The Bridges at Toko-ri

by James A. Michener

  Seoul immediately ordered, “Proceed Roundelay. Operate as he directs.”

  So by means of field telephone, radio, ship-to-shore communication and ship-to-plane, American jets were diverted to rescue South Korean foot soldiers. As the planes swept south Cag called ahead, “Roundelay, twelve jets reporting for orders. We’re loaded.”

  From the bright morning sky came a whispery voice: “This is Roundelay. I’m flying an SNJ.”

  Each jet pilot was astonished that in today’s swift war the out-of-date old SNJ would still be used. It had been ancient before they took basic training, but no one had quite the shock that Harry Brubaker experienced. “An SNJ?” he repeated incredulously and he was back in 1935, a gangling boy stretched out upon the floor, quietly and supremely happy, for he had mailed the box tops and the company had kept its promise. Here was the highly colored put-together of America’s latest plane. “It was an SNJ,” he recalled.

  Then suddenly from behind a mountain, there was the real SNJ, a rickety, two-bladed propeller job with a high greenhouse, a useless spare seat and six smoke rockets slung precariously under its wings. A slap-happy air force captain was wheeling it slowly around and Harry thought, “What’s an SNJ doing here?” Then he learned.

  “This is Roundelay. Get the big guns first.”

  “Can’t see ’em,” Cag said.

  “Follow me.”

  And to the amazement of the jet pilots Roundelay trundled his slow plane down almost to the treetops and delivered a smoke rocket against the target. “See it now?” he called.

  “Will do!” Cag cried, and he led his twelve screaming jets into a howling dive, right onto the gun and it fired no more.

  “Strictly wonderful,” Roundelay called. “D’you see the other two?”

  “Negative.”

  “Watch this smoke.” And the bug-like SNJ hopped almost at ground level up a narrow valley to deliver another smoke rocket against another gun. Then, when it seemed the midget plane must follow the rocket against the rocks, the pilot twisted free, skipped over a ridge and ducked down upon a third gun.

  “Will do!” Cag reported, and when his swift jets had silenced the guns, Roundelay called cheerily, “You must come back often.”

  The jets had zoomed so high they could not keep track of the tiny plane, but then sunlight glinted on the ridiculous greenhouse and they heard Roundelay call, “I think I see Red troops beginning a new attack. Follow me.” And once more he hurried off like a busy old woman going to market.

  Brubaker’s division was aloft and he watched Cag’s four jets roar low into a column of communists assaulting a hill. With appalling accuracy the Banshees spread their hundred pound bombs, each wound with high-tension steel wire that shattered into small pieces with machine gun fury. The communist advance wavered.

  “Next division,” Roundelay called. “Keep hitting them while they’re confused.”

  “Will do,” Brubaker replied, but as he prepared for his dive, the SNJ wheeled suddenly and Roundelay called, “Do you see what I see?”

  Below, in obedience to some order of incredible stupidity, more than one hundred communists had moved out of a woods and onto a frozen road, and as Brubaker’s jets came screaming at them they did an even more unbelievable thing. They fell to their knees in the middle of the road, clasped their arms about their heads and made no effort to escape inevitable death. The tactic so astonished Brubaker that he gasped, “They’re sitting ducks!” And some ancient boyhood training in the mountains back of Denver restrained him.

  But when he had zoomed high into the heavens he heard the unemotional voice of Roundelay: “Clobber those guys. That’s their standard trick. Throwing you off balance.”

  So the jets wheeled and came screaming back down the road. Not a communist moved. Not one hit the ditch. They huddled and waited. “Here it comes,” Brubaker whispered grimly, and his finger pressed the trigger. Keeping his eye upon the kneeling troops, he watched his bullets spray a path among them. “You wanted trouble,” he said weakly.

  Roundelay now spotted another column of attacking communists and called in Cag’s division. Brubaker, with sickening detachment, watched the merciless jets and thought, “Those people in Denver who ridicule air force reports of enemy dead ought to see this.” And he remembered Admiral Tarrant’s words: “If we keep enough planes over them enough hours somebody’s got to get hurt. And when they hurt bad enough, they’ll quit.”

  “How’s your fuel?” Roundelay asked.

  “Can do one more pass,” Cag replied, and the jet pilots, who approached the speed of sound, watched as the slow little doodlebug SNJ hopped about in search of fat targets. Brubaker, pulling out of his last bombing run, sped past the prop plane and for an instant of suspended time the two men looked casually at each other. Harry saw that the air force man was very thin and wore a moustache but he saw no more, for a five-inch communist gun, hidden until then, fired one lucky shot and blew the frail little SNJ completely to ribbons.

  In terrible fury Brubaker launched his jet at the gun and tried to root it from its cave. He carried his fire almost into the muzzle of the enemy gun. Then, although his fuel was getting tight, he turned and made another run, pushing his jet to a deadly speed. He saw the gun, saw the wounded crew and the shell casings. On he came, firing until his own guns were silent, and the communists fell away. Then he zoomed aloft to overtake the homeward jets, but except for his wingman the planes were far away.

  “You ought to tell me when you’re going to run wild,” the wingman protested.

  “I really clobbered that one,” Brubaker said grimly, but as the two Banshees soared away from the ravaged battleground with its wrecked artillery and dead bodies huddled along frozen roads, the enemy gun that Brubaker thought he had destroyed resumed firing. Mute with outrage, Brubaker wanted to dive upon it once more but he heard his wingman say, “Their side has guts, too.”

  Finally, when the roar of battle was past and the jets were far in the wintry sky Brubaker called, “How’s your fuel?”

  “Thousand five.”

  His own gauge read just under a thousand and he thought, “I hope Beer Barrel is bringing us in.” Then he heard his wingman cry, “There’s Cag, up ahead.”

  The two jets increased speed to rejoin the flight and all pilots began the difficult job of trying to spot the task force. Drifting clouds mottled the sea and made the ships almost invisible, but they had to be within a small area, for to the east hung the permanent snow line and to the north a new storm boxed in the fleet, but no one could see the ships.

  It was ridiculous. Twelve highly-trained pilots couldn’t find a task force of nineteen ships, including carriers, cruisers and a battleship. For some perverse reason Brubaker took delight in this limitation of human beings and thought, You never master this business.” Then Cag called, “There’s home!” and where absolutely nothing had been visible a moment before the jet pilots saw the nineteen ships. And Brubaker, seeing them as big as barns on an open meadow, laughed.

  But his relief didn’t last because when the jets descended he saw that the carrier deck was pitching rather formidably, and this meant many wave-offs because the landing officer would have to wait until the carrier stabilized itself between lurches, so that you might approach in perfect altitude but find the deck in a momentary trough and have to go round again. That took fuel. Because when you got a wave-off you had to pour it on. And there went your fuel.

  Then he had a happy thought: “They probably haven’t turned into the wind. The deck’ll be better when they do.”

  But as he watched, a flight of jets took off from the Hornet and that proved the carriers were already into the wind, so he looked at the heaving Savo, stern leaping high in the air, bow down and said, “There’s your deck and you’ll like it.” Then, although he never prayed, he mumbled, “Beer Barrel, be out there today!” And as if in answer to this plea Cag announced, “Beer Barrel’s bringing us in on a pitching deck. Anybody short on fuel?”

&n
bsp; Brubaker reported, “1591 reporting over ship with 800.”

  He listened to Cag forward this news to the Savo and then call, “We’ll double up. No trouble getting aboard.”

  So instead of the normal interval which would enable one jet to land each 26 seconds, the twelve Banshees formed a tight little circle yielding 15-second intervals so that whenever the deck stabilized there would be some jet diving right for it. But this also meant that one out of every two planes would have to take automatic wave-offs. “Hope I’m one of the lucky ones,” Brubaker said.

  He was. On his outward leg the Savo pitched so badly that no landing plane got aboard, but by the time Harry’s downward leg started, the big ship was shuddering into stabilized position. “It’ll hold that position for at least a minute,” Brubaker assured himself. “Time to get three of us aboard.” Nervously he ticked off the jets ahead of him in the circle. “Seven of them. Just right. First two will have to pass because the deck won’t be steady enough, but three, five and seven’ll make it. Boy, I’m seven!”

  Then he saw Beer Barrel’s paddles bringing number three in and the deck crew had the hook disengaged in two and a half seconds and the deck was steady and clear. “What an outfit when the going’s tough,” Brubaker said admiringly.

  Then hell broke loose. The pilot in jet number five did what Beer Barrel had warned his men never to do. As his Banshee neared the cut-off point the deck lurched and the pilot tried to compensate. Instead of flying Beer Barrel he flew the deck and missed every wire. In great panic he managed to pancake into the barriers but he ripped them both away and the crucial barricade as well.

  Brubaker, screaming over the wreckage, saw instantly that it would be many minutes before the deck could be cleared and he cried feverishly to himself, “I don’t want to go into the sea again.”

  His fear was unreasonable. He could see the helicopters waiting to rescue him. He saw the alert destroyers, always quick to lift a downed pilot from the waves. But he also saw the gray sea and he’d been down there once. “The second time you crack up. You sink and they never find you.” Instinctively he felt to see if his three gloves were watertight at the wrist. That’s where the sea crept in and froze you. Then he pulled his hand away in horror and whispered, “Beer Barrel, don’t let me go into the drink.”

  Then he got hold of himself and heard Cag’s quiet voice say, “All nylon torn away. At least ten minutes to repair it. Is that critical for 1591?”

  Brubaker breathed deeply to drive down any quiver in his voice and reported evenly, “I’m down to 600.”

  Cag said to the ship, “1591 low on fuel. Must land on first pass after barrier is fixed.”

  The radio said, “Hornet’s deck temporarily fouled. But would landing there in eight minutes be of help?”

  Promptly Brubaker said, “I’d waste just as much gas getting in the circle. I’ll stick here.” What he did not say was that without Beer Barrel’s help he might lose his nerve completely.

  With mounting fear he noticed that the crashed plane still fouled up the landing space and the broken barriers were not being promptly repaired. What made this especially infuriating was that all this time the carrier remained in stabilized position and all the jets could have been landed. Then he saw something that froze him. The towering black crane called Tilly was being moved into position alongside the wrecked Banshee, right where the missing nylon barricade should have been. Then a quiet, reassuring voice spoke to him, offering a choice. “1591,” the impersonal voice said, “Hornet’s deck still not ready. Impossible to erect barricade in time for you to land but we must protect planes parked forward. Have therefore moved Tilly into position to stop you positively in case you miss wire. Do you wish to attempt deck landing or do you wish to ditch? Advise.”

  He stared down at the monstrous crane looming up from the middle of the deck. “That’ll stop me. Oh boy, will that stop me!” It was a brutal thing to do, to move Tilly out there, but he appreciated why it had been done. Behind the crane were parked $40,000,000 worth of aircraft and they must be protected and he felt no resentment at the maneuver. But before replying he reasoned carefully, “The last guy missed the wires because the deck pitched. I can too,” and he was about to elect ditching but a compelling instinct told him that his only hope for safety lay with Beer Barrel.

  “I’m coming in,” he said.

  He made his first turn and prayed, “Beer Barrel, bring me in. I don’t care if the deck is going crazy, bring me in.”

  On the down-wind leg he dropped to correct altitude and avoided looking at the pitching deck. He kept his eyes on the screen that shielded Beer Barrel from the wind but for a moment he became quite sick, for the stern was bouncing about like a derelict rowboat.

  “Bring me in, Beer Barrel.”

  Then as he whipped into the final turn he saw that terrible thing, the crane Tilly filling the end of the landing space and he would have turned aside had he not also seen Beer Barrel. The big man stood on one foot, his paddles up ... still good ... still coming ... oh, Beer Barrel, keep me coming. ...

  Then mercifully the cut sign, the firm hook catching securely, the run of singing wire, the tremendous pull upon his shoulders, and his eyes looking up at the monstrous crane into which he did not crash.

  From the flag bridge Admiral Tarrant followed the emergency landing and when he saw Brubaker lunge onto the deck safely he sent an aide to bring the pilot to him as soon as intelligence had checked battle reports. Some minutes later the young man appeared relaxed and smiling in freshly pressed khaki and said, “Somebody told me there were eight hundred ways to get back aboard a carrier. Any one of them’s good, if you make it.”

  Tarrant laughed, jabbed a cup of coffee into the pilot’s hands and asked casually, “What were you doing in the catapult room last night?”

  Brubaker sat down carefully, sipped his coffee and said, “I lost my nerve last night.”

  “You looked pretty steady out there just now.”

  It was very important now that Brubaker say just the right thing, for he knew that something big was eating the admiral but he couldn’t guess what, so he looked over the rim of his cup and said, “Best sedative in the world is Beer Barrel and those paddles.”

  The admiral remained standing, somewhat annoyed at Brubaker’s having presumed to sit. Nevertheless, the bonds of sympathy which bound him to the younger man were at work. He didn’t want Brubaker to participate in the attack on the bridges, so in an offhand manner he asked, “Son, do you want me to ground you ... for tomorrow’s flight against Toko-ri?”

  Brubaker thought, “If he’d wanted me to stay down he wouldn’t have asked. He’d have told me. This way he hopes I won’t accept.” But of his own will and regardless of the admiral he decided to say no and replied evenly, “If anybody goes, I go.”

  Admiral Tarrant was at once aware that he had posed his question the wrong way and said, “I think you’re jittery, son. I think you ought to stay down.”

  Again Brubaker thought, “The old man’s wrestling with himself. He wants to ground me but he’s afraid it would look like favoritism. So he’s trying to trick me into asking. That way everything would be OK.” But again he said, “I want to fly against the bridges.”

  Certain, and in some ways pleased, that the young man would refuse the order, Tarrant said, “Harry, I’ve been watching you. There’s nothing shameful in a man’s reaching the end of his rope for the time being. You know I consider you our finest pilot ... after the squadron leaders. But I can’t let you fly tomorrow.”

  And Brubaker said quietly, “Sir, if you’d offered me this chance last night I’d have jumped to accept it. Or half an hour ago when I stared at that big black Tilly. But I think you know how it is, sir. Any time you get back safe, that day’s trembling is over. Right now I haven’t a nerve. Look.” He held out his coffee saucer and it remained rigid.

  “You’re sure it’s passed?”

  “Positive. Remember when you told my wife about the volunt
ary men who save the world? I’ve seen two of these men. It shakes you to the roots of your heart to see such men in action.”

  “Who’d you see?” Tarrant asked, the sparring over.

  “Yesterday I saw Cag take his photographic plane. ...”

  “Cag?”

  “Yes, sir. I saw a man so brave. ... Admiral, he went in so low that he simply had to get knocked down. Then he went in again ... lower.”

  “Cag?” Admiral Tarrant repeated, amazed.

  “And this morning. ... Did anyone tell you about the air force spotter in the SNJ?”

  “No.”

  Brubaker’s voice almost broke but he stammered, “He was killed by a gun I might have knocked out ... if I’d really been on the ball.” There was a long silence in which Tarrant poured more coffee. Finally Brubaker said, “Sometimes you look honor right in the face. In the face of another man. It’s terrifying.” His voice trailed away and he added in a whisper, “So I have no choice. I have to go out tomorrow. If he could fly an SNJ, I can fly a jet.” He laughed nervously and thrust his saucer out again. It remained immovable, like the end of a solid stone arm. “No nerves now,” he said.

  It was 1145 next morning when Cag, his jets poised aloft for their first run against the bridges, cried, “Attack, attack, attack!”

  With deadly precision, and ignoring the mortal curtain of communist fire, four Banshees assigned to flak-suppression flung themselves upon the heaviest guns at more than 500 miles an hour. Rendezvousing to the north, they swept back in ghostly blue streaks and raked the principal emplacements a second time, but as they reached the middle of this passage communist fire struck number three plane and with a violence few men have witnessed it smashed into a hill and exploded in an instantaneous orange flash.

  Before the eight pilots aloft could realize what had happened Cag called quietly, “Prepare to attack,” and the four jets in his division peeled off for swift assault upon the bridges. They descended at an angle steeper than 50° and for the entire final run of two miles no pilot swerved or dodged until his first huge bomb sped free.