There were cannibals in the mountains of Espiritu Santo all the time we were there, and I rather imagine long after we left. Occasionally we would make a trip into the hills and take a look at these primitive people with bones piercing their nostrils and ear lobes. One of our trips I recall a pilot saying, “I’ll bet these folks think we are crazier than hell because we don’t even save heads.”
The natives were typical of the others throughout the South Pacific, with great bushy mops of kinky hair, and feet that looked more like shovels than anything I am able to think of now. They had been bleaching their hair various shades of red and blond by applying lye to the hair to rid themselves of lice.
This was a rear-area base that was bothered only on occasion at night by some lone Japanese bomber. Our job was to supply the fighting squadrons at Guadalcanal with supplies, and act as a re-forming place for squadrons coming out of action or going into action.
My new job was assistant operations officer of the strip, which was about as next to nothing as I had ever hoped to be in charge of in my life. I had the say of nothing. All I did was count the planes when they went out for training flights, and count them again when they returned. What a life!
The months seemed to drag on, and even though I didn’t feel as if I was a part of it, the Japanese were being well taken care of. For certain, somebody had to do rear-area work, but I knew I could never be happy doing it.
Major Bob Galer, with whom I had attended the University of Washington, and flight school afterward, had been CO of the first fighter squadron in Guadalcanal. Bob had been shot down three times but had returned through the enemy lines each time to fight again. He had been there when the Marines lived on captured Japanese food after taking the first foothold in the war, and my old friend Robert had knocked down eleven Japs when the going was the roughest.
Another friend, Joe Foss—whom I had met in Pensacola as an instructor—came in and out of Espiritu between combat tours at the Canal. Joe was truly a gaunt specimen of life while flying the Wildcats against the Japanese. Joe’s final score was twenty-six before the Marines finally yanked him out of combat, full of malaria and worn down to a nub, and the first American to tie Eddie Rickenbacker’s World War I record.
Grumman F4F “Wildcat”
To me Joe has always been a great guy, even before he shot down all the planes. And I think that the people of South Dakota share my opinion, for Joe has been re-elected governor of their state. May Joe have many years to come, for there is one guy, in my opinion, who doesn’t ride in the same car with politicians as I see them.
Also, there was Joe Bauer, with whom I had had the pleasure of serving in each of the only two fighter squadrons the Marines had prior to the war. And Joe Bauer, superb pilot that he was, had done a terrific job by getting twelve when the going was real rough, but was shot down at sea, never to return.
There was another old flying-school classmate who had been a corporal when I was a cadet. Ken Walsh was among the first to fly the new Corsair against the Japanese in the Southwest Pacific, and he rang up twenty Zeroes before being shipped back to the States.
As an operation’s officer the closest I got to combat was by ferrying an occasional fighter into the Canal, remaining overnight for “Washing Machine Charlie,” as we called the Jap night bombers, and then being flown back to Espiritu the following morning.
Around May 1943 I finally thought my break had arrived at last, for Elmer Brackett was able to get me into his squadron as an executive officer. And we were off to the Canal. We had no more than arrived when Elmer was promoted out of the squadron, and I was assigned as commanding 222.
For four weeks—ordinarily a combat tour was six weeks—222 escorted dive bombers to various islands up the “Slot,” as this chain of islands extending from Guadalcanal to Bougainville was called. Besides, 222 patrolled the Canal skies for hours each day but never saw so much as the vapor trail of a single Japanese plane.
During my stay at the Canal I spent part of my time in the famous Hotel De Gink, a real rat hole, but most of the time I lived in a tent not far from the Lunga River. The Lunga was the swift mountain stream in which so many of our valiant ground troops had drowned and shed their blood. We could see the fresh cool water from our tent area, which was concealed from the sky by tall jungle trees. Its refreshing waters were used daily to bathe and to rinse out sweaty clothes. Farther up the stream were crocodiles, and one of the sergeants I had met on the Lurline had been killed by one, but that didn’t slow down our swimming.
This is an aviation adventure of sorts, and I am not deliberately excluding my many many ground friends. But there is one incident I chuckle about that happened in this very same jungle tent-area when the Marines had no aviation on Guadalcanal and the Japanese fleet had just finished shelling them from behind as they were in the process of getting their first foothold. Admiral Halsey had come ashore after the Jap fleet had pulled out, because he thought that he had better boost morale and visit General Vandegrift. And it was at a time when the Marines were cooking, literally, in their tin hats.
An old sergeant who had about a four-hundred-word vocabulary at the outside was helping win the war for the second time; like so many he had the right spirit but not the youth to go with it. Vandegrift had made a staff cook out of this old sergeant, who was obviously very near exhaustion. “Bull” Halsey, attired in fresh khaki, had just finished dining with the tired and soiled Vandegrift and was going into expostulations over the wonderful meal. He said:
“And that apple pie, it was out of this world.”
“Admiral, if you thought it was so darn good, and want to thank somebody, why don’t you thank my cook?” came back the general.
“Great idea, I’d be only too happy to.”
With this statement from Halsey the general called to his cook, “Hey, Joe, come here a minute, I want you to meet somebody.” And the bedraggled old sarge in filthy T-shirt, and badly in need of a shave, came slowly over to this high-ranking pair on very sore feet. In his entire life the sarge had never been so close to so many stars as adorned the shirt collars of the pair.
“Sergeant, Admiral Halsey would like to compliment you in person on your cooking,” Vandegrift said.
“Why yes, Sergeant, especially the apple pie, it was terrific,” stated Halsey.
The old sergeant was embarrassed and fidgeted like a little boy, placing one sore foot behind the other while wiping a hairy forearm across his sweating and wrinkled face, and he answered:
“Oh, bullshit, Admiral. You didn’t have to say that.”
By now the Japs had been wiped out of the Canal, and the bulldozers had covered the last of the stinking bodies. The only Japanese thing of any use was the ice plant, which was inherited by the Marines, and they thoroughly enjoyed it. The capacity was limited, and the higher echelon had to come first which is only natural. And there happened to be a drinking general at the time for whom we had to commence cracking ice in the middle of the afternoon. By the time it was dark and Washing Machine Charlie started to come over, our drinking general was in real good shape—he really wanted to go into action.
The staff would have one hell of a time with the old general as he insisted upon staggering around beneath the jungle trees shouting orders. A few planes had been lost in such a manner before the staff learned how to keep him pacified. But a great person, nevertheless, who did a great deal of good, besides having a heart that was in the proper place.
By far the greatest thrill I got from this brief and fruitless tour was Admiral Yamamoto’s arrival by transport plane at Kahili, Bougainville. One night we were drinking with some Air Force pilots next door to us, and they informed us that the Allies had broken a coded message telling of the arrival of Yamamoto on the following morning.
I remember how we Marines envied these P-38 pilots, for we didn’t have enough range with our Wildcats to reach Bougainville and return to Guadalcanal. We even helped the P-38 pilots plan the whole trip, and were there bes
ide the planes to wave good-hunting as they made an early take-off, although we found out later we weren’t supposed to know about this top-secret mission.
Man, oh man, what excitement in our tent area the afternoon these P-38s came back from Kahili and told us about the rendezvous with Yamamoto’s transport as it was circling for a landing. They had gotten him all right. The whole world was soon to know, but we, even though we had not made the trip, were in on the very beginning. This must have been a horrible blow to Japan, not only to lose a great admiral, but also to know we could crack their code.
P-38
With this for a memento we were sent back early to Espiritu, for at this time the last of the Wildcats were being replaced by the swift Corsairs.
There had been some doubt as to whether our squadron would be sent on the usual “week’s rest and recreation,” as it was termed, for we had had only a very brief, no-action tour in the combat zone. However, we managed to luck out, and away we went to Sydney, Australia, many miles down under.
When the book Snake Pit came out, after my return from the war, I kept wondering to myself where I had heard the word before. Or in what connection. And then I remembered, and it had nothing to do with flying. It had to do with the lobby of the Hotel Australia … and what seems now long, long ago.
After our six-week combat tours were up, the flyers were sent back to a rear area where they were given malaria smears.
If they did not have malaria, they were permitted to go down to Sydney by transport aircraft and spend one week of what was termed on the books as rest and recreation.
I sometimes doubted that the terms were appropriate, because when the poor boys were loaded back on the planes at Sydney they had to return to the combat area to get rested up.
But just the same, on these trips down to Sydney the first thing we did (we got down there just about dawn) was to take our clothes to the cleaners and have all the mildew and tropical rain sponged out of them and have them pressed. Then we would go to breakfast and have fresh milk and eggs, something we did not have up in the islands.
Then we would get into the clean uniforms and we would go down to the lobby of the Hotel Australia, known as “The Snake Pit.” Or sometimes even “The Passion Pit.”
But in this lobby would always be about a hundred girls, and practically any one of them you asked would be willing to stay the whole week with you.
Some of the boys didn’t stay in the hotel. Some of them preferred flats because they could raise a little more hell in the line of parties.
Also, every time we went down to Sydney, we would get an extra-large table at either one of the two night clubs in town, Prince’s or Romano’s. Some of the fellows couldn’t make these night clubs every night, but they usually averaged about five nights out of seven in getting to those squadron parties.
It was common saying then, even around the United States, that the Australian girls seemed to go a lot more for the American boys than for the Australians. And I think this is true, and that the reasons given for it are true; namely that American boys were more lavish with their money and we all had a good time down there. I guess the girls had a good time likewise, because they all used to write us back in the combat zone and tell us what a good time they had had, wondering when we were coming back again.
But even now, on thinking about it, I don’t care to go into comparing American women with their Australian sisters. The Australian girls didn’t have anything on the girls back home except that—well, except that what the Australian girls had they had there.
And in defense of these women I feel that it is necessary to say that most of their virile men were away fighting in Europe and elsewhere. But somehow I was happy that I didn’t have to stand in line for my women or my drinks.
About the only disconcerting part of the week was that U.S. Navy Intelligence kept looking us up and asking all natures of questions. And we kept trying to avoid these officers and enjoy the fun. Their concern was to try to find out how everyone in Australia knew about Admiral Yamamoto and the code being broken. They wanted to find out who was talking about it. Everyone from Guadalcanal was suspected.
On the long trip over the ocean returning to our base weight was a very important factor, and the pilot of the DC-3 told us that we could take back with us nothing we hadn’t taken down there. We had answered: “I certainly hope you are correct, my dear captain.”
“No, you know what I’m referring to,” he said, pointing to several cases of beer and a few bottles of whisky we had lugged out to the airport. So, to comply with our captains wishes, we were able to get rid of our precious cargo all right by simply drinking all of it before we flew out of Sydney.
Back in Espiritu we got acquainted with our new planes. We hoped the combat tour coming up would prove more exciting than our last brief tour.
The Corsair was a sweet-flying baby if I ever flew one. No longer would we have to fight the Nips’ fight, for we could make our own rules. Here was a ship that could climb with a Zero, only with a more shallow angle of climb, and one that had considerably more speed.
We flew by day if weather permitted, and the evenings were taken up by outdoor movies, as the mosquitoes were a thing of the past. A public-address system would come on during intermissions at the movies, and we would hear newscasts from the rest of the world as well as home.
The actor Errol Flynn was having a lengthy session in court concerning his amours at the time with some young things aboard his yacht. And a blow-by-blow account of the trial was woven into these newscasts. I’ll never forget those few hundred lonesome lads under the coconut trees at Espiritu, chanting as one, “Get that God-damn’ war news off the speaker! We want to hear about Flynn.”
I wonder if Flynn realized how much entertainment he was providing the troops overseas. Anyway, I give him a vote of thanks for this, and for that expression that still stands, “You are in like Flynn.”
Those of us who drank, and most of us did, would spend some of these nights drinking and singing up to a point, then wrestling bouts seemed to come in fashion. This happened to be my strong point, for I dearly loved to wrestle, being a former intercollegiate wrestling champion in my day. I also loved to drink. I used to say I provided this form of entertainment, as an excuse of course, to keep the pilots from getting lonesome and thinking of their mothers.
It was just prior to 222’s going back to the Canal in our new planes, and I had been one of the participants in a free-for-all when somebody tackled me from the side in the darkness with a shoestring tackle. My anklebone had snapped audibly like a twig, and the following day found me with my leg in a cast up to my knee. If fate didn’t get in my way … then I got in hers.
The next thing I knew I was being assigned to a room aboard a hospital ship on its way to Auckland, New Zealand. I was to remain in Auckland until I was physically fit. Next to my bunk was a pilot who had lived to tell how one can spin in from one thousand feet in a Corsair and still live, but this poor pilot was in cast clear up to his chest.
The pilot’s jaws had been broken also, and his teeth were wired up solid, so he was forced to take his nourishment through a straw at mealtimes. A corpsman came into our room before the ship left and handed this fellow a pair of mechanic’s pliers. As I had taken over the detail of doing the talking for the pilot, I asked: “What are these pliers for, corpsman?”
He answered: “We are shorthanded, and if the going gets rough, he is to yank his own wires out—before he strangles to death.”
As the speedy light cruiser that had been converted into a hospital ship pulled out of Espiritu, I thought to myself, “Man, oh man, you have loused up the detail now!” It was beyond the realm of possibility to get into a squadron again, for, owing to my age and rank, a CO spot had been my last chance, and now that was gone, with 222 on its last combat tour without me.
* * *
14
* * *
June of 1943 found me parked safely in Mobile Six, a naval hospital a
t Auckland, and it was wintertime down there. This was a far cry from the excitement of Sydney; however, I was to find the New Zealanders very hospitable. Whisky was at a premium. But I had taken this into consideration when I took the precaution of having a huge cardboard box of cartons of American cigarettes shipped with me.
Of all the mediums of exchange American cigarettes, I believe, were the best. It wasn’t entirely because their tobacco was rationed; they truly preferred our cigarettes to their own.
The hospital fixed my leg with a walking cast, but it wasn’t too satisfactory, and I had to depend on my crutches to get anywhere in a hurry. My shoulder muscles developed rapidly. In no time at all I could walk quite a distance without tiring or getting sore arms. I used to practically run on my crutches to the Navy Club in a downtown hotel about three miles away, so I would be able to stack up drinks, which were served from five to seven each evening.
While in the hospital I received a few letters from the boys in 222, telling me how they had struck pay direct on their last trip. The Japanese had made an all-out air effort when the Marines had gone into New Georgia. During this action the Jap aircraft came so steadily 222 had been ordered to fight until out of fuel then land in the ocean. This was about the only real action 222 had, but they helped save the day by getting thirty Jap planes, which many an outfit would like to have on their record.
A few of the boys who weren’t picked up by our destroyers came back later with coast watcher Kennedy’s natives. Kennedy was a large, florid-faced Australian who had stayed on in the islands during the war because, for one thing, he was one of the few who could speak the native language. His native boys would paddle out in their canoes and pick up pilots after air battles before the Japs could reach the pilots in the shore boats. This coast watcher had seen to it that over a hundred of our boys had gotten home safely, so Kennedy was finally persuaded to come to Guadalcanal, where they intended to pay him homage. The purpose was to present some reward, but our headquarters got nowhere with Kennedy as he wanted nothing.
Baa Baa Black Sheep Page 13
