Barry Blake of the Flying Fortress

by Gaylord Du Bois

  CHAPTER NINE

  NIGHT ATTACK

  When Barry next saw Curly Levitt, the dapper navigator was firing asub-machine gun at the searchlighted sky. Black parachutes weredropping toward the field, with Jap soldiers dangling beneath them.Every man on the field who could find a gun of any kind was shooting atthe rain of enemies. And the Japs were firing back.

  The party started with a terrific bomb barrage about midnight. The Japsevidently believed that neither aircraft detectors nor antiaircraftequipment were as yet set up. They were wrong about both. Another thingthey didn’t know was that most of the living quarters, supplies, andeven planes, had been moved into the jungle that fringed the field.

  A few moments after the bombs started falling, the new antiaircraftbatteries went into action. They caught three of the Jap bombers withtheir shells. In return, bombs wiped out two guns, three searchlights,and their crews. Then came the parachute troops.

  There weren’t many of them—not more than fifty in all. Apparently thefire was too intense for the Jap transport planes to risk. Why thesefew suicide squads were dropped remained a mystery until morning.

  Barry reached the field as the first ’chutists landed. He saw a Garandrifle in the hand of a soldier who had been killed by shrapnel. Theweapon, he found, was fully loaded—and unharmed. As he turned to picka target, the field’s floodlights went on.

  A dozen of the Japs lay motionless, tangled in their parachutes. Theothers were squirming free, or firing from bombholes with their smallcaliber sub-machine guns. Barry felt a bullet tug at his trouser leg;another burned the skin of his shoulder. He threw himself prone.

  A Jap had just wriggled free of his chute and was diving toward a bombcrater. Barry took a snap shot at the man, and saw him collapse. Heswitched his aim to a hole from which the pale flames of Jap machineguns were licking like serpents’ tongues. They were firing at thefloodlights, which were rapidly going out.

  The shadows deepened across the bomb-torn field. Barry was sure thatsome of them were Japs crawling toward the jungle. He fired at thenearest. Suddenly he realized that he was trying to shoot an empty gun.

  Bullets were kicking up dirt too close for comfort. Barry glanced aboutand spotted a convenient bomb crater. It was strange that he hadn’tnoticed it before. Clutching his empty gun, he rolled into the hole.

  As he reached the bottom a steely hand seized him by the throat.Instinctively his hand shot up, grasped a muscular wrist. Moonlightglinted faintly on the long knife in the hand that he had blocked.

  While he struggled with both hands to wrest the weapon away, a rocketstreaked up the sky. Directly overhead the flare burst, floodingeverything with white light. Barry’s enemy gasped and dropped hisbutcher knife. He was Fred Marmon.

  “Lieutenant Blake!” the redhead yelped. “Thank Heaven for that flare—Imight have carved you for a Jap.”

  “You mean I might have broken your arm!” retorted Barry. “Listen,Fred—if you’ve got an extra gun or a clip of ammo, let’s have it. Ithink those yellow snakes are heading this way.”

  “I have something better,” Marmon replied. “A sack of hand grenades. Igot ’em when the Japs started landing. Help yourself—”

  He broke off as Barry made a lightning lunge past him with his emptyrifle. A high-pitched scream rang briefly. Barry had rammed hisgun-muzzle like a bayonet into the face of a crawling Jap who hadreached the edge of the hole.

  Another queer-shaped helmet appeared, and beside it a machine-gun’smuzzle. Barry swung his gun-butt at the weapon, knocking it aside. Asplit instant later Fred struck with his knife. The second Jap kickedconvulsively.

  “I fixed him!” the redhead muttered. “See any more, Lieutenant?”

  _Barry’s Enemy Gasped and Dropped His Knife_]

  Other flares were lighting the field. Barry spotted a furtive movementin a crater thirty yards from the jungle’s edge.

  “There’s a bunch that’s getting ready to break for the bush, I think,”he said. “Give me a few of your grenades.”

  “Swell! We’ll both rush ’em,” Fred Marmon responded. “Here’s the bag ofpineapples.... Help yourself, sir.”

  Barry stuffed his pockets hastily. He kept one grenade in his hand,with his finger through the ring.

  “I’ll go first,” he said shortly.

  Crouching low, he sprinted toward the Japs’ bomb hole. Before he hadquite reached throwing distance, the raiders saw him and opened fire. Aslug glanced off his helmet. He took three more strides and flunghimself flat. Behind a ten-inch-high ridge of earth he pulled the pinof his first grenade. Then, rising on one elbow, he flung it.

  Five yards away he glimpsed Fred hurling another. As the second grenadelanded six Japs boiled up out of the bomb crater. Two were still on theedge when the grenades went off—Barry’s in the hole; Fred’s just aheadof them.

  A cheer went up from the American riflemen and machine gunners. A newstorm of gunfire broke out, aimed at three or four other bomb craters.

  “Come on, Fred!” Barry yelled. “We’ll clean out the rest of thesnakeholes. The boys are shooting to keep the Japs’ heads down for us.”

  “Right with you, sir!” came the sergeant’s shout.

  So furious was their friends’ fire that few Jap bullets came near Barryand Fred. Crouched within easy throw of the occupied craters, theyflung their deadly little missiles. Some of the enemy attempted a dashfor the bush, only to be cut down. Once a grenade was tossed back. Itexploded in the air dangerously close to Barry. Later he found that aflying fragment had cut his cheek.

  With their “pineapples” gone, the two Fortress men trotted back to thetrees.

  “Why didn’t I bring another bag of ’em?” the red-headed engineerwailed. “I just know there’s a few more Japs playing possum out thereon the field. Only way to get ’em is to toss a grenade into every holeyou can find—”

  Just in front of them an antiaircraft battery went into action. Thewhite fingers of the searchlights began combing the sky again. Betweenthe gun reports, Barry caught the scream of a falling bomb.

  “_Down!_” he yelled, pulling Fred to the ground beside him.

  The ground erupted near them. Half dazed by the shock, the two friendsstarted crawling. Dirt rained down on their helmets. From farther upthe field came more bomb concussions.

  This time the bombardment was less intense, but it lasted for half anhour. One Jap bomber followed another at irregular intervals, flying ata very high altitude. The light of a blasted and blazing gasoline truckfurnished a plain target, not to mention the antiaircraft gun flamesand the searchlights. Yet the Japs were so high that more bombs fell inthe jungle than struck the field.

  When the raid was over, Barry Blake headed for the dressing station.His injured head was pounding like a bass drum. He longed to lie downand close his eyes.

  There was no place for him in the hospital tent, however. The medicalofficer was operating on men wounded by bomb fragments—tying offsevered arteries, sewing up torn flesh, probing for shrapnel. He wasstripped to the waist, covered with sweat and blood. The medical-corpsmen were equally busy.

  Barry had no intention of getting in their way. He found some aspirinfor himself, swallowed two of the pills, swabbed iodine on his cutcheek, and left. In his crew’s shelter tent he found Curly and Fredarguing about the raid. He sank down on a cot beside them.

  “There’s something queer about those parachute troops,” Curly declared.“The Japs didn’t drop them just by accident. They had some veryimportant job which only suicide squads could do. If only we knew whatit was....”

  “Don’t worry, sir,” said the red-haired sergeant. “They didn’taccomplish it. We’ve just searched the field and found only four liveJaps. They were all wounded. Two of ’em opened fire on us and wereblotted out. Number Three played dead until one of our boys tried toturn him over. Then he set off a grenade that blew both of ’em topieces. Number Four struck with his teeth—just like a rattlesnake—andbit a medical-corps man’s cheek. He’s the
only one that’s still alive.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure that they didn’t accomplish anythingimportant,” said Curly Levitt. “A few of them may still be loose in thejungle. I have a hunch that we’ll hear from them yet.”

  “I’m inclined to agree with you, Curly,” Barry Blake put in. “I’m notso much worried about the few Jap parachutists that may have escaped tothe bush. To be sure, they could do plenty of damage. But if immediatedamage had been their purpose, we’d have had two or three times as manyto fight. I have a hunch that this bombing and skirmishing on the fieldwas just a trick to cover up some other maneuver.”

  “You mean a Jap landing on the beach, sir?” asked Fred Marmon. “Thatthought hopped into my head, too—but it’s no good. Our boys have thatcoastline guarded so well that wild pigs couldn’t get through withoutraising an alarm. Their scouts would have brought us warning.”

  “Let’s try to get a little shuteye, then,” Curly Levitt yawned. “Wewon’t help matters by worrying or arguing all night. ’Sufficient untothe day is the evil thereof.’”

  At dawn the field was roused by a third bombardment. This time it was ashelling from medium-heavy field guns. It plowed the already bombedrunways until the field looked like a map of the moon’s craters. Twoswift fighter planes tried to take off before the last smooth strip ofground was blown up. One of them ground-looped.

  The second, by clever dodging of bomb holes, managed to take the air.Fifteen minutes later it returned, riddled with bullet holes. The pilotnosed over trying to land on the field’s least plowed end. When theypulled him out of his wrecked fighter he said that he had flown overthe enemy positions at less than five hundred feet and had a prettygood look at them.

  The Japs were entrenched on a grassy ridge, about 1500 feet above thefield and within easy range. There were two or three hundred of them,with at least twenty pieces of artillery camouflaged in clumps oftrees. Evidently they had been landed by parachute from a swarm of hugetransport planes, under cover of the night attack on the air field.

  “You were right about the purpose of that raid, Lieutenant Blake,” FredMarmon admitted, as the _Rosy O’Grady’s_ crew moved their tent fartherinto the jungle. “The Japs will make our field useless as long as theyhold that ridge. The problem is how to clean them out.”

  “Better heads than ours are working on that right now,” Barry told him.“We could bomb the Jap positions with planes based at Port Moresby, forinstance. Or we could bring up troops and take the ridge by assault.But neither job would be as easy as it sounds. We’ll just have to waitfor the brass-hats to decide.”

  The American plan did not develop for forty-eight hours. During thattime a transport vessel arrived with more antiaircraft and twocompanies of soldiers. They were welcome additions to the field’sstrength, but they did not solve the problem of the Japs’ shellfire.

  On the third day after the Japs’ first raid, the field’s commandantcalled all his officers together. These included the air as well as theground forces. Between the regular _whoomp_ of bursting shells, thecolonel outlined his plan of attack.

  “Tomorrow,” he stated bluntly, “we shall attack the enemy position onGrassy Ridge. I should like to have had artillery here to soften up ourobjective, but we cannot wait for it to arrive. A surprise attack musttake its place. After dark the infantry will move forward as far aspossible. They will carry iron rations, and ammunition for theirweapons. The attack will be at dawn.”

  “How about supplies, in case the Japs aren’t routed by the firstassault?” an infantry captain asked.

  “In that case, our engineers will open a jeep road through the bushwith bulldozers,” the commandant replied. “They’ll start in themorning, and push ahead to the steep hillside a mile and a half fromGrassy Ridge. From there on we’ll have to carry all supplies bymanpower, including mortars for close-in bombardment.”

  “How about us fliers, Colonel?” the commanding officer of the Fortresssquadron spoke up. “Do we have to loaf while even the native blacks aredoing their bit? Can’t we fix up one runway while the Japs are busyducking our shells? My boys would love a chance to smash thoseegg-heads with a few five-hundred-pounders.”

  “You’ll probably have your chance, Captain,” the commandant smiled.“Building a road to the Ridge is the engineers’ first job; after thatthey’ll tackle the field. Don’t let your crews get mixed up in theground fighting, or some ships may be short-handed when you’re ready totake off.... I think that is all for the time being, gentlemen.”

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