We pulled in just before sunset. There’d been a bombing raid on Rendova two hours before, but a division of destroyers had arrived that morning to refuel from a tanker anchored in the harbor. Their combined gunfire, even while at anchor, had driven off the raid, with three Bettys splashed outside the harbor. One of our MTBs brought two injured sailors over to Montrose, and I quickly thumbed a ride back to our little base on Bau Island. The boats looked a lot worse for wear after their cross-channel operations around New Georgia. The guys taking me back told me that the drive toward the airfield at Munda had bogged down into a bloody slugfest, emphasis on the bloody part. Most of the Army troops over there hadn’t been on Guadalcanal for the big show and were learning the hard way what it was like to fight real Japs, dug-in. I asked the skipper what the boats had been doing.
“Everything,” he said, wearily. “Mostly night ops in support of the Army. Not much in the way of fighting but lots of people-moving and logistics runs with emergency ammo and food supplies. We’ve got a second, sort of emergency base on New Georgia, but it’s pretty basic. We wanted to be indispensable; we’ve succeeded, but with the Army, not the Navy. How do you like them apples?”
Bluto was still out when I got to Bau but Higgins was there to greet me. They’d upgraded the medical station a little, but it was clear that Montrose was carrying the load. We repaired to the command tent as full darkness fell. Higgins hadn’t lost his ability with screamers, so we were pretty relaxed when Bluto came roaring in, turning the air blue about some Army colonel who’d questioned his authority. From what little I could understand, the FUBARmy was the single most screwed-up organization on the planet, in the solar system, in the Goddamned galaxy, which couldn’t, etc., etc. Then he spied me.
“And where the hell have you been, Doc?” he roared, as if I’d been AWOL. I looked over at Higgins, who looked over at Bluto, who deflated. “Right. You went out on that hospital ship. How’d that go?”
“Well, today we got bombed by our own planes,” I offered. “Montrose has a five-hundred-pounder stuck in her OR and a new skylight. Fortunately, it didn’t go off.”
“And lemme guess,” he said. “Those were Army bombers, am I right?”
I nodded. He closed his eyes for a moment, shook his head, then hit the screamer pitcher and ordered me to tell him all about it. I did, and then focused on the colonel’s request for me to join the surgical team on Montrose in return for a doc from the hospital ship for the squadron. He drained his screamer and growled for another, which was quickly provided.
“That makes some sense,” he said. “You’re a surgeon. You can’t do surgery here, but you can on that ship. But still…”
“I’ll miss the boats and evening prayers,” I said. “But I think they could use some help.”
“And it’s not like we’re doing much in the way of combat operations,” he said ruefully. “We’re high-speed taxis most of the time.”
“Well,” I said. “If things are that tough over there on New Georgia, you’re probably the only way they can piss on the fire of the hour. Speed doesn’t seem to be the Army’s strength.”
He laughed at that. “Understatement of the year,” he said. And then he relented. “Actually, they’re trying their hearts out. Sometimes literally. The Japs have gone crazy. Word is they can’t believe we threw them off Cactus and now, here we are, on the next stepping stone to Rabaul. Their officers have ’em hopped up on some kind of drugs and they come out of the dark, screaming like banshees, jump into our trenches with swords and knives, all foaming at the mouth.”
“What’s the Navy doing?”
“They’ve got their hands full, too. Big night fights out at sea. Some we win, some we don’t. It’s not as bad as those first few months around the ’canal, but it seems like they’re getting into those scary torpedo fights every other night.”
“Sounds like MTBs could help with that, if only to throw some shit into their formations.”
“They don’t love us anymore,” he grumped. “If they ever did.”
“What happened?” I asked. Then I remembered—the flagship.
“We-e-l-l, one of our new guys torpedoed the amphib commander’s flagship as they were going in on New Georgia. It’s a long story, which ends with a wet admiral. No, if we’re gonna be useful, it’s the Army or nothing. I’m starting to miss the night runs around Savo.”
“You’re all alone there, Boss,” one of the boat skippers muttered, to much laughter. Even Bluto grinned.
“So, you think I should go to the Montrose?”
“I do; so yes, take the offer. Go be a surgeon. From everything I’ve heard, you got the gift for it.”
That was the first time I’d heard anything like that from Bluto. I was suddenly struck by the fact that individuals were being talked about in this sprawling conflagration. That was a little bit scary. The doc on the Montrose said I was famous; notorious might have been closer to the mark. What had Major Bergin said? You’re that guy.
I was back aboard by midnight, seabag in hand. Montrose got under way at 0100 after having received the latest clutch of casualties from New Georgia. An hour later I was scrubbed in and going to town, assisted by one of the original surgeons and three extremely competent army nurses. The bomb was still there in the middle of the OR suite, but some Army bomb disposal guys had removed all the fusing components, which rendered it inert. The holes through the upper decks had had temporary plates welded on, but it would take a crane to get the actual bomb casing out. Some wag had put a white Dixie-cup-style sailor’s hat on the rear fuse assembly stub.
After doing three fairly complex thoracic surgeries, I changed roles and assisted my heretofore assistant as he did the fourth one, coaching as we went along. He was nervous but he did well. He should have—he’d completed the full scope of surgical training. He knew what to do; it was the fact that he’d mostly only seen it done before that had made him hesitate. After that procedure, I floated among the individual tables. By sunrise I thought I had a pretty good sense of who could do what and who would need help. The colonel came down around five in the morning and did his own walk-around, then pulled me aside and asked for a briefing. When I’d finished, he nodded approvingly.
“Perfect,” he said. “Keep doing what you’re doing. I sense a lot more confidence around here.”
I went up to the top deck to see about some coffee and maybe even breakfast. I spied the head nurse, Major Bergin, and asked if I could join her. During the night I had seen her circulating and solving problems. Unlike many of the Hollywood-movie head nurses, Patsy was kind, almost motherly, and it was obvious that the younger nurses loved her. Breakfast on the Montrose wasn’t a whole lot different from breakfast on Guadalcanal, so I’d opted for coffee and the attempt the ship’s baker had made at bread for toast. I wondered where the donuts had come from.
“Well, Doctor,” she said with a tired smile, “what’d you think?”
“It’s all relative, Major,” I said. “I started out on Guadalcanal in a big, wet tent with battle lanterns for light, red mud floors, no ventilation, electricity when and if the generators were running, bloody instruments being boiled in fifty-five-gallon drums, and having to duck when the occasional round whacked through the tent walls. This is medical paradise, in comparison.”
“I suppose it is,” she said. “Nouméa was mostly tents, as well, but no Japs and a pretty good supply chain.”
“We came ashore with the Marines and the Seabees,” I said. “Unfortunately, the supporting fleet bailed out on us a few days later with half of our supplies, food, and ammo still on board. Triage became a very sad procedure.”
“I hate triage more than anything else,” she said. “Especially when you know the guy’s not going to make it, but you can’t tell him that. I cried in my bunk for several nights before I realized that I had to be tougher than that. Still…”
“Yeah,” I said. “Still. And then there are the horrible ones where the only option is a thiopentone spinal.”
She shuddered. “The colonel put out the word that there was no reason to put someone who’d basically been blown in half but was still sort of alive through the agony of a boat ride to the Montrose. Field medics were authorized to do what they had to do, as long as a medical doctor authorized it.”
I sighed. I was suddenly aware that I’d been up all night and needed some sleep. We were well out to sea with our trusty destroyer escorts, which meant that there’d be no new patients for several hours.
“You need to hit the sack, there, Doctor,” she said. “By the way, I’m hearing the nurse anesthetists were quite impressed last night.”
“I’m not the wunderkind that people think I am, Major,” I said. “It’s just the fact that I’ve done so many of these operations that makes people think I’m somebody special. There’s still a hell of a lot I don’t know.”
“Hold that thought, Doctor,” she said, her eyes twinkling. “And, please, call me Patsy.”