The Jersey Brothers

by Sally Mott Freeman

  Her hair fell forward, thrown out of place by her shuddering. Bill saw streaks of gray that he had never noticed before and suddenly realized how Barton’s removal from her life had utterly transformed their mother. It was as though a vital organ had been ripped from her core, and she could not get on without it.

  Bill saw full force that no matter how hard he or Benny or even Rosemary tried to make her proud, to fight the good fight, this pain was deep and untouchable. There was no earthly remedy for it. He had never felt so helpless.

  Bill said no more about the impending news story after that, except to again suggest tenderly that she avoid reading it. All he could muster was to repeat, “The Japanese will pay for what they’ve done, Mother; you can be sure of that.” At this, Helen shored herself up and narrowed her eyes contemptuously.

  “By the time they get around to it, it will be too late for Barton, I fear,” she said angrily, her old imperiousness making a brief reappearance. “They,” Bill knew, meant all the people he worked for, right to the top.

  The visit did not last much longer. He embraced his mother and shook Arthur’s hand after putting on his overcoat and reclaiming his cap from the end table. “I am doing the best I can, please know that at least,” he said, his voice thick but the words forceful and clear. They nodded.

  “Be careful, Billy dear,” Helen said, regaining her composure. “I do need at least one son left to carry on.” Bill was both touched and taken aback, just as he had always been by her brief spasms of warmth. This was the best he could hope for, he understood now.

  THREE DAYS LATER, A Friday, Helen remained in her New York hotel room for the entire day with the dreaded copy of the New York Times. Her eyes welled with tears each time she reread the opening line of the front-page story. “A pent-up story of atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese army on the captured heroes of Bataan and Corregidor was released by the United States government today in sickening detail.”

  Contrary to Bill’s advice, she pored obsessively over the article, alternately sobbing and lying down. Arthur was stricken, too, but by early afternoon, he implored his wife to get dressed and go for a walk with him. Getting some fresh air would help them both, he urged. But Helen declined, remaining in her bedclothes the entire day.

  The story went on for pages, the details beyond the opening paragraphs so much worse than her worst expectations that Helen had to pause every few lines to absorb the shock. Before switching off the light and ending the day’s misery, she opened her diary and unscrewed her fountain pen, hand shaking slightly:

  The Japanese atrocity stories are out. Oh God! They cannot be true!

  A million bayonets pierce my heart—my dear one, my lad of peace and kindliness—where are you? How fare you, beloved one? I die for you in your pain. No food, no solace in this life until Barton comes! If only I could bear each insult, torture, pain for him. I will not even call on the name of God again.

  And the next day, written diagonally across the page, was only: “Sick, sick, in body and mind.”

  By the end of January, the story had been told and retold in thousands of newspapers and magazines across the country and around the world. It punched the public with predicted emotional force and the response was universally vengeful. At the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s ceremonial christening of the USS Missouri the day after the story’s release, a somber Vice President Harry S. Truman stated, “May this great ship be an avenger to the barbarians who wantonly slaughtered the heroes of Bataan.”

  Whether Helen saw the coverage of the Missouri ceremony in the New York newspapers is unknown. There were no further entries in her diary until February 6, 1944. On that day, she wrote:

  For Arthur, I cannot go on this way. I must keep living in the slipping hope that my boy may come back. And Rosemary came by today too and said, coldly but logically, I suppose, “Either Bart returns or he doesn’t. There is nothing you can do to alter that fate. But you can prevent it from killing all of us, Mother.”

  I must, I will face it.

  26

  POLITICS IN BRISBANE

  HAROLD ROSENQUIST ARRIVED IN Brisbane in early December, and he and Steve Mellnik went right to work fleshing out the logistical details of the rescue proposal. Under General Willoughby’s guidance, they crafted a staff study that covered every aspect of the mission. For comparison purposes, Mellnik also prepared a memorandum on the potential for escape from the Cabanatuan prison camp and the significantly greater logistical challenges it presented. Luzon was far more heavily garrisoned than Mindanao, and Cabanatuan significantly more so than Davao.

  In a race against time, they focused primarily on the details of a Davao rescue, which had the greatest potential for success. Mellnik laid out the proposed timetable based on his own escape and knowledge of the island. First, he explained that Rosenquist’s submarine would need to rendezvous with local guerrilla units in the waters off the Davao Gulf on the east coast of Mindanao. Once ashore, he would then have to make his way to Major Lauretta, whose Davao guerrilla unit would be central to the plan’s implementation.

  Under Lauretta’s guidance, Rosenquist would then initiate contact with select Davao prisoners. Letters from Mellnik, written on GHQ stationery, would be passed to trusted prisoners inside the camp. This aspect of the operation was not as daunting as it might seem, Mellnik assured Rosenquist, as many locals came and went from the penal colony daily, and prisoner work details moved in and out of the compound frequently.

  Once these clandestine contacts were established, the next priority would be to smuggle in vitamins, medicines, and badly needed quinine tablets to bring rampant malaria under control. The prisoners would have to regain as much strength as possible ahead of a mass evacuation.

  Rosenquist assured Mellnik that this would be the least of his problems: his MIS-X expertise was camouflaging and smuggling such items past hostile parties. Compared with what his team of experts had concealed and smuggled into German prison camps—money, maps, radios, compasses, even weapons—vitamins, medicine, and quinine tablets would be a cakewalk.

  The men spent countless hours refining the elements of the rescue itself, including the logistics of the predawn raid and the distribution of prisoners to multiple safe havens within the Mindanao hill and jungle communities and other outposts under guerrilla control. Sophisticated escape-and-evasion maps, complete with topographical data, were prepared, in addition to “Plan B” maps detailing alternative escape routes to the sea.

  Ultimately, the men would be rotated off Mindanao by submarine. Nautilus and Narwhal, and additional navy submarines as they became available, would provide the conveyance. In the cover memo of the detailed Staff Study submitted for General Sutherland’s approval, Mellnik wrote:

  “Recommend that Lieutenant Rosenquist, MIS-X, be authorized to proceed immediately to Mindanao and that Colonel Fertig be directed to make arrangements for his trip to Major Claro Lauretta’s headquarters. Its proximity to the POW camp . . . makes it the logical point of contact from which active assistance to the POWs can be initiated. It is further recommended that Lieutenant Rosenquist work directly under the auspices of G-2.”

  General Willoughby signed off on the Staff Study on December 11, 1943, and immediately forwarded it to General Sutherland for final approval. Mellnik and Rosenquist were jubilant when the plan came back in January with General Sutherland’s consent, after which he departed Brisbane for Washington for an indeterminate length of time to promote General MacArthur’s control of the entire Pacific theater. Rosenquist prepared to depart on the very next Mindanao-bound submarine scheduled for February 16, 1944.

  But from the moment Courtney Whitney got Rosenquist’s dispatch request and learned the details of the rescue plan, he raised loud and continuous objections. Thus was launched the GHQ battle royal over control of the Philippine theater. The rescue plan—placed under G-2 auspices—had been specifically designed to bypass Whitney and his new Philippine Regional Section, with the exception of his control over
its use of the submarines. Rosenquist would need to be transported to Mindanao by submarine, and the freed prisoners evacuated in them.

  Whitney objected that the rescue operation would endanger the Mindanao guerrillas’ primary goal: the eventual facilitation of MacArthur’s return—the principal reason, he argued, that PRS had been supplying the guerrillas in the first place. He further objected that the plan rendered Colonel Wendell Fertig—GHQ’s anointed Mindanao guerrilla leader—subordinate to Rosenquist’s orders, and by extension, General Willoughby’s. Whitney adamantly opposed Rosenquist’s “unwarranted” authority over Fertig.

  Lacking veto authority, Whitney’s tactic was to delay the operation, at which he proved very effective. Each new delay was cleverly disguised as a “concern.” As the lives of Davao’s prison population hung in the balance, dueling memoranda between PRS’s Whitney and G-2’s Willoughby locked Australia’s army headquarters into inaction. With General Sutherland on a possibly months-long mission to Washington, he was unavailable to break the tie. General Richard Marshall, acting chief of staff during Sutherland’s absence, declined to mediate. “I’m staying out of this . . . brawl,” he said flatly. “Take the problem up with Sutherland when he returns.”

  And so, on February 16, 1944, Courtney Whitney’s cargo list for the Mindanao-bound USS Narwhal emphatically excluded one Lieutenant Harold Rosenquist.

  27

  “PROCEED TO KWAJALEIN”

  IT HAD BEEN A long time coming. Bill slung his duffel over his shoulder and stepped onto the gangway of the USS Rocky Mount, the Fifth Fleet’s amphibious flagship. Anchored in the central lagoon at Kwajalein, in the heart of the Marshall Islands, “the Rock” had just completed a victorious sweep of the southern half of the Kwajalein chain, the world’s largest coral atoll. The operation had been supported by two naval task forces—one, the new, hard-hitting “Fast Carrier Force” (TF 58), and the other led by the battle-hardened Enterprise and her screening vessels.

  Bill was to report to Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, Allied commander of the Fifth Fleet’s new Joint Expeditionary Force—responsible for the seizing of designated Japanese-held islands across the Central Pacific, and for all naval, air, and landed troops in each operation. Bill’s new position was flag secretary to Admiral Turner. He was also designated the fleet’s legal officer. Turner desperately needed a new flag secretary; many had already been chewed up and spit out by the famously abrasive admiral. As head of the Navy Department’s War Plans Division in the crisis-ridden years of 1940 to 1942, Turner recalled young Lieutenant Mott as one of the few people there that he hadn’t fought with and also that Bill had been quite helpful to him on occasion. In his note requesting Bill’s services, Turner wrote:

  Between 1940 and 1942, I was the Director of War Plans in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations. During this period, Lt. Commander Mott was on duty in the Office of Naval Intelligence and very frequently came under my close observation. I observed his great energy and attentiveness to duty during long hours and well in excess of prescribed hours, including most Sundays. I would welcome his attachment to my personal staff.

  In the exponentially expanded US Navy of 1944, résumés for top staff positions requiring both amphibious and code-and-communications backgrounds were “as scarce as glassy seas in the Bay of Biscay,” one admiral mused; those selected would require a strong work ethic and hard, on-the-job training. Bill Mott amply satisfied both requirements, and with the rare quality of never having previously crossed hairs with Admiral Turner, his orders to Rocky Mount were drawn up.

  He was needed immediately. With completion of the Allied occupation of Kwajalein—relatively lightly defended but valuable for its large and deep natural harbor and sturdy, coral-surfaced airfield—Turner’s forces had begun planning their next series of amphibious assaults: Eniwetok, followed by Truk and then Saipan, the most prized of the inner protectorates of the Japanese islands. A continuation of the amphibians’ thrust across the mid-Pacific, this next phase was designed to pierce the enemy’s perimeter-island defensive arc that protected mainland Japan itself.

  HIS NEW HOME, FLAGSHIP USS Rocky Mount, was unlike any ship Bill had ever boarded. Its superstructure was dominated by a geometric tangle of radar and radio gear. Above the bridge was another curious gnarl of transmitters of various shapes, sizes, and heights, all positioned next to a phalanx of receivers. In most other respects, Rocky Mount resembled little more than an old supply transport—a purposeful disguise. Experience had shown that enemy bombers went after this sort of ship last.

  Rocky Mount was not only the Amphibious Force Command headquarters; it was home to its Combat Information Center (CIC), the fleet’s electronic nerve hub, and served as the floating residence for top brass from every service taking part in each island offensive. The Rock was to Pacific amphibious campaigns what the Map Room was to the world war: the decision-making epicenter for all commands. In sight of all action at all times, it was the lead vessel in every action. The monumental challenge of coordinating combined amphibious operations, among the most demanding of military missions, was soon to become Bill’s life—heart, soul, body, and mind.

  For the three months prior to Bill’s arrival at Kwajalein, Admiral Turner and the amphibians had been busy seizing Makin and Tarawa Islands and gaining a toehold in the Gilberts and Marshalls. But personnel losses from those operations had numbered in the several thousands due to stiff enemy resistance, inadequate resources, and flaws in their advance reconnaissance—as well as in planning and execution. This was especially the case with Tarawa.

  The objective had been narrow: seize Tarawa’s strategic mid-Pacific airfield. But the losses were staggering and caused a storm of stateside protest. Was that seven-hundred-yard-wide scrap of mid-Pacific coral and sand, smaller than New York’s Central Park, really worth the lives of a thousand marines, and twice that wounded? MacArthur wasted no time pouncing: he placed square and very public blame on the navy for Tarawa’s “tragic and unnecessary massacre of American lives.”

  Kelly Turner was not taking time off to celebrate his recent promotion to vice admiral; the next objective was imminent, and lessons from Tarawa needed to be understood and applied. First of all, four million pounds of explosives dropped on the island ahead of the landings had not made a dent in enemy positions. Unmolested, 4,600 Japanese ambushed the landing marines. Another ugly surprise had been the dual effect of Tarawa’s jagged coral reefs and a lower-than-hoped-for tide—a deadly combination of landing conditions that exposed wave after wave of marines to murderous artillery fire as they struggled toward shore through wide stretches of razor-sharp coral.

  Admiral Turner wasted no time applying these hard-won lessons to future planning. Naval and air pre-bombardment was revised following grim proof of its ineffectiveness at Tarawa. Henceforward, pre-invasion firepower would focus on destroying specific enemy capabilities, not neutralization. More amphibious landing vehicles (amtracs) with better armor were also ordered, as well as side armor for the marines. And underwater demolition teams were created to search out and clear all natural and artificial beach obstacles ahead of future landings.

  And so it was that one of Bill’s first reading assignments was to memorize his new boss’s post-Tarawa memorandum, “Recommendations for Changes and Improvements in Tactics, Techniques, Existing Instructions and Material,” as well as that of Turner’s senior amphibious subordinate: Rear Admiral Harry Hill’s sobering “Lessons from Tarawa.”

  According to Bill’s position description, he was to “supervise and direct production plans and execution of major amphibious operations.” This meant coordinating among a myriad of constituents the logistics and battle plans that make up an expeditionary force invasion: naval support groups; underwater demolition teams; meteorologists; beachhead organization (beachmasters); the amphibious corps; marine personnel; medical personnel; and the strategists who determined the timing and disposition of the multiple landing forces and whether they were variously
supplied with rations, water, ammunition, tourniquets, and morphine in advance of battle. And, of course, there would have to be major contingency plans to all the above—for according to naval doctrine, “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.”

  Bill read his orders with the appropriate humility of one whose longest prior ship duty was his post-plebe midshipman cruise more than a decade earlier. He was terrified and thrilled in unequal parts by the enormity of the challenge. But the home front had done its part. Turner’s Joint Expeditionary Force encompassed 634 ships and more than 300,000 navy, marine, and army personnel. With the country’s industrial might ramped up to full war footing, the sailors’ joke now was that they could walk for miles across Pacific anchorages without getting wet: the ocean was paved with steel.

  BEFORE SETTLING INTO HIS duties aboard Rocky Mount, Bill requested permission to board the Enterprise, lying astride recently annexed Kwajalein. Time was short: Enterprise was preparing to depart for its next enemy raid of Truk. Benny had been cautiously optimistic that he and Bill would intersect at Kwajalein, but he had avoided setting his heart on it, given the potential for snafus in the navy generally and in the middle of a war zone specifically.

  So when Bill came through the heavy door of Enterprise’s Sky Control, Benny let out a howl of delight. One proud introduction followed another, Benny making great hay out of Bill’s new job as “Terrible Turner’s” latest flag secretary.

  The brothers’ reunion was brief but upbeat—until the end, when Bill shared the difficult details of his January visit in New York. He didn’t need to brief Benny on the Japanese atrocity story; it had reached the farthest Pacific outposts in no time, smacking Allied forces like a rogue wave. With each printed word, every man on the front lines seethed for revenge.