Pacific Glory

FOUR

“Okay, guys, there it is. Henderson International. I’m seein’ no smoke, no big fires, no Zeros, so stand by to break.”

Mick clicked his radio mike twice in sequence with the other five planes in the mixed section. There it was indeed, Henderson Field, on the godforsaken island of Guadalcanal. They were flying southeast down the coast about to break into the pattern for a right-hand approach. To the west was a high hill of jungle-covered rock called Mount Austen, and beyond that was the Kavo Range. The field itself looked like a dark red scar framed by light green jungle. A second scar was emerging out of the tropical bush parallel to the first.

“Where’s the Pagoda?” someone asked.

“They took it down,” the section leader responded. “Japs were using it as an aim point on the field. They got artillery last night, and they’re sayin’ hang left of centerline when you go in.”

That much was obvious, Mick thought. He could see the black craters all over the field, some of which had already filled with silver saucers of water. There were Seabees bulldozers out on the main runway, pushing red dirt into the holes.

“They gonna clear those dozers?” someone else in the flight asked.

“Negative,” the section leader said laconically. “Steer around ’em, best you can. Try not to ground-loop; it tears up the runway and irritates the Seabees.”

Steer around the bulldozers, Mick thought. Wahoo. That ought to be interesting in the middle of a rollout, especially with four five-hundred-pounders strapped to his wings. He was the only Navy pilot in the gaggle. Everyone else was a Marine. They probably thought this would be fun. He got his flaps and gear down and waited to follow the flight leader into the break. He was flying an unmarked Dauntless Avenger, minus the machine gunner in the back. They’d come off the Hornet two hours ago, flying in as replacements for the aircraft destroyed by last night’s shore bombardment, courtesy of what the Marines were calling the Tokyo Express coming down the Slot from Rabaul.

Mick was now officially an orphan. When the Yorktown went down at Midway, her embarked squadrons were either assigned to other carriers or, in some cases, having lost too many planes, broken up. Mick had been tagged, probably at Oxerhaus’s instigation, to go into the aviation motor pool, as the orphans called it, at the Kaneohe Marine Corps Air Station on Oahu. The orphans were aviators whose planes had gone down with their carrier, or whose squadrons were now unemployed until new fleet decks came out from the west coast. Mick’s injuries had given him a bit of a break at Pearl, but not for long. The extended slugfest on Guadalcanal was nearing its climax, and they needed planes and pilots out there. Any unclaimed orphan who could drive a bomber or a fighter would do, and so when two Marine Corps colonels had come down from Makalapa like a press gang to the naval base, Mick had raised a bandaged arm and said he was a Dauntless pilot and he was bored.

“Got just the thing for that,” one of the colonels called out. “When can you suit up?”

“Mark break,” the flight leader called and banked his plane hard right to begin his final approach to the northwest. Mick waited his turn and then joined the spiraling column of planes swooping down onto the Marsden-matting runway. The only thing really dangerous about this landing, not counting craters and itinerant bulldozers, was the fact that he was sporting those five-hundred-pound armor-piercing bombs. If he’d been coming back aboard a carrier, he would have jettisoned any remaining bombs before committing to his final approach, but the air boss on Hornet had been adamant: For some unknown reason someone desperately wanted some AP ordnance at Guadalcanal. Mick had been instructed to land with the bombs on board and intact. He wasn’t entirely sure what the Marines wanted with AP bombs; they’d be wasted in the jungle mud of the islands, but, as ordered, here he was.

His windshield filled with the sight of a huge black thundercloud that was obliterating the afternoon sun out over what the ship-drivers were calling Iron Bottom Sound to the northwest. He steadied out on final, belatedly ran through the landing checklist in his head, and then put the thing down on the steel runway, watching for errant bulldozers through all the dust from the plane ahead. He tried to forget about the bombs. They weren’t armed, he kept telling himself. Their safe and arming plugs were stowed in the backseat. If a bomb came off it would mostly just scare the shit out of the dozer crews.

He rolled out and then taxied behind a pockmarked follow-me jeep to a hardstand, where he shut the barge down. A flight crew swarmed over the plane as he climbed down, asking about any mechanical gripes and whether or not the fifties were armed. A small truck came out to take down the four heavy bombs. He handed over the S&A plugs and then walked across the parking ramp to a large tent marked OPERATIONS. There was a big generator roaring away by the side of the tent. Inside, a bunch of Marines were sitting at tables made from bamboo poles and the tops of ammunition crates. Some were obviously radio operators, others were pounding typewriters, and another half dozen were yelling into hand-cranked field telephones. At the very back of the tent stood a tall, lanky officer wearing a cowboy hat and the gold oak leaves of a Marine Corps major.

“You the Navy guy?” he called out.

“Yes, sir,” Mick said, walking back to shake hands. “Mick McCarty, barge driver first class, reporting for duty.”

“Aw-right,” the major said. “Bring us some puncher bombs?”

“I did.”

“Good man,” the major said. He was sporting a broad Texas accent, and his sidearm was a large, ivory-handled six-gun. “You were at Midway?”

“I was,” Mick said.

”Do any good work for Jesus there?”

“Got a thousand-pounder down the forward elevator of a Jap fleet carrier,” Mick said.

“You’ll do to ride,” the major said. “First things first — lemme show you where the club is.”

They walked out of the Ops tent across a moonscape of craters, red dirt, oil-soaked sand, blasted trees, and piles of materiel covered in tattered canvas tarps. The major walked with an odd gait, almost as if some crucial part of his brain had lost comms with his legs. He led Mick to another tent, this one with a small sign out front saying O-CLUB. The sign had two bullet holes in it. There was a large crater, easily twenty feet across, right in front of the tent, filled with water. Once inside, Mick found himself in the frontline Marine Corps version of a bar. The chairs were all mortar ammo crates, some of them still containing shells. The tables were empty cable reels. The bar was the wing of a destroyed aircraft, burned at one end and exhibiting several shrapnel holes, supported by two fifty-five-gallon aviation gasoline drums. Mick hoped they were empty. Behind the wing, the booze was stored in steel chests.

“What’s your pleasure, suh?” the major asked.

“Whiskey,” Mick said. Leave it to the Jarboons, he thought. Set up a perimeter, post sentries and scouts, kill all the nearby Japs, and then get an O-club organized. The Navy would still have been writing the op order.

The major produced a bottle of sour mash and two canteen cups. They sat down at one of the mortar crate tables, and the major poured out.

“Your good health, Lieutenant,” he intoned. “Now tell me: What the hell you doing here?”

Mick tipped his cup in a salud and got himself some hair of the dog. He heard a train of dozers go by outside, clattering like tanks. In the distance it sounded like some artillery pieces were going to work at the end of the airfield.

“I’m a carrier dive bomber,” he said. “Reasonably good at my trade. I’m also a regular Navy lieutenant. Not so good in that department.”

The major poured some more whiskey. “Whose dick you waltz on?” he asked.

“Air boss on the Yorktown, to name one,” Mick said, “but that was before she got sunk. Don’t know if he made it off, but if he did, he’ll still be pissed.”

The major nodded. “And before that?”

“Well, sir,” Mick said, “who can remember all that shit.”

The major chuckled. “How’d you get sent out here?”

“Volunteered.”

“Oh, my,” the major said. “We don’t indulge in that vice around here.”

“I suspect that my options were limited,” Mick said. “That Marine colonel from CincPacFleet said it would be an adventure. He didn’t lie, did he?”

The major grinned at him. “No, suh, he did not. Most definitely, he did not lie. This place is every bit the adventure of a lifetime, especially when the Japs come around offshore at night with their big naval guns. It’s all the adventure a man could want, even for two lifetimes.”

“Are you a pilot, Major?” Mick asked.

“Oh, yes, I am,” the major said. “I’m the executive officer of what we call the combined air forces here on our little piece of paradise, otherwise known as the Cactus Air Force. The CO went med-down with malaria, so I’m also acting CO. Now ask me how I got here.”

“You’re a Marine major,” Mick said. “You volunteered, of course.”

“Hah,” the major said. “You got me. Now ask me why.”

“Why?”

“I have a brain tumor, that’s why. I have a cancer, or at least all those Navy docs think so. They said there was nothing they could do for me in the way of guttin’ and cuttin’. Furthermore, I am certainly going to die.”

“Does it hurt?” Mick asked.

The major stared at him for a moment. “You know,” he said, “that’s the first intelligent question anyone’s ever asked about my condition. The answer is no, it doesn’t hurt. But I thank you for askin’.”

“So you figure, if you’re gonna die, why not do it for glory and apple pie? Instead of lying in some hospital, shitting your sheets.”

“Pre-cisely, Lieutenant. For glory and apple pie. And for the chance to kill as many of these Jap sonsabitches as humanly possible, seein’ as they killed my younger brother at Kaneohe on Mr. Roosevelt’s day of infamy. And you know what? Killing Japs on this island is pleasant work. When they come, they come in hordes — and they die in hordes. Actually, though, that’s not why you’re here.”

“But I like to kill Japs.”

“Don’t we all, suh, don’t we all. But: We need a guy like you to help us kill ships, not a buncha yella-bellied, buck-toothed, rice-crappin’ squirm-worms out there in the high weeds. I’m talkin’ big ships. Heavy cruisers. Battleships, sometimes. We need someone knows how to plant him a big AP bomb right where it hurts on a big ship.”

“I can help you, there, Major.”

“Day or night?”

Mick finished his whiskey and put the tin cup down. “Day, no problem. Night? Never tried that.”

“Night’s when they come, though,” the major said. “Night’s when they come, and that’s when the glorious Yew-nited States Navy seems to be either going elsewhere or adding to the litter in Iron Bottom Sound out there. All our fine carriers and such move their precious asses out of harm’s way when them Dalai Nipponese come down the Slot, hissin’ and spittin’. That leaves us helpless jungle bunnies sitting here while those big bastards cruise offshore and shoot the place all to hell. It’s bodaciously noisy, too. Man cain’t hardly sleep.”

“And you want to go up at night? Do some dive-bombing, what, in the moonlight? With no visible horizon?”

“Exactomundo, pardner,” the major said. “As you will find out, it beats the hell out of being down in the bunker, wondering if the next round’s gonna come through all those grass-reinforced balsa-wood logs.”

“Oka-a-y,” Mick said. “I can see getting off the deck. I can see maybe getting set up on a cruiser or even a battlewagon, if there’s enough moon, or star shells, maybe. But here’s the problem: You gotta know when to drop and, more importantly, when to pull out.”

“Ain’t no problem, there, Lieutenant. You drop when the little bastards look up, squint real hard, see you comin’, and start to say oh-shit in Japanese.”

“Actually, Major, you drop when there’s enough altitude left to pull up and get away, and that depends on being able to see the horizon. That’s real hard to do in the dark.”

“Did I say it would be dark? It won’t be dark. There’s always plenty of light around here when them big ships come. Burning tents, oil drums, airplanes, ammo dumps, even the jungle burns sometimes. Lots of damn light.”

Mick shook his head and grinned. The major finished his whiskey. “The real problem,” he said, “is the strip, and that’s because it’s usually full of big-ass holes.”

“So where do we land?”

“I propose to land on the beach, Lieutenant,” the major said. “Them bastards never shore-bomb the beach.”

Mick just stared at him. He’d seen the beach when they’d landed this afternoon. It was maybe forty feet wide, steeply slanted, with palm trees right alongside. “Any more of that whiskey in there, Major?”

“You bet,” the major said with a grin. There was some noise outside, and then the rest of the flight came pushing through the tent’s flaps. “And did I say welcome to Cactus?”

Outside the big black cloud arrived, releasing a torrential rainstorm that momentarily drowned out any further conversation.

Land a Dauntless on the beach in the dark, Mick thought. These guys had been out in the jungle far too long. On the other hand, the bombing mission sounded interesting. The Japs would never expect dive bombers coming off Guadalcanal at night. For a damned good reason, he had to admit.

The next morning Mick joined the rest of the hung-over pilots in the Ops tent at daybreak. He’d been assigned to a single tent out along the runway, halfway between the duty strip and some crude hardstands back in the woods. The Marines had learned from bitter experience not to keep aircraft anywhere near the airstrip at night. The Jap cruisers had started using special fragmentation warheads on their shore-bombardment shells, which reduced unprotected parked planes to metal shreds. The major, not noticeably any worse for wear except for a slight tremor in his hands, gave the brief.

“Morning, Breakfast Clubbers,” he said, pulling down a well-oiled plastic map of the island. “Welcome to yet another fine Navy day on Guadal-fucking-canal. Here’s today’s deal.”

He told them that a two-regiment push had begun that morning north of the Matanikau River and that they would be providing air support for the grunts.

“For our lone carrier new guy, the bombs are small, two-hundred-fifty-pounders, but the advantage is you can carry four under each wing, and a two-fifty will tear up some Jap ass when they’re in one of their holes.”

Mick raised his hand. “Who controls the strike?” he asked.

The major smiled. “It ain’t a strike, Lieutenant. It’s escort duty. We fly in two-plane sections. Each section works for a forward air controller, what we call a FAC. A FAC is a second lieutenant with a radio, a view of the forward areas, and a death wish. Your section comes up on the FAC’s freq and you get a target. One guy rolls in on the target, the other guy flies cover in case the Nips have an AA gun nearby the target. You drop, you climb out, you wait for the next call. Once you’re out of bombs, you become the wingman, your buddy becomes the bomber. When you’re both dry, you RTB, rearm, refuel, go do it again until sundown. The FACs have a mortarman with ’em so they can use willy-peter smoke rounds to mark the targets. Friendly front lines will be given in local landmarks, such as a buncha Marines waving at you and pointing at the bad guys. It’s easy, actually.”

“Bandits?” someone asked.

“We get Jap bombers from time to time, sometimes twice a day if the weather’s good. We keep fighters up on CAP stations. The funny thing is, the Nips don’t seem to coordinate their fighters with their bombers, so y’all should not see any Zeros.”

“If we do?”

“Pickle your baby bombs and go get ’em, Lieutenant. That’s why God put those fifties in your wings.”

“Are there gunners for our SBDs?” another pilot asked.

“Negative,” the major said. “It saves weight for more bunker bombs.”

There were no further questions.

“That’s it, then, boys and girls,” the major said. “Breakfast on the flight line. And remember, out here we never come back with live ordnance. Find something suspicious beyond friendly front lines and crap on it if you’re out of called targets. Okay? Let’s roll.”

Breakfast consisted of a cigarette, a canteen cup of serious coffee, and a warm mystery-meat sandwich, slathered in ketchup, mustard, and hot sauce to hide the mold. Then they launched. Mick figured that if he ran out of fuel, he could burp in the general direction of the engine and it would keep right on going.