Leon Uris by O'Hara's Choice Read Free Book Online

does it, Miss Amanda?” Tom Ballard asked softly.
    Amanda, who had gathered which way the wind was blowing, turned to the Marine and said, “I was very rude and I apologize.”
    The others nodded in unison.
    “Colonel Ballard,” Amanda said, “I’d like you to command . . . Private . . . er . . .”
    “Zachary O’Hara,” Ballard said.
    “I want you to order Private O’Hara to attend a post-debutante charity dance at Inverness,” she said, referring to an event that was to be held at the Kerrs’ Baltimore mansion. “Saturday, next.”
    “I can assure Miss Amanda that Private O’Hara will be guarding your door, properly.”
    “No,” Amanda corrected. “I wish to extend my apology by having him as a guest.” She turned. “I’ll wait, Father,” she said, and burst out of the office as suddenly as she had burst in. Ballard nodded for Zachary to leave.
    Horace Kerr softened. “She’s a handful. Just turned sixteen, you know, made her social debut in Baltimore a few months ago. She’s feeling her oats. Stepping into her charity duties, all that.”
    “He does have a proper uniform for the occasion, does he not, Tom?” Kerr asked, referring to the private.
    “I can’t do a hell of a lot for the Marines these days, but I can see to it he has a dress uniform.”
    In the 110-year history of the Corps, it was the only time that a commandant ordered a new dress uniform for a private. It included a white sash belt, a gleaming brass buckle, a white spiked hat with pom-pom, and the loan of an officer’s ceremonial sword.

• 6 •
CAPTAIN TOBIAS STORM
    The senior Wart-Hog, Tobias Storm, received his commission into the Marines through the established system of political patronage.
    His father, Marcus Storm, a Bostonian, had been among the ranks of Andrew Jackson’s troops when they handed the British a sound defeat in the War of 1812 at New Orleans. The war had been over when the battle was fought, but the victory was celebrated, nonetheless, as one of a David over a Goliath.
    Marcus Storm took his discharge there, overwhelmed by the allure of New Orleans and its French heritage. The fancy goods and tawdry way of life were of a sort not seen in Boston.
    He returned to Boston two years later, with a dozen trunks of silk and wines and aromas and ornate gems. Marcus Storm became a smashing success as a purveyor of luxury imports from France, which filled a hole in the staid Bostonian existence.
    His marriage was blessed with four sons, more than enough to carry on the family enterprise; in fact, there was one too many. Marcus selected sons numbers one, two, and four. Number three, Tobias, was odd man out.
    Tobias was a spirited young man more given to chasing skirts than to selling the material to make them. He was a contender in every saloon he patronized. It would be best, Marcus thought, to ease him away from Boston, but neither the army nor the navy would take him. As a last resort, he was imposed on the Marine Corps and went on to have an undistinguished career, notable only for the fact that he was present with Admiral Dewey when the latter entered Tokyo Bay to introduce Japan to the glories of Western civilization.
    Tobias was left in Tokyo to put together a small railroad, one of the gifts to the Japanese emperor. He had a way with iron and machinery.
    On returning to the States, Lieutenant Storm’s value to the Corps came in his assessment of military ordnance. There was no standard for procurement of weapons and Storm’s job was to try to see to it that his little Marine Corps was not handed down everyone’s obsolete cannons and muskets.
    In the final months of the Civil War, the Union had cracked through at Vicksburg, Farragut was in Mobile Bay, and the Confederacy was cut in half along the Mississippi.
    On the coast side, an enormous fleet of over a hundred Union warships, packing more than a thousand guns, moved toward Cape Fear. Wilmington, North Carolina, one of the last operating