CHAPTER TWELVE
NEW GUINEA GARDENS
Reporting for duty at the Queensland repair base, Barry ran intosurprises still more bewildering. The first was the news that he waspromoted to first lieutenant; the second, that he would be givencommand immediately of a Flying Fortress. The ship and crew, he wastold, were now waiting for him on the runway.
Wondering if it were all some crazy delusion, Barry hurried to theairport. For a moment it seemed that he must be back in Seattle,looking at _Sweet Rosy O’Grady_ for the first time. For there she sat,with her inboard props turning slowly in the sun, and her name paintedclear on the fuselage.
There was even a tall, wide-shouldered figure in flying togs, leaningagainst the plane’s tail. He looked like Captain O’Grady from adistance. But he couldn’t be!
Barry wiped his hand across his eyes, and walked toward the ship. Thetall fellow looked up. He wasn’t the Old Man—he was _Hap Newton_!
Hap let out a whoop like a locomotive and charged down upon BarryBlake. The two friends proceeded to do a war-dance, bombarding eachother with questions. The surprise was entirely mutual. Hap had beenbased in another part of the South Pacific until recently. His B-26Marauder had run out of gas near the northern tip of Queensland onenight, and its crew had bailed out. Only Hap and the bombardier-gunnerhad made shore. Just this morning Hap had been assigned to the _RosyO’Grady_ as co-pilot.
“And now _you_ are my skipper!” he exclaimed. “It’s such a wildcoincidence that I can’t believe it yet.... But just wait, Barry—theshocks aren’t over. Step inside and meet the rest of us.”
Barry turned to the open hatch, but he had no chance to enter. Men wereboiling out of it as if the ship were too hot for them. In five secondsthey were all around him. Fred Marmon, Cracker Jackson, Tony Romani,Curly Levitt, and Soapy Babbitt, with his broken shoulder still alittle stiff, but useable.
“Where’s Danny Hale?” Barry asked, the moment they gave him a chance tospeak.
Silence, as stunning as a blow, answered him. Barry’s face went white.
“Tell me, boys,” he muttered through stiff lips. “You—you mean thatDanny—that he....”
“He got transferred, Barry,” Curly Levitt said quietly. “It was justafter the medical-corps men carried you back to the dressing station onGrassy Ridge. A bunch of us were trying to capture a Jap field gun. Weducked into a slit trench and started tossing hand grenades, but theJaps chucked them right back at us before they could explode. Onelanded in our trench. Danny covered it to protect the rest of us—andjust then it went off.”
“Thanks, Curly,” Barry said in a choked voice. “Sorry my questionbrought it all back to you. It—it _is_ easier, somehow, to think ofDanny as simply transferred.... Have they sent us a bombardier yet?”
“They sent him—such as he is!” replied a strangely familiar voice.
Barry jumped as if he had been shot. Through the hatchway dropped asmall, bandy-legged man whose short blonde hair bristled like the fuzzof a newly hatched duckling.
“Chick Enders!” Barry cried, making a grab for his old friend. “How didyou get _here_?”
“The same way Hap Newton did,” answered Chick, grinning from ear toear. “I was the bombardier who bailed out with him from the B-26.”
“Boys,” said Barry Blake, turning to face his crew, “I know that in afew seconds I’m going to wake up and find myself back in my littlehospital bed. The sawbones will be looking solemn and saying: ‘Thatchunk of shrapnel went deeper than we thought. It’s affected hisbrain!’”
He cuffed back his hat and laughed.
“It’s too good to be true, finding you all here—and _Sweet RosyO’Grady_ too! I’m going to say hello to her before she vanishes in apink fog, or something!”
Understanding chuckles followed him as he dived into _Rosy’s_ openhatchway.
“We’ll leave him alone with her for a few minutes,” Curly Levittsuggested. “Mess call is about due. Lieutenant Enders can wait here toshow the Old Man to his quarters.”
It was past midnight before _Rosy’s_ crew talked themselves out andfell asleep. In the morning, Barry reported for orders. He learned thathis new battlefront base was to be another jungle airport, farther westalong the New Guinea coast. They would fly the shortest route acrossthe island’s central mountain range, and carry a full load of bombs.
“Not much excitement on the way,” Fred Marmon commented; as the crewheaded toward their waiting ship. “There’s nothing in the interior butmountains and jungles and wild men. Even the Japs steer clear of it,they tell me!”
“You’ll have plenty of excitement once we reach the northern coast,Fred,” Barry told him. “The Japs have been punching back hard at ournew airports. They realize that, given enough bases for a big airoffensive, we can push them right out of the East Indies. They can’tkeep backing up forever, and keep any ‘face’ with their people at home.”
_Sweet Rosy O’Grady_ took off as smoothly as she had on her maidenflight. Except for the patched places in her aluminum skin, there waslittle to show that she was not a new ship.
“As a matter of fact, she’s better than new, Lieutenant,” Fred Marmondeclared. “She’s been battle-tested. Every part of her, except thesenew engines, has stood up under the worst strains. She won’t fail us,no matter what we ask of her.”
“They patched her up in New Guinea—enough to fly her back to thisQueensland repair base,” Curly Levitt explained. “Here they gave her acomplete overhauling. Most of her replaced parts came from otherwrecked ships—”
“Like Hap and me!” spoke up Chick Enders.
“Yes, you’re battle-tested, too,” Barry laughed. “By the way, dideither of you hear or see anything of our old messmate, Glenn Crayle?After all the surprises of the past twenty-four hours, I wouldn’t besurprised to see him waiting for us at the new airport. Would you, Hap?”
“Aw, don’t talk about it, Barry,” his big co-pilot replied. “I wouldn’tbe surprised, either, but I’d be pretty doggoned sore. The sight ofthat mister would sour my stomach for the duration.”
“Mine, too—unless he’s toned down a lot,” agreed Chick. “This war doesqueer things to people. It may have let the wind out of Crayle andshowed him that he wasn’t such a hot pilot as he thought. I hope so,anyway.”
“I believe you’ve got hopes for Hirohito, too,” Hap Newton scoffed.“Let’s forget Crayle until he does show up—and I hope that event willbe a long, long time away!”
The blue expanse of Torres Strait now showed beyond the green of CapeYork. For an hour the Fortress hung above it at six thousand feet.Then, almost before her crew realized the change, the high grasslandsof New Guinea were sweeping beneath her belly. Far to the east lay theGulf of Papua, with a mass of cumulus clouds tumbling above it. Aheadrose the island’s mountainous backbone.
“Let’s fly a little lower, Barry,” Chick Enders said. “You won’t haveto start climbing over the central range for half an hour. I’d like toget a look at one of these native villages, and give the localhillbillies a thrill at the same time.”
“All right, Chick,” Barry replied. “But we won’t do any hedgehoppingwith a quarter of a million dollars worth of Fortress. If the air isn’tbumpy I might take _Rosy_ down to five hundred feet—when and if youspot a thatch-roofed metropolis.”
“Don’t try to thrill ’em by dropping an egg on the town pump,” said HapNewton. “General MacArthur has caused the word to be spread among thetribesmen that United Nations airmen are their friends. We wouldn’twant to give them the wrong impression.”
“I wonder how many New Guinea wild men could tell the Jap ‘rising sun’from our insignia,” Chick remarked, “even if they were near enoughto—oh-oh! Look, Barry! Straight ahead on that little grassy plateau... don’t those patches look like native gardens to you?”
By way of answer, Barry eased the wheel forward. In a long, flat dive_Rosy O’Grady_ roared down toward the plateau. Moment by moment thetiny squares and oblongs of different col
ors took the shape ofcultivated gardens. Near by appeared a few loaf-shaped native houses.
“There’s your village!” Barry exclaimed. “Looks like a busy place, too.They’re clearing more grassland for garden space, if I’m not mistaken.”
Looking down through the plastiglass of the big bomber’s nose, her crewcould distinguish twenty or thirty human figures at one end of thecultivated section. Suddenly the natives stopped gaping at the divingplane. They ran for cover.
“We’re wowing ’em, all right,” whooped Hap Newton. “Just see thosegrass skirts scatter! You ought to be ashamed of scaring the ladiesthis way, Barry!”
“They’ll have something to talk about for a month at least,” laughedthe _Rosy’s_ skipper, as he pulled back on the wheel. “Are yousatisfied with this glimpse you’ve had of native culture, Chick?”
“Not by a long shot!” the homely bombardier replied. “I wish you’d turnback for another look, Barry. There’s something blamed queer about thatvillage. Several things, to be truthful.”
There was a grim note in Chick’s voice that Barry recognized. Hisbombardier was in deadly earnest.
“Okay,” he said shortly. “Slap on the coal, Hap. We’re going back foranother look-see. What was it that struck you as queer, Chick?”
“Since when do _men_ wear grass skirts, or New Guinea women wear theirhair clipped short?” Chick responded. “I had a better view here in thenose than the rest of you did. I’ll swear to what I saw. And, whilewe’re asking questions, will somebody tell me when the natives of thiscountry became _market gardeners_? There’s enough cultivated landaround those dozen thatched huts to supply food for ten villages....Look down now and tell me what you think of it!”
For wordless moments every man in the cockpit gazed at the orderlypatchwork of little fields below. Suddenly Barry grasped the truth.
“Look at the pattern down there, Hap!” he exclaimed. “They’ve broken itup pretty cleverly with camouflage, but the cleared place is L-shaped.If that isn’t an airport I’m cockeyed.”
“Then those birds in grass skirts—” Curly Levitt’s voice gaspedthrough the interphone.
“—were _Japs_!” Chick Enders finished the sentence. “Go as low as youdare, Barry, and see what else we can spot.”
“Man all the guns!” Barry’s order crackled in the headsets. “Cracker,be ready to strafe any antiaircraft before they can pot us....”
He broke off as the white lines of tracer bullets streaked upward froma patch of bushes at one side of the field. Other guns opened fire.
Small bullet holes appeared suddenly in the bomber’s fuselage andwings. But four of _Rosy’s_ .50-caliber machine guns were talkingback—the twin weapons of her bottom and tail turrets. Seconds latershe had swept out of range.
“Well, whaddyuh know about that?” Hap Newton blurted. “New GuineaGardens Grow Grass-skirted Gunners. Who’d ever believe that headline?”
“Why didn’t they throw any flak at us?” Curly Levitt asked. “A field asbig as that ought to be protected by more than machine gun fire.”
“The airport isn’t completed yet,” Barry pointed out. “The Japsprobably haven’t had a chance to bring in heavier installations. Therewasn’t even a camouflaged plane in sight—nothing but those steel-matrunways dressed up to look like vegetable gardens. Of course it’spossible that there were some bigger guns but no time to man them,before we were past.”
“It’s worth risking them to give the field a thorough pasting,” ChickEnders said. “Let’s go back at about five thousand and give it everybomb in our racks.”
No shellfire greeted them as they made their run over the Jap airfield.Even the machine guns were silent. The grass-skirted gun-crews werefleeing through the surrounding grass and scrub like scared rabbitswhen the first stick of bombs whistled down.
They left the runways looking like a raw, black wound in the earth,with a thick cloud of dust hanging over it. All their bombs had struckwith the accuracy of rifle bullets, five-hundred-pounders that flungthe twisted steel matting high in the air.
“Get the exact position of this spot, Curly,” Barry Blake said, as heclimbed into the hot blue sky. “The sons of Nippon won’t be using theirlittle mountain playground as long as our fliers can keep an eye on it.”
“That’s right,” agreed the _Rosy’s_ navigator. “We’ve wiped out an airbase from which the Nips could have raided Queensland, Port Moresby,and any of our northeast airports with equal ease. And we’ve discoveredsome of their latest tricks of camouflage, thanks to Chick Enders.Headquarters will be glad to know about it.”
For the rest of the trip _Rosy O’Grady’s_ pilots and bombardier kepttheir eyes peeled for suspicious looking “market gardens,” but noneappeared. An hour after they crossed the height of land the ocean wasagain in sight. Soapy Babbitt contacted their new airport on the MauRiver and received the answer to come in.
As the field came in sight, Barry noted that it was scooped out of thetropical forest, not far from the sea. A United Nations transportvessel lay just beyond the beach. It was unloading by means oflighters. In this manner the new airdromes all up and down the coastwould be quickly furnished with equipment and defenses. The danger, ofcourse, was that the Japs might send warships to shell the fields atnight. They might even land troops a short march from the field itself.
All this passed through Barry’s mind as he circled for a landing. Hehad experienced one shelling from warships, and a worse one fromair-borne artillery. No base, he decided, was safe from a sneak attack.In any war the main strategy must be to “dish it out” to the enemy inheavier quantities than he could return.
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Barry Blake of the Flying Fortress Page 12