===
Major Kenneth R. "Killer" McCoy, USMCR=== First Appearance:
Semper Fi His name is Kenneth R. McCoy, the introductory character of the saga, a Marine
Corporal stationed in
Shanghai, China with the
4th Marines (the primary component of the
China Marines) prior to the
attack on Pearl Harbor. Ken has a great affinity for languages and in China learns
Japanese,
Wu,
Mandarin, and
Cantonese, which leads to his being assigned to intelligence-gathering convoys by Captain Edward Banning, USMC, the Fourth Marine Regiment's intelligence officer. His fellow Marines call him "Killer" for killing two
Italian Marines in self-defense with a baby
Fairbairn–Sykes knife (to his great embarrassment), and for having killed 18 Chinese bandits in the employ of the
Kempetai with a
Thompson submachine gun while on an intelligence mission. Following the action in which he killed 18 "bandits," he is transferred back to the United States and enters
Officer Candidate School to earn a commission as a
second lieutenant. After graduating from OCS, he is assigned as an officer courier for intelligence in the Pacific while working for the Marine Corps Office of Management Analysis, a special, little known intelligence group run by Lieutenant Colonel (later Brigadier General) Fritz Rickabee. While on a courier run just after Pearl Harbor, he manages to make it into the
Philippines shortly before the
Japanese invasion and reunites with Captain Ed Banning while assisting in the defence of a landing beach. Following an artillery barrage, McCoy carries the wounded Banning to a monastery for treatment. He makes it through enemy lines and is returned to the States. He is awarded a
Purple Heart for wounds received and a
Bronze Star for his performance under fire and his efforts to save Captain Banning. McCoy is next assigned to evaluate Lieutenant Colonel
Evans Carlson of the
2nd Marine Raider Battalion, whose unorthodox methods
caused concern among his superiors. He trains for six months with the
Marine Raiders in San Diego, and participates in the
Raid on Makin Island. He participates in several secret missions under Brigadier General Fleming Pickering, including landing on Japanese-controlled
Mindanao; staging the rescue of two Marines manning a
Coastwatcher station on the island of
Buka; being sent on "Operation Windmill" by General Pickering to evaluate the sanity of General
Wendell Fertig and the resistance potential of his U.S. Forces in the Philippines; and setting up a weather station in the
Gobi Desert urgently needed by the Navy and the Army Air Force. During the course of the series he receives a
Bronze Star, three
Silver Stars, the
Distinguished Service Medal, the British
Victoria Cross, and the
Purple Heart with five stars. Following the success of Operation Gobi, McCoy is promoted to the rank of Major and is ordered to attend the U.S. Army Command and General Staff course, a desirable course which usually is reserved for officers destined for great things, by direction of President Roosevelt. (Note: The Victoria Cross is an error on the part of the author. Only
British and
Commonwealth subjects serving in the armed forces were eligible for this medal, the highest award in the
British honours system for combat valour. It seems more likely McCoy would have been awarded the
Military Cross or the
British Distinguished Service Cross.) Following his return from establishing Station Nowhere in the Gobi Desert in May, 1943, he and Ernestine Sage were married and McCoy attended and graduated from the "long course" at C&GS School. Apart from that assignment, newly promoted Major McCoy continued to work for General Pickering in the OSS until the end of the war, though. After C&GS School the only other assignment specifically mentioned was his accompanying General Pickering on the first flight of Americans into
Atsugi Air Base in August, 1945
prior to the formal Japanese surrender. During the period between his graduation and General Pickering's involvement in the Japanese surrender, Ken and Ernie were stationed at the Marine base at
Quantico, VA, where his duties were not specified but it may be assumed he was an instructor of some sort, possibly teaching guerrilla operations behind the enemy lines. Based on the fact that when the story picks up in June, 1950 McCoy is once again a captain, it is clear he was caught up in the reduction-in-force that happened to the armed services after World War II. Due to his lack of a college degree, at some point after World War II ended he was reduced in rank to captain despite having graduated from the Command and General Staff School and having more than enough time in grade to make his promotion permanent. He observed that "The Corps had a – maybe unwritten – policy that if you were reduced in grade, you were transferred ...", which saw the McCoys sent to Japan. Between the end of World War II and the start of the Korean War, McCoy is assigned to Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers, General MacArthur's headquarters in Japan as part of its naval element, still working in Intelligence and specializing in Korea. He learns to speak and read Korean, and develops his own network of intelligence sources. Following his submission of a report that directly contradicts General
Charles Willoughby's report to MacArthur that all is quiet in Korea, Willoughby attempts to run McCoy out of the Marine Corps. Feeling he has nothing to lose, he contacts his former boss, Fleming Pickering, and asks him to get his report (which, never having been entered into the intelligence filing system by Willoughby, he was able to spirit out of SCAP HQ without anyone noticing) into the hands of the CIA. The report comes to the attention of President
Harry Truman and McCoy is retained on active duty. After the Korean War breaks out, he is co-opted into the CIA by General Pickering, who has been recalled to active duty in the Marine Corps by the President as the CIA Deputy Director for Asia. Once again, Pickering uses McCoy as his eyes and ears on the ground and gives him his head. This results in McCoy setting up an intelligence operation generally similar to that of Mac MacMillan in
The Brotherhood of War series. Among other things, McCoy conceives and with the approval of General Pickering carries out the seizure of islands in the Flying Fish Channel in the Inchon approaches without tipping off the North Koreans that enables Douglas MacArthur to successfully land two divisions there. As a result, he is promoted to Major by General MacArthur, and decorated with the Silver Star. McCoy successfully rescues Pick Pickering three months after Pick was shot down while shooting up an enemy train and evaded capture by the North Koreans, and continues his intelligence operations in Korea. While this is happening, his wife Ernestine successfully gives birth to a son in Japan after having suffered repeated miscarriages. As The Corps' final book to date (
Retreat, Hell!) ends with the Korean War still raging, we know nothing of McCoy's post-Korean War life or assignments. ===
Colonel Edward C. Banning, USMC=== First Appearance:
Semper Fi Introduced as the
S-2 (intelligence) officer of the
4th Marines in China, and assigned as McCoy's legal advisor after Ken's killing of the two Italian marines. Initially he wants to plead McCoy guilty, but McCoy refuses, and to the chagrin of the prosecutor McCoy comes up with members of
William E. Fairbairn's "
Flying Squad" of the Shanghai Police as witnesses. Banning quickly becomes an integral part of the book as McCoy is slowly indoctrinated into the world of intelligence gathering. After charges are dismissed, Banning sends McCoy on convoys to "get him out of sight", and discovers McCoy has great talent as an observer and evaluator of Japanese military readiness. Also a China Marine, his relationship with McCoy changes from superior officer to peer as the story progresses. Unlike the majority of pre-World War II regular Marine Corps officers, Banning is a graduate of
The Citadel, the Military College of
South Carolina. When orders come down transferring the Fourth Marines to the Philippines, Banning marries his longtime lover Ludmilla Zhvikov, a
stateless person (a genuine
White Russian countess and daughter of a Tsarist general) traveling on a
Nansen passport. But for the impending war, this would have destroyed his career; as it is, his superiors barely take note of it. He is forced to leave Milla behind when the regiment sails, as a subordinate of his, Sergeant Ernest Zimmerman, also had to do with his Chinese wife, Mae Su. After the 4th Marines are moved from
Shanghai to the Philippines, he finds himself defending the beaches of
Lingayen Gulf (
Luzon) during the Japanese invasion. He is temporarily blinded and transferred off
Corregidor by submarine with other seriously wounded US servicemen; fortunately, his sight returns before reaching port. Banning subsequently serves in the Office of Management Analysis and under Brigadier General Pickering in the
Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II, finishing up the war on the staff of General
Joseph Stilwell as an analyst and special cryptographer in charge of the ultra-secret MAGIC Special Channel. Killer McCoy arranges for Ludmilla to be brought out of China as part of Operation Gobi, and Banning reunites with her — and with his son, Edward Edwardovich Banning, whom he had never seen. At the beginning of the
Korean War in
Under Fire, he is a colonel in charge of Marine Barracks in Charleston, South Carolina, near retirement, and contemplating a future in real estate development on islands his wealthy family own. Like Ken McCoy, he is co-opted into the CIA by General Pickering, serving on his personal staff until the General, following a meeting with Director
Walter Bedell Smith, the new head of the CIA, reassigns him as the CIA's Tokyo station chief. Nothing is known of Banning's career or life following the Korean War, although in
Under Fire a possible path is given. The Banning family owns an island south of Hilton Head, and Banning has in mind developing it as a retirement community for senior military officers who have never owned homes of their own. ===
Master Gunner Ernest Zimmerman, USMC=== First Appearance:
Semper Fi Ernest "Ernie" Zimmerman is a China Marine
sergeant who serves with McCoy in Shanghai and operates with him in reconnaissance missions. He was present when a group of Chinese bandits in the pay of the
Kempeitai attacked one of the convoys McCoy used as a cover for his intelligence work, killing more than a dozen of them. As a result, he is one of a very few people who can call McCoy "Killer" without incurring McCoy's wrath. Like McCoy, he is fluent in Wu, Cantonese, and Mandarin. When the 4th Marines are ordered to the Philippines, in November 1941, Zimmermann is forced to leave his Chinese wife, Mae Su, behind. She returns to her home village, bringing Major Banning's wife, Ludmilla Zhivkov, with her. Later, the two and their children become part of a
caravan of American soldiers, sailors, and Marines both active duty and retired, who intend to escape the Japanese by crossing the
Gobi Desert to India. Later, Zimmermann serves with McCoy in the
Marine Raiders on the
Makin Island raid. Following this, Zimmerman serves with VMF-229 in the Pacific during the first months of the
Guadalcanal Campaign. At McCoy's request, he assists in landing on the Japanese-held
Buka Island to resupply a
Coastwatcher base; bringing in new personnel and extracting exhausted USMC personnel. He is then transferred to the OSS at Ken McCoy's request. He takes part in an evaluation mission to General
Wendell Fertig in the Philippines to determine if Fertig is sane and in a position to wage guerrilla warfare against the Japanese. Following this, he is assigned to help McCoy set up a weather station in the
Gobi Desert. During that operation, Zimmerman is reunited with his wife and children. The family is evacuated to the United States after General Pickering uses his influence with Senator Fowler of California (a longtime personal friend) to write a
private bill granting
non-quota immigrant visas to the family. At McCoy's request, Ernie Sage provides the money to help set them up in business in South Carolina. Following the Gobi Desert assignment in 1943, Zimmerman is promoted to
Master Gunner by direction of President Roosevelt. During the Korean War, he serves with McCoy in the
CIA in Korea, directly under the command of General Pickering. Like Colonel Banning, Master Gunner Zimmerman is nearing retirement. The Bannings own an island south of Hilton Head. The Colonel and Mae Su (who is something of an entrepreneuse) are planning to build a retirement community on the island aimed at newly-retired field-grade officers of the military. It is implied that following their retirements, the Colonel and the Gunner will form a development corporation, possibly also including Ken and Ernestine McCoy.
Major Malcolm "Pick" Pickering, USMCR First Appearance:
Semper Fi On the train from Boston to Philadelphia, McCoy meets a friendly civilian named Malcolm Pickering ("Pick" to his friends). Pick is the son of Fleming Pickering, owner of Pacific and Far East (P&FE) Shipping, and Patricia Foster Pickering, heir to the Foster hotel chain (allowing Pick to stay at the exclusive hotels at no cost). He is a Harvard graduate with a degree in hotel management, having learned the business from the bottom up, starting as a busboy and working up to substitute assistant manager. By his own admission, Pick can do any job in the hotel except pastry chef, claiming he could not master handling pastry dough. After parting company, McCoy and Pick are reunited as classmates in
Officers Candidate School at
Quantico,
Virginia. Following their graduation and commissioning, they remain in touch, occasionally being involved in the same mission. While Ken acts as an officer courier just before Pearl Harbor, Pick is accepted for flight training and attends flight school at
Pensacola. After earning his wings, Pickering transitions into
Wildcats and flies with the
Cactus Air Force on
Guadalcanal. He qualifies as a
fighter ace and is decorated with the
Distinguished Flying Cross. He is sent back to the States to participate in a War Bond tour, following which he is promoted to captain, qualifies as an
F4U Corsair instructor pilot, and is made the executive officer of VMF-262, serving under his friend William "Billy" Dunn, with whom he had flown at Guadalcanal. Unfortunately, despite his skill as a pilot Pick suffers from a lack of maturity that repeatedly (and deservedly) lands him in hot water. He is also a
ladies' man who is sought out by women, whom he frequently beds without considering the consequences. The combination of immaturity and success with the ladies results in his involuntarily volunteering for the Gobi Operation as copilot of one of the
PBY-5A Catalinas. Following the success of that mission, he returns to the United States and continues to fly Corsairs for the rest of World War II, shooting down more Japanese and being shot down himself more than once. Women continue to pursue him, and he sometimes pursues them as well through the course of the series. Pick was promoted to Major while commanding a USMC Reserve fighter squadron shortly before the Korean War. At the same time, he is working as President and Chief Pilot of Trans-Global Airways, the airline started by his father following the end of the war. His squadron was subsequently activated and deployed to Korea. He gained a reputation for hunting enemy trains, important and dangerous targets, painting locomotive silhouettes on his Corsair to mark each kill, determined to become the Marine Corps' first "Locomotive Ace." Flying combat missions off the
escort carrier USS Badoeng Strait, he is shot down over enemy territory after busting yet another locomotive but survives, evades capture, and returns to friendly lines, rescued by Killer McCoy. The experience, coupled with the loss of a lady war correspondent with whom he had been contemplating marriage and subsequently connecting with the widow of another Marine Aviator, seemed to finally mature him. Nothing is known of Pick Pickering's life following the Korean War.
Brigadier General Fleming "Flem" Pickering, USMCR First Appearance:
Semper Fi Fleming Pickering, father of Pick Pickering, is the owner and chairman of Pacific and Far Eastern Shipping, a large and successful worldwide shipping conglomerate. During the First World War, he was a Marine
corporal, and was thrice wounded in action during the
Battle of Belleau Wood where he was awarded the
Navy Cross (the Navy's second-highest award for valor and the equivalent of the
Distinguished Service Cross). During his World War I service, he was also awarded the Silver Star, the
World War I Victory Medal, and the French
Legion of Honor in the rank of Chevalier, plus the
Croix de Guerre. (The wound stripes he was awarded during the war were converted to the Purple Heart plus two gold stars in lieu of the second and third awards when the Purple Heart was reauthorized in 1932.) Following the war, he went to sea and worked his way up to an unlimited Master's license and several ship commands before his father's unexpected death propelled him to the position of Chairman and CEO of P&FE when he was 26. As Chairman of P&FE, he modernized the company, assigning officers where the company needed them instead of permitting them to monopolize one ship. He has no prejudice against officers who "came up through the hawsepipe" rather than graduating from a maritime academy, having worked his way up from Ordinary Seaman to Captain himself. As improvements in cargo-handling equipment are made, they are installed in his ships and their cargo terminals. Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, then-
Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox asked him to take a wartime commission as a Navy Captain, to act as Knox's
plenipotentiary in the Pacific theater. During this period of his World War II service he was awarded the
Silver Star and his fourth
Purple Heart after taking command of a destroyer when her skipper was killed in an air attack. Pickering was aboard the destroyer following service as the Acting G-2 of the
First Marine Division on
Guadalcanal, which volunteering for the job had seriously annoyed Secretary Knox. General Archer Vandegrift recommended him for the Legion of Merit for his service in that role, which medal was awarded to Pickering by President Roosevelt personally. Pickering was commissioned a Marine Brigadier General and assigned as the
Office of Strategic Services Deputy Director for the Pacific by President Roosevelt in an attempt to force
Douglas MacArthur to permit the OSS to operate in his theater of operations. Pickering establishes Special Detachment 16 of the Marine Corps to deal with secret missions in the Southwest Pacific Ocean Area that are not entirely supported by Supreme Commander MacArthur. General Pickering stages the relief of an important Coastwatcher station on Buka; a mission codenamed "Operation Windmill" to evaluate the guerrilla potential of General Wendell Fertig's United States Forces in the Philippines; and Operation Gobi, the establishment of a vitally needed weather station in the Gobi Desert. He also becomes involved in investigating a possible security breach of
MAGIC, the top secret communication system and Japanese codebreaking and analysis operation. It falls to General Pickering to determine if the secret has been compromised, which sends him around the world to make the determination. Being able to read the Japanese coded messages is a priceless asset to the Allies, but one which would evaporate if the Japanese realize their codes, which they consider unbreakable, have been broken. Following the war, Fleming Pickering resumes his position as chairman and CEO of Pacific and Far East Shipping, but also establishes an airline, Trans-Global Airways, with his pilot son Pick Pickering as its president and chief pilot. While on a visit to Tokyo, he is contacted by Captain Ken McCoy. McCoy gives him an intelligence analysis that concludes the North Koreans are readying an attack on South Korea. General Willoughby, MacArthur's chief of intelligence, has informed MacArthur that all is quiet in Korea, squashed McCoy's contradictory report, and attempted to railroad McCoy out of the Marine Corps. Pickering takes the report to the director of the
CIA, who is skeptical of its accuracy but orders an investigation by his station chiefs. When McCoy's report turns out to be right on the mark, Pickering is recalled to active duty as a USMC brigadier general and is named the CIA's deputy director for Asia, essentially the same position he had held in the OSS. He supports McCoy in establishing a secret intelligence and operations group generally similar to Mac MacMillan's Task Force Able in the
Brotherhood of War series. He also stages an operation in support of General MacArthur's
Inchon landing, which has a great deal to do with the landing achieving surprise and succeeding. Nothing further of Fleming Pickering's life or career is known.
Major (previously Lieutenant) Robert Macklin, USMC First Appearance:
Semper Fi Robert Macklin, USMC is a "generally slimy creature" and the epitome of everything a good Marine officer ''shouldn't'' be. A Naval Academy graduate, he is regarded with contempt by all officers who know him. He worked for then-Captain Ed Banning in China before the war, but proved to be unfit for intelligence work. After writing a self-serving report on the missionary convoy mission where Corporal Ken McCoy earned the nickname "Killer McCoy," Banning sent Macklin home from China with an efficiency report, endorsed by Major
Chesty Puller, that should have seen him thrown out of the Corps. World War II gave him a stay of execution. Assigned to Quantico as a mess officer, he attempted to prevent Ken McCoy from being commissioned. Captain Jack NMI Stecker caught him at it, and the base commander advised him to find another home. He volunteered for the Marine Parachutists, earned his jump wings, and was assigned as a supernumerary officer to the First Battalion of the Para-Marines. Blown off the dock in the assault on Gavutu and wounded in the face and the leg, he had to be pried loose from a dock piling by the corpsmen. He was sent to a hospital in Australia, where Major Jake Dillon recruited him as a "hero" for a war bond tour because while he is a scumbag, he
is handsome. After working on the second "Marine Heroes" war bond tour, Macklin volunteered for the
OSS, believing he could salvage his career by so doing. A Marine major who did not know Macklin's record arranged for him to be promoted to captain, and because he was available, he was assigned to "Operation Windmill," the OSS's code name for the mission to General Wendell Fertig in the Philippines. Despite the objections of several officers in Washington who knew Macklin, Secretary of the Navy Knox ordered him sent on Operation Windmill. However, General Pickering, who was staging the operation, gave Lieutenant McCoy, the mission commander, permission to kill Macklin if he got in the way of carrying out the operation. He was not joking. The feeling of the officers involved in the mission was summed up by Captain Ed Sessions, who answered Navy Lieutenant Chambers Lewis's question "If you hate this guy so much, why don't you just drown him?" with "I think that's probably been considered. If anyone had asked me, I would have voted 'yes.' " Captain Macklin was sent ashore with the rest of the Operation Windmill team. He expected to be pulled out when the first supply submarine arrived, but instead was ordered to remain with United States Forces in the Philippines under the command of an OSS Major. General
William Donovan, Director of the Office of Strategic Services, did not want it known that he had sent a paranoid, delusional screw-up into the field, observing to his Deputy Director for Special Projects, "Get somebody competent there in time to get on the sub" (the submarine carrying supplies to the USFIP). "Somebody senior to Macklin ... if Macklin is the idiot everybody seems to think he is, I don't think he should be in a position to give orders." As a result, Macklin spent the rest of the war with the guerrillas in the Philippines, without command responsibilities, until the islands were liberated. Macklin, now a major, reappears in
Under Fire, working in Personnel at
Camp Pendleton. With Captain McCoy about to be involuntarily separated from the Marine Corps, Macklin has several plans to make his remaining time as a Marine officer miserable. After General Dawkins, Deputy Commander of Camp Pendleton, learned of McCoy's pending involuntary separation he instructed the colonel in charge of the involuntary separation program at Pendleton to make the process as swift and painless as possible for the Killer, and to send him on leave until his final day in the service. This derailed Macklin's plans to pay McCoy back for perceived actions that had impeded his advancement and promotion, and causes his superior to question his competence. The intelligence analysis Captain McCoy had done predicting the North Korean attack came into the hands of the head of the CIA and President Truman, and he was retained on active duty. After Macklin disobeyed the G-1 (Personnel) colonel's order to remain in his office until McCoy, who was on leave prior to separation, was located to be shipped to Washington and duty with the CIA, he is in trouble for disobedience of a direct order. (The Killer's separation had been canceled by the outbreak of the Korean War, though Macklin did not know this.) When the G-1 figured out Macklin's scheme, it is implied Macklin will be assigned to permanent storeroom inventory duty until he takes the hint and submits his resignation. ==Supporting characters==