The Hooligans

by P. T. Deutermann

  They didn’t, crafty bastards that they were. There were eight of them and they flew in overhead at about 8,000 feet and dropped 500-pounders all over the Rendova harbor. We scampered down the ramp when we saw what was about to happen and huddled in the dank shelter, wishing it was a mile or so deeper. We were then treated to a series of bomb blasts, mostly out in the harbor except for one that landed on our water-catchment slab, thumping us off our log benches and filling the shelter entrance with a rain of dirt and bits of stone. We could hear lots of gunfire from outside, but I knew that none of those guns could reach the Japs at that altitude.

  The noise finally subsided and we crept out of our hidey-hole. One of the transports was burning furiously amidships from what had to have been a direct hit; the other seemed unharmed until we saw all the shrapnel holes along her port side from a near miss. Then that cluster of holes went out of sight as she began to list to port. That near miss had surely opened some seams below the waterline.

  I counted PT boats, and came up with eight. A thick pall of water mist, smoke, and blasted air hung over the harbor, obscuring the shores on the opposite sides. There were two oil fires burning furiously over near the main Army encampment. Suddenly we heard the sound of approaching airplane engines out over the Blanche Channel to the northeast. Then two Bettys came zooming in at low level and launched torpedoes at the listing transport. She was hit twice and pretty much disappeared in a blast of red fire, towering waterspouts, and flying debris. When the smoke cleared, she was upside down and sinking by the stern. The other transport continued to burn, and I could now see many small black figures in the water around her. Three MTBs had moved in and were pulling men out of the water. The Bettys had come in so fast that not one MTB had opened fire.

  Then we heard more airplane engines, but this time from the direction of that dark volcano five miles to the west. The boats were ready, and when the next two Bettys popped up above the western tree line they were greeted by a veritable storm of fire which quickly turned them into flaming wrecks that spun out of the sky and exploded in the harbor. Then we heard the sounds of distant gunfire, which probably meant that the LSTs offshore were being attacked by yet another group of bombers. The Japs may have been driven off Guadalcanal, but Rendova and New Georgia were absolutely not going to be taken without a fight. The closer we got to the hornets’ nest on Rabaul, the more hornets we could expect to see. I saw the MTBs heading in toward the two transports. Hoping that the attack was over, I told everybody to get to the partially completed aid station. It was going to be a long day. I prayed that at least some of the LSTs were coming back, because they had real sick bays onboard, while I had essentially a grass hut with an A-frame roof made of palm tree trunks.

  Three of them did but not for two more hours. There had been five of them in the harbor when the warning came. Two had been torpedoed and lost. A third had been torpedoed but the warhead hadn’t gone off. It still left a huge hole in her port side engine room, so another LST had taken her in tow to get her back to the harbor. They’d been attacked by six Bettys and had shot down three, after which the Japs apparently lost their taste for LST bombing. But as everyone knew, tomorrow was another day and the Japs reportedly had the world’s supply of Bettys up there in Rabaul.

  The two LSTs which had gone down had already been unloaded, so their precious cargo of troops and equipment was already ashore on Rendova. The loss of two amphibious ships was costly, though, especially in view of the upcoming cross-channel invasion of New Georgia proper. The general commanding asked Cactus for fighters to be on station during the most likely attack windows.

  I received word to meet the first LST that came in. All casualties initially would be collected there until we could assess the state of the other sick bays. Each ship had a doctor assigned, but there were no surgeons. Two hours later, I had a boat take me out to the first LST that dropped anchor back in Rendova harbor, the USS Liscomb County (LST 1164). We could see a line of holes where she’d been strafed along the tank deck as we came alongside. Her 40 mm gun tubs, the barrels burned black, were still full of empty shell casings. Sailors were picking their way through the casings, salvaging the deformed ones right along with the good ones. Brass was in short supply back home. All spent casings, 20 mm, 40 mm, five-inch, and even six-inch would go back to the States for reuse. One 40 mm gun tub was fully manned and ready while the other one’s crew collected brass.

  They lowered the ship’s front ramp so Chief Higgins, two HMs, and I could jump aboard with our equipment bags. An ensign took us back to the sick bay. I asked about their casualties. He told me they’d had two killed in the strafing run, but otherwise, that was it for Liscomb County. He also said that he’d seen what looked like a couple hundred men in the water after the two ships had gone down, but he didn’t know where they were right now. Higgins and I looked at each other, knowing what we were probably going to see in the next several hours. I asked about survivors from the transports. He didn’t know. One was gone, the other still burning amidships, although it looked as if the fires were being subdued.

  Since the LSTs could be tasked with hauling troops as well as vehicles and ammo, they had a bigger sick bay than did, say, a cruiser or destroyer. There was even an operating table, although they had minimal surgical equipment. The ship’s doctor was a lieutenant in his late thirties, possibly even forty, with rather long hair for a naval officer. He introduced himself formally as Doctor Ellsworth Howard. He was already in sick bay, and he looked surprised when I showed up.

  “They said the MTBs’ MO was a surgeon,” he said, with a bit of a Bostonian twang. “I’m sorry, but you don’t look old enough.”

  At that moment, the ship’s announcing system came up to report two boatloads of casualties were inbound to the Liscomb County.

  “Let’s get ready for triage, shall we?” I said, evading his implicit question.

  He nodded, but I could see he wasn’t done with his questions yet. “Tank deck, then,” he said. “Follow me, please.”

  The ramp was down as we came out on the tank deck, that large open cargo area that ran down the middle of the ship. An LST looked like a floating shoebox, whose bow could split open and then drop a ramp large enough for tanks to cross. The genius of the LST design was that the ship would approach the landing beach through shoaling water, drop an anchor behind her, and then deliberately run the front end aground, after which tanks, mobile artillery, trucks, jeeps, and finally troops could cross that big ramp and charge up the beach. Lighter now by several tons, they’d lift the ramp, close the bow doors, and then winch themselves off the beach to go get more stuff from ships anchored offshore and out of danger.

  Triage was painful, as it always was. The only way we got through it was to remind ourselves that the broken bodies laid out on the steel decks, most of them leaking precious bodily fluids, were in far more pain than we were. We used a tag system: one color for “hopeless—sedate/make comfortable until he dies,” another for “immediate surgery/attention,” and a third for “he can wait.” The two of us would agree upon a determination and tell the hospitalman what color tag to put on the man’s stretcher, using the words one, two, or three so as not to further frighten the already badly frightened man. I’d had a lot of experience doing this; Doc Howard had not, but we agreed on almost every case. It was one of the “disagree” cases that brought back the questions.

  Toward the end I examined one man whose belly had been opened up by a piece of flying metal. I called for tag two; Dr. Howard said, surely no, he’s a one—just look at that.…

  I told him I disagreed. It looks horrible, I said, but there’s a bowel resection procedure that can save his life as long as you have some plasma. He looked at me over the prostrate form between us. Then I told him who I was and, more importantly, what I was. He looked even more upset.

  “I can’t do a bowel resection, Doctor,” he said. “Surely, you’re not qualified to do that, are you?”

  I asked him a question: “
You just said you can’t do a bowel resection. I can and have done more than thirty of them back on Guadalcanal and Tulagi. But we have to move now to avoid sepsis. You can’t help him. I can. It’s major surgery under less than ideal conditions, so he still may die, but that’s the risk they all take by just being there. Well?”

  Higgins was watching this little discussion carefully, as was the wide-eyed HM who’d been applying the tags. Doctor Howard stood there with his mouth open, but he clearly didn’t know what to say. Then I piled on.

  “You know what, Doctor?” I said. “Why don’t you assist? You’re going to have to learn how to do this kind of thing ’cause I think it’s gonna be a long war and there will never be enough surgeons, will there?”

  “First, do no harm,” he whispered, reminding me of the Hippocratic oath.

  “Granted,” I said. “But it’s wartime. You want to face his parents and tell them you decided to do nothing? That you didn’t even try?”

  He sighed. Admittedly, it was an unfair question, but I was going to need an assistant. “Okay,” I said. “Let’s get to it before the real rush begins.”

  SIXTEEN

  As it turned out, Howard was an excellent assistant. He’d gone to Yale for medical school and Mass General for his internship, and it showed. We did three more abdominal repair procedures during the next twenty hours. We saved the first and the third. The second patient died as we were stabilizing the anesthesia. We also did a bunch of thoracic work—punctured lungs, ruptured diaphragms, blunt force trauma to rib cages, and on and on. Howard had never been on his feet that long and finally cried uncle. That gave me an excuse to sit down, too. By then we had two more docs from other LSTs attending the general triage and repair operations. Even the Army sent over a doc, a very young-looking first lieutenant, but he quailed at the sheer scope of the casualties. I threw him out and told him to go back to the Army HQ and continue with his short-arm inspections. It turned out that the Army had waited to set up a hospital until they were sure Rendova was secure. In the meantime, they’d depend upon the Navy, who had been told there’d be an Army hospital on Rendova. Situation normal, etc.

  Procedures was perhaps the wrong word. The term “surgical procedure” calls to mind a fully equipped hospital surgery, a surgical staff of doctors and nurses who’ve been briefed on what was coming, a patient who’s been prepped and is preferably not in shock, and a supporting staff of on-call specialists like radiologists and pathologists, a blood bank, a responsive lab, and an unlimited supply of sterile equipment. We weren’t doing procedures, not in the traditional sense. We were doing emergency battle surgery, reinforced by the technical knowledge of how it would be done under perfect conditions. We were doing the best we could, just like the field medics, whose only available response would be to hang an IV, dust the entire wound with sulfa powder, and then bandage the hell out of it. Morphine to stop the screaming. Water on his forehead to keep him cool. A cigarette if the morphine was working. A stretcher when enemy fire allowed one.

  Outside of the sick bay, there was a major logistics operation going on. Cactus had begun sending Catalinas, so now there had to be a second round of triage, as we docs had to decide who most needed an airborne stretcher berth out of Rendova. The Cats flew them down to Cactus, where a fresh set of medical eyes evaluated them. Some were then sent on to Nouméa; others to the recovery tents on Guadalcanal, still others back into surgery for another try. We thought we were home free after so many hours, but then the burning transport suddenly broke in half. The back half sank. The front half exploded, raining artillery shells and other ordnance all over the Rendova harbor. One large artillery shell actually hit our LST, but, since it hadn’t been armed by being fired down a grooved barrel, there was no explosion. The thing slammed down onto the tank deck, bounced, hit again, and then sat there spinning in place, as if practicing for a game of spin-the-bottle for the wide-eyed sailors, holding their ears as they watched it.

  The LST in front of us wasn’t so lucky. Some other type of red-hot shell hit her farther aft and penetrated a 40 mm magazine, which blew up and took the port quarter of the ship clean off. Several crewmen were flung into the harbor, and we went back to work about an hour later. Most of the cases were burns, so there wasn’t much call for extensive surgery. I reverted to assisting the docs who were doing the burn treatment, about which I had a lot to learn, mostly from Doc Howard, as it turned out.

  By sundown we had things pretty much under control. We found our way to the ship’s wardroom, where there was food, fresh coffee, and most importantly, a place to sit down. The LST’s captain, a Navy full lieutenant, joined us. He said that the Army was about a week away from launching an invasion on New Georgia Island, and that there was talk of designating one of the LSTs as a temporary hospital ship. She’d go into the assault landing zone, disgorge her cargo, then back off and set up shop somewhere close enough that casualties could be brought aboard from behind friendly front lines.

  “Who’ll protect her?” Doc Howard asked.

  “There’ll be destroyers for the invasion,” the captain said. “Plus, the PT boats will be assigned to be close-in AA defense.”

  One of the other docs asked if there would be additional medical personnel coming along with the main invasion force. The captain didn’t know.

  I thought an LST would make a damn sight better field medical station than the tree-covered ravine we had now over on Bau Island. Electricity, fresh water, food, clean bunks, refrigeration, insect and rodent control, and the ability to sterilize equipment properly: relative luxuries, all. The only problem I could see was that the Japs might have an easier time sinking a large, slow target (LST), especially an anchored one, than getting a bomb into our ravine.

  A messenger from the bridge knocked on the wardroom door and reported to the captain that three destroyers had arrived just outside the harbor.

  “About time,” the captain said. “We’re overdue for another air raid.”

  The GQ alarm sounded as if to acknowledge his remark. He shook his head wearily and hustled out of the wardroom. Moments later the ventilation was shut off. We could hear watertight doors being dogged shut throughout the ship, so it looked like we were going to sit this one out in the wardroom. I was tired enough that I wandered over to the couch, sat down in one corner, and went to sleep. I thought I could hear the sound of guns but by then the sleep monster had me. The wardroom was quickly becoming uncomfortably warm, but I was beyond caring.

  The next thing I knew I was airborne and tumbling across the wardroom and stumbling painfully into the table. I tried to focus my eyes but the room was full of dust. The other docs were, like me, flailing around on the deck. I couldn’t hear anything over the roar of a large explosion, followed by the sounds of structural failure—the screeching of ruptured steel, the clatter of falling debris, and the screams of injured men. I tried to get up off the deck but something was wrong—the deck was moving. Things began to topple off the wardroom table, and all of a sudden we found ourselves trying desperately to get off the deck, which now was tilting ominously. The lights flickered and then went out. Battle lanterns came on, illuminating the chaotic scene in their spectral yellow light.

  I clawed my way back over to the table and hoisted myself into a semi-vertical stance, pulling the tablecloth off in the process. The other docs were all trying to do the same. By now the list on the ship was at least twenty degrees and things, big things, were sliding around outside on the tank deck. Suddenly the wardroom door, which was not a watertight door, snapped open as its doorframe deformed. A water line out in the passageway had broken and was vigorously spraying water everywhere. I staggered toward the door with the rest of the docs and then realized I didn’t know how to get out of the interior of this ship and onto a weather deck. One of the other docs did and took the lead. We followed him into a passageway that was lit only by battle lanterns, sloshing through water that should never have been there. Then there was a very loud bang, followed by a gig
antic lurch which threw all of us onto the deck and actually underwater. I realized that hadn’t been an explosion but the sound of the hull breaking up.

  Suddenly there was daylight and an enormous wall of seawater coming straight at us. We were swept back into the passageway, tumbling ass over teakettle in a vortex of foaming seawater, and then swept right back out as that water wave hit watertight doors and rebounded. I found myself underwater and scrambling to get back up to the surface for a breath of air. My eyes were stinging from salt water and I tasted fuel oil. When I finally cleared my eyes, I saw our LST, broken in half and fully capsized. As I watched, the front half disappeared in a howling cloud of dirty air and frothing seawater. I could dimly hear airplane engines through my water-plugged ears and a lot of heavy gunfire, much bigger than the 40 mm AA guns the LSTs carried. One of the other docs surfaced next to me, purple faced and hacking his lungs out as he tried to recover his breathing. I spied a life raft twenty feet away and swam to it, and grabbed on to the netting like a snapping turtle. The netting was covered in fuel oil so I had to try a couple of times. Then I looked around for the other doc, but he had disappeared.

  Patients. What had happened to our burn victims and the other patients? I knew the answer but didn’t want to acknowledge it. I closed my eyes and concentrated on breathing, blanking out the horrible knowledge that they were all gone. Then I felt that I was slipping out of the life raft netting, so I hooked my arm through the lines and hoisted myself halfway onto the raft itself. It almost tumbled me back into the water but I kicked vigorously until everything stopped moving. By then I was completely entangled in the raft’s netting. I no longer had to work at it, so I just relaxed and hung there.