The Bridges at Toko-ri

by James A. Michener

  But it was Beer Barrel’s job to see that barriers and the barricade were not needed and he would shout curses at his pilots and cry, “Don’t fly the deck, Junior. Don’t fly the sea. Fly me.” An air force colonel watching Beer Barrel land jets exclaimed, “Why, it isn’t a landing at all! It’s a controlled crash.” And the big Texan replied in his beery voice, “Difference is that when I crash ’em they’re safe in the arms of God.”

  Now he brought in three more, swiftly and surely, and Admiral Tarrant, watching the looming mountains of Korea as they moved in upon his ships, muttered, “Well, we’ll make it again.”

  But as he said these words his squawk box sounded, and from deep within the Savo the combat intelligence director reported coolly, “1591 has been hit. Serious damage. May have to ditch.”

  “What’s his position?”

  “Thirty-five miles away.”

  “Who’s with him?”

  “His wingman, 1592.”

  “Direct him to come on in and attempt landing”

  The squawk box clicked off and Admiral Tarrant looked straight ahead at the looming coast. Long ago he had learned never to panic, but he had trained himself to look at situations in their gloomiest aspects so as to be prepared for ill turns of luck. “If this jet limps in we may have to hold this course for ten or fifteen more minutes. Well, we probably can do it.”

  He studied the radar screen to estimate his probable position in fifteen minutes. “Too close,” he muttered. Then into the squawk box which led to the air officer of the Savo he said, “Recovery operations must end in ten minutes. Get all planes aboard.”

  “The admiral knows there’s one in trouble?”

  “Yes. I’ve ordered him to try to land.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The bull horn sounded. “All hands. We must stop operations within ten minutes. Get those barriers cleared faster. Bring the planes in faster.”

  The telephone talker at the landing platform told Beer Barrel, “We got to get ’em all aboard in ten minutes.”

  “What’s a matter?” Beer Barrel growled. “Admiral running hisself out of ocean?”

  “Looks like it,” the talker said.

  “You tell him to get the planes up here and I’ll get ’em aboard.”

  So the nineteen dark ships of the task force sped on toward the coastline and suddenly the squawk box rasped, “Admiral, 1591 says he will have to ditch.”

  “Can he ditch near the destroyers?”

  “Negative.”

  “Is his wingman still with him?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “How much fuel?”

  “Six hundred pounds.”

  “Have you a fix on their positions?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Dispatch helicopter and tell wingman to land immediately.”

  There was a long silence and the voice said, “Wingman 1592 requests permission stay with downed plane till copter arrives.”

  The admiral was now faced with a decision no man should have to make. If the wingman stayed on, he would surely run out of fuel and lose his own plane and probably his life as well. But to command him to leave a downed companion was inhuman and any pilot aboard the Savo would prefer to risk his own life and his plane rather than to leave a man adrift in the freezing sea before the helicopter had spotted him.

  For in the seas of Korea a downed airman had twenty minutes to live. That was all. The water was so bitterly cold that within five minutes the hands were frozen and the face. In twelve minutes of immersion in these fearful waters the arms became unable to function and by the twentieth minute the pilot was frozen to death.

  The decision could not be deferred, for the squawk box repeated, “Wingman 1592 requests permission to stay.”

  The admiral asked, “What is the absolute minimum of gas with which the wingman can make a straight-in landing?”

  There was a moment’s computation. “Assuming he finds the carrier promptly, about four hundred pounds.”

  “Tell him to stay with the downed man ...”

  The voice interrupted, “Admiral, 1591 has just ditched. Wingman says the plane sank immediately.”

  There was a moment’s silence and the admiral asked, “Where’s the helicopter?”

  “About three more minutes away from the ditching.”

  “Advise the helicopter …”

  “Admiral, the wingman reports downed pilot afloat.”

  “Tell the wingman to orbit until helicopter arrives. Then back for a straight-in landing.”

  The bull horn echoed in the gathering dusk and mournful sounds spread over the flight deck, speaking of disaster. “Get those last two jets down immediately. Then prepare for emergency straight-in landing. A plane has been lost at sea. Wingman coming in short of fuel.”

  For a moment the many-colored figures stopped their furious motions. The frozen hands stopped pushing jets and the yellow jeeps stayed where they were. No matter how often you heard the news it always stopped you. No matter how frozen your face was, the bull horn made you a little bit colder. And far out to sea, in a buffeted helicopter, two enlisted men were coldest of all.

  At the controls was Mike Forney, a tough twenty-seven-year-old Irishman from Chicago. In a navy where enlisted men hadn’t much chance of flying, Mike had made it. He had bullied his way through to flight school and his arrival aboard his first ship, the Savo, would be remembered as long as the ship stayed afloat. It was March 17 when he flew his copter onto the flight deck, wearing an opera hat painted green, a Baron von Richthofen scarf of kelly green, and a clay pipe jammed into his big teeth. He had his earphones wrapped around the back of his neck and when the captain of the Savo started to chew him out Forney said, “When I appear anywhere I want the regular pilots to know it, because if they listen to me, I’ll save ’em.” Now, as he sped toward the ditched pilot, he was wearing his green stovepipe and his World War I kelly green scarf, for he had found that when those astonishing symbols appeared at a scene of catastrophe everyone relaxed, and he had already saved three pilots.

  But the man flying directly behind Mike Forney’s hat wasn’t relaxed. Nestor Gamidge, in charge of the actual rescue gear, was a sad-faced inconsequential young man from Kentucky, where his unmarried schoolteacher mother had named him Nestor after the wisest man in history, hoping that he would justify everything. But Nestor had not lived up to his name and was in fact rather stupid, yet, as the copter flew low over the bitter waves to find the ditched plane, he was bright enough to know that if anyone were to save the airman pitching about in the freezing water below it would be he. In this spot the admiral didn’t count nor the wingman who was orbiting upstairs nor even Mike Forney. In a few minutes he would lean out of the helicopter and lower a steel hoisting sling for the pilot to climb into. But from cold experience he knew that the man below would probably be too frozen even to lift his arms, so he, Nestor Gamidge, who hated the sea and who was dragged into the navy by his draft board, would have to jump into the icy waves and try to shove the inert body of the pilot into the sling. And if he failed—if his own hands froze before he could accomplish this—the pilot must die. That’s why they gave Nestor the job. He was dumb and he was undersized but he was strong.

  “I see him,” Nestor said.

  Mike immediately called to the wingman: “1592. Go on home. This is Mike Forney and everything’s under control.”

  “Mike!” the wingman called. “Save that guy.”

  “We always save ’em. Scram”

  “That guy down there is Harry Brubaker. The one whose wife and kids are waiting for him in Yokosuka. But he don’t know it. Save him!”

  Mike said to Nestor, “You hear that? He’s the one whose wife and kids came out to surprise him.”

  “He looks froze,” Nestor said, lowering the sling.

  Suddenly Mike’s voice lost its brashness. “Nestor,” he said quietly, “if you have to jump in … I’ll stay here till the other copter gets you.”

  In dis
may, Nestor watched the sling drift past the downed pilot and saw that the man was too frozen to catch hold. So he hauled the sling back up and said, “I’ll have to go down.”

  Voluntarily, he fastened the sling about him and dropped into the icy waves.

  “Am I glad to see you!” the pilot cried.

  “He’s OK,” Nestor signaled.

  “Lash him in,” Mike signaled back.

  “Is that Mike? With the green hat?”

  “Yep.”

  “My hands won’t ...”

  They tried four times to do so simple a thing as force the sling down over the pilot’s head and arms but the enormous weight of water-soaked clothing made him an inert lump. There was a sickening moment when Nestor thought he might fail. Then, with desperate effort, he jammed his right foot into the pilot’s back and shoved. The sling caught.

  Nestor lashed it fast and signaled Mike to haul away. Slowly the pilot was pulled clear of the clutching sea and was borne aloft. Nestor, wallowing below, thought, “There goes another.”

  Then he was alone. On the bosom of the great sea he was alone and unless the second helicopter arrived immediately, he would die. Already, overpowering cold tore at the seams of his clothing and crept in to get him. He could feel it numb his powerful hands and attack his strong legs. It was the engulfing sea, the icy and deadly sea that he despised and he was deep into it and his arms were growing heavy.

  Then, out of the gathering darkness, came the Hornet’s copter.

  So Mike called the Savo and reported, “Two copters comin’ home with two frozen mackerel.”

  “What was that?” the Savo asked gruffly.

  “What I said,” Mike replied, and the two whirly birds headed for home, each dangling below it the freezing body of a man too stiff to crawl inside.

  Meanwhile Admiral Tarrant was faced with a new problem. The downed pilot had been rescued but the incoming wingman had fuel sufficient for only one pass, and if that pass were waved off the pilot would have to crash land into the sea and hope for a destroyer pickup, unless one of the copters could find him in the gathering dusk.

  But far more important than the fate of one Banshee were the nineteen ships of the task force which were now closing the hundred fathom mark. For them to proceed farther would be to invite the most serious trouble. Therefore the admiral judged that he had at most two minutes more on course, after which he would be forced to run with the wind, and then no jet could land, for the combined speed of jet and wind would be more than 175 miles, which would tear out any landing hook and probably the barriers as Well. But the same motive that had impelled the wingman to stay at the scene of the crash, the motive that forced Nestor Gamidge to plunge into the icy sea, was at work upon the admiral and he said, “We’ll hold the wind a little longer. Move a little closer to shore.”

  Nevertheless, he directed the four destroyers on the forward edge of the screen to turn back toward the open sea, and he checked them on the radar as they moved off. For the life of one pilot he was willing to gamble his command that there were no mines and that Russia had no submarines lurking between him and the shore.

  “1592 approaching,” the squawk box rasped.

  “Warn him to come straight in.”

  Outside the bull horn growled, “Prepare to land last jet, straight in.”

  Now it was the lead cruiser’s turn to leave the formation but the Savo rode solemnly on, lingering to catch this last plane. On the landing platform Beer Barrel’s watcher cried, “Hook down, wheels down. Can’t see flaps.”

  The telephone talker shouted, “Pilot reports his flaps down.”

  “All down, Beer Barrel droned.

  “Clear deck!”

  “Clear deck.”

  Now even the carrier Hornet turned away from the hundred fathom line and steamed parallel to it while the jet bore in low across her path. Beer Barrel, on his wooden platform, watched it come straight and low and slowing down.

  “Don’t watch the sea, Junior,” he chanted. “Watch me. Hit me in the kisser with your left wing tank and you’ll be all right, Junior.” His massive arms were outstretched with the paddles parallel to the deck and the jet screamed in, trying to adjust its altitude to the shifting carrier’s.

  “Don’t fly the deck, Junior!” roared Beer Barrel and for one fearful instant it looked as if the onrushing jet had put itself too high. In that millionth of a second Beer Barrel thought he would have to wave the plane off but then his judgment cried that there was a chance the plane could make it. So Beer Barrel shouted, “Keep comin’, Junior!” and at the last moment he whipped the right paddle across his heart and dropped the left.

  The plane was indeed high and for one devastating moment seemed to be floating down the deck and into the parked jets. Then, when a crash seemed inevitable, it settled fast and caught number nine. The jet screamed ahead and finally stopped with its slim nose peering into the webs of the barrier.

  “You fly real good, Junior,” Beer Barrel said, tucking the paddles under his arm, but when the pilot climbed down his face was ashen and he shouted, “They rescue Brubaker?”

  “They got him.”

  The pilot seemed to slump and his plane captain ran up and caught him by the arm and led him to the ladder, but as they reached for the first step they stumbled and pitched forward, so swift was the Savo’s groaning turn back out to sea.

  As soon as the copters appeared with little Gamidge and the unconscious body of the pilot dangling through the icy air, Admiral Tarrant sent his personal aide down to sick bay to tell the helicopter men he would like to see them after the flight doctor had taken care of them. In a few minutes they arrived in flag plot, Forney in trim aviator’s flight jacket and Gamidge in a fatigue suit some sizes too large.

  The admiral poured them coffee and said, “Sit down.” Forney grabbed the comfortable corner of the leather davenport on which the admiral slept when he did not wish to leave this darkened room of radar screens, repeating compasses and charts, but Gamidge fumbled about until the admiral indicated. where he was to sit. Pointing at the squat Kentuckian with his coffee cup, the admiral said, “It must have been cold in the water.”

  “It was!” Forney assured him. “Bitter.”

  “I hope the doctor gave you something to warm you up.”

  “Nestor’s too young to drink,” Forney said, “but I had some.”

  “You weren’t in the water.”

  “No, sir, but I had the canopy open.”

  “How’s the pilot?”

  “When me and Gamidge go out for them we bring them back in good shape.”

  “They tell me he wasn’t able to climb into the sling.”

  “That pilot was a real man, sir. Couldn’t move his hands or arms but he never whimpered.”

  “Because he fainted,” Nestor explained.

  The admiral invariably insisted upon interviewing all men who did outstanding work and now he pointed his cup at Gamidge again. “Son, do you know any way we could improve the rescue sling?”

  The little Kentuckian thought a long time and then said slowly, “Nope. If their hands freeze somebody’s got to go into the water to get them.”

  The admiral put his cup down and said brusquely, “Keep bringing them back. Navy’s proud of men like you.”

  “Yes, sir!” Forney said. He always pronounced sir with an insinuating leer, as if he wished to put commissioned officers at ease. Then he added, “There is one thing we could do to make the chopper better.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I got to operate that sling quicker. Because it seems like Nestor goes into the sea almost every time.”

  “You know what changes to make?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then make them.”

  The two enlisted men thanked the admiral and as they went down the ladder Tarrant heard Forney ask, “Nestor, why’d you stand there with your mouth shut, like a moron? Suppose he is a mean old bastard. No reason to be scared of him.”

 
“By the way,” the admiral called. “Who was the pilot?”

  “Brubaker, sir,” Forney cried, unabashed.

  The name struck Tarrant with visible force. He backed into the darkened flag plot and steadied himself for a moment. “Brubaker!” he repeated quietly. “How strange that it should have been Brubaker!”

  Shaken, he slumped onto the leather davenport and reached for some papers which had been delivered aboard ship by dispatch plane that afternoon. “Brubaker!” He scanned the papers and called sick bay.

  “Doctor,” he asked, “any chance I could talk with Brubaker?”

  A crisp voice snapped back, “Admiral, you know the man’s suffered exposure.”

  “I know that, but there’s an urgent matter and I thought that when he found himself in good shape ...” He left it at that.

  Then he thought of Brubaker, a twenty-nine-year-old civilian who had been called back into service against his will. At the start of the cruise he had been something of a problem, griping ceaselessly about the raw deal the navy had given him, but gradually he had become one of the two or three finest pilots. He still griped, he still damned the navy, but he did his job. The admiral respected men like that.