The men were surprised to hear a sound they didn’t think existed anymore; it was the sound of their own laughter.
Less than a mile away, in a stinking, squalid bunker, the Japanese soldier wrote:
The lieutenant killed himself today
As if the failure of the Empire was solely his
And his alone
Maybe the hunger drove him crazy
Or the diet of lies we have been forced to live on
They said our victory was certain
But the boats no longer come, bringing fresh troops each night
All clean and strong
Ready to be sacrificed
Or just join the ranks of the starving
The dead feed us now
Ours…theirs…it makes no difference
The lieutenant killed himself today
Already there is not much left of him
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Sergeant Major Patchett’s grease pencil squeaked as it made the last of the day’s entries on the unit manpower board. Totaling the columns yielded a bleak picture: barely 200 combat-able men—less than half of a full-strength battalion—would be attacking the Duropa Plantation later that night. Zero hour for the attack—3 January at 0100—was just six short hours away.
Patchett had been meticulous not to include the survivors of the Kapa Kapa in his tally. They were not combat fit. Hell, Patchett told himself, the bunch of us who wasn’t on the damn Kapa Kapa ain’t all that fit ourselves. But we gotta draw the line somewhere whether you fish or cut bait.
The men from the Kapa Kapa would cut bait. They’d man the battalion and company CPs, handling the phones and radios, freeing able men for the assault. They’d even man the fighting holes providing headquarters security; with any luck at all, that task would prove to be more convention than necessity.
But they wouldn’t be making that walk in the dark into the plantation.
One of the Kapa Kapa men manning the phones called out: “Major Miles, Regiment says the boats are leaving Oro Bay now.”
“Excellent. Right on time,” Jock replied.
Already in his field gear, Jock slung his Thompson and stepped from the tent into the gray light of dusk. Patchett did the same, telling himself, Time to do a little fishing.
They would be making that walk into the plantation.
The captain of the ocean-going tug, Mieke, was not a happy man. Hendrik Jansen had allowed his cousin, Beatrix Van Der Wegge, captain of Java Queen, to badger him into this voyage on two conditions: first, he would go no closer than two miles to the shore at Buna Village, rather than the one mile that crazy Australian girl Beatrix was so fond of wanted; second, Beatrix would forgive one-half of the 10,000 gulden in Netherlands East Indies currency he was in debt to her.
He had begun to have second thoughts on the incentive of the second condition: If the fucking Japs win, that Dutch money is worthless, anyway. I’d be off the hook.
It was too late for Hendrik to back out now, though. His blacked-out tug—and the 25 barges and whaleboats it was slowly towing from Oro Bay—was drawing close to Buna. Full of fake men, dynamite, and gasoline to boot, he thought. We’ll be lucky if we don’t all get blown to bits. And I’m already in trouble with the Yank Navy. Indeed he was: he was supposed to be picking up another load of barges at Milne Bay this very night.
Jillian spun the dials on Mieke’s radio direction finder, plotting the bearings to the Japanese transmitters at Lae and Rabaul as well as the Australian Navy station at Milne Bay. She smiled as the three radio vectors intersected on the chart quite close to her celestial plot. “About a mile to the release point,” she told Hendrik. “Twelve more minutes on this heading and speed.”
Somewhere in the darkness to the south lay Buna Village.
“Let’s get the skiffs ready,” she said.
Twelve minutes later, Mieke’s throttles were cut and she coasted to a stop. Her two skiffs were lowered into the water. The starter ropes for their small outboard engines—short lengths with a knot in one end and a wooden handle on the other—were wound onto the flywheels and given mighty pulls. The outboards came to life with a steady putt-putt which had never before seemed so loud.
“The Japs are going to hear these bloody engines all the way to Rabaul, let alone Buna,” the Dutchman with Jillian in the first skiff said.
“If we do this right, Ruud,” Jillian replied, “we’ll be long gone before they suspect a thing. For all they know, these are their boats. They won’t risk lighting us up with a searchlight…not right away, at any rate.”
In a most unconfident tone, Ruud said, “I hope you’re right, missy.”
Jillian and Ruud—plus the two crewmen in the other skiff—went about the business of maneuvering the unmanned boats for their blind southerly run to shore. Six big barges would be in the lead, towing columns of three boats each. Engines roared to life, tillers were lashed amidships. Very long fuzes for the explosives were lit.
That left one boat—a big whaleboat loaded with barrels of gasoline—as a free agent. It was the fastest boat of the lot and its engine the loudest of all: a corroded muffler had seen to that. They’d set this one to sail southwest—toward shore but diagonally away from the other boats. Hopefully, its noise would divert the attention of the Japanese, making the arrival of the other two dozen boats at a different point on the beach all the more alarming.
The big whaleboat’s engine was cranked and Jillian steered her to the southwesterly course. Lashing down the tiller, she said, “Light her fuze, Ruud…and let’s get the bloody hell out of here.” They jumped into the skiff and cast off from the floating timebomb.
The roar of the whaleboat’s unmuffled engine drowned out the putt-putt of the skiff’s outboard motor for a good 15 seconds—until that roar sputtered and died.
“Go back,” Jillian said to Ruud on the skiff’s tiller. “We’ve got to start her again.”
“Forget it,” the Dutchman replied. “I’m not getting my ass blown up for you or some Yanks.”
“That son of a bitch won’t blow for a good ten minutes,” she said, “and a lot of good blokes are depending on us to make this work. Turn this fucking boat around. Now.”
The helmsman laughed and replied, “I don’t take orders from you, missy.”
She didn’t bother answering. He was seated on the side bench, one arm casually draped over the outboard motor’s tiller, his long legs spread wide apart.
She kicked him squarely in the balls.
As he writhed in pain, she grabbed him by his feet and levered him over the side.
“Best inflate your life belt, Ruud,” she called to the man now struggling in the water. “I’ll be back for you when I’m done. Don’t go too bloody far.”
It didn’t take but a few minutes to figure out what was wrong with the whaleboat’s engine in general terms: Plenty of fuel but no bloody spark. The battery’s going to give out if I keep trying to crank her, too.
Fumbling in the sparse illumination of her blackout flashlight, she got to the heart of the problem: The bloody ignition lead is so corroded, it fell right out of the distributor.
Using her pocket knife, she stripped clean the ignition wire and distributor terminal.
Now, how do I hold them together?
Her bootlace did the trick: a few sturdy wraps around the lead and post, secured with a sound knot, and the circuit was restored.
If only the bloody battery has enough life for one more crank…
It didn’t. Pushing the start button resulted in nothing but a few anemic clicks of the solenoid.
I’ll have to pull-start her.
She glanced at the fuze, sizzling its way around the whaleboat: Looks like it’s about half burned down. Maybe five minutes left.
Five minutes—at most—until the fuze set off the dynamite and gasoline drums, blowing this boat to matchsticks and setting the sea on fire.
Jillian needed a starter rope. There was one in the skiff—the one the
y used to crank her outboard.
She held it in her hands, examining it closely:
It’s too short. It’ll never turn over this big motor enough to get her started.
The only other rope was the long, stout length tying the skiff to the whaleboat’s beam—and it had plenty of extra hanging from the cleat.
She cut it, knotted one end and wrapped it around the crankshaft’s start pulley.
It fit perfectly.
She grasped the rope with both hands and tugged with all her might.
The rope slipped through her hands; the crankshaft didn’t budge.
I need a handle on the free end of this bloody rope…something to give me more grip.
Her eyes fell on the skiff’s bilge:
The oar!
She tied the rope to the oar’s handle. They formed a “T” she could grab firmly with both hands.
Jillian pulled…
She was rewarded with a partial turn of the crankshaft—one pumff of a cylinder’s compression stroke…
And that was all.
The burning fuze rounded another turn in its path to the dynamite caps.
Four minutes…maybe. I need more leverage!
Jillian tried straddling the engine block, squatting as low as the machinery allowed. She pulled again…
This time, two pumffs…and then silence.
More bloody leverage!
She climbed onto the engine itself, struggling for a precarious foothold among the manifolds and wires.
Jillian wound the rope’s slack around the oar’s handle, making a short, tight lead to the pulley, squatted low…
And sprung to a standing position with every ounce of strength in her being.
She went flying as the rope played out from the pulley.
Tumbling backward, she ended up wedged in a sitting position between the engine block and deck, her backside stuck into the bilge.
But the loud mechanical throbbing between her knees could only mean one thing:
Success. The engine was running.
The whaleboat was moving again, heading with purpose toward shore—and the Japanese.
The fuze was in the final leg of its long, circuitous run to the dynamite.
Three minutes, tops.
She leaped into the skiff and cast off from the vessel about to find its destiny as a fireship. The raucous sound of her unmuffled engine grew fainter.
Jillian couldn’t find the starter rope for the outboard.
Bloody hell! It’s still on the other boat!
She tried to fit the rope she had fashioned for the whaleboat’s engine into the outboard’s flywheel:
Too thick!
At least she still had the oar.
In the moonlight, she could see the faint outline of Mieke, 200 yards—maybe more—to the north. She kept rowing.
Somewhere in between—hopefully—was Ruud.
At least without this bloody kicker running, I’ll be able to hear the wanker sobbing.
Ruud must have heard the slap of the oar, because he began to call her name, mixed into a continuous string of curses.
“KEEP IT UP, WANKER,” she called out, “IF YOU DON’T MIND DROWNING.”
Jillian edged the skiff toward the sound of his voice. Soon, she could catch glimpses of his head, wet and glistening in the moonlight, as it bobbed not far off in the low swells.
Reaching him, she thought the wiser of offering a helping hand to climb back into the skiff.
The bastard will just pull me in for spite.
She threw him the rope instead.
Ruud sloshed over the side, an animated silhouette, eyes glowing with rage.
His profane tirade began anew, first in Dutch: “Stomme kut! Stomme hoer!”
And then in English: “I swear to God, I’ll fucking kill—”
The brilliant orange flash lit the sea and everything on it for an instant. A split second later, the sound of the whaleboat’s detonation assaulted their ears.
Ruud’s face was no longer just a dark shape with luminous eyes. In the flare of the explosion, Jillian could watch as his anger and hate changed abruptly to shock and fear.
There was good reason for the sudden change: he could see the seaman’s knife in her hand, reflecting the fire’s light as if it, too, was ablaze.
He remembered Hendrik’s warning: Mind Beatrix’s words…that crazy woman will gut you like a fish if you cross her.
At first, they thought the fire spreading across the water’s surface was throwing brilliant sparks.
Then they realized what they were seeing was actually tracers bouncing off the water all around them.
Large-caliber tracers, at that, aimed at the pool of fire spreading from where there was once a whaleboat.
“We’ve certainly caught the Jap’s attention now,” Jillian said, pumping the oar through the water as if competing in an Olympic event.
Ruud’s arm was over the side, the palm of his hand paddling frantically, adding whatever propulsion he could.
The skiff drew closer to Mieke. They could hear the THUNK of rounds striking the tug’s steel hull.
They were so near—but Mieke was beginning to move away, her propellers churning the sea beneath her stern.
A loud CRACK—and all at once a whirlwind of stinging splinters, a splatter of something warm and wet. The sea began to flood in where the skiff’s bow used to be only a moment before.
The last thing Jillian heard was the inflation cartridge on her life belt hissing like an enraged viper.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Charlie Company lay poised on the eastern edge of Duropa Plantation. The sea to their right, the rest of the battalion to their left, they were ready—and waiting—to push west toward Buna. When that first whaleboat exploded in the night, it didn’t seem very impressive at all. Lieutenant Lee Grossman began to doubt the wisdom of this whole attack, asking, “That’s it? That’s the whole damn diversion?”
The whaleboat’s fiery demise—several miles away, well out to sea and over so quickly—seemed to have little effect other than to rouse a robust Japanese response. Judging by the amount of Japanese firepower raking the sea, the weary, disheveled men of Grossman’s company were thanking their lucky stars they were on land right now—even if it wasn’t exactly dry land—and not out on that water, trying to storm the beach in flimsy wooden boats as General Freidenburg would have them do in a few days.
But if the attack they were about to launch succeeded, there’d be no need for dying in the little boats. At the moment, though, this attack seemed just as stupid as the general’s plan.
The GIs’ thinking didn’t change for a few minutes—until the main body of the fireships erupted in a thunderous succession of explosions, showering flaming gasoline onto a broad stretch of beach just a mile or two ahead.
“Now that’s more like it,” Grossman said.
Tom Hadley, his first sergeant, was even more expressive: “It’s like we’re staring into a red-hot furnace...”
Indeed, the rows of coconut palms between them and the beach could resemble a furnace’s grill in a man’s imagination.
Understanding the power of the flames within that furnace required no imagination at all.
Hadley squinted into the distance for a better look. “Looks like those bunkers along the beach took a dose of burning gas, sir.”
That sounded like a good bet: the Japanese heavy weapons firing out to sea had stopped. All that could be heard now was the irregular poom…poompoom of their ammo cooking off.
“I think it’s now or never, guys,” Lieutenant Grossman said. “Let’s get moving.”
Within minutes, the men of Charlie Company were deeper into Duropa Plantation than they’d ever been…
And they hadn’t taken a round of enemy fire.
The blaze’s orange light shone from the beach like a beacon guiding the GIs forward—without lighting them up like targets for the slaughter.
The first line of bunkers—the bunke
rs that had stopped them cold on each of their previous attacks into the plantation—were backlit by the flames. The GIs could make out their shapes clearly.
Carefully, they skirted the silent bunkers and then approached them from the rear—close enough to hurl grenades through their entryways.
When the dust from the grenades’ explosions settled, they stormed inside—and found no one…
No one alive, anyway.
But the grenades hadn’t killed a soul.
The corpses, stacked like cordwood in corners, had been dead for a long time.
Some were missing limbs.
All seemed to be stripped of flesh somewhere.
The corpses weren’t all Japanese. Tom Hadley noticed that right away.
Some of the bodies had dog tags—GI dog tags—around their necks. Hadley reached out for one.
“Careful, Sarge…they might be booby-trapped,” a squad leader said.
The first sergeant paid no attention. He read the name on a dog tag.
Then another.
Hadley looked stricken. They could barely hear him when he mumbled, “Son of a bitch!”
Then he said it again, much louder this time.
There was no need to ask Hadley what was wrong. Everyone knew.
They needed to get out of that bunker, to get some fresh air…
Even if that air stunk from the fumes of the inferno on the beach.
Better that than the stench of death.
Lee Grossman arrived to find most of the GIs around that bunker hunched over, puking the meager contents of their stomachs.
Grossman asked Hadley, “What the hell is going on, Tom?”
The first sergeant had trouble putting the words together. Finally, they spilled out in an anguished torrent: “Miserable fucking bastard lowlife animals…”
Lee Grossman wasn’t sure who or what he was talking about.
Hadley saved him the trouble of asking: “OUR GUYS, SIR! THE GUYS WE COULDN’T FIND…THOSE BASTARDS, THEY WERE EATING THEM!” His voice dropped: “No wonder we couldn’t—”
Operation Easy Street (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 3) Page 22
