A Dawn Like Thunder

by Robert J. Mrazek

  They had waited to test the issue until Grant Teats was gone. No one wanted to take a chance that the big man would react negatively to the wager they had made, even though he and Whitey were always ribbing each other. Whitey would loudly threaten to whip Grant if he didn’t stop ragging him, but it was said in good humor.

  When Teats left, the pilots gathered around Whitey’s chair at the back of the ready room. As usual, he had a contented smile on his cherubic face, as if he was dreaming about a date he was on with Lana Turner.

  Tex Gay was ready with a charcoal stick. Reaching around the back of the cushioned backrest, he drew a thick black mustache across Moore’s upper lip. Whitey never moved. A few seconds later, Gay added a goatee. Whitey kept breathing with calm regularity.

  That was when the Skipper arrived. Seeing the pilots clustered around Moore, he walked over to find out what was happening. Realizing what they had done, he began chewing them out as a bunch of idiots.

  Whitey and Grant. They were definitely an odd couple. Mutt and Jeff. The biggest man in the squadron and the smallest. Grant had a beard like sandpaper. Whitey had blond hair the texture of goose down. Grant hated regimentation and chafed at the often petty rules that dictated their lives. Whitey could always roll with the punches.

  Since the time they had begun rooming together at Norfolk, the two men had grown exceptionally close. For one thing, Grant was able to confide to Whitey his concerns about Diana. Whitey had had his own star-crossed relationship in the past.

  The two men shared something else. They were both homesick. For Grant, it was a yearning for the ancient forests in Oregon, whose breathtaking beauty had a powerful hold on him. For Whitey, it was the mountains of West Virginia.

  He loved to reminisce about his hometown of Bluefield, located a half mile up in the Appalachians. He missed its clear cold winter mornings. He missed steam engine 1203 as it thundered past on the Norfolk Southern main line under a full head of steam. He missed the hot dogs Gus Theodorou made for him down at the Dough Boy on Bluefield Avenue.

  And he missed Catherine.

  Bluefield was a railroad town, the place where the Norfolk Southern Railroad had built one of the largest roundhouses in the country. Three shifts a day serviced the gigantic coal-fired steam engines, each one with a five-man nomadic crew that rode them around the country.

  The railroad workers needed a temporary place to live, and for many of them it was the YMCA, where Whitey’s father, Lloyd E. Moore, was the manager. Kindhearted and gregarious, he spent the Depression years easing the hardships of railroad families. Growing up, Whitey was strongly influenced by his father’s attitudes and values.

  No one ever accused Whitey of having movie-star looks, but he was the most popular boy in his 1935 graduating class at Beaver High School, primarily because he always seemed to make things fun for the kids around him. He was only five foot six, and the girls thought he was cute as a button. They enjoyed mothering him and he seemed to enjoy it, too.

  Physical and mental challenges came easy for him. Just about everything did except falling in love. That turned out to be the hardest thing he ever tried. On a break between classes during his second year at Bluefield Junior College, he had heard voices in the college theater and strolled inside. That’s when he first saw her. Catherine Dunn was rehearsing for a school play. As if hypnotized, he walked down to the edge of the stage and stared up at her. He came to the next rehearsal, too. When he asked her for a date, she accepted.

  Along with curly chestnut hair and a wholesome smile, Catherine was smart. Her father cherished the classics, and Shakespeare’s plays were read aloud by the family after dinner. In some ways, she seemed too good to be true. Early on, she told Whitey she had never kissed a boy. He did his best to win her heart, taking her to hear the big bands that came to the Colonial Theater in Bluefield. One Saturday afternoon, he drove her to see a piece of land he was hoping to buy someday. The pastures were separated by rows of ancient stone fences, and looked out on magnificent mountain views.

  When Whitey left Bluefield to attend West Virginia University, she would come up to Morgantown for football weekends and to attend his Kappa Alpha fraternity parties. The girls stayed together at a rooming house, and the boys would come to pick them up bearing gardenias.

  After his graduation from WVU, Whitey joined the Navy. Returning on leave after flight training at Pensacola, he proudly showed Catherine his new gold wings. On the morning he left to go back, he asked her to wait for him, and she agreed.

  When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, all of their male friends enlisted in the service. And several months later, Catherine began dating an older man who was an executive at the local bank. The banker was in his thirties, and too old to be drafted. When he asked her to marry him, she said yes and wrote to tell Whitey the news.

  Whitey knew he wasn’t the first man to receive a Dear John letter, and he wouldn’t be the last. At Norfolk, he met Betty Watkins, one of the nurses at the hospital. Betty was just over five feet tall and weighed a hundred pounds. He felt like Gary Cooper standing next to her. There were nightly parties at the Breezy Point BOQ, and as the liquor began to flow, it was a standing joke for one of the pilots to say, “Just give those two the cork. That’s all they need to get tight.”

  He thought he was falling in love with her, and wrote home to tell his parents so. He was older now, and with the war on, there wasn’t time for a storybook romance. When he and Grant shipped out, Betty said she would wait for him, too.

  Ozzie and Rete

  TUESDAY, 2 JUNE 1942

  EASTERN ISLAND, MIDWAY ATOLL

  CENTRAL PACIFIC

  Oswald “Ozzie” Gaynier had figured out the odds.

  He knew the Midway garrison faced an uphill battle against the Japanese invasion force coming at them. Ozzie and the other Avenger pilots had been briefed by Langdon Fieberling after Fieberling’s meeting with the Marine air group commander, Colonel Ira Kimes.

  Secrecy was paramount to the success of Nimitz’s ambush plan, and the forces on Midway were not informed that three American carriers would soon be rendezvousing only a few hundred miles to the northeast.

  As far as Kimes knew, the combined Army-Navy-Marine air group at Midway, along with the 6th Marine Defense Battalion, was all that stood in the way of the Japanese fleet. Kimes said he believed that the American carriers were all back protecting the approaches to Pearl Harbor.

  “We’re alone,” Fieberling told his pilots afterward. “The Japanese want these airfields. The planes we have on this island are everything we’ve got to stop them. Nothing else is coming.”

  Ozzie had already taken a careful look at the other aircraft in the garrison. Like the Avengers, some of the planes were really impressive, as good as anything the Army and Navy had in their arsenals. But aside from the Flying Fortresses, the four Marauders, and a handful of Wildcat fighters and Dauntless dive-bombers, the rest of the combat planes looked like they came from the boneyard.

  Most of the fighters at Midway were Brewster Buffaloes. Six months earlier, the British had sent their Buffaloes up against the Japanese Zeroes over Singapore and Burma, and they had been slaughtered like their Great Plains namesakes.

  Most of the dive-bombers were obsolete Vought Vindicators, with canvas fabric skins so decrepit that their fuselages were wrapped with four-inch-wide hospital adhesive tape to keep the peeling fabric in place. The Marine pilots who would be flying them were fresh from flight school, totally green. None of them had even seen a Vindicator before.

  Ozzie had calculated their chances with the same calm logic he brought to every aspect of his life. Like the other pilots, he had seen a copy of the general order prepared for the defense of Midway’s two islands by Lieutenant Colonel Harold D. Shannon, who commanded the Marine battalion that would attempt to repel the Japanese invasion.

  Information available indicates that the Japanese plan an all-out attack on Midway with a view to its capture. This attack may start any hour
now. . . . Our job is to hold Midway.

  If the Japanese planned to take the two islands, it meant they were bringing a substantial force of shock troops, presumably enough men to overwhelm the two thousand defenders dug in around him.

  Our aviation forces have been strongly reinforced. As long as we keep our aircraft flying, they can work on hostile carriers, transports, and other surface craft.

  Other surface craft. That meant Japanese battleships and heavy cruisers, enough of them to protect their aircraft carriers, and enough to bombard the island’s defenses to rubble if they won control of the air.

  After the Japs figure that our Air Force is out and that defensive installations have been sufficiently weakened, they will attempt a landing. This time they are coming to us and we have the opportunity of a lifetime to reflect glory on our Corps. . . .

  An opportunity of a lifetime. That was one way of putting it. Some of the words in Shannon’s order sounded like those of Colonel William Travis at the Alamo. Or Custer at the Little Big Horn.

  Ozzie Gaynier had grown up in Monroe, Michigan, the boyhood home of General George Armstrong Custer. He passed Custer’s statue every day on his way to school. The trumpeting of glorious deeds didn’t go a long way with him.

  The words were obviously meant to inspire the men, but Ozzie hadn’t found too many defenders at Midway who were out for glory. The men he met went about their jobs with quiet determination and an awareness that the Japanese had to be stopped.

  To have a chance, the Midway air garrison would have to intercept the Japanese force before it got to Midway, take them by surprise, and inflict enough damage to make them turn back. If the enemy carriers and battleships got through, there would be no way to save the island, even with a couple thousand salty Marines defending it. Molotov cocktails and machine guns wouldn’t stop a carpet bombardment by battleships.

  In most places, the island’s water table was only three feet beneath the surface of the sand. There was no way to dig deep bunkers. After the Japanese battleships finished shelling the island with fourteen-inch guns, there wouldn’t be a lot of men left.

  At the same time, Gaynier and the others knew they had to fight with whatever weapons were available. And the battle had to be really important if Admiral Nimitz had come out here himself to look things over.

  PBY patrol craft had been dispatched to the north and west in hopes of spotting the Japanese advance ships as quickly as possible. Toward dawn, the pilots would warm up their aircraft and wait in the cockpits in case the Japanese arrived early.

  At least it wasn’t cold. Ozzie Gaynier had always hated the cold.

  Back in Norfolk, Torpedo Eight had trained through one of the harshest winters in local memory. At night they would do landing practice drills with the cockpit canopies wide open. The constant blast of frigid air had been brutal as he sat in the middle seat behind a succession of new pilots, flying around Monogram Field in the darkness, sometimes no more than fifty feet over the trees. Frozen to the bone, he knew that the green pilot in front of him was one small miscalculation from killing them both.

  Growing up in Michigan, Ozzie had come to hate the winter. His father, Ezra Gaynier, was descended from French Canadians and seemed oblivious to it. The only part of Michigan winters Ozzie enjoyed was Christmas. There were eight children in the family, and Ozzie was the second oldest. Each year they would search the nearby woods for the perfect tree and decorate every room in the three-story house with fresh evergreen boughs.

  The year before he started high school, he had bought a Santa costume with a large molded Santa mask. On Christmas Eve, he waited until bedtime to set up ladders against the two sides of the house where the kids slept in the second- and third-floor bedrooms. While the little ones were still awake in their beds, he surprised them by throwing open their window and tossing their bag of gifts inside. While they were still screaming with excitement, he ran around to the other side of the house and did the same thing for the others.

  Though he finished high school, he hadn’t taken to higher education. He lasted just one day as a freshman at Michigan State before going home again. Something about it didn’t feel right.

  After working for a year, he went back the next fall to try again. This time, he lasted three days, forfeiting the entire fall semester tuition of fifteen dollars. By then, he was twenty years old and bored with small-town life. The wanderlust was in him, and he left Monroe in the empty boxcar of a westbound freight train. For six months, he crisscrossed the West, working odd jobs and occasionally living in hobo jungles.

  Remembering that one of his cousins had married a lumber baron in central Oregon, Ozzie hitchhiked up there and asked for a job. After several months of cutting down trees, he decided that an education might be more enjoyable after all.

  He started at Michigan State again, and this time it took. An English major, he also became an intercollegiate track star, eventually breaking all of the Michigan records as a pole vaulter.

  And then he met Rete.

  There was definitely such a thing as love at first sight. He was living proof of it. With perfect symmetry, the tall, willowy blonde felt exactly the same way about him. Rete thought Ozzie seemed larger than life, as if he had already seen it all in his twenty-four years.

  Rete had just started her sophomore year at college. The first dance that fall was at the Phi Delta house, and Ozzie asked her to dance. He had just won the college middleweight boxing championship, and looked like a man among boys. He walked her home from the party.

  From that night on, she didn’t date anyone else. A few weeks later, he told her he loved her, and took her home to Monroe to meet his family.

  In his final year of school Ozzie decided to become a Navy pilot. By then, the war in Europe was raging, and he believed America would be drawn in soon. Accepted for flight training, he left for Pensacola in the summer of 1941. Rete had just started her junior year when Ozzie called her from Florida and said, “I want you here with me.”

  He told her that Navy regulations prohibited him from marrying her for two years, but they would get married as soon as it was legal to do so. In the meantime, he missed her too much to wait.

  For Rete, it was an easy decision, although her sister Florence, who had been helping Rete with tuition bills, hit the roof. She angrily demanded that Rete finish her schooling before anything else.

  “I’m going,” said Rete.

  Ozzie found her a studio apartment over a garage in Pensacola, but it was rare they were in it together. Training pilots were given few privileges. She saw him two nights out of every fourteen. Her days were spent working in the local dime store to help pay their bills.

  When Ozzie won his wings, they were secretly married in front of a Miami justice of the peace. Rete couldn’t afford a wedding dress. He wore his Navy blues, and she wore a navy-colored dress and matching hat.

  On training missions, he would often fly over their little apartment house. Rete knew it was him because they had arranged a signal in which he would gun the engine three times in low pitch as he came over. She would come running out into the yard and wave up at him.

  By the time Ozzie joined Torpedo Eight, the Navy had relaxed its ban on marriage, and Rete joined the small band of pilots’ wives at Norfolk. Commander Waldron’s wife, Adelaide, put her at ease from the start. Adelaide had a great sense of humor, and had seen just about everything. She was there for Rete with wise advice.

  When Ozzie and the other pilots were ordered to fly the new Avengers to San Francisco, the wives followed, driving together to catch up to them before they left for the Pacific aboard the USS Chaumont.

  On their last night together, Ozzie took Rete to Fisherman’s Wharf, where they shared a candlelight dinner. When he left their hotel the next morning, she gave him one last hug, only breaking down after he was gone. A few hours later, there was a knock at the door of her room. When she opened it, Ozzie was standing there with a huge grin on his face.

  “We�
�re not sailing today,” he said. “We’ve got one more night.”

  When the time came for their final parting, it was even harder than the previous one. With a reassuring smile, he said to her, “Don’t worry, darling. I’ll come back.”

  Now, at Midway, all he could do was wait. There was no way to predict the future, but if he had to cash in his chips, he honestly felt that he had enjoyed a good life.

  Today was Rete’s birthday. June 2. She was twenty-three years old.

  Freddy

  WEDNESDAY, 3 JUNE 1942

  USS HORNET

  TORPEDO SQUADRON EIGHT

  Although he had been part of the squadron for less than a week, Fred Mears was still lobbying the Skipper to let him fly with the others when they sprang the ambush on the Japanese fleet.

  After arriving at Pearl Harbor in early May, he had been assigned to the torpedo squadron on the carrier USS Lexington. While he was enjoying a week of liberty in his suite at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, a rumor began to spread that the “Lady Lex” had been torpedoed and sunk in the Coral Sea. It was true.

  On May 27, a typewritten note arrived at the hotel ordering Fred to report immediately to Kaneohe Bay Naval Air Station. Putting on his uniform, he flagged a taxi and headed over to the duty office. At Kaneohe he was told to report to Commander John Waldron at Torpedo Squadron Eight, temporarily based at Ewa Field.

  Through the grapevine, Fred had heard that a big battle was brewing in the Central Pacific. This might just be his ticket to the party. He hustled over to Ewa, only to be kept waiting along with other pilots who were hoping to join the squadron.

  When he got in to see Waldron, the craggy old officer was brusquely polite. The truth was that Waldron didn’t want him. Although Mears had flown plenty of hours in a Devastator, he had never actually landed one on a carrier. With the Hornet’s departure just hours away, Waldron told Mears there was no time for him to become carrier-qualified.