The Corps V - Line of Fire Read online

  The Corps V - Line of Fire

  W.E.B. Griffin

  Griffin, W.E.B.

  The Corps V - Line of Fire

  THE CORPS is respectfully dedicated to the memory of Second Lieutenant Drew James Barrett, III, USMC Company K, 3d Battalion, 26th Marines Born Denver, Colorado, 3 January 1945 Died Quang Nam Province, Republic of Vietnam, 27 February 1969 and Major Alfred Lee Butler, III, USMC Headquarters 22nd Marine Amphibious Unit Born Washington, D.C, 4 September 1950 Died Beirut, Lebanon, 8 February 1984 "Semper Fi! And to the memory of Donald L. Schomp A marine fighter pilot who became a legendary U.S. Army Master Aviator RIP 9 April 1989

  Chapter One

  [One]

  BUKA, SOLOMON ISLANDS

  SPRING AND SUMMER 1942

  In the early months of 1942, a Major of the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps in Australia was forced to reconsider his long-held belief that he'd passed the point where the Army could surprise him.

  The Pacific and Far East Shipping Corporation's freighter John J. Rogers Jr. docked at Melbourne after a long and perilous voyage from Bremerton, Washington. In addition to desperately needed war material , it off-loaded 800 identical, sturdy wooden crates. Each of these was roughly three feet by three feet by four feet, weighed 320 pounds, and was strapped with steel, waterproofed, and otherwise prepared for a long sea voyage.

  These crates were loaded aboard trucks and taken to the U.S. Army Melbourne Area Ordnance Depot, a requisitioned warehouse area on the outskirts of the city. Because they were in waterproof packaging and inside storage space was at a premium (and because the Ordnance Corps Major could not leave the shipping manifest), the crates were placed on palettes holding four of the crates-and stored outside under canvas tarpaulins.

  It was two weeks before the Ordnance Corps Major could find time to locate the shipment, remove the tarpaulin, cut the metal strapping, pry open the crates, then tear off the heavy tar-paper wrapping.

  He found (as the manifest said, and indeed as was neatly stenciled onto the crates in inch-high letters) that each of the crates did indeed contain US SABERS, CAVALRY MODEL OF 1912, W/SCABBARDS, 25 EACH.

  The sabers and their scabbards were packed five to a layer, and each crate held five layers. It took him a moment to do the arithmetic: If he had 800 crates, and there were twenty-five cavalry sabers, with scabbards, in each crate, that meant he had 20,000 cavalry sabers, with scabbards. They all looked new; they had probably never been issued. The Ordnance Major was aware that the last horse-cavalry unit in the U.S. Army, the 26th, had been dismounted in the Philippines; their mounts were converted to rations for the starving troops on Bataan; and the cavalry men went off to fight their last battle as infantrymen.

  On the face of it, cavalry sabers were as useless in modern warfare as teats on a boar hog. A lesser man than the Ordnance Corps Major would have simply pulled the tarpaulin back in place and tried to forget both the US SABERS, CAVALRY MODEL OF 1912, W/SCABBARDs and the goddamned moron who used up that valuable-as-gold shipping space sending them all the way to Australia.

  But the Ordnance Major was not such a man.

  He gave a good deal of thought to how he could make them useful, yet the best he could come up with was to convert them to some kind of fighting knives, perhaps like the trench knives of World War 1. On investigation, however, this proved to be impractical. The blades were too heavy and the hilts too awkward.

  He'd just about concluded that the sturdy crates the goddamned sabers were packed in had more potential use to the war effort than the sabers, when he had another idea. This one seemed to make sense.

  And so a contract was issued to an Australian firm (before the war it had made automobile and truck bumpers) to convert the sabers into Substitute Standard machetes-at a cost of U.S.

  $2.75 each. The blades were cut down to sixteen inches and portions of the hilts were ground off. The scabbards, meanwhile, were run through a stamping press. In one operation the press cut the scabbard to size and sealed its end.

  And so when First Lieutenant Joseph L. Howard, USMCR, Commanding Officer of Detachment A, USMC Special Detachment 14, decided he needed a dozen machetes for a military operation, he was given MACHETES, SUBSTITUTE STANDARD, W/SHEATHS which had begun their military careers as us SABERS, CAVALRY MODEL OF 1912, W/SCABBARDS.

  Actually, he got more than a dozen. Lieutenant Howard had had previous experience with the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps (as a sergeant), and he'd learned then that he was lucky to get half or a quarter-of what he'd requested.

  This request proved an exception to that rule. He requisitioned one hundred machetes, and he got one hundred MACHETES, SUBSTITUTE STANDARD, W/SHEATHS.

  The mission Lieutenant Howard drew the machetes for involved a parachute drop of both personnel and equipment.

  Since there were no specially designed cargo containers, or parachutes, available for the equipment (most importantly, shortwave radios), ordinary personnel parachutes had to be adapted.

  Cushioning the radios against the shock of landing was rather simply accomplished by wrapping them securely in mattresses.

  But that wasn't the only problem. The standard personnel parachute was designed for a standard soldier carrying normal equipment-that is to say, it could handle a "drop weight" of 200 to 225 pounds. The mattress-wrapped shortwave radios weighed approximately 110 pounds.

  Since lightly loaded parachutes fall more slowly than heavier ones, and thus drift more, Howard's radios would not fall to earth anywhere near his personnel.

  This was a matter of critical concern, because Lieutenant Howard intended to drop upon a small landing area in the mountains of Buka Island.

  Approximately thirty miles long and no more than five miles wide, Buka is the northernmost island in the Solomons chain.

  That places it just north of the much larger Bougainville and 146 nautical miles from the Japanese base at Rabaul on New Britain.

  On Buka, there was a Japanese fighter base and a garrison of Japanese troops variously estimated from several hundred to several thousand.

  There was additionally a detachment of the Royal Australian Navy's Coastwatcher Establishment. This consisted of one officer, Sub-Lieutenant Jakob Reeves, RAN Volunteer Reserve, and approximately fifty Other Ranks, all of whom had been recruited from the native population.

  Sub-Lieutenant Reeves remained behind when the Japanese occupied Buka; he was provided with a shortwave radio and a small quantity of arms and ammunition; and he was ordered to report on the movement of Japanese ships and aircraft from Rabaul, Bougainville, and of course from Buka.

  From the beginning, these reports had been of enormous value for both tactical and planning purposes. But by June 1942, when Lieutenant Howard was preparing his drop, their importance had become even more critical: The United States planned to land on the island of Guadalcanal and to capture and make operational an airfield the Japanese were already building there. The invasion of Guadalcanal was not only the first Allied counterattack in the Pacific War, some considered it to be the campaign that could decide the outcome of the entire war in the Pacific.

  Since there were no Allied air bases within fighter range of Guadalcanal, initial aviation support for the invasion of Guadalcanal would fly from aircraft carriers. But launching and recovering aircraft from carriers was a difficult, time-consuming operation, and aviation-fuel supplies were finite. These difficulties could be minimized, however, if the Navy could be informed when Japanese aircraft took off from Rabaul or other nearby bases and headed for the invasion area. That was the function of the Coastwatcher Station on Buka.

  Unfortunately, Sub-Lieutenant Reeves' shortwave radio went off the air during the preparations for the invasion. The Coastwatcher Estab
lishment saw two likely explanations for Reeves' absence: One, the radio itself had broken down (this was the most hopeful scenario). Or two (and much worse), the Japanese had captured Sub-Lieutenant Reeves.

  An overflight of his location, conducted at great risk, returned with aerial photographs of a grassy field. The grass had been stamped down to form the letters RA, for radio. SubLieutenant Reeves needed another radio. Good news, considering the alternative.

  USMC Special Detachment 14, whose mission in Australia was to support the Coastwatcher Establishment, had a number of brand-new, state-of-the-art Hallicrafters communications radios; and it would be a fairly easy thing to air-drop one to Sub-Lieutenant Reeves. The problem was that Reeves' knowledge of radios was minimal. He almost certainly would not know how to set one up and get it operational. Thus, the planners decided to send someone to Buka who could handle such things.

  Additionally, the planners felt it would be useful to have a second aircraft spotter on Buka. Not only could Sub-Lieutenant Reeves use the help, but there was the further question of what to do should he become hors de combat from either enemy action or tropical illness-more a certainty than a probability.

  It was decided, consequently, to parachute a radio operator technician into Buka with the radios. Sergeant Steven M. Koffler, USMC, was a parachutist as well as a radio operator technician. Unfortunately, he couldn't tell the difference between a bomber and a scout plane, and there was no time to teach him. Neither did Sergeant Koffler have the tropical jungle survival skills he was sure to need.

  On the other hand, though Lieutenant Howard was not a parachutist, he not only had the necessary survival skills, he had as a sergeant taught classes in identification of Japanese aircraft and warships. And so Howard volunteered to jump in with Sergeant Koffler and the replacement radios.

  When faced with the question of ballast for the cargo parachutes,(to bring their drop weight up to the norms for personnel parachutes), Lieutenant Howard suggested small arms and ammunition. For these were heavy, fairly indestructible, and valuable to Ferdinand Six-the radio call sign for Sub-Lieutenant Reeves' detachment.

  But Lieutenant Commander Eric Feldt, Royal Australian Navy Volunteer Reserve, disagreed. Feldt, who was commanding officer of the Coastwatcher Establishment, pointed out that the mission of the Coast watchers was not to fight the Japanese but to hide from them. Ferdinand was the bull who preferred to sniff flowers rather than fight, he reminded Lieutenant Howard and Major Edward F. Banning, USMC, the commanding officer of USMC Special A small quantity of small arms and ammunition should be dropped to replenish losses, he maintained. But what Howard and Koffler certainly needed were machetes. Machetes were not only useful for hacking through the jungle, they made effective-and silent-weapons.

  Major Banning deferred to Commander Feldt's expertise. And the mattress-wrapped radios were ballasted primarily with MACHETES, SUBSTITUTE STANDARD. Their scabbards were left behind.

  The airdrop on Buka went off more or less successfully. And Sub-Lieutenant Reeves was on the whole pleased to have what Feldt and Banning sent him. He was, as expected, delighted with his new radios. On the other hand, he entertained early doubts about the wisdom of dropping a pair of sodding Yanks in his sodding lap. He was not on Buka to nursemaid sodding children. One of them didn't even know enough about parachutes to keep from breaking his arm on landing.

  The Other Ranks of Ferdinand Six, however, had no complaints about the drop, and they were especially overjoyed with the MACHETES, SUBSTITUTE STANDARD. Their own machetes were in short supply and worn out, while the new ones were high quality steel of a more modern and doubtless better design.

  There were even enough of them to equip the women and the older boys with one. The men, as a general rule of thumb, went about with two.

  [Two] FERDINAND SIX

  BUKA, SOLOMON ISLANDS

  28 AUGUST 1942

  The commanding officer of the U.S. Marine Garrison on Buka Island and the senior representative of His Britannic Majesty's government there-that is to say, Lieutenant Joe Howard and Sub-Lieutenant Jakob Reeves elected to locate their command conference at a site where the subjects to be discussed and the decisions made relative thereto would not become immediately known to their respective commands.

  They selected for this purpose the tree house, a platform built a hundred feet off the ground in an ancient enormous tree.

  Large enough for three or four people to stand or sit comfortably, the tree house was their primary observation post. Since it was normally manned from daybreak to dark, as soon as Sub-Lieutenant Reeves finished climbing up the knotted rope, he ordered the man on duty, Petty Officer Ian Bruce, Royal Australian Navy Native Volunteer Reserve, to go catch a nap.

  Petty Officer Bruce was armed with a Lee-Enfield Mark I.303 rifle and two MACHETES, SUBSTITUTE STANDARD, and he was wearing a loincloth and what might be described as a canvas kilt. He was a dark-skinned man with a mass of curly hair; his teeth were stained dark and filed into points; and his chest and face were decorated with scar patterns.

  "Yes, Sir!" PO Bruce replied crisply, in Edinburgh-accented English. He and many of his fellows had been educated in a mission school operated by Protestant nuns from Scotland.

  He went nimbly down the rope, and then Lieutenant Joe Howard climbed up.

  Howard, who wore a three-month-old beard, was dressed in Marine Corps utilities. The trousers had been cut off just over the knees, and the sleeves torn out at the shoulders. He was armed with a Thompson.45 ACP caliber machine gun and what had once been a U.S. Army Cavalry saber.

  He found Reeves sitting with his back against the trunk of the tree. He was wearing a battered and torn brimmed uniform cap, an equally soiled khaki uniform tunic, the sleeves of which had been cut off, and khaki shorts and shoes, the uppers of which were spotted with green mold. His hair hung down his neck, and he was wearing a beard even longer than Howard's.

  A 9mm Sten submachine gun and a large pair of Ernst Leitz Wetzlar binoculars hung from his neck on web straps.

  "I passed the distillery on the way here," Reeves said. "It's bubbling merrily."

  "Sugar we have, salt we don't," Howard said.

  "Yes," Reeves agreed. "And what do you infer from that?"

  "That we can either die drunk or go get some salt. And maybe some other things." Reeves chuckled. Despite his initial doubts, he had come to admire Joe Howard since he dropped from the sky three months before. In fact, he'd grown fond of him.

  "The last time the cannibals attacked a Japanese patrol," Reeves said evenly, "they had three hundred people up here for a week."

  "But they didn't find us."

  "They came pretty sodding close."

  "We need salt," Howard repeated. "And we really could use a couple of hundred pounds of rice. Maybe even some canned smoked oysters, some canned crab. Koffler said he would really like to have a Japanese radio. I'm not even mentioning quinine or alcohol or other medicine." "If I were the Japanese commander, and I heard that an outpost of mine had been overrun by cannibals who made off with smoked oysters, medicine, and a radio, I think I'd bloody well question if they were really cannibals."

  "I think they know, Jake. By now, they must."

  "And if they suspected that the cannibals were led by an Australian, or for that matter by an American Marine-and I think probably by now they've heard us talking to Pearl, which would suggest an American presence-then one thought that would occur to me would be to arrange an ambush for the cannibals the next time they came out of the sodding jungle."

  "We need salt," Howard said.

  "You keep saying that, mate."

  "That's not debatable."

  Reeves shrugged, granting the point.

  "Which means we have to get some from the Japs. We would get the same reaction from stealing a fifty-pound bag of salt as we would carrying off whatever we find."

  "The last time we were lucky."

  "Where does it say you can't be lucky twice in a row?"


  "In the sodding tables of probability, you jackass!" Reeves said, chuckling.

  "I'll take Ian Bruce," Howard said. "And a dozen men. I can make it back in six days."

  "No," Reeves said, smiling, but firmly.

  "Jake, that sort of thing is my specialty."

  "I know Buka. You don't," Reeves said. "For one thing we can't afford to lose you, Jake. If you weren't around, the natives would take off, and Christ knows, I wouldn't blame them."

  "Precisely my point," Reeves said. "Except that they wouldn't just take off. There would be a debate whether they should convert you to long pig or sell you to the Japanese." `You don't mean that," Howard said.

  `About the long pie. Or selling you to the Japanese?" Reeves asked. "Yes, I do, mate. Both. My use of the word `cannibal' was not to be cute. You don't think the good nuns put those scars on Ian's face, do you?" Their eyes met for a moment and then Reeves went on: "We'll leave Ian Bruce here with Steve Koffler, one or two other men, and most of the women. That'll keep the station up, and there'll be enough people to carry things off if the Nips should luck upon them while we're gone." Howard thought that over for a minute and then looked at Reeves again.