TEETH - The Epic Novel With Bite (The South Pacific Trilogy)

by Timothy James Dean

  Henry was well aware it was not his destiny to see the heady days of battle of his legendary predecessor, Douglas MacArthur. He knew he might walk in the great man’s footsteps, but he would never fill his shoes. Still, Henry had seized the opportunity. Part of his reason was personal. He had a passion for military history.

  Upon arrival in Port Moresby, Chambers was given a tour of his new command. With everything else, he was shown four giant Quonset huts. Each was piled to the roof with file boxes. The Colonel knew he was looking at the raw paper record of the war in this theater.

  Most men would have seen only an avalanche of information that would smother them. But Henry, gazing at the mountain of paper, had an epiphany. In these silent storehouses was his motherlode.

  Indeed, it was part of his official mandate to sift through all this. He and his staff were to summarize key facts and destroy most of it. Anything still secret, or records that were, in his opinion, of lasting value, he would organize for shipment to the Army archivists.

  Like a light illuminating his road through retirement, Henry saw his book. This would be his history of the Army’s participation in the war in the South Pacific.

  Many a Friday night over drinks at the Officer’s Club, the Colonel confided to his inner cadre that his research was the one thing that kept him from going mad in this overheated backwaters. While continuing to fulfill his official capacity, Henry filled journal after journal with his careful notes. Here were the dates, battles, numbers of troops and enemy reported killed, records of conversations, orders given, and much more. All told, he had filled seventeen legal-size ledgers with his longhand. These, he would guard close to his side on the long journey home.

  Henry imagined a popular history for the postwar book market. While his material itself was fascinating, in his opinion, he believed he had a sure winner because of the key figure who would loom from its pages. This was no less a personage than Supreme Commander Douglas MacArthur himself. Every time the General opened his mouth, something potent and quotable came out. The newspapers ate it up, and the Colonel had a thick file of clippings.

  Chambers even believed that the flamboyant MacArthur would one day run for President. In that case, he predicted the consummate warrior would win the highest seat in the nation. After all, there were few leaders better known, or as popular. As Henry weighed the odds, he concluded that, win or lose, his book would benefit. In addition, it would give him cachet with the leading Charlestown families. He saw himself as a sought-after guest at the better dinner parties. Of course, the royalties would be a welcome addition to a modest military pension.

  Now, with his final days in Port Moresby flying away, Henry felt a mounting urgency. No matter how much research he had done, there was always more. And once he departed, there would be no coming back. He called for more and more files, and the boxes climbed his office walls. Every night now, long after everyone else was gone, The Commander could be found writing at his desk.

  Shortly after Private Willman left his office, the GI almost faded from the Colonel’s thoughts.

  But then, against explicit orders, Johnny barged in again. It was the worst thing he could have done.

  FROM THE JOURNALS OF COLONEL HENRY CHAMBERS, JR.

  I Shall Return!

  When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and multiple targets in December of 1941, the leader of the American forces in the Philippines was General Douglas MacArthur. This was the warrior who had once been appointed Field Marshall by the Philippine Government. “Field Marshall” is a rank that does not exist in the United States—much, some say, to the General’s disappointment. In his days of oriental splendor, he wore a gold-braided uniform of his own design.

  Eventually, Douglas MacArthur returned to the khaki uniform and mere title of General of the United States Army. It was no surprise that President Roosevelt would reassign him to our Philippine Islands, to command the 100,000-strong Army of Americans and nationals. The United States, of course, beat the Spanish in the late 19th Century, then purchased the Territory from them, put down a Filipino uprising, and assumed control in 1902.

  General MacArthur had believed for many years that war with Japan was inevitable. Your Author has heard the Supreme Commander hold forth on this subject. However, in early December of 1941 when Washington warned him at last and indeed, the Japanese invaders were coming at him, MacArthur was unable to mount a significant defense. It took the enemy a mere two months to rout his Army.

  With surrender imminent, the President himself ordered his high profile General to forsake his men and flee. At last, accompanied only by his family and close officers, the Commander boarded a PT boat in the dark of night and slipped away. Of the men he left to the nonexistent mercy of the Japanese, it is known that up to eleven thousand perished. Whatever else, it was a disgraceful defeat for MacArthur.

  The General slunk into Australia with his tail between his legs. There, however, he was mollified by the hero’s welcome. Australia, he discovered, had been abandoned by Mother Britain. The cream of the nation’s fighting men had been sent to aid England. When invasion of Australia by the Asian hordes seemed inevitable, the nation begged Churchill for the return of her legions. It was made clear they would not be sent home. It was a desperate Prime Minister John Curtin who embraced America, in the form of MacArthur, as his nation’s only hope.

  To the dismay of his own senior officers, Curtin placed them under the thumb of the imperious “Yank.” Washington dubbed MacArthur, “Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Southwest Pacific Area.”

  Just who is this military Titan? (Dear Reader, your Author learned the following from Douglas MacArthur’s own lips). He was born “under the flag” in an armory in Little Rock, Arkansas. He grew up in frontier Texas where his father was still fighting the Indian Wars. The first sound he claims to remember was the call of the bugle, and he says he could ride and even shoot a rifle before he could walk.

  Shortly after the turn of this 20th Century, watched over by his beloved mother “Pinky,” MacArthur graduated from West Point Military Academy with Outstanding Honors. He became an aide to President “Teddy” Roosevelt. By the end of the First World War, he was already a Brigadier General, and the most decorated veteran in all America.

  How ignominious it was for the consummate warrior to be run out of the Philippines! But while his pride took a drubbing, his legendary ego survived. At his first opportunity in Australia, he announced to the world, “I have come out of the Philippines, and I shall return!”

  His words reverberated to the White House. It is said that our recently demised President Franklin Delano Roosevelt took offense and rebuked his General. It was the American nation, not one man, who would liberate the Philippines!

  At his very next opportunity, however, the General trumpeted it again: “I shall return!” It was a personal promise, and in spite of an abysmal lack of manpower and equipment and a distance that would be measured not so much in miles, but in years and tens of thousands of lives, MacArthur forged his iron plans.

  At one time during the height of the New Guinea campaign, there were many thousands of Allied troops gathered in Port Moresby. During those boomtown days of war, they included the most famous soldier of them all, MacArthur himself.

  Still, in every toe-to-toe fight with the enemy, the Japanese continued to teach him hard lessons. They had carefully chosen the territory they would defend, and wherever the Allies attacked, the enemy exacted high casualties. Moreover, tropical diseases like Malaria and Typhoid cut down more troops than enemy bullets.

  The General is many things, and for some he has been roundly criticized, but without doubt, he is a gifted tactician. If he was to keep his promise to the Philippines, and then invade the Japanese islands themselves, he could not spend forever grinding out campaigns in obscure areas of New Guinea. This was particularly true when the Navy was carving out much publicized victories across the South Pacific.

  It is well known that General MacArthur’s a
rchrival is Admiral Chester Nimitz. The General might have the top hand in the Southwest Pacific, but Nimitz is the Commander in Chief of everything else across the ocean.

  It was Nimitz who garnered the glory in such pivotal battles as the Coral Sea, Midway, and the Solomon Islands. His Navy took the Marianas, Saipan, Guam and more. After landing MacArthur to fight it out on the Philippines, the Admiral’s ships finished the rout of the Nipponese Navy in the battles of the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf. It was his Marine and Army unites that made household names of Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and recently, Okinawa.

  Mired in the jungles of New Guinea, General MacArthur worried that his war was forgotten. In order to free himself from the savage island, the Commander devised a strategy he called “leapfrogging.” He would bypass the enemy strongholds and go for the prize—the Philippines and then Japan. He would leave the marooned Japanese behind to “wither on the vine.”

  All US military aircraft belong either to the Army or the Navy. Nimitz commanded his carriers with their fighters, while MacArthur had his land-based Air Force. His bombers had a maximum range of two hundred miles, so that was the measure of each leap his Army would make. The General and his men hopped “up the back of the turkey,” as he called New Guinea, a reference to its shape. Late last year, the Supreme Commander was finally done with this island, and was ready to make good his famous promise.

  On October 20th 1944, MacArthur waded ashore onto the Philippine Islands, a moment well covered by photographers.

  “I have returned,” the General thundered on the beach. “By the grace of Almighty God, our forces stand again on Philippine soil—soil consecrated in the blood of our two peoples. Rally to me. Rise and strike! Strike at every favorable opportunity. For your homes and hearths, strike! For future generations of your sons and daughters, strike! In the name of your sacred dead, strike! Let no heart be faint. Let every arm be steeled. The guidance of divine God points the way. Follow in His Name to the Holy Grail of righteous victory!”

  It was vintage MacArthur, and our troops and the Filipinos have indeed rallied to the challenge. At the time of this writing (July, 1945), the United States has won. The latest news says MacArthur’s boys are mopping up the last enemy resistance on the wild island of Mindanao.

  In my mind’s eye, I see the Supreme Commander glare north across the open Pacific. In that direction lies our nation’s and his own inexorable destination, the Imperial Empire’s heartland.

  At Pearl Harbor, the die was cast, and it is certain that this very year, General Douglas MacArthur shall land with force on those shores and lead us to our destiny.

  That God-guided destiny is, and always has been, the utter defeat of the enemy, and the absolute victory of the United States of America.

  CHAPTER 8

  A long line of wrecks edged the Port Moresby runway, the castoffs of MacArthur’s Air Force. Every serviceable flying machine had long since departed with the General, ferrying his Army up the north coast of New Guinea.

  One of the aged beauties had been dragged out from the rest. This was a Hudson light bomber of pre-war vintage, built for Britain by the American Lockheed Corporation. This Saturday morning, six men swarmed over the battered fuselage.

  The Hudson had seen duty with the RAAF (the Royal Australian Air Force). After it had been aerated by shot on several occasions, and had crash-landed twice, it had been stripped of its guns and relegated to reconnaissance. During its last flight, it had been attacked by an enemy fighter. One engine streaming smoke and blown to pieces, it thumped aground a final time. The mechanics declared it beyond repair, and wheeled it to stand with the rest of the relics.

  A cursory inspection showed jagged holes all over the body, although the worst of them were covered with metal patches. The entire nose, once a glassed-in turret, was replaced with a metal cone from another wreck.

  On each side of the Hudson’s fuselage, just below the cockpit windows, was painted a reclining beauty. Scantily clad in a tied-off top and short-shorts, she had flowing yellow hair, long legs, and balloon-like breasts. Beneath her, the artist had rendered in script, “Miss Nippon-These.” On the near side, bullet holes stitched across her, and in the tropical sun, she was a faded and peeling rose.

  The brains of the salvage operation straddled an engine on the wing. He was Australian of medium height, with freckled skin and sandy hair. He wore filthy shorts and was grease to the elbows. He was a one-time soldier, self-taught pilot and mechanic, and adept jack-of-all-trades.

  For the past three months, he’d been at work on the Hudson. It was the centerpiece of his plan—an about-to-be-launched air cargo business. He’d combed the discarded wrecks for one he could save and had settled on the “Miss Nippon-These.” He hired mechanics and paid them from his pocket. The repairs they made had been substantial, if primitive.

  So far, the pilot had only been able to get one of the aircraft’s two engines running. He had dropped the plant the enemy fighter had ruined, and replaced it with one from another wreck. Neither motors nor propellers matched, but the pilot was confident they would serve.

  Still, after all his labor, the replacement motor would not start. That was what kept him from getting the craft in the air, but he knew he was close. Today is the day! He sat with his legs spread on each side of the engine. The cowling was off and he fished into the innards with his tools. One of his men sat in the cockpit. The side window was open and his hands were up in the tangle of wires. He pulled one strand down, stripped the insulation with his teeth, and touched it to another wire. There was crackling and a puff of smoke behind the instrument panel.

  “Bugga!” He jerked the wires apart, pulled down another, and touched again. A light flared in an instrument and he nodded and twisted them together.

  “Turn the motor over, would ya?” the pilot yelled.

  “Righty-oh!”

  The propeller cranked and the pilot pulled his legs away from the blades. The engine caught, ran unevenly as the men cheered, then backfired and stopped. There was a flash of fire, and a gush of oily smoke. The pilot jerked away, frantically slapping at the flames that singed his inner thighs. A cloud enveloped him and he emerged flailing.

  “Bloody hell!” he coughed. He spat and kicked the engine with his heels. Muttering darkly, he reached with a screwdriver and twisted again.

  Two men with makeshift wooden ladders leaned them against each side of the rear fuselage. They climbed to the jagged hole that had once been the rear gun turret. A jumble of metal and broken glass poked through. One of them peered in, noticed the black crust over everything and scratched his head with a filthy finger.

  “Cor blimey! Is that blood?” His friend took a look.

  “I reckon so, mate,” he said cheerfully. “Let’s cover it up.” He clambered to earth and fetched an oval of metal snipped from another wreck. The men arranged it over the hole and began to pound it into shape with wooden mallets.

  Two more men stood beneath the wings, working on the landing gear. One set of wheels was cocked at a forty-five degree angle, and a brace was broken. The welder tipped the mask over his face while his mate watched through a piece of smoked glass. Sparks flew.

  “Go on,” the pilot called. “Give ‘er another go!” The man in the cockpit complied. The engine sputtered, ground over, and at last roared into life. Gradually it went up in pitch and began to howl, almost blowing the pilot off. He made a frantic slicing motion across his throat and his mate cut the juice.

  “Bloody brilliant!” the pilot grinned as his men yelled and whistled. He slipped off the engine and stepped on bare feet to a ladder resting against the wing. He scampered down and noticed the worn leather ball resting on the tarmac. He coaxed it onto a toe, tapped it to his knee, bounced it once, twice, three times, dropped it to a heel, popped it over to the other foot and kicked it up. He knocked it high off his forehead and it spun against the sun. As it fell, he caught it neatly on top of his foot, and rolled it aside.

  “I gotta go to t
own. You blokes carry on,” he called. “Now we’ve got the bloody motor running, she’ll be ready to take up later t’day. Whadda ya reckon?”

  “Right you are,” the man in the cockpit smiled. “I’ll watch from down here. And where are you off to, mate?”

  “Gotta see a Sheila,” the pilot grinned.

  “Who’s that then?”

  “Never you mind. I’ll be back in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. Oo-roo.” He tugged on a pair of leather sandals, went to an ancient motorcycle with wide handlebars and climbed on. He kicked it to life and sped away.

  “No doubt he’s off ta see that nurse—the Canadian,” one of the welders said. His partner shrugged.

  “Poor old Footy has no luck at all with the Shielas. Here, hand us that spanner.”

  Colonel Chambers’ eyes were fixed on the letter’s “P.S.”

  “Father Bastion warns us to ‘beware of the river,’” he told Dingo. “He says a ‘monstrous crocodile’ has recently arrived. ‘It is the biggest one I have ever seen,’ he writes. ‘Our villagers call it Ka-him-ka, which means “Father of the Crocodiles.” It is a fearsome creature. “Leviathan, the piercing serpent.” It could have crawled up from the fiery pit itself.

  “‘Our people speak of it as a deity. Brother Constanti and I have barely been able to keep them from worshipping it, especially since it slaughtered five of our flock. This only heightened their desire to placate it. Some of our elders think all the calamities that have befallen us, including the Japanese, are a result of turning from the old ways.’” The Colonel glanced at the Major.

  “He calls it ‘a test from God.’”

  “Or the devil,” Dingo retorted. “Leviathan, he says! As I mentioned, I believe I know what it is. One that big is your Estuary or Saltwater crocodile. We call them that because they are at home in the ocean, but they are equally able to negotiate freshwater rivers. Unusual for this one to be so far inland, but not unheard of. ‘The Father of all the Crocodiles!’ My word! I’ve heard stories about it all my years here, but I thought it was just another kanaka fairy tale.