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other ship was the USS
Houston
.
    Wisecup was not meant to be a China Marine. But he was clearly meant to stand out on the
Houston
. When the troublemaker hauled his seabag up the gangway, he saluted the officer of the deck and announced, “Sir, Private Wisecup, reporting for duty. Where’s the brig?” Wisecup did his time and managed to stay out of the lockup thereafter. He adapted to a world of regimentation and polished pride. Captain Rooks’s Marines were not allowed topside except in full dress, shoes polished and shirts triple-creased. Forced to vent his insuppressible rages privately, Wisecup maintained a serviceablereputation, though in time his steel locker door was permanently bowed in.
    The tradition of the seagoing Marine dated to the Revolutionary War, when Marines shot muskets from a man-of-war’s fighting tops. It spoke to the depth of the leadership tradition that grew from the
Houston
’s heady early days, and of the talents of 1st Lt. Frank E. Gallagher, Gunnery Sgt. Walter Standish, and 1st Sgt. Harley H. Dupler of the
Houston
’s detachment in particular, that a man such as John Wisecup was put in a position to make something of himself. It was true of all the crew to one degree or another, such was the contrast between life on board ship and the deprivation of the times. A sailor named James W. Huffman left his faltering family farm in the San Joaquin Valley, California, in 1933 and hustled his skinny frame to the San Diego Naval Training Center mostly in order to eat. And because the Depression destroyed families as well as livelihoods, more than a few
Houston
sailors had enlisted to escape broken homes. Howard R. Charles, a
Houston
Marine private, put himself in the path of a world war by escaping the wildfires of another: an escalating violent struggle with his stepfather back home in Hutchinson, Kansas. Melfred L. “Gus” Forsman, a seaman first class, didn’t need a push. He left Iowa in April 1939 to become a
Houston
sailor, dreaming of seeing faraway lands. But as he soon learned, anyone aspiring to a life of adventurous globetrotting found he had been sold a bill of goods. Fuel was expensive, and ships were kept in port as often as possible. Most enlisted men found their ambitions checked by a system of class that generally reserved the prestige of an officer’s commission for the white, the Episcopal, and the wealthy. The accoutrements of the good life found in officers’ country—silver service worthy of Hyde Park, a Steinway baby grand in the wardroom, all gifts of the citizens of Houston—were as much the ornaments of expectation as of accomplishment.
    Several members of the
Houston
’s Marine detachmentwere veterans of the illustrious Fourth Marine Regiment, the unit that helped defend Shanghai’s International Settlement from the brushfires of combat between Japanese and Chinese forces. According to a veteran of Asia Station, Rear Adm. Kemp Tolley, the Fourth Marines were “the seaward anchor of the Yangtze Patrol during the period which might be called the Patrol’s heyday: 1927 to its flaming end on Corregidor.” One of its battalion commanders, the colorful Maj. Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller, had served in the
Augusta
’s Marine detachment under Captain Nimitz. The
Houston
’s Sgt. Charley L. Pryor Jr. had gotten his first stripe from Puller himself during his tour on the
Augusta
. In 1940, liberty in Tsingtao was an adventure unto itself. “Marines were never slow in tangling with men of the various other foreign detachments,” Tolley would write. “A very satisfactory state of belligerency could be established by a leading question or a facetious remark concerning a Seaforth Highlander’s kilt.”
    Brawling frolics with soldiers of friendly nations were one thing. The Japanese were another. Charley Pryor had seen them training for war, witnessed their exercises, saw squads and company-sized units drilling in the hills and on the beaches in and around Shanghai. He