There was a moment’s silence and then Schneider said, “Sir, we’re hardly presentable. To report to the Group Commander, I mean.”
“Lieutenant,” Galloway said, “we are blessed with a Group Commander who is wise enough to know how mussed people get flying here from the States. He wants a look at your balls, not the crease in your trousers.”
Jim Ward laughed.
“Yes, Sir,” Schneider said.
If first impressions are important, Galloway thought as he drove the Ford convertible down the taxi road behind the flight line, Big Steve just blew it so far as Schneider is concerned.
Technical Sergeant Oblensky was sitting on the ground in the shade of a Wildcat, his back against the left wheel, with a bottle of Coke resting on his belly. He was wearing service shoes and what had originally been khaki trousers, now somewhat raggedly cut off just above the knees. And nothing else. The belly on which the Coke bottle sat sagged over the trouser waistline. His massive chest was streaked with grease and what probably was hydraulic oil, and he needed a shave. His head and neck were sweat streaked.
As Galloway stopped the car and he and the others got out, Oblensky pushed himself to his feet and sauntered over. He glanced at the two young officers with Galloway and dismissed them as unimportant; then he looked at Galloway.
“Those fucking guns need a good armorer,” he announced. “Peterson came back this morning with three of his guns jammed after three, four rounds.”
There were four .50 caliber air-cooled Browning machine guns on F4F-4 aircraft.
“What’s the problem? More important, what do we do about it?”
“If I knew what the problem was, I’d fix it,” Oblensky said. “What I did was call a pal—used to be a China Marine, now he’s a Gunny with the 2nd Raider Battalion, guy named Zimmerman. He said if I could get them over there, he’d have a look at them.”
“OK,” Galloway said.
“But I’d have to give him a little present.”
“What’s he want?”
“An auxiliary generator,” Oblensky said. “They’re living in tents. He’s got a refrigerator someplace, but he needs juice to run it.”
“Jesus, Steve, we only have two.”
“I think I know where I can get another one.”
“Where?”
“You don’t want to know, Captain.”
“And if you get caught?”
“Then I guess you’d still have some fucked up Brownings, Captain.”
“Then be careful,” Galloway said.
Big Steve nodded.
Galloway glanced at Ward and Schneider. He saw fascination in Ward’s eyes and disbelief in Schneider’s, as both came to comprehend what had just been discussed.
“Gentlemen,” Galloway said, “I’d like you to meet Technical Sergeant Oblensky, the squadron maintenance sergeant. Sergeant, this is Lieutenant Ward and Lieutenant Schneider; they’ve just reported aboard.”
Big Steve extended his hammy, greasy hand to Ward and Schneider in turn. Ward shook the hand with visible pleasure; Schneider managed a smile only with an almost visible effort.
“Welcome aboard, Sirs,” Big Steve said. “The Skipper’s told me about you. We didn’t expect you so soon.”
“I told them you’d paint their names on their airplanes, so we could take a picture,” Galloway said.
“Consider it done. Tomorrow, for sure,” Big Steve said. He smiled, turned, and pointed at the Wildcat behind him. “This one’s ready for a test hop, and if they can replace one more jug in that fucked-up engine in Six-Oh-Three, that’ll be ready this afternoon, too.” (A “jug” is the engine’s cylinder and piston assembly.)
“Is that what you want me to do, Steve, test-fly this one?”
“Lieutenant Dunn took Lieutenant Peterson out again. He said if you got hung up, he’d test-fly this one when he got back.”
“What I’d like, Steve, is for six-oh-three to be ready for a test hop when I bring this one back,” Galloway said.
“You want to trust Neely to replace the jug himself? I mean, I got to see about that other auxiliary generator.”
“We have to push him out of the nest sometime, Steve.”
“OK. I’ll tell him to have it ready when you get back,” Oblensky said. “Things are probably going to be a little tight. You want to change your plans for tonight, Captain?”
Shit! I forgot all about that!
Mrs. Stefan Oblensky, aka Lieutenant Commander Florence Kocharski, United States Navy Nurse Corps, had requested the pleasure of the company of Captain Charles M. Galloway, USMCR, at dinner at the family residence where she and Technical Sergeant Oblensky cohabited with the blessings of God but in contravention of the Rules & Customs of the United States Naval Service.
Charley looked at Big Steve’s face.
I can’t turn him down again. They’ve asked me four times, and I’ve had to turn him down three.
“Hell, no,” he said. “I’ll be there.”
XII
(One)
HEADQUARTERS, MAG-21
EWA USMC AIR STATION
OAHU, TERRITORY OF HAWAII
1445 HOURS 7 JULY 1942
Lieutenant David F. Schneider reached out and touched Lieutenant Jim Ward’s arm as Ward tried to operate the door latch of Galloway’s 1933 Ford convertible. Ward turned and looked at him.
“Don’t you really think it would be a good idea if we took a shave and got into a fresh uniform before we go in here?”
“You heard what the man said. The man said the colonel is smart enough to know you lose the crease in your trousers when you spend twelve hours in an airplane. And the man, if I have to point this out, is now our commanding officer.”
“But he hasn’t changed much,” Schneider said, “has he?”
“Meaning what?”
“You did understand that he gave that bare-chested gorilla of a sergeant of his permission to steal an auxiliary power unit generator someplace, from somebody who certainly needs it?”
Ward didn’t reply.
“So that he can swap it to some other sergeant in the 2nd Raiders,” Schneider went on, “for doing something to the machine guns that he’s not competent, or too stupid, to do himself? The last I heard they call that ‘misappropriation of government property.’ ”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jim Ward said.
“You were standing right there!” Schneider said indignantly, and then understood. “Oh,” he said in disgust. “I see.”
“I don’t think you really do, Dave,” Ward said. “Let me tell you something about yourself, Dave. Most of the time you’re a pretty good guy; but hiding inside you—I guess all the time—is a real prick struggling to get out. I don’t like you much when that happens.”
Schneider looked at Ward for a time, and then he said slowly, “Your attitude wouldn’t have anything to do with the relationship between Galloway and your Aunt Caroline, would it?”
“Probably that has something to do with it,” Ward said. “But what I think it is, what I hope it is, is loyalty to my commanding officer.”
Schneider snorted.
“You weren’t sent here,” Ward said. “You volunteered, so you could get out of flying R4Ds and into fighters. Galloway fixed it. If it wasn’t for him, you’d still be at Quantico. You knew what Charley—Captain Galloway—was like when he let you volunteer. All you had to say was no.”
“I can’t believe that you are actually condoning what you saw him do with your own eyes.”
Ward turned away and managed to get the door open. Then he walked quickly around the front of the car and intercepted Schneider as he was getting out.
“I never thought I would enjoy something like this,” he said, “but I was wrong. You will recall, Lieutenant, that I am senior to you. By the authority therefore vested in me by the goddamned Naval Service, Lieutenant, I order you (a) to get back in the car; (b) to shut your fucking mouth; (c) and to sit there and don’t move until I send
for you. And be advised, Lieutenant, that if it comes down to it, I will swear on a stack of Bibles that when Sergeant Oblensky spoke with us, he was dressed like a fucking recruiting poster and said not one fucking word about a goddamned generator. You got that, Lieutenant?”
“Jim,” Schneider said. “Obviously, I ...”
“Your orders, Lieutenant, are to sit there with your fucking mouth shut,” Ward said, spun on his heel, and walked to the door.
(Two)
THRESHOLD, RUNWAY 17
EWA MARINE CORPS AIR STATION
OAHU, TERRITORY OF HAWAII
1450 HOURS 7 JULY 1942
Captain Charles M. Galloway, USMCR, had a dark secret, a true secret, shared with no one else. He wasn’t sure if it was a character flaw, or whether it was something that happened to other people, too. But he knew that he didn’t want it known, and that he could never ask anyone else if they were similarly affected. Or maybe similarly afflicted.
The cold truth was that in situations like this one—in the cockpit, with all the needles in the green, in the last few instants before he would shove the throttle forward and then touch his mike button and announce to the tower, with studied savoir faire, “Five Niner Niner rolling”—he was afraid.
He could tell himself that it was irrational, that he was a better pilot than most people he knew, that the aircraft he was about to fly was perfectly safe, that he had so many hours total time; and he could even remind himself that a study by the University of California had proved beyond reasonable doubt that a cretin (defined as the next step above morons) could be taught to fly; but it didn’t work. At that moment—and all those other times—he had a very clear image of the airplane going out of control, smashing into the ground, rolling over, exploding. And it scared him. Sometimes his knees actually trembled. And more than once he had taken his hand from the stick so he could try to hold his shaking knees still.
Today, as he sat there waiting, he reminded himself of the command decision he had made vis-à-vis himself and Lieutenant Bill Dunn: who would fly what and why. Dunn was a good pilot, and he had done something Galloway had not done. He had met the enemy in aerial combat and shot down two airplanes. Galloway believed that there was no way to vicariously experience what it was like to have someone shooting at you.
That did not change, however, his belief that good pilots were a product of two qualities: natural ability and experience. He really believed that he was a better natural pilot than Dunn, and there was no question that he had much more experience.
The mission of VMF-229 at the moment was to become operational, which is to say its eighteen F4F-4 Wildcats and their pilots had to be made ready to go where the squadron was ordered to go, and to do what the squadron was ordered to do.
All his pilots were of course rated as Naval Aviators. Someone in authority had decreed that they were qualified to fly. But with Galloway’s certain and Bill Dunn’s possible exception, the pilots VMF-229 had so far were for all practical purposes novices. They were highly intelligent young men in superb physical condition who had passed through a prescribed course of training. But none of them had been flying for more than a year; and none of them, so far as Galloway had been able to determine, had ever been in trouble in the air.
And they were all impressed with Lieutenant Bill Dunn—understandably ... if, in Galloway’s judgment, rather naively. Dunn had been in combat, and he’d been hit and wounded, and he’d returned alive and with two kills.
All the same, just as soon as Big Steve Oblensky was able to make flyable two of the Wildcats they had trucked to Ewa from the docks at Pearl Harbor, Galloway flew against Dunn in half a dozen mock dogfights. He had no trouble outmaneuvering him the first time out, or the second, or the third; and he was starting to wonder if he should, so to speak, throw a dogfight, because consistently whipping Dunn was likely to humiliate him.
Then he thought that through and realized that humiliating Dunn was precisely the thing he should do. As the privates in a rifle squad should think, believe, that their sergeant was the best fucking rifle shot in the company, so should the lieutenant pilots of a fighter squadron believe that The Skipper was the best fucking airplane driver in Marine Aviation.
That policy seemed to have worked out well, even better than Galloway foresaw. For one thing, Dunn wasn’t impressed with his own heroic accomplishment at Midway. So he was not humiliated when he was bested by a pilot who’d been flying when he was trying out for the junior varsity football team in high school.
For another, as the other pilots drifted into the squadron, Dunn let each of them know that The Skipper was really one hell of a pilot. Coming as it did from a pilot who had been wounded and scored two kills at Midway, Dunn’s opinion was taken as Gospel.
And Galloway didn’t let either himself or Dunn sit and rest on their accomplishments. He believed the simple old Marine Corps adage that the best way to learn something was to teach it. So he had Dunn up all the time teaching techniques of aerial combat and gunnery to the kids, honing his own skills in the process, and picking up time, which meant experience.
As for Galloway, whenever possible he did the test flying himself—simply because he was the best qualified pilot to do it. Most test flights were simply routine. If everything worked, they could be flown by one of the University of California’s cretins. It was only when something went wrong that experience became important. An experienced pilot often sensed when something was about to go wrong, and so he could act to reduce the risk to the airplane before things went seriously bad. Even when some major system failed unexpectedly, an experienced pilot could often recover, and put the airplane back on the ground in one piece, while a pilot without his experience was likely not only to get himself killed, but to send the airplane to the junkyard, as well.
No aircraft assigned to VMF-229 had been lost—or even seriously damaged—during test flights. In Galloway’s view this was a pretty good record ... especially when you considered that three times the test pilot—C. M. Galloway—had lost power on take-off: When the fan of a Wildcat stopped spinning, the Wildcat didn’t want to fly anymore; as soon as the power quit, the nose got heavy, and it started to stall. (Although the manual usually read like a sales brochure for Grumman, it nevertheless warned—in small print—that the aircraft became “excessively nose heavy in a power loss situation.”) And then, even if you could keep it from stalling by getting it into a glide, the Wildcat sank like a rock.
Despite all that, Galloway somehow managed to bring each of those three aircraft down without cracking up the aircraft or the test pilot.
And so as Galloway sat there in the cockpit of the Wildcat he was testing that afternoon, cleared by the tower as Number One for take-off, and with all the needles in the green, it started to hit him that his anxious feelings, viewed objectively, just might be pretty goddamned ridiculous.
Captain Galloway pressed his mike button.
“Ewa,” he said confidently, “Five Niner Niner. I’m experiencing a little roughness and low oil pressure. I want to check it out a moment.”
“Roger, Five Niner Niner. Do you wish to leave the threshold at this time?”
“Five Niner Niner, negative. I think I’ll be all right in a minute.”
It would be a mistake I would regret all my life, correction, for all eternity, however the fuck long that is, if I took this bird off and crashed in flames with a letter from my girlfriend I hadn’t read in my pocket.
He put his finger in his mouth, caught the index finger of the pigskin glove on his right hand between his teeth, and pulled the glove off. Then he repeated the process with the glove on his left hand. He took the envelope from his pocket and sniffed it.
I am probably fooling myself, but I think I can smell her perfume.
The envelope contained what Charley thought of as “ladies’ stationery,” a squarish, folded, rather stiff piece of paper. The outside bore a monogram. Scotch-taped to the inside was a small piece of jewelry, a round gold disc on a
chain.
Jenkintown, June 30 ‘42
My Darling,
This is an Episcopal serviceman’s cross. I know you’re not an Episcopalian; and now that I’m divorced (and for other reasons), I am a fallen Episcopalian woman. But I wish you would wear it anyway, to know that I am praying for you constantly.
It has occurred to me that the only time you will ever notice it is when it gets in your way when you’re taking a shower. But perhaps that will remind you of the showers you have shared with someone who loves you and lives for the moment when she can feel your arms around her again.
All my love, now and forever,
Caroline
Charley Galloway reached up and shoved his goggles up on his forehead. For some reason, his eyes were watering. He pried the medallion loose from the Scotch tape and looked at it. He tried to open the clasp on the gold chain, but couldn’t manage it. There was no way he could get that fragile gold chain over his head. So he leaned forward and looped it around the adjustment knob of the altimeter on the control panel, then tugged on it to make sure vibration wouldn’t shake it off.
He wiped his eyes with his knuckles, put his goggles back in place, worked his hands back into his gloves, and put them on the throttle and the stick. He inched the throttle forward and turned onto the runway. Then he moved the throttle to full take-off power, and pushed his mike button.
“Ewa,” he said, with practiced savoir faire, “Five Niner Niner rolling.”
Four hundred yards down the runway, he spoke to the engine.
“Don’t you dare crap out on me now, you sonofabitch!”
A moment after that, F4F-4 tail number 40599 of VMF-229 lifted off into the air.
(Three)
HEADQUARTERS, MAG-21
EWA USMC AIR STATION
Battleground Page 30