Long Walk To The Sun (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 1)

by William Peter Grasso

  Jock jumped from his seat and interrupted the Aussie. “That’s no good. We’ll be on those damned planes all night. We’ll be exhausted before we even get started.”

  “There is no other choice, Captain,” the Aussie replied. “Japanese air power is too strong to risk the flight in broad daylight. Once the Catalinas drop off you and your men, they’ll depart with great haste, I assure you.”

  Jock scowled and sat back down. There was no point debating operational plans with a mere briefing officer. “Go ahead,” he said to the Aussie. “Let’s see what other gems you’ve got up your sleeve…so I can get them all changed at once.”

  The Aussie shrugged arrogantly and returned to the map. “It’s about eighty miles due west across the peninsula from Temple Bay to Weipa. A detail of Nackeroos”—Jock’s men snickered again at the mention of that name—“will meet you with vehicles and transport you to here.” He pointed to a dot on the map about halfway across the peninsula, a place called Moreton, where a thin black line—a road, maybe just a trail—met a thin blue line: a river. “Moreton—that’s as far as the trucks can go cross-country and still get back on their petrol load.” With a cocksure grin, he added, “There are no petrol stations in the bush, Yanks.” He paused, waiting for the laughter he felt sure would come. It never did. The Aussie broke the awkward silence with, “You’ll be on foot from there.”

  Jock wasn’t happy with the plan at all. “About forty miles on foot,” he said, “a good two days’ forced march…totally on our own, in the middle of fucking nowhere.” It came out as more of a lament than a statement of the obvious.

  “You may not need to walk that far to find the Japanese, Captain,” the Aussie replied. “But it will be a nasty walk, regardless…just you, the abos, and the crocs.”

  “Speaking of Aborigines,” Jock said, “why can’t you provide us one as a guide?”

  It was the Aussie’s turn to snicker. “Oh, you don’t want that. Didn’t you get the word? We expect the abos to collaborate with the Japanese. Any guide familiar with Cape York will have tribal ties there and cannot be trusted. The same goes for any abos you encounter along the way.”

  In a stage whisper, one of Jock’s men wisecracked, “Why don’t they just shoot us all now?” Another faceless voice added: “Yeah. Save the Japs the trouble.”

  “All right, men…at ease,” Jock said, and the room fell quiet. Turning back to the Aussie, he asked, “What’s the plan for getting us back out?”

  “It’s expected that your removal will be the reverse of your insertion, Captain Miles. But of course, high command prefers to remain fluid, based on your circumstances.”

  Jock could not hide his disgust as he said, “In other words, you have no plan.” Turning to Patchett, he said, “First Sergeant, move the men out. We’re done here.”

  The Aussie was suddenly flustered. “But I’m not finished,” he said.

  “Yeah, you are,” Jock replied. Not bothering to shake the Aussie’s hand, he added, “I realize you’re just the messenger boy here…but thanks for nothing, mate.”

  As the men of Task Force Miles—exchanging wisecracks once again—filed from the room, Patchett said to Jock, “Maybe we oughta take ourselves a chaplain, too, sir? You know…for the last rites?” He followed his gallows humor with a wink and a wry smile.

  Waiting outside the briefing room was another Australian Army officer, this one a major. As First Sergeant Patchett formed the men for the march back to the company area, the Aussie major approached Jock Miles. His uniform was ill-fitting, as if he had carelessly donned someone else’s. He had none of the arrogance of the captain who had given the briefing. His manner was casual and confident, as if accustomed to receiving respect without having to demand it.

  “Captain Miles,” the Aussie major said, offering his hand rather than returning Jock’s salute. “I believe you’re in a need of a medic? I’m Dunbar Green. Perhaps I can help. May I call you Jock?”

  Jock thought that perhaps he should pinch himself, in case he was dreaming. In the midst of a day that had offered nothing but dismal news so far, he had just been cut a terrific break. Major Dunbar Green, Royal Australian Army Medical Corps, was far more than the medic Task Force Miles so sorely needed. He was a full-fledged doctor—and he was volunteering to go with them into the Cape York wilderness.

  Even better, he was familiar with the terrain, wildlife, and people of the Cape. “I’ve spent a few months working at the missions up that way,” Doc Green explained. “Even been to Weipa once,” he added, “though it was quite a while ago.”

  “But how did you find out about this task force?” Jock asked. “Don’t tell me the whole damned world knows about us? It’s supposed to be a secret.”

  “No, I don’t think the whole world knows, Captain. I was only told because I’m assigned to give you lads your briefing on the Cape York environment tomorrow…you know, natural hazards, diseases, hygiene—”

  “But Major—”

  “Please…call me Doc.”

  “Okay, Doc it is. But aren’t you assigned to duty here in Brisbane? How can you just pick up and go to the field with us?”

  Doc Green found that funny. “They’d be more than glad to get rid of me for a while. My CO at the surgical hospital and I know each other from our mufti days. We worked at the same hospital in Sydney. Let’s just say we’re not exactly chums.”

  Jock didn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but something was still troubling him. Hesitantly, he said, “Begging your pardon, Doc, but I’m a little…I don’t know…uneasy that you outrank me. It could lead to confusion for my men…maybe bring up questions of who’s really in command.”

  Green began to laugh again as he pointed to the insignia of rank on his epaulets. “Jock, I only wear these crowns because that’s what they pinned on me when I was inducted. I’m no more a soldier than the bloke in the moon. You’d be the boss, always…I’m just the doc.”

  “Okay, fine,” Jock said. “But why do you want to go with us at all?”

  “I’m not doing much good around here, Jock, and I’d love one more chance to help stick it to the bloody Nips. I was in Papua, you know…bloody shame, it was. And I heard some of the bullshit that wanker of a captain was shoveling at you. To be honest, Jock, there’re good reasons almost nobody lives on the Cape. The Japs may prove to be the least of your problems. You’re going to need all the help you can get just to survive.”

  “I guess I can’t argue with any of that. Welcome aboard, Doc.”

  They shook hands with great enthusiasm. “Outstanding!” Doc Green said. “When do we ship out?”

  “In two more days.”

  “I’d better get packing, then. May I billet with you and your men right away? Like right now?”

  “By all means, Doc. By the way, you said ‘surgical hospital.’ You’re a surgeon?”

  “No, Jock…I’m a gyno.”

  The next words that came from Jock’s mouth sounded like those of a man who fully understood what he had just been told but refused to believe it. “A what?” he asked, his voice climbing half an octave on the what.

  “A gynecologist,” Green replied.

  The stunned look on Jock’s face prompted Doc Green to expand on his answer a bit. “But don’t worry,” he added. “I know all the man parts pretty well, too.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The three-man radio team had just arrived from Division. They snapped to attention at Melvin Patchett’s command as Jock Miles entered the dayroom. There were other new arrivals, too: sitting in the middle of the floor were three large, olive drab backpacks. Each pack was box-shaped and looked like it weighed a ton. One of the new men, wearing the newly-introduced rank of T/4—a buck sergeant with a capital T under the chevrons, designating technical expertise—said, “Sergeant Botkin, reporting as ordered, sir.”

  “At ease,” Jock replied. “Introduce me to your men, Sergeant Botkin.”

  Pointing to a tall, strapping red-haired you
ng man, Botkin said, “This is PFC McGuire. And to his right, we have PFC Savastano.”

  “Where do you men call home?” Jock asked.

  “I’m from Springfield, Illinois, sir,” Botkin replied.

  Then it was McGuire’s turn: “Boston, sir.” It came out Baasten, with that broad, flat a.

  Jock smiled and said, “Beantown…who wouldn’t have guessed that? How about you, Savastano?’

  “The Bronx, sir.”

  Melvin Patchett grumbled from behind his desk. “Great…s’more damn Yankees.”

  “Don’t mind Top,” Jock said. “He can’t help it he’s from Alabama. I’m a Massachusetts man myself, McGuire. I’m from Pittsfield.”

  McGuire’s eyes brightened as he joked, “So you’re from way out west, eh, sir?”

  “Yep, about as far west as you can go and still be a bay stater,” Jock said as his attention shifted to the three backpacks on the floor. “Are those the radio sets? How many did you bring?”

  “Only one, sir,” Botkin replied. “It breaks down into these three packs.”

  “And if anything happens to any one of these packs?”

  “We’re out of commission, sir.”

  Swell…and the whole mission goes to shit.

  Botkin was eager to press on. “Can I give you the two dollar tour, sir?”

  “By all means, Sergeant.”

  Botkin and his men went to work. In a few minutes, they had assembled the bulky receiver-transmitter unit onto its short-legged folding table, attached its vertical antenna, and wired it to a hand crank generator. With Botkin crouched before the console, he began his presentation. “This is the latest in field radios, sir…the SCR-284. It transmits high-frequency signals on either AM voice or CW…that’s continuous wave transmission using Morse code…with a CW output of twenty-four watts.” He ignored the brief frowns of the company commander and first sergeant; apparently, they knew damned well what CW meant. “It’s the only radio in our inventory with the range required for this mission. With the right atmospheric conditions, they should be able to copy our CW signal halfway around the world.”

  Jock had a question. “The right conditions, you say, Sergeant…Will we be able to communicate with Brisbane reliably from way up north in Cape York? Won’t the mountains on the east coast disrupt radio signals?”

  With easy confidence, Botkin answered, “Normally, they might, sir. But we’ve established fixed radio stations on a number of peaks in the Gregory Range to snoop on the Japs. Those stations are only three to four hundred miles from where we’ll be, and they all have very sensitive antenna arrays. We’ve just set up a station at Iron Range, too, where we’ve been trying to build that airfield. That’s only about a hundred miles away. None of those stations will have any trouble working us and relaying our messages. And they all have excellent direction-finding capability, which we’ll need to pinpoint our location. We can use the azimuth vectors from two or more DF stations to figure out exactly where we are. That’s how we’ve been getting fixes on the Jap ground transmitter up there ever since they landed—”

  “Wait a damned minute,” Jock interrupted, suddenly agitated by what Botkin had just said. “You mean to tell me we know where the Jap transmitter is?” From the corner of his eye, he could see Melvin Patchett’s face growing red, too. He knew what the First Sergeant was thinking: Ain’t that just like the goddamn Army to send you looking for something when they already know where it is? And we’ve got to find this out from a lowly little buck sergeant, to boot? Jock was thinking exactly the same thing.

  “Well…yes and no, sir,” Botkin replied. “Their transmitter keeps moving.”

  “Moving? Where?”

  “So far, sir, it’s been within a two hundred square mile area north, south, and east of Weipa. It may even be more than one transmitter moving around. Even though it transmits at the exact same time every night, at twenty-two fifteen hours, the signal never comes from the same place twice.”

  Jock thought that over for a moment before saying, “So the Air Force can’t bomb something we can’t pinpoint.”

  “Exactly, sir,” Botkin said. “We haven’t been able to crack their code yet, either, so we have no idea what they’re saying. We’re pretty sure they’re giving status updates to their base at Rabaul, though.”

  Jock felt himself calming down. Perhaps he had been a little too quick to judgment. Who can blame me for being jumpy? After all, just about everything else about this mission has been a circle jerk from the word go. He could see the normal color returning to Patchett’s face, too.

  It was time to get back to technical matters. “How does this setup work, exactly?” Jock asked.

  “Well, sir, one man does the sending and receiving,” Botkin said, tapping a few dots and dashes on the Morse code key attached to the unit’s table. “The other two take turns cranking the hand generator. The one not cranking stands guard. All three of us are qualified radio telegraph operators, and I’ve been to the tech school on this unit. I can repair it in the field, if necessary.”

  “That sounds fine, Sergeant,” Jock said. “But I have one more question. How good at weightlifting are you three?”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “The three packs the set breaks down to…how much does each one weigh?”

  “About fifty pounds a piece, sir.”

  “They did explain to you up at Division that this mission is a long-distance foot recon patrol that could last a week…maybe more by the time we walk back out?”

  The look on Botkin’s face could not have been more earnest. “Yes, sir. We understand that. Fully.”

  “So tell me, Sergeant…how do you expect to do a forced march of twenty or more miles a day with all that weight on your back…in tropical weather…for a week or more?”

  A look of relief came over Botkin’s face. Almost apologetically, he said, “Oh, no, sir…we don’t plan to carry them on our backs. We used some Yankee ingenuity and built little carts for them.”

  Miles and Patchett spoke the same word almost at once: “Carts?”

  “Yes, sir,” Botkin replied. “You remember Radio Flyers? Those little red wagons kids play with? Lightweight, man-carryable, sturdy as hell…just about indestructible? Well, we modified three of them…put on fatter wheels so they wouldn’t sink into soft ground and drilled some holes in the bed so they didn’t fill up with water. Of course, we painted them army green, too. One pack fits in one wagon perfectly, with room to spare. We could drag them around at normal walking speed for months.” He paused, savoring the astonished expressions on the faces of the captain and first sergeant. “Radio Flyer…that’s a pretty appropriate name, don’t you think, sir?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in a buoyant mood. Maybe it was caused by the lovely June morning outside the Oval Office windows. Perhaps it was just the afterglow of his latest therapeutic trip to the Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia. Whatever the reason, he felt triumphant. Surprising, he thought, considering how little my military chiefs have given me to feel triumphant about lately. But as he gazed upon those military chiefs now sitting before him, he somehow had the feeling this morning might be different. He was ready for some good news for a change.

  Admiral King, Chief of Naval Operations, would have the first chance to disappoint the president, although he believed he was doing just the opposite. “There’s good news from Hawaii, Mister President,” the CNO said. “Nimitz reports excellent progress on the Red Hill Project. We’re well ahead of schedule and now have nearly fifty percent storage capacity available.”

  FDR was grinning from ear to ear. “That’s wonderful! How soon can we fill that capacity with fuel oil for the fleet?”

  “We’re already thirty percent full, Mister President. We’ve been working the tanker fleet to exhaustion, but so far they’ve handled the challenges magnificently. At our current replenishment rate, we can hit fifty percent by the end of July.”

  T
he president restrained the urge to feel giddy. Treading carefully so as not to be let down too hard, he asked, “And what does that fifty percent get us in terms of naval capability?”

  “Well…it expands the range of our one operational carrier group defending Hawaii, Mister President.”

  “That belabors the obvious, Admiral,” FDR said, his impatience flaring. “What I want to know is what new capabilities it gives us.”

  King knew what the president wanted to hear. What the president might want, though, and what the CNO thought was a good idea were not necessarily the same thing. Steeling himself, he replied, “Theoretically, it gives us the capability to make another carrier group operational in the Pacific—”

  “I’ll take it,” FDR said, his fist gleefully pounding the desk, a gesture that mimed rubber-stamping his approval.

  “I said theoretically, Mister President.”

  “You can either fuel your ships or you can’t, Admiral King. What’s theoretical about that?”

  “There are many thorny issues yet to be resolved, Mister President. Having the fuel in storage tanks on land is not the same as having it in a warship’s bunker.”

  “Again, Admiral, you belabor the obvious. You already said you’ve worked wonders with the logistical issues. I expect you to keep doing so.”

  King realized he had made a mistake and was now on dangerous ground. You could not be vague with Franklin Delano Roosevelt about nautical matters; he simply had too much experience in the Department of the Navy. The CNO had no choice but to come clean about his reluctance to deploy a second carrier group in the Pacific. The president, though, beat him to the punch.

  “I understand your unwillingness, Admiral King,” FDR said. “You don’t want to commit to the fight at anything less than full strength. There’s a great deal of merit in caution…but right now, caution is a luxury we don’t have. Whatever naval capability we can reacquire, we must find a way to put it to offensive use against the Japanese immediately. The American people demand it, and we must deliver. Do I make myself clear?”