The Galloping Ghost (6 page)

Indeed, Fluckey and his fellow ensigns had arrived in Long Beach at a precipitous time. The year 1935 foreshadowed in many ways what was to come. Fascist troops from Italy had invaded and occupied Ethiopia. The Japanese army had marched into Beijing in China. Nazi Germany had created a new Luftwaffe (air force), instituted a compulsory draft, and began rebuilding its navy. Japan began accelerating shipbuilding, having abrogated the London Naval Treaty of 1930 that had fixed the size and type of warships that the major navies of the world could build with an aim to preventing the kind of arms race that led to World War I. Meanwhile, Tokyo fiercely objected to a plan by the U.S. Navy to conduct its annual Fleet exercise in the area of Wake Island, the American possession nearest to Japan. Adm. Joseph M. Reeves, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet, wanted to test his theory that it was possible for Japan to spring a surprise attack on the big Navy base at Pearl Harbor by using aircraft flying off carriers. Reeves wanted to see if his carriers could take Wake Island by surprise in a mock attack. Tokyo demanded that unless the war games were called off, it would cancel a trade agreement with the United States that had made Japan its
second largest market. President Franklin Roosevelt, unwilling to risk a disruption in trade, ordered Reeves not to venture close to Wake.

The ensigns aboard the battleships at Long Beach were not privy to any of this. Rather, their purpose was to learn how to be officers. The tradition was to rotate duty stations every few months so that over a two-year probationary period they would have a good understanding of all the various commands and responsibilities aboard. Engineering, communications, and deck management were primary objectives, as well as completion of the so-called ensigns notebook. “The notebook had a separate chapter for each department of the ship,” explained Capt. Max Duncan, who was to serve under Fluckey in World War II.

Ensigns found a very formal setup on battleships and carriers. There was a junior officers mess with a separate wardroom, and the mess president was the senior lieutenant j.g. The junior officer mess was informal and was frequently the scene of dinners with dates on weekends. Many times the dinners were quite formal—and cheap. Cost was important. “Ensigns pay was $125 a month plus $18 a month subsistence,” explained Duncan. “Only if you lived on the ship did you have enough money to go ashore and have a good time.”

Maneuvers off Long Beach and spring voyages to Panama and Hawaii kept the Fleet battle ready.

Fluckey, at age twenty-two, preferred life aboard the battleship, focusing on all his tasks. He was not much for dating, a pattern he established during
his academy years. But in December 1935, fellow Ensign Germershausen met a young woman in Long Beach by the name of Marjorie Gould. She was pretty with long blonde hair, high cheekbones, aquiline features, and a light build on a tallish frame. Her girlish mannerisms were irresistible. Socially she was outgoing and was a chanteuse for a local band and had joined a group of young ladies, including the wives of senior officers, who provided companionship to naval officers at formal teas and dinner dances. Ensign Germershausen thought Marjorie would be an ideal match for his good friend Fluckey and arranged a blind date between them. Afterward Gene was so smitten that he rushed back to the
Nevada
to report, “I've met the girl I'm going to marry.” He wrote a letter to his father announcing the same news. The next day he proposed. But Marjorie demurred. It took her more than a month to reveal what wasn't outwardly apparent. In late January, she got up the courage to write a letter to Gene at sea, unveiling a story of tragedy, hardship, and perseverance.

Marjorie was the older of two daughters born to an affluent English immigrant couple. She grew up in privileged circumstances in Flatbush, then an upscale section of New York City in the 1920s. Her father was a department store buyer. Marjorie, well educated early in life at private schools, seemed destined for a comfortable life. But at age eleven she was on vacation with her family and was playing with other children on a second-story balcony at their hotel when she slipped and plunged to the ground. She wasn't seriously injured. However, perhaps by coincidence, her pancreas stopped functioning, bringing on profound and irreversible diabetes at a time when treatment was very limited.

The Goulds took her to the Joslin Diabetes Clinic in Boston, where doctors decided to start their youngest patient on insulin, an experimental drug first manufactured by the Eli Lily Company in 1922. Traditionally, diabetes patients practiced what was known as a “starvation diet”—fasting and consuming large quantities of fat and very few carbohydrates. Insulin made it possible to eat normal foods. But it could also be unpredictable; too much insulin could bring on serious reactions. The clinic's renowned “wandering nurses” visited the Goulds at home, sometimes staying with them, to teach Mrs. Gould how to inject the medicine and how to calculate the calories needed to balance her daughter's diet with her insulin. Large needles were needed, needles that had to be sharpened on a pumice stone. The syringes were made of glass and had to be boiled so they could be reused. If the calculations were inaccurate, if too much insulin was injected, sudden dips in blood sugar could bring on frightening mood swings and, in the extreme, diabetic coma. Marjorie had enrolled at public school in Flatbush
after being diagnosed with diabetes, but the school couldn't handle her diabetic reactions. A Catholic school accepted her, but after two years it too let her go.

The Goulds separated when Marjorie was fourteen. She, her mother, and a younger sister moved to California at the invitation of an uncle in Long Beach. Again she was unable to enroll in any school. Meanwhile, her father fell upon hard times and sent less and less money to support his family, causing great distress. Out of economic necessity, Marjorie learned to sew, becoming an excellent seamstress who made all of her own clothes. She also became a voracious reader, becoming self-educated. As a diabetic, it was clear she could never have children. The doctors had told her as much. The risk to fetus and mother was too great. And it was because of this that she wrote to Gene that marriage to the ensign wouldn't be a good thing.

Marjorie mailed her letter in care of the
Nevada
, then had second thoughts and wrote a second letter. “Last night I stayed awake from eleven when I went to bed till 3:45 am thinking of you and wondering what you were going to think of me when you get the letter I wrote on Saturday. I nearly sent a telegram asking you not to open it. I practically bared my soul to you and hon, it's almost like standing naked before someone. You don't think me awful, truthfully, do you?”

Quite the contrary—the revelations only deepened Ensign Fluckey's feelings for her. He wrote of his undying devotion, that having children didn't matter to him, that it was his love of her that mattered. On leave a few weeks later, Fluckey went to Marjorie's house and the couple announced their engagement.

Marriage under normal circumstances would have been possible within a short time. But in the mid-1930s the Navy frowned mightily on any of its ensigns getting married. War was coming and the Navy was determined to hang onto them for as long as possible. Rules were adopted to prohibit them from marrying until a full two years after graduation from the academy. Anyone who violated the directive was subject to immediate dismissal from the service.

Gene and Marjorie contemplated getting hitched secretly, perhaps in Mexico. But in the end they decided not to flaunt the regulation, though it meant no marriage until at least June 1937—a year-and-a-half away. They both were young and willing to wait. They could still see each other whenever the Fleet was in port, and when away steady correspondence—each letter numbered in a countdown to 6 June 1937—kept the flame burning. So absorbed was Ensign Fluckey in writing letters to Marjorie in his off-duty hours one
day that while giving his messboy orders, he called him “honey.” “That damn message has been laughing about that ever since,” he wrote Marjorie.

Every week at sea Fluckey arranged for forget-me-not flowers to be delivered to his fiancée. Through daily correspondence, the couple exchanged poetry, thoughts about popular tunes, sometimes lapsed into French, and professed deep love for one another that at times was tested. In March 1936, for instance, the
Nevada
embarked for the Bremerton, Washington, Navy Yard for a month-long refit. On leave at the time, Fluckey took the train from Long Beach to rejoin the battleship at the shipyard. There he received a letter from Marjorie describing an encounter with a married aide to Fleet Admiral Reeves at a dinner party she was requested to attend as the aide's escort. “He was old enough to be my father,” she wrote. “Franny [the hostess] warned me not to get cornered alone anywhere with him as he's very amorous. He has a '36 Buick sedan that's a honey but even that couldn't intrigue me. We all went to the Biltmore after dinner and had a very enjoyable time but when we arrived home he wouldn't let me out of the car. Gave me quite a fight until I told him I'm very much in love with someone and that I detested people who had no regard for other's feelings. After that speech he let me go. He said he'd like to call again but I told mother that I'm out if he does.”

Fluckey started counting down the hours in his letters until the
Nevada
was back in Long Beach. There Marjorie noticed in a city newspaper that Gene was being transferred to the destroyer USS
McCormick
(DD-223), based in San Diego. “Your letter gave me the worst fright of my life,” he replied. “I spent the whole afternoon running around the communication offices of the
Nevada, Maryland
and
New York
reading over all orders sent out in the last two weeks—my name didn't appear. I even went to the newspaper offices in town, checking the back file of orders sent to the news—still no orders for me. Darling, I'm so in love with you that the thought alone of being in San Diego this next year with only weekends to be with you, is enough to drive me nuts. Surely fate couldn't be that mean.”

But mean it was. Six days later he sent another letter to Marjorie on USS
Nevada
stationery with the
Nevada
crossed out and replaced with a handwritten
McCormick
.

“Marjorie, darling,” he began, “I'm aboard.”

The change from the spacious battleship to the
McCormick
was incredible. “Hon, this is the first time I've ever written a letter to you on the overhead—one leg is out the port, the other over the side of the bunk to keep the steady
rolling from affecting my writing. Gosh, I'm glad I'm a fairly good sailor, otherwise I'd have to install a one-way valve in my throat. It's such a change from a battlewagon. As a Junior Officer, one is wet-nursed perpetually [on a battleship]. The moment I stepped aboard the
McCormick
the executive officer informed me that I was Gunnery Officer, Assistant Engineer, Commissary Officer, Assistant Communications Officer, Ships Service Officer and Wardroom Mess Treasurer. I was flabbergasted.”

On the way down to Panama, the destroyer was involved in wartime maneuvers with the battleships. “Yesterday was one I'll never forget,” Fluckey wrote. “From two in the morning till a forlorn supper at ten last night, we ran around like a dog with a tin can tied to its tail. Making smoke to protect our dear, dear battleships till we all looked like coal miners.”

So often did Fluckey begin his letters with “Marjorie, darling” that he mused he would name his flagship “Marjorie, darling” when he became admiral. “Then I'll never get mixed up. Anyhow it sounds good to me and the British call theirs ‘invincible,' ‘indefatigable,' and ‘impregnable.' Naturally in time the U.S. will probably have a ‘delightful,' ‘delicious,' and ‘delovely.'”

Ensign Fluckey adjusted well to life aboard the destroyer. Both he and his fiancée eventually viewed his reassignment as fortuitous. As she put it, “It could be lots worse, for it might have been one of the new destroyers on the East Coast.” He agreed. “The final ensign to get orders from the
Nevada
is being sent to an oiler which travels any place and every place. Perhaps I could have done worse.”

The
McCormick
was in and out of San Diego, often at sea with the Fleet off the West Coast, visiting Central and South America and Hawaii. When the ship was in San Diego and the officers got shore leave, Fluckey took the bus to Long Beach. He made the trip so often that he later joked he had put enough mileage in to circumnavigate the world.

On a return cruise to the Canal Zone, the
McCormick
docked in Panama City, where everyone got to go ashore. Fluckey was appalled by the city's squalor just beyond the shopping district. “Later I dropped into a small restaurant and received a shock. The most peculiar individual I have ever seen in my life dropped himself at a nearby table. One might call him a male—I wouldn't. He was blonde with a weak attempt to make his hair quite pink. His face was powdered, lipsticked, eyebrow penciled, with mascara. The climax was silver nail polish. Passing sailors laughed when he beckoned to them. I waited for someone to pop him, but he went unmolested. Pitiful sight.”