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

by William Peter Grasso

  “A good night’s sleep.” As if she had not already made her rejection plain enough, she added, “Alone.”

  “Perhaps I can call on you tomorrow evening,” he said. “We can listen to Liszt together…”

  Jillian wanted to laugh out loud for a variety of reasons. Listening to a drunk try to pronounce listen to Liszt—which came out as an almost unintelligible slurry of sh sounds—was only the first reason. But she contained her mirth, thinking instead, It might not be so bad to enjoy and discuss great music with someone who knew what he was talking about.

  “Fine, Bob,” she said as she wheeled Franz around and began to trot away. “Just leave the saké at the whorehouse.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Of the 16 men in Task Force Miles, only Jock and Doc Green had ever flown in an airplane before. As the 14 first-time flyers climbed down from the deuce and a half to the boat dock at Brisbane River, they looked with a mixture of awe and trepidation upon the two dark blue RAAF Catalina flying boats afloat at their moorings. One was marked with a large block letter “L” in dull white next to the RAAF roundel on the fuselage, the other with an “M.”

  Even to experienced flyers, the first look at a Catalina—Cat for short—rarely inspired confidence in its abilities as a flying machine. It looked more like a long, squat boat which someone, as an afterthought, had decided to suspend from a wide slab of wing. Then they stuck some tail feathers at the aft end. The two engines that sprouted from that wing seemed tiny and insufficient to get the awkward contraption into the air. The dark blue paint looked faded and shabby even in the gentle, forgiving light of sunrise. Machine gunner Nicky Russo summed up everyone’s feelings: “We should’ve taken the train…or another goddamn boat.”

  “These things look god-awful enormous when you see ’em overhead,” Melvin Patchett added as he took the airplanes’ measure. “They don’t look near so big when they’re sittin’ in the water. We’re all gonna fit in just two?”

  “There’s enough room inside, Top,” Jock said. “Let’s form the men up and do a weapons check.”

  “Very well, sir,” Patchett replied. Within moments, he had the task force’s enlisted men in inspection ranks. “HEAR ME GOOD,” the first sergeant bellowed. “THE RULE FOR PASSENGERS IS NO LOADED WEAPONS ONBOARD THE AIRCRAFT. ANY ONE OF YOU TOUCH-HOLES EVEN THINKS ABOUT PUTTING A ROUND IN THE CHAMBER BEFORE WE GET TO TEMPLE BAY, YOU’LL WISH YOU NEVER FELL OUTTA YOUR MAMA’S TWAT.”

  The RAAF men on the dock were getting one hell of a kick watching Melvin Patchett lay down the law.

  “AND ANOTHER THING,” Patchett continued. “IF YOU PUKE, YOU CLEAN IT UP. NOW, SERGEANT HADLEY, YOUR TEAM RIDES IN THE AIRCRAFT MARKED ‘L FOR LOVE’ WITH THE CAPTAIN AND THE DOC. SERGEANTS ROPER AND BOTKIN, YOUR TEAMS RIDE WITH ME IN THE AIRCRAFT MARKED ‘M FOR MOTHER.’ ANY QUESTIONS?”

  There were no questions, to no one’s surprise.

  “OUTSTANDING! THOSE LAUNCHES WILL TAKE US OUT TO THE PLANES…LET’S MOVE OUT!”

  The launches brought them to a waist gunner’s blister on the aft fuselage of each aircraft, its clear canopy rolled open. The men of Task Force Miles quickly began to hoist themselves and their equipment onboard. Once inside and struggling to cram themselves into the crew’s bunk compartment, they found themselves even less confident in their mode of transportation. Directly above them sat the flight engineer, manning his control panel in the cabane strut that connected the fuselage to the wing. Jock’s men felt like they were being wedged into the bottom of a flimsy tin can. And it stunk to high heavens—a pungent combination of decayed food, sea water, chemical toilet, and body odor.

  Nicky Russo surveyed the cramped confines, the belts of .30 caliber machine gun ammo crisscrossing his torso making him look like some Mexican bandit. Shaking his head, he loudly expressed the collective dismay: “I don’t think this piece of shit’s gonna fly…and it smells like my grandfather’s ass in here!” To everyone’s mute surprise, he walked back to the waist gun blister and announced, “I’m getting off this son of a bitch.” In another moment, he was climbing out of the plane, back into the launch.

  Jock Miles, in the cockpit going over maps at the navigator’s table with Wing Commander Tim Wells, was unaware of Russo’s vanishing act until he heard Sergeant Hadley yell, “Hey, Russo, where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

  “Ahh, shit,” Jock said. “What the hell is going on back there? Could we hold up for a minute, sir, while I square this away?”

  Tim Wells nodded sympathetically. “By all means,” he replied.

  Jock climbed out of the flying boat and into the launch with Nicky Russo and the puzzled Aussie helmsman. Russo was standing aimlessly amidship, arms crossed, his grand, mutinous exit complete. Once back on shore, he expected to be dragged off by the MPs, who would lock him up in the stockade pending his court martial. He had it all figured out:

  Court martial…big fucking deal. They take away my one stripe and throw me in the can for a couple of months…maybe a couple of years. Better than playing hide and seek with the Japs in the middle of nowhere. Who knows…maybe the captain won’t even come back from that circle jerk…or that redneck prick first sergeant, either.

  But the look on Captain Jock Miles’s face was not what Nicky Russo expected. Rather than the hard-set jaw and pinpoint stare of a military man about to dispense military discipline, Captain Miles studied him with an air of easy surety. He had the look of a man who had faced—and beaten—his demons a long time ago. There was even a slight, but comforting, smile on his face as he said, not in the strident voice of a hardass company commander but a father confessor, “You’ve come a long way to let yourself down like this, Nick.”

  The first thought that raced through Nicky Russo’s mind was, Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Captain. But Miles’s words had stung him; he had come a long way. He had finally become best at something—the machine gun—and with that status had come benefits: nobody had tried to fuck him over ever since. And they would not, unless he gave them an excuse. At the moment, he was creating one hell of an excuse.

  The captain is looking right through me! He knows I’m just scared out of my fucking mind. Who wouldn’t be? But am I that big a pussy that I won’t get back on that airplane?

  Nicky Russo answered his own question. As his fingers played with the ammunition belts draped around him, he thought, If I’m going to dress up like Pancho Fucking Villa, I’d better play the part.

  Jock watched Russo’s defiance crack away, a little piece at a time. It was like watching those films of melting icebergs, where huge sheets suddenly break off and slide away into the sea. It takes some time, but the mammoth iceberg disappears into the warm, welcoming water.

  “I just needed a breath of fresh air, Captain.”

  Inwardly, Jock breathed a sigh of relief. It would have been so easy just to throw PFC Nicholas Russo in the stockade. The mission would have carried on without him, even if he was the best machine gunner I’ve got. That’s the way the brass hats would want it, but that wouldn’t have been real leadership in my book…not the kind of leader I want to be, anyway. He’s just scared. Shit, we all are…Hell, even an old bulldog like Melvin Patchett would try to relight a guy’s fire one last time before snuffing it out for good.

  Another launch circled alongside. Its helmsman made an impatient what gives? gesture, with arms open, palms skyward. Jock put his hand on Russo’s shoulder. “Come on, Nick, we’re holding up the show.”

  Russo climbed back into the flying boat first. Once in the cabin, he turned to Jock, and with his best bullshitter’s smile on his face said, “But it still smells like an elephant took a shit in here, Captain.”

  “Probably not an elephant,” Doc Green said, who, in preparation for a nap was fluffing his pack to use as a pillow. “But perhaps a mob of kangaroos…”

  The Cat’s flight crew, at least, found that very funny. With a big smile on his face, Tim Wells addressed his passengers. “Sorry about the rank odor, lads, but
that’s what happens when these girls get flown ’round the clock. But trust me...the only aroma you have to worry about is the smell of petrol. If you start to get a whiff of that, we’re all in big trouble.”

  “Why, sir?” Nicky Russo asked. “Does that mean we’ve got a leak…and we’re going to blow up?”

  Jock had watched the fear creep back into Russo’s face as he spoke. There better be a hell of a punch line coming, Wing Commander, or I’m back to square one with Russo.

  “Blow up from a leak? Maybe,” Wells replied, very nonchalantly. “But worse than that, your General MacArthur will surely beat our brains in for wasting precious fuel.”

  The Aussie flight crew was laughing again but stopped suddenly when two massive .50 caliber machine guns were hoisted onboard. As the gunners loaded thick belts of ammo into the fifties—with bullets that looked the size of Coke bottles—the somber realization they would soon be flying into harm’s way returned to everyone onboard the Cat.

  “Now we’re ready to fly,” Tim Wells said.

  The engines coughed to life in great puffs of grayish-white smoke, and Wells addressed his passengers one more time: “I’d like all you lads to put those life vests on now. There may not be much time if we have to go for a swim.”

  Despite the doubts of Jock’s men, the Catalinas did eventually fly. The takeoff run down the river seemed to go on forever, thumping and bumping along in the light chop—and occasionally slamming hard, like a speedboat crossing a wake—until the Cats finally broke free from the water’s surface and the ride suddenly felt very smooth. They certainly were not fast, but in the 15 minutes since lifting off the river, the flying boats had climbed to 5,000 feet and were heading north, up the east coast of Australia. L for Love, with Tim Wells at the controls, was the lead plane. M for Mother flew in trail, slightly below and off the leader’s right wing.

  For all the wonder and grandeur of flying, an airplane passenger’s existence at cruise is mostly spent fending off boredom and imagining the passage of time has come to a screeching halt. A few of Jock’s men tried—like Doc Green—to sleep the flight away, but the unfamiliar sensations of being airborne in this ungainly machine kept all the first-time flyers wide awake. Fortunately, it had been a smooth flight so far, with little of the sudden ups and downs that displaced one’s stomach. But the drone of the props, the rumble of the engines, and the steady whistle of the slipstream over the airframe made normal conversation difficult.

  A protocol was devised—mainly with hand signals and a few shouted words—so each man could, in rotation, spend some time in the waist gun blister alongside the gunner, viewing the panorama of land, sea, and sky. Out the left blister were the rugged mountains extending far inland from Australia’s east coast, a few rising as high as their aircraft. Out the right blister was the shimmering blue of the Pacific, dotted by a small handful of ships bringing more American troops and supplies to Australia. When viewed against the backdrops of an endless ocean and the vastness of Australia, those ships looked like they could provide little more than a drop in the bucket for the war effort. The gunners kept the blisters closed, with the .50 calibers inside, as they scanned their sectors for any threat. Should enemy aircraft be sighted, they would quickly roll open the blisters. The machine gun would then be swung out into firing position.

  Sergeant Hadley shouted a question to one of the gunners. “How come you just don’t leave them open, with the guns at the ready?”

  “Because it’s bloody noisy enough in here as it is,” was the reply. “It only takes a couple of seconds to get the gun ready to fire.” Despite the Aussie gunner’s air of experience, the American sergeant hoped with all his heart that a couple of seconds would be enough if they got jumped by Japanese fighters.

  “You ever run into any Jap planes around here?” Hadley asked.

  The gunner nodded, pointing to some small, patched punctures in the cabin’s thin aluminum skin. Hadley had not noticed them before—a dozen, perhaps, each patch covering what was once a bullet hole.

  After his turn in the blister, Hadley climbed over his sprawled team members, making his way to Jock Miles. “Sir,” the sergeant said, “those mountains all along the coast…they look pretty rough. We won’t have to climb any like those to get inland, will we?”

  “No,” Jock replied, “the mountain chain starts to level out north of Cairns, just like I showed you on the map. We’ll be in the trucks when we go through what’s left of them.”

  About an hour into the flight, Tim Wells left the cockpit to use the chemical toilet which sat prominently in the aft end of the cabin, affording its user no privacy. Stepping around the men of Task Force Miles and their equipment, he startled them all by dropping his trousers and skivvies to his ankles and plopping down on the bowl. Sergeant Hadley began to admonish his men, who were all gawking in astonishment at a sight they had never seen and were unlikely to see again: a wing commander—equating to a lieutenant colonel in their army—relaxing on the throne. Even the latrines they had dug during maneuvers had separate accommodations for the officers, screened off by a tarpaulin.

  “GIVE THE WING COMMANDER SOME PRIVACY,” Hadley barked. “AVERT YOUR EYES.”

  Nobody in the aircraft was laughing harder at Tom Hadley’s ridiculous demand than Wing Commander Tim Wells. “That’s all right, Sergeant,” Wells said once he caught his breath. “There’s no such thing as privacy on a bird like this. When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go.”

  His business finished, Wells hitched up his trousers and beckoned Jock to join him in the cockpit. “My navigator noticed something I think you should see, Captain Miles,” he said.

  Jock joined Wells and the navigator, a prematurely gray flight sergeant, at the chart table. “Flight Sergeant Wilcox will explain,” the pilot said.

  “Something fishy with your maps, sir,” Wilcox began, folding one of Jock’s topographic maps so its lines of latitude and longitude at Temple Bay aligned with the aviation chart on the table. “They’re very old…based on a 1910 survey.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Jock said.

  “We’ve come up with new charts,” Wilcox continued, “based on surveys done last year. I know your Yank aviators have the latest ones, but I guess they didn’t get them out to you ground troops yet.” He laid a plotter on the aviation chart. “Look at the coordinates for the most westward point on Temple Bay, sir, where we’ll be landing tomorrow.”

  Jock leaned over the table, moving his fingers along the plotter’s smooth, clear surface. “Okay, got it,” he said.

  “Now, let’s do the same thing on your map,” Wilcox said, moving the plotter over. “See the difference? That same point on Temple Bay is off by almost a minute north and east on your map. If you’re trying to use it for celestial or radio DF navigation out in the middle of nowhere, you could be about a mile away from where you think you are.”

  Jock felt his mood darkening. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “That could really screw things up, and there’s not much margin for error when you’ve got to walk everywhere. I don’t suppose you’ve got extra maps I can have?”

  “Sorry, sir…afraid not,” Wilcox replied. “I’d give you this aviation chart, but it won’t do you much good as a topographic map once you’re on the ground. Everything’s hard to come by these days…maps, petrol, spare parts…”

  “Yeah, I know, I know,” Jock said. “Any chance of radioing ahead to Cairns? Maybe they can drum up a few for me.”

  “Certainly,” Tim Wells replied. “We’ll give it a try.”

  Jock smiled in gratitude. “Well, even if they can’t come up with any,” he said, “at least I’m aware of the problem.”

  Scooter Brewster was desperate for an excuse to enter General Briley’s office. Colonel Snow was in there with the general, and he felt sure they were discussing Task Force Miles. Brewster’s curiosity was killing him.

  One of the Aussie secretaries gave him the excuse he needed. As she approached the office door with a pile of disp
atches for the general, Brewster stopped her and took the papers from her hands. “That’s okay, Miss Cobham. I’ll bring them in,” he said.

  Annie Cobham raised a skeptical eyebrow. Ordinarily, this pompous little wanker of a lieutenant would never lower himself to do women’s work. But here he was, volunteering.

  The dickhead must want to get in there awfully bad, she thought. Oh, well…no skin off my nose.

  She shrugged and walked away. Triumphantly, Brewster knocked on the office door.

  “Ahh, Brewster,” General Briley said. “What’ve you got there?”

  “Just the afternoon dispatches, sir.”

  Now it was the general’s turn to raise a skeptical eyebrow. “Why are you bringing them?” he asked. “Did all the young ladies break their legs?”

  “No, sir…I didn’t think you’d want any secretary hearing your discussion.”

  Scooter placed the papers on Briley’s desk. Once that was done, he braced to parade rest. Colonel Snow, standing silent with pointer in hand at a large map of Australia hanging on the wall, did a slow burn.

  “You’re absolutely right,” the general said. “A secretary should not hear what’s being said in here…and neither should you. You are dismissed, Lieutenant.”

  Once Brewster had slunk from the office, the general cracked a grin and said to Snow, “Some gall on that young man, eh?”

  Snow didn’t get the joke. He nodded in enthusiastic agreement. “Yes sir! Some gall indeed, sir!”

  “Oh, come on, Colonel. The boy’s all right. He just needs that ambition of his properly channeled, that’s all. Hell, by the time this war is over, I’ll bet he’ll be wearing one of those chickens on his collar…just like you, Colonel.”

  They returned to the discussion of Task Force Miles. “In summation, sir,” the colonel said, “I’m quite afraid Supreme Command has forced upon us an objective that is a bit obscure…and an execution that is much too rushed.”