Days of Infamy Read Free Page B

Schofield Barracks BOQ and a bar tab that was liable to outdo Jane’s legal fees. He had the sympathy of some of the officers and men who knew what had happened to him. Others suddenly didn’t seem to want anything to do with him. Almost all of those were married men themselves. They might have feared he had something catching. And so he did: life in the military. If anything could grind a marriage to powder, that’d do it.
    He sat on a bar stool soaking up whiskey sours with Gordon Douglas, another lieutenant in the battalion. “She knew I was an officer, goddammit,” he said—slurred, rather, since he’d already soaked up quite a few. “She knew, all right. Knew I had to take care of . . . this stuff.” He gestured vaguely. Just what he had to do wasn’t the clearest thing in his mind right then.
    Douglas gave back a solemn nod. He looked like the high-school fullback he’d been ten years earlier. He was from Nebraska: corn-fed and husky. “You know, it could be worse,” he said slowly—he’d matched Armitage drink for drink.
    â€œHow?” Fletch demanded with alcohol-fueled indignation. “How the hell could it be worse?”
    â€œWell . . .” The other man looked sorry he’d spoken. But he’d drunk enough to have a hard time keeping his mouth shut, and so he went on, “It could be worse if we spent more time in the field. Then she would’ve seen even less of you, and all this would’ve come on sooner.”
    â€œOh, yeah. If.” But that only flicked Fletch on another gripe of his, one older than his trouble with his wife (or older than his knowledge of his trouble with his wife, which was not the same thing). “Don’t hold your breath, though.”
    â€œWe do the best we can.” Gordon Douglas sounded uncomfortable, partly because he knew he was liable to touch off a rant.
    And he did. Fletch exploded. “Do we? Do we? Sure doesn’t look that way to me. This is a hell of a parade-ground army, no bout adout it.” He paused, listened to what he’d just said, and tried again. “No . . . doubt . . . about it.” There. That was better. He could roll on: “ Hell of a parade-ground army. Butwhat if we really have to go out there and fight? What will we do then, when we’re not on parade?”
    â€œWe’d do all right.” Douglas still sounded uncomfortable. But then he rallied, saying, “Besides, who the hell would we fight? Nobody in his right mind would mess with Hawaii, and you know it.”
    Down the hatch went Armitage’s latest whiskey sour. He gestured to the Filipino bartender for another one. Even before it arrived, he went on, “All this shit with the Japs doesn’t sound good. They didn’t like it for beans when we turned the oil off on ’em.”
    â€œNow I know you’re smashed,” his friend said. “Those little fuckers try anything, we’ll knock ’em into the middle of next week. I dare you to tell me any different.”
    â€œOh, hell, yes, we’d lick ’em.” No matter how drunk Fletch was, he knew how strong Hawaii’s defenses were. Two divisions based at Schofield Barracks, the Coast Artillery Command with its headquarters at Fort DeRussy right next to Waikiki Beach, the flyboys at Wheeler right by the barracks complex here, and, just for icing on the cake, the Pacific Fleet . . . “They’d have to be crazy to screw with us.”
    â€œBet your ass,” Douglas said. “So how come you’ve got ants in your pants?”
    Armitage shrugged. “I just wish . . .” His voice trailed away. He wished for a lot of things that mattered more to him right now than just how prepared the men at Schofield Barracks were to turn back an attack unlikely ever to come. And those weren’t ants in his pants. He and Jane had been married