Operation Long Jump (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 2)

by William Peter Grasso

  Lee Grossman wasn’t just a college football player. He was a Golden Gloves boxer, too.

  “You all saw that,” Wharton said, his voice a frail wheeze. “I’m pressing charges, Grossman.”

  “Press all you like, Bob,” Grossman replied, “but I’ll be back within the hour…and you’d better have that fucking listening post set up.” He pointed to spools of telephone wire laying unused in a heap. “And with a working telephone, too.”

  As Lee Grossman walked away, Wharton again beseeched his sergeants: “You’ll all make statements attesting to that assault on me.”

  Mike McMillen shook his head. “We didn’t see nothing, Lieutenant. We were too busy minding our own business.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Day 7

  The Air Force had done its bit to soften the Jap defenses—Flying Artillery, the Air Force liaison officer at Regimental HQ called it with great cockiness. Now it was time for the ground attack to start. With a collective groan, the division overcame its inertia and started creeping forward.

  The attack’s jump-off line spanned four miles from the sea’s edge to the base of the mountain. Standing at that line, the men of 32nd Division were 12 miles from the Japanese defensive positions. Those 12 miles presented a variety of terrain to the three infantry regiments making up the division: flat coastal plain that snaked around bays and inlets; rolling hills farther inland; jagged foothills near the base of Astrolabe. The jagged foothills belonged to the weakened 81st Regiment—Jock’s regiment, missing its lost-at-sea battalion. Owing to their greatly diminished numbers, the 81st had been given the narrowest sector of the front—little more than a mile. They’re still going to have the toughest time, though, Jock thought. Every one of those hills could be a Japanese bunker…and there are dozens of them. Even worse, none of the handful of light tanks the division has are attached to the 81st. Wrong terrain for them…they’d be much too vulnerable. They’ll probably break down in the first mile, anyway.

  Sitting in the Headquarters tent, waiting for news to filter back, was more than Jock could bear. He needed to be out among the troops—his troops, preferably, the men of Charlie Company—but they were on a mountaintop 10 miles away as the crow flies. As a soldier walks, though, they were a whole day away. Even the radio-equipped jeep that came with his regimental staff job wouldn’t get him there any faster: it couldn’t climb the craggy face of Astrolabe.

  Jock’s driver, a young PFC named Homer Flood, turned a sickly shade of white when Jock announced his intention: they would be at the front as the regiment went into battle. “Are you sure you want to do that, sir?” Flood asked, his voice rising an octave.

  “No better place to gather intelligence than from the source,” Jock replied, “except maybe up on that mountain there.”

  Homer Flood shuddered at the thought of being up on that mountain with the I and R company, behind enemy lines. He had been thrilled when first assigned as a headquarters driver: a nice, safe, rear-echelon job. He was even more thrilled when he found himself underemployed as that fat Major Conwell’s driver: that crazyman wanted to be up on that mountain, too, but he never did figure out how to get the jeep up there. Oh, well…he didn’t last long, anyway.

  Now, Homer Flood had to contend with a new crazyman: this Captain Miles, who’d rather be risking his ass up on point than sitting in some nice, cozy HQ tent.

  Just my damn luck, Flood thought, slumping down in his driver’s seat, offering the jeep’s engine block more of his body to protect.

  Jock wondered what this advance might look like from the mountain: Probably like some kind of turtle race, with bunches of GIs inching along, sometimes going straight for the finish line, sometimes veering off course and needing a helping hand to point them in the right direction. Turtles would probably move faster, though. I doubt we’ll make contact with the Japs before tomorrow.

  The 32nd Division made six miles that first day—halfway to Port Moresby. The only shots fired were by panicked GIs who sprayed gunfire at livestock rummaging in the brush, low-flying friendly aircraft, and an unfortunate native in a tree who was mistaken for a sniper and killed. Even though the Americans were now in range of the Japanese artillery, it remained silent. “They’re not sure where we are yet and they’re saving their ammo,” Colonel Murdock said.

  The division dug in as the sun set. Everyone expected there would be sporadic gunfire in the night by the green, nervous GIs. Whatever phantoms they’d be shooting at in the dark would not, hopefully, be shooting back.

  They thought it was a late-night thunderstorm at first—a bright flash, like lightning, right in front of them and then that deep rumble a split-second later which shook the ground so violently it toppled GIs who were standing. But there was no rain: the only thing falling from the sky was shells from big guns. Two had landed in quick succession a few hundred yards in front of the American line. An anxious silence followed for more than a minute—and then two more landed farther inland but still short of the American line. All across the 32nd Division, some GIs clutched their weapons tighter and gazed warily into the darkness; some tried frantically to burrow deeper into the earth. The rest froze in mortal terror.

  PFC Homer Flood was in that last category. He was dozing in the back seat of the jeep when the first round hit. Now he was wide awake but curled into a quivering ball on the jeep’s floorboard, blocking Jock’s access to the radio.

  “MOVE, FLOOD,” Jock said, but Private Flood didn’t budge. Jock grabbed him by the web belt and dragged the terrified young man out of the way. Finally able to get at the radio’s dials, he tuned it to the fire direction net, which was surprisingly silent. He keyed the microphone: “Blind Eye Six, this is Long Jump Six-Two, over.”

  Jock instantly recognized the voice that replied: it was Melvin Patchett. “Got a target, Blind Eye?” Jock asked.

  “Affirmative…hostile battery is offshore. Repeat, offshore.”

  As Patchett handled the radio, Lee Grossman and Trevor Shaw were busy calculating the coordinates of the Japanese ships doing the shooting. From Astrolabe, they had seen the flash of their guns; Shaw had the azimuth to the flash from the OP at The Notch. Bogater Boudreau reported the azimuth from the remote OP, a mile east on the peak. Everything else was simple geometry—your target was located where the two azimuth lines intersected on the map.

  “Give us an illumination round about ten seconds before impact and continuously after that,” Shaw said as he handed the coordinates of the target to Patchett.

  At first, the gunners in the 155-millimeter artillery battery thought the fire command they had just been given was somebody’s giant fuck-up: the target direction was 90 degrees to the left of their field of fire. At the charge and elevation called out, the target would have to be about six miles out to sea, making it eight miles from their position.

  Then the realization sunk in: they would be firing at ships. The fear that caused the US Navy to flee had finally materialized: Japanese warships had arrived, and they were hurling their very big shells at the GIs. The only American weapon that could try to engage them was the 155 howitzer. Nothing else had enough range.

  The gunners began the laborious process of manhandling their cumbersome guns through a seaward pivot. It would have been even more laborious if they had actually fired some rounds since occupying those positions: the guns’ trail spades would have been driven much deeper into the ground, requiring much more digging to get them free. Grunting, stumbling, and cursing in the dark, the gunners managed to reorient the guns, but it took almost 10 minutes before the first round—the requested illumination round—was on the way, followed 15 seconds later by a ranging round from a different gun. During that time, another two dozen Japanese shells shook the earth around the American positions, getting closer to doing some real damage with each new salvo.

  “Sarge, what if they see our flash and zero right in on us?” a terrified cannoneer asked his section chief.

  “Can you see their flash?” th
e sergeant asked.

  “No…we can’t see much of the sea at all from here.”

  “That’s because our battery’s down in a depression, numbnuts. We can’t see their flash, they can’t see ours. Be thankful for that. Now shut up and keep those powder bags coming.”

  The illumination round popped its flare, revealing the tiny, ghostly shapes of five warships to the observers on Astrolabe, some 12 miles distant. Peering down his telescope, Shaw gasped. “Oh my goodness,” he said, “I count four destroyers, but the big one is a battleship…an old girl, too. One of the Kongo class, unmistakably. She’s the one doing the shooting, for sure, but I wonder why she’s in so close. She can shoot more than twice as far as we—”

  “Splash, out,” Patchett said into the radio, loud enough for everyone nearby to hear. That meant the ranging round would impact in five seconds.

  Staring down binoculars, Grossman counted, “Three…two…one…there it is.”

  Well short of the battleship’s hull, a tiny geyser of seawater shot up and glimmered briefly in the flare’s light. Grossman added, “Gee…everything is so small. I can barely make it out.”

  “But you can see enough,” Shaw said. “At sea, we do this over greater distances, and we’re observing from only a masthead, not a mountain.” He did some calculations in his notebook as he continued, “She’s not making much smoke, so I’m guessing her speed at ten knots, maybe less. And we’re a bit short, so…” A few more calculations and he reported the correction to Patchett. The first flare flickered near the water’s surface, about to extinguish. A second flare popped high above to take its place.

  Less than a minute later, the soft poom of the 155 firing from the lowlands echoed up the mountain. They counted to themselves until Patchett once again acknowledged, “Splash, out.”

  They couldn’t see the round impact this time. “Shit,” Grossman said, “we lost it.”

  “No, Lieutenant,” Shaw replied, “that can only mean one thing…”

  “Yeah,” Patchett said, “we’re over…and we’re real close. Can’t see the splash because the ship’s in the way.”

  Shaw’s face beamed in his flashlight’s glow. “Exactly, First Sergeant,” he said.

  “Well, Commander,” Patchett replied, “this ain’t exactly my first time at the circus. What’d y’all say we give ’em a right two hundred, drop five-zero and fire for effect?”

  The old Aussie nodded. “That sounds like a capital idea.”

  Fire for effect: every gun in the battery—all six of them—let their rounds fly in near-perfect synchronization. As the sound of the shots echoed, Patchett said, “Not bad…It usually sounds like popcorn in the cooker when they all try to fire at once.”

  Shaw was the first the first to speak after the impacts, his voice more surprised than jubilant: “Bloody hell…I do believe a couple of rounds actually hit the bugger.”

  “I counted two direct hits,” Grossman said, breathless with excitement. “You can’t miss that bright flash of round hitting metal.”

  “Let’s not get too giddy, lads,” Shaw said. “It’ll take a lot more than that to sink her. But look at how much smoke she’s making from her stacks now.” He watched the ship’s progress for a few moments more and then added, “Ahh, look…she’s leaving. I guess she didn’t think very much of our rude welcome.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Day 8

  By late the next morning, the Americans’ jagged line of advance was within three miles of the Japanese airfield. A rifle platoon of the 82nd Regiment was the division’s lead element. The men of the platoon crept forward in column, two abreast.

  First Squad was at the column’s head…

  And then they were wiped away in one fell swoop.

  Those farther back in the column never heard the blast that erased First Squad. They could feel its deadly punch, though, as the punishing pressure wave of expanding gases, metal shards, wood splinters, and body fragments flew invisibly past them at blinding speed.

  Every man spared had known the expression blown to bits since he was a child. It had always been just words—until this moment. Now, they all knew what blown to bits looked liked: First Squad had actually been blown to bits. A Japanese artillery round had done it.

  Machine gun bullets from unseen bunkers began to crisscross the American column. Those GIs who could still move retreated on the dead run. No orders could make them hold their ground. They didn’t stop running until they found hills to take shelter behind.

  They didn’t bother to return fire. Instead, they huddled in languid, demoralized groups of threes and fours, no longer bound to the brotherhood of their unit or the armed force to which it belonged. Overcome by terror, they cowered, incapable of fighting, incapable of saving themselves.

  They were waiting to die.

  It was the same throughout the 32nd Division. Jock Miles came across a group of three GIs straggling away from the stalled battle line, discarding most of their field equipment like they’d no longer be needing it. They were sullen and unresponsive when Jock asked, “What outfit are you from?”

  They weren’t the first demoralized GIs Jock had seen this morning. He took a step closer and asked, “Who’s your commanding officer?”

  One of the men—a corporal—looked quizzically at Jock at first. Then he broke eye contact and stared into the distance, mumbling, “I thought you was.”

  “No, Corporal, I’m not your CO,” Jock replied. “All of you climb in the jeep. I’ll take you back to your unit.”

  They ignored him and kept walking.

  Jock called out, “Perhaps you didn’t understand me. I just gave you an order.”

  Without breaking his shuffling stride, the corporal replied, “We heard a lot of officers giving orders today, and every one of them fucking orders got guys killed for nothing. We ain’t following no more orders.” To make his point more clear, he flung his rifle into the underbrush.

  Jock glanced at his catatonic driver, PFC Homer Flood, still shaking and hugging his knees to his chest in the back of the jeep: I’m having a tough enough time finding a CCP to drop off this poor bastard Flood. I don’t have time to play cop and start arresting people right now. That bunch will run into the Division MPs soon enough…assuming they’re not running, too. This attack’s going to shit, real fast.

  He loaded the discarded rifle into the jeep and drove off to Regimental Headquarters.

  When Jock entered the Headquarters tent, Colonel Murdock was berating the naval liaison officer. When the tirade was done, the Navy man said, “But Colonel, you could lose all the rest of the supplies and equipment”—he put great emphasis on the word all—“if our fleet gets caught at anchor by a force like the one last night.”

  No one would be surprised if steam began to vent from Murdock’s ears. His face was beet red—and not from the tropical heat. After a few agonizing moments of silence, he said, “Ain’t this hot shit, gentlemen? The best this regiment can do right now…no, make that the best this whole goddamned division can do…is hold its position. We’ve got company after company that won’t even fight, with deserters running away all over the place…and the Navy can’t even find the guts to land our fucking supplies.” He looked to the S4, hunched over a desk in the corner of the tent, and asked, “What’s the damage, Herb?”

  The S4 wished he had about another hour to prepare that answer. Hesitantly, he began his report: “Well, sir…at the forecast casualty rates—”

  “Cut the shit, Herb,” Murdock said. “I’ve got half a regiment that might as well be casualties right now, for all the fighting they’re doing. Just give me the numbers.”

  “It’s like this, Colonel…we have one day’s worth of C rations left and another two days’ worth of K rations. After that, we’re living off the land.”

  “What about fresh water?” Murdock asked.

  “Let’s just hope it rains a lot, sir…and soon.”

  “And ammunition?”

  “Critically
low on all types, especially artillery rounds.”

  Murdock refocused his frustration on the Air Force liaison officer. “When can we expect some fighter support that doesn’t take twenty-four hours to show up? The Jap air forces won’t stay away forever…especially if they think they’ve got us on the ropes.”

  “The Japanese Army and Navy planes are having the same problems we are, sir,” the Air Force man replied. “Their bases are just too darned far away right now—”

  Murdock cut him off. “Not for long, I’m afraid. Any minute, I expect some new squadrons of Japs to reoccupy the Port Moresby airfield. Nothing’s stopping them at the moment.”

  “Not likely, sir,” the liaison officer said. “Their closest main base is now Lae, up on the north coast. To get here, they’ve got to get over the Owen Stanleys. That’s an exhausting flight for anyone.”

  “But what about our airstrip at Gaile? Are we going to get some fighters in there anytime soon?”

  “The engineers say it’ll be ready in another day or two. The rains slowed them down a little. But General Kenney won’t base any planes there unless the airfield is secure…and the way things look at the moment…”

  “You and the Navy boy over there are singing from the same hymnal,” Murdock replied. Turning to Jock, the colonel’s scowl softened. “But there is one bright spot. Your boys up on the mountain did a great job last night, Jock. How are we doing with counter-battery fire this morning?”

  “Every Japanese battery that’s shot off a round has been targeted, sir. We’re keeping on top of them as they try to relocate. We’ve been able to pinpoint some of the bunkers and taken them out, too. One problem, though…we’ve got more targets than the artillery has ammunition.”