saw the Japs in action, didn’t you? They’re brave, yeah, okay, but no way in hell they can stand up to us. Besides, their tanks are a bunch of junk.”

“Six months ago, people said the same thing about their planes,” Wenzel remarked.

“That’s different,” Dillon said. “With their tanks, it’s really true.”

“They’re liable to have better ones by the time we can get over there,” Wenzel said.

Dillon grimaced. That was a cheery thought. He sipped at his beer. After a moment, he brightened. “Well, so will we. The Army just had Stuarts in Hawaii, and they didn’t have very many of ’em. A Lee’ll make a Stuart say uncle any day, and a Sherman…!” With reasonable armor and a 75mm gun in a proper turret, a Sherman was a very impressive piece of machinery.

Dutch Wenzel nodded. “Okay. I’ll give you that one,” he said. “But the Japs won’t be sound asleep when we hit the beach, the way the Army was when they landed.”

Now he admitted the Army hadn’t done everything it might have to defend Oahu. The Navy hadn’t, either. If Dillon could have got his hands on General Short and Admiral Kimmel, he would have given them worse what-for than the Japs were, and scuttlebutt said the Japs were hard as hell on prisoners. For that matter, the Marines at Ewa and Kaneohe hadn’t done enough to stop the enemy, either. You get caught with your pants down, that’s what happens to you, Dillon thought unhappily.

“I just wish we could get at them,” he said, and finished the Burgermeister. Sucking foam off his upper lip, he went on, “Sooner or later, we will. And when we do, I want to be the first guy off the boat.”

“First guy to get his ass shot off, you mean,” Wenzel said. Dillon lazily flipped the other noncom the bird. He knew Wenzel was as eager to get within rifle range of the Japs as he was.

Two days later, his company commander summoned him to his office. Captain Braxton Bradford was as Southern as his name; he had a Georgia drawl thick enough to slice. “How would you like to make gunnery sergeant, Dillon?” he asked, stretching Les’ surname out into three syllables.

“What do I have to do, sir?” Dillon asked eagerly. He couldn’t think of anything he wanted more than a second stripe on the rocker under the sergeant’s three.

“Hoped that might get your attention.” Captain Bradford pointed north. “We’re gonna need us a hell of a lot of new Marines. All of those boots are gonna need somebody to show ’em how to be Marines. That there’s one of the things a gunny is for.”

“Oh.” Les thought for a moment, but only for a moment. “Thank you very much, sir, but I’ll pass.”

Bradford’s eyebrows came down and together. His nostrils pinched. His lips narrowed. He would have scared a boot out of ten years’ growth. Dillon already had all his growth. After machine-gun fire, nothing a captain did or said could be more than mildly annoying. Bradford kept on trying his level best to intimidate: “Suppose you tell me why, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir,” Dillon said stolidly. “They’re going to throw the old breed at the Japs in Hawaii. If I’m up there at that Camp Pendleton place, I won’t get to go. If I stay where I’m at, I will.” He threw away the promotion without the least regret. He wanted some things more than that second stripe on the rocker after all.

It was Captain Bradford’s turn to say, “Oh.” He did his best to hold on to his glower, but his best wasn’t good enough. “Goddammit, I can’t even get angry at an answer like that.”

“Sorry, sir,” said Dillon, who wasn’t sorry one bit.

Bradford’s sour smile showed a gold front tooth. “Now tell me one I haven’t heard. You think of anybody who’d take a promotion to go on up to this new place, or maybe to Parris Island or Quantico?”

“Nobody I know, sir,” Dillon answered. “You can always ask, though.”

“Officers all over Camp Elliott are asking-other places, too, for all I know,” Bradford said. “Lots of good people turning ’em down. You aren’t the only one. In a way, that’s good. We want our first team on the field against the Japs. But we want first-raters showing the boots the ropes, too. If mediocre people show ’em what being a Marine’s all about, they’re liable to make mediocre Marines.”

“Yes, sir.” Dillon said no more. With officers, the less you said, the better off you were. He didn’t disagree with Captain Bradford. He knew what was important to him, though-knew very plainly, if he’d turned down a promotion to keep it. And he had.

Bradford studied him. “Nothing I can do to make you change your mind, Sergeant?”

“No, sir.” Les almost added another, Sorry, sir. But that would have been laying it on too thick.

The company commander made a disgruntled noise down deep in his throat. “All right. Go on. Get the hell out of here.”