Above the Thunder (21 page)

Our planes finally came, and were assembled by the boys at Base F. Everyone got a new plane—except me. The plane that would have been mine was diverted to some outfit with higher priority, and I was issued good old #1167. I was somewhat upset about that at first, but it turned out to be the best L-4 I ever flew. It was beautifully rigged and trimmed, had a good engine, felt easy, smooth, and lively on the controls, and, with its slicker finish, cruised a couple of knots faster than the newer ships. I claimed it was a better plane because it was experienced.

But one night after dark we got orders to bring a plane to Finschhafen immediately. It was to be dismantled and flown by C-47 to Hollandia to replace a combat loss in the 24th Division. Since #1167 was the oldest ship we had, she was elected, so Wendy Young went along to help tear it down, and we felt our way down the dark coast to Base F and loaded the plane in the dark. Not long after that, I was issued a new plane. Its tail number was 79608, and I named it
Booby Trap II.
Vin, although a Missourian by birth, had lived in Arizona, and he named his plane the
Arizona Keed.

There was a period—I don't recall how long or why—when Vin and I with our planes were staying at Base F and flying out of a little corner of the big airfield there. I think the Japanese air in that area was quite weak by then, but the P-38 pilots seemed to be finding something to hit on occasion, because now and then we'd see one come low and fast across the field, then pull up and do his victory roll, his wingtip contrails drawing spirals in the air. I think they were patrolling over New Britain at that time. The cocky little pilots with their crushed hats could easily get on one's nerves, you know. They were the glamour boys, and
no one knew it better than they. In one such case, I was talking with a second lieutenant of the Quartermaster Corps. He said he'd had enough braggadocio to last him a while, and he invited me to come aboard his ship and we'd have a drink.

At first, I thought he was kidding, but I found that he did have command of a ship, all his own, that he had skippered all the way from New Orleans, through Panama, and across the Pacific to New Guinea. It was seventy-five feet long and twenty-five feet in beam, had a high forecastle and a high bridge, and between them it was quite low where a single hatch gave access to the hold. It looked something like Christopher Columbus's
Santa Maria
without sails. On the bridge, which was typically nautical with lots of varnished wood and polished brass, he mixed us some grape Kool-Aid and spiked it with medical alcohol. Best of all for me, he cooled it with real ice cubes, something I had not seen since Hawaii. He told me that his crew for the little ship was fourteen men. He loved the job, and I sort of envied him.

At one time I was asked to land on a baby aircraft carrier much different from the second lieutenant's ship—that was anchored in the harbor at Finschhafen. It was the kind that Navy aircraft took off from but did not ordinarily land on, their main purpose being to replace airplane losses from the larger carriers. I went out and made a couple of flybys. Then I asked if it was really important for me to land there. They said no, they just wanted to see how it looked to an L-4 pilot. I told them I could probably land OK if I had to, but the damned thing looked much too small for comfort, just sitting out there with no wind.

The Div Arty camp at Fortification Point was right up to the camp builders' standard, but Vin and I and our air section men lived at the airstrip nearby. Vin and I shared one tent, while the four enlisted men—Eddie Janes had now joined us—shared another about fifty yards away.

One night I walked down to the men's tent to speak to Sergeant Allen about something. The walls of the tent were rolled up, and as I approached I could see Allen and Young sitting on their cots on opposite sides of the tent. Each had a clipboard on his knee and was intent on writing a personal letter. There was not a sound except the hissing of a Coleman gasoline lantern hanging on the tent pole and the light scratching
of their pens. They didn't notice me come up to the tent entrance. At the entrance I stopped, because on the canvas cot at Allen's right elbow was a grayish-brown snake about five feet long. It was coiled, but about half of its length was raised, placing its head nearly level with Allen's shoulder. It slowly swayed to and fro, apparently watching Allen's hand move as he wrote.

It occurred to me that if I spoke, or if one of the men should see me there, both would immediately stand up, and that would surely cause the snake to strike Allen. Glancing around for a weapon, I saw an extended entrenching tool leaning against the tent rope at my right side. I grabbed it, then, as fast as I could, I leaped across the tent, swept the snake's reared-up body off the cot, and killed it. It was over before Allen knew what was happening, I think, although Young saw the snake as I knocked it off, and I believe he helped me kill it.

In accordance with the medics' standing request, we called for them to identify the snake. It was a cobra, they said, a common cobra.

On another dark night, I heard something down near our planes, and I was a bit intimidated when I made out several tall figures that did not show the familiar lines of American soldiers. When I approached them, one spoke up.

“Good ev'nin', mate! We're your neighbors from across the river. We thought per'aps you chaps might like to come over for a spot of tea.”

They were officers from the Australian unit camped on the other side of the Massewang, and I'm afraid none of our people had had the grace to call on them or invite them over. I guess they came to the airstrip because we were nearest to them. But thereafter, some of us did go over and visit with them on several occasions. Among my loot from those visits was one of their famous bush hats, which had one side pinned up by a bronze insignia of the Royal Australian Engineers on a background of red felt. I lost the hat somewhere, but I think I still have that insignia. And another visit ended with my wading back across the Massewang carrying a submachine gun and a waterproof bag containing about six hundred rounds of ammunition. If the friendly Aussies got anything in return for their generosity, I doubt that it was anything more than my undying goodwill toward their country.

Our airstrip was barely finished and the other air sections moved in before the rains hit us in full force. Rain was heavy and almost constant. Additionally, the change in winds made our beach landing area extremely difficult for the boats that had been supplying Div Arty. One of the boats rolled over in the surf, and the Quartermaster Corps, which operated the boats, refused to come in anymore until conditions improved. And so it was that for two whole weeks nothing came into or went out from Div Arty except by L-4 airplane.

Now bear in mind that the legal payload of an L-4 was 370 pounds, including the pilot's weight. You can see that we had to do a lot of flying. We had ten planes and eleven pilots, so each day one pilot was detailed as dispatcher, and we had an officer from Div Arty to determine load priorities. Our planes flew to and from Base F from dawn till dark, halting only long enough for fueling and for the pilot to grab a drink of water or a bite to eat. We were loaded both going and coming, hauling up to 500 pounds, regardless of the 370-pound limit. We hauled about everything from food rations to jungle rot patients, from routine personal mail to classified official papers and ranking officers. Despite the rain and low visibility along the forty-mile route, we had no accidents.

But in the worst of the conditions, navigation did pose a real problem. We worked out a system for finding and getting lined up on our inconspicuous little strip. Always we were coming up the coast from Base F, very low, following the white line of the surf pounding the shore at the foot of often invisible green hills. Watching closely, we could recognize the mouth of the Massewang, then we'd watch the land side until we could make out the row of officers' tents that lined the shore just below the main camp. At that point, we'd make a ninety-degree left turn and watch the camp flow by a hundred or so feet beneath our wings. When the tents ran out, we'd execute another ninety to the left, count three seconds, then make another—and in a few more seconds we'd spot the strip, just about under the nose. Set down, taxi over, unload, reload, and go again.

Come to think of it, it's rather surprising that we didn't have at least one head-on collision somewhere along the coast. We must have had some rule to preclude that, but I don't remember what it was.

Lt. Lorne Stanley, Don Vineyard, and I had all graduated from the
“kill or be killed” school for jungle warfare instructors on Oahu. In fact, Stanley had remained there for a while as an instructor in bayonet and knife fighting. The three of us considered ourselves pretty hot stuff when it came to fast hip-shooting with a rifle or carbine, among many other things, and we missed the opportunity for practicing our art—and showing off before the other boys. One day, accompanied by Lt. Voris “Okie” Taylor, we went up the coast a few miles to a coconut grove to have a little fun with our carbines. There was a silly rule prohibiting officers from driving vehicles (because they didn't have to do the first echelon maintenance on them), so we got a Technical Sergeant Anderson, of the battalion communications section, to drive for us.

While we four lieutenants amused ourselves and shot up lots of ammunition for an hour or so, Sergeant Anderson sat quietly in the truck, his cap down over his eyes as if he were dozing. When one of us finally asked him if he'd like to try his hand at the carbine, he allowed himself to be coaxed into giving it a whirl. He unwound his tall, lanky frame and came over and took the weapon someone offered him. He looked around rather uncertainly.

“What should I shoot at?” he asked.

“Oh, just pick out anything—like that palm tree over there.”

No sooner were the words out than Anderson's carbine was spitting bullets—ba-ba-bam!—three shots so close together they sounded almost like one. And right in the middle of the palm tree, about waist high and spaced vertically about six inches apart, appeared three holes. He proceeded then to show us what a carbine could do if one really could shoot. It was finally made known to us that even before he got into the Army, Anderson was an NRA champion, and he had continued his superior shooting since joining the service, adapting it to combat fire techniques. He made us feel silly.

Lt. Col. Thomas Truxtun was our Div Arty G-2 (intelligence officer), a tall, slim, handsome, and distinguished fellow who looked exactly as an officer and a gentleman should look. At Fortification Point he was not very busy. Needing something to brighten his days, he asked me to fly him in to examine a Japanese bomber that had been reported down in the hills some forty-five miles northwest of us.

The wreck was on a grassy hillside maybe five miles from the coast. Half a mile from it was an extreme rarity in that part of New Guinea: a house. The hillside where the bomber lay offered no prospect for a safe landing, so I picked a spot not far from the house and looked it over carefully. A crackup in that isolated spot would be a problem for sure. The grass was tall, about shoulder high, but I figured I could land in it OK, then trample down a takeoff lane. I did land without difficulty, except that near the end of my short rollout the plane dropped over a bank about four feet high that the grass had concealed from me. She nearly went over on her nose, but I gunned the engine and brought the tail back down.

We walked over to the bomber. It had been down for at least several weeks, and it had about it an unpleasant atmosphere of deteriorated rubber and mildew. Under the tail lay the skeletons of two crew members. While the colonel began examining various items of equipment, I asked if I might investigate the old house.

It looked very much like a poor farmhouse somewhere in the southeastern United States—a small frame building with tin roof and weathered, unpainted wooden siding. The windows were long ago broken out and everything inside had seen many rain soakings. It had that musty smell like the airplane. I found an old pedal-pumped organ still in fair condition, and quite a few items like tubs and chairs and a clothes wringer. And there were some books. One, which I took with me, was a German-language biography of Bismarck. Another was a ledger in which was a list of words in some New Guinean native language with German translation beside it. There were scraps of religious songbooks in German, and the whole thing led me to conclude that the house had been home to German missionaries now displaced by the war.
⁵

When I saw Colonel Truxtun heading back for the plane, I did likewise. With just a few yards of grass mashed back in front of the plane, and with the takeoff run carefully walked over to be sure there was no hidden obstacle, we got off with no problem. Once in the air, he asked me if we could land on an old Japanese fighter strip we had seen just where we turned in from the coast. About a mile from it, at the foot of the hills, was a village that he wanted to visit. We flew over the village
without seeing a solitary human being and then landed on the equally deserted old strip. We walked along a well-beaten path through the kunai grass until we came to the village.