by Judy Nunn
‘John, this is Wolf Baker.’ The pilot’s uniform bore the stripes of Lieutenant Commander and he outranked Wolf, but the doctor made his introduction with no recognition of rank. ‘Wolf, this is John Stubbs.’
‘Hi, John.’ Wolf took his cue from Dr Redmond, a tough, wiry little man but obviously sympathetic. Redmond had arrived before John Stubbs in order to have a ‘quick chat’, as he called it, and when Stubbs appeared several minutes later, he was assisted by two medical orderlies. The guy could walk okay, Wolf noted, although he was tentative, distracted.
‘His mind’s closed off, he doesn’t know where he is,’ Redmond had explained. ‘I don’t think he’ll cause you any trouble,’ he’d added, aware of Wolf’s concern. ‘He’s mobile, and he can understand and obey simple instructions, but he’s unable to make any decisions or choices.’
Wolf offered his hand as they were introduced, but the pilot didn’t even notice; he was looking out over the flight deck at the tidy rows of fighter planes. Not frightened, but bewildered, his eyes were wide, and his mouth slightly open, like a child, unsure of himself and his surrounds. John Stubbs was a big man, fit and strong, in his early thirties, and it was a pathetic sight.
The doctor and orderlies accompanied them down to the flight deck, and John stood obediently still whilst one of the ground crew rigged him with his Mae West and parachute. Then the orderlies, whom he obviously knew and trusted, helped him up onto the wing and into the rear seat, talking him through each action and placing his limbs in the right spot. ‘Put your hand here, John, and now your leg here, that’s right.’ Wolf wanted to look away, it was so sad.
‘Will he be all right?’ he asked Redmond.
‘In a peaceful environment I’m sure he’ll make a recovery,’ the doctor replied diplomatically. He could tell young Baker was moved. ‘Psychiatrists can do wonders these days.’
Satisfied that the patient was settled, Redmond and the orderlies prepared to leave the flight deck, but Redmond had one final piece of advice.
‘Avoid any action if you can, Lieutenant. I worry that further stress of combat could render him catatonic.’
Wolf gave a laconic smile. ‘I’ll do my best, Doc,’ he said. Jesus, did the man think he was going to go hunting Japs?
Before he climbed into the cockpit, Wolf checked that John Stubbs was safely buckled in, but the orderlies and ground crew had taken care of all that. His flying cap and R/T headset were on, his harness fastened, and he was sitting quietly, his hands folded in his lap, his eyes darting around warily.
‘You all set, John?’ Wolf smiled, patting the man’s shoulder. ‘Ready for a trip?’ John looked up at him and nodded trustingly. Perhaps the guy liked him, Wolf thought, kids always did.
During takeoff he tried not to be distracted by the thought that the experience might disturb John Stubbs. He wished he was flying an aircraft where he could see the guy’s face in the co-pilot’s seat, but he couldn’t afford to think that, he told himself. It was just him. Just him and the Dauntless.
And then they were off.
He climbed steadily to 20,000 feet and headed east for Efate. ‘You right, John?’ he called through the R/T over the throb of the engine. ‘You okay back there?’
‘Mmmm. Mmmm. Mmmm.’
He heard a series of humming noises through the headset. What the hell was he supposed to make of that? he thought. But there didn’t seem to be any hysteria in the sound.
‘How’s that for a view? Some sight, huh?’
‘Mmm. Mmm.’
Wolf was sure it was a signal of agreement, and he started to relax.
John Stubbs was actually rocking back and forward in his seat, his hands still clasped in his lap, not tightly, not distressed, but he wasn’t looking at the view. He was somewhere else entirely.
They’d been travelling for nearly three hours when Wolf saw the Japanese aircraft below him. It was a Pete, a two-man float biplane, slow-flying and no match for the speed of the Dauntless. There would be no need for a showdown so long as he held his course. The Pete wouldn’t dare chase him this close to the Americans’ New Hebridean bases. Christ, what was it doing here anyway? They must be only fifty miles from the coast of Malekula. It would have to be a special reconnaissance plane, surely.
Wolf was about to report the Japanese biplane’s position to Quoin Hill, but he hadn’t reckoned on the escorts. He’d been distracted by the continuous humming through the R/T. John Stubbs seemed to be singing a song, he’d thought, and he’d been lulled by the sound and the evident safety of their flight. They were not far from home now.
The two Zeros had seen him well before he’d seen the Pete, and they dived from above, a patterned attack.
Wolf saw them in the same instant he saw the tracers cross the nose of his aircraft and he banked sharply, feeling the jarring thud of bullets hit the stern of the Dauntless. He wheeled the aircraft, chose one of the Zeros and dived. He had guns this time, he thought. This time he could attack. No need to run this time.
He felt no bravado, no thoughts of revenge, just a cold, clinical thankfulness that this time he could fight back.
The humming he could hear through his headset was now high-pitched and continuous, like an electrical saw reverberating in his skull, but he had no time to think of John Stubbs. The Zero was in his sights, and he fired. A direct hit, flame burst from its fuselage and it started to spiral, but Wolf didn’t wait to watch it plummet into the sea. He climbed fast, the other Zero on his tail.
Together they climbed. Together they wheeled. Wolf fired, he missed. The Zero fired, Wolf dived, bullets streaking through the air only feet above him.
Again they banked, and wheeled and fired, then dived only to climb again, dodging and weaving, a macabre dance in the sky.
John Stubbs was no longer humming. He’d opened his mouth and the sound through the headset was a primal scream.
The scream, far from distracting Wolf, became an outlet for his anger and terror. It was the scream he would have liked to have let loose himself, but didn’t dare. John Stubbs was doing the screaming for them both.
The dance continued. Once more, Wolf climbed and wheeled with his deadly partner, and for a second there was a loss of synchronicity, a moment when they were out of step. It was the moment Wolf needed. He fired. Orange flame burst from the Zero’s fuselage, and this time he watched as it spiralled into the sea.
The Pete was on its own now, flying low, escaping to the north. Wolf knew that the Dauntless was damaged, not critically, but he was aware of a faint shudder in the aircraft. If he was to have any hope of reaching Efate, he needed to maintain a slow, steady pace. But he had to down the Pete. God knew what information the Japs might have gathered from their reconnaissance; they’d sure taken some risks getting it.
He took up the chase. The Pete was desperate to escape, but it was no match for the Dauntless, and finally, John Stubbs’s screams ringing in his ears, Wolf pulled the Dauntless into one more climb. Then he wheeled and dived.
He wanted to scream along with John as he fired a burst at the Pete. He scored a hit. Not fatal, but the biplane turned in an attempt to limp its way home. The fight was over.
Wolf had paid a price, however, as the Japanese pilot well knew – his own gunner had also scored a hit. The American would not follow them, there would be no further attack, the American’s aircraft was useless.
The 7.7mm machine-gun fire from the Pete’s rear gunner had perforated the engine of the Dauntless. It started to sputter. The engine was dying, and Wolf knew that he couldn’t make it to Quoin Hill. But he could see land in the distance. Not Efate, he was sure, they were too far north, probably Malekula, he thought. Although God only knew where the dogfight had taken them, he’d lost all perception of direction and distance.
He tried to make radio contact with the base at Quoin Hill, but there was no reply, just an ominous crackling in his headset. He repeated over and over an approximation of his position in the hope that he might be getting throu
gh. Then the crackling ceased and the radio went dead. Above the engine’s sputter, all was silence, and it was only then he realised the other sound that was missing, the sound that had been missing from the moment they’d been hit. John Stubbs had stopped screaming. Was he catatonic as the doctor had feared? Was he dead?
Wolf pulled off his headset. ‘John!’ he yelled with all the lung power he could muster. ‘John, are you okay?’
Silence.
There was no time to think of John Stubbs.
Wolf put the aircraft into a long, shallow dive. He had to ditch her, but the closer he could get to land, the closer he would be to the possibility of rescue.
He focussed on the island up ahead and as he flew, barely a hundred feet above the clear blue water, the aircraft shuddered more violently and the sputter of the engine became more erratic in its death throes. But he was getting closer. Closer and closer, he could see the shapes of distant coconut trees now.
The water loomed. He was skimming above its surface. He had to keep the nose up.
‘Brace yourself, John!’ he yelled, just in case the man could hear him.
Then the undercarriage of the Dauntless hit the water. The aircraft bounced and skipped. Once, twice, three times. It was a stone thrown by a child, skittering across the sea. But each time it bounced, the water felt like concrete. Keep the nose up, keep the nose up. Wolf fought to maintain control. And then finally, jarringly, they were down and shuddering to a halt. A sluggish metal weight sitting in the middle of the sea. Any minute the aircraft would tilt nose down and, once she did, she would plummet to the ocean’s depths.
Wolf struggled with his seatbelt and parachute harness. He told himself not to panic, as water bubbled into the cockpit. Panic made for clumsiness. Slow, steady. That’s it. And he was out, standing on the wing, desperately trying to free John Stubbs. The man was alive, and he appeared uninjured, but he was unconscious. Probably just as well, Wolf thought, freeing the seatbelt and fighting with the buckle of the parachute harness, he’d be either catatonic or raving mad otherwise.
Oh Jesus, he thought, oh Jesus, he couldn’t get the buckle undone, and the plane was half submerged, any second she’d start to tilt. He tried to drag Stubbs out, parachute pack and all, but he was a big man and he seemed to be wedged into the seat. Finally the buckle gave way, but it was too late, the plane was tilting now. She was starting to go down, and Stubbs was going down with her, his head disappearing beneath the water’s surface.
Wolf dived and, as the submerged plane continued to tilt, everything became slow motion. There were only seconds before the Dauntless would plunge for the bottom, and those seconds seemed a lifetime.
With one hand, he held on to the side of the cockpit to keep himself anchored, whilst with the other he slipped the harness from Stubbs’s shoulders and fed his arms through the straps. Freed of the parachute, he managed to pull the man half out of the rear seat, but Stubbs was tall, and his legs remained locked in the cockpit. Without traction, his body floating freely, Wolf didn’t have the strength to pull him free. The nose of the plane was pointing downwards now, her tail clear of the water, and as she started her dive, Wolf yanked on the cord of Stubbs’s Mae West. The lifejacket inflated. Then, with a firm grip on Stubbs, he let go his hold of the aircraft and inflated his own lifejacket and, as the plane plummeted to the ocean floor, the two men rose to the surface.
They bobbed about in the water like corks, Stubbs now semi-conscious, coughing and spluttering.
‘You okay, John?’
But he didn’t reply. His body having instinctively fought for the breath to survive, John Stubbs soon lapsed once again into a state of unconsciousness, and, grasping the man’s lifejacket, Wolf started to swim for the distant shore.
It was probably a futile exercise, he thought, unless the wind and the tide were in his favour, in which case he’d be better off just drifting anyway. But swimming gave him something to do.
Then he noticed the fin. The black dorsal fin slicing the water and heading straight for them. He stopped swimming. The shark circled them inquisitively, not bent on attack. Wolf cursed the fact that he’d had no time to grab the survival kit – there was a vial of chlorine in it which served as a shark repellent and it had gone down with the plane.
He twisted his head about, following the shark’s every movement, intermittently darting glances at John Stubbs, searching for the wound that might have rendered him unconscious. Was there blood? He couldn’t see any ominous leakage from beneath the man’s flying cap. He was suddenly aware of a pain in his chest. Had he himself been wounded on impact? Was he bleeding? But the pain felt internal, maybe a fractured rib. He hoped so. They didn’t need blood in the water.
In the gathering dusk, the shark kept circling. Soon there might be others. And soon it would be dark, and Wolf would no longer be able to see their fins.
Two days later, aboard the USS Wasp, Martin heard the news. Second Lieutenant Charles Wolfgang Baker and Lieutenant Commander John Stubbs were missing in action.
The Executive Officer had approached Martin as he was leaving the hangar deck following early morning prayers. An area of the hangar deck, known affectionately as ‘the chapel’, had been allocated for Sunday services and prayer meetings, regularly conducted by both the Protestant and Catholic chaplains aboard.
‘I thought you should know,’ Commander Dickey said sympathetically; it had been apparent to him that Baker and Thackeray were friends.
No, Martin thought. No, not Wolf. ‘What happened?’ he asked.
Quoin Hill airbase had received a radio message from the Dauntless as Wolf was preparing to ditch the aircraft, the Commander told him. They hadn’t been able to make contact themselves and the aircraft’s position had been vague, although Wolf had reported that he was in sight of land. Two Corsairs had been dispatched to search the area where they presumed the plane had gone down, but they’d found nothing and darkness had rendered the exercise futile. The following morning, however, they’d remounted the search and, in covering broader territory, they’d sighted a Japanese amphibian aircraft downed thirty miles off the coast of Espiritu Santo. A naval patrol boat had picked up the two-man crew from the Pete and, upon interrogation, it had been discovered that Wolf had shot down their Zero escorts and incapacitated the biplane. But, according to the Japanese pilot, the Dauntless had been badly damaged herself and would certainly have had to crash land.
‘The Japs were very helpful,’ Commander Dickey said. ‘The interpreter reported that the Japanese pilot greatly admired Baker’s skill.’
‘Just as I admire his resourcefulness,’ Martin replied. ‘He was in sight of land, you say?’
The Commander nodded. ‘Malekula, he seemed to think. The Pete was discovered off Espiritu Santo, but it was heading north and it had covered quite a bit of ground before it ditched, so we’re also presuming it was the shores of Malekula that Lieutenant Baker sighted.’
Something told Martin that Wolf had made it ashore. He didn’t know why, but he had a strong presentiment that both men had survived. ‘I believe he’s alive,’ he said. ‘And John Stubbs too.’
‘I hope so, Dr Thackeray,’ the Commander replied. ‘I hope so.’ He certainly wouldn’t bet on it himself, but he admired the man’s faith.
Jane heard the news from Chuck Wilson, whom she’d met a number of times with Wolf. She knew they were close friends and she liked the man.
Chuck arrived at Mamma Tack’s early in the morning, just as Jane was opening the clinic for the day. He’d decided to deliver the news personally, rather than allow her to hear it via the grapevine.
‘Can I have a word, Jane?’ he asked through the open-shuttered window.
His face was grave, and Jane felt a sense of dread as she nodded to Mary to take over, and to keep an eye on Ronnie, who was playing with some local children nearby. She ushered Chuck inside and they retired to the examination area at the rear of the boatshed, Jane pulling the curtains across for privacy.
/> ‘I have some bad news, I’m afraid,’ he said.
The breath caught in her throat. ‘Marty.’
‘Oh no. No, no,’ he quickly assured her. She’d gone suddenly pale, and he was horrified that he’d aroused such fear in her. ‘Your husband’s on the Wasp. Hell, the Wasp is impregnable. He’s fine. Really he’s fine.’
She sank thankfully onto one of the beds. She knew Martin had arrived safely at the aircraft carrier, they’d told her that much, but she lived in constant fear.
Chuck sat on the other bed, facing her. ‘It’s Wolf. They’ve reported him missing in action.’
‘Oh.’ Her face remained ashen.
‘It happened on the return trip.’
‘What return trip?’
‘After he’d flown Dr Thackeray to the Wasp.’
‘Wolf flew Martin to the Wasp?’
‘You didn’t know?’
No-one had told her that. She shook her head.
‘It was supposed to be me,’ Chuck said, feeling wretched. ‘I was assigned the job and Wolf swapped places.’
Chuck Wilson was plagued by conflicting emotions. He couldn’t stop thinking that if it hadn’t been for Wolf Baker, he’d be the one missing in action. He felt burdened with guilt and yet at the same time thankful to be alive, and he hated himself for it.
He explained what had happened. They knew the full story, he said, because of the Japanese crew aboard the Pete. ‘There was no sign of the Dauntless,’ he concluded. ‘And they couldn’t find the bodies of Wolf and his passenger.’
He’d told the facts in a clinical fashion, but he was starting to crack up now.
‘Wolf wanted to fly your husband out there and when he volunteered I didn’t see any problem. I mean, I thought it was a pretty straightforward transport flight. Just there and back, you know? I didn’t think …’
‘And why should you?’ Jane felt deep sympathy for the man. He held himself responsible for Wolf’s death, just as Wolf had blamed himself for the death of his co-pilot. ‘It’s not your fault, Chuck.’