THE CORPS VI - CLOSE COMBAT Read online

  THE CORPS VI - CLOSE COMBAT

  W.E.B. Griffin

  Griffin, W.E.B.

  THE CORPS VI - CLOSE COMBAT

  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]

  Henderson Field

  Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands

  0515 Hours 11 October 1942

  First Lieutenant William Charles Dunn, USMCR, glanced up at the Pagoda through the scarred Plexiglas windshield of his battered, mud-splattered, bullet-holed Grumman F4F4 Wildcat. The Henderson Field control tower didn't look like a pagoda, but Dunn had never heard the Japanese-built, three-story frame building called anything else.

  A tanned, bare-chested Marine stepped onto the narrow balcony of the Pagoda, pointed his signal lamp at the Wildcat on the threshold of the runway, and flashed Dunn a green.

  Captain Bruce Strongheart, fearless commanding officer of the Fighting Aces Squadron, carefully adjusted his silk scarf and then nodded curtly to Sergeant Archie O'Malley, his happy-go-lucky, faithful crew chief O'Malley saluted crisply, and Captain Strongheart returned it just as crisply. Then, adjusting his goggles over his steel-blue eyes, his chin set firmly, not a hair of his mustache out of place, he pushed the throttle forward. His Spad soared off the runway into the blue. Captain Strongheart hoped that today was the day he would finally meet the Blue Baron in mortal aerial combat. The Blue Baron, Baron Eric von Hassenfeffer, was the greatest of all German aces. With a little bit of luck, he would shoot down the Blue Baron (in a fair fight, of course) and be back at the aerodrome in time to share a champagne luncheon with Nurse Helen Nightingale.

  Dunn was twenty-one years old. He hadn't shaved in two days, or had a shower in three. He was wearing: a sweat-stained cloth flight helmet, with the strap unbuckled and the goggles resting on his forehead; an oil- and sweat-stained cotton Suit, Flying, Tropical Climates; a T-shirt with a torn collar; a pair of boxer shorts held in place with a safety pin (the elastic band had long ago collapsed); ankle-high boots known as "boondockers"; and a.45 Colt automatic in a shoulder holster.

  Dunn, who was (Acting) Commanding Officer of USMC Fighter Squadron VMF-229, looked around to check whether all of his subordinates had made it out of the revetments to the taxi strip, or to the runway. There was a Wildcat on the runway, sitting almost parallel with him (First Lieutenant Ted Knowles, who had arrived from Espiritu Santo four days before). Five more Wildcats were on the taxiway.

  Seven in all, representing one hundred percent of the available aircraft of VMF-229, were prepared to soar off into the wild blue. According to the table of organization and equipment, VMF-229 should have had fourteen F4F4s.

  Dunn then looked at his faithful crew chief, Corporal Anthony Florentino, USMC-three weeks older than he was. Florentino had developed the annoying habit of crossing the taxiway and standing at the side of the runway to bid his commanding officer farewell. When Dunn's eyes caught his, he smiled and made a thumbs-up gesture.

  I wish to Christ he wouldn't do that.

  Tony Florentino had large expressive eyes; it wasn't hard for Dunn to see what he was thinking: This time the Lieutenant's not coming back.

  He's not questioning my flying skill, Dunn was aware, but he knows the laws of probability. Of the original sixteen pilots who came to Guadalcanal with VMF-229, only two are left-me and the Skipper, Captain Charles M. Galloway. Of the twenty-two replacement pilots flown in from Espiritu Santo, only nine remain.

  You can't reasonably expect to go up day after day after day and expect to survive-not against enemies who not only outnumber you, but are flying, with far greater experience, the Zero, a fighter plane that is faster and more agile than the Wildcat.

  Dunn glanced at Ted Knowles and nodded, signaling that he was about to take off. Then he looked at Tony Florentino again and made an OK sign with his left hand. After that he took the brakes off and pushed the throttle forward. .

  For Christ's sake, Tony, please don't do that Catholic crossing-your-self-in-the-presence-of-death crap until Fm out of sight.

  Lieutenant Dunn, glancing back, saw that Lieutenant Knowles was beginning his takeoff roll. Then he saw Corporal Florentino crossing himself.

  He dropped his eyes to the manifold pressure gauge. He was pulling about thirty inches. The airspeed indicator jumped to life, showing an indicated sixty knots. He was pulling just over forty inches of manifold pressure when he felt the Wildcat lift into the air.

  He took his right hand from the stick and grabbed the stick with the left. Then he put his free hand on the landing-gear crank to his right and started to wind it up. It took twenty-eight turns. The last dozen or so, as the wheels moved into their final stowed position, were hard turns. When he was finished, he was sweating.

  Dunn put his right hand back on the stick and headed out over the water. In the corner of his eye, he saw Knowles slightly behind him.

  When he was clear of the beach, he reached down and grabbed, in turn, each of the four charging handles for the.50 caliber Browning machine guns (these were mounted two to a wing). He reached up and flipped the protective cover from the GUNS master switch, then pulled on the stick-mounted trigger switch.

  All guns fired. He was not surprised. VMF-229 had the best mechanics at Henderson. And these were under the supervision of Technical Sergeant Big Steve Oblensky, who'd been a Flying Sergeant when Bill Dunn was in kindergarten. Another Old Breed Marine, Gunnery Sergeant Ernie Zimmerman, took care of the weapons. Dunn was convinced that Zimmerman knew more about Browning machine guns than Mr. Browning did.

  But he would not have been surprised either if there had been a hang-up... or two hang-ups, or four. This was the Cactus Air Force (from the code name in the Operations Order) of Guadalcanal, located on a tropical island where the humidity was suffocating, the mud pools were vast, and the population of insects of all sizes was awesome. Their airplanes were in large part made up of parts from other (crashed, bombed, or shot down) airplanes, and were subjected to daily stresses beyond the imaginations of their designers and builders. Flying them was more an art than a science. That anything worked at all was a minor miracle.

  Reasonably sure that by now the rest of the flight was airborne, Dunn picked up his microphone and pressed the switch.

  "Check your guns," he ordered. "Then check in."

  It was not the correct radio procedure. Marine flight instructors back in the States would not have been pleased. Neither, for that matter, would commanding officers back at Ewa in Hawaii, or probably even at Espiritu Santo. But there was no one here to complain. Those addressed knew who was speaking, and what was required of them.

  In the next few minutes, one by one, they checked in.

  "Two, Skipper, I'm OK."

  That was Knowles, on his wing. "Seven, Sir, weaponry operable."

  One of the new kids, thought twenty-one-year-old Bill Dunn, yet to be corrupted by our shamefully informal behavior.

  "Three, Skipper."

  "Six, OK."

  "Five, Skipper."

  There was a minute of silence. Dunn reached for his microphone.

  "Four?"

  "I've got three of them working."

  "You want to abort? And try to catch up?"

  "I'll go with three."

  "F
orm on me, keep your eyes open," Dunn ordered. "And for Christ's sake watch your fuel!"

  There was no response.

  VMF-229 formed loosely on its commanding officer and proceeded in a northwest direction, climbing steadily. At 12,000 feet, Dunn got on the mike again.

  "Oxygen time," he ordered.

  [TWO]

  1125 Hours 11 October 1942

  Lieutenant Colonel Clyde W. Dawkins, USMC, Commanding Officer, Marine Air Group 21, set out to confer with the (acting) commanding officer of VMF-229. Dawkins was a career Marine out of Annapolis-a tanned, wiry man of thirty-five who somehow managed to look halfway crisp and military even in his sweat-soaked Suit, Flying, Tropical Climates.

  He found Lieutenant Dunn engaged in his personal toilette. Dunn was standing naked under a fifty-five-gallon drum set up on two-by-fours behind the squadron office, a sandbag-walled tent. Water dribbling from holes punched in the bottom of what had been an Avgas fuel drum was not very efficiently rinsing soap from his body. Dunn's eyes were tightly closed; there was soap in them, and he was rubbing them with his knuckles.

  Dunn was small and slight, five feet six or so, not more than 140 pounds; he had little body hair.

  He's just a kid, Dawkins thought.

  Six months before, the idea of a twenty-one-year-old not a year out of Pensacola even serving as an acting squadron commander would have seemed absurd to him.

  But six months ago was before Midway, where this skinny blond kid had shot down two Japanese airplanes and then made it back home with a shot-out canopy and a face full of Plexiglas shards and metal fragments. And before Guadalcanal, where he had shot down five more Japanese.

  The regulations were clear: Command of an organization was vested in the senior officer present for duty. And Bill Dunn was by no means the senior first lieutenant present for duty in VMF-229. He should not be carried on the books as executive officer (though in fact he was), much less should he have assumed command during the temporary absence of Captain Charles M. Galloway, USMCR.

  But he was the best man available, not only in terms of flying skill, but as a leader. Dawkins had agreed with Galloway when the question had come up; fuck the regulations, Dunn's the best man.

  This was the second time Dunn had assumed command of VMF-229. Six weeks before, Galloway had been shot down and presumed lost. When he heard the news, tears ran shamelessly down Dunn's cheeks. But the next morning, he led VMF-229 back into the air without complaining. If any doubt at all about the kid's ability to command VMF-229 had come up, Dawkins would have relieved him. But he did fine.

  Meanwhile, Galloway's luck held... that time. A Patrol Torpedo boat plucked him from the sea, and he returned to duty. And then six days ago, on orders from Washington, Galloway went off on some mission that was both supersecret and-Dawkins inferred-superdangerous. It was entirely likely that he would not come back from it.

  And so Dawkins was glad he had the skinny little hairless boy with the soap in his eyes to command VMF-229. He didn't look like one, but Lieutenant Bill Dunn was a fine Marine, a born leader, a warrior.

  Dunn held his face up to the water dribbling from the fifty-five-gallon drum, then stepped to the side and wiped his face with a dirty towel. When he opened his eyes, he saw Colonel Dawkins.

  "Be right with you, Skipper," he said.

  "Take your time," Dawkins said.

  Dunn pulled on a T-shirt and shorts. These didn't look appreciably cleaner than the ones he'd removed and tossed on a pile of sandbags. Then he pulled on a fresh flight suit. After that, he sat on the pile of sandbags and slipped on socks, then stuck his feet in his boondockers. Finally, he put the.45 in its shoulder holster across his chest.

  When he was finished dressing, he looked at Dawkins.

  "What happened to Knowles?" Dawkins asked.

  "He got on the horn and said he was low on fuel, so I sent him back. Him and two others who were getting low themselves. We still had thirty, thirty-five minutes' fuel remaining."

  "He almost made it," Dawkins said.

  "Oblensky saw it. He told me he tried to stretch his dead-engine glide and didn't make it."

  Technical Sergeant Oblensky had been a flying sergeant when Colonel Dawkins had been a second lieutenant. His professional opinion of the cause of the crash was at least as valid as anyone else's Dawkins could think of. He hadn't questioned it.

  "He should have put it in the water," Dawkins said.

  "He was trying to save the plane," Dunn said.

  "What do we call it, 'pilot error'?"

  "How about 'command failure'? I should have checked to make sure he wasn't running on the fumes."

  "It wasn't your fault, Bill," Dawkins said.

  Dunn met his eyes, but didn't respond directly.

  "How is he?" Dunn asked. "That's why you're here, isn't it?"

  "He died about five minutes ago."

  "Shit! When I was over there, they told me they thought he would."

  "They did everything they could for him."

  "Yeah."

  "What kind of shape are you in, Bill?"

  "Me personally, or the squadron?"

  "You personally, first, and then the squadron."

  "Except for wishing Charley Galloway was here and not off Christ only knows where, playing whatever game he's playing, I'm all right."

  "I'm sure it's not a game," Dawkins said, a hint of reproof in his voice. "That mission came right from Washington."

  Dunn didn't reply.

  "You're doing a fine job as squadron commander," Dawkins said.

  "Squadron commanders write the next of kin," Dunn said. "I'm getting goddamned sick of that."

  "I'll write Knowles's family. What is it, wife or parents?"

  "He got married at P'Cola the day he graduated," Dunn said. "And heard last week that she's knocked up." He pressed his lips together, bitterly. "Sorry. That she's in the family way."

  "I'll write her, Bill."

  "No. I killed him. I'll write her."

  "Damn it! You didn't kill him. He knew what the fuel gauge is for."

  "And I should have known that he wouldn't turn back until he was ordered to turn back," Dunn said. "Which I would have done had I done my job and checked on his fuel."

  "I'm not going to debate with you, Mr. Dunn," Dawkins said coldly, breaking the vow he made on the way from the hospital to VMF-229 to overlook Bill Dunn's habit of saying exactly what was on his mind, without regard to the niceties of military protocol.

  "I will write Mrs. Knowles," Dunn said. "And since I am a coward, I will tell her that the father of her unborn child died doing his duty."

  "You never know when to shut up, do you?" Dawkins flared. But he was immediately sorry for it.

  Dunn met his eyes again, yet didn't reply.

  "Nothing happened this morning?" Dawkins went on quickly. "You saw nothing up there?"

  Dunn shook his head "no." "Dawn Patrol was a failure," he went on. "The Blue Baron declined the opportunity for a chivalrous duel in the sky."

  Dawkins chuckled.

  "I used to read Flying Aces too, when I was a kid," he said. "Who are you? Lieutenant Jack Carter?"

  "Captain Bruce Strongheart," Dunn said with a smile. "Right now I'm getting dressed to have a champagne lunch with Nurse Nightingale."

  "That wasn't her name," Dawkins said. "It was... Knight. Helen Knight."

  "You did read Flying Aces, didn't you?" Dunn said, smiling.

  "Yeah," Dawkins said. "I always wondered if Jack Carter ever got in her pants."

  "I always thought she had the hots for Captain Strongheart. Beautiful women seldom screw the nice guy."

  "Is that the voice of experience talking?"

  "Unfortunately," Dunn said.

  "They'll be back," Dawkins said, suddenly getting back to the here and now. "I wouldn't be surprised if in force. How's your squadron?"

  "After Knowles, I'm down to five operational aircraft. By now, they should be refueled and rearmed. Tail number 107 is down
with a bad engine. I don't think it will be ready anytime soon; maybe, just maybe, by tomorrow. Oblensky is switching engines. There are two in the bone-yard he thinks he may be able to use."

  "What happened to the engine?"

  "Well, not only was it way overtime, but it really started to blow oil. I listened to it. I don't think it would make it off the runway. I redlined it for engine replacement."

  "They keep promising us airplanes."

  "They promised me I would travel to exotic places and implied I would get laid a lot," Dunn said. "I don't trust them anymore."