Baa Baa Black Sheep

by Gregory Boyington

  It was impossible for me to see this flamer crash. By this time, I was too occupied getting my plane out of the spin before I hit the water too. I did, however, shoot a sizable burst into the second Zero a few seconds later. This Zero turned northward for Choiseul, a nearby enemy-held island but without an airstrip. The only thing I could figure was that his craft was acting up and he planned upon ditching as close to Choiseul as he could. Anyhow I didn’t have sufficient gas to verify my suspicions.

  Also, I was unable to locate the oil-smeared Corsair again. Not that it would have helped any, or there was anything else one could do, but I believed Bob Ewing must have been in that Corsair. For Bob never showed up after the mission. And one thing for certain, that slowed-down, oil-smeared, and shell-riddled Corsair couldn’t have gone much farther.

  This first day of the new squadron had been a busy one, all right. It had been so busy I suddenly realized that my gas gauge was bouncing on empty. And I wanted so badly to stretch that gas registering zero to somewhere close to Munda I could taste it.

  I leaned out fuel consumption as far as was possible, and the finish was one of those photo ones. I did reach the field at Munda, or rather one end of it, and was just starting to taxi down the field when my engine cut out. I was completely out of gas.

  The armorers came out to rearm my plane and informed me that I had only thirty rounds of .50-caliber left, so I guess I did come back at the right time.

  But I was to learn something else, too, in case I started to think that all my days were to be like his one, the first one. For this first day—when I got five planes to my credit—happened to be the best day I ever had in combat. However, this concerned us nought, for one would have thought we won the war then and there.

  Opportunity knocks seldom. But one thing for certain, people can sense these opportunities if they are halfway capable of logical thinking, and, of course, are willing to take the consequences if things go dead wrong.

  Lengthy delay in arrival of relief squadrons from the States plus my ability to con Colonel Sanderson into making a squadron out of thin air were the necessary ingredients—and bluff. This was the shady parentage of my new squadron. Born on speculation. An operation strictly on credit had been approved: Airplanes, pilots, and even our squadron number, 214, were borrowed.

  That night, I recall vaguely, the quartet of Moe Fisher, Moon Mullin, George Ashmum, and Bruce Matheson harmonizing on the cot next to mine. Tomorrow, the future, meant little to me then. Not even the possibility of a hairy hangover bothered me the slightest. So I took aboard a load of issue brandy, which our flight surgeon, Jim Ream, had been so kind to supply. I took this load of brandy, along with yours truly, to another world.

  Sandy couldn’t possibly have known that our first mission would work out this way—or could he?

  * * *

  16

  * * *

  Daylight was streaming through the Dallas-hut windows, and I could sleep in for a while, and I wanted to fall back to sleep, shutting out the world a little longer—but I couldn’t. There were many problems on my mind. But first I had to gather my boys together and wise them up to a few things that hadn’t been carried out to my satisfaction.

  While I was pulling on my fatigue clothes, a two-piece jacket and trousers, I was thinking of things I would have to explain to the pilots. These fatigues were green cotton affairs I believed were the most comfortable clothing a fellow could wear after they had been laundered a few times, and very easy to shed if one were to have a forced landing in the water, which happened to be about the only place we could expect to have one.

  The first man I saw this morning—or noticed, I should have said—was Major Stanley Bailey, my executive officer. Stan had been recently promoted to major, and what a proud one he was; I was positive he polished his gold leaves daily. There Stan was in fresh starched khaki with rank insignia on his collar and on his hat, which few of us ever bothered to wear. When I observed that he was also carrying a small swagger stick I thought I was seeing things, but no, I was not. He gave the impression he had just been waiting for the day he made major and would be entitled to pack this “riding crop” from there on in.

  Stan was a swell person as well as a good pilot—naïve, yes, and a sincere-type lad with whom we could have a great deal of fun. The other pilots in the squadron remembered him from Pensacola, where he had taught instrument flying, as he had been stationed there after graduating from flight school. When my exec would get wound up a bit, the boys in the squadron would say:

  “Now settle down, Major. All you have to remember is—needle—ball—air speed.”

  Moon Mullin, who was our flight officer, called the boys at 9:00 A.M. for our little get-together. The faces that surrounded me in the ready shack were of happy, joking boys, not the serious do-or-die-type lads we are accustomed to watching in the motion pictures of war. I started: “Before any compliments or corrective criticisms, there is something else I believe should be decided upon immediately. We are going to have to choose a squadron name that is fit to print, my friends.”

  “Just what do you mean, Gramps?”

  “I mean Boyington’s Bastards. In the first place, I don’t think a squadron should be named after a person. And in the second place, a correspondent said last night, they would balk at printing it back home.”

  There was a great hassle following this, and some of the many suggestions followed:

  “Outcasts?”

  “Forgotten Freddies?”

  “Bold Bums?”

  “To hell with ’em, we’ll do such a job they’ll have to print it and like it.” So it appeared we were right back where we had started.

  “No, Gramps. We have thought it over, suggested names, but we like the one we already have. Besides, we have been treated like bastards, and our name rhymes.”

  I had an answer, but I didn’t tell the boys where it came from, for fear they would laugh me out of the ready shack.

  Since my childhood the noises made by trains and motors of various types had played a little jingle with my thinking upon many an occasion. My recollection of these occasions when I had been pleasantly occupied with daydreams was most enjoyable. My childhood jingle was, “Baa Baa, Blacksheep, have you any wool, yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.”

  So I said: “Say, fellows, I got an idea! Something we could use in polite society. Something society already accepts.”

  “Okay, spill it, Gramps.”

  “Try this for size. Black Sheep. Everybody knows that it stands for the same thing. And yet no personality is involved, and they can print Black Sheep.”

  “By golly, we like that, Gramps. We can make up a bastard coat of arms like they used to do in England. And we can put it on a shield and use it as our insignia.”

  Several days passed before the boys obtained all the authentic dope they needed for drawing up the shield, or insignia. Someone explained that the bar on a bastard shield ran diagonally in the opposite direction from the legitimate. So we made ours this way. They also decided a black sheep was to be on the shield, but, search as we might, we could not locate a drawing to copy one from. Finally we came across an artist of sorts, and the sergeant promised to draw our sheep for the squadron.

  I’ll never forget their delight when the boys saw the drawing the sergeant came up with, it was ideal, the most woebegone-looking black sheep anybody ever saw. It had taken him such a long time to bring our black sheep that my curiosity had been aroused, so I asked: “Where in hell did you get the idea to draw this from, Sarge?”

  “I searched high and low, and was about ready to give up, when I happened to run across a cartoon in a magazine.”

  The sergeant then handed me a worn sheet from the magazine he spoke about, and I immediately broke into laughter. The cartoon was two G.I.’s on their hands and knees camouflaging themselves in sheepskins, and one G.I., in a black skin, was watching a ram approach the flock where the two were hiding, and the face looking out from under the head wa
s saying: “Look, Joe, I’m not so sure I wanna go through with this or not.”

  Anyway, this sad-looking sheep the sarge had drawn, with the position it was in, and the name Black Sheep were to stick. And we were free to go on with the business at hand.

  My talk concerning the mission to Ballale, our baptism in combat as a squadron, was given to protect our lives and yet shoot down more enemy aircraft at the same time. There had been far too many probables. I realized, though, that the unexpected manner in which we had gone into action was the excuse for not following up. I also realized how bad I’d been in my first fight.

  I informed the squadron of my own efforts in the past, all the hours I had flown searching and trying my best, that this was the first time in nearly two years I had been given an opportunity, that one has to plan, before the time arrives, just exactly what one is going to insist that his plane do when the infrequent opportunity presents itself.

  And when one gets some of these few chances, he has to know ahead of time how he is going to get into position. When in position, which is the furthest thing in the world from being permanent, he doesn’t have seconds. There is just a split second where everything is right, for the target is going to remain anything but stationary. During this split second the range has to be just right, the deflection has to be accurate, and the first squeeze of the trigger has to be as smooth and perfect as humanly possible.

  In other words months of preparation, one of those few opportunities, and the judgment of a split second are what makes some pilot an ace, while others think back on what they could have done. Some of the boys took this message to heart, while others did not—or could not. I will never know. Or does it really matter?

  Bob Ewing hadn’t shown up. We knew Bob was down. But whether he had made some island, of which there were few, and most of them Japanese-occupied, or, more than likely the wide, wide Pacific Ocean, we did not know. I couldn’t help thinking that he was in the beaten-up plane I had tried to help. Patrols of fighters were sent for several days until, at last, one of our pilots brought back a report. He had sighted a one-man raft, the type carried by fighters, and there had been a motionless body aboard. The pilot had flown within a few feet above the raft but had gotten no response, saying that the body appeared black and lifeless. We relayed this information to “Dumbo,” a PBY rescue amphibian that went out and circled the raft for twenty minutes at a speed much slower than the fighter’s.

  Dumbo had wisely decided not to risk four lives landing in high waves so close in enemy waters, just to pick up a dead companion. Anyhow, whether this was Bob we never knew, and Bob Ewing had to be declared missing in action, like the majority of people who chose to fight in the air.

  It has been said: “Who knows the man you are sitting next to.”

  Bob McClurg, who was doing his best when he stayed in the same sky with his squadron, had blasted two Nips from this very same sky. His section leader had had to return to base with engine trouble prior to the fight, but Bob stayed with the formation as best he could, and he said afterward that every time he joined up with a plane he discovered it was covered with angry red meatballs. The character. How in hell did he ever get home? There has to be a Supreme Power; that’s all there is to it!

  PBY “Dumbo”

  Bob Alexander, who was from Davenport, Iowa, a fellow with perfect white teeth that matched his clean-cut, youthful appearance, seemed definitely out of character as he gave his version of the encounter. He related: “I sent three bursts into this Zero, but it didn’t want to go down, so I flew alongside to see what was holding him up. It was really something. I could see the Jap’s face. His hands were flailing like windmills, batting at the flames in the cockpit. I was only a few feet away, staring right at him, as he burned to a crisp.”

  McGee was standing there as he was always dressed, except, possibly, when we were on shore leave at Sydney. “Maggie” had swarthy features and always wore a bandana around his neck, and, except for the lack of golden earrings, I’d have sworn the gent under the mop of curly hair was a gypsy. And he had also drawn blood the first fight but was not the demonstrative type by any stretch of the imagination.

  It was almost securing time that afternoon, when a jeep drove up to the ready shack with the colonel in charge of the strip and his driver. Stan and I were off to one side of the shack talking, the occupants of the jeep had asked some questions, and some of the boys were pointing in our direction. The colonel walked over to where we were standing and started talking to my exec, leaving me completely out of the conversation. The pair conversed for quite some time, while I stood listening and chewing on a piece of straw. Finally Stan blushed so red it shined in the polished insignia on his collar, and he said:

  “Colonel, you must think I’m the commanding officer.”

  “Why, yes, aren’t you?”

  “No, that’s Boyington, in the fatigue clothes.”

  “Well, both of you are invited up to my quarters for dinner this evening,” the colonel skillfully replied, and then he shoved off.

  Before the two of us drove up the hill to dinner, I wished that I had not been recognized at all, so that I could enjoy the evening with my boys, and some of Doc Ream’s brandy. But I got dressed in khaki and up the hilltop we went to accept the hospitality of the colonel in charge.

  This colonel was one of the sweetest guys I’ve ever met, and he was full of enthusiasm, as much so as any of the small fry in the squadron. He was all wrapped up with our tales of the action the day before in the skies under his command. Here was a fellow I believed when he stated: “I wish I could be demoted a couple of ranks so I could have gone with you.”

  As soon as I entered the colonel’s quarters, I spotted several bottles of Old Taylor sitting beside some glasses and ice cubes on a drink service, and immediately my mouth began to water. My brain was going a mile a minute. I was thinking of the brandy I had enjoyed after the mission last night, and wondering if he could possibly know anything about this. And I wondered if Colonel Lard could have been so mean as to have forwarded those orders he had told me of.

  While all this was going over in my mind, I heard my host say: “Water, soda, or straight, like the men you have proved yourselves to be?”

  “Water for me, please, Colonel?” I vaguely remember hearing Stan’s voice. Although I was thinking a great deal, words didn’t seem to want to come out of my mouth.

  “I know how you like yours, Boyington—the same as I do.” And the old boy poured two water glasses over half full after handing Stan his mixed drink. There before my eyes was this straight bourbon staring me in the face, waiting for me to accept it from my host’s hand.

  “Well, come on, take it, drink hearty.”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled, and reached out, taking the offered glass from his hand. I thought: “What in hell is this, a trap of some kind?”

  I sat there, not paying much attention to the conversation, just toying with the glass, when the colonel finally brought me back to this world.

  “Come on, drink up. Don’t worry, there is lots more where this comes from.” He winked at me and pointed to a wooden case in the corner of the room.

  I thought: “To hell with Lard. He will never be around where there are any bullets. So why should I let him worry me now?”

  After the first large swallow had gone down my neck, the others took care of themselves; not the slightest worry concerned me. But as we three were leaving to go to dinner, the colonel informed Stan that we would be with him in a minute, as we had something to talk over privately. I found that Lard had sent those orders after all.

  I thought: “What a hell of a world this is, a nice fellow like this trapping me,” and I believe the greater part of the delightful glow left.

  The colonel said: “Have no fear, Boyington. I’ll show you what I think of Lard and his orders, ‘to be forwarded.’ ” With this statement he tore the orders to bits, extending a hand in warm friendship.

  I had broken faith with Lard, bu
t I was more determined than a little bit not to let an understanding gent like this down, and many others like him. Come to think about it, I didn’t have to worry, because a man like Lard had already lost his faith in everybody, himself included.

  But it would seem that these white coral strips on the Russells were, like so many more, constructed only to be completed too late to be of much use. The Japanese were not sending their aircraft down this far any longer. For the equipment we were using it was an ungodly long way from here to where the Nips were operating out of Bougainville. So we had to be content with escorting TBFs up the Slot afternoons until darkness set in, then we would fly to base, leaving them to go the rest of the way in the dark to bomb shipping and anything else on the schedule.

  One of these TBF outfits we used to escort was commanded by Major Dooley, who was a cadet when I instructed at Pensacola. This young man had been badly burned as he bailed out of a flaming trainer with his instructor, and it had been doubtful that the Navy would permit him to continue training. I remembered that he had wanted his wings above anything else. And it was evident that he had stuck to it, for here he was, a major leading a squadron.

  About a half hour before sunset Dooley would motion for me to fly alongside, so the two of us could use sign language and not have to open up on the radio. The gutty character would then pat the top of his head for taking over command, give me a cat-eatin’ grin, and blow me a kiss good-by with a gesture from one of his crippled hands. Then, as our fighters executed a 180° for the Russells, I would be thinking: “God, what a man!”