“Here’s a Trench!” He Whispered Over His Shoulder
“Here’s a Trench!” He Whispered Over His Shoulder
“Here’s a Trench!” He Whispered Over His Shoulder
Their wait was not long, though to their tensed nerves it seemed hours. From behind them a Jap sentry’s rifle shot was blanketed by the heavier voices of American sub-machine guns. Shrill yells arose. The sharper clatter of Jap .25-caliber machine guns joined the din.
Barry’s party needed no command to toss their deadly little “pineapples.” Two apiece, they lobbed them right into the tent. Then they ducked, pulling the grass mats over them.
The explosions came almost together—like a string of giant firecrackers. A patter of debris sounded on the grass matting just over their heads. Jap voices broke out, shrill with excitement, drawing rapidly nearer.
Suddenly light showed, farther down the trench.
“They’re coming in!” Barry snapped. “Wait till they fill the trench, and then rake ’em with the tommy-guns. Curly and I will lie down; the rest of you kneel or stand and fire over us. Toss off the end mat at the last minute.”
“Okay, Lieutenant—we’ll sure clean them out that way!” muttered Fred Marmon. “That is, if nobody lobs a hand grenade intothisend of the ditch!”
Evidently the Japs had no idea that the grenades that had wrecked the tent might have come from the trench. They proceeded to take the camouflage mats off methodically, moving up from the other end.
Barry lay on the very bottom, with Curly’s elbow digging him in the ribs as he aimed his weapon. It was lighter now in their end of the trench.
Taking a long breath, Barry pressed the trigger. The trench erupted with fire and sound. He saw the Japs nearest him crumple like rag dolls, one after another, down the trench. They never knew what hit them.
At the further end, however, the doomed men saw the licking gun-flames. Some of them tried to return the fire—only to be riddled in the act. The remainder started scrambling out of the death trap. Cracker Jackson and big Danny Hale caught most of these, but not before one Jap had lobbed a hand grenade.
The missile, hastily thrown, landed outside the trench, six feet from Hale and Jackson. Without a split second’s hesitation, big Danny flung himself upon the thing. In one motion he grabbed and flung it. The grenade burst harmlessly, fifty feet away.
Now, however, bullets were humming over the slit trench. The Japs were all outside.
“Down, men!” Barry Blake shouted at Danny and Cracker Jackson. “We’ve got to hold this trench if we want to live.”
All of the shooting now came from the direction of the American advance. The Japs between the attacking force and Barry’s trench were keeping their heads down and their gun barrels hot. Their camouflaged helmets offered difficult targets.
“Hold your fire until our boys blast them out of those trenches,” Barry told his friends. “It won’t be long now. Then we can see what we’re shooting at.Curly, suppose you face the other way and see that nobody snipes—”
PING!
Barry broke off as a .25-caliber slug glanced off his helmet. The shock of it hurt his old head-wound like a knife stab.
“I see the beggar!” yelped Curly. “He’s in that tree above the wrecked tent....”
The raving of his tommy-gun drowned out Levitt’s words. Tony Romani’s weapon joined it, firing short bursts. Suddenly the shooting stopped.
“One more honorable sniper bites honorable dust,” chantedRosy O’Grady’snavigator. “So solly!”
From concealment in patches of brush and trees the Jap field guns started to fire. They were lobbing shells just over their trenches, feeling for the Americans down the slope. Apparently some of the shells landed close. Their result was simply to speed up the attack.
In a series of short rushes the two companies closed in on the entrenched Japs. While some of them advanced the rest poured a hot fire into the Jap positions. Then the foremost Americans started hurling grenades. In a few minutes much of the fighting was hand to hand. Howling like wolves, the boys from Montana, Ohio, and New York leaped into the Jap front-line defenses and cleaned them out.
Fred Marmon and Cracker Jackson wanted to charge down the slope and join that fight, but Barryforbade it.
“You’d probably be shot for Japs,” he told them. “And, anyhow, you’ll be more useful here when the enemy starts to scatter.... Look there! Isn’t that a bunch of ’em crawling out of a communication trench? Once they reach the bush they’ll all turn into snipers. We’ll have to head them off.”
The Fortress crew needed no urging. A fight in the open was more to their taste than crouching in a trench, any day. This time, with big Danny Hale in the lead, they ran, stooping, through the grass toward the outcropping of rock.
They were within twenty feet of the enemy when the Japs realized that they were Americans. The little men tried to shoot, but the Yanks were too close. Swinging his tommy-gun like a war-club, big Danny Hale closed the distance. He took a bullet through his thigh without feeling it, and mowed down two Japs with one blow. His gun came to pieces, so he dropped it and fought bare-handed.
Cracker Jackson was using his bayonet like a short sword—inside his opponent’s guard. Fred Marmon was swaying in a knife duel with a third enemy. Tony Romani, his sub-machine gun empty, was coolly picking his shots with an automatic pistol.
Barry had shot two Japs and knocked out a third with his gun butt. Without stopping to make sure of the last man, he turned to help Fred Marmon. That was a mistake. A half-dead Jap is more dangerousthan a coiled cobra.
As Barry turned his back the dizzy son of Nippon clawed out a pistol and fired. Fortunately for Barry the Jap’s aim was bad. The bullet drilled through the calf of his right leg.
Tony Romani’s quick eyes caught the play. His pistol blazed twice. The Jap stiffened out, his weapon sliding from his hand.
The nearest enemies were all accounted for, but a movement to the right caught Barry’s eye.
“Down, boys!” he said sharply. “There’s another bunch coming out of the communication trench. I’ll keep ’em busy while you reload your tommy-guns.”
Throwing himself down behind a small rock, Barry opened fire in two-second bursts. He must halt the Jap retreat, and still conserve his ammunition until the others had replaced their empty cartridge drums.
His strategy worked almost too well. The Jap officer leading the retreat took Barry for a lone gunner, and decided to wipe him out at once. Firing in short spurts, he led his thirty-odd men straight at the outcropping of rocks.
Bullets pounded the stone behind which Barry lay. They glanced off with wicked little screams. Once rock-dust got in Barry’s eye, half-blinding him.
“Make it snappy, fellows!” he warned through clenched teeth. “Our game will be up in half a minute.”
“I beg to differ with you, Lieutenant,” Curly Levitt’s voice sounded at his shoulder. “Just watch this!”
His tommy-gun spoke, just as the thirty Japs started their rush. Barry’s weapon chimed in briefly, slamming its last bullet into the officer’s midriff. The charging Japs flung themselves flat.
Barry rolled aside to make room behind his rock for Fred Marmon. Sergeants Jackson and Romani had now finished reloading. They were firing from the highest point of the rocks, raking the enemy mercilessly. Quickly the Japs realized that to stay where they were meant sure death. Behind them the Americans were mopping up the last trenches.
Barry had just joined Danny Hale in the shelter of a half-sunken boulder. The big sergeant was trying to puzzle out the workings of a captured Jap rifle. Suddenly he glanced up.
“Here they come, Lieutenant!” Danny Hale whooped. “No time to reload now.”
Dropping his tommy-gun, Barry whipped out his bayonet. At Danny’s heels he vaulted the boulder. The Japs who dived through the hail of sub-machine gun bullets must be met with cold steel.
The shooting fizzled out. Now all the fighting was hand-to-hand. Barry bayoneted a monkey-like figure who had leaped upon Fred Marmon’s back. Turning, he glimpsed Danny Hale wielding his Jap rifle like a pitchfork. Just in time, he leaped aside tododge an enemy bayonet thrust and grapple with the man.
He blocked a vicious kick with his knee, but his wounded leg gave way. The next instant he was rolling on the ground, with the Jap’s buck teeth snapping at his throat, and the Jap’s knife slashing his ribs.
Desperately he twisted aside and jabbed with his bayonet. His enemy screeched and went limp.
Another mob of helmeted figures came bounding through the tall grass. Barry heaved the dead Jap aside, and came up on one knee. Sweat stung his eyes, blurring them. He gripped his bayonet for a last thrust.
“Hold it, man!” yelped a Yankee voice. “Don’t you know your friends?”
The newcomers were infantrymen, arriving just too late for the finish. They had popped out of the communication trench and were looking for more Japs. With them was a medical-corps man—the same one who had attended Barry in the field dressing station. Seeing Barry’s new wounds, he whipped out a hypodermic needle, and drove it home before the young flier knew what was happening.
“You bonehead!” Barry cried. “I’m only scratched. Now you’ve fixed me so I can’t carry on. There’s a lot of mopping up to do. Those Jap field guns—”
“We’ve plenty of men to take care of them, sir,” the corporal interrupted. “If the Lieutenant will permitme to contradict him, wounds two and three inches deep are hardly scratches. They need to be stuffed with sulfa powder—not dirt. And besides that, sir, you’ve lost a lot of blood.”
“Oh, have it your own way,” sighed Barry, as the swift-acting drug began to take effect. “Got a drink of water handy? I’m thirsty as a fried fish.”
LIEUTENANT IN WHITE
LIEUTENANT IN WHITE
LIEUTENANT IN WHITE
Barry’s next impression was as startling as a vision of something unearthly. A girl with big, blue eyes and a crisp white uniform, was pushing something into his mouth. The thing was a thermometer.
“Who—where—whap happumed...?” Barry mumbled in bewilderment.
The blue-eyed vision touched her lips. A red-gold curl that had escaped from her cap dangled as she shook her head. She took Barry’s wrist in a light, expert grasp and compared his pulse-beats with her watch. The seconds, it seemed to him, passed with agonizing slowness.
A glance about him showed a regular hospital ward. The beds were occupied by young fellows dozing, reading, listening to the tuned-down radio. This couldn’t be New Guinea! But where was it? Andhow longwas it since the Battle of Grassy Ridge, when that Jap had tried to bite his throat, and....
“You’re in a base hospital in Queensland, Australia,” the nurse murmured, just as if she had been reading his thoughts. “You have been here for a week. As long as your fever continued you were kept under the new sleeping drugs. I don’t thinkyou’re very bright, Lieutenant—getting into a second fight before your head wound had started to heal. But your blood seems to fight germs as hard as you fought the Japs. You’re disgustingly healthy.”
“And you’re distractingly beautiful, Lieutenant!” Barry retorted. “Nevertheless, feasting my eyes on you doesn’t fill my empty stomach. How about bringing me a T-bone steak—rare?”
The blue-eyed nurse made a face at him.
“All you deserve is a can of bully-beef,” she declared. “But I’ll see what I can do.”
Barry’s steak turned out to be bacon and toast. At his groan of disappointment, Nurse Stevens threatened to take it away. In fact, Barry had to apologize and promise to make no more complaints before she would let him eat anything.
Not many days passed, however, before Barry Blake was actually eating steaks and calling Lieutenant Moira Stevens by her first name. He started that on the first evening that she helped him to walk from the ward to the canopied ramp that surrounded the hospital.
“Why won’t you tell me anything about Captain O’Grady?” he asked as she took the deck chair beside him. “You admitted he was sent here from the New Guinea airfield. If he’s dead, I’m well enough to stand the news without bursting a blood vessel.”
Lieutenant Stevens turned her clear, steady gaze on Barry’s face.
“You think the world of Captain O’Grady, don’t you?” she murmured. “How long did you know him before he was wounded?”
“Less than two weeks,” Barry Blake responded. “Somehow time doesn’t count much with wartime friendships. It seems as if I’d known you for months—Moira.”
A low laugh bubbled in the girl’s throat. It wasn’t a giggle—just a good-humored, friendly chuckle. Lieutenant Moira Stevens rose several points in Barry’s estimation because of it.
“I guess I can safely tell you the latest news about Captain O’Grady now,” she said, changing the subject. “I heard the doctor say this morning that he is out of danger. When you first came to your senses the captain was just hanging between life and death. If I’d told you the truth then, you might have worried yourself back into a fever.”
Barry did not speak. He gazed across the clearing at a row of tall cocoanut palms. All at once the tropical night seemed very beautiful.
“So the Old Man is here—in this hospital,” he said at last. “When do you think I might see him? I—I’d like to talk with him aboutSweet Rosy O’Grady... tell him she’s not beyond repair.”
“I’ll ask the medical officer in charge, Barry,” the girl promised, as she rose to her feet. “Come, now! It’s time you were getting to bed. Take my arm—that’s it—and we’ll go back to the ward.”
The following day Moira took Barry to see his Old Man for a three-minute period. Captain O’Grady looked shockingly thin. His wide, humorous mouth was drawn with lines of pain, but his blue eyes had the same smile that Barry remembered.
“What brought you here, Barry?” he asked as he released his co-pilot’s hand. “Another raid on Rabaul?”
“Nothing so pleasant,” Barry grinned. “The Japs raided our airport the next night after you came to this hospital. The raid was a cover-up for a landing of paratroops and field guns on a ridge above the field. I got cut up a few days later helping to clean them out with tommy-guns and grenades. All ofRosy’screw went along and had a great time.”
Captain O’Grady’s face sobered.
“I see,” he murmured. “The Jap guns had shot up the field so you couldn’t get any planes off to bomb them. You boys were wrong, though. You had no right to risk half a dozen highly trained Fortress men in a land skirmish. Why did you do it?”
“That’s hardly a fair question, Captain!” Moira Stevens broke in. “You’d have wanted to go yourself if you’d been there. Would you be happy, sir, sitting in the shade of your plane while your friends were fighting to save it for you?”
“Nurse Stevens,” the Old Man replied with a wry smile, “you’ve knocked out all my guns. I’m completely at your mercy, and you know it.”
“In that case, sir,” Moira said, “Lieutenant Blake and I will leave you to make the best landing you can.... Come along, Barry! Time is up.”
As she pulled the young co-pilot toward the door he turned for a last word.
“I’ll be back to see you again as soon as the nurse will let me, Captain,” he said. “And, by the way sir,Sweet Rosy O’Gradyis only grounded until she can get repairs. I—er—thought you’d like to know.”
In his later conversations with the Old Man, nothing was ever said about the Captain’s missing arm. They talked as though one of these days would see him again at the wheel of a flying fort. But both men knew that it was all talk. Before long Tex O’Grady would be back at home in the States with the only person in the world that he loved better than his warplane—sweet Mrs. O’Grady herself.
Six weeks from the day he came to the Queensland hospital, Barry Blake received his new orders. He was to report at the new airplane repair base immediately upon being discharged.
Barry was exultant. He demanded that Moira bring the medical officer in charge to examine him at once. For the past week, he told her, he had been feeling more like a prisoner than a patient—without even a prisoner’s excuse for sticking around. Furthermore, he declared, a certain blonde, blue-eyed lieutenant had been neglecting him shamefully.
“I’ll Be Back as Soon as the Nurse Will Let Me.”
“I’ll Be Back as Soon as the Nurse Will Let Me.”
“I’ll Be Back as Soon as the Nurse Will Let Me.”
Moira Stevens wrinkled her pretty nose at him.
“As a nurse I have no interest in perfect physical specimens,” she replied. “Sick men are my job. But if you haven’t forgotten me when this war is over, it might be fun to get together and compare notes.”
She flashed him a smile that took the chill out of her words.
“Hmmm!” murmured Barry as she swept out of the ward with a rustle of starched uniform. “They don’t make ’em any finer than Lieutenant Moira Stevens. And I mean,definitely!”
The colonel in charge gave Barry an examination that overlooked nothing.
“You’re fit for service, Lieutenant,” he said. “If you were my age, you’d be in bed for another six weeks. Be thankful that nineteen years heals just twice as fast as forty-five! Er—by the way—at eleven thirty you will report to Captain O’Grady on the west ramp outside the hospital. That is all.”
Barry had intended to see the Old Man before leaving, but beingorderedto do so puzzled him. He glanced at his watch and saw that it was already ten-thirty. He would have just comfortable time to shave, dress, and check over his few personal effects that had been sent from the New Guinea airport.
As he stepped out onto the west ramp, the sight of several “brass hats” halted him in his tracks. A mere second lieutenant had no place in such company! Then he glimpsed Captain O’Grady in a wheelchair, chatting with the highest-ranking officer.
Barry glanced at the time—eleven-thirty. Recalling that he was there by order of the colonel gave him courage. He waited until O’Grady recognized him, then stepped forward and saluted.
“General Morse,” the captain said with grave formality, “this is Lieutenant Barry Blake, who brought our crippled Fortress home after the raid on Rabaul. Although wounded, he landed the plane under almost impossible conditions, risking his own life to save mine!”
As in a dream, Barry found himself taking the general’s outstretched hand. He tried to make some appropriate answer, but no words would come. All at once he found himself the center of everyone’s attention. General Morse was pinning something on his breast. In the background the colonel and the brass hats were standing at attention—to honorhim.
Barry caught his Old Man’s eye, and it steadied him. He saluted, met the general’s handclasp, and stepped back. The tableau of high-ranking officers broke up and passed on into the hospital.
“Sit down with me, son,” O’Grady invited him. “Moira Stevens will join us in a few minutes for lunch. There’ll be just the three of us. You don’t know how pleased I am, Barry, that I could be present to see you decorated with the Purple Heart.”
Barry touched the bright medal wonderingly.
“I feel, somehow, as if it ought to belong to you, sir,” he answered.
NEW GUINEA GARDENS
NEW GUINEA GARDENS
NEW GUINEA GARDENS
Reporting for duty at the Queensland repair base, Barry ran into surprises still more bewildering. The first was the news that he was promoted to first lieutenant; the second, that he would be given command immediately of a Flying Fortress. The ship and crew, he was told, were now waiting for him on the runway.
Wondering if it were all some crazy delusion, Barry hurried to the airport. For a moment it seemed that he must be back in Seattle, looking atSweet Rosy O’Gradyfor the first time. For there she sat, with her inboard props turning slowly in the sun, and her name painted clear on the fuselage.
There was even a tall, wide-shouldered figure in flying togs, leaning against the plane’s tail. He looked like Captain O’Grady from a distance. But he couldn’t be!
Barry wiped his hand across his eyes, and walked toward the ship. The tall fellow looked up. He wasn’t the Old Man—he wasHap Newton!
Hap let out a whoop like a locomotive and charged down upon Barry Blake. The two friends proceeded to do a war-dance, bombarding each otherwith questions. The surprise was entirely mutual. Hap had been based in another part of the South Pacific until recently. His B-26 Marauder had run out of gas near the northern tip of Queensland one night, and its crew had bailed out. Only Hap and the bombardier-gunner had made shore. Just this morning Hap had been assigned to theRosy O’Gradyas co-pilot.
“And nowyouare my skipper!” he exclaimed. “It’s such a wild coincidence that I can’t believe it yet.... But just wait, Barry—the shocks aren’t over. Step inside and meet the rest of us.”
Barry turned to the open hatch, but he had no chance to enter. Men were boiling out of it as if the ship were too hot for them. In five seconds they were all around him. Fred Marmon, Cracker Jackson, Tony Romani, Curly Levitt, and Soapy Babbitt, with his broken shoulder still a little stiff, but useable.
“Where’s Danny Hale?” Barry asked, the moment they gave him a chance to speak.
Silence, as stunning as a blow, answered him. Barry’s face went white.
“Tell me, boys,” he muttered through stiff lips. “You—you mean that Danny—that he....”
“He got transferred, Barry,” Curly Levitt said quietly. “It was just after the medical-corps men carried you back to the dressing station on Grassy Ridge. A bunch of us were trying to capture a Japfield gun. We ducked into a slit trench and started tossing hand grenades, but the Japs chucked them right back at us before they could explode. One landed in our trench. Danny covered it to protect the rest of us—and just then it went off.”
“Thanks, Curly,” Barry said in a choked voice. “Sorry my question brought it all back to you. It—itiseasier, somehow, to think of Danny as simply transferred.... Have they sent us a bombardier yet?”
“They sent him—such as he is!” replied a strangely familiar voice.
Barry jumped as if he had been shot. Through the hatchway dropped a small, bandy-legged man whose short blonde hair bristled like the fuzz of a newly hatched duckling.
“Chick Enders!” Barry cried, making a grab for his old friend. “How did you gethere?”
“The same way Hap Newton did,” answered Chick, grinning from ear to ear. “I was the bombardier who bailed out with him from the B-26.”
“Boys,” said Barry Blake, turning to face his crew, “I know that in a few seconds I’m going to wake up and find myself back in my little hospital bed. The sawbones will be looking solemn and saying: ‘That chunk of shrapnel went deeper than we thought. It’s affected his brain!’”
He cuffed back his hat and laughed.
“It’s too good to be true, finding you all here—andSweet Rosy O’Gradytoo! I’m going to say hello to her before she vanishes in a pink fog, or something!”
Understanding chuckles followed him as he dived intoRosy’sopen hatchway.
“We’ll leave him alone with her for a few minutes,” Curly Levitt suggested. “Mess call is about due. Lieutenant Enders can wait here to show the Old Man to his quarters.”
It was past midnight beforeRosy’screw talked themselves out and fell asleep. In the morning, Barry reported for orders. He learned that his new battlefront base was to be another jungle airport, farther west along the New Guinea coast. They would fly the shortest route across the island’s central mountain range, and carry a full load of bombs.
“Not much excitement on the way,” Fred Marmon commented; as the crew headed toward their waiting ship. “There’s nothing in the interior but mountains and jungles and wild men. Even the Japs steer clear of it, they tell me!”
“You’ll have plenty of excitement once we reach the northern coast, Fred,” Barry told him. “The Japs have been punching back hard at our new airports. They realize that, given enough bases for a big air offensive, we can push them right out of the East Indies. They can’t keep backing up forever, and keep any ‘face’ with their people at home.”
Sweet Rosy O’Gradytook off as smoothly as shehad on her maiden flight. Except for the patched places in her aluminum skin, there was little to show that she was not a new ship.
“As a matter of fact, she’s better than new, Lieutenant,” Fred Marmon declared. “She’s been battle-tested. Every part of her, except these new engines, has stood up under the worst strains. She won’t fail us, no matter what we ask of her.”
“They patched her up in New Guinea—enough to fly her back to this Queensland repair base,” Curly Levitt explained. “Here they gave her a complete overhauling. Most of her replaced parts came from other wrecked ships—”
“Like Hap and me!” spoke up Chick Enders.
“Yes, you’re battle-tested, too,” Barry laughed. “By the way, did either of you hear or see anything of our old messmate, Glenn Crayle? After all the surprises of the past twenty-four hours, I wouldn’t be surprised to see him waiting for us at the new airport. Would you, Hap?”
“Aw, don’t talk about it, Barry,” his big co-pilot replied. “I wouldn’t be surprised, either, but I’d be pretty doggoned sore. The sight of that mister would sour my stomach for the duration.”
“Mine, too—unless he’s toned down a lot,” agreed Chick. “This war does queer things to people. It may have let the wind out of Crayle and showed him that he wasn’t such a hot pilot as he thought. I hope so, anyway.”
“I believe you’ve got hopes for Hirohito, too,” Hap Newton scoffed. “Let’s forget Crayle until he does show up—and I hope that event will be a long, long time away!”
The blue expanse of Torres Strait now showed beyond the green of Cape York. For an hour the Fortress hung above it at six thousand feet. Then, almost before her crew realized the change, the high grasslands of New Guinea were sweeping beneath her belly. Far to the east lay the Gulf of Papua, with a mass of cumulus clouds tumbling above it. Ahead rose the island’s mountainous backbone.
“Let’s fly a little lower, Barry,” Chick Enders said. “You won’t have to start climbing over the central range for half an hour. I’d like to get a look at one of these native villages, and give the local hillbillies a thrill at the same time.”
“All right, Chick,” Barry replied. “But we won’t do any hedgehopping with a quarter of a million dollars worth of Fortress. If the air isn’t bumpy I might takeRosydown to five hundred feet—when and if you spot a thatch-roofed metropolis.”
“Don’t try to thrill ’em by dropping an egg on the town pump,” said Hap Newton. “General MacArthur has caused the word to be spread among the tribesmen that United Nations airmen are their friends. We wouldn’t want to give them the wrong impression.”
“I wonder how many New Guinea wild mencould tell the Jap ‘rising sun’ from our insignia,” Chick remarked, “even if they were near enough to—oh-oh! Look, Barry! Straight ahead on that little grassy plateau ... don’t those patches look like native gardens to you?”
By way of answer, Barry eased the wheel forward. In a long, flat diveRosy O’Gradyroared down toward the plateau. Moment by moment the tiny squares and oblongs of different colors took the shape of cultivated gardens. Near by appeared a few loaf-shaped native houses.
“There’s your village!” Barry exclaimed. “Looks like a busy place, too. They’re clearing more grassland for garden space, if I’m not mistaken.”
Looking down through the plastiglass of the big bomber’s nose, her crew could distinguish twenty or thirty human figures at one end of the cultivated section. Suddenly the natives stopped gaping at the diving plane. They ran for cover.
“We’re wowing ’em, all right,” whooped Hap Newton. “Just see those grass skirts scatter! You ought to be ashamed of scaring the ladies this way, Barry!”
“They’ll have something to talk about for a month at least,” laughed theRosy’sskipper, as he pulled back on the wheel. “Are you satisfied with this glimpse you’ve had of native culture, Chick?”
“Not by a long shot!” the homely bombardier replied. “I wish you’d turn back for another look,Barry. There’s something blamed queer about that village. Several things, to be truthful.”
There was a grim note in Chick’s voice that Barry recognized. His bombardier was in deadly earnest.
“Okay,” he said shortly. “Slap on the coal, Hap. We’re going back for another look-see. What was it that struck you as queer, Chick?”
“Since when domenwear grass skirts, or New Guinea women wear their hair clipped short?” Chick responded. “I had a better view here in the nose than the rest of you did. I’ll swear to what I saw. And, while we’re asking questions, will somebody tell me when the natives of this country becamemarket gardeners? There’s enough cultivated land around those dozen thatched huts to supply food for ten villages.... Look down now and tell me what you think of it!”
For wordless moments every man in the cockpit gazed at the orderly patchwork of little fields below. Suddenly Barry grasped the truth.
“Look at the pattern down there, Hap!” he exclaimed. “They’ve broken it up pretty cleverly with camouflage, but the cleared place is L-shaped. If that isn’t an airport I’m cockeyed.”
“Then those birds in grass skirts—” Curly Levitt’s voice gasped through the interphone.
“—wereJaps!” Chick Enders finished the sentence. “Go as low as you dare, Barry, and see what else we can spot.”
“Man all the guns!” Barry’s order crackled in the headsets. “Cracker, be ready to strafe any antiaircraft before they can pot us....”
He broke off as the white lines of tracer bullets streaked upward from a patch of bushes at one side of the field. Other guns opened fire.
Small bullet holes appeared suddenly in the bomber’s fuselage and wings. But four ofRosy’s.50-caliber machine guns were talking back—the twin weapons of her bottom and tail turrets. Seconds later she had swept out of range.
“Well, whaddyuh know about that?” Hap Newton blurted. “New Guinea Gardens Grow Grass-skirted Gunners. Who’d ever believe that headline?”
“Why didn’t they throw any flak at us?” Curly Levitt asked. “A field as big as that ought to be protected by more than machine gun fire.”
“The airport isn’t completed yet,” Barry pointed out. “The Japs probably haven’t had a chance to bring in heavier installations. There wasn’t even a camouflaged plane in sight—nothing but those steel-mat runways dressed up to look like vegetable gardens. Of course it’s possible that there were some bigger guns but no time to man them, before we were past.”
“It’s worth risking them to give the field a thorough pasting,” Chick Enders said. “Let’s go back at about five thousand and give it every bombin our racks.”
No shellfire greeted them as they made their run over the Jap airfield. Even the machine guns were silent. The grass-skirted gun-crews were fleeing through the surrounding grass and scrub like scared rabbits when the first stick of bombs whistled down.
They left the runways looking like a raw, black wound in the earth, with a thick cloud of dust hanging over it. All their bombs had struck with the accuracy of rifle bullets, five-hundred-pounders that flung the twisted steel matting high in the air.
“Get the exact position of this spot, Curly,” Barry Blake said, as he climbed into the hot blue sky. “The sons of Nippon won’t be using their little mountain playground as long as our fliers can keep an eye on it.”
“That’s right,” agreed theRosy’snavigator. “We’ve wiped out an air base from which the Nips could have raided Queensland, Port Moresby, and any of our northeast airports with equal ease. And we’ve discovered some of their latest tricks of camouflage, thanks to Chick Enders. Headquarters will be glad to know about it.”
For the rest of the tripRosy O’Grady’spilots and bombardier kept their eyes peeled for suspicious looking “market gardens,” but none appeared. An hour after they crossed the height of land the ocean was again in sight. Soapy Babbitt contacted their new airport on the Mau River and received theanswer to come in.
As the field came in sight, Barry noted that it was scooped out of the tropical forest, not far from the sea. A United Nations transport vessel lay just beyond the beach. It was unloading by means of lighters. In this manner the new airdromes all up and down the coast would be quickly furnished with equipment and defenses. The danger, of course, was that the Japs might send warships to shell the fields at night. They might even land troops a short march from the field itself.
All this passed through Barry’s mind as he circled for a landing. He had experienced one shelling from warships, and a worse one from air-borne artillery. No base, he decided, was safe from a sneak attack. In any war the main strategy must be to “dish it out” to the enemy in heavier quantities than he could return.
MYSTERIOUS ISLAND
MYSTERIOUS ISLAND
MYSTERIOUS ISLAND
No familiar faces greetedRosy O’Grady’screw at the Mau River airport. A new bomber command was based there. Three more forts, Barry learned, were due to join it within the week. Until they arrived there would be no mass raids on enemy targets.
Rosy’sfirst job was a reconnaissance flight to the northwest. There had been signs of enemy concentration among the islands west of Point D’Urville. Headquarters wanted to learn what it meant.
Rosy O’Gradytook off with the first faint dawn light. Her bomb racks were full. In addition, she carried a few score of four-pound incendiary bombs. She was “loaded for bear,” and eager for a fight.
At 10,000 feet, Barry Blake turned westward. As they flew along the coast, the gunners in the top and tail turrets watched the sky for Jap planes. The pilots and the bombardier scanned air and sea ahead. Suddenly Chick Enders leaned forward on his perch in the nose, with a shout of discovery.
“What do you see now, bombardier?” Barry asked. “Some more grass skirts?”
Chick Enders ignored the gibe.
“Look at that little island, just offshore,” he saidsharply. “There’s a white streak stretching north from it, like the wake of a ship.”
“It is, at that!” cried Hap Newton. “A boat of some kind must have put into a hidden cove there.”
“That island isn’t big enough to shelter any vessel that could make such a wide wake,” Barry Blake declared. “Could the island itself be moving, Chick?”
“It is!” theRosy’sbombardier yelped. “The thing is a Jap vessel camouflaged with palm fronds. Give me a run on it, Skipper ...now!”
Barry’s touch on the controls did not shift. Without altering its course by a single point the flying fort kept straight on up the coast.
Chick groaned.
“Why did you pass up such a chance, Barry?” he asked. “We could have laid an egg right in the middle of that floating brush heap.”
“Two reasons,” the young skipper replied. “First, there are four ships at least in that floating island, and two or more may be cruisers. Splitting their formation would only prolong the job.... Second, I want a better look at their scheme of camouflage before we blow it to pieces.... Sergeant Babbitt, you will radio the airport what we have seen, and say that we are about to attack.”
He swung the Fortress a few points to the left and nosed down.
“Tail gunner from pilot:” he said through theinterphone. “Let me know as soon as that fake island is out of sight.”
A few minutes later Tony Romani’s voice came through.
“Pilot from tail gunner: Floating island has dropped below the bulge of the coastline.... Are we going back, sir?”
“Right now, Tony!” the skipper told him.
Keeping the land mass of New Guinea between him and the Jap vessels, Barry turned his plane around. Lower and lower he took her, untilSweet Rosy O’Gradywas skimming only a few hundred feet above the sea. Tree tops nearly grazed her belly turret as she swept over a blunt headland, into sight of the camouflaged ships.
“We’re going over ’em at two thousand feet, Chick,” Barry warned. “Be ready to drop a whole stick of bombs on the target.”
“Look!” yelled Hap Newton. “There’s a swarm of landing barges between the fake island and the shore. They’re crammed with Jap troops.”
“We’ll take care of them later,” Barry said grimly. “Here we go, bombardier.”
“Roger!” Chick’s answer came back ... and an instant later: “Bombs away!”
Hard upon his words came the blast—a multiple explosion so terrific that it tossed the great Fortress like a feather. Later her crew found that it had torn all the fabric off her ailerons and elevators.
Barry climbed his ship, and came back. There was no more “floating island”—only three burning Jap transports and the two broken halves of a fourth, just settling into the waves.
A puff of smoke blossomed just beyondRosy O’Grady’sright wing-tip; another, to the left and rear. The gun crews of the stricken transports were only now reaching their weapons.Rosy’ssudden re-appearance, close at hand, had taken them entirely by surprise.
Barry Blake swung his ship shoreward and nosed down.
“We’ll risk the shell-fire,” he said briefly. “Our first job is to destroy those Japs landing on the beach. Be ready to fire all guns.”
At a thousand feet the big bomber roared between the burning ships and the shore. Her nose and tail and belly turrets spat .50-caliber death. Beneath her the Jap soldiers in thirty landing barges fired their rifles upward in frantic reply. Through the side gun-port Fred Marmon hosed lead at the deck of the nearest transport.
Twice more the flying fort swept back over the same course. Shells from the Jap ships missed her narrowly. Some of the bursting antiaircraft fragments struck her fuselage and rudder. But the Jap landing force was practically wiped out.
Sinking barges drifted aimlessly, filled with dead men. Some of the soldiers jumped overboard, onlyto die in the water. Curly Levitt with his side-gun mowed down the one bargeful that made the beach.
After that run, Barry did not turn his ship until well beyond the range of Jap shell fire. At ten thousand feet he swung back. The three Jap transports were much farther apart. The nearest one was drifting and burning more fiercely than ever. The others were zig-zagging.
A sudden sheet of flame shot up from the drifting vessel. In a space of seconds her superstructure went to pieces.
“She’s done for,” Chick Enders said. “Give me a run on the farthest one, Skipper. I’ll try to drop an egg right down her stack.”
“Hap and I will do what we can to help you,” Barry answered, “at ten thousand feet. We have those last two ships in the bag. There’s no need to riskRosy O’Gradyat point-blank range.”
Chick’s first attempt was a near miss—the Jap helmsman was too good at dodging. On his run over the second transport he scored a hit. The five-hundred-pound bomb struck her stern, crippling her steering gear.
“Nice work, bombardier!” Barry applauded. “Now we can concentrate on the last target.”
A shell burst from the stricken craft slammed chunks of jagged metal throughRosy’stail assembly. The big bomber lurched.
“Tail gunner from pilot:” Barry spoke into the phone. “Are you all right?”
“That flak missed the turret, sir,” Tony Romani answered. “But I can see daylight through the fuselage just behind me.”
“The rudder and elevators still work,” Barry told his crew. “That’s as near a hit as I want, though. Let’s get this job done.”
On his next run Chick Enders accomplished the nearly-impossible. His bomb plunged down the transport’s stack and exploded in her bowels. The Jap ship simply crumpled up and sank, like an old tin can.
The one ship left afloat was burning fiercely from stem to stern. No boats or barges had been lowered. Those Japs who had survived the flames were now swimming in the shark-infested water.
“Here come three of our forts from Mau River!” Hap Newton cried, pointing to the east. “Boy! Will they be sore when they see what we’ve left!”
“Just a few bones on a broken platter!” Barry exulted. “We had all the cold turkey and cranberry sauce. Switch over to the radio and let’s hear what they’re saying, Soapy!”
Few of the other crew’s comments were cheerful, but Barry soothed their disappointment.
“You might possibly find a force of Jap warships farther up the coast, sir,” he told the commanding officer, Major Browne. “My guess is that they were landing troops for a night attack on our airport. In that case they’d be expecting some naval units tocome after dark and ‘soften up’ the field for them with shell fire.”
“That’s good reasoning, Lieutenant Blake,” the major agreed. “We’ll search the coast toward Point D’Urville.Sweet Rosy O’Gradylooks to me as if she needs a little patching before she goes hunting more trouble.”
“Rosyneeds bombs, too,” Chick Enders remarked, as they headed for home. “She’s had a pretty good day’s hunting, even if she didn’t finish her patrol. By the way—how do you think those Japs rigged their camouflage, Skipper?”
“With rope nets, I’d say,” Barry replied. “I noticed some of the stuff drifting alongside the ships, after the first bombs struck them. I think they strung their nets over the masts and superstructures and fastened the tops of jungle trees to them. They used bushes to cover the sides. The one thing they couldn’t hide was the ship’s wake.”
“They’d planned to have all their troops ashore a little after sunrise,” Curly Levitt put in. “If we hadn’t come along, they would have left a force here strong enough to take over our airfield and perhaps two or three more.”
Five minutes after landing, Barry Blake and his crew were making their report to the officer in command of the airport, Colonel Bullock.
“You men have written a great page in Fortress history today,” the officer declared when they hadfinished. “Four transports and thousands of enemy troops sent to the bottom within a few minutes! That would have been a nice bag of game for a whole squadron. I have an idea that decorations will be coming to all of you for this feat. You’ve earned a few days’ rest, too, but I’m afraid you won’t get it.”
“We shan’t mind that, sir,” Barry said with a smile. “We like action better than sitting around and fighting mosquitoes. Is there some special mission for us?”
Colonel Bullock’s gaze shifted to the slice of blue sky framed in the tent door.
“No, not yet,” he replied, frowning. “But the enemy is massing his strength for another big land, sea, and air attack. Our steady gains in the South Pacific have cost him too much. He is due to strike back, hard.”
There was a brief silence. Glancing at his crew, Barry saw their faces tighten with eagerness.
“The sooner they come the better, sir—so far as we’re concerned,” he said.
The colonel rose to his feet, smiling.
“That spirit will win this war for us, son,” he said. “It’s won every war we Americans have fought. But here at Mau River we’re still short of planes and men. I shall see to it personally thatSweet Rosy O’Grady’srepairs are rushed through. In a day or two we may need her—badly!”