The shout had come from 3rd Platoon on the right flank. A mortified PFC was immediately fingered by his squadmates for the mistake.
“Two Japs popped up right in front of me and started to run away,” the PFC tried to explain to his company commander. “But they vanished, just like that. I had to do something, sir.”
Doing a slow burn, Lieutenant Colletti said, “You picked the wrong something, Hallstrom. You weren’t on fucking guard duty. You were on a recon patrol. Did these Japs even see you?”
“We looked right into each other’s eyes, sir.”
“All right…so what do you mean by vanished, Hallstrom? Where’d they go?”
“I don’t know, sir. They just dropped out of sight. Gone…just like that.”
“All right,” Jock said as the debriefing wound down, “let’s sum up what we’ve learned today. We know pretty well where the Jap bunkers are on the eastern edge of the plantation as well as its southeastern corner.” His fingers retraced the red lines already drawn on the map.
“We also learned our mortars aren’t worth a shit in the palm groves,” he added. “We were damn lucky they only wounded four of Tony’s men. How are those guys, Tony?”
“They’ll be okay, sir,” Lieutenant Colletti replied. “They can stay and fight.”
“That’s good news,” Jock said. “Now, I’ve already called in the Air Force. They gave an ETA of sixteen hundred, give or take a little. A spotter plane will mark the targets with smoke. We’ll have to guide him in so he puts the smoke in the right places for the attack planes. We’ll set up an OP here”—his finger marked a spot on the map—“near the coast on the far edge of the swamp, with the big radio.”
Sergeant Major Patchett had been quiet throughout the briefing, but now he was sketching on a pad of paper like a madman. “Begging your pardon, sir,” he said, “but I think I’ve got something here.”
“Let’s have it,” Jock replied.
“Well, gentlemen,” Patchett said, “y’all been talking about how you actually ain’t seen no Japs, except those two that Lieutenant Colletti’s man tried to capture. And even those two vanished like ghosts. By the way, Lieutenant”—he nodded to Colletti—“I trust you’re gonna reassign that man, before his own platoon does him in?”
“Already taken care of, Sergeant Major,” Colletti replied.
“Very fine, sir,” Patchett said. “That man just made hisself a mistake…a real fucking stupid one…but he won’t be making it again, I guaran-damn-tee it. Now let’s be getting back to these invisible Japs. I don’t believe they’re invisible at all. They just done like both sides did in France in ’18—they dug a network of communications trenches linking their bunkers. They’re probably not too deep, or they’d fill up with groundwater like every other hole in these parts, but them Japs can use ’em to move around, bring supplies, visit the latrine…all without their heads ever popping up above ground. And the jungle will hide those trenches just like it hides those bunkers.”
Patchett passed the pad he’d been drawing on to Jock. “I sketched out a few ideas how we can use them trenches to our advantage.”
The other officers gathered around; the drawings diagrammed an attack plan brilliant in its simplicity.
“So,” Jock said, “we take a corner bunker…and then work our way down the trenches, one bunker at a time.”
“And all the while,” Patchett added, “the Japs can only get at us from one direction—down that narrow little trench from the next bunker. Keeps everything real linear, sir.”
Chapter Sixteen
The only thing that came from the sky around 1600 was the rain. The Air Force radioed their regrets: there would be no air raid on Duropa Plantation today.
“They’ll try to be back first thing tomorrow,” Jock said.
“Maybe it’s just as well, sir,” Patchett added. “We wouldn’t have much daylight for a follow-up attack if the flyboys came now, anyway.”
When the chills and shakes hit him a few hours back, Lieutenant Colonel Vann had insisted he was all right and 3rd Battalion was to push on. Now, the fever was upon him and he could barely stand, let alone slog through swamps. Pushing on was impossible.
“I’ll be all right,” Vann told his staff. “I’ll catch up in a bit.”
His staff thought that much too optimistic. They’d seen enough malaria to know the symptoms on sight: each platoon had already lost half a squad due to illness, and sick call kept growing slowly but steadily. They knew their commander’s fever wouldn’t break for hours.
“Major Raddatz,” Vann said to his executive officer, “get the men into the ambush position along the Sanananda Road. You’ve still got time before dark.”
But not much time, Herman Raddatz thought as he studied his map in the fading light of dusk. We should’ve crossed flowing water at four points—one river and three creeks, according to this fucking map—but by my count, we’ve forded five already and we still haven’t stumbled across anything a civilized person—let alone that annoying Aussie Bennett— would call a road.
The road, Dickie Bennett had told them, was on dry terrain and wide enough to accommodate a truck. It was the final leg in the Kokoda Track. Any Japanese fleeing Kokoda to the north coast would be on that road. Maybe they’d be on it tonight.
Dry terrain had Raddatz scratching his head, though. Every step the men of 3rd Battalion took seemed to go deeper into swampland.
The only thing Herman Raddatz was sure of was his exhausted men had been walking all day, trying to cover the eight miles between Dobodura—Double-Dare—and Popondetta, a village straddling the Sanananda Road his men had promptly nicknamed Pompano, like the city in Florida. Or the fish, perhaps.
We should have been there by now, Raddatz told himself, but we’ve got no choice except to keep going.
By the time the sun was about to set, 3rd Battalion had come to some sort of swamp thoroughfare, a north-south path, high and dry, that appeared heavily—and recently—used. Whether it was wide enough for a vehicle or not depended on one’s definition of a vehicle: a bicycle would fit; maybe a donkey cart. But that was about it. If they were anywhere near the village of Popondetta—Pompano—they couldn’t tell.
Racing the darkness, Major Raddatz used one rifle company to set up a roadblock, another to lay the ambush along the trail, and the third to close the trap from behind once their quarry was stalled by the roadblock in the kill zone.
“When the Japs come down this road from Kokoda,” Raddatz told his staff, “they’re dead men.”
They waited half the night. Most of 3rd Battalion had long since dozed off at their ambush posts.
The small band of Japanese stragglers, silhouetted by the light of a full moon, were more than halfway down the gauntlet before the Americans realized they were there. “Wait,” a sergeant whispered to a wide-awake GI about to fire, “let them get all the way to the roadblock.”
“But I’ve got ’em dead to rights, Sarge!”
“Take it easy, Killer…they could be the lead element for a battalion still way down the road. Or a division. Don’t give us away just yet. Let them get all the way in.”
At the roadblock, the company commander watched as the stragglers approached. “Only four or five of them, by my count,” he said to his men. “Capture them. Don’t shoot unless they want to fight. Try to keep it quiet…in case there are more coming.”
The five Japanese surrendered without a fight. Hands up, they knelt until pushed face-down on the road by their captors.
“Look at them,” the company commander said to Major Raddatz. “They’re in rags…and barefoot.” One by one, he lifted their heads and shined a red-filtered flashlight into their faces. In the dim light, it might as well have been skeletons staring back at him. “These guys look like death warmed over.”
No one noticed the secret smile on the face of one prisoner as he was rolled over to be searched. Quickly, deftly, he pulled the grenade from beneath his tattered shirt and—with a CLANK�
�armed it by striking the primer against the helmet of the GI bent over him.
“What the hell?” the GI said—and then he saw the small, round object rolling slowly toward the circle of officers.
“GRENADE!” the GI yelled as he pulled the Japanese soldier in front of him for cover.
It was too late.
The blast seemed little more than that of a large firecracker to those far enough away.
To those closer, it didn’t matter.
Major Raddatz was dead. Two junior officers in the circle were, too. The company commander was mortally wounded. So was the Japanese soldier who dealt the grenade.
The other four Japanese were quickly bayoneted to death by a mob of GIs who whooped like cowhands as they thrust their blades through flesh and bone.
For good measure, the Japanese soldier who had already stepped through death’s door was bayoneted repeatedly, as well.
Bloodlust knows few limits.
A few hundred yards to the west—on the actual Sanananda Road—two battalions of exhausted and sickly Japanese soldiers stole through the darkness toward the north coast. They could sense they were close to the end of the harrowing journey that began in Port Moresby. They could already taste the fresh coconut milk that would slake their bottomless thirst; that was the only thing keeping them on their bleeding and swollen bare feet.
None of them were the least bit interested in the sound of an explosion from across that forbidding swamp or the barely audible screams and cries which followed: the horrific sounds of men facing—and dealing—death.
Chapter Seventeen
There was good news over the radio at first light: the attack planes from 5th Air Force were in the air. They’d be over Duropa Plantation within the hour. Jock was trying to rub from his eyes the two hours of fitful sleep he’d managed to get. Sergeant Major Patchett looked like he’d bagged a solid eight hours as he bustled around the battalion CP. Jock knew better; Melvin Patchett had probably never gone to bed. He seemed to be the only human on the planet who didn’t require sleep.
Jock asked, “How’s sick call looking, Top?”
“We’ve got ten more, sir…mostly malaria, Doc says.”
Jock did the math in his head: between the combat casualties, the sick, the still-missing mortar platoon, and the fact they had been short some 50 men to begin with, his battalion was at 60 percent of full strength—about 250 men.
And it’s only been five days since we flew in here…
A strange sound drifted in from outside the CP tent: hoofbeats. Colonel Molloy and Dickie Bennett were approaching on horseback.
“We’re on our way to Third Battalion over near Popondetta,” Molloy said. “These mounts seem like the best way to travel…until we get some jeeps here, at least.”
Dickie Bennett asked, “Would you like one for yourself, Major Miles? My boys pinched quite a few from the bloody Nips.”
“No, thanks, sir…I’m not much of a horseman.”
Patchett laughed and said, “Which one of you Yankees is, sir?” He stopped laughing when he remembered Colonel Molloy was from Ohio…and he was an ex-cavalryman. “With all due respect to both you gentlemen…just making a little joke.”
“No time for jokes, I’m afraid,” Molloy replied. “I’ve got some bad news. The plane carrying your mortar platoon—the one that never showed up at Fasari. Well…the Air Force spotted it, crashed up in the mountains. Survivors don’t look very likely, they said.”
Patchett’s jaw tightened. His voice flat and emotionless, he said, “That’s a tough break, sir.”
Jock could only mumble, “Dammit.”
But there was no time to grieve. He asked Colonel Molloy, “Are you going to stay a while and see what the Air Force can do, sir?”
“That’s my plan, Major.”
They made their way on foot to the designated observation post—the OP. As they walked, Molloy asked Jock, “You copied the radio traffic from Third Battalion, didn’t you?”
“Yeah…Colonel Vann’s down with malaria and some of his staff are dead. Sounds like a pretty shitty ambush when you lose as many as you kill.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Molloy replied. “That’s why I’m headed over that way. I’ve got to see for myself what’s going on with that unit…even if it takes all damn day on horseback to get there and back.”
Jock asked, “Are you going to replace Colonel Vann, sir…him being sick and all?”
Molloy shook his head. “With who, Jock? We won’t see any replacements for weeks…maybe months. If Vann can function at all, he’s my best bet for the time being.”
Patchett broke into their conversation. “Begging your pardon, sirs, but we’ve got the spotter plane on the big radio. He’s about four minutes out. Major Miles, you want to call the shots here?”
“Yeah,” Jock replied, “but I want to do it with Lieutenant Papadakis and Corporal Boudreau. They’ve been closest to the target.”
The two men he’d just named were poised for the task. Jock walked over and gave each an encouraging pat on the back. Bogater Boudreau asked, “How come we can’t just mark the target with Willie Peters from our mortars, sir? Seems kinda silly to have some air-machine do what we can do for ourselves.”
“Not really, Bogater,” Jock replied. “By the time we got the mortars adjusted on target, we’d have smoke all over the place. Wouldn’t be very precise for the bomber pilots. Besides, when there are friendly aircraft in the area, we don’t lob high-trajectory fire through their airspace. Don’t want to shoot down our own guys.” He paused, and then added, “Plus, we don’t have a whole lot of white phosphorous rounds to play with at the moment.”
Boudreau thought that over, finally nodding as if it all made perfect sense.
“Let’s try to get it done in one pass,” Jock said. “That slow little bird is too vulnerable to keep coming back over those Japs.”
Papadakis asked, “You sure got a lot of sympathy for those flyboys after all that aviating you did over Port Moresby, don’t you, sir?”
“Yeah, Theo. Some of them, at least.”
“Don’t sweat it, sir,” Boudreau added. “It’ll be just like tossing apples into a barrel.”
The faint purr of the spotter plane’s engine was on the breeze now, growing louder by the second.
“There she is, sir,” Boudreau said, pointing out over the water. “Maybe that’s the same L4 you were flying in.” Bogater cradled the microphone in his hands like it was their key to salvation.
“Maybe,” Jock replied, eyes glued to the little plane. “Turn him…wait…wait…NOW, Boudreau.”
Within seconds, the L4 banked sharply toward land while diving lower to skim the waves.
“Smart,” Jock said.
“Why’s that, sir?” Papadakis asked. “Is he harder to hit flying low like that?”
“No, Theo…but he won’t have so far to fall when the plane gets shot out from under him. Vector him left five degrees, Boudreau.”
The plane settled on its new course.
“Perfect,” Jock said. “All we’ve got to do now is watch.”
Patchett nodded with satisfaction, too. “Even if his smoke rounds burst in the treetops, that should still get the job done.”
Jock asked, “You mean mark the target with a burning coconut tree, Sergeant Major?”
“Whatever it takes, sir,” Patchett replied.
They could hear the Nambus firing from the far side of the plantation. “They ain’t using tracers,” Patchett said. “Can’t tell if they’re hitting that flying bag of sticks or not.”
“He’s still airborne,” Jock replied. “That’s all that counts.”
The L4 was just above the plantation’s treetops.
“NOW, NOW, NOW, OVER,” Bogater screeched into the microphone.
Four smoke grenades tumbled in rapid sequence from the little plane.
Two of them actually made it all the way to the ground. The other two nestled in the treetops, setting them ablaze
just as Patchett foresaw.
“Close enough for government work,” the sergeant major said.
The radio squawked with a new voice: the attack flight leader.
“We’ve got the smoke,” the leader’s voice said. “Heads up…here we come.”
As the L4 made its escape across the swamp—and heading straight for the OP—Jock and company didn’t need tracers to see the Japanese machine guns were slicing the plane to ribbons.
Each man made his unique sound of distress as the L4’s tail section suddenly swung up and away from the fuselage, detached itself, and began a fluttery, spiraling descent to the swamp a hundred feet below.
Minus its tailplane, the rest of the airplane nosed over and—like the projectile it now was—plunged straight down for a heart-wrenching second, its engine roaring until the swamp silenced it with a final, sickening THWOOSH and a mighty spray of muddy water.
It had come to earth just yards in front of the OP’s cowering occupants, an upside-down crucifix—or an olive drab angel with broken wings, its head jammed deep into the mud.
The pilot—still inside, strapped to his seat—was obviously dead, the grotesque twist of a broken neck unmistakable.
The strike of the attack bombers was almost anticlimactic.
Peering into the tangle of bomb-blasted coconut palms, Theo Papadakis asked, “Think the Air Force did us any good?”
“Let’s go find out,” Jock replied, “and we’d better do it on the double…while those Japs are still shell-shocked.”
This time, Charlie Company led the advance into the plantation. Their objective was simple: take the bunker anchoring the southeast corner; it seemed to have taken quite the desired pounding from the bombers. Boudreau even thought it might have suffered a direct hit with a 250-pound bomb. With any luck, the occupants of that bunker were dead—or at least too dazed to fight.
Operation Easy Street (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 3) Page 9
