Reluctant Warriors

© 2014 Jon Stafford. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopying, or recording, except for the inclusion in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Published in the United States by BQB Publishing

(Boutique of Quality Books Publishing Company)

www.bqbpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

978-1-939371-40-9 (p)

978-1-939371-41-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014933064

Book design by Robin Krauss, www.bookformatters.com

Cover design by Dave Grauel, davidgrauel.com

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas’d,

Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,

Raze out the written troubles of the brain,

And with some sweet oblivious antidote

Cleanse the stuff ’d bosom of the perilous stuff

Which weighs upon the heart?

—Shakespeare, Macbeth

Dedication

I dedicate this work to three persons:

My father, Nile W. Stafford, now ninety-five years old, was the first reluctant warrior I knew. From the time I was able to walk, he told my three siblings and me fascinating stories of his eighteen months with the Twentieth Air Force, sleeping in a tent in eastern India. He was part of the ill-fated attempt to get B-29s to attack Japan from there. He almost died, losing forty-five pounds in a matter of weeks. When he was rotated home, his trunk went in another direction, to Okinawa, and the ship was sunk by a kamikaze.

Mr. Arthur Lawrence Hellyer III, of Oswego, Illinois, has been my closest friend since we met in the lunch line as high school freshmen in Naperville, Illinois, in 1962. He encouraged me to write and has been my mentor all of these years.

Finally, Ms. Grace Garwood Wells of Columbia, South Carolina, has reviewed every story and given much good advice.

Jon Stafford

Columbia, South Carolina

Western Pacific

Contents

Preface

Jimmy DeValery Stories

The Day Off

Strafing Run at Wewak

A Dip in the Sea

The Gift

Harry Connors Stories

Mojarra

The Devil’s Cauldron

Goby

Dell

Theodore Rodgers Stories

Mackson

The Broken Leg

Preface to “Battle for Huon Gulf”

Battle for Huon Gulf

Battle Off Noemfoor

Joseph Wiley Stories

Two Sergeants

A Downed Plane

Heinzeldorf

The Faded Rose

The Circle

Preface

It is a blessing of living in the United States that we have high expectations for ourselves and for our fellow citizens. Slogans trumpet this, such as the Army’s “Be All You Can Be” and the recent (unsuccessful) national school idea of No Child Left Behind.

Most would agree that opportunities are there for us to choose and gain with hard work. But the things we take for granted now were not so easy for young Americans to obtain sixty-five or so years ago. During their formative years, they were victims of the Great Depression, the worst economic calamity the nation ever experienced. Then they were inexorably caught up in World War II, and their lives changed forever. The men went to foreign places and battled implacable foes under terrible circumstances. The women had to see their men go off and worry and wait for their return. Years were taken from them, and over half a million Americans lost their lives. This book is the story of the sacrifices made by that generation.

I grew up with World War II veterans all around me: next-door neighbors and numerous relatives. In middle age, they were a sedate lot. Between talking to these men and laborious reading, I developed a pretty fair idea of what our servicemen were like. The first books I ever bought were paperback editions of Theodore Roscoe’s Tin Cans and Pig Boats, semi-official histories of our wartime destroyers and submarines I purchased around 1960.

As a young man, my primer was Samuel Eliot Morison’s fourteen-volume History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. From there, I went on to read dozens of other histories and autobiographies, including much of what was published for decades.

Our servicemen were reluctant warriors. None of the men I met or whose works I read said they took pleasure in killing their enemies. They seemed profoundly respectful of the value of life and the finality of death. They were ordinary men who had to extricate themselves from extraordinary situations. The purpose of this work is to honor the Americans who served, and to show the types of situations and places in which they found themselves.

The United States had some sixteen million men in uniform in World War II. Their conversion into professional soldiers was one of the great stories of all time. Though the Army had little more than a hundred thousand men in the 1930s, and the Navy fired not a single real torpedo between the wars, they were victorious on every front.

The metamorphosis was made possible by several factors. Our democratic society produced millions of capable soldiers and sailors, which both Germany and Japan (and even Great Britain) thought impossible. Americans were actually tough physically, used to privation, and somewhat accustomed to a life of discipline. Many grew up during the hardships of the Great Depression, when having enough to eat was a real issue. Millions had also worked in such programs as the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation Corps, where young men aged eighteen to twenty-five left home for something similar to the military: communal living, eating, and working. The Hitler Youth had little on these guys, and our people showed an innovative spirit that our enemies never developed with their strict societies, a quality that still makes us the business center of the world.

Our arms, all produced by the free enterprise system, proved better in most every case than those fascist Germany and Japan could come up with in many year-long government programs. For the Army, small arms, such as the Browning .45 pistol, the M-1 rifle, standard for the infantry, and assault weapons such as the Browning Automatic Rifle and the Thompson submachine gun, were as good as anything in the world. Our standard artillery gun, the 105, was the best in the world. Only our principal tank, the Sherman, was not a success. It was junk compared to German Panthers and Tigers, but like everything else we made, it was produced in such staggering numbers (fifty thousand) that its weaknesses did not slow our advances. Many have argued that it was the best vehicle that could be mass-produced and shipped on American railroads. The common American G.I. could fix much of this equipment, while foreign soldiers were only trained for, and could only do, one task.

The Army Air Force, separated into its own branch in 1947, had two of the world’s best medium bombers: the B-25 and B-26. We also had the world’s three best heavy bombers: the B-17, the B-24 (of which we produced eighteen thousand), and the B-29, the first weapon that could have literally destroyed the Earth. We produced five great fighter planes, the Army’s P-38, P-47, and P-51, and the Navy’s Corsair and Hellcat. The first four of these, if produced in enough numbers, would have dominated the skies against either foe (the Hellcat was a little too slow).

The Navy’s ships in every category were as good as, or better than, those of our allies or foes: submarines, destroyers, light and heavy cruisers, battleships, and aircraft carriers. All were produced in terrific numbers. It is true that German subs could go deeper than ours. But the loss numbers prove the superiority of our subs. A total of 782 German U-boats were lost, to our 52 submarines. We had only one weakness at sea: our torpedo. But this was completely solved by 1943, midway through the war.

Women heroically took up the slack when the men went into uniform, leaving the home and replacing men in factories as “Rosie the Riveters.” The United States was revolutionized business-wise by becoming completely communistic, with our government controlling what was produced, where, and by whom, and setting pay rates. No new automobiles were produced during the war, showing the complete sacrifice the public was ready to make, which is in such stark contrast to our experiences in the Vietnam and the Iraq wars. Strangely, when the war ended, the entire process was completely reversed. Capitalism was completely reinstituted.The women mostly returned to being homemakers and mothering the Baby Boomers, and the men gladly gave up soldiering to return to civilian life.

The workplace changed radically after the war ended in 1945. While our servicemen had come off the farm or from menial Depression-era–type jobs, they were transformed into worldwide executives. The pre-war world had been completely altered. Every notable US competitor had been ruined: Japan and Germany by our bombs, and Great Britain by financial and manpower exhaustion. Bolstered by the free college education offered by the G.I. Bill, and having seen the world, our soldiers could not go back to the farm. What followed was twenty years of unchecked US dominance, with our companies proliferating worldwide.

Eventually, we rebuilt our former foes by the Marshall Plan, and even Great Britain made a comeback. Ironically, we did such a great job on Japan and Germany that both exceeded us in many areas by the 1960s, and eventually realized more power and dominance through capitalism than they experienced at the height of their military power in 1942.

The four main characters in this book are a cross-section of our servicemen in the war. Two are from the Army: Joseph “Chip” Wiley, a scout, and Jimmy DeValery, an Army Air Force pilot. Two are from different parts of the Navy: Harry Connors, a submarine pilot, and Theodore Rodgers, Jr., a surface ship commander.

While the stories are mostly about the men, family histories are included for three of the four (Rodgers has no children). They show families from different states: Wiley’s from South Carolina, though he is born in West Virginia; DeValery’s from North Carolina; Connors’ from Iowa; and Rodgers’ from Washington, DC, though he was born in Alabama. There is an overabundance of southerners, but more American soldiers came from the south than from any other part of the United States.

All of the characters experience lasting marriages. This was very typical of WWII veterans for several reasons. Many did not especially like the war world they had seen, and so were happy to be back in the good old United States. They had either been in combat or caught in boring and unending jobs behind the lines. A wife, regular meals that did not include Spam, an automobile, and a new suburban home seemed like paradise in comparison. This era was the beginning of our country becoming wealthier than anywhere else in the world. It was such a smashing success that we have spent the last six decades attempting to share our system and “secrets” and make the rest of the world just like us, which has had mixed results at best.

The war also has different impacts on the men. Wiley is hurt only physically, though not enough to impede his earning a living. DeValery is hurt only psychologically, but this takes years from his life. Connors has only a few bad memories, and Rodgers has none.

The stories were as good as I could make them historically. While the specific characters, actions, and battles are fictional, they relate to real campaigns: the New Guinea, Guadalcanal, and Marianas campaign, and the North African campaign. With the exception of a few persons, like Lakeland Wells in the Rodgers stories, all generals and admirals are accurately portrayed. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., and Admirals Crutchley and Halsey were in command at the times and places cited. All references to weapons, planes, and ships, and their performances were carefully researched.

These stories do not present the real horrors of the war, where soldiers’ lives were wasted and 293,000 Americans were killed in battle, sometimes being terrorized and dying in their own waste. If you want the graphic truth, see E.B. Sledge’s With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa. Neither is the war glorified here. These tales are simply a series of examples of how Americans rose to the task of fighting World War II, the central event of recorded history, and handily defeated the most difficult enemies we ever faced, enemies who actually intended dire consequences for the Earth. These are the stories of reluctant warriors.

Jimmy DeValery Stories

The Day Off

New Guinea, December 1943

Twice a week, a pilot from the 342nd Fighter Squadron flew the mail run from Port Moresby to the advanced base at Dubodura. Today, it was Jimmy DeValery’s turn.

He took off at 0640, heading almost directly east. His plane rose slowly above the jungle humidity as the day began to take on its color. It had rained for a week straight, but today would be clear and sunny, with excellent visibility. He climbed steadily. Ahead, blocking his route, the Owen Stanley mountain range rose up ten thousand feet. He expected to see no enemy planes on this milk run. The Japanese had mostly been driven from their once formidable base at Lae, not far from Dubodura. The intelligence shack told him he had nothing to worry about, and his ground chief had agreed:

“Aw, nobody has seen any Zeroes near there in a month. We put a hundred rounds in two of the machine guns, but nothing in the cannon. You won’t need ’em, though. Have fun, Jimmy.”

Jimmy planned to. He had flown five combat missions in two weeks and needed a day off.

As the Owen Stanleys loomed up in front of him, he thought through the mission. All he had to do was make the pass. Dubodura was only eighty miles ahead, all downhill. It would only take an hour and a half. He wished it were longer.

He glanced at the altimeter, which read 7,100 feet, then at the mountains ahead. He needed more power.

Jimmy pushed the throttles ahead slightly. The two huge Allison engines responded and he put the P-38 in a steeper climb. Soon he reached the pass, at 8,200 feet, and then angled down for the long descent.

He looked down for enemy troop movements, although he expected none. All he could see was a jungle canopy too thick to see through, except for a few well-worn ridges. No enemy. He thought that was just as well.

He looked up, distracted by a speck on his canopy.

“Must be oil,” he muttered, “I wish they would tune up these old engines.”

He looked more closely. It was not a speck of oil. It was something moving in the sky.

The specks soon multiplied into four. Jimmy, alarmed, realized they were planes high above him, at 10 o’clock, maybe five or six miles to the north. He squinted despite his excellent eyesight. Whose planes were they? Immediately, he pushed the throttles all the way forward and began to climb again.

If they’re Japanese, he thought, and catch me below them, I’ll be a sitting duck. Maybe they’re friendly planes returning to Port Moresby. But then why would they be so high?

He kept watching as they continued directly toward him. Several more seconds passed as his eyes strained.

“They’re Japanese!” he blurted out. “They’re Zeroes!”

Jimmy pushed the throttles harder, even though they were already at full power. I need to get higher! With the great weight of his plane, he could dive away from a Zero. But he didn’t have the altitude.

He grabbed for the radio.

“Mayday-mayday-mayday,” he called, “enemy planes jumping me.”

He gave his position. He waited, but there was no response. He knew he could never raise Port Moresby with the mountains in the way, but Dubodura was relatively close.

“Mayday-mayday-mayday, enemy planes headed for Dubodura.”

The pressure built in his mind as the planes came closer and closer. There was no answer. He could see the enemy planes’ markings distinctly. Why isn’t Dubodura answering? he wondered.

As his plane clawed for altitude, Jimmy’s mind raced. He was trapped! He couldn’t get above them. There was no time! There was only one thing to do: dive away from them and hope for the best. Fear gripped him. Dive out, dive before they’re on top of you, his brain screamed.

From his experience, he knew better, that altitude meant life.

“Wait, wait!” he yelled.

The enemy planes were very close now, almost within firing range, and still well above him. The altimeter read only fifteen thousand feet, but he couldn’t wait any longer. He kicked the pedals over and dove.

The P-38 screamed straight down. His speed jumped: 260, 340, 390, 450. It wouldn’t be a long dive, he knew, but it had to be straight down if he was to have a chance. The hills below began to come into focus.

In only a minute it was time to pull out. He grabbed the stick firmly and pulled hard. It didn’t even budge! He had never had a P-38 in such a steep dive. The ground loomed up in front of him, and he panicked!

“Pull out now!” Jimmy screamed.

He stood straight up in the cockpit and pulled with all of his might. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the nose, laden with four huge fifty-caliber machine guns and an Oerliken cannon, began to come up.

The ground jumped before his eyes. Gravity pushed him down in the seat. Grey and white spots appeared before his eyes. He saw his wife’s face and then briefly lost consciousness.

His vision returned, and he found himself rocketing along just above the trees. Relief flowed through him.

“I made it! I got away. No man on Earth could follow that dive,” he called out, laughing.

He rubbernecked.

Four dots still followed him.

That can’t be! he thought. As his speed rapidly fell off, 395, 385, 375, the Japanese gained quickly.

Jimmy realized what had happened. The dives of the Zeroes, long and shallow, had been more than the equal of his short, violent one. He pushed his throttles hard again, just to be sure he was getting every ounce of power.

“Mayday-mayday-mayday,” he called into the radio, over and over. Why aren’t they answering? I can’t be more than fifty miles from Dubodura.

He checked every few seconds.The enemy planes continued approaching, growing from specks to larger and larger objects. Sweat began to pour down his face, a face contorted in pain as though his body were being jabbed with pins. He prayed that their dives must be wearing off as well.

In seconds that seemed like an eternity, the Japanese planes’ speed did taper off. Jimmy looked back at them constantly, wondering if it would be enough. They would be within firing range in moments.

Then he noticed something else. He was passing from the land of New Guinea out over the Pacific.

“Out to sea,” he mumbled, the sound entirely drowned by the motors. It was almost a death sentence.

Heading away from Dubodura, if he turned even slightly, the Japanese would turn inside him and he would be an easy target for a deflection shot. His only chance was to outrun them. He would have to forget about the radio. Even if it worked, help was too far away to do him any good.

Jimmy looked around again. The enemy was within range now, he judged, as the five planes raced along at about one thousand feet. Then he realized something. They were no longer gaining.

They’re no faster than I am, he judged. There’s a chance after all.

The enemy planes fanned out behind him. He thought each Zero might get one pass at him before their dives wore off fully. The one on the end was closest and would probably take his firing pass first.

Just as Jimmy realized that, the plane began firing at about four hundred yards. He could see the gun flashes on the wings. Sweat cascading down his face and down the inside of his clothing, he prayed that the shots would miss, but didn’t believe they would.

He huddled behind his armor-plated seat, but nothing happened. The first pilot had missed!

Jimmy watched as the first plane faded back, pushed by the recoil of its guns. As he looked back again, the relief he felt faded.

The second Zero angled toward him. He saw the wings twinkle, almost instantly followed by loud pinging sounds. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw about thirty holes from machine gun rounds appear in his left wing, like a sharp pencil poking holes through aluminum foil.

A bullet came through the back of the Plexiglas canopy, just missing Jimmy’s head, and ricocheted about inside.

The cannon shells hit harder. One made a large and jagged hole in the left wing, and two hit the back of the seat, bucking him forward violently.

The giant Lockheed plane flew on, seemingly undamaged. The engines were untouched!

Jimmy looked around just as the third plane made his run, and saw it firing. He ducked again. The seat had a contour piece for his head, but nothing for his feet. He put his tennis shoes up on the pedals as high as he could.

Again, nothing happened. The third plane had also missed.

He looked again. The Japanese planes had receded somewhat, but still hung behind him like pictures on a wall.

There were only three Zeroes now. He looked for the fourth, several times, in both directions. It was gone. It must not have been able to keep up.

Jimmy smiled, though he looked terrible. Here, just above sea level, the insidious humidity of the South Pacific pervaded the cockpit. Sweat was cascading down his body as though propelled from an unseen pump. His T-shirt was completely soaked as continuous beads of water ran down inside it, into his shorts, down his legs, and into his sneakers. He noticed none of it.

All he could think of was the trap he was in. He was well out to sea now, and while the enemy planes weren’t closing, they weren’t falling behind either.

Minutes dragged on. Jimmy crouched in his little canopy. It was almost like being in a closet. He wondered whether he would ever see his wife, Mara, again.

Thinking of her steeled his determination. I will find a way out of this!

No longer panicky, he checked the two fuel gauges at the left of the control panel. The dial marked “Rear” for the fuel tanks in the rear center of each side of the plane showed they were depleted. The “Front” tanks still had a full forty-five gallons in each: forty minutes left. No, thirty minutes at this speed.

What if he picked up slowly on the ailerons? The plane would rise, he knew, and if he did it slowly enough it would offer the Zeroes very little angle for a good shot.

Jimmy touched the controls, and the plane rose. He looked behind to see the Zeroes doggedly following. He was too afraid to smile, but soon he could see it was working. The P-38 was at its slowest at sea level. If he could just get her some altitude, get into lighter air, the engines’ power would be better used.

Over the next few minutes, he rose five thousand feet. The enemy was still hanging on behind him, but got no closer.

In ten minutes he passed ten thousand feet. The superchargers began to kick in.

Soon enough, he reached seventeen thousand feet. The enemy planes began falling back, and as he turned back toward Dubodura, they could do nothing. Soon, they disappeared.

Now his chief worry was fuel. He throttled back on both motors.

The coastline appeared in a few minutes. Twenty more, and he began to recognize familiar landmarks.

Three hours almost to the minute after he took off on the supposed milk run, Jimmy made an uncharacteristically bouncy landing on the field at Dubodura. Once the plane came to a stop and the engines were powering down, he went still in his seat, shaking all over.

He became aware of a figure coming up beside the plane, waving at him to open the cockpit. As he did, he recognized the guy. It was the ground chief, shouting.

“You musta had some trouble, huh? Hey, why didn’t you call in on the radio? I just tested it and it’s good! We had planes in the air, buddy.”

Jimmy looked down at his radio. In a rush of awful clarity, he realized why no one had answered his calls. In his fear, he had completely forgotten to turn the radio on.

Strafing Run at Wewak

New Guinea, December 1943

In order to cover the attack by the First Marine Division on Cape Gloucester on New Britain Island, Washington ordered General George Kenney to strike along the coast of New Guinea with his Fifth Air Force. The target of the Army Air Force squadron Jimmy DeValery belonged to was the port of Wewak, 310 miles away.

An hour before, Jimmy had been grumbling, which was unusual for him. The ground crew hadn’t tuned up the engines on his plane, Mara, even though he’d requested it. His P-38 J model was not as fast as the new J-2s most of the other pilots had, and he worried he might lag behind the rest of his squadron in some crucial spot. He had fussed at Pete, his ground crew chief. Later, during breakfast, he wondered whether he’d asked too much. Pete’s crew put in a lot of long hours.

The sixteen silver Lockheed planes, with their 231 squadron numbers in black on their red tails, took off, one by one. Jimmy and his wingman, Tony Seegars, joined up with the planes circling the field awaiting them. They began turning toward the distant target.

It is good to be up in the air, Jimmy thought. It had rained even more than usual in the last few days, and everything on the ground was saturated beyond belief. It was hard to even breathe when it got that humid. The smell, like rotten vegetables, was perhaps even worse.

There was nothing on his person or in his possessions that was actually dry. His clothes had run so badly that there was little of the original green color left. Everything he owned was slimy or downright soggy. His B-4 bag, with his dearest possessions inside, was the worst: moldy and smelling like rotten leather.

The ink on the letters his wife Mara had sent had run so badly that he could no longer read them. It hadn’t stopped him from getting them out and trying though. He could remember almost every word without being able to see them.

Even his breakfast, with its powdered eggs and Spam, had been slimy and disgusting. He had made the same promise that millions of other American servicemen were to make: if he made it back home, he would never touch the stuff again.

Jimmy looked at the altimeter, now reading ten thousand feet, and smiled. Up here, he thought, the humidity clears out, and you can breathe easier. And it’s so much cooler!

It wasn’t that he was breathing easy about the mission. The coastal town of Wewak was an ominous name to many of the men. He had only seen it once, from about twenty miles out. But he was fairly confident. His squadron had developed into a great team, and he loved the men he fought and lived with, would do anything for them—especially his tent-mate Mickey Vivaldi, from Philadelphia, and Rickert, Seegars, and Freddie Davis in his flight.

Besides, this was the twenty-first time he had risen from the jungle to attack the Japanese from one base or another. He and the others were longtime veterans by now. They knew what they were doing. Jimmy had been on strafing runs, bombing runs, escort duty, and even on the mail run that time he had been bounced by that flight of Zeroes in the fall. He thought again about his plane, Mara, which he had named after his wife. It worried him that newer and faster Japanese planes, Tonys and Hamps, had arrived at the front in the last few months.

They were fifty miles into the mission now. Jimmy eyed the other fifteen planes in his squadron. Davis and his wingman, Rickert, were right in front of Jimmy, and Seegars was glued to Jimmy’s wing. He smiled thinking of young Seegars, only twenty and a recent replacement for Duns, who had been sent home. At twenty-four, Jimmy was the oldest pilot in the wing, and he would have to watch out for his young wingman.

He pulled his aluminum tray onto his lap and looked at his notes. Take off just after dawn. Rendezvous with the B-24s at some place called Veersma about 250 off and about 60 miles from Wewak. Escort them to the target, get them headed back, and then strafe the harbor area.

The squadron continued climbing, to twenty-two thousand feet, and then proceeded along at 250 miles per hour. Jimmy glanced ahead and behind to find his flight in position. All was in order. Mara was ready. Pete had said there were 500 rounds for each of the plane’s four .50-caliber machine guns, and about 150 rounds for the Hispano cannon.

They made the rendezvous point within an hour and circled, searching. There was no sign of the B-24s. What the hell? Jimmy thought, over the whine of the engines. He could hear Colonel Hazelton, the squadron commander, on the radio, trying to find out what had happened.

In a crackle of static, one of the bombers radioed back that they had been early and decided to go on ahead. Hazelton ordered the squadron to speed up to three hundred miles per hour to catch up.

Within a few minutes, Jimmy could see specks—the bombers—maybe fifteen miles ahead. Wait, he thought. There were too many specks, and thin trails of smoke were spewing from some of them. As the squadron drew closer, he saw the telltale yellow and red of the Rising Sun insignia on some of the distant planes’ undersides. The Japanese had jumped the unescorted bombers!

Two of the big bombers were in trouble, smoking and falling out of formation. Jimmy thought he could make out about thirty enemy planes, mostly Zeroes, but maybe some Hamps as well.

As the squadron drew close, the Japanese broke and headed for home. Jimmy watched as the shot-up bombers headed toward the coast and the open sea. If you had to crash, it was better to hit the ocean than the hellish jungle. They had all heard stories of crews going down in the jungle and never being heard from again. Submarines were supposed to be on duty off the coast. If you went down in the water, you had a good chance of being found.

One of the bombers was smoking from two of its four motors. Jimmy knew it would never make the coast. He watched it drop lower and lower until it crashed into the jungle. The tree cover closed almost instantly above the wreckage, leaving no sign that a crash had taken place. Not one chute, he lamented. Not one guy parachuted out. Damn, that’s bad luck. Seems like someone could have gotten out. He had to look away.

Ten more minutes of flight, and Jimmy could see Wewak below, even the big red smokestack that everyone was supposed to key in on. He watched the B-24 formation pivot, and then make their bombing runs west to east, against scattered antiaircraft fire.

As the bombers turned south for home, the P-38s sliced off for their strafing runs. The flights were staggered, so that no one crashed into anyone else. Jimmy’s flight of four was to be last to hit the docks. They circled for some minutes, flying top cover as the other flights took their passes and cleared out.

Then it was their turn. They went into shallow dives from about twelve thousand feet. By the time they made their runs, they were speeding along on top of the waves at more than four hundred miles per hour. On the first pass, Jimmy picked out a little freighter that was already smoking from an earlier attack. He opened fire at about five hundred yards, and watched the .50-caliber slugs pour into the ship, going right through the sides.

As he pulled up to ten thousand feet, the radio came on. It was Rickert.

“I can’t see the target with that smoke.”

“Me neither,” Seegars shouted.

“Jimmy, how about you and me?” Davis asked.

“Sure.”

“Stick to my wing, Jimmy.”

As the two planes dove, the smoke got worse. Davis kicked the rudder over, and the two yawed to the right. The flak was much heavier than before, but Jimmy didn’t notice it much. He concentrated on targeting a warehouse by the water’s edge, watching the bullets pour into it.

Just as he reached the other side of the harbor and began to pull up, a tremendous explosion ripped into the plane on the right side. It seemed to blow up in his face. The left side of his head slammed against the Plexiglas canopy. The plane skidded to the left, almost out of control. Stunned, his instincts took over, and he righted the plane, narrowly missing a smokestack at the water’s edge.

As if in slow motion, Jimmy saw the smoke and debris coming from the right motor. But it did not concern him. His head was still spinning from the blow. In that moment, he was supremely confident that he was all right and in complete control, that he and his Mara would be fine. He had no idea of the seriousness of what had happened.

Barely conscious, he flew blithely away from the harbor, in the wrong direction.

It was several minutes before he was fully aware of his surroundings again. There’s wind coming through the canopy, he thought. That’s strange. He looked at the Plexiglas. There are holes in it, he observed, not comprehending.

Next, he realized that the plane wasn’t responding to the stick. He knew instinctively that something was wrong with the right motor. He looked at the smoke billowing out of it. The twelve-foot Hamilton-Standard propeller had stopped. One of the blades was sticking straight up.

The motor stopped, he thought, in a complete quandary. Something was very, very wrong. Slowly, dizzily, he looked at the left motor to see if it was all right, and then at his compass on the left side of the control panel.

It read 350 degrees. For a few moments, he didn’t know what that meant. Then, he recalled the briefing by Colonel Hazelton.

“If you get in trouble,” Hazelton had said, “just take the heading of 132 degrees. It’ll bring you back here.”

His mind was still clouded, but Jimmy nevertheless recalled clearly the Colonel looking downward and tapping his foot on the floor. Not knowing how much trouble he was in, he concentrated on the image of the colonel’s foot.

Then, dutifully, almost like a robot, he brought the machine around, slowly banking to the right until the compass lined up on 132 degrees. He had no idea that he had flown almost fifty miles in the wrong direction.

As he worked the stick, sudden pain flared in his right arm. It seemed on fire!

Jimmy looked at his arm and noticed his blood spattered on the right side of the canopy. And his arm would barely move! Every movement he made to correct the plane’s trim was almost more than he could bear.

I’ve trained for this, he thought, blinking and shaking his head to clear his brain. He thought back to his advanced training at Eglin Air Base in Florida: how he had resisted holding the stick in the left hand, and then almost crashed into the beach.

“Switch,” he muttered. “It’s okay.” It did not feel as awkward as before, but the truth was he had the touch of an elephant.

He looked again at his right arm. He could see blood dripping from it onto the cockpit floor, and thought of his jungle kit with its bandages. He reached for it with his right arm without thinking, and excruciating pain shot up all the way up his shoulder. I’ll wait, he thought, grimacing and nodding slowly.

With his head spinning, Jimmy thought of his wife, Margaret Ann, his Mara. She appeared before his eyes, seemed so real that he thought he might reach out and touch her. He smiled, thinking how he had loved her all of his life. He saw her now as he had first seen her, on the swing at the elementary school playground all those years before. He thought of their baby, Claire, now eleven months old, whom he had never seen. Despite his disorientation and pain, he thought: I would trade my life to see Mara and our baby together, just once see them both.

His thoughts were becoming more coherent with every passing minute. He’d been in the air for three hours now. The altimeter read 4,800 feet, which he guessed was all right. Then, he began to think of his speed. He wondered what it was.

In a moment, he remembered: all he had to do was check. He was already looking at the controls. He moved his gaze an inch to the left. The dial read “MPH” in small letters. Two hundred, it said. He had to think for a few seconds to understand what two hundred meant. Go slower, he thought. More speed will only use up the fuel.

Jimmy’s left hand went almost automatically to the throttles on the left wall of the cockpit. After a thousand-plus hours of flight experience in a P-38 cockpit, he didn’t even have to look for the correct metal lever covered with the red plastic ball, or think about how far to pull it back. Slowly, the plane’s speed dropped to 160 miles per hour.

His brain cleared, and his brow furrowed as the depressing truth came to him quite clearly. He was alone and hurt, and a long way from base in a shot-up plane. The gas gauges weren’t working. Maybe the fuel had bled out through the damaged motor and was about gone. Maybe the left motor would stop soon.

The radio! Why hadn’t he tried the radio? He was used to operating it with his left hand. He switched it on, but there was nothing, not even static. He tinkered with it for a minute or so, then gave up.

He realized that air was coming into the cockpit from below as well as from holes in the Plexiglas. He looked down at the floor and noticed a large hole in the right side of the fuselage, near his right foot. He could see the jungle passing by below, in swaths of brown and green. How much damage had Mara taken?

A reflection far off to the right drew his attention. It had to be a glint off something metal. There it was again! He watched it move. It approached slowly, almost on a parallel course, and not much higher. He throttled up a bit, knowing that if was an enemy plane, he was a sitting duck.

He watched, anxiously. In a minute he could see the plane clearly: another P-38 slicing across his path, on a heading of maybe 120 degrees. Its tail bore the yellow markings of the 261st squadron, which was based forty miles from his.

Mara was now traveling at 190 miles per hour. Jimmy turned, painfully, to parallel the new plane. As he came alongside it, he saw that both its engines were working, but its canopy and nacelle were a shambles, riddled with bullet holes. He looked at the pilot: a big man, slumped over the stick, obviously badly hurt.

Slowly, the pilot turned toward Jimmy, and seemed to look directly at him. But their eyes never met.

The planes were less than seventy feet apart now. With great effort, Jimmy reached for the radio. It was still dead. He tried signaling with his left hand and shouting: “One hundred and twenty degrees will take you out to sea!”

There was no response. Jimmy shook his head. He wanted to help the other pilot, at least keep him from crashing in the trackless jungle, but the other man didn’t even seem to realize he was there.

“Buddy, I got to go. I got to live, go back to my wife and child.”

As he throttled back to 160 and went back to 132 degrees, the yellow-tailed plane continued on its doomed course. He watched it drop out of sight, into the trees.

Jimmy sat up a little in the seat. “I’m not going to go like that,” he said to himself. “I’m going to make it!”

His wife came into his thoughts again. He could see her so clearly, this time standing in their kitchen and laughing that time he’d dropped the eggs all over the floor. Her voice, mock-scolding: Use the sense the good Lord gave you, Jimmy DeValery.

His wound had stiffened. He thought it was time to try bandaging his arm again. He reached for his kit. Again the pain was beyond anything he could stand, and after several minutes of agonizing and accomplishing nothing, he gave up.

Jimmy felt exhausted and faint, his eyes having trouble focusing on the jungle below. The stress had weakened him a great deal and he was far less conscious. The jungle is so mesmerizing, he thought. It stretches on and on and on and on, all the way to the horizon. I am just creeping like an ant in a field. Will it never end? He could never remember being so tired.

Jimmy could barely keep his eyes open. He decided he would have to make a crash landing before he blacked out. With his left hand, he checked under his left armpit, confirming that he still had the .45 he usually kept in a holster there. I’ll need it to survive in the jungle, he thought calmly. And I’ll need my jungle kit too. His eyes fixed on his canteen.

In an instant he realized what had happened. With the blood loss and sweating, he had become seriously dehydrated! He grabbed the canteen, ignoring the renewed pain reaching for it sent up his arm. He unscrewed the cap and drank. The water, which he normally disdained as smelling like fuel oil, gave him an immediate jolt, as though it were pure caffeine.

He gulped half the canteen and almost instantly felt better and more alert. He checked his speed and altitude; both were fine.

Five minutes later, he spotted something on the ground far to the west. It looked like the old abandoned airfield at Bena Bena! He studied landmarks as his plane flew past.

“It is Bena Bena!” Jimmy shouted. That meant he was only a few miles away from Nadzab! “I’m going to make it!”

The situation had changed so quickly that Jimmy had little time to enjoy it. All he could manage was a feeble chuckle. I must concentrate, he thought. I’m not safe yet.

In another ten minutes he could see Nadzab. Perking up, he nevertheless would not allow himself to get giddy. With no way to radio the field, he made a slow circuit and attempted to lower his landing gear. Considering the damage to the plane, he thought the right wheel might not come down. When its green light failed to come on, he knew it had not.

I’ll have to make a belly landing. That means Mara will never fly again. I’ll lose my ship! Jimmy thought. He looked around at his beloved plane.

“Forgive me, but this is the only way I think I can live through this,” he muttered.

He came around for one more circuit of the field, and then raised the landing gear that had come down. As he approached, he throttled back and came in.

As his speed died, the huge Lockheed plane seemed to almost hover over the crude strip. Jimmy pulled back slightly on the stick and the nose came up. For an instant, it seemed as though Mara would gently float in, like a paper airplane, and come to a stop without a scratch.

Then the seven-ton machine hit the ground; horrific grinding and smashing sounds roaring up around him. The plane, or what remained of it, ground to a skidding stop across the concrete, the underside nearly torn off.

Jimmy sat up as much as he could in the slightly squashed cockpit, staring woozily through the cracked Plexiglas. Several of the men were running up the strip, shouting, drawn by the noise of the crash. He recognized the guy in the lead: his wingman, Tony Seegars.

A great feeling of relief came over Jimmy. Tony made it back! he thought. Then the combination of shock and humidity hit him like a thirty-pound soccer ball against his chest.

His body went limp as his friends and ground crew carefully lifted him out of the plane. He happened to glimpse one of the men’s watches as they did.

It was 1130 hours. Only 1130? Feels like an eternity since we left, he thought. Just my luck, to get back just as the day starts getting really disgusting.

A Dip in the Sea

New Guinea, April 1944

Captain Jimmy DeValery walked alone toward the briefing room for the thirty-fifth time. He gloated just a little bit, a slight smile on his face. He wondered if anyone else he passed knew that this would be his last mission. After thirty-five missions, he qualified to be rotated home out of this hellhole.

He took a seat in the middle of the room as the other pilots gathered. Then, the tall and angular Colonel Hazelton entered and began the briefing.

Jimmy didn’t listen very closely for the first several minutes. He expected some sort of run up the coast again, and planned to get the details in the map briefing later. Then, he heard the word volunteer, and his attention fixed fully on the Colonel’s voice.

“Men,” said the Colonel, “this is not my idea, or some stunt by General Kenney and his people. This comes straight from the top, General Arnold in Washington. The Navy wants this job done and we were volunteered because we are the closest group to the target. It is a very, very tough job. You know I have flown every mission with you. I would do this one myself, but the word came down yesterday from General Guest that no one above the rank of Captain would be considered. The pilot must have a P-38 J-2 because of the extremely long range, be an excellent navigator, and have a good record of bombing accuracy.”

Major Franklin stood first, followed by all of the other squadron leaders, all above the rank of Captain. They were followed by other pilots, all young Lieutenants.

The Colonel looked at each man with the respect that comes from risking lives together. “Bob,” he said looking at the Major, “Craig, Jim, you know I can’t take you for this one. And you young guys don’t have the experience. Thank you, though.”

By this time Jimmy was squirming in his seat. He could navigate as well as most of the guys, and his bombing was good enough. It was obvious to him: there was no one else! It was like a spotlight was suddenly shining on him.

Due to his broken arm from the Wewak mission, and then his bout with malaria, he was the only one left from the original wing that had come to Port Moresby. All of the others from his original squadron had either been killed or rotated home. Even his old wingman, Tony Seegars, had gotten his final mission last month and was gone now.

As he looked around the room, Jimmy saw that the others knew too. Several of the younger guys turned and glanced nervously back at him. He wasn’t entirely sure he was up to this, physically speaking. He had come overseas with a robust 170 pounds on his five-foot-eight frame, but had lost forty pounds because of the malaria and almost died. With little to eat but powdered eggs and Spam, he had gained little of his weight or strength back. A milk-run mission would be one thing, but this?

For a moment he stewed, thinking how unfair—and unexpected—this was. Then, he stood up.

At 0430 hours the next morning, it was still completely dark. Jimmy looked at his watch in the dim illumination of the cockpit light. It was the second watch and the sixth watchband he’d gone through over here. The leather watchbands would just rot, and finally the watch would warp in the humidity too.

As he taxied the plane toward the other end of the runway, he passed the Seabees in the faint light of the oil lamps. They were still working on the end of the runway. He had heard them all night, cutting down trees and putting another fifty yards on the runway’s length, so that his very heavily laden plane would have a better chance of taking off.

Silhouetted against the darkness by the lamps, the men began to line up to watch, to see if it had been worth it. There were about a hundred of them, haggard and dirty from their labor in the terrible humidity. They had done all they could. Jimmy was obliged, and he nodded to them from his open canopy as he passed by. He tried to look cheerful, tried not to think of the tremendous pressure he was under.

His thoughts turned to his plane, Mara II. Loaded down with a thousand-pound general-purpose bomb and over a thousand gallons of aviation fuel, she was like a huge and ungainly duck totaling almost 21,000 pounds. Has anyone ever gotten off with this much weight before? he wondered. Even on the long strike to Hollandia, she had been only about 1,700 pounds. In a few minutes, he came to the other end of the runway, some 4,800 feet away from the Seabees.

The Seabees made him feel less angry about his bad break of not being given a milk run and a ticket home. No one could say he had not done his part. He’d definitely taken his share of chances over thirty-four missions. Still, he wasn’t sure anyone deserved this one: an 850-mile flight to Truk Lagoon to bomb a radar station for the Navy.

The American carrier groups had plastered the western edges of the Central Pacific, starting with their big raid on the islands of Palau three weeks before. The word was that they would now swing back eastward, blasting every Japanese stronghold one by one. Truk had to be on the target list, or they wouldn’t have dumped this mission on the Army. The radar station had to go, Jimmy figured, so the Navy fleet could move toward Truk and not be seen.

Besides trying to take off with Mara II so heavily loaded, he had worried most of the sleepless night about making the rendezvous with the submarine Skate. The plan was to land in the water on the way back, because the airplane couldn’t fly the whole seventeen thousand-mile round trip lugging the bomb halfway. He would have to part with his second plane. As he stopped and pivoted the plane into position, he thought of his first Mara, badly shot up on the Wewak raid and destroyed when he was forced to crash-land.

Jimmy had blamed himself, feeling that he had done a poor job on the mission. He remembered sitting on the back of a Jeep after he crashed. He had wept looking at Mara on the runway, a hopeless wreck with her twisted props and torn-out underside.

Doc Peters had examined his broken arm, and he had laughed upon finding the shard that had fractured Jimmy’s ulna sticking out plain as life, obscured only a little by his blood. Jimmy, still staring at his smashed plane, hadn’t thought it funny at all.

Now, he was ordered to lose Mara II as well. He’d flown fifteen missions with her, and the idea of ditching her in the ocean was like asking him to cut off his arm. Sure, Skate would be right there to pick him up. Just like getting on an elevator, the intelligence officer had told him. Right, Jimmy thought sourly. He could just see the sub being late or lost, and him drowning in the ocean three hundred miles from the nearest landfall.

The Army had done a lot to make Jimmy’s mission succeed. Besides lengthening the strip, the wing had sent their chief mechanic, a guy named Breslow, down to work with Pete, his own crew chief, and they had worked all night just like the Seabees. It was great that all of these guys were behind him. Colonel Hazelton himself had spent most of an hour briefing him.

A wave of confidence came over the veteran. He and Mara II could do this job, however nasty it was. “If anyone can pull this off, we can,” he muttered.

It still wasn’t light enough to see the strip’s far end. But Pete was visible on the near end of the strip. He signaled Jimmy to start revving up the great Allison motors. As the rpms came up, great clouds of dust and debris blew up behind the plane.

Jimmy’s eyes met Pete’s. From the faraway look in the crew chief ’s eyes, he was getting the distinct feeling that Pete thought he would not come back. He looked away for a second.

The two 1,475-horse engines revved higher and higher but sounded flat. Another glance at Pete’s face told Jimmy that Pete thought so too. Finally, Jimmy throttled back and opened the window on the side of the cockpit.

“I can’t get but 3,450 out of them!” he yelled to Pete.

“That’s the best they will do in this humidity,” Pete yelled back.

As Jimmy revved the engines again, it began to rain. When the engines crested, he knew, he’d have to go. If it started raining any harder, he doubted he would be able to get off at all.

The left motor was reaching slightly higher revs than the right. When it came up to 3,475, he nodded to Pete, pulled the canopy shut, and took his foot off the brake. Mara II lurched ahead. She gathered speed very quickly, and to everyone’s surprise, even Jimmy’s, lifted off rather easily, clearing the trees at the end by a good hundred feet. Curving away from the field, he saluted down at all the men who had helped.

He needed to take up a heading of 28 degrees to get to Truk. First, he tapped the direction gauge at the top left of the controls, and then twisted the dial so that 28 degrees was now at the top. This made it easier to keep track of the heading. He throttled back to the 250 mile-per-hour speed Breslow had told him to use.

Within minutes, the weather cleared off nicely. He reached his altitude of three thousand feet. It was nice to be this far up: the terrible humidity lessened at this altitude and became almost bearable. He was flying into the sunrise, dawn becoming visible as a pale pink and gold glow along the horizon.

In less than an hour, Jimmy could just make out the eastern tip of Manus, an island in the Admiralties Group to the west maybe fifty miles off. The dark was giving way to a clear day with unlimited visibility. Past Manus he entered what he feared the most, what the colonel had called “the dead zone,” where there was no landfall for five hundred miles. He would have to fly directly across this area to reach Truk. On the way back he would have to radio Skate and then fish in, right in the middle of this great void, trusting that the sub would find him.

He made navigational checks every few minutes. He was bucking a head wind of thirty knots or more. That’s very unusual for this time of the year, he thought, for wind like that to come out of the north. The prevailing currents here most of the year are from west to east.

Slowly the miles went by, the great Allison motors straining with the weight but still singing their song. Carefully, Jimmy managed the fuel from the two massive three hundred-gallon drop tanks, taking thirty minutes’ worth from one, then the other, and marking the details down carefully on a chart he kept by his right foot. Once, far to the west, he saw the reflection of something. His heart sank for a moment, but he did not see it again. He concluded that it was one of the enemy search planes they’d told him to expect. I’ll have to be lucky, he thought. My life won’t be worth much if they see me coming. Luckily, he saw nothing for the rest of the three-hour trip.

The bright sun was well up in the sky, illuminating the ocean. He’d never flown over water very much. It struck him that the water didn’t look like water. It looked like a solid substance. Terrain, even New Guinea with its unending jungle sameness, had more depth to it. But the ocean from several thousand feet up looked foreboding, two-dimensional. It seemed like a gigantic grayish bedsheet going off in every direction.

Another hour passed in a blur of hot sun and engine noise. By 0810, with the headwind still holding, Jimmy figured he was about eighty miles from the center of Truk Lagoon and seventy miles from the target. As instructed, he brought Mara down to fifty feet to avoid the enemy radar. Still, he saw no sign of enemy planes. By 0825, his keen eyesight spotted the target, perhaps twenty miles off, a tall metal tower on a small island on the southern end of Truk atoll.

He was almost dead on target. That was a relief. His heart rate rose as he made his preparations to attack. Banking a bit to the right, he reached for a lever and dropped his two wing tanks, which were mostly spent anyhow. Then he throttled up to about three hundred miles per hour, intently scanning the sky in every direction, and turned on the control panel switch that armed the bomb.

Soon, just as Hazelton had briefed him, Jimmy began to fly up a corridor with small coral islands on each side. With half a mile to go, very inaccurate and light antiaircraft fire began to come in from his right. None of it came very close.

At 0831, after throttling back to about two hundred miles per hour, Jimmy pulled up on the stick and dropped his bomb from about 1,500 feet. He wheeled about, heading south, and looked back to see if he had hit the target. There was so much smoke rising, he couldn’t tell for sure.

I’m sure not going to swing around to take another look, he decided.

The sharp rattle of guns was opening up on him from all sides now. He pushed the throttles all the way forward and turned for home. As he got clear of the harbor, he came up in altitude and kicked the airspeed up to about 350. At this speed, the enemy would have to be on him immediately to have any chance of catching him.

Nothing followed. Twenty minutes and more than a hundred miles out, he stepped the engines back to 250. He began regular calculations of his position, and rubbernecked every few minutes to see if anyone was coming after him. It was hard to believe that he had gotten away with it!

The weather continued clear. Forty minutes later, with two hundred gallons of fuel left, Jimmy began looking for Skate. He was to meet the sub at 150 degrees west longitude and 4 degrees above the equator. After several minutes of staring at ceaseless ocean, he thought he saw the faint shape of a submarine, far ahead and a little to the west.

“Yes, there it is!” he yelled out, with a smile on his face. Sure is an ugly-looking thing, he thought.

He began his descent, pulling back on the throttles. The water looked calm, almost glassy. He figured it would be easy to set the plane down. He came closer and began a wide circle.

Looking out the corner of his eye, Jimmy was amazed to see the sub submerging. What’s going on here? He wondered. Then he saw it: a big red Rising Sun insignia on the sub’s conning tower!

“Shit!” he blurted. It was a Japanese sub! He leveled Mara II and flew off to the south, then tried to raise Skate on the radio. Nothing!

Perhaps she was somewhere near. She might be submerged and eying the enemy sub through the periscope. Or maybe the Japanese had gotten her, sunk his intended rescuers.

I can’t stay around here waiting, he thought. I gotta get out of here! He turned back toward his base. He sure couldn’t fly around in circles—he was in the middle of the dead zone!

He’d gone from feeling almost safe to being completely lost. It’s 250 miles to the nearest landfall, he thought. I’d better cut my speed back to 160, and feather one engine.

Jimmy’s left hand went to the side of the cockpit. He didn’t have to look to grasp the red plastic ball of the right motor and pull it back. Soon, the engine, starved for fuel, coughed. The propeller quickly slowed, and then began windmilling. As the plane slowed, he worried over turning the motor off. Some guys don’t think feathering one motor saves fuel, he thought. I have no idea. I should have asked Breslow. But I never thought this would happen! I just don’t know what to do. Why did I trust the Navy?

He looked at the vital fuel gauges. I had 410 gallons when I jettisoned the wing tanks and attacked the radar station, he lamented. I roared out of there at top speed! I might as well have dumped the fuel out the window! He tapped on the fuel gauge. All I have left is a hundred! A hundred gallons! Where’s the nearest landfall? he wondered.

He spread his map over his knees and stared at it. There were some islands to the north, he noticed, Sae Island, and a little to the north, the Kaniet Islands. He wondered if they were controlled by the Japanese. Almost panicking, he scoured the map again, shaking his head. Then he saw it. Manus!

His mind raced. He thought: I passed it in the darkness, how many hours ago? It’s the nearest landfall that’s definitely not in enemy hands. MacArthur just invaded the place, though—how much of it is in Allied hands?

Then he remembered what the Colonel had said: “Seaadler Harbor on the eastern end of Manus is under our control.” But the center of the fifty-mile-long island would be closer—maybe by only five miles or so, but closer. Five miles farther to go could mean the difference between being alive or dead.

Jimmy studied the map. There was a Catholic mission on the coast near the middle of the island. It was his best chance, maybe his only chance. If I reach the mission, he thought, I can turn east toward Seeadler Harbor.

After a quick calculation, he came over to a heading of 192 degrees and readjusted the direction gauge. He checked the fuel level. Only ninety gallons were left.

“That’s not enough!” he cried.

Much of what followed, he later blocked out of his mind. He looked at the gauge every few seconds, what seemed like thousands of times. He stared ahead for land he knew could not yet be there, sweat pouring down his face, his heart pounding in his chest. Each gallon of fuel gone made cold panic rise inside him. It never stops dropping! he thought.

Finally, Jimmy thought he saw land, a headland just a little to the west.

“Yes, yes,” he brayed. “Land, maybe fifty miles off ! Twenty gallons! Not enough!”

His heart rate went higher still, a rate that would have brought on a stroke in an older man. As the miles tediously closed he became even more frantic. The gas gauge was on empty! He pounded on the little dial on the left of the panel.

For a time he completely lost control of himself, terror gripping him. He pounded on the instrument panel, screaming in a high-pitched, unearthly voice, lurching up and down in his seat.

“Please, please, please just one more mile,” he screeched. “One more is all I ask! Save me this one time! Please, help me! I don’t want to die. Oh God, don’t kill me like this! I’ve come so close. Please, please, please!”

Then the terrain of the island was there beneath him, rushing past. As he came over the beach, he could see the mission a mile or so to the west. Hurriedly wiping sweat and tears from his eyes, he circled to the left.

Then the motor stopped, the sound that had become a part of his very existence for almost six and a half hours sputtering out. He continued his circle, knowing the mammoth plane could not go far.

It coasted just far enough to get him about four hundred yards off shore, where he pulled back on the stick and landed softly in the ocean. He popped the canopy open, but the plane sank so quickly that he swam right out, into the cool water.

Jimmy laughed, elated. The sea was like glass. He could see the trees and the mission so clearly.

I can swim in easy! he thought. He inflated his Mae West life preserver and struck out for the beach.

But he pulled for naught. The neap tide, far stronger than he’d ever expected, kept pulling him back into the offshore depths. Within minutes, he was exhausted. The stress of the long flight had sapped what strength he had.

Damn, he thought, watching the shore recede. Then he was motionless in the sea, unconscious.

He awoke to shouting and hands hauling him out of the water. A hard thump, and he realized he was lying in the bottom of a canoe.

A man, brown-skinned, definitely not Japanese, leaned over him. Jimmy could hardly understand him over the excited chatter of the others in the boat and the slopping waves.

“We’re from the mission,” the man shouted. “We saw you come down in the water, and we figured you needed help.”

Jimmy smiled, dazed, watching the clouds rotate above him as the canoe turned and started heading back to shore.

I’ve made it, he thought. I’m safe. I’m going home to Mara and my baby.

Colonel Hazelton had been more correct than he knew: for Jimmy DeValery it had indeed been a very, very tough job. This one day plagued him and brought ringing back into his mind every bad memory the war held for him, and thus took years from his life. In the hundreds of months that followed, the memories never faded away. He teared over them too many times to count, and wept when he knew no one was around.

Part of it was losing his second plane. When his friends had been killed or rotated back home, Mara II seemed to be all he had left. He gave her credit for pulling them out of scrapes, getting off the ground with more weight than anyone could ask of her, and bringing him all the way back to Manus against all logic and science. Until the day he died, it never occurred to him that the headwind he encountered on the way to the target was the tailwind that made the difference in getting him to Manus. It was not that he had wanted Mara II to go to some replacement pilot. But he had lost her, forsaken her in the sea.

A larger part was the guilt he felt in surviving the war. He had watched others from his squadron—Tony Andreas, Dorsey, Billy Mayford, Forski, and Black—die so easily, sometimes in quirky ways that made their entire lives seem so trivial, as though it had not mattered that they had lived. And he had survived when he should not have, when the odds had been too steep. The largest part, though, was the sheer terror he had experienced during the run in to Manus.

A terrible, haunting shame pervaded his life. Even to his wife, whom he loved more than life, he could say nothing. With her woman’s intuition, she understood better than he would have wished, and perhaps better than he did himself. And she knew that she must never ask him about it. Yes, he was grateful to be alive and have a family with a loving wife and two beautiful children, but he was alive and the others were dead. The war had brought him to the edge of a great void where he hung, and where the difference between what he regarded as the terrible unfairness of life and the darkness of death was scant. Thousands of times he awoke in a sweat, or lay in bed, seeing the same images of his friends being killed over and over again, just as clearly as the day they happened.

Gradually, with the passage of decades, he could manage to say some things to his grown children. He told them of being trapped by the Zeroes at Dobodura and of the “mistakes” he thought he had made at Wewak to lose Mara I. But of the fear that had gripped him at Manus, he could not speak. He never sought the sympathetic ears of his war buddies or his wife. He just bore it in his heart until the end.

The Gift

Mara and Jimmy’s Life

Do not beseech me to turn from and leave you.

Where you will go, I will go,

And where you stay I will stay.

Your people will be my people,

And your God will be my God.

Where you die, I will die,

And there I will be buried.

May the Lord punish me, be it ever so severely,

If anything but death separates you and me.

—Ruth 1:16–1:17

New International Version

Wilson, North Carolina, August 4, 1980

Claire DeValery Baines pulled the letter from the mailbox she was expecting from her eighty-two year old grandmother, Hannah Thurmond, very ill in the hospital in Raleigh sixty miles away. With the death of her father, Jimmy, Claire had called her several days before and the two had had a brief conversation.

“Is your Mama doing Okay, Claire? I talked to her last night.”

“No, not really, but I suppose as well as could be expected.”

Oh, Claire,” she had said, “it breaks my heart to have to miss your father’s service. I would give anything to be there, but the doctor says ‘No,’ and I must accept that.” She had gone on to say that she would write a few things. The letter had arrived just before the service and Claire opened it. Inside were hand written pages which Claire knew were not in her grandmother’s hand. Then she saw a note at the top in a wavering scroll: “Claire, Mrs. Patterson, a very nice person who is sitting with me, wrote this up. I just had to write something.”

Claire went in the house, smiled as she passed those sitting in the living room with her mother and sister, and went upstairs to her childhood bedroom where she had spent the last two nights, and begin to read it.

I have to say in my long life, it began, that besides the memory of my loving husband, Hermes, and my wonderful daughter, Margaret Ann, I am most grateful for my son-in-law, Jimmy DeValery.

He was the handsomest and nicest man I ever knew. You might think it odd, but his good looks were particularly hard on your mom, my dear and only child, Margaret Ann Thurmond DeValery. Once, in my hearing, in talking to her two daughters about their father, she blurted out something in great emotion.

“I thought myself too plain for him!”

It hurt my feelings for many years. I watched as she dabbed at her eyes with a tissue for a long while she was consoled by the girls.

I suppose most would have agreed that, like me, she was not thought to be any kind of a great beauty. She was short rather than statuesque, had average skin, and mousy brown hair which she admitted was “like straw.” I didn’t think so, but she always thought her nose was too big. Certainly, most thought it a mystery as to what her war hero husband, who might have charmed a fence post, saw in her. It was not made easier for her that her girls, first Claire and her baby, Helen, called “Bye,” both competed in the Miss North Carolina beauty pageant. But to Jimmy DeValery, she was the world and all of its treasures.

It certainly wasn’t that he could not function without her. He proved a very good and innovative executive in the tobacco industry, a good provider, and a wonderful father. In front of strangers, even large crowds, he could tell story after story, entertaining them thoroughly, and leaving them laughing. But he so much preferred being with his “Mara,” as he alone called her. And he did not have to be the center of attention. He preferred that she drive. He regularly went shopping with her and never complained even when he waited for long periods of time.

Generally, he deferred to her in all things from fashion to things for the house. When he left on a business trip on which she could not accompany, a number of times I saw him he noticeably ill at ease at the airport in Raleigh. He would look back at her when he was boarding, a worried look on his face, usually stepping awkwardly. Twice I saw the former gifted athlete either brush into a wall or actually walk into one. He and I often had long talks, and he told me that when he saw her his heart leaped and sometimes he felt faint.

It was a standing joke in our town, that he was just helpless near her. His first thought always was to be with her and to care for her, and he did so every day of their lives together until the moment of his death. Even when his health deteriorated and his heart had become paper thin, he waited on her, despite anything she or I or the children could say. There was simply no stopping him. On July 29, 1980, he went to the kitchen to get her a soft drink and didn’t come back. She found him on the floor dead of a heart attack. The look on his face was one of peace. He had been doing what he wanted to do.

Over the years people began to change their minds around my Margaret Ann. She projected an aura of goodness and kindness with which she could transform a room when she entered. She had had a great gift, a fairy tale love, which validated her and made her into a better person than she might have been. She glowed with a sense of happiness that was lovely indeed. People said, “She has light in her eyes.”

Theirs was a sweet love story which went on for nearly fifty years. The two became a couple when they were still in grade school. She had almost no choice in the matter at all. She told the story all of her life that one day on the playground in third grade she noticed a boy watching her. A day or so later one of her little friends noticed the boy and asked about him.

“Oh,” Margaret Ann said, “he’s always there at recess. I don’t know his name.”

The next day, the friend reported back.

“His name is Jimmy. He’s in fourth grade.”

Soon, he began to come to our house after school. I was won over the first time I ever saw him. He would knock on the door, and when I opened it there he was, an innocent look upon his face. His question was the same every time.

“Is Mara here?”

My lips just have to tremble over this more than half a century later. He was the cutest little boy! I could have just picked him up and hugged him. You know, he was the only person who ever called her Mara, but no one had the heart to tell him not to. Why he called her that I never learned. In the Bible in the book of Ruth, Naomi tells her daughters-in-law to call her “Mara” which means “bitter” because her life had been so hard. So we didn’t want that, but that’s the way it was. Happily, I think they never had a bitter day in their married life. He never lost that innocence, even in the war. That’s why it hurt him so badly. My eyes just have to moisten thinking about that.

Hermes, who had no middle name or initial, was not so quickly impressed. Once, in the beginning, he called Jimmy “that little ragamuffin,” and his family “little better than beggars.” It went on for a while until one day, after church, I had to say something. Margaret Ann had cleared the dishes and gone to spend the afternoon with a neighbor girl. We were at the sink finishing up and I turned to my dear husband.

“I don’t want you to talk against Jimmy anymore.”

He was a thin, already graying man then, and I know I caught him off-guard.

He said, “What are you talking about?”

“You know very well what I’m talking about. It’s true his folks don’t have much, and that his clothes and things are plain, but he’s clean when he comes here. He’s a nice little boy.”

“He’s just not of our standing in this community is all I mean,” he said.

I’m sure he was wondering why we were having such a conversation.

“When we have him sit down to supper you know he’s had nice manners, saying ‘Yes, Ma’am’ and ‘No, Sir.’”

“Yes, well,” he said, still not clear in his mind what I was saying.

“Then give the boy a chance as father gave you and me a chance. Principal Gilford’s wife, Lorna, says that Bob says that Jimmy’s the smartest child in that school, as smart as that Jackson boy who went to Princeton. It will probably come to nothing between the two. But let Margaret Ann have someone who pays her attention, like you did me. He really does help her with her school work.”

“Well, I sure can’t help her. It’s over my head.”

Thus little Jimmy was allowed to continue to come and was welcomed by all three of us. One day went into another, and then the years rolled by and he would come, in all kinds of weather, always with the same innocent look on his face, just wishing to see Margaret Ann. He brought her a present everyday he came! Oh, I can’t think of that without chocking up a little. They were just simple things, a flower, a dandelion, or a little figurine. Every day! He would hold it in front of him as I opened the door. Margaret Ann kept them in a drawer for years and years, until the dandelion petals had long since turned to dust.

His attraction to Margaret Ann was just the natural love God intended the male and female relationship to have.

“Mom,” as he lovingly called me. “I liked to see her, her form, her silhouette, how those old print dresses hung on her long before she had any figure at all, how she holds her head, how she leans forward ever so slightly when she walks. I like her hair, and how her face scrunches all up when she’s asleep, and how she holds the girls in her arms.”

They were lovers, and best friends, one of those lucky couples who grow closer as the years passed, can talk rather continuously about almost nothing, producing a contentment and joy in both. Their lives together were like an endless summer.

Claire had teared reading the narrative and was surprised as it ended so abruptly. Then she noticed a sentence at the bottom that explained it: “Your grandmother is tired now and needs to rest. I will send this on to you. Good luck with the service and all. Lou.” She nodded thanking her grandmother and feeling a little pressure knowing what was ahead of her. In only three hours she stood in the church where she had grown up, and walked to the podium on this very hot day to deliver her eulogy.

“As with everything else he did,” she began, “whether it was being a pilot or executive or husband, Daddy was a wonderful parent as well. He was always there for us girls. When we were sick, he would come and sleep on the floor next to our beds just in case we might cry or need comfort. When we were older and asked him if he was uncomfortable when he slept on the floor, he had a standard answer.

“‘It sure beats the cot I had at Nadzab.’

“It took me years to realize that Nadzab was a base he was assigned to in New Guinea during the war. Many a time he would pick us up unannounced from elementary or middle school. He would say, ‘I just missed you and wanted to see you!’

“We thought every daddy was like that.

“He scratched our backs almost every chance he got, a sweetness we have passed on to our own families. He called it ‘tickling’ but it was really caressing, running his right index finger over our faces. He had a real knack for it. He could caress Mama’s face and pretty much rid her of the migraine headaches she occasionally suffered. And always, he said sweet things to all three of us at every turn.

“He told Mama, ‘I never wanted to let a chance go by to be sweet to my sweethearts,’ and that was the way it was.

“He pursued no other interests for himself until we girls were grown. As his time permitted, he met our teachers, took us to Miss Farmer’s for ballet lessons, even went to play rehearsals, and anything else that came up.

“And he was very funny too. He always had jokes to tell us. We came to learn that he tested his material on us, and if we liked them, he would put them in his seemingly endless talks before groups or conventions. They were never pointed, or gender sensitive, just good wholesome jokes which never hurt anyone’s feelings. We never had any idea where he got them, or if he made them up himself. In my career as a writer of two novels on the World War II generation, I have actually used some of his stories for my main character, based on my dad. Here are two I heard him deliver which the audiences particularly liked. The first he told in Raleigh at a convention when he was introducing a candidate for political office.

“The old backroom politician died and went up to Heaven where he saw St. Peter at the gate.

“‘My son,’ the Heavenly One said, ‘we would like to give you a chance to see if you would like to remain here with us, or would rather live in Hell. So, take a few moments here to look about.’ The politician looked around very carefully, noting that everyone was wearing white, playing harps or flutes, reading books and doing a lot of skipping.

“In a few minutes he took the elevator down to Hell. It took a long time. When the door finally opened, he saw a lot of voluptuous women scantily clad, the finest Canadian liquor free for the asking, and lots of gambling. He seemed to fit right in, and in the short time he was there having lots of fun, laughing and carrying on.

“Later, when he went up to see St. Peter, the old gentlemen asked where he would like to wind up. ‘Well, Pete, you have a good thing going for you here, but I think I’ll take my chances in the other place.’

“Again he entered the elevator and in a few minutes the door opened in Hell. All he could see was a desert of unspeakable heat. People were suffering terribly, moaning, sobbing, and pulling on his clothes, begging for a drink. The Devil happened by just then. ‘Hey,’ the politician asked in shock, ‘what had happened to the all of the things I saw a few minutes before?’

‘Oh,’ the Devil said, ‘those were just our campaign promises!’

“This last one he told to a group at women’s club:

“A woman went to the doctor for her annual checkup.

After all of the tests, the doctor came in and said, ‘Well, Delores, you’re in fine shape for a woman your age, but there is one thing I should tell you, you’re pregnant!’

In shock, the woman burst out of the room, rushed to the phone in the outer office and dialed a number.

“I can see him right now, a wry smile on his face, and an occasional lifting of an eyebrow.

“‘Are you sitting down for this one?’ she yelled into the receiver.

‘Yes, I think so,’ he answered timidly.

‘I’m pregnant!’ she screamed.

His tone changed.

‘That’s impossible!’ he said determinedly.

‘No, I’m serious. I’m pregnant!’

Just as determinedly, he said again, ‘That’s impossible!’

‘I’m here in the Doctor’s office,’ she said, talking down to him, ‘and he says I’m pregnant!’

‘Who is this?’ he asked.”

“Of course, there was another side to Daddy that we came to discover. The war had been very destructive to him. As children, Bye and I had no idea of the damage it had done. When they were old enough to understand that he had been a pilot in the war, we were intent on asking him all about it. We wanted him to fly us places on great planes, or at least see him fly, but we never did. Flying was still new enough then to be magical in itself for most people. The harsh aspects of people he loved being killed in the war completely eluded his daughters.

“The war was fascinating to us: a desperate foe defeated by my daddy and other men. Good versus evil. These men were uncompromising heroes on the order of the Knights of the Round Table. It has been my lifelong wish to read as much as I could about that generation to aid me in my writing.

“Father’s plane was of great interest to me and in time I came to read about the plane’s proclivity to go into a ‘flat spin’ which fascinated and puzzled me. I could not imagine what it was. It remained in my mind until one day when I was home from college I came right out and asked Daddy about it.

“‘Oh,’ he said. He sat in his chair in the living room for a long moment and then began. ‘The P-38 was a very hard plane to fly. At high altitude, it was such a delight!’ His face brightened. ‘Your vision was just wondrous; its maneuverability was like that of a dancer. But lower,’ and his voice flattened, and he paused and shook his head. ‘Lower it had many faults, like in diving and in that spin. I told you of diving to get away from Zeroes one time.’

“‘At Dobodura,’ I chimed in.

“‘Yes. It was so heavy that it didn’t do well diving at lower altitudes. It was so heavy up front with those two big motors that it was hard to pull out of a dive. It was sort of like maneuvering with a cement truck.’

“He laughed weakly and so I thought it was okay to press him about the flat spin. I asked and he nearly cut me off.

“‘It was very bad,’ he said.

“My heart sank with a serious look on his face that I might have brought bad memories back to him. But it was too late and he went on.

“‘The plane was sort of rectangular is probably the best way to explain it,’ he said. ‘It had the two fuselages with a motor at the front of each, both hooked together by a nacelle which held the pilot. Fifty-two feet wide but almost forty feet long, I forget the exact length. Anyway, at low altitude, in maneuvering around, the plane could get out of control and begin to spin flatly. I know that sounds crazy, a plane spinning like a Frisbee. But unless you could get out of it, the plane would continue to spin, losing altitude, until you crashed.’

“I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help but ask the obvious question. ‘Did it ever happen to you?’

“‘Yes, twice,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘I should have known better by the second time. I was just a kid.’

“He paused for a while, obviously reflecting.

“‘The only way out of it was to, well—picture yourself spinning around quickly but flatly. If it was a dark day, I never saw anyone get out of it. But if it was a bright enough day that you were able to pick out an object on the horizon, and you could gun the engines each time you spun around to that object. Gradually, the spin would become an ellipse, and you could fly out of it.”

Claire looked up at the audience and smiled as most smiled back at her. “My parents had a good life together. I am sorry for all of us that Daddy was hurt so much by the war, and is not here rubbing and scratching our backs. But he got to see his grandchildren and was loved very much. We were lucky to have had him in our lives for as long as we did. We were luckier than many families whose loved ones never came back.”

Harry Connors Stories

Mojarra

Dorance, Iowa, April 5, 1970

Harry Connors’ Kiwanis friends had specifically asked him to go to the town meeting, and so he went, even though his wife, Dell, could not accompany him. Today’s topic was the Vietnam War. The meeting was supposed to end with everyone making some kind of resolution about whether the town should support it. He could think of a million other things he’d rather discuss than America’s latest war halfway around the world. In fact, cleaning the chicken coop at the farm would be more appealing. If he was doing that, at least he would get to be outside on this sunny day.

Instead, here he was, in the library meeting room with its smell of mildew and sound of buzzing fluorescent lights. Others began the discussion, and he sat quietly, having no intention of saying anything.

“We must support our government,” Cal Werts said. “If the government calls, we must, must answer! It’s our duty as good American citizens, whether we personally agree with the cause or not.”

Daryl Felton spoke next. “I can’t support this much. I don’t like us putting ourselves in a foreign basket. If these people bought farm products or had any prospects of being business customers any time in the future, maybe I could see it. Otherwise, why should my boy go way over there? There’s nothing in it for us. Those people are nothing to us. They don’t even like us.”

Bob Anderson, the local pharmacist, stood and spoke. “I suppose there is something to going overseas. My mother-in-law grew up in what is now East Germany during the war. She says communism is very bad. I know these Vietnam characters are in league with the Soviets, so that is not good.”

Others spoke. Several of the men looked at Harry as if they expected him to speak, but he did not volunteer. He sat still, lost in thought, ignoring the uncomfortable folding chair.

He was jolted to awareness by the sound of Major Kirkman’s voice. “Folks, we have a real war hero here with us, Harry Connors. Harry commanded a submarine in World War II and won the Navy Cross. Harry, we would like you to say something.”

Everyone turned Harry’s way. Reluctantly, he stood. He was a slight man in his middle fifties, with graying temples on his black hair. Though he had not been in the service for more than two decades, the military bearing that never left him was apparent to all. As respected as any person in the community, he projected an air of basic decency and honesty.

He looked around at his friends and neighbors. I wish Dell was here, he thought.

With a long look on his face, he began, in his deep baritone voice: “Well, to tell you the truth, I wish I had never seen the damn medal. Please excuse my language.”

People stared at him. He knew many of them had never heard him swear. He paused for a second, and then went on, slowly.

“I got that medal over the death of several of my closest friends. Since that day, I would have traded it a thousand times for one of their lives. They were good men, much better than I could ever be. Good husbands.” He nodded. “Good fathers. Just . . . good men.”

He paused again.

“Some of you are veterans and will probably agree with what I’m about to say. I think the rest of you will have trouble taking the words of an old hand like me. So, take them for what they’re worth, if anything.

“War is a terrible undertaking not describable with any words I can find. It’s almost useless for me to try to say anything. But if you are determined to go to war, I would say two things to you that are pretty much for certain, two things you might not have considered.

“The first is that you will kill innocent people. However you define the word innocent, no matter how small, you will kill some of these people by accident just because they’ll be in the wrong place at the wrong time. You will kill women and children who are innocents in any Christian sense you can find.

“I contributed directly to the deaths of, I am sure, hundreds of people who were in the ships we sank. Some were enemy soldiers or sailors that I was pledged to kill. But probably the majority were innocent civilians. We may have killed some of our own people who were prisoners of war on those ships. That’s a hard thing to live with.

“Second: your friends will be killed. In war, due to the stakes involved in risking your lives with others, they become friends unlike any that you have known, or will know. They become like brothers, but more.”

He paused, looking around at everyone. Then he continued, his words measured.

“They become a part of your soul. Nothing that anyone could ever say or do will ever change that, not even your own death. And these are the ones who will be killed right in front of your eyes, and you will watch them die, and not be able to do anything about it.”

He nodded in respect to those present.

“Thanks for listening to me. I did not mean to talk so long.”

Harry didn’t look at anyone as he walked back to his seat. He picked up his jacket and walked out of the room. As the door closed behind him, he realized he could hear the discussion resuming behind it. He paused, wondering if he’d had any effect on things.

One young man—it sounded like Danny Buckson, the feed store clerk—said: “I think we should support this. Americans believe in democracy. We need to help the rest of the world in becoming democratic and resisting communism. It is really an evil system.”

Someone else, whose voice Harry couldn’t place, spoke up. “I’m sure war is no fun, but we must support our country.”

Harry decided he’d heard enough.

He left the library and walked across the parking lot to his ’68 Chevrolet Impala. As he opened the door and sat inside, it all flooded back.

There was never a face or recognizable voice that went with it. All he could remember was the outline of a head and a man’s voice. It spoke to him so weakly, so hauntingly, “Harry, I . . . hurt bad! What happened? The . . . whole side . . . caved in.” The voice slipped away, but Harry could not move to help. He had tried so hard to move! Sometimes he awoke in a sweat, thinking he was there in the submarine again, trying to move. But he could not. He was stunned, and it felt as though a great weight were on top of him, pressing down, paralyzing him.

It was one of the memories of the war that troubled him the most. He racked his brain there in the parking lot, as he had thousands of times before. But his mind was blank. He heard the words and saw the vague shape of the head. The great weight had held him down, making it impossible for him to move. Yes, I had an excuse, he thought, staring forward. I sit here in my car, twenty-seven years later, safe in Dorance, Iowa, knowing that I was hurt. But it’s never enough, is it? It’s not a good enough excuse. It’s bad enough that I didn’t help the man, but I don’t even know who he was. Was he an officer? Is that why he called me by my first name? Or was he an enlisted man who called me “Harry” just because he was so badly hurt? If he was an officer, who was it? Was it Don Forbes, or Larry Montain, or Simpson, or Cordell? It might even have been Walter Wood. They all perished in the sinking . . .

October 14, 1943, Central Pacific

The submarine Mojarra, on which Lieutenant Harry Connors was serving, had been making an “end run” at a top speed of twenty-one knots on a convoy off the western edge of Mindanao in the southern Philippines. Several hours earlier, at about 0600, they had seen a large convoy come out of the mists and head due north, directly away. The only thing to do was to try to race around the flank of the convoy and get in front of it for a torpedo attack. A submarine on the surface during the day with the periscope raised and on four-power could see the smoke from ships for many miles, while its little silhouette allowed it to remain almost unseen.

Captain Fostel was on the bridge, barking out orders that were obvious to everyone, as usual. There goes “Hostile Fostel” again, Harry thought, exasperated. The truth was that Fostel was too old to command a submarine. He wasn’t aggressive enough to take the calculated risks necessary for successful command, but was quick to blame that lack of success on others. Harry had witnessed many occasions when Fostel had ridiculed an officer in front of the crew for some triviality. Mr. Wood, he would say, you would have done much better if you had done it this way instead . . .

“What does he know about respect?” Harry mumbled to himself. No explanation or excuse of any type by the victim held any weight with “the Boss,” as he liked being called. In fact, excuses only made it worse. The captain would stubbornly cross his arms and frown at the man without responding. Reprimands took the form of unsavory duties like being on garbage detail, where, just to get it done, the officer would help “Cookie” dump sacks of garbage overboard. The men, officers and enlisted alike, soon learned to just accept Fostel’s criticism and scorn, say nothing, and go about their duties. Named after an insignificant little silver fish, Mojarra was an insignificant and unhappy boat.

And an unlucky one. It went all the way back to Lake Michigan. Mojarra had been built at Manitowoc, Wisconsin, and the crew first assembled there for the commissioning. Fostel first got on everyone’s nerves during the lake trials. That was long before Harry joined the boat for its third war patrol.

Harry’s friend, Don Forbes, told him about one day on the lake in February of 1942, with the temperatures well down into the twenties. As Mojarra labored against the choppy waves, spray splashed onto the bridge and froze almost on contact. It was caked two or three inches thick on everything, from the two periscopes to the safety railings that held in the lookouts. Fostel ordered the boat submerged, but the twenty-four inch wide air intake vent, which had to be closed to make the boat watertight, had frozen solid in the open position. The bridge personnel, busy trying to keep from freezing, had not noticed the open hatch.

As diving officer, when the light on the Green Board showed “red” for the intake, Forbes had cancelled the dive and blown the ballast tanks. This quick action had saved the boat. Had she submerged, it would have been only a matter of minutes before the ice on top of the open valve melted, water poured in by the ton, and the boat went down, carrying the entire crew to their deaths.

Fostel had yelled, “This is the end! My God, we can’t even submerge this goddamn boat!”

That was a bad thing to say on a submarine. The men in the conning tower had looked askance at the captain, not wanting their submarine to be the object of scorn.

Fostel went on. “What will happen next? Mr. Forbes,” he said, his voice rising, his head nodding as he walked toward the young officer. “You are the diving officer. I have made SOO-perhuman efforts to give all of you people a chance to learn the difficult, difficult job of commanding a warship. I would think that you could respond by arranging it so we could SUBMERGE! After all, what are we?”

No one dared speak or even look directly at the captain. Fostel went on anyway, speaking even louder, spittle flying from his mouth.

“We are a submarine! S-U-B-M-A-R-I-N-E!”

He did not seem to notice or care when it took three men with hatchets twenty minutes to chip the solid block of ice from the air intake so Mojarra could indeed dive. Forbes hadn’t dared say anything to Fostel, then or now, but Harry knew he was still pretty upset about the whole mess.

Forbes was hardly the only one Fostel bullied. The result was an inefficient boat on which men squabbled with each other over nothing, and no one wished to take responsibility. In its five war patrols, all under Fostel, the submarine only sank three ships. Fostel always blamed the poor record on “bad luck.”

Younger, more aggressive men were gradually replacing the older commanders. But that took time, months even. When Vice Admiral Charles Lockwood, better known as “Uncle Charlie,” took over the submarine command in May of 1942, everyone on Mojarra hoped he’d remove Fostel. No such luck. Hostile Fostel was still in command. In the meantime, competent officers that came to Mojarra had unsavory experiences and so transferred out as quickly as they could, in a continual revolving door of personnel.

Harry had come to the boat as executive officer. Due to a curious incident, he was the only officer of the nine aboard who became exempt to Fostel’s continuous barrage. Harry had actually upstaged the captain in firing two torpedoes at a freighter at the last second. With Fostel on the scope in the conning tower, all of the preparations for firing had been completed. The enemy ship was just seconds away from an optimum firing setup when the captain began to berate one of the crew! Harry never knew who it was. He had been watching the Combat Data Computer, a very complicated calculating machine, as the diatribe began. It became obvious to Harry that they had to fire immediately or the torpedoes would miss.

The captain was still turned away, oblivious to Harry’s signaling. Harry had then violated the oldest protocol in Navy regulations by taking over from a captain without permission. He just couldn’t help himself. Everyone on board wanted so much to sink enemy ships, to get revenge for Pearl Harbor, to be in the war! Determinedly, he’d shouted, “Fire one, fire two.”

If those things had missed, his career would have ended right there and then. Probably Fostel would have had him put in irons. Fostel spun around, as amazed as outraged, about to start shouting at Connors, when both torpedoes hit!

The crew had erupted in joy. They’d continued cheering as they heard the Japanese freighter begin breaking up and sinking. Fostel had stared at Connors, no joy on his face at all. It must have occurred to him that he could not very well reprimand Harry. Mojarra had sunk a ship, something command had been breathing down their necks to accomplish!

Fostel stalked off, without a word, and retired to his cabin. He never said an unkind word about Harry after that, though he was not complimentary either.

That had been Harry’s first run on Mojarra. This was his fifth, and things just didn’t seem to be getting any better.

He headed down to the Control Room to check on operations. This room, directly under the conning tower, which in turn was below the bridge, earned its name by “controlling” the ship. There were dozens of gauges visible on the four walls, punctuated by the three large steering wheel–like controls: two on the port side of the room, one for each of the diving planes, and the other one on the wall facing the bow, which controlled the rudder.

Harry walked aft, intending to talk with the radar operator. He was in the narrow passage between the Radar Room and the crews’ mess when there was an ear-shattering bang, and the port side of the crew’s mess exploded.

Harry instinctively flung his arms up in front of his face to protect himself. The explosion’s force threw him against the lockers opposite the Radar Room. He looked up, dazed, blood dripping into his eyes, and saw the greenish-blue water of the Central Pacific rushing in through a jagged hole in Mojarra’s side, rising around him and starting to fill the compartment. In the flashes of the dying lights, he could see the steep angle the sub had immediately taken. We’re going down! We’re going down! he thought.

He could never remember actually getting out of the ship. Later, he imagined he must have gone through, or been pulled through, the hole the mine had blown in her side.

He could remember swimming through an interminable rush of dark water, as fast as he could. As he felt the water’s pull slacken, he rose to the surface.

There was a lot of debris floating in the water around him. He grabbed the nearest piece big enough to keep him afloat and hung on, mind and body numb. In a short time, he began to come to his senses. He noticed many men in the water, some crying out in agony. Harry knew he needed to help, so he slipped into the water, which, luckily, was not contaminated by fuel oil.

He was surrounded by chaos: men yelling, some in the water, and some on impromptu rafts, mostly made of deck planking. Harry spotted Captain Fostel, clinging to some debris, mostly unnoticed by those around him.

“Sir, are you all right?”

The captain did not react. His eyes were closed and his head barely above the water. It was obvious that he was terribly hurt. Harry touched him on the shoulder, and he let out a deep moan. Harry called to him again, but the man so familiar to him was beyond responding. He tore Fostel’s shirt, attempting to ease the pressure on the shoulder. It exposed a large puncture wound in his side, streaming blood into the water.

Harry saw Fostel’s grip begin to slip. There was nothing he could do.

He tried to hold the captain up, knowing he would die, listening to the man’s breathing become slower, raspier, then stop. Harry had seen life and death growing up on a farm, and he knew when there was nothing to be done.

He let go of Fostel’s limp body, turning and paddling away. There was a small knot of men floating nearby. He struck out toward them, and then collided with something else afloat.

It was his best friend and bunkmate, Walter Wood.

Wood was floating next to some wood planking, his head barely above the water. Harry saw immediately that he too was in bad shape. He was trying to say something, but he couldn’t speak.

Oh, Walter, I wish it were me, Harry thought.

Wood seemed to recognize Harry and blinked a few times, but said nothing. Harry couldn’t tell where he was hurt. He grabbed his friend and, for some minutes, did his best to hold him to the debris; then Walter became limp, just like Fostel.

Harry couldn’t let go. He held Walter up longer, hoping he had just fainted and would revive. But the burden became too great. He knew he would have to choose! If he held on, the time would come soon when he could no longer save himself.

He looked into Walter’s slack face.

“Walter, forgive me. I can’t hold us up. I have to let you go.”

Walter was dead, Harry knew. His body was completely limp.

Harry felt himself reaching exhaustion, coughing, water coming into his mouth. He had to rest or die. He let go. Walter slipped straight down, and in ten or so feet, was out of sight in the greenish water.

Walter had been his roommate at Annapolis. They’d spent thousands of hours together. He had laughed when Harry came aboard Mojarra at the chance that both wound up on the same ship. Fostel seemed to have a particular dislike of Walter, though no one had a clue as to why. Walter was as amiable a guy as you could find.

Harry grabbed onto the debris and hung on for a while. With the captain dead, he fully realized that he was the senior officer and that he should take charge and swim to try to help the others. But he couldn’t move.

I always kidded Walter that he would become a movie star, he thought, without a smile. And he was such a great runner at Annapolis too. I was best man at his and Sally’s wedding. They didn’t get a chance to have the kids they wanted. Now she’ll have nothing left of him.

His parents are such wonderful people too. His dad tempted both of us with the idea of getting out of the Navy and becoming lawyers in his booming practice. Who’s gonna tell them what happened?

His thoughts were interrupted when one of the men called out: “There’s a ship off to the east!”

Harry couldn’t see well enough from where he was. Carefully, painfully, he climbed onto the largest piece of planking and slowly stood up, recalling something he had overheard the radar man say just before Mojarra exploded. He peered, shielding his eyes from the glare.

His face sank. “It’s that patrol boat we had on the radar before we got hit!”

Quickly, he jumped back in the water. He perched himself on the planking with his torso out of the water and yelled to the men. “There’s a patrol boat out there about three or four miles off. I think she’s headed this way.”

The men who could perked up. A few asked what they were to do. Harry called out to them again.

“Men, whatever you do, don’t signal them. You know that they’ll try to kill us or bring us on board to torture us if they find us. Stay down!”

In the next hour, as the hurt and exhausted men continued to slip away, the patrol boat got closer. Harry prayed for darkness, but the enemy finally saw some of the debris at about 1830. They sped up and closed on some wreckage about five hundred yards from Harry.

First the enemy ran over some men in the water who couldn’t get out of the way. Harry could hear their screams above the craft’s motors. Then they methodically began machine-gunning men from the prow. With such a small ship, they couldn’t take on many survivors, and so took joy in killing the Americans. Harry tried to stay absolutely still, hoping the enemy would mistake him for a corpse. The boat was close enough that he could hear the Japanese laughing.

Suddenly, a tremendous whine came from overhead, and an explosion jarred everyone. A great geyser shot up fifty feet in the air, yards off to the north and much closer to the patrol boat.

“She blew up, sir. That damned patrol boat blew up,” a sailor nearby yelled.

No, I don’t think so, Harry thought. As the geyser dissipated, it once more revealed the Japanese patrol boat. Men on the deck of the little ship began scurrying about. In about fifteen seconds another of the heavy and menacing sounds came whistling through the air, and another explosion rocked everyone.

“Someone’s shooting at them!” a sailor shouted.

Harry watched as another shell came even closer to the enemy craft. He was simply amazed.

Jeez, he thought to himself, THAT is a gun! Unbelievable power! If I ever get my own sub, I want a gun like that! It must be one of our newer subs, a Balboa Class with one of those five-inch guns instead of our three-inch. If I ever get a gun like that, I am going to use it!

Shells continued to come close to the enemy ship. The Japanese got under way as fast as they could. Having nothing to match the big cannon, they moved off in the opposite direction and began to build up speed. One of the shells came very close. Harry could barely see as men were blown from the deck by the explosion. Soon the Japanese disappeared to the west.

In the next half hour, it became quite dark. With the overcast sky, Harry and the other men could see very little. But soon a long black shape loomed into view and lights began to flash in their direction. The men yelled in the direction of the lights, and the boat drew closer.

Away from the lights, no doubt, more men were lost. It was impossible to tell. Harry thought, Those lights can be seen for miles. These guys are risking their lives to save us!

Harry swam from group to group, yelling out into the void to see if anyone was still out there. When everyone he could find was taken on board, he came alongside himself.

“You Lieutenant Connors?” a voice called down.

“Yes,” he answered, looking up into some lights and not being able to see the face that asked the question.

As he climbed up toward the bridge, Harry started to shake. A hand he could barely see reached down and helped him up the last rungs of the ladder. He climbed onto the deck. The helping hand belonged to a tall, red-haired man who looked vaguely familiar.

“You Connors?”

“Yes, sir.”

“This is the submarine Bluefin. I’m ‘Red’ Phelps.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry said, smiling. “I remember you from the Academy. I was in the ’37 class, two behind you.”

“Let’s go below. I’m sure you’re beat. Get him a blanket,” he said to someone, “he’s shaking like a leaf.”

They went down into the conning tower, to the Control Room directly below it, and then to the captain’s cabin. Phelps took one look at Harry and started a little.

“Harry, you need to have someone look at that wound.”

“Wound, sir?”

“Harry, you have blood all over the right side of your face. It’s matted in your hair. You feel okay?”

“Yes, sir. How many did we get?”

Phelps frowned. “Looks like ten men, including you. Four were dead in the water.”

Harry slumped a bit. Mojarra had had an eighty-man crew.

Phelps jumped up to steady Harry.

“Harry, I want you to lie down right here in my bunk before you collapse.”

Harry passed out the moment he hit the bunk.

He awoke to someone bandaging his head. He squinted up. The man tending him looked very tired and very young.

“I’m Botel, sir. I amount to a medic around here. You can try sitting up, but go slow. You’ve been out for a while.”

“My crew!” Harry said, sitting up. This time sitting up was not so painful. “What about my crew?”

“Well, sir, I’m sorry to say we lost a man late in the afternoon yesterday, Seaman Wolston.”

“Rudy Wolston. I never even saw him in the water,” Harry said. Wolston had been only eighteen. He was from Dubuque, Iowa, only eighty miles from Dorance. The two Iowans had spent much time talking. He was an only child, Harry thought, and his dad died years ago. Now his mom’s got no one left.

He looked up again. “What about the others?”

“They’re under control.” The young pharmacist’s mate nodded. “A broken leg, several broken arms, many contusions, a bad concussion, as bad as yours, but they should all recover.”

The doorway curtain opened, and the steward stuck his head in the cabin. “Sir, if you’re okay, the captain says you are to eat something first, then come see him on the bridge.”

“Okay. What’s the time?”

“About 1600, sir.”

Twenty-four hours have passed, Harry thought as he stood up. I guess I feel okay so far. He was wavering a little, but only because he had been off his feet for so long.

“Thanks,” he said to Botel, then stepped into the submarine’s narrow hallway and wobbled down to the Wardroom down the hall. There were only a few people there, drinking coffee and talking amongst themselves.

Harry stood uncertainly in the doorway, looking around. One of the guys looked familiar. He stared, then remembered the man’s name: Julian “Rocky” Fordyce, from the class after his at the Naval Academy.

“Harry, come on in!” Rocky called.

Harry stepped in and was glad to sit down again.

“Sorry about your crew, Harry,” Rocky said.

“Yeah.”

Soon, they were joined by Ted Felders, whom Harry recognized—barely—from one of the later Academy classes. Both men sat quietly and respectfully as Harry had some coffee and a sandwich. He wasn’t sure exactly what was in the sandwich—but it sure tasted good.

Afterward, as he made his way past the Sonar Room to the Control Room, a passing young officer stuck out his hand.

“I’m Pete Danford, sir. Glad to have you aboard.”

“Thanks.”

Harry nodded to each man in the Control Room and felt okay going up the ladder and through the tiny opening to the conning tower.

“Is the captain on the bridge?” he asked. As the men looked his way, he recognized Rudy Ferrell, who had been a year behind him at the Academy.

“Hey, Harry!” Ferrell bounced over to him, and they shook hands warmly. “I’m sorry about Walter. I know how close you two were.”

“Thanks. The captain up top?”

“Yeah.”

Harry ascended the ladder to the bridge, feeling much more encouraged. As he emerged into the light and wind, he immediately saw the captain from slightly behind.

The boat was traveling at Standard speed, about sixteen knots. Phelps’ famous red hair blew straight back. Harry remembered that Phelps had been a star on the Academy football team and become famous for a particular goal line stand in the Army-Navy game of 1935. He was well known throughout the service as a good commander, fair in his dealings, good to the men.

“You okay, Harry?”

“I think so, sir,” he said as the two shook hands.

“Harry,” Phelps began, “there are several things I need to talk to you about.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Well, that’s probably the first one. Harry, we’re very informal on Bluefin. The men might have called you ‘lieutenant’ or ‘sir,’ but that’s only because they don’t know you yet. Soon they’ll start calling you ‘Harry.’ I want you to be okay with that.”

Harry thought how different that would be from the formality Fostel had demanded—and how much nicer. He’d already noticed a different air to this boat. The men were contented, happy, something he had not seen before.

“That’s fine, sir,” he answered.

“Everyone calls me ‘Red.’”

“Red, how the hell did you find us?”

“It was just sheer luck, Harry. We heard your report of the convoy, and Pearl ordered us to back you up. We were coming up as fast as we could, dead astern of the convoy. My exec [executive officer] Louie Rice was on the bridge, and he thought he saw an explosion to the west. None of the lookouts saw anything, because they were concentrating on the convoy to the north. He thought it was either a ship being torpedoed or hitting a mine. Was it a mine?”

“I think so.”

“Anyhow, we couldn’t raise you. We had to assume that either you had blown up or were submerged ahead of the convoy. From your last transmission, Rudy Ferrell, who was doing the plot with Louie on the bridge, came to the conclusion that you had not had enough time to get that far ahead. But that’s when the appendicitis hit Louie! He just keeled over on the bridge. I was below. We took up the wrong heading, because all he got out was that it was off to the west. He was doubled over and couldn’t even say anything. Botel, our pharmacist’s mate, who you’ve met, performed the operation.”

“He did a nice job cleaning me up too.”

“He’s a good man. Says Louie will be okay, but won’t be getting out of his bunk for probably a week. So it was several hours before we came this far west and found you. The tip-off was that damn patrol boat firing away at your men. I am very sorry about that. You were unlucky that Louie got sick, but lucky that he saw anything in the first place.

“Harry, I’ll get straight to the point. I need an executive officer, and I want you to fill that spot if you’re up to it. You know Louie. He was in the class ahead of yours, I think.”

“Yes, he was.”

“Well, he’s laid up below with appendicitis. Fleet has already hinted that, when we get back, Louie will be in line for his own command. We have some good young officers aboard. I wouldn’t trade any one of them for a trip to the Rose Bowl. They will be ready soon, but they are not ready now. I know of your troubles on Mojarra. Hell, the whole fleet knows. I hope you can do this for us. You up for it?”

“I would be honored!”

“I thought you would. Word came from Pearl an hour ago officially transferring you to this boat.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Red.”

Harry nodded, and the two shook hands.

The Devil’s Cauldron

Central Pacific, January 4, 1944

Harry Connors was in the Control Room when the message came in to his submarine, Bluefin, over the radio from Commander Submarines Pacific at Pearl Harbor, known as ComSubPac. Bluefin was to leave the convoy they’d been trailing for hours and divert south to an island that no one on the boat had ever heard of before.

Harry called to the bridge with the message. Captain Phelps, Red to his crew, swore, which was very unusual. “God damn it, Harry,” he said over the phone. One of the lookouts later said he had thrown his cap down on the deck of the bridge. “What are they thinking at Pearl?” he demanded. “How can they do that to me? I want you to ask for a retransmission over my name. I know it will give away our position, but I just don’t care.”

In only a few minutes a message came back, which one of the other men painstakingly decoded. It was identical to the first. Red won’t like this, Harry thought, and buzzed the bridge again.

“Red, here it is, ComSubPac at the top, etc., the same message: ‘PROCEED IMMEDIATELY NISSAN ISLAND, GREEN ISLAND ARCHIPELAGO. HIGH PRIORITY. DETAILED TRANSMISSION WILL FOLLOW.’ By the way, Red, they even give us the heading of 175 degrees, I suppose just in case we can’t find this jewel on the map.”

Phelps swore again, and again Harry thought how unusual it was—Phelps must have mistakenly left the intercom on. He couldn’t recall ever hearing the captain cuss before. But it was the fifty-fourth day of the patrol, and their pickings north of the Bismarck Archipelago had been very slim—only five ship sightings and only one sunk, a medium-sized tanker of about four thousand tons. They weren’t used to such poor luck on Bluefin, and it wore hard on Red. This was only Harry’s second patrol with the ship, but on a submarine the patrols were long and you got to know people quickly, working in close quarters. Harry had never seen the captain this low.

“All right, Harry,” Phelps said after a long pause, obviously disheartened. “Come over to 175 degrees. Stay at flank speed.”

Almost immediately, the boat heeled over. Then she slinked off from the convoy, which had never known she was there in the first place.

In a few minutes, Harry called up to Red again.

“Red, Rudy has the place on the map. It’s part of an archipelago, a coral atoll, oval in shape. Looks like about two hundred miles east of Rabaul, the big Japanese base, nearly the same distance from our closest base on Bougainville.”

As Harry spoke, he could hear the captain’s voice fading in and out, muttering to himself, still cursing his luck. “I would have given my right arm for a crack at that convoy. Well . . . duty . . . had them right there . . . right there! . . . ah, to hell with it!”

Soon enough, the promised long transmission came in and was laboriously decoded. Harry took it up to the bridge. By this time it was nearly 1530 hours on a bright and beautiful day. Most of the crew on a submarine never got to see the light of day, so Harry always felt privileged to go up through the hatch.

As usual, the first thing he noticed was the captain’s famous red hair blowing back as the 311-foot warship sped along at full speed, a shade over eighteen knots.

Still smarting, Phelps said, “Okay, Harry, read it.”

“FLEET ORDERS # 58-601 . . .”

Phelps interrupted, still agitated. “Hey, they are serious about this, aren’t they? Sorry, go on.”

“Yeah, looks like it,” Harry said. He looked up from the paper at the sour expression on Phelps’ face.

“Harry, you in there for the decoding?” the Captain asked.

“Yeah.”

“Well, cut through the crap and just give me the gist of it.”

“Okay. We’re to rescue this German national from his plantation on this island, part of the Green Island atoll. Fleet must want this guy real bad. They repeat this as High Priority and you know what that means.”

“Yeah. We’re supposed to ‘sacrifice all elements of the command, including men and materials, to the mission at hand.’ So why would we want to put ourselves out for some German guy?”

“They don’t say, Red. There are quite detailed directions, though, as to lying off the easternmost point of the island, appropriately called East Point, and how to get through the reef. Then his plantation is about two miles off down the coast road to the south. They think there are no Japanese there. Looks like there are three islands in this oval-shaped atoll. Nissan is the biggest one, looking like a lowercase ‘j.’ It goes about three-quarters the way around the whole atoll. Then you have two little islands, Sirot and Barahun. I’m guessing that Fleet wants to knock this place over and construct the usual bomber strip, so they can use it to blast Rabaul. This guy must know something. Goes on to say that the surf where we go in is very rough. They call it the Devil’s Cauldron.”

“Oh, that’s just great! Doesn’t this place have the usual passageways into the lagoon?”

“Yeah, but only on the Rabaul side, the west side in between those little islands. Fleet says the Japs run up and down the west side like there’s no tomorrow, so avoid that at all costs. Besides, this guy lives on the east side.”

“So, why not send a seaplane in, have the guy row out, and fly him out?”

“Got me.”

“What’s his name, this German traitor?”

“Vandelmann.”

“So, what’s this ‘Cauldron’ they talk about?”

“Doesn’t say. Just says that we must land there at 1600 hours tomorrow afternoon because the tide will be right just then. We have to find our way through the surf, go to his plantation, get him, and get out.”

The phone buzzed. Phelps pushed the little lever down. It was Rudy Ferrell. As executive officer, Harry was supposed to do the navigating. But Ferrell was the best navigator either Red or Harry had ever seen, so they let him do it instead.

“Red, here’s what I’ve got. I recommend we come down to Standard speed. We’ll still make the place with a couple of hours to spare.”

“Thanks, Rudy, come to Standard now,” Phelps said.

Soon, the boat seemed to hang still for just a second, and the hum of the motors lost a little of their intensity.

“Harry,” Phelps said, “that’ll give us time to look the place over before we go in. I’d better see the orders myself. I’ll study them in my cabin. Take the boat for me for about thirty minutes.”

Harry nodded.

Phelps sidled past, with the orders blowing in his hand. As he did, he said something that would change Harry’s life.

“Harry, I want you to command this thing. Okay?”

That’s new, Harry thought. “Sure, my pleasure. Can I pick who I want?”

“Take whoever you need.”

Harry watched Phelps go back down through the hatch, then looked out at the choppy waves and thin blue horizon again, his stomach twisting with nervousness and anticipation.

Everything seemed to go well enough to start with. Bluefin arrived off what was obviously East Point at a little before 1400, as planned. For two hours, she ran up and down the coast submerged, taking sightings through the periscope, trying to figure out how to get in through the surf.

Red and Harry had talked in some detail about the shore party. They had decided to send in eight men in two inflatable rafts. The first, a large eight-man raft, contained Harry, Torpedoman First Class Tony Polavita, Able Seaman Herman Czarik, and Pharmacist’s Mate Jim Botel. The second and smaller raft held young Ensign Howie Bennish, Chief of the Boat Ulmer “Duke” Osborne, Sonarman Second Class Maldin “Mike” Ketchel, who had had some high school German, and little Radioman Third Class Petey Minton, whom everyone called “Phoebe.”

It took nearly two hours to make it through the coral reef, a maze of solid rock pathways, most of which went nowhere. Only the unusual calmness of the sea and the high tide the orders referred to made it possible to carefully explore and edge the rafts in. The best way in was down two particular corridors, and then directly between two extraordinary pinnacle rocks, the so-called Devil’s Cauldron.

They made it in to shore at 1725, just as the sun was waning. After hurriedly covering the rafts in palm fronds, the men picked a spot for their camp. Harry split them into two groups. The young ensign, Bennish, along with Osborne, Ketchel, and Minton, were to head south along the coast road in the direction of the Vandelmann plantation, which they thought they had glimpsed seaward on the way in.

Bennish and his team left long before dusk. Understanding the time limits, they started jogging immediately down the coast road, and soon disappeared from view. It seemed like a good split to Harry. They didn’t come any better than Duke Osborne. Ketchel was a good man too. So Minton was a little bit young, but Bennish was a good young officer, well respected on board.

The men from Harry’s boat were to hold the landing spot, which Polavita jokingly called “our little beachhead. Hey, it’s closer to Tokyo than any of us have gotten so far.” They crouched in the underbrush as the sun began to set, listening to the soft lap of the waves and the sounds of birds in the jungle.

Harry saw an insect that resembled the walking stick he was used to at home on the prairie, but this one had what looked like leaves for legs. Birds of many varieties flew past. They all seemed to have curved beaks. He watched carefully for spiders and snakes, but saw only one small red spider, ambling past a few feet away. There was a beautiful parrot, some flying thing that looked like a bat, and worms on many of the leaves. He knew to watch out for mosquitoes as carriers of the dreaded malaria, but the wind blew steadily across the little peninsula, and he saw none.

The last sunset glow gave way to darkness, broken only by a three-quarter moon and a scatter of stars. The group stayed quiet, alert for any signs of trouble in the distance. No gunfire was heard, though the noise of the surf and the distance meant they might not hear it if there was any.

Harry looked at his luminescent watch, which said 0230, and felt his stomach drop. Five hours! They had figured Bennish’s group would need only two, maybe three, hours. What if the whole thing was an enemy trap? Fleet wasn’t always right! Earlier in the patrol they had said that the harbor at Kavieng was loaded with fat transports, but when Bluefin showed up, the boats had mysteriously disappeared and the harbor was clear.

With no other choice, Harry and his team remained spread out in the uncomfortable grass. The men whispered to each other for the first few hours, but gradually became quiet. Harry checked his watch again. It was 0330. His men seemed asleep; he was oddly comforted by the faint sound of one of them snoring. Maybe the men on the patrol were okay, were just held up by something. Maybe after the darkness closed in on them they couldn’t get back. If the patrol didn’t show up by morning, Harry’s men would have to go looking for them.

Periodically, Harry felt some insect crawling over him and brushed it off. In the time before nightfall, he had noticed the incredible life around him. Some plants he recognized, bananas, breadfruit, pawpaws, and coconuts, but there were many more he had never seen before. The jungle, though it wasn’t especially dense, held countless nonfloral examples of life. He could still spot some of the bugs in the moonlight: four or five types of beetles alone, one with pincers that were as long as its body. Armies of ants seemed to go in every direction. Luckily, they didn’t seem interested in him. Several times he noticed ants or swarms of caterpillars on leaves.

He wasn’t sleepy. On his farm in Dorance, Iowa, he might have been lulled to sleep by the sound of the land, but not here. This island was a forsaken land, with its permanently rotting vegetation. Its smell was nauseating and kept him awake. I would hate to have to make a life for my family here, he thought. There was certainly plenty of rain and the soil was wonderfully fertile, both great for farming. But it was too much of a good thing. The land was spoiled. It smelled like that one time when he was a boy and his father-in-law-to-be, Ray Woodson, tried to save a heifer that had cut her underside open trying to get over a barbed wire fence. The poor animal’s intestines fell on the ground, and in the end Ray had to shoot her to put her out of her misery. The island smelled like that, like decaying flesh.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed. The moon had set, throwing the surroundings into darkness, and Harry didn’t want to check his watch again and possibly draw the attention of anyone who might be out in this jungle.

As farmers did, he picked up some dirt once or twice. He couldn’t see it clearly. It was slimy, more like mud than good soil. He dropped it on the ground and shook his head, wondering how people could live in a place like this. Sounds also kept him awake, sounds entirely foreign to his ears, loud sounds that were almost deafening. The silence here was not silent. Knowing that the climate in Germany was a lot like that of Iowa, he wondered what kind of a man this German was who was so important to ComSubPac. Why would he come here?

His attention was instantly diverted by a new sound, soft rustling, in front of him. He sat motionless in the two-foot-high grass with his legs crossed. His men were behind him, but this sound came from in front.

None of my guys could possibly be in that direction, he thought. I would have heard them move. We talked about this! I would be the closest one to the coast road, and no one was supposed to go in front of me. I told the other three men at dusk, “If you move off in front of me, one of us is going to shoot you.”

Could it be the men from the patrol? No, because there was an agreed-on signal. Neither had thought it was very necessary at the time, but Bennish and Harry had agreed that if the patrol returned after dark, they would begin flashing two flashlights when they figured they were within half a mile. There had been no lights, and whatever was making this sound was several feet away. Then, Harry had an even more worrisome thought: perhaps it was a survivor from the patrol getting back as best he could. Someone who didn’t know the signal or didn’t have a flashlight. Maybe he was hurt and didn’t know where he was.

Then, Harry thought, if he was hurt, he would at least groan! It didn’t lessen the stress. He took the .45 Browning pistol from his lap, the gun with the fake ivory handle grips. It was a real mystery how that gun had become Navy issue. But there it was when Harry chose from the weapons locker. He’d been hoping never to have to use it. Though a farmer, he had never enjoyed hunting or the dying part of rural life, just the growing.

There it was again, a rustling sound! It was a little louder this time. He felt frozen, exposed. Was there light shining upon him, some moonlight coming through the clouds? He looked around, trying not to move, but still could see absolutely nothing but jungle and grass. Like everyone in the United States, he had heard much about the Japanese proficiency in jungle fighting. Could the Japanese have eliminated the patrol and now be creeping toward his men? Could they see in this light?

With fear beginning to envelop him, Harry again caught himself. No. He knew very well from years at sea that some people had better night vision than others. His was pretty good. If someone were coming through the deep grass toward him, they wouldn’t be able to see any better than he could. He clutched the gun harder. He knew there was a bullet in the chamber. But a .45 would not fire unless you pulled back the hammer and cocked it. Then it would shoot nine times, just as fast as you could pull the trigger. It was a weapon of amazing power, and he knew it would drop a man with a single shot.

There it was again, several steps closer! If it was an animal, why didn’t it make a sound, breathing or feeding? No sound, except the sound of something moving through the grass.

Harry knew he had to cock the gun immediately. Leaning over a little on his left hand, and placing the .45 under his rump to muffle the sound, he pulled the hammer back.

Clunk, and it was cocked. The sound seemed deafening, but in a moment the object was there again, slowly moving.

Ever so slowly, Harry brought the weapon around and twisted his body so that his torso was closer to the sound. The object moved again, directly toward him. He wondered if his men were still behind him. Had the enemy taken them as they slept? He only entertained the thought for a second. No, Polavita would’ve raised the alarm, he thought.

He concentrated completely on the object in front of him, slowly extending both arms. With his arms parallel to each other, he put his open left palm forward, though it was not as far forward as the muzzle of the .45. The object was very near! He could hear the grass move in front of him. Somehow, he felt no fear. His hands were quite steady.

The grass moved again. It pressed against his left hand. Harry closed his eyes and fired.

The report of the .45 seemed like an artillery shell. The object slumped. The sounds of the night quieted for a few seconds, and then welled up as before as though nothing had happened!

Harry rolled over on his back, half-expecting Japanese soldiers to jump him, or at least fire back. There was nothing! The nonsilence was not replaced by any new sounds. No soldiers attacked. It was just the deafening roar of the putrefied land he despised, the strange unquiet.

Finally, he did hear something, a low whisper. “Boss, you all right?”

A wave of relief flooded him. Only Tony Polavita ever called him that! Then two other recognizable voices came in out of the dark.

“What the hell was that?” said one.

The other, obviously the snorer, groused, “What happened?”

What a relief ! They were all there, Harry thought. He was halfway around the world from his family, and his mission’s success was in doubt, but he couldn’t help smiling broadly.

“I’m okay,” he said slowly.

“Want me up there with you, Boss?” Polavita whispered.

“Yeah,” Czarik added, “me too?”

“Shut up,” Harry answered quietly but firmly.

Silence fell again. Harry checked his watch again. He figured it was safe. Anyone watching them from the jungle would have heard them already and made themselves known. It was 0500 now.

His mind wandered, first to his wife, Dell, and then to their three children. For the first time he thought it would be nice to go back to the farm, to raise crops again, just give up his career in the Navy. He’d only seen their eldest, Wilhelmina, once, and never seen the boys, Toby and Danny. With Dell’s father, Ray, dead, there was no one to help Dell run the farm. Both of us are struggling, he thought, and both of us are losing.

What could have happened to Bennish’s men? Why didn’t they come back? They had had three hours of daylight when they left. They’d headed off jogging, and it wouldn’t have taken much time to go down to that plantation, maybe twenty minutes. That would have given them plenty of time to snatch the guy. Unless there were Japanese here! They had heard no shooting, but the surf could have hidden the sounds. On and on the questions and ideas recirculated in Harry’s mind.

There was about an hour left before dawn. Harry relaxed a little, thinking back to his years in the choir at St. Bartholomew’s Lutheran Church in Dorance. Hymns whirled through his mind, one after another. One in particular rolled through his mind over and over again:

Singing songs of expectation,

Marching to the Promised Land.

Clear before us, through the darkness,

Gleams and burns the guiding light.

Brother clasps the hand of brother,

Stepping fearless through the night.

He had to laugh, thinking of old Mrs. Franklin singing it. She must have weighed three hundred pounds. When she hit those high notes, they were hit! He used to shudder when she sang, because it was more like screeching.

Something flickered in Harry’s peripheral vision. He turned toward the coastal road.

There, amazingly, was a gleaming light just as the hymn said! He stared, his mouth open. It was definitely a light, and it was moving! In another second he recognized that it was the patrol, and that they were coming back on the coast road holding torches! In a few minutes, with both groups yelling encouragement to each other, they were close enough to distinguish the men holding the torches.

“It’s my guy Duke,” Polavita said, squinting a bit, “three of our guys and . . . a cart with what looks like two men on it.”

As the returning party came up to them, Harry could identify the figures on the cart: Ensign Bennish, his uniform bloodied, and another figure in a dirty white Panama suit, bound with ropes—probably the mysterious Vandelmann. At least they all came back, Harry thought, relieved.

Osborne greeted them with an indignant snarl. “He shot Howie, sir! This goddamn German asshole shot little Howie!”

Harry hurried over to Bennish. The little ensign tried to get up, but Harry motioned for him to lay back.

“I don’t feel so bad, sir,” Bennish said. “I’m just sorry about the mission. I’m sorry I bungled it, Harry.”

“Well, you got him.”

“But I really don’t know what I could have done differently. We had a rough time of it, sir. This German is a little crazy.”

Harry looked at the German for the first time. He was an average looking man of fifty to sixty years with a huge waxed moustache that came straight out on either side of his nose. His suit must have been nice once, but now it was dirty and soaked in sweat. He also reeked of booze.

“So, this is the guy we risked our lives for?” Harry asked. “You’re joking, right?”

“We go up there to the house, sir,” Bennish explained, “and we knock on the door. We can see him in there playing cards with two natives, drinking these shots of some kind of liquor, just roaring laughing. So, we knock again, walk in, he looks surprised, and damn if he didn’t shoot me.”

Botel leaned over Bennish and started examining the wound.

“Jim, how does it look?” Harry asked.

“It doesn’t hurt much, Harry,” Bennish said woozily. “Let me stand up.”

“Stay down, Howie. Jim?”

“Harry, the bullet went right through his side here.” Botel pointed at the open wound that he had slowly unwrapped. By this time it had gotten reasonably light and there was no need for the torches anymore. “He’s bled a lot. But it’s a clean wound, not bad if we can get him out of here soon.”

Harry turned to his men. “Let’s not waste any time in getting out of this dump.”

They headed to the rafts. Osborne, who had settled down a lot, but still regularly waved his pistol at the German, added something.

“Harry, I almost forgot. While this damn German was shooting Howie, Phoebe went up the line to scout and found two Japs.”

Harry had noticed a smile on the face of the diminutive little sailor, but hadn’t thought anything about it.

Phoebe immediately began to talk, almost boasting.

“Yes, sir, I found these two Japs in a hut and I plugged ’em, sir, with my .45. They were dead for sure. I watched ’em fall over and they didn’t get up. Just after that, I heard the shot and ran back toward the plantation.”

“There wasn’t supposed to be any enemy presence on this island!” Harry had a very bad feeling about this.

“Funny thing about that, sir,” Phoebe continued. “When I turned to run back to the plantation house, a phone rang in the hut they were in. I didn’t think they had phones on this rock.”

All of the men stared. Osborne, Polavita, and Harry yelled at the same instant, “A phone!”

Phoebe looked hurt. “So they got phones?”

“They don’t have phones on this heap, Junior,” Osborne said caustically. “That was an enemy field phone. You never said anything about a phone. Sir, I didn’t know or I woulda gotten out of there and not spent those hours looking for that damn cart.”

Polavita chimed in. “Yeah, kid, who do you think was on the other end of that thing, my little sweet grandmother?”

“Phoebe, you sure you heard a phone ring?” Harry asked softly.

“Yeah.” Phoebe’s voice sounded dispirited. “I thought it would be a good surprise and you would be happy with me.”

“Was it a short ring?” Osborne asked.

“Yeah, a funny sorta ring.”

“Yeah, a field phone,” Duke said. The rest nodded.

“Ketchel, give me that Morse lamp,” Harry said. He pointed it at the submarine, whose hull-down silhouette could not be seen between the waves, and sent:

HAVE GERMAN. HOWIE SHOT. JAPS ON ISLAND.

In a moment, he could see the answer as it came back.

ROGER.

Harry sat down to take stock. He looked at Botel, who had been leaning over Howie the last few minutes. The little officer was no longer talking.

“His wound’s beginning to fester in this heat,” Botel said.

Meanwhile, the German had sobered up just enough to begin nonstop talking. He was in a jovial mood, still sitting on the cart.

As each man passed he would ask, “Wie heissen Sie?”

Ketchel finally looked up and said, “He wants to know your name.”

None of the men answered, but the German kept on asking.

Harry stepped back and thought. The whole thing was becoming clear to him. The German had lied, perhaps about everything. Maybe he knew important things and maybe he didn’t. He had a plantation, so he was in the copra business. The information Rudy Ferrell had come up with was that the Green Islands had been German up until the end of World War I, when they had gone over to Australia as a mandate. So this guy had come here as a young man. But for the last thirty years he had done business with the Australians.

It was also a good bet that the German had continued sneaking copra out to his Aussie clients after the Japanese bypassed the place. Now he feared from the increasing Japanese activity that they might occupy the island. When they examined his copra tanks and found them empty, all they would have to do was get some of his native workers together to figure out that he had been double-dealing them, and they would put him in a nice hole in the ground. No doubt he had a pile of money in Australia in some bank. He’d contacted his business cronies to get him out, but since the Aussies had no subs, the pressure came through Washington to Admiral Lockwood at ComSubPac.

“Meine Haus liegt hinten dem Walde,” Vandelmann blurted drunkenly, pointing toward his plantation.

“Shithead says his house is over there,” Ketchel said, not looking up. He was leaning against a tree.

“Yeah, I’d like to send him back to his house,” Osborne added, looking at him with a hateful glance. “How about on the end of a torpedo, jackass?”

“Der Alte aber verlor sein ganzes Geld!” Vandelmann insisted.

Ketchel translated, “Ah, the asshole says he’s a poor old man who’s lost all of his money.”

Several of the men chimed in at the same time, “Ah, drop dead! We’re just crying our eyes out for ya!”

The German looked at Ketchel and said, “Űbersetzung?”

“Ja.” Ketchel sounded irritated. “Translation, ja, ja, I’ll translate for you. Though I bet you understand everything in English just fine.”

Harry, Osborne, and Polavita all looked at each other. He wondered if they were thinking what he was thinking. The Japanese were on the island. By now, they had probably guessed what was going on with Vandelmann, and maybe guessed that some Allied force was on the island as well.

The wind had started coming up since dawn. Could both rafts get off the island and through the Cauldron? It remained to be seen. If they pulled out now, but were swept back in, the enemy might be waiting for both. The patrol would be captured and the mission would become a disaster. The orders were still there, hanging over Harry’s head, and it was obvious what had to be done.

“All right, Duke, you know what to do! Get that machine gun of yours and set it up over there on that rock or some other place with a good field of fire. Did we get the three hundred rounds?”

Osborne nodded, then walked over to the trunk of a palm tree about fifteen feet away and picked up the Browning automatic rifle that stood against it.

“Polavita, sprinkle Ketchel and Minton around with those Springfield rifles and a lot of ammo. Duke will tell you where. Then come back here.”

“Yes, sir!”

Men didn’t use “yes sirs” and “no sirs” on board Bluefin. But this was an emergency, and they all knew that discipline might save their lives.

In a moment, with the men placed, Polavita came back.

Harry bent down with Osborne and Polavita. “Tony, you need to make good on this . . . ”

Several voices swept their way: “Sir, look!”

Everyone stood. Harry picked up a pair of binoculars and could see a truck rounding the end of the island. The three bent down again.

“This mission is going to succeed or fail depending on if you can get through the surf with that German right now. Take Botel, Czarik, and the big raft. That will give you three men paddling and the German and Howie lying down in the bottom for ballast. It ought to keep you from overturning.”

“Sir,” Polavita said, “I hate to leave you with Phoebe. He’s just a kid and he’s afraid already.”

“That can’t be helped. I’m sorry to give you only three paddlers, but it’s the best I can do for you and still hold this place. If you can’t get through, don’t get drowned, get swept back in.”

Polavita nodded. He could see it was the only way.

“Go now, and we’ll try to hold them off with the gun. Send up a flare when you make it. I need Duke here with me.”

The three men stood. “Okay, Harry, we’ll get you off this damn place,” Polavita promised.

Harry watched them take off at a run, pulling the cart and its bound prisoner. Then he glanced toward the enemy, now with three trucks but still a long way away. He noted that the men were getting the big raft ready.

Then he picked up the blinker light again. The surf was up from when they had come ashore the day before, but he aimed the Morse light out to sea anyway and signaled:

JAPS COMING UP COAST ROAD. SURF HIGH. SENDING ONE BOAT WITH HOWIE AND GERMAN.

Harry felt confident that with the periscope up as high as it would go, and the lens turned to four-power, the message would get through. He wondered if the reply, sent from the bridge, would come through. But in only a minute he saw the response clearly, one word:

ROGER.

As the raft shoved off, Harry looked up the road. The Japanese were clearly in view now, about three-quarters of a mile off.

He could hear Vandelmann’s loud, drunken voice trailing away as the boat moved off: “Nach und nach.”

Harry looked at Ketchel, who was at his post with his Springfield rifle close by. He rolled his eyes and translated for the last time, “The asshole says ‘little by little,’ sir, whatever the hell that means.”

Harry picked up the field glasses and turned toward the advancing enemy. The three open trucks were packed with men, the lead one with a machine gun over the cab on some kind of a swivel track. Several squads of men followed the trucks. Harry estimated the total to be perhaps one hundred, to his four!

Osborne had the gun set up on a rock that stood up about four feet high. The other two men, Ketchel and Phoebe, had bolt-action Springfield 1903 rifles. Harry first picked up a Springfield himself, but then set it back against a tree. It would be better, he thought, to hand the gun’s magazines to Osborne.

“Maybe we can hold ’em up for awhile,” the fifty-eight-year-old chief said.

“Yeah, let’s hope long enough.” Ketchel nodded. They looked toward the raft. It had cleared the surf and was almost out of sight. They knew that if the raft got out and a flare went up, they could scramble to get out, but that would take an hour and the Japanese would be in front of them in twenty minutes.

The thought was too much for Phoebe. The young radioman began to sob. “We ain’t never gonna get outta here, are we? I know it’s my fault. I’m sorry. I’m real, real sorry!”

“Shut up now, boy,” Ketchel responded blandly.

Sullen looks spread across the four Americans’ faces as they watched the overpowering enemy force approach. Then, they were startled by a new, approaching sound, increasing in volume. It came from behind them and instantly passed over and toward the Japanese.

The Americans ducked instinctively. Then a tremendous explosion hit in the water about fifty yards from the first truck, now about five hundred yards off. It was so unexpected that it took a second for them to realize that it was Bluefin’s deck gun!

Before they could react, another shell soon cascaded by. The Japanese, now puzzled, never moved after the first shot. Then the second hit in the palm grove on the other side of the Japanese and they began to scatter. The third shell hit almost directly under the first truck and blew the vehicle violently end-over-end, fifty feet into the air. Harry and the others yelled and screamed and jumped.

Other shells followed into the enemy formation, blowing up the other two trucks and forcing the enemy into the jungle. Standing and now rather quiet, one word of gratitude played on the men’s lips: “Phelps!”

Harry thought: That’s the second time that gun has saved my life! The submarine, unseen beyond the surf, could see right into the lap of the enemy with the periscope extended.

With no more targets, the great gun ceased. The periscope could not see the enemy moving through the jungle. Harry figured the numbers were now halved: maybe there was a chance. As he examined the ground in front of them, he thought better and better of their chances. Osborne’s position was a commanding one, with a terrific field of fire.

He spoke to the boy. “Phoebe, get my glasses, go over here behind us, and look for the flare. Soon would be a nice time to get out of here.”

“Okay, sir.”

“Duke, have you looked at this setup?”

“Yeah, not bad.”

In front of them was a completely open area of about 250 yards that the Japanese would have to cross. It was a giant basalt formation, gray color rock, smooth. In some previous millennium, lava had spewed forth under the sea from an underwater volcano and formed the massive formation of pillow basalt. It domed slightly about fifty yards away from the Japanese side.

“How many you figure they still got, Harry?” the old chief asked.

“Forty, fifty.”

“Harry, those men will have to come across that open area to get to us, and they can’t do that.”

It was easy enough to agree. They had the submarine’s one heavy rifle. It had the gun power of a machine gun, but nearly the accuracy of a Springfield rifle. It could fire a twenty-shot clip in as little as five seconds. The chief pointed at the dome of the basalt.

“They can’t set up a machine gun against me in the jungle because it’s either too far away down the coast road, or that dome is in the way. They’ll have to come out in the open on that dome. I’ll shoot ’em before they can do that.”

“Yeah, unless they have a mortar,” Ketchel said.

Osborne shook his head. “My guess is they don’t have one. Or maybe Red just blew it up.”

Harry looked over at Phoebe. “You see anything?”

“No, I don’t see no rafts or flares, Harry.”

“You watch that real good. That’s our ticket out of here. We can’t get out of here until they reach the sub.”

“I know.”

God, Harry prayed silently, let us hold this place so that our crewmen can get away, not only the ones on the first raft, but us as well.

These were good men, like family to Harry. He had known of Chief Osborne by reputation for years. Red Phelps had tried hard to get Osborne to come over to Bluefin for many months. Finally, after several official attempts, Phelps had seen him at a bar near the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu. “If I buy you a couple of beers, will you come over to us?” Phelps had asked.

The Duke quickly retorted, “I thought you’d never ask!”

With amazing dispatch, only possible with thirty-five years of Navy connections, the transfer papers had come through in six days! Osborne had been worth it too. Any difficult-to-acquire supply item, whether important or trivial, left in his hands never failed to arrive in less than a week. His understanding of everything on a submarine, from keeping the vessel from broaching during silent running to the finer points of torpedo technology, went past that of anyone on board.

Harry knew Mike Ketchel too. He claimed to be a nephew of Stanley Ketchel, the Australian light heavyweight boxing champion of the early part of the century who had assembled one of the great records in boxing history. No one knew where he had grown up, or if he had any family. Never a letter or postcard came for him that anyone saw. When leave came, he just sort of disappeared, and no one had any idea where he went. But in a pinch like this, he was a good man to have on your side. He had handled the German well. Slender of build, perhaps 150 pounds, he had the reputation of being stronger than any man on board except Tony Polavita, who weighed about 200.

Then there was Phoebe Minton. He was an orphan from Bayonne, New Jersey. Every boy who passed through that particular orphanage wound up joining the Navy, because there was a priest there who loved the service. The boy talked about the priest daily, because he was the closest thing he had to a father. His real name was Peter Minton, but with his slight build he was usually called Petey growing up. That all changed the day he came on board Bluefin and was brought around to every part of the ship, as Red Phelps demanded of every new man. The After Engine Room was going through an overhaul and the old chief, a man named Porcel, could not understand the boy’s pronunciation of “Petey” with the engines at full blast and finally settled on “Phoebe.” It stuck, and the boy never seemed to mind. It was an appellation denoting the affection the crew had for him, and he had never had much of that before.

Phoebe didn’t write well, so Harry handled his finances every month. Five dollars went to the priest, fifteen to a savings and loan in Princeton, New Jersey, and the rest Harry gave to Phoebe. He never gave him all of the money at once, because Phoebe was a soft touch for every sad story by every moocher on board. Phoebe was a good little man, and Harry had no intention of letting him or any of the others down.

It was high tide now, the perfect time to get away. But with no rescue from the submarine, Harry’s men were stuck. There was no part of East Point more than six feet out of the water. Suddenly, a group of four Japanese soldiers appeared, climbing over the basalt formation and onto the dome with a Hotchkiss machine gun.

Osborne watched as the men hurried out onto the basalt in plain view two hundred or so yards away. One was carrying the weapon, one the tripod, one a twenty-five-shot aluminum tray, and the last a box of ammo. Before they could even sit down, Osborne began to shoot.

The gun, with its distinctive deep-throated BUP, BUP, BUP, BUP, BUP, BUP, sounded and the men fell. As if in a strange dance, four more took their places, pushing their comrades out of the way, and sitting down at the weapon. The gun sounded again, BUP, BUP, BUP, BUP, BUP, and again the gunners were lying motionless on the rock.

Four more men ran out, Duke fired, and again the enemy tumbled over like bowling pins. Osborne then targeted the gun itself. He must have damaged it in some way, because the enemy gave up on it. There it sat, bodies all around it.

“How many they got left now, Harry?”

“Good stuff, Duke, thirty to forty.”

“Look,” said Ketchel, “they’re trying to swim over here!”

Looking back up the coast, Harry’s men saw four or five soldiers running from the jungle, across the coast road toward the surf. At 250 yards, Ketchel, with his Springfield propped up perfectly on a boulder, shot the first man just as he reached the water. In the crystal clear water, the others made easier targets. One by one, Ketchel took care of them too.

“Well, Harry, we ought to be down to maybe thirty-five tops, ’eh?” he said.

“Sir, it’s the flare!”

Everyone turned at Minton’s call. Sure enough, the submarine’s flare was arching through the sky.

Harry smiled. “So we pulled it off. Now we need to get out of here!”

“Yeah, but look at that surf,” the chief said in a low, depressing tone. “It’s higher than before, the wind’s up more. We are not getting through there in that raft.”

The sullen look came back on Harry’s face. It was the truth, and it didn’t take long for him to come to a conclusion.

“You’re right, Duke. The raft isn’t going through there. I’m going to have to swim out to the sub and bring a rope back.”

“I wish I was twenty years younger, I’d try it,” Osborne said. “But I don’t think you can make it, Harry.”

“Do we have any choice?”

“No.” The chief shook his head. “At least you have plenty of time. The tide crested an hour or so ago and is still pretty full. We got a stalemate here. The enemy’s hung up just as we are. Unless they get reinforced, with the thirty or so men left they won’t try to swim around the left side anymore, and sure as hell won’t try coming across the rock face. And now we can have Phoebe watch the starboard side. They can’t get to us, at least until dark. Then they’ll rush us and kill us.”

“So how long you figure I have, Chief ?” Harry asked, looking at his watch.

“Six to eight hours.”

Harry nodded, the other three looking on.

“Look, if I don’t get back, take the raft and head out before dark. I doubt they could see you pushing off from where they are. By the time they rushed in maybe you would be to the breakers, a long shot with a rifle. Don’t wait too long. Who knows, maybe the wind will be down by then and you can paddle right out.”

“Harry, you take care.”

“Sure,” he said, noting their respectful faces.

The Duke came over and stood by him. “Harry, get the three-eighths-inch Philippine hemp. Have Chief Dougherty get it. It’s the only rope that I think will work. We have two thousand yards of it stowed in the Forward Torpedo Room. Dougherty will know. That stuff will almost float and won’t rip against that rock goin’ around those bends.”

“Okay.” Harry picked up the Morse lamp, aimed it out to sea again, and sent:

AM SWIMMING OUT.

He watched for two minutes, then repeated the message, but didn’t see any response. It wasn’t surprising. If anything, the wind was still stronger. Shedding the .45, he decided to keep on all of his clothes, even shoes, in case he was thrown against the rocks. Then he waded into the water he had come out of almost twenty-four hours before.

Even a hundred yards out, he was still on his feet. Soon, he began to swim through almost three hundred yards of nearly placid water, a sort of lagoon. He kept aiming toward the surf beyond, directly toward the two pinnacle rocks, each jutting up thirty feet, directly toward the forty-foot passage that went between the two. He decided to swim like Johnny Weissmuller, the Olympic champion. Weissmuller swam freestyle with his head up out of the water, rather than the traditional method of the head down and breathing with every other stroke. With the tempestuous water he was to face, using that style was Harry’s only chance.

After many minutes of easy swimming, the water began to swirl. In another twenty or so more minutes, Harry entered the surf and began to be buffeted by undercurrents.

Then, he was in the Cauldron, encountering violent waves. Angry currents swept him almost instantly many yards in one direction, and then, seemingly without logic, in another. Rip currents pulled him under without notice and then tossed him up above the waves as though he were a blade of grass. Gulping air, half seeing, swimming as hard as he could, he made it to the two great rocks. First, the tide drew him out and the swell pushed him back in, then again and then still another time, in and out he went.

He pushed off some boulders, and was thankful he had his shoes. The hurrying tide and the depth of the water saved him from hundreds of submerged objects that would have shredded his body or torn out the bottom of a boat at low tide.

As he cleared the Cauldron, Harry knew he had made the wrong decision. It had taken only ten minutes to get out, and it had not been nearly as bad as he thought it would be. It was something he could never admit to anyone else, but he knew it as he swam on, that if they’d taken off just then in the raft, they would have made it. He also knew he couldn’t go back and get the men and the raft. The wind was getting stronger each minute. By the time he’d get back in, it might no longer be possible to get out. The only way to have a good chance to get out was Duke’s rope.

Harry swam on. The swimming gradually became easier, and he navigated passages he had carefully noted the day before. He slowed his pace and swam down one narrow corridor, about fifty feet wide, where the pillow basalt sides went up ten to fifteen feet on each side. He knew that the next passage led out to the south and would take him to the open sea.

After nearly forty minutes in the water, he emerged. To his great relief, the sea was not as rough as he’d thought it would be. He couldn’t see the sub, but the wind was just right and he heard voices.

“Harry!” he heard, far off. He treaded water for a minute, looking around.

“Harry!” he heard again. “Harry, over here. Harry!”

Between the swells, about a hundred yards off was a raft with men on it. He swam in that direction. In a few anxious minutes, he was on board! In another fifteen minutes, they came aside Bluefin.

Red Phelps came down onto the ballast tank and pulled him on board. “Harry, I’m glad to see you,” he said. “I want to hear about the situation on shore.”

As they made their way below, Phelps anticipated Harry’s first question and answered it. “Howie’s fine. We got the German.”

“You know he lied.”

“Yes, we know all about that. Fleet still thinks he can tell our people the best passageway through the outer islands and into the big lagoon, which is about six miles across.”

“What about him shooting Howie?”

“Well, Arnie Blackmon knows his lingo. He says Vandelmann said it was all a mistake, that Howie rushed him. You know as well as I that it all depends on what he knows.”

They went to Red’s tiny cabin, along with Rocky Fordyce, who had debriefed the patrol. The Filipino steward came in with sandwiches. Harry ate and explained the shore situation. Phelps looked at him. Recalling a conversation with Rocky a few minutes before, he knew Harry would have to swim back in.

“I want Harry to lie down and rest for twelve hours,” Phelps had said.

“Red, Harry is going to have to go back!” Rocky insisted.

“No, he’s bound to be exhausted.”

“Red, we can have him rest for two hours before he goes back in. He’ll have three hours to get in and start out with the guys before dark and the enemy closes in.”

“No, I’m not going to do that to him. We need someone else to do it.”

“Red, according to Polavita and the others, it’s a maze in there; Harry knows that maze. Besides, I was a year behind him at the Academy and saw him swim. One time half our team was down with the flu and we had a meet with Rutgers. He stood pretty much the whole Rutgers team, swimming four events for us and winning three. He has the body for it, and he recovers quickly. Red, we don’t have anyone who can match Harry. We had Pelston, but he transferred. And he wouldn’t know the passageways in anyhow. If Harry goes in and fails, that’s one thing. But if you send someone else in there and none of those guys come back, Harry won’t be able to live with himself.”

Red sighed heavily. “Rocky, I appreciate you telling me this. I’m sorry to have to tell him to do it, but I suppose I have to.”

Red was getting ready to say something to Harry as he finished the second sandwich, his clothes dripping a few cups’ worth of seawater on the floor. But Harry knew what was going on the captain’s mind and spoke first.

“Red,” he said, “I have to go back. I have to try it. Yes, I’m tired. How long ‘til the tide changes?”

“A few minutes.”

“How long till dark?”

“About five hours.”

“I’ll have to try it at fairly low tide, which isn’t good, but at least it will be going in. Did Polavita tell you the setup on the island?”

“Yeah, the gun. We heard the thing firing some.”

“In the last two hours?”

“Yes.”

“That’s not good. When I left, I thought Duke had them in a standoff that would probably be good till dark. There’s this rock face the Japanese have to come across.”

“Tony said something about that.”

“Unless they were reinforced, they couldn’t have come across it against Osborne. Any reinforcements with equipment to overpower that gun would have to come up that coast road, and you would blast the hell out of them. By the way, thanks for blasting them with the five-incher.”

“Sure. We’re watching the road real good. Luckily, no planes have come along. I can’t think that will last. We have that new forty-millimeter Bofors antiaircraft gun, so we won’t submerge unless they attack with several planes. Harry, I just hate that you have to do this.”

“I’m not looking forward to it myself, but there’s no other way.”

“All right. Lie down for an hour, right here in my cabin. That will give you some rest and let the tide bring the water level back up some. If anyone wakes you up, I will personally throw them overboard. We’re going to set the rope up on a small raft that you’ll tow. The guys will take you in as close as possible to those corridor things. That way there will be no weight on you directly. How about you with a Mae West with a twenty-foot tether? The rope will play out from the raft you tow.”

“Sure. Osborne says we need the three-eighths-inch Philippine hemp stashed somewhere in the Forward Torpedo Room. Dougherty knows. He thinks it’s my only chance, because it’ll float.”

“You lie down for a while. I’ll take care of it.”

Harry collapsed on the bunk as soon as Phelps and Rocky left the room. In a few moments, he was sound asleep.

Some time later someone shook him awake. It was Phelps. “Okay, Harry, it’s time.”

Harry sat up slowly, his wet clothes still clinging to his body, and followed Phelps up on deck. Immediately, he could tell the wind had slackened. Now at least I have a chance, he thought.

“Harry, we got the rope,” Phelps said. “Good luck.” They shook hands warmly. Then Harry turned, walked down on the ballast tank, and sat down in the raft.

The first raft, with Ensign Felders at the head, pulled away from the submarine. Three others followed. In thirty-five minutes they were as close in as they dared get to the rocks. Harry slid off into the water and headed out.

Soon, he found himself alone in the rock corridors, pulling the two-man raft with the two thousand feet of rope slowly playing out. The water in the corridors was lower than when he had come out, and he feared underwater obstacles. The waters swiftly rose and lowered, but it was actually easier swimming than when he came out. With each stroke the tide carried the water in, and in only twenty minutes he could see the two great vertical rocks and feel the water begin to act up.

He reached the pillars and entered the Cauldron. The comparatively easy swimming turned into a nightmare again, and he swam as hard as he could, his arms and legs going hard. It continued for a long time. His strength held as his heart pounded and he gasped for breath, occasionally pushing off rocks and cursing the life preserver for impeding his progress.

Almost imperceptibly, the rate of his arms and legs began to slacken. He pulled at the waters as they tossed him about. Once or twice the raft was flung in front of him, but luckily he was not entangled. His speed continued to slacken. As his concentration began to lapse, words from almost forgotten passages plowed into his head, mostly from Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. He had read and memorized these as a boy with great joy. Now his mind played tricks on him and carelessly, meaninglessly, dumped King Arthur’s words into his mind:

Authority forgets a dying king,

Laid widow’d of the power in his eye

That bow’d the will.

He kept up measured strokes in the turbulent waters. More words about the mythical king flooded in his mind.

. . . because his wound was deep,

The Bold Sir Bedivere uplifted him,

Sir Bedivere, the last of all his knights,

And bore him to a chapel night the field

That stood on a dark strait of barren land.

Harry didn’t remember very much after that. He had reached the apex of the Cauldron, and the Mae West, which he had cursed for slowing him down, now kept his head out of the water so he could breathe. Gradually, his strokes ceased altogether, and he began to drift. A wondrous wave of contentment came over him. He saw himself from under the turbulent waters. It beckoned him: if he would only come down where the water was calm, he would no longer have to struggle. He felt completely at peace. The echo of the poem ceased and the voices quieted.

Drifting with the incoming tide, he floated semiconscious through the waves of the surf and into the placid lagoon, the sound of the surf diminishing with every foot he traveled. A new set of sounds replaced it: the sounds of the hateful island and its unquiet. But he didn’t think about his approach to the verdant green of its lushness, where a plant might grow two feet in a single day, every day. Nor did he contemplate its ever-present decay, where a dead animal’s carcass might completely disappear in twenty-four hours, except for the bones. He did not puzzle over the equal and competing powers of life and death, each so exalted on this speck of earth. The water shimmered, and the sea breezes contained a freshness and renewal. But it was soon tempered by equal doses of pungent and putrefying decay. He gently glided toward Nissan Island, a paradise built over a sewer.

Strong arms grabbed him and pulled him from the water. It was Ketchel who had waded out.

“Boy, are we glad to see you, Harry!”

Gradually, Harry became more alert. He had been set with his back against the trunk of a tree. He heard the men talking, but couldn’t concentrate on what they were saying at first.

“Chief, how much time we got left before they rush us?”

“Beats me. It’s about two hours to dark. I was hoping Harry would have a raft, but all he’s got is that two-man thing. Phoebe, get that raft behind us more. We can’t let them put holes in that one too. Look at him, Mike, he’s beat. He gave everything he had for us and here he is. Lucky that Phoebe saw him out there. Has he said anything?”

“Naw, Chief, just mumbled stuff. Three of us could maybe get on that raft he brought, but not four. So we got crap. I can tell you, I am not leaving that guy or anyone on this damn pest hole for the Nips to torture.”

“Me neither, Mike. How many magazines we got left?”

“We got six, Chief. I got ’em here in my lap.”

“That’s what I thought. That’s about a hundred rounds, including the magazine that’s in here.”

“You guys okay?” Harry managed to say weakly.

“Well, Harry, we are, sort of. They must have gotten some more men cause they rushed us about two hours back and got close enough to put a couple of grenades in here. And, they saw the big raft and put umpteen holes in it. Damn. But we killed maybe twenty-five of them and they haven’t been back. Bodies all over the place.”

“That changes nothing,” Harry managed to say, surveying the two dozen bodies strewn about them. “You three are getting out of this place right now. Where’s the rope?”

“We tied it to the tree, sir,” little Minton said.

“That’s fine,” Harry said. He struggled to get up, but could not.

“Harry, take it easy. We’re not going anywhere,” Ketchel said.

“Yes, you are! Leave me the gun. You three get in that raft and get out of here!”

“Harry, Mike and I are not going to do that, leave you here.” Ketchel nodded. Little Phoebe did not look so convinced.

“No, no! It’s all arranged,” Harry said, trying to sound strong and convincing. “I’m not staying on this God-forsaken place after you pull out. They’re going to pull me in like a fish. Look at the rope, it’s taut.” Harry felt dizzy all of a sudden.

“So, let ’em pull me in like the big fish,” the old chief said.

“No, Chief,” Ketchel said adamantly, “I’m stronger than you. Let ’em pull me in.”

Harry was seeing spots before his eyes, but he couldn’t let them know. “Don’t fool with me. This Cauldron thing is too much for anything but three strong guys. As it is, you guys are going to be buffeted like hell. This isn’t like yesterday when we paddled right in; it’s ten times worse. If you three guys get in that thing and all hold on to that rope, you’ll get out. Forget about paddling until you get past the Cauldron. Just pull yourself along. I don’t have the strength to pull or even hold on. If you put me in the raft, and two of you are pulling the rope, I’ll be tossed out. If you rope me in, I’ll drown. No, they’ll pull me right out of here with that same Mae West that got me in here. It’s the only way for all of us to get out.”

He didn’t know how he was able to say all of that. It was one of those times in his life that he did something he shouldn’t have been able to do. And it worked! Harry could see that the three men had bought it, that he knew the Cauldron and they did not. But they did not like it.

“I order you three to get out of here! Right now!”

Osborne and Ketchel were still uncertain.

“Harry, I can’t leave you here,” Osborne said.

Ketchel shook his head. “I can’t either.”

“You must do exactly as I say, right now. Otherwise we’re all dead.” The emergency was making Harry more and more conscious. “Look, that damn German did this to us. He lied to us about everything, just to save his own neck.” Harry looked sternly at the three men. “I am saying to you plainly that he’s not worth even one of us. Do what I say and you three get in that raft and leave here right now. Don’t let that guy kill any of us.”

The others looked at each other, then back at him, and nodded.

“I’m fine,” he said to them. “Shove off.”

“Okay, okay,” Osborne said after a long pause. He moved toward the little raft, and then turned back. “Harry, you got a knife for that rope?”

“No, I guess I don’t,” Harry managed. He was starting to feel woozy again.

Osborne walked over to Harry, reached in his pocket, and pulled out a Case jackknife with a pale yellow handle about four inches long. “My father gave this to me. He was a good man like you. I expect to get it back in a little while.”

“In a little while.”

Osborne turned and went to the raft.

“See you,” Ketchel said, as the three men made their way into the water.

Harry could feel himself failing. It was all he could do to smile as the men began to paddle away. His head felt as though it were in a vise; his eyes fluttered. He didn’t move from the tree trunk. As the raft traveled the first hundred yards, he passed out.

As soon as Osborne reached the submarine, he jumped up on the deck and yelled for Chief Dougherty, who quickly appeared.

“Bennie, I want you to hook the rope up to that winch in the Forward Torpedo Room.”

Dougherty looked at Osborne. “Duke, we decided we would pull Harry in by hand.”

“No,” argued Osborne, “we’re not going to do that. That won’t work. He’ll drown in the Cauldron. We have to have more pull. That little winch will do it.”

“You got it,” Dougherty said.

Osborne ran to the bridge.

“Red,” he said, coming up the ladder, “we have to take a chance on this. We’re against the tide. If the guys pull Harry in by hand, he will have to swim continuously, and he can’t swim anymore. I saw him, Red. He’s completely gone. I want permission to pull him in with a winch. Then, all he has to do is cut the rope.”

“Duke, you just have to tell me. Tell me and we’ll do it!”

“I think . . . I think we have to do it.”

“Then do it!”

Harry awakened still sitting against the tree. He thought he had gone blind, but then recognized that it was getting dark. The Japanese would be closing in, but he was as dead as alive and didn’t think of them. His focused on only one thing: the rope! He had no way of knowing how much time had passed, or that the guys had made it through the Cauldron and were back at the sub. The flare had already been up. The mission had been a success!

Perhaps if he had known that, his concentration on the rope would have evaporated. He saw, and knew, only one thing, that he had to get to the rope. He looked at it, though he was not conscious enough to know how far it was away, or how high it was off the ground. He only knew, almost instinctively, that the slender strand was everything! Like a forbidden fruit, the narrow strand stood alluringly before him.

With tremendous difficulty, he struggled to his feet, his calf muscles like steel cords, aching and attempting to cramp. He staggered, resisting the cramps, focusing all of his attention on the three-eighths-inch rope. He stepped forward, several steps too quickly, and fell backward, missing the tree trunk by only an inch. With considerable effort, he stood again.

“The rope,” he told himself, “the rope, you must reach the rope!” He said out loud in a low and almost mechanical voice, “I must reach that rope! I must!”

He stepped toward it and fell headlong. But his legs were loosening up, and his head clearing. He was up faster this time. He mopped his face with his sand-laden right hand, wiping granules into his right eye, and stepped forward.

“Only a few feet! I must get to that rope!”

Stiff-legged like a Frankenstein monster in trying to keep the cramps away, Harry advanced only inches at a time. He tripped over something and fell again, almost within reach of the rope. He got up haltingly, reached for the rope, and grabbed it!

He was swaying enough to almost fall again, but he had it! A wave of exultation swept over him as he held it against his chest. He had it! It was tempting to just sit down and rest! I could just lie down here in this warm sand and sleep, he thought.

He stood there trying to think for a few minutes. Finally, it occurred to him that he needed more: he needed to find the loop! Osborne’s words came back to him: “Harry, don’t cut the rope until you loop yourself in and tighten it. I’ve made a loop for you.”

Harry wavered, almost falling, and reached into his pocket for the jackknife Osborne had left him. It was still there!

Lifting it up to the rope was unexpectedly difficult. With his aching arms, it felt like lifting a truck. His heart still pounding, he tried opening it. Sand, sand was in the way! Finally he opened it, his hands shaking. Then, he stopped.

“First, the loop.”

Holding the knife, he looked for the loop. He hadn’t noticed it before, but there the loop was, near his right hand! He noticed his Mae West too, still on his chest and still inflated. With difficulty, he slipped the loop over his head and past his arms, brought it up under the vest to his armpits, and tightened it. His arms seemed to weigh a thousand pounds!

Again Harry held the blade against the rope and, this time, cut it. Immediately and unexpectedly, he was jerked about fifteen feet toward the ocean, yanking him off his feet. In the next moment, he was dragged right out into the water. Luckily, he was able to twist around so his back was toward the sea as the pull continued. The vest held his head well out of the water as he was pulled out into the lagoon and to the sub at about a foot a second.

Despite shooting an American officer, the German wasn’t as crazy as he seemed. His information proved to be important, leading to a PT boat scouting mission less than a week later on January 10, 1944. The mission confirmed his claim that the best entrance to the atoll was between Nissan and tiny Barahun Island to its north. On February 15, a force of 5,800 New Zealanders coasted right through the opening and landed in the giant lagoon. In weeks, an airfield on Nissan was bombing Rabaul, the last step in securing the Solomon Islands, and putting a nail in the coffin of Japanese control over the Bismarck Archipelago.

Harry thought a lot about Nissan Island after the war. He wondered what he’d shot in the tall grass on the blackened night. Taking up their new position when the Japanese attacked, he’d never had time to go back and see what it was. He guessed it was probably a tapir.

Unexpectedly, at the oddest times, in church or in a store, the smell of the place would come back into his nostrils. He would think of little Minton hearing the phone ring, of the German’s lies, of the big cannon, and Osborne with the Browning rifle. He never could remember if they’d left the machine gun.

Mostly, though, he would think on his swims through the Cauldron. He wondered why the German picked that place for them to land. Harry guessed that the old man had never been through it himself. Miraculously, he had lived through four passages of the turbulent water with only a few bruises to show for it. He knew he must have looked pretty funny being hauled out of there backwards by that winch, but it had sure worked great! The Duke had saved his life.

As the years went by, Harry concluded that a certain vitality never came back into his body after those swims. But he had to smile and, sometimes, even chuckle over it. It was a good trade, a little energy for the lives of men he loved then, and still loved.

Goby

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,

And breathed in the face of the foe as he pass’ed.

And the eyes of the sleepers wax’d deadly and chill,

And their hearts but once heaved, and for ever grew still!

—Lord Byron, Sennacherib

Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on the submarine Bluefin, May 1, 1944

Half an hour after docking, the men had left the boat. Vice Admiral Charles Lockwood, Commander Submarines Pacific, sat down in the wardroom with the sub’s commander, Lieutenant Commander “Red” Phelps.

“Red, I want you to take command of something new we’ve come up with, a wolf pack like the Germans have been using against us. It hasn’t worked for them. Our boys in the Atlantic, especially the Brits, are sinking U-boats at a furious rate, maybe a couple dozen a month. At this rate, the Germans are through at sea. Of course,” Lockwood shrugged, “we hope it will turn out better for us. It’s top secret, but no real secret, that we’ve lost thirty boats ourselves thus far. But I think this will work for us.”

The old man looked about Bluefin’s interior and smiled. He was marveling at the difference between it and his first command, the A-2, thirty years before. Phelps was content not to interrupt.

“Couldn’t stand one of these anymore, even with air conditioning,” Lockwood went on thoughtfully. “But I think about it every day.” He looked at the sub’s commander again. “What I say to you is top secret, and this time no one is to know, not even your wife.”

“There is no one else aboard, sir.”

“Good. By the way, your wife is on the dock, so I don’t want to keep you too long. I’m going to give you four subs, Bluefin, Terrapin, Cornet, and Goby. I think you know the men: Medlin, Tony Horton, and Billy Estes. Good men.”

“Yes, sir. Ah, sir? Can I have a name for my group?”

“My people are ahead of you for a change. Your command is already billed as ‘Red’s Raiders.’”

Phelps chuckled.

Lockwood continued. “Red, this is my baby and I want it to get off the ground. As we get closer in to Japan, I think there’s good logic in forming such groups for mutual support so far away from our bases, and also for pounding their convoys. Soon, the carrier groups will start to plaster the Marianas. The Marines will hit the beach as soon as possible after that.

“There’s talk of us taking over several of the islands in that group, instead of the usual ‘Island Hopping’ strategy of just one. The word I get, which is supposed to be all hush-hush, but is really pretty much known to everybody, even the newspaper guys, is that the Army Air Corps has a new Boeing super bomber, much bigger than either the B-17 or B-24.”

Phelps nodded.

“They’ve picked out Tinian. The Air Corps plans to fly all the way from Tinian with the new bomber, blow Japan from here to tomorrow, and fly all the way back in one flight. End the war in six months!” Lockwood nodded approvingly.

“That must be something like 2,200 miles round trip, sir!” Phelps said, surprised.

“Yeah, more like 2,600. My people tell me it’s 1,289 miles from the northern tip of Tinian to Mount Fuji.

“Red, we want you to take your command and bottle up the Marianas like a drum. Concentrate on the northern islands, the ones closest to Japan. From north to south, that’s Saipan, Tinian, and then Guam. Four boats, three islands. By the way, the confirmation of your promotion to commander came in from Washington a week ago. Congratulations!”

They shook hands.

“Thank you, sir!”

“Also, you won’t be the only such Wolf Pack. I’m giving one to Jimmy Blanchard. He’ll have his Albacore, plus Finback, Bang, and Stingray. They’ll be quite a ways south of you and some west. He’ll intercept any fleet the Japanese send in to deal with Marc Mitscher’s fast carriers. There could be a major fleet action coming up.

“I’ll leave the disposition to you for your Raiders. It must be obvious that the Marianas are next on our hit parade. The Japanese will try to bring in whatever they can to reinforce the group, and perhaps sneak key people out too. I want you to sink anything that comes in, if they get by Blanchard, or anything that tries to come out.”

The admiral stood up. He looked about the sub again and shook his head. “You know, I don’t usually come on board with orders. Of course, formal orders will follow. But this is big, as important as anything we’ve done.” He looked keenly at Phelps. “I had to see your face. I’ll give you Bobby Ahern, whom I think you know.”

“Yes, sir. He was in the class behind mine.”

“Of course, you’ll be able to get whatever you want. Everyone knows that Ahern speaks for me. He’ll expedite this because I want you at sea in ten days with the whole outfit. The eight boats will leave over a forty-eight hour period, so as to not attract undue attention. Only you and Jimmy Blanchard are to know now. The rest will find out at sea that they are to form into these groups. All eight must be on station by the twentieth.

“I’m sorry about the short leave. It won’t sit well with the crews, but that can’t be helped. The timetable for the invasion has been set by the Joint Chiefs and we can’t change that. The hurry is that you and Jimmy will have to be in there and out before Marc Mitscher and his carrier boys roar in. My guess is that they will move in on 15 June, or a little sooner. Those hot shot pilots of his couldn’t tell one of our fleet boats from the Empire State Building, and I won’t allow any slipups. So, I want you and Jimmy to clear out on 12 June and no later. That gives you only three weeks on station. I would’ve given you more target time, but I just found out about this yesterday and we’ve been up all night with it. After it’s over, you’ll be released to different areas for the balance of your patrols. You okay with all of this?”

Phelps nodded. “Yes, sir!”

The admiral turned to go. Then he thought better of it and sat back down. “I’m going to have to take Harry Connors from you.”

Phelps smiled thinly. “Well, I knew that one was coming. So, he’s coming back?”

“My people tell me he’s on the train now. His ankle is fine.”

“That’s a relief. That was the craziest thing, that trailing wave. If he hadn’t thought fast and popped that hatch shut with his foot, we wouldn’t be here. Tons of water would have gone right down the hatch, sent us straight to the bottom. He saved this command.”

“He saved that whole mission to Nissan Island too,” the Admiral added. “I read your report myself. It read like a novel!” The Admiral smiled. “I know you think a lot of Harry, that he’s up to having his own boat.”

“Admiral, he was ready the day we fished him out of the Sulu Sea when Mojarra went down. Great guy to work with.” An idea came into Phelps’ head. “Sir, ah, since he is coming back, I would like something.”

The admiral gave Phelps his full attention, his brow furrowed. “Name it, Red, and you have it!”

“Well, since Harry is coming off an ankle break, he might not be quite up to snuff. Let me have him for one more patrol. Breaking in a new sub is a tough business; maybe he’s not quite up to it just now. Besides, I could use him as the commander of Bluefin, so I can coordinate the four boats.”

Lockwood thought for a moment, knowing that his carefully laid plans were about to go up in smoke. He mused. “This is just between the two of us.”

Phelps nodded.

“I had a new boat for him coming out of the Mare Island yard in San Francisco. But, okay. You rate it, so you have it.”

“Thank you, sir. If you’re going to let me have him, would you promote him to lieutenant commander?”

“You always were pushy, Red,” Lockwood laughed. “But that’s what I like about you. You’ve never asked me for anything that wasn’t good for the service. Sure, the order will be cut today. And, Red, I’m going to take Rudy Farrell soon enough. He’ll make someone a good exec.”

“I feared that too, sir. He’s the best navigator I ever saw, the best! I just hope you don’t take both at the same time.”

Lockwood didn’t answer the question, but said, “You still have Rocky Fordyce and young Danforth. We have quality replacements coming out now. But, as you know, the new boats are coming out quickly and each crew will be one-third veterans transferred from boats like yours. You have a good bunch and I must take them.”

“Thanks for letting me have them this long.”

The older man stepped out of the wardroom into the hallway, turned back and said, “You take care of yourself, Red.”

“Thank you, sir.”

At sea ten miles west of Garapan, capital of Saipan in the Marianas Islands, May 23, 1944

The radar had been down for repairs for only thirty minutes when a large Japanese freighter loomed out of the mist at about 0200. Only radical maneuvering from Harry Connors averted catastrophe. As the two ships passed only two hundred feet apart, Harry exulted over the prospects of the chase, of another “kill.”

“Captain to the bridge!” echoed throughout the boat. Within two minutes, Phelps came up through the hatch.

“We got a convoy, Red,” Harry said.

“What was that radical maneuvering about?”

“A freighter almost rammed us.”

“They see us?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, that’s no surprise. I can’t see anything myself. Where’d it go?”

“Off to the west.”

In fewer than five minutes the two veterans and close friends assumed their usual positions, with Harry moving down to the conning tower one deck below and Phelps remaining on the bridge. The big boat swung into action, as it had so many times before.

As the radar came back on, it showed an enemy convoy of six ships. Talking back and forth by intercom, the two men decided that the ship that had almost rammed them would make the best target. With the night completely black, it proved impossible to glimpse the ship, let alone see the angle on the bow.

Radar revealed the target’s direction, and the sound man calculated the speed from counting the propeller’s revolutions. He fed the information into the Tactical Data Computer, checking and reinserting the results several times, as Bluefin maneuvered into a good firing position.

They fired two torpedoes. Everyone in the crew cheered wildly as they saw two explosions some 1,500 yards off. Soon the sound man reported that the ship was breaking up. Unusually, after the flashes of the explosions, no fire followed, and the freighter sank unseen.

In another minute Phelps was on the intercom again. “All right, Harry, let’s get a setup on the other ships.”

The scope revealed the convoy proceeding north by west.

“Red, they’re fleeing Garapan, getting outta town,” Harry voiced up to his boss.

“Yeah! The radar still good?”

“Yup.”

“Okay, Harry, I want you and Rudy to work up the best course for interception, an ‘end around’ or whatever you think. What we got, two plus hours before daylight?”

“Yeah. Okay, Red.”

Harry called Ferrell to come up from the Control Room to the conning tower with his map. It took them only a few minutes to come up with a solution.

Harry clicked on the speaker to the bridge. “Red, they’ve definitely sped up, maybe eight and a half knots now. We recommend 270.”

“Okay.”

Harry called out the new order. “Come to new course, 270.”

In a few moments the 311-foot long Fleet boat began to take on the new heading.

“I didn’t think you would mind if we ran up to flank speed,” Harry added.

“Sure, sure, it’s your boat,” Phelps said impatiently. “The mist is lifting. How do you see it?”

“Red, it’s uphill,” Harry said. “The closest one to us looks like a patrol boat. She’s swinging around her chicks at a pretty good clip. She’s probably a destroyer, or at least a Chidori gunboat.”

“Ah, crap.”

Harry continued. “If we go around to the other flank, it’ll take maybe thirty hours before we can get in front of them. The only thing to do is to stay on this flank and get far enough out from the destroyer to do the ‘end around.’ It’ll take twenty hours at their speed and direction and put us in front of them by about 2300.”

“Okay, assume whatever heading and speed you think appropriate. I want Cornet and Terrapin in on this. Isn’t Goby too far?”

In thirty minutes, the Radio Room made contact with all of the subs. Goby, patrolling the eastern approaches to the Marianas, proved to be more than one hundred miles off—much too far away to help. Terrapin, assigned the western approaches to Guam to the south, was also too distant, some eighty miles away. But Cornet was on station sixty miles west of the convoy and in perfect position to intercept. Phelps and Harry decided Bluefin should shadow the convoy instead of doing the “end around.”

In a running battle that lasted for the next twenty-five hours, the two submarines attacked and sank three of the five enemy ships, including the large destroyer. Its crew elated, Bluefin headed back toward its station off Saipan, now almost two hundred miles to the east.

Thirty-nine hours after sinking the freighter, Bluefin was proceeding at ten knots, about sixty miles from Garapan, when lookouts reported wreckage ahead. Harry was on the bridge. First, debris appeared, scattered over a wide area, and then one of the lookouts called down.

“Sir, there are people in the water too.”

Harry ordered Bluefin to slow to crawling speed, then called for Phelps to come up. By the time Phelps came on the bridge, Harry could see much more.

“Red, there are hundreds of people in the water. A lot of them dead, but some are alive.”

“Where’d they come from?” Phelps asked.

“I don’t have any idea. We must be, what, forty some miles west of where we sank the first freighter, and well east of where we sank the others,” Harry said. Both men felt depressed at the thought of so many persons in distress.

“Lookouts!” Phelps called out. “Be very careful in identifying the people in the water. Some might be Allied prisoners of war. And watch out if there are enemy troops among them. They’ll shoot at us if they can.”

Bluefin moved closer to the wreckage, slowing gradually. Harry, Phelps, and the others on the bridge waited tensely. Then, one of the lookouts leaned down.

“Sir, they’re civilians, women and children as far as I can tell. Looks like some old men too.”

Phelps spoke up. “If any lifeboats were aboard, maybe the crew or soldiers headed off in them.”

An idea crossed Harry’s mind. He called down to the Control Room. “Rudy, what are the currents like here?”

The young officer responded in a minute. “Harry? Ah, there’s the usual west to east current here. How strong, I need more time to come up with. I’m guessing, two knots at most.”

Harry went cold and numb as the horrible realization dawned on him. He stared at Phelps. “Red, these are the survivors from the first ship we sank!”

They looked at each other. Then, Phelps nodded grimly.

“So, now we kill women and children,” Harry said, softly. “Women and children.” He thought: In Iowa, people believe in never sending away a person in need. Here we kill them.

The silence on the bridge was interrupted by the cries of the survivors, coming distantly through the hatch.

For the next thirty minutes the sub carefully combed through the wreckage area, looking for survivors. They found no Allied prisoners of war, but approximately 250 were still clinging to wreckage, with more dead in the water. The survivors were suffering from exposure to sun and water, lack of food, and extreme dehydration.

Captain Phelps ordered the crew to bring up drinking water and any food that could be spared. He and Harry took it through the hatch. The lookouts threw the supplies to the victims on rafts, who received them with stunned looks.

Then, Phelps turned toward Harry. “You know they’ll die.”

“I know it. If a ship comes out to rescue them, we’re going to torpedo it. But we have to try. Look at our guys. I don’t think there is a man who hasn’t tried to help. I know it’s hopeless. So do they, but they’re helping anyhow.”

Phelps nodded.

Harry noticed a dead girl floating facedown in the water, about fifty feet from the submarine. Her long straight black hair flowed slightly in the glassy sea.

That girl is the same age as my Billy, safe on the farm in Iowa, he thought. He looked at her for a long time, her arms and legs spread straight out from her body, her clothing moving slightly with the sea. What right did we have, he asked himself, to take the light from her eyes? Would I have taken the food from her mouth that nourished her body? I have contributed to her death when she was no more guilty of anything than my own girl. She was innocent by any Christian teaching I know of. My hands have helped to kill her. And not just her.

He looked away from the child, at the other corpses floating in the wreckage. Each form now reminded him of someone in his family or town. Several were the same diminutive-size women as his mother-in-law or Mrs. Whitlow, the wife of his priest.

I have committed a sin that can never be absolved, he thought.

Phelps noticed Harry’s look of anguish. “Harry, go on down below.” He paused as Harry turned to look at him. “Harry, we’ve done all we can here.”

“Yeah.”

Harry went down the hatch into the conning tower and then to his bunk. He sat there, staring at the wall, for what seemed like a long time.

In twenty minutes, a blip appeared on the radar screen, seemingly a plane. Bluefin moved off from the survivors, submerged for a while, resurfaced, and then resumed her triangular search pattern as the light faded.

At a little past midnight, after Harry had returned to the Control Room, the phone buzzed. Harry picked it up.

It was Rocky in the Radio Room. “Harry, you’d better come down here. There’s a long transmission coming in.”

Harry walked a few paces toward the back of the boat to the Radio Room. In fifteen minutes, Rocky had decoded the message.

The boat picked up speed, maintaining its easterly heading. Harry went to the captain’s cabin and stuck his head into the compartment.

“What’s up, Harry?” Phelps asked, looking up from his tiny desk.

“Red, we’ve got real trouble.”

“Yeah?”

“Pearl says Goby has been out of contact for nearly twenty hours. She missed the morning call in, and they haven’t raised her since. Her last position was 147 degrees east and dead on 15 degrees north. Rudy says that’s about sixty miles east of the channel between Saipan and Tinian.”

“I can feel that you’ve come up to flank speed.”

“Yes, and of course Pearl has ordered us to look into it, High Priority.”

“Let’s go talk to Rudy.”

The three officers pored over a map of the Marianas on the work area in the middle of the Control Room.

“So, Rudy, you’re telling me,” Phelps asked pointedly, “that we’re sixty miles west of these two islands and that Goby’s last reported position was sixty miles east of them? So, Goby’s 120 miles from here, with the damn islands right in the way.”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Ferrell responded.

“Damn. What’s the shortest way there?”

Ferrell shrugged. “Through the Saipan Channel separating the two islands, sir.”

The normally passive Phelps had a look on his face that few of the men in the conning tower had seen. “I know it’s a narrow passage. How narrow?”

Ferrell looked up with a frown on his face. “Not even three miles.”

“Damn,” Phelps said again. “Which way does the crystal ball tell you is the next shortest way?”

The navigator was ready. “Red, from where we are now, it’s only fifteen miles farther going south of Tinian than going through the straits. It’s much farther going north of Saipan.”

“If the shortest way is through the strait, then that’s the way we’re going,” Phelps said, with some emotion in this voice.

The men in the Control Room looked at each other, thinking this was not the captain they knew. His decision was not a wise one.

As Phelps stepped away, someone nudged Harry from behind. “Harry, could I speak to you?” It was the communications officer, Bob Finkler, who had come in with a minor message from Pearl and overheard Phelps’ orders.

“Sure.”

The two men went a few steps beyond the Radio Room into the crew’s mess. No one else was there.

“Harry,” the young officer began, “I don’t know if you recall, but I did two patrols on Goby when I first came out to the Pacific. Billy Estes was her captain then, as he is now. Harry, all Estes did was talk about Red. They were on the same academy football team. They’re one year apart, both from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and they grew up together.”

Harry raised his hand for Finkler to stop. “I understand. Thanks, Bob.”

Both men went back to the Control Room.

Phelps had gone up to the conning tower. Harry followed and beckoned Phelps over to a corner, where the others wouldn’t hear. They spoke in muffled voices.

“Look, Red,” Harry whispered, “We can’t win with this setup. The strait probably has at least one patrol boat that could hold us up or even kill us. We’d be lucky if they only held us down for a few hours. Even if they don’t have gunboats, there could be mines or nets, and they sure are going to blast us with shore batteries. At that range, they couldn’t miss. We’ll have to submerge where we can, only make nine knots minus the current, versus twenty on the surface, if we go south of Tinian. For God’s sake, it’s not going to help Estes and his crew out of any trouble if we get ourselves killed.”

Harry looked Phelps in the eye and continued. “I’ve never pulled anything on you before, but I’m telling you to take this boat south of Tinian. If we’re lucky, we can go full-speed the whole way, and the risk is nothing compared to going through the strait.”

Phelps turned his head, a frown on his face, running his left hand through his famous red hair.

Harry went below, to the Control Room. Several minutes of tense waiting passed.

Finally, Phelps’ voice came over the intercom. “Rudy, give me a course to go around the southern tip of Saipan.”

“One-zero-eight, sir,” Ferrell answered almost instantly.

“Come to new course, 108.” In a few seconds, the boat leaned over a bit and finally settled into its new course.

“Let me make this plain,” the squadron commander ordered. “I want every effort made to increase our speed. What does it read?”

The sailor called out, “Nineteen knots, sir, a shade over.”

“That’s not good enough,” Phelps said firmly. “Not enough. We will have more speed!”

The men in the conning tower noted the seriousness in Phelps’ voice, and stood silently at their posts, waiting to feel the boat speed up.

“Nineteen plus,” Phelps called dejectedly over the intercom. As he intended, everyone in the conning tower heard it. “Is that the best we can do?”

Ferrell was on the plot, noting some tiny islands coming up. Fordyce, the diving officer, answered Phelps. “Well, Red, we could blow the safety and negative tanks. They hold thirty-odd tons of water.”

“Yes! Yes! Do it!”

“Sir, it’ll leave the boat a little unseaworthy.”

“That’s fine,” Phelps responded quickly. “There’s no particular swell up here at all.”

Soon, the great craft came up to nearly twenty and a half knots.

An hour passed. With a slightly adjusted course, the submarine now ran just off a shallow area called the Esmeralda Bank. Phelps told the lookouts to be very vigilant.

In another twenty minutes, the lookouts’ binoculars began to bring out the southern coast of Tinian. According to top secret plans, in a few months the B-29 bombers would take off from there, fire bomb dozens of Japanese cities, and then mount the atomic bomb attacks.

The tiny island of Aguijan appeared off the port bow, clear in the early morning light, as well as a still smaller shoal area off the starboard quarter. Ferrell judged that the boat could pass through the shallower water at top speed. Soon they came back into deep water.

A third hour passed, with Tinian easing by at what seemed to every man on board an agonizing slowness. They took a few degrees off the heading every few minutes as they rounded the tip of the island, finally winding up on 059. The fourth hour came and went, and the crew became more and more alert, knowing that Goby’s last position made it possible for her to be anywhere.

“Smoke!” the lookout called out to Phelps, still on the bridge.

The squadron commander whirled around. “Bearing?”

“One-nine-zero, sir,” the man called out, which was almost directly astern of the speeding submarine.

Phelps called over the intercom. “Harry, we got a contact at 190. Got anything on the radar?”

There was a pause while Harry checked. “Nothing yet, Red.”

“Put the scope up all the way and look.”

The scope went up. Then Harry was back on. “Yeah, I can see her. Looks bigger than a patrol boat. Maybe twelve miles out. Looks like she’s heading this way.”

“Come up to the bridge.”

Harry motioned to Fordyce, pointing upward. The officer nodded, and Harry ascended the ladder to the bridge.

Phelps silently offered Harry a cigarette, which Harry accepted silently, as usual. “So, what do you make of this one, Harry?”

The intercom buzzed, Harry picked it up, listened, and then passed the word on to Phelps. “They got her on the radar now.”

“So, Harry, what do you think? It’s like they knew we were here.”

“Well, I expect they saw us some time ago, had some kind of gunboat at Rota thirty miles south—or maybe Guam—and ordered it against us.”

“Could they have seen us from those islands we passed?”

“Probably. We passed that last speck in enough daylight for them to see us.”

Harry tilted his head and shrugged. “It’s just like these guys, to put some poor slob on just such a place with a radio.” He buzzed the Control Room. “Rudy, check with Bob in the Radio Room. Have we picked up any communications in the last hour?”

In a minute Ferrell was back on. “Harry, Bob says there were a flock of them about the time we passed Aguijan.”

Harry relayed the word to Phelps.

“That’s just great!” Phelps said.

“Red, my guess is that they’re watching us right now. The Japanese probably have a telescope on the southern end of Tinian.”

“I wonder why they don’t shoot at us.”

“They’d need a six-inch gun for a shot like that, and they probably don’t have one.”

At that instant a terrific geyser erupted out of the sea, about half a mile toward Tinian. Phelps looked at the water cascading down.

“You were saying?”

“I wonder if that’s extreme range,” Harry responded.

“I expect we’ll find out soon enough,” Phelps answered.

Several more geysers followed, all short by at least half a mile. Hitting the button, Phelps asked the radar operator, “How far is that ship?”

“She’s closing fast, maybe eight miles.”

“She must be a patrol craft of some type to make that kind of speed,” Harry said.

“That’s just great,” Phelps said. “We got this ship on one side of us and an enemy island on the other.”

Another great geyser appeared to seaward. One of the lookouts called down. “Harry, I think that’s a Chidori gunboat.”

That really set Phelps off. “Jesus Christ, this is all we need, a damn Chidori! We can’t fight it out with one of them.”

“Well, it’s not going to help just talking about it. What do you want to do this time?”

“Harry, it’s your boat.”

“Let’s at least make it so they can’t see us.” Harry leaned toward the intercom and hit the button. “Flood negative and take her down.”

The lookouts jumped down from their perches on the periscope shears and disappeared down the ladder into the conning tower. The diving alarm sounded throughout the boat: Ah-oogh-gah! Ah-oogh-gah!

The thirty-six-inch round main induction valve was closed to the outside air, and the crew started the complicated process of closing down the diesel engines and switching over to battery power.

Harry was last down the ladder. As he reached the bottom, he asked Fordyce, “Green Board?”

“Yes, pressure in the boat, Harry.”

“What do we have under the keel?”

“About thirty fathoms.”

“A hundred and eighty feet. That’s not enough for much maneuvering.”

Harry leaned over the opening in the floor leading down to the Control Room and called, “Rudy, come up here with your map.”

Ferrell climbed up, slightly wide-eyed, map clutched in his hand.

“What’s it look like as we head inshore?” Harry asked.

Ferrell checked. “It looks like the bottom comes up gradually all the way to the island.”

Harry turned to the diving officer. “Rocky, bring her down to sixty-two feet.”

“Sixty-two feet, sir. Passing forty feet.”

Harry turned toward Phelps and lowered his voice. “If we head out to sea at any angle, that gunboat will cut us off in this shallow water and sink us. They got the best sound stuff in the Japanese navy on Chidoris.”

“Yeah. We got to go inshore,” Phelps added. “They might get the pinging screwed up against the land formation.”

Harry nodded. “Yeah, but we won’t have much water under the keel. If they find us, we’ll have to battle surface and shoot it out. I think she’s got three 4.7-inchers to our one five-inch gun.”

Phelps nodded and frowned.

“Rocky,” Harry called, “you got those two tanks filled again?”

“All filled.”

Phelps asked the hydrophone operator, Ned Curic, “Is she pinging for us?”

Curic listened for several seconds. “Just starting now, sir.”

“Rudy,” Phelps asked, “any idea of the current around here?”

“My guess is that it blunts against these islands and sort of splays in this direction south as much as east, actually driving us back out to sea.”

“So, southeast. Two knots,” Harry said, thinking. “So, at least we won’t be pushed toward the island.”

“Leveling off at sixty-two feet, sir,” Fordyce called out.

“Rudy, give me a course inshore. She’s less likely to follow us into shallow water.”

“I’m on it, sir.” Making quick calculations, Ferrell answered back in less than twenty seconds. “Try, uh, 350.”

“Come to course 350,” Harry ordered, “all ahead full.”

Phelps leaned toward Harry again and spoke quietly. “He can’t carefully ping for us going at top speed. So, if this joker knows what he’s doing, he’ll slow and come right up our tail. Then, if he doesn’t turn us up, he’ll start a box search, turning off perpendicular to us in one direction or the other to begin his pattern.”

Harry interrupted, knowing exactly what his boss was about to say. “Yeah, that would give us enough time to get in close enough to make this work.”

Phelps nodded. “We need all the speed we can get.”

The sub slowly came up to ten knots. For the next forty minutes, as the gunboat slowed but still headed directly toward her, Bluefin headed as fast as she could toward Tinian, every man on board counting the seconds. A man might look at his watch, believing minutes had passed, only to see that it had been mere seconds.

By 0800, Curic concluded that the gunboat was only three thousand yards off.

Phelps nodded. Harry ordered, “Rig out for silent running,” and, a minute later, “All stop.”

The command quickly passed through the boat. The crew turned the air conditioning off, along with trim pumps and all other electrical devices that the enemy might pick up on their hydrophones.

The sub glided, slowly losing headway. The thum-thum-thum-thum of the gunboat’s propeller, clearly audible through the submarine’s pressure hull, tapered off also as the Chidori slowed even more, until she seemed to hover not far away.

For every man on board Bluefin, the minutes were almost more than they could bear. A powerful enemy was above them, holding them down near an island occupied by thousands of enemy soldiers. One false move, one slip, and the enemy would close in and attack them. Though it was unnecessary, the men whispered and acted as if the enemy were in the next room.

Phelps spoke in a low voice. “We can’t keep her down for long without some speed.”

With that, the boat rose a little, and both of the commanders looked at the diving officer as if to ask, Can you hold her down, hold her level? Fordyce knew exactly what was up, and nodded.

After nearly ten minutes, all on board were relieved when the Chidori’s engines suddenly increased their revolutions. They built quickly: THUM—THUM—THUM—THUM.

Phelps and Harry looked at each other, wondering if the gunboat had finally picked them out against the landmass of Tinian.

Seconds passed as Curic listened carefully. After a long silence, he looked toward Harry and Phelps. “She’s going away.”

“She’s beginning her box search,” Phelps said, in the same low tone.

“Which way, Ned?” Harry asked just as quietly.

The operator listened carefully for a few more seconds. “West.”

Harry smiled. After five more minutes, he was ready with a new order. “All ahead one-third, come to new course 090. That’ll take us out to sea some. How much is under the keel?”

“Ten fathoms.”

Phelps chimed in. “Well, that was close enough. Another fifteen minutes and we could have docked at the place.”

In the next thirty minutes, as the gunboat continued to go west, the submarine came up to full speed. Within fifty minutes, Harry ordered that Bluefin be brought up enough that the deck was barely out of the water. That way, the main induction valve could be opened and the ship could go on diesel power and higher speed.

Harry was ready to take his chances. He ordered, “Surface.”

The sub emerged from the ocean depths, and the diving planes were secured. Harry was on the periscope immediately. On the six-power lens he could see the gunboat, now only a speck, and remarked to Phelps: “I sure hope they don’t have search radar. Rudy, how far are we from Tinian?”

“Twelve miles, sir.”

“All ahead flank speed.”

Looking at Phelps, Harry said, “We are heading directly away from Tinian. They would have to be looking directly at us with a telescope to see us, so let’s see what happens.”

The search for Goby then began in earnest. In an hour, some thirty-two miles off Tinian, the intercom buzzed on the bridge. Harry pressed the button.

“Sir, we’re picking up something on the radar about sixteen thousand yards out, bearing 120.”

“Battle stations,” Harry ordered. “Come to new course 120.”

Men jumped from their bunks and ran through the corridors of the submersible. In less than forty seconds, all the crew were again at their stations, hoping and praying that it was, indeed, the missing sub.

In fifteen minutes, Clemens, the lookout with the keenest eyesight, sang out. “It’s a sub, Harry!”

The vessel gradually became visible to all on the bridge. It was Goby. It had to be her; it was obviously an American sub, and Goby was the only one assigned to that area.

“Tell Chief Osborne to come to the bridge,” Phelps ordered.

In less than a minute, the sixty-year-old chief was standing next to Phelps and Harry. The three men looked toward Goby as Bluefin drew closer and closer.

“Duke,” Phelps said, “I want you to be ready to go aboard and survey the damage with Harry. I’ll hold the fort.”

By now, the trio could see the entire submarine. They looked her over with binoculars. Goby was wallowing in the shallow waves, with about a twenty-degree list to port. Several officers and crew were visible on the bridge, and both of her gun crews were in position.

“Both periscopes look like they were twisted around by a giant,” Osborne said. “No radar or even radio antennae.”

“She’s been hit by a bomb or shell,” Phelps said. “The bridge is all warped, the lookout perches askew.”

The radio man couldn’t raise Goby. Bluefin turned and came abreast of her. Osborne brought up a megaphone and yelled across, oscillating his voice from high to low as best he could: “What . . . hap . . . pened . . . to . . . you?”

An officer on the bridge of Goby picked up a megaphone and yelled back in the same manner. “Plane . . . at . . . tack . . . cap . . . tain . . . ex . . . ec . . . dead, . . . ma . . . ny . . . woun . . . ded.”

Phelps sagged visibly, his mouth open a little. “Billy Estes. Dead. How the hell are his parents and his girl Rosaline going to take it?”

Rocky Fordyce had come up to the bridge during this exchange. He looked across at the stricken sub. “Red, that’s Harold Barton shouting. He was our fullback at the Academy. Everyone calls him ‘Bump.’ He’s a very good man.”

Phelps, still pale with shock, turned to Harry and saluted him, which surprised everyone on the bridge. “Harry, you are to assume command of Goby from this moment.”

Harry saluted back as Phelps continued. “They got guys on the Bofors and the deck gun, so they’ve got some firepower. Let’s get our gun crews up too.”

Harry called into the intercom, “Gun Action!”

Men began to scurry up from below. In minutes, they had manned both weapons.

“Harry,” Phelps said, “Find out if that boat is salvageable, should be scuttled, is towable, whatever. I knew you would want Duke, but take with you whomever else you wish except Rudy. Understood?”

“Yes, sir. I want Botel, Polavita, and Freddie Warren. I’ll swim over now. Duke, you coming? Send Botel with as much medical stuff as the raft will carry. Get Tony and Warren to paddle him over.”

“Good.”

Phelps went to the intercom and ordered Polavita and Warren to the bridge. Harry, and then Osborne, stepped off the deck onto the ballast tanks and dove in.

After several minutes they were pulled aboard Goby’s tanks.

Harry climbed up toward the bridge. Bump Barton awaited, a grim look on his face.

“Sir,” he said, saluting.

“You Barton?” Harry asked. The officer nodded. “I’m Harry Connors. I’ll be in command.”

“Yes, sir! We sure are glad to see you! We’d about given up hope. We’ve been thirty-two hours like this, occasionally seeing smoke in one direction or another, knowing it wasn’t anyone friendly.”

“What happened?”

“It was a bomb, sir. We couldn’t have been unluckier. It was a clear day just like today. The radar was down one hour! So we had extra lookouts on the bridge. The plane must’ve come right out of the sun. None of them ever saw it. Captain Estes was on the bridge and the executive officer, Steve Franz, had just come up. They and the lookouts were killed, all eight of them.”

“I can see the hole through the side,” Osborne said, coming up beside Harry.

“Must have hit close aboard,” Barton said. “It blew that hole right through into the crew’s mess. Killed another four men outright, and wounded many others. Four of them are barely holding on.”

“We have our pharmacist’s mate coming over on a raft to help with the wounded.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You can’t make speed?” Harry asked.

“No. The electrical circuits have troubles all over the place. We’ve been all of these hours trying to patch them.”

“Who’s chief of the boat?” Harry asked.

“Arnie Krolewitz.”

“Let’s get him up here.”

“Yes, sir.”

Harry edged toward Osborne and whispered in his ear. “You know if this Krolewitz is any good?”

“Harry, he’s good, a real electrical whiz.”

Krolewitz clambered onto deck. He looked visibly worn, but he smiled when he saw Osborne and warmly shook his hand. “Glad to see you, Duke!”

Harry interrupted. “I want a complete report from you two in thirty minutes as to the chance that this boat can get under way. Go! Bump, you will assume the duties of executive officer.”

“Yes, sir.”

In twenty-five minutes, the two chiefs were back on the bridge. Osborne did the talking.

“Harry, we got real trouble!” He shook his head and ran his fingers straight back through his long, graying hair. “It’s hard to find a place to start. I’ve never seen anything this bad.”

He frowned and pointed at the hole in the hull. “First, there’s that thing. You pull the plug on it, and it’s straight to the bottom. Second, she got jolted so hard that some of the battery cells have been ruptured. How many, there’s no way to tell. The chlorine gas is very strong down there, a sure indication that some cells are cracked. We can’t even get in either the fore or aft battery rooms to inspect or add water to the cells unless we get some ventilation.

“Which leads to the third major problem, the engines. Without ventilation from the engines, not only are we sitting ducks, but acid leaking from the batteries will actually eat holes right through the hull, though it might take a couple of days. Without water added in there, and no ventilation down there, the batteries could blow up like a Roman candle and take us with them.

“The good news, if there is any,” Osborne continued, “is that if you give us two hours, we think we can get two of the diesels working and one of the two shafts turning. These are the brand new Fairbanks-Morse diesels, new motors three months ago. That would give us the ventilation we need to get in there and add water to the batteries, and maybe get some kind of a guess as to how many are ruptured. Maybe get you ten to twelve knots too. Besides the boat itself, they got ten men in serious shape, others wounded. If she sinks, which could have been an hour ago, there’d be no way to get them out of the boat before they drowned.

“The radar’s gone, really gone. No possibility for either of the periscopes. You may have salt water in the fuel oil too. The Kleinschmidt evaporators are busted, so no fresh water. There’s maybe 4,500 gallons in the tank, enough for three, four days, even including enough for the batteries—if we could get into those compartments. Maybe we could rig a radio with short-range transmission.”

“Get at it,” Harry said. “Make it an hour.”

The two men went down the hatch into the conning tower.

Standing next to Barton, Harry was in deep thought. We have to either abandon ship or be prepared to fight it out, he pondered. If we fight it out, we could lose both boats and all 160 men. On the other hand, if we scuttle the boat, sounds like four or five men will die in the transit over to Bluefin. Four or five men! I just don’t know. I just can’t think! I have to decide right now if we should begin evacuating. It’ll take an hour for sure, which we may be lucky to get. The plane that bombed Goby might come back with his pals.

With a little luck, he thought, we could haul off to the east, elude the enemy, and get everyone back. If one plane attacks, we got plenty of firepower from the two Bofors. I only wish those five-inch guns could be raised enough to down attacking planes.

In an hour, by a miraculous effort, just as the two chiefs had hoped, the crew had restored power to one of the two shafts. Two of the four diesel motors came on line. Harry nudged Barton and told him to pick up the megaphone and yell across to Bluefin.

“Can . . . not . . . sub . . . merge . . . On . . . one . . . shaft . . . now . . . Cov . . . er . . . us . . . to . . . the . . . east!”

Phelps took the megaphone and raised and lowered it several times, signaling his agreement. Bluefin informed Pearl of the emergency, and that the two subs would attempt to make Midway Island, some 1,850 miles to the northeast.

Soon Goby was able to make ten knots, then thirteen. Ventilation was restored, and crewmen were able to brave the chlorine fumes and inspect the fore and aft batteries.

All seemed to be going well until Clemens, the same Bluefin lookout who had originally spotted Goby, sang out. “Smoke, bearing 311.”

Phelps came around to the rear of the bridge. “Yes,” he said, “I see it, probably beyond the scope of the radar. Must be . . . twenty thousand yards.”

Phelps turned toward Goby and saw Harry raising and lowering the megaphone. Obviously they also had seen the smoke.

The mystery vessel continued to close. The two subs also closed, this time to one hundred feet. Phelps yelled across to Goby: “If . . . a . . . crui . . . ser . . . or . . . des . . . troy . . . er . . . scut . . . tle . . . your . . . boat . . . We . . . will . . . pick . . . you . . . up . . . if . . . can!”

On Goby’s bridge, Harry winced as he realized his terrible mistake. If the approaching vessel was a cruiser or destroyer, the two sub deck guns would be no defense at all against such firepower and Goby would be doomed. The entire crew could be captured by the Japanese and subject to beatings and execution, especially those who were even slightly wounded. Survivors would face the doom of imprisonment in some place like the Ashio copper mine north of Tokyo that all submariners had heard of. Bump Barton noticed the look on Harry’s face, but he said nothing.

How could I have been so stupid? Harry wondered. He prayed that it was just some small patrol boat.

The enemy ship came on quickly, despite the subs moving directly away. Once it came on the radar, its speed could be judged: twenty-five knots. It soon became obvious what it was. It’s the Chidori! Harry thought.

Two lookouts confirmed what he already knew. That captain figured we scooted off his tail to the east, so he backtracked, Harry thought. This guy’s no second-teamer. He got nothing on the box pattern, probably came up the east coast for a while, and then came out to sea. Pretty smart.

Phelps was shouting something baffling on the megaphone. “Come . . . to . . . two . . . five . . . ze . . . ro.”

Harry mashed the button on the intercom.

“Sir?” Barton answered.

“Bump, take on a slow turn to starboard, finally taking up the new heading of 250. Where does that take us?”

“Sir, that takes us south, almost in the direction of Guam.”

Harry was nearly dumbfounded. Back toward the enemy! Was Phelps luring the Chidori into an ambush with maybe Terrapin, three subs against the gunboat? That would certainly be a lot of firepower, and maybe the Chidori would back off. But wasn’t Terrapin on the other side of Guam, too far away?

Tension immediately built in his head. Turning away from the others on the bridge, he muttered, “This is all my doing.”

Then, before he could dwell on his mistake, an idea flashed into his brain. He looked at his watch. It’s nearly 1720 hours, he realized. Red is maneuvering the enemy so that in an hour or so the sun will be going down in their eyes, and a target the size of a sub running directly away from them would be a difficult one to hit!

Foolishly, the Chidori slowly made the arc with the submarines instead of cutting the distance. In ten minutes, all three had taken up the new course.

Harry thought to himself: That’s the first mistake he’s made. He called down to Barton again. “Look up a Chidori on Jane’s. Doesn’t it have one forward firing gun?”

Just as he spoke, the enemy vessel opened fire at about nine miles’ range, with the shell hitting more than five hundred yards to the port of Bluefin.

The intercom buzzed. It was Barton. “Sir, we looked at Jane’s, but we also have an update from Fleet. Just like you thought, one 4.7-incher firing forward, one amidships, and one firing off the stern.”

Harry saw some movement on Bluefin out of the corner of his eye. A sailor appeared on the deck and began sending a message with semaphore flags as another shell landed far off to port.

Well, at least they’re rotten shots, Harry thought, as he read the message:

STAND OFF FOUR HUNDRED YARDS.

Knowing his boss as well as he did, it took only a few seconds for Harry to grasp the meaning. He hit the button and called down to the conning tower. “Bump, come up!”

In ten seconds, Bump was climbing up next to Harry. “Sir?”

“You need to know this in case something happens to me,” Harry began. “I can tell you what Red’s thinking. That Chidori has one forward firing gun, but two others aft. If we stay relatively close together, say four hundred yards apart, she won’t be able to bring either rear weapon to bear, just one gun to our two. Then we’ll have him in a little crossfire. Luckily, both of our deck guns are located aft. If their captain fishtails to bring his other guns to bear, he’ll be able to use them only at the chance of giving us a much better target. Of course, a Chidori is only about six hundred tons, with each of us being more than three times that. None of us can stand much damage.”

“Okay,” Barton acknowledged, and went below as a third shell landed about two hundred yards to port.

The signalman appeared on Bluefin’s deck, which Harry read as an order to open fire. He raised his arm as a signal and Goby’s deck gun fired, jolting the entire ship.

But the signalman sent another message, and Harry read it:

THE TRUMPET BLOWS.

Harry nodded with a wan smile and thought of his family, halfway around the world. The big gun fired again, with a deep BOOM. Harry looked respectfully at it. Bluefin’s gun had saved his life twice. I wonder if it can do it a third time, he thought. I always said I wanted to have one of these things, so here’s my chance.

At the distance between the two subs, he could barely distinguish Phelps on the bridge. So, the trumpet blows, and it’s time to fight it out, Harry thought. Let’s see if this guy continues rushing us when he figures out he’s facing two five-inchers. He does have a higher fire control system, which will make his fire much more accurate. If he puts a shot in Goby, it could sink us, and if he puts a shot into Bluefin, he may have two crippled subs he can finish off anytime he gets around to it. I did this to us. And Red trusted my judgment and bought into it. Harry shook his head as the deck gun fired again.

The enemy ship slowed its advance when the avalanche of more than ten shells a minute showed the Japanese what they were up against. She veered off to the north, and the Americans hurried to make their escape.

The range widened slightly, from seven to seven and a half miles, and for several minutes the enemy seemed content to offer a number of broadsides. None came particularly close. The Americans began assuming that the range would continue opening and that the battle might be over.

Then, just as abruptly, at 1757, the Japanese ship changed course again and turned back toward the subs.

Now the battle commenced in earnest. As though on a millpond, the warships flailed away at each other, the water around them like glass. The American salvoes began to come close to the gunboat, but none hit.

At the same time, the enemy fire came much closer, putting a shell within one hundred yards of Bluefin. Both the Japanese and Bluefin began to weave, while, of course, Goby continued in a straight line to the west as fast as she could.

The Americans remained on average four hundred yards apart, despite the gyrations of Bluefin. The strange contest between the two implacable foes continued on until 1826, when the first shell hit Goby’s bow, destroying the port bow plane, penetrating the deck into the forward Torpedo Room, and killing six men.

Despite the additional damage, the boat continued unimpeded. Unfortunately, at 1841, the sub was rocked again, this time above the after Torpedo Room. Five of the crew were killed, including two in the gun crew, but the shell just missed the engineering spaces. Again the boat continued on at thirteen knots.

By now the sun’s descent was proving a serious problem for the Japanese. Their only other hit, also on Goby, came at 1922, in the extreme aft of the boat. It penetrated the engineering spaces and knocked one of the two remaining diesels completely out of operation but killed no one. The submarine’s forward speed dropped off immediately. It appeared to be only a matter of time before a fourth hit would sink the boat.

On board Bluefin, Phelps called down wearily to Rudy Ferrell. “Listen, Harry’s about finished. One more hit and I’ll give you the word to submerge. I don’t care if you get a Green Board. I want you to take her down fast, so they’ll have as little fix on us as possible. We’ll come around and torpedo this guy when he comes in to make sure of Harry.”

At the same instant, one of the two subs—no one could ever figure out which one—landed a shell on the Chidori’s bridge. There was a terrific explosion, easily visible without binoculars. The Americans on both bridges waited, in shocked silence, to see the result.

The gunboat continued directly toward the Americans for another two minutes, but no more shells were fired. Either the captain had been killed, the communications system destroyed, or the fire control system damaged beyond repair. In another two minutes, the enemy turned off to the northwest toward Tinian and gradually disappeared off Bluefin’s radar. The battle was over.

Later, as they cruised gently toward Midway, it was time to deal with the dead. In all, fourteen bodies, rolled in blankets, were lined up on Goby’s deck. With the men from both subs looking on, Harry conducted the simple service that has been the tradition of the US Navy since the beginnings of the Great Republic:

Unto almighty God we commend the souls

Of our shipmates departed.

And we commit their bodies to the deep,

In the sure and certain hope of the resurrection

Unto eternal life, when the sea shall give up

Her dead

In the life of the world to come.

He looked away as three of the men put their fallen comrades over the side, one by one.

The subs proceeded toward Midway at nine knots, the best speed Goby could make, for the next six days. To everyone’s amazement, not a single Japanese plane or ship was detected. Unfortunately, the complicated and extensive repairs Krolewitz and Osborne attempted improved the vessel’s condition only marginally. The wounded and the log were carefully transferred to Bluefin, just in case.

In the afternoon of the seventh day, Chief Osborne came to the bridge.

“Harry, we’ve come to the end. My guess is we’ve got thirty minutes or so. I doubt she’ll last an hour. Those cells, especially the ones in the forward battery, have just leaked out too much chlorine gas. It’s eaten through the hull somewhere. We can actually hear it sizzle like a steak on a grill. The pumps are at full blast, but as of fifteen minutes ago, they’re losing.”

Harry put his hand up and spoke quietly. “You don’t have to say anything else. I’ve felt her lose headway in the last couple minutes. Signal Red to move in closer. Let’s get some lines across; the sea is coming up. Go to dead slow, just enough speed to maneuver.”

Osborne went below. Harry mashed down on the intercom button and called out to the entire boat. “Men, it’s time to get everyone off. Help bring up the wounded, and then we’ll abandon ship.”

Soon lines were passed and tied to both subs. Goby’s crew came up on the deck to leave their ship, one by one, and then in groups. Some made their way across on the lines drooping in the water, and others dove into the sea and swam across. Most paused and looked at Goby, giving a thought or two to their home. A few saluted, teary-eyed.

Everyone but Harry and Osborne were across within thirty minutes. The remaining diesel conked out, the lines were untied, and Harry motioned for Duke to go across.

Now he was the only one left, on a bridge starting to tilt noticeably as Goby sank lower in the water. Harry paused for a moment before he saluted, and then stepped off into the sea, hanging on to a line and striking out for Bluefin.

He climbed aboard, and turned to watch Goby go.The tired sub foundered quickly, surprisingly beginning her plunge completely upright and level, as though she were submerging. Goby’s final location was noted as 169 degrees east longitude and nearly 18 degrees north latitude, or some 180 miles north of Bikini Atoll and some 1,150 miles short of Midway Island.

June 18, 1944, Pearl Harbor

Phelps, Harry, and Admiral Lockwood sat in Bluefin’s wardroom. They had just finished discussing the mission.

“I think you two did a good job,” the admiral said.

“Thank you, sir,” Phelps said. “Do you have any early indications of how the campaign’s going?”

“Well, you and Jimmy Blanchard bottled up the place real well. We have no indication at all from the intelligence people that any enemy shipping got in or out. The Marines hit Saipan three days ago. From what we hear, they’ve made good progress after landing at the southwest corner of the island near the straits. Red, I want to talk to you in a few minutes, but let me talk to Harry first.”

“I’ll be on the dock.” Phelps tipped his cap and left. The admiral turned to Harry.

“Harry, I read your report and it’s a good one. I think you are too hard on yourself.”

“Sir, I got men killed unnecessarily.”

“I don’t see that. You were in a tough spot, a new command with personnel unknown to you. You were completely on your own.”

“Still.” Harry looked into the old man’s eyes. “I feel responsible for the men who died in the battle. I should have scuttled Goby when Osborne came to me with the report on her condition. There would’ve been no battle, and we could’ve ducked the Chidori.”

“Maybe so. But she could just as well have drummed up Bluefin after you scuttled and sank Goby. I’ve done this for a long time, son, and I have learned that nothing much happens in war the way it should.”

“Yes, sir,” Harry said.

“Harry, I want to give you a new boat. She’ll be coming in from the Panama Canal in a couple of weeks.”

Harry took a deep breath. “Sir, I would like to resign from the service.”

Admiral Lockwood gaped at him.

“Sir,” Harry continued, “I’ve been home twice in eight years, once sick and once with a broken ankle. My wife is just barely holding on to our farm.”

“Harry, we have to see this one to the end, however long it takes.”

“Sir, I’ve had eight war patrols since ’41.”

“So, you think your number is up, eh?”

Harry looked the admiral straight in the eye. “I’ve almost been killed four times, sir. I’ve been sunk twice, losing almost all of the crew the first time and losing too many this time. Got held down in that depth-charging off the Carolines for thirty hours. But mostly, I think, as we get closer and closer to Japan, I’ve gotten more and more sick of killing innocent people. This time I saw hundreds of people in the water from a ship we torpedoed. Mostly women and children, some old men. Some were already dead and the rest were soon to die. This is closer to murder than war to me, sir.”

The admiral looked down at the pad, thinking. This is the second time I’ve tried to give him his own boat. He’s a good man, but he’s taken all he can take. Every man has a limit and Harry’s reached his. I wonder how we get men like him. I just wonder. I hope the supply doesn’t stop coming.

Finally, he looked up at Harry and shook his head a little.

“You have definitely done your share, maybe more. I’m not debating that. This is what I can do for you. Rusty Clark, a very good man, was killed two weeks ago in a plane crash at sea. I want you to take his place until the war ends, whenever that is. You will get no leave, and I will not allow a transfer once you accept this. You will be one of three officers who meets new boats at the Panama Canal and comes out with them. You will polish those crews, and evaluate their commanding officers in the two weeks it takes to get there.

“Harry, tomorrow you’ll be promoted to commander, so that you will outrank these captains. You will have complete authority over the new boats. You will have complete authority to speak in my name. On your say, I will order the boats to the war zones, hold them for more training, or consider your recommendation to relieve the captain. Will you take the job?”

“Yes, sir, I would love it!”

“You will leave tomorrow at 0400. Come to my office this afternoon at 1300 and work out the details with Bobby Ahern. He’ll bring you up to speed.”

The old man stood and saluted. Harry returned his salute, feeling limp with relief.

“Thank you, sir!”

“Harry, you rate it, so you get it!”

The two men shook hands.

“You’re dismissed, Harry. Send Red back down.”

Harry rose and went up on deck. He saw Red standing on the dock with his wife and waved for him to come back aboard to meet with the admiral. He looked up at the bright sky, feeling glad to be alive, and thought of his family, thousands of miles away.

Then all he could think about was the girl he had seen in the water.

Dell

Let us now praise famous men, and our fathers in their generations . . .

There were those who ruled in their kingdoms, and were men renowned for their power,

Giving counsel by their understanding, and proclaiming prophecies;

Leaders of the people in their deliberations and in understanding of learning . . .

And there are some who have no memorial, who have perished as though they had not lived;

. . . as though they had not been born, and so have their children after them.

But these were men of mercy, whose righteous deeds have not been forgotten.

—Ecclesiasticus 44

The Five Brothers farm near Dorrance, Iowa, June 16, 2006

“Billy” Connors Kraig sat with her computer on her lap looking out the old plate glass window toward the grove of trees on the hill. The Five Brothers, she thought, smiling faintly. On this, the thirteenth anniversary of her father’s death, she and her husband had long lived at the farm. She had thought of the approaching anniversary for some time, and was now prepared to write down what she recalled. I need to do this now, she knew, before I forget.

She had made up her mind that she would tell the story mostly through her mother’s point of view. Papa had his diary of his war experiences published for us, but Mama’s side has been left out. I’ll tell her story.

My mother was Dell Woodson Connors, she began. She was a strong woman, tall, with an average figure, average face, and average eyes. Everything about her spoke of being a farmer’s wife. Her features were not delicate, she dressed plainly, and her topics of conversation were restricted to farm things: crops, animals, the weather, and the children. She was a good Lutheran woman who never complained, never swore, and mostly said very little. To her, material things were not of much importance. Some said that farming was all she knew. Wasn’t it true, they said, that she had been born on the farm, lived there all of her life, and then died there in the same bed where she had been born?

They didn’t keep in mind that she had been a career naval officer’s wife for a time. That life had not been for her though, as she told us so many times. She had given up that life for the farm she loved. At the end of her life she was a little stoop-shouldered and her features worn, but she was a happy, contented woman with no regrets. She often told me, “I’ve had the best life!”

My great-grandfather, Fallon D. Woodson, purchased this land from the US government in 1868, at the age of twenty-five, as part of the Homestead Act, and built this house in 1899.

At some time in those early years he purchased some pin oak trees that were to become the trademark of his farm. By the time I came to live here, the five trees were huge, large enough that we children could play hide-and-seek among them. But what I recall most about them was the refuge they afforded my mother. I saw her go to the grove hundreds of times. No matter what the weather, winter or summer, one hundred degrees or twenty below, she regularly made her way there. I spoke to her about them many times, and I always marveled at her response.

“Baby,” as she called me until the time I went off to college at Grinnell, “I love this place very much, more than words can express. To see these trees Grandfather planted! And the little graveyard over there with Grandfather and Grandmother, Father and Mother, Mr. Riser. Our farm, which has been the lifeblood of our generations! The fields, full of life! It renews me so when I am here. I am in such awe of this place. It’s like a temple to me!” Without fail, her eyes would moisten.

My grandfather, born in 1875, was Ray Woodson, a big man but like a teddy bear. My mother idolized him when he was alive and later teared up whenever anyone spoke of him. She grieved for him many years after his death in late 1941. He was six-foot-four and about 245 pounds, a man as gentle as he was huge. Supposedly, he could lift the back of a Model T truck off the ground without much effort. I was the only one of us kids to see him. He died when I was five, after a long illness at a time when my father had already gone to fight in World War II. I saw him only for a number of months and was very little. I have always been sorry not to remember him more clearly.

Mostly, I recall him with his big black dog, Gus. Because I was so small, both of them looked the size of a house to me! The two of them were always together, to the consternation of Grandmother. I recall her saying things against the dog, though I did not know why. Gus was a wonderful dog, at least to me. But when I look at him now in old photographs, I see a large and shabby-looking animal who would have scared almost anyone. He looked fierce, like a black wolf, standing next to Grandfather. I recall hugging him, although I think he didn’t like it. His fur was raspy, almost like a wire brush. He would lick me in the face with a tongue so coarse that it almost hurt.

On many occasions, Gus was my nanny. If he had somewhere to go for a few minutes, Grandfather would point at Gus in a special way I can see so clearly even now. He would say, “Now, Gus, you stay right here with my little Sweetie Pie until I get back,” and Gus would. I felt completely safe and enjoyed being a “Sweetie Pie.” He would stand near me and I never saw him lie down when he was watching me. He chased off many a stray animal that I am sure meant me no harm. I was told he once faced down an escaped bull on my behalf.

My grandparents were quite a strange pair. Grandmother was the former Eva Perdue. She was not even five feet tall. A beauty queen from Des Moines, she had been runner-up to Miss Iowa in the state pageant held in that city in 1905, when she was twenty. Ray, a hulking farmer from Dorance, Iowa, 120 miles off, had seen her there.

The next year, when he came to shop for farm implements, he saw her again at her father’s store. She was a beautiful petite woman, with black hair like coal, small hands, and delicate features. She still fit into a size four dress when she died in 1963. Despite having worked very little, and knowing nothing of cooking or farming, she fell in love with and married Ray in the summer of 1906, and came to live here. Great-Grandfather Fallon was still alive and went to live in the attic.

It has been said of the Woodson women that they have great devotion to their husbands. Eva certainly fit that mold. In five generations, none of us has sought a divorce. Eva was completely unsuited to farm life. But because of her great love for Ray, she remained here, decade by decade, hating everything around her: the hard physical work of an isolated farm woman, the openness of the Great Plains, the fickleness of crops, the smells of animals, the milking of cattle, and, more than anything else, the utter lack of any social life or friends from what she perceived as her social station. She watched as her hands coarsened and she developed arthritis in them and in her back from the continual process of kneading bread and lifting things too heavy for her to lift. I recall her often being in considerable pain.

She was also not the type of woman who took naturally to the process of bearing children. But she held nothing of her situation against her husband. Eventually, on May 1, 1912, she produced her only child, a robust baby girl whom the overjoyed father named Della Francine Woodson, but always called “Dell.”

Thus began the heartbreak of my mother’s life: that Grandmother never really accepted her. Mama grew to be five-foot-nine and had her father’s physique. There was nothing in her of the delicacy that Grandmother treasured, nothing of the frilly girl who could be dressed in pretty things. Mama’s hair was a mousey brown. She had large hands and feet, and from her first breath, she loved the farm and everything that went with it.

I suppose the final blow came in 1922, when Mama was ten. While detasseling corn with a lot of other kids, she caught her left arm in the machine, wrenching it terribly. Our family doctor, Oscar Deluse Karnes, examined it. He said the ulna was too badly fractured even to be set, and amputated it just below the elbow. Grandmother had a definite eye for beauty. Now she looked at her daughter and saw a gawky child who was plain and crippled.

But Mama made the best of the world she was given. I never recall a time when supper was not on the table or housework was not done. Occasionally, when she was mixing something and the bowl would get away from her, she would say to me so sweetly, “Would you help me?” I never recall an unkind word coming out of her mouth or an unkind act of which she was a part.

Grandmother’s eye for what she perceived as good-looking gave me my father, Harry Connors. He was born in 1915, on the farm next door, the fourth child of Dour and Emma Connors. Grandmother often talked to me admiringly about Emma. “She had the most attractive features, a beautiful figure—and her black hair!”

Grandmother spent many an afternoon with Emma, perhaps to the deficit of her chores. They were not able to enjoy each other’s company for long: the influenza epidemic in the spring of 1919 ended it.

She told me the story many times: how everyone thought the disease would concentrate in the congested areas in the east and not hit the farm country. With deep emotion, she told of the almost daily bad news in 1918, at the end of “the war” (World War I), of troops embarking for Europe and half of a company coming down with pneumonia and dying quite quickly. Only the third wave came as far west as Iowa. One day, her dear Emma called on the party-line phone and said they were ill.

“I worried over her all that day,” she would say. “When I heard nothing the next day, I told Ray to start the Model T and we rode over to the Connors’ place. I had to go, but I wouldn’t risk my Ray’s health. I told him to wait in the truck. I walked up on the porch and called inside through the screen. I remember the wind blew softly by my face. There was no answer, so I walked in. I never can forget that smell. My eyes focused on the floor of the parlor. It was much changed, having been turned into a makeshift sickroom. There on the quilts were my dear Emma and Dour and three of their boys. My heart just broke in two for that lovely woman and her family!”

She would stop for a moment, unable to control her tears.

“All of them were dead, strewn there on makeshift beds. It was a terror. The Lord take these old eyes if I’m ever to look upon such a thing again. Despite the weakening afternoon light I could see their lips, so blue, and the purplish-blue tinge of their skin, which sent a chill up my spine. I have that chill sometimes now when I think of them. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I could see they had spat up blood toward the end. Then I saw movement to the right, where the light was particularly dim.

“There, sitting bolt upright in a chair, was your father! The three-year-old turned toward me, but said nothing. He needed his mother! But she couldn’t go to him!”

Grandmother’s lower lip quivered. It made me cry too.

“The least I could do was to take Emma’s boy! I grabbed him up, ran out on the porch, and tore his little clothes from him. I rubbed camphor all over his body, which at the time was thought to quell the flu’s path into the body. We washed him again in the yard when we got home, and he never showed any signs of the plague.”

With his slight features and black hair, Grandmother took Papa as her own. I suppose Mama did not mind; she had her Ray.

Mama and Papa were a wonderful pair from the beginning. As an only child, Mama needed a playmate, and being three years older, she could help care for him as a big sister as well. In time, he grew to be five-foot-ten, but never weighed over 165 pounds. For all practical purposes brother and sister, they formed a bond that defied distance and logic.

One of my most vivid memories is of my mother completely disconsolate one morning during the war. It upset my little world and made me afraid. I think about it often.

I came downstairs before the others that day. I saw Mama in terrible anguish: sitting on the side of her bed, rocking back and forth, weeping and mopping her hand over her face. The bed was still made from the day before. She remained there all day, except for helping a little with dinner. In her room, she buried her face in her skirt, without any noticeable recognition of her family about her. We attempted to ask her things and soothe whatever was wrong. But she did not respond, and after a few minutes we gave up and left her alone. By evening, she was so shattered as to go to sleep with her clothes on at 5 p.m., which I saw her do only one other time, near the end of her life.

The next day she seemed to be herself again. She was making breakfast when I came down. I asked her what had been the trouble.

“Baby,” she said, “I felt something terrible was happening to your Daddy.”

She hesitated, bent a little, looked sweetly at me, and straightened. Then she had a faraway look on her face, and her voice wavered and rose at the end. “There is such a bond between us that sometimes I know he is in danger.”

She brushed tears from her eyes, looked so lovingly at me, touched me on the face, and then was again lost in her thoughts. “I don’t know how to describe it, but it comes to me, and the feeling is more than I can deal with.” She slumped in a chair. “It overwhelms me.”

“Mama, is he okay?”

“Yes, baby.” She looked up at me. “I feel the danger has passed now and he’s okay.” She teared up again. “I would know if evil came upon him.”

Later, we were to learn that on the previous day, June 14, 1943, Papa’s submarine, Mojarra, had been sunk with great loss of life, and that by the sheerest chance he had been spared.

My parents were not demonstrative of their love. Of course, they knew each other very well. I know on a thousand occasions one answered the other for a question that had not yet been asked. They kissed each other every day, sweetly, and in front of us. Occasionally I saw them hug, but their relationship was like a fine watch, sweet but efficient, caring but work-oriented. And so it remained, neither ever raising a voice to the other that any of us ever heard. When Mama died of a hemorrhage in 1986, my husband and I came back to the farm to take care of Papa, who had never fixed a meal in his life. He fell into a state of depression, but recovered and lasted three more years, dying in July of 1989.

Papa gave Mama the great adventure of her life. After graduating in 1933 as Valedictorian at Dorance High School, he obtained an appointment to the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland. I’m not sure that he was actually considering a career in the Navy; as he later said, that his main interest at the time was poetry and literature.

But these were very bad years on the Great Plains, the terrible years of the Dust Bowl, when year after year of drought saw top soil blown away by high winds. Dust storms reached Chicago, hundreds of miles to the east. Many thought the region would never be restored agriculturally. Though it was worse in other areas of the Plains than Iowa, Papa told me he thought it was a good time to go because then there would be one less mouth to feed. Besides, the truth was that he longed for a little adventure! This presented Mama with a dilemma. She loved my father but had no wish to go East. In the end, they compromised as they always did, and she made the laborious trip to see him twice during his four college years.

A story shows the great dedication Papa felt to her despite his wish to “see the world.” During one of her trips to see him, the two attended a Christmas ball. Mama had taken much care in choosing new outfits, so that she looked the part of a socialite. But because of her missing arm, she did not fit in with some of the nation’s elite young ladies.

According to a story that got back to her through a friend, a lady named Forbes, Papa’s best friend, Walter Wood, was not too sure about him marrying Mama. Having heard of her for months before he’d seen her, he’d commented to Papa, “Dell’s great, but you need to date other women. Why not try someone else?”

Obviously, this had never occurred to Papa. He quickly responded, “Why would I want to do that?”

Papa never talked much about himself, so I know very little else of his schooling at Annapolis. He proved a good student, especially in mathematics. Too slight to be much of a footballer, he made his way in track as a reasonably good miler, he was an especially good swimmer. He had very few demerits, I suspect because he had no wish to see women by sneaking off campus and because he was basically a rule follower. He graduated in the upper third of his class in the spring of 1937. My parents got married the day after graduation in the chapel at Annapolis. For the next two years, the young couple went from one naval educational facility to another, enjoying their wedded bliss in a life very unlike what they had known before.

Mama returned to the farm under very unfortunate circumstances in the fall of 1939. The following Western Union message reached her at the naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii:

FATHER IS SICK STOP COME HOME STOP

—MOTHER

She made it to the farm on November 2, never to leave again. My parents would be separated for the next six years, except for the three times Papa made it home—two before the war and one during.

Grandfather’s death the next month and then the attack on Pearl Harbor a few weeks later on December 7 changed much at the farm. All of us knew that Papa would not be coming back soon, and Grandmother became embittered for many years. She worked some about the house, but became as much of a burden to Mama as a help.

Billy sat back for a few minutes, watching some birds lazily flying in circles over one of the fields not too far away. I hope that was okay on my parents. Now, I suppose I had better talk about us kids since I am the only one still around who knows just how our mother accumulated us! She chuckled out loud.

I came to the farm just before the war under very strange circumstances. Dr. Karnes was well aware that Mama could not have children of her own but wanted them. On February 26, 1940, he called and then came to the house, with me! I was almost four. Mama related the story to me a hundred times.

“Dell, I want you to take this child,” Dr. Karnes said. Then he looked at his watch and mumbled, “Oh, I’ve only got five minutes.”

Mama said she was truly speechless, and mumbled something like, “Where does she come from? Who are her people?”

He responded that she was not to worry about it, and also that he could not tell her much because he had been sworn to secrecy.

“But what about the child . . . ?”

“Dell, I’m in a terrible rush.”

He must have seen the puzzled look on Mama’s face. “Dell Woodson Connors!” he trumpeted. “I brought you into this world and have known you all of your life, from a little bit of a thing to now, a grown woman. I need for you to take this child from me right now!” He lowered his voice, perhaps not wishing Mama’s parents to hear. “I need to say this to you. If word of this ever reaches a living soul, I could lose my license.” The gray-haired country doctor then straightened up.

“I need you to take this child this instant! Mrs. Pedderson is in labor in my office with number, ah? What number is it? I can’t think. Anyhow, knowing her, she won’t last an hour. Betty [his long-time nurse] is there by herself.”

I can imagine the shocked look on Mama’s face and how weakly she must have responded.

As he handed me over, she recalled that Dr. Karnes said along the lines of, “I pledge to you that no one has been hurt in any way by this.”

“I know you would not do that,” she said, holding on to me. Tears of joy poured down her face as she looked down upon what she had prayed to God about for so long.

“And I promise you on the Bible that the legal part is fine. This child is now yours. No one,” he emphasized, “no one will ever come here to take her from you! But don’t ever, ever ask me anything about this. I’ll have to deny that I had anything to do with it. When people ask you how you got her—and you know they’ll line up to do so—just make up something.”

“I don’t understand,” Mama said.

“You want this child, don’t you?”

“More than my life!” she told me she said to him and often smiled at me and repeated the phrase again.

“Then she is yours. I think you’d better call her Wilhelmina.” He walked out the door and toward his infamous old dark green ’35 Hudson, the motor still running in the driveway.

No doubt Mama related the story so many times so that I would understand that I had a place in this life, on the farm, and that there was no way for me to ever find out who my folks were. There were rumors over the years, but the old doctor kept his word and died without ever revealing anything. So, my life started on the farm. Sixty-five years later I am still here with Joe, my husband of forty-five years, and the photos of our children and grandkids to keep us company.

I have only a few faint memories of my life before the farm. It was a time of shadows and being inside. I see a man bending over me who is in very dark clothes, a suit, I suppose. He speaks to me, but I can’t understand his words. In another, I hear muffled sounds like sobs. People are very unhappy, and I am unhappy too. And I think there was a dog, maybe named Sparky, who was my friend. I cried when he went away.

When I came to the farm I came with no possessions of any type other than the clothes on my little body. Of course, I never cease to ask myself questions about this: why I had no other clothes or toys, why I was taken from my parents, and what happened to them. I wonder how much the old doctor knew. Perhaps he knew nothing and was merely handing me on from another person. Perhaps the person my birth parents wished to look after me was unwilling to do so, and passed me on to the dear doctor who knew I would find a home at the Five Brothers. I pray to God every day that my real folks rest in peace, and give thanks that I was brought here. If I have any regrets, it is that I have never liked the name someone in my background obviously intended that I should have.

With work enough to do, Mama was about to take on even more responsibility. I was six almost to the day (we decided that my birthday would be May 1) on May 10, 1942. That was the day my two beautiful brothers, the little Granville boys, came to live with us, stretching the money Papa was sending to us even further. It was just impossible for Mama to farm and look after all of us, and the last crop was ’41’s.

I came home from school one day, and there they were! While they always looked to everyone, even to us, like twins, there at the table were Toby, four, and Danny, three.

“We know who you are!” said Toby.

“You are Willa, Willa-Willa!” said Danny, and they nodded and smiled.

“Wilhelmina,” I said, trying to figure out what was going on.

“Oh,” they both said.Then they continued eating some ham, even though it was only about 4 p.m.

“Danny and I are going to live here now,” said Toby. “He is my brother. And I am his brother. We are brothers!”

They both nodded.

“Oh,” I said, though nothing could have been more obvious.

They were always such handsome boys! With their towheads, blond hair, and blue eyes, they were just fun to look at.

They ate and jabbered away. Grandmother, who announced about this time that we were to call her “Mimmi,” slowly shook her head.

Soon enough, Mama talked to me about them. She asked me so sweetly, pleading with me, really: “Is it all right that they come to live with us? They don’t have hardly a soul in this whole world, baby.”

The full meaning of what she said eluded me. All I could see was someone to play with and care for. “Sure, Mama. Are we going to cook for them too?”

“Yes, baby, they are your brothers now. You’ll have to help your grandmother and me take care of them. We will have to plant a larger victory garden next year, and you will have to be the farmer.”

“Oh, yes,” I thought, “how fun!”

And it was fun.

The next morning I went downstairs to help with breakfast. Was Mama surprised! I got the job of making the biscuits. Grandmother had helped with meals before, but had given it up with Grandfather’s death. Mama had been doing it for months. Looking back on it, it must have been a great relief to her to have my help, because kneading and then rolling the dough with one hand must have been very difficult. But she never complained.

Then Toby and Danny came down for breakfast. I had the great satisfaction of watching them eat my biscuits.

“I think I’ll have a biscuit,” Tony said.

“I think I’ll have one too,” Danny seconded.

“I said it first!”

“Okay,” Danny said, sounding so depressed. “Then I won’t have one.”

“No, you’re my brother. So you can have one. You can have mine. I’m your big brother, so I’ll fix one for you!”

They were always like that, helping each other, just as nice as they could be. In high school they were both linebackers on the football team, and they’re in business together now.

It was years before I heard how the boys came to us. Their father, William Granville, was a worker in the Curtiss aircraft plant in Des Moines. Their mother, Sophie, was from Dorance. They married and lived in Des Moines quite happily until Sophie took sick, and in a matter of a few months, died, of what we never heard. Evidently, it was her dying wish that the boys be raised in Dorance, and William wanted to honor her wish. The boys were brought to Dorance and raised by Sophie’s mother. But in a year and a half the grandmother herself died.

Called from Des Moines, the father faced a dilemma. He could not come to live in Dorance and keep his high paying factory job working sixty hours a week. He had gone to Dr. Karnes, who suggested Mama. William Granville said he would come back for the boys after the war, and Mama had agreed that she would not have legal custody. But he never came back. We have always wondered if he lost his life in some accident. I know he sent money to us for a long time, but this ended when he left the Curtiss plant in 1944 to travel to California to work for Lockheed, or so we heard.

What Mama had to contend with during the war is apparent from something that happened to me. A year or so after the two little Granville boys came to live on the farm, my teacher unintentionally said very unfortunate things in my second grade class.

“Class,” young Miss Judith Henshel began, “our first vocabulary word is ‘orphan.’ Now class, think of what an orphan is.”

She fumbled trying to think of a way to explain it. The little Hollum boy, Jed, raised his hand.

“Is that when you don’t have a mother?” he asked.

“Yes, that is so,” she said. “But what else?”

A little girl raised her hand. It was Betsy Wald, who still lives in Dorance.

“Yes, Betsy.”

“That’s when you don’t have a father?”

“Yes, that’s right. So what is it?” she said, her voice trailing up.

The class had spoken nearly as one. “That’s when you don’t have a mother or father!”

I had been looking around, participating and hanging on my teacher’s every word. Smiling, and not having any idea of the damage about to be inflicted on me, she added: “Yes, and we have an example right here among us. Wilhelmina is an orphan.”

A boy blurted out: “So, Wilhelmina doesn’t have a mother or a father?”

Amazed and shocked, I almost could not respond. “No, no, I do have a mama and daddy! Daddy is off fighting in the war. My mama . . .”

As I looked around the room, it seemed as though each of my classmates had accepted that the teacher was right and that I had no one. I had never thought much about not knowing my real mother and father, because I had had such a happy existence on the farm. But suddenly, even I realized that the teacher was right. I didn’t like the way it felt to be different from the other children. Now, everyone knew I was different.

I was so hurt that I cried for hours after I came home. It was not like other times when I cried from some temporary setback, but it was a deep hurt that made Mama cry just watching me.

“Miss Henshel said you are not my mama,” I cried out. I could feel my little lip quiver. “Mama, can you be my mama?”

Grandmother had put the boys to bed. Mama rocked me in the old rocker that survived so many children, stroking my hair until I went to sleep.

“Sweeeeeeet baby,” she said over and over again in her loving voice. “You are my baby! You will always be my baby. I am your mama. I will always be your mama. Always, always, always.”

Mama and I were at school when it opened the next morning, 8 a.m. sharp. By this time, word of what had happened had spread all over town. The principal, Mr. Jacob Farthing, who had retired before the war but had been pressed back into service, had heard all about it. He had already been to the house where the teacher rented a room and knew that she knew she had made a very hurtful mistake. He was prepared for an irate parent, a hysterical woman. But he got something else.

Ushered into the office, we sat on a wooden bench. Mama let me wear my church dress and patent leather Mary Jane shoes to make me feel better. I snuggled as close to her as possible. My legs were too short to touch the floor. I recall swinging them up and down so I could see my Mary Janes with my white socks folded over ever so carefully. Those shoes just shone!

The principal began explaining that it was all some sort of misunderstanding. He went on, seeming nervous even to a young child and talking a little faster than he usually did. I don’t think he ever looked at Mama, but he smiled at me. Still, she said nothing, but just looked at the man. I saw her gripping the bench tightly with her hand.

I suppose her face said all that there was to say. It was the sad expression of a person who was doing all she could.

She said: “My husband is off in the war halfway around the world. I have not heard from him in weeks. I must run the farm as best I can and take care of my three little children. Is it too much to ask that you not make my child feel worthless and unloved?”

The principal tried to answer for a moment, but in the end stopped, put his face in his hands, and bowed his head. There was simply nothing to say. There were no words of comfort for anyone: Mama, the young teacher, the principal, or me. My hurt took a long time to go away.

In 1943, Papa came home for the only time during the war for thirty days’ convalescence leave. Mama received a telegram on July 10 that he would come. For more than a week we were on edge with excitement, Mama smiling and much happier than usual. I had seen him only once before, for three days shortly after I had come to the farm. I was only five then, so I had few recollections of him and associated him more with pictures in my parents’ bedroom than with actual memories.

The boys had never seen him. They really had no idea what it was to have a father. But they went about it all in their usual positive manner and jabbered away. We had only one topic of conversation.

“Toby, we have a father. He’s coming to see us.”

“Yes, and he will bring us all big presents. Danny, he’ll bring you a big present too, maybe a cow or a horse.”

“I don’t want a horse. Horses are very smelly, and I would have to feed it. Toby, what do horses eat?”

“Let’s ask our sister, Willa-Willa. She knows everything!”

His stay was to be a disappointment. It was a convalescence leave, after all, and he was hurt badly enough that we didn’t get to see him much. He had suffered a bad ankle break on a war patrol, and then caught some bug coming across the country from California on the train. He arrived in an ambulance one day with Dr. Karnes, which concerned us a lot. He came into the house and soon was asleep in the bedroom. He remained there for several days, with only Mama and Grandmother going in to him.

He regained his strength slowly. Soon he was able to sit on the porch and deal with three children, all wanting to establish ourselves as his favorite. His two little boys pestered him with questions while sitting on his lap.

“Do submarines jump out of the water?” Danny asked.

“Well, not usually,” he answered.

“Are there women on your boat?” Toby wanted to know.

“Nope, no women.”

“Oh, that’s good, girls are a lot of trouble to us men,” he said. Papa smiled at Mama, and then nodded to Toby.

He had time for me too. Finally, I got to see my father up close. He asked me about school, if I liked boys, thanked me for helping Mama with chores.

This is my papa, I thought. He is a nice man, a handsome man. Now I know I have a mother and a father for always.

He did have a gift for each of us. For Mama he had an African violet plant, the first we had ever seen, with its delicate flowers. I don’t recall what he had for Grandmother. For Danny and Toby he had little jackknives, and for me a tea set from Chinatown in San Francisco. We thought he had given us the moon!

Soon, his time was gone and we all cried when he left. I picture us all lined up sobbing, Mama, Grandmother, myself, and the boys. Dr. Karnes came for him. Soon, the visit seemed like a dream. But I never had to rely on the pictures of him again. I knew what he looked like, and I waited every day for him to come home. But it was more than two and a half years before he came back to us for good.

The war droned on, week after week, month after month. An occasional letter from Papa arrived. Grandmother remained in her depression. While my chores expanded as I grew, almost everything fell on Mama’s shoulders. It was the time in her life when she was the most needed, and so for her it was the most satisfying. She was a person who yearned so desperately to be needed, to serve others, and to be seen as a person of worth. With all of the stress, all of the endless struggles over food, war coupons, clothing, cattle, and, of course, tears and weather, she made her way and became self-sufficient, a person whom she could admire. After this, she never again had to look for the approval that Grandmother was never able to give. People saw a change in her that somehow showed in her face, a dignity that had not been there before.

But events were to change Mimmi, our grandmother, too. On a Wednesday night in February of 1945, as the war was all but done in Europe but was just reaching its climax in the Pacific, the phone rang. I remember it so well.

“Dell?” the voice asked. “This is Mrs. Whitlow.”

It was our pastor’s wife, talking so loud Mama had to hold the receiver away from her ear. I could hear every word she said.

“Dell, I really do not know who to turn to. I have this little fellow here, a boy. I think he is about three years old. I know I have no right to ask . . .

“Dell, I will tell you straight. This boy, Tommy, is illegitimate. His mother is that young girl, woman, who has been working in town, Jan Carhart; calls herself Mrs. Carhart. Used to come to church with him and sit in the back. I . . .”

“Yes, the black haired boy. I remember him and how he would cling to her.”

“Well, she said that her husband was in the Army. Ralph and I spoke to her many a time. But she was not telling the truth! I knew it! I just knew it! But, no! Ralph just went on in his way, not even listening to me. Well, the boy has been here at the parsonage for three days now and I just don’t know what to do with him.”

“Where is his mother?”

“Well, she left. And he won’t eat! He just sits off in the corner. He won’t eat. He just will not. I guess he just doesn’t like my cooking.”

“What have you given him to eat?”

“Oh, the same as what we have, a roast, greens of course, broccoli, Ralph’s favorite stuffed peppers, Brussels sprouts, and the like. The thing is that his mother has no husband. She just had a fling and came here out of shame. But she brought the boy to us three days ago, all flustered, and said she’d come back soon. But we haven’t seen her. And . . .”

“Can I come for him?”

“Well, we could bring him by. Ralph and I are headed in for tonight’s service. Are you going to come?”

“Not this time, Mrs. Whitlow. We will be there Sunday as always. Will it be in a few minutes?”

“Oh, thank you, Dell. If the Lord had given me children of my own, I would have been able to do more for him.”

“I will be at the door waiting.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” the old woman kept saying, the relief audible in her voice.

Mama hung up the phone. Grandmother was standing there, ready to question her.

“Is this another child? Dell, it’s about all I can do to take care of you and your three as it is!”

Mama said nothing. She just waited by the door.

In about twenty minutes, the familiar blue Chevrolet curved around in front of the house and stopped. With her husband waiting in the car, Mrs. Whitlow, holding the boy’s hand, came to the door.

He was a smallish boy carrying a little brown leather suitcase. Though his mother had loved him as much as she could, we learned that she lived in a self-constructed prison of shame and it had not worked out well for either of them. She had appeared in town one day, and some months later delivered the child at Dr. Karnes’ office. She had shunned company, both before and after the birth, only confiding in Karnes who kept in touch with her for years afterward. As a result, she had developed few friendships and no support group. No more than a child herself, her sudden adjustment to being mother, father, and wage earner all in one person must have been terrible.

She had worked in the drugstore waiting on people at the lunch counter. Though a hard worker and pleasant enough, folks said she was closemouthed, and they could see the unsettled look on her face that came from leaving a comfortable home at eighteen.

According to what Dr. Karnes told Mama in later years, Mrs. Carhart’s parents, to whom she returned, thought she had run off with her high school sweetheart. They never knew of the child. Even in later life, though he said it pained her, she never revealed her secret, never attempted to see her son. She married in her town, Cedar Rapids, forty miles away, and raised a family. She was a good person and loving mother, but her son never saw her again.

Several days before our soon-to-be-brother came to live with us, his mother had gone to Minister Whitlow and completely broken down. “I just can’t go on!” she had wailed.

Mrs. Whitlow, who I recall very well had led the chorus of gossips, was a woman poorly equipped to handle problems. Instead of attempting to calm the distraught young woman, she had left the room to get her husband. The sixty-five-year-old minister appeared but was capable of no more comfort than his wife. He uttered a few platitudes and had the mother kneel and pray.

With her little child in shock on the couch watching his mother fall apart, the girl could stand it no longer. She rose, crying and almost panicky, and said: “I–I can’t keep my little boy. I can’t do this anymore! I will die unless I see my mama again! I know you will take care of him. I’ll come back soon.”

She had hugged the boy tightly, kissed him, run out the door to a waiting taxi, and left town.

The old couple had done their best. But in truth, they had no idea how to care for a child. I remember how they had always seemed awkward around children. Mama guessed that they had pushed various foods in front of him that he had never had before. In the shock of seeing his mother so upset and then leave him, he ate almost nothing for three days.

Without anyone saying anything mean to him, Tommy Carhart must have always felt a lack of fitting in, always felt his mother’s shame as keenly as she did, even though he had no idea of the reason. While his mother worked, an elderly woman who lived in the same house where his mother rented a room had cared for him. He had rarely played with other children. He was withdrawn from almost everything around him.

As he walked in the door holding Mrs. Whitlow’s hand on this cold winter’s evening, without a coat but wearing three shirts, he had no smile on his face. Even seeing us children failed to bring him out. In fact, he only smiled at the sight of a toy his mother had given him, a little stuffed deer that was to be the only gift he was ever to have from her.

Mama picked him up immediately, which wasn’t easy for her. Grandmother turned and left the room without looking at the boy. She called over her shoulder: “Another one to care for! That’s all I need!”

Mama pressed the almost lifeless boy to her breast. There was something about him, and in an instant she thought of it.

“Children, this is Tommy. He looks like your daddy!”

We all left the table and gathered around to see.

“Yes, Mama,” I said, “he does look like Papa.”

Of course, Toby and Danny could barely recall seeing Papa and didn’t know what they were looking for.

“Yes, Danny, he looks like Papa, doesn’t he?”

“Well, he is a lot younger.”

I looked at him closely.

Without thinking, I said something that was to be sort of prophetic, “Mama, he has ruddy cheeks,” I decided.

“Baby, that’s because he’s so cold.”

Danny and Toby looked at each other.

“Toby, maybe he would like a biscuit.”

“Yes, I’ll give him one of my biscuits.”

With the boys greeting him warmly, the little boy had crossed the first hurdle in being accepted into his new family!

Mrs. Whitlow made a few cursory remarks. She seemed greatly relieved as she hurried out the door. The Chevrolet, sounding as though the clutch was almost gone, roared and headed off down the long drive, turning south on the gravel road toward town.

As we turned back toward the new boy, Mama brought him to the table full of food and sat him in her chair. He sat looking down with no expression at all. But soon the food caught his eye. There were bread, biscuits, blackberry preserves Grandmother had canned, a roast, a little ham left, milk, a pitcher of water, and corn in a big blue bowl with flowers that Mama loved. She poured a large glass of milk and put it in front of him.

He must have known that he had come to a good place. Almost faint from lack of food, he took the milk in both hands and drank, a little dribble edging down the side of his mouth. My sweet little brothers came and offered food from their plates.

“Here, this is good, eat this.”

He ate for a long time, trying everything on the table. It brought tears to his new mother’s eyes, so that she had to turn away. I know my mother’s thoughts because she said them at every supper we ever sat down to, even after we were grown: “All-Knowing God, thank you for bringing these children into our lives.”

Her greatest love was caring for children. Ten would not have been too many for her!

In a few minutes, Grandmother came back in the room. She wanted to inspect the “little intruder.” We all awaited the usual caustic remarks.

But her reaction was to change the lives of everyone in the room, most especially hers and the new boy’s. She took one look at him, this innocent and fragile boy who had never been loved as a child needs to be loved. A milk moustache on his upper lip, he looked toward her as she came in through the swinging door from the parlor holding laundry in her arms. Their eyes met, and she froze, dropping her carefully folded bed sheets onto the floor.

“Oh! Oh, my!” she said. “It’s little Harry! It’s Harry!”

She sank to her knees in shock, her arms reaching out. The startled boy thought he had done something wrong. He slowly nodded toward her, attempting to speak.

The four years of heartbreak after Grandfather died and the frustration of more than thirty-five years of farm life ended for my petite and still pretty Grandmother. All of the times she had cursed God for taking her husband from her, all of the times she had lamented that her dear Harry had left her, came to an end. The boy with his black hair and small features held magic for her. I think it was the silhouette that she had looked to see in every child she had ever looked upon.

“Oh! Oh!” she said. “Thanks to God for this boy! Thanks to God for this boy!”

She got to her feet and walked toward the frightened boy, her arms outstretched. He had a piece of white bread in his hand and he never let it go. She scooped him up, bread and all, and went into the parlor to the old rocker, talking to him in a sweet voice.

“Oh, you are my sweet boy. You’ll see. You have a place here now. This is your new family. This is your house now. This is your place. You’ll see. You’ll see. You will be my boy!”

All of the problems of these two hurting persons, who had never seen each other before, melted away. In time the boy, called “Rudd” by all of us, adjusted to farm life. Nurtured in the rocker every night by his “Mimmi,” he soon learned his numbers and to read. His stutter disappeared, and he was well-prepared two and a half years later for first grade. No one ever questioned his belonging after that night. But his cheeks always were to remain red!

The change was just as drastic for Grandmother. She became capable of love again, and not just for the new boy. Her years of deflating and burdening sarcasm, which had lengthened every day and made life almost unbearable at times, ended that cold night. She took on a loving role for all of us children, and when Papa came back he found a fully functioning family in which he could make his recovery from the war.

Billy got up and went into the kitchen. It was almost 4 p.m. and she thought she would have to start dinner fairly soon. But in a few minutes her husband, Joe, called and said he would bring something home in an hour or so. A small glass of red wine in hand, she sat down and decided to try to finish her story. The light was still full outside, and, as she looked passed the famous grove of trees, she imagined a man on a tractor going back and forth on one of the fields.

Mr. Riser came to live with us at about that time. He was a wonderful man. It seems not that long ago when one frigid winter evening, there was a knock on the door as we were putting dinner on the table.

I went to the door. A man was standing there, covered with snow.

I went to get Mama. She opened the door, and the man looked up and spoke. “Missus, I am very hungry. Could I have something to eat?”

He shivered as he spoke, and his voice shook too. I suppose it is hard to imagine in this day and age, but Mama never turned away a hungry person, and I think that was true of most people.

“Certainly, sir, you come right in.”

He staggered in, seeming none too steady. Mama took him over by the stove. He remained there a long time, covered in a blanket she threw over him.

When he seemed a little thawed out, Mama spoke to him. “Would you like to wash up? Supper is about ready. You may wash up here at the sink.”

When he was finished, she ushered him to the table.

“Please, sir, sit at the head of the table. Children, now move your chairs around a little. We have a guest.”

“I thank you, missus.”

He slumped down and drank the steaming hot chicory coffee Mama put in front of him. I remember the gloves he wore, without material on the fingers. He was unshaven. He ate as we passed food to him, and ate more, asking if it was all right. Even at eight years old, I could tell a freezing and starving man when I saw one. It would have surprised us all if someone had told us that this unkempt man with his dirty clothes would have a wonderful impact on all of our lives.

After staring at him curiously while he ate, Danny and Toby began asking him questions.

“Do you know—” Toby tried to ask.

“No, let me ask him,” Danny jumped in.

“No, I’m first! Do you know the Precident? Precident Rosyvelt lives in Washington, D, ah, D.”

While he did not look like the sort of man who knew anyone important, all of us perked up just in case. Thawed out by this time, he sat back a little and puzzled over the question very carefully as though it were the deepest he had ever considered.

“Well, children, no, I have not met any presidents, but I have known many an interesting person. I’ve known generals, an Indian chief once; I’ve met Henry Ford and Douglas Fairbanks and the cowboy star Colonel Tim McCoy, a grand man. And many others.”

“Have you ever swum, ah, swam the ocean?” asked Toby.

“Nope, don’t know how to swim. But I went twice on an ocean liner across the great big ocean!”

All of our faces lit up!

“Wow,” said Danny. “I’ll bet it was big. Bigger than our farm?”

“Oh yes, children. It was even bigger than Iowa!”

“Bigger?” Toby said, surprised. “Was it bigger than the whole world?”

“It was big, children, and sometimes had waves taller than this house!”

That seemed to exhaust the man’s remaining energy. He slumped down, and Mama intervened, interrupting several anxious questioners.

“Now babies, Mr. ah . . .”

“Riser, missus, Jacob Riser.”

“Mr. Riser is tired and needs his rest. Sir, if you go up the stairs to the second floor, you will see the stair to the attic. You will find what you need up there, quilts and the like. The last occupant was my Grandfather a long time ago, so it will be nice to have someone stay there.”

He walked a few feet toward the stairs and turned. “I thank you so much, missus; I owe you very much.”

He bowed, holding his cap in his hands, and mounted the steps.

Thus began Mr. Riser’s time with us. It stretched on for fourteen years, until he died quite suddenly in the late winter of 1958.

The next day, after asking Mama’s permission, he began to take over the chores. In the spring he planted for us and then farmed for the first time since Grandfather was alive. He proved to be a good stockman, good with crops, and a capable mender of fences and machinery. He went about his work in a positive way with a smile on his face. I must say he taught me everything I was ever to learn of farming. When my father returned from the war, he found a fully working farm in the same condition he had left it in 1937, nine years before.

My father came to call him “Captain.” Over the years we came to think that perhaps he was a veteran of the First World War who had fallen on hard times. But I never managed to find out. The two men became very close. I know Mr. Riser helped my father a great deal in his readjustment to farm life and in putting the war behind him. Many nights the two men sat on the porch well past the time the rest of us retired for the evening.

I am also indebted to him for my nickname, “Billy.” Thank goodness no one has called me Wilhelmina since 1945!

One evening on the porch he said to us, to me:

“My dear, your name is too long for you. You are a straight up sort of person like your mama. Your name should be Billy. Wilhelmina is named after the old Kaiser of Germany, Wilhelm I or II, which, luckily they don’t have anymore. You don’t want to be named after some king that a lot of us fought against, do you?”

“No, I guess not.” It wasn’t hard to say that, because I never liked the name in the first place.

He gave all of us nicknames! I never recall him calling any of us by our Christian names. He called Mama “Missus,” always. He called Papa “Colonel,” which was the Army version of his naval rank. Unaccountably, he called Toby the “Old Timer.” Danny became “Sonny” or “Sonny Boy.” Rudd he called “Top.” When Karen came, she became the “Little Princess.”

Mr. Riser entertained us at night too, acting and singing to us, to our great delight. He had a clear voice, and while he had some difficulty reaching the high notes, he was fun to listen to. We would be sitting on the porch, as we did every almost evening when the weather was at all decent, reading and talking, or listening to the radio, and he might jump up and begin singing. One of his favorites was the old Louie Armstrong tune from the late 1920s, “When You’re Smiling.”

He would sway back and forth in front of us, almost like Al Jolson. We would applaud boisterously. Then he might sit down, or open right up into another, like the Bing Crosby song “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” which he always tailored to me! At first I was embarrassed, but as time rolled by, I came to love it. Some songs were funny, like the tunes from The Wizard of Oz, which we had seen a year or so before he came to us. All of us would laugh when he sang them. He was at his best with the Ray Bolger tune “If I Only Had a Brain.”

He would act out the part of the scarecrow, even falling on the ground. We were just glued to his rendition.

Before the war ended, he became very partial to the Mills Brothers and two of their great hits. “Paper Doll” struck us as funny.

Often he did the brothers’ “You Always Hurt the One You Love.” Looking back on it, I wonder if it had a deeper meaning that escaped us.

When Papa returned, he added his voice to the songs. And then Grandmother! No one in the family had ever heard either sing outside of church. Papa had a deep voice, almost a bass, and had grown up singing in the choir at Ebenezer Lutheran Church in town, our church now for almost one hundred years. And my little petite grandmother, who we had no idea could sing, actually had a lovely voice. Hers was the best voice of any of us, an operatic soprano voice that reminded us of Jeannette McDonald, the 1930s movie star who starred so often with Nelson Eddy.

Occasionally, Papa would sing solo. His choices were usually love songs that he invariably sang to Mama. A few stand out even after all these years. He particularly loved the middle ’50s’ tune “Let Me Go Lover,” the one sung by Johnny Ray rather than the much more popular version done by Teresa Brewer with her booming voice. Ray wasn’t nearly as popular, but we loved him because you could just feel, even over the radio, that he was putting everything he had into his singing. I think he only had one top one hundred song, “The Little Cloud that Cried,” in the early ’50s. Papa had the same skinny figure as Ray, but did not do the gyrations. He would smile, but mostly just stand in the yard and sing a few stanzas, which are easy to remember even now.

I remember one other song he loved and sang many times, which was always such a treat. It was the Dean Martin song of the late ’50s, “Return to Me,” which was just perfect for his voice. Mostly, I recall the two men singing duets, Mr. Riser reaching for the higher notes and Papa the lower. They were at their very best with the Patti Page song of the early ’50s, “The Tennessee Waltz,” which was just wonderful.

To me, the singing on the porch represented the postwar years as much as anything else. They were wonderful years for our family, all of us healthy, all of us together again with no war to separate us. Papa and Mr. Riser farmed, and these were golden years for farming on the Great Plains.

In 1952, our family was finally completed with the arrival of my little sister, Karen Finney. I was sixteen then, a junior in high school. It was fall, after the harvest. Papa was over on the forty acres Great-Grandfather Fallon had purchased in 1891, near the crossroads of Iowa state Highway 6 and a county road. This was the same intersection Papa hiked from when he came home from the service. Papa heard a terrible crashing sound above the sound of the tractor. He looked and could see that two cars had collided at the junction. He jumped from the tractor and ran there.

There were the car of State Senator Milton “Ted” Bywinger, a Cadillac, and a late model Dodge sedan. He could see no movement in either vehicle as he came closer. Upon getting there, his worst fears were realized.

It was obvious that the senator, driving on the county road, had been going at a tremendous clip and had not heeded the stop sign at Highway 6. Before anyone else arrived, Papa examined the Cadillac and found two bloodied and dead people inside: the politician and his secretary, whose name now escapes me. As he looked into the broadsided Dodge, he saw a young couple, also dead, bloodied and slumped over. He almost did not notice the little bundle on the floor of the backseat. But in the next instant the little girl, no older than three, began crying. He yanked open the back door and pulled the child out, holding her to his chest.

In a few minutes, Mama arrived in our Chevrolet, her apron still on. She had heard the crash at the house. She could see that something was wrong with the child. Luckily, she had called the police, and in only about twenty minutes old Dr. Karnes arrived. He was concerned enough to ride in the ambulance with the child to the hospital in Waterloo, where he set her broken left arm.

The young couple’s driver’s licenses said that they were Tim and Louise Finney of 1218 Roark Street, which turned out to be an apartment in Dubuque. Obviously, they were traveling west from their home. But where they were going has never been solved. Nothing more has ever been learned of them. Neighbors said that they had just moved to town. Their landlord had recorded no previous address and had taken cash for their deposit and two rent payments. No employer came forward, despite a massive effort in Dubuque. In fact, despite a national effort by local and national newspapers, no relative was ever located. An unfortunate series of events took their lives and gave no clue as to whom to inform.

Of course, Mama was ready. She insisted that the child be brought to our house. Perhaps the old doctor cut a corner or two to make it happen. He knew that Mama had taken in four children, and that one more would be as welcome as the first. She was one of us from the first moment we saw her. She was as blonde a child as I ever saw, small-boned, unlike me, and petite in every way.

She was in considerable pain for a few days. But she mended quickly, and in a few weeks, the splint was gone. We all doted on her. It must have been obvious to her that she was in a new home. The boys would bring her little presents: a hard candy that one of them was saving in a secret place, or a little metal car with worn-off paint. After school, I would come into the bedroom we shared with one of my favorite books from when I was her age, and she would smile and listen intently. We knew exactly how to make someone feel safe, and we knew how important it was to do so.

At first, we feared that our new little sister would be taken from us by a relative who might knock on the door at any moment. But first a week went by, and then months, and finally years, and no one has knocked on the door yet.

This was an incredible joy for Grandmother. This was the child she had hoped for all of her life! Finally, a dainty girl to dress up in frilly clothes! (She had long since given up on me.) The two spent vast amounts of time together. Mimmi made her dress after dress. Grandmother had always made practical clothing for us. Now, she delighted in going to town, carefully choosing a pattern, buying the material, and making something pretty for Karen. She labored with joy as she ironed every ruffle with care. It’s not that she abandoned Rudd; after all, he had his brothers. This was a special “girl” relationship, and the two of them were very close until Grandmother died.

From the beginning, Karen was so positive and nice. She had good manners, which we weren’t used to. “Thank you,” she would say, in her squeaky little voice. Soon, there were lots of “I wove yous,” and later, “I love you. You are my best friend!” which she managed to say to everyone with equal sincerity. No one ever complained! She would set the table so that everything was perfect, all the flatware just so, making sure everyone had a proper napkin.

When she was the one who folded our clothes, we could always tell. She was always so fastidious, even as a small child. While I was up long before her to help Mama with breakfast, when I looked in on her, she would be making her bed, the only one of us to do so. Before she would come down to eat, she would assemble the things she might wear by placing them perfectly on her bed. I would sometimes watch as she carefully considered each choice, while the rest of us would just slap on our clothes. Then she would carefully put away the things away she had rejected, and the ones that remained on the bed, she would wear.

We had money for things by that time. For the next twenty-five years, almost until the passing of my folks, small farms like ours just boomed on the Great Plains. It was a golden age, as wonderful as the Dust Bowl years had been terrible for my grandparents. About the time Karen came, Papa purchased the first of a seemingly endless line of brand new Chevrolet cars and trucks from Mr. Kay Jenson’s dealership in nearby Waterloo. I know the same expression passed Papa’s lips a thousand times: “If Chevrolet doesn’t make it, I don’t want it.”

There was money for clothes too. Mama delighted in buying clothes for us. Of course, that didn’t change us much. We still assembled in order, with me as the leader, and then Danny, Toby, and Rudd. Off we went, looking for sailing ships, pirates, monsters, and the like. At the time I had a dog that I just loved, a German shepherd named Kim. She was a great dog and a pal to all of us. We would be running on one of our expeditions, and she would have to be in the lead. When we suddenly decided to change direction and she was last, it wasn’t long before she made up the distance and was first again.

But our daily excursions were never really of much interest to Karen. She was never too sure, like the rest of us, that dirt was good. When all of us went into the barn to climb up to the loft and jump down on the hay piled on the floor, Karen would climb up a few rungs, watch us jump, sharing the fun of the moment, but not jump herself. I don’t think she ever jumped. Mostly, she stayed near the house and helped Mama. She wore dresses when I was in jeans, and generally shunned everything that even hinted of being a “tomboy.” Unlike the rest of us, she was a little sweetheart all of the time. She never threw things, only occasionally pouted (usually for good reasons), and was just plain nice. We soon learned that to put rocks in her bed or bugs in her shoes was too low, even for us.

And she did things for us. Coming back from building a fort or at the end of some other adventure, we might find sandwiches and drinks carefully laid out for us on the porch in such a way that we knew Karen had been the preparer.

Papa was absolutely wound around her finger. The two played a sweet game that all of us loved and heard time and time again during her elementary school years. She would be on his knee reading a book and he would ask her: “Sweetie, was anyone mean to you today?”

She would nod her head without speaking, that innocent expression on her face. Papa knew no one had actually been mean to her. It was a time for validation and intimacy.

“Was a boy mean to you?” he would continue.

Again she would nod, perhaps playing with her hair. He would hold her a little tighter then. “Well, you don’t have to worry about that. You are safe from all of the mean boys here.”

She would nod, and they would go back to reading the book. Of course, he had missed a certain part of the early childhoods of the rest of us, so he had his catching up to do.

My parents so loved this farm and the life it provided, which is now mostly gone. It was the same for me. Mama spoke to me many times about it. “Baby, look out on to the fields. This is God’s face that we see here. His hand is in everything that happens here. He saves the land for us by giving us the winter, lets it rest and renew itself. Then He makes it bloom and flourish with little work from us, so we can feed the people in the cities so busy with their own work.”

My parents’ reverence for this life touches me very deeply. Theirs was a life of contradictions. While our acres and crops remained the same, with the birth and death of animals, and the growth of us kids, it was a different place each year. The renewal of life here is so awesome. An observer seeing the farm in January or February, when everything is so dormant, dead, would think it impossible that anything could ever grow here again. But within a matter of weeks, the same land has a bounty beyond comprehension! My parents felt great satisfaction in growing food that nourished so many people. Lastly, we’ve all felt a sense of the power of the land, due to the sheer vastness of the Plains and its closeness to nature. Sometimes there is so little here that speaks of any human influence.

I think of my parents now and the world in which they lived. It was a world of turbulence, a time when life was cheap. But they did their best to value life, and helped make a world better than the one they found. They were involved in difficult battles that would be too much for most people today. Yet they wound up as the same people that they were at the onset. I think that’s a great accomplishment. I can’t say which of them had the harder struggle. Different people would answer differently. Yes, my father was almost killed, and he served far away and against a pitiless enemy. But my mother took care of the thing they both valued the most, our family. In many ways, she had a more complicated and stressful time of it.

I can see us now so clearly in those old days: Papa on the tractor toting little Karen in his arms, gently patting her on the bottom; Mama mixing something for supper and me steadying the bowl; all of us kids running someplace, just playing. How I miss those times! But they are gone, gone as far away as the crops we harvested.

Now Joe and I are long retired, I from teaching in the same grade school I attended, Joe from the telephone company. My beautiful little brothers, Danny and Toby, run the Perdue farm implements store my great-grandfather began four generations ago in 1899. Little did we know, looking at shy little Rudd, that he would make a career of our little games of running around the farm. He has just retired at age sixty-five from forty years of being the head track and baseball coach at a high school not far away. And Karen, the little sweetheart of our tribe, now has three grown girls who were just as pretty and frilly as she and two grandchildren. Her husband has the largest law firm in Cedar Rapids, in which two of her sons-in-law are now partners.

I think I’ll just go up to the Five Brothers and think about those old times.

Theodore Rodgers Stories

Mackson

South Pacific, October 9, 1942

Seventy-two hours. That was as long as his first command had lasted. He had savored the idea of having a command for his entire adult life, and it had lasted only a matter of hours. As he lay in the captain’s cabin with a broken leg, Commander Theodore R. Rodgers, Jr., thought back on those three days.

He had been speedily driven from the dock as soon as the PBY amphibian plane landed and came ashore. It was 6 October, and they were at the big US base at Noumeo, New Caledonia, some eight hundred miles south of Guadalcanal. He was immediately ushered in to see Rear Admiral Lakeland W. Wells, a staff member of Admiral Thomas Ghormley, Commander South Pacific.

“Kip,” Wells said, using Rodgers’ old Academy nickname, “this is a real emergency. I’m going to give you verbal orders. There’s no time. You probably saw the destroyer and tanker in the harbor as you were coming in. Those are Mackson and Mineola. We were bringing you here to take command of the destroyer Garnet, but that’ll have to wait. She’s been delayed getting here.”

The old man looked Rodgers squarely in the eye. “I am hereby ordering you to take command of Mackson as of this moment. You are to run Mineola up to Guadalcanal. We wish we had ten destroyers to send with you, but Mackson’s all we can scrape up. Next week, we could send you with more. But that’d be too late.” Wells leaned across the table. “You are to protect that tanker with everything you have. If they send a battleship against you, you attack. You understand me?”

“Yes, sir!”

“If you fail, come back on your shield. I doubt we can give you any air support. We’ll try. But there are ninety thousand gallons of aviation fuel on Mineola and they must reach Archie Vandegrift on Guadalcanal as soon as possible. His Marines are holding on by their toenails. We could lose this whole show if we don’t take some big chances. It’s that close. We must take the chance that you can sneak in.

“Admiral Ghormley just relieved Mackson’s skipper two hours ago, for reasons that need not concern you. This job should only take you seventy-two hours. We’ll have a skipper for her by that time, and we’ll have a seaplane bring him up and get you out.”

The two men stood. Wells shook Rodgers’ hand firmly, grasping his right forearm with his left hand as well. “Go, my launch is at the pier waiting for you!”

“Yes, sir!”

Whatever ordeal Mackson’s crew had been through that necessitated the relief of her commanding officer, Rodgers only discovered later. As the ship left the harbor at Noumeo, her crew seemed to be in some shock. But it did not last long. As soon as he was on the little destroyer, the new skipper, but an experienced sailor, he initiated the command style that was to make him a household name in the United States.

He saw that every man on board was a vital cog in her welfare, each more capable than he could ever be. He was confident that they would perform heroically with even minor encouragement, giving their lives if that was what was needed. A captain did not need to micromanage them, or even to really run the ship. The executive officer could do that. Rodgers saw a captain’s role as being apart from the crew. He had no intention of picking up binoculars if someone could see for him, or disciplining or second-guessing anyone. He would not curse, worry, lament, or show any weakness in front of the men, ever. He was there merely to provide leadership.

He toured the engine room first. He met, shook hands with, and spoke with every man, visiting and taking his time as the ship sailed on. Though a shy person at the social gatherings his wife lived for, Rodgers was a born leader. The leadership he projected, the affability and basic goodness, were completely natural and had remained sincere as he had ascended the ladder to high rank. In five hours, the handsome and smiling thirty-nine-year-old had met about half of the crew, and they had forgotten the past troubles.

He left coordination with Mineola and the zigzag movement to the executive officer, Lieutenant Samuel P. Cashion, an Academy man from the ’34 class. Rodgers had chatted with Cashion for only about ten minutes. He had only set the direction and the speed to be whatever the tanker could make. Within twenty-four hours, the new captain had met every person on board.

By daylight on the third day, the two ships were making about ten knots, about eighty miles south and west of Guadalcanal. Within four hours of dawn, Mackson’s SG radar reported a contact about eight miles distant.

Rodgers went down and looked at the screen himself. He then returned to the bridge and motioned for Cashion to come over.

“Sam, that is obviously a search plane. He’s made no move to attack, and he appears to be shadowing us. We’ve been seen for sure.”

“Looks like it, sir.”

“I see from intelligence reports that there are several Japanese bases within striking distance of us in the Solomons, like Buka.”

Cashion nodded.

“I know it’s early, but let’s make sure that every man in this command has his lunch as soon as possible,” Rodgers said. “We won’t have time for it later, and we’ll all be needing it.”

“Yes, sir.” Cashion hurried off.

About 1300, on a somewhat overcast day, the radar began to pick up a number of bogeys to the northwest, about twenty miles off.

Rodgers took immediate action. Speaking with only a trace of a Southern accent, the Alabaman nodded to Cashion. “Sam, it looks like what we thought. I suspect they’re going to stage against us now. I want you to get on the horn [TBS voice system] to Mineola. Ask Captain Bennings to head for that squall to the west. Tell Freddie to stay in there—if he can—until it gets dark, about six hours from now. They’ve seen him, no question. But if we keep the enemy busy for a while, maybe they won’t be able to wait him out, and he can sneak in to the ‘Canal tonight. Order him in my name not to turn back, no matter what happens to us.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Let’s wait as long as possible to go to ‘Boots and Saddles.’” That was the term Rodgers liked to use for General Quarters. “Then we can go to Battle Stations. That way, the men will be as relaxed as possible for as long as possible.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rodgers turned to the helmsman. “Mr. Raguzzi, there will probably be a lot going on here in a few minutes. But I want you to watch me very closely. I’m not going to say much, but you watch my hands and turn this thing just as fast as you can in whatever direction I indicate.”

He held each arm up at various angles. “This will mean two points to starboard, this to port. This means four, and this means eight. Now, I want you to head toward that sunshine two points to starboard.” Rodgers pointed.

“Yes, sir,” Raguzzi replied.

“Mr. Hodges,” Rodgers told the signalman, “get through to Noumeo. Say this in plain language. There’s no time for code: ‘We are confronting a large force of enemy aircraft. Request immediate air support.’ Give our position. Make sure they acknowledge.”

Rodgers stood up from the captain’s chair and spoke to the men on the bridge, his voice calm and reassuring. “Men, you report to me what is happening, what you see, nothing more. When you see planes, tell me where they are and how many, the direction they are heading, and what kind of planes they are. There’s no reason to get excited. If you say it in a calm voice, that will help me quite a bit. Let’s do the best we can. Let’s put on a good show for these people.”

By 1330, planes began appearing to the northeast as well. It was growing apparent that this would indeed be a major attack. By 1415, the planes began their moves, with two distinct flights, one from the west and one from the east.

An anvil attack, Rodgers thought to himself, judging from what the lookouts reported. “Mr. Farrow, ask Chief Clark to give us all the speed he can. Let’s see what she’ll do!” he said in a matter-of-fact voice.

Ten minutes later, “Guns” opened fire at extreme range with the four five-inch, .38-caliber main guns. Fitted with the new high proximity fuse, these fifty-four-pound shells had an immediate effect. They drove off the first wave, shooting one plane down and sending another heading away trailing smoke.

The second wave came closer. Clearly visible but out of range, the anvil attack commenced with a flight of eight “Kate” torpedo bombers to the west and ten “Val” dive bombers to the east, paralleling Mackson until they were several miles ahead. Then, abruptly, they turned in toward the little ship at the same time, so that whatever direction the destroyer turned, she would be hit. With the thirty-five-knot speed of the warship, this too came to nothing, and a second aircraft was brought down.

Under a patch of brilliant sunlight, the 1,500-ton Craven class destroyer opposed some thirty Japanese planes, weaving and twisting like a contortionist, guns blazing. In the next twenty minutes, they beat back a third attack. Another aircraft sputtered away, smoking.

Rodgers sat calmly on the bridge as though nothing were happening, chain-smoking his beloved Camel cigarettes. Only once did he rise, curious to see if “B” turret would finally bring down a Kate that he’d watched aim directly at the bridge from several miles out. It passed not thirty feet above the mast and made its way off to the northwest. Rodgers shrugged, surprised that her torpedo had missed.

Twice, when planes made strafing runs on the bridge, he sat unaffected as bullets came close to his head and other personnel hit the deck. He joked with the helmsman and signalman, seemingly completely unconcerned about the chaos and desperate circumstances that surrounded them. Only a keen observer would have noticed his left hand in his pocket. He was running his thumb over a coin his mother had given him when his father had been killed, and which was engraved with part of the Rosary:

Holy Mary Mother of God

Pray for us sinners now

And at the hour of our death

The power and coordination of the fourth attack doomed the little warship. There were just too many planes and not enough guns. Rodgers managed to comb the wakes of several torpedoes, but he could not avoid both the bombs and the torpedoes.

Four five-hundred-pound armor-piercing bombs struck Mackson within a very few seconds. The first hit in front of the bridge, just missing “A” turret, and went all the way through the ship and out the bottom without exploding.

Mackson was not so lucky with the others. The second bomb struck near the fantail and exploded above the engine room. The third hit amidships near the funnel, heeling the ship over almost forty degrees.

As the ship was beginning to right herself, the fourth bomb hit within a few feet of the bridge.

One moment, Rodgers and the other bridge personnel were secure at their stations. The next moment, he was in the water, his ears ringing and the breath knocked out of him by the force of the explosion.

Gasping, chin-deep in seawater, he looked around. There was a huge hole in Mackson, gouts of fire and oily smoke boiling out of it. All the bridge personnel, and the debris of everything on the bridge itself, had been blown into the sea and were floating around him. He spotted Hodges, who looked badly hurt, Cashion, and three others clinging to wreckage near him.

Mackson settled almost instantly and began to sink. Rodgers grabbed the nearest piece of wreckage and floated, dazed, in the water among perhaps two hundred other men. They watched as the destroyer went down not far from them, in some nine hundred fathoms of water. Several rafts were in sight, but none of the ship’s whaleboats. Many of the men were crawling aboard debris of one kind or another as they watched the Japanese disappear to the north, looking for Mineola.

The breeze slackened and the sea turned relatively calm. The men were able to stick together in small groups, but there were not places on rafts or debris for all. The water began to blacken as thousands of gallons of Navy Standard Fuel Oil (NSFO) escaped the ship and rose to the surface, coating the surface of the water and the men as well.

There was little in the world as slippery and foul-smelling as NSFO. Rodgers could hear the men swearing and spitting as it burned their eyes and got in their mouths. He winced in sympathy. Swallowing NSFO could be fatal. Some of the unlucky men treading water were probably getting a lethal dose of the stuff. He hung on to the debris, keeping the upper half of his body out of the fuel. The fumes still stung his eyes and made him cough. He looked down at his arms, peppered with tiny fragments of metal from the explosion. His left leg hurt an awful lot too. Trying to move it only made the pain worse.

Darkness fell within a few hours. Providentially, two-foot seas and a stiff breeze out of the northwest dissipated much of the NSFO. Despite his pain, Rodgers began to swim among the groups, making sure the weakest were maintaining their handholds and being looked after.

This went on most of the very black night, through intermittent rain. When he heard a man cry out, Rodgers would swim in that direction. When he found men in the dark—usually fuel-stained, bloodied, or both, and always panicked—he comforted them as best he could.

“Help is on the way, men; help will be here soon. Hold on now. Hold on. It won’t be long, not long.”

Twice, he came up to figures who turned out to be corpses: his signalman, Hodges, and Raguzzi, both draped limply over floating debris from the bridge.

Occasionally, in the blackness, he could see nothing and had to call out. Invariably voices came back from the void: “Over here, sir.” It pleased Rodgers that they knew his voice.

He rested when he could and tried to wipe oil away or move to ease the pain in his leg. He thought of his wife, Cari Lynn. They had met at a Christmas dance at the Academy in 1923, when he was a junior. The ballroom music played in his head. She thought him the handsomest man she had ever seen. She was a high society type from Silver Springs, Maryland, just outside of Washington, D.C. Her father had served as ambassador to both Belgium and Italy. She was 97 pounds of black hair and sparkling eyes, and had enough ambition for both of them. She saw in him the strength that was to make him into a great officer, and had not let go of his hand all evening. When he was a senior, once she kissed him, he knew she had fallen for him. So, they married, and neither ever regreted it.

Even twenty years later as he lay in Bethesda Naval Hospital in bitter pain, dying of throat cancer, a shell of his former self, she was there doting over him. She complained a lot and made trouble for everyone, but toward the end stayed in the room for almost ninety hours straight. Anyone whom she perceived to delay his treatment or get in the way, whether nurse or doctor, orderly or naval personnel, or even a congressman, rued the day they appeared in her sights! As a reporter would say of the pair, “Together they’re invincible. Separate they are not bad either.”

The sea became a little rougher. He thought of his time at Annapolis. As with men since the beginning of time, the call of the sea had been strong in him since childhood. It had been so for his father as well. His father had been killed at sea in 1912. He had saved several crewmen from a fire, and he had been awarded the Navy Cross posthumously. Rodgers had been nine at the time. Rodgers’ little sister, Faye, had been only four.

His father’s distinguished service had practically guaranteed Rodgers an appointment to Annapolis, if he decided he wanted it. While his mother must have expected it, it had nearly broken her heart when he announced, during his junior year of high school, that he would like to go. He had heard the sea breezes bring her sobs in through the screens many of those summer nights in Mobile in 1921, after she thought he was asleep. So, he had gone reluctantly. They’d had very little money. With one less mouth to feed, he knew his mother could get by with Faye to help her. He’d felt powerless when his mother was forced to go to work in a bank.

But everything had changed in his freshman year at the Academy. His mother married the bank’s president, which relieved Rodgers’ mind no end. And he went out for football. There, assistant coach Lieutenant Lakeland W. Wells was waiting to change his life! Rodgers had been drawn to him immediately as a father figure.

Wells had made him into a good man, a Navy man. Wells had taught him and his teammates the ancient “Soldier’s Elegy,” which Rodgers had taken as his life’s motto and thought about every day. Its refrain came to him now as he floated in the Coral Sea, hurt and approaching exhaustion:

Here lies the last of all my friends.

He fought by me in all the Great Wars

And against all of the mighty foes

Now unnumbered by the years.

And always was on time with people,

And lightly brought he the word of others.

All know he was not great, but of long service.

But I have not seen better and will not.

Even among the Picts his name was known as of a Chief,

And that was his fate, to die here in this dismal place

For no value, and with no calm word by a fair voice.

Wells had taught them that the soldier’s life was a life of service to others, of sacrificing and suffering without expectation of reward, to always do one’s duty and be a good lieutenant.

As the early morning hours passed, Rodgers became weaker and weaker. He could no longer feel his injured leg, and the hours of swimming in the sea had taken their toll. He barely made it to the next raft. It was all he could do to cling to it, his strength gone.

Quietly, the life essence ebbed out of him. He could no longer speak when Sam Cashion happened upon him just before dawn. Cashion had also been swimming among the rafts and boats most of the night.

“It’s the captain, men. It’s the captain!”

Hands reached out and pulled Rodgers onto the raft. Two badly hurt men gave their places, slipped off the raft. They had heard him come and go all night. Despite having him as their commander only seventy-two hours, they were devoted to him, a captain who would speak to them personally.

They had known him by reputation long before. Everyone in the Navy knew of his heroism at Pearl Harbor as the executive officer of the heavy cruiser San Francisco, calmly standing on the bridge directing fire at the attacking Japanese planes, ducking as they made their strafing runs. They had accounted for five of the twenty-four enemy planes brought down that day. The men knew that they needed a man like him in their country’s struggle against great enemies. Here was a man who could win the Navy Cross before war was even declared. Grips loosened, and in a few minutes they drifted away.

As dawn lightened the sky, Rodgers began to regain his senses. Sam Cashion was there when he awoke.

“You okay, sir?” Cashion asked.

“How are the men doing?” Rodgers responded, not answering the question.

“From what little we can tell, the men are hanging on as best they can.”

“No count of the men?”

“No, we’re pretty spread out.”

“Let me get back into the water,” Rodgers said.

“Sir, don’t you think you should stay put?”

Rodgers slid in. Almost immediately, Cashion had to grab him. “Men, it’s the captain. Get him up!”

Again, hands reached down and pulled Rodgers back on the debris. Luckily, the sea was still calm.

Rodgers lay limp on the raft, drifting into thoughts of his football days at Annapolis. “The Middies are strong up the middle,” the eastern newspapers had said. Wells and the others had made him into a good player. At six-foot-two and 200 pounds, he had played tackle both ways on a very good team. He and Lonnie Betcher from Saddle River, New Jersey, had been the tackles. As a senior, only the center from Notre Dame, All-American Benny Hyerson, who was to become a lifelong friend, had outplayed him. His roommate and best friend, Tommy Ransom, had been the quarterback and safety.

He almost managed a smile, thinking of these things, and closed his eyes. He felt guilty, but for the first time in his life he really could not get up. In a few more seconds, he passed out.

By midmorning, some of the men began to see smoke to the east. Soon the silhouette of Clarkson, one of the new Fletcher-class destroyers that were to prove part of the backbone of the march to Tokyo, came into view.

Rodgers was awakened by the sound of the men whooping and hollering. He lifted his head just long enough to see Clarkson’s silhouette looming over them. They were saved!

As he was being hauled up to the bridge, Rodgers introduced himself to the captain almost incoherently and gasped: “Did she get in? Did Mineola get in to the ‘Canal?”

“Yes, sir! She got in all right. They were attacked at dawn and the captain was killed, but they were unloaded by then. We weren’t sure what had happened to you. The current took you quite a ways. We looked for you all night.”

Rodgers lay back on the stretcher. Freddie, he thought, I’m sorry I got you killed. If I live through this, I’ll go see Angela and the boys. He breathed a sigh of relief that his mission had been accomplished.

“How many of my men did you get?” he rasped. His mouth still tasted like NSFO fumes.

“A hundred and ninety-four by our count, sir.”

Rodgers sagged back against the stretcher. Mackson had left port with a crew of 256.

Some bluejackets carried him into the captain’s cabin, and the ship’s doctor began attending to his leg, muttering about it looking bad. Rodgers was too exhausted and numb to care. He stared blankly up at the ceiling until the man finished his first aid.

Once the doctor had left and the cabin was empty, Rodgers lifted up his head and looked around the room. No men in agony here, he thought.

He had never felt so tired. He remembered Admiral Wells’ orders to either succeed or come back on his shield.

Come back on my shield? I wonder if it’s close enough to come back flat on my back? he thought. My first command, only seventy-two hours, and sixty-two of the lives entrusted to me, I got killed off. That’s almost one man per hour. May the Creator, in His infinite wisdom, have mercy on those men’s families. He looked up at the ceiling, wondering if the Navy would think he had done well by them.

Deep in thought, Rodgers did not hear the pharmacist’s mate enter the room. He was a little startled when he heard the man’s voice.

“Sir, I’m going to give you this sedative. It will knock you out for twenty-four hours. You need your rest.”

Rodgers silently offered his arm for the injection. Soon afterward, he lapsed into a deep and tranquil sleep, as though nothing at all had happened to him in the last three days.

The Broken Leg

Noumeo, New Caledonia, March 4, 1943

No one in Halsey’s office could recall a battle quite like this one. The two old warriors, Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., Commander South Pacific, and Rear Admiral Lakeland W. Wells, had been yelling at each other for ten minutes before things quieted down. Twice, Halsey’s chief of staff, Captain Miles Browning, walked toward the door with important papers that needed an immediate signature. Both times Browning reached for the door handle, thought better of it upon hearing the tumult inside, went back to his office, and closed the door.

It had started well enough. Halsey ushered Wells into his office, and the two ancient friends shook hands heartily. Wells accepted a drink, and the two began talking.

“Lake,” Halsey explained, “I’ve made a deal to send you, along with the heavy cruiser Grand Rapids and two destroyers, to [Commander Southwest Pacific] MacArthur. He and [Vice Admiral] Kincaid have convinced Washington that they cannot do what they need to do without another squadron. All they have is the Brit—Admiral Crutchley—and his cruisers. I had to agree, since I can’t drive up the Central Pacific with that area lagging behind on my flank. You are to stay on for the entire run up the New Guinea coast.”

“Yes, sir, I know that, and that’s fine,” Wells replied.

“How did you hear that?” Halsey asked, surprised.

Wells laughed a little. “Even my driver coming over here knew that.” He took another sip of his whiskey.

“Okay,” Halsey agreed. “Is Grand Rapids ready to go?”

“Yes, sir!”

Halsey took a deep breath. “I’ll have to take Commander Rodgers from you too. Did you hear about that?”

Wells sat bolt upright, his drink sloshing. “No, I did not hear that! Whose stupid idea was that?”

Halsey leaned forward. “This is not my idea. It’s Navy regulations. I was told that Rodgers’ leg injury from the Mackson sinking still isn’t fully healed.”

“You heard wrong! Rodgers’ leg is fine,” Wells said, insulted.

“I am sending him stateside,” Halsey said. He fumbled for the lighter on his desk and lit a cigarette. “He’ll get promoted and get some nice job in procurement or some damn place. A good record.”

Wells raised his voice. “You are not. You are not going to do that to him with his record. You are not going to do that to me either. This guy is a backstop type!”

“It’s out of my hands, Lake,” Halsey said flatly. He spewed thin blue smoke into the air as he talked.

“I don’t care!” Wells shouted.

“I can’t buck the inspector general on this,” Halsey insisted, his voice louder. “You know what trouble he could give me.”

“I don’t care. You are going to fix this!”

“Now, how the hell am I supposed to do that?”

“Of all the goddamn assholes and shit-headed desk jockeys we’ve battled over the years, you’re the last person I would expect to be part of such crap,” Wells snarled. “On a man who has won two Navy Crosses! You’re going to put him on the beach? So he’s not good enough to fight for you?”

“No one’s saying that, Lake! But the man’s not fit. Besides the leg, I hear he has shrapnel wounds all over.”

Wells was ready. “How is this different from when you were in the hospital after Pearl Harbor for all of those weeks?”

“I don’t have a health problem,” Halsey demurred.

“Oh sure! If his leg isn’t one hundred percent, it will be all right soon. But you will still be itching and scratching yourself from head to toe the next time I have the misfortune to come to this goddamn office!”

The determination went out of Halsey’s face. He lowered his voice. “I can’t do it.”

Sagging in his chair, he could not look at Wells.

Wells spoke calmly. “You cannot do this to this man. I am not going to let your name be associated with such trash. He is the very type of man we have all been crying for from the beginning of the war. Look at that job he did for us with Mackson. Some goddamn Jap might be sitting here in your seat were it not for him. He’s good under pressure,” he said, nodding his head. “We cannot do without him on the road to Tokyo!”

Halsey looked at Wells and thought for a moment. “Okay, Lake, I’ll talk it over with Washington and ask for him on a highest priority basis.”

“No! No!” Wells shouted. “That is not good enough! You and I both know exactly what they’re going to say. I hate to do this to you.”

Wells put down his drink, some of which had sloshed on the floor in his gesturing. He stared hard at his boss. “Bill, I am going to ask you as my friend of forty years.”

Halsey stared back, dismayed. “Don’t do that to me. Of all the men on this Earth, I never expected to hear that from you!”

“I am asking! I am asking you to promise me to do this for me. I want you to look me in the eye and promise me you will do it.”

Wells leaned over the desk and spoke so that no one else could possibly hear.

“I’m through, Bill.” His face looked lost and soured. “I’m not standing up to this so well. That Aleutian campaign did me in. I passed out in my cabin. The doc told me this is it. I asked him to give me six months.”

“What doc?” Halsey asked, taken aback.

“Yours.”

“Your heart?”

Wells nodded. “Bill, I’m supposing you’re good for the whole run, till we defeat Japan. But this New Guinea thing will have to be my last go. I’ll head home to my Polly, watch from the beach.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Halsey asked, his words slowing with shock. “How could I have faced Polly if you had keeled over in my office?”

“I knew you wouldn’t give easy. That Aleutian thing is a blot on my record.”

“Everyone knows that wasn’t your fault!” Halsey said understandingly. “But I can see how you feel, know how it looks.” He paused, frowning. “I’m sorry, Lake. I was hoping you’d be with us.”

Wells brought his fist down slowly onto the desk.

“Let me go out on top,” he begged. “Not have my record splotched up at the end. I’ll take my chances with one more shot. But I must have someone I trust. I have to have Rodgers. It can’t be any other man. It’s too late for me to break in anyone else, trust anyone else. As it is, and I am only telling you this, I will have to give him the command. I have to lay off. I’ve promised Polly for thirty years that there’d be time for us. I don’t want to break that trust. I must have a man who can command a task force.”

In an instant, Halsey saw the big picture. An old friend for whom he would give his life stood before him, a hard campaigner who had never spared himself any hardship. It was legend throughout the service that Wells had never asked for a favor from anyone.

“Okay, Lake. You have him!” Halsey looked Wells in the eyes and shook his hand.

Wells added casually, “And I want you to get him back on the promotion list.”

“You know I can’t do that one.”

“I know you can,” Wells stated flatly. “I know you’re flying out of here to D.C. on Tuesday.”

“How did you hear that?”

“The same way you knew we were sending you to MacArthur. I want you to go to Admiral King on this one. As chief of staff, he can do practically anything he wants. Ask him. He’ll give it to you, because he needs you more than you need him.”

Halsey put his hand on his old friend’s shoulder as they headed for the door. “Okay, okay. He hates me, but I’ll push it over on the old creep.”

“Thanks, Bill.”

“The orders will be cut today. You take care of yourself, Lake.” He smiled, the two clasping their hands in a tight grip. “I wish I could have you for the six months.”

Halsey’s tone was strong now. Wells knew what he wished would be done. He regretted that he had had to put it that way to an old friend. But he was not sorry. He was prepared to do whatever it took. The two men walked out into the adjoining office, smiled to everyone, and Wells left.

Halsey went back into his office, closed the door, and sat down on the corner of his desk. He did not intend to reflect for a long time, but he did. The last of the sun filtered into the room through the dusty blinds. Shadows began to lengthen and the room began to darken. His usual cigarette was absent.

He sat motionless.

“Lake can’t make it,” he muttered. “There will be more like him who we use up in the long years and hard campaigns that are bound to come before we win this thing. Many a good man will be sacrificed to the needs of the nation before this is all over.”

A hard and vicious look came over Halsey’s face. As usual, this meant very bad things for the Empire of Japan. He had a terrible and seething hatred toward them, ever so much more terrible than that they were merely the enemy of his country.

“If it takes the last drop of my blood, I will grind them into dust along with their entire civilization. I will bring the vast power of our country into this. I promise to use whatever resources I can get. No mercy will be shown. Even their women and children I will savage, if that’s what it takes to win this hideous struggle.”

The sentimentality that was so much a part of him, and was an even match for his terrible hatred of the enemy, flooded into his mind. “I have committed an unforgivable sin to have made Lake beg like that. God forgive me.” He mopped his left hand over his face, tears stinging his eyes. “I should not have done that.”

A verse he’d memorized years ago, something by Rudyard Kipling, came into his head:

God of out fathers, known of old,

Lord of our far-flung battle-line,

Beneath whose awful hand we hold

Dominion over palm and pine;

Lord God of hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget—lest we forget!

That one had been very popular among his class at the Academy. Back then, of course, he hadn’t felt the truth of it, not the way he did now.

“Damn it, who is the enemy here?” he lamented. “Lake! I’ll make it up to you if it takes everything I’ve got!”

He thought of Rodgers, the man who had caused all of this fuss. Halsey remembered him from the ceremony the last December when he’d pinned the Navy Cross on the man’s chest. He’d only ever seen Rodgers that one time, hobbled on crutches with the broken leg.

“So, that’s the guy Lake thinks so much of, eh.” Halsey nodded slowly, steely-eyed.

Staring ahead, he made a sacred promise to himself that he never shared. “If Lake likes him, then I like him. Rodgers will be my man. I’ll let him go to Kincaid. I’ll let him make his own way, and follow the pathways the war makes for him. But I’ll be there, watching to see that nothing bad happens to him, that he doesn’t go down between the cracks, torpedoed by someone.”

In the years that followed on the long road to Tokyo, Halsey never had a reason to regret his vow.

Preface to “Battle for Huon Gulf”

Ship Types

In World War II, there were three types of surface warships: battleships, cruisers (heavy and light), and destroyers. The general rule was that the bigger the ship, the bigger the guns and the slower the speed. If a ship had armor, as battleships and most cruisers did, it did not cover the entire ship. It was placed in “belts,” on turret faces, and to protect the bridge and deck. The rule of armored protection was that a ship should have enough armor to have some protection against a ship of equal power.

There were great differences between the ship types. Cruisers could speed away from most battleships, but could not catch a destroyer. A heavy cruiser’s guns had about one-eighth the power of a battleship’s, but six times that of a destroyer. Both Japanese and US cruisers fired a 256-pound shell that was eight inches wide. A light cruiser’s guns had a third of the power of a heavy cruiser’s. For light cruisers, one-hundred-pound shells were standard in both navies. Heavy cruisers had armor protection that was two to five inches thick.

Names in the Story

All geographical names used are real. Admiral Crutchley was a real admiral who commanded cruisers in the southwest Pacific. The names of the two Japanese cruisers were names that appeared in the 1940 edition of Jane’s Fighting Ships (which is still in publication as the most authoritative such book in the world). These were ships the Japanese were actually planning to build, though in the end they did not. All other names, ships or otherwise, are made up.

A word about US prewar heavy cruisers, to which I dedicate this story: There were seventeen of them. They were all made to international treaty limitations of ten thousand tons, to which the United States subscribed until 1941. Meanwhile, the Japanese violated their treaty obligations and made the large Myoko class. These cruisers were faster and bigger in size, going about 13,500 tons. Even so, the prewar American heavies had the same gun power as their competitors. In a real sense, they were actually harder to hit, because the Japanese ships were so much longer (seventy feet).

Despite their lack of size, US prewar heavies generally gave a good account of themselves during the war. Some achieved lasting fame: Salt Lake City at the Kormandorski Island battle; San Francisco and “Sweet P,” the Portland, both at the Battle of Guadalcanal; and Houston. Others, such as Tuscaloosa, New Orleans, Louisville, and Augusta, had solid careers. Some were lost, but not due to not being pugnacious. Chicago was sunk by a very skillful Japanese night aircraft attack at the Battle of Rennell Island. Astoria, Quincy, and Vincennes were the victims of poor leadership and unbelievably bad luck.

Only Indianapolis, which carried the A-bombs to Tinian (where they were loaded on to B-29s and flown to Japan to be dropped), had a bad career so far as I know. She was said to be a bad roller even in moderate seas, and of course was sunk under still-controversial circumstances. Eight hundred and eighty men, the majority of the crew, were eaten by great white sharks as they languished on rafts for days awaiting rescue.

Battle for Huon Gulf

Those who go down to the sea in ships,

Who do business on great waters;

They have seen the works of the Lord,

And His wonders in the deep.

—King David, 1000 BC,

Psalm 107:23-24

New American Standard Bible

Huon Gulf, off the coast of eastern New Guinea, September 16, 1943

At 0430, in the predawn darkness, Captain Theodore R. Rodgers, Jr., came onto the bridge of Grand Rapids as he did every morning. He sat in his chair and took a cigarette from his inevitable package of Camels. Long years at sea had taken the boyish looks from the forty-year-old’s face. Somewhat weather-beaten, it was a sailor’s face, to be sure. It had other unmistakable qualities too. There was strength in it that spoke of a man of authority.

But that was not why men followed him, jumped to his commands, and would die for what he wanted. He projected a goodness of heart and a sacrifice for others that won them over. Always, he would hear the views and complaints of a man, no matter his rank. He visited endlessly and effortlessly with any member of the crew. No one had ever heard him swear or even raise his voice against another. He forgave mistakes. He could take enormous amounts of pressure and act on great amounts of information without even looking busy.

The heat of the tropics was not so evident at this early hour. The light wind reminded him of his youth in Mobile, when the sultry ocean breezes came in through the live oak trees and into the tiny bedroom he shared with his little sister. He recalled the oil lamps he so often cleaned, even after almost everyone else they knew had gotten electricity.

The image of his mother came into his mind. He saw her standing in the kitchen, heard her voice in his head: Teddy, did school go well for you today? She would come to him and touch him lovingly on the check, the perfect mother. She had made a nurturing home for two children after their father had been killed.

Since adulthood, the sea had been his home, one ship after another for nineteen years since graduating from Annapolis. It was not something he could explain, or even attempted to explain, even to his wife. She seemed to understand that he never tired of the sea, never wished leave, was really at home nowhere else.

This particular ship, the fourteen-year-old Grand Rapids, was the oldest heavy cruiser in the US Navy and the sister ship of the famous Pensacola and Salt Lake City. She had captured his heart. Although he was to command fleets and entertain kings, no other assignment he was to have could compete with commanding her. She had such good manners in a bad sea, and her gentle sway at low speed had a simple magic that he never got over.

She was like a voluptuous woman, with her two triple eight-inch gun turrets high out of the water on huge barbettes and her two two-gun turrets hugging the deck. Her armor was scant by later standards. But packed into her stubby 586 feet and 9,200 tons was gun power equal to that of any heavy cruiser in the world, and more than in most. To Rodgers, she represented the might and majesty of the country he had dedicated his life to defending, the odd combinations of raw power in a pretty package and austerity with charm. She remained in his mind every day of the rest of his life, proudly at anchor with her tall tripod mast. He never tired of the pleasure of seeing her lines, smelling her, loving her, his great love.

It was a satisfying time in his life for many reasons. For one thing, he was the youngest captain of a major warship in the US Navy. He had captained Grand Rapids since coming off the injured list in March. The intervening months had seen them in the thick of the war, doing what they were made for, attacking Japanese targets along the coast of New Guinea that General Douglas MacArthur, Commander Southwest Pacific, was moving against.

Rodgers’ eleven-month-old leg wound had mostly healed. His left femur bone had been badly fractured when he lost his first ship, and he had taken about thirty tiny bomb fragments in various parts of his body. He had gone back on active duty too soon, and for months each step had been an excruciating trial. But he had never let on, and the expression on his face had not given him away. As the embedded bomb fragments worked their way to the surface of his skin, he calmly pulled them out without comment and dropped them on the deck. He assured skeptical doctors, one after the other, that he was completely well and in no pain at all.

The prize had been Grand Rapids. While he took pain better than almost any man, she had been his drug, intoxicating him. She was enough of a nurse that he had thrown overboard the pain pills prescribed for him. Looking about the ship in the predawn light, he pressed his left hand against the flesh where the break had been. His left eye twitched as he winced almost imperceptibly. But he was a man who did not need the sympathy of others, and he never said anything to anyone, not even his wife.

In the growing light, Rodgers looked fore and aft at the other members of the little task group he commanded as it approached Dampier Strait, the narrow channel between the island of New Britain and the great island of New Guinea. The task force, designated 61.2, also contained the destroyers Winslow, commanded by Felix O’Bright, and Avery, commanded by David Trask. Right now Winslow was ahead of Grand Rapids, Avery astern.

Rear Admiral Lakeland W. Wells, who was in ill health, was in command of the overall operation. It was a veteran force, with many of the crews having served together since before Pearl Harbor. All continued to remain quiet on the flagship as Rodgers sat in his chair, smoking his cigarettes. The sailors went about their business, oblivious to the fact that a powerful Japanese task group had been tracking them for the last twenty minutes.

To the northwest, a Japanese force led by heavy cruisers Niitaka and Zukaku had glimpsed the American ships by binocular. On the bridge of the Japanese flagship, Zukaku, Rear Admiral Tokira Osukawa talked over plans with Captain Mosudi Satsuma.

“Ah,” he nodded, “the Americans have appeared in exactly the wrong place, barring our way to the beachhead. Is this Admiral Crutchley’s force?”

“We think not, sir,” Satsuma replied. “Army scout planes saw him leave Milne Bay with his cruisers on the twelfth and pass here heading north two days ago.”

“Then who is this?”

“We do not know, Admiral, but it looks like three ships, one a cruiser.”

“What kind of a cruiser?”

“We will have to wait until the light gets stronger.”

At 0643, as Grand Rapids was steaming at fourteen knots on the northern leg of its patrol pattern, a signalman rushed toward Captain Rodgers.

“What is it, Billy?” Rodgers asked.

The excited eighteen-year-old blurted out, “Sir, radar has a contact! Bearing north-northwest, sir, about eighteen miles.”

Rodgers turned to the communications officer. “Boots and Saddles, Mr. Ware.”

The klaxon sounded throughout the ship, bringing the crew to General Quarters. The two destroyers followed.

On the radar screen, the contact soon multiplied into two large blips and two small ones. The light was not yet full, and the contacts could not be brought out by the inferior American binoculars on the bridge, but as their direction made them enemy ships, Battle Stations was sounded, bringing Rear Admiral Wells to the bridge. Rodgers sat calmly as others scurried about the bridge, the admiral standing next to him.

“What you got?” the admiral asked.

“Four enemy ships. Looks like two cruisers.”

“Well,” the admiral said cautiously, “I hope they’re light cruisers.”

At 0701, the bridge identified the larger ships as Sendai-class light cruisers, along with two destroyers. A moment later, word came down from “Guns” that the destroyers were the huge heavy cruisers of the Myoko class.

“Damn!” Wells snapped, on hearing the news. “They’ve never brought big ships into these waters. How the hell did they get here, past air patrol?”

Both Wells and Rodgers took binoculars and looked to the northwest.

“I have no idea, sir,” Rodgers responded. “They couldn’t have come from Rabaul to the east, or our planes would have spotted them. And they couldn’t have come from the west, or they would have run into Crutchley’s ships. So I guess they must have come south from Truk. But that lead ship’s a Myoko for sure.”

The two men retreated toward the back of the bridge and consulted in muffled voices. Soon they were joined by the Executive Officer Commander Harold Springer and Captain Thomas E. Ransom, assistant chief of Naval Operations Southwest Pacific, who happened to be on board.

“Well,” the admiral finally suggested, “we could run for it. Each of those Amazons has about four thousand tons on us and the same ten-gun power.”

“We can’t do that,” Rodgers objected. “They’re headed to the beachhead at Lae. Those men and supply ships will be sitting ducks.” He handed his binoculars to a nearby sailor.

“Maybe they’re headed somewhere else,” the admiral said.

“I don’t know,” Rodgers said, thinking aloud. “They’ve seen us for sure. Wherever we go, they’re likely to follow us just to polish us off. Besides, if we head away from the beachhead, they’d have a free shot at it. There’s not much help to be had either. Crutchley is bombarding Madang 150 miles north of here, and I think the Air Force has got a big strike on for Rabaul.”

“How far are we from the beachhead?” the admiral asked.

Springer answered. “I figure about sixty-five miles. Two-plus hours steaming time.”

On Zukaku, Captain Satsuma returned to the bridge to make his report. “Sir, it is one of the Pensacola-class heavy cruisers.”

The admiral was surprised. “But we believe Pensacola was sunk at Guadalcanal last year, and Salt Lake City was either sunk or badly damaged six months ago at the Kormandorski Islands battle.”

“Perhaps they have repaired Salt Lake City.”

“I would be very surprised, Captain. As you know, I was there, commanding Maya. All of us thought she must have gone down, although we had to withdraw with American planes on the way and did not actually see her sink. But there is a third.”

“Yes, Grand Rapids.”

“So, this is Grand Rapids!”

“Yes, perhaps so. But, Admiral, it makes no difference. We have twice the power of the enemy. Our ships are newer, faster, and have more armor protection. She will not hold us up for an hour. Then we can go on to attack the beachhead at Lae.”

The admiral looked far away. “I do not know, Choshi.” Choshi was the nickname he had called Satsuma since their days as instructor and student at the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy at Tsukiji, near Tokyo. “I learned at the Kormandorski battle to never underestimate the Americans. Let us see if they offer battle.”

Admiral Wells continued the discussion. “Maybe General Kenney and his Fifth Air Force know all about this and are coming to pulverize that force right now. Let’s pull out southwest, retreat before them and play for time.”

Rodgers shook his head.

“If you leave me in command, sir,” he said, “I can tell you right now that I’m not going to do that. If the Air Force does show up, that’s great. In the meantime, these people,” as he always called the enemy, “have maybe three knots’ speed on us, depending on their last overhaul. If we pull out and retreat before them, in two hours they can come up on us pretty good. I can see one on each of our flanks, putting holes all over us. They might get in a lucky shot, polish us off, and go on to the beachhead without us even hurting them. I don’t think we have any choice but to set up right here.”

The three officers present looked toward the admiral to see how he would respond. Wells paused a moment. Well, he thought to himself, this is why I fought with Halsey for this guy. I have to let him command. Also, I have to make it perfectly clear for the record that Ransom and Springer understand this.

“Kip, you’re in command,” the admiral said, his voice firm. “I just hate for you to lose your ship.”

“Sir, let’s make them put us in the water. That’s why we’re here.”

Here goes my career, Wells thought. Looks as though I’ve lost after all. This will be like being shot at in a fish bowl. But he responded, “Okay, do it!”

Rodgers was ready. He moved back to the center of the bridge, the admiral and the others standing behind him. “Mike,” Rodgers said to the helmsman, “come to, ah, 125. Ring up flank speed,” he said to another. “Tell the engine room chief what’s going on, and that we need all he can give us as soon as possible.”

He turned to another sailor. “Get on the horn to Trask and O’Bright.”

There was a wait of about twenty seconds before contact was established.

“Felix? David?” Rodgers called.

The two commanders responded: “Yes, sir?”

“Listen, we intend to offer battle right here.”

Trask sounded surprised when he answered. “Two Myokos, sir? Can we hold out against them?”

“Well, we sure hope so. But we haven’t much choice. We think they intend to attack the beachhead at Lae.”

O’Bright chimed in. “How could they have reacted so quickly after our invasion?”

“We have no idea,” Rodgers replied. “There’s no use thinking about that now. You two conform to my movements as best you can, fronting me from those destroyers. Get about a thousand yards to port of me.”

O’Bright interrupted. “Sir, we could run a torpedo attack in on them and you could get away.”

“No, don’t worry about that. We want you to keep those destroyers off us and out of torpedo range as long as you can. Listen carefully, just in case we live through this and they want to court-martial me. If this goes against Grand Rapids, then I want you to attack these people with torpedoes until they sink you. Clear?”

The very slight remains of his Southern accent struck both men. Both responded in the affirmative.

Rodgers continued. “We’re about ten minutes from opening fire now. Good luck to you both.”

He set the phone back in the hanger and gazed slowly and carefully at the men on the bridge, knowing he was putting their lives on the line. The chance of battle is always with us, he thought.

He turned away from the others for a moment. Though his facial expression never changed, he prayed silently: Heavenly Father, be with us today as we engage the enemy of our country. Excuse us the sin of taking their lives. Guide me that I do not waste the lives of those entrusted to me. Should their lives be taken, may they stand before You this day in Paradise.

He paused a little longer, and then turned back to the men on the bridge. “Get that little Citadel ensign up here.” He frowned at not being able to recall the man’s name. “Also, get off this plain language message to Post Moresby:

“We are engaging a superior enemy surface force in Dampier Strait. Request immediate air support!

“Then get Lieutenant Cashion on the phone.”

In seconds, the young gunnery officer, sitting two levels directly above, was on the line. “Sam, what’s the range?” Rodgers asked.

“Very close to thirty-four thousand yards, sir.”

“Okay. We plan to fight right here.”

“Sir, ah . . .”

“Yes, I know. We want you to open fire at extreme range. What would that be? Thirty thousand?”

“Yes, about.”

“Can you hit anything at that range?”

“Perhaps, sir.”

“Well, it doesn’t make any difference. We’re further out of the water with those big ‘B’ and ‘X’ triple gun turrets than they are. That must give us a tiny range advantage. We need to play for time, Sam. Keep them off of us for as long as you can. Maybe we can get a break. For now, put three of your four turrets in against that lead ship.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yes, Captain?” Admiral Osukawa asked, as Satsuma approached.

“Admiral, Grand Rapids is paralleling us, showing no intention of withdrawing. She will offer battle.”

Assuming he was facing an American admiral instead of a captain, Osukawa said, “Ah, so we will see what this American admiral is made of. I tell you, I am wary of the Americans, but the success of our mission depends on the enemy air force. We need to defeat Grand Rapids as soon as possible and move on. What is your plan against the old cruiser?”

“Admiral, I would be surprised if she could make more than twenty-eight knots to our thirty-three. In two hours, we should we able to force our way past, demolish her with our broadsides, and move on to the beachhead. The fact that their planes are not already hounding us means we are undetected until now. I am certain they are reporting our presence, but surely it will be some hours before they can mount a strike against us. By that time, we will be destroying their invasion force and saving New Guinea. The Americans will be set back for years.”

“Yes! You may proceed.”

The Citadel ensign, pilot of the one working scout plane on the Grand Rapids, reported to the bridge. Rodgers looked at him as he approached. He thought: This young kid with no battle experience, a mere child, is our only chance to not be blasted off the map in the next couple of hours.

“What’s your name, son?” Rodgers asked.

“Clark, sir, Manning C.”

“Oh yeah. Where you from?”

“Camden, South Carolina, sir.”

“I should have remembered! I didn’t tell you that I served with a guy from there when I was just out of the Academy. His name was Fortner, Jed Fortner. A nice guy.”

Ensign Clark shook his head. “I didn’t know him, sir.”

“You’ve probably heard we are going to have a battle here in a few minutes.”

“Yes, sir!”

“You think you can get off with that plane?”

“Yes, sir!”

“How many launches do you have from a ship?”

“Well, none, sir,” Clark answered sheepishly. “But I’ve trained a lot.”

“I’m sure you have. How much fuel you got? How many hours’ duration?”

“Nine hours, sir.”

“Hm. Well, I dearly hope you get to use it up. I want you to get off before we start firing, which will be in about five minutes. You need us to head into the wind?”

“No, sir.”

“How high are you supposed to spot from?”

“Five thousand feet, sir.”

“If you flew over us at that height, we’d blow the stuffing out of you, so don’t do that. Fly at, ah, seven thousand. If they shoot at you, go up to eight. I doubt they’ll shoot at you that high.”

Rodgers looked at the boy very seriously.

“We are depending on you. These people are going to overpower us unless you can help us out. If they have any spotter planes, I doubt they will interfere with you. You spot our guns, as you have been trained to do. Nothing else. Don’t get yourself killed. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.” Clark looked a little shaken, the weight of responsibility clinging to him.

“Stay away from those destroyers,” Rodgers continued. “We might as well give you the best chance we can, so wait until we turn into the wind and give you the signal. Go!”

The young man ran off the bridge and down the ladder.

In a few minutes, the little Curtiss “Seagull” float biplane got off from its amidships launching track. As the two fleets drew parallel, running at high speed toward the southeast at 0712, Grand Rapids opened fire at more than fourteen miles range. The Japanese followed at 0731, but the range was too great for either side to score for more than an hour. Slowly, the Japanese pulled ahead with their speed advantage.

“Ask Chief Clark to come up here,” Rodgers said finally. In less than five minutes, the gray-haired engineering chief reported to the bridge.

Rodgers stood and took the cigarette from his mouth. “Chief, you’re going to have to give me more turns on the propeller shafts.”

The chief seemed taken aback. “I assure you that the engines are at maximum revolutions right now.”

Rodgers tried not to let his irritation show. He spoke calmly but insistently. “I know that. But I need at least half a knot more.”

“Sir, these old Babcock turbines can’t take much more abuse.”

“Well, it’s not going to make much difference,” Rodgers confided, in a lower voice. “At this speed they’re going to cross in front of us and sink us in the next hour with their broadsides.”

The old chief looked alarmed. “They’re in front of us, sir?”

“Yes,” Rodgers said placidly. “They’re about to get in front of us and mop us up on their way to that beachhead at Lae to murder our invasion force. Chief, if you have any old tricks up your sleeve, this is the time for them.”

“I’ll do what I can, sir.”

“I know you will, Frank.”

The chief hurried off. Shortly afterward, Rodgers felt a faint grinding and shuddering coming up through the deck plating as the 107,000 horsepower turbines brought the old American cruiser up two-thirds of a knot. They were now traveling at a shade over 31.5 knots.

On Zukaku, Admiral Osukawa sat confidently in his chair on the bridge. He had known for many years that one day the United States would be his country’s enemy. He thought, as did every Japanese sailor, of national hero Admiral Togo who annihilated the Russian fleet at the Battle of Tsushima Strait in 1905. That battle had assured the Japanese a place at the table of the world’s great nations. Now the Americans were pressing the Empire on every front. More great victories were essential, he knew. He reveled in the idea that he might humbly hold a place in the Japanese pantheon with Admiral Togo.

His entire training had been for triumphant fleet action, a face-to-face battle of samurai warriors who would vanquish the enemy and ensure the expansion of the Empire and its dominance in Asia for decades to come. Now, the usual American material superiority was reversed. A decisive victory over an inferior American force seemed only a matter of time away, and he exulted to himself and for his Emperor. I will expel the Americans from New Guinea and ensure our success on this flank in this battle of civilizations, he thought.

But after an hour, Osukawa began to feel uneasy. He turned to Satsuma. “Satsuma, I feel the American salvos coming closer.”

“Yes, Admiral, the Americans have put up a spotter plane.”

“I knew it was a bad omen, Captain, when our planes were damaged by that storm as we left Sasebo. What of our progress in getting around the enemy and onto the beachhead?”

“Sir, the old cruiser has more speed than we thought.”

“Well,” the Admiral responded abruptly, “did we hit her?”

“We’re not sure, sir. But Lieutenant Komada assured me a moment ago that Grand Rapids is continually buried under tons of water from our near misses. There’s no question that the concussion effects of these shells are causing her serious internal damage.”

“Yet she shows no sign of weakening speed or gun power.” Osukawa leaned forward intently.

“No, sir, but neither has she hit either Niitaka or us.”

There was a loud boom above, and then a near miss deposited an inch of water on the bridge.

Osukawa nodded at Satsuma. “I suggest you urge Komada to redouble his efforts.”

“Yes, sir.”

Constantly changing course to throw off the enemy’s aim, Captain Rodgers would calmly hold up one hand or the other without saying anything. If the helmsman saw two fingers on the left hand, he would turn two points to port; one on the right hand meant one point to starboard. The helmsman would repeat the orders, and the word would be transferred to “Guns” and the two destroyers.

The eight-inch, 256 -pound Japanese projectiles, some thirty-five seconds in the air, continued to come close, plunging forty-five degrees down from their apogee of forty thousand feet.

Rodgers smiled and chuckled to himself. “Well, they certainly are lousy shots. Can’t they figure out that all I’m doing is heading toward the splashes of the ship firing the green dye “chasing salvos” and hoping for good luck with the other cruiser? They correct their aim and are bound to miss again.”

With the shells from twenty large caliber guns aimed at Grand Rapids, a young sailor on the bridge was beginning to shake and turn pale. Rodgers smiled and spoke to him.

“If they keep this up, they might just hit us.”

At that, a near miss deposited an avalanche of water on the bridge.

“Son, come over here next to me. I might need you,” Rodgers called. The sailor quickly followed the order and then stood next to his captain, almost as if seeking shelter.

“You’re Beck, right? Where you from?”

The boy was still shaking. “Overland Park, Kansas,” he said, so afraid he did not bother to say “sir.”

“That’s Kansas City, right?”

“Yes.”

“I have a great pal from Kansas City I played baseball with in college, Johnny Parks.”

The young man perked up and smiled. “Yes, sir, everybody in Kansas City knows of him. He was a big hero to us kids. When he got killed on Lexington at the Coral Sea, the whole town went into mourning.”

Rodgers frowned and spoke quietly. “I didn’t know. He was a good man.”

“Yes, sir!”

Remembering playing baseball with Parks brought an idea into Rodgers’ head. From what we’ve heard, he thought, on several occasions—like at the Savo Island and the Komandorski Islands battles—the Japanese have shied off from pressing their attacks and retreated too soon. Perhaps we could throw them off guard and they’ll make such a mistake again. Johnny taught me to throw a palm ball, a pitch that looks like a fastball but is really much slower. I think it’s time to throw another palm ball.

“Tell Chief Clark to make smoke,” he said.

“Make smoke, sir?” one of the men on the bridge questioned.

“Make smoke!” he said insistently.

He turned to Admiral Wells, who had a quizzical look on his face.

“We should try to keep these people off balance,” Rodgers explained, half smiling. “It can’t hurt, and it might just confuse them.”

The admiral nodded. Several minutes went by, with the captain changing the course several times in their death dance.

On Zukaku, Osukawa looked up as Satsuma rushed toward him.

“Admiral, the American is making smoke!”

Osukawa stood up quickly.

“Finally!” He smiled. “The American admiral is very bold but could not stand against us. He is hurt and trying to cover his retreat. Either his engine has been damaged, or our near misses have battered the old ship and caused severe flooding. Now is our chance. Advance and finish her off !”

“Sir, ‘Guns’ says they’re turning,” one of Grand Rapids’ bridge crew called out.

Wells and Rodgers went to the edge of the bridge, Rodgers picking up the phone.

“Sam, what’s up?” Rodgers listened and relayed the words to Admiral Wells. “Looks like they’re countermarching on us. Sam figures they’re turning back into us some, probably thinking we’re hurt.”

He waited while Cashion decided. “He thinks about 285, so slicing twenty degrees into us to cut down the range. Hold on, Sam, and try to listen to this.

“Come to new course, 325 degrees.” Rodgers held the phone and turned to a bluejacket. “Get Springer and Ransom in here.”

In less than a minute, the two officers walked in from the plot room.

Rodgers said, “You guys need to hear this.” He turned toward the admiral. “Sir, this is the break we need. As they turn back on us, it puts us in front of them for a change, far enough ahead that we can try to cut them off, give them a few broadsides. If they are turning back at 285 degrees, and we cut them off by heading 325, we could get in a number of salvos before they can do much to us. They’ll be in a single line and will only be able to use their forward guns, maybe four or six guns to our ten.”

The admiral had a better idea. “Well, the range will narrow. But, if you’re going to take that chance, why not really cut them off by turning to 345 degrees? That would cut sixty degrees in front of them. It would be better to have ninety, but they would turn away and not let us have that.”

Rodgers nodded. “Mr. Berry,” he called, “come to new course 345. Sam, you still there? You heard that? If we want a chance, we’re going to have to make a break for ourselves right here. It was only a matter of time paralleling them before they smashed us. Put every gun in against that lead ship’s big head.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rodgers put the phone down. “This really is our only chance to survive the next hour,” he said solemnly.

With the help of the spotter plane, “Guns” Cashion was on target with his broadsides and made two hits on Niitaka. At once the Japanese column veered off, again paralleling Grand Rapids, the range reduced to eight miles. Well, Rodgers thought, I hope that was worth it.

Nine minutes later, at 0959, the American cruiser was hit for the first time. The projectile penetrated above the armor belt and exploded in the galley, killing forty-five men and causing a very bad fire that took fifty minutes to contain. It also left them with no food stores for the crew.

A number of near misses jarred the ship, and three duds hit Grand Rapids. As was the case throughout the war, Japanese projectiles proved to have a high rate of failures. Some members of the crew actually saw the shells. As they began their plunge on the ship from their apogee, they reached terminal velocity at about 190 miles per hour, producing a strange screeching sound that drew the men to look directly at them.

“Sir, radar reports planes to the east,” one of the bridge crew piped up. Rodgers and Wells walked to the starboard side of the bridge.

“Radar now shows sixty to seventy planes, sir, thirty to forty miles out.”

Rodgers and Wells watched the flying specks come closer.

Finally, the admiral spoke. “Damn,” he said, “Those are our planes. Look like bombers in formation. They’re our bombers, going to blast hell out of Rabaul!”

Rodgers smiled. “Well, that’s just fine. At least it’s not the enemy!”

He put his binoculars down and thought to himself: This really is unbelievable. We send out a plain language message two and a half hours ago that the beachhead is in danger, and those dopes at HQ can’t change the flight path of a load of airplanes. I’ll bet twenty of those planes would convince the enemy to withdraw.

The combination of the spotter plane calling Grand Rapid’s “shorts” and “longs” and Rodgers’ uncanny ability to fool the enemy by his radical maneuvering began to pay off. In the next forty minutes, her gunnery was superb.

At least four of the eight-inch shells hit the main target, Niitaka. By 1030, she seemed to be listing several degrees and losing speed. Grand Rapids’ crew could see fires on her without binoculars, especially near the bridge.

After taking another hit, Niitaka was forced to leave the battle line, turning and chugging away into the distance, spewing smoke. She eventually made the port of Gasmata on New Britain Island. On the 25th, she was attacked and sunk there by the same flight of bombers from the Fifth Air Force that had flown past at Huon Gulf.

Admiral Osukawa sat dejectedly on the bridge of Zukaku.

“If only I had the power of the Americans, just once could command that number of planes. I feared their planes since we left Sasebo. Unaccountably, they have not touched us. Instead, this ghost ship hits us but is impervious to the shells of our mighty ships. How bad is the damage to Niitaka?”

“Admiral, I’m sorry to report that she will have to retire.” Satsuma’s face looked drawn and weary. “She has six serious hits, sir, with much internal flooding.”

“Order her to Gasmata. We will join her there if we can. Tell Captain Osumata that we will avenge her and accomplish our mission.”

When Satsuma returned from sending the message, the admiral was ready.

“The American has been very clever. He has outsmarted us with his ruse of making smoke. How has he been able to avoid our shells?”

“Admiral, I believe it to be pure luck. The grouping of her salvos has actually been poor. Ours land much closer together but for some unaccountable reason, have not hit home. We heard before the war that the muzzle velocity of Grand Rapids and her sisters’ guns is too great and leads to poor groupings.”

“So, all of ours hit or none. Then, how can she hit us at all?” the Admiral demanded.

“Sir, my explanation is that her shells are so errant that some just happen to hit.”

“I tire of this game, Satsuma.” Osukawa leaned back in his chair. “Let us employ a trick of our own. Order our destroyers to close to torpedo range by 1100 and launch their Model 93s, the six-thousand-pound torpedoes. This must be done slowly, so as not to alarm the American destroyer screen. Let us see if we can catch the devil ship with a torpedo or two.”

“Yes, Admiral!”

Thirty minutes passed with neither cruiser making a hit. Finally, on the US cruiser, a sailor answered the phone and spoke to Captain Rodgers.

“‘Guns,’ sir.”

Again Rodgers relayed Cashion’s words to the Admiral. “Sam thinks those destroyers are getting too close, maybe getting into position to make a run on us to launch torpedoes.”

“Are we within range of their torpedoes?” Admiral Wells sounded worried.

Before either man could say another word, a titanic blast hit destroyer Avery. It blew off the bow up to the number one turret, leaving her dead in the water. Moments later, a second torpedo found its mark, hurling men and equipment one hundred feet in the air. When the smoke cleared, Avery was gone.

Rodgers ordered Grand Rapids to loop back by the survivors. As she did, the cruiser’s men threw life jackets, and anything else that would float, into the water. Avery crewmen would remain in the water for thirty hours, until being rescued by a curious flotilla including Winslow, a number of smaller surface ships, and the submarine Tenorfish. In the meantime, they held front row seats for the finale.

Apprised of the destruction of the American destroyer, Admiral Osukawa sat motionless for a moment, depressed that the twenty-four torpedoes had missed the American cruiser. Suddenly, he stood and raised his voice to Captain Satsuma, who turned.

“The American will make his mistake! Up until now he has outfoxed us, but now he will loop back for survivors. I know the weaknesses of these Americans from my years in Washington! He cannot afford to free his last destroyer to pick up his men in the water, because he knows we might have submarines in front of him. Thus, he will loop back to jettison lifeboats and his ability to maneuver will be diminished! He will be caught in a funnel. Tell Komada the American will loop back for his worthless men. This is our chance! We must strike hard!”

By this time, the American flagship was a shambles inside. The concussion of the great guns had strewn passageways all over the ship with gear and personal items. Storage areas not secured, or that had come loose, had emptied their contents onto the deck. Soon it would be much worse. Just as Grand Rapids passed the Avery survivors, she was bracketed and then hit by two salvos from Zukaku.

One of the shells penetrated the two inches of glacis armor on the face of the 250-ton “X” turret and destroyed it, killing all of the men inside. Luckily, the hit did not detonate the magazine several decks below and destroy the ship. The second and third shells were more serious, penetrating just below the waterline on the starboard side, causing such destruction that in the end the flooding could not be contained. A fourth shell proved to be another dud.

The fifth and last exploded behind the plot room in back of the bridge, knocking the bridge personnel to the floor.

Once the smoke began to clear, Rodgers was the first to enter the shattered plot room, followed by some of the bridge crew. Amid the maelstrom of smoke and noise, they tended to the wounded as best they could. Rodgers spotted others in the wreckage, clearly beyond any help: the executive officer, Springer, Ransom, and many of the other men.

When the wounded had been cared for and removed to a safer area, he came back and collapsed into his chair.

So, he thought, I’ve killedTommy Ransom. I’ve killedTommy. And Springer, and all those other men. He covered his face, overwhelmed with grief.

Admiral Wells had been supervising the bridge while Rodgers helped with the wounded.

“You men go about your work,” Rodgers heard the old man say calmly. “Helmsman, come to a new course of 250 degrees. Get Lieutenant Andrews up here to make his damage report. He’ll be down below in all of that mess somewhere.”

In a minute, Rodgers was standing next to Wells. Wiping the tears from his face, he was ready to resume command.

“You got her headed for the beachhead?” he asked.

“Yeah,” the admiral said. “I can’t think it’s going to be good, but let’s see what the damage is. We need to get out of here for now.”

The Americans, still making smoke and still able to make twenty-five knots, retreated west toward the beachhead, destroyer Winslow bringing up the rear.

In about fifteen minutes, a young officer appeared, solemn-faced, dirty, and dripping wet, his cap long since gone.

“You been all the way down?” Rodgers asked.

“Yes, sir.” The twenty-five-year-old Andrews was breathing hard. “As near as I can tell with all of that water coming in, sir, we have two large holes well forward of the armor belt. They are large, real large. And they couldn’t have been placed in worse spots. The one near the fourth bulkhead is high enough that you can see about half of the hole. Sir, you could drive a Packard right through it. You’ll begin to lose headway here pretty quick. I’m guessing there’s probably three hundred tons of water down there now and more coming in like Niagara Falls. It was seven, eight feet over the keel when I left. The other we think is worse, judging from the water flowing in, but low enough that we can’t even see the hole. I doubt Chief Engel can do much with either of them. But the men are down there now trying to fashion coffer dams, doing all they can.”

“I knew it was bad!” said the admiral.

“Actually, sir, it couldn’t be much worse,” Andrews replied. “That lower one’s putting tons of pressure on that old keel. If you could reduce speed, it would be one thing. As it is, another shot in there and we could break in two.”

“Is there any chance she can survive?” the admiral asked.

Andrews thought hard, all the naval engineering experience and training he had ever had flashing through his mind.

“No,” he answered glumly, shaking his head. “Admiral, without further damage, I’ll give her six hours—maybe eight if the coffer dams work. But she will go.” He saluted and headed back down.

“Get ‘Guns’ for me,” the captain ordered.

In a moment Cashion was on the line.

“Sam, it looks like we’ve about had it.”

“Afraid so, sir. Those shots rocked us up here almost enough to knock out the fire control system.”

“Yeah, Andrews gives us eight hours if we’re lucky. What’s that second cruiser up to?”

He relayed the response to the admiral. “Sam says it looks like they’re coming around on us from the north, looking to finish us off.” He hung up the phone.

“All right, Kip, you’re going to have to pick your ground,” Wells told Rogers. “Make your stand before we get too close to the beachhead.”

“Sir,” Satsuma said to his Admiral, “we have hit Grand Rapids several times as she cleared the destroyer’s survivors, Komada says. Best of all, he thinks the bridge has been hit and destroyed.”

“Ah, Captain.” The admiral smiled, nodding. “Finally, let us hope that we have killed this American admiral and the Devil Ship is finished! Charge down on her to make sure. Be vigilant that their last destroyer cannot torpedo us. But, Satsuma, do not slow. We are late for our appointment, as the Americans say. We mustn’t tarry here but go on to the beachhead at Lae before their air fleet arrives. There we will do the Emperor’s bidding as long as we have strength in our limbs.”

Rodgers went on for several miles, neither cruiser scoring any hits. At 1128, he ordered the ship to turn across the Japanese line of march. With smoke billowing out of Grand Rapids, the range about seven miles, it was not immediately clear to the Japanese that she had turned broadside and the three remaining turrets were firing against them.

The range came down very quickly, and Grand Rapids made good on the enemy’s confusion. “Guns” was on target again. From 1142 to 1154, he made four hits on Zukaku. The crew saw one in particular, visible without binoculars, hit in the aft of the ship, creating a tremendous fire. Luckily, there was too little time for the Japanese to put their torpedoes to use.

At 1210, the Japanese had had enough and retired to the northeast in the direction of Rabaul, which Zukaku made in twelve hours. The five-hour Battle for Huon Gulf was over.

Aboard Zukaku, Osukawa sat in a lump. He mumbled to himself.

“So, the American admiral was not killed. He has beaten me after all. Twice the power, surprise, newer and faster ships. The Americans have devil ships, first Salt Lake City and now Grand Rapids. I have failed the Emperor. Captain Satsuma,” he said, slightly louder, “can we make port?”

“Yes, Admiral, the fire near the torpedo tubes is under control. All of the fires are under control, but we must seek shelter in a harbor as soon as possible. What signal shall I make to our destroyers?”

The old officer did not respond. A long silence ensued.

Finally, in a far-off voice, he said, “Choshi, did I ever tell you of the cherry blossoms at Kinan along the Yoshino river near my home when I was a boy?”

Without giving Satsuma time to answer, he went on. “Our greatest joy as children was to go to nearby Tosa Bay and watch the whales come in shore. Or to watch the American steamers go in and out of Osaka. I dreamt for many years of riding one of those steamers to see the incredible wonders of the United States. It had a fascination for me, Satsuma, which only the mind could hold. Only later did I realize they would be our enemies.”

He looked down at the deck with no expression on his face.

“Now I will be relieved. And humbled before the Emperor. I should like to return to see the cherry blossoms one more time. I wonder if that would be allowed.”

There was a moment of great rejoicing aboard the American ships, but officers and men alike knew that their cruiser was in very bad shape. They tried desperately to save the ship. They brought the fires under control, but they couldn’t halt the flooding. Men left their gun stations and manned bucket brigades for the next six hours.

Captain Rogers set course for Milne Bay. When that became out of the question, the hope was to beach the ship on the coast near Buna, some thirty miles away. But the ship continued to sink, nose first.

At 1814, with Buna still twenty miles off, Rodgers ordered “Abandon Ship.” The long process of getting the men over the side began. Many wept openly at leaving their home, a ship that had performed so heroically this hot day in the tropics. With their wounds, many had to be lowered to the boats in agony. Luckily there were enough boats, and Winslow was able to get very close in the nearly calm sea.

The captain toured the ship, saw that the men were getting out in an orderly fashion, and then went back to sit on the bridge in his chair. Almost forty minutes went by before Admiral Wells turned to his protégé.

“Kip, I’m going to go. You made me proud today. Thanks for letting me go out on a good note. But I can’t stay with her—I have a date with my Polly! You going to come?”

Rodgers looked up admiringly at the person who, for all practical purposes, was his father. “I’d like to sit here a while, sir.”

Wells raised his eyebrows. “I understand. This has to be your choice, but I wish you would come with me.”

Rodgers looked up with the same love in his eyes but said nothing.

The old man slowly walked off, went over the side, and got into a boat.

It was now relatively quiet on the bridge, just as it had been almost fifteen hours before when he’d first come on the bridge. Rodgers bowed his head and prayed again: Heavenly Father, You have graciously granted us victory today. I pray that the men who perished did not do so in terror. Assure the family of each that their loss was not meaningless, and comfort them now, and in the years to come. Now, take my soul to Purgatory, that I may atone for my sins of killing so many this day.

The great warship slowly settled by the bow. As the waves began to lap over the foredeck, rivulets began their inexorable process of claiming the deck. There was only an occasional terrible grinding sound as the ship quietly died. The fires were out, but smoke continued to billow out from several areas.

Sam Cashion hurried down the passageway from the aft part of the ship. He had watched over the evacuation of his own people in the fire control area and had been to the engine room to make sure that everyone who could get out was out. Now, he saw no one. He was determined to get to the bridge before the cruiser sank, because he knew who he would find there.

As he expected, when he mounted the steps, he saw the captain in his chair with the usual placid expression on his face and cigarette between his fingers. He looked completely relaxed, almost as though he were getting ready to take a nap on the porch.

“Did the admiral get out?” Cashion asked.

“Yes.”

“Sir, come with me.”

“I’ll be along,” Rodgers said, not looking up and not moving. “You go ahead.”

“You hurt, sir? Your leg?”

“No. I’m just going to sit here a while.”

“Sir, she might founder at any moment.”

“I know.”

“Come with me.” Cashion stepped toward Rodgers.

Rodgers looked into Cashion’s eyes. “Leave me here with her.”

Cashion went still. He paused, without saying anything, for more than a minute. The ship creaked and groaned ominously, telling those who would listen that she was tired out and would have to give up soon.

Finally, he said, “Come with me.”

Rodgers made no movement.

Cashion spoke with some agitation in his voice. “Look, sir, I pulled you out of the drink once before. If she goes down with us here on the bridge, I don’t think I could do it again. She’ll take us both down with her.”

Rodgers looked up at Cashion. “Sam, you and that little ensign won this battle for us today. I hope he’s okay. Thanks.”

He looked around the ship.

“This was her great moment. She even goes down with grace, doesn’t she?”

Both nodded.

“I suppose better here than in the breaker’s yard,” Rodgers said.

Cashion paused again. There were several more dire grinding sounds. He looked about, half expecting a torrent of waters to begin rushing in.

“Sir, Springer’s dead. Ransom’s dead. That means either the Admiral or I will be the one to go see your wife. I don’t want to do that! Please don’t make me do that! You have won a great victory today. You defeated an enemy force twice our size and saved those guys on the beach.”

He shook his head slowly.

“The boys put some good shots into that first ship. She’s probably at the bottom by now. Sir, come with me! She will slide any moment now.”

Rodgers looked up, his eyes blinking slowly. “Sam, I lost two ships in two years.”

Cashion shouted back. “I am not going to leave you here! I will NOT!”

That jarred Rodgers. He looked up into Cashion’s eyes. He knew he could order the man out, but knowing Cashion, he wouldn’t go.

Rodgers wanted to remain on the bridge and go down with the vessel he loved so much. Sitting there had been the most comfortable feeling of peace he had ever known. But his code of honor, the ancient “Soldier’s Elegy,” did not include selfishness. He would not cause the death of another. He stood up, dropping his cigarette.

“All right,” he said quietly. He took a deep, slow breath. “Did they get the log?”

Cashion went to it and picked it up. “I’d hate to have to save this thing and you too,” he said.

The two smiled together as they left the bridge, walked down the two flights of stairs to the deck, and went to the rail.

As they looked forward, they could see “A” turret already half submerged and water lapping gently at the base of the housing below the massive “B” turret not far away. The ship had only a few moments left before she would begin her slide to the bottom five hundred fathoms below. But Rodgers stopped, and for almost a full minute took a long, slow look around.

Finally, with the anxious Cashion already over the side and climbing down a rope, he smiled a smile of gratitude, nodded slowly several times, and went over.

A spontaneous and sustained cheer went up from the hundreds of exhausted men in the boats and on Winslow.

Battle Off Noemfoor

Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more . . .

—Shakespeare, Henry V

Weapons . . . when next we meet,

May serve to better us, and worse our foes

Or equal what between us made the odds, . . .

—Milton, Paradise Lost, Book Six

By the late spring of 1944, General Douglas MacArthur, Commander Southwest Pacific, had taken many locations in his advance up the east coast of New Guinea to the northern edge of the island, called the “Vogelkop,” or “bird’s head.” Unfortunately, only two proved usable as bases for the heavy B-24 bombers: Nadzap, in the extreme south, and Hollandia, halfway up the coast. A successful conclusion of the campaign would require the acquisition of a third location that would yield the six-thousand-foot runway capable of handling the big bombers for the next jump, to the Philippines.

The island of Biak off the “Vogelkop” was selected and was attacked May 29, 1944. The island of Noemfoor, fifty miles to the west, was then selected for invasion in order to secure Biak’s flank. The Japanese reaction to Biak was swift. First they attempted to bring in reinforcements, and then they brought major warships to bases to the west of New Guinea. The Allied support of Biak and Noemfoor was staged from Hollandia with its airfields and excellent harbor, Humbolt Bay.

Off the coast of northern New Guinea, June 25, 1944

Captain Theodore R. Rodgers, Jr., was a hard man for the crew to figure. Many a sailor studied him closely or just plain stared at him to try to understand what he was like. By this time in the war, he was a legendary figure in the United States. Many of the younger men had idolized him long before they entered the Navy, having seen his picture in Life or some other magazine next to Joe Foss, Marion Carl, or Eisenhower. His accomplishments made him into a natural hero. The men knew of his decisive action at Pearl Harbor, how he had brought crucial supplies to the Marines at Guadalcanal, and how he had beaten the Japanese at the Battle of Huon Gulf despite two-to-one odds and saved an invasion force.

Though it was the furthest thing from his mind, the forty-one-year-old squadron commander with graying temples looked every inch the hero the young men idolized. He was tall and lean, and had become better looking with age. The physique that had made him one of the great athletes in the history of Annapolis was still evident, his body as yet oblivious to his heavy smoking. The crew knew that the “Old Man” still held the record for winning twelve games in a row as a pitcher on the baseball team, and that he had been such a star on the football field that more than one newspaper had called him “the best tackle in the east.”

While young men naturally admire a famous athlete, they had come to like Rodgers personally as well. He was fair in his dealings with them, always ready to take the time to talk with them, and played no favorites. They knew that he was always cool under fire, never rattled in any way. He never even raised his voice. Finally, they were fascinated by the testament to his leadership abilities that followed him around: that he had never relieved an officer or needed to.

As young men do, they failed to understand their leader. Rodgers thought of himself as a rather average professional soldier and patriot. While he recognized that he had achieved some measure of success, he was sure it was due to the excellence of his subordinates. There was no place in his strict code of honor for individual laurels. While many portrayed him as a great dispenser of revenge against an implacable foe, in this too they misjudged him. He had no hatred of the enemy as a people at all. He opposed them simply because they were the enemy of the United States.

In this process of battling for his country, Rodgers thought very little of his own life. He was prepared without any hesitation for it to be sacrificed for the good of the nation. Only one thing in his life matched his duty to country: his duty to his men. To him, his men essentially were the nation, and his respect for and dedication to them knew no bounds. Neither was this contradiction—of doing the nation’s bidding versus not risking lives needlessly—apparent to his observers, though it caused him much anguish.

It would have confused the younger men all the more had they known that nine months before their hero had suffered through the loss of his great love, sunken heavy cruiser Grand Rapids. He still thought of her every day and would grieve for her in his own quiet way, telling no one, until the day he died. But she was gone, and no trace of anguish was evident on his face. He never mentioned her again, and those whom he carried with him as he went up the chain of command knew better than to mention her in his presence. Even to Sam Cashion, now a ship’s captain, who had saved Rodgers’ life twice, and who several months before had married Rodgers’ little sister, Faye, Rodgers confided nothing of his loss. He appeared the same as always, joking and smiling with the crew, and spending inordinate amounts of time in idle talk with them.

Perhaps he had remained so strong because he had a new love to replace Grand Rapids. It was the destroyer Reed. Built as a destroyer leader before the war, she and her nine sisters in two similar classes had been among the largest destroyers in the world when built in the middle 1930s. While the Fletcher-class destroyers, now rolling out of US shipyards in great numbers, were actually heavier tonnage-wise, the older ships had as much gun power as any in the world. To the Fletcher-class ships’ five five-inch guns in five single turrets, Reed had eight such guns in four double turrets.

There were three Fletcher-class ships in Rodgers’ squadron. Cashion was actually the commander of Reed, but Rodgers had made his flag in her, forcing Cashion from the captain’s cabin to bunk with the other officers. She was top-heavy like his old love, and buxom, with “B” and “X” turrets high out of the water. She was as handsome as any warship. The casual observer might have assumed her to be a light cruiser. Over time, she proved too top-heavy, and some of her double turrets were replaced with single mounts. But on this day, her ability to fire four guns forward, to the two of the Fletcher-class ships’, would prove very important for the United States.

Rodgers came onto the spacious starboard wing of the bridge at 0430, as was his custom. His orders dangled from his right hand. He sat in the new captain’s chair he had had installed on the wing in order to allow Cashion room to command his ship and stay out of the way of the traffic of the tiny bridge.

The door into the back of the bridge was open. Around the corner, in his cabin, a favorite record spun on the Alabamian’s phonograph: Ernest Tubb’s first big country hit, “Walking the Floor Over You.” Young Tubb’s twangy voice, not yet developed into the lustrous bass of later years, sounded in the background. It repeated again and again, to the consternation of some bluejackets unimpressed with country music.

Rodgers had read the orders a number of times but looked at them once more as Tubb’s voice droned on:

FLEET ORDERS 62-869

AS PART OF OPERATION TABLETENNIS, YOU WILL STAND OUT FROM HUMBOLT BAY AT 0130 HOURS 24 JUNE 1944, WITH YOUR COMMAND TO CONDUCT OPERATIONS OF EIGHT DAYS’ DURATION.

PROCEED TO A POINT SOUTH OF BIAK ISLAND VIA JAPAN STRAITS, MAKING RADIO CONTACT WITH OUR FORCES AT BOSNIK AT 0330 HOURS 25 JUNE. USE THE CALL SIGN “METEOR.”

FROM BIAK:

1. PROCEED ALONG THE BIAK-NOEMFOOR AXIS

2. DOMINATE THE ISLAND OF NOEMFOOR UNTIL RELIEVED:

A. BOMBARDING THE LANDING BEACHES AS PRESCRIBED IN FLEET ORDERS 62-864B.

B. SUPPRESSING SHORE BATTERIES THAT COULD JEOPARDIZE THE LANDINGS.

C. BOMBARDING AIRFIELDS AT KAMRI AND KORNASOREN IN THE NORTH AND NAMBER IN THE SOUTH AS PER OPPORTUNITY.

D. PREVENTING REINFORCEMENTS FROM REACHING THE ISLAND.

E. RESCUING ALL DOWNED US AVIATORS AS POSSIBLE. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES ARE YOU TO ENTER GEELVINK BAY TO THE SOUTH.

YOU ARE TO INTERPOSE YOUR COMMAND BETWEEN NOEMFOOR AND ANY ATTEMPTS AT RELIEF BY THE ENEMY, ENGAGING AND DESTROYING ENEMY FORCES OF EQUAL OR INFERIOR STRENGTH.

YOU ARE TO RETREAT BEFORE SUPERIOR SURFACE FORCES, LINKING UP WITH THE INVASION CONVOY IF PRACTICABLE.

Knowing that an action involving destroyers had just taken place two weeks before off Biak, Rodgers had carefully readied his command. The usual accompaniment of shells had been augmented from the Fletchers’ 350 to nearly 450. Reed’s supply had been raised from three hundred to about five hundred, the great majority being AP, or armor piercing, to be used against ships rather than targets such as airfields.

The port commander had strenuously remonstrated at the overloading. “I intend to lodge an official complaint that this creates a safety hazard to your entire command,” he’d said.

Unable to convince the man, Rodgers had simply ignored him. The loading had continued. The crews found themselves stepping around shells stuffed in every nook and cranny, and in some places just stacked on deck. Aside from ammunition, it was a command that needed little else to prepare it for battle. In the nine months since the loss of Grand Rapids at the Battle of Huon Gulf, Rodgers’ Destroyer Division 29, or Desdiv 29, had built an enviable record. While the central Pacific had Arleigh Burke and his “Little Beavers,” the southwest Pacific had Rodgers and his “Maulers.”

Since their formation in December 1943, the “Maulers” had been in almost continuous action against the Japanese. Suffering no serious damage, they had conducted twenty-one coastal bombardments and, several antisubmarine sweeps, and labored through nine major air attacks, including the one that sailors liked to call “The Battle of the Lights.”

In February, they were halfway up the New Guinea coast and about thirty miles off Wewak when they were beset by some of the same elite air units that had sunk the old heavy cruiser Chicago off Rennell Island in the Solomon Islands the year before.

The Japanese had illuminated Chicago with pyrotechnic flares, a skill American aviators never learned. Few of the attackers had been fired on or even seen. The cruiser had taken two torpedo hits and gone down, producing one of the great Navy stories of the war.

Once, years later at an inquest having nothing to do with Chicago, an old veteran of the vessel was giving testimony. Part of his duty was to answer questions about his career. The judge advocate asked: “When did you consider yourself detached from Chicago?” Without batting an eye, the old salt had asked for permission to light a cigarette, then leaned back and replied: “When the Pacific Ocean reached my knees, sir.”

At the “Battle of the Lights,” Rodgers and company had faced the same obstacles: a powerful, unseen, and untouchable enemy with enough bombs and torpedoes to take care of all four of his destroyers. Worse, unlike at Rennell Island, the action was fought completely at night. No one saw even one of the attackers.

In the early morning hours, as many planes had begun to approach, Captain Rodgers had stood before the radar screen, studying it carefully for ten minutes. Then, he had gone to sit down in his chair without commenting on what he saw.

“It sure is a lovely night,” he had said to the keyed-up men on the bridge as they sweated away.

Minutes later the Japanese had begun dropping surface flares, illuminating the entire squadron. They’d started to put together their complicated attacks, so difficult to organize at night. At the last minute, as the planes began to attack, Rodgers had returned to the bridge and ordered his ships to disperse like a half starburst, with each ship fanning out and away from the enemy in different directions. It had ruined the coordination of the attack, and the enemy had not been able to reorganize and try again. They had returned to their bases without using a single weapon.

In the short or long run, the “Maulers” proved to be quite an assemblage. Of course, Sam Cashion and Rodgers, now related through marriage, proved to be a wonderful team. But Annapolis classmates, now commanders, Spruel “C.T.” Trediger on Bindle and William “Dude” Hennessey on Paulley took a back seat to no one. Inseparable for most of their lives, they knew exactly what the other was thinking. The lanky and affable Trediger and his wife Lauren were godparents of Hennessey’s two daughters, as “Dude” and his wife, Sharon, a former beauty queen from Colorado, were for the Trediger children. Both had enough command ability to later become rear admirals.

Perhaps Commander L.L. “Pete” Bernhard of Kaulk had the most potential of anyone in the command outside of the commander himself. Tragically, he would be killed, along with his entire family, in an automobile accident outside of Cleveland, Ohio, on February 21, 1947. Many others in the force would have distinguished careers after the war, in the military and out. There would be a rear admiral, a chief of the Bureau of Ordnance, several CEOs of large companies, and both a US senator and congressman. The force was experienced, well trained, and of the opinion that no task was beyond its reach.

After making radio contact with US forces at Bosnik, the four-ship squadron proceeded directly for Noemfoor. Reed was in the van, and the three Fletchers followed in line: Kaulk, Paulley, and then Bindle.

By 0615, they were making fifteen knots and about six miles short of the nearly round eleven-mile-wide island. Suddenly, a shell jarred Reed as it hit some five hundred yards to starboard.

Battle Stations sounded throughout the squadron. Sailors jumped to their feet and scrambled to their places. Rodgers and Cashion went to the edge of the bridge, only to be greeted by another, and nearer, miss.

“What in the hell was that?” Cashion complained. “They must have some coastal cannon hidden behind one of those little hills we saw on the map.”

“What’s the height of those hills?” Rodgers asked.

“Four hundred feet?” Cashion guessed.

“That’s all jungle though, isn’t it? Those shells are at least five inchers. It’s hard to drag guns like that around in terrain like that. I don’t see it.”

As the day lightened, minute by minute, other shells exploded around the destroyers in intervals of about fifteen seconds.

“Look at that color in the water from that last one, red,” said Cashion. “Those are naval cannon. The army’s not going to use dye markers so you can tell one gun from another.”

Rodgers agreed, watching another shell hit near Paulley.

“Yeah, a blue color on that last one. I’ll bet they’re coming from one of those two bays we saw on the map. What was that one to the southwest, Roembi or Roemoi? Another bay on the east side.”

“They have a cruiser in one of those bays,” Cashion guessed. “Let me get ‘Guns’ on the phone and see what Lanaman says.”

He walked toward the phone and in a few seconds was talking to the officer one level above. “Don, what’s the direction of that fire?” Then he relayed the answer to Rodgers. “Sir, he thinks it’s northwest.”

“They have a cruiser in that bay on the southwest side of the island!” the squadron commander said, lifting his eyebrows. “They must have a spotter somewhere on one of those hills.”

The shells came closer, with geysers erupting seventy feet in the air, well above the tallest masts on the American ships. Every time one came close to one of his ships, Rodgers winced a little, thinking of the underwater damage such a concussion might cause.

“Get on the TBS [radio voice system] to the guys,” he ordered. In a minute, a signalman handed him the phone.

“Guys, I want to pull out of here before they put holes in us. Sam and I think they have a cruiser, a light cruiser, in that bay to the southwest of the island. I want all of us to execute a 180 turn to port in fifteen seconds from now. Mark! ‘Dude,’ that will put you in the van. Head out at, ah, 100 degrees. We will follow you.”

The little squadron smartly made its turn and headed to the southeast, rapidly drawing out of range.

“Well, sir,” Cashion said, “That ship wasn’t there yesterday according to the fly-boys. Here’s the chart of the island. See, Roemboi Bay. ”

The two men talked for several minutes. Then Rodgers turned to a sailor. “Ask Lieutenant Pruitt to come out here.”

Executive officer Weldon “Skip” Pruitt came in from the plot room behind the bridge where he was in charge of navigation, plotting the courses of all American and hostile ships as well as planes on a big wall chart.

“Skip, figure this out for us,” Rodgers began. “We need a setup. Where are we, right here?” He pointed.

“Yes, sir.”

“Assume that they have a cruiser in Roemboi Bay, here. Assume that they shove off right now, knowing that we’ll call in planes to blow them up if they don’t. Assume that they already have steam up, because they’d be crazy not to, even though we saw no smoke. They must go north until they clear the New Guinea mainland to the west here.” He pointed again. “After that, assume that they head west to Sorong, Ceram, or some place like that in Indonesia. Assume that they build to, ah, twenty knots as soon as they can. It’ll take them a while to light up all of their boilers and build steam. We want a course and speed to go around the island the other way, up the east side, and meet them north of Noemfoor. I’m guessing we have a little farther to go, though not much.”

As he spoke, Rodgers displayed mannerisms that had become his trademarks. When making a detailed point, he would frequently point his fingers at the chest of the person he was speaking to, with his right hand fashioned as though he were holding a baseball. Then, when he finished his point, he would flop his right hand over so that the palm was up. It was the same motion baseball pitchers have made for a hundred years to indicate to the catcher that their next pitch would be a curveball, that they wished to “turn the ball over.”

“But, Skip,” he continued, “here’s the important part. We can’t wind up ahead of these people, or even with them. We think it’s likely that they’ve brought a convoy of reinforcements up during the night and that this cruiser has some destroyers with her. So I want to come out behind them. I want a stern chase. If they’re too strong for us, say a load of destroyers with this cruiser, they could put us all in the water in a hurry if we come out ahead of them and they’re between Humbolt Bay and us. We sure can’t stand up to broadsides from a cruiser. We must be able to get out if things get too hot for us. I am betting we have more speed than they, so they can’t catch us, but we can catch them. Give me a plot for that.”

“Yes, sir.”

Within five minutes, Pruitt returned. He was carrying the map, with a course suggestion drawn on it.

“Sir, we’re here now. We’ve passed the eastern edge of Noemfoor. If we take up zero degrees now, taking us directly north at twenty-seven knots, it’ll bring us abreast of the north edge of the island in about forty minutes. From what you say, the enemy will take on a track of about 340 degrees and be, say, fifteen miles ahead. Of course, the more northerly they go, if they take up 0 degrees, the closer they’ll be to us when we both clear the island. But it’s hard to see that they’ll be closer than ten miles.”

“Okay. Skip, thanks. Sam, you okay with that?”

“Sure, we have to try something. That’s good.”

Rodgers nodded. Cashion went to the phone in the bridge and informed the other captains. The little squadron took up the course and speed recommendations, and Cashion and Rodgers spent the next two-thirds of an hour discussing possibilities.

“I agree that there’s certainly no logic in them staying in that bay with that damn cruiser, sir,” Cashion said.

“Yes, exactly,” Rodgers said, running his hand over his face, which never would be shaven that day. “Unless they want to sacrifice that ship for the defense of the island and try to camouflage it so the fly-boys can’t see it. We never did see any smoke.” He shrugged.

“I can’t imagine they intend to do that,” Cashion theorized. “They must suspect that we intend to invade, but for all they know Admiral Crutchley and his cruisers are right behind us. A light cruiser wouldn’t hold up his people for twenty minutes, camouflaged or not. No place on that scrap heap is high enough to hide any kind of a ship for long. They must have brought up reinforcements, like you said.”

“Well, we’ll find out soon enough. Tell me what kind of hitting power they might have on that cruiser.”

They spent the next few minutes discussing the hitting power of the various calibers of Japanese cruiser guns: 5.5-inch, 5.9-inch, and six-inch guns.

As they came near the northern edge of the island, radar began to pick up the images of ships on the other side. Cashion got the first report and went back to Rodgers.

“Sir, radar thinks there are three of them, no idea of size.”

“Okay.”

In the next five minutes, both forces crested the northernmost point of the island, and the signalman approached the squadron commander.

“All right, Billy.” Rodgers smiled at the young man, now all of nineteen.

“Sir, it’s a light cruiser and two destroyers. ‘Guns’ thinks it’s a six-inch cruiser.”

Rodgers interrupted before the boy could finish. “What’s the range?”

“About twenty-four thousand yards, sir.”

“Well, Sam, it’s no load of destroyers,” Rodgers said, obviously pleased.

“Yes, sir, this is what we hoped for. It’s a bigger cruiser than what we would have liked, but don’t you want to tackle them?”

“Sure! We are ordered to attack any force mousing around this island, so long as they’re not superior to us. These people are not superior to us. Besides, now that they’ve seen us, if we let them go, they could sneak back with more ships and reinforcements anytime they got around to it. It could ruin the invasion timetable. What time is it?”

“It’s 1035, sir.”

Rodgers turned to Cashion and kindly touched his shoulder. “As usual, Sam, I want everyone in the command to have his lunch before we open up.”

“Yes, sir!”

Cashion went to the phone and communicated with the other captains.

Men stood silently on the decks of the American ships.The fleeing enemy was in full view in the distance, and sober looks came upon their faces. Some busied themselves with petty tasks, but many stopped and stared. What they had feared so often during the long periods of tedium now struck them hard. Their fragile hold on life, and their helplessness against the heartless power of weapons, came to them all too clearly. They felt like insignificant specks on the surface of the Earth. A well-placed shell, an unknown element, a single misstep, could take their lives in a split second. Nothing in their past seemed to count for anything now. All of the things that had protected them from infancy, a mother’s love, a father’s strength, what they had learned, and what skills they had built, now seemed absent, pushed away.

Some could not keep the fear from their faces. Each looked inward, searching his heart. Many of the youngest men, just kids really, who had been in high school a year or so before, thought of their mothers, home. Most thought of their wives, sweethearts, and children, wondering if they would ever see them again. Those who had no one, the older men especially, worried over their ship and what would befall her. Their gaze did not last long. In a second or two or ten, they stopped staring and went about their work.

What occurred to many was another emotion: pride. They thought of their training, their leaders, their weapons, and their ships—the things that had absorbed so many endless hours, days, months, and changed them so much. And they had the competitive zeal of young men who itch to be in the contest, to win. For some, it was easy to think of battle in the same way they had thought of a high school football game, as a mere contest, even though the issue was now life and death. Most would have agreed with the old salt on the Kaulk, who mumbled under his breath, “I guess it’s time.” Many took a second to pray, feeling awed by the stakes and their frailty. Many sought forgiveness for their sins.

While the slowly converging forces were quite equal on paper, the truth was that the Americans had every advantage. Only the chance of battle held any hope at all for the Japanese. The Americans had superior leadership, five men who worked together as well as any on Earth, innovative men who would find an enemy’s weaknesses and exploit them. They had more experienced crews and better quality ships with the Fletchers and the big-gunned Reed. And they had the best naval weapon in the world, the five-inch, .38-caliber dual-purpose main gun.

One of their advantages, though as yet unknown, was the fire control officer on Kaulk, Lieutenant Frederick C. Harner. Looking back on this day, some in the squadron would conclude that the young officer’s knack in aiming the five-inch guns amounted to witchcraft. All four fire control directors in the squadron, all young lieutenants, used the Model 37 Fire Control System present on all US destroyers and cruisers. But Harner had much more success with his guns than the others. With his two forward firing guns out of the squadron’s ten, Harner was able to make as many hits as the rest of the force combined! In time, all were to see that it was actually skill, a sixth sense with weaponry that was enough to make him a future chief of the Bureau of Ordnance.

A stern chase was always a long chase. This one was no exception. As the American ships built up steam and speed and blacker smoke billowed out of their funnels, it soon became obvious that they were about three knots faster than the Japanese. This gave the squadron commander just enough time to organize his force as he wished. After about twenty minutes conferring with Cashion, Rodgers ordered him to get the others on the TBS. In a few seconds, the other three captains were all listening, and Rodgers came to the phone.

“You three there?”

All three acknowledged.

“This is pretty much what we want. We do not want to follow these people in line. They’re likely to pump torpedoes into us if we make it easy for them. Let’s fan out in a sort of crescent formation with C.T. out the farthest to port, and next, Dude, you two fairly close to each other. You two decide how close. Reed to starboard. Those are the two sides of the crescent, each side of it about a thousand yards on either side of the base course of that cruiser.

“Pete, we want you and Kaulk to be dead astern of that cruiser. That will give us the crescent or arc. You follow her wherever she goes, but lag behind the two sides eight hundred or so yards. The three of us will conform to your course changes just as you conform to hers.”

One of them began to interrupt, but Rodgers continued.

“No, just listen for a minute. That’ll put the wings or sides about two thousand yards apart. C.T., Dude, shoot only at those two destroyers. We know they’ll turn and launch torpedoes against us. But with us fanned out, Sam and I don’t think they have much of a chance of hitting a thirty-nine-foot-wide destroyer with a torpedo from six miles off.”

The men all agreed.

“Kaulk and Reed are going to tackle this Tiger cruiser. Pete, Reed is going to ‘front’ that thing for you as best we can. We’re going to fire at him as fast as we can and put on a good show. With the rest of us weaving and them weaving, which will spoil everyone’s aim some, they might just forget about you trailing behind. Unless they fire at you, don’t weave. You should have the best chance to make hits.”

Rodgers continued. “Here’s the last part. If that thing turns to give us some broadsides, I want all of us to converge on her and ignore those destroyers. If we don’t, she could sink one of us in a hurry. So, let’s try this arc setup. If it’s not working, I’m sure you’ll tell me. Then we can try something else. Open fire when you want.”

Again all three men concurred, and Rodgers hung up.

“Sam, what’s the range now?”

Cashion answered as he hung up the phone to “Guns.” “Eighteen thousand.”

“That’s too far. When do you want to open fire?”

“Sixteen thousand would be good,” Cashion said.

“Okay.”

At 1252, the Japanese beat the Americans to the punch when the light cruiser, Akasi, opened fire. In two minutes, the two Japanese destroyers, Mishi and Shimia, opened fire. They were still out of range, and the shells fell about half a mile short. Reed opened fire at 1308, at some sixteen thousand yards. The Fletchers followed within a few minutes.

Japanese fire from the cruiser came close in the beginning, twice straddling Paulley and coming reasonably close to Bindle. When it became obvious to the enemy that Paulley and Bindle were firing at the two destroyers, the cruiser shifted over to Reed.

Nevertheless, despite their preponderance of shell power and advantage in range, the Japanese only hit Reed once during the entire engagement, at 1415, when a dud hit the deck in front of “A” turret.

Rodgers and the others were knocked to the deck. Amazingly, the debris from the impact hurt no one. As unflappable as always, the squadron commander looked down carefully on the smoking hole in the bulkhead. He grinned and ordered a course change. But none of the subsequent six-inch shells landed within two hundred yards.

Reed’s fire was furious enough that the crew felt it throughout the big destroyer. Sailors standing on the deck bounced several inches high with each report of the four forward guns. Metal trays in the crew’s mess clanged, and the china in the officer’s mess clattered.

It didn’t take long for the heat of the tropics to exhaust the men in the turrets and one deck below in the shell hoists. It was ninety-five degrees outside on this afternoon. Inside the ship, it was even hotter. Despite the ship’s speed, temperatures reached 140 degrees in these very confined areas. Men could only stand up to it for about an hour before they fainted.

“Sir,” Cashion told Rodgers, “we can’t continue like this.”

“Why, what’s on your mind?”

“We’re expending ammo at a very fast clip, and we have gun crewmen passing out every few minutes or so. If we come to a crunch here, we don’t want to have our efficiency impaired.”

“What do you recommend?”

“Let’s fire six rounds a minute. That will give us hours’ worth of shells. And tell the guys to go to a regular system of rotating the crews.”

Rodgers nodded, and Cashion passed the word around. Still, the crews continued to approach exhaustion. The men who fainted, caked in dirt and grease, were carried out on the deck by their fellows, where they were cooled off and rehydrated. Then most went right back into the turrets. Some passed out two, even three times but were still ready to go back in.

While all of the other ships on both sides gyrated continuously in their movements, Kaulk did not. She began to hit Akasi almost from the beginning of the engagement. The crew could see the hits through the Model 37 Fire Control System. But the range was still great enough that the hits weren’t visible through binoculars on the bridge of any of the American ships, and this caused much soul-searching.

At about 1425, Rodgers got Reed’s young fire director on the phone. “Don, are you hitting that thing?”

Lieutenant Lanaman replied. “Sir, I believe we’ve hit her at least once. Several near misses.”

“What about Kaulk?” Rodgers wanted to know.

“Sir, I have no idea what they’re doing that I’m not, but I think they’ve put three or four shots into her.”

“Really!” Rodgers smiled.

“Yes, sir. And maybe, ah, seven–eight near misses. Sir, there’s no doubt that we are hitting her!”

“Thanks,” Rodgers said with a shrug, hanging up the phone and relaying the news to Cashion. “Well, Sam, are we not piercing the armor on that thing or what?”

Cashion, who had been constantly looking through his binoculars, had no answer. “I have no idea. I haven’t seen a hit yet. If we are hitting her, why aren’t we seeing anything? If our stuff ’s just bouncing off, we’re in big trouble. Maybe she has more armor than we thought.”

Meanwhile, Trediger and Hennessey were conducting their own battle on the other side of the crescent. At 1502, they called their commander, who had been listening to them talk to each other on the TBS for quite a while.

“Sir, it’s C.T. Dude and I want to know if we can cross each other’s wakes.”

“Why?”

“Sir, to throw off their fire, confuse the hell out of them, you know.”

“Sure. It does increase the chance of them putting a torpedo into you. But do whatever you want, so long as you stick to the original deal. Have they hit you?”

“No, sir.”

“Are you hitting them?”

“We have one hit on each destroyer at least, a lot of near misses. We haven’t slowed them up yet though. You’re obviously doing better than we are.”

“Really! We can’t see that from here at all.”

“Sir, you’re hitting that cruiser for sure,” Trediger contended.

Hennessey interrupted. “I think we have the best angle. We can’t tell which one of you is hitting her, you or Kaulk, but we think you’ve made five or six good hits; maybe nine to ten near misses. You guys are right on!” He paused for a second or two. Then he added, excitedly, “My people think they hit that trailing destroyer again!”

Trediger came on again. “Sir, you might watch yourself now. Those destroyers are turning some to the east, probably launching torpedoes.”

“Okay,” Rodgers responded. “Let’s wait on you guys crossing and head directly toward them, to reduce the angle and present a smaller silhouette.”

All three captains answered, “Yes, sir.”

Torpedoes did begin to come in within a few minutes. The six-thousand-pound, steam-driven Model 93 24-inch-diameter monsters soon came streaking toward the Americans at nearly fifty knots. Men watched from the decks as the speedsters zoomed menacingly by the squadron, their wakes bubbling. Only one came very close, a hundred yards off Paulley’s port side.

As the battle continued, with Kaulk trailing directly behind the cruiser, her rear turrets never came to bear. But with the other American destroyers bobbing and weaving, their rear turrets did occasionally have the opportunity to shoot. Then, when the ships headed over on a new course, the rear gunners would lose their angle and curse their luck.

The enemy, with less speed, had no chance to deviate much from their base course and was not able to bring their forward guns to bear at all. Nevertheless, they did weave slightly, and thus their accuracy suffered. The two Japanese destroyers made three hits during the engagement, one on Paulley and two on Bindle.

On Paulley, the 4.7-inch, forty-two-pound shell hit aft. It glanced off the “Y ” turret, which was not in use at the time. The explosion did no damage to the ship but killed five bluejackets who were on deck.

The two hits on Bindle were a little more serious. The first exploded against the radar mast, destroying it.The second hit in the aft of the ship above the engine room. Luckily, the impact was mostly absorbed by gear on the deck.

The battle was entering its fourth hour. The shells that had been stacked in odd places on the American decks had long been used up. The shells remaining in the forward magazines were rapidly being depleted. This necessitated bringing shells from the rear magazines. A continuous line of bluejackets, grunting in the heat, becoming increasingly dirty and exhausted, spent the rest of the engagement manhandling the fifty-four-pound projectiles forward.

By 1530, it was obvious that the Japanese cruiser fire was no longer coming close. Rodgers and Cashion concluded that her control system must have been hit, which was corroborated after the war. Still, the American shellfire seemed to have had no effect on the enemy at all. There were no detectable fires on the ships, their speed remained at about thirty-three knots, and they continued their slight maneuvering like cagey boxers.

This continued until almost 1600, when a terrific explosion lit up on the cruiser. Many men heard it as well, a series of almost simultaneous blasts that erupted in a great orange ball, creating a large fire easily visible from the American ships without binoculars. The pent-up frustration of the Americans produced a great cheer. After the war, members of Akasi’s crew claimed that their flagship’s deck had been a shambles by this time.

The Americans had closed the range to fifteen thousand yards, and their accuracy continued to improve. They had made ten hits on Akasi so far. While the inch-thick deck armor protected the ship’s vitals, twisted metal was everywhere. The shell that caused the explosion struck amidships as torpedoes were on the deck being reloaded into tubes. Some of the Torpex explosive detonated, blowing a massive hole in the deck and destroying some engineering spaces below. Immediately, Akasi’s speed fell off and she turned to port, seriously wounded.

At 1601, Rodgers looked up to see the same young signalman hurrying toward him from the radar room one deck below.

“Billy, what’s up?”

“Sir, radar has a target on the screen bearing north-northwest, almost eighteen miles.”

The young sailor walked off as Rodgers turned to Cashion.

“I sort of figured they wouldn’t leave us alone, Sam.”

Cashion, half in the enclosed part of the bridge and half out the door on the wing, was already picking up his binoculars. He took a long look.

“I can’t see yet, too far.” He gave the glasses to a young sailor. “Son, your eyes are young. You look.”

“Well, I’ll wager that it’s the cavalry,” Rodgers said.

The young sailor handed the glasses back to Cashion. “I can’t tell, sir. I see two bigger ships. I think five ships.”

The young signalman approached again.

“All right, Billy, what do they say now?” Rodgers asked.

“Sir, ‘Guns’ has five ships. They think two are cruisers but can’t tell what kind yet.”

“Thanks.” Shrugging, Rodgers turned toward Cashion. “Sam, I would sure like to polish off this guy before his pals show up. Ask Chief Clark to come up here, and get the guys on the horn.”

In a moment, the three captains were on the phone.

“I am sure you see we have guests,” Rodgers said, trying to keep his tone light. “I want you three to forget about those destroyers and line up on the cruiser. She’s badly hurt.”

Hennessey jumped into the conversation. “Sir, we’ve just put two more shots into the rear destroyer, and she has slowed. Let the two of us finish her off.”

“All right, make it count.”

Both Trediger and Hennessey signed off, leaving Pete Bernhard of Kaulk on the line.

“Pete,” Rodgers told him, “I want you and Sam to put everything you have into that cruiser. We should get close soon.”

“Yes, sir!”

Chief Clark, who had been with Rodgers on Mackson and Grand Rapids, entered the bridge and came over to the commander.

“Sorry to drag you up here, Frank. You’ve probably heard. They’ve turned the tables on us. Five ships headed toward us. What have we been making, thirty-five knots?”

The completely gray, diminutive, sixty-five-year-old chief stood up straight. He responded proudly: “We got 35.8 for you, sir!”

“Can we continue to make that kind of speed for maybe three, four hours more? Will your geared turbines stand up to that? I know they’re not as young as those on the Fletchers.”

“Well, sir, probably, but no guarantees. We’re out on the limb now trying to keep up with the Fletchers. She’s doing more than she should.”

Rodgers chuckled. “Well, that’s good enough for me. But I’m assuming that, whoever these people are, they can’t match us in speed. If I’m wrong, we’ll be in the water soon enough. Thanks, Frank.”

“I’ll be getting back, sir.” Clark scurried out. Rodgers turned back to the signalman.

“Signalman, get this off to Humbolt Bay as soon as you can. Don’t bother to waste time encrypting it: ‘Sighted superior enemy surface force. Request air support.’ Give our position.”

Word came from “Guns” again. “Sir, the big ships are definitely Myoko-class heavy cruisers along with three destroyers.”

“That’s just great!” Cashion complained. “You want to pull out?”

“No!” Rodgers said firmly. He sat down in his chair as the guns fired and thought to himself: More Myokos. Just like at Huon Gulf. They keep coming up with these things. At least it can’t be the pair we beat up there. Well, even if I had Grand Rapids, we’d have to retreat before this bunch. Orders. I would sure like to oblige them, but not today.

Cashion said, “Sir, we’re closing at about sixty knots a minute with the new column. They’ll be in range in a few minutes.”

“Get the guys again,” Rodgers said. He waited till the three captains were on the phone. “I want all of us to slow to ten knots now and turn to, ah, ten degrees to put all of your turrets, fore and aft, in against these people. Up your rate of fire if you can. That’ll give us both some more time and firepower. We need to put these people away! When the time comes, I’ll want you to execute another smart ninety degrees to starboard and we’ll get out. I’ll probably want you to launch torpedoes at somebody during that last turn, so get ready.”

The range had closed to about six miles to the wounded light cruiser. It was almost dead in the water. The wounded Japanese destroyer continued to flee, but its speed was now only about ten knots, and the range was also six miles. The Japanese destroyers’ designers had made the error of placing electrical conduits on the inside walls of the hulls. A shell had blown a hole in Mishi’s side, shattering major circuits, leaving the ship almost helpless. Now, both Mishi and the cruiser Akasi received a number of additional hits.

By 1620, at extreme range, the Japanese heavy cruisers opened fire. The destroyer had slowed to only several knots and was no longer firing. The cruiser continued to absorb hits. The Americans could now see fires on both ships without binoculars.

At 1625, one of the monstrous eight-inch projectiles came to within about seven hundred yards of Reed. Still, the American commander sat calmly in his chair, smoking his Camel cigarettes one after the other, not having moved appreciably for some minutes. Feeling the pressure, Cashion walked onto the wing and asked again.

“Sir, are we going to pull out soon?”

“No!” Rodgers looked up at Cashion. “You might as well get the others on the phone.”

Once the other captains were on the line, Rodgers said: “Listen, these people are at extreme range. No one can hit anything at extreme range. Sam and I battled ships just like these last year.”

Cashion thought to himself: Yeah, and they sank us!

“It took them a long time to hit us,” Rodgers added, “and we were closer and in a bigger target. They couldn’t hit Yankee Stadium at this range. Listen to me! For all you are to care, those cruisers are on the moon! You understand me? My orders are to ‘destroy enemy forces of equal or inferior strength,’ and we’re going to do just that.” His Southern drawl was particularly evident now. “You do the shooting, and we’ll do the worrying. When it’s time to pull out, we’ll let you know.” His voice was adamant, and the others knew it was not the time to argue.

But standing next to his commander, Cashion was not sharing his boss’s confidence. As he looked around the bridge, every other face seemed to agree with what he was thinking: We need to pull out! He looked anxiously at Rodgers and marveled at his composure. There’s absolutely no emotion on his face at all! He just lights his cigarettes and calmly asks the steward for a drink.

Cashion had to shake his head. He just sits there and continues joking with the men! I can feel those Japanese ships lining up on us, just licking their chops to put their next salvo right down our throats. In thirty minutes they’ll be literally on top of us! We could throw rocks at them!

How long until they have our range? One hit from one of those things could sink one of us. And he looks like he did when I came for him on the bridge of Grand Rapids. I wonder if he’ll ever pull out! Maybe he has a death wish. I see the men’s faces, looking at me. I can see the sweat pouring down their faces and on the backs of their shirts. He looks absolutely crisp, no sweat on his brow and his shirt completely dry! If only I could order that turn and get out of here.

Several minutes passed. Shells were getting closer and closer. Finally Cashion caught himself. No! he thought, looking at Rodgers out on the wing of the bridge. He’s never made a bad decision yet. Even if he wants to pitch in against those heavy cruisers, that’ll be fine by me.

By 1630, the range to the heavy cruisers was down to only twenty-two thousand yards. That was optimum range for their guns. Their salvos were coming very close.

Finally, when one came within 150 yards of Kaulk, jolting her violently, Rodgers stood up and walked toward the phone.

“Get the guys,” he said, referring to the phone. He muttered, “That’s enough. They have our range. Three, four more minutes and they’ll hit one of us.”

Cashion jumped across the bridge to the TBS voice system and called as fast as he could. The other captains must have been at hand, since they answered almost instantly.

“Here, sir.” Cashion handed the phone to Rodgers.

“I want you to wheel around now to 170 degrees magnetic, launching your torpedoes, you two at the destroyer, and Pete and us at the little cruiser.” Cashion breathed a sign of relief. “Then up your speed to thirty-five knots and clear out. We’ll join up south of here. Keep firing as fast as you can on those targets.”

“Sir,” Hennessey reported, “that destroyer (Mishi) just turned over.”

“Good,” Rodgers responded. “You two point your torpedoes at the big cruisers, and we and Pete will aim at the little cruiser. If those shells come close, start weaving.”

The eight-inch shells did come very close, as the destroyers’ helms slowly responded and they began their launches, burying them under tremendous geysers of water. Bindle was rocked repeatedly. Several times, an inch or more of water landed on her bridge.

As their torpedoes streaked out, the Americans turned south and began weaving. Strangely, none of the US torpedoes hit anything. But they did force the Japanese heavy units to veer off, allowing the Americans to make good on their retreat and rapidly draw out of range. The light cruiser remained afloat. Taken in tow by one of the heavy cruisers, she reached the Japanese anchorage off Ceram in thirty-two hours. The battle of Noemfoor Island was over.

At Ceram, experts flown out from Japan observed some twenty-nine shell hits on Akasi. Many had burst against the various armored parts of the ship and caused comparatively little damage. But fourteen were judged serious. The galley had been destroyed, as well as the gun director system, a turret with its hoist mechanism, and all of the torpedo tubes. One of the two funnels had collapsed and lay half in the water. The engine was partially unseated, the bow warped, and the armor belt seriously compromised.

A second examining team, flown from Tokyo a month later, judged that the engine could not be repaired short of Sasebo Naval Base near Nagasaki in southern Japan. The armor belt alone would need a year of repair. Fissures in the hull from the concussion of many near misses forced them to judge it unsound. Towing the ship seventy-four hundred miles to Sasebo, with American submarines dominating the waters in between, was clearly out of the question. She was declared a total loss and finally scuttled on September 14, 1944. Ironically, the first American bombers to take off from Biak flew over the anchorage at Ceram the next day looking for the cruiser. Finding nothing, intelligence concluded that she had gotten away.

Captain Rodgers and company knew nothing of this until after the war. All they knew was that they had expended some 1,400 shells and sunk one ship, a destroyer. They saw the failure to sink the light cruiser as a terrible blow, the worst thing that had happened to the team in all of the months they had worked together. They returned to Humbolt Bay two days after covering the landings on Noemfoor on July 2.

In actuality, Destroyer Division 29’s mission was a towering success. It prevented reinforcements from arriving at Noemfoor, allowing the landings to go on as scheduled and without any serious opposition. It made Biak’s flank secure. Within a few months, General MacArthur’s forces made the leap up to the Philippines. Only the division’s vaunted expectations hid the truth from them. They had dominated an enemy of equal size, driving them from the area and destroying two-thirds of their force in the process. They had made thirty-five hits on an elusive enemy but only been struck several times themselves. Some 450 of the enemy had been killed while only 10 Americans had been lost.

Noemfoor was to be Rodgers’ last battle against surface forces. He spent the rest of the war commanding destroyer screens for the fast carrier task forces as they advanced and contributed to the destruction of the Empire of Japan.

In 1947, when the details of the victory were made public by the release of Japanese records, the outcry from the hundreds of districts representing the crews was such that Congress voted the command a Presidential Unit Citation. As a result, on October 14 of that year, Captain Theodore R. Rodgers, Jr., was voted the very unusual Thanks of Congress. A week later he was named rear admiral, the youngest in the US Navy.

Joseph Wiley Stories

Two Sergeants

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,

It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, . . .

It was the season of light, it was the season of darkness,

It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair,

We had everything before us, we had nothing before us . . .

–Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

In their first great offensive against the Germans in World War II, American forces landed on the west coast of North Africa in November of 1942. In the following months, they advanced hundreds of miles to the east without opposition toward Tunisia, where the Germans had retreated before British forces that had chased them west all the way from Egypt. In their first taste of battle, the Americans were decisively beaten by German armored units that mauled them badly at the Battle of Kasserine Pass, driving them back eighty miles.

West of the Kasserine Pass, February 22, 1943

It was 0400. What men there were lined up. They were a dirty and beaten lot, these men of the 26th Infantry Regiment of the hallowed First Division.

“Anyone see Sergeant Renko or his squad?” Captain Miner asked.

The men shook their heads.

“What about Lieutenant Mosely?”

“I saw him get it,” a private volunteered. “Half-track.”

“Lieutenant Christopher or Sergeant Tallemy and any of his squad?”

“Sir, I saw Christopher at that bridge over that wadi about ten miles back. It was near that river that was supposed to be dry,” a private piped up.

Another man recalled him too. “Was that him? I saw him there. I think he may have been wounded. Sir, it was all a blur. I didn’t know that shells could land like that and not kill every one of us. I had to get outta there.”

Several others thought they might have seen the lieutenant but were not sure.

“That artillery was on us, sir,” a dirty-faced and dejected private added.

“Those half-tracks, sir. I don’t know how those bullets missed me. I just ran. My buddy got it and I just ran and didn’t even look back,” a corporal stated, with a miserable look on his face.

“I want volunteers to go back out and look for Christopher,” the captain said.

No one responded.

“I know you’re down,” he said earnestly. “But he might be out there, wounded but still alive.”

There was another long pause. Then, eighteen-year-old Private Joseph “Chip” Wiley stepped forward. “I’ll give it a throw, sir.”

“Good. I need two more men.”

The men were uneasy. Many knew Christopher well and liked him. But they had just had their first taste of defeat, and it was a new and terrible feeling to them. It was humbling that Americans could be beaten. Some hated themselves for not volunteering, but none would step forward.

Wiley collected a few rations and replenished his ammo. He took a grenade offered by guilty comrades, and then stopped to fill his canteen from one of the few supply trucks that had escaped the debacle. By himself for a minute, he wondered: Why’d I volunteer? That was real stupid. I guess I can’t go back on it.

He had been scouting well behind enemy lines with two other men when the panzers broke through behind them. They had come back much farther than the others. He had a small wound too, which should have let him out of duty altogether, although he knew many others had wounds as well. True, he had been caught up in the panic, but so had everyone else.

The answer was plain enough. I’m ashamed that fear took such a holda me that I panicked, and I’m angry at being beaten when I believed that crap they taught us that we would never lose.

Then fear gripped him again, the fear that had made him panic and run. He sat down on some ammunition boxes. It was a sensation deep in the pit of his stomach, the same sensation he had had as a boy knowing that his father was about to beat him. That was the last time he had been afraid. He had stood partially to prove to himself that he was no longer afraid.

But he was afraid, terribly afraid, more than ever. Deep down, fear grabbed at him, and he felt physically sick. It was the same fear that had overtaken him in the disastrous retreat, a sudden, terrifying, and consuming fear of death at the hands of the German armored units that had ripped the Americans to shreds and seemed to have no weaknesses.

Wiley thought he would be a coward again, that he would again run in the face of the pitiless machines that had come so close to running him over. He sat for a long time in the cool desert dark, knowing that he should go but not wanting to.

Without any reason to stand, he stood. He didn’t know what made him stand at that particular moment. Perhaps it was duty, or stubbornness, or stupidity. He might just as well have never stood again in the rest of his life. But he did anyway and began walking, oblivious to those around him, not hearing those guilty few who wished him good luck as he walked past.

He had been looking out into the blackness. Perhaps he recognized that if he got up he could be alone. He had always looked forward to being alone. There was something in being in the open, or by himself in the woods, that always comforted him. Watching his breath in front of him in the predawn cold, he felt a slight exhilaration as he blithely walked away from his lines.

The battle sounds so continuous in the previous few days were now silent. As Wiley proceeded southeast, the sun began to show itself, and he saw the area of the retreat unfold in front of him as though giants had turned lights upon the Earth.

“I promised myself I’d never come back here,” he whispered to himself. “So, here I am! Why did I volunteer? That was stupid.”

But he continued on.

The Grand Dorsal appeared some twenty miles off to the east, the line of peaks that the Army had passed through a week before, completely unaware of the enemy forces waiting to pounce on them from behind the Eastern Dorsal. The men had last seen Christopher somewhere in the area in between the American lines and the First Dorsal. But Wiley had not seen the bridge they mentioned and had only a vague idea where to look.

Into these vast badlands the private ventured alone, armed with his rifle and enough food for three days. He had been scouting for the company ever since they came to Africa, and soon he fell back into the rhythm of being a scout. But this time, he decided that he couldn’t be as careful as he usually was.

“It’ll take too long,” he told himself. “If Christopher’s out there, wounded, he might die if I take eight hours instead of four to reach him. I gotta take the chance of someone shooting me.”

Then, with a small amount of bravado, he added: “I’m not afraid a somebody shooting me. That’s what bein’ a scout is. Part of volunteerin’ is to maybe get yourself kilt.”

His stomach felt somewhat better now. He walked boldly, but warily, ahead in the open.

Other than the peaks in the Dorsals and a lone peak of perhaps a few hundred feet before him, the entire area appeared as flat as a tabletop. However, Wiley knew from traversing it that there were thousands of depressions, mere dips, or beds of streamlets, some with water in them from the recent rains but most dry. Knowing the near impossibility of finding anything in many square miles of such ground, he walked slowly toward the peak in front of him, listening for every sound.

It took almost three hours to reach that peak in front of him. The sun was almost directly overhead by the time he got there. He sat behind a large rock and ate and drank—warm, stale water and a tasteless K-ration—before spending another thirty minutes climbing to get a good vantage point.

Once he reached the top, Wiley sat, took out his binoculars, and attempted to scan every foot of the vastness around him. Minutes passed by as he searched for a glint off a weapon, anything that would give away a man’s presence. The only real landmarks were Highway 17, which traversed the area left to right paralleling the peak he was on, and the Hatab River further off. The Army had used the highway in their advance toward the pass and then taken it in their chaotic retreat toward Thala, where they had made their stand and finally halted the panzers with a massive artillery barrage.

Most of an hour passed in this process. He was about to give up when he saw something off to his right in the direction of the pass.

“Explosion!”

He turned the glasses to the right, east.

“Grenade . . . I think.” He looked carefully through the glasses as the cloud of debris came back to earth, but he was too far away to see much. “That’s most of a mile, maybe more. I’ll have ta get closer.”

A glance to his right told Wiley that the peak he was on ran in the direction of the sighting. Quickly, he was up and jogging. Carefully watching his footing on the loose rock, he went as fast as he could, sometimes sliding, sometimes almost falling, his gear smacking him disrespectfully.

He maintained his elevation and aimed toward a particularly prominent point in front of him. When he reached it, he stopped and looked through the glasses. “I think it was over that way, not sure. Naw, I can’t see nothin’ from this little plateau.”

Then he began hearing occasional gunfire. He turned the glasses a good bit to the right. “There it is. Can’t see much. Still too far.”

He got up and started running again. Once, the cold air carried the sounds of the firing to him so clearly that he thought he had gotten too close and stopped in his tracks.

DAT . . . DAT–DAT–DAT . . . DAT.

Thompson submachine gun, Wiley thought. No gun sounds like it. That’d have ta be a sergeant or officer because they’s the only ones who carry it. He couldn’t remember if Christopher carried a Thompson or a Williams carbine.

Finally, he got close enough. It was an area many hundreds of yards across, scrub ground with occasional cacti and low lying bushes. At first he saw nothing. He sat and got out the binoculars. Then the gun fired, and he looked right at it.

DAT . . . DAT . . . DAT.

He’s gone off semiautomatic ta single shot with the Thompson. Must be low on ammo. There he is, must be four or five hundred yards off in a depression. Looks like one of our guys, he thought, not really sure.

The gun fired again.

I can’t see who he shootin’ at. In a few more moments he heard other weapons firing. Can’t see where they’re comin’ from. I’ll have ta get closer.

Wiley stood and ran along the edge of the escarpment, toward a closer high point about five hundred yards off and maybe two hundred yards from the firing.

In several minutes, listening to the mixed gunfire below, he came to the high point. For the first time, he could see well. He brought up the glasses for the third time.

That’s a G.I. for sure, he thought, but it’s not Christopher. Guy’s gone to his pistol, a Browning .45. I’d know that sound anywheres. Thompson’s probably outta bullets.

The Browning’s distinct sound echoed: BUNK, BUNK . . . BUNK.

The wind shifted. Now Wiley couldn’t hear the firing very clearly, but the G.I. continued shooting, running from one side of the low point to the other. Wiley searched in his glasses for the soldier’s targets.

I thought so. A band of A-rabs, probably six of ’em, no . . . seven. Maybe some of the same guys that chased me. I’ll fix those shits!

Quickly, Wiley twisted his rifle from his shoulder. The eight-pound M-1 Garand fit perfectly in his hands. He hiked up the rear sight to the notch that said “200.” He picked out an Arab who was some yards behind his comrades.

He sat motionless. Even a degree off, the bullet would miss or perhaps barely wound the Arab. He squeezed the trigger.

There was a loud crack, and the man fell over. Wiley got out his field glasses again and looked at the other Arabs.

Wind’s in my favor, he thought. They don’t know I’m up here.

The G.I. continued to fire: BUNK . . . BUNK.

I’ll shoot ’em all, Wiley thought, aiming again.

He picked out another man, squeezed off another round, and again the figure slumped. He picked out a third Arab. Just as he fired, the man moved.

The round, in the air for less than half a second, barely wounded the Arab. He began to yell to his comrades. Unaware of the direction the bullets came from, the man moved clearly into view. Wiley was on target this time.

CRACK. The man spun around and fell.

With that, the remaining Arabs bolted. Wiley saw no reason to give away his position by firing any more. He watched them scurry off in their woolen robes.

He waited a few minutes, until they were out of sight, and then stood up. He fired in the air, waved, and yelled at the American in the trench: “Over here. Hey!”

He fired again, and the soldier looked his way.

“Come on, come on!” he yelled.

The G.I. saw him and waved.

“Come on! Get outta there. Come on!”

But the man didn’t move. He only shook his head.

Then Wiley had a thought: Maybe Christopher’s down there, wounded. I gotta go down there. Jeez, I sure hope those creeps don’t come back or there’ll be more of us trapped.

Cautiously, but hurriedly, he ran down the incline and then toward the depression, his gear hitting him again. Once he stumbled awkwardly on the lip of a depression and almost fell. In not quite five minutes, he and the man he had observed stood face-to-face.

The other soldier was a bulky barrel-chested man, a staff sergeant about forty years of age, maybe six feet tall, perhaps 180 pounds. Wiley noticed he was helmetless and balding, with no coat despite the cold temperatures.

“Lad, glad to see you.”

“Sergeant.”

The two men shook hands. Wiley could tell from the uniform that the man was a Ranger.

“How many men you got with you?”

“Just me, sergeant.”

“Oh. Well, that’ll have to do. I need to get my captain out of here.”

Wiley noticed a man in a bloody uniform lying in the depression about fifteen feet away. He took a couple of steps closer, then stopped. The man was obviously dead.

That sure ain’t Christopher, Wiley thought.

“Lad, he was my captain,” the big man said in reverence. “I got him straight from the States, green as they come.”

Wiley was puzzled. What was he supposed to do now?

The sergeant continued. “He made a good officer. You should have seen him back at Kasserine shouting orders in such a calm way. We made a good stand there with a rag-tag group of men.” He shook his head and smiled. “A good stand. We commandeered a half-track with a seventy-five on it and set up behind a huge boulder and held ’em up an hour or so till one of those new Panther tanks came up and blew us out of the way.”

“Sarge, I’m lookin’ for my lieutenant, Christopher. You seen him?”

“No, lad,” the big man said, turning toward the dead man.

“Sarge, we gotta get outta here before those guys come back. And I need ta go on and look for my lieutenant.”

“Okay, lad” the big man said calmly, “but I’m not gonna leave him here so they can desecrate him. You know, they even steal your socks.”

The two walked over to the captain. Wiley looked at the dead man. He was a good-looking man in his early twenties, tall and lanky. He had taken a serious wound in his side, as evidenced by the big stain that had come through his jacket. The American flag patch on one shoulder was further evidence of a Ranger. The sergeant slouched down next to his officer, shaking his head.

“The Germans overran us and a lot of men got captured or killed. Only a couple of us got away. We came back maybe ten miles dodging patrols, and some hours later heard a big battle up ahead.”

“Yeah, we finally held ’em up.”

“We got split up from the others. The captain and I got trapped here by the guys you saw. We held ’em off as best we could, but late yesterday they flushed us and he got that wound you see. He was a good young officer.”

Wiley thought: I’m sorry for this guy, but I gotta look for my lieutenant. He saw a Williams carbine under the officer’s leg, with no clip in it. Four or five feet from it was the Thompson the scout had heard firing, no clip left in it either.

“Sergeant, we gotta get outta here.”

“Yes, lad, I’m ready. Help me get him up. I’ll carry him back.”

Wiley helped lift the dead man up onto the sergeant’s shoulder. The sergeant walked with his burden toward the lip of the depression several feet off, but struggled to step up the one-foot side.

“Lad,” he said, “help me!”

The scout tried to help him up. But the angle was too much for the two exhausted men, and all three fell back, hard, into the depression.

Wiley stopped to catch his breath. “Sergeant, we don’t got enough strength left to do this.”

“Well–” the Sergeant began, but stopped.

The wind carried intermittent heavy motor sounds their way: sputtering, stopping, then in a few seconds again cutting through the crisp air. Wiley stepped out of the depression, reached for his glasses, and gazed to the southeast.

“Looks like several vehicles headed this away. One . . . looks like . . . two, three half-tracks and a hundred or so infantry maybe half a mile or more off.”

“Private, you go back up on that incline and cover us.”

“Yonder, sergeant?”

The big man looked up at Wiley. “Yes. I’ll bury him.”

Wiley took off his helmet and set it down next to the sergeant. “Use that. Sergeant, it ain’t gonna be long before that column gets here. I have orders ta look for my lieutenant. I’m goin’ to head off ta the south before those troops get here.”

The sergeant nodded, then picked up the helmet and began digging into the sand.

Wiley walked away to the south, keeping the base of the peak about one hundred yards to his right. He had to assume that there were no Germans between him and the column.

This is another one of those chances a scout hasta take, he thought. With his young man’s bravado, he didn’t even bother to stoop. At this range a German looking directly at me, even with their super binoculars, couldn’t pick me out in this olive drab.

In twenty minutes, the column’s direction became clearer. They were headed more behind him and toward the sergeant. After some minutes, Wiley began to stoop. At the same time, a larger picture began to occur to him. He slowed down to think things over, standing still for a moment.

I wonder if I’m doin’ the right thing? Maybe nothin’ I can do’ll make this mission a success. How can I find Christopher or anybody else by walkin’ on the ground like this? He could be in a low spot ten feet away and I’d walk right by. At least I could see if I got up in those rocks. Naw, that can’t work neither. That column is comin’ close to here. So, if I find the guy or some other guy, I can’t get him out the way I come. And now the Germans’ll be blockin’ the road behind ’em too. So, how am I supposed to get a guy out? Even if I found a guy and could get behind that column, it would be twenty miles gettin’ back to our lines, and I can’t make that one; I just can’t carry a guy that far!

Wiley was now completely confused.

That sergeant looked tired. Maybe he’ll need help in gettin’ away. I know the way ta get back, but he don’t. Seems a shame to let the guy get captured or killed after all he’s been through. Besides goin’ back for him, what other choice I got?

He looked at the German column. It was now abreast of him, but five hundred yards off. With them closer to the sergeant’s position with every second, he needed to decide what to do, right now!

He started to walk back toward the sergeant.

This mission’s completely fucked! he thought. I might as well shoot myself in the head as try ta get across that damn highway. The retreat took place near the damn highway and the Germans have the damn highway. If Christopher’s over there, they already got him! If I do this, I’m givin’ up my mission, givin’ up on Christopher. Yeah, but at least I can help one guy I know for sure is still alive.

Still stooping, he began to run toward the sergeant’s position. He stayed almost parallel to the enemy column, which was now somewhat ahead of him and angling closer every minute. Then one of the half-track’s motors roared, and he stopped immediately.

It was the same sound that had caused him to panic in the pass when the onslaught of the enemy vehicles seemed to be unstoppable. He had never seen one of their tanks or half-tracks disabled. He crouched, and his mind immediately began to race out of control.

How can I get outta here? Out, out, away from here! I can’t hurt them! Those men inside the machines will see me, roar their engines, and run me over with those giant tracks like they did those other guys. They’ll laugh as they crush my bones into thousands of pieces!

He imagined his flesh and blood oozing out between the gaps in the steel tracks. He rose up just as one of the half-tracks turned slightly in his direction. His eyes almost popped out of his head!

They’ve seen me!

Wiley panicked. He began to back step, and then he turned and ran away from the sergeant’s position, not even stooping, his heart pounding. But he had only gone about forty yards when he stopped instantly.

There! There in front of me, somethin’ is movin’. I’m trapped! They’ll trap me between them! They’ll run me over with those tracks!

He ran back in the sergeant’s direction, all thought of his mission blown from his mind. The thought of falling in front of the massive treads terrorized him, and the laughter of the enemy echoed in his head over and over again.

I have ta get away! There’s only one way out, up the incline! I must get there. They can’t follow me there!

He ran wildly toward the incline five hundred yards away, his gear bouncing violently. He held on to his rifle only because he didn’t know he was holding it. His rations flopped out of his bag, but his other gear remained despite his gyrations.

He fled for several minutes. Then he looked back toward the Germans, tripped, and fell into one of the endless depressions, knocking the wind out of himself.

As he slowly raised his head, something startled him. There, not thirty feet from him, fully visible beyond a few bushes in the next depression was the sergeant! Panting, Wiley failed to notice that the man was motionless, sitting with his back against the lip of the depression, his legs splayed at almost a ninety-degree angle.

That sergeant, he’ll protect me from those tracks! Wiley thought.

The scout crawled toward the man on all fours, up the side of the lip, and into the next depression. But he stopped as he came within ten feet. The man’s eyes were open. He was dead!

The exhaustion from the run, the fall, and the shock of seeing the man dead cut the panic from Wiley’s mind.

“How could you be dead?” he said breathlessly. “We were just talkin’.” Dragging his rifle on the ground by the strap, he edged toward the man.

For the first time, he looked at the sergeant carefully and noticed what he had failed to notice before on the grimy uniform.

There’s blood several places where it came through his pants, he thought. Still breathing hard, he got closer and noticed more. There’s a small hole through his left side just below the beltline. And a second wound to his right leg under the groin.

Looking further, he discovered a hole through the man’s left boot, where one of the straps was torn away. I couldn’t have moved five feet with those holes in me, Wiley thought in wonderment. He sat back on his haunches with a miserable look on his face.

Damn, he thought sadly. He never said he was hurt. I looked him in the face and never saw any sign a pain. He seemed okay.

Wiley sat down, almost unable to move, heedless of the approaching enemy.

I’m so sorry for this man. He gave his life. I hope it was worth it.

Carefully, he pulled off the sergeant’s dog tags and read the name. “Blaik, George T.”

Wiley was motionless for a few more seconds. Then he noticed the mound of freshly turned sand nearby and the glint of metal atop it. He picked up the metallic thing: the captain’s tags, which Blaik had laid on the freshly dug grave.

Wiley heard the heavy motor sounds again and stood up. Without even getting out of the depression, he could see a half-track about a hundred yards off, going by obliquely.

The panic gone from his mind, he turned to go. Then his eye caught the dead man’s Browning .45 automatic, still in the holster. He stooped a little, lifted the holster’s flap and took it out. He pressed the button for the magazine, and the nine-shot clip ejected. There were two bullets still in it, and he could see one in the chamber.

“The guy had three shots left,” he said out loud. “Three goddam shots.”

He cradled the gun in both hands. A determined look came on his face.

“I’m gonna take this gun and use it as he would of, honor him.”

With its enormous, nearly deafening sound, the half-track passed by and out of view. A wave of fear went through Wiley again. He thought he had only one chance, to go right now. He stood again to see if the machine was headed back his way, but it proceeded on.

“I’m sorry ta leave you here, sorry I can’t bury you so that the damn A-rabs can’t desecrate your body, but you know I have ta save myself. Troops behind that thing’ll see me soon enough.”

Wiley stooped again, went to the side of the depression away from the enemy, and flopped down. He looked back.

“He was a good soldier,” he muttered in reverence.

Wiley crawled the two hundred yards to the escarpment and plopped down behind a giant rock. By now he felt absolutely exhausted. I know they won’t follow me here, he thought.

He felt relaxed for the first time in nearly two days, and he slept for a few minutes. He was awakened by motor sounds passing by.

He looked around the boulder to see that he was relatively safe and sat down again. His thoughts ran back to a time before the war and to another sergeant, his Basic drill sergeant at Fort Jackson in South Carolina.

What would First Sergeant Betts think a the way I acted today? he wondered. I’m ashamed. Will I ever make a good soldier?

Wiley had gone into the Army as a sixteen-year-old from Summersville, West Virginia. One day in 1940, while he was working as a clerk in a store, he noticed a poster in a store window:

JOIN THE ARMY AND SEE THE WORLD!

It had a picture of a handsome soldier with a pretty Asian girl. The tall, rawboned boy had straightened up. “This is a crap job I got here livin’ in the back a this store. What I gotta lose?”

He’d walked a block to the Army recruiter’s office on Main Street, telling the man behind the desk that he was eighteen.

“That’s fine, Bud, but you have to have a parent or guardian sign this form.”

“Sure thing, sir.”

Taking the form, he’d walked out the door, signed it himself, walked back in, and plopped it down on the desk.

But the Army didn’t turn out to be what I hoped, he thought. I’d been living by myself since I was fourteen. I was used ta doin’ whatever I pleased. Gettin’ up at 0400, eatin’ what and when you were told, and sleepin’ when told ground me the wrong way. One night after tellin’ some friends I meant ta go AWOL, I snuck out of those shitty wooden barracks left over from World War I and headed east into the most deserted part of the post. I had gone several miles when I had ta go under a viaduct I knew from a trainin’ exercise. I was thinkin’: A hundred yards and I’ll be off the post.” It was real dark, especially under that viaduct. I came pokin’ out the other side, got about ten feet, and a voice came out of the darkness:“Hey.” It was like bein’ hit with a hammer.

Wiley leaned back against the boulder and smiled weakly, remembering.

I stumbled and fell right on my face. “Come here,” the voice said, real calm. I peered back in the dim light to see Sergeant Orville Betts, or “S.O.B.” as us recruits called him. I thought a runnin’, but the shit that I was, I shamelessly decided ta stand up to the man.

He was sittin’ on top a the viaduct. He spoke again. “Come here. Sit here.” He was motionin’ for me ta climb up and sit next ta him, so I did.

“Whatcha doin’?”

“I don’t like this. I’m gettin’ outta here. I ain’t afraid a you or any man.”

“Where you headed?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care. You can’t stop me neither.”

“Here, take a shot,” he said, forking over a small bottle of booze. “It’s rye.”

I’d never had rye before. I took a long pull that made me almost retch. I handed it back, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand.

“You got any family?”

“Yeah!” I said without thinkin’, stickin’ my nose in the air.

“Really, you got any folks?”

He could see right through me and I knew it. I looked down at the ground.

“No, Sergeant, I don’t . . . nobody.”

“I figured. Have another.”

He offered the bottle to me again. The bluster was gone and I was realizin’ how much trouble I was in, so I waved it away.

“Come to my quarters tomorrow night, 1800 sharp.” With that Betts jumped down and, before I could react, was gone into the darkness.

He cleaned me up inside and out, Wiley thought, sitting at the dorsal. Other than my grandparents, he was the first person who treated me like I wasn’t shit. He taught me ta respect myself, how ta speak ta people; that I should watch people I respected, how they dressed and talked and do as they did, which really opened my eyes. I gotta stop talkin’ like a hick.

The sergeant had proved a good friend, more of a father figure than the boy had ever known. Now, Wiley thought of him nearly halfway around the world.

He knew now that he had two mentors.

Wiley remembered seeing a little draw when he ran down the incline toward the sergeant. If he could find that, it would cover him as he climbed up the incline.

Carefully, he walked along the base of the escarpment. Once or twice he heard voices—near or far away, he couldn’t tell with the rock sides twisting around—and stopped for a few minutes. Fearing that Arabs might be hiding just around the next turn, he held the .45 ready. He started again. His luck held, he found the draw and began climbing up.

In another few minutes, he could see the entire German force clearly, about four hundred yards off. There were four half-tracks and several hundred troops. The vehicles were stopped. It looked as though they were preparing to ambush any force that came along Highway 17.

Odd that they’d set up there without no tank support, he thought.

In the next instant his attention was diverted toward the pass. A vehicle came into view, then two more. He glimpsed what they were pulling through the blowing sand. It became clear why the force in front of him had stopped where they were.

They got eighty-eight millimeter cannons they’re towin’ up here! The most feared antitank weapons of the war, Wiley could only imagine the damage they could do to an American column. I need ta get back with this info.

Being able to bring back such lifesaving information made him feel slightly better about giving up on Lieutenant Christopher. He started along the peak, making his way back the way he had come, walking boldly in the open. He knew he was out of range of German rifles, even if they saw him. He knew the half-tracks could not touch him, and he wanted to show himself that he was not afraid. It would be a while before the eighty-eights limbered up and could shoot at him.

To the north, six or eight miles off, were his lines, if his people were still there. He noted it was 1730, growing late in the afternoon.

Soon, the peak ended and Wiley sat down. He felt exhausted again and starved. As he looked in his coat for the rations that had fallen out when he panicked, he happened to recognize the place about fifty yards off where he had begun his ascent a few hours before. He thought of all that had happened to him and took a long drink from his canteen. His mouth felt as though it were coated in dust.

He stood and headed directly north into the great expanse. For the first time, he noticed the coldness of the afternoon with the sun beginning to descend to the west.

He began relaxing his guard as he came closer to his lines. He had gone about a mile when, with a loud, whining ZIP!, a bullet passed not far from him. He hit the ground, his nose smashing into a particularly foul-smelling plant.

Several seconds passed, Wiley listening with all of his senses. Suddenly, a grenade flew up in front of him. He lost it in the grayness of the sky and, for an instant, thought it would hit him in the head. It fell twenty-five feet in front of him, and as he hugged the ground, it blew up harmlessly.

That’s an American grenade, he thought incredulously. Jesus Christ, my own people tryin’ ta kill me!

Had he gotten so far only to have his own people try to kill him? His temper got the best of him. Wiley brought his rifle up and yelled at the top of his lungs.

“If you do that again, I’m goin’ ta shoot you!”

He was a veteran now, and his voice had a quality in it that was not there before. It was the voice of a man who knew how to command others, a voice to be obeyed.

What happened next stunned him. Almost at the same moment, twelve men, spread out over nearly half an acre, stood up from small depressions with their hands over their heads. Some were still terrified by the German blitzkrieg attack, some were lost, and all were tired and hungry and disoriented enough to surrender to a fellow American.

“You really never can tell,” he said aloud.

“Please, please, please, please don’t shoot me,” several begged.

Wiley, shocked but wary, didn’t know whether to hold his rifle on them or shoulder it. He decided on something in between. In a loud voice, he yelled, “All a you, get over here and line up!”

The exhausted and depressed men, their heads hanging down, shuffled as though being scolded by parents. They took some time to get in order. Some had rifles, which they held by the straps so that they almost touched the ground, but most had no weapon. Wiley noticed a number of privates, three corporals, and even a lieutenant! One close look at the officer, and the scout could see that he was in no condition to lead anyone. The man was pale, his eyes empty and staring, his face slack and expressionless.

“Sir? . . . Sir?” But the man didn’t even look up.

“His men got killed,” a private announced sheepishly. “He’s been like that since we found him yesterday.”

“You watch him, soldier. Take care a him. Take that carbine from him and put it over your shoulder.”

“Yes, sir.”

Wiley thought for a minute and figured he would try a question. “Anybody here know where you are?”

A corporal volunteered. “Sir, ain’t we behind German lines?”

Several nodded in agreement. It was a rag-tag group, to be sure, some looking at Wiley as though he were a general. They were kids just as he was, men who were in shock and had lost the will to care.

Wiley shook his head at the whole scene. A private, commanding corporals? But he knew he would have to take charge.

“Right face!”

The men turned, slowly, unconvincingly.

“In column of twos, march!”

Sometimes it was hard to tell they were in column of twos, but the little army proceeded, their footsteps crunching in the sand.

Within about an hour and a half, just as night was falling, the voices of American sentries challenged them out of the dark.

“Who goes there?”

“A small group a Americans, comin’ in.”

“Stand and be recognized! Any funny moves and we’ll blast hell out of you.”

Wiley’s energy and patience had both run out. “Oh, shut up, you morons! Do we look like Germans? Look at these guys, they’re about done in,” he said, in the same authoritative voice he had invented an hour or so before.

“No, sir! Come on in!” the sentry said, saluting.

The next day, Wiley was promoted to buck sergeant. The man with no high school education had become a professional man and a person of responsibility.

A Downed Plane

Under the wide and starry sky,

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die, . . .

Home is the sailor, home from the sea.

And the hunter home from the hill.

—Robert Louis Stevenson, Requiem

Northern France, July 23, 1944

The two officers were talking as Sergeant Joseph “Chip” Wiley entered the tent, stopped in front of the desk, and saluted. There were several other men Wiley knew as well, working away at their various tasks. Captain Redding, his company commander, returned the salute in cursory fashion. He never looked up, just continued to talk to a major from headquarters whose nametag said White.

Within minutes of his arrival, the news of the major’s presence had spread throughout E Company. The word was that another dirty job was at hand. As he stood at attention, watching and listening, Wiley could tell that these two were old friends.

“So you saw him?” Redding asked.

“Yes, many a time at Twenty-First Army Group after D-Day,” the major answered. “And I was attached to First Division HQ in North Africa before you came overseas when he was assistant division commander, and I saw him every day for months.”

“What was he like?” Redding asked, intently interested, as the two men sat smoking cigarettes.

“Well, he was a little squirt of a guy,” White said. “Just a little guy, but a real powerful, raspy voice, which was known to literally everyone in the division, all fourteen thousand. They could pick his voice out at night in pitch darkness! He was the type of guy there are just too many stories to tell about.”

“Like what?”

“Well, everyone knows he was the only general to land in the first wave on D-Day at Utah Beach.” White shook his head in reverence. “All the goldbrickers we’ve seen and then this guy, the son of president, under machine gun and artillery fire! Can you beat that?”

Redding nodded in agreement. “We heard that. Tell me something else.”

“The guys just marveled at what he did during the assault on Cherbourg. The Germans were in these medieval forts, castles really, on the edge of the harbor, solid rock. We didn’t have anything that would make a dent in that stuff. I’m telling you, I watched the armor piercing stuff from our seventy-fives hit that stone and bounce off like they were peas. And we were taking serious casualties. You know we had to have that port because the one we constructed off Normandy, ‘Mulberry,’ broke up in that storm.”

“Yeah, we heard.”

“Well, here’s this brigadier general. He throws his helmet on the ground and curses that his people are being shot up. Now I have heard people curse, but you just had to get out of the way when he was like that. So he curses for a while, until you could see an idea come into his head and for just a second he freezes. You could have heard a pin drop. I just happened to be there, but I’ll never forget watching him operate. He says, ‘Get Tommy Wagner on the phone.’ You know, Wagner’s Corps artillery so Roosevelt can’t command him to do anything. In a minute, this Colonel’s on the line, and Teddy starts in on him.

“‘Tommy, you got any 155s that have come ashore yet? You do! That’s great. I need two of them here as soon as possible.’

“We had no idea what the hell he wanted with 155s. You know, they’ll shoot maybe fifteen miles. We just listened. He lets this guy carp for a minute.

“‘I know it, Tommy,’ he said, ‘but I have to have those guns here. I’ll square it with General Bradley. When can you get them here? . . . Well, that’ll be too late. In the morning? Great. I’m depending on you. Yes. My best to Mary and the boys.’

“The monster guns arrive and he orders them put right in the front lines! There was no elevation at all to these babies. They were just point blank at these forts.

“Teddy says to the major commanding the 155s, ‘If one of those goddamn Germans sticks his head up, you shoot at it!’ You know, Redd, the shell from a 155 weighs a hundred pounds! Then he says to the major, ‘If they shoot at my people with a machine gun, you shoot at that machine gun.’

“Well, in two hours the Germans surrender! We get this regular army colonel, a real Prussian, the gloves, the monocle, a spotless guy. He comes forward to surrender, hands over this engraved pistol, and says ‘When you start using a 155 as a sniper rifle, it is time to surrender, my compliments,’ and he clicks his heels together.” White shook his head again, grinning.

“So, Lewis, what killed him?” Redding asked.

“His heart. He had a heart attack right there on the battlefield.”

“Damn, that’s tough.”

White went on. “The guy served the country as treaty negotiator, governor-general of the Philippines, and other stuff, served until the last moment of his life.”

Wiley, tired as usual, had relaxed somewhat by this time. Redding finally noticed. “Soldier, you’re at attention!”

“Yes, sir!”

Redding went on, “We heard the First and Fourth Divisions stood down out of respect the next day and refused to fight. Is it true?”

“Well, I don’t know about that. I think Eisenhower and Bradley agreed to let them stand down.”

Both officers turned toward Wiley at the same time.

“All right sergeant, I mean, corporal,” Redding said, “at ease. We go from Theodore Roosevelt, Junior, to you,” he said sarcastically. “What did you do with your .25 Colt?”

“Threw it away, sir.”

The captain rolled his eyes. “Oh, hell,” he snapped, and turned to Major White.

“Lewis, since advanced training at Fort Benning, this guy’s been carrying a little .25 Colt. So we put him in charge of this German major we captured, and he winds up shooting the guy with the damn thing and killing him. Tell the major and me how that happened.”

Wiley swallowed hard, then answered in an apologetic tone. “He had a pistol in his hat, sirs, a Walther PPK, which Wal . . . which we missed. He went for it, so I shot him. I only winged him. But he was kinda an old guy and croaked anyway.”

“Yeah, great, so no PPK! So, you lost your third chevron. And battalion is steamed. They sure wanted to question that guy.”

Wiley held up a German pistol. “Here it is, sir. One shot’s missin’ where he creased the top a my ear here.” He pointed at his left ear. “Wallinski took it from the German while I was tryin’ ta explain myself ta Lieutenant Bates.”

Redding stared. “Really? Why didn’t Wallinski say something?”

“Guess he wanted the souvenir, sir.”

“So, that was good of him to come forward,” Major White chimed in.

Redding looked suspicious. He knew that Wallinski was one of the least-liked men in the company. “Why didn’t Wallinski bring it in himself ?”

“He’s at the aid station, sir.”

“Oh, really. What’s the problem?”

“Broken arm, sir.”

“And how did he get a broken arm?”

“Must have slipped, sir.”

Redding rolled his eyes. “Okay. And how did you get that cut over your eye? You ‘slip’ too?”

“Must have, sir.”

“All right, sergeant, you can put on your third stripe. And Chip, if you pull this one off, you’ll make staff sergeant. I know that you send your money back home. Might make a difference for your family.”

“Thank you, sir!”

“Major White, the battalion intelligence officer, has come down to brief you. Major?”

“Corporal, rather sergeant, you have been picked by your commanding officer to go behind the lines and find a plane that went down this morning about ten miles from here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Here is your map.” White motioned for Wiley to come around next to him and opened a large, detailed map with topographical markings on it. “Soldier, this is yours, but make no marks of any type on it in case you get captured. We are here, and we think the plane went down right here.” He pointed. “The plane is a P-38 photo reconnaissance job. You know what a P-38 looks like, right?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We have noticed a great deal of enemy activity across the river. He was to photograph that and a target behind the lines that is very important to us.”

“May I know the nature of the important tar . . .”

“No, you may not,” White interrupted. “All you have to know is that we need that photographic cartridge. We have someone from the Air Force outside who will brief you on how to remove such a cartridge from the plane.”

“May I speak, sir?”

“Yes, you may, sergeant.”

“What about the pilot, sir? Do I get him out too?”

“Sure, if he can move. But, the information on board that plane and the scouting you do going in and out can save many lives. We would send another plane, but the whole area’s socked in and might continue to be for the next few days. So don’t risk anything much for the pilot. Look,” White went on, “Division feels that the Germans are building up in this sector and that they might attack soon. If we sent a squad in there, you wouldn’t get two feet past that river. You are it, you and, ah, the other man.”

Wiley looked concerned. “Another man, sir?”

“Yes, two men. Captain Redding says you have been a scout for a long time; good record. Many missions, North Africa to now.”

“Thank you, sirs.”

“Sergeant,” White said, looking Wiley directly in the eyes, “you have thirty-six hours. If you don’t report back by 0600 on the 25th, you’ll be too late. I can’t tell you more than that. Well I’m due back.” He rose and walked toward the flap. “Where’s Sergeant Kennedy, my driver?”

Redding’s aide, Sergeant Bracey, piped up: “He was just outside the tent, sir.”

“Thank you, sergeant.”

White turned, pointed at Wiley, and said, “Thirty-six hours!” He saluted. Redding, Wiley, and the others in the tent returned the salute. White disappeared outside.

Redding turned toward Bracey. “Sergeant, get that photo guy in here.”

For the next twenty minutes, a diminutive corporal from the Air Corps, who Wiley privately thought was a real pipsqueak, went over and over and over the correct way to remove a photographic cartridge from a P-38. After the first two repetitions, Wiley began to despise the little man.

He must think I’m stupid or somethin’. I got more rank that that little twerp, he thought.

He wanted to stay awake, but soon a more powerful notion came over him, one that had helped to keep him alive one time or another. If your life ain’t on the line, to hell with it. He nodded off.

Captain Redding dropped something and Wiley started.

“Thank you, corporal, that will be enough.”

“But, sir, I thought I’d go over it once more.”

Redding was having a hard time staying awake himself. “Thank you, corporal. That will be all!”

The corporal turned, a smirk on his face, and went out the flap. Redding eyed Wiley.

“Sergeant, it’s about 1900. You have an hour and a half before dark and close to thirty-five hours after that. Get your stuff together and get down to the river. We want you to get across as soon as possible and be maybe halfway to the plane, say five miles in, by dawn. You should be able to see enemy positions by their fires after you pass through the lines. Zip in and zip out.”

Wiley thought: Sure, just ‘zip in and out’! What does he know?

Redding continued. “I know you like to scout during the day, but it can’t be helped.”

“Yes, sir. Do I really need ta take someone with me?”

“Yes, I want you to take Private Kuehl.”

Redding knew Wiley wouldn’t be thrilled about this. He was greeted by the blank look he’d expected.

“Sir, I’d rather not take Kuehl.”

“Who would you like to take?”

“Well, nobody, sir. The captain knows what happens ta the guys that go along with me.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Sir, I’ve been doin’ these missions since we hit the beach at Oran. First with Noah Hendricks. He got himself captured at Kasserine Pass. Then they gave me Enrique. He got shot by that sniper in Sicily. Then Tony Dutton who got it in the side and I had ta carry six miles. I hope he’s okay. And now Burke last week. We ran outta that basement with Germans shooting at us, and I never saw him again.”

“Yeah, your point is?”

“Well, sir, I got ta know these guys real well. Dutton, I made six trips with him. I just don’t want this ta happen ta some other guy. Kuehl’s a pretty good sort.”

Redding looked up at Wiley. “Chip, we can’t afford not to send someone with you.” He looked down at some of his mounting paperwork. “Someday it’ll be you that doesn’t come back.”

He looked coldly at Wiley. “Or it’ll be me. I’ve told Kuehl, but given him no details. That’s up to you. Go.”

Wiley walked out of the tent and toward the company’s tents, spread out over several acres of ground. It was an overcast day, with the threat of rain making the air heavy.

“Yeah,” he said to himself, “just ‘zip in and out.’ I wonder if any a these people have any idea at all about crawlin’ around behind the lines.”

As he came into the middle of the company, his comrades, exhausted from continuous action since D-Day on June 6, called across to him from their tents or where they were milling about.

Jerry Daghastani was the first. “Hey, Chip, watch out for that pile of shit in front of you, you might slip and bust your arm!”

Wiley laughed. Then he yelled at his pal Andre McMurtha, or “Long Shot,” as everyone called him. McMurtha waved.

Frankie Bari was across the way and shouted. “So, Chip, goin’ up country again, eh? You lucky slob, you might get to Paris before me and see some of them Frenchie broads. Hey, can I go?”

“Not today, lover boy.”

Wiley called out to a number of other men as they came within sight.

“Hingas!”

The soldier gave a mock salute with his left hand. Wiley called out to another who nodded. “Skinny!”

Then, as he neared his gear, there was a tall man.

“Torgeson, you dumb Swede.”

The tall towhead called back. “West Virginia! Is that part of the United States?”

Others saw him and nodded or waved. They knew him well and had heard that he’d been volunteered for another dangerous scouting mission. To a man, they were relieved that he was going and not them. It would be too bad if he didn’t come back, most thought; he was a good man in a pinch. At six foot one and usually 170 pounds of muscle, he was as tough as any man in the company. A terrific rifle or pistol shot, he never mooched from anyone or started arguments and got along with almost everyone. He was true to his word too.

Wiley spotted Kuehl about forty feet away. He motioned for the private to come with him.

Wiley made it to his gear. He opened his duffle bag and looked for a few more clips for the Browning .45 automatic pistol strapped to his waist. He grabbed four and began to get other needed things together. Then he sensed someone behind him.

He turned. There, looking at him, were Bud Hadley, McMurtha, Torgeson, and Kuehl.

“Thanks, guys, for coming ta see me off on this here fun trip.” He noticed that Kuehl looked nervous. Wiley looked up at Hadley. “Bud, you got my little Colt?”

“Yeah, here it is.”

He handed over the 4.5-inch gunmetal black pistol. Wiley smiled, looked at it, and put it in his right front pants pocket.

“It’s loaded up,” Hadley added. “I don’t know why in the hell you carry that damn thing. You couldn’t knock over a bug with it! You got the .45. If you’re going to shoot someone, knock ’em down!”

“Yeah, well, it saved my life a couple a times,” the scout said casually, “includin’ against that Nazi that asshole Wallinski forgot to search.”

McMurtha asked, “They give you back your stripe?”

“Yeah, that’s life,” Wiley said sarcastically. “Proves you never can tell.” He grabbed a small flashlight. “I sure hope this thing works. You guys got any batteries?”

The four men shook their heads.

“Long Shot, you got a candle?”

“Yeah. I think so.” McMurtha walked toward his tent. He always had something of everything. The disheveled-looking man, about thirty years old with a faded Boston Red Sox sports cap backward on his head, was the best scavenger in the company.

“Listen, Pally,” the big Swede said, “take these.” He handed over three chocolate bars. “You don’t have another twenty pounds to lose like you did that last time.”

“Thanks. Yeah, four days in that damn basement with the damn Germans within a few feet of us. I wish Burke and I’d had these things,” the scout said, taking the bars. “We wouldn’t a had to run for it. How’d ya get ’em?”

“Fell off a truck.”

Wiley smiled.

“Thanks, I can make two, three days on these. Andre,” he said to McMurtha, who had returned with a small white candle, “I gotta travel light. I’m goin’ ta need Bracey’s M1 carbine again. I can crawl a lot easier with it than my Garand.”

“I figured. I already got it. Eight clips too. That enough?”

“Yeah.”

McMurtha produced some tape. Wiley taped two of the clips to the carbine’s stock and put the others in a cartridge belt.

“All right, you don’t have to ask. I know what else you want,” McMurtha said. He handed a thick silver cylinder to Wiley.

“Thanks. I wonder how many times I used this silencer.”

“Listen, Chip,” Torgeson added, “Lieutenant Gummerson has duty at the river. He’ll help you two get across.”

“Yeah, he’s a good man. Well, it’s been fun. You know what ta do with my stuff. We’ve been through this enough times, haven’t we?”

The three friends nodded.

Within forty minutes, Wiley told Kuehl everything he needed to know about the mission—and, as this was Kuehl’s first time scouting, some of the secrets of staying alive. They smudged boot polish on their faces and made their way down the long decline to a depression within thirty yards of the river. There, the two men busied themselves putting together a crude raft, discussing with Gummerson where to cross.

They took most of their clothes off and then wrapped them, their weapons, and waterproof ponchos into the shelter halves (half of a pup tent). When it was dark enough, they carried the raft to the water and edged in.

Recent rains made the water in the fifty-foot-wide stream unusually swift, and they lost their footing continually. Twice, Wiley caught one bundle as it was about to fall in. Listening as closely as they could in the rapid waters, they worked their way across wondering every second if they had been seen, knowing that one alert guard could get them killed or captured.

Wiley became confident as they were carried downstream. “There’s no alarm that I can tell, and no one’s runnin’ along the bank parallelin’ us. Only if we step out in someone’s lap will they get us. If we can just get ta the other side!”

They came to a heavily wooded area, and Wiley pushed the raft and Kuehl to the enemy side as hard as he could. As they came to the bank, the trees were actually so dense that they overhung the water. They had trouble holding on and much trouble in climbing out amongst the slimy roots.

In the underbrush, they put on their clothes and ponchos and armed themselves, Wiley smiling that again he had the little Colt within reach. It began to rain as they hiked.

Wiley knew that getting through the lines would be comparatively easy now. But after an hour and slow progress with the rain showing no signs of letting up, Wiley knew they had to stop.

The rain came down very hard as the two stopped to talk.

“We gotta stop here,” Wiley said, almost yelling. “Might as well get some rest.”

“I ain’t tired,” Kuehl protested. “We could go a long way on a night like this.”

“We can’t be a dumb ass about this. It’ll screw hell outta the timetable, but we don’t have a choice. We can’t see anythin’! We’re supposed ta scout stuff, but this way we’ll probably get captured.”

“We’re supposed to get some film.”

“Shut up. See that oak tree over yonder?”

“Which one is the oak, that one?” Kuehl pointed at the wrong tree.

“Naw, see that giant tree over there?” Wiley pointed at a tree whose trunk was probably four feet across. They could barely see it through the rain.

“Yeah, I see it.”

“You go over there. Pull stuff over . . .”

“What?”

“Shut up!” Wiley said. “Brush! Sit against the damn trunk and pull brush over you as best you can. Go ta sleep. If anyone steps on you, he won’t even know you’re there. Hold your stupid knife in your hand. I’ll come for you in the morning’. Don’t go lookin’ for me. Don’t! And don’t stab me with that damn thing.”

He motioned. Kuehl walked away slowly and nearly out of sight in the rain.

Kuehl sure likes his knife, Wiley thought. He walked over to behind another tree trunk, settled in, and thought to himself about the large, ugly switchblade that Kuehl had bought on a London side street. Wiley heard him boast many a time about how he would “cut me up a Kraut.”

Wiley pulled out his little .25 caliber Colt, made doubly sure that there was a bullet in the chamber, put his finger on the trigger, and put his hand in his pocket.

The .45’s much more lethal, but a lot louder, unless I use the silencer, he thought. But with that tube on it, the thing’s thirteen inches long and hard ta get out. If I got surprised, I’d rather use the .25. At least I could get off a shot.

He settled in some more. “I hate knives,” he muttered.

The night went poorly. Wiley ate little from his dinner K-ration. He decided it tasted like leaves. As near as he could figure, he slept only about two hours. It was always hard to tell without a luminescent watch. He’d had one in Africa but decided it might give him away in the dark. There was no sense in getting out his flashlight.

“I’m stuck here anyhow, ain’t I,” he mumbled sarcastically.

He spent some time thinking of how the heavy rain had wrecked his plans before he even got started. Some rain’s always good, because the enemy would likely be inactive, tryin’ ta stay dry. But this’ll cost me six hours, one-sixth of the time I got.

Wet and miserable, he closed his eyes. This is the way it is for a scout.

But that was nothing new to him; his entire youth had been spent in discomfort or in hunger. He heard the voice of his father in his head.

“You’re a little fuckin’ liar,” Pop would say. “You just lie, lie, lie all the damn time, you little asshole.” That’s the way it usually started, right outta of the blue with some fun words.

Wiley opened his eyes and looked around, the rain still falling hard.

I’m here, now. Behind enemy lines in the province of Normandy in the country a France.

He nodded with a frown on his face and then closed his eyes.

Pop drank and drank. It took him about an hour ta get really abusive. At least he was quiet then. Old Forrester was his favorite when he could get it, but anythin’ would do. It just took longer with wine or beer. I learned ta leave when he started and hide in the woods, but many a time he came home after I’d gone to sleep. I’d wake up with him yellin’ in my face. He’d scream for a while and then beat me.

When I knew he was comin’ home, I’d go down to my grandparents’ place about half a mile off. Essie and A.C. Bellinger. They were the only people who ever loved me.

Holding the little Colt tighter, the nineteen-year-old stared into the rainy darkness.

I don’t remember Mom, though others talked about her. Once Essie was on the phone and let the receiver down for just a few seconds and I heard a woman’s voice. “She couldn’t a loved him much, or she’d a been there for the little fella.” Essie looked at me. We’d both heard. She put the phone back to her ear.

Wiley remembered her talking on the phone. She always nodded and would say “Yes” to whatever anyone said.

The rain hit on the Wiley’s nose, ran past his mouth, and off his chin.

“Mama left when I was two, left me to him, my dear father, Dick ” he muttered bitterly. The usual embittered look came on his face, one that very few people had ever seen. “It must a been tough on her to put up with him, but she left me to him! Why did she do that? It’s just because I’m a shit, that’s why she left me.”

Such thoughts made the night pass very slowly.

By first light, the scout stood and walked toward Kuehl. The rain had stopped, and he had no trouble seeing him. He poked the man with the barrel of the carbine.

Roused out of a deep sleep, Kuehl jumped to his feet. “I was awake!”

Wiley saw two empty K-ration cans and their coverings scattered on the ground. “Listen, you dope, pick that crap up. Anyone come through here and they’d know we been here.”

“Yeah, I was goin’ to pick ’em up.”

Wiley looked at Kuehl as he cleaned up his mess. This guy’s goin’ ta get me killed, he thought. He’s more trouble than he’s worth. Funny how some can handle this and some just ain’t meant for it. I know he’s a good guy, but he’s careless and has no common sense for this job.

“Listen, buddy,” Wiley said, “when we head off, parallel my movements about fifty yards off.”

“Why?”

“Because one can hide easier than two. And two are easier ta see than one.”

“Okay,” Kuehl said, a baffled look on his face. “Whatever you say.”

The two men ate a breakfast K-ration after pulling the oblong package out of its cardboard container. Both agreed in muffled voices that it was the best of the three meals. They buried the remains and headed off, Wiley looking at his compass and pointing in the direction he wished to go.

Soon the country became much more open, and the scouts made slow progress. Each stopped as the other moved, making sure they had not been seen. Many times they heard explosions off to the north that sounded like artillery. Wiley judged that some were within a few miles, but most were much farther off. Most of the morning passed in this way, crossing the occasional road and bypassing the occasional farmhouse, but seeing no enemy positions or even a single soldier. Wiley estimated that they had made five miles.

This is about where we shoulda gotten last night, he thought.

As they paused in a thicket to eat something, they began hearing intermittent heavy motor sounds, far off and farther away from American lines.

“You hear that?” Wiley asked.

“Yeah,” Kuehl mumbled through a mouthful of food.

“Let’s head off so we can see what it is.”

The woods got thicker as they approached the sounds, and there was plenty of cover. In ten minutes, they came to a covered spot overlooking a dirt road. Soon, they heard sounds to the south and looked off that way.

“Looks like there’s a bend down there maybe two hundred yards,” Wiley muttered.

“Yeah.”

The sounds built for more than a minute. The ground began to shake.

Finally, a tank came into view, the commander sitting on top of the turret instead of standing in it. Steel tracks clanking, it rumbled past at what Wiley figured was top speed of about twenty miles an hour.

A bad taste came into Wiley’s mouth. He thought back to his first experience with German tanks eight months before in North Africa. The same sounds had panicked him then, and he felt somewhat queasy. But the panic was gone now. The fear he felt was that of a veteran soldier who knew the risks of battling tanks.

I was just a kid then, he thought soberly. Since then I been in on the blastin’ a many a tank, some by myself. He remembered his first. That Mark III. Sicily. Then Italy, southern France, and here. He motioned to Kuehl.

“He’s goin’ some place in a hurry!”

“Yeah.”

As the tank went out of sight, they heard another vehicle approaching. Wiley immediately came to a conclusion. “The enemy’s not concentratin’ in this sector like Division thinks. They’re shiftin’ up north.”

The next thirty minutes confirmed his idea, as many vehicles came rumbling down the lane and passed by.

“They’re spacin’ themselves ta keep the noise down,” he said softly to Kuehl. “And comin’ down this lane ’cause the woods are thick enough that no photo plane could see ’em even if it wasn’t cloudy. And that first guy had on the black uniform of an SS officer. These are elements of an SS Panzer Division, headin’ north ta blast our people somewhere.”

“Okay, so what’s that to us?”

“Listen, buddy boy, this is probably more important than some stupid film.”

“So what do we do, go back?”

“No, you’re goin’ back!”

“No way!”

“Private, I’m orderin’ you ta go back. Tell Reddin’ that we’ve seen five Panthers, about a dozen Mark 4s and 3s and six half-tracks headin’ north. No troops at all. You got that?”

“Yeah, okay, okay, when do I leave?”

“Now. Do you have any idea where you are?”

“I was depending on you for that.”

“Where’s the compass I gave you?”

“Right here, Chip. What heading do you want me to take up?”

“Ah, 190 degrees.”

Kuehl was mystified. “You told me the plane was 330 degrees, northwest. So shouldn’t I go back 150 degrees? Ain’t 150 degrees 180 less than 330 degress?”

“Listen, I always go in an oval ta the east ta get ta a target, and then come back in an oval to the west. So, go 190 degrees straight back.”

Kuehl left in a few minutes. Meanwhile, since no more vehicles appeared, so Wiley carefully made his way down to the road.

The quiet seemed eerie to the scout after the thunderous sounds of the last forty minutes. He noticed crates of German matériel on the side of the road. He looked carefully up and down the lane. He could see less than two hundred yards to the south but a long distance to the north.

He heard nothing unusual. He crept right up to a few of the crates. They were made of wooden slats, and he could see what was inside.

“Teller mines!” he muttered to himself, “antitank mines. I could get out the old Bag a Tricks! Boy, would I love ta put a couple a these babies in the roadway!”

Wiley didn’t think what effect doing something like that might have on his mission. Perhaps his youth took control of his better judgment. An almost childlike idea of wishing to see something blow up seized him. Using the mines was something he could not resist.

He used his carbine’s barrel to pry a few of the slats away and took out two of the heavy, disc-shaped mines. Moving into the middle of the road, he continually looked both ways and listened intently.

“They were going ta mine this road for when our guys came up,” he muttered. “Two can play that game.”

He walked a few feet up the road to the north, bent and used the butt of his rifle to gouge a shallow hole for the first mine on the right side of the road, then covered it with leaves. About 350 pounds a pressure and this sucker’ll blow, Wiley thought.

He walked up the road for two or three minutes and planted the other mine on the left side. As he was pushing the leaves over it, he heard distant sounds to the south.

“Time ta go.”

He jumped up on the far side of the roadway and began to run perpendicular to the roadway, again farther away from American lines. It was still only early afternoon. The sun filtered through the trees as he ran as fast as he could uphill, with the sounds, multiple sounds now, becoming louder and louder.

He was far enough away that he couldn’t see the road any longer. He judged from the mechanical sounds that the vehicles had come to the mines. He plopped down against a large chestnut tree, expecting to hear a large explosion.

But none came, which baffled him.

Sounds like trucks passin’ on the road, so what gives? he thought. Well, shit! You never can tell. Maybe the damn trucks passed on the other side a the road. But the road’s not that wide!

Wiley shook his head, realizing that he had let his guard down. He reached for the ever-present Colt .25 and found it right where he expected, in his pocket. Hearing more vehicles all the time, he stood cautiously near the tree and looked carefully in every direction.

I guess I’m okay . . . Before he could finish his thought, there was a teeth-rattling explosion. He smiled that one of the mines had indeed taken its toll. “Ah, the old Bag a Tricks!”

He took out his map to figure out where he was. The woods were not as dense as before, but no landmarks were visible. It took several minutes to find the road he had just left. Then he heard another boom and knew that the second mine had exploded. It was definitely a big outfit with that many vehicles.

He smiled again at knowing that he had caused the enemy some inconvenience, and then he looked back at the map.

If it’s accurate, which is alwaysa big question, this is where I’m at. Damn, the Swede says you’re not supposed ta say ‘at’ at the end of a sentence. He put his finger on the map. If I’m right, I’m still on my arc ta the right side of the oval and only about three miles from where the plane should be.

He looked at his watch: 1400, six hours till dark and sixteen hours before he had to be back in camp. Damn, twenty hours gone already! No damn plane and more than half my time shot.

Wiley was starting to feel very doubtful about the mission. He put the carbine over his shoulder and headed out. As he crested the top of the hill, he could see, intermittently, a great distance. The plane was somewhere ahead of him down there.

He looked to the left. Eight or nine hundred yards off, he could see what had to be the continuation of the road he had just left. There were no tanks or vehicles on it at all.

Directly in front of him, down the other side of the hill, was a large open area containing farm buildings. For the first time, he took out his field glasses.

Better look this over, he thought. Crouching, he spent several minutes carefully looking at the entire area. Two barns, outbuildings, and several houses. No P-38 or evidence of a crash. Now that I seen it, I’ll avoid this open area completely. It’s just a real easy place ta get trapped.

He studied the area to his right, east. Wooded like what I’ve come through. I’ll go through it. No buildings that I can see. Looks like another road too.

He shrugged. “Those trees could hide an army,” he mused to himself, “an entire Panzer Division.”

His attention was distracted back to the continuation of the road he had left. He could see many men coming into view, going obliquely away from him. They were being marched double time. He pulled up his field glasses again. He guessed those men were convicts or forced laborers.

Perhaps two hundred men had come into view when Wiley heard sounds behind him, toward where he had planted the mines. Immediately, he dropped to the ground. About three hundred yards away, he could see figures coming his way through the trees below him. Through the glasses, he could see dogs.

“Damn,” he said out loud, “how in hell did they get dogs on me?”

He thought of the answer in the next instant. It really wasn’t hard to figure out. I been here too long eyein’ the country, he thought. They had those dogs somewhere in those trucks, and when their pals got blown up they began ta track me. They probably think I’m some French guy.

His heart rate quickened. A disturbing thought came into his mind. What have I done this time? If I get away from these guys, are others goin’ ta be houndin’ me all over the place? That was stupid ta use those mines and wreck my mission. And get myself killt.

Surprisingly, only six men and two dogs appeared. The scout sat, taking the Williams carbine from his shoulder. German shepherds, comin’ quick. I can get these guys off my back.

He pushed off the safety. Sitting at an angle to the enemy, he brought the rifle around so that his left elbow rested on his left knee.

It was a long shot for a carbine. The velocity of its bullet was nowhere near that of the regular infantry rifle, the Garand. Methodically, Wiley hiked up the iron sights in the back.

His body absolutely motionless, he aimed at the man with the first dog, waiting until the group came to the next open spot. Dogs had chased him before, he recalled readily, and he knew what to do: shoot the man, not the dog. He squeezed the trigger and the carbine sounded: CRRRACK.

In the three-quarters of a second it took the bullet to traverse the distance, Wiley changed his target to the second dog handler. Just as the bullet hit the first man, the carbine sounded again: CRRRACK. In an instant, the second man spun around and fell, his rifle flying up in the air.

Wiley felt no emotion about the people that he had just killed. He never had nightmares or even thought of the families whose loved ones’ lives he had ended. He was completely certain that he hadn’t been seen and that the remaining enemy soldiers had no idea where his shots came from.

Suddenly, a bullet came within ten or fifteen feet of his head. ZIP! It cut two leaves off a nearby tree, delicately.

“What?” he muttered, nearly dumbfounded.

He hadn’t considered this possibility. The feeling was strong in him to remain motionless. But in less than a second he rolled to his right.

He had no idea that the bullet had come from a German fighter plane shooting at an American bomber thirty thousand feet above him in the overcast sky, completely out of hearing. Other bullets had fallen to earth as well, but the nearest had hit several hundreds yards from him. He never once considered such a possibility.

In an instant, Wiley was up and running. With two of the enemy soldiers dead and the others apparently diving for cover, he was floored thinking that someone had seen him and actually shot at him.

I got a damn flash-hider on the barrel! he thought. How could they see me? But don’t make no difference. Even without anyone seein’ me, I’d have ta run. It’s not a scout’s job ta fight it out with the enemy, ta take a few more with me. I’m on enemy ground, ground I don’t know. In the end, they’d kill me if I stayed there. I got ta see ta my mission and run from the enemy.

His first long strides were to the left. I’ll fool ’em. After a few yards, when he knew instinctively that he was beyond the crest of the hill and no one could see the direction he took, he cut to the right. His escape route, already set in his mind, was the road that he had seen to the right though the dense woods, the woods that could hide a division.

If there are troops in there, I’ll run inta ‘em and be killed or captured!

Wiley ran as fast as he could down the hill toward the woods. In two and a half minutes, he came down to the road and headed left, to the northeast. It was a dirt road of about the same quality of the one where he planted the mines.

Now his pace picked up, and he ran almost all out. On and on he raced on the slightly winding road, making the first mile in less than eight minutes. He maintained that pace for a second mile, the carbine impudently banging his backside and his gear flopping up and down, the water in his canteen sloshing violently. But he saw no enemy.

He knew that his direction was taking him farther and farther away from the plane. Finally, he stopped running. Breathless, he walked along the edge of the road, rainwater dripping on him from the trees.

Wiley knew he could always hear vehicles and even troops coming in plenty of time to hide. He felt safer now, but he also knew that a single enemy soldier standing in any one of the thousands of square feet within sight of him could put a bullet in him at any moment. After only two minutes, he heard something ahead on the road out of sight and walked calmly off to the left.

“That bush. Get behind that bush,” he muttered.

He lay down about thirty yards from the road and watched a German staff car pass by. He checked his watch. It said 1503. He decided to pause for a while to see if he was being tailed and enemy troops were closing in.

Nothing. He stood, made his way about 150 yards from the road, and slumped down. He noticed the sky had brightened just a little.

I gotta think a this mission, he thought. But instead all he could think about was running. I’ve always run away from my problems!

A smile came upon his face as he remembered the good days in his childhood in Fenwick, West Virginia.

Most every day I went ta my grandparents’ place up the road. Pop was gone three hundred or more days outta the year as a long haul trucker. For ten years I went to their house and they cared for me. They didn’t have anythin’, poor clothes, poor educations, and didn’t speak so well. Later, when I went ta boot camp and talked ta guys, I found out how plain and poor we were, and it hurt a lot. I’m a sergeant now and I need ta act and talk better. The Swede’s helpin’ me. For a long time it made me hate anybody who I figured came from any money. Grandma had no nice furniture or dishes, he thought, just a few knickknacks she prized and that plate with ‘Chicago World’s Fair, 1926’ painted on it.

The young soldier, who had missed most of his childhood, hit himself hard in the face as he sometimes did. Sometimes I hate who I am.

Finally, he had another thought. For a change he felt superior, almost.

I have somethin’ more valuable than any ol’ money! My grandpa taught me about the woods from the time I was a little shaver. All right, so I didn’t have those cars or the big house, or even any folks. But I know how ta survive in the woods, and that’s worth a lot in this war. I know all kinds a things those rich guys didn’t know, he thought, trying hard to convince himself.

A.C. was a little man, retired from the coalfields after twenty-five years under the ground. He’d say, “Obey the rules of the woods and you’ll be fine. The first is ta listen. And when you think you’ve listened, then really listen! If you can hear animals, birds, that’s a sign you’re alone.”

He smiled, then would not allow himself another thought until he took his grandfather’s advice and listened to the sounds about him: water dripping off trees, the rustling of squirrels in the leaves on the ground, a bird piping faintly somewhere close. Good. That meant there wasn’t likely anyone nearby.

He thought again of his grandfather. He loved me. He was always good to me. “Chip,” he’d say, “look. And when you’ve looked, look again! Mother Nature’ll tell her secrets if you’ve a mind ta notice her clues. Animals that have passed by, man’s passin’ by, and man’s waste. The clues’ll be there.”

The old man’s voice came to Wiley so clearly.

“When you shoot at somethin’, shoot ta kill. We don’t shoot no animals fur fun but ta sustain ourselfs. You shoot it, you use it, just as The Creator intended. He put animals on this Earth for our use. It’s a Bible rule,” he’d say, “not ta waste what God gives ya.”

Wiley took off his knit cap and ran his hands through his matted hair. Then he died a black lung disease at fifty-nine, and my life began goin’ bad. Fifteen peoples came ta the funeral. Essie stood by the grave and wept slow tears. Was that all a poor man is worth, that only a few peoples would come ta your burial? I’ll bet a rich guy would have lots of peoples come.

He had much hatred washing about in his mind. It started with his malicious father, but it included people in general because they had not attended his grandfather’s funeral. It was also for himself, for running away and not seeing that his grandmother had been properly buried. Finally, he hated Germans because he had seen them act superior to American soldiers and because they had killed so many of his friends.

He saw his grandmother cooking in the kitchen.

She was a heavy woman used to usin’ lard in most everything she cooked. After Grandpa died, sometimes his pension wasn’t enough and she made lard sandwiches for us. I ate what I was given and thought nothin’ about it. Now, I’m ashamed. I never saw it then, the large folds a fat under her arms, and the heels of her shoes, worn down from age and her weight all worn out. She had trouble gettin’ around because of her leg. She would smile at me, stroke my hair. “We’ll get by,” she’d say, “The Lord takes care a the meek.”

So, I’m one of the meek? I’ll show ’em. I’ll show ’em all.

And he had the same image in his head he always had of what he would do to his father, if he ever met the man again. He’ll try ta hit me and I’ll block that blow. He’ll be so surprised! I’ll look him straight in the eye. Then I’ll smash him in the face!

His body tense, Wiley thought again of his grandmother.

Eight months after A.C. died, one winter’s day, she lay down for a nap in the bedroom, and then she died. I was fourteen. I’d gone out ta the shed ta chop some firewood. I sat a long time after comin’ back inta the house, watchin’ her from the other room, wishin’ that she would wake up. But she didn’t get up as she always had. She didn’t move at all. I got more afraid as it got dark. I lit the lamp and went over ta her bed. I looked at her face. It scared hell outta me ta see her lips were blue. I knew she was dead. My world had ended. Pop’d beat me. Whenever he returned, he’d get drunk and know that neither A.C. nor Essie would be there lookin’ over his shoulder. There was nothing ta restrain him.

I’d thought about what would happen if Grandma died for a long time. I picked up my coat, a coupla little things along with a dime I had hidden away, and went out the door and ran. I knew Pop and the sheriff were pals. I knew if I stayed around town, the sheriff would find me and bring me back, and I’d be beaten all the harder. I’m so sorry I didn’t go ta her funeral. I was just acting out of my instinct for self-preservation, like an animal.

That was the first time I ran ta save my life. That first time I ran from Fenwick all the way ta Summersville, twelve miles. In North Africa, once on a mission behind the lines, I ran twenty miles ta get away from some A-rabs. Now, here I am, at it again.

Wiley touched the flesh near his right shin. The old knife wound an Arab had given him still felt tender.

That was the first time the little .25 Colt had saved his life. The Arab hadn’t seen the weapon. Wiley could remember the surprised look on the guy’s face when he’d shot him.

He felt for the little weapon in his pocket, and it was there. Feeling it was always a relief. He pulled it out and whispered to it: “I’ll never part with you as long as I live. You’re the only thing I got left from Grandpa.”

In the vast number of long hours he had spent by himself overseas, the scout had convinced himself that the gun was the only thing left of his family. He’d told Captain Redding and others that he had to send money home to his family. But the truth was that he had no real family, just the Gregorys in Columbia, South Carolina, whom he’d met during Basic Training.

He carefully looked down the road in both directions. Nothing.

Summersville had taught him a lot. He’d learned to get by on his own. In his two years there, he’d never seen anybody he’d known before. After a few nights sleeping in doorways, he’d gotten a job in Linus Campbell’s hardware store as the stock boy.

Campbell had taken a dollar a week out of the young Wiley’s pay so he could live in a room in the back of the store. It didn’t even have a window, but Wiley hadn’t cared, because it was his! Nobody came there to beat him up. He’d had a bed of old grain sacks, an old chair someone had thrown out, and an oil lamp. At night, he would sit reading an old newspaper or magazine and feel like a king. Sometimes, he’d dream of seeing some of the places the magazines pictured. He’d stolen to have enough to eat, but mostly he’d gotten by. His schooling ended with eighth grade, but that wasn’t bad in West Virginia.

What had affected him the most was the prejudice. In 1938, the last year of the Great Depression in the coalfields, West Virginia was as yet untouched by the influx of contracts World War II would bring.

Everyone kept ta their own kin, Wiley thought. Outsiders weren’t welcome. I learned ta be tough in just protectin’ myself. Boys came by ta tell me I wasn’t wanted in Summersville, and many a fight followed. I wasn’t very big then, but I held my own. I still do.

Having heard and seen nothing, the scout rose, put the carbine over his shoulder, and headed off in a westerly direction. His watch read 1558. He forced himself to think of his mission.

“I’ve got just four hours before dark ta find that shitty, goddam plane,” he whispered, beginning to hate the thing. “Whether I find it or not, I’ll have ta travel all night over new ground ta get back.”

He stopped walking. “First the damn rain and then I was stupid an’ had ta use those damn mines. I don’t think this will work.”

He had a strong feeling that the mission was blown. “That’s cost me about six, seven hours. I can’t make that up. I could just . . . stay here in these woods. In a few days, the Army’ll would come up. I got those chocolate bars. I could . . . aw shit!”

He started walking again, boots squelching in the mud.

Slowly, he worked his way back about three miles to an area just north of where he had seen the farms. The terrain was a mixture of dense forest and farms. He studied each farm through his glasses, seeing the people come and go with their chores but no signs of the downed plane or enemy troops. He was lucky in not happening upon any natives. He only saw one dog, which did not even offer to bark at him.

Wiley went on farther west. A little after 1800, he came to another country road. The roadsides had good cover, and in less than a minute he was ready to cross. There was a cleared area on the other side, with what looked like a good path from it leading into the woods beyond. He hurried across the road toward it. He took one step on the other side of the road into the cleared area and froze.

Something was wrong! He stepped back, stooped in plain sight at the edge of the road, and listened. He heard a bird, then another, but it made him feel no less tense. He looked around. The cleared area was about the size and shape of a football field end zone. It had brush in it and a few small trees but was mostly open.

Again he hesitated, stooped, listened, and looked. The scout puzzled as several seconds passed. Finally, it came to him. There was a smell . . . a very faint smell . . . of lubricating oil!

Wiley looked at the ground. Though he could see nothing obvious, he knew instinctively what it was.

A minefield! Mines are made in factories by machines that use oil ta cool the metal! Look at that ground, it’s not right. It’s . . . messed up just a little. They almost fooled me.

He smiled, thinking: I wasn’t taken in by those creeps, but I know full well that no soldier survives a hundred such chances. Maybe they’ll get me the next time and blow off my leg or put a bullet into me. You just never can tell.

He walked around the cleared area and picked up the path he’d seen on the other side. He was very close to the area Major White had pointed to on the map.

He spent the next hour and a half looking for the plane.

At a few minutes to 2000, he sat down against a large tree, wondering what he would do next. I crisscrossed this damn area in every direction from where White pointed on this map, he thought. This is hopeless. It’s less than an hour from dark! I’m maybe ten miles from my people and I got ten hours. No damn plane.

Again Wiley thought of not even attempting to go back to his lines. He had some rations and the chocolate bars. He could last for a while.

He looked up through the trees, a sour look on his face. He could see a long way to the west. “What’s that?” he said in astonishment. “Maybe, just maybe.”

He stood up but then could see nothing. The opening through the trees was very small. Only by sitting in the one place was he able to see anything at all. All he could see was the top of a tree that was somewhat bare.

“Maybe half a mile, hard ta judge.” He looked at it a long time through his glasses, trying to find a landmark near it. There was nothing, just the battered top of a tree. He started walking in that direction.

As soon as he began to walk, he began to doubt that he’d seen anything. “Could be wind damage,” he muttered to himself.

He took out his map and noted where he thought the tree was. It was well out of the area he was supposed to search and somewhat lower in elevation. Soon, the ground began a slow decline that continued for many hundreds of yards. With forty-five minutes of light left, he hurried.

It was a careless way to go about this, but there was no other way. This was his last chance to pull off the mission and get the information back in time.

Perhaps he hurried a little too quickly in the next fifteen minutes. Suddenly, he found himself within fifty feet of two German soldiers pacing back and forth on guard duty. He dove to the ground. Slowly, he lifted up his head and found the two soldiers still slowly pacing, unaware of his presence. In full view behind them, about thirty yards off, he saw something.

It was the plane!

He could see that it had burn damage, but the light was too poor for him to tell very much. The light was going.

Wiley thought: I have ta act! I have ta act right now!

He took his .45 from the holster and quickly screwed in the silencer. Then, he slowly crawled forward, his eyes glued to the two Germans in between glances at the ground.

The enemy soldiers came together and, beginning to talk, turned away from him. At first he could hear little more than their voices. Strangely, he half expected them to speak English. As he got closer, the words became more distinct. Obviously, they weren’t speaking English. He had no idea what they were saying.

The first man, a taller and bulkier man with a Schmeisser submachine gun, laughed loudly. “Das Leben ist Kurz!” He continued to talk rather quickly. The scout paid no attention to what he said.

The smaller man, obviously inferior in rank, stuttered when he spoke. “Jaden s–s–s–ommer fahren wir aufs s–s–schreiben.”

“Ja, ja, das ist gut, Heinz,” the larger man responded.

Wiley could wait no longer. He stood only twenty-five feet from the two Germans. The bigger man saw him and began to react. The little man never saw him.

THUNK. THUNK. The Browning reported, and both Germans were thrown backward and down. Neither moved again. Wiley stooped down and spent almost thirty seconds motionless, listening and looking.

How stupid could they be? he thought, as the seconds ticked by. They’re on guard duty and let some shit sneak right up and shoot ’em! Are these two the only guards?

Neither man had moved. They had to either be dead or so badly hurt that they were no threat to him any longer. Wiley got up and walked quickly toward the plane.

It was a big silver plane, much larger than he’d ever imagined in all the times he’d seen P-38s fly overhead in Africa and Europe. The light was poor by now, but one look told him that the photo cartridge was no longer there.

Where’s the pilot? he wondered.

A glance at the rest of the plane told him a lot. From just behind the nose, most of the rest of the plane was badly burned. The metal was twisted and charred. He edged back toward the cockpit. The bubble canopy was gone. He came aside what remained of the cockpit. There was no sign of the pilot.

“No cartridge, no pilot,” he muttered, all of his hopes sinking again. “This whole damn thing is just shit!”

With the light almost gone, he wasted no time in heading south toward his lines. More guards could appear at any second. He held the .45 ready. He felt uneasy for several reasons.

“I wonder if Kuehl made it back,” he said to himself. “At least he didn’t have far ta go. Well, I can’t think about him now. Gettin’ back won’t be easy for me! It’s almost directly south ta our lines, all through unknown country, and all of which I’ll have ta go through at night.”

Wiley was some distance from the plane now. He stopped, put his poncho over his head, and got out his map and flashlight. As soon as he turned the flashlight on, he could see that the batteries were about gone.

Maybe it’s better that they’re weak, he thought. At least nobody can see me. The light lasted just long enough for him to see that he was right: his lines were directly south. No time for his usual oval.

He turned out the light and proceeded south. The moon peeked through the clouds occasionally, and he could see some things in the thin silver light. He’d seen a road on the map, but at night he avoided roads just as he preferred them during the day. At night, troops were just going to sit on a road, which they wouldn’t usually do during the day. Following a road would get him shot for certain.

He went overland and looked for paths that weren’t very visible in the light. Three times in the next hour, he startled things in the woods that ran away from him, animals no doubt.

This is like livin’ in a shootin’ gallery, he thought.

About 2200, the terrain headed downhill. Wiley began to have an uneasy feeling. For a time, he stooped and waited. His scalp became itchy. He continued, but soon stopped again and again waited.

There was something here. He could feel it.

He heard a bird’s tweet and felt a soft breeze that caused a rustling in the trees. For a fleeting moment, he wondered if he could just sit down for a few minutes and not face this problem.

Aw, he thought, I got information. And everything seems normal. Still, he couldn’t shake a strong feeling of apprehension. I can’t stay here.

Then, in a few more steps, he saw it ahead. It’s a train! I smelled it.

It lay in a gulley about ten feet below him, directly across his path. He crept up on it ever so slowly, every nerve alive. It was like a gigantic black beast, some kind of worm that had died in a trench. The Germans must have parked it here so the Allied planes wouldn’t see it. He had the .45 ready, the silencer still on.

Despite inching carefully forward, Wiley tripped over something about twenty feet from the train. He fell headlong toward the train with much crashing through the underbrush, actually sliding several feet. Fearing he might accidentally shoot himself, he let the .45 go, and it fell away from him. He scrambled for the little Colt in his pocket. Then he lay motionless, expecting the worst.

But no sound of rushing enemy came to his ears. He listened with such intensity, and yet there was only an eerie silence. He felt around in the muddy leaves for several seconds, looking for the .45. He found it and put the .25 back in his pocket. It occurred to him that he hadn’t reloaded it, and it had only seven shots left.

Unbelievably, no one appeared. He got up to a crouching position, waited a long time, then crept the rest of the way down to the train and the tracks. The silence was so eerie that for a second he wondered if he could still hear.

I wonder if the fall turned off my hearing, he thought. He listened for what seemed like a long time and was relieved to hear a low hoo, hoo.

That’s an owl! I can hear. Is this train unguarded?

In the darkness, he squinted to see the train. There were tracks going away from him, fairly straight, in both directions. Then he saw a light, a conductor’s light, far down the track to the right. It moved away from the train and back several times. Wiley turned and saw the same from the left.

This thing is about to get under way! Again he forgot about his mission. I gotta find out what’s in these boxcars.

He walked several cars to the right and ahead saw one with open doors. He frowned. There was no other way to do this, other than to come abreast of the door and just look in. There was no time!

Wiley edged up to the opening, his scalp tingling. He quickly poked his head in front of the opening and then drew back. There didn’t seem to be anyone inside.

Then he stood in front of the opening and peered into the car. Nobody, no sleeping guys! A wave of relief came over him.

The train began to lurch forward off in the distance. In a few seconds, the car he was looking into jolted several inches.

It won’t be long now, he thought, and this thing’ll be gone. He peered in again. He could see the car was packed with hundreds of boxes bearing the sign of the skull and crossbones.

“Explosives!” he said softly. “If this is an ammunition train, I can’t let it go! I better try ta blow it up.”

Then his thoughts clouded. “I don’t know if this whole train’s loaded with explosives. For all I know, this is the only car with ammo.”

He didn’t pause long.“Well, at least I know this car has some stuff in it! Hey, time ta get out the Bag a Tricks. If I don’t blow this thing up, this stuff will kill a lot of our guys.”

He grabbed a lantern hung on the outside of the car, intending to light it and toss it in. He quickly changed his mind. “I’ll blow myself up!”

Two alternate ideas came into his mind simultaneously. He looked and listened for just a few seconds as the car began to move. Then, placing the lantern in the car, he hauled himself up and into it. Again, he squinted in the poor light to make sure no one else was in the car.

“I don’t know if either will work, but I’ll try ’em both if only I got time.”

He took out a match and lit the lantern. “I gotta have this light for just a minute.”

He noticed a stack of only five of the foot-high boxes on the other side of the car next to the far door, which also was open. “Yeah, I can move that stack.”

The train had not yet reached walking speed. His heart rate jumped, imagining that guards might see him illuminated by the lantern as the train stepped by.

Wiley went over to the short stack of boxes. “These will be perfect.”

His hands began to shake, and he had to take a deep breath. The train lurched again, and he almost lost his balance.

“This is better than perfect. I’ll get this thing out.”

He pulled the candle McMurtha had given him out of a pocket, lit it from the lantern, and then blew out the lantern. He stooped down and placed the candle on the car’s floor, against the lowest box in the stack on its backside.

“I doubt anyone’ll be able ta see it glow as the train goes by. Maybe it’ll catch the box on fire in a few miles, if it doesn’t roll off.”

He considered the setup. Then he picked up the candle, turned it so the melted wax would fall in the same spot, and seated it on the wax. “Now it’s not gonna roll off.”

With some effort, he moved the higher boxes so that they overhung the candle. “That oughta catch that whole stack on fire in a few minutes. Now, for trick two.”

He pulled his only grenade from his belt and went to the side of the boxes next to the door. The standard American grenade, it had a pin like all grenades but a safety handle as well. If a man pulled the pin and let the spring loaded safety handle pop off, the device would blow up in about four seconds. But if he pulled the pin and held on to the safety handle, it wouldn’t go off.

Wiley pulled the pin. Holding the handle, he wedged the grenade carefully between the open door of the car and the lowest box.

“If this car lurches one time too many or if someone closes the door, it’ll be too bad, too sad.” He looked out the door both ways, and chuckled. “Can you beat this, no guards! This is the easiest job I ever pulled.”

He glanced back at the grenade. I hope that holds till I get outta here, he thought.

He sat down in the doorway, made sure he had his gear, looked both ways again, and jumped out. The train was going no faster than a slow walking pace, and he had no trouble maintaining his footing as he hit. He ran up the other side of the embankment as fast as he could and dove into the woods, visible for only a few seconds.

The train rolled on. In a few minutes, it was out of sight. Even the great rumble of the awakened beast soon faded. Wiley felt relieved, back in his element, the woods. Tired from the ordeal, his adrenaline still flowing, he decided to sit for a minute.

He put the poncho over his head again, brought out his map, and frowned. How was he supposed to see the damn map without a flashlight or a candle?

Surprisingly, the batteries still had a little life left in them. He found the railroad on the map. He was maybe six miles from his lines. Before the batteries gave out, he saw that it was 2308.

I got seven hours ta go six miles. Hell, he thought, much relieved, I ought ta be able to do that one. Maybe two miles in an hour. He nodded, knowing full well that things could happen to make it impossible.

Without realizing why, he decided to remain sitting. With perhaps ten hours of sleep in the last sixty hours, and the mission all but concluded, his body began to let down. He was so hungry, so dead tired!

“When did I have that stuff ta eat with Kuehl?” he asked himself, finding it difficult to concentrate. “Was that today? Sure, that was this mornin’, how stupid can I get?”

Wiley started in on one of the chocolate bars the Swede had given him and thought of Kuehl again. When had they had breakfast? Half conscious, he took off his knit cap and ran his fingers through his hair a number of times as he ate, scratching here and there. In what was almost a reflex, he took a drink from his canteen.

“Wonder if he got back? I can’t remember, he only had six miles ta go?” He was slurring his words. “He musta made it, musta.”

He took out a k-ration. At first he couldn’t remember why. Then he could barely muster the strength to tear off the wrapping and open the container.

“This tastes good,” he mumbled, without taking a bite.

His head ached. He set the ration down, no longer sure he was seeing it very clearly. His right foot, which he had twisted while being shot at the week before, throbbed. His head hung to one side. Exhaustion had such a grip on him that he drooled out the side of his mouth, not really aware of where he was. Though he sat upon an obnoxious-looking rock, it seemed completely blissful to him. He didn’t feel his carbine slide off his shoulder or hear it clunk onto the ground.

In this stupor, a scent came to him that he had not smelled in many months: peppermint ice cream. He loved peppermint ice cream!

“That’s a nice taste.” He stuck out his tongue to taste it. “Good, isn’t it?”

The smell and taste went away as mysteriously as they had come, which puzzled him. His brow furrowed. He stared into the darkness for a minute, completely oblivious to his surroundings. Another smell then wafted into his nostrils. He tilted his head back to make sure.

“It’s sugar maple trees!”

Soon the delicate smell went away as the peppermint had. Puzzled as to whether he had actually smelled anything real, he was bothered enough to blink his eyes and become more awake. Soon he was alert enough to get up. He picked up his rifle by the strap and started walking south, dragging the butt on the ground.

As the light remained dim, the chocolate began to do its magic. Soon he became fully conscious, making his way toward his lines more carefully. Many times he thought he heard something and ducked down, only to have minutes pass by with no untoward sounds at all. Periodically, he came toward lights that turned out to be from farmhouses or came upon roads. Twice he put the poncho over his head and checked his position and the time by match light.

The going was slower than he had expected, but by 0300 he figured he was within a mile of his lines. It was then that he began to encounter German troops. He crept past a campfire here and there, and sounds of men became common. The numbers were small, however, confirming his idea that the enemy had mostly pulled out. He was not challenged even once.

Just as Wiley came to the river, he heard some distant and muffled explosions to the west and sat down beneath a bush. In a few minutes, a large glow appeared on the horizon in that direction. He smiled.

“Well, I guess I’m not as dumb as I look,” he said to himself. “I’ll bet that was my train. You just never can tell.”

He watched for about ten minutes more, started out again, and soon made it to the water. The water level had receded in thirty-three hours, and he waded across without even losing his footing.

Soon he was challenged by sentries but had no trouble convincing them that he was an American. It was 0430. He smiled, knowing he had made it with time to spare.

Lieutenant Gummerson soon appeared. “Sergeant, you’re back!”

Wiley took a deep breath. “Yes, sir. I’d like ta make my report.”

Gummerson motioned Wiley up the hill toward the command tent. Still dripping wet, Wiley lifted the flap and saw a strange captain behind the desk.

Sergeant Bracey walked by. “Hey, Chip.”

Wiley walked toward the captain, who looked up with a frown. The scout saluted.

The officer looked up, returning the salute. “Sergeant?”

“Sergeant Wiley reporting, sir. I’m supposed ta report ta Captain Reddin’.”

“You will report to me, soldier. Redding’s at the aide station.”

“Bad, sir?”

“Nah, a couple of pieces of shrapnel in the shoulder. Tank he was standing next to got it from an eighty-eight. Report.”

“Sir, Private Kuehl and I were sent out ta get the photo cartridge from a . . .”

“Oh, yeah, Sergeant Bracey told me. Bracey!”

“Sir!”

“Sergeant, get me that report on replacements.” Looking completely uninterested, the officer motioned with his hand for Wiley to continue.

“Sir, Kuehl and I crossed the river at 1800 on the 23rd. We proceeded about six miles in the direction of the airplane, seein’ no enemy activity of any type. That’s when we saw a large concentration a armored vehicles headed north, SS stuff.”

“Yeah, we know all about that. Did you get the cartridge?”

“No, sir. It was already gone.”

“Doesn’t make any difference.”

“Sir?”

“We don’t need the intelligence, sergeant. Some guy in the Twenty-Sixth Regiment, up the line, captured a German colonel who told us everything we needed to know. Where’s this Kean guy?”

“Kuehl, sir. We split up, sir. I sent him back so he could tell you the enemy was movin’ north. I went on for the cartridge. He didn’t come back?”

The officer frowned again, picked something out of his teeth, and then lit a cigarette.

“Nope, haven’t seen him. So you lost a man and didn’t get the film. Well, don’t worry about it. Third Armored Division is moving north to deal with the SS boys, so we get a couple of days off. Since you haven’t been on the line, get some rest. We might want you to go out again tonight.”

“Yes, sir.”

Wiley saluted and walked out of the tent thinking about his friend. He shoulda gotten back. He had a straight shot. At the same time he knew the business of scouting was as dangerous as it got. Anythin’ coulda happened ta him.

The sky was just beginning to brighten. The scout shook his head and sighed. “It’s all just a pile of crap. I hate the Army.” Actually, he loved it.

Heinzeldorf

. . . but the mouth of them that speak lies shall be stopped.

—King David, 63rd Psalm

King James Bible

As the war in Europe slowly ground to a halt, Allied armies, having crossed the Rhine, rapidly pushed through Germany and its thousands of towns and cities. Most towns and cities gave up without a fight, while others were defended fiercely.

Western Germany, Company B, February 26, 1945, 1830 hours

Staff Sergeant Joseph “Chip” Wiley thought back on the previous two nights’ scouting missions.

The first night, with Private Dennis Walsh, was bad enough. Studying the best maps available at company headquarters for an hour, they’d decided to go to the left of the enemy position and then curve around into the town. It was actually a toss-up what side to probe. Captain Redding’s orders had been of no help in the decision at all.

“Look, you two,” Redding had said, looking up from his desk. “An advance element of A Company with a couple Jeeps and a half-track smashed into what they said was a very strong position going up the main road into that town, Heinzburg, ah, Heinzedorf, whatever.” Like everyone else, Redding was exhausted from being up for thirty-six hours straight. He went on.

“Ran into cannon and machine gun fire. Blew the hell out of one of the Jeeps. Killed Lou Fontana who was on point.”

“Damn,” Wiley said, saddened by the loss of one of the best guys they’d had. Then he asked the obvious question. “How’d we get the place if A Company got hung up?”

“Regiment redrew the line, so now we share the place. They’re talking about three companies being involved in this one, and there are other scouts out too, so watch out for them. We don’t care how you do this, but we want you to look the whole enemy position over.”

Then Redding called across the tent. “Hey, Oren, what the hell is the name of this damn town?”

“Which one?” Staff Sergeant Oren Bracey responded.

“This one!”

“Oh, yeah, it’s, ah, Hastenburg.”

“No, that was the last one!”

“Oh. Yeah! I’m looking. Ah, Heinzeldorf. Yeah, Heinzeldorf.”

“Really? Heinzeldorf ?”

“Yeah!”

Redding turned back toward Wiley and Walsh, and shrugged. “Hell, I got one right! Anyway, I want you two lowlifes to scout this place and find a way to attack at 0600 tomorrow.” He looked at his watch. “That gives you nearly ten hours to get in and out and make your report. Any questions?”

“No, sir,” Wiley said, and the stocky little black-haired Walsh nodded.

The two men got their gear together and left when it became dark enough, about 1900. Neither of them had seen the ground during daylight hours, so the going was slow. It was completely black outside.

The first thing they ran into, just after they thought they’d crossed the lines, was some kind of canal or pond. It was about twenty feet wide and went on for maybe fifty feet or more. Wiley never did figure out what it was. He pushed Walsh, and they went around to the right.

In another thirty minutes, the moon rose and they could see much more. Soon, they happened upon what became the focal point of Wiley’s life for the next three days: a sunken road. It wasn’t on the map they had studied. They had no idea where the thing went to the left but thought the right probably led to the town.

With the fall leaves on the ground, the men decided in whispers it would be too noisy to rustle around in the brush. They walked down the side of the road instead.

Soon, it curved and headed up a slight rise in the direction of Heinzeldorf, which they could now see some of, at least the darkened shapes of some buildings. Wiley and Walsh followed it. As they expected, it led directly into the town. They saw no one.

The emptiness did not put Wiley at ease. The quiet brought to mind a feeling he’d had many times before while scouting: that they were advancing into some sort of trap.

Finally, they reached the edge of town and stepped onto the cobblestones that had been part of so many of these German towns for hundreds of years. The place was completely blacked out. After the first block, they went through to a parallel street. Occasionally over the next half-hour, they saw a light here and there and once dodged a dog. They moved carefully, stooping and whispering, concluding that most of the residents had probably fled when A Company approached and was fired upon.

Wiley was beginning to doubt that they were walking into any trap. In another half-hour they’d reached the little town’s center. There was some sort of large statue they could barely see crowning the square. It took a while to conclude that the road they’d been following ended in a new road just after the statue.

“I’ll bet this new road is the main road,” Walsh said, an inch from Wiley’s ear. “If we follow it to the right, it’ll bring us down to the back of their position.” Wiley nodded.

They started to the right, crossing the new road. Still, they saw no one, either soldiers or civilians. They pushed out the other side of the town, where the road became sunken again.

Walsh whispered in Wiley’s ear. “Hey, Chip, I don’t think a tank could even get up the steep sides of this thing.”

The road did head back toward the Allied lines. Soon, Wiley and Walsh saw their first soldier, barely visible walking guard duty, flapping his arms together in an attempt to stay warm. The German position had to be only a short distance ahead.

They managed to elude the sentry by going through what appeared to be a park. Sounds of activity were welling up out of the darkness all around them: men talking, then, one after another, three large motors starting. They roared a few minutes and then stopped.

Wiley and Walsh huddled again.

“Damn, Chip, I know a Panther’s diesel when I hear one,” Walsh hissed. “Let’s get the hell out of here!”

“You got it, pal.”

The men crept around a corner of a house and then halted. Not fifteen feet away was the outline of a squad of Germans, marching directly toward them!

Wiley thought fast. Even though they’d been seen, it was so dark that the enemy soldiers probably had no idea they were Americans. A man who was probably a sergeant motioned toward them. Wiley swept Walsh around, and the two men joined the enemy. No one said anything. The strange procession continued back toward town for several hundred yards until it rounded another corner.

There was a low stone wall running along the road here. Wiley pushed Walsh out of the line, and they flopped down behind it, Wiley scraping his left leg on it as they did.

Surprisingly, the Germans did not come back looking for them. Wiley had to think no one in the unit had noticed.

It was about 0300 and cold. Wiley guessed it was at least below freezing. He and Walsh huddled, whispering about what to do next. Finally, they decided to cut across below the town, hopefully not making too much noise in the leaves. They looked around sharply at every sound, expecting to be challenged at any moment. It took forty minutes to make it back to the curve in the road where they’d started. They were almost home.

Suddenly, not forty feet in front of them, a vehicle started, and its spotlight caught the men directly in its beam. In an instant, they both bolted toward their lines with the light fully on them. The loud RAT–AT–AT of a machine gun, an MG 42, opened up, dozens of bullets hitting all around them.

The spotlight illuminated the outline of the canal in front of them. They ran for it and jumped in. But just as they dove, Wiley saw Walsh take a hit in the back.

Firing began from the American lines and the light went out, but it was too late for Walsh. The water was near freezing. While their fellow soldiers fished them out in only a minute or so and Walsh was able to stand, within thirty seconds he fell over and lost consciousness.

Wiley didn’t really remember being hauled to the aid station. He vaguely registered the medics working on Walsh for a long time, finally stepping away from the private’s still form.

After the medics checked him over, some of the other soldiers packed Wiley into a Jeep and headed out. Shivering, with two blankets still around him, he found his reception at headquarters about 0430 less than what he’d expected. In the main tent, Captain Redding was talking with Captain Eugene Alvarez, the long-time commander of A Company. Soon Alvarez left, and Redding turned to Wiley.

“All right, Chip, what ya got?”

“Sir, Walsh and I saw the whole place, or at least most of it. The German left flank is wide open. There’s a sunken road that leads right up ta the town, one of those cobblestone places, stone buildings, statues, the whole deal.”

“You fall in a river?”

“Yeah.”

“Where’s Walsh? He fall in too?”

“He’s dead, bullet in the back. We were just real unlucky. Ran inta a scout car or truck that had a spotlight and an MG 42.”

Redding looked upset. “Damn. Sorry.”

“Yeah . . .”

“He just got a letter from . . . looks like from his wife in Baltimore.”

“Yeah.” Wiley was feeling numb and dopey from the cold.

“So, the left flank’s open?”

“Yeah, these guys are thin, sir. We saw almost no one.”

“So we could go right up the main road?”

“No! We didn’t see that.” Wiley wondered what the captain was talking about. He repeated himself. “We went around the left and inta the town. It dumps inta the main road, which we followed outta town toward our lines. The whole place is like a half circle.”

“So, you didn’t see their actual positions?”

“No. But we sure as hell came close.”

“Chip, I got to tell you that some guys from A Company went out, came back in an hour or so ago, and said the place to attack is up the main road.”

“That’s bullshit, sir,” Wiley said, puzzled and half-angry. “I don’t see it. Sir, we heard heavy motor sounds, Panthers for sure, when we came out the other side of town on that road. You know how they gotta keep those diesels running every hour on those things. We heard three motors shut off, one after the other. They had ta be very close ta the main road.”

“Well, Alvarez was just here. He’s going to Colonel Pope at the Twenty-Sixth Infantry right now to push for an attack up the main road.”

“What the hell’s wrong with the left?”

“I have no idea.”

Redding got on the phone to the infantry regiment. In a few minutes, someone told him that the attack would indeed be up the main road. He insisted on talking with Pope. Wiley listened wearily. Redding kept trying to speak, breaking off his sentences as Pope broke in on the other end. Apparently, the man’s mind was made up.

Redding finally said, “Yes, sir,” and hung up. He turned to Wiley. “Shit. Chip, they didn’t buy any part of it.” He frowned. “I’m sorry about Walsh.”

“Yeah.”

“Try to get some sleep. You’ve got a few hours before things start.”

Wiley headed wearily back to his tent. He picked up his poncho, into which he had crudely sewn a blanket. Some of the men had German women sew the blankets in, and their “viel fleckens” even had pockets. Wiley’s sewing job wasn’t nearly as good, but it provided extra warmth, which was the important thing.

He put the poncho hood up and put his helmet on over it. He closed his eyes and slept in fitful dozes, each interrupted by his starting awake, dread heavy in the pit of his stomach.

The attack, which Wiley and his squad participated in, commenced in four hours. It proved a disaster, with three Sherman tanks destroyed and forty casualties, including fifteen dead.

When the men returned from the attack, with wounded men being carted by and the cries of others left on the field fresh on the minds of everyone, Redding sent for Wiley.

“Look, Chip.” Redding’s voice was dull and sad. “I suppose you know what they want.”

“Tonight again?”

“Yes. Are you up to this?”

“Why not?” Wiley didn’t even try to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “What am I supposed ta do this time?”

“Same damn thing.”

“I figured. What’d they do ta those jerks who said the main road was clear?”

Redding leaned forward. “They blamed it on you, pal.”

“What?! What’re you sayin’?”

“They’re saying you and Walsh went in there and made so much noise that the enemy thought we were going to attack the main road and moved back in! Pope bought it.”

“You can’t be serious! Those guys never moved in the first place. They were there when Dennis and I scouted, and they were still there when we attacked.”

“These other guys are from Pope’s old company. They’re calling you two real shitheads.”

“Who are the guys?”

“That’s not important. Hey, I know that look on your face. Now soldier, Chip, give it the hell up. It’s done!”

“Sir, we scouted. Sometimes people see ya, and shoot at ya, and kill ya when ya scout. So they saw us, shot at us, and killed Walsh. But they didn’t even see us in town on the damn main road. Walsh was shot 150 yards from this goddamn spot.” Wiley slammed his fist down on the desk. “That’s on the left a the line! That must be a good nine hundred damn yards from their position, so how in hell could we a mucked up?”

Redding sighed. “I have no idea. It’s done. Take Dietrich.”

“No!”

Redding looked at Wiley. “I know you like to go alone, but that’s orders. Comes straight from Pope himself. The mission is to be done by two men.”

“Crap.” Wiley was too tired to complain much. But he had to ask. “Why Dietrich?”

“He knows a little German. Why, what do you have against him?”

“Nothing.”

“Get some rest.”

“Sure.” Wiley spun around and stalked out of the tent.

At dark, the ever-present Sergeant Bracey nudged Wiley awake. “Chip.”

Wiley, all warm in his poncho, yawned and then blinked a few times. He’d been thinking of a dark-haired girl in Columbia, South Carolina. Just a kid when he’d last seen her, but he’d been thinking of her more and more. She’d be grown up by now. But she probably wouldn’t want anything to do with a guy like him.

He stood up, slowly, stiff with cold. The last mission came back to his mind. He thought: Did I mess that up and get Dennis killed? No. I can’t see it. No! Damn, it feels even colder than last night.

He turned to Bracey, who was still standing there to make sure he got up. “Where’s Dietrich?”

“Loadin’ up his canteen. He’s ready to go. We got some slop for you at the cook tent. At least it’s hot.”

“Thanks. There’s no hurry in this; they’re always on the guard at nightfall.”

Again the last mission played in his head. As tired as he was, it was easy to blame himself. It was hard to think he might have caused someone’s death.

Distracted, unbelievably tired, Wiley made the mistake of splashing water from his canteen on his face. It was so cold that it jolted him and gave him a sharp pain in one eye. He winced and slowly walked toward the water vehicle, yawned again, and almost tripped over a tree root.

“Even German roots hate me,” he muttered.

He thought over the last mission as he got his gear together. What, exactly, had gone wrong? Maybe they shouldn’t have gone through those leaves coming back.

He felt a little better as he checked in his right pocket for the little Colt .25 pistol his grandfather had given him. Its metal was warm, which made him a little uncomfortable. Then he took his .45 out of the holster and ejected the clip. He saw that it had the full nine shots, stuffed the clip back in, and pushed it back into the holster.

He gathered a few other things and joined Dietrich for chow. They talked most of an hour about how to handle the mission and then shoved off.

If anything, that second night began even darker than the first. But Wiley knew the ground this time, and Dietrich proved easy to work with, so they made good progress. In an hour and a half, they crossed the lines and came to the curve in the road where the vehicle had shot Walsh. They startled a deer about halfway into town. Finally, they arrived at the cobblestones at the edge of town.

“Nobody here,” Wiley whispered to Dietrich.

The moon rose, much brighter than the previous night. The two men decided to wait until the clouds obscured the light again. The town was as quiet as the night before, with very few lights.

Suddenly, a door opened, and they were caught in a bright and blinding light! There was a boy in the doorway, perhaps a Hitler Youth. He yelled the alarm and kept yelling it.

Wiley pointed the little Colt right at the boy’s face. He wanted to fire as the stupid kid continued to yell, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he and Dietrich bolted off.

Bullets flew around them as they ran, some hitting buildings behind them, some hitting the pavement in front of them. One hit Dietrich in the left thigh. He fell against Wiley, and both men went sprawling.

In a second, they were up again, Dietrich limping badly. They ran around a corner and up a block. In desperation, Wiley kicked open the door of a darkened house, and the men rushed inside and collapsed in a corner. He reached for his .45 and cocked it, expecting the door to burst open at any moment.

“Sorry, Chip,” Dietrich gasped. “I should have shot that damn kid but I couldn’t.”

“Me neither.” Wiley knew he should look over at Dietrich, but he couldn’t. He had to watch the door. “Shit, truth is we been lucky ta get as far as we did. Town on alert’s bound ta be expectin’ scouts.”

Dietrich didn’t answer. At the same instant, Wiley felt something warm on the cold floor. He touched it and knew right away that it was blood.

“Jack, talk to me!”

Dietrich could barely speak. “Don’ worry . . . get me up . . . I can . . . I can . . . wal . . . k.”

Wiley hadn’t had any idea the man was so badly hurt. He pulled out a small flashlight and saw a gaping wound in Dietrich’s leg. It was obvious that the man was going into shock, maybe bleeding to death.

Wiley’s stomach lurched. He thought: I’ll be damned if this is goin’ ta happen ta my partner again. I’ll give myself up if I hafta.

He bandaged Dietrich as well as he could, the flashlight giving the only light in the evidently empty house. He managed to pick him up and open the door to the street, half expecting an avalanche of bullets to crash into them. There was nothing, no lights, no alarm, no troops.

Wiley walked along several streets, the completely limp Dietrich slung over his shoulders. He spotted a dim light in a house ahead.

He trotted up as fast as he could while carrying Dietrich’s weight. He pounded hard on the door with the butt of the .45, glad he knew enough German to yell something: “Raus mit im!”

He pounded on the door again, put Dietrich down on the doorstep, and ran to an alleyway two doors down. He peered around the corner.

The edge of the door opened, emitting a line of light. Wiley heard voices speaking, surprised-sounding German. He watched as, slowly, someone pulled Dietrich inside.

That’s the best I can do for you, pally, he thought. Hopefully, whoever lived there would try to help Dietrich, not kill him.

Wiley went down the alleyway, headed for the edge of town. He thought for a minute that he should go back to his lines. Then the weight of everything descended on him. He knew he had to find out the truth about the enemy positions.

Maybe I killed Dennis and got Dietrich shot. Maybe I been gettin’ my guys killed and captured all along. The idea had been in the back of his mind for some time. The guys who scout with me all get it one way or another.

He knew the enemy would certainly be on the alert. The logical thing to do was to go back to his lines, but he couldn’t do that. He had to prove everything that had happened wasn’t his fault. It wouldn’t bring his friends back, but he could prove that he’d been right in what he’d found. It mattered very little to him that he was risking his life, perhaps throwing it away.

As carefully as he could, knowing that they must be looking for him, Wiley made his way out of town toward the German positions. He got closer this time.

He crept through the darkness for nearly two hours, noting the position of troops and the three tanks. The Germans hadn’t moved at all! He couldn’t see why the other scouts would have lied, but they had!

Wiley headed back around 0200, passing over to his lines at nearly 0400. As before, he made his report to Captain Redding and went back to his poncho-blanket for a couple of hours of rest.

As soon as he awoke that morning, Wiley went over to the main tent. The first thing he saw as he walked in was Redding, pacing and smoking a cigarette, obviously upset.

The captain spotted Wiley. “Sergeant, you won’t believe this. I told them what you found last night. They just called and told us the attack’s going up the main road, just like before!”

Wiley stared. “What?”

“Don’t, don’t even ask me,” Redding said. “I’ve been up all night with this. The same guys that had us attack up the main road and were wrong as hell still have Colonel Pope’s ear. They told him the Germans had moved out of the place.”

“That’s ridiculous! I was just there! There are Germans up and down that main road.”

“Pope’s friends think they must have gotten in after you. Could they have pulled out after you did?”

“No! When I saw ’em they weren’t showing signs a goin’ anywhere! You know how long it takes ta move tanks and equipment. Those bastards are out-and-out lying!”

Wiley looked Redding right in the eye.

“Well, then they’re going to kill us, because the orders have been cut and they tell me they can’t be changed.”

“Great.” Wiley sighed. “Let me get my squad ready.”

The attack was another disaster, with more tanks and men lost, including two of Wiley’s close friends. By noon, it was all over, and the survivors had returned to the company.

Wiley sat silent in his tent, thinking. McMurtha never could hit anythin’ with a rifle, so, naturally, we called him “Long Shot.”

Wiley’s mind wandered, thinking about the time they’d seen a deer on patrol. McMurtha had emptied an entire eight-shot clip at the animal, from less than a hundred yards away, and missed every time! The men had gotten a big laugh out of it. Now he was dead.

He refused to wear anythin’ but that damn Boston Red Sox baseball hat, backwards, and the shrapnel from that shell went right through the cap and killed him. Wouldn’t have gone through a helmet. Yeah, he had his faults takin’ advantage a recruits in card games and such, but if anyone ever needed somethin’, he’d come up with it after a while, whatever it was.

He closed his eyes, mopped his hair, and felt pieces of something or other that he didn’t bother to remove. Depressed, he scratched under his chin. In Sicily, once a bullet had barely creased the underside, and now, half a year later, it itched maddeningly. It had itched ever since.

And the Swede, Jeff Torgeson. Now that’s a good man. I called him the “Big Dumb Swede,” just ’cause he was high class; he never once complained. But the truth was he was about the smartest guy I ever knew. I was the dummy! He sat with me a hundred times correctin’ my English, showin’ me proper manners. He respected me. College man, Indiana University, or somethin’ like that. He taught me things and made me feel not so much like a shithead. Mostly, he told me ta try ta let go of the bad things I had growin’ up.

Wiley breathed hard, thinking about how the bullet had hit Torgeson in the shoulder and spun him around.

I hope he’s okay. So, it’s been two bad nights, two bad attacks.

He went to sleep.

No one could remember Colonel Pope ever being in such a rage before. For two days, the regiment had butted its head into the German position, taken terrible casualties, gotten nowhere. Now they were being ordered to attack a third time.

“What do you mean, we have to attack tomorrow at 0600?” he yelled into the phone. His face was turning an alarming shade of fuchsia. “That can’t be done. I’ll remind you that the casualty rates yesterday and today amount to twenty percent of the assault groups. We face dug-in Tiger tanks in a position that commands the entire goddamn valley. We’re like fish in a barrel here, and you want me to attack? Without air support, that can’t be done! We have four tanks left! Let me talk to the general.”

There was a long pause.

“General?”

The men at headquarters—a major, several captains, half a dozen lieutenants, and numerous clerks—stood paralyzed. They could hear the voice squalling at the other end of the phone.

“Sir. . . . Yes, sir. . . . We . . . I . . . Yes, sir!”

Pope dropped the phone, and the clerk put it up. The colonel sat for several minutes, with no one in the tent daring to speak.

Then he sprang up again, as belligerent as before. “Where are those goddamn scouts?”

One of the clerks ran out. A few minutes later, he returned with the scouts in tow: Sergeant Wiley on one side, and Sergeant Belser and the four other men in his squad on the other.

“What’s this I hear?” Pope snapped at them. “Two groups go out twice and come back with completely different intelligence. You,” he said to Wiley, “you told Captain Redding something about a road.”

Wiley stepped forward. His uniform showed signs of wear and tear, with dirt over a great portion of it and what looked like grease smeared over some of the rest of it and on his face.

Pope eyed him. “Soldier, you look terrible. You’re a disgrace to the uniform.”

Wiley stiffened a bit. “Yes, sir.”

“Well?”

“Sir, there’s a road, a sunken road, that aims behind the entire enemy position.”

The colonel looked indignant. “Behind their entire position?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I suppose you’ve seen this road.”

“Yes, sir. Walsh and I walked along it two nights ago. I was on it again last night with Dietrich.”

“So where the hell are Walsh and Dietrich to confirm your story? I don’t see them here.”

“Walsh was in the aid station down the road, sir. And Dietrich was captured.”

“All right,” Pope said, motioning to two MPs. “You two go and carry Walsh back here. He’s wounded, I take it.”

“He died, sir, bullet in the back.”

“So you have no one to confirm your story.”

Wiley bristled. “No, sir.”

“You, Belser, what about your group?” the colonel asked. “You told us yesterday that the main road was clear, and we bloodied ourselves hitting it.”

The stocky thirty-year-old spoke up. “Sir, it was clear when we saw it. From what I hear, this guy goes in there, stomps around, and the Germans get the idea and move their people around.”

“So, what about last night?”

“We didn’t see anyone on the main road at all. But there’s no telling. Now we hear Wiley goes over again and makes a mess of it, so who knows?”

“But the main road was clear.”

“Yes.” The other four men in his squad nodded.

Redding spoke up. “Could I have a word with the colonel?”

“Yes, captain.”

The two men edged over to one side of the tent. Everyone inside could hear every word they said.

“Colonel, may I suggest that Sergeant Wiley might just be telling the truth?”

“It’s the word of five men against his,” the colonel said incredulously. “What possible reason would he have for making up such a story?”

“What possible reason would those five men have for making up such a story?” Pope replied, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

“I know those men are with your former outfit, sir. But look at their uniforms. They’re clean. Those men haven’t been anywhere.”

With that, Sergeant Bracey waved all of the men in the tent except the five clerks outside.

Sergeant Belser and his group went to the edge of the next tent. Wiley followed them.

“You shitheads! You tell the colonel you lied!” he shouted.

“Ahh, fuck off, asshole!” Belser responded.

In less than a second, Wiley had drawn his .45. In front of all of the men, he cocked it and pointed it at Belser’s head. Belser froze.

Completely calm, Wiley walked over to Belser and grabbed him by the throat. “First, I’m gonna shoot off your goddamn ear.”

Belser tried to get away, but Wiley only tightened his grip.

“Wiley, you’re insa . . . You’ll fa . . .” Belser managed to get out.

The other members of Belser’s group stepped back, looking horrified. None had their rifles. Belser was the only one with a sidearm, and he was in no shape to draw it out of his holster.

“Then,” Wiley continued, “I’m gonna shoot your nose off. You’ll look real funny without a nose.”

A lieutenant spoke up. “Soldier, you’d better stop right now. This is a court-martial offense.”

Another man spoke up, voice tense: “A lot of us might get killed in the attack tomorrow morning unless Wiley really is telling the truth. I’ll put my money on him. Let’s see what happens.”

Wiley paid no attention. He was too busy staring into Belser’s frightened eyes.

“Then,” Wiley told him, just as determinedly, “I’m gonna put this gun in your mouth and blow your goddamn lyin’ brains all over that tent behind you. No one’s gonna call me a liar.”

The word liar echoed in Wiley’s head—not in Belser’s voice, but in the slurred, drunken tones of his father, so long ago.

“Every man here’s life is on the line because of you and your asshole pals. For once, tell the truth. Or for damn sure I’ll . . . blow . . . your . . . head . . . right . . . off. If I have ta spend the rest of my life in Fort Leavenworth, I’ll do it!” he shouted.

Belser, panicking, found himself wishing to own up to his lie. But he could not speak.

“That’s just fine, you coward,” Wiley growled. “Three seconds and the ear goes.”

Private Melton piped up. “Yes, yes, we lied!” He lowered his voice in shame. “We lied. We hid over at that schoolhouse both nights. We even joked about it and drew on the board. We didn’t go across the lines, just as you said. Belser said there was no use us getting killed too . . . to just say what he said.”

Private Alters spoke up: “Yeah, that’s all true. And after the first night, we had to say Wiley was lying.”

By this time Belser was crying and looking at the men around him, who stared back. Someone—Wiley was never sure who—said quietly: “He would’ve gotten us killed to save his own skin.”

Wiley let go of the sergeant, who fell against the side of the tent. As he scurried off, several of the men kicked at him and cursed him. The next day he was busted to private and transferred out of the regiment with the other four.

The two officers who had watched a foolish offensive destroy their commands were embroiled in their own argument. The words went back and forth for several minutes until the colonel had finally had enough.

“I don’t like your attitude, captain.”

The normally calm Redding answered indignantly. “May I also point out that my command has borne the brunt of your offensive the last two days, costing my company nearly thirty percent casualties?”

“Well, captain, maybe your company could use a change of leadership,” the colonel snapped.

With that, Redding blew up completely. “Then do it! Relieve me!”

“Morton!” a voice came from the entrance of the tent. Both officers turned to see Colonel Jacob B. Karns III from First Division headquarters.

Karns walked toward the men who, still boiling, said no more. His entrance into the tent created a sensation. None of the clerks moved an inch. He was not especially tall or short, fat or thin. But he was one of those men whose persona dominates a room and hides any idea of his age or size, which, later, no one could recall. Everything about him spoke of a man of authority, a man to whom power was a familiar tool. Not surprisingly, with the appearance of a commanding general, all of the many collateral conversations among the overworked clerks ceased instantly. But Karns had none of the usual loudness and bluster of a general, traits which these men had no respect for at all. Instead, he instantly created a martial spirit inexplicable to any logic. Those present stood ready to do his bidding, despite having no idea who he was.

The men gawked as Karns took off his camel hair overcoat, the likes of which none of them had ever seen. It yielded a man immaculate from head to foot. His shoes glistened, and his uniform fit so perfectly that it seemed an actual part of his body. He was clean too, which made him stand out among these men who could not even hazard a guess when they had last bathed. The rest was his demeanor. Completely calm and emotionless, Karns had the look of a competitor who awaits a great contest supremely confident that he will dominate its every phase. It was not the look of a friend or an enemy but of a man to be feared. As even his friends said of him, “He’s half electric shock and the other half we don’t even want to talk about.”

Karns, whose father was an assistant chief of staff of the Army in Washington, motioned calmly to the clerks in the tent. “You men clear out.”

In seconds, the tent looked like an empty warehouse. With the composure that was to make him a four-star general, Karns spoke almost offhandedly to the two officers. “You two have got to stop this.” He sat with calm dignity, as though he were holding court. “You need to step back.”

Although he did not mean it literally, both Pope and Redding stepped back.

“Mort,” Karns said, emphasizing the colonel’s name and talking so casually as to seem disinterested. “I can only imagine the disaster that would befall this storied regiment, which attacked the heights of Chalpultapec, if you relieved Redding here and now and then you got relieved tomorrow. I don’t need to remind either of you that many a brave man has sacrificed his life for us in the last two days. Whatever else we do, we must not dishonor their memories.”

The two arguers nodded almost reverently. Karns motioned, and the two sat.

“I was outside just long enough to hear Wiley, whose work is well known to us, put the jolt into some other men I took to be scouts as well. Actually, he said he would blow one of their brains out unless he told the truth.”

“That’s a court-martial offense!” Pope said indignantly.

The young colonel’s tone turned condescending. “Mort, this one is never going to see the inside of a courtroom! Not one of those men will testify against that man if he is right and he saves them from a hopeless attack. I would not testify against him myself. That’s a tough man. I would believe anything he told me.

“Besides, afterward, without further ado, the other scouts came clean in front of twenty-five or so witnesses and said that they just made up their reports, which unfortunately we bought.” By this time, the colonel and captain had calmed down. “Captain, if you would not mind stepping out for a moment.”

As Redding left, Karns leaned toward Pope and lowered his voice.

“Look, Mort, I will spill the whole plate. I am sure you have figured out by now that I am here officially. The general is concerned enough to send me down here. I won’t mince words.”

He looked Pope directly in the eyes.

“If you fail to attack tomorrow at 0600, or fail to take Heinzeldorf, I have orders to relieve you of this command, and you will be on the next plane stateside. We know you have a good record. No one, and I mean this sincerely, no one wants you relieved. But you must know that Bradley and Ike are behind this bloodbath one hundred percent. It’s some stupid game of Ike’s to convince the British up north that we can fight. They have put a lot of pressure on the general and all of the division commanders.”

He shook his head in disgust. “They are going to use you up, and if you cannot do the job, they are going to put me in here and use me up too. I can tell you, the last thing I want personally is to come back to a regimental command.”

“Thanks for telling me,” Pope said, looking at the ground and nodding slowly.

“Besides that one, the general wants you to give battlefield promotions to qualified noncoms, sergeants.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. We hear that the supply of officers is not too strong for the next two months. You are going to have to make some of your own. That’s the story. All right,” Karns said, his tone turning half bored. “I’ll just sit over here and spy. You won’t even see me.”

“Thanks for the lowdown,” Pope said.

Karns nodded, took up his overcoat, and went to sit in the corner.

Pope turned and yelled for his clerk, Sergeant Justin Romero, to get everyone else back in the tent. As Wiley came back in, Pope motioned for him to come back to the map table. “Sergeant Wiley.”

“Yes, sir!” Wiley wondered if his ordeal before Pope would continue. Or maybe he was about to be arrested.

“All right, sergeant, tell me again. Use this map.” Pope twisted a map around so that the dirty and exhausted young man could demonstrate.

“Sir, the Germans are dug in here just below the town.”

“Tiger tanks?”

“No, not that we saw or heard. We saw three Panthers, here, here, and . . . about here.” He pointed on the map. “Germans are dug in and have Panzerfausts (a bazooka type weapon) all over the place. They haven’t moved anythin’ in the last two days that I can tell.”

“Any eighty-eights?”

“No, not that we saw. Sir, we’d need the six Shermans we lost yesterday, and probably twenty more tanks, ta blast through there.”

“What about the road you said you came in on?”

“It’s a sunken lane really, not on your map, runs here.” Wiley pointed. “But we actually measured it, and it’s wide enough for a tank destroyer. Here’s where we picked it up. It’s sunken about two feet, steep sides. Then it goes north toward the town. Right here in the middle of town, it runs inta the main road. The left goes north somewhere, as it shows here, while the right goes down ta the back of the position we’ve been attacking. As it leaves town, it goes sunken again. The sides are two, three feet high a some kinda rock like flagstone that’s stacked up. A tank can’t get outta it once it gets down in there. If we start our tank destroyer on the sunken road on our left, advance inta town and get inta the sunken road, even if it gets blasted, they’d be trapped. But you’ll have ta have that tank destroyer with the seventy-six-millimeter cannon. You know a seventy-five on a Sherman doesn’t have the velocity to handle a Panther.”

“Redding, we only have that one tank destroyer left?” the colonel asked.

“Yes, sir.”

The colonel’s mind was racing. He talked quietly, every officer in the tent knowing that his thoughts would become orders soon enough.

“We’d need several bazookas and two fifty-caliber machine guns, just in case they have some half-tracks stashed somewhere that Wiley didn’t see. Let’s send in A Company on Wiley’s road, with the weapons platoon on the point and the other two platoons coming behind it. They’ll come through town and attack the enemy position from behind as the other two companies attack up the main road as a diversion. I hope to hell you’re right, soldier. That leaves us very weak up front if they attack with those tanks.”

“May I say somethin’, sir?” Wiley asked.

The colonel thought for a minute and then turned Wiley’s way. “Go ahead.”

“They’re thin, sir.” The scout shook his head. “There were no guards hardly anywhere. I doubt from what we saw that they got enough men or supplies ta resist long. If we block that sunken road, I think they’ll give up.”

The colonel thought for a full minute, weighing his options. Finally, he said, “We have no choice. All right!” He looked at Redding. “Captain, I want you to be in command.”

“Yes, sir!”

Completely calm now, Pope nodded toward Wiley. “Son, I want you to lead this. If you pull this off and live through it, I will see you to a battlefield commission, tomorrow.”

“I thank the colonel,” Wiley said, as he saluted.

There were a few hours to rest before the attack began. As he sat against a tree, huddled in his poncho, Wiley wondered if he could still be arrested and about Dietrich and Torgeson. His clothes itched badly. He could not recall how long they had been on his body. Was it months or just weeks? He had a strange thought, wondering if the enemy could smell him.

That’s stupid, he thought. But he really wasn’t sure it was stupid at all. He had seen inside many a German home in the last few weeks and knew that they had a higher standard of living than he’d seen in the States. They were educated and cultured, just as he wished to be. He hated them for what they had and what they had done to his friends. In twenty minutes, in complete exhaustion, he finally went to sleep.

He was awakened by someone tapping his shoulder. He looked up. It was Sergeant Bracey.

“All right, Chip, captain says it’s time.”

“Okay. I was just thinkin’ about the last two attacks. I hope this one’s better.”

Bracey turned away. “I learned a long time ago, Chip, that thinking about this war is just a really bad idea.”

“Okay, Sarge, I know you’re right.” Wiley watched him walk away.

In about twenty minutes, he was on the sunken road for the third night in a row. The artillery barrage commenced right on time, 0500. Wiley could see the shells flying right into the enemy position, perhaps nine hundred yards off to the right.

Unlike the previous nights, he walked alone directly down the middle of the dirt road, defying anyone to shoot at him. It was foolhardy, since anyone could have put a bullet in him, and he was the only person left who knew the enemy position. But he was bone-tired, and tired men don’t make very good choices.

The weapons platoon and the tank destroyer were about one hundred yards behind him. The enemy appeared as lax as before, evidently so thin as to not even have anyone close enough to hear the tank destroyer.

The bright winter moon occasionally peeked through the clouds, just as it had the night before. Soon Wiley came up to the cobblestones at the edge of the town. There wasn’t a single light on anywhere. But, as always, he was wary of a trap, so he waited.

The lead elements of the platoon came up, led by Sergeant Larry Betters. Nothing happened. Wiley felt relieved that he’d told the colonel the enemy was so thin as to not even place sentries on the road.

With the tank going ahead, he took two squads and went down the parallel street. They passed the doorway where Dietrich had been shot. Wiley silently lamented that he had not shot the boy.

I’d be glad ta shoot him the next time. It was a pointless thing to think, hoping Dietrich was alive in some German hospital. They passed the same doorways, saw the same boot on the stoop of the same house, the same pots that might hold flowers again in the spring. Wiley wondered if he would still be alive in the spring.

After what seemed a long time, they came to the statue, some guy on a horse. The road ended there, and they turned right toward the back of the enemy position and their own lines. Wiley began to feel confident that the trap would work, strung on the enemy and not on them. Just a few more yards, and they could spring their trap and the Germans would be in the bag.

Then an ugly thought came into his head. I never saw the far side of the German position, the American right. Maybe they can retreat there.

Wiley settled for what seemed likely. “Well, at least we’ll take the town.”

As they edged out the other side of the town, Wiley turned to Betters. “Larry, send your point men ahead. We’re close enough ta the position.”

“Okay, Chip.”

Betters motioned to his guys, and they went forward. In another couple of minutes, Wiley heard rifle fire. At the same moment, someone touched him on the arm. He turned to see Captain Redding.

“What’s up, Chip?”

“Sir, we need to stop the barrage! It hides the sound of the tank destroyer real good, but we’re close ta comin’ in contact with it. Betters and his men are ahead and came in contact with the Germans.”

They both heard the rifle fire continue.

“Yes, I’ve done that.”

They could see fairly well by this time, with all of the fires their artillery had started up.

“Captain! See that wall over there, forty yards out? What about the tank destroyer behind that? It won’t be long before one a those Panthers comes lumberin’ up this road. That seventy-six right there’ll fix those guys real good.”

“If we leave the TD on the road,” Redding argued, “even if they blow it up, they’re trapped.”

“Well, sir, we haven’t seen their left flank. If we put the TD over there, maybe it can cover that too.”

“Okay. That’s good.” Redding turned to the TD commander behind him. “Sergeant Pettibone, get your tank behind that stone wall over there as fast as you can. You know what to do.”

“Yes, sir,” the man said, saluting.

“Lieutenant?” Lieutenant Gummerson was standing behind Redding. “Bill, you take the part of the field on both sides of this road. Get four bazooka men and spread them out. Take one of the fifties. See that house there by the road?” He pointed.

“Yes, sir,” Gummerson replied.

“That second floor window on this corner looks like it’ll give you a good field of fire. Get a thousand rounds up there. I want Chip here in the middle near the TD, and I’ll handle the other flank.”

“Yes, sir!” Wiley and Gummerson said at the same time.

By 0600, as the two companies began their attack up the main road on the front of the German line, the TD had backed up the road, into the town, and come over behind the stone wall. It was just in time. The ground began to shake slightly as one of the Panthers began to grind up the hill from somewhere below.

The dawn’s light became better with every passing second. It was becoming more and more obvious that putting the tank behind the stone wall was a good idea. It commanded the sunken road and a great area below of about three hundred yards’ width. Unseen, the TD held its fire as the much greater German weapon came slowly up, perpendicular to its cannon. Only forty yards off, the seventy-six-millimeter sounded. The Panther stopped and soon caught fire. Wiley nearly cheered.

As the gun fired, a young private darted past it. Wiley tried to shout a warning, but it was too late. He watched, helpless, as the private ran right into the line of fire. The blast knocked the boy down, and he was still.

It had begun to snow. Wiley stared down at the handsome boy, only a year or two younger than himself. His face was unmarked and so peaceful! He looks like he just went ta sleep! Wiley thought.

As he turned away, a bullet struck him in the left side and spun him around. He fell on his back.

He lay there on the cold ground, stunned, not feeling any pain yet. He couldn’t get up.

For a few minutes, he was fully alert and completely aware of what went on around him. He could see peripherally all the chaos of the battle: men running by him, one inadvertently stepping on him, the sounds of the cannon firing and of shells hitting nearby.

But in a few minutes, his body began to cool. He drifted into the ethereal world of shock, no longer registering outside sensory data. He lay in suspended animation, feeling no pain, wonderfully comfortable, each minute shaving a fraction of a degree from his body temperature.

“Chip,” the voice came to him softly, “Chip.”

He knew it was his mother, though he could not ever remember seeing her. But he saw her so clearly now, a plain country woman wrapped in a brown shawl.

“Mama.”

“Chip, I am here for you.”

“Mama, why did you leave me? Didn’t you love me?”

“Oh, Chip, you were my own sweet baby. I never left you! I am here for you now.”

“But you left me to him, and he hurt me.”

“No, Chip, I lay close to you all that time. He killed me and buried me in the woods close to the house. I protected you as best I could.”

“But, they said you ran off with a man. Even Grandma and Grandpa said that.”

“Yes, but that wasn’t true. Your father is a very bad man. Sheriff Borders is his half-brother, which no one knows. He only said he’d seen me with another man. But, it wasn’t true. I held you to my breast and loved you with all my heart till he killed me.”

She faded away.

Wiley’s eyes opened, just a little. His consciousness registered the cold, the pain, and the noise around him once again, just barely. He could feel himself failing.

Something moved above him. A man looked down at him.

“A bad wound with that much blood,” someone else called. “Leave him. He’s gone. How about the guy over there?”

The man walked off.

Wiley’s eyes closed again. He called out in his mind. Mama!

She appeared again, indistinct before him.

“Mama.”

“Yes, my only love.”

“Mama, I want to go with you,” he said in his mind, but his lips did not move.

“No, my love, your time is not now. You need to awaken. There are men here who will help you.”

She was smiling so sweetly, so peacefully. He reached toward her. “Please, take me with you!”

“No, baby. You must do this one thing for me. You must go back and be alive again. I must go now.”

He tried to move but could not. “Mama, I can’t get up.”

“All you have to do is move and they will see you. I must go.”

She faded away. Wiley cried out in anguish in his mind! His mouth opened to let out the cry, but there was no sound.

Crunching footsteps nearby, then a shout. “Hey, this sergeant is alive. Medic! MEDIC! Over here! This guy’s alive!”

Wiley awoke on something warm and soft. He opened his eyes, slowly, and looked around blearily. There was a blanket over him and rows of occupied cots stretching away on both sides of him. On the opposite wall, there was a sign with a big red cross on it. He was in a hospital ward, then, probably a field hospital.

There was a terrible pain in his side. He looked down at himself, noting with relief that all his limbs were still there. Then he noticed the gleam of something metal on his chest.

He looked closer. It was the gold bar of a second lieutenant, pinned to his gown.

The Faded Rose

. . . morning fair

Came forth with Pilgrim steps in amice gray;

Who with her radiant finger stilled the roar

Of thunder, chas’d the clouds, and laid the winds,

And grisly Specters, which the Fiend had rais’d . . .

And now the Sun with more effectual beams

Had chear’d the face of Earth . . .

—Milton, Paradise Regained, Book 4

New York City, May 1945

Twenty-year-old Second Lieutenant Chip Wiley stepped out of the hospital with a smile on his face and took a deep breath of the air of New York City. He stood erect, displaying a perfect martial bearing. His red hair blew slightly in the gusts that swept up the street.

“Feels good,” he muttered. “Air’s not as good as in the country, but I’m not gonna complain.”

It was a wonderful relief to finally be out after more than two months lying in a hospital bed and then two weeks more just sitting around. The nurses and staff had been great. “But, no more hospital,” he said to himself, a smile on his face. “I got ninety days convalescent leave. Bye-bye Army after thirty-five months.”

He walked to the paymaster’s office, collected three hundred dollars, and then hailed a cab. He was headed for Columbia, South Carolina, to see the Gregorys. He’d met them five years ago, when he and their son Scott had become friends during Basic Training together there.

He was confident the money would be enough to get him there. On the way, he would make three stops to visit with the families of some of his fallen comrades: Albany, New York, to see “Long Shot” McMurtha’s folks; Detroit, to see Mrs. Jack Dietrich; and Calumet City, Illinois, to see Thomas Kuehl’s family.

The day after McMurtha was killed, Wiley had looked amongst his things for an address. McMurtha almost never got mail, but there had been one letter. The return address said “1214 E. Washington, Albany, New York.” Wiley had written it down.

Now five months later and a world away, he was on a train to Albany. It was only a two-hour ride from Grand Central Station.

He flagged down a cab at the Albany train station. The cabbie studied Wiley’s uniform as he got in. “Heading home, soldier?”

“Not exactly.” Wiley settled into the seat, feeling a twinge in his side where the old wound was. “I’m gonna see the family of a buddy of mine, a guy who didn’t make it back.”

“I know that tune.” The cabbie’s lined face looked sympathetic. “I was in the Navy myself. Convoy duty in the north Atlantic. Just got out for good six months ago.”

They drove to what had been 1214 East Washington, only to find a large area being cleared by a bulldozer. The operator didn’t know much. “Yeah, there was some houses here, real run-down stuff. Why, soldier? You from around here?”

Wiley had the cabbie stop by the police station next, but they knew nothing. The phone book showed no listing for McMurtha. The former scout racked his brain but could recall nothing his dead friend had said of any family. I thought findin’ them would be easy, and the hard part would be facin’ them, he thought.

An hour had passed. There was $4.58 on the meter. The cabbie looked up as Wiley climbed back in. “Any luck?”

“Nope.”

“Jeez, I’m sorry, Bud. You wanna try anywhere else?”

Wiley puzzled for a second. “No. If none of these people know anythin’, probably nobody here will. Just take me back to the station, I guess.”

Sorry, Long Shot, he thought.

After two hours of waiting at the station, Wiley boarded a night train to Detroit. It was a slow journey, with nine or ten stops along the way.

He watched the passengers for a long time. He was fascinated by seeing so many civilians: men not in Army uniforms, women with their long hair and dresses, young children with their parents.

It struck him that something new was happening to him wherever he went. It had happened in Albany and now on the train. People nodded at him. Men might touch their hats and say, “Soldier,” as they passed by. Some said “Lieutenant,” in such a nice way. At first he didn’t know what to make of it. They can’t be ttryin’ ta get somethin’ from me, can they? he thought. Somethin’ wrong with my uniform?

Then he realized: they were acknowledging him out of respect!

Can you beat that? he thought. He smiled over it again and again. You never can tell.

The night passed slowly. He looked out the window for a while. Outside, it was dark, except for scatters of lights when they passed through towns. It was a little cramped in coach, but he didn’t mind the upright seat. Coach seats weren’t so bad. They were a whole lot better than sleeping against a tree with the possibility that some German would stumble on you and shoot you.

Finally, he fell asleep.

Dietrich had had many letters from his wife. Wiley had copied their address down as well: Pontiac, Michigan, just outside of Detroit. It was easy to find “Jack Dietrich” in the phone book.

Over several hours the next day, he called the number repeatedly from a drugstore just around the corner. It wasn’t until 6:30 that evening that Mrs. Dietrich answered and immediately invited him to come around.

She answered the door. Wiley was immediately taken with the nice-looking woman in her early twenties, immaculately dressed in a dark blue suit with padded shoulders.

They sat facing each other in plain ladderback chairs in the tiny apartment. Mostly, she looked down at the floor but occasionally lifted her head and smiled wanly at Wiley.

“Chip, Jack wrote in detail about you and several others in your unit.”

“Mrs. Dietrich–”

“Paula,” she corrected.

“I’m sorry for what I did. I should’ve bandaged Jack better when I had the chance.”

She looked into the scout’s eyes, so calmly and understandingly. “I know war is terrible and you can’t always do what you would under other circumstances. I’m sure you did all you could, Chip. He always had good things to say about you.”

Dietrich’s death flooded back into his mind as though it had happened the day before.

“Paula, it all happened very quickly. He got hit, and in the darkness I couldn’t see how bad the wound was. If only it had been different. It was very cold and his only chance was with the local people, the Germans. They were really pretty good about takin’ in our wounded. I had my mission. A lot a lives were at stake.” Wiley stiffened. “So I took him to a house and left him. I saw them pull him in.”

“Yes, I see.”

“I got wounded right after that and wound up in the hospital. I tried ta find out about Jack. I wrote our captain, a good man named Redding.”

“Yes, Jack mentioned him too.”

“I wrote him ta check the Prisoners of War Exchange List, but he said Jack’s name was not on it.”

Wiley and the young widow sat facing one another five feet apart. But she had no words of blame for him. He thought he deserved blame, having left a helpless man. But she would not oblige him. He watched her. She had lovely and expressive hands and beautiful auburn hair carefully curled. Her back, perfectly straight, never touched the chair. She seemed lost in her thoughts.

Then she finally spoke again, in a lower voice than before. “I am sure you did all you could for my Jack.”

He felt obliged to keep the conversation going. He asked how long they had been married, though he knew the details from the endless conversations he had been part of overseas.

She looked up in happy recollection. “One day, five years ago this June, he came into the office of my father’s insurance company answering our ‘Help Wanted’ ad. It’s just a few blocks from here, you know. I’ve worked there since I was fourteen. Jack had such a nice personality that Father was won over immediately and gave him the job.

“We got to know each other working together. He was a fine and honest man. No one ever said a word against him. His old customers still ask after him. We dated and then married nineteen months later. I had my husband only twenty months, and most of that time he was overseas.”

She paused for several seconds. Wiley sat in awkward silence.

Then she looked into his eyes so seriously. “Do you think he suffered much?” Her voice wavered, then dropped to a whisper. Tears began to run down her face. “I must know. You will tell me the truth, won’t you, Chip?”

“Yes. Paula, I will. No, I don’t think he suffered. It was very cold. He got numb very quickly.”

Wiley watched as she grabbed a handkerchief off the nearby bureau and wiped the tears away. Then she was erect in the chair again, the same sad, resigned expression returning and remaining.

The soldier hadn’t been around women very much, and he failed to understand what was going on in her mind. Paula was a person of habit. She derived great satisfaction from the order of her life, begun as a young girl. A year and a half of marriage hadn’t broken the regimen. Her husband had sweetened her life immeasurably but not changed it structurally. She still arose at the same time every morning, weekday or weekend, put on her same makeup in the same way. Her job, apartment, clothes, church, and where she shopped were the same and would remain so for what seemed to all around her to be an endless time. This order was a powerful comfort for her, and she relied upon it in this life she would not have chosen for herself. She had always imagined having a lot of children, but perhaps she was better suited to a lonely life. Sometimes she lost her way and wept at the loss of her husband, but it was rare. In the quiet time, she thought of her dear, sweet Jack, and his love sustained her. It was not that she turned her back on another loving relationship but rather that another good man never seemed to come along.

Wiley noticed only that the woman was sad. The sadness brought a quality of beauty and vulnerability to her. He wondered if he should hang around for a while, maybe come back to see her on his leaves. But it was a fleeting thought. There was a dedication in her manner that said that she was taken and would remain so. When he was ready to leave, he made sure he had the address written down and assured her he would stay in touch.

Wiley spent the night in a rundown hotel off Michigan Avenue. The next day, he caught a train to Calumet City, Illinois, south of Chicago not far from the Indiana line. Thomas Kuehl had boasted to his fellow soldiers nonstop that his hometown was “America’s number one sin city,” and Wiley saw a city that the prosperity of the war had bypassed.

Arriving at dusk, he walked from the station toward a long line of seedy hotels. The respect he had enjoyed for his uniform and rank were absent here. People drove by fast, occasionally cursing him. One even threw a bottle at him, though it failed to come very close.

As he passed an alleyway, five young men in their late teens yelled at him. “Hey, you, soldier boy! Stop!”

As they came closer, Wiley felt for the ever-present Colt pistol in his pocket.

“Drop your wallet on the ground and move back,” the leader said. “We’re gonna jump you and slit your throat if you don’t.”

Wiley sized up the boys for a minute and then laughed. “Why don’t you come and get it?” he said coyly.

Two of the boys made a move toward him, but he stood his ground. They sensed that they were overmatched and backed up, one of them cursing him. “All right, soldier boy, we’ll catch up to you later!”

“Why not now?” Wiley lifted his arms up in mock innocence. “It’s just little old me, and there are five a you great big men!”

With that the boys backed up more and, cursing, melted into the shadows.

The next day, he spent nearly five hours tracking down the Kuehl family. First he went to the address he had copied down in Germany, which turned out to be an apartment building.

He found apartment fourteen and knocked. A woman answered the door. She was huge, probably close to three hundred pounds. She wore a massive and dirty print dress and completely lacked the simple innocence the poor sometimes possess.

She responded to every question gruffly and in a language completely unknown to him. She evidently understood at least some of what he was asking. Sensing that, Wiley asked about several things, only to be baffled by the rattled-off answer and her obvious wish to close the door. Finally, she had had enough and slammed the door in his face.

Next he knocked on other doors in the complex. Three people answered their doors. One man again spoke no English, though he was most friendly. Another had no idea who the Kuehls were.

Only the third person, a man named Ogacheski, recalled the family. He was one of those men who had begun work in the 1910s, before there was much in the way of job safety. His hands and body bore the marks of serious accidents for which no compensation had been paid. Though he looked ancient, he was fifty-three and still worked the night shift in a factory that made steel electrical boxes, just as they had for thirty years. His wife long dead, with no savings and not a relative in the world, he prayed each day to last long enough to collect Social Security.

“Yessa, Ia knew dem. Day had ta go avay. I tink day ah lib near da lyberry Mr. Carnegie gab us ober dare on 12f schreet. Dat’s a big famly! Lots a kids.”

The two men talked for a long time. The old man asked about the war and was fascinated by the scout’s responses, every time nodding his head and pensively saying the same thing.

“Dat rite!”

When he left, Wiley almost said, “Tanks,” but he caught himself.

He had his lunch from a vendor who sold him a Polish sausage and a Nehi orange soda near a park and spent a nice hour sitting on a bench, watching children play and cars go by. The weather was warm for March.

He didn’t feel so well. He kept feeling odd twinges and occasional sharper jabs of pain in his side.

After lunch, he walked over to the neighborhood near the library, knocking on doors until he found someone who could point out exactly where the Kuehls lived. He followed the directions to a garage apartment behind one of the old tenement buildings. He could hear yelling inside and a radio blaring.

A woman of about forty with a baby in her arms opened the door.

“Yes, what you want?”

“Ma’am, I’m tryin’ ta look up the family of Private Thomas Kuehl.”

“Why you want dem?” she asked.

“Ma’am, I served with him in Europe. My name is Chip Wiley.”

“He dead.”

“Yes, ma’am. I know. I was there when he went missin’.”

The woman looked confused. “He not dead?”

The child looked at him, her face dirty, her clothes no better.

“Well, ma’am, we don’t really know what happened ta him. I was on a mission with him and we . . .”

“So, he dead!”

“Perhaps so, ma’am. Are you Mrs. Kuehl?” Wiley could see past the woman into the room. There were five children of various ages playing on the floor and a girl of perhaps sixteen.

“Mrs. Soldawitz, now. What you want?” she asked more suspiciously than before. “We don’t have no money.”

“No, no, I just wanted ta look up his family ta tell you about him.”

She looked at him blankly. “We know about him.”

In the back, he saw two of the children fighting. The older girl yelled at them, and then the entire room seemed to descend into chaos. He wondered who the mother of the infant was, the woman at the door or the young girl?

“You go now,” the woman said. She closed the door slowly, looking curiously at Wiley the whole time.

Wiley stepped back. He figured that Kuehl would have listed his family as the beneficiary of his service insurance policy. Soon they would have its $10,000. He wondered if they knew that or would know how to spend the money wisely. For a second, he thought about knocking again and telling them, but instead he walked off.

He went back to sit on the park bench. I knew Kuehl pretty well, he thought, depressed. He wasn’t much of a scout, but he was a pretty good guy. But his family has forgotten him.

He thought of the reason he was going to South Carolina: the letters from Mrs. Gregory inviting him to come whenever he could. “Please, Chip,” she’d begged, “you’re family to us. Come to Columbia whenever you can. We want to see you!”

He wondered whether it would work. People like me and Kuehl, he thought, we’re not much, and when we go nobody even notices. Many instances from the war came to mind, times he could just as easily have been killed and was not. That time in Africa when those German tanks nearly ran over me. Or in Sicily when the sniper shot and killed Enrique standing right next ta me, when I was six inches taller and several feet closer to the enemy. Why didn’t he shoot me and get it over with? Everyone would be better off.

And he still felt lousy. Aw, I guess it’s just my body gettin’ used ta movin’ around again. That Polish sausage probably didn’t help either. Stomach’s probably not used ta it after hospital food.

A ball rolled into his foot. He heard running footsteps approaching. He looked up to see a girl of perhaps seven or eight standing there, looking at him.

“Can I have my ball, sir?” she said innocently.

“Sure.” He pushed it back toward her.

She didn’t move other than to pick up the ball. “Are you a soldier, like my daddy?”

Wiley smiled. “Yes, I am.”

She perked up. “My daddy’s a soldier far away. He can’t come home now,” she said, nodding. “Mama cries. She wants to see him! I want him to come home too! But he can’t, my Mama says, can’t for a long time.”

“Doesn’t know when, eh?”

She shook her head. “He was here when I was six, but he had to go to Italy. He bought me my ball then. It’s mine, just mine!”

“Where’s your mama now?”

“She works over there at the drugstore. She says we need the money. Sometimes she lets me play here when she works.”

The scout knew what this all meant. The Italian campaign had ended two years ago. The girl’s father was probably dead but still listed as “Missing in Action,” which meant that his family couldn’t get the insurance money. Probably the girl’s mother had to work to get by. The girl was probably out here alone because her mother couldn’t afford anyone to watch over her, and so just had to hope she’d be okay. A single woman with a kid should live someplace better than here, he thought. This isn’t safe for the child or her.

He had an idea. He’d have to do this quick or his chance would pass. “Would you give your mama something for me?”

The girl looked at him a little blankly.

“This will have to be a secret. Can you keep a secret?”

The girl beamed. “Oh yes!”

Wiley loosened his boot and pulled out his roll of money. He took two one hundred dollar bills from the inside of the roll and folded them very carefully. The child didn’t recognize the large bills.

“This money belongs to a princess.”

“What princess?” she asked in wonder.

“Well,” the man stumbled, “it’s a . . . a secret princess your mama knows all about. See where I took this from my boot?”

“Yes,” the girl said eagerly, nodding her little head.

“Well, you must put this money in your shoe just like I did. Don’t you want ta help the princess?”

The girl’s face turned solemn. “Oh, yes, I do!”

He handed her the money. “Well then. This is very important. You mustn’t tell anyone about this except your mama.”

The girl was almost breathless, her little mouth wide open.

“Now, put it in your shoe and lace your shoe back up.” He paused while she did it. Then she looked up and nodded, awaiting the next instruction.

“I know you’re a good girl, and you will help your mama save the little princess.”

The girl nodded again.

“Now, look around. Do you see any bad people?”

The girl looked very hard but only in one direction. “No!”

“Okay, it looks clear. Now I will watch you. Is it that drugstore over there with the blue sign, Rexall?”

She nodded again.

“You go there and tell your mama all about this and give her the money for the princess. You go now, and watch for cars when you cross the street. Go ahead.”

The child walked off toward the store, proceeding so haltingly that Wiley had to laugh. He watched as she crossed the street and went in the store.

“Time for me ta go,” he said to himself. He looked down at what was left of his roll. “Thirty bucks. Damn, I hope it’s enough to get to Columbia.”

As he stood, he felt a sharp pain in his side. It took an entire minute to pass, but it did, and he headed toward the train station a mile away.

Wiley perked up as he walked. Could I have a girl like her someday? he thought. If a man has a child, then he leaves something that can’t be taken away by anybody. He shrugged, finding it hard to believe that any woman would be interested in him. Cute little kid. I would like a boy! I would like a boy ta maybe throw a ball with. Maybe I could own a house. Maybe I could have a wife who . . . loved me.

He thought again of the dark-haired Gregory girl he had known. It seemed so long ago.

Jill. She’ll be grown up now. They say they want me ta come. I’d like to go there. But Scott’s still overseas, so I hope it won’t be awkward.

Wiley had met Scott Gregory in basic training in Columbia and had spent many evenings at the Gregory home. He thought back to the first time he entered the big two-story house with its giant chandelier and staircase. He had never been in such a house before, and it had dazzled him, shocked him.

And yet they were always nice to him, including him in everything they did, which he thought a wonder. He was still in wonder of it, and it made him worry that it would not work. At the same time, the Gregory place was the only real home he’d ever known besides his grandparents’ tiny house. The pain in his side came back and remained, not always as sharp as before but enough that his breathing quickened.

He took a train into Chicago. There was a telegram office near the Chicago train station, so he stopped to send the Gregorys a wire letting them know he was coming.

He caught another train for Knoxville, where he arrived twenty hours later.

He paid $12.52 for the last leg of the journey: Knoxville to Columbia, with a layover of ten hours in Asheville, North Carolina. With almost all of the money from the paymaster gone, he had to dip into his personal “stash” of twenty dollars. After buying the ticket, he had five dollars and some change left. He shook his head as he walked away from the ticket counter. I’m gonna show up with no money, he thought. What’ll they think of me?

The last part of the trip from Knoxville through the Appalachian Mountains to Asheville was rough. The rails were well worn from endless carloads of heavy war matériel traveling over them. The ride was a jolting one as the train curved around the various mountain peaks.

With so many servicemen in the car smoking, Wiley found it harder and harder to breathe. All the way from Asheville to Columbia, he felt winded and faint.

The erect and soldierly bearing he’d displayed in his travels of the last few days was absent as he stepped onto the platform in Columbia. Even sitting in the car, he had breathed hard. Now, as he entered the station, he bent slightly as the wound seemed to get worse.

Doris Day’s new recording of “Sentimental Journey” wafted across the building, echoing perfectly against the ceiling.

Sharp pain, worse than ever before, flared in Wiley’s side. The pain blotted out the song. He suspected what had happened, that the wound had ruptured. He could feel it.

He had no idea that it had never been attended to correctly in New York. The nurses and doctors, so busy tending more seriously wounded men, had passed him along without examining the wound carefully enough. No one had realized that the bullet had nicked his spleen and that he needed two more months in the hospital. He was used to pain and privations, this veteran who had never voted in a presidential election. Like his doctors, he still thought he would be all right.

His mouth widened, though his lips remained close together in what almost appeared to be a smile. He stopped, leaning against a wall next to a glass display case. A spot of blood appeared on his shirt. He blinked once or twice, staring into the case. There in the middle was a red rose made of paper! It was the only thing he noticed in the display. One of the only things he’d ever seen that belonged to his mother was a similar red paper rose.

Wiley’s mind went back to his childhood in West Virginia, when he spent his time at his grandparents’ house. The rose, red fading to pink, sat in a vase on the end table.

“You know your mama made that,” his grandmother had often told him. “She loved flowers so!”

He had looked at it a thousand times, wondering about his mother, what she was like, and why she had gone away and left him. He knew every petal of the faded flower, every detail of the two leaves as they sat in the plain amber-colored glass vase. When he first noticed it, the vase was fully two of his little hands high. By the time he’d run away, his fingers had nearly reached the top.

He spoke to the flower, his mouth moving but no sound coming out. “Mama, I made it. I never thought I’d live through it, but I made it. I’m alive. I’m a lieutenant now and people respect me and look up ta me for the first time in my life. I’m somebody! I just wanted you ta know . . . I’m pretty tired now.”

The sight of the faded rose took the strength out of him. He breathed even harder. A Marine walked by, and Wiley reached out for him.

“Ser-ge-ant?”

The soldier turned and looked at Wiley. “Yes, sir?”

“I think . . . I’m gonna faint.”

The husky man grabbed him.

“Get me outta here. . . . Is the sun shining?”

“Yeah, it’s real bright!”

“Okay . . . okay . . . get me outta here . . . I can’t breathe.”

The Marine put Wiley’s arm over his shoulder and took a good deal of the scout’s weight. In a minute they had left the bustle of the station and went into a brick-paved courtyard. He sat Wiley down on a bench and leaned over, looking him in the face.

“Sir, you don’t look so good. They got corpsmen in there. Let me get one for you.”

Though still winded, Wiley felt better. “Is it . . . hot, sergeant?”

“No, sir, it’s real nice, maybe seventy? Hell of a lot better than Eniwetok.”

Having heard of that Pacific island battle, Wiley smiled weakly. He looked up at the man. “I didn’t mean ta . . . hold you up from your family.”

“That’s all right, sir. It’s only me and my mom. I gotta take the bus to Bamberg. That’s west of here,” he said, correctly gauging that the young lieutenant was not from the area. “You know you’re bleeding?”

“Yeah . . . I got it in February . . . and can’t seem ta shake it. I was . . . doin’ pretty good till yesterday. I guess the train jarred me.”

“Let me get you a corpsman.”

“Naw, I feel better. If I can just sit here awhile.”

“You got anybody comin’ for you?”

Wiley looked up and managed a smile. “I do,” he said hopefully. “I do. I got people here. . . . They’re comin’ for me. Go ahead, get your bus. I’ll be fine.”

“Not a chance, sir. I never left a man down yet, and I’m sure as hell not gonna start now.”

“Thanks,” Wiley said gratefully.

“I’m gonna get you a Coke, hold on.” The Marine walked off.

Wiley thought again of the faded rose. Mama would be proud a me now, he thought, his head leaning down staring at the brick. Still winded and blinking a little, he looked up as he heard a sound.

“Chip!”

As he looked up toward the sun, he saw the outline of a woman’s face.

“Chip!” He could not focus on the face with the brightness of the sun, but the voice sounded familiar. He blinked a few times.

“Chip, it’s me, Jill, Jill Gregory.”

She sat beside him on the bench, an eighteen-year-old dark-haired girl. His heart leapt. He had thought about her so many times.

“Jill! I’m sorry. I didn’t hardly recognize you. I–”

Jill stared at him, her smile turning worried. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, let me catch . . . my breath. I was lookin’ for your mom. No . . . I didn’t mean that.” As the words were coming out of his mouth, he looked at Jill and smiled, thinking, Her hair isn’t black. It’s dark brown!

“That’s all right. Mama couldn’t come. She’s baking you three peach pies.”

Jill looked at him, not even noticing that he was hurt. She had last seen him when she was fourteen and a freshman in high school. She and her mother had written him letters and rejoiced at the occasional reply. The family had carefully followed the European campaign news in the paper, wondering which action Wiley was part of. She had thought of him a million times, and here he was! She didn’t notice his labored breath or the beads of sweat on his forehead. All she saw was that he was very good-looking, a tall and handsome man.

Wiley saw the way Jill was looking at him and smiled. He thought: I do have people! I do! They came for me like they said. I know this’ll work, I just feel it.

In a minute, the Marine came back. He smiled. “This your girl?”

Both Wiley and Jill smiled back weakly.

“Here, lieutenant, drink some of this,” the Marine said, handing him a six-ounce Coke.

It rattled around some in his teeth as he drank. He took a deep breath. “Thanks.”

The Marine saw some men waving at him from across the way. He waved back. “Some of my buddies got a cab to the bus station,” he said. “I need to go pretty quick if I can. Think you can get up?”

“Yeah, I think so.” Haltingly, Wiley stood. Jill stared at the blood on his shirt and the look of pain on his face.

“You’re not okay, are you?” She took his hand, uncertainly. “Mama said you’d been wounded . . .”

Wiley nodded. “I . . . think I better have somebody look at it again.”

“I’ll take you home. We’ll just call Dr. Hart, and you’ll be fine!”

With Jill supporting him on one side and the Marine on the other, Wiley made his way out to the Gregorys’ car in the parking lot, his feet wobbling occasionally. The Marine put Wiley in the worn-out red 1938 Chevy Cabriolet convertible. They shook hands and parted ways, off to their new lives.

The Circle

I see him sometimes as he plays,

In endless summer days.

This little fellow from my past,

Who plays until the very last.

He smiles so much more than then,

Glad I’m not the man I might have been.

—The Things He Never Had

Columbia, South Carolina, June 2007

Jill

Jillian Gregory Wiley sat at the huge desk, a relic left over from her father’s law office, wondering how to begin. Her children and several of her grandchildren had approached her in the last few months after her husband Chip’s death, asking her to write a narrative on their lives together. She was eighty years old now. Her once very dark brown hair, which had been her best feature, had become lustrous silver that she wore in a pageboy. Like her mother before her, she was five foot seven inches, fit in a size eight dress, and had never weighed more than 135 pounds.

The task before her was not an unhappy one: to write the remembrance of a happy life. But her expression held a hint of sadness because of the recent death of her husband. Though computers had become a way of life, she bent over a yellow legal pad. Occasionally, she paused to look out the windows in the den so familiar to her, once her parents’, then her own, and now her son Andy’s. Her grandchildren were at school, and her son and daughter-in-law, Kay, were at work. The large old house, in the family since 1930, was quiet.

She began.

I first met my husband, Joseph “Chip” Wiley, in the spring of 1940. He was a sixteen-year-old private in the US Army, and I was a young girl of fourteen, a freshman in high school. We were married in 1947, after I had two years of college. We had our first child, Andy, in 1948. I had a hard time in the pregnancy, so we decided not to try again until Chip got out of the service in 1960. We had two more boys, Jamie in 1961, and Joseph, always affectionately called “L.C.” for Little Chip, in 1963. After sixty years of a happy marriage, Chip died this March. I write this now, while I still recall the details well enough, so that my children and grandchildren might understand the times in which we lived and the complex man Chip was.

My mother and I, perhaps, didn’t understand him all that much ourselves. Though she, and I to a lesser extent, engineered the change that gradually made him into a family man and a successful businessman, we never knew much of his earlier life. My brother, Scott, first brought Chip here when both had weekend passes from Basic Training here at Fort Jackson. Scott told us Chip’s childhood had been very rough. We failed to get very interested in his military career either. That he had extensive experience with guns, tanks, and the madness of war never concerned us all that much. Mother saw through the whole thing, as she usually did, by accepting Chip as he was. He was absorbed into our family and loved as a son or husband, which, of course, was what he needed.

There was much that his new family could not have understood about Chip. It wasn’t easy for Chip to adjust to a new life, his third. He had already experienced two very different lives before 1945. His youth was almost a scientific case study of “Survival of the Fittest,” one that would have made Darwin himself take note. He survived his father’s beatings only by cunning: lying, knowing where to hide, learning to sense danger, finally running away when cunning no longer worked.

His life in the Army had been more complicated but completely unscientific. In combat, while experience could save you one day, each day brought a new set of chances where the weakest and most foolish sometimes outlived the most careful. The conclusion, to him, was that men were expendable, mere pawns in a game without rules, a game beyond all understanding.

Many times he pulled the little Colt .25 pistol out of his pocket or a drawer, depending on where he was, and held it against his temple. He never intended to pull the trigger. He never even pulled back the slide to cock the weapon. It was not any kind of religious belief that kept him from killing himself. He had no relationship with God. Through his grandparents, he did believe in Goodness. He felt strongly that the Creator would certainly put his new family under his loving wing and thought that others also deserved His gaze. But he was sure that no beneficence awaited him. He saw soldiers like himself as solitary players in the great scheme of things, ones who had no right to request help. He held the gun to his head as testament to the fact that he thought himself worthless and that his status could not be changed.

Chip remained in the Army for fifteen years after World War II ended. He saw still more combat in the Korean War. He had no trouble commanding men and knowing that they would instantly obey his orders. But he never considered himself superior to any man, only a better soldier because he had more experience. He never spared himself from sharing their privations, never kept for himself the better sleeping conditions or food that were his due as an officer. If anything, he suffered more than the others because he felt he deserved worse. Men loved him for this sacrifice and would do anything for him. While he was glad to have the admiration of soldiers and the love of his family, it took years to change his opinion of his worth.

And yet a third life was emerging with the Gregorys, where Goodness held ascendancy. He could be worth something through them, and he dedicated himself to their service. It was a world that made sense, one in which he could be safe from the endless rolling of the dice. He had despised those with means all of his life. Nevertheless, he clung to his new family and what he saw as their high class, though they thought of themselves as middle-class people.

He never really understood how he fit into their lives, and he never ceased to be amazed when he came to live at “The Mansion,” as he called their house. He was always the person looking in the window, rather than the one looking out from the safety behind the glass. He felt guilty for what he took of their love and stability, unaware of the qualities he offered in return: honesty, strength of character, dependability, and selflessness.

Chip felt that he didn’t belong in their world. Because they never inquired into his past, he feared the day would come when they would see him as the low-class trash he thought himself to be. Perhaps someone would denounce him. He often imagined being forced to go away and never able to see his family again. No one ever said a word to him to encourage such thoughts.

Jill teared a little for a moment, thinking of the life she had lived and enjoyed with her husband. Then she began again: Our relationship began when I picked him up at the train station downtown in the spring of 1945, after he came back from Europe. He was still recovering from a terrible wound he’d received in Germany, and he was not doing very well. I have to say I didn’t notice at first. A soldier had to help me haul him out to our old car.

Old Doctor Francis Hart, who delivered my brother and me and was beloved by my family, came to the house to examine Chip. Doctors made house calls in those days.

“I’m surprised the man could even walk,” he said. “The wound has not healed correctly.”

“Will he be all right?” Mother and I asked.

“Well, if he could make it this far with a hole in him like that, I expect he’ll live. I am supposing the bullet hit the spleen. He’ll need two to three months to mend, a month of bed rest, and probably a couple more with light activity. I’ll call [Major General] Bob Mores at Fort Jackson and get him to square it with the First Division people. Now Granton [my mother], if this boy had gone much longer like this, it would have probably killed him, so you keep him in this bed. Under no circumstances is he to be up wandering around. I’m not kidding. We’ll get him an x-ray in a couple of days.”

That was how it started. Chip made a slow recovery at our home, and he and I had months to get to know each other as adults.

Eventually, time soothed the wounds he bore in both body and soul, though the healing took years. The new life changed him slowly, from being a very efficient killer to a successful citizen. The constancy of love he received could not be ignored. Over time, it made him into a more complete person. His old prejudices died off.

In 1948, when Andy was born, Chip waited outside the delivery room. The nurse, in her crisp uniform, came out to place the child in his arms. Awkwardly, he took the bundle and looked at the little person.

“He’s yellow!” he said. “Will he be okay?”

The nurse smiled. “Yes, this is very common. He just has a little jaundice. It will go away in a couple of days.”

He gazed at the contented, sleeping baby. This is my boy, he thought. He remembered when he was in Chicago and first thought of having a child of his own. Now here that child was! This child is me, he thought in absolute wonder, or at least part of me. From now on, I have a real, permanent life that can never be completely taken away, even if I get killed on my next tour of duty. Andy’s birth was the beginning of Chip’s change. He was never the same person thereafter. The Army became secondary; his family came first.

The old woman paused in her task, realizing that despite the passage of so many years, her understanding of her husband had large gaps. But she was not a poor observer, and her intuition came to her aid. She continued:

Some men never grow up. But my Chip never had a childhood. While the rest of us were still in high school, as a seventeen-year-old he was in North Africa with Germans shooting at him. The result was a man who had no patience for silliness, and not much of a sense of humor. As the expression goes, “he was all business!” He had a reputation here as a good man. I have never heard anyone say that he ever broke his word or cheated anyone in a business deal.

He was a loving father to our three boys. Despite his background, or perhaps because of it, he could never muster up the courage to spank any of them, not even once! Of all people, I was stuck in the role of being the disciplinarian! He always defended the boys when he thought it important.

In 1965, Andy was playing high school football. He was small-boned like me, so I’m afraid he really wasn’t much of a player. His coach was Willis Freeman, an imposing man of maybe 250 pounds. His wife had left him some time before. He was an unhappy person, and he was quite abusive to the team, physically and mentally. You could get away with that in 1965, when paddling and such were still going on in schools around here. Sometimes he would hit the players and push them around. Once at a game, he berated our son along the sidelines and actually smacked him in the face, nearly knocking him down. I couldn’t believe it. I climbed down the bleachers to the fence and yelled at the coach in my usual fiery way. Other fans were also upset. But Chip just sat in the stands. The game kept going and it passed, or so I thought.

The following Monday, unknown to me, my husband was waiting for the coach in his office after practice. Andy rode home with friends and so had no idea what went on until Johnny Duncan, whose family is still close to us, told us about it. Johnny had lingered to talk to the coach about not wanting to play left guard or center . . . I have no idea about football. The sense of what he said follows.

The coach had a spacious office under the stands. He evidently had no idea why Chip came to see him. The two sat, and the coach asked what he wanted.

Chip was direct, as always. “I noticed that you slugged Andy during the game on Friday.”

“Yes, Mr. Wiley. These boys need discipline. I believe in giving it to them.”

“I don’t want you to hit him anymore.”

“Well, I’ll try not to,” the coach said casually and probably not too sincerely, as he leaned back on a swivel chair.

“I saw a lot of people mistreated in two wars,” my husband said, “lives thrown away. People are important. I don’t care how you discipline Andy or the others, making him run laps or doing push-ups or whatever the hell else you think important. But I want you to promise me right now that you won’t slug him again, treat him like he’s dirt.”

“Well,” the coach said a little more seriously, “ah . . .”

“You lookie here. Unless you promise me that right now, I’m gonna come across this nice desk of yours and smash your face into this floor for a while. Then we’re goin’ out on the football field, and I’m gonna kick your sorry ass from one end of it to the other.”

Johnny said Chip had been speaking in a very calm voice but that the tone changed with his last comment. I knew exactly what he was talking about, having heard that voice once or twice. I think it was a voice he used in combat. It was something one didn’t want to ignore.

The shocked coach evidently sat up straight and looked at Chip to see if he was serious. “Yes, . . . yes, I ah, I promise, sir!”

“I’ll take your word on it,” Chip said in that same voice. “But if you break your promise, I’ll come back here and break both of your arms so you can’t hit any more kids.”

The news of this made it around the school and the town rather quickly. I must say the result of it was good. The coach’s negative cracks against the team ceased, as did his bullying. He became a much nicer man. In time, he remarried and we came to respect him. The team got better and better too. Our paltry record of zero and three wound up as five and five that year. I recall at the end of the season seeing the coach approach Chip not too far from me and warmly shake his hand.

I have always been a fiery person used to having my way, and we were to have many battles in our married life, mostly about money. When Chip retired from the Army in 1960, he began a company here that demolished buildings and did commercial landscaping. The South was still locked in the throes of segregation, with little building or demolition going on. I was sure I had the better business mind and wanted Chip to advertise statewide. Our battles usually went something like this:

“Chip, money is the thing, money for advertising,” I would insist.

“I know, but I don’t have the money for that. I’m paying on the bulldozer for another couple a years,” he would say.

I would shake my head. “Mother will lend you the money. I asked her again today! Why won’t you do that? You never listen to me!”

He would sit with his head hanging down, saying little, and I would hammer the same points over and over again. Many times I got mad enough to pull the kids up from our little place near the university, load us in the car, and spend a few days here.

Usually though, I would realize that he was doing all he could and that perhaps my temper had got the best of me and I had gone too far. The process made him feel worthless, as though he could not provide for us. We would all come back to our house. I would apologize and kiss him sweetly, and we would be back on par. He never responded to me the same way or said an unkind word to me, though he might not talk to me for a while.

It was like that most of our first married years. But by the time Jamie and L.C. were in grade school, our arguments ceased. Luckily, Columbia was becoming stronger economically, and the demolition business began doing very well. I kept the books and figured out the right time to buy this piece of machinery or that. All the boys learned to operate backhoes and bulldozers! They never had any trouble finding something to do in the summer.

I could say my husband was a secretive man. I think calling him a loner would probably be closer. He never shared his hopes and dreams with any of us, and he never discussed business with the boys. I recall one of his comments to Jamie about his battles with me only because such remarks were so unusual. He said about one of my glances: “Sometimes, I think they’re worse than German bullets.”

Chip was a worker, some would say to the point of ignoring our kids. But his business took many years to be successful, and of course my doing the books didn’t bring in extra money, so the burden was on him to provide for us. Also, he had survived two wars by being a scout. Working alone was part of his nature.

My mother was the glue that kept us all together. My father, an attorney named Harmon Calder Gregory, died suddenly when I was sixteen. One day in 1943, his secretary found him bent over this desk, dead from a massive stroke. He had the reputation amongst his own family of never being seen outside his bedroom without a suit coat and tie. He was forty-five.

Much responsibility fell on the shoulders of my mother, the very lovely Granton Grace Maroth Gregory. She preferred the awkward name Granton because her mother’s name was Grace and she did not wish to be “Little Grace.” Even so, the family called her “Gigi” (pronounced Gig-ee).

She might complain about the time necessary to fix herself up, but I rarely saw her when she was not nicely dressed and manicured. She was a true aristocrat among women, beloved by everyone who knew her. Her background remained obscure to us and continues to be so to this day. She said easily enough that she was an orphan, but there the story ended. She never spoke of her real folks. I think it likely that she didn’t know who they were. We learned nothing of this from our grandparents, who Mama described as the “sweet old couple who raised me in a small town in North Carolina.” They were long departed before we kids came along. She had enough money from Father’s insurance and business interests to maintain a very nice lifestyle and raise two children, my brother Scott and me, by herself without a relative in the world.

My Chip loved her very much. Like her, he had no family of his own, at least any that he ever told us of. Mother knew exactly what he needed. He gave her credit for making his life a happy one, and his allegiance to her knew no bounds. He was a man of terrific loyalties, and he spoke to the boys harshly only on those few occasions when they innocently or foolishly said something unkind about her.

When she died suddenly at eighty, his reaction frightened the rest of us. While her children and grandkids gathered around weeping and consoling one another, his reaction was a solitary one. For nearly thirty hours after the funeral, he sat in a chair on the porch, eating nothing and only occasionally sipping some water. He might clear his throat or run his hands through his hair, but he said nothing with the most stolid expression on his face, looking straight forward. I shooed the family away from trying to speak to him. Finally, he stood up, announced he had to go to work, and walked out the door.

My dear family, I apologize, but I tire of writing. My arthritis gets the best of me now and then, and it has taken me these two days to compose these few lines. I never did learn to work a computer. So I will let my eldest, Andy, transcribe these notes and continue on with the parts of our family’s life that he knows best.

–Jillian Gregory Wiley

Andy

My father was a tough man made hard by combat in two wars. He bore several wounds from his service. He was shot in the left side in Germany in 1945. It took nearly nine months for him to recover enough to go back on active duty. Without that furlough, I would probably not be writing this, because he and my mother fell in love during that time. He had a very noticeable scar on his left shin that he dismissed as “nothing to worry about, just a scratch, really!”

He later got a few shrapnel wounds in Korea, but he had an especially ugly wound to his right shoulder, which again led to a long recovery. Time did little to smooth its jaggedness. I heard some of his friends tell me about their experiences in Korea, but I never could get a word out of him. Mostly, he laughed about these wounds. One might have assumed that they caused him no pain at all, but I learned otherwise.

His health began declining in the late 1990s. Once, I accompanied him to the VA hospital here in town for outpatient treatment for the removal of a cyst on his back. The surgeon figured it was caused by one of the old pieces of shrapnel that had never quite worked its way to the surface. Dad took his shirt off, displaying the physique of a man of perhaps forty, not an ounce of fat on his body. He weighed 170 pounds. As he moved his right shoulder, both the physician and I saw him wince noticeably.

“How long has that shoulder bothered you?” the young doctor asked.

Dad looked away for a moment, then looked at the man and answered nonchalantly. “Oh, Doc, I guess about forty years.” I was shocked. Later I asked Mother about it.

“He’s never said anything to anyone about it, not even to me,” she said, “and has never taken pain medicine that I know of. He has some nerve damage in that shoulder and has some serious pain in it periodically. He’s hidden it from all of us as well as he could all these years. You’ll notice if you watch him carefully that sometimes he stops what he’s doing, and his eyes seem to squint a little. That’s when the pain catches up with him. In a minute or so, he’s all right. I’ve urged him to go to a doctor a hundred times.”

None of us kids had ever noticed. Like I said, he was a tough man, even at age seventy-five.

Dad was most happy in the woods. He was a true outdoorsman and hunter. The time he spent with us boys was taken up hunting and camping, many times with Uncle Scott, whom, strangely, we called “Uncle Bun.” I always forget the story on that one.

They knew people with large tracts of land in the country, and they took me along when Jamie and L.C., who most everyone called “the Twins,” were too young. Soon, even as little boys, they were out in the woods tromping about. We began with sticks but packed rifles as we got older. We all had wonderful times blasting away at birds, squirrels, and even fish.

For deer hunting, Dad always had his M-1 Garand rifle he had used in World War II and Korea, a unique weapon in that it had a large chip out of the stock. We told him a hundred times that he should buy a new rifle, but he ignored us. “This is the best infantry weapon that will ever be invented. I like this one.”

We were amazed at his skills in the woods. I never saw him miss a shot with the Garand, even ones as far away as two hundred yards. Usually, none of the rest of us even saw the deer. Only once did a deer move after he shot at it, according to L.C.; one time when I was not along. It had evidently flinched as Dad fired, and though shot behind the shoulder, the wounded animal made off.

L.C. saw a pained look on Dad’s face as they trailed it. At first he thought Dad was miffed because he hadn’t brought it down with one shot. But soon he realized Dad was more concerned that the animal was made to suffer. They trailed it for most of a mile, Dad bending down to look at the ground and, without comment, pointing in the direction the animal had gone.

L.C. would ask him: “Daddy, how do you know where he went?”

“See,” Dad said, “there’s a little blood on this leaf.” Then he pointed several feet away. “There’s another drop. He’s pumping his heart out.” He looked at a bush. “Notice this branch, how it’s bent in this way? An animal passed through here, probably that buck.”

Eventually, they found the animal, dead. Dad carried it back to the station wagon, where he slung it on the roof. He always insisted that every part of an animal that could be used was used, even having sausage made from it, which he gave away.

As Jamie tells it, “When we were out somewhere, we all had our drugstore compasses and all had views as to what direction would take us back to the car. We’d all point differently. Then, without comment and without a compass of his own, perhaps after looking up at the trees for a minute, Dad would point. He was never wrong. We thought it a great feat to be the closest to the right direction.”

He counseled us on shooting too. “I wouldn’t take that shot. See, it’s open behind there, and that bullet could travel a long way. And we don’t know, somebody could live back in there.”

When we went camping and got up in the morning, he’d sniff the air and tell us what the temperature was, always within a degree or two of any thermometer we could hurriedly drag out. He just amazed us. Those were the moments when we felt closest to him and understood him best.

Dad wasn’t demonstrative, even to Mama or to us boys. I never saw him hug anyone. But he showed his love in other ways. All three of us played high school football and never expected that he could make our games. With his business coming on strong, he might be in Charlotte or Augusta on a Friday football night. But many a time, we caught sight of him at the fence. By the end of the game, sometimes he was gone, having to get some rest before being off very early the next morning. Some time later, he might say to Jamie, who was the best player of us: “That was a good catch you made on the five-yard line.”

He rarely said anything that could be considered sweet or mushy to any of us. Once or twice, though, he said things that gave him away.

When I entered college and met my darling Kay, I asked Dad what he thought of women. “I would be nothing without your mother and grandmother,” he said, “nothing. Maybe Kay will mean the same to you.” Other than Mam and Grandmother, though, I think he didn’t really know what to make of women. He talked to them courteously and didn’t avoid them, but his real friendships were with men.

My father had men whom he trusted and always did business with, never shopping around. He bought all his heavy machinery from Jacob Puller and his John Deere dealership in Winnsboro and wouldn’t accept anyone else’s business card. All agree that he worked his employees hard, but not as hard as he worked himself. I only saw him angry a few times, on occasions when he felt someone had “crossed” or “betrayed” him. To those people, he was unforgiving, never speaking to them again. He worked terrifically long hours. We actually saw little of him when we were very young.

Besides Dad, there were other people in our lives growing us, a series of black people who worked at the house who were all thought of as family. I recall a wonderful old gentleman, Sam, the yardman, who was still around when I entered college in 1966. He was a great baseball fan. He’d played minor league baseball in the Negro Leagues and spent a lot of time talking about “them good ol’ days.” He also attempted to “learn you,” as he called it, “how to throw a drop,” or curveball. Mostly, he wasted his time, because I never caught on.

He often took me fishing. He had two grandsons, or “grands,” as he called them, Wilber and Floyd, both older than I. Floyd was close enough to my age that we became great pals. Sam had a series of ancient Ford pickup trucks as long as I knew him. Wilber, Floyd, and I would ride in the back and take off for days at a time, camping and fishing. I loved Sam. He was a man of almost no education and very little means. But he was always cheerful, honorable, and decent.

I do have to roll my eyes a bit thinking of the times he picked up “road kill,” some poor beast that had been run over. He would haul the mangled corpse home and whip it up into an amazingly tasty supper. He drew the line at possums, but deer, raccoons, and such were fair game. He had several expressions I think of often. He would say, “The boat tumped over,” meaning it turned over. And “On today, boys.” He passed away after a long illness, and I recall the large turnout for his funeral. I have no idea how old he was. He loved to quote his hero, the old baseball pitcher “Satchel” Paige, who said, “Don’t look back. Life could be gainin’ on ya.” I took that to mean that one’s actual age is very relative, depending on the person, and there’s no use in even asking, which I believe is true. He was a true friend and confidant. I have to say he was a surrogate father to me until Dad retired from the service in 1960.

I became great pals with Floyd. His skills in growing things and with animals were wondrous. He loved squirrels and wound up raising a host of them that had fallen out of nests as babies. People would bring them to our house looking for him.

He would let the squirrels crawl all over him, which I thought very awkward and uncomfortable. Unintentionally, they dug their little claws right into you! It was like little pinpricks. He could hold them in his hands and tell what they were thinking. “Old Wiggy here’s giving me that look. He doesn’t need us anymore. He’ll go off in another day or two and by next spring have his own family. That’s just the way of things, and it can’t be altered by man.” He could recognize them in the trees for months afterward, when they looked like any other squirrel to the rest of us. He was a gentle soul. Drafted in 1969, he never came back from Vietnam.

Ida Mae Wilkerson, who cooked for Grandmother, came most days of the week. She was a huge woman, a real battleship, from cooking for many years and frying most everything she cooked. The cornbread she made was to die for. Of course, she made fried chicken! That was every Wednesday and the high point of the week for us boys. Her patience with us seemed inexhaustible, especially with little L.C., who would ask for a cheese sandwich and then change his mind when she was about to serve it. She didn’t mind, since she could just take the food home for her own kids. When she cooked she made enough for us and for her own family as well, a lot of food!

When Jamie and L.C., only two years apart, were wrestling on the floor, she might yell at them. “You break somethin’ and you won’t get no supper if I have ta clean it up. You boys go outside.” We knew she meant what she said, and it was enough to stop any fracas!

We kids were hard to keep up with. Yet we all did pretty well. All of us took something from our father’s martial past and went to The Citadel, the military college in Charleston, some one hundred miles south of here. I spent two tours in Vietnam, luckily surviving without a scratch, and have spent the last forty years following my grandfather’s profession of the law. Jamie and L.C. still run the same demolition company Dad founded.

We met some of Dad’s comrades as they came through Columbia, like Mr. Torgeson and Dad’s old captain, Mr. Redding. One person we became familiar with was Mrs. Dietrich, the wife of a soldier my father served with in Germany who was killed. Dad had gone to see her in Detroit after the war, and then we kept in touch. She wrote long, lovely letters that Mama read to us. I think Dad wrote her for a while, but soon Mama took up the task. Mrs. Dietrich’s life always seemed to stay the same. She worked as the secretary in an insurance company her father had started. Even after her father sold the business in 1950, she remained the secretary until her retirement in 1985. She remained in the same apartment, describing the decline of her neighborhood and Detroit too until crime became so bad that she wrote us she’d moved.

In 1988, all of her relatives pooled their birthday gifts and gave the sixty-five-year-old widow a Caribbean cruise. She flew to Charleston to board the ship. Within thirty minutes, she met a widower named Charlie Hartestee, from Macon, Georgia. By the end of the cruise, he’d proposed and she’d accepted! We all attended the wedding in Macon. It was the only time I ever met her.

Of all of Dad’s old comrades, the one we saw the most was a retired soldier at Fort Jackson, Staff Sergeant Orville C. Betts. I first saw him when I was a boy of six, and he seemed fine to me. But his health deteriorated quickly over a period of a dozen years, and he died in the fall of 1963. Dad and I spent too many afternoons to count visiting his quarters at the fort. We were both pallbearers at his funeral.

The sergeant’s wife, Alma, was a goodhearted, plain woman whom I came to love very much. I often helped her get meals together as the two men talked. When I was little, I just watched. As I got older, she entrusted more tasks to me. I never worked so well with another person, even my wife or brothers. And she was a fun person to talk to. She had only a high school education, but she had read some, and she got me interested in literature.

Alma talked about the characters from Great Expectations, especially Pip, Magwitch, and Wemmick, as though they were her good friends. She talked to me about the inequalities of justice, including Les Miserables, where Javert the policeman is the bad guy and the convict, Jean Valjean, is the hero. She taught me that those in positions of power aren’t necessarily good or right, a lesson I have always remembered in practicing the law.

She talked much of her husband’s decline. It was due to a phosgene gas attack in France in October of 1918, near the end of World War I, which he had recounted to her on many occasions. They had no children. She’d grown up in Wisconsin, with six brothers and sisters. Her father was a salesman, and she talked of being hungry many times in her youth. After her marriage, due to her Army moves, she rarely saw her family and that hurt her.

“I would’ve liked to have seen my Mama just once more before she died,” she told me once, with moistness in her eyes. “Orville and I just didn’t have the money for me to go to her funeral.” She spoke of her sister, Jean, who she missed “every day.” She recalled the countryside where she grew up and said, “Sometimes it calls to me, like in a dream.” She missed snow and said, “I always liked the cold weather, when we would huddle by the stove and talk.” She told me about the ten Army bases where the couple lived, someplace in Nebraska being her favorite. Both she and Sergeant Betts spent many a time at our house as well. She continued to be a valued friend to all of us until she died in 1980.

I also recall many conversations between the sergeant and my father. They had a very close bond. When they were together, it was one of the few times I saw Dad laugh hysterically so that tears came down his face. The conversations were always, always about the thing they shared; the US Army. Dad called Sergeant Betts “sir.” I suppose that was out of respect because Dad had the higher rank. Betts called him “lieutenant,” and, later “captain,” in return.

They talked a lot about weapons they’d used in war. I recall one conversation they had about the thirty-seven-millimeter cannon.

“That thing was the worst gun I ever saw,” Dad said. “We used it in weapons platoons pulled by a Jeep. Once in Sicily, we got pinned down near this huge concrete bunker with a couple of machine guns in it, those fast firers, MG 42s. You couldn’t stick your boot out from behind the wall without gettin’ it shot off.

“I was a sergeant then. The lieutenant, one of those guys just out of West Point, had been killed an hour before. He was a good young officer, Jenkins. He just stuck his head up once too often, and one of those guns put a bullet right through his helmet. So I sent my runner back for this gun. He was a good man, a corporal named Bullock, who I think got it the next week.

“I went back to meet the gun crew. In ten minutes, these six guys roar up in this Jeep, towin’ this damn gun. The thing weighed nine hundred pounds, but the shell only weighed a measly two pounds, nothin’ compared to German stuff.”

Dad and Betts both laughed.

“These guys jump out of the Jeep. They were real good, muscling that thing into place and unlimbering it in maybe thirty seconds. They start shootin’ at that bunker about 250 yards off while I’m lookin’ through my field glasses. First shot missed the aperture by a foot to the right. I don’t even think the enemy knew we were shootin’ at them!”

The old sergeant chuckled. Dad went on.

“I’m tellin’ you, sir, I could hardly see a dent in the concrete of that pillbox! It was like throwin’ darts at it. But, hoop, hip, hop, throwin’ those tiny shells from one guy to another, and they shot again, this time missin’ by about six inches. It had such low velocity you could actually see the thing, see the drop in the trajectory. I’ll bet it dipped a foot before it hit. The Germans must have heard that one, as they started rangin’ for us. Our guys fire again, and this time the shell goes right in the aperture, and that’s all she wrote.”

That’s how their conversations went, first when Dad had leave and for a couple years after he retired. Betts’ condition declined slowly, until near the end he had to be covered by a blanket even in nice weather.

Once, after he died and Alma came for dinner, Alma told me a story that’s stayed with me. At the end of the war when Dad came home from Germany, he had spent weeks at Mama’s family home recovering from a wound. When he was well enough, he went to see Sergeant Betts at the fort. Alma said she and her husband were sitting outside about midmorning when this tall soldier approached impeccably dressed, adorned in his five campaign ribbons.

“We had no idea who he was at first. He walked right up to us and was about to introduce himself to us when both Orville and I recognized him. You see, he’d been for supper many a time during his training. I rose to say hello. But Orville looked at him, and tears began to come down his face. Chip didn’t know what to do, nor did I. Chip and I looked kindly at one another, but Orville was overcome. In the end, your dad politely bowed and asked to be excused and said he would come back. That began their deep friendship.”

At age eighty-three, the day came for my father as well. I knew what to do because he had prepared me for it.

“Andy, when I go, I want you to do somethin’ for me.” He showed me two lists in a drawer, with many names, addresses, and phone numbers on each. Most had been crossed out and a date written in. I was to contact the first man left on each list. As the World War II veterans Dad knew had aged, they had established phone chains to spread the news when one of their number passed on. The Korean War vets had begun one as well. I called Mr. Redding from the first list and Larry Reyes, who had been a sergeant with Dad in Korea, from the other.

Dad died on a Wednesday in March. The funeral was on Saturday afternoon, with visitation after the interment.

While family and friends gathered in the house in Heathwood, the old veterans gathered in the backyard. There were eight of them. Being the only one of Dad’s children to be a veteran, I sat with them. Some of these men we’d seen before as they came through town and spent the night in long conversations with Dad, always in the backyard with its chairs surrounding our circular brick patio. Some I’d never seen before. In the early spring evening, the temperature perfect, I surveyed the group.

They were old men, gray-headed or balding. As the light dimmed, they appeared almost like ghosts. They had come, despite distance and the added expense of booking flights only a day or two in advance. Some hadn’t been able to make the funeral and had just appeared at the house. But there they were, from six different states, retired men whose occupations had varied from janitor to millionaire businessman. Three were left from World War II, the rest from service in Korea.

Some had retained their martial bearing and looked like old soldiers. Others were just paunchy old men. While from different social classes, their clothing failed to give them away. They looked like, and were, one. Once young men, their bodies hard, time had taken its toll. But the bond forged in combat, stronger than love, stronger than hate, had never weakened. The trumpet had sounded once again, and they had answered the call. A part of each had died with my father’s death, and no hardship could keep them away. Dad had been part of this. Many a time he’d left us on scant notice after a call and disappeared for a day or so. The process had been mysterious to our family, until now.

They sat for three hours. Some talked openly. Some, perhaps exhausted by the trip, said little. The conversation went around, and each man had his chance.

A man named Lester spoke first.

“I saw him in Sicily, just after the invasion when the division jumped from Africa. I was eighteen. Hell, I think he was eighteen. He was a buck sergeant in those days. We had this goddamn stupid captain named Conover. We were in the middle of some town near the coast. I never did understand what the hell towns we were in. I’d like to see what they look like now. Torn-apart buildings, blood, that’s what I saw.

“Well, we were behind the corner of a hotel, I think, some big brick building. Conover came over and told Chip, ‘Sergeant, take ten men and set up an observation post in the steeple of that church.’ He pointed at a church maybe a hundred yards off, a big, tall place. I’m telling you this job would have taken a reinforced company. To think the enemy would just let us walk into that church and set up an OP was stupid. It commanded the whole damn town.

“But it was orders. Chip picked ten of us, and we got a .30 machine gun. We had this guy, Rudy Blasingame, who was as good with that gun as anyone I saw. Chip tells Rudy and two ammo carriers to cover our advance from a garage roof directly to our right. They take off lugging that stuff across forty yards of open space, and a sniper starts nipping at them. Ping . . . Ping . . . I can still see those bullets hitting the rubble as the guys ran. Between the corner where we were and the church was mostly open ground, with two buildings in it, a big two-story frame house directly in front of us but farther back, and a little house off to the right but closer than the two-story. So, who was first around the corner? Chip! ‘Gimme supportin’ fire,’ he says, and he goes.

“Now, the sniper starts in on Chip, who jumps behind some rubble. He was in the two-story house maybe 150 yards off. We can’t see the guy, so Blasingame just shot that damn building apart, putting slugs around every window, and the sniper stopped firing. Several of us went around the corner and Chip also moved up. He got just enough forward that he could see the backside of the little house off to the right. Jesus Christ, there was a Mark IV tank there with about forty infantry! They were just waiting for some poor slobs to come across that ground.

“There was no time to do anything by the book. Chip jumped up and ran back toward us. ‘Get back!’ he yells, ‘Y ’all get outta here. Rudy!’ he hollers at Glasingame for him to get out. The tank advanced to get a shot at us. We all started running like hell for the corner we’d just come from. The first shell came in, blew out the side of the building, and knocked Chip down. But he was up and just got around the corner. Then the second shell came in, blew the corner off, and knocked him down again, this time unconscious. We picked him up and ran the hell out of there. Can’t recall if we ever took that damn church or bypassed it. He was a good combat leader, as good as I saw.” Several of the others nodded. “He wouldn’t ask anything of you he wouldn’t do himself.”

Others spoke of Dad’s talent as a leader. One man said: “I was with him in Korea as we retreated from the north, after the Chinese attacked in the winter of ’50. A bunch of us had come into the line maybe only a week before. I was only eighteen and had graduated from high school that June. The Chinese got ahead of us and ambushed us. Plenty of us were near panic. I looked up. There Chip was, standing over me.

“‘Soldier, take this rifle. It’s mine. See this chip out of the stock? A German bullet did that and almost took my hand with it. I like that rifle, and I’m gonna want it back real bad, so you take good care of it for me.’

“He just stood there in the middle of that road and never really sought cover. It buoyed us up a lot. I guess his .45 was out of ammo. So, he pulled out his little .25. Everyone who ever served with him knows about that little Colt he always carried.” The men all smiled. “I saw him shoot two Chinese with it. He saved my life, so I had to come to say ‘thanks’ this last time.”

Another man who’d served with Dad in both wars added: “We all thought the Huertgen Forest in Germany was bad, but those temperatures in the Iron Triangle in North Korea were really terrible.”

I thought a Mr. Selton told the most memorable story. “This happened in ’52 in Korea when Chip was a captain of scouts. Five of us, including Reyes and myself, snuck behind enemy lines to meet a small plane carrying about 150 pounds of explosives to blow up an important railroad bridge. It was about ten miles behind the lines. Why the fly-boys couldn’t do the job beats me. Anyhow, almost to the meeting site, Reyes gets shot through the chest. We never saw the shooter, and we got away along a ditch. We got to the rendezvous point carrying this good-looking guy next to me. He was unconscious. When the single-engine plane landed, bringing in the explosives, we carried him over to there.

“That pilot, a young lieutenant, was real jumpy; boy, did he want to get out of there. He didn’t even shut off the engine.

“Chip yelled, ‘You gotta fly this guy out of here right now.’

“The guy says, ‘Captain, I’m not flyin’ anybody but myself out of this goddamn dump. Orders from Major Drummond.’

“Chip stood back, affronted, but then continued. ‘The bullet went right through. He has a collapsed lung. It’s fillin’ up with fluid. We can’t do anythin’ for him here. If you don’t get him out and back ta an aid station, he’ll die in a couple hours.’

“‘I’m not doing it. We don’t haul you guys around! We bring in supplies and fly out, period!’ the lieutenant said. It was the same indifference about life that Chip hated, which endeared him to all of us.” Selton paused and looked around the circle. Many of the men nodded.

“The look on his face changed. He pulled out his .45, cocked it, and pointed it at the pilot’s head. ‘I’d be happy ta blow your head off right here if you don’t do exactly as I say.’

“It took us all night and most of a day to carefully work our way that many miles behind the lines. I can imagine our dirty uniforms and sour expressions. The pilot was just dumbfounded! ‘What are you talking about? If you shoot me, he’ll die!’

“‘If you don’t take him, he’s gonna die anyway,’ one of the guys said. Chip and the rest of us nodded. The pilot still couldn’t believe it.

“‘I’ll be killed. This thing can get into these spaces with all of these supplies, but I can’t get out with any extra weight!’

“‘We don’t care,’ I said.

“The pilot realized there was no way out but to do as we said. ‘I’ll be killed,’ he said, almost screaming. ‘All right! All right! You assholes. My major’ll fix you, Wiley, all of ya! You’ll all be court-martialed!’

“‘That’d be fine,’ Mickelson said. Sometimes in combat, you reach the place where you just don’t give a damn.

“We couldn’t lie him down in the back with that lung, so we put him upright in the passenger seat and strapped him in. That was his only chance. Chip grabbed the pilot by the neck just before he was to take off.

“‘You lookie here. Suppose the sergeant here happens ta fall out on the way back durin’ some rough air. You should know that whatever god-forsaken hole you crawl into, wherever you go, some day I’ll find ya and I’ll kill ya.’

“The pilot, obviously rattled, said only, ‘Just let me go!’ He surveyed the field, revved the motor, and actually got off. Damn, I never thought he’d make it. He was at the aid station in thirty minutes. It saved the sergeant’s life, and here he is sitting next to me with that same ugly face.”

The men chuckled.

“That damn pilot did seek revenge. In several weeks word came down to battalion that charges were being preferred against Chip and he would face a court-martial hearing. Legal proceedings continued for a long time, until the charges were suddenly dropped.” Several of the men smiled and nodded. “The rumor’s always been that [Lieutenant Louis] Hubering went to see that pilot.”

Another one of the men in the circle said, “Yeah, that Hubering was a good man too.”

The time slipped by. They took their turns; none seemed to be in a rush. When they were done, suddenly they stood, almost as one. Each shook my hand warmly. I offered to put them up in the house or with neighbors, but they politely declined. In what seemed like less than a minute, they disappeared, much in the same manner as the old veterans themselves were disappearing.

Now, when I open the drawer of Grandmother’s antique desk, there in felt fabric are the two weapons my father carried with him while in the Army: a Colt .45 automatic and the little Colt .25. I never saw either fired, and the bullets in the detached clips were removed long ago. On those occasions when we looked at his Army uniform, or at pictures of Dad and his friends, sometimes he would take out the pistols.

The .45 he looked at with admiration, as one would an old and valued friend. He dismissed our questions about it. “Someday, maybe I’ll tell you about it. I got him from a good soldier.” Then his lip stuck out and stiffened, and he would be silent for a while.

The .25 was even more important to him. He revered it, almost like a living thing. We asked where he got it too, but he never said.

He would look at the weapon, smiling, marveling at it. Then he would look at us and say the same words every time: “Children, this plain-lookin’ gun was the dearest friend I ever had in this world! Many a time, he saved my carcass. Without him, none of you children would be here, and your mama would have married a rich man and had a sweet life.”

We never quite understood his statement. The idea that our lives might never have been, that he might have been killed in the war, struck us curiously.

I only saw Dad upset a few times and get emotionally upset twice: once when Mama was ill, and once near the end of his life during one of the times when we looked at the little pistol. Why he held it in such regard, I would love to understand. He always promised that he would tell us about the guns, but he never did.

So I look at them now, a few months after his passing, and carefully place them back in the fabric where they belong.

–Andy Wiley

Columbia, South Carolina

July 17, 2007

Soldier, rest! thy warfare o’er,

Sleep the sleep that knows not breaking;

Dream of battled fields no more,

Days of danger, nights of waking.

—Sir Walter Scott, The Lady of the Lake

Table of Contents

COVER PAGE

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT PAGE

DEDICATION

CONTENTS

PREFACE

JIMMY DEVALERY STORIES

THE DAY OFF

STRAFING RUN AT WEWAK

A DIP IN THE SEA

THE GIFT

HARRY CONNORS STORIES

MOJARRA

THE DEVIL'S CAULDRON

GOBY

DELL

THEODORE RODGERS STORIES

MACKSON

THE BROKEN LEG

PREFACE TO "BATTLE FOR HUON GULF"

BATTLE FOR HUON GULF

BATTLE OFF NOEMFOOR

JOSEPH WILEY STORIES

TWO SERGEANTS

A DOWNED PLANE

HEINZELDORF

THE FADED ROSE

THE CIRCLE