Battleground
Page 50
Galloway’s reaction was that the Marines, and maybe especially MAG-21 in particular, could use all the help they could get; but they weren’t going to get very much from a squadron of P-400s. He knew the story of the P-400.
Technical Sergeant Charley Galloway first heard about the aircraft in 1939. Curious about it, he managed to have a little engine trouble over Buffalo, New York, which gave him a chance to sit down at the Bell plant and have a look at the plane that began life as the Bell P-39 Aircobra.
He had not been impressed. It was a weird bird, sitting on what looked to Charley like a very fragile tricycle landing gear. It had a liquid cooled Allison engine, mounted amidships, behind the pilot. The prop was driven by a shaft. The shaft was hollow, and carried a 37mm cannon barrel. There was no turbocharger, giving it, consequently, low to lousy performance at high altitudes.
All of which, in the final analysis, meant that nobody wanted the damned things.
The English wouldn’t have anything to do with them. So the Aircobras that were supposed to go to them were sent to the Russians. Though Charley couldn’t say for sure, it was entirely possible that the Russians, as desperate as they were for anything that would fly, didn’t want them either. And so somebody had turned them over to the Army Air Corps.
Their reputation was so bad they’d even changed the name from P-39 to P-400. The only thing that surprised Charley was that the Marines hadn’t wound up with them. The Marines normally got what the Army and the Navy didn’t want.
It was not the sort of thing you talked to your men about, to bolster their morale, so Charley kept his mouth shut.
A familiar bald head and naked barrel chest appeared on the side of the runway, directing Charley to taxi to a sandbag revetment.
Tech Sergeant Big Steve Oblensky climbed up on the wing root before Charley stopped the engine.
“Well, I see you all got here,” he said.
“There was some doubt in your mind?”
“Only about you,” Big Steve said.
“What shape are we in?”
“Great. We have to pump fuel—the fuel there is—by hand through chamois. That runway’s going to be a fucking muddy ...”
“ ‘The fuel there is’?” Charley quoted, interrupting him.
Big Steve waited until Charley hauled himself out of the cockpit before replying.
“Those converted tin cans that brung us here,” he said, “carried 400 barrels of Avgas. That’s not much. Some of it they already used to refuel the Catalinas that have been coming in.”
“You’re telling me we have less than 22,000 gallons of gas?”
“Maybe a little more. They’re bringing in a little all the time, but when we start using it ...” Oblensky gestured at the aircraft that had just flown in. “And I just heard that the Army is sending in a half dozen P-400s tomorrow.”
“Jesus Christ,” Charley said.
There was the sound of aircraft engines, a different pitch than a Dauntless or Wildcat made. Charley looked up at the sky and saw a Catalina making its approach.
We make fun of them, he thought. Aerial bus drivers. But it has to take more balls to fty that slow and ungainly sonofabitch in and out of here than it does to fly a Wildcat.
“And there’s no fucking chow,” Oblensky said, almost triumphantly. “We’re eating captured Japanese shit.”
“Well then, I guess we better hurry up and win the war,” Charley said. “I wouldn’t want you writing Flo that we officers are starving your fat ass.”
(Two)
U.S. NAVY HOSPITAL
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
0905 HOURS 24 AUGUST 1942
The nurse bending over the chest of Captain Fleming Pickering, USNR, was a full lieutenant who had been in the Navy for six years. She was competent, aware of this, and had a well-deserved reputation among her peers as being both hard nosed and unable to suffer fools.
She looked over her shoulder when she sensed movement behind her, and barked, “You’ll have to leave. Who let you in here, anyhow? Visiting hours start at oh nine thirty.”
Pickering laughed, and it hurt.
“Lieutenant,” he said, “may I present the Secretary of the Navy?”
“Bullshit,” the lieutenant said and chuckled, then looked, and said, “Oh, my God!”
“Please carry on,” Frank Knox said. “How are you, Fleming?”
“I’m all right,” Pickering said, and then, “Jesus Christ, take it easy, will you?”
“You want an infection? I’ll stop.”
“I thought they had some new kind of miracle drug—Sulfa?—you could just sprinkle on it,” Pickering said, looking down at his chest.
“It’s bullshit,” she said. “What I’m doing works.”
“It should, it hurts like hell.”
“Be a big boy, Captain, I’m just about finished.”
“So, I suspect, am I. Finished, I mean,” Pickering said, looking at Knox.
“No,” Frank Knox said. “I checked with the hospital commander. Despite your grievous and extremely painful wounds, you’ll live. You should be out of the hospital in two weeks.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Pickering said.
“I know what you meant,” Knox said.
“I’m not finished?”
“I bring the personal greetings of the President of the United States,” Knox said. “That sound like you’re finished?”
“It sounds suspicious.”
“Take a look at this,” Knox said, and walked to the bed and handed Pickering a sheet of paper.
URGENT
CINCPAC 0915 22AUG1942
SECRET
PERSONAL FOR SEC NAVY
INFORMATION: CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS
1. CAPTAIN FLEMING PICKERING, USNR, DEPARTED PEARL HARBOR VIA MARINER AIRCRAFT FOR SANDIEGO NAVAL HOSPITAL 0815 22AUG1942. THE PROGNOSIS FOR HIS RECOVERY FROM WOUNDS TO THE CHEST AND FRACTURED ARM IS QUOTE GOOD TO EXCELLENT END QUOTE.
2. IN VIEW OF CAPTAIN PICKERINGS UNIQUE ASSIGNMENT THERE IS SOME QUESTION OF THE AUTHORITY OF THE UNDERSIGNED TO DECORATE THIS OFFICER, AND THE MATTER IS THEREFORE REFERRED FOR DETERMINATION.
3. IF CAPTAIN PICKERING WERE SUBORDINATE TO CINCPAC, THE UNDERSIGNED WOULD AWARD HIM THE SILVER STAR MEDAL WITH THE FOLLOWING CITATION: CITATION: CAPTAIN FLEMING PICKERING, USNR, WHILE ABOARD THE USS GREGORY IN THE CORAL SEA ON 18 AUGUST 1942 WAS ON THE BRIDGE WHEN THE GREGORY WAS ATTACKED BY ENEMY BOMBER AIRCRAFT. WHEN THE CAPTAIN AND THE EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF THE GREGORY WERE KILLED IN THE ENEMY ATTACK, AND DESPITE HIS GRIEVOUS AND EXTREMELY PAINFUL WOUNDS, INCLUDING A COMPOUND FRACTURE OF HIS ARM CAPTAIN PICKERING ASSUMED COMMAND OF THE VESSEL. REFUSING MEDICAL ATTENTION UNTIL HE COLLAPSED FROM LOSS OF BLOOD, CAPTAIN PICKERING MANEUVERED THE SHIP DURING THE CONTINUING ATTACK WITH CONSUMMATE MASTERY, WHICH NOT ONLY SAVED THE SHIP FROM FURTHER ENEMY DAMAGE BUT RESULTED IN THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ENEMY AIRCRAFT, A FOUR-ENGINED JAPANESE HEAVY BOMBER. HIS CALM COURAGE, ABOVE AND BEYOND THE CALL OF DUTY IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY INSPIRED HIS CREW AND REFLECTED GREAT CREDIT UPON THE OFFICER CORPS OF THE UNITED STATES NAVAL SERVICE. ENTERED THE FEDERAL SERVICE FROM CALIFORNIA
NIMITZ, ADMIRAL, USN, CINCPAC
Pickering handed the message back to Knox.
“Before you start handing out any medals, you better look at this,” Pickering said. It was handed to me a few minutes ago, just before Florence Nightingale came in here.“
“Will you hold still, please?” the nurse snapped.
Pickering handed Knox the radio message Lieutenant Pluto Hon had sent to MAGIC headquarters in Pearl Harbor.
Knox glanced at it and handed it back.
“I’ve seen it,” Knox said. “How do you think they knew where to deliver it?”
“You don’t know what it means,” Pickering said.
“I’ve got a damned good idea,” Knox said. “I also have this.”
He handed Pickering another radio message.
URGENT
SECRET
HQ FIRST MARD
IV 0845 20AUGUST 1942
SECNAV WASHINGTON DC
PLEASE PASS URGENTLY TO CAPTAIN FLEMING PICKERING USNR SERGEANT J M MOORE USMCR HAS BEEN AIRLIFTED ON MY AUTHORITY TO USNAVAL HOSPITAL PEARL HARBOR FOR TREATMENT OF WOUNDS SUFFERED IN COMBAT 19 AUGUST 1942. THE RABBIT DID NOT GET OUT OF THE HAT. BEST PERSONAL REGARDS SIGNED VANDERGRIFT MAJGEN USMC
BY DIRECTION: HARRIS BRIGGEN USMC
“I wonder what he means about the rabbit in the hat,” Knox said. “That sounds like MAGIC.”
“It never entered my mind that boy would be sent to Guadalcanal,” Pickering said. “How the hell did that happen?”
“No one knew any reason he should not have been sent. Not even me.”
“I thought it was necessary that Hon have some help.”
“So did I. That’s why I sent your secretary over there.”
“I didn’t know she was coming,” Pickering said.
“I told myself that,” Knox said.
“I think you should know that I would do the same thing again, under the same circumstances.”
“Except that next time, you might bring me in on it?”
“Yes. I am sorry about that. If it had been compromised, it would have been my fault.”
“Who else knows?”
“Just Vandergrift.”
“OK,” Knox said.
The nurse finished cleaning the wounds on Pickering’s chest.
“I’m going to send a nurse in to give you a sponge bath,” she said. “And this time, you will not run her off.”
“Yes, Ma‘am,” Pickering said.
“You’re on the way to recovery. Don’t screw it up by getting yourself infected,” the nurse said.
“No, Ma‘am,” Pickering said, and then to Knox: “I don’t suppose you know how badly Moore was hurt?”
“He’s well enough to be flown home; I ordered that.”
“That kid should be an officer,” Pickering said.
“Why don’t you make up a list of things you think the Secretary of the Navy should do?” Knox said, and then called after the nurse, “Lieutenant, there’s a Captain Haughton and a lady out there. Would you send them in, please?”
“Yes, Sir.”
Captain David Haughton held the door open for Patricia Pickering to enter her husband’s hospital room.
She looked at him. Tears welled in her eyes.
“You goddamned old fool, you!” she said, and walked to the bed and kissed him.
“Haughton,” the Secretary of the Navy ordered. “Give him the medal. I think we can dispense with the reading of the citation.”
(Three)
BUKA, SOLOMON ISLANDS
1105 HOURS 24 AUGUST 1942
“Here you go, Steve,” First Lieutenant Joseph L. Howard, USMCR, said to Sergeant Stephen M. Koffler, USMC, handing him a limp, humidity-soaked piece of paper. He had had to be very careful as he encrypted the message so that his pencil would not tear through the paper.
Koffler smiled at him and laid the paper on the crude table. Koffler, Howard thought, looked like hell. There were signs of malnutrition and fatigue. There was a good chance that Koffler had malaria. There was no question that he had a tape worm, and probably a half dozen other intestinal parasites.
Koffler thought much the same thing about Joe Howard, who was down to probably one hundred thirty pounds, and whose eyes were deeply sunken and unnaturally bright.
But, like Howard, he kept his thoughts to himself. Talking about it wasn’t going to fix anything.
“Hey!” Koffler called. Ian Bruce was sitting on the generator. He smiled, exposing his black, filed to a point teeth, and began to pump slowly but forcefully.
There was a whine; and after a moment, the dials on Koffler’s radio began to glow a dull yellow. The yellow turned almost white, and the needles came off their pegs.
Koffler put earphones on his head and arranged his own pad of paper on the table. He had attempted to dry out his paper on a heated rock. The result was that the paper had shrunk and twisted.
Koffler reached for the key.
The dots and dashes went out, repeated three times, spelling out simply, FRD6. FRD6. FRD6.
Detachment A of Special Marine Corps Detachment 14 is attempting to establish contact with any station on this communications network.
This time, for a change, there was an immediate reply.
FRD6.FRD1.FRD6.FRD1.FRD6.FRD1.
Hello, Detachment A, this is Headquarters Royal Australian Navy Coastwatcher Establishment, Townesville, Australia, responding to your call.
As Koffler reached for the RECEIVE/XMIT switch, there was another reply.
FRD6.KCY.FRD6.KCY.FRD6.KCY.
Hello, Detachment A, this is the United States Pacific Fleet Radio Station at Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii responding to your call.
“What’s that?” Joe Howard asked.
“We got both Townesville and Pearl Harbor,” Koffler said. Meanwhile his fingers were on the key.
FRD1.FRD1.SB CODE. KCY.KCY.PLS COPY.
Townesville, stand by to copy encrypted message. CINCPAC Radio, please copy my transmission to FRD1.
FRD6.FRD1. GA.
Townesville to Detachment A: Go ahead.
KCY.FRD6.WILL COPY YRS FRD1.GA.
CINCPAC to Detachment A. As requested we will copy your transmission to FRD1. Go ahead.
Koffler put the sheet of damp paper Howard had given him under his left hand, then pointed his index finger at the first block of five characters.
As his right hand worked the telegrapher’s key, his index finger swept across the coded message. It is more difficult to transmit code than plain English, for the simple reason that code doesn’t make any sense.
It took him not quite sixty seconds before he sent, in the clear, END.
FRD6.FRD1.VRF.
Detachment A, this is Townesville. I am about to send to you the material you just transmitted to me for purposes of verification.
FRD1.FRD6.GA
Townesville, this is Detachment A. Go ahead.
Koffler picked up a stubby pencil carefully.
We’re running out of pencils, too. If something doesn’t happen, if they don’t send us some supplies, I’ll be taking traffic from the Townesville and the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific by writing it with a sharp stick in the dirt floor.
After the message was received, Koffler handed it to Howard, who checked it against his original. Then Koffler began to write down the verification from Pearl Harbor.
The message informed both the Royal Australian Navy Coastwatcher Establishment and the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, that Detachment A had observed, beginning at 1025 hours, a fleet of approximately ninety-six Japanese aircraft, consisting of approximately thirty Aichi D3A1 “Val” aircraft; ten Mitsubishi G4M1 Type 1 “Betty” Aircraft; fifteen Nakajima B5N1 “Kate” aircraft and approximately forty-one Mitsubishi A6M2 Model 21 “Zero” aircraft, flying at altitudes ranging from 5,000 to 15,000 feet, on a course which would probably lead them to Guadalcanal.
Howard wanted to make sure the message had been correctly transmitted. It took a little time.
FRD6.KCY ?????????
Detachment A. This is CINCPAC Radio. What’s going on? We haven’t heard from you in ninety seconds.
KCY.FRD6. FU FU.
CINCPAC Radio. This is Detachment A. Fuck You Twice.
“OK, Steve,” Howard said. “Tell them we verify.”
FRD6.FRD1.KCY. OK VRF. SB.
Detachment A to Townesville and Pearl Harbor. Verification is acknowledged. Detachment A is standing by.
FRD1.FDR6. SB TO COPY CODE.
FDR6. GA.
A minute later, Sergeant Stephen Koffler asked rhetorically, as he scribbled furiously, “what the hell are they sending us, the goddamned Bible?”
The message took three minutes to take down.
FDR1.FDR6. CLR.
Townesville to Detachment A. We have no further traffic for you at this time and are clearing this channel.
/> FDR6.FDR1. CLR.
Detachment A to Townesville. OK, Townesville, Good-bye.
KCY.FD6. FOLLOWING FOR COMMANDING OFFICER. PASS TO ALL HANDS. WELL DONE. NIMITZ. ADMIRAL.KCY CLR.
FRD6.KCY. GRBL. RPT.
Detachment A to CINCPAC Radio. Your last transmission was received garbled. Please repeat it.
KCY.FD6. FOLLOWING FOR COMMANDING OFFICER. PASS TO ALL HANDS. WELL DONE. NIMITZ. ADMIRAL.KCY CLR.
“I’ll be goddamned,” Sergeant Koffler said, and sent: FRD.6.KCY.CLR.
“Ian!” he called to the now completely sweat-soaked man pumping the generator. When he had his attention, he made a cutting motion across his throat.
“About fucking time!” Ian Bruce replied.
Steve handed the sheet of paper to Joe Howard.
“You think that’s for real?” he asked.
“I can’t imagine CINCPAC Radio fucking around,” Howard said, seriously. “I’ll be damned.”
“What was the long code?” Steve asked.
Howard handed it to him.
Deeply regret am unable to relieve or reinforce at this time. Cannot overstate importance of what you are doing. Hang in there. Semper Fi. Banning.
“That’s all there was?” Koffler asked.
“That’s not enough?” Howard asked.
“You know what I meant,” Koffler said. “I thought he was sending the goddamned Bible.”
“That was all, Steve.”
“Are we going to get out of here?”
“Until we got that ‘Well Done’ from the Commander-in-Chief Pacific, I thought so,” Howard said. But when he saw the look on Koffler’s face, he quickly added, “Just kidding, for Christ’s sake.”
“I was thinking of Daphne this morning,” Koffler said. “I can’t remember what she looks like. Ain’t that a bitch?”
“When you see her, you’ll know who she is,” Howard said seriously. “Let’s go get something to eat.”
(Four)