The Hooligans

by P. T. Deutermann

  Our new CO arrived four days later after a flight from Nouméa to Cactus. He was every bit as big as Tucker had described, with a bit of a paunch, upper arms like hams, a big black beard, of all things, an oversize face with a great beak of a nose, and a voice like a trumpet. He came to us from Cactus in a Catalina, whose crew were whispering he’d occupied two seats. Deacon had asked me to go along to welcome the new skipper. I asked him if he was scared; he simply said, yeah, a little bit.

  We met the seaplane in the 404 boat to avoid having to bring him all the way around the harbor to the command bunker. His handshake enveloped my hand like a bear paw, but in a relatively gentle manner. He had bright blue Nordic eyes. I think he must have weighed almost 250 pounds. The 404 boat’s skipper, Goody Gushue, nosed the boat up next to the Cat’s hull and Rackham hopped down onto the bow. A plane crewman then handed down his seabag, followed by a Western-style gun belt, complete with rounds in the belt loops and containing two Colt .45 revolvers. He took a moment to strap on the gun belt, and then walked over to the helmsman’s station without so much as a how-do-you-do.

  “Back us outa here,” he said. We only had one engine on the line, as was the usual case for moving around the harbor. The helmsman did so, and then Rackham ordered the other two engines lit off. Deacon and I had expected to exchange welcome-aboard niceties, but Rackham didn’t seem interested in talking. The other two main engines lit off in a cloud of exhaust smoke as we backed away from the Catalina. The helmsman, a young boatswain mate, looked uncertain as to what to do next. Rackham pointed seaward. The helmsman engaged all three engines and headed in the direction of the open sea at just above idle speed. We made a practice of keeping wakes down in the harbor because there were often women and children doing their washing right down on the edge of the beach.

  Deacon and I were left standing there up in the cockpit like two pieces of furniture. It took three minutes at slow speed to gain the entrance into Tunabuli harbor, at which point Rackham indicated he wanted to take control of the boat. Goody stepped up and offered to drive. Rackham looked down at him for a brief moment and then shook his head. “Lash yourselves down, shipmates,” he ordered with a smile, and then, as we cleared the inner harbor, pushed the throttles to maximum power.

  For the next fifteen minutes we basically just tried to hang on as Rackham, much as his predecessor had done, ran that boat flat out through a series of straightaways, wide turns, violent turns, S-turns, and then straight ahead again. Goody had brought only a few crewmen for what he had assumed was just a taxi run: the engineman, one gunner, the boatswain-mate helmsman, and himself. This was the boat Cogswell had taken over as the command boat, so the torpedo tubes were absent. That had taken 4,000 pounds of topside weight off the boat, which meant the 404 could flat-ass move out, even with the extra electronic gear and guns. The engineman had disappeared belowdecks once he saw what we were going to do. Goody hung on with both hands, as did we. The gunner strapped himself into the 20 mm mount back aft—it was the driest point on the boat—as we hit almost fifty miles an hour on a light chop. Rackham did one 180-degree turn where the boat basically left the water, bouncing through each ten degrees of the turn every time its keel could snatch a second of traction on the wave tops.

  Then the engines positively screamed as he pulled the throttle straight through neutral to reverse. The bow plunged into the sea and we were all instantly soaked. As we gathered sternway, he reversed again and spun the helm. The boat heeled sharply, too sharply I thought, sure that we were going to capsize, and then began shooting a big rooster-tail as she came back up to maximum power. This went on for another five minutes before he slowed the engines down to low power and indicated for the helmsman to take the controls. That wide-eyed worthy almost didn’t know what to do, so Goody stepped up and took the helm, while Rackham leaned back on the bulkhead and lit a cigarette. He told Goody to take us back to the base.

  Deacon and I leaned against the sloping forward bulkhead of the bridge structure, trying to dry off. Rackham stepped down off the bridge and joined us on the forward bulkhead. It was like standing next to a bear. “I talked to Commander Cogswell while I was down at Halsey’s headquarters,” he said. “I got a full briefing on the squadron. What you’ve been doing and where, the problems of not being owned by anyone at Nouméa, how you get supplies and parts when the Navy fails to provide. Screamers.”

  We both laughed at that. Screamers. There was hope.

  “They also told me about our new so-called ‘mission’ of babysitting the big green machine on Cactus.” He spat over the side to show us what he thought of that. “Doc, he said you were an excellent surgeon and that he often used you as a sounding board, because you had no Navy career skin in the game.”

  “We talked often,” I said. “Not that I know much about operational stuff.”

  “He thought otherwise. Said you were a Civil War history buff. That you thought we ought to be acting like Nathan Bedford Forrest. I think I agree with that. XO?”

  “Yes, sir?” Deacon replied. We were about two miles from the turn into the harbor estuary.

  “Which would you prefer to be: a part of the regular Navy, with a well-defined chain of command, including a squadron commodore with his staff and a schedule of inspections, a regulation channel into the naval supply system, a book of standard operating procedures, fleet regulations, maintenance directives, and a bevy of captains looking over his shoulder all the time—”

  “Or?” Deacon said.

  “Being part of a uniformed pirate organization, which governs itself. A mob of high-speed gunfighters who are masters of midnight requisitioning, nighttime raiding parties, ambush, machine-gun massacres, and the general terrorizing of the emperor’s navy and all its works.”

  Deacon nodded as he took all that aboard. “Can I still be the XO?” he asked finally.

  Rackham roared with laughter. “Attaboy, Mister Haller. And yes, you can still be XO. Now start thinking about who we’re gonna send to the big staff in the sky. He needs to be something of a diplomat, preferably with some connections back home.”

  “I’ve got just the guy,” Deacon said. I looked over at him, a silent question in my eyes. He mouthed back the words: Lamb Chop.

  FIFTEEN

  Thus began a brand-new chapter in the existence of the Hooligans. We learned that our new boss, after his séance with Commander Cogswell, had gone to see one of his classmates, someone medium high up in the headquarters, with a proposal for doing something very different from ferrying army patrols around the still-bleeding remains of the Guadalcanal battlefields. The key concession as the price for our independence was that we would put an officer on the staff of whoever was running the show as the fleet went north. His job would be to coordinate our activities with the deep-water Navy so that we wouldn’t mutually interfere with each other.

  Our mission would be to terrorize Jap logistics, drive up in the night to shoot up their shore installations, rescue any of our pilots who’d gone down in waters too dangerous even for the Catalinas, drop off frogmen to do whatever frogmen did to Jap facilities, conduct hydrographic sounding sweeps in areas where the bosses might want to land troops, lay the odd minefield, and carry wounded from the front lines to the nearest medical facilities. In short, we would strive to become extremely useful, with that all-important proviso that we wouldn’t do anything until our warm body on Halsey’s staff made sure we wouldn’t be screwing things up. His classmate had told Rackham he’d see what he could do.

  The first order of business was to find a home on or near New Georgia Island. The planners on Halsey’s staff suggested we go look for someplace suitable actually on New Georgia Island, unless of course we thought the island was too hot, in which case they’d pick somewhere a bit safer. I suspected that somebody down there knew exactly how a guy nicknamed Bluto would react to that. He told them via message that he would select a spot near enough to be no more than one hour from whatever was going on. We found out that the next Alli
ed objective was a large airfield at a place called Munda, on the west coast of New Georgia. That island was heavily garrisoned, its forces augmented now by the evacuees from Guadalcanal. The plan apparently was for the Army to occupy the much smaller Rendova Island, which was a short four miles across a strait from Munda. Once taken, Rendova would provide a perfect place for a battalion of Army heavy artillery to subdue the Japs across the strait holding the Munda airfield, which was the ultimate objective. Once we took Munda, our bombers would be within practical range of Simpson Harbor at Rabaul, where all the Jap ships in the Solomons were based.

  Once again, I tapped the coast-watcher headquarters, and they recommended a tiny island named Bau, which was located inside the main harbor on Rendova. Bluto agreed.

  I was dealing with a sudden surge in malaria while all this was going on. It was the scourge of South Pacific battlefields, requiring the troops to take toxic pills which they often quit taking. I remembered my Civil War history books all talking about disease incapacitating more soldiers than the enemy. If a soldier came down with it, he was airlifted out. Chief Higgins thought that some of the grunts stopped their pills for this reason, without realizing that it could lead to a lifetime of disabling sickness.

  The landings on Rendova pitted 6,000 US Army troops against about 300 Japanese defenders, which meant it was a walkover. As soon as Bluto got word that the island was secure and that there were LSTs parked there, he took his command boat, plus one other to act as wingman, and went to Rendova. It was a longish trip from Tanabuli, so they had to keep their speed down when out in open waters, but they still managed to arrive on the next morning, much to the surprise of the Army commander. The skipper grounded his boat’s bow on Bau Island, a tiny, wooded islet, and did a quick walk around. There was one cove that would be perfect, so he visited the Army general in charge and said he’d be back with a full squadron of PT boats within three days. They refueled from an LST and then headed back across the Slot to Tanabuli.

  The boats were then divided into two divisions: the first division was made up of all the boats that were ready for sea and able to make the transit right now. The second division consisted of the boats that were not ready, for whatever reason. The first division boats were the ones charged with bringing the most urgently needed gear and as much of our ammo and spare-parts stash as they could possibly carry. I went down to the command center to brief the skipper on our malaria cases, the last five of which were being airlifted out that morning. There were three skippers in there complaining about being put into the second division. Rackham was unsympathetic. If your boats were ready to go out and fight, he told them, you’d be in the first division. Remember that next time and now, if you please, gentlemen, comply with my orders.

  I thought that was a pretty good lesson and told him so after the three abashed skippers left. Then I asked him about the medical facilities situation on Rendova.

  “Right now, there’s a bunch of LSTs there, so any casualties will go to them. But I’m not sure for how long the Navy will stick around, because the Japs are surely gonna counterattack. The Army plans to invade New Georgia proper as soon as it can; they really want that airfield at Munda. Rendova was a cakewalk; New Georgia might be a tougher nut. I think we ought to set up our own medical facility, just in case the deep-water Navy has to run for it. As I understand it, they’ve done that before.”

  He was referring to the first few days after the Guadalcanal landings, which the Marines still resented.

  “Sounds good to me,” I said. “I’ll rape and pillage the amphib ships for as long as they stay there. But now I need to talk to you about malaria.”

  He groaned, looked at his watch, and sat back down.

  I made the transit with the first division that night so that we could arrive at daylight. The crossing went without incident, although everybody was pretty apprehensive. As best we knew, Guadalcanal was the first time the Japs had been driven off an occupied conquest since the beginning of the Pacific-wide war. I left behind the redoubtable Wooly McAllen, Chief Higgins, our two lend-lease surgical chiefs, and two hospitalmen, who were going to bring up all our stuff. I thought I was coming up in the world: I actually had a medical staff!

  Rendova was a tropical island with a large, supposedly dormant volcano at the center, some 3,000 feet high. The actual harbor was up on a strait called the Blanche Channel, which ran between Rendova Island and the much bigger New Georgia Island. Rendova was going to be a more spartan base than beautiful Tanabuli, at least for the MTBs. No caves, no freshwater springs, no Blind Man, and very little level ground. The only good news was that it was so inconspicuous that the Jap bombers, when they came, and everyone knew they surely would be coming, might just ignore it. There was one small cove, which was more of a notch in the shoreline, and that’s where the skipper decided to set up his command center. There were two troop transports and five LSTs anchored around the harbor when we arrived. The transports were unloading 155 mm artillery guns, which the Army lovingly called Long Toms. An advance party of Seabees was busy carving out protective artillery emplacements overlooking the Blanche Channel, which would give the big guns a clear shot over the channel to Munda and its defenses. The Japs had to be watching all this from Munda. It reminded me of the denizens of a medieval castle watching siege works going up. They apparently did not have Long Toms on New Georgia.

  The next three days turned into a blur of activity as we got set up on Bau and the Army prepared for the cross-channel invasion of New Georgia itself. We found out that a Marine raider battalion was also going to be involved. Our boats found immediate employment, taking Navy underwater demolition teams (UDTs) across the channel at night to scope out the potential landing sites on New Georgia. Word was that there were as many as 10,000 Jap troops over there who’d had some time to dig in and prepare extensive defensive positions, something they were really good at, according to the Army guys. As a surgeon I was called over to the LSTs at least once a day to deal with one medical emergency or another.

  The good news was that Higgins was scheduled to arrive shortly. He could then take over supervision of the medical aid station that was going up on our lonely rock. The bad news was that we’d lost Wooly. He’d gone missing during the beehive activity of packing out the base. A search party eventually found him, at the bottom of that big, clear pool next to the aid station. His body was badly battered, as if he’d rolled all the way down from the cliffs above and hit several sharp rocks on the way down. Broken like a stick figure in so many places that his body bag had been round, not straight, was the way the report described it.

  I knew exactly what he’d been doing; he’d gone back to that veil of a waterfall to go through it and explore that dark, brooding statue up above. I sent word back to Higgins to see if the locals would bury him on his old plantation, now that the Japs were gone. The next day I got word back that they would not do that. Somehow, they had concluded that Wooly had gone into the water cave beyond the talking stone, and thus incurred the wrath of the Blind Man, and that was that. The pack-up party had buried him in the jungle in one of our supply-dispersal bunkers. They’d put a cross above his grave. I wondered how long that would last once we left.

  The best news was that the rest of the Seabees had arrived. They joined the group that were setting up the big guns along the channel side of Rendova, but we still got some help building some makeshift wooden A-frame shelters for the boats along the edges of the cove and the makings of a crude ops hut.

  We’d barely got our field medical aid station up and running when a cruiser pulled into the harbor. She’d been in a sea fight north of the island and had a lot of casualties, plus the survivors of a destroyer that had been sunk. The LST medical people were quickly overwhelmed, so we got the chance to try out our new tent-city aid station. The only thing that saved us were all those ugly amphibious boats carried by the transports and the LSTs, which could bring supplies and medical personnel shared by every ship there to wherever they we
re needed.

  Fresh water was a big problem. The Navy ships could make enough for their crews and boilers but not enough to also support us. Once again, the Seabees came to our rescue. They dynamited the sides of a rock formation, creating a slanting slab of bare volcanic rock that led from the top of the island, some 200 feet above the cove, down to the water’s edge. They then blasted out a slanting fracture line which led to a small open space, filled with clean barrels. Every time it rained, which was often, rainwater would be collected and sluiced into those barrels, giving us basically unlimited fresh water.

  On the sixth day the Army commander got a warning from coast-watchers at around sunrise that Jap bombers were coming down the Slot in our direction. The LSTs quickly slipped their anchors and scrambled to get out of the constricted Rendova Harbor. The two troop transports remained anchored. The Army general ordered the torpedo boats to set up an AA screen around the transports. I’m sure they would have preferred destroyers, but, as usual, tin cans were in short supply. Bluto seemed delighted that the Japs were finally coming. He had wanted to make us useful to the New Georgia operation, and here was our chance. He took his command boat out, purportedly so as not to miss out on the fun. I wanted to tell him that Bettys were anything but fun, but figured he’d discover that soon enough. My medical team and I headed for shelter in a log-covered trench near the base of the water-catchment cliff. We sat down on some logs right outside the ramp going down to the shelter, because of course we wanted to see what happened.

  We now had a total of ten boats on Rendova. We had no way of knowing which way the Japs would come, so the skipper ordered eight boats to take up close-in stations around the anchored transports, with the remaining two, including his command boat, ready to move wherever they could do the most good. The transports had guns of their own, four 40 mm twin mounts in gun tubs topside, plus some smaller 20 mm Oerlikon mounts. The swirl of MTBs could offer forty 50-caliber barrels plus ten 20 mm guns. If the Japs came in low, as they usually did, that would make for quite a reception.