While his comrades free me from this hell
Chapter Forty-Four
Their first night inside Buna Village, Jock announced his decision: “I’m not going to keep trading one dead GI for one dead Jap in a hole, like General Freidenburg seems to want us to do. I don’t think much of that equation at all. Neither does Colonel Molloy. So at first light, we’re going to pull back a little and let the Air Force set fire to this whole damn place. And when those fires burn out, we’re going to crush what’s left with tanks.”
His company commanders were relieved—but puzzled. Lee Grossman asked, “Tanks, sir? As in plural? Where the hell are we getting more tanks from?”
“The colonel just told me five more Stuarts are sitting at Oro now,” Jock replied. “Assuming they all make the drive up here without breaking down, we’ll get two more and the Aussies will get three.”
As the briefing broke up, Melvin Patchett told Jock, “Good plan, sir. Real good plan.”
But then he noticed Jock was shaking. “The malaria…it’s coming over you again, ain’t it, sir?”
“In spades, Top.”
Late that night, as the chills rolled into fever, Jock had only one decision left to make: “Don’t let the medic take my temperature, Top.”
“Somebody’s gotta do it, sir.”
“Then you do it.”
When Patchett took the thermometer from under his tongue, Jock didn’t have to be a mind reader to know the number wasn’t good.
“It’s climbing. One-oh-four point three,” Patchett said, like a jury foreman reading a guilty verdict. “We gotta get you to the sick ward.”
Even though his voice was strained and shaky, Jock’s words were emphatic: “The fuck you will, Top. I’m staying with my men.”
Melvin Patchett laid a comforting hand on Jock’s shoulder. There was no point trying to talk a feverish man out of something he had his heart set on.
Sure, he’ll stay with his men…even if it kills him.
He sent a runner to fetch the medic.
The sun was high and the Air Force’s firebombing well under way when Jock’s fever finally broke. “He shouldn’t even be here,” the medic said to Patchett, who was pointedly ignoring him.
“You do realize, Sergeant Major, that we took four more men out of action during the night with the fever?”
Patchett bristled. “You trying to tell me my business, boy? Of course I fucking realize that.”
Jock was still stirring, not quite awake yet. Nodding toward him, the medic added, “Well, then you know it should have been five.”
He sprinted out of the tent before Patchett could unleash his wrath.
Jock gulped down the first canteen of water handed him, letting the last bit splash over his sweaty face. “The tanks,” he said. “Did they get here?”
“Yep,” Patchett replied. “Only one broke down and Colonel Molloy said to scratch it off the Aussie’s allocation. I’m really starting to like that man.”
“You see, Top? I told you he was a good man to work for. What else did I miss during the night?”
“Not a damn thing. We’re all just waiting on the flyboys to finish up.”
Jock tried to stand and nearly fell on his face. He would have if Patchett hadn’t caught him.
“You know, sir…another bout of the fever like you had last night and you may not be with us much longer. And I’m not talking about a trip to the aid station, neither.”
“Can’t think about that right now, Top.”
He found his feet this time. They headed out of the tent to watch Buna Village burn.
General Freidenburg was expecting gratitude from the Aussie commander, General Vasey. Instead, he was getting an earful.
“Two bloody tanks? That’s all I get from you Yanks?”
“I think that’s quite a fair allocation, General,” Freidenburg replied. “You were doing quite well breaking through the Sanananda defenses without them. They’re just icing on the cake for you now.”
Vasey tried hard not to laugh in the American’s face. “Doing quite well, General? If you call my horrendous casualty rates doing quite well, I don’t want to know what doing badly entails.”
Freidenburg paid no attention to the complaints. He had a few of his own.
“Looking at your situation map, General Vasey, you don’t seem to be using the US Eighty-Second Regiment very effectively. Why aren’t they in the main thrust of the attack with your boys, instead of just guarding your boundary with my Thirty-Second Division?”
“Because my men don’t bloody trust them under fire, General. Neither do I. And since you Yanks have cocked up so badly, I need an entire regiment just to protect my flank from all those Japanese you let escape from Buna. I consider it poetic justice to call upon your Eighty-Second to provide me this service. Unfortunately, they don’t seem very good at doing that, either.”
“Now see here, General,” Freidenburg said, “I will not tolerate—”
But Vasey kept right on talking. “Twice, I’ve had to rescue their flank from being enveloped by ragtag bunches of Nips. And another thing, General…can you tell me how many Japanese your Eighty-Second has killed or captured?”
Freidenburg was stumped for an answer.
“Then let me tell you, sir…a dozen. A bloody dozen. Thousands of Nips fleeing right through their lines to the hills—where, no doubt, we’ll be fighting them all over again—and the best your lads can do is bag a dozen?”
Spitting fire, Freidenburg said, “I’ve listened to enough of your bullshit, General. Now I want a straight answer: when will you capture Sanananda?”
George Vasey wasn’t in the least bit intimidated. His reply: “We’ll capture it bloody well before you Yanks finish your mucking about in Buna.”
The fires from the Air Force’s incendiary raid on Buna were beginning to burn out. There was still plenty of daylight left to begin the task of finding—and finishing—any Japanese making a stand in the village. The engines of the Stuart tanks roared to life. A squad of men climbed on the back of each, doing their part in the symbiosis of infantry and armor: You give us rolling cover and firepower, we’ll keep the Jap sappers off you.
Jock had been summoned to Regimental HQ just as the sweep into Buna Village began. He wasn’t happy about it; he’d wanted to be with his men as they cleared the village inch by inch.
But maybe it’s a blessing right now, he thought. I’m about as wrung out as an old dishrag. I can tell by how everyone’s staring at me that I look like warmed-over shit. Riding in this jeep is about as much exercise as I can handle at the moment. Maybe I should grab some chow up at Regiment…that might help.
After nothing but K rations—and, when the sickness peaked, no food at all—the thought of a canned C ration entrée was making his mouth water.
He hadn’t been in the HQ tent for a second when Colonel Molloy said, “Jock…listen to this.”
An American voice was shrieking over the Division radio net, calling for immediate air support. The target: Jap armored vehicles.
They moved to the map to plot the given target coordinates. They couldn’t believe where the pin fell.
“Impossible,” Jock said. “That plots right on the edge of my zone, in Baker Company’s area. It’s bullshit…we haven’t seen a Jap tank the whole time—”
He stopped cold. The realization of what was happening struck him—and everyone else in the tent—like a punch in the face.
Molloy asked, “That call’s coming from Eighty-Second Regiment, isn’t it? Over with the Aussies?”
“Affirmative, sir.”
“They’re looking across the Girua River, sir,” Jock said, “right at my guys working with one of the Stuarts.”
“Call off the fucking Air Force,” Molloy commanded. “They’re fixing to hit friendlies.”
The Air Force liaison piped up and said, “We’re not handling that call, sir. It’s going through the Aussie net. They’re relaying the Eighty-Second’s support requ
est.”
“Break into the Aussie net, then,” Molloy said.
“I’ll try,” the liaison said as he fumbled with the signal SOP book. “Gotta figure out what frequency they’re on. But by the time we authenticate…”
Molloy was getting hot under the collar fast. “Then get Division on the fucking horn and have them do it. We don’t have much time…there are planes in the air all over the place.”
The colonel was right: there were planes all over the sky, just waiting for a target of opportunity like this—even if it was an American tank they’d be accidentally targeting.
But there wasn’t enough time.
Lieutenant Tony Colletti, walking behind the Stuart with a squad of his men, heard the P-40 screaming toward them long before he saw her.
By the time the plane came into view, streaking at treetop level, it was too late…
He could see the big white stars under her wings plain as day.
For the pilot, who got nothing more than an instantaneous glimpse of his target, a tank was a tank.
Colletti’s last thought: Gee…nice to get air support when I didn’t even ask for it.
A hundred yards away, Melvin Patchett was an inadvertent witness as the mistake unfolded.
He heard the P-40 coming, too…and saw the bomb drop.
In the split second that followed, he was trapped within the silent bubble of excruciating pressure and pain as the blast’s shock wave expanded at cosmic speed.
His ears too battered to hear the explosion, his body flung through space like a rag doll, Melvin Patchett felt like he had absorbed the blow of some giant sledgehammer.
When he finally struggled to his feet, aching but still alive, the Stuart was nothing but a smoldering shell, unrecognizable but for the severed tracks still dangling from drive sprockets.
Lieutenant Colletti and the men with him were gone, erased as if they had never existed.
Chapter Forty-Five
The close-in airstrip at Double-Dare made more than just close air support possible. Now, General Freidenburg could make regular trips to MacArthur’s HQ in Port Moresby, flying there and back in the same day.
The current trip—five days and counting into 1st Battalion’s clearing of Buna—was cursed with bad news for Freidenburg from the start. He had barely stepped from the airplane when informed his deputy commander, a brigadier general, had been shot and severely wounded by a sniper while attempting to expedite the clearing of Buna.
“It’s a living hell in that village, sir,” Freidenburg told MacArthur. “I’ve watched my men rooting Japanese soldiers out of the ground like they were pulling weeds.”
An interesting analogy, but a lie: Freidenburg had yet to set foot in Buna Village and had no intention of doing so until it was completely pacified.
Adding insult to injury, the Australian command had upstaged the good news he came to announce: their radio message informing MacArthur they had conquered Sanananda had beat Freidenburg to Port Moresby by a good hour.
Looking none too pleased, MacArthur said, “And yet, despite your brilliant amphibious deception, Robert, we still struggle in Buna. How long until you’re finished there?”
“Not much longer, sir…a matter of a few days. I’ve got the Japanese with their backs pinned against the Girua River. There’s no place they can run now.”
“Very fine. But one more thing, Robert. Those casualty rates—totally unacceptable. Washington is not pleased. I can’t have any more Bunas. Is that understood?”
Freidenburg found the irony in MacArthur’s words infuriating: Suddenly he’s worried about casualties? Isn’t this the man who said, “Take Buna…or die trying?”
Nonetheless, he replied, “Yes, sir. Absolutely, sir.”
MacArthur finally cracked a smile. “But all in all, Robert, you’ve done an excellent job. I consider this campaign as good as closed.”
Freidenburg wasn’t out the door of the villa a minute before MacArthur had his message of great success in Papua on the airwaves to Washington.
Busy in the kitchen, Ginny Beech caught glimpses of the Supreme Commander standing before the drawing room mirror, preening like a schoolboy, practicing his victory speech.
“His victory, my bloody arse,” she mumbled as she set out the general’s fine china for supper. “His lads should be getting all the credit.”
The table set, she returned to wondering if she’d ever again see the lad she cared about most: Melvin Patchett.
Nothing seemed excellent or as good as closed to the GIs clearing Buna Village. True, once they reached the Girua River—less than a half mile away—every square foot of this tropical graveyard would be secured. But in that distance, they could find themselves in any number of small but deadly battles with concealed Japanese.
One such battle had played itself out earlier that day. “That brigadier we ain’t never seen before just walked smack into it,” Bogater Boudreau told some GIs who’d missed the spectacle. “I guess them stars don’t make you too smart. He was just standing there, tall as can be, telling us we was all sissies. Couldn’t figure out why we was all crawling on our bellies, I reckon.”
The tanks had been a godsend. As Tom Hadley put it, “Just think how fast we could have done this if we had those Stuarts from the very beginning...instead of the bullshit games we’ve been playing for the last month.”
A few yards away, Jock sat on the hood of a jeep and watched the mop-up proceed. “Hey, Top,” he called to Patchett, “those tanks are too close together. Spread them out…move one of them over to that creek bed with Able Company. That looks like trouble, don’t you think?”
A few days ago, he would have had the strength to run over and correct the situation himself. Now, he was simply too weak: I’d end up flat on my face in the mud after a couple of steps. That’d be inspiring as all hell to the men, wouldn’t it? Those sick troopers still out here on the line…how the hell are they doing it?
No sooner had the Stuart joined Able Company, the POOM-POOM-POOM of its main gun echoed through the burned-out rubble that was once a village. There was one hell of a fight going on at that creek bed. It was over in seconds.
Lieutenant Papadakis made the long walk back to Jock. Almost apologetically, he said, “Thanks for the tank, sir. We would’ve been in deep shit without it.” His head hung down, he added, “I should’ve thought of it myself. That creek was a perfect ambush spot if there ever was one.”
“Don’t sweat it, Theo. Chalk it up to a lesson you’ll never forget.”
Moving like a man three times his age, Jock eased himself off the hood and settled into the jeep’s right seat. “Let’s get closer,” he told his driver.
The Japanese soldier couldn’t believe his good fortune. Some 30 yards away, centered in his field of fire, a jeep rolled to a stop. Several ragged Americans crowded around it immediately, their bodies slouched against the vehicle as if it was the only thing keeping them upright. They were all listening intently to the man in the passenger’s seat.
He is their leader even if they do not bow to him. A fool could tell.
I have been given a supreme final gift.
Praying the faint click-click of the bolt wouldn’t be heard over the murmur of the jeep’s engine, the soldier checked the chamber of his Arisaka rifle—needless confirmation of a fact he knew all too well:
My last bullet.
But his shot at the leader wasn’t clear.
Move out of the way, Yankee bastard!
He could feel his heartbeat pounding in his ears, a racing clock ticking off the last seconds of his life.
Hurry! Give me my moment. I am ready.
But the Yankees seemed in no great rush...
Until that one man moved…and the leader’s cover evaporated.
The hunter locked eyes with his startled quarry.
He sees me! The eyes of a hawk!
The Americans became a blur, men scrambling to defend themselves, screaming like animals caught in the snare…
One by one finding their triggers.
I squeeze my trigger, too…
While the voices of my ancestors spirit me away.
Bogater Boudreau was keeping an exact count: this guy made the 27th dead Jap his squad would be pulling out of the ground since the assault on Buna Village began.
“Twenty-seven in five days,” Boudreau said to no one in particular. “You’d think all the ruckus they stirred up, we’d be finding a lot more than that. If every squad in this battalion pulled out twenty-seven, that’s…that’s…”
“Nine hundred seventy-two, give or take,” a private said, helping out his mathematically challenged squad leader. “Assuming, of course, all the squads actually have GIs in them…which they don’t.”
They kicked the last of the splintered, blood-spattered boards off the hole.
“Geez,” the private said, “this guy’s head got blown clean off.”
His voice matter-of-fact, Boudreau replied, “Yep, that’ll happen when half-a-dozen guys unload their Thompsons all at once. Easy now…check him for booby traps.”
“I hear Major Miles was the one who spotted the guy just in time.”
“Heard the same thing,” Boudreau said. “Too bad he had to get winged for his trouble.”
“Winged? I heard he took it right in the chest.”
“Nah…just the shoulder. He’ll be okay.”
“Funny, though,” the private said, “when the medics hauled him off, he was shaking like a man scared out of his ever-loving mind.”
“You don’t know nothing, shithead. The major ain’t scared. It’s the sickness making him shake, that’s all. He’s got it real bad. You start spreading any bullshit rumors about him and it’ll be your ass, you hear me?”
“Yeah, Corporal. I hear you.”
“Good. Now give me a hand here.”
They reached down, grabbed the dead man’s belt, and pulled. The rotted fabric snapped in two.
Operation Easy Street (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 3) Page 27
