Baa Baa Black Sheep

by Gregory Boyington

  Upon inspecting the helmet it was apparent that a 7.7 slug had cut a slit completely through the fabric approximately four inches in length. But outside of a small welt and a wee bit of skin missing from the center of his crew cut, he looked as good as ever to me. I can’t say I blamed the lad for never flying again with his seat any higher than just enough to look through the electric gun sights.

  One night the Japanese decided to evacuate Kolombangara by small boats. They had counted upon darkness and early morning fog to conceal the movement, and fortunately it did for the majority of the boats. Some of 214 with parts of other squadrons caught the last of the Nip boats on the early morning patrol and strafed the poor devils at sea. I was just as happy that I had been fortunate enough to miss this action.

  The evacuation of Kolombangara was assumed to be complete by the Allies and they had no intention of sending any patrols ashore, which happened to so many of the unimportant islands of the Pacific. The Japanese had spread themselves thin by trying to protect all the islands, so when the Allies came to control the sea and air, the troops on these islands were of no value to the enemy; they were stranded. They remained there until the end of the war, to exist as best they could off the land itself. I am certain that this was no picnic on any of the islands I saw.

  The day of this evacuation of Kolombangara was a sad one for the Black Sheep. Not that it was any great military action, but the loss of one Sheep, no matter what the cause, was of great concern to us—and to his loved ones back home. A mistake happened this day, as did many others during this long war, but actually no one can be blamed—or should be blamed.

  One of our patrols of four spotted a boat from altitude near the north shores of Kolombangara, and the flight was signaled to dive down. The leader had recognized that this was not a Nip boat, but one of our own PT boats patrolling the island a lot closer than it was supposed to be. The leader had pulled up, and expected his three wing men to do likewise, but they did not.

  Bob Alexander was in this flight, but apparently couldn’t hear his section leader, firing a burst at the PT boat. One of the pilots on this flight said he saw one of the U.S. sailors trying frantically to wave the Corsair away, and as he was watching the sailor wave from the bow, the Corsair fired his .50-calibers, cutting the sailor in half as he was waving.

  Another sailor handling the twin .50s from the stern of the PT boat fired back as Bob continued to fire. It was automatic reflex, more or less defense action. Bob Alexander’s Corsair didn’t pull out, but crashed in smoke and flames a few yards back of the beach in the jungle.

  One thing I have noticed about letters, especially letters exchanged with parents whose sons were lost with us or missing, is that the parents do not want the answers to contain gush or platitudes. In other words the parents, and quite rightly, do not have to be sold on the worthiness of their own boys. What the parents or relatives do want is the minutest details of the boy’s last fight, or how he came to be knocked down, or what he was doing when last seen. And this information, to obtain or to know or to give, is the hardest of all. I tried, but only in a few cases in regard to lost flyers did I know, or does anyone know.

  We would take off on a mission, we would cover lots of miles over ocean or jungle, and we would be shot at, we would have our own individual fights maybe, we would go through clouds. And those of us who did not come back just simply did not come back. And the ocean tells no secrets. This roughly was how it was when we lost people, or, as a more personal example, when I myself was lost later.

  Or as in the case of Bob Alexander, another example, but one where we did have a clue: we saw him go down. We saw his plane burst into smoke and flames, and we saw him crash. But he crashed on an enemy-held island. So the remainder would have been a secret.

  I wrote his folks, of course, and told them exactly what had happened, and that the island was held by the enemy. And this is all that I could do at the time, or anybody could do. Yet it so happened that the case of Bob Alexander is the one and only, while I was squadron leader, in which we were able to recover a body later—and could complete the tragic letter to the folks. For in December, some two months later, after Bob had gone down on the island, our troops had forced the last of the Japanese to evacuate, and we were transferred to the nearby Vella strip. Immediately I formed a small party among us, and we got a PT boat’s crew to take us over to this island.

  We maneuvered around the north end of Kolombangara where we had seen the plane go down, and finally saw traces where the terrain had been torn up. We swam ashore with machetes and shovels, and finally located the spot where the plane had crashed.

  The place was a jungle, but we searched through it, climbing through the brush and the vines, and finally found Bob’s body. What was left of Bob’s mortal remains had been slammed into a tree trunk there in the jungle.

  The day was so hot with that sticky tropical heat that all of us were soaked with sweat by this time, and we finally managed to edge out a grave. We placed Bob’s body within the grave and, remembering what a fighter he had always been, we decided to place his body so that he faced Tokyo. He had wanted so much to get there. Then, after covering the grave with jungle earth, we took one of his bent propeller blades, painted his name on it, and placed it at his head.

  Bob Alexander’s funeral services were brief. Three New Zealand boys who had accompanied us on this mission stood on one side of his grave, and I placed three of Bob’s comrades on the other. I had all intentions of giving a befitting prayer. But as I started out, in my memory I saw Bob standing before me. He was such a well-built boy. I could see his perfect teeth and his hair, which was more golden than red, and I could see in my memory his everlasting smile also. So, as I started to give the prayer, words would not come. The best I could do was give a right-hand salute. We all saluted, and then I mumbled: “So long, Bob.” And that, for some reason, was all I could say.

  Yet, for once, and only once, we had found one of our lost Black Sheep. We had found Bob, and could write his folks so.

  After we swam back and had gotten aboard the PT boat, heading back for Vella, I was mentally chastising myself for the lack of delivery in the prayer department. In my lifetime it was nothing unusual for me to try to rebuild the past, forgetting the present. I turned to Moon Mullin, the handsome lug, because he seemed to possess such great faith, and started to talk.

  “If only I could have gotten a prayer out.”

  Moon must have been reading my thoughts, for he placed his arm around my shoulders, smiled kindly, and said: “Don’t worry, Gramps. We all understand. We feel the same way.”

  B-25

  The command at Guadalcanal had been recently turned over to the Air Corps, and we had many an occasion to escort B-24s and B-25s. It was on one of these Air Corps B-24 missions that I came very close to being decorated with my first medal. As it happened, I wasn’t, and, having left China in a huff, I had collected no medals from there, either. I didn’t know that I was eventually going to be given up for dead before I was to receive what I termed “booby prizes.”

  The Black Sheep squadron was one of three designated to escort B-24s from Guadalcanal on a strike to Bougainville. Air Force P-38s were to be top cover, Bell Aircobras were to be low cover, and 214 was to be medium cover for the 24s. The 214 rendezvoused with the 24s and their other pursuit over Munda, then proceeded on the mission.

  A storm front was beginning to make it appear unlikely that the bombers would even find their target, let alone bomb it, so, one by one, the two Air Corps pursuit squadrons peeled off, returning to their respective bases. But not the Black Sheep, good old USMC stuck right with these Air Corps bombers, and it was a good thing we did, for the Nips were able to get up plenty of Zeros in the clear weather on the other side of the storm front.

  None of our planes was shot down, bombers or fighters, although several of them were struck by 20-millimeter cannon fired from the defending Zeros. My Corsair came back with all its ammo intact because I was n
ever presented with a decent shot, but 214 was not goose-egged, as Casey, Moon, and Bolt scored. The Nips gave our fighters but few opportunities; they could see that we were intent upon escorting properly and wouldn’t break off and chase them.

  Quite some commotion was created in Air Corps Headquarters at the Canal by our sticking with the 24s when their own pursuit had left them. I’ve long forgotten the name of their CO. It was something like General Hill, but I am not certain. And it really doesn’t make much difference now. Anyhow, the general was all set to come over to Munda and pin a Silver Star on me. He had even gone so far as having the papers written up for the decoration. But in trying to be ethical the general had informed Navy Headquarters of his intention, and somebody there squelched the dear general, informing him that the Navy was capable of decorating its own Marines. This was the closest I ever came to being considered for so much as a Purple Heart until it was believed that I had been killed, although I had no way of knowing this at the time.

  I thought: “To hell with medals,” as I sincerely believed there were other things a person can give that are far more important. Memory is the only means of getting these things out and enjoying them over again.

  Words or gestures of encouragement come in strange ways. In the same sense that we often may be unaware of giving them to others, so, too, others may be equally unaware of giving them to us. This goes not only for the war. It goes for today as well. And I am especially thinking of a man who, possibly without realizing it himself, has bucked me up at both times.

  The second time was after World War II when I, after being returned to the United States, was trying to get my personal things squared away after my long absence as a captive, and during a specific period when nothing seemed to be going right for me at all. But the first time this same man encouraged me was long ago when the going was truly rugged in Munda.

  With all the flying and little sleep at night we had to take a little shut-eye during those moments when we could grab it. Next to drinking I liked to sleep as much as anything else in the world. I always have been that way about sleep since I was a kid. My mother thought I was going to come down with sleeping sickness before I was graduated from college.

  At this particular time I had no idea that later I would be a so-called hero. And the next month, just depending on the morning’s paper, one might be something else for a while, yet at heart all along he is still the same person. Then it is natural for some people, even military higherups, to be on the safe side and watch one carefully from the sidelines, or avoid him altogether like a leper, until the publicity (or whatever it is) blows favorably in his direction again.

  It was another hot sticky morning on Munda, and I was stretched out on a cot in one of the tents beside the white coral strip. One of my boys came in and nudged me and said: “Hey, Gramps, somebody outside to see you.”

  Being tired and a little crabby, I answered: “My God, what in hell does someone want to see me for now?”

  Trying to push the sleep out of my brain, I walked out of the tent blinking under the glare of that white coral strip, just like looking at an everlasting field of white snow. The light was blinding.

  I finished rubbing my eyes and got them focused, and saw an array of stars on collars. Two admirals were standing before me, and two Marine Corps major generals. Without a cap I could not salute, but I nodded and said: “How do you do.” And one of the admirals stepped up in front of me.

  I was a little nervous at first, but was soon put at ease. This grizzled-looking admiral who had stepped forward was Admiral Halsey. He stuck out his hand and said: “Nice work, boy.”

  After that I felt just as much at ease as though I was talking to my own father.

  At the time water was scarce around Munda. In fact, we had hardly enough to drink, let alone to shave with, and the weather was so hard on our faces in that hot climate and the slip-streams and everything from flying that I did not like to shave more than about once a week anyhow. But I was put right at ease with this too: I noticed that Admiral Halsey had not shaved for at least a couple of days.

  Another gentleman I talked to in this group of visitors ashore was Harold Stassen, at the time a commander in the Navy. I had only about a five-minute chat with him there on the field at Munda.

  All of us cannot return to States-side life knowing all the answers as readily as if we had lived there all the time. For even some of those who have lived here all the time do not know all the answers either. This is the way with everybody, of course. We may not change, but the publicity momentarily may change, and that is all. But we are helpless against it for the brief while it lasts. And one evening I could not help thinking of all this a little, and perhaps contemplating it a little too, as one does—and just then the phone rang in my home.

  The call was an oral message relayed from Halsey that, when he reached the coast the next day on his way to Mexico, he wanted most of all to have my wife and me attend a small dinner with him.

  He had not, then, forgotten the unshaven guy on Munda when the going had been rough. And he had not forgotten him later, for I was still the same guy, though older, of course, and more dilapidated, but nevertheless the same guy to whom Halsey that morning had said: “Nice work, boy.”

  So, at least, I got a turn later to think of a man like that with the words: “Nice work, Halsey.”

  Maybe this can make you understand, as I did, that tokens of true friendship that words are inadequate to describe mean so much more than all the hundreds of thousands of tiny chunks of metal they could possibly design. Men like Halsey, Moore, and my own Black Sheep spurred me on, although I had not the slightest notion of where I was going to end up, or even where I was going.

  Living had become more normal around old Munda. Even the nights were at last free from Washing Machine Charlie, because an old Navy friend, Commander Gus Woodhelm, had a squadron of night fighters based at Munda. These night fighters were Corsairs with a large, bulblike fixture on the wing, a radar, and these planes proved to be very effective too.

  Gus and his boys patrolled by night and slept by day. Most of the Nip bombers were being knocked down long before ever getting close enough for us to hear the guns or see the tracers. I found that Gus and I had different problems on our hands, for he chased a dot around on a radar screen within his cockpit, never looking past the instruments, not until the dot that represented a bomber got very close to the center of the screen.

  He said that they were in no hurry, as we were; they tracked a bomber, checking its speed, enabling a nice slow closing rate where either a miss or a chance of ramming a bomber was highly improbable. With these night fighters, which involved more thinking than action, the nights were cleared, so I had more time to rest, and think too.

  I often wish today that in some of these big fights where we had twenty or thirty Corsairs and Hellcats, and about forty or fifty Zeros, that I could have had a moving-picture setup that would have taken in the whole affair. The little cameras connected up with one’s guns took only the actual firing at a plane. The film never showed a plane go all the way down to the sea. But if I had had a camera that could have taken the whole thing, it would have been a sight to behold for today’s public records.

  In these bigger battles you could see planes going around in circles, half circles; you could see Zeros, Corsairs, Zeros, all firing at each other; you could see the red balls from the tracers, just like Roman candles going every which way in the sky. The battles would cover an area from about three thousand feet above the water to about twenty thousand, and equally as wide. Every time somebody pulled any g-load in turning or pulling out, it would form a vapor streak that would get larger and larger.

  Zero

  When one is off away to one side, these vapor streaks resemble a bunch of hoops placed in the sky, and, as I have said before, sometimes when one is directly below, they resemble chicken tracks that have been made in wet mud and allowed to dry.

  After a while our prey got a little ro
ugher to get, because the Japs wouldn’t take to the air when we had the advantage. Instead, they dispersed their aircraft on the ground, so it would have been foolhardy to try to strafe them.

  Strafing in the middle of the day is truly a rough proposition at best because every ground gun in the place, including rifles, can be trained upon one when he comes down to strafe. So, we had to devise different methods for getting them up in the air. Any semblance to the laws protecting ducks is purely coincidental, my friends.

  One highly successful caper was pulled in October as twenty-four of us flew to Bougainville in “V” formation at high altitude so the Nips would think we were unescorted dive bombers and might possibly take off. We were talking back and forth to one another about where we intended to bomb as we approached Kahili. And best of all of the ruse—the Nips fell for it.

  The trouble with anything good was that it usually worked only once, never more than two times at the outside. This was one of those firsts—and what a first.

  We waited until about half of the Nips had climbed out of Kahili, and the rest were in the process of taking off or taxiing up to the end of the strip. I don’t believe that any of the first Nips off ever got much higher than five thousand feet. But they had committed themselves, and that was all we wanted them to do. We quickly changed the formation from bomber Vs of three into fighter pairs, then we streaked down upon our unsuspecting foe.

  We started nailing the first Nips at about five thousand, as they were climbing up at a considerable disadvantage. Even the Nips on the ground were practically helpless because they could not fire for fear of hitting their own aircraft. By following the dust streaks down the field we were able to see others taking off. Some of these Zeros were knocked down before they even had a chance to take up their landing gear after take-off.

  Off the end of the Kahili strip, which stopped right on the edge of the ocean, I saw eight splashes, with oil gradually spreading in larger circular patterns on top of the water. This must have been a demoralizing sight for the ground Nips, watching their gallant air force take off up the field and before completing a half-circle ending up in the drink, right in front of their noses.