Hours later we all just suddenly folded up and sat down. My hands and arms were so tired I was no longer safe with a scalpel. My “assistant,” Dr. Carter, had sprawled onto the floor, apologizing profusely because his legs weren’t working anymore. I didn’t even know what time it was, but what I did know was that we were finally out of everything: bandages, sterile instruments, morphine, syringes, sulfa powder, and even sponges, for God’s sake. Chief Higgins lay sound asleep.
Then Captain VanPiet showed up, with about two dozen medics and an equal number of stretcher-bearers. He informed me that a light cruiser had come into the harbor for the express purpose of gathering up as many wounded as possible for a high-speed run to Nouméa. Another cruiser was anchored off Henderson Field, on the same mission. I wanted to get up and tell them about each patient, what we’d done for them and what I thought they needed. Then the cruiser’s medical officer, a full commander, appeared and motioned for me to sit back down.
“We’ve got this, Doctor,” he said. “You guys have done some amazing stuff. We’re going to load as many patients as we can possibly carry and then we’re going to do a full-power run for Nouméa. We can get them there in twenty-six hours. This is Chief Hospitalman Carrons, who’s going to check the three of you out and then give you something that will help you get back on your feet as soon as possible. Again, well done.”
I was so tired I couldn’t formulate an answer, but by then the commander had moved on, organizing the collection of as many patients as could stand to be moved. Chief Carrons and two hospitalmen ushered the three of us out into the triage area, where we were each gently invited to lie down on a bloody cot. The chief gave us some fresh water, brought in from the ship, and then conducted a quick vitals exam. We weren’t injured, just exhausted. I vaguely remember a brief sting and that I tried to object, but then a wave of cool darkness swept over me. Who was I to object, I wondered, as my eyes crossed and down I went.
By the time we resurfaced it was two hours after dark. I’d been awakened by the sound of familiar voices. I discovered that Boss Cushing and the usual suspects were seated on ammo boxes around the operating table, digesting the news that the squadron was being moved up the Slot to an island called Santa Isabel. I sat up on my cot and then had to wait for my fuzzy brain to focus and reestablish comms with my arms and legs. When Cushing saw that we were stirring, he dispatched one of the skippers to the galley, where Cookie Young rustled up a batch of powdered eggs and canned bacon, accompanied by his own special hot sauce creation, which he called Sweet Jesus. Higgins, Doc Carter, and I were famished. None of us could remember when we’d last eaten. Boss very nicely had three beers waiting for when Cookie’s hot sauce began to pickle our tonsils. I never did find out where Doc Hobbs went after he was transferred.
Half the squadron was now out on patrol just north of Cape Esperance, where the Japanese garrison was hunkered down waiting for supplies. An LCU, a bigger version of a Mike boat, was scheduled to come over in the morning to restock our medical supplies. Captain VanPiet sent over a working party to take all the cots out of the bunker and the two overflow tents and run them down to the seashore. They set up what the Navy called a Handy Billy, which essentially was a gasoline-powered water pump. They blasted everything with seawater, then sprayed an antiseptic solution over all the cots and the mountain of bloodied bedding. Back home we’d have disposed of every bit of it; out here in the weeds of the Solomon Islands, we didn’t have that luxury. They hung everything out to dry, cots and all. It promptly rained.
I found out that the big explosion last night had been one of the destroyers. The Betty attack had started a fire and then a magazine had gone up. That said, things were improving, if only relatively. The flights of Bettys thankfully dwindled and then stopped entirely as the summer morphed into early October. Infantry engagements over on Guadalcanal were becoming more infrequent. The Jap army units had withdrawn into a heavily defended enclave up around Cape Esperance. The Marines reportedly had decided to lay siege to the enclave but not try to invade it. The word in the weeds was that the Japs were starving and the Marines had had quite enough of the daily meat-grinder firefights against consistently suicidal defenders.
Perversely, our MTB squadron began to see more action than ever before. The Japs were trying frantically to resupply their encircled and starving troops. They used everything: destroyers, barges, and even submarines. Destroyers provided high-speed deliveries, but they usually lost one or two on the way back north. The subs could get through undetected, but they carried a pitiable amount of food and medicines when compared to the need. Most of the supplies and reinforcements that did get through were on those amphibious barges. Roughly half the squadron went out nightly now, hunting intermittent radar contacts that popped up and then faded because they weren’t heavy cruisers. The guys had seen these craft before and knew they’d get perhaps one chance to run in and shoot up a group of barges before an escorting destroyer turned on its searchlights and returned the favor. The barges weren’t shy, either. They were armed with 20 mm cannon and heavy machine guns, too. They traveled in groups of four or five, which meant a lone PT boat attacking a group would face a substantial response. And, of course, all of this happened at night.
It was a familiar pattern: the Japs owned the night; the Allies the day. They’d secrete their flotillas of small transports in coves and bays all along the Slot, taking sometimes up to three days to get close enough to Guadalcanal to make the final dash across Ironbottom Sound. Our planes would search for them by day, having finally gained control of the sky. The daylight sky. At night, everything changed. The supply craft would venture forth from their hides and stream across the Sound to land as much as they could in terms of food and ammo to the remaining garrison. They wouldn’t actually land on the beach. Instead they would get close in to the shore, dump everything into the surf, and then hustle back across the Sound and into hiding before American air patrols lifted off from Henderson Field at dawn. By that time, the barges had gone to ground in the jungle-covered coves and creeks of the hundreds of small islands littering the Solomons. Once it got dark, they’d resume their way north, back toward Rabaul and New Georgia.
Only the PT boats, as it turned out, could follow them into shallow waters and hunt them down. Our cruisers and destroyers had to stay out in known deep water or risk running aground. Their navigation charts dated back to Captain Cook’s day and described large areas around the Solomons simply as “dangerous ground.” If there were Japanese destroyers lurking in the darkness, our bigger warships knew all too well what the Long Lance torpedo could do. This led to our boats becoming gunboats instead of torpedo boats. The supply barges weren’t worth the expenditure of a torpedo, so the boats reduced their loadout of four tubes down to two in favor of adding some more guns.
Boss laid out the changing situation at our first meeting after the cruisers had evacuated our mass casualty situation to Nouméa. The reason for moving us north became clear when he showed us the proposed new base on the lower half of Santa Isabel Island, some fifty miles northwest of Tulagi. We needed to intercept as many of those supply barges as possible, and if we were based farther up the Slot, above Guadalcanal, we’d get two licks at them. Deny the Japs food and ammo and they’d be weakened to the point of ineffectiveness. Hit the barges filled with their sick and wounded from Guadalcanal on their way back north and there’d be fewer Jap soldiers facing us when the Allied armies went north in force to drive them out of the Solomons entirely.
“This long island north of here is called Santa Isabel,” he said, tapping a pointer on the map of the Solomons. “We’re looking at a tiny coastal village called Tanabuli, which sits on a natural harbor almost at the southern tip of the island.”
“Facilities?” one of the skippers asked.
“Nothing,” Cushing replied. “Except: real estate. It is a natural harbor and there’s a village, which means there’s fresh water. Shelter will be important when the typhoons come and fresh water, as we know from experience right here, is doubly precious.”
“Natives friendly?” another skipper asked.
“Don’t know,” Cushing said. “General Vandegrift will send an advance Marine recon platoon to find out.”
I raised a hand. “Let’s check with that coast-watcher group over on Cactus,” I suggested. “They know everybody up and down the Slot.”
“Great idea,” Boss said. “Will you find out from VanPiet how to do that?”
“Got it,” I said, glad to have something to do. “And will we be moving our medical station along with the squadron?”
That question prompted some discussion. We had a pretty nice setup here near Tulagi; the problem was that it was fifty miles away from where our guys would be getting into trouble. I couldn’t reasonably expect the Seabees to do it all again at yet another island. Cushing said he’d ask them. I said this might also be a matter for the medical command over on Cactus to decide. Boss wasn’t sure about that. He was of the school that said he’d rather be chastised for something he did than ask permission and be told no.
“If I just order you and your medics to move with us to Tanabuli, I might get a blast from Cactus. But I don’t think they’d recall you, which would mean I’ll have medical help on the new island.”
Later that night Cushing made an interesting point. “Guadalcanal,” he said, “is right now the end-all, be-all of our existence. But the real objective is Japan itself. We’re not just gonna leave Tulagi for a long stay at Tu-whazzit. Once the Marines stomp on the Japs on Santa Isabel, we’ll head north again on whatever route it takes for us to chase these bastards back to their home islands.”
“Then the Navy is going to have to figure out how to take major medical care to sea,” I said. “The Pacific is huge. We can’t go building field hospitals on every damn island as we push them back.”
“Don’t count on that, Doc,” Cushing said. “We might end up doing exactly that.”
I made my way back to my bunker by the light of an uncertain moon. My bunker, I thought. Of course, Cushing was right. We weren’t going to stop in the Solomons. Higgins met me at the entrance to the bunker. “Boats are coming in,” he said. “They ran into Jap destroyers.”
I swore and we went below to get ready.