Corrigan's Run

by Colin Falconer

  *****

  Sergeant Lavella raised his head above the shelter of the coconut bole and watched them come. There were about two dozen soldiers, and two officers, spread out in single file along the trail. Three of the soldiers were carrying a Nambu machine gun and tripod.

  Manning had insisted that no shots were to be fired unless the Japanese were on top of the camp. Lavella had allowed himself some license with these instructions; he had posted his men in ambush alongside the trail. He believed it was better to take the battle to the enemy than wait for them to bring it to you. Lavella came from a long line of warriors; he felt he knew better than the kiap how to deal with these Japanese.

  What he had just seen had convinced him. The japoni had killed the mumi in cold blood. It was unthinkable that they should let the act go unpunished.

  He and his men were outnumbered almost four to one, but he would have the advantage of surprise and anyway, the Japanese would not immediately realize that they had just six men ranged against them. They would spring the trap, then melt away into the jungle before the japoni had time to react. The kiap called it ‘shoot and scoot’.

  Lavella had chosen the site of the ambush carefully. Halfway up the ridge above Marmari Point was a small clearing. Lavella and his men had taken up positions in the jungle around it. Men walking uphill in the heat always stopped for a rest in any open space, and they would bunch together and lose their alertness.

  It would be the perfect time to strike.

  Lavella waited, his face pressed against the warm stock of the gun. The jungle trail passed just fifty yards below him. Somewhere in the impenetrable mass of green around him, his five men were similarly poised, waiting for him to fire the first shot. The Japanese would not be expecting this. The hunter would become the hunted.

  The soldier on point was very close, walking with his head down, his rifle slung over his shoulder, sweat gleaming on his face, his tunic drenched with sweat. The path up was very steep.

  He reached the clearing and stopped, swinging the rifle off his shoulder and leaning it against a tree. He reached for his water bottle. Soon he was joined by the rest of the platoon, some sinking down thankfully against the trees, others fumbling to take off their packs.

  Lavella found his target, centred the sight on the chest of the officer with the sword. Lavella grinned. Now the japoni would pay for the life of the old man.

  But Lavella had never been quite the expert marksman he supposed he was. As he fired, he jerked the barrel with his left hand; and despite all Manning's patient coaching through the years, he pulled at the trigger, instead of squeezing it gently with his forefinger.

  His first shot went well clear of its intended target; but the Japanese soldiers were huddled so closely together that the bullet still found its mark, ripping through the chest of one of the machine gunners, killing him instantly. His second attempt hit Tashiro in the arm, and he fell backwards into the undergrowth.

  Lavella's men joined his fire from their positions. The Japanese dived for cover, leaving six bodies strewn over the clearing. Lavella was satisfied. It was time to retreat before the Japanese had time to recover and regroup. A bullet splintered the trunk next to his head, adding urgency to the decision.

  Lavella heard the Japanese firing blindly into the jungle long after they were gone. They melted away into the thick jungle and returned to face the kiap's wrath.

  *****

  Rachel found Corrigan sitting in his lean-to with one of his sandals off, peering at the pad of his left foot. He had his ivory-handled gutting knife out and was carefully wiping it on the leg of his shorts.

  ‘Ian said you'd hurt your foot.’

  ‘Got a thorn in it.’

  ‘You're not planning to cut it out with your knife?’

  ‘I've washed it.’

  ‘The knife?’

  ‘My foot.’

  ‘That isn't going to help very much.’

  ‘Got a better idea?’

  Rachel didn't answer. She snatched the knife away from him and threw it away. Then she bent down, took his foot in her hands and examined it. She could see the head of the thorn under the curl of his middle toes.

  ‘Start slashing your foot with that knife and you'll get an infection. I'll get it out for you.’

  Corrigan leaned back on his elbows and grinned at her. ‘And how do you propose to do that?’

  ‘With my teeth.’

  Corrigan raised an eyebrow. ‘That should be interesting. New experience for me.’

  ‘There aren't many of those left for you, are there?’ Rachel murmured and sank her teeth into his foot, biting down as hard as she could.

  ‘Jesus!’ Corrigan tried to jerk his foot free.

  Rachel paused to examine her handiwork. The marks of her teeth showed pink against the tender white underside of his foot.

  ‘Do you treat all your men this way?’

  ‘I think the sun has addled your brains, Patrick Corrigan.’

  ‘Boyfriends, then. You must have had boyfriends.’

  ‘I came here to remove a thorn from your foot, not to discuss private matters.’

  Corrigan reached down and ran his hand along her arm. His touch was surprisingly gentle, and she was shocked by this sudden intimacy. She looked up. He was leaning forward, his face now very close to hers. He was smiling, but there was a warmth and tenderness there that caught her quite by surprise.

  She pulled away, startled by the possibilities of the moment and once again sank her teeth into his foot. Corrigan yelled again but this time his protests were drowned out by shouts from outside the hut.

  Sergeant Lavella had returned.

  Chapter 40

  Manning wiped the perspiration off his face with the hand towel he wore around his neck. He was having trouble with his breathing again. He sat on a wooden crate in the radio hut and listened to Sergeant Lavella's account of the ambush with increasing frustration. He did not share his sergeant's pride in the achievement. So he had killed some Japanese. They would always send more.

  ‘How many casualties?’ he asked again.

  ‘Seven dead, fifteen wounded,’ Lavella said, wildly exaggerating.

  Corrigan limped in, in time to hear Lavella’s body count. He started laughing. ‘Halve that and he'd still be exaggerating. He probably nicked one of them in the hand.’

  Sergeant Lavella glared at Corrigan.

  ‘I told you not to fire unless you had to.’

  Sergeant Lavella still did not understand how the little black box that Manning spoke into every day was helping them beat the Japanese. In his experience there was only one effective way of getting rid of unwanted intruders.

  ‘Well that's done it now,’ Corrigan said. ‘Now they know we’re nearby they'll comb every inch of jungle round here and bring in every man they've got.’

  ‘Did you lose any men?’ Manning asked.

  ‘One fella he no come,’ Lavella said shame-faced. ‘Corporal Volulu.’

  ‘My God. If they've taken him alive . . .’

  ‘Him he no talk,’ Lavella said. ‘Good fella that one.’

  Manning shook his head. ‘We can't take any risks. We'll have to move camp. Now - tonight.’

  ‘I agree with you for once, old son.’

  Manning looked up wearily. ‘Thank you Sergeant Lavella. That will be all.’

  Sergeant Lavella snapped off a smart salute and marched outside.

  After he'd gone Corrigan pulled up one of the wooden crates and sat down next to Manning. The Englishman’s head was bowed and his shoulders were hunched in fatigue. The strain was beginning to tell.

  Corrigan put a hand on his shoulder. ‘You're not looking well.’

  ‘Worried about me, are you Patrick?’

  ‘Look, it's your funeral. I'm just giving you the benefit of my great wisdom. You've done your bit, time to call it a day. Get this submarine, and we'll all get on it and head for greener pastures.’

  ‘I can't do that.’

&n
bsp; ‘Why not, for God's sake?’

  ‘I have to stay. I can't run away from this.’

  ‘Well I'll be damned if I understand it. Still it's ...’

  ‘Yes, I know. It's my funeral.’

  Corrigan took in Manning's sunken cheeks, and the yellow in his eyes. ‘Sure, and a lot sooner than you think,’ he said.

  *****

  Corporal Volulu's spirit ancestors had deserted him. Wounded in the upper thigh by a stray bullet during the ambush, his companions had melted away into the bush before any of them had realized he was missing.

  For almost an hour he lay in agony, unable to move the leg, the femur shattered by the bullet. He had tried to staunch the flow of blood by pushing his thumb deep into the wound, refusing to cry out for fear of luring his comrades back into danger.

  Finally he had passed out from loss of blood.

  When he regained consciousness, he found himself staring up at Lieutenant Tashiro. The Japanese officer’s arm was strapped across his chest, the sleeve of the tunic ripped away, the bandage on his upper arm soaked in blood.

  He was trembling with rage. Five of his men were dead. Three more were badly wounded.

  Tashiro drew his sword. ‘Tie him to the tree,’ he whispered, and two of his men forced Volulu to his feet, despite his agonised screams, and tied his arms behind him around the trunk of a callophyllum tree.

  ‘Now you will tell me where the Englishman has his camp,’ Tashiro said. He grabbed the terrified Sam Doo by his shirt and threw him at Volulu’s feet. ‘Tell him he can die quickly or slowly. It is up to him.’

  After Sam Doo had translated this, Volulu looked up at Tashiro and with great precision, spat in his face.

  Chapter 41

  The bloodied and writhing thing tied to the tree was no longer recognizable as a man. But Volulu had uttered not a sound. Now, near death, he could not have spoken if he had wanted to.

  Tashiro lunged with the sword, plunging it so savagely into the islander's chest that it embedded itself in the trunk. The mutilated body sagged against its bonds. He uttered a long sigh and then was still.

  Tashiro stalked away. He would catch this Englishman. Nothing would stop him now.

  Nothing.

  *****

  A huge yellow bomber's moon rose out of the sea. It threw an eerie light over Henderson Field and the skeletal silhouette of the control tower. A flare burst overhead, and as it faded, it was followed by a cacophony of klaxon horns, and the din of men beating their hands on empty diesel drums.

  The lights all went off in the tent area, and there was the sound of catcalling and whistling from the movie tent. For the seventh successive night, the men would not see the end of the film.

  On the field the planes were already warming up, their slipstreams churning up clouds of black dust. The Grummans roared into the air to meet the Japanese bombers, while the Douglas Dauntless dive bombers and the P-400's were taking off behind them; their job was to stay out of the way until it was all over.

  Mitchell left his tent at a run and sprinted towards the nearest foxhole; his own plane had been riddled with bullets in a dogfight that afternoon, and was too badly damaged to fly. He would have to sit out the bombing with everyone else.

  He heard it then, the distinctive de-synchronized sound of the Japanese bombers; Betty's probably, he thought, searching for their silhouettes against the night sky.

  ‘Here he comes,’ he heard someone say from a foxhole very close. ‘Washing Machine Charlie.’

  Searchlights swept the sky, finally converging on one plane. Mitchell heard the steady boom-boom of anti-aircraft fire from the edge of the strip, followed by the shriek of the bombs. He curled himself into a ball, tried to make himself as small as possible. He remembered to open his mouth to reduce the risk of concussion in case the bomb landed close by. Then there was nothing to do but wait and pray.

  There was a roar followed by the boom-boom-boom as the rest of the stick hit. The ground rocked underneath him, and the echoes of the blasts reverberated across the jungle towards the mountains.

  As the bombs continued to fall he huddled further down into the trench, each concussion sucking at the air around him. He was surprised to find that he wasn't thinking of himself. He was thinking of The Weatherman.

  That morning the calm, measured voice had reported the weather and the Japanese movements, as he always did. But then he had said something else; he had been forced to move camp again, he said. The Japanese had sent two planes low over the island, looking for him. For the first time Mitchell had heard fear in his voice.

  He wondered where he was. Choiseuil? Bougainville? Mitchell guessed Bougainville, on one of those peaks at the north of the island overlooking Buka Passage. The Japs must be desperate to find him. In recent weeks the tide had begun to swing against them; two nights ago the Navy had kicked their asses for the first time in a night action. They met the Tokyo Express off Cape Esperance and sunk two cruisers and crippled another. The Japanese could no longer call The Slot their own.

  And now Nimitz had sent them the American division. They were just raw kids, lumberjacks and Minnesota farmhands who had spent the last few months lying in the sun on New Caledonia. They might not be much right now, but it meant Vandergrift had three thousand extra men to bolster his defences.

  And they still had The Weatherman, their ace in the hole. What sort of man was he? Mitchell wondered. A professional, he had to be. Probably a Naval Intelligence man dropped behind the Japanese lines by submarine.

  Whoever he was, they wouldn't have a chance without him. The Zeros would have shot them out of the skies long ago. That afternoon he had warned them that two squadrons of bombers and a Zero escort were on their way, headed for Henderson Field. Mitchell's squadron had been waiting, had swooped down on them like gulls on a school of fish. They hit them time and time again, and any that found a way out of the trap lurched into a barrage of anti-aircraft fire from the Navy cruisers in Purvis Bay.

  He wondered how many they had taken out that day. Already he had nineteen ‘meatballs’ - as they called the small Rising Sun flags painted on to the fuselage to indicate a kill - to his credit. That in a just a couple of months on Guadalcanal. Three others already had over twenty. Surely the Japs couldn't take much more.

  More of his pilots were willing to dogfight with the Zeros now; many of the Japanese front line pilots had been lost and their replacements were younger, and much less experienced. The American Navy pilots were chewing them up.

  The shelling stopped. A green flare burst in the sky, giving the all clear, and lights began to wink on again all around the field. Already Corporal Cates was roaring across the airstrip in his bulldozer to start filling in the fresh craters.

  As he climbed out of the trench, Mitchell dusted dirt off his jacket. Shoup's head bobbed out of a foxhole close by.

  ‘Bit of a pounding tonight, eh Major?’

  ‘What's the matter with you? Want to live for ever?’

  ‘Sure do.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Mitchell said. ‘Me too.’

  Chapter 42

  Father Goode lay on the bamboo cot, shouting at the specters that had come to haunt him, bathed in sweat. The two day hike from the Nigillini River had almost killed him. They had walked day and night, using the Southern Cross as a guide. Finally they had reached Manning’s last fall-back camp, under the smoldering caldera of Mount Teatupa.

  Here the mountains soared to razorback spines that fell away either side into deep valleys; everything except the sheer black cliffs was covered in primeval forest, and the treetops wreathed in swirling grey mist. Up here it rained every afternoon and as they squelched through thick mud up the steep tracks only the natives, with their broad, splayed-toed feet, were able to keep their balance. This was the domain of malarial mosquitoes and giant centipedes whose single bite could leave a man writhing in agony.

  The verdant jungles filtered out the sunlight so that only a dim greenish light reached the the jungle floor
. The cathedral silence was broken only by the harsh screech of a mynah or a white cockatoo.

  They had been hacked their way through drooping lianas and giant webs, as strong and fine as fishing line, spun by spiders as large as dinner plates.

  The site Manning had chosen was on a volcanic ridge, blessedly cooler and mosquito free, but by now it made no difference to the priest; he had succumbed to both malaria and septicaemia. It was a miracle he had survived this long.

  Rachel sat on a wooden crate beside him, bathing his forehead with a wet cloth and steeling steeling herself for what she had to do.

  In her hand she had a bottle of whisky. It was the last of Manning's supply.

  ‘Uncle, drink some of this.’ She tipped a few drops onto his lips. The priest sat up gagging. ‘The Devil's brew! Take it away!’

  He threw out an arm spilling some of the contents on to the ground.

  ‘You must drink some. It will help with the pain later.’ She tried to pin down his arms, leaning her weight on him and holding his wrist with her other hand. Quickly she tipped some more of the liquor into his mouth. He spat it out.

  ‘There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth!’ Somehow he worked his other arm free and his hand smashed into Rachel's mouth, knocking her onto her back. She sat up, put her hand up to her nose and felt the warm trickle of blood.

  Father Goode turned his head towards her, his eyes crazy from fever and the poison in his body. ‘Lust,’ he muttered. ‘Lust.’

  ‘You have to drink the whisky. It will numb the pain.’

  ‘Your women are all whores and the Lord shall rain down fire and destruction!’

  ‘If you won't drink it, I'll have to make you drink it.’

  But Father Goode did not hear her. The world had become a hot and infernal place.

  *****

  Rachel made out Corrigan's silhouette against the trunk of the bloodwood tree. He was lying on his back, apparently asleep. She approached him gingerly, still holding the bottle of whisky. She watched him for a few moments; when he was asleep he looked like an angel.