CHAPTER TEN

As it turned out, Lieutenant Steele’s plans for another day of training were cut short when the timeline for shipping out was moved up. In fact, the whole division had received orders to ship out in a few days, sending the beach into a flurry of activity. Already, some transports were beginning the process of taking on men, where they would likely sit at anchor for several days before embarking for wherever the army decided to send them.

Patrol Easy would be leaving even sooner. Looking around at the troops who were busy with preparations for the long sea voyage, it became apparent that if Patrol Easy wasn’t successful in its mission, then these other poor bastards would pay the price.

After the grueling hike, it didn’t exactly break the men’s hearts that they would be spared whatever other field trips the lieutenant had in mind for them. But probably even more than Steele had expected, the hike through the jungle, even the near miss with the Japanese holdouts, had done its intended job of helping the soldiers get to know the marines, and the other way around.

They had taken each other’s measure, and they were satisfied that the other guys were solid. If they weren’t exactly peanut butter and jelly yet, then at least the soldiers and marines were not completely oil and water.

The logistically tedious process of moving the bulk of troops off Guam was just beginning, but as it turned out, Patrol Easy was getting a special ride. While the rest of the massive convoy was still being loaded and organized, they were soon on a destroyer bound for Leyte, more than thirteen hundred miles away.

Chosen for its relatively swift speed, the ship was the USS Ingersoll, a Fletcher-class destroyer. Deke had to admit that the destroyer was an impressive sight. Built in Bath, Maine, the ship approached four hundred feet in length and was outfitted with both five-inch guns and forty-millimeter antiaircraft guns, not to mention racks of depth charges to deal with any Japanese submarines. The vessel had been named in honor of the Ingersoll family, who had served in the US Navy and lost a son at the recent Battle of Midway.

The patrol gathered on the stern of USS Ingersoll to watch Guam sink below the horizon. Soon, all that they could see was a very big ocean all around them.

“I can’t say that I’m gonna miss Guam,” Philly said.

“I reckon you just might change your tune once we get to Leyte,” Deke pointed out.

Philly just shook his head. “That’s what I like about you, Deke. You always look on the bright side.”

“What’s wrong with that? At least you ain’t dead yet.”

“See? That’s exactly what I mean.”

Deke just shook his head, not exactly sure what Philly meant at all, and went off to find a spot on the deck where he could clean his rifle in peace and quiet. He feared that it might start to rust in the salty ocean air.

He soon found that there wasn’t much room to spare on the deck of a destroyer. Almost every square foot of space was covered in nautical gear of one sort or another, and the spaces that weren’t seemed to be filled with antiaircraft batteries or racks of depth charges.

Unfortunately, they were informed by the crew that the Japanese continued to be a very real threat, especially from submarines and planes.

“No matter how many subs we sink or planes we shoot down, the Japs always seem to have more to send,” one old salt pointed out. “If that wasn’t bad enough, we’re heading that much closer to Japan all the time.”

It was also less than reassuring to learn that in order to save time, the captain had been ordered not to follow the usual zigzag pattern that made a ship a more difficult target for submarine and aerial attacks. A ship moving in a straight line would always be easier to attack.

Though fast enough to make a quick run to Leyte, the destroyer was also much smaller than the typical troop carrier. This meant that the crew and passengers felt every wave as the destroyer plowed through the sea at speed.

“You know what, Philly? I do miss Guam already,” Deke announced, then leaned over the rail and promptly threw up. Once again, he was reminded of how much he disliked the sea.

Philly clapped him on the back. “I think it’s going to be a long voyage for you, Farmboy. Although I’ve got to say, I don’t know how anybody could miss Guam.”

Deke didn’t have a good reply. He just wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and nodded, looking distinctly green.

He felt bad enough that he halfway considered finding his bunk, bad as it was. While the food aboard the ship was like a five-star restaurant in comparison to the C rations that the men had been eating on Guam — when they weren’t too seasick to eat — the tight quarters were something that was hard to get used to.

The men were given bunks in their own corner of the crew’s quarters. With only about eighteen inches of space between the beds, sleeping aboard a US Navy vessel felt very much like being sardines inside a tin can. Deke had learned the hard way not to sit up too fast — he had already whacked his head more than once on the bunk above him. Quarters more suitable for an officer had been found for Lieutenant Steele — which meant that he shared a cramped space with two other officers.

Some might say that the bunks were better than a muddy foxhole. After all, there weren’t any mosquitoes or other creepy crawlies to contend with. They didn’t have to worry about enemy infiltrators coming to cut their throats at night.

However, the tight quarters were almost too much even for Yoshio, who rarely complained about anything. “I never thought I’d say this, but give me a foxhole any day,” he said.

One of the ship’s junior officers had gotten the bright idea that he didn’t want the soldiers on deck, possibly interfering with the operation of the vessel. No sooner was Guam out of sight than he informed them that they would be allowed up on deck just twice each day for exercise, for a total of two hours out of their sardine can.

Not long after they complained to Lieutenant Steele, the officer gave them free rein to wander the deck. In fact, the officer now seemed to avoid the soldiers altogether.

“Geez, Honcho, what did you do to that guy?” Philly wanted to know.

“That’s Honcho, sir. The navy isn’t exactly informal, and I don’t see any Japanese in sight, do you?” Back on Guam, the lieutenant had made it clear that he was not to be addressed as an officer in any way in order to avoid becoming a target for Jap snipers.

“No, sir. No Japs here.”

His point having been made, the lieutenant continued. “That officer won’t be giving you any more trouble. It turns out that we’re sharing quarters, and I told him that I’d smother him with a pillow if he wasn’t nicer to my men.”

It was hard to know whether the lieutenant was kidding.

While it was a relief not to be stuck below, it was still no pleasure cruise. On the third day, the ship hit a patch of the Pacific studded with choppy waves that reminded Deke of a newly plowed field. The constant banging against the waves seemed to threaten to pop the ship’s rivets apart, but the sturdy destroyer held up. Those shipbuilders in Maine had done their job well.

Then there was the threat from Japanese planes the closer that they got to the Philippines, where the Japanese still had a substantial force — or at least that was the concern. The closer that they drew to the occupied Philippines, the more that the crew looked to the skies with growing concern.

It wasn’t long before their fears were realized. The men were lounging on the deck one afternoon, staring out at yet more endless seas, when the ship was called to general quarters. Sailors raced to man the antiaircraft guns that bristled from almost every surface, finally putting them into action. The only role that the soldiers were given was to stay out of the way.

“I don’t see a damn thing!” Philly exclaimed. “What about you, Deke?”

“Nothin’.”

“That’s because it’s probably on radar,” Yoshio said. “They know these planes are coming from miles away.”

Sure enough, the ship’s radar must have given advance warning of approaching aircraft. Fortunately, it was not a determined air attack, but a plane that seemed to be scouting for ships. The nickname for it was a snooper. From a distance well out of reach of antiaircraft fire, the plane circled them like a hawk watching a rabbit. The plane finally disappeared, but the sky was not empty for long.

Seemingly out of nowhere, a trio of Betty bombers came racing toward them, skimming just above the waves. It was a common Jap tactic to avoid radar. They could see the flashes from the planes’ machine guns, but more ominously, they could see what looked like bombs slung from the underbelly of each plane. Machine-gun rounds pinged off the deck, but it was the bombs that could sink them.

In the confusion, the soldiers had been forgotten. They scrambled for whatever shelter they could find as tracers from the Jap plane came streaming at them. They could hear the high-pitched whine of the bombers approaching at high speed.

But that was soon drowned out by the response from the destroyer as every gun on deck seemed to open up, trying to blast the planes from the sky. The tracers and exploding shells would have made a fascinating show if it hadn’t been so terrifying. On the bridge, the captain had ordered a series of sharp turns to make the ship a more difficult target.

One of the bombers was hit and cartwheeled into the sea, leaving a smear of flaming wreckage. Another plane billowed black smoke before disintegrating in the air. But the last Betty bomber kept right on coming.

“He’s headed right for us!” Philly yelped. Despite the danger, Philly seemed captivated by the drama unfolding above, plane against ship. Maybe this was something that the destroyer’s crew were used to, but you didn’t see sights like this from the foxhole.

“Keep your head down, you dang fool,” Deke warned him, dragging Philly behind the shelter of a steel bulkhead. As much as any spot on the ship was safe while under attack, it at least felt comforting to have a few inches of metal between them and the plane. They could feel each concussion of the bigger guns reverberate through the ship and into their very bones. Deke could hear bullets ricocheting off the deck.

Philly had been right. The plane looked as though it was coming right at them — right down their throats. Deke saw the bomb or torpedo — whatever it was — separate from the aircraft. For a moment, the payload seemed to hang in the air — and then it plunged right at them.

Deke grabbed hold of the nearest chunk of metal and shut his eyes, expecting to be blown to kingdom come.

But either the Japanese pilot’s aim was off or the destroyer’s maneuvering had paid off. The bomb slanted down and struck the sea, lifting a geyser of salt water that soaked everyone stationed on the bow.

Having missed its chance at a killing blow, the Japanese pilot tried to pull up and away, perhaps to circle back for a second chance. The blazing guns of the destroyer weren’t having any of that. Tracers raked the Japanese plane, and it began to disintegrate as it passed the stern. What was left of the enemy plane slammed into the ocean, leaving burning wreckage on the surface.

Everyone’s ears rang in the sudden silence once the guns quit firing. It was hard to say who had fired the shots that downed the plane. In a sense, every gunner on the ship had played a part. Cheers filled the air. USS Ingersoll had lived to fight another day.

“I’ll be damned,” Deke said.

They’d been quick to say that sailors had an easy life. They wouldn’t be saying that again.

* * *

Even if the men on the ship weren’t looking forward to what lay ahead, they knew that everything they did, no matter how small on the great stage of war, was necessary to defeat Imperial Japan.

Much of that strategy was developed in the mind of one man, General Douglas MacArthur.

MacArthur was currently working alone in his office, looking over the latest reports. He got to his feet, glad to stretch, and walked to the huge map on his wall. War in the Pacific was like a game of hopscotch, thought MacArthur. Hop, skip, jump. Each move carrying them ever closer to Japan. Hopscotch was a child’s game, but there was nothing childish about the war that was being waged across the warm, blue waters of the Pacific.

Thousands of American men had perished fighting on the sands or on the seas. Perished was too fine a word for it, he mused. They had died fighting, plain and simple, against a savage and relentless enemy.

His critics could accuse MacArthur of many faults, from being self-serving to having an imperious nature. But the truth was more complex. MacArthur was a soldier, through and through, every bit as savage and determined in his genteel way as a GI in the trenches. Everything in his life had been seen through the lens of strategy — whether it was his career or winning the war. To accuse him of simple vanity overlooked the fact that he was far from a small-minded man.

In his thinking and in all his actions, he had far more in common with the likes of Washington and Lee, or even Napoleon or Caesar, than the “everyman” American general favored by the press. Americans didn’t always relate to MacArthur, and neither did the men serving under him, but he was going to win the war in the Pacific.

A staff officer popped his head into his office, where the general paced back and forth in front of the map. “Sir, can I get you anything?”

“Not unless you have a spare division in your pocket.” The general shook his head. “On second thought, I’ll have a cup of tea.”

Most military men were devoted coffee drinkers who also favored cigarettes and scotch. The general preferred tea and a pipe. In a sense, the tea was a concession to MacArthur’s having spent scarcely any time in the continental US for years. Through and through, he was a man of the vast Pacific.

Tall and solidly built, MacArthur was imposing in his own way. Well into his sixties, he was older than most of the command staff. For all the myth that had built up around him, he was human enough. He felt self-conscious about his balding head and, as a result, insisted on wearing a hat most of the time. The pipe didn’t make him seem any more youthful.

But he was no tired old general, rather an energetic man still in his prime.

Just a few months ago, during the darkest days of the war, reaching the Japanese home islands had seemed an impossible feat. Sure, there had been the Doolittle Raid that dropped bombs into the heart of Tokyo, showing the Japanese that they were not beyond the reach of the American military. But that had been a largely symbolic act, America thumbing its nose at the Emperor and all his militant minions. But now the tide had turned.

MacArthur did his best thinking when he was pacing. He paused long enough to study the map on the wall. Something big was afoot. Soon, the final campaign to crush Japan would begin.

That campaign would start with the Philippines. There was a definite sense of justice from that, considering that the Japanese had seized the islands in 1942, after they had been a US possession for nearly half a century. The loss had been a major defeat for the United States. Japan’s victory also had been a personal affront to MacArthur, who had commanded US forces there.

To be sure, he had made mistakes in the defense, such as not doing more to protect American air defenses. Japanese raids had quickly wiped out the US planes before they could even get off the ground. In years to come, historians would be relentless in their second-guessing of MacArthur and his shortcomings in regard to those airfields.

Then again, salvaging the air defenses might only have prolonged the inevitable and even allowed those planes to fall into Japanese hands. Cut off from reinforcement from the sea by the Japanese Navy, without any supplies or spare parts, MacArthur simply didn’t have the resources to sustain much of an air war against the forces of the Rising Sun.

The general had a deep affinity for the Philippines and its people. It seemed to be an ideal melding of the Far East and the West. Part of that stemmed from the fact that Manila had an old-world, European feel, thanks to its Spanish heritage.

MacArthur would have preferred to stay and fight like the soldier that he was. After all, he had seen the trenches in WWI, far different from Eisenhower, who had never been in combat but now commanded Allied forces in Europe.

But FDR had recalled him from the Philippines rather than have his general go down fighting. The general had resisted the order, but in the end he’d had no choice. Wisely, FDR had not wanted the general to be captured and become another pawn of war, which might also have been a huge embarrassment to the United States.

So he had left, escaping ahead of the Japanese invaders. Several thousand US troops were not given the same opportunity. They fought desperately but surrendered in the end. The result had been the dreadful Bataan Death March, a harbinger of Japanese cruelty in the Philippines and wherever else they made their presence known.

Alone in his office, MacArthur stared at the map for the millionth time, letting the geography sink in. The Philippines itself was a series of islands rather than a single large island or continent. Beyond lay the rich resources of Asia. Whoever occupied the Philippines essentially controlled the sea lanes that brought vital natural resources to the Japanese home islands: oil, rubber, lumber, even basic food supplies. Planes stationed here were that much closer to Japan. This strategic location was why Japan had taken control of the Philippines in the first place. The islands were essential to Japan. It was also why MacArthur was going to take them back.

His master plan would begin soon, with the invasion of Leyte. The island provided deep water anchorages and beaches for landing troops, tanks, and supplies.

He knew that the Japanese were not going to simply hand Leyte over to the invaders. Even now, they were reinforcing their troops there, or attempting to do so. His intelligence experts estimated that the Japanese had as many as 250,000 troops on Leyte, and they were sending more all the time.

It was going to be one hell of a fight.

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