Behind the Lines

by W. E. B Griffin

  For the last five days, Sunfish had run on the surface, prepared to emergency-dive at the sight of anything in the sky or on the horizon. There had been nothing. At 1805 the previous day, she had transmitted her estimated arrival time—0445—to CINCPAC.

  Now, having reached coordinates 780 x 149 at 0440 hours, she was running with just enough turns to provide steerageway over a calm and endless sea. Despite what her original orders had said about “further details to follow,” none had followed.

  The change in the pitch of her engines had brought Captain Jim Weston to the conning tower from the wardroom, where he had been reading every magazine Sunfish had aboard.

  It was light, but the sun had not yet appeared on the horizon. Lieutenant Commander Houser had made a command decision—which did not lie lightly on his shoulders—not to man the antiaircraft weaponry, four .50 caliber Browning air-cooled machine guns, or her four-inch naval cannon. Should aircraft appear in the sky, or a warship on the horizon, he felt the greater safety for his vessel lay in crash-diving as quickly as possible. Ensuring that gun crews had made it safely inside would take time.

  At the instant the tip of the sun appeared on the horizon, Chief Buchanan, unable to conceal his concern, bellowed:

  “Aircraft dead ahead, estimate two miles, two thousand feet!”

  Commander Houser turned to his talker, a sailor equipped with a microphone and a headset permitting him to relay orders to and from the conning tower.

  “All ahead full, prepare to dive,” Houser ordered.

  “All ahead full, prepare to dive,” the talker parroted, and there was a near-instant roar and billow of smoke from Sunfish’s diesels.

  “Get below, Mr. Weston, please,” Commander Houser ordered calmly, then trained his binoculars on the rapidly approaching speck in the sky.

  The aircraft was difficult to see. It was coming in out of the sun, which lay just over the horizon. But Houser could make out that it was a flying boat; he could see the fuselage, from which pontoons dropped, and a high wing.

  It’s probably a Catalina, he decided. It would be the ideal aircraft for a mission like this. A Catalina was a long-range reconnaissance aircraft, easily capable of making a landing in the sea, taking Weston aboard, and taking off again.

  And then he felt bile in his mouth.

  That sonofabitch has four engines; it’s not a Catalina, it’s an H8K!!! The Kawanishi H8K, which borrowed many of its design features from the two-engine Catalina, was a four-engine long-range reconnaissance/bomber seaplane. It was faster and more heavily armed and armored than the Catalina.

  And my antiaircraft isn’t manned! Goddamn it, what was I thinking of when I made that decision?

  “Emergency dive!” he ordered. “Dive, dive, dive!”

  The personnel on the bridge began to drop through the hatch as quickly as they could manage to do so.

  The submerging process seemed to be slower than Houser remembered.

  The H8K was growing larger by the second. And it was unquestionably on a bomb run. A nice, slow, sure-to-be-accurate bomb run.

  And then he saw something that made the situation appear even worse.

  The H8K was not alone. Other aircraft were above and behind it, two of them, on the exact same course, smaller planes, almost certainly fighters. At the speed they were moving, they would be in strafing range of the Sunfish long before the H8K could drop its bombs. Twenty-millimeter machine cannon fire would probably sweep the hull, or certainly the conning tower. Houser didn’t know how well the conning tower could resist that kind of fire; he did not think it could resist much of it.

  And then, as Houser watched, the left wing of the H8K began to emit smoke, almost immediately followed by the yellow glow of an explosion; and a moment after that, the wing crumpled. The H8K turned into the crumpled wing, then began to tumble. It struck the surface of the sea, causing a simultaneous flash and explosion. There was an enormous cloud of black smoke, suddenly cut off as the plane went beneath the water and the fire died.

  “Jesus H. Christ,” Chief Buchanan said, “talk about the goddamned Cavalry to the rescue!”

  Commander Houser had not known that the Chief was still on the bridge. But when he thought about it, he was not surprised. If Buchanan had his way, he, not the skipper, would have been the last man to leave the bridge.

  “Belay the dive,” Houser ordered.

  The talker was gone, so Buchanan relayed the order orally, dropping to his knees and shouting down the open hatch. Then he rose to his feet.

  “They’re dipping their wings, Skipper,” Chief Buchanan announced, quite unnecessarily.

  “It would appear so,” Houser replied.

  The aircraft closed quickly. Then, at what the pilots obviously estimated to be the maximum range of a .50 caliber bullet, they turned sharply to the left and right. The maneuver served to turn their wings so that their undersides—and their American identifying insignia—were visible to the personnel in the conning tower.

  There were now three people on the bridge. The talker had been the first to return.

  Commander Houser turned to him.

  “One quarter ahead,” he ordered.

  “One quarter ahead,” the talker parroted.

  “Mr. Weston to the bridge,” he said.

  “Mr. Weston to the bridge,” the talker parroted.

  Weston immediately climbed through the hatch again.

  “I don’t know where your coach is, Cinderella,” Commander Houser said, “but the outriders are here.” He pointed to the two fighters.

  The fighters were almost on them, now down on the deck. They were aircraft the like of which Weston had never seen before. Obviously fighters, they were low-wing monoplanes, whose wings seemed to be bent, coming straight out from the fuselage, and then tipping upward.

  The plane on the portside flashed past the Sunfish with its cockpit canopy open, close enough for Weston to see the pilot. He was a bareheaded, blond young man, earphones cocked jauntily on his head, wearing aviator sunglasses. He smiled as he waved a cheerful hand in greeting.

  But more important to Jim Weston, late G-2 of USFIP and onetime Naval Aviator, were the big, bold letters across the aft portion of the fuselage: MARINES.

  Tears ran down Weston’s face and disappeared under his beard.

  “Aircraft ninety degrees to starboard, estimate three miles, two thousand feet,” Chief Buchanan bellowed. “A great big sonofabitch!”

  Before Commander Houser could bring his binoculars to bear on the new aircraft, there was another call.

  “Aircraft, dead aft, estimate three miles, two thousand feet. Make that two aircraft. More fighters.”

  “They’re Corsairs,” Commander Houser announced, “I didn’t know they had them out here,” and then faced his talker.

  “Make turns for steerageway, prepare to stop engines.”

  “Make turns for steerageway, prepare to stop engines,” the talker parroted.

  “Boat crew on deck, prepare to inflate and launch rubber boat,” Houser ordered, and then as the talker repeated it, turned to Weston.

  “I think that great big sonofabitch, as Chief Buchanan so vulgarly described it, is your carriage, Cinderella,” he said. “It looks like a Coronado.”

  “God, look at that,” Weston said as a Corsair approaching the Sunfish from the rear, flashed past on the deck at what must have been 350 knots, and then soared high in the sky.

  “Jim, is there anything you want to take with you?” Houser asked gently.

  Weston thought that over for a moment.

  “My hat, Sir.”

  Houser turned to his talker.

  “Mr. Weston’s campaign hat to the bridge,” he ordered.

  “Mr. Weston’s campaign hat to the bridge,” the talker dutifully repeated.

  The Coronado, growing larger by the moment, slowed as the pilot lowered his flaps and dropped her closer to the water. Above it, two of the Corsairs circled protectively, as two others rose into the sky at
a rate of climb that had Jim Weston shaking his head in awed disbelief.

  A tall officer in somewhat mussed khakis pulled Weston out of the rubber boat and through the door in the side of the Coronado. Almost immediately, the engines of the aircraft revved up as the pilot turned into the wind.

  Inside were plushly upholstered chairs. After the tall officer in the mussed khakis made sure that Weston was safely strapped into his, he sat down beside him. Weston saw that the passenger compartment was otherwise empty, except for one other officer, a lieutenant commander of the Navy Medical Corps, sitting forward.

  “Welcome back to the world, Captain Weston,” the tall officer said. “My name is Pickering.”

  It was only then that Jim Weston saw that the silver insignia on his collar points were five-pointed stars.

  “General, it’s really lieutenant,” Weston said.

  “Oh, no, it isn’t,” Pickering said, and handed him a sheet of paper.

  HQ USMC WASHINGTON

  VIA SPECIAL CHANNEL

  SUPREME COMMANDER SWPOA

  ATTENTION: BRIG GEN F. W. PICKERING, USMCR

  0905 2 JANUARY 1943

  (1) NEXT OF KIN, MRS DOUGLAS WILLIAMS (AUNT) CEDAR RAPIDS IOWA WAS BEEN NOTIFIED OF RETURN TO ACTIVE DUTY OF FIRST LIEUTENANT JAMES B. WESTON, USMC BY THE UNDERSIGNED 26 DEC 1942. THERE MAY BE SOME ADMINISTRATIVE PROBLEMS IN THIS REGARD AS WESTON WAS PREVIOUSLY DECLARED MISSING AND PRESUMED DEAD IN ACTION AND DEATH BENEFITS ETCETERA HAVE BEEN PAID. WILL ADVISE.

  (2) FOLLOWING QUOTED FOR YOUR INFORMATION:

  EXTRACT, GENERAL ORDER 1 HQ USMC WASH DC DATED 1 JAN 1943

  PARA 13 .1/LT JAMES B. WESTON, USMC, DETACHED FROM HQ USFIP AND ASSIGNED USMC SPECIAL DETACHMENT 16 WITH DUTY STATION BRISBANE AUSTRALIA.

  PARA 14. FOLLOWING OFFICERS PROMOTED TO GRADE OF CAPTAIN, USMCR, WITH DATE OF RANK 25 DECEMBER 1942

  MCCOY, KENNETH R USMC OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT ANALYSIS WESTON, JAMES B USMC SPECIAL DETACHMENT 16

  (3) FOR YOUR INFORMATION, CAPT WESTON IS AUTHORIZED THIRTY (30) DAY RECUPERATIVE LEAVE, NOT CHARGEABLE AS LEAVE, AT LOCATION OF HIS CHOICE IN CONTINENTAL US AS SOON AS HIS MEDICAL CONDITION PERMITS. SECNAV HAS AUTHORIZED AAA AIR PRIORITY FOR RETURN TO US VIA PEARL HARBOR.

  BY DIRECTION:

  BANNING, MAJ USMC

  All four engines of the Coronado began to roar as the pilot shoved the throttles to takeoff power. In less than a minute, they were airborne.

  The Navy doctor came aft as the Coronado was still climbing out. General Pickering left his chair and walked forward.

  “Good morning, Captain,” the doctor said, and then put a stethoscope to Weston’s chest, took his pulse, pinched his skin, looked into his eyes, told him to open his mouth, pulled at his teeth, and then patted him encouragingly on his shoulder.

  Then he stood up and walked to General Pickering.

  Weston considered this a moment, then unstrapped himself and got out of his seat and walked forward.

  The doctor stopped whatever he was saying in midsentence.

  “If you’re talking about me, I’d like to hear it,” Weston said.

  “Tell him, Doctor.”

  “You are malnourished,” the doctor said. “But you don’t have malaria, which is surprising. We’ll do some tests, of course, when we reach Brisbane, but I can’t see any indications of parasitic infestation, or other illness. And once we get some balanced nutrition into you, I think your gums will firm up quickly; you won’t lose any teeth, in my opinion.”

  “Is that where we’re going, Brisbane?”

  “Right,” General Pickering said. “The fighters will give us cover, these and some others from Henderson Field, until we’re out of range of Japanese aircraft.”

  “Where is Henderson Field?”

  “On Guadalcanal, an island in the Solomons,” Pickering said, and then added, “My son used to fly Wildcats off Henderson.”

  “I never saw these before,” Weston said, gesturing out the window, where a Corsair flew three hundred feet away.

  “They just got here. Corsairs. My son—he’s now an IP in the States in them—wrote me that they have the most powerful engine ever put in a fighter.”

  “I used to be a fighter pilot,” Weston said.

  “Used to be?” Pickering said. “An old friend of mine named McInerney told me that flying is like riding a bicycle: Once you learn how, you never forget.”

  “I hope that’s true,” Weston said. “General, do you think it would be all right if I went to the cockpit?”

  “I’m sure it would,” Pickering said.

  Weston started forward, toward a ladder on a bulkhead. “Captain,” Pickering called after him.

  “Sir?”

  “Do you happen to play bridge?”

  “Yes, Sir, I do.”

  “Fine,” Pickering said.

  Wondering what that was all about, Weston climbed the ladder and made his way to the cockpit. The pilot—a lieutenant commander—the copilot, and a chief petty officer Weston presumed was the flight engineer, looked at him curiously.

  “I like your beard,” the pilot said finally.

  “I was ordered to keep it,” Weston said.

  “You ever been up here before?” the pilot asked.

  “No, Sir. First time. A million years ago, I flew Catalinas, and before that Buffaloes.”

  The pilot turned to the copilot and jerked his thumb upward. The copilot unstrapped himself and lifted himself out of his seat.

  “Sit down,” the pilot said. “It’s supposed to be like sex.”

  “Sir?” Weston asked, wondering if he had heard correctly.

  “Once you learn how to do it, you never forget,” the pilot said.

  [FIVE]

  Quarters of the Supreme Commander

  South West Pacific Ocean Area

  Brisbane, Australia

  1730 Hours 6 January 1943

  It is entirely possible that I am dreaming, Captain James B. Weston, USMCR, thought, absolutely seriously, as he examined himself in the mirrored walls of the elevator.

  There were four splendidly uniformed Marine officers in the elevator, each wearing crisp, high-collared white summer uniforms. One of them was a brigadier general, whose breast bore an impressive array of ribbons representing his decorations for valor and places of overseas service in two world wars. A second was a full bull colonel, whose breast was similarly adorned, and around whose neck hung the blue-starred ribbon of the highest award for valor awarded by the United States, the Medal of Honor. The third was a second lieutenant of Marines, wearing only five colored ribbons, but also the red and gold aiguillette of an aide-de-camp to a general officer.

  The fourth officer was a Marine captain, on whose breast were only two ribbons. One of these was yellow with two narrow red, white, and blue stripes representing the American Defense Service Medal, awarded to all military personnel who had been on active duty before 7 December 1941. A second yellow ribbon, this one with two white-red-white stripes and one red, white, and blue stripe, represented the Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medal, which was awarded to anyone who had served anywhere in the Pacific between 7 December and a date to be announced later.

  The fourth officer also wore the gold wings of a Naval Aviator and a full, blond beard.

  The elevator door whooshed open.

  A master sergeant with olive-colored skin, in stiffly starched khakis, either standing at attention or incapable of slouching, stood outside.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” he said in impeccable English. “The Supreme Commander and Mrs. MacArthur are in the study. I believe you know the way, General?”

  “Yes, I do, thank you,” Brigadier General Fleming Pickering said.

  “Está muy acepta aquí, mi Capitán,” the master sergeant added to Captain James B. Weston. (You are especially welcome here, my Captain.)

  “Gracias, Sargento,” Weston replied.

  The exchange sort of shattered the dreamlike feeling. First, he must know that I’ve been in the Philippines. Se
cond, he spoke Spanish to me. And I understood him, and replied in Spanish without thinking about it. Which means that all the time I spent in the dark with Sergeant LaMadrid, as I tried to perfect his English and he tried to teach me Spanish, was worth it. That makes everything real. Maybe I really am going to meet General Douglas MacArthur.

  He followed General Pickering and Colonel Stecker for twenty-five yards down a carpeted corridor. The right half of a double door was open. A white-jacketed orderly, also obviously a Filipino, bowed them inside.

  The Supreme Commander was far less splendidly uniformed than his guests. He wore khakis faded and softened by many washings. He had a long, thin, black cigar in his mouth.

  “Fleming, my dear fellow!” he said.

  “Good evening, Sir,” Pickering said. “Mrs. MacArthur...”

  “Jean, please, Fleming.”

  “... You both know Colonel Stecker and Lieutenant Hart. May I present Captain James Weston, USMC, late G-2 of United States Forces in the Philippines?”

  Suddenly not at all sure whether this was specified by regulations for such an occasion, Weston saluted.

  MacArthur returned it, then put out his hand. When Weston took it, MacArthur put his left hand with his right and squeezed Weston’s hand emotionally.

  “My wife and I thank you for finding time for us, Captain,” he said. “I’m sure that you’re anxious to return to the United States, to the bosom of your family and friends. Jean, this is the young officer I’ve been telling you about.”

  “Good evening, Captain,” Jean MacArthur said, and offered her hand.