A cluster of Navy doctors and medical corpsmen were grouped around the body when Skaggs arrived and slowly climbed out of his Jeep. “When Gunny Barlow gets here,” he told the driver, “have the OD send him directly to me.” Skaggs approached the shapeless form wrapped in a Marine poncho. In the glow of a bright flashlight beam, one of the surgeons from the Battalion Aid Station was waving his cap to scatter the flies that were buzzing around the corpse. The sergeant of the guard had called out his entire watch and Marines were lining the road and manning the barricades on full alert. Skaggs nodded to a number of the Marines he recognized and then squatted beside the bloody lump, fearing what he would see as the doctor pulled back an edge of the poncho.
“This the way you found her, Doc?” Ska
