"I read your story, Ace!"
The voice came from a darkened thatched-roof shack. A rotting, hand-painted sign next to the door announced this as the Officer's Club, but Joe Pageant knew better. It was to be his personal purgatory. He swallowed hard and continued up the creaking carton planks that served as steps. He paused for a moment and considered the relative virtues of Japanese hara-kiri, then hesitantly peered through the door toward his appointed tormentor--a smirking, U.S. Navy Lieutenant who had been assigned to acquaint Pageant with the niceties of military protocol.
"Admiral MacArthur?" asked the Lieutenant. He was joined by a chorus of hoots and jeers from the other patrons in the bar.
"Oh, shut up!" said Pageant, as he quickly sat down across the table from the officer.
Joe could tell that 1942 was going to be a very
bad hear. When the late-breaking story came over the wire about
MacArthur's
retreat from the
"Look, it's so simple, a non-com-poop could understand it," said Lt. Halyard, entirely too pleased with himself. "A Navy Ensign is the same as a Second Lieutenant in the Army, and a Lieutenant (J.G.)..."
"J.G.?" asked Pageant.
"Junior Grade," continued Lt. Halyard, "would be a First Lieutenant in the Army."
"Uh-huh," said Pageant, figuring it was better to just nod and go along at this point.
Lt. Halyard went on, "A Navy Lieutenant would then be a Captain in the Army, but remember, a Navy Captain is equivalent to an Army Colonel."
"Now that makes a lot of sense," said Pageant defensively. He hadn't cared much for kindergarten the first time around. He liked it even less twenty years later, especially when his teacher was a smug, 90-Day Wonder whom he figured had probably received his commission on the Yale rowing team. But, the whiskey in front of him was well iced and all too inviting. The condensation from the glass dribbled down his arm as he picked it up. Pageant took a long, slow sip. He relished the feel of the cold all the way down. "Oh well," he thought, "at least the jerk is buying."
"What about the Marines?" Pageant asked.
"What about 'em?" responded the Lieutenant. "Oh, they're attached to the Navy, but they use Army ranks."
"Why?"
"Because this is the Army, Mister!" snapped Halyard, forgetting himself.
"Navy," said Joe flatly while resting his chin on his hand. This was going to take a while.
"Whatever. Don't interrupt me," said the Lieutenant.
It was too hot to argue. Joe swirled the remaining slivers of ice around the bottom of the glass and signaled the bartender for another round. Frankly, he wondered how hard liquor had found its way to such a backwater area so soon after hostilities had begun. As all the supply ships and transports were overloaded with incoming troops, weapons and replacement parts, it was doubtful that booze was anywhere near the top of the priority list--and shipboard liquor was expressly forbidden by U.S. Navy regulation--that much he knew. In any case, he wasn't about to ask. The drink had tasted vaguely of kerosene...and he wasn't sure he wanted to know.
Lt. Halyard continued, "O.K. You got it now? A bird Colonel is the same as a Navy Captain...a four-striper."
"Captain," nodded Pageant, who was beginning to get sleepy from the heat.
"Cap'n!" shouted someone behind him.
Pageant jumped, rattled by the unnerving echo. He turned around to see a red-headed, pimple-faced kid in baggy, sailor whites snap to attention and salute. Lt. Halyard returned the salute. The kid stared straight ahead and proceeded stiffly to recite his message, boot camp fashion--at the top of his lungs..."Sir!" One would think he was addressing Admiral Halsey rather than a junior officer hardly five years his senior. Pageant guessed that the kid hadn't been out of basic training a week.
"Beg pardon, Sir," said the sailor in a
high adenoidal pitch, "but the Chief says we'll be ready to shove off
at
"Thank you, sailor. That'll be all," said Lt. Halyard as he dismissed the young man.
"Captain?" asked Pageant, more confused than ever. "I thought you were a Lieutenant."
"J.G." stated the officer by way of correction, "However, that sub tender tied up alongside the pier is my command. The commander of a vessel is the captain of his crew, regardless of rank. The title's professional courtesy."
Pageant was lost. "So, a captain's the commander and a commander can be any rank."
"Not necessarily," Lt. Halyard explained. Pageant could detect a tinge of mischief in his voice. The Lieutenant was enjoying this a bit too much. "The officer in charge is the commander and the captain of his crew..."
"Who is equal to a Colonel..." Pageant piped in.
"Let me finish!" said the Lieutenant. "But a Commander is the same as a Lieutenant Colonel, who outranks a Major, that is, a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy--and a Commander is captain only if he's in command," said the Lieutenant.
Pageant was beginning to suspect that he was being
suckered into an Abbott and Costello routine. This was giving him a
headache.
He wished that he was back in journalism school, or back at
Halyard rejoined, "But a Commander's called a 'Captain' if he's captain of his crew. Now you've got it!"
Pageant sat straight up, took a last sip of liquid courage, then jumped in. "O.K., let me see if I have this straight," he said. "In the Army, you have Second, then First Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Lieutenant Colonel, then bird Colonel...?"
The Lieutenant anticipated this one. "Sorry," he said. "The 'bird' is the eagle insignia, opposed to the Lt. Colonel's silver cluster. It's just Colonel. Don't forget, Army ranks apply to the Marines, too."
"Who are attached to the Navy," said Pageant.
"Yeah," said Lt. Halyard.
Joe rolled his eyes wearily, "How could I forget?" he said sarcastically. He then continued his recitation of accession of rank. "Then in the Navy, you have Ensign, Lieutenant (J.G.)..."
"That's ' Junior Grade'," volunteered Lt. Halyard.
"Now who's interrupting?" protested the reporter.
"Sorry," said the Lieutenant.
Pageant continued, "Then there's Lieutenant, Lieutenant Commander, Commander and Captain. Whew!" He sat back with a sigh of relief and smiled in self-satisfaction. Lt. Halyard was duly impressed and congratulated him. Reporters as green as Pageant usually required another two whiskeys to get this far.
"Now for the flag officers...Admirals and Generals," said Lt. Halyard, who then explained to his trust how Commodores compared to Brigadiers, and how a Lieutenant General outranked a Major General despite the precedent in the lower ranks.
Reasoning discretion to be the better part of keeping his teeth, Joe didn't say what he was thinking by the time his host got around to Rear and Vice Admirals. He just sighed and moaned, "We're going to lose this war, aren't we?"
"Hush!" scolded the Lieutenant. "You need another drink."
"Barely out of college, Pageant was beginning to feel like Hemingway...covering a major war through the bottom of a bottle. The peeling paint on the swollen, splintered walls of the Officer's Club was beginning to look a little fuzzy. "No more for me," he objected, but the Lieutenant wouldn't hear of it.
"Sergeant Major, two more!" barked Halyard to a burly Marine who was tending bar.
"Who does he outrank?" asked Pageant with a thickening tongue.
"In here, everyone but the Shore Patrol," quipped the Lieutenant. "Never mind, he's non-commissioned. It could be worse, you know. If we were British, I'd be called 'Lef-tenant' and would have rung for the 'batman'."
"Oh, go away!" said Pageant as his head dropped to the table.
A grinding wail outside sobered him up instantly. It was an air raid. The bar was abandoned as men scrambled to battle stations. Lt. Halyard scurried to his ship as Pageant made for the nearest slit trench. Fire belched from ship and shore batteries as Mitsubishi Zeros began strafing the island base. A couple of seconds later, the bombs began to fall. Pageant looked up through the hail of debris as a low-flying Zero barreled overhead. Its starboard wing had been sheared in half. It crashed and burned barely one hundred yards behind him.
"Thank God!" he said. "It's the Japanese."
© Russ Brown, 1997