Dawn of a Thousand Nights

by Tricia N. Goyer

  Dan circled Clark Field, preparing to land. Beneath him the airfield spread like a lake of compacted dirt in the midst of a thick jungle. Along the edges were the recently built tent barracks, large wooden hangars, and beyond those, Philippine homes on stilts that cascaded down the treed hillsides surrounding the base like wooden waterfalls. And past those hills, barren mountains, which looked like large anthills from the air.

  Dan noticed a long line of men stretched in front of the door to the thatch-and-bamboo chapel, and he wondered if their prayers centered on those they’d left behind in Hawaii or on their own fate. Though no one said it, everyone knew the Philippines would be a key asset for Japan’s control over the South Pacific. Their question wasn’t if the Nips would strike, but when.

  Dan landed his plane, opened the canopy, and taxied the plane down the dirt runway. The blazing Filipino sun scorched his gray flight suit. No wind today. Not even an ocean breeze to cool him off. He lined up his Curtiss P-40 Warhawk with the others and waved to the maintenance workers busy with refueling.

  As he strode across the length of the airfield toward the thatched mess hall, he scanned the skies for enemy planes. He let his mind wander to past flights over Pearl Harbor with Libby at the controls.

  Dan pictured her face, heard her laughter, remembered the way she scrunched her nose when he told a bad joke and the way she bounded over the hot Hawaiian sand in large leaps all the way down to the waves.

  He knew that her Sunday schedule meant a full day of student flights. With weekends off, soldier and sailor alike hoped that polishing flying skills would mean future advancement. She would have been up in the air as the first Japanese planes approached. What had she seen from her vantage point? The first bombs dropping in the harbor? A swarm of enemy fliers surrounding her small plane? The Piper Cub posed no threat; surely the Japs would’ve realized she wasn’t part of the Army Air Corps. But would they have cared?

  Dan strode by the B-17s, also known as “Flying Fortresses,” lined up in a long row on the side of the runway. A flurry of activity surrounded them; twenty-pound, fifty-pound, and hundred-pound bombs were being loaded into their bays, like huge silver bullets being shoved into a gun cartridge.

  Dan approached one of the planes. “Heading out?”

  “Yup. They gave us the thumbs-up. We’re heading to Formosa to send our yellow friends a message.” Sweat mixed with dirt and grease glistened on the worker’s biceps as he continued to load.

  Dan patted the hard surface of a fifty-pounder as it was set gingerly in its cradle. “Do your job, big guy. Show those Japs who they’re dealing with.”

  A red-haired bomber pilot approached, checking out the crew’s work. He slapped his sweaty hands together, then rested them on his hips. “Just a quick lunch, and we’re outta here.”

  “Same for us.” Dan patted his stomach. “Quick is the word. Drives me crazy being grounded too long.”

  “Yeah, the Japs snuck in on Hawaii, but there’s no way we’re going to let that happen here.” The bomber pilot walked with Dan toward the mess hall in the distance. “We’ll show them, all right. I—” His words caught in his throat.

  Dan glanced over and noticed the pilot’s forehead tensed into hard creases.

  “Sorry. My best friend is stationed there. On the Arizona.”

  The sinking feeling in Dan’s stomach grew larger. “No need to explain.”

  He heard the same talk, the same declarations of revenge, spoken all around the lunchroom.

  “My girl was stationed as a nurse at Hickam. I swear, if any Japs’ hands touch her …” The soldier’s fist struck the table, causing the water to slosh in their tin cups.

  Dan patted his shirt pocket where he carried Libby’s photo. Still, he refused to voice his concerns. Somehow mentioning her name and stating his worry would make it all the more real.

  Suddenly, vibrating over the noise of voices and forks scraping against dishes, they heard the drone of planes overhead. Dan cocked his ear toward the doorway.

  A young soldier sitting at his table shoved another spoonful of corned beef hash into his mouth. “Sounds like our guys are back up keeping watch.”

  “Can’t be. Our guys are right here!” Dan’s stomach lurched as he jumped from his seat and sprinted to the door. Before he even made it to the threshold, he heard the whistling of bombs falling from the sky. The explosions, sounding like thousands of firecrackers going off at the same time, were punctuated by the tremor of the floor beneath his feet.

  “Japs! Attack!” a voice behind him called.

  “Well, it’s here,” a soldier to his left said almost casually as he strode up to the doorway. “This is what we came for, I guess.”

  “Okay, let’s get it over with, and then maybe we can go home,” another soldier answered, strapping his helmet to his head and running out the door toward a line of waiting tanks. Within seconds everyone on hand had moved into action.

  The planes! We’ve got to get to the planes. Dan felt helpless on the ground, especially remembering that their aircraft sat side by side on the runway. Perfect targets.

  As he sprinted toward the airfield, he cocked his head to watch the V formation of Japanese planes, black against the sky. They were flying in from over the mountains, up from the China Sea. The bombs dropped with huge explosions, moving ever closer down the line.

  Dan’s eyes darted to the pursuits as he pushed through a group of soldiers. His feet pounded on the asphalt as he moved to the P-40 nearest the chow hall. But he couldn’t move fast enough. The silver bombers dropped their loads on the silent aircraft, picking them off one by one the way Dan and his friend used to hit tin cans lined along their backyard fence.

  Dan was within thirty feet of the closest P-40 when a silver streak slid through the air and landed directly in the center of the plane. The explosion knocked him to his face, and cries of injured men rose above the ringing in his ears. He tasted blood in his mouth and felt the sting from biting his tongue. He spit out bits of rock and held his scraped cheek. Heat slapped his face, and he shielded his eyes from the wall of fire that had consumed the plane.

  Got to find another. Got to get up in the air. The ground continued to rock under him, shaking as if it had a life of its own.

  A voice rose over the din. “Machine guns open fire!” The chattering began as golden strands of tracer fire shot up to greet the visitors.

  As far as he could tell, the only retaliation against the Japs came from those .30- and .50-caliber machine guns mounted on tanks and half-tracks placed there to protect the field. The sounds of their rat-a-tat-tat now joined in the commotion. But they did little good as the bombs continued to whistle, whanging their way to earth.

  Soldiers poured out from the tents surrounding the field, hurrying to their tanks and machine-gun nests. Others ran from the field in terrified screams. Already, wounded men littered the field, their pained cries for the most part ignored.

  Regaining his resolve, Dan jumped to his feet and moved to where more planes waited in the distance. He’d almost made it to the next waiting plane when the last of the bombers dropped their payload. As the drone of the bombers eased, the cries of the injured grew more prevalent. Dan heard one man’s voice as he ran. “Captain, Captain, Captain!” At first he thought the man was calling for help, then noticed it was a private, a deep wound to his shoulder, lying over the chest of another man, Capt. Richard Tyler. His dead eyes stared into the busy sky.

  “My captain,” the private cried again.

  Dan wanted to stop, to urge the private to leave the field, but he didn’t have time. He had to get to a plane.

  Just as it seemed they’d receive a bit of respite, dozens of small, one-man Japanese Zeros swarmed in from all directions, raking the confusion on the ground. They dived shallow, at forty-five-degree angles, spitting bullets all the way. As the planes swooped, the red orbs seemed to glow from under their wings. Then the Zeros peeled off one by one, diving at separate targets. One hummed down to
ward the battery. Another turned off and flew toward the fuel dumps.

  One swooped so low that Dan felt the wind current from the plane’s wings, and he cursed at the wide smile of the goggled pilot.

  “Over here!” Dan heard the familiar voice and turned to see Gabe Lincoln waving toward two P-40s still untouched.

  Dan ran toward the waiting plane. Gabe reached the other and scurried into the cockpit. Dan climbed in the second, hoping that it had been refueled.

  Then again, one direct hit …

  He couldn’t worry about that now. Instead, he climbed into the cockpit, lowered the hatch, and with the flips of knobs and dials, the engine roared to life.

  Now to find a way out of here.

  Another bright light flashed out of the corner of his eye. There was no time to think. His airplane taxied forward—as if by instinct—dodging bits of plane parts, human corpses, and bomb craters that littered the airstrip. An intense heat and a second explosion told Dan two more planes had been hit—he could only hope one wasn’t Gabe’s.

  Within a minute Dan’s plane lifted, joining the Japs in the air. He’d never felt so alone.

  “Just find one and pick it off. That’s all you can do,” he told himself. Dan banked the aircraft in a wide turn toward the enemy planes. Then he saw it, a lone Zero trailing the others. Getting it in his sights, Dan worked as one with the military machine. He imagined the look of surprise on the Jap pilot’s face as the P-40 sneaked up behind him.

  When the Zero was in range, Dan’s thumbs hit the trigger buttons for the wing-mounted machine guns. “Say bye-bye.” He held his breath.

  “Bull’s-eye!” he shouted seconds later as the bullets hit their mark. Like a wounded bird, the Zero shuddered and then plummeted to the ground. Everything in Dan wanted to keep his eyes fixed on the target, to witness the kill, but he knew dozens more fighters swarmed the skies. He directed his gaze toward his next victim.

  Darkness had fallen, and Libby stood in the bell tower of the small schoolhouse, watching thick black smoke roll across the harbor.

  Rumors spread that the Japanese would be coming back to invade Honolulu. Antiaircraft guns were aimed at an enemy that was surely out there somewhere.

  Yet the darkness was far from silent.

  Shells from the burning ships continued to explode, sending flashes across the dark sky. And when Libby looked across the harbor, she could clearly make out the American flag still waving from the sunken U.S.S. California—the pole mostly submerged, the flag tattered.

  “The rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,” she said under her breath with a trembling voice.

  After the first wave of bombing, just when they thought the worst was over, a second wave of Jap fighters swooped in to finish them off. When all finally died down, word had reached the John Rodgers airfield that help was needed with the wounded. As fast as they could, Libby and Billy Jackson made their way to the nearest hospital. The blood, the broken bodies, the cries for Mom …

  Hours later, the commotion still hadn’t died down. All available nurses had found their way to the hospital, and Libby had joined other volunteers at a local school that was quickly organized into a temporary emergency room. Classrooms still decorated with children’s paintings and clay models had rapidly filled with injured men, most of whom had been brought in by rescue crafts from the harbor. The injured sailors were covered with oil from the sinking ships, if they were lucky. Those not so lucky were covered with burns.

  The school cafeteria had been transformed into an operating room, and the kitchen into a center for sterilizing instruments. There was a shortage of bandages and medicine. Too many needs and not enough help. It took everything within Libby not to turn and run from the scene, but then she thought of Dan. If he were injured, she hoped there’d be someone there to help him.

  She’d washed bloodied bandages in the large enamel kitchen sink, looking out the window at long lines of soldiers who still waited for care. She’d scrubbed oil from the skin of many soldiers. Many just lay there, as if in a daze. She’d swabbed wounds and wiped tears from trembling chins, caring for each man as if he were Dan.

  Now Libby turned her back to the glow of the harbor once more and took in a deep breath. With slow steps she moved down the winding staircase of the bell tower, knowing more young soldiers were in need of care.

  Dan had managed to cause damage to quite a few Japanese Zeros, and counted two sure kills, before the Japanese planes returned over the mountains to the sea, where their carriers waited. He returned to Clark Field, and his initial relief that the Japanese were gone was replaced by horror at the destruction left in their wake.

  The ground beneath his feet was tinted red with the blood of the dead and dying. He wiped his hand along the stubble on his chin and looked around. Hangars still burned, and ammunition sporadically ignited, causing the eyes of weary men to grow wild once more. As he strode by one hangar, a chunk of metal slid from the roof; he jumped to the side, barely skirting it.

  Scattered trucks, jeeps, and planes were burning. The jeep he’d ridden in just the day before was wrecked and still smoldering. The wounded had been taken away, but the dead still lay where they fell. Dan attempted to step over the bodies without looking into their faces, but it was impossible. They were young men. Strong men like him, who just this morning had no idea that today would be their last. As he walked past, Dan shooed away the blue flies that covered the bodies like death shrouds.

  He paused before a whole B-17 crew lying dead next to their burning ship. They’d been preparing to leave for Formosa and had been hit by a bomb before they could reach cover. But that wasn’t the only B-17 hit. The largest four-engine bombing force in the world—boasting twenty-two planes—was demolished.

  “We only got four ships off the ground.” Gabe strode up to Dan. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, showing off his brown, muscular arms. Blood streaked those arms; as soon as Gabe had landed his plane, he’d been out there in the wreckage searching for survivors. They hadn’t pulled one man out alive.

  Dan tried to remember what Clark Field had looked like the previous day. A runway that stretched like a neat line down the center of the jungle with planes lined up. Buildings filled with happy-go-lucky soldiers, chatting about their dates with local girls or army nurses, or showing off the souvenirs they were packing up to send home.

  “I heard Don Bell report that they struck Iba Field too. All but two of the 3rd Squadron’s P-40s were destroyed.” Gabe ran a hand down his face. “The planes were riddled before the engines could get started, just like here.” Gabe pointed to a smoldering plane closest to the tent city. “Hansen was burned alive. Can you believe it? Hansen was always the cocky one.”

  Dan continued on with quivering legs toward the charred buildings. His mind raced, searching for the right thing to say, but no words seemed adequate. They walked past a large black crater where a gasoline shed had sat. Dan was sure he smelled the scent of burned human flesh.

  “A gang of maintenance workers ran inside when the bombing started.” Gabe glanced Dan’s direction. “The whole place was blown up about a minute after they got inside.”

  Dan swore under his breath. “The Japs didn’t miss. Every bomb hit its target—a gasoline storage tank or an airplane. How could this happen? I mean, we’d been up in the air just minutes prior. We could have got them good if we’d refueled earlier, or—”

  “Dan, no.” Gabe placed a charcoal-smudged hand on Dan’s shoulder, halting his steps. “There’s no way we could have known.”

  Dan nodded and wiped his face. “That’s just about the worst luck I’ve ever heard. Just thirty minutes sooner or later, and the outcome of this battle would’ve changed.”

  As Dan leaned over to pick up a bloody pilot’s cap lying on the tarmac, he felt the crumple of paper in his pocket and pulled out a crushed envelope, remembering how he’d stashed it there the previous night with the intention of finishing his letter to Libby this morning. He un
folded the sheet of paper and reread the news he planned to share—news that was surely null and void.

  Dear Libby,

  All is well in Paradise. And good news—I’m higher than a Georgia pine knowing that in less than a month’s time, I’ll be heading back to Hawaii to train more pilots. That’s right, I’m heading back!

  More P-40s arrived safely, and the military is bulking up against the threat of war that supposedly could be around the corner, but the bigwig says planes aren’t any good without pilots. They need someone back at Hickam to train the new crop. That someone will be me, and I’m hoping that a lady I know can give me pointers on how to train them good.

  Dan had ended the letter there, and reading his words now caused a wave of foolishness to flood over him. What had he been thinking? All the signs pointing to war had been glaring at them like neon billboards. Although they talked as though war could happen, none of them really understood what it would be like when it did. No one figured that the greatest nation on earth would be caught with its pants down … twice, unable to defend itself against a weaker Japanese army.

  Dan looked at the paper again. Then he crumpled it in his hand and threw it into a smoldering pile of debris. Personal mail would be the least of the army’s concerns. Sending out death notices would be top priority now.

  Dan watched as a corner of the letter caught fire; then he hurried to catch up with Gabe.

  “So one day of war, and just like that we lost half our airpower.” Gabe slowed his pace.

  “Half? You do try to look at the positive side of things, don’t you? I’d say most.”

  Gabe rubbed his temples. “Come on. Let’s pack up our things. I’ve got word from headquarters. We’re being bivouacked away from the base about a half mile out.”

  “In the boonies?”

  “Heck, as long as there’s a field kitchen with hot food and a place to sleep, I don’t care where they put us.” Gabe ran a filthy hand through his equally dirty hair. “Don’t worry; we’ll get the rest of our things later. We just need to survive a night or two.”