“I was,” I said. “That was—terrible.”
“I can’t imagine,” Whittaker said. “So, what the hell are you doing here? You should be at that big deal they’re setting up at the Munda airfield.”
“Yes and no,” I said. “If they’d let me operate, yes. But if the old guard put their feet down and said, forget that stuff, Mister Resident, you can assist and only on the cases we deem appropriate for your, ahem, limited medical training…”
He nodded. “And that’s exactly what they’d do,” he said. “The farther the real war got from Nouméa, the more the same old hospital politics came into play down there. I volunteered for Tutuila because she was going up on the front lines. With the PT boats, no less. I’m dying for a ride.”
“I can set that up for you,” I said. “But you may not come back.”
“If they’ll go out, by God, I’ll go out,” he said, firmly. “We’ve gotta beat these bastards, all the way back to Goddamned Tokyo.”
“That’s the spirit,” I said. “Now I need to get you together with my chief, Wally Higgins. He does anesthesia.”
The next morning the captain showed up in sick bay while Higgins, Chief Whittaker, and I were doing an inventory. He had a message for me.
“From the Medical Command down at Munda,” he announced in a grave tone of voice: “They’ve asked if a Lieutenant Lincoln Andersen, MC, was here and, if so, they want to see you, ASAP.”
I groaned. Apparently, my little escape and evasion plan hadn’t worked after all. Whittaker gave me a sympathetic look. Crawford apparently realized that there was a problem. “If I can help in any way…” he offered.
I thanked him and told him that I needed to go see Bluto.
“Like I was saying yesterday,” Chief Whittaker said, “you’d be wasted here, you being a surgeon and everything.”
I could hope, I thought, but my gut told me this wasn’t a summons to join the Munda surgical service. I could see that Higgins was thinking the same thing. I took one of Tutuila’s small landing craft over to the new pontoon nest on Puruata where Bluto was holding court on one of the boats. I told him what had happened.
“Hell with ’em,” he said promptly. “If they had to ask if you were here, then they don’t know you’re here. I’ll have a word with Sam Crawford. As long as he doesn’t answer that message, they’ll still be in the dark. Messages go astray all the time.”
For a moment I was tempted, but only for a moment. If there was going to be some kind of reckoning over what I’d been doing, I’d just as soon resolve it, one way or another. Two hours later I was headed south for Munda on the 655 boat. We passed through several small islands to minimize our exposure in the Slot to Jap air.
The Munda airfield was already in full operation when we got to the tiny harbor. Navy and Marine fighters were coming and going, while contrails in the sky indicated there were more fighters stationed as top cover. An LCI (Landing Craft, Infantry) was unloading some wounded men onto a steel ramp leading to waiting ambulances, so I hitched a ride with one of them over to where the hospital was being built. The site was abuzz in heavy construction machinery when we got there, with Seabees happily tearing up the ground as only they could. The surprise was that they were installing Quonset huts instead of tents.
Even more impressive, they were excavating deep slots in the sandy soil so that the Quonsets would be almost completely underground. One cluster of four huts was already in operation. Only the top quarter of rounded steel showed, and men were busy dragging camouflage netting over that. From the air they should be invisible. The big red crosses were conspicuously absent. There was a cluster of large generators sitting in concrete revetments and covered with netting. The Seabees had left clumps of palm trees here and there. There was a 90 mm anti-aircraft battery hidden in each clump.
The operational medical cluster was in the shape of a cross: two Quonsets in line with two more branching off on either side. I had to walk down a ramp with the stretcher-bearers to enter the first hut through what looked almost like an airlock. Another surprise: they were air-conditioned! No more need for mosquito netting. What a difference eighteen months makes, I thought. The first Quonset was a combination of triage and admin, so I went to what looked like an admissions desk and introduced myself as Doctor Andersen. The weary-looking Army sergeant sitting behind the biggest desk almost said, and so? when a younger man in a surgical gown, who’d been doing some paperwork, looked up when he heard my name. He came over to the counter and stuck out a friendly hand.
“Steve Dugan,” he said. “Orthopod. You’re being assigned here?”
“Not sure,” I said. “Unless you’re short on surgeons. I was up north on Bougainville with my PT boat squadron when a message came in saying someone wanted to see me.”
“PT boats,” Dugan said, admiringly. “That must be something. But look—if a message was sent, you probably need to go over to the headquarters hut. Back up the ramp, look up the hill. You’ll see a hut with a flag out front. I’d take you over there but there’s a meeting of all the surgeons in five minutes. Mandatory training.”
“Who’s the CO here?” I asked.
“Captain Holland Fraser Whitman Garr, US Navy Medical Corps,” he said with a wry smile. Then he saw the look of dismay that was crossing my face. “Let me guess—you know him?”
“In a manner of speaking,” I said. “We didn’t exactly get along on Guadalcanal.”
“I’m shocked—shocked—” he said in his best Claude Rains imitation. “Have fun, Doctor. Better thee than me-e-e.”
Wonderful, I thought. Garr, of all people. I’d forgotten his pretentious name, but it was absolutely in character. I took a deep breath and went to find the headquarters.
TWENTY-FIVE
“Well, well, well, look who we have here,” Garr said. “The Navy Medical Corps’ very own Nobel-striker, in the flesh: Doctor Hooligan himself. Please have a seat, Doctor. These gentlemen want to hear all about your amazing surgical achievements of the past year.”
Garr was sitting behind a standard Navy gray metal desk, looking somewhat plumper than I remembered, but still sporting that purplish face. There were two other Medical Corps officers in his office. One was a four-stripe captain, the other a lieutenant commander. Their faces were neutral but they both had notebooks open on their laps. I sat down in the chair indicated.
“To refresh your memories, Doctors,” Garr continued, “this is the third-year resident from the Duke University surgical program, Lieutenant Lincoln Andersen, Medical Corps and USNR, who landed with us at Guadalcanal and then proceeded to pass himself off as a fully certified surgeon.”
“Bullshit,” I said, quietly. Garr’s eyes flared when I interrupted him. “Total bullshit, and you know it, Doctor.”
There was a stunned silence in the room as Garr’s face did its familiar color change. I decided to seize the moment.
“I did not pass myself off as anything but what I was and you damned well know that. I’d completed three years of the Duke surgical residency program, so I was assigned to assist the fully certified surgeons right after the invasion. By you, as I recall. It’s only when the Cactus medical team became overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of casualties that I was told to do what I could, by you, and that’s what I did. Especially after the fleet bailed on us and left the Marines to deal with the Japs as best they could. And, took all our supplies with them.”
“Now you listen here, Lieutenant—” Garr sputtered.
“No, I won’t,” I said. “I’m tired of your lies. In the two weeks after the invasion of Guadalcanal, I performed more surgical procedures than anyone at Duke would get to perform, probably in the seven years of our academic training. Yes, I did a lot of them on the fly, assisted by chief petty officers and junior hospitalmen who were doing their best to save lives. I did save lives—lots of them. I also lost some, just like you did. Like everyone did. And, I don’t remember you taking me off the duty roster because I was only a resident.”
“Not because I didn’t want to,” he blustered. “You simply were not qualified!”
“Granted, but after Guadalcanal, and then Tulagi, I was as qualified as any cutter out there for the shock-trauma work I was doing. Nothing like having a nineteen-year-old Marine arrive at the table with his innards in his hands to inspire you to do not only what you can, but the best that you can. I’ve done emergency procedures which I’d only heard about at Duke, more times than I can count. I took chances. We all took chances, from the anesthetist nurses to the orderlies, often to the sound of incoming fire. I’m sorry I didn’t arrive with suitable credentials, but there are a lot of young Marines alive because I was there. And you started me on that course.”
My angry outburst produced another moment of silence. Garr visibly gathered himself to make a rebuttal, but the captain raised his hand. “Tell us, please, about the surgeries you’ve been doing. Guadalcanal, Tulagi, Rendova, New Georgia.”
I took a deep breath. “Don’t forget the Montrose,” I said.
The captain seemed surprised. “You were on the Montrose?”
“I was, temporarily, the senior surgeon on the Montrose,” I said. “At the request of Colonel Maddox, SMO. I was on board when she was sunk by a Kawanishi’s torpedoes.”
Apparently, that was news to Garr, whose expression revealed his complete surprise. He started to say something, but the captain again cut him off.
“How about you just tell us what you’ve been doing since landing on Guadalcanal,” he said. “Take your time. I want it all.”
I proceeded to do just that. It took an hour and a half. When I finally ran out of breath, Garr looked like he’d swallowed a frog. The captain and the lieutenant commander, who’d been taking notes, sat there for a long moment. Then the captain had an interesting question.
“Do you have any records of your surgical work?” he asked.
“I did,” I replied. “But Colonel Maddox—he was the SMO on the Montrose—advised me to send my first surgical log home. He said I’d need it when the war was over. I began a second one after that, but it was lost with everything else when Montrose was sunk. I started a third log after that, but when New Georgia fell, I went back to my squadron duties.”
Garr’s face lit up. His expression clearly said: Gotcha now, you impudent bastard. The captain, however, seemed to have different ideas.
“Doctor Andersen,” he said, finally, “I apologize for this surprise interrogation. It’s obvious to me that you must be something of a prodigy, and I would have to say that, based on what you’ve told us, you’re a fully qualified battlefield surgeon. Doctor Garr, do you have anything to add now?”
Poor Garr, God love him, didn’t know what to say. The captain left him hanging out to dry for a moment, and then took mercy on him.
“Doctor Andersen,” he said, “I want you to return to the PT boat squadron—for the time being, anyway. You belong in a surgical department, but I sense that your talents might be, um, somewhat underutilized here. Let me just say this: the hospital here at Munda will inevitably be overtaken by events in the next several months. Once we set up the next big facility, we’ll call you back. If you have no further questions for me, you may go now. Thank you for your debrief.”
I stood up, a little bewildered by what had just happened. Garr was visibly gritting his teeth, but it was clear that, whoever this captain was, he was absolutely in charge. I had just stepped out of the admin hut when some sirens began to wail. I was almost bowled over by two sergeants and a Navy hospitalman as they ran past me, slapping their helmets on. One looked over his shoulder and pointed to a nearby air-raid trench while the two of them headed for one of those 90 mm AA gun emplacements out in the trees. I didn’t need to be told twice: the sound of Betty bombers, a sound I knew only too well, was rising in the jungles surrounding Munda airfield.
The unfinished trench shelter was a full six feet deep, accessed by a crude dirt ramp at one end. The top of the trench was covered in loose canvas over transverse logs, but the “floor” was two inches of red mud where rainwater had leaked down the ramp. There were two long boards along the top edges to keep the sides from collapsing in. I saw some steel helmets and gas masks hanging on pegs along the wall, so I grabbed a helmet. I had just figured out how to lengthen the strap and put it on when three Army nurses in ward uniforms came hustling down the ramp. They, too, donned helmets and then assumed a crouching position, hands over their heads to hold the helmets in place. By then the AA guns had started up, happily drowning out the sound of the approaching Bettys, at least until bombs began to fall. I’d forgotten how terrifying it was to listen to 500-pound bombs going off, each one closer and louder than the one before it. You’ll never hear the one that gets you, a Marine had once told me with a cheerful smile. Cold comfort indeed. He failed to mention that you would hear the one that almost got you.
There was a sudden, overwhelming, eardrum-cracking compression of the air around us, followed by a blaze of white light and then the sides of the trench gave way under a deafening blast. I was knocked unconscious for at least a minute. When I was able to gather my senses, I was upright, bent over in what was left of the trench, and up to my waist in pulverized dirt with shreds of burned canvas draped over my head. I couldn’t hear anything but a painful buzz in both ears. I put my hands up to my face to wipe the dirt out of my eyes. They came away bloody because my nose was bleeding and I’d somehow bitten my lower lip. I looked around for the nurses but didn’t see them. Then I remembered—they’d been crouching. I tried to move but the wet dirt had me locked in place. I tried rocking back and forth, like getting a stubborn fence post out of the ground. That worked. Then I was able to crawl through the dirt to where I thought the nurses had been and start digging like a dog on the hunt for a bone. I uncovered the first head and face and heard her take in one enormous breath and then start crying. I left her to it and scrambled to find the next one. She had been able to move a hand to create an airspace, so she was a little less traumatized. By then I was lying flat on the shattered earth and searching frantically for the third nurse.
“Where is she?” I yelled at the other two. The crying one just kept bawling; the other one said something I couldn’t hear and then pointed to her other side. Dammit! I’d gone the wrong way, looking for her. I clambered back in the direction she was pointing and resumed digging with my bare hands until I encountered one of those reinforcing boards that had been at the top of the trench. I couldn’t budge it and I couldn’t get around it. By then I was out of breath and exhausted. I closed my eyes to catch my breath for just a moment.
I woke up on a stretcher, lying on the ground. The two nurses were alongside. The crying one had calmed down, but the second nurse was weeping silently, her eyes closed. We were all filthy and my face felt like it was crusted in mud and blood. I could feel activity all around but I still couldn’t hear a thing. I looked for the third nurse. That’s when I realized we were lying in a bomb crater, whose circular sides were amazingly smooth. I could catch the occasional glimpse of men coming and going above us and I could feel vehicles passing by. There was a huge cloud of black, oily smoke darkening the sky above our crater. Then some orderlies came, lifted us out of the crater, and took us to the actual hospital Quonsets. On the way I saw the HQ building, which looked untouched until I looked again. It had been strafed and it looked like there were stretchers out front. The dirt berms had absorbed a lot of the rounds, but there was a clear track of what looked like 50-cal holes down the length of the exposed top.
Nobody was bored in the triage/admin area this time. There were stretchers everywhere, nurses hanging drips, and two young-looking docs who were apportioning the dreaded tags. A senior-looking nurse, and by that, I mean a woman in her late thirties, came over to where they put our stretchers down. She gasped when she saw the two nurses from the trench.
“Check them first,” I said. “I’m not injured.”
She stared at my face, which apparently was
covered in crusted blood and mud. “Nosebleed,” I said. “Also, there was a third nurse in that bomb shelter. I dug these two out when it collapsed, but I couldn’t find the third one.”
The calmer of the two nurses spoke a name, which I couldn’t hear, and then the senior nurse’s face paled. She shouted something, which, for the first time, I could hear as my ears crackled back to life. She then grabbed an orderly and ran out the door. The calm one wasn’t calm anymore. I decided to just get up, but that took longer than I’d expected as I rolled out of the stretcher and lifted an arm at one of the orderlies. He obliged by pulling me to my feet, where I leaned on him for a full minute before getting my balance back. That’s when he saw my medical insignia. “You a doc?” he asked.
I nodded. He took me behind the counter and plopped me down in the surly sergeant’s chair, then went to get some surgical wipes to clean me up. I sat there and let him do it as the sounds of triage, some good, some not so good, began to rise. When he was done, he had another question. “Sir, are you a surgeon, by any chance?”
Again, I nodded. At that moment a young and really scared-looking doctor wearing a blood-spattered surgical gown came through the double doors that separated admin from the treatment huts. He was being pursued by two nurses, also in OR gowns, who caught up with him and said he had to come back.
“I can’t do it,” he said plaintively. “I’m not a surgeon. I’m a burns guy. I want to help, but Jesus! I’m doing more harm than good.”
I stood up, a little more stable now. “I’m a surgeon,” I announced.
None of them recognized me, of course, but one of the young nurses came right over. “All the surgeons were doing a training session in hut three,” she said, her voice rising. I thought she was very close to completely losing it. “A bomb hit, didn’t go off, but none of them can do surgery right now. The hut collapsed and then the bomb started smoking something chemical. We’ve got broken bones, multiple lacerations, concussions, breathing problems, three surgeons are hurt bad, twenty casualties waiting, and we’re all going to die!”
The Hooligans Page 22