"The question is moot," Lieutenant Donnelly said. "There are no cargo ‘chutes available. Period. You’re talking about modifying a standard Switlick C-3 ‘chute, Corporal?"
Steve nodded.
"How?" Donnelly pursued.
"Do you think I might be able to get you the parachute, parachutes, you need, Banning?" Pickering asked.
"Sir," Donnelly replied for Banning, "I don’t think there’s a cargo parachute in Australia."
"OK," Pickering said. "You were saying, Corporal Koffler?"
"Sir, I think you could make up some special rigging to replace the harness. Make straps to go around the mattresses."
"Mattress?" Banning asked.
"Mattresses," Steve said. "What I would do is make one package of the antenna and the generator. I think you could just roll them up in a mattress and strap it tight. And then add sandbags, or something, so that it weighed about a hundred seventy-five pounds. Where do you want to drop the radio, Sir?"
"Why sandbags? Why a hundred seventy-five pounds?"
"That’s the best weight for a standard ‘chute. Any more and you hit too hard. Any lighter and it floats forever. You couldn’t count on hitting the drop zone," Koffler said, explaining what he evidently thought should be self-evident to someone who was not too bright.
He obviously knows what he’s talking about. Why does that surprise me?
"And then do the same thing with the transceiver itself," Koffler went on. "Wrap it in mattresses, and then weight it up to a hundred seventy-five pounds. It would probably make sense to wrap some radio tubes-I mean spare tubes-in cotton or something, and put them with the transceiver. They’re pretty fragile."
"I have some parachute riggers, Corporal," Lieutenant Donnelly said. "Civilian women. They have some heavy sewing machines. Could you show them, do you think, how to make such a replacement for the harness?"
"Yes, Sir," Koffler said. "I think so."
He looked uncomfortable.
"Speaking of civilian women, Sir, I’ve got a lady outside in the car. Could I take a minute to talk to her? I was about to take her home."
"Sure," Banning said. "Go ahead."
When he was gone, Fleming Pickering said, "Well, what do you think, Ed?"
"I don’t know what to think, Sir. He doesn’t seem to think there will be much of a problem. More important, he seems to know what he’s talking about."
"I was thinking, for a moment, that he seems so young for something like this. But then I remembered that I was a Corporal of Marines when I was his age; it’s probably not that he’s so young, but that I’m so old."
Steve Koffler didn’t have to go out to the Studebaker to find Yeoman Daphne Farnsworth; she was standing in the foyer, just outside the corridor to the library.
"I had to go to the ladies’," she said.
"You found it all right, I hope?"
"Yes, thank you."
"Something’s come up," Steve said.
"I heard, I went looking for you."
"I don’t know how long this will take," Steve said. "I’m sorry, I should have taken you home first."
"Are you in some kind of trouble? About taking the car, maybe?"
"No, I don’t think so. I thought I would be when I saw that Captain Pickering was here, but I think they want me to jump in with the radio. Otherwise, I think my ass would have been in a crack."
"You’re sure?"
He nodded. "I’m sorry you have to wait. I was going to tell you to wait in there," he said, pointing toward the sitting room. "There’s couches and chairs and a radio."
"All right," Daphne said. "You’re sure you didn’t get in trouble coming out to see me?"
"I’m fine," he said, smiling. "No trouble. Things couldn’t be better."
He turned and went back down the corridor. Daphne walked into the sitting room. She sat down on a couch and picked up a magazine, and then threw it down angrily.
That American Navy captain and Steve’s major and lieutenant and Donnelly didn’t come here on a Saturday evening to discuss a training mission. I know what the Marines are doing here with the Coastwatchers. If they’re going to parachute him anywhere, it will be onto some island in Japanese hands. And the only reason they would do that is because there’s some sort of trouble with the Australian already there.
She looked impatiently around the room. Her eyes fell on several bottles, one of them of Gilbey’s gin. She walked over to it, looked over her shoulder nervously, and then took a healthy pull at the neck of the bottle.
" ‘Otherwise,’" she quoted bitterly, " ‘I think my ass would have been in a crack!’ Oh, Steve, you bloody ass!"
Then she capped the Gilbey’s bottle and walked down the corridor to the library door, where she could hear what was being said.
"I’ll try to get to the airfield to see you off, Steve," Captain Fleming Pickering said, "but if something comes up ... good luck, son."
"Thank you, Sir," Steve said.
They were standing on the porch of The Elms. All that could be done tonight had been done. The officers, except Lieutenant Howard and his girlfriend, were leaving.
"You’ve been taking some kidding, I’m sure, about being a corporal, as young as you are," Pickering went on.
"Yes, Sir. Some."
"Well, it’s going to get worse," Pickering said. "As of this moment, you’re a sergeant."
"Sir?"
"I think, Ed," Pickering said to Banning, "that between us we should have the authority to make that promotion, shouldn’t we? I’m not going to have to trouble the Secretary of the Navy with an administrative problem like that, am I?"
"No, Sir," Banning chuckled. "I don’t see any problem with that."
"Then good luck again, Sergeant Koffler," Pickering said, and patted Steve, a paternal gesture, on the arm. He went down the stairs and got in the Drop-Head Jaguar.
"I will see you and Lieutenant Howard at half past six, Sergeant, right?" Lieutenant Donnelly said. "At the airfield."
"Aye, aye, Sir."
"Don’t get carried away with your girlfriend tonight, Sergeant, " Banning said softly. "Have fun, but be at the airport at 0630."
"She’s not my girlfriend, Sir," Steve said.
"Oh?"
"I wish she was, but all she is ... is a very nice lady."
"I see."
"I’ll be at the airport on time, Sir."
"Goodnight, Steve," Banning said.
He got in Pickering’s Jaguar. Steve stood on the porch until both cars had disappeared down the driveway, then went looking for Daphne. He suspected that she would probably be sort of hiding in the sitting room. It would have been very embarrassing for her if Lieutenant Donnelly had seen her. He would have gotten the wrong idea.
Daphne Farnsworth was not in the sitting room. Nor in the toilet off the corridor. Nor in the kitchen, Nor anyplace.
Jesus! What she did was walk all the way to the goddamned road, so that she can try to catch a ride!
He ran to the Studebaker. Daphne’s bag was not in the backseat.
She’s even carrying her goddamned suitcase!
He got behind the wheel, squealed the tires backing out and turning around, and raced down the drive between the ancient elms. She was not in sight when he reached the highway. He swore, and then drove toward Melbourne. Once he thought he saw her, but when he got close it was not Daphne sitting on her suitcase, but a pile of paving stones, neatly stacked by the side of the road.
Finally, swearing, he gave up, and drove back to The Elms.
At least she didn’t have to carry that heavy goddamned suitcase; I would have carried it to her in the morning.
And that would have at least given me the chance to say "so long."
When he got back to The Elms, he saw there was only one light on, on the second floor. That meant Lieutenant Howard and his girlfriend had gone to bed. Together.
Jesus, talk about good luck! Having your girlfriend right here.But then he considered that. Maybe it would
be better if she wasn‘t here, especially since she knows what’s going to happen tomorrow. The minute they were alone, she probably started crying or something, and that would be hard to deal with. And then he considered that again. At least they could put their arms around each other and not feel so fucking alone.
Steve went into the library. He thought he would write his mother. But when he was sitting at the little writing table with a sheet of paper in front of him, he realized that was a lousy idea.
What the hell can I write? "Dear Mom, I’m fine. How are you? I’ve been wondering when I’m going to get a letter from you. Nothing much is happening here, except that I’m living in a mansion outside Melbourne; and tomorrow or the next day they’re going to jump me onto an island called Buka. I don’t even know where it is."
I can’t even write that. This whole thing is a military secret
He thought about going into the kitchen and maybe making himself an egg sandwich, but decided against it; the last time he’d done that, he’d awakened Mrs. Cavendish, and he didn’t want to do that tonight.
He went up the broad staircase to the second floor, and down the corridor to his room.
Tomorrow night, or maybe the night after that, I’ll be sleeping in the goddamned jungle with bugs and snakes and Christ knows what else. I should have known a good deal like this couldn’t last- a room of my own, with a great big bed all for myself.
He pushed open the door to his room and turned on the light.
Yeoman Daphne Farnsworth was in his bed, with the sheet pulled up around her chin.
"Jesus Christ!" Steve said.
"I saw you drive off in the car," Daphne said. "I didn’t know when, or if, you would be back, so I decided to go to bed and worry about getting into Melbourne in the morning."
"I was looking for you," he said. "When I couldn’t find you downstairs, I thought you had probably tried to hitch a ride into Melbourne."
"Oh," she said.
"I’m going to jump onto some island called Buka."
"I know. I heard."
"How come you took your bag out of the car?" Steve blurted. "I mean, you must have-"
"I know what you mean," she said, very softly.
"Jesus!"
"I didn’t want you to be alone tonight," Daphne said. "If that makes you think I’m some kind of a wh-"
"Shut up!" he said sharply. "Don’t talk like that!"
"And I didn’t want to be alone, either," she said.
"Once, in the car," Steve said, "we were talking about something, and you leaned close to me and put your hand on my leg, and I could smell your breath and feel it on my face, and I thought my heart was going to stop. . . ."
They looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment.
Finally, softly, reasonably, Daphne said, "Steve, since you have to be at the airfield at half past six, don’t you think you should come to bed?"
(Two)
Port Moresby, New Guinea
0405 Hours 8 June 1942,
When Flight Sergeant Michael Keyes, RAAF, went to the tin-roofed Transient Other Ranks hut to wake him, Sergeant Steve Koffler, USMC, was awake and nearly dressed, in greens that still carried the stripes of a corporal.
Lieutenant Howard had tried to fix it so they could be together overnight, but the Aussies hadn’t let them. Steve had told Howard not to worry about it. He thought Howard had enough to worry about, like making his first jump, without having to worry about him having to sleep by himself.
"Briefing time, lad," Sergeant Keyes said.
"OK."
"First, breakfast, of course. The food here is ordinarily bloody awful, which explains the stuff we brought with us."
"I’m not really very hungry."
"Well, have a go at it anyway. It’s likely to be some time before steak and eggs will be on your ration again."
"Some time," shit. By tonight I’m probably going to be dead.
"I guess I better put this on now, huh?" Steve said, holding up an RAAF flight suit, a quilted cotton coverall.
"Yes, I think you might as well," Keyes said.
Steve put his legs into the garment and shrugged into it. There were the chevrons of a sergeant of the United States Marine Corps on the sleeves, and the metal lapel insignia of the Corps on the collar points. Staff Sergeant Richardson had taken care of that yesterday in Townesville, when Steve and the crew of the Lockheed Hudson were packing the Hallicrafters set and loading it into the airplane.
He had also given Steve a Colt Model 1911A1.45 pistol. Steve suspected that Staff Sergeant Richardson had given him his own pistol; only the officers and a couple of the staff sergeants had been authorized pistols. He thought that had been a very nice thing for Staff Sergeant Richardson to do.
Steve had decided the best-really the only-way to take his Springfield along was to drop it with the antenna set; it and his web cartridge belt and two extra bandoliers of .30-06 ammunition and a half-dozen fragmentation grenades had been wrapped in cotton padding, and then that bundle had been strapped to the antenna parts.
Now that Richardson had given him the pistol, at least when he got on the ground he would have a weapon right away. There was no telling how quickly he could get the Springfield out of the antenna bundle. If he could find it at all.
Steve took a couple of foil-wrapped Trojans from a knee pocket in the flight suit, ripped one of them open with his teeth, unrolled it, and then tied it around the top of his boots. Then he bloused the left leg of the flight suit under it.
As he repeated the process for the right leg, Flight Sergeant Keyes said rather admiringly, "I wondered how the hell you did that to your trousers."
"They call it ‘blousing,’" Steve said.
He strapped Staff Sergeant Richardson’s pistol belt around his waist, and then tied the thong lace around his leg through an eyelet at the bottom of the holster.
"Ready," he said.
"Good lad," Keyes said. "We have to get hopping."
They left the tin-roofed hut and walked across the airfield to the mess. Based on his previous experience-in the movies- with what war should look like, Port Moresby was what Steve had expected to find when he got off the Martin Mariner in Melbourne. The people here went around armed, and they wore steel helmets. There were sandbags all over the place, at the entrances to bomb shelters, and around buildings, and to protect machine-gun positions. This place had been bombed.
Their airplane, the Lockheed, had been pushed into a revetment with sandbag walls. There were other airplanes, none of which was very impressive. There were three bi-wing English fighter planes, for instance, that looked as if they were left over from the First World War.
In the mess hut, Sergeant Keyes took his arm and guided him into an anteroom under a sign that said,officers. Lieutenant Howard and the rest of the airplane crew were there: the pilot, who was a "flying officer," and the navigator, who was a sergeant, and the gunner, who was a corporal. Steve decided that in the RAAF, if you were a flyer, you got to eat with the officers.
But he quickly learned that wasn’t the reason Sergeant Keyes had taken him in the Officers’ Room.
"Good morning, Sergeant," a voice said behind him. "About ready to get this show started?"
Startled, Steve looked over his shoulder. There was another RAAF officer, an older one, with a bunch of stripes on his sleeve, standing by the door.
He’s at least a major, or whatever the hell they call a major in the RAAF.
"Yes, Sir," Steve said.
"We’re running a bit behind schedule, so I’ll just run through this while you eat, all right?"
"That’ll be fine, Sir," Lieutenant Howard said.
The officer gestured to the navigator, who picked up a four-by-four sheet of plywood and set it down on the table.
"Sit here, Sergeant," the navigator said, indicating a chair at the table beside Howard. Steve saw that Howard had already been served his breakfast, but hadn’t eaten much of it.
Steve sat down. The
old RAAF officer went to the map.
"Here we are, in Port Moresby," the RAAF officer said, pointing. "And here’s where you’re going.
"Buka is an island approximately thirty miles long and no greater than five or six miles wide. It is the northernmost island in the Solomons chain, just north of Bougainville, which is much larger. Where you are going, here, is 146 nautical miles from the Japanese base at Rabaul on New Britain. There is a Japanese fighter base on Buka, another on Bougainville, and of course there are fighters based at Rabaul, along with bombers, seaplanes, and other larger aircraft. From his base, Sub-Lieutenant Reeves has in the past been able to advise us of Japanese aerial movements as they have occurred. These reports have obviously been of great value both tactically and for planning purposes, and now that they have been interrupted, getting Reeves’s station up and running again is obviously of great importance."
The Corps 03 - Counterattack Page 51