The situation reports coming in from the platoons painted a fairly optimistic picture of the night fight’s aftermath: they were fairly sure they had beaten off an attack, but it was still too dark to estimate enemy casualties. As to Charlie Company’s status, Lee Grossman hoped the unanimous no men killed or wounded reports were accurate. But there was one disturbing statistic: one man missing. First Platoon could not find its leader, Lieutenant Bob Wharton.
“Maybe he’ll turn up when the sun rises,” Melvin Patchett said. “That’s less than an hour away.”
When the sun did rise, Joe Garcia picked up binoculars and tried to count the dead Japanese in The Notch. After a few moments, though, he couldn’t go on. There were only a few intact bodies; he didn’t know how to tally the horrific abundance of severed limbs and dismembered torsos the artillery left behind. Sagging to his knees, he joined the others who had been foolish enough to look. Together, they surrendered to the painful dry heaves wracking their empty stomachs.
Around Charlie Company’s perimeter, the other platoons did their count of enemy dead. Lieutenant Tony Colletti’s platoon, on the backslope closest to The Notch, found four dead Japanese, all just a few yards in front of their positions. Sergeant Mike McMillen, the acting leader of Wharton’s platoon, found no Japanese bodies at all.
Theo Papadakis’s count held the biggest surprise. Beside the 16 dead Japanese scattered in front of their L-shaped perimeter, there were 3 behind them—inside their position. Not far from those three dead Japanese lay the body of Bob Wharton.
With that first glint of dawn, Bucky Reynolds’s self-satisfaction shattered like glass. He realized the mistake he made in the dark: he had been facing the wrong way. Maybe it had been a fortuitous error. Maybe he killed the Japs. Or not.
Maybe I killed Lieutenant Wharton…
First Sergeant Patchett wrote the epitaph for the night’s battle on the spot: “The lieutenant gave his life protecting the company from infiltrators. We owe him a great debt.”
Lee Grossman was stunned by Patchett’s words. “You really think that’s what happened, Top?”
As he examined Wharton’s submachine gun, Mike McMillen gnashed his teeth and said, “C’mon, Top…this weapon ain’t even been fired.”
Patchett just shook his head. “Don’t matter much now, does it?”
There was a long, uncomfortable silence before Grossman replied, “Maybe you’re right, Top. But I’ll tell you what does matter…the Japs know we’re here now. We’re probably going to get pasted by artillery any minute. We’ll keep an OP at The Notch, but get everyone else to the backslope and dug in deep on the double. They won’t be able to hit us much back there.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Day 10
The two surviving battalion commanders of the 81st Regiment felt sure this was about to be the worst morning of their lives—and maybe the last. Their commander, Colonel Murdock, was here—in the flesh—to lead an assault against the Japanese dug in along the foothills of Astrolabe. The colonel made it clear: he was going to kick ass and take names.
“While your battalions have been busy fucking the dog,” Murdock said, “I’ve got one li’l ol’ company…just one…actually doing its job: those boys up on the mountain. Last night, they routed a Jap flanking attack at least a battalion strong. If they hadn’t, you’d have Japs in your face and up your ass right now. No good deed goes unpunished, however, gentlemen, because those boys up there started their morning with Jap artillery pounding the shit out of them. But they’ve never stopped functioning as a forward observation post. Because of their efforts…and their efforts alone, gentlemen…counter-battery fire from our own guns has silenced their artillery, at least for a little while.”
The battalion commanders cringed; they knew what was coming next.
“And during that little while,” Murdock continued, “we’re going to execute a flanking attack of our own and break this stalemate wide open.”
One of the battalion commanders raised his hand. “How can we do that, Colonel,” he asked. “There’s no room to maneuver…not with that fucking cliff on our right flank and the Eighty-Second on our left. We can’t do anything but try another frontal attack, and they haven’t worked out real well for us so far.”
“That’s because you’re not using your imagination, Major,” Murdock replied as he pointed to a spot on the map. “We know this is as far as their bunker complex extends. Beyond there, you’re right…the mountain is too steep even for goats. This last foothill, though…Hill Seven-Five…it’s only got two bunkers on it—”
The other battalion commander raised a hand to interrupt. “How do we know there are just two, sir? I’ve lost half a company already trying to take that hill.”
“How do we know? Because, gentlemen, our boys on the mountain can see those bunkers plain as day…and they can count, too.”
Murdock’s icy stare silenced any further comments. Turning back to the map, he continued, “For once, the wind is perfect, so we’ll lay down a smoke screen to blind the Japs. Third Battalion will keep them busy with frontal fire. Second Battalion will come out of the smoke, envelop the hill, and take it. Once we’ve done that, we’ve made an avenue for the whole fucking division to surround and finish the Japs.”
There was one more question from a thoroughly horrified battalion commander: “Can’t we just pound that hill to smithereens with bombs and artillery, sir?”
Murdock shook his head. “We’ve been doing that for days, Major, and I don’t have a damned thing to show for it. A cockroach shouldn’t still be alive up there, but you’re still sitting here with your heads up your asses.” Murdock checked his watch. “Saddle up, gentlemen. We move out in one hour.”
Jock could not believe his eyes: Weipa was a very different place from the tiny seaside village it had been only three months before. It was now a sprawling military compound—a major Allied base on Cape York in northern Queensland—with a busy harbor, four airfields buzzing with aircraft large and small, a forest of tall poles sprouting radio antennas, row upon row of Quonset huts, and olive drab tents big enough to house circuses. Trucks and jeeps jammed the newly cut roads; American MPs at every intersection—with shrill whistles and short tempers—somehow kept the traffic moving.
Electric wires seemed to be strung on poles everywhere. The steady hum of diesel generators provided the background noise in those brief moments when louder machines fell silent.
One thing hadn’t seemed to change: the old Mission House was still the center of it all. A phalanx of parked jeeps and staff cars formed what looked like a defensive ring around its perimeter. General Hartman’s jeep—with its two-star flag flying from the front fender—was being shepherded by MPs through the traffic to a VIP parking spot within that ring. Wedged sideways into the back seat among the general’s baggage, Jock couldn’t read the banner stretched across the front of the house. He assumed it bore a welcoming message for General MacArthur—that would suit the old man’s style. Paying the banner no attention, Jock eased his body from its cramped perch in the jeep.
The banner said something very different. In bold block letters, it read: WELCOME BACK, CAPTAIN JOCK.
General Hartman wasn’t pleased. “Have that sign taken down immediately, Major,” he said to Jock, “before MacArthur sees it and shoves it up both our asses.”
What Jock wanted to reply was, Having MacArthur shove something up my ass wouldn’t be a first, sir. What he said instead: “Yes, sir. Right away, sir.” Only then did Jock look up and read the sign. He wanted to smile. He didn’t dare.
With a startling crash, the Mission House’s screen door flew open and Jillian Forbes shot out across the veranda, a blur of lean, strong limbs pumping and curly black hair flying, the skirt of her cotton dress whipping like a flag. She leapt from the top step and her feet never touched ground again: she came to rest entwined with Jock, her arms hugging his shoulders, her legs wrapped around his buttocks, her mouth on his in a shamelessly deep
kiss. A vertical beast with two backs.
When she came up for air, she said, “My God, you’re bloody filthy. I’ll bet it’s been three months since you’ve had a proper bath, too.”
General Hartman’s disapproving glare was getting harder to ignore. Jock eased her bare feet gently back to the ground. That done, his arms resumed their embrace.
“How did you know I was coming, Jill?”
“Manifests, laddie, manifests.” She nodded toward the Mission House. “This is a pub and guest house now. They booked you a room here...with the rest of the Yank punters.”
“Let me guess…you run the place.”
“I don’t run it, you silly wanker. I own it.”
“And the fishing business?”
“Making a fortune. You Yanks just love to dole out money, don’t you?”
A welcome line of smiling Aborigines—male and female staff of the house—had formed on the veranda. Aside from the three men dispatched from the line to lug General Hartman’s bags, they paid the man wearing two stars no attention. Their smiles were for Jock Miles.
He remembered almost everyone’s name—men who carried food and water to his recon patrol; those who stood guard at the Peppan Creek camp as together they hid from the Japanese; the women who fed them as they recovered from the ordeal of combat. To the black people of Weipa, the man who freed them from the Japanese had returned. Captain Jock was the one to be revered; the men wearing stars were just more strangers in their midst.
Jillian fingered the oak leaf on Jock’s collar. “Oh…and I see it’s major now, too. About bloody time, I’d say.” A worried look crossed her face. “Does this mean you’re not with your lads anymore?”
“They’re still with me…just in a little different capacity. They send their love.”
She liked the sound of that. “Give them mine, too,” she said, but her smile faded again as she remembered just how soon he’d be doing so. This reunion would be very brief. She was his innkeeper now, and he was only booked for two nights.
But two nights are better than none.
As they walked into the Mission House, she told one of the black men, “Better take that banner down right away. God forbid we annoy our old friend MacArthur.”
“Thanks,” Jock said. “I appreciate that.”
Arm in arm, Jillian pulled him down the hallway. “Later,” she said, “when you’re free, take a walk with me down to the harbor. There’s something I want to show you. But first, we must get you cleaned up.” For emphasis, she clamped her nose closed with her free hand.
The artillery’s smoke screen was doing its job. The GIs sneaking along the fold at the base of Hill 75 hadn’t drawn any fire from the Japanese dug in on its peak. There was just one problem: smoke doesn’t take sides. It drifted across the hill, obscuring the Americans’ view of their objective just as surely as it was blinding the Japanese. Colonel Murdock, accompanying the assault’s lead platoon, signaled the column to a halt. He diagrammed in the dirt his estimate of how far they had come.
Stabbing his finger into the diagram, Murdock told the platoon leader, “We’re here, Lieutenant, directly adjacent to our objective. Now, climb the hill and take the northern bunker from behind. They’ll never see you coming. You’ll be making history.”
The young lieutenant shook his head. “With all due respect, sir, I think we’ve only come to here.” He stuck his finger onto Murdock’s diagram at a point well short of the colonel’s estimate. “That slope peeking through the smoke…it’s not the hill with the bunkers on it. It’s just a ledge that sticks out in front of it like a big claw. We’re not there yet, sir. We need to go farther.”
The colonel wasn’t interested in the lieutenant’s protests. The landscape preoccupied him; it looked so much different now, so less favorable. Seen through binoculars from the comfortable distance of several miles, these looked like gentle hills, easy to climb, covered with lush trees providing ample cover and concealment for his attacking troops. But up close, thinly veiled in the white smoke, the gentle hills seemed more like near-vertical walls needing to be scaled. The trees jutting from these walls were actually low, scraggly, and sparse—little more than overgrown scrub—offering the GIs no protection.
“We don’t have any time to dicker, Lieutenant. We’ve got only so many smoke rounds. Once they’re gone, you’re shit out of luck. You’ll have nothing to hide behind.”
“Sir, we’re going to walk right into their mine field—”
“Nonsense, Lieutenant. There’s no evidence the Japs have laid any mines.”
“We hear them digging in the night, sir.”
“For all we know, they’re just burying their own shit.” Murdock stood and started toward the hill. “I’ll tell you what…if there’s a mine field up there, I’ll be the first one to step in it. Follow me, Lieutenant.”
It all seemed so easy now. The hill wasn’t nearly as hard to climb as his fear wanted him to believe. Chuck Murdock felt invincible—the king of the mountain—enveloped in this mysterious cloud that rendered him invisible to his adversaries; a cloud of his own design. Because of his leadership, the stalemate at Papua would be broken. The Japanese defensive wall that had stopped the Americans cold would be breeched. They’d be in Port Moresby by tomorrow—Hell, maybe even tonight.
He looked back over his shoulder. The platoon following him was lagging farther and farther behind, their silhouettes growing ghostly. Foolish young men, Murdock told himself. Don’t they know fortune favors the bold? He wanted to call out to them, urging them on, letting them stoke their courage with his, but the sound of a voice would give them away. He pumped his fist in the air instead: Hurry up!
Nothing and no one hurried up. Time, in fact, did the opposite. Colonel Murdock watched as the men of the platoon—walking at funereal pace—lost their ghostly quality and became amazingly distinct in the bright sunlight. The shroud of smoke in which they hid was gone like a fog blown out to sea. Needing replenishment but finding none, the cloud floated away toward Astrolabe, where eddies of wind along its steep slope would swirl it like cotton candy and disburse it to nothingness.
Shit. The guns are out of smoke rounds, Murdock thought, as he watched the platoon turn as one and begin their sprint—still in slow motion—back down the hill. His head swiveled to face front again, taking in at a snail’s pace the panorama the hilltop provided. It was beautiful, this island paradise, he thought, this lush garden jutting skyward from the sea. It was ugly, too, for some men would die to possess it, while others would die for nothing.
The cold snap of a machine gun’s bolt slamming home took on its own duality: on one hand, a harbinger of death just yards away; on the other, a clear and sweet clarion call beckoning you to another dimension.
The afternoon’s torrential rain caught everyone by surprise except Jillian Forbes. “This is The Wet, gentlemen,” she told the group of American officers marking time in her pub. “Expect to get very drenched, very frequently.”
The rain had delayed MacArthur’s arrival at Weipa. His flight from Brisbane had diverted to Iron Range to refuel and wait out the storm. He wasn’t expected to land at Weipa for another two hours. When Jock finally made his appearance at the bar—freshly scrubbed and wearing brand new khakis supplied by the quartermaster—Jillian jumped from behind the bar to greet him.
“Well, hello, Major,” she said. “Don’t you look all bright and shiny.” Then she pulled him outside to the veranda. The rain was letting up. The dark storm clouds rumbled and flashed their lightning as they moved on toward Albatross Bay and the Gulf of Carpentaria beyond.
“Let’s take that walk I mentioned before,” she said. “You won’t need a raincoat.”
“Oh, darn,” Jock said with all the theatrical disappointment he could summon, “I was kinda hoping—”
She swatted him hard on the shoulder. “No, silly boy…I mean an actual raincoat, not a rubber, as you bloody Yanks say. We’ve got all night for that.”
“Whew
, what a relief.”
She swatted him again.
Navigating the maze of wooden walkways the Americans built to keep from sinking into The Wet’s deep and sticky mud, they were at the water’s edge in a few minutes. “I’m still amazed by all the activity in this harbor,” Jock said.
“There’s more every week now,” she replied. “This will be a major depot to supply Papua and the Solomons…”
She didn’t need to finish the sentence. Jock knew the words: If you bloody wankers ever get off your arses and get rid of the bloody Japs.
“Look over there,” she said, pointing to a ship at anchor. “What do you think?”
Jock wasn’t sure what she was getting at. He shrugged: “It’s a freighter…a little small, maybe.”
“Not an it. She’s a she. And she’s not small...she’s two hundred twelve feet at the waterline, to be exact. Big for a coastal trader. Her name’s Esme, by the way.”
Esme…the name of Jillian’s late mother.
“She’s yours, Jill?”
Jillian nodded, her pride unmistakable.
“What are you going to do with her?”
“I’ve got a contract with your government to carry supplies to Papua and beyond, Major Miles. I’m going to follow you all over the bloody map. You’ll never get rid of me.”
As wonderful as that sounded, there were still a few hurdles Jock’s mind needed to clear. “You’re going to sail on her?”
“I’m going to captain her, Jock.”
“You can do that? I mean…the biggest things you’ve ever captained are your fishing boats, right? And what are they…a quarter her size?”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, Jock, there’s a war on. They’re not exactly choosy about who does what right now. I can handle her just fine. How the bloody hell do you think she got here?”
Operation Long Jump (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 2) Page 16
