Finally, there was Corporal Grover Wheatley, walking sullenly in front of Jillian, without a weapon, carrying only the walkie-talkie he had left Brisbane with four days ago. He had been stripped of his M1 rifle since he surrendered and he wasn’t getting it back until Brisbane. He had complained constantly from the moment they set out from the camp, and First Sergeant Patchett had given him a simple ultimatum: “If you don’t shut that whining pie-hole of yours, son, I’m gonna plant you like your Captain Brewster.”
“But what if the Japs hit us, First Sergeant? I ain’t got no gun!”
Patchett scowled and replied, “You ain’t got no rifle, sparky. It’s a goddamned rifle, not a gun. But I’ll tell you what…if we come across any Japs, just throw that useless, piece of shit radio at them, with its one fucking mile range.”
Jock Miles and Melvin Patchett weren’t worried in the least about Corporal Wheatley, though. Jillian had assured them if Wheatley made as much as one wrong move, she’d shoot him herself. They believed she’d do it, too. To her mind, he was guilty by association with Scooter Brewster.
Patchett asked, “How far do you reckon we’ve gone, Captain?” It was more an expression of pessimism than a question.
“Not far enough,” Jock replied. “Pulling those wagons…Hadley and his boys doing this trip for the third time…we’ll be lucky to make 15 miles today.”
“That’s about what I figured,” Patchett said. “That makes it a three-day trip—”
“Even longer if those Nackeroos aren’t there to pick us up,” Jock added.
Even thought the pace of the march wouldn’t break any records, everyone with Task Force Miles took solace in one article of faith: they were fairly confident they’d seen the last of the Japanese. But this wasn’t a carefree stroll across the bush. They remained vigilant and kept a well-dispersed tactical column, for they were far more concerned with encountering hostile wildlife than enemy soldiers. As Melvin Patchett summed it up, “We lost two to Mother Nature, two to our fellow soldiers…and zero to the Japs.”
Jock asked, “You’re counting Russo to Mother Nature, Top?”
“Yes sir, I am.”
“Yeah, me too.”
The sun was setting at their backs. It was time to stop and set up camp. As Melvin Patchett directed the perimeter setup, he was met with a barrage of protests.
“Come on, Top…there ain’t no Japs around here,” Mike McMillen said. “You’re not really going to make us dig in, are you?”
“You bet your sweet ass I am, Corporal,” Patchett replied. “What gave you the idea this was some admin bivouac?”
The grumbling continued from all quarters—but so did the digging.
Jillian said to Jock, “Lend me one of the lads and I’ll fetch us some supper.” Bogater Boudreau volunteered to join her on the hunt before she had even finished speaking.
“Okay,” Jock said, “but you two be real careful out there. We can eat K rations if we have to.”
“Lovely as that sounds, we can do much better,” Jillian said. “Now, promise no one will panic when my rifle fires.”
Boudreau added, “But if you hear my Thompson let loose, y’all better come bail us out, because it won’t be shooting at no game, that’s for damn sure.”
They were gone half an hour, and in that time, there were three shots from Jillian’s rifle. Boudreau’s Thompson remained silent. They returned to the perimeter just as the sun had dropped behind the trees. Jillian carried two bush turkeys—large flightless birds with black bodies and red heads—by their feet, their heads dragging lifelessly along the ground. Bogater Boudreau had several long, fat snakes—quite dead—draped over his shoulders.
“Dinner is served, chaps,” Jillian called as they dropped their quarry at Patchett’s feet.
“Outstanding,” the first sergeant replied, and then added, “and since our Corporal McMillen didn’t appreciate the need to dig in, one of his men gets the honor of digging the fire pit to cook these vittles.”
Later, after the sun had set and the meal was consumed, Jock and Jillian relaxed by the dwindling flames of the cookfire with Melvin Patchett. There hadn’t been much said; they were all spent from the walk. Their feet ached and the muscles in their legs felt like taut elastic bands, stretched to the breaking point. But they all knew that after some rest, they would loosen those limbs and be ready to do it all over again, tomorrow and the day after that. There was no landmark to prove it, but they were quite sure they weren’t even halfway to Moreton yet. All considered, though, Jock found the stamina of his soldiers simply amazing. He told the first sergeant, “You did one hell of a job whipping these men into shape, Top.”
“It was my pleasure, Captain,” Patchett replied. “I’ll tell you what, though…this lady here is the one who really impresses me.”
Jock could find no argument with that statement.
The second day of the walk passed much like the first. They pushed a little farther into the sunset before making camp on the off chance they were nearer to Moreton than dead reckoning led them to believe. There would be no light to hunt for supper. K rations would have to suffice. Moreton Station, the Telegraph Track, and the Wenlock River were still nowhere in sight.
Colonel Najima had grown noticeably drawn and weak, his refusal to eat for the past four days finally taking its physical toll. Doc Green offered Najima each item in a K ration package one at a time as Patchett watched, and with each offering the colonel turned his head away.
“That son of a bitch better not die before we get his ass to Brisbane,” Patchett said. “Can’t you force feed him an IV or something, Doc?”
“Even if I could, it would just be wasted, Top. He’d find a way to tear it out.”
Mid-afternoon of the third day, the poles along the Telegraph Track came into view. The euphoria of finally getting there swept over everyone except Jillian. She caught up with Jock and said, “Wait a minute…If the diggers are there, I’m supposed to be your prisoner, am I not?”
“Damn it! You’re right,” Jock replied, feeling sheepish for overlooking that part of the plan. “Better give me your rifle.”
She handed it over. “Better tie my hands, too,” she said.
“No. There’s no need for that,” he said, as he slung her rifle over his shoulder.
She pointed to Najima on the wagon. “Look…he’s a prisoner, and you’ve got him shackled hand and foot.” She handed him a length of rope from her pack. “Let’s make this look right, at least.”
“I said no, Jillian. We have no idea what’s going to happen. You might need those hands…and this rifle, too.”
A half hour later, they were at the Moreton Station. There was nobody there to greet them.
“Shit,” Jock said as he took a look around the big, empty house. “Sergeant Botkin, can you send another telegraph message?”
Botkin had already checked the equipment. It was exactly as he left it three days ago. “Sure, Captain,” he replied. “No problem.”
“Excellent. Tell Brisbane we’re here, awaiting rendezvous.”
Patchett had just finished his own recon of the area. “How about we set up in the woods by the river, sir?” the first sergeant asked. “This building is a little too out in the open for my taste.”
“Agreed,” Jock replied.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
It was well after dark when the telegraph receiver relay began to chatter with Brisbane’s answer. The message was terse: HOLD POSITION. NACKEROOS ADVISED.
Patchett chuckled as PFC Savastano read the telegram aloud. “A little light on specifics,” the first sergeant said. “It’d be real nice to know when they planned to get here.”
“It won’t be tonight, that’s for sure,” Jock said. “Not in the dark.”
A few miles to the east, Corporal Harry Cockburn and his three Nackeroo privates had settled in for the night. The negotiation to procure the trucks had taken far longer than they planned—a day and a half longer. The miners were far more rel
uctant this time than last to hand them over. Petrol was harder than ever to obtain, and the miners ultimately demanded the Army repay in petrol at a rate five times over what they’d use for the journey. Knowing he could never get his hands on such a quantity, Cockburn quoted with great assertiveness a nonexistent wartime regulation he made up on the spot. The imaginary regulation threatened the Army would confiscate the mine if the miners didn’t cooperate. That seemed to do the trick. He had pulled off the bluff—it just took too long. Finally in the vehicles, the Nackeroos raced the setting sun to Moreton Station—and lost.
Harry Cockburn took the order from his pocket and read it one more time. He found the instructions within more and more unsettling. He had expected to be told to retrieve Captain Miles’s patrol—or at least what was left of it—in a straightforward manner, the reverse of how he had inserted them into the bush. The order he held in his hand made the task sound much more risky.
Cockburn had no way of knowing the order had been the product of a chain of military services and organizations, each reviewing and reproducing the message, passing it down the chain to arrive at the next link with a slightly different meaning. It was no different than the parlor game of telephone¸ where a message is whispered from one person to the next in a circle. By the time it arrives back to the first player, its original meaning has been totally corrupted.
The order was first drafted by General Briley’s operations officer—his G3—and was what Cockburn might have expected: instructions to retrieve Task Force Miles at Moreton Telegraph Relay Station. Anticipated arrival time of the task force at Moreton was one to three days from date of the order, an accurate estimation. Somewhere along the chain, though, the concept of imminent Japanese threat was introduced. Whether this came from Briley’s original suspicions of a Jap trick—before those suspicions were set aside by Tim Wells’s clever verification technique—or simply the figment of some overcautious officer’s imagination was difficult to say. All Harry Cockburn could see—plastered below the header of the orders—were the words IMMINENT JAPANESE THREAT.
He asked himself, So what? Isn’t that why we’re here in the first place? Because of an imminent Japanese threat?
Harry Cockburn let those words spin around in his head, their implications amplifying and turning more sinister with each revolution until he envisioned a Japanese invasion force sweeping across the Cape from the west.
Sure...Task Force Miles needs to be retrieved, but I’m betting they’re being chased by a bloody mob of Japanese. And if I’m not careful, I’m going to drive us right into those Japs. We may already be too late to save the Yanks, thanks to those bloody miners!
Cockburn made up his mind then and there: in the morning, they would leave the trucks parked right where they were and advance toward Moreton on foot. Trucks make noise and attract airplanes. On foot, we can be stealthy…and if we do come across the Japs, we’ve got a chance to sneak away without them ever seeing us.
The new sunrise marked the start of the eleventh day Task Force Miles had been on the ground at Cape York. It would be the first day in four they had no plans to walk anywhere. That sounded good in theory, but it didn’t get them any closer to the comfort and safety of Brisbane.
First Sergeant Patchett was releasing men from the perimeter in pairs, sending them to the river to wash themselves. When it was Mike McMillen’s turn, Patchett told him, “You and Simms go get cleaned up, and take the Jap with you. Let him do his business, if he’s got any…and don’t you dare come back without him.”
McMillen and Simms led the weakened, stumbling Najima down to the river. The leg shackles gave the colonel just enough freedom to maintain an awkward, throttled stride; the arm shackles allowed him to undo his own trousers. McMillen mimed the act of urination for Najima’s benefit as Simms kept a firm grip on the chain functioning as a leash. The colonel responded with a trickle of urine against a tree by the riverside and then dropped to his knees to wash his hands and face in the river’s anemic flow.
“I don’t know about you,” Simms said, “but I could sure use a bath.”
“Good idea,” McMillen replied, “but we’ve got to make it quick. Let’s chain the Jap to a tree and get to it. Stand him up over here…”
With Najima secured, the two Americans stripped to their skivvies and waded into the knee-deep water at the middle of the river. “It ain’t much, but it’ll have to do,” McMillen said, throwing himself flat and rolling around in the cool water. “I figure we’ve got about three minutes.”
It took a lot less than that for Simms to get nervous, though. “Maybe we’d better get back, Mike. Top will shit all over us if he thinks we’re fucking the dog.”
“Relax, Frankie…we’ve got plenty of time. Just keep an eye on the Jap so he—”
They felt the bullet slice the air above their heads a split-second before they saw Najima’s chest blossom in a crimson spray. His body recoiled off the tree trunk and sagged to its knees, its torso still upright, held by the restraining chain. His head hung lifelessly against his chest.
McMillen and Simms shared one thought: how silly it would be to be killed taking a bath in your skivvies—with your weapon well out of reach.
Their weapons weren’t out of reach for long. The Thompsons were pointed across the river now, their bearers out of the water and crouched in firing positions behind trees. McMillen and Simms could make out something nearing the opposite bank, a low silhouette moving slowly. It was too far way for an easy kill with the Thompson.
“Let them get closer,” Mike McMillen whispered.
“I don’t see a them,” Frank Simms replied. “I just see one.”
“Let him get closer, then.”
The figure kept coming until there was no mistaking what it was: an Australian soldier—a Nackeroo, standing on the far bank. The shorts, slouch hat, and Lee-Enfield rifle were a dead giveaway. His anxious, wide-eyed gaze was fixated on Najima, hanging dead against the tree.
Still concealed behind the tree, McMillen called out, “nice SHOT, numbnuts…BUT Why the fuck did you KILL our prisoner?”
When the two Americans—wearing only undershorts, holding submachine guns—popped out on the other bank, the Nackeroo was so startled he lost his footing on the slippery rocks and fell face-first into the river.
Doc Green shook his head. There was nothing he could do. Colonel Najima was dead, shot through the heart.
Jock Miles was trying as hard as he could to be civil, but he was losing the battle. “Corporal Cockburn,” he said, “your people have a real knack for accidental killings.”
“With all due respect, sir,” Cockburn said, “our orders warned of an imminent Jap threat.”
“And your men took that to mean one guy chained to a tree is a threat?” Jock asked. “Is that your battle doctrine, Corporal? Shoot the first man you see? Isn’t that like poking a hornet’s nest? What if he was the point man for a company…or a division?”
“My man panicked, sir. He saw a Jap, he fired. Simple as that. And he didn’t see your men.”
Jock let out a sigh of frustration. “The Japs are gone, dammit,” he said. “The ones that aren’t dead are running back to New Guinea. We’ve already told Headquarters that. Don’t they pay any attention down there?”
“No, sir, I guess not,” Cockburn replied. Eager to change the subject, he added, “Now, as far as getting out of here, the trucks are about two miles—”
Jock cut him off. “Go get them, Corporal. My people have walked enough. And try not to kill any more of us today.”
As Cockburn rounded up his three men, Jock turned to Sergeant Botkin. “Better get a message off to Brisbane, Sergeant,” Jock said. “Advise them our Jap regimental commander has met a most untimely end.”
As they waited for the trucks to arrive, Jillian tried to understand why Jock was in such a funk. “You did a brilliant job out there,” she said. “Losing Najima doesn’t change that, does it?”
Jock mumbled his answer: “The
brass like trophies, Jill…and we just got ours taken away.”
Chapter Sixty
It was four more days before Task Force Miles was back in Brisbane. After cooling their heels at Temple Bay for two nights, the Catalinas finally arrived just after dawn. They stayed onboard the Cats for nearly 24 hours—including a fuel stop at Cooktown, featuring a fistfight that erupted when the flight engineers demanded more aviation gasoline than the fuelers felt they were authorized—before touching down with the new sunrise on the Brisbane River. They were delighted when they found their company vehicles—a jeep and a deuce and a half—still secure in the seaplane base motor pool. It would not have been uncommon for the vehicles to be gone, appropriated by some other outfit, who would paint bogus unit markings over the authentic ones.
As he made his way through the base’s hangar, Jock picked up a week-old newspaper. Its headline—in bold, two-inch-high letters—announced:
YANK AIRMEN DRIVE JAPS FROM CAPE YORK!
He scanned the article, searching for any mention of the ground recon patrol—his patrol—that had made it all possible. He tried to tell himself he wasn’t surprised when he found none, but something in him refused to believe it. The ache of disappointment—tinged with a feeling of betrayal—would not go away.
Across the hangar, Jillian hung up the telephone and found Jock standing next to her. “Aunt Margaret is expecting us,” she said with apprehension written all over her face. “She doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
The deuce and a half rolled to a stop at the Division Signal Company bivouac. Melvin Patchett stepped down from the cab and met Corporal Grover Wheatley as he climbed down the truck’s tailgate. The men of Task Force Miles, still lounging on the truck’s bed, didn’t bother to say goodbye to him.
Long Walk To The Sun (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 1) Page 37
