Battleground

by W. E. B Griffin

  “By the Black Flag, I presume you mean the Black Flag raised above the control tower signifying ‘Condition I, Airbase under attack.’ ”

  “Is there another black flag?”

  “And once you were in the air, what did you do?”

  “I started the climb,” Dunn said. “Alone. I had been in the climb two, three minutes when I saw Lieutenant Schneider forming on my wing.”

  “That would be Lieutenant David F. Schneider?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, we finally got to 10,000 feet. By that time the bombers, the Bettys, had dropped their bombs, and were headed home.”

  “And how high would you estimate the Bettys were?”

  “They were at nine thousand feet, I guess, and they were in a shallow dive, apparently to gain speed.”

  “There were no other enemy aircraft in sight?”

  “There were Zeroes to the right,” Dunn said. “They had seen us and were trying to keep us away from the Bettys. Captain Galloway and Ward headed for the Zeroes. I headed for the Bettys.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was pretty clear to me that was what Captain Galloway wanted me to do. He would take care of the fighters while I attacked the Bettys.”

  “Where was Lieutenant Schneider?”

  “Shit. While we attacked the Bettys. He was on my wing. I told you that.”

  “And you did, in fact, attack the Bettys successfully. I have been told that you attacked from above ...”

  “Yeah.”

  “And that your stream of fire caused an explosion in the engine nacelle ...”

  “The one Schneider got, he took the vertical stabilizer off. Then it blew up.”

  “We were talking about yours.”

  “I got the engine. Schneider got the vertical stabilizer on his and then probably the main tank.”

  “Right. I have that. And then what happened?”

  “Then the Zeroes showed up. Some of them apparently stayed to deal with Captain Galloway and Ward, but most of them tried to protect the bombers, and came to where we were.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “I don’t know. We got into it.”

  “Witnesses to the engagement have stated that during that engagement, you shot down two Zeroes. And you don’t know what happened?”

  “We were all over the sky. The only thing I know for sure is that Schneider got one, beautiful deflection shot, and he blew up.”

  “I thought you said Schneider was on your wing.”

  “I also said we were all over the sky. I don’t know where Schneider was most of the time, except when I saw him take the Zero with the deflection shot.”

  “But you do remember shooting at at least two Zeroes?”

  “I shot at a lot more than two. I’m sure I hit some of them, but I couldn’t swear to anything but that I hit one good and he started to throw smoke and went into a spin.”

  “You did not see him crash?”

  “No.”

  “Did you see Captain Galloway crash?”

  “No. I saw Captain Galloway on fire and in a spin, but I did not see him crash.”

  “Was that before or after you shot the Zero you just mentioned, the one you said began to display smoke and entered a spin?”

  “Before.”

  “Did you see Lieutenant Ward during this period?”

  “I don’t know. I saw a plane that could have been either him or Captain Galloway. I can’t say for sure. They both came to help us when the Zeroes came after us.”

  “But you are sure that it was Captain Galloway you saw, in flames, and in a spin?”

  “Yes.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I’m sure, goddamn you. Take my word for it.”

  “Tell me about the Val,” the debriefing officer said.

  “He was a cripple,” Dunn said. “I saw him down on the deck as I was coming home.”

  “Let’s get into that. Why did you disengage?”

  “My engine had been running on Emergency Military Power too long. I was losing oil pressure. My cylinder head temperature needle was on the peg. And I had lost fuel. A fuel line fitting had ruptured. I didn’t know that. All I knew was the LOW FUEL light came on. Two of my guns had either jammed or were out of ammunition. So I started home.”

  “But you saw the Val and attacked it?”

  “Why not?”

  “Was attacking the Val wise, Bill?” Dawkins asked. It was the first time he had spoken.

  “I was a little pissed at the time,” Dunn said.

  “Because of Captain Galloway?” Dawkins asked.

  “He was one hell of a Marine, Colonel,” Dunn said, and Dawkins saw tears forming in his eyes.

  “Getting back to Captain Galloway,” the debriefing officer said. “At the time Captain Galloway was reported hit, it has been reported that he had engaged a Zero and seriously damaged it. Did you see any of that?”

  “Yeah,” Dunn said. Dawkins saw that he was having trouble getting the lump out of his throat. Finally he cleared his throat. His voice was still unnatural.

  “I am sure beyond any reasonable doubt that the Zero Captain Galloway was engaging the last time anybody saw him was in flames, missing his left horizontal stabilizer, out of control, and a sure kill.”

  “Very well, we’ll put that down as ‘confirmed.’ ”

  “Thank you ever so much,” Dunn said sarcastically.

  “That makes it three and a half for Captain Galloway and two and a half for Lieutenant Ward, right?” Dawkins asked.

  “Yes, Sir,” the intelligence officer replied.

  “What was the total, Sir?” Dunn asked. “Not, now that I think about it, that I give a flying fuck.”

  “Eleven this morning,” Dawkins said. “And seven this afternoon. That makes eighteen. I think that’s probably the most aircraft ever destroyed in a twenty-four hour period by any squadron—Marine, Navy, or Air Corps.”

  “We get a gold star to take home to Mommy?”

  Dawkins ignored him.

  “We lost five. Captain Galloway, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Close your mouth, Dunn,” Dawkins snapped, and then went on. “Galloway, missing and presumed dead. Jiggs. We know he’s dead. Hawthorne, ditto. Ward, pretty well banged up on landing. And Schneider, wounds of the legs and a broken ankle. Six aircraft lost or seriously damaged. That’s not a bad score, Lieutenant.”

  “It didn’t come cheap,” Dunn said, “did it?”

  “I don’t want to wave the flag in your face, Dunn, but don’t you think Charley went out the way he would have wanted to?”

  “Charley didn’t want to go out at all,” Dunn said. He stood up. “I’m going to the hospital to see Jim Ward and Schneider,” he said.

  “I spoke to Ward,” Dawkins said. “He asked me if it would be all right with you if he wrote his aunt and told her what happened to Charley. Charley apparently had her listed as ‘friend, no next of kin.’ I told him I thought you would be grateful.”

  “Yeah, sure,” Dunn said.

  “The other letters, you’re going to have to write yourself, Bill. In my experience, it’s best to do it right away. It doesn’t get any easier by putting it off.”

  It took a moment for Dunn to take Dawkins’s meaning. It is the function of the squadron commander to write letters of condolence to the next of kin of officers who have been killed. In accordance with regulations, Lieutenant William C. Dunn had acceded to the command of VMF-229 when the previous commander had been declared missing and presumed killed in action.

  “As soon as I see the guys in the hospital, Sir,” Dunn said. “I’ll get on it.”

  “We’re not through here, Lieutenant,” the intelligence officer said.

  “Yes, you are,” Dawkins said. “Go ahead, Bill.”

  (Six)

  160 DEGREES 05 MINUTES 01 SECONDS EAST

  LONGITUDE

  09 DEGREES 50 MINUTES 1
4 SECONDS SOUTH

  LATITUDE

  1820 HOURS 24 AUGUST 1942

  Captain Charles M. Galloway, USMCR, had a pretty good idea that he was going to die before the sun, now setting, rose again. It could come violently, and soon ... in minutes. Or more slowly ... he might last the night.

  He could think of two possible violent deaths. The most probable, and the most frightening, was from a shark attack.

  At the moment he was floating somewhere in the Southwest Pacific. God knows where. It was a circumstance that flung the thought of sharks right out there in the forefront of his mind.

  He remembered hearing somewhere a peculiar theory about shark attacks. Peculiar or not, at the moment he took some small comfort from it. This theory held that when a shark bites something—or in this case, someone—it considers to be dinner, the force of the bite is so violent that the person bitten doesn’t feel any pain.

  The shark bite was somewhat analogous to a gunshot wound. When you’re shot, the pain comes later, after the shock has passed. When a shark bites, according to the theory, there’d be no pain at all: a shark would tear away so much flesh—the powerful jaws of a shark could tear away half a leg, or so he had been told—that you passed out from loss of blood before the shock went away and the pain came.

  The other sudden, violent death he could think of would be self-induced. He still had his .45 automatic. It had been underwater since he had gone into the drink, of course, but he thought it would still fire. After all, he reasoned, ammunition was designed to resist the effects of water. The cartridge case was tightly crimped against the bullet, and the primer was coated with shellac.

  Although they were badly puckered and a dead-fish white, his fingers still functioned. He was reasonably sure he could get the .45 out of its holster, work the action, put the barrel against his temple or into his mouth, and then pull the trigger and see what came next.

  It wasn’t an idea that attracted him very much, even under the circumstances. In fact, the idea was repugnant. It literally made him shiver. When he was a young marine, for reasons that were never made clear, an old staff sergeant blew his brains all over the wash basins in a head at Quantico. The memory was bright in Charley’s mind; he didn’t want to go out that way, even if logic told him there wasn’t much difference between a shattered head and having half your abdomen ripped off by a shark.

  Given the imminent certainty of his death, he thought, it would have been better if he had been killed in the air. That almost happened. Now that he had time to go over it in his mind, he was more than a little surprised that it didn’t:

  He saw a Zero, a thousand or so feet below him, on Bill Dunn’s tail. Bill was firing at a Val and didn’t see him. Charley put his Wildcat in a dive and went after the Zero, to get him off Bill’s tail.

  He got him, almost certainly a sure kill. But as he started to climb out again, another sonofabitch came out of nowhere. Before he knew that anyone was anywhere near him, it was all over.

  Parts of the engine nacelle suddenly flew off; a moment later, the engine stopped. Probably 20mms, hitting and shattering jugs, and freezing the engine.

  Because he was in a climb when the power stopped, he decelerated rapidly. Moments later, the expected shudder announced a stall. And a moment after that, yellow flames came from the engine.

  The nose went down, and the Wildcat began an erratic spin to the right. He reacted automatically. First, he shut off the fuel selector valve. There were probably shattered lines, but it probably wouldn’t hurt. Then he pushed the stick full forward—the priority was to pick up airspeed and restore lift—and applied full left rudder.

  He didn’t remember how many turns he made—five, anyway, probably six—but getting out of the spin took a long time. By then he had a chance to look at the instrument panel. Most of the gauges were inoperative, and there were bulges and tears in the control panel itself, telling him that either explosive rounds had gone off behind it, or that the 20mms that killed the engine had sent shrapnel and/or engine parts into the back of the panel.

  He had no doubt that it was time to get out of the Wildcat.

  He held the stick between his knees, so that he could pull both of the canopy jettison rings simultaneously. If you didn’t do that, the canopy might well jam on the remaining pin, trapping you in the cockpit; or else it might drag off into the airstream and hang there like an air brake, making control difficult or impossible.

  The canopy blew off without trouble. All he had to do after that was unfasten his seat and shoulder harness, and climb out.

  That turned out to be harder than he thought it would. He’d been a pilot for a long time, but he was still surprised at the force of the slip stream when he lifted his head and shoulders above the windscreen.

  He went over the left side, bounced on the wing, then fell free. He watched the tail assembly flash over his head, alarmingly close, and then he pulled the D-Ring.

  A moment after that, there was a dull flapping, thudding noise, and then a hell of a jolt as the canopy filled with air and suddenly slowed his descent.

  For a while there was still some horizontal movement. When he bailed out, he was probably making right about a hundred knots. So when it opened, the parachute had to stop the forward motion before it started to lower him to the water.

  He swung like a pendulum for maybe twenty seconds under the parachute, and then he looked down and saw the water. For a moment, it looked very far away, but the next it rushed up at him with alarming speed. Then he went in.

  He remembered, at the last possible instant, to close his mouth. He even tried to get his hand up to hold his nose, but there wasn’t time.

  All of a sudden, he was in the water. It was like hitting hard sand. It wasn’t at all cushiony, like water is supposed to be.

  He remembered to get out of the parachute harness as quickly as he could. He worked the quick-disconnect mechanism and made sure he was free of the straps before swimming to the surface.

  If you got tangled in the parachute harness, the shroud lines, or the parachute canopy itself, you could drown.

  When he was on the surface, and sure that he was away from the parachute, which was floating on the surface of the water, he fired the CO2 cartridge and inflated his life vest.

  The sea moved in large, gentle swells. Nothing at all was in sight, not even aircraft in the distance. Using his hands, he turned himself around. He could see no land on the horizon. He was therefore at least seven or eight miles from any land—and probably a hell of a lot farther than that. In any event, he was too far away to try to swim anywhere, even if he knew where he should go; and he didn’t.

  He never felt so alone in his life.

  He told himself they would probably look for him, either airplanes from his squadron, or Catalinas, or maybe even with Navy ships. But then he told himself that was wishful thinking.

  If anyone watched him go down, they would have seen he was in bad trouble, and they’d probably figure he died in the crash.

  He was in the water about an hour when the wind picked up and started making white caps. That seemed to put the cork in the bottle. He was a tiny little speck floating around in the great big ocean. It was difficult, but possible, for someone to spot the brilliant yellow life preserver against a calm blue sea; there was no chance anyone—from four, five thousand feet—could make out a couple of square feet of yellow among the white caps.

  When darkness fell, Charley told himself that with a little bit of luck, he would be asleep when the shark—sharks—struck. That would be a better way to go than putting the .45 in his mouth, or of being sunburned to death when the sun came up again in the morning. He was already desperately thirsty, and that could only get worse, not better.

  He went to sleep thinking of Caroline. They were in the marble walled shower of the Andrew Foster Hotel in San Francisco, with the water running down from the multiple shower heads over them.

  (Seven)

  USN PATROL TORPEDO BOAT 110
>
  160 DEGREES 05 MINUTES 02 SECONDS EAST

  LONGITUDE

  09 DEGREES 50 MINUTES 14 SECONDS SOUTH

  LATITUDE

  0505 HOURS 25 AUGUST 1942

  At 0400, Ensign Keith M. Strawbridge, USNR (Princeton, ‘40), relieved PT 110’s skipper, Lieutenant (j.g.) Simmons F. Hawley III, USNR (Yale ’40); but Hawley elected to remain on the bridge.

  Ensign Strawbridge wasn’t sure whether Lieutenant Hawley was staying because there was no sense trying to go below and get some sleep; or because he didn’t really trust him to assume command of the boat; or whether—despite the heat, it was a pleasant night, reminding both of them of sailing off Bermuda—he just decided to stay for the pure pleasure of it.

  After all, he was the captain. PT 110 was, in the law, a man of war of the United States Navy; and Sim Hawley was therefore invested with the same prerogatives of command as the captain of the Aircraft Carrier USS Saratoga.

  If he wanted to stay on the fucking bridge of his man of war and play his fucking harmonica, there was no one to say him nay.

  Having just asked his executive officer if he thought bathing the harmonica in fresh water would be a good idea, to combat the rust from the salt spray, Captain Hawley was startled and somewhat annoyed by a report from Motor Machinist’s Mate 3rd Class James H. Granzichek (Des Plaines, Ill. Senior High ‘41).

  “Hey, Mr. Hawley,” he called. “Check out whatever the fuck that is on the left. The yellow thing.”

  Hawley did not like being addressed as “Hey, Mr. Hawley.” He preferred to be referred to as “Captain,” but thought it would be rather bad form to suggest it, much less order it. He also could not see where it was necessary for the men to use “fuck” every time the proper word did not immediately come to mind. And there was a proper Naval term for “on the left.” Granzichek should have said, “to starboard.” Or was it, “to port”?