"If you hadn't, I would have made an even bigger fucking fool of myself!" McCoy said, adding a moment later, "Jesus!"

"As I said," Pickering said, "there is a remote possibility that Ernie likes you-"

"She doesn't like to be called Ernie" McCoy said.

"- for what you are. Warts and all," Pickering continued.

"Jesus, you just don't understand, do you? this isn't the first time this has happened to me. All she wanted was a stiff prick. Marines have a reputation for having stiff pricks."

"I think you're dead wrong," Pickering said.

"Fuck what you think, I know," McCoy said.

"You told me that you"-Pickering paused and then went on-"were the first."

"So what?"

"That means something to women, from what I've seen. They can only give it away once. Ernie chose to give it away to you."

"She decided to get it over with, and I was available."

"That's bullshit and you know it."

"She lied to me, you dumb fuck! A whole line of bullshit, about this being her first job, right out of school, and I thought she meant high school, and how they were paying her eighteen fifty a week, and that's why her apartment was such a dump."

"That's all true," Pickering said.

"You know what I mean," McCoy said.

"She had to lie to you, you dumb fuck," Pickering said. "You have this well-developed inferiority complex, and she was afraid you'd crawl back in your hole."

"Do me a favor, Pickering," McCoy said. "Just shut your fucking mouth!"

"Ken, I want to keep you from-"

"Shut your fucking mouth, I said! The subject is closed." Pick Pickering decided that under the circumstances, the only thing to do was shut his fucking mouth.

(Two)

The last week of training in Platoon Leader's Course 23-41 went just as rapidly as the previous weeks had, but far more pleasantly.

In the words of Pick Pickering: "It's as if the Corps, having spent all that time and effort turning us into savages, has considered the risks they'd run if they turned us loose on an unsuspecting civilian population and is now engaged in recivilizing us."

There were several lectures on the manners and deportment expected of Marine Corps officers, and lectures on "personal finance management" and the importance of preparing a last will and testament. There was a lecture on insurance, and another on the regulations involved in the travel and transfers of officers.

They were even taken to the Officers' Club, where the intricacies of officer club membership were explained in a hands-on demonstration. They were ushered into the dining room, allowed to order whatever struck their fancy from the menu (which Pickering and McCoy found somewhat disappointing), and then shown how to sign the chit. Commissioned officers and gentlemen do not pay cash in officers' clubs.

Afterward, before they marched back to the company area, a lance corporal at a table outside the dining room permitted them to redeem the chits for cash.

But they got the idea. And they had their first meal as gentlemen-if not quite yet officers-and-gentlemen-and were thus free, since they had paid for it, not to eat it if they didn't like it. Corporal Pleasant had not even marched them over to the officers' club (Platoon Leader Candidate McCoy had been ordered to do that) and there was thus no risk that any of them would be ordered to slurp it up.

And they were given liberty at night during the last few days, from retreat to last call. Pickering and McCoy went to the slop chute, where a pitcher of beer and paper cups were available for a quarter. McCoy put away a lot of beer; but neither he nor Pick Pickering got drunk or reopened the subject of Miss Ernestine Sage.

On Wednesday afternoon, in time for the retreat formation, most of the officer uniforms were delivered. The uniform prescribed for the retreat formation was a mixture of officer and enlisted uniforms. They could not be permitted to wear officer's brimmed caps, of course, because they were not yet officers. But they wore officer's blouses and trousers, without officer-type insignia, because the primary purpose of the formation was really to see if the uniforms would fit on Friday, when they would be sworn in.

Platoon Leader Candidates Pickering and McCoy did not have their officer's uniforms on Wednesday afternoon. When this was discovered by Corporal Pleasant, it afforded him one last opportunity to offer his opinion of the intelligence, responsibility, and parentage of two of his charges. But even after that, they were not restricted to the barracks for the evening. They got the LaSalle one last time from the provost marshal's impounding lot and went off the base so that Platoon Leader Candidate Pickering could make inquiries of Brooks Brothers.

It was a lot of trouble to make a lousy phone call, but there were few pay phones available on the base, and these generally had long lines waiting to use them. And they had to get the car from the Impounding Compound rather than take a bus, because the MPs checked passes on buses. McCoy's properly stickered car and campaign hat got them past the MP at the gate without inspection.

On Thursday morning, as the platoon was preparing to march off to rehearse the graduation and swearing-in ceremony, a blue Ford station wagon drove into the company area. A large black man emerged from it, and addressed Corporal Pleasant.

"Hey, Mac!" he called out. "Brooks Brothers. I'm looking for Mr. Pickering and Mr. McCoy."

Even Pleasant seemed amused.

"The asshole with the guidon," he said, "is Mr. McCoy, and Mr. Pickering is the tall asshole in the rear rank. Wave at the nice man, Mr. Pickering."

The man from Brooks Brothers cheerfully waved back at Mr. Pickering, and then began to unload bag-wrapped uniforms, cartons of shirts, and oblong hat boxes from his station wagon. He stacked everything on the ground, and then sought out Mr. Pickering and Mr. McCoy to get his receipt signed.

After the rehearsal, as they were unpacking their uniforms and preparing their enlisted men's uniforms to be turned in, Corporal Pleasant entered the barracks.

"Attention on deck!" someone bellowed.

"Stand at ease," Corporal Pleasant said. And then he went to each man and handed him a quarter-inch-thick stack of mimeograph paper. It was their orders.

There were three different orders, or more precisely, three different paragraphs of the same general order. The first sent about half of Platoon Leader Class 23-41 to Camp LeJeune, North Carolina, "for such duty in the field as may be assigned." The second sent just about the rest of 23-41 to San Diego, California, "for such duty in the field as may be assigned."

There were only two names on the third paragraph of the General Order. It said that the following officers, having entered upon active duty at Quantico, Virginia for a period of three years, unless further extended by competent authority, were further assigned and would proceed to Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Washington, D.C., "for such administrative duty as may be assigned."

"What the hell does this mean?" Pickering asked, when Pleasant had left.

McCoy had a very good idea what it meant so far as he was concerned, but he had no idea what the Corps had planned for Pickering.

"It means while the rest of these clowns are running around in the boondocks, you and I will be sitting behind desks," he said.

At 1245 hours,. Friday, 28 November 1941, Platoon Leader Candidate Class 23-41 fell in for the last time. They were wearing the uniforms of second lieutenants, U.S. Marine Corps, but Corporal Pleasant took his customary position and marched them to the parade field.

The first order of business was to give them the legal right to wear the gold bars on their shoulders. They raised their right hands and swore to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to obey the orders of such officers who were appointed over them, and that they would discharge the duties of the office upon which they were about to enter to the best of their ability, so help them God.