by Dean Hughes
Alex saw some logic in that, but he was still bothered by the money. Both he and his father, along with Henry, could get rich out of this. The war only assured them that more contracts would be coming their way. “Dad, I feel like we’re trying to talk ourselves into excuses. I can’t stay here and profit off the war while other boys go out and fight. I’d feel like a coward.”
“No. Don’t say that. You keep the parts going out and you’ll be a hero. In any war there are more support troops than gun-toting infantrymen. Plenty of patriots are going to run down and sign up and then end up pleased as punch to be whacking away at a typewriter instead of pulling a trigger. You’re going to play a bigger role in this war than anyone like that.”
Alex tried to accept that. The idea that he could stay home without guilt and not have to do any shooting was certainly comforting, but he was still uneasy with the idea.
“Alex, there’s something else you need to think about.”
“What?”
“The girl you met over there. Anna.”
Alex had thought of her from the beginning. He was trying to think what it would all mean, but he told his father, “It
doesn’t change anything for me, Dad. I’ve known for a long time that we would probably end up in this war.”
“Alex, it could last for years.”
“I know.”
“Have you heard anything more from President Clark?”
“No. He got my letter through to a German Church leader, but by the time the letter got to President Meis, the Stoltzes had left Frankfurt, and no one knows where they are.”
“Why would they pick up and leave?”
“I’m not sure. But I’m worried that they might have had trouble with the Gestapo.”
“Maybe they got hauled off, if that’s the case.”
“I know.” Alex had hardly thought of anything else for weeks, and he hardly needed his dad to put it in such bald terms. “Alex, are you sure you want to hang on to this idea? Wouldn’t you be better off to start thinking in terms of finding someone else?”
“No. I wouldn’t.”
Dad obviously knew better than to say any more. He simply nodded. Alex accepted that as a sizable act of compromise on his part. But saying nothing was almost a more powerful argument. Alex only saw the reality more clearly: his chances of ever seeing Anna again had to be remote.
“Well,” Dad said, “let’s go listen to the radio. I hope our whole Pacific fleet isn’t lost.”
The two got up then and walked back into the dining room, where Alex found his mother, her face white with concern. She looked up at Alex and President Thomas. “My heart breaks to think of all the pain that is coming. I wonder what it will mean for Wally.”
Bobbi, who was sitting next to Mom, reached her arm around her shoulders. “I feel like he’ll come back,” she said. “Remember how Dad blessed him when he left?”
“Yes, I do,” Mom said. “But maybe it’s not fair to ask for special blessings. So many boys are going to die. Why should our family expect to be spared?”
The question cut to the heart of things. The room fell silent except for the continued voice on the radio. And now the announcer was beginning to name the ships that had been sunk and the numbers of sailors who were on board each of them.
It was President Thomas who finally said, “I guess now we’ll find out what our family is made of. We’ve always had it too easy.”
Chapter 32
No one at Clark Field knew what to expect, but Wally had never seen the men so solemn. They stood about in little groups and talked—trying to make sense of all this. They cursed “Japs” in the foulest language, but at the same time, they wanted to know how America could have let this happen. How could a huge armada of ships make it all the way from Japan to Hawaii without being detected? How could all the U.S. ships have been sitting there, just waiting to be destroyed? A begrudging tone of respect had also come into the men’s voices. The “little Nips” had turned into cursed “yellow bellies,” but the Japanese had also taken upon themselves the proportions of a serious enemy.
Everyone was supposed to be at his post. But Wally’s post was the supply shack. He walked over and surveyed his supplies, and now he looked at everything from a new point of view. His 45-caliber pistols had been issued to the senior noncoms. What he had for defense were four racks of 12-gauge, sawed-off shotguns. Those were to protect against the possibility of an attack by parachute troops or to put down any local disorder. A lot of good they would do if the Japanese were to land on the island. The only serious weapons were a few Lewis 30-caliber machine guns, one per squad, but in training, the old relics had always managed to jam after a few bursts of fire.
The unit did have some anti-aircraft guns, and the men had dug several trenches around the hangars and the operations and mess shacks. Wally remembered how much the men had complained when they had had to dig those trenches, but the protection was welcome now. The airmen themselves weren’t entirely untrained for an attack, but they were unprepared mentally. An easy indolence had become a way of life. How could men like that suddenly turn into warriors? Wally told himself that he wasn’t afraid, and he certainly didn’t feel any sense of panic, but a numb disbelief kept telling him that war just couldn’t come here.
One thing Wally did believe was that the pilots in their unit would hold their own in the air. Shortly after the C.O. had spoken to the squadron that morning, all the fighters had taken off. The P-40s were to stay in the air most of the time—to intercept any attack, but also to protect themselves from being bombed or strafed on the ground. Ground crews would have to work hard to keep them in the air.
At about eleven the airplanes returned, and crews refueled them and gave them quick maintenance checks so they would be ready to take off again soon. A little more ease spread through the base as word came back that the pilots had spotted no enemy airplanes or ships. All the same, the pilots were unusually serious, and they were eager to get back into the air.
The maintenance crews were busy, but Wally had no part in any of that, so he decided to walk over to the mess shack and get something to eat. He donned an old World War steel helmet—the only kind available—and he got his mess kit. He locked up the supply shack and began to walk across the field to the mess shack, a distance of a couple hundred yards. He hadn’t gone far, however, before he heard the sound of airplanes. He stopped and looked at the sky. He knew that fighters from the other bases on the island were also supposed to stay in the air, and so he assumed these must be from one of the other two squadrons.
At first he saw nothing, but then, coming in quite low, he saw a flight of aircraft dotting the sky. It was comforting to see such a large force protecting the island. But something didn’t make sense. He could gradually see that the airplanes were too large and slow to be fighters. Somehow, the air corps had managed to get a whole fleet of bombers to the Philippines. This would add some real power to their defenses.
He watched for a few more seconds, enjoying the sight. The bombers banked to the left over Fort Stotsenberg, next to the airfield. They were almost overhead before Wally saw the insignia: the “Rising Sun” painted under each wing.
“Jap bombers!” Wally screamed, and already he could see the bombs begin to fall. He dropped to the ground, in the open field, and grabbed his helmet with both hands. The horrible whistle of the bombs blocked out other sounds until the first of them hit the earth with a deafening explosion.
The target, of course, was the flight of P-40 fighters on the ground—and the B-17 bombers. Wally watched from a safe distance, but the scene was horrifying. Pilots ran for their airplanes and tried to get them rolling onto the runway. Crews were trying to help. But bombs were falling at a furious pace, the whole earth jumping and airplanes exploding. Some of the pilots got their planes moving, but Wally watched them blow apart before they ever got into the air. He knew the men in those planes, knew the crewmen who were running for their lives.
“Run,
run,” Wally screamed into the roar and confusion as he watched four men dash toward a trench. But all of them dropped at the same time, cut down by shrapnel from a huge explosion just behind them. Another man, a sergeant Wally knew, was sprinting hard for the trench when he slowed, kept trying to run, and then dropped to the ground with a huge, red hole in his back. At least some of the men were making it out of the inferno and were diving wildly into the trenches.
In just a few minutes the whole flight of aircraft was torn apart. Explosions kept going off in the middle of them, and then secondary explosions followed as the fuel tanks blew. Everything seemed to be on fire. Only three P-40s managed to get through the chaos and off the ground.
Bombs were striking the hangars now, too, tearing them apart, and heavy black smoke was rising everywhere, obscuring most of the sky. Wally saw a bomb hit the mess shack and blow it apart. He hoped no one had been inside.
Once the bombers had passed over, Wally jumped to his feet and ran back to the supply shack. He fumbled for his keys and opened the door, and he grabbed himself a shotgun and some shells. He had no idea whether a parachute landing might be coming with the bomb attack, but he knew he wanted some kind of weapon in his hands.
As he headed back out the door, he almost crashed into Len Granfield, a staff sergeant. “Wally, give me a shotgun,” he shouted. Wally turned back and grabbed a gun and a box of shells. Neither said another word. They both ran outside, but Wally had no idea where to go. He wanted to get to one of the trenches, but now that the bombers were gone, Japanese Zeros were swarming over the field. They were strafing with machine guns and firing their big 20-millimeter cannons at the same time. Amid the staccato of the machine gun fire was the constant “whomp, whomp, whomp” of those cannons.
Wally looked about, tried to think where to go, and then he spotted a pile of sand that construction workers had dumped near the supply shack. Len was already running for it, and Wally followed. He could hear a Zero diving toward them, the machine-gun fire already sounding, and the whistle of bullets in the air. He dove behind the pile and then watched the sand fly around him as bullets pounded into it.
For a moment he felt safe until he saw another Zero coming in from the opposite direction. He and Len jumped up and shuffled around the sand, and then they got down on their knees. Again the bullets pounded into the sand and didn’t touch them.
Hunched down that way, a strange memory came back to Wally. He saw it for only an instant, but with amazing clarity. He was a boy, back in Sugar House, down the street in a vacant lot. He and his friends were playing war. He was hiding behind a tool shed, waiting, ready to jump out and fire at “the enemy.”
Some jumbled thoughts followed: a picture in his head of the little red wagon he had gotten for Christmas one year. He had left it outside and someone had stolen it. Wally had never really gotten over that. And then he saw fireworks going off one night at the Twenty-Fourth of July rodeo. His dad was holding him and telling him the noise was nothing to be scared of.
Maybe he was about to die. He had heard that a person’s life passed before his eyes before he died. And yet, the memories were merely impulses firing through his mind. His conscious focus was on the next Japanese fighter coming in.
“Why aren’t we shooting back?” Wally screamed, although he never knew whether Len heard him in all the noise and confusion. But Wally couldn’t hear anything that sounded like anti-aircraft artillery.
Another Zero was diving at them. Len and Wally scrambled around to the safe side of the pile of sand again. And they did this dozens of times before everything ended.
There was only one good moment, when one of the P-40s that had gotten off the ground disappeared with two Zeros on its tail but then swung back into view, out of the smoke, and hit one, then the other Japanese fighter with gunfire. One of the Zeros dove directly into the ground and exploded. The other began to smoke badly and disappeared. But Wally had no time to take much joy in that, nor did it give him the slightest degree of hope. He knew that the Japanese were receiving almost no resistance.
Eventually, there was little more for the Japanese to accomplish. The fighters had strafed all the damaged American airplanes and fired into the burning hangars and operations shack. They had even zoomed over the living quarters and fired into them. Finally, they began to peel away and disappear beyond the smoke. Wally waited and watched for some time, but finally Len said, “They’re all gone,” and Wally allowed himself to drop onto the sand. He rolled onto his back and lay there panting. He realized that he was still clinging to his shotgun even though the barrel was jammed with sand. He tossed the thing away, and for a couple of minutes he lay where he was, taking long breaths.
When Wally and Len finally got up and took a look, they saw that almost everything was burning. The planes were virtually all destroyed, which meant the Japanese could return any time. There was no way to stop them. Wally had no idea how many of his squadron were dead, but he had seen a number of them die before his eyes.
Yet, it was strange how little fear Wally felt. The whole thing was like a scene out of a war movie. It had all happened, and Wally had reacted, but he couldn’t comprehend what it was going to mean. He had a strange sense that he was utterly vulnerable to another attack, and yet, it was more a sense of recognition—just a fact—than it was a concern.
Later that day, word would come that the gunnery base on the opposite side of the island had been wiped out completely. The fighters there had also been destroyed, and one of the first bombs had hit a mess shed full of airmen, killing all of them. Clark had not lost as many. Seven pilots were dead, and fifteen enlisted men, along with dozens more who were wounded or burned.
For some reason, the Japanese had not attacked Nichols Field. Maybe it would be next, but at least the men at Clark were glad to know that some American airplanes were still operating. The three planes that had survived the attack on their own field were hardly enough to mean anything.
As it turned out, it was the C.O., Major Teuscher, who had piloted the American P-40 that had knocked down the two Zeros. And after the battle, he managed to land on the broken field. So Clark Field was not without its leader—the young “old man” the men respected so much and who now had been raised to a higher level by his heroics in the air.
By late afternoon, the Major had organized the surviving troops and instructed them to abandon the field. They were to bivouac near a river a couple of miles inland. Wally, as supply sergeant, earned the dubious right to carry the C.O.’s bed roll to the site along with his own equipment: one blanket. He didn’t begrudge the major. The man had earned plenty of respect that day. All the same, the hike through the jungle was difficult, especially with the added weight, and Wally was completely spent by the time he made it to the bivouac site. It was dark by then, and no one was doing much to set up any sort of camp. Men were dropping their blankets in the first good spot they could find and then crashing onto the ground. No one seemed interested in talking. Wally’s mind was full of all kinds of images, thoughts of the dead, confusion about the future, but he had neither the energy nor the desire to discuss any of that with the others.
Wally was hungry, but he soon learned there was no food. What he wanted more than food was sleep anyway. So he wrapped himself in his blanket and in only a few minutes was sound asleep. He hadn’t slept long, however, when someone began to shake him. Wally couldn’t see much in the dark, but he heard a familiar voice say, “Sergeant. It’s Lieutenant Cluff. I need your help.”
It took Wally a moment to get everything straight, and then it all thundered back into his head: where he was, what had happened. Lieutenant Cluff had been his supply officer at one time. Wally liked the man and had worked well with him, but that didn’t mean he was pleased to be awakened this way.
“The C.O. wants me to go back to Clark. We’re getting some replacement planes in from Nichols. I came up in a Jeep, on the road, but I’m going to have to walk back, and I don’t know the trail. Do you think
you can help me get there?”
“Sure,” Wally said. He rolled onto his side and then got up, slowly. His body ached, and he still wasn’t thinking very clearly, but something told him he had to do what was asked of him right now. He had to come through; everyone had to do that. “I can get there,” he mumbled.
“Okay. We need to get going.”
“Do you have any food?”
“No. But we can get something back at the field.”
It wasn’t worth it. However hungry he was, right now he just wanted to sleep. “Have you got any kind of light?”
“No. We’ll just have to find our way.”
“All right.” Wally stumbled off in the direction he thought he would have to go. There was some moonlight, and Wally soon found the trail. For some time the two walked in silence. If airplanes were coming, the field was going to be kept open. That could only mean more attacks. He wondered whether the squadron had a chance of defending itself any better the next time.
“How are you feeling, Wally?” Lieutenant Cluff finally asked.
“Tired. But I’m okay.”
“Scared?”
“Not too.”
Maybe another minute went by before the Lieutenant said, “It’s hard to believe. I didn’t think any of us would die over here. Davis and Samuelsen were both good friends of mine.”
“I know. I was friends with Holbrook.” The reality of these deaths seemed to strike with more force now. Wally had lived amid these jungles for a long time, but everything seemed more eerie, the sounds strange again, the way they had been when he first arrived. He wished that somehow he could escape the island and go home.
Lieutenant Cluff let some time pass again before he said, “I just can’t die out here. I’ve got to get back to my family.”
Wally didn’t know what to say to that, and so he didn’t respond. The trail was not hard to follow, but the jungle growth cut out most of the light. Wally had to move slowly and feel his way along. His uniform was already soaked through by his own sweat and the humid air.