Operation Long Jump (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 2)

by William Peter Grasso

  Ringing ears or not, they must have understood him, because—wounded or not—that’s exactly what they started to do.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Day 13

  The sun rose, and the bombers of the Fifth Air Force returned to the clear skies over Port Moresby, quickly dumping their ordnance on—or at least near—the designated targets before hurrying back to their Australian bases. On Astrolabe, both The Notch and the backslope received a healthy share of the flyers’ brief attention.

  Among the flurry of radio traffic at Regimental HQ was yet another request from Charlie Company for a second long-range radio. “How many times do I have to tell these people?” the regimental communications officer—an efficient and resourceful captain—said as he pigeon-holed the message. “They’re lucky they’ve got the radio they have. They aren’t getting another one.”

  “But they’re spread across that peak for six miles,” Jock said, “and they’ve got to stay mobile. They need another long-range set.”

  “Look, Major,” the commo officer said, “a big chunk of the regiment’s Two-Eight-Fours are on the bottom of the Coral Sea. We’ve got half of Third Battalion with no radios at all. The radios that made it ashore are crapping out faster than my guys can fix them. I’ve got two days to get stuff reallocated before the Aussies come ashore and we start moving again…or we’ll be using smoke signals.”

  “How about this, then?” Jock said, pulling the captain over to the map. “Run a landline up this trail on the front face of Astrolabe, right to here.” He pointed to OP Charlie Able’s location. “If their radio craps out, at least they’ll have some kind of backup system…and we’ll still know what’s happening on our flank.”

  “My wire teams are exhausted, sir, and you’re asking them to lay wire up a steep mountain. On foot, yet.”

  Jock was fast losing his patience. “Every swinging dick in this division is exhausted, Captain. I want wire up that fucking mountain. Today.”

  “My men will need a guide, Major. They don’t know the mountain trails.”

  “No problem. I’ve got just the man.”

  Jock went back to studying the map. Despite last night’s probes by the Japanese, the regiment’s—and the division’s—lines were still intact. When the sun came up, the American units had expected to see the ground around them littered with Japanese corpses. Including the three sappers Spill killed near Second Battalion’s CP, though, the Japanese dead could be counted on two hands. Thankfully, the American casualty reports had been even lighter. Jock was relieved to read Charlie Company’s morning report—radioed to Regiment—listed only one man wounded in action but returned to duty.

  Astrolabe still troubled him more than any of the other ground 81st Regiment defended. If Charlie Company got pushed off the mountain, the advantage would shift to the Japanese again. Jock’s fingers traced the gentle contour lines of Astrolabe’s backslope all the way to the Kokoda Track over the Owen Stanleys. I’ve got to see what’s going on back there, he told himself. I need Lieutenant Worth and his little airplane.

  But the status report from Twenty Mile Airfield wasn’t encouraging. Worth’s L4 was still undergoing repairs from the battering it took on its last flight. It wasn’t expected to be back in service before tomorrow.

  Okay…if I can’t get my bird’s eye view from an airplane, I’ll do the next best thing…

  He would rejoin the men of Charlie Company on Astrolabe.

  PFC Travis Spill was proud to be the man Major Miles designated to guide the commo team up the mountain, but he didn’t understand why they needed him. Any damn fool can walk up a mountain, he thought. No matter, though—the major had entrusted him with the job, and he would see that it was done, and done right. Even though he’d only been up and down this particular mountain once himself.

  He waited all morning—and was still waiting—for the three wiremen to get their gear together and barter with the natives to carry the extra reels of wire. Funny, Spill thought, how up on the mountain, the natives would go out of their way to help you for free. But down here at HQ, they were learning how to be all commercial real fast. If you want something done, you gotta pay for it someways.

  He had nothing better to do than daydream. He thought about what he’d done—what he had to do—back at that battalion CP. And it hadn’t been a lie when he told Major Miles that killing those Japs wasn’t eating on him. It truly hadn’t—not then, anyway. But now, every time he thought of that dead Japanese sapper and his rucksack full of grenades, it was his face—the face of Travis Spill of Smokey Junction, Tennessee—gracing that corpse. It got even stranger: standing in a circle around the dead body with his face were all his friends from Pastor White’s Sunday School at their little mountain church—barefoot, in tattered clothes—looking just like they did at the age of nine or ten. They were chanting a song. He couldn’t remember if they actually knew that song as children, but they certainly seemed to know it now:

  The worms crawl in

  The worms crawl out

  In your stomach

  And out your mouth

  They eat your eyes

  They eat your nose

  They eat the jelly

  Between your toes

  “Shut up,” Spill said, barking at no one in particular, but startling some troopers goofing off nearby. “I ain’t dead yet, you little redneck fuckers.”

  “No, you ain’t,” a trooper replied, “but you sound like you’re ready for a Section Eight, pal.”

  Jock made it to Astrolabe’s peak well before midday. The men of Charlie Company would have been happy enough just to see their old commander, but Jock came bearing gifts: loaves of fresh-baked bread from the regimental mess he carried in a sack strapped to his back. To a soldier who’s been living on subsistence rations, a slice of fresh bread on which to smear his K ration jam was nothing short of a feast.

  “That’s damn white of you, sir,” Melvin Patchett said, gratefully accepting the sack. “There’s more than enough here for everyone. I’ll get this divvied up right away.”

  Jock sat down with Lee Grossman, who was trying to draft the requisite commander’s letter of condolence to Lieutenant Wharton’s wife. “This is harder than I thought, sir,” Grossman said. “How do you say nice things about a nasty son of a bitch you couldn’t stand?”

  “I’ve done six of them already, Lee, and it’s never easy. Just say how he fought and died bravely, doing his duty.”

  “But that’s just it, sir,” Grossman replied. “He sure as hell wasn’t brave…and I’m not really sure he was doing his duty.”

  Jock knew exactly what Lee Grossman meant. He remembered Patchett’s suspicions about Bob Wharton’s attention to duty after those first Japanese attacks. But that was all water under the bridge. “It doesn’t matter now, Lee,” Jock said. “His family deserves to be told he’s a hero.”

  When Patchett returned, he brought the four platoon leaders and Commander Shaw with him, each still licking the remnants of the bread and jam treat from his fingers. The first sergeant asked, “Ready to give us that briefing you promised, sir?”

  “I’m ready, Top,” Jock replied. “But first, let me ask this…from what you can see, has the Jap disposition down on the lowlands changed at all?”

  “Not a damn bit,” Patchett replied.

  “That’s good, I suppose,” Jock said. Then he launched into the plan for the Aussie landing, still two mornings away. Warily, the cadre of Charlie Company took in the information.

  “You know what’s gonna happen, sir,” Patchett said. “The Aussies will push on the Japs’ back door, our division will push on their front, and them yellow bastards will vamoose right through The Notch…and there won’t be much we can do about it.”

  “Yeah, Top’s right,” Theo Papadakis said. “If there ain’t a big force to block them in The Notch, they’ll get away…”

  “And we’ll have to fight them all over again someplace else,” Lee Grossman added.

 
“I hear what you’re saying, guys” Jock replied, “but Regiment won’t risk pulling men from the line to form a blocking force at The Notch. Neither will Division. Believe me, I tried to sell that plan from the moment I became S2, but it isn’t going to happen.”

  “Figures,” Patchett said, spitting on the ground in disgust. “The brass are still fighting the last war. Forget about out-maneuvering your enemy. All they know is trenches, artillery barrages, frontal assaults…”

  Grossman finished his sentence: “With a bunch of airplanes thrown in every now and then for show.”

  “The brass are right about one thing, though,” Jock said. “Any blocking force we could muster would be weak and vulnerable. We couldn’t get any artillery over or around Astrolabe in time. It’d take months. We just don’t have the engineer support to cut roads.”

  Patchett wasn’t convinced. “Division shoulda started plugging The Notch the minute they landed, sir,” he said. “This thing would’ve been over in a week.” The first sergeant pointed toward the backslope, swept his arm across its broad expanse, and added, “And it’s gonna be up to our l’il ol’ company to cover Division’s ass and hold out against whatever Tojo throws at us on this mountain, I suppose?”

  “You’ve been doing a great job of it so far,” Jock replied. With a nod toward Commander Shaw, he added, “Of course, when the Aussies land, maybe you can do some spotting for the Navy’s guns again. Granted, you can’t see the landing beaches from here.”

  “True, Major,” Trevor Shaw replied, “but if any Japanese ships try to approach from the east, we’ll certainly be the first to see them.”

  Something Jock said was still eating at Theo Papadakis: “Does Colonel Hailey really believe we’re just goldbricking up here, sir?”

  “He did, but he’s changed his tune,” Jock said, “and he’s now taking full credit for you guys being in this excellent position.”

  Patchett let out a laugh. He couldn’t let the ridiculousness of Hailey’s claim pass without comment. “Wasn’t that your idea, sir? When you were flying around in that little spotter plane, right?”

  “That’s how I remember it, too,” Jock replied, “but no matter. Tell me about The Notch. How are we covering it?”

  “Boudreau’s got an OP team out there,” Lee Grossman replied. “They got pushed back a couple of miles during the night…sounds like they cut it so close they almost bought it from our own artillery…but they’re working their way back toward The Notch now. Hadley took a squad out there with a BAR to help them out.”

  “And they’ve got to bring back Private Lyle so Doc can patch him up good,” Papadakis added. “He caught a little shell fragment in his ass.”

  “He was your one WIA on today’s morning report?” Jock asked.

  “Yeah, but he’s okay, sir. Walking wounded.”

  “That’s a relief,” Jock said, “but maybe I’m missing something here. How is Boudreau’s team communicating with you? They’re out of walkie-talkie range, aren’t they?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Grossman said, “we forgot to mention that. We’re using the old Japanese landline. It was Sergeant Hadley’s idea.”

  “Outstanding,” Jock said, truly impressed.

  “And speaking of wire, sir,” Grossman added, “thanks for getting that new landline run up here from Regiment.”

  Jock shrugged. “It’s the least I can do since I couldn’t get you another radio.”

  “And you got that foul-up Spill guiding the wire team?” Patchett asked, his tone and expression quite skeptical. “He’ll get ’em lost for sure. They’ll never get here.”

  “Spill’s doing just fine,” Jock said. “In fact, he saved Second Battalion’s CP from a sapper attack early this morning.” Seeing the disbelieving faces around him, he added, “Single-handedly.”

  “No shit?” Patchett said.

  “No shit, Top.”

  Patchett asked, “So, you gonna decorate him?”

  “Damned right I am.”

  Melvin Patchett grinned broadly. That was exactly what he wanted to hear.

  “So what’re your plans, sir?” Grossman asked. “I know you didn’t come up here just to say hello.”

  “I need to have a look farther down this backslope than you guys can see from here,” Jock said. “I’ve got to get an idea how many Japs are down there. I’d rather do it from the airplane, but it’s still being patched up. How far down the slope are your LPs?”

  “A couple of hundred yards.”

  “That’s not far enough, either.”

  Half the soldiers in Charlie Company wanted to go on the recon patrol with Major Miles. It would be a small team, just the major and three men. Melvin Patchett made a most impassioned case to be included.

  “I could never go with you on those Cape York patrols,” the first sergeant said to Jock, trying to cloak his plea in logic. “I always had to stay back and mind the base camp. Now it’s my turn, sir. Lieutenant Grossman can manage without me for a little while.”

  Lee Grossman nodded his agreement. Patchett was in. With great purpose, the first sergeant strode off to gather his field gear.

  “I need proven scouts to round out the team,” Jock told Grossman. “Men who were with me on Cape York.”

  He really wanted Sergeant Hadley and Corporal Boudreau, who’d proved themselves beyond any doubt long before they set foot on Papua. But they were busy and several miles away, trying to reclaim The Notch. The patrol’s last two slots would go to Sergeant Mike McMillen and PFC Frank Simms.

  As the team members got themselves ready, Jock and Grossman snuck to an LP for a closer look at the terrain the patrol would be crossing. Jock didn’t like what he saw.

  The rainforest that looked so dense from the air was, when viewed at ground level, little more than a collection of scrawny tree trunks, which despite their vast number provided little cover or concealment to troops on foot.

  “We figure that’s why the Japs are only coming at night, sir,” Grossman said. “We can see them a mile off when the sun’s up.”

  “I’ve still got to find a way to get down there,” Jock replied. “And back.”

  “But what about commo, sir?” Grossman asked. “You’ll get out of walkie-talkie range real fast.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Jock replied. “I’m going to take the Very pistol with us. If we fire a red flare, put artillery, mortars…whatever you can…right under it.”

  “But isn’t that where you’ll be, sir?”

  “Maybe, Lee. But with any luck at all, we’ll be running away like hell.”

  They returned to the company’s perimeter at the peak. Jock noticed Melvin Patchett and Ginny Beech standing by The Morgue, locked in verbal confrontation. Even at a distance, he could sense the emotion of words he couldn’t hear, words that seemed to evoke not anger but great concern. It looked like the way things of great importance were hashed out by close friends. Or lovers.

  They saw him watching. It was Ginny who broke away and headed straight for Jock. She began to make her case while still several paces away.

  “You’ll need me to go with you, Major,” she said. “I can talk with the natives for you. You’ll get more information that way.”

  “Come on, Ginny,” Patchett said, hurrying to catch up with her. “You said yourself all the villagers down there up and moved out when the Japs started showing up. Don’t listen to her, sir. She don’t know what she’s getting herself into.”

  “Apparently, neither do I, Top,” Jock said. “It’s so wide open down there, I still haven’t figured out how to pull this off in daylight without getting spotted.”

  “I know a way,” Ginny said.

  Jock clearly wanted to hear what she had to say. Patchett clearly didn’t.

  “There’s a series of narrow gullies running down the backslope,” she said. “Stick to them, and we’ll have all the cover and concealment we need.”

  Patchett didn’t like the sound of that one bit. “Gullies!” he said. “They can be deat
htraps… machine gun alleys.”

  “Not these gullies, Patch,” she replied. “They’re very winding. There’s not a straight bit in the lot.”

  Jock asked, “Can’t you just show us where these gullies are on the map?”

  “It’ll be much easier to show you in person.”

  Jock was warming to the idea. Despite Patchett’s obvious disapproval.

  Ginny watched Jock’s face closely. She knew the major was going to say yes. He wanted—no, needed—this patrol to succeed. She plunged ahead to her next, sugar-coated demand: “Can I carry one of those Thompsons, too? I quite fancy them.”

  Melvin Patchett threw up his hands in despair. “No, Ginny, no,” he said, “they’ll kill you if you got caught with one of them things.”

  “They’d kill me, anyway, Patch. You, too…if they catch you.” Her eyes caught Jock in their fiery gaze. “So, it’s settled, Major?” she asked.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Day 13

  Ginny’s plan to use the gullies was working like a charm. It had only been an hour since leaving camp at the old OP, but they were already over two miles down Astrolabe’s backslope. The gullies were narrow and often no more than a few feet deep, but they were winding, just as she promised. Patchett’s fear of them being long, straight machine gun alleys was slowly but steadily being put to rest. Walking low, concealed within the gullies’ banks, the patrol would be difficult to detect.

  Patchett felt obligated to remind Ginny of one point: “Don’t forget, this is a recon patrol. No shooting unless we have absolutely no other choice.”

  His comment obviously annoyed her. She replied, “Patch…dear boy…you don’t think I’m bloody stupid, do you?”

  The first bit of information the patrol discovered was not good news: the morning’s bombing raid on the backslope had come nowhere near the Japanese assembly area. Several rows of bomb craters and shattered trees etched straight lines through empty rainforest, wounding nothing but the earth.