O'hara's Choice - Leon Uris [14]
Paddy O’Hara crawled out on the beach time and again, dragging back more wounded and ordering the healthy men to throw them into the boat.
And again he went out for wounded, and again . . .
. . . until the Rebels came screaming once more through Lizard’s Gate . . .
He threw an unconscious Ben Boone into the whaler, threw the wounded in one after the other until twenty of them lay in the bottom of the boat quivering like netted fish.
The boat was too heavy to row. Paddy and the rowers sloshed and slipped in the blood and vomit, finding newly dead and heaving them overboard until the whaler lost enough weight to move, then pushed along, tightly hugging the bank for cover.
Sea grass kept them out of the firing line of the Rebs, who were too busy finishing off the wounded and shooting those retreating into the surf to look for fresh targets.
The whaler stayed thus until darkness, the healthy men quieting the wounded and sending dead ones over the side. Four rowers and twelve wounded remained.
The four rowers moved out with a wounded Marine at the rudder and Paddy leaning over the bow to count and measure the severity of the surf.
And good black darkness clamped in.
It took three hours to find a steam launch. Paddy was the last man able to move, near dead from thirst. War makes bad sights, civil war makes worse, but there was never a sight to match the bottom of that whaleboat on that night.
Having saved three men at Bull Run and fourteen survivors at Sumter from massacre or prison, Sergeant O’Hara was well on his way to becoming a legend.
He became the second United States Marine to be awarded the new Congressional Medal of Honor and was ultimately promoted to sergeant major.
1888—Prichard’s Tavern—Late Afternoon
Private Jones wheeled off the highway into the roundabout of Prichard’s Inn. Jones retrieved Major Boone’s carpetbag as Master Gunnery Sergeant Kunkle emerged from the inn and saluted.
“Ah Christ, Gunny, give us a hug!”
They clanked against each other.
“Kunkle! You’re uglier than you were four years ago.”
“Hell,” the Gunny said, “nobody’s that ugly, not even me.”
• 5 •
AMANDA BLANTON KERR
1888—Washington—the Following Monday
The waiting room of Navy Secretary Nathaniel Culpeper’s office was efficiently quiet. Three male clerks, civilians, and a naval attaché scratched away at the papers on their desks with an air of importance. In a small foyer, an unblinking statue of a Marine private guarded Culpeper’s door.
Amanda Blanton Kerr wiggled restlessly, trying to get into her book. She opened her necklace watch. Her father had been inside for nearly an hour. Amanda’s eyes drifted from her pages. Her alert glance took in everything about her.
The attaché gave a small smile and nod of sympathy as he checked out Amanda’s enthralling beauty. She gave him a slight curl of her lip, hinting of a flirtatious engine inside her.
Her eyes went up the Marine guard and down the Marine guard with scarcely a glance. The attaché sniffed another smile. The Marine continued looking forward, unblinking.
* * *
Beyond the mighty door, Secretary of the Navy Nathaniel Culpeper pondered. He was a great ponderer. On one side of his desk sat Horace Kerr, the shipbuilding titan, and beside him Commodore Chester Harkleroad, chief of the navy’s massive building program.
The pair of them stood foursquare against Lieutenant Colonel Commandant Thomas Ballard, referred to snidely as the Marine Corps’ “Uncle Tom.” The old warrior was desperately trying to salvage his Corps, but he was in for another lacing today. Moreover, those two bastards opposite him had managed to keep his major, Ben Boone, out of the meeting.
The commodore’s naval architects and Horace Kerr’s engineers had proffered advance blueprints for a new class of armored cruisers. No quarters, mess, or provisions had been drawn for a Marine unit, not even to man secondary guns.
Final approval by Secretary Culpeper would further deplete the Marines. Two nights earlier, young Theodore Roosevelt, a rising star in