“Yeah,” Jock replied, “but they all went home a long time ago. We’re the only idiots going to be stuck up here in the dark.”
“Speaking of the dark, sir,” Worth said, “better call Twenty Mile and tell them to get some lights ready for us. By the time we get back there, we won’t be able to see a damned thing.”
The night’s meeting was long over. General Sugiyama was the only member of the Imperial War Council still in the chamber, pouring over reports from the field. He pulled a page from the stack on the table before him, one he had already read several times. Desperately, he read it one more time, hoping it might say something different.
But its meaning was still the same: Rabaul was reporting a complete loss of communications with the Port Moresby headquarters. An Army reconnaissance aircraft had been dispatched from Buna on a night flight over the Owen Stanleys. Hopefully, it could act as a radio relay for the short-range tactical radios of the retreating division.
Deep in thought, Sugiyama didn’t realize Admiral Yamamoto had entered the chamber and was reading the message over his shoulder. “Perhaps it is nothing more than a radio failure,” Yamamoto said, startling the volatile Sugiyama. Trying to calm the agitated Army man, the admiral continued, “It is much too early to assume the worst. I am sure the aircraft will provide the communications link and ease your fears.”
Too furious to look Yamamoto in the eye, Sugiyama scooped up the papers from the table. Storming to the door, he blurted, “This disaster, Admiral, just like every other one that has befallen the Army, is totally the fault of your Navy.”
“Your disasters have been very few, General,” Yamamoto replied, “and your victories very great. Tell me…are those victories the fault of my Navy, as well?”
The only reply was the sound of Sugiyama’s boots storming down the hallway.
Nighttime had beaten the L4 to Twenty Mile Airfield. They could see nothing but the vaguest hint of the horizon—an indistinct line separating two broad fields of very dark gray. Even that might be an illusion. John Worth checked the clock on her instrument panel and said, “We should be about there. Have them pop a red star cluster, sir.”
Fifteen seconds after Jock broadcast the request, the flare—the red star cluster—blossomed in the darkness off her left wingtip.
“The field reports winds calm,” Jock said.
“Okay,” Worth said, “have them give us some runway lights. Tell them we’ll come in from the east…less trees that way.”
That request was a little slower in coming. As Worth circled the L4 to the east of the fading flare, carefully holding a safe altitude, he and Jock waited anxiously for the runway lights: the headlights of six vehicles lined up along the runway. Once they illuminated, Worth would have to get the L4 on the ground quickly. An enemy aircraft in the vicinity would be able to see the lights—and the location of the airfield—just as clearly. A bombardier couldn’t ask for a better gift.
The first set of headlights popped on, shining across the runway’s width. The other five followed in rapid succession. From the L4, the six points of light outlined the narrow runway—one on each side of the near end, the middle, and the far end. His voice tense, Worth said, “If we lose sight of any of those lights during the approach, we’re too damned low.”
“How do we know if we’re too high?”
“That’s kind of hard to tell, sir. I’ve just got to try to set her down somewhere between the first and second set of lights.”
“Have you ever done a landing like this before, John?”
There was an uncomfortable moment of silence before Worth answered, “Not exactly, sir.”
“Well, then…best of luck to you, Lieutenant.”
“Same to you, sir.”
Only once during the approach did the nearest set of lights suddenly disappear. Worth gunned the engine, tugged back on the stick, and in a matter of seconds, the lights reappeared.
“Shit,” Worth said through gritted teeth.
A few seconds more and the closest pair of headlights passed beneath them. There was a rough bump—and then another—before her tires were rolling steadily toward the last pair of headlights at the runway’s far end. She came to a stop well short of them. As soon as she did, the vehicles’ headlights snapped off. A mechanic armed with two flashlights appeared out of the darkness and guided her taxi to the parking ramp.
As they climbed from the L4, Jock realized his pilot was drenched with sweat. He patted him on the back and said, “Great job, John.”
Worth returned a feeble smile and dropped to his knees by the landing gear. In the glow of his flashlight, he looked like he was praying.
“What are you doing?” Jock asked.
“That time the lights vanished…I swear to God we brushed a treetop. I bet there’s a branch or two jammed in the gear.”
But he found nothing; not even a leaf.
John Worth rose to his feet. He wiped his brow on his sleeve and said, “Tonight, I am the luckiest son of a bitch in the United States Army Air Force.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
Day 16
When he returned to Division HQ, Jock was surprised to find General Hartman and his staff in high spirits. If the positions drawn on the tactical map were the reason, their elation was based on false hope:
This map looks nothing like what I told them from the air. It’s someone’s pipe dream…or maybe their wet dream.
“Neither we nor the Aussies are in the positions you’ve got marked here,” Jock said, staring at the map in disbelief. “They’re not even close. They couldn’t possibly have swung around to block the Japanese escape. Not that fast. Not in the dark.”
General Hartman shook his head in disagreement. “Don’t you think the darkness is going to slow down the Japanese, too, Major? We’ve still got plenty of time to trap them.”
“I don’t think so, sir,” Jock replied. On the map, his fingers traced the actual Australian and American positions as he’d seen them from the air at dusk. “While our forces are sitting way back here, waiting for the sun to come up again, I’m betting the bulk of the Japanese are within a mile or two of The Notch.” He moved his fingers to bridge the nearly eight miles between the Allied positions and The Notch. “Question is, what are they going to do when they get there?”
“If they get there, Major,” the general said, “which isn’t very likely. We’ve got every artillery piece we own pouring fire into this area.” He pointed to the target zone, a spot on the map well short of The Notch. “The Navy will have a cruiser offshore later tonight, dropping its eight-inch shells on them, too.”
“That’s all well and good, sir…assuming the Japs are just going to stand still while we shell them. We need to consider what will happen if they move into the mountains in force and dig in. We’ve only got about half a company holding Astrolabe—fifty men hanging on to a fifteen-mile ridge that commands this whole area. They won’t last long if a Jap regiment, or a Jap division, decides it wants that high ground.”
General Hartman still wasn’t buying Jock’s argument. Supremely confident, he said, “We won’t need to worry about Japs in the mountains, Major. Not tonight. Not tomorrow, either. Our plan is working like a charm. We’ve got them on the run and we’re decimating them with artillery fire. Tomorrow, our infantry will begin mopping up what’s left. Then, we can scratch a whole Japanese division from the order of battle in Papua.”
While the general basked in his certain victory, an operations sergeant handed a message to the G3. He read it, walked to the map, and sketched a new red goose egg, signifying a Japanese position. It was centered squarely on The Notch.
“General,” the G3 said, “OP Charlie Baker reports the sound of many vehicles in The Notch right now. It’s a Japanese movement in force, sir.”
“It can’t be,” Hartman said. “They must be confused. The night can do funny things with sound. They’re letting their imaginations run wild…”
“It’s certainly not our ve
hicles they’re hearing, General,” the G3 replied. “I’m afraid Major Miles’s estimate of the situation is turning out to be pretty accurate.”
Jock Miles appreciated the vindication, but he would have preferred to be dead wrong.
General Hartman stepped to the map. His mind launched into a thousand different calculations, each prejudiced toward his original belief the Japanese were caught in his trap. But no amount of prejudice could erase that new red goose egg. It began to look like a big, fat zero to Hartman: a failing grade on the report card MacArthur would give him.
“Shift the artillery,” Hartman said, still staring at the map. “All of it. Put it on The Notch.”
“That’s out of range of some of the seventy-five and one-oh-five batteries, General,” Jock said. “And even if that naval cruiser drove right up on the beach, it’s out of her reach, too.”
“Fine,” Hartman replied, with obvious impatience. “Just shift the batteries that have the range. And do it quickly, dammit.”
Jock started to update the situation map but the G3 stopped him. Sounding surprisingly fatherly, the colonel said, “We can handle this, Major. Why don’t you get some chow and some rack time? We’re going to need you in the air again tomorrow, well rested and looking sharp.”
He didn’t need to be told twice. As Jock made his way out of the HQ tent, the G3 added, “You’ve been doing a hell of a job, Jock.”
Man! Two notes of praise in as many minutes, both from a guy who’s done nothing but break my balls up until now.
He tried once more to make his exit, but this time he was stopped by the naval liaison officer. He ushered Jock aside and spoke quietly: “Hey, Jock…didn’t you say your girlfriend captains an Aussie ship called Esme?”
“Yeah, I did. What about it?”
“Did you know her ship is part of the first merchant convoy coming here? It’s supposed to get here tomorrow.”
“No, I didn’t,” Jock said, his spirits soaring even higher. “That’s great!”
The Navy man didn’t return Jock’s smile. Instead, he gave a look that said you poor bastard. He handed over the clipboard from under his arm. The top sheet was a radio message from AX-17, the convoy due to arrive tomorrow. It said the convoy, en route from Queensland, was under night attack by Japanese submarines. Three merchant vessels were reported sunk. So far.
Jock’s happiness collapsed like a punctured balloon. He stared at the clipboard for a second which seemed like an eternity before saying, “They don’t say who…”
“They’re probably not sure yet,” the liaison officer said. “Sounds like the attack is still going on. Sometimes these cat and mouse games with subs go on for quite a while. I’ll let you know if I find out anything else.” The Navy man gave Jock a consoling pat on the arm and went back to his desk.
Dazed and feeling terribly alone, Jock told himself, You might as well go back to work, too. You’ll never sleep now.
On OP Charlie Bravo, Corporal Bogater Boudreau listened as the first artillery rounds began to crash down into The Notch. All he could see from the overlooking mountaintop, though, was the instantaneous flash of rounds exploding on impact. Whether those rounds had hit anything or not, he had no idea.
PFC Fanning was working the field telephone back to OP Charlie Able. “Tell them to repeat,” Boudreau told him, “and call for illum rounds, too. I gotta see if we’re on target or not.”
Fanning nearly dropped the phone in horror. “Illum rounds? You can’t be serious, Corporal! The Japs’ll know we’re up here, watching them!”
Boudreau just shrugged and replied, “So?”
When Fanning still didn’t relay his request, Boudreau added, “Just do it. That’s an order.”
Within a minute, the first illumination round popped and bathed the valley floor below in its stark, white light. “It looks like a million of ’em down there,” Teddy Mukasic said, his voice shaky, his body coiled low, ready to run. Fanning looked like a sprinter in the starting blocks, too, just waiting for the signal to start running.
A few seconds later, the second volley of high-explosive shells crashed down, far wide of the Japanese column.
“It ain’t no million, numbnuts, but we ain’t hit a damn one of them yet,” Bogater said. “Fanning, give ’em a left one hundred, drop four hundred.”
Fanning did as he was told. Bogater Boudreau then grabbed his two privates by their web gear straps and pulled them close. He wanted to look them right in the eyes. “Y’all calm the fuck down,” Bogater said. “We’re a thousand feet up a steep fucking slope…and I don’t see none of them Nips climbing nothing anyway. You’re gonna be just as fine as red pussy hair. Now get your heads out of your asses and stop acting like something that squats to pee. Y’all know what a turkey shoot is?”
Even in the dark of night, Bogater could see enough of their faces to know they didn’t have a clue. He explained, “You’re enjoying one right now, dickheads. They’re the fucking turkeys and we’re doing the shooting.”
Cannoneer Number Four was certain he had never felt as drained as he did at this moment. He’d lost track of how many rounds his howitzer had fired today. As the low man on the totem pole in this 105-millimeter howitzer crew of seven men, he’d spent most of his waking hours—and what hours in combat weren’t waking?—in this tropical hellhole uncrating and assembling 40-pound artillery shells. By the truckload.
And when I haven’t been humping ammo, I’ve been digging holes.
He never even knew he made the mistake. The high-angle fire mission called for Charge Six; that meant he was supposed to remove and discard one powder bag from the canister—the number seven bag, the largest of the seven bags strung together by a thin cord—before mating the canister and projectile. Fumbling in the dark, his arms and legs wobbling like elastic stretched to its breaking point, his eyes strained and weary, he didn’t realize he’d pulled numbers seven and six from this canister and flung them mindlessly into the pile of surplus powder bags.
That’s when the section chief—a staff sergeant—starting yelling at him.
“Don’t throw that bag away yet, you moron,” the sergeant yelled. “Hold it up, dammit, so I can see it.”
In the darkness, the sergeant couldn’t tell how many bags had just been tossed into the pile; he just assumed it was only the number seven bag. There was no time to walk over and check. In a well-trained battery, all six guns fired simultaneously when the command was given. If his piece fired even a split-second late, the other gun sections would mock them with the taunt Popcorn! His crew would become the screw-up section.
Cannoneer Number Four had been on the sergeant’s shit list before; he wasn’t eager to find himself there again. His tired, fearful brain made him do the only thing that made sense at the moment: he reached into the pile of discarded powder bags, grabbed a number seven bag at random, and held it up for the section chief to see.
The errant round he had just assembled—a Charge Five, not the required Charge Six—was rammed into the breech.
“That’s better, dumbass,” the section chief said. “Now, hold that son of a bitch there until—”
The firing of the howitzer finished the sergeant’s sentence.
No one in the battery realized they had just fired a short round.
As that short round crashed down on Bogater Boudreau and his men, they never knew what hit them.
First Sergeant Patchett cranked the field telephone for the third time. He waited in vain for someone to answer. After a few moments, he flung the phone down in disgust. “We’ve lost contact with Bogater and them, sir,” he told Lieutenant Grossman. “We’ve got nothing. The line’s dead.”
“What do you think we should do, Top?”
“We need to stay dug in right here, sir,” Patchett replied. “We’re still the only swinging dicks watching Division’s back. If those Japs swing around and try to come up the backslope…”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to. Everyone knew the
re was a large Japanese force on the move. If they came up the mountain, the men of Charlie Company would be overrun.
Patchett reached for another phone, the one connected to Division HQ, and said, “We’d better tell them OP Charlie Baker is knocked out. Any eyes we had on the Japs down that way, well…we ain’t got them no more.”
Lee Grossman felt the need to do something—anything—to fight the feeling of helplessness swelling inside him. Once again, they were just sitting there, waiting for the Japanese to attack.
“We should send a patrol to look for Boudreau and his people, Top,” Grossman said.
“Not now, sir. That’s a good way to lose another bunch of GIs. When the sun comes up, maybe.”
The Allied artillery kept firing—blindly—for another hour. No staff officer took the initiative to stop it. It was General Hartman who finally made the call: “Turn the guns off. We don’t know what the hell we’re shooting at anymore. Let’s not waste rounds.”
There was no dissenting voice among his staff. It didn’t take a tactical genius to know that any Japanese still alive were long gone. The problem was, nobody in this tent knew where they went. There was no point in shooting where they used to be.
Just a few hours ago, this headquarters was smelling victory. Now, it was wallowing in the stench of defeat. “It’s all the fault of the damned Eighty-First Regiment,” General Hartman pronounced.
Jock slumped on his camp stool, burying his face in his hands. The general’s words had stung. He felt guilty by association; only a few days ago, he had been a member of the 81st, and his heart was still with the men of Charlie Company.
The general’s right, Jock told himself. If the Eighty-First had advanced like they were supposed to, we could have trapped every last Jap on open ground and finished them. But they didn’t…and just like John Worth said, we squirted the Japs through The Notch just like squeezing a pimple. Will they vanish into the Owen Stanleys? Or will they turn and take Astrolabe again from the back side?
Operation Long Jump (Jock Miles WW2 Adventure Series Book 2) Page 32
