10 February 1944: U.S.S. Constitution, designated TG 58.3.4, sortied from Pearl Harbor in company with U.S.S. Oakland and five destroyers. Force direction of advance is approximately 210 true although actual destination has not yet been announced. Squadron strength includes thirty-two pilots and thirty-three aircraft. During downwind approach leg, aircraft piloted by Ensign Patrick collided with aircraft piloted by Lt. (j.g.) Smith, losing most of its rudder and forcing Patrick to bailout. He was picked up by destroyer Harwell shortly thereafter. Lt. (j.g.) Smith landed safely.
12 February 1944: Aircraft piloted by Lt. (j.g.) Heckman crashed when landing as a result of applying instead of cutting power. Aircraft caught the top of the barrier and flipped, landing upside down on parked SBD of VB-20. Mister Heckman is in critical condition following surgery. Seaman Apprentice Samuel Crabbe was killed instantly. There was no fire.
“Jack.” Boom Bloomington, the new air group commander, waved his arms about as if to ward off the evil spirits in his stateroom. “Jack,” he said, “what the hell is wrong? What the hell is wrong with your pilots?”
Jack sat on the edge of Boom’s bunk and tried to think of an answer, but Boom didn’t allow him the time for one.
“They’ve caused more fuck-ups since we left Pearl than I remember seeing for six months. They’re not just fuck-ups, Jack. They’re killers. They’re flying like a bunch of goddamn trainees. What the hell is wrong?”
“Well,” said Jack carefully, “I wasn’t able to work with them very closely for several weeks while CAG had me flying at night.” He was not even satisfied with his own answer.
“That’s no reason,” said Boom. He was finding his new job grindingly hard. It seemed that the great pools of replacement pilots had lots of new, young lads but there was nary a one experienced enough to take up where Commander Jennings had left off. “Have you seen? Are you aware there’s a problem?”
“Yes,” said Jack quietly, “I’ve seen there’s a problem. I just don’t know where the answer is right now.”
“Asper says he hasn’t given this many wave-offs since October. It’s as if your boys have forgotten how to fly.”
Jack sat still and felt the vibration of the deck beneath his feet, a sensation that was quite different from the ordinary feel of the ship underway. Constitution was making a good twenty-eight knots through heavy seas, hurrying toward an as of yet unannounced rendezvous with the enemy, burning up three times the normal amount of fuel and battering the hapless destroyers of the screen, forced to keep up, with the pounding waves.
“Any word on where we’re going yet?” he asked.
“Not a peep,” said Boom. He sat astraddle the single chair in the room. “I hate to say this, Jack, ’cause I know it makes me sound like my worthy predecessor, but I think—”
“My men have the wrong attitude,” Jack finished for him. He had been thinking it, too. Since Kwajalein they were listless, careless—dangerous. They needed motivation. Whose fault was all this? “I understand. I’ll work on it.”
“Do it fast, Jack,” Boom said seriously. “Wherever it is we’re going, we’ll be there in a few days at the most.” He stood up and opened the door to indicate the audience was over.
“Sure,” Jack said, standing. He was slightly miffed. Boom hadn’t offered the usual courtesy of a drink from the hidden bottle of Scotch. Rank and position inevitably changed a man for the worse, Jack reflected. He said good night and left.
It was just past darken-ship time. The labyrinthine passageways of the carrier were lighted dimly in red or not lighted at all. He wandered through an area of pilot berthing, enjoying the nighttime sounds of men left temporarily to their own devices. Many were asleep, stretched out in three-deep bunks with the covers thrown off and the doors open to try to keep the warm, stale air moving. More than a few men appeared to be writing letters. There were no bull sessions in progress, no loud, boasting, speculating pilots jammed into staterooms. That was most unusual.
Jack passed Higgins’ stateroom and stood in the open door. He would have put money on the fact that Duane would not be there, and sure enough he wasn’t. The lieutenant from the torpedo squadron was in the lower bunk reading a letter. Without looking up, he said. “He isn’t here. Big game going somewhere below.”
“Thanks,” said Jack, not surprised. He continued his stroll, heading in the general direction of Fred’s stateroom. The fact that Duane was in another poker game didn’t really bother him. He was sure that the uproar and the reprimand over the mission at Kwajalein had put the fear of God in him and there would be no repeat of that fiasco.
Fiasco, he thought. Three men, one of whom you know well, get killed, and you call it a fiasco. What would be a tragedy under any other circumstances was merely a fiasco under the auspices of war.
Jack dodged a steward hurrying in the opposite direction. Why, he asked himself, did they design the passageways to twist and turn this way? Why aren’t they straight? He pounded his fist against a bulkhead and tried to imagine what was on the other side. He remembered a true story about another Essex-class carrier where a fully equipped metal-turning workshop was inadvertently walled off, and had gone undiscovered until six months after commissioning.
He came to Fred’s compartment, but it was empty. Fred’s bunk was tightly made. The others were messy. Jack smiled to himself. That was how Fred kept his life: orderly, well made.
He left the small stateroom and headed topside, trying to arrive at a word for how he felt about Fred. All this time, all these things we’ve done together, he thought. And still it eludes me.
The hangar deck was dark and quiet, swept by the ocean air that found its way through openings in the sides of the ship and eddied about the propellers, wings, tails of the silent aircraft. Picking his way through them, Jack found the deck edge elevator and stepped out onto it. The wind was too strong there though. He retreated to a sheltered spot near the forward part of the great square opening. There in the shadows he gently collided with someone else.
“Fred.”
“Skipper.”
“Small ship, isn’t it?”
“Gets smaller every day.” The two men pulled back cautiously until no part of them touched. Then both leaned back against the hard steel and looked out at the blackness of ocean, the cold blaze of stars.
“It’s been a while since I saw you here,” said Jack. Whenever they talked aboard ship, now, he felt as if someone were listening to every word they said. He noticed it this time, too.
“I haven’t been up here for a while. It’s nice,” said Fred.
“Windy.”
“For sure.” The conversation petered out. Jack reached out and, in the darkness, placed the palm of his hand in the small of Fred’s back.
“Fred, you see things differently from where you are.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“What’s the matter with the squadron?” Fred shifted uncomfortably. “How come things look so sloppy?”
Fred didn’t answer immediately.
“What do they talk about?”
“They, uh, don’t talk about much at all.” Fred sounded uncertain.
“Of course they do. Come on, help me.”
“They talk about Mister Higgins and the guys we lost at Kwaj.”
“Still on that one?”
“They’re about evenly divided. Half of them think you did the right thing. The other half think he was unlucky and you were wrong.”
“That about says it, huh?”
“They’re also talking like they’ll never make it through the war. The way they see it, the pilots do all the dangerous work. Sooner or later the Japs’ll catch up with you. There’s no end to it.”
Jack withdrew his hand and sighed audibly. He could depend on Fred to answer him honestly, even if he didn’t want to hear the answer. It made sense, unfortunately. He changed the subject. “I still haven’t decided who I want to write the Diary. You have any ideas?”
“Sure,” said Fred. “Me.”
“No, you’ve done enough.”
“But I want to. Makes me feel like I’m contributing something.”
“Why is it I can never argue with you?”
“I’m still thinking about your book,” said Fred.
Jack laughed. “You think about it more than I do. It’ll probably never get off the ground.”
“You mean out of the water.”
“Whatever.”
Behind them, from the depths of the hangar deck, the address system growled to life and echoed hollowly around the great enclosed space. “Now hear this. Now hear this.”
Jack nudged Fred and the two men moved further into the shelter of the hangar deck, out of the wind.
“What time is it?” asked Jack.
Fred consulted his watch. “8:15.”
“I wonder…” said Jack, but he was cut off by the voice of the captain.
“This is the Captain speaking. I want all hands to know that fifteen minutes ago we received by radio broadcast the information we have all been waiting for. I’m passing it along to you now because I’m tired of hearing rumors that we’re headed for Tokyo again.” He paused as if to let the laughter subside. “Our target is the island base at Truk in the Caroline Islands approximately six hundred miles west of Kwajalein. The day after tomorrow we will rendezvous with the rest of Task Force Fifty-eight and head into the target on the morning of the seventeenth. I have every confidence that when we leave the area on the eighteenth the Japs will know they’ve been repaid for Pearl Harbor. That is all. Carry on,” The address system gave a final burst of static and clicked off.
Jack exhaled the breath of air he had held since the captain had first said “Truk.” He and Fred silently stepped to the edge of the elevator.
“Truk,” said Fred.
“Why not Tokyo?” Jack sounded bitter. “Maybe what the guys are saying is right. If they try hard enough, they just might manage to get all of us killed.”
“We’re up to it,” said Fred simply. “Like you said, if it’s not one Jap island, it’s another.”
Jack stood helplessly for a minute, feeling the wind search his face and clothes. “I wish I had about a dozen more of you,” he said. Then, “No. I don’t know what to do with one of you. What would I do with more?”
“You’d have a well-written War Diary.”
Jack laughed. “I’m going to bed,” he said. “I’ve had enough for one day.” He tousled Fred’s hair playfully, and the two left the elevator and headed below.
Before they parted, however, Jack asked Fred if he had the will in a safe place, and Fred said that he did, but that he would never have to open it. Humorlessly, Jack told him not to bet on that.
Duane screwed up his courage one last time, knocked on the door of the squadron office, and entered without waiting for an answer. Jack was at the desk, writing with his fountain pen. He looked up to acknowledge Duane, then continued to write. Duane seated himself and cleared his throat, waiting for Jack to finish.
“Yes?” said Jack evenly, still writing. “What can I do for you?”
“There’s something we have to talk about,” said Duane.
The way he said it made Jack stop writing and cap his pen. “And what would that be?”
“A couple of things.” Duane was sweating, not heavily, but enough for Jack to notice. “First off, there’s something I have to clear with you. It’s just a formality, really…”
“What is it?”
“I’ve decided to get married.”
Jack broke into a sardonic smile and leaned back. “Is that right?” he said.
“That is correct; isn’t it? I mean, you have to approve of it?”
“You were right. For someone like you, it’s just a formality. I’ll pass it along to Commander Bloomington and that’s as high as it goes.” Jack continued to smile. “What made you decide to take the plunge?”
“Nothing in particular. Just thought it was about time to do it.”
“And who’s the lucky girl, if I might ask?”
“You sure can,” said Duane. He had practiced saying this again and again, trying to find the most effective way to get the point across. “Her name’s Eleanor.” Jack’s eyebrows went up a notch. “Eleanor Hawkins.” They went up another notch. Silence reigned for several seconds. “We’d like to do it as soon as possible.” Jack’s expression remained unchanged. “I mean as soon as we get back, or the first opportunity…” He didn’t understand. Jack was supposed to be upset, shocked, something. It wasn’t working right. Jack just sat there, the beginnings of a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. “I’ve been seeing her for a couple of months now…”
Jack gave a sound like a chuckle, only it came out derisive and hard. “Son of a bitch,” he said.
“You have no objections?” Press him, thought Duane, press him into admitting…
“I wish you every happiness,” Jack said. He sat forward, uncapped his pen, and began writing again.
Is that all there is? Duane thought. No rantings, no ravings? “Thank you,” he said formally. “You’re invited to the wedding, of course.”
“Of course.” Jack’s head bobbed slightly. “By the way,” he said, “I was just working out the schedule for the strikes tomorrow. Tell me what you think of it.”
Jack turned a piece of paper around and Duane picked it up to read it. The Ironsides’ contribution to the first strike—a massive fighter sweep drawn from seven carriers—was being led by Hardigan and wingman Trusteau. The second strike, late in the morning, composed of bombers and fighters, was being led by Lieutenant Schuster. Duane looked for his name and found it; he was second division leader in the first strike. He contemptuously sailed the single sheet of paper back on the desk. Jack made no move to touch it.
“Don’t want me leading a strike again, huh?” The blood was rising to Duane’s face.
“Not this time,” said Jack.
“Why don’t you just demote me to ensign and let me fly wing on one of the new guys?”
“I thought I was doing you a favor.”
Duane snorted. “Thanks,” he said. “There’s someone else you can do a favor for.”
“Who’s that?”
“Why don’t you make Trusteau a section leader? Or a division leader? I think he’s ready for it.” By the look on Jack’s face, Duane could see he’d touched a sensitive spot.
“Trusteau flies wing on me,” said Jack.
“Hell, he’s got five kills. All the guys look up to him.”
“Trusteau flies wing on me. The matter isn’t open to discussion.”
“I know he flies wing on you,” said Duane hotly. “What else does he do for you, Mister Hardigan?”
“What do you mean by that?” snapped Jack.
“I mean you and he are pretty damn chummy when you’re off duty, after lights out…”
Jack’s chair crashed to the deck. His tight, white-knuckled fist hovered under Duane’s nose.
“Get out of here.” The command came from a throat rasping with barely controlled rage.
Duane slid back his chair and stood to go. He stopped at the door, as if to speak again.
“Get out of here,” Jack said again.
Duane left, closing the door behind him. As he made his way through the bustling passageways, to nowhere in particular, he kept thinking: I didn’t even have to mention that night at the BOQ. It’s true, by God, it’s true.
Fred Trusteau sat in his chair and played solitaire while the tension in the ready room, packed as it was by nearly all of the squadron’s men, gathered like storm clouds. The ship was operating a two-plane CAP and no ASW searches, a puzzling format considering how close they were to Truk. By careful reasoning, he deduced that the wind was wrong for flight ops and high speed along their direction of advance at the same time. In the morning they had to be in position for the launch of the dawn fighter sweep over the target, and since they were making an amazing twenty-eight knots, any deviation from the charted course, even for flight ops, could throw them seriously behind schedule. So they operated a minimum of aircraft and kept the rest on alert, ready for immediate action should the need arise. But the need had not arisen, and the storm gathered.
The skipper had been in and out of the ready room several times, never once stopping to talk to him. Fred could see that Jack was seriously agitated. He wore a scowl, talked in grunts, and seemed to avoid anyone who didn’t have important business.
The skipper’s irritation seemed to be catching. Just five minutes earlier Higgins had broken up an argument between Rogers and Jacobs before it reached blows. Higgins went back to a card game in the rear of the compartment. Jacobs and Rogers sat and sulked. Fred dealt himself another game of solitaire and listened to the conversations around him; he kept an eye on the skipper sitting in the front row, growling to himself over a bundle of papers.
Fred could hear Schuster talking conspiratorially with one of the two new men, a wistful youngster named Horace. Schuster was trying to sell the kid one of the giant Japanese rubbers, complete with the line about the Emperor’s personal pilots and their manly qualifications. Horace wasn’t buying it, though not for the obvious reason. He kept saying that after tomorrow he wouldn’t have any need for it because the Japs never took prisoners.
Fred laid out his cards in a pyramid—one at the top, two covering the one, three covering the two, and so on, down to a line of seven at the bottom. Then he began turning over cards from the remaining pack and matching up cards that totaled thirteen—sixes and sevens, fives and eights, fours and nines, threes and tens, deuces and Jacks, Aces and Queens, Kings by themselves. He worked the pyramid down to the point at which he could match no further without cheating, then started over.
“Come on,” said Jacobs to Bracker, “he’s here now, we can ask him.”
“No way, fella,” said Bracker. “I don’t wanna ask the skipper.”
“Come on, trade with me. I want first crack at them Nips this time.” Jacobs was in the second strike, escorting the bombers. Bracker was a member of the sweep.
“I won’t do it,” said Bracker. “I don’t want to, anyway.”
“Why not? Everyone says it’s supposed to be a suicide run.”
“Who says the second strike’ll be any better? I just want to get it over with as soon as possible.”
Fred began matching thirteens again and worked the pyramid down to three cards at the top before he was stymied. The skipper had heard that exchange, he was sure. He set up another hand.
“Hey, Trusty,” said Patrick, sitting in the chair next to his. “How do you spell ‘funeral’?” He was writing a letter.
“F-u-n-o-r-a-l.” Fred took out a King and matched the Jack of hearts, the familiar Jack of hearts, with the deuce of clubs.
“Thanks,” said Patrick.
“Don’t mention it.”
Bagley and Levi came into the ready room from outside, dangling their flight gear, talking about the LSO.
“That jerk,” said Levi, hanging up a Mae West. “Three goddamn wave-offs. He must be blind as a bat.”
“Nah,” said Bagley. “Just a grounded flyboy. Jealous of the fighter pilots.”
“Tell you what,” said Levi. “I’d trade with him in a second right now. After tomorrow he probably won’t have much of a job.”
Fred glanced up. The skipper had heard that one, too. Bagley and Levi continued undressing, then settled comfortably into their chairs. All the pilots were here now. The tension was palpable.
“Aw, shit,” said Duggin loudly, “we don’t stand a chance. The Japs’ll make mincemeat out of us.”
“Now all pilots except the duty section stand down from flight quarters,” said the address system. “Now all pilots except…” The remainder of the message was drowned out by the noise of pilots rising, stretching, talking, heading for the door. Almost immediately another voice, a very harsh one, stopped them in their tracks. It was the skipper. The storm had broken.
“Take your seats, gentlemen,” said Jack Hardigan. He blocked the path to the ready room entrance.
Since Fred was in the duty section, he hadn’t moved, but he noticed that Higgins had somehow been closest to the door and thus was now closest to the skipper. The men found their ways uncertainly but quickly to their seats. Higgins merely sat in the one nearest him. The skipper tossed the bunch of papers into his chair—a move that eloquently displayed his displeasure.
“Mister Duggin. Stand up,” he said.
“Sir?” said Duggin in a high voice.
“I said stand up!” The last words rang out like artillery shells. Duggin got shakily to his feet. For a moment silence hung like a shroud.
“Mister Duggin,” said Hardigan, “if I hear you just one more time, one more time, make the slightest remark downgrading the fighting men in this outfit,” a pause for emphasis, “I will have you in hack so fucking fast it’ll make your head swim.”
Fred felt sweat on his upper lip but made no move to wipe it off. Around him he could feel, could sense the eyes of the other men moving, looking, each man glad he wasn’t in Duggin’s shoes.
“Do I make myself clear?”
Duggin broke the almost hypnotic gaze the Skipper had leveled on him and looked down at his feet. He mumbled something.
“I can’t hear you,” said Jack in a voice that cut right to the heart of everyone who heard it.
“Yes, sir,” said Duggin clearly, still studying his shoes.
“Sit down,” said Jack.
Fred exhaled, unaware that he had been holding his breath since the exchange began. The skipper was very mad—so mad he had sworn, something Fred had never heard him do in front of the men. And if he’d only been pretending to be mad, he should be nominated for an Academy Award.
The skipper glared at them for a long moment with dark eyes that shone like polished rocks. His forehead glistened.
“What the hell do you want?” he began. “What in the name of God do you expect?” He paused at the end of each phrase, as if to choose his words carefully. “You fly the best goddamn fighter in the world. You’ve spent more time in training than any pilots in history. You’ve got the best food, the best mechanics, clean sheets, and stewards to make your goddamn beds every morning. What in hell do you want? Do you want the Japs to surrender? Just like that?” He snapped his fingers.
Then he broke his stance and turned his back on them. He picked up the wooden pointer leaning against the status board in the front of the room. He faced the pilots again, and the pointer carved out a swath of air, like a sword. It struck sharply against the back of a chair. “I’ve listened to your bitching for a week and I won’t listen anymore.” He flexed the point like a riding crop, and it broke with a snap. “I won’t ask, or request, or suggest—anymore. You can consider this an order, gentlemen.” He held the two pieces of wood in his right hand and stabbed at the air. “Every pilot who leaves this ship in the morning will come back aboard with at least one confirmed kill or he’ll stand in front of me tomorrow evening and tell me in detail why he didn’t. Is that clear?” He waited in silence for several seconds, then bellowed, “Is that clear?”
A smattering of voices hesitantly replied, “Yes, sir.”
“I can’t hear you!”
“Yes, sir!” The ready room resounded with a single voice. Jack Hardigan looked up, as if for divine guidance, then back at his pilots. “I’ve spent one year, gentlemen, twelve months, trying to turn you into fighter pilots. I didn’t invest that much of my time just to have a whining bunch of momma’s boys call themselves Fighting Twenty. Truk.” Jack swung the arm with sudden violence and the pieces of pointer clattered into the corner. “Fuck Truk! If you think the Japs at Truk are going to give you a hard time, you haven’t reckoned living with me if you blow this mission. And if you blow this mission, gentlemen, you know where to lay the blame. Not on me. Not on the aircraft. Not on the goddamn stewards. But on yourselves. No one else.” He looked one more time at thirty unmoving, scarcely breathing men, then strode to the door.
Duane Higgins stood suddenly in his path, but Jack pushed up to him, face to face, his head shaking slightly as if it were difficult to control himself any longer. “Don’t cross me,” he said to Higgins, just loud enough for the entire squadron to hear, and was gone.
The skipper’s footsteps had faded away in the passageway outside before the numbing spell began to wear off.
“He’s right, you know,” Bagley said simply.
Higgins bolted through the door and disappeared.
Slowly, quietly, the rest of the pilots pulled themselves to their feet and shuffled out. When all were gone except the four pilots of the duty section, Fred got up and carefully gathered up the skipper’s papers. He straightened the pile and left them in the chair. Then he sat back down, dealt himself another hand of solitaire, and began matching the thirteens.
Fred Trusteau sat suited and ready in his chair, marveling at the change that had come over the men of Fighting Twenty. They were as hot for combat as he had ever seen them. Again and again he would hear repeated the skipper’s remark from his now-famous pep talk: Fuck Truk. Jack Hardigan was in front of them now, giving the final briefing in as businesslike fashion as was possible. Much of the information he was giving was repetitious—course, speed and altitude to the target, expected opposition, launch time—but most of the details reflected the urgency of the moment.
“Two miles on the launch heading will be a can with a white truck light. Do a standard group grope to the right and join up by divisions. We still stay at one thousand feet until thirty miles from the target, then circle twice to fifteen thousand. We’ll be over the target at 7:45.”
There were no surprises, only a comforting sort of security in routine practices. Fred took it all in and wondered…
He wondered how everyone had changed so since yesterday. Patrick—of his three bunkmates the only other fighter pilot—was up before reveille. He woke Fred with his shaving and humming and told him that he wasn’t writing home until he got back that afternoon and could give his parents the news that he had his first kill. Fred lay in his rack until Patrick was finished with the sink, then as he was brushing his teeth, Patrick casually remarked, without malice, that Fred didn’t know how to spell. They went to breakfast together.
At breakfast in the wardroom, the twelve pilots of the first sweep ate together at the same table in high spirits. The skipper came in last and was welcomed by all but Duane Higgins, who got up and left before he had finished his steak—only Fred seemed to notice that. The skipper said he’d been back to sick bay to see Heckman, who was awake at this ungodly hour and wishing the squadron well. It was a nice touch, the skipper checking up on his men. It sat well.
“The Japs have five airfields at Truk,” Jack was saying now, “scattered through the various islands. Intelligence says they have a total of 185 aircraft there, maybe half of which are fighters. We’ll be coming in with about eighty Hellcats with tactical surprise, so pickings should be pretty damn good.”
A cheer went up from the men, punctuated with several “Fuck Truks.”
“Attack whenever you get the chance. We’re under no escorting constraints. Just clear the air of Jap planes. And don’t get caught alone.”
Duane Higgins stood by himself off to the side of the ready room, fingering the heavy black pistol holstered under his left armpit. Fred and Higgins had never been all that friendly, but recently the executive officer had been positively rude. And now Higgins was going in with the first sweep, instead of leading a subsequent strike. Fred figured that either the skipper was cautious about letting him lead another strike so soon after the disaster at Kwajalein, or he wanted his best pilots in what would probably be a monumental fighter battle.
“We’re making the trip in at 180 knots, so we’ll have plenty of time over the target. Rendezvous on command or at the latest at 8:30, and don’t get caught alone…”
An enlisted petty officer came into the ready room and handed Jack a cardboard chart covered with crude airplane outlines and scribbles. “Okay,” said Jack, “looks like we’re spotted in launch order with one exception. Mister Higgins is still on the elevator with a couple of SBDs in front of him. But they’ll work that out as they clear off the deck. Check the chart on your way out, gents.” Fred glanced at Higgins and thought that the uneven spotting of his fighter was an omen, and he would be killed over Truk, or worse, captured by the Japanese. It was nonsense, and he quickly felt ridiculous for thinking it. But Higgins was still acting strange this morning.
“The time is now 0615. Launch is at 0640. Don’t be late, gentlemen.” A scattering of laughter swept the ready room and the briefing ended. Fred sighed, resigned to the waiting, and took out his deck of cards for another game of solitaire.
Duane Higgins found his fighter in the dark without trouble. It was squarely on the number three elevator with two Dauntless dive bombers parked in front of it. He didn’t wonder how it had come to be that way; that was not his problem. As the planes were launched in proper order in front of him, the deck crew then would push the other two out of the way so that he could taxi forward to the flight line. He climbed up the wing root and lowered himself into the cockpit, immediately making the radio connection and adjusting his parachute pack until it felt moderately comfortable. Goddamn, but it was dark.
He had known the skipper for what seemed like a lifetime. How could he think of him as anyone but the man whose life he had saved at Santa Cruz, who had saved his life more than once at the ’Canal and Munda? Dark shadows hurried around his aircraft. A faceless figure appeared beside him and checked him out, tugging quickly at the straps, then disappearing. An amplified voice boomed out: “Pilots, start your engines.” Duane flipped the power switch. The instruments glowed. He tapped the fuel gauges and the needles rose quickly to the “full” position. He primed the engine and hit the starter button.
The ear-splitting roar of engines in front of him drowned out everything, even the noise of his own engine as it caught, sputtered, turned over, caught again, vibrated into steady running. The r.p.m. indicator danced, fuel and oil pressure rose, cylinder head temperature began to climb. Duane stood hard on the brakes and revved the engine, satisfied that all was in order.
What had Jack been trying to accomplish yesterday in the ready room? Did he actually believe that a routine like the angry speech he had given would help their chances on a mission like this? Duane cursed to himself because he was behind most of the launch, and the exhaust gases swirled around his plane and entered the open cockpit. Ahead of him lighted wands began directing planes forward. He checked his watch. It was 6:35, almost time to go.
Eleanor Hawkins popped into his mind—incongruously at such a time. It disturbed him to think he had won her without a fight, that Jack Hardigan didn’t care whether he married her or not. That maybe he was even glad Duane was doing it, to get her off his back, as if she weren’t a good-looking, desirable woman. But maybe Jack didn’t find any woman desirable. But that was as hard to believe as his finding Fred Trusteau desirable. Duane had tried to imagine what the two men could have been doing with each other in the darkened BOQ room, but it was so bizarre that he couldn’t visualize it. How could that same man be leading this fight of Hellcats toward the Japanese equivalent of Pearl Harbor? It didn’t make a particle of sense.
They were launching the first aircraft ahead of him. The rumble of engines increased as the lighted wand circled, then fell as the Hellcats accelerated down the deck and climbed into the air. Two, three, four more fighters followed in rapid succession. Suddenly one of the two Dauntlesses moved magically away from in front of him, and Duane saw a man scamper under his wing and emerge with a chock. A light wand directed him forward. He taxied slowly off the elevator and stopped just short of the island. Two more aircraft roared down the deck and took to the air, then it was his turn. The conical wand bade him run his engine up. He ran it up to twenty-seven hundred revolutions. The tail tried to rise in the whirlwind produced by the propeller. He strained to hold the brakes down and the stick forward. The instruments blurred in the vibration. Duane leaned out and checked for the hooded deck lights, the wand snapped downward, and he was off, snatched away by the thundering engine.
When the accelerative forces released him, Duane searched vainly for a horizon to fly by, couldn’t find it, and turned to his instruments. He climbed at a shallow angle to five hundred feet and began looking for the rendezvous light. In a minute it appeared reassuringly, and he flew directly over it, turning right, and climbing slowly. Tiny, starlike lights were moving against a background of real stars, and he knew he had found the main body. He moved in cautiously, constantly checking his artificial horizon to make sure he was in the proper attitude. He joined up on two Hellcats he hoped were the other half of his division. Moments later another dark shape glided in on his left and edged into a wing position. A few more minutes of circling and they were ready. As if on signal, the white turtle-back lights they had used to join up were extinguished, and the whole formation turned ponderously onto the heading for Truk.
The twelve Ironsides fighters leveled off at one thousand feet in tight formation, without the aid of radio. Duane accepted the fact casually, without thinking of the difficulty involved. It was what they were trained to do, so they did it. What concerned him now was the coming fight. Maybe it was better the skipper had brought him along on the first sweep; they were sure to find opposition and the ugly blot against his record from Kwajalein could be expunged. He didn’t care now if Jack Hardigan went to bed with left-handed, cross-eyed gorillas. He would show him, and his ace-hero wingman Trusteau, that he could fly and fight as well as or better than both of them put together. Duane Higgins settled his body and mind and grimly composed himself for combat.
The first intimation that something was wrong came to Jack just as the sky was beginning to brighten. They were climbing steadily as planned, and the encircling reef of Truk Lagoon was plainly visible ahead of them. But just as they were reaching fifteen thousand feet, Jack noticed Fred Trusteau, on his left wing, gesturing frantically and pointing over his shoulder. Jack looked back, straining hard to see into the eastern sky, and was shocked to find only emptiness. The four aircraft of Division One—he and Fred, Hughes and Fitzsimmons—were quite alone. He turned back, rubbernecked rapidly in all directions, but the others were nowhere to be seen. He looked across at Fred and shrugged exaggeratedly, implying that there was nothing he could do about it. Fred’s masked face nodded agreement, and the four Hellcats flew on toward the enemy. Jack checked his clock. It was 7:40. The lagoon, the humpbacked green islands of Truk itself crawled across the face of the dark sea until they were directly below. Spotty clouds, brightened by the first rays of the sun, drifted across the target. Jack led the division in a wide circle to the left, thinking they were a few minutes early, that surely the rest would be along shortly.
Higgins. It was Duane Higgins again. Although he didn’t want to judge Duane before knowing all the facts, Jack still realized that his Exec had been leading the Second Division, and the Second Division led the Fifth. It was quite possible that they had become separated as they climbed to altitude in the dark and passed through clouds on the way up.
But nothing could change the way Duane had acted for the past two days. His veiled accusation about himself and Fred left Jack feeling very cold.
“Bandits.” The single-word transmission caught him by surprise, made him jump. “Nine o’clock low.” It was sharp-eyed Fred. Jack looked to the left and found the enemy—Zekes, still far away but climbing straight for them. He counted five, nearly invisible against the backdrop of dark green island and early morning shadow. As he looked, several more, strung out behind as if they had just taken off, straggled into view. And Jack knew that if Duane and the rest of the squadron didn’t show up soon, they’d be outnumbered at least two to one. Their best choice now was to attack without delay, while speed and altitude were on their side.
“Let’s take ’em, guys,” he said. “One fast pass, then take it back up. Stay together.” He leaned the stick over and started down, still looking for the rest of his squadron. His speed increased quickly and he checked on Fred, satisfied that Fred would follow him anywhere. Fitzsimmons and Hughes moved away to get flying room, then went down, too.
Nose high, the Zekes struggled for altitude. Jack figured they could flame a few before the rest closed in and forced them back up. It would be extremely dangerous, almost certain death, to get below that many enemy fighters, even though the Hellcats could outclimb the Zekes without difficulty. He lined up the head formation, three greenish brown planes in a backwards V. His speed climbed to 350 knots. Black puffs of antiaircraft explosions began to spot the sky around him. A messy explosion boiled up on one of the islands below. The battle was being joined.
The leading Zeke was turning toward them, still climbing, and his wingmen were following. It would be a head-on pass at extreme speed. Jack checked on Fred again, centered the rapidly closing target, and squeezed off the first burst. Then suddenly he’d passed through the enemy formation. Without being able to observe the results of the pass, he pulled up and around in the tightest turn he could manage. Enemy planes, islands, water, and sky flashed before his eyes until he could haul the fighter around and level it. He had time to see a Hellcat (was it Hughes?) twisting tortuously to stay on the tail of a Japanese fighter, while another Zeke twisted after the first Hellcat and another Hellcat followed the second Zeke. But he had no time to watch.
The Zekes they had attacked were racking around and coming for them. Jack chandelled up five hundred feet, throttle wide open, rolling out on the tail of a turning Zeke and snapping off a burst before losing him. Again he was unable to observe the results; again he checked Fred; he was still there, as before. Up to this point they’d had it easy, with speed and altitude to their advantage, but now things were different. The Zekes were on their level, closing in, lining up for passes. Jack counted five. Far ahead of them, to the east, he saw aircraft going down in fire and smoke and wondered briefly if that could be the other divisions of Fighting Twenty or perhaps Hellcats from another ship. But they were too far away to help him and Fred. Jack pressed his throat mike. “Weave,” he said, “cover each other.”
“Roger.” Fred’s Hellcat abruptly left Jack’s wing and soared out to the right. Jack banked sharply to the left, checking Fred’s tail, just as he knew Fred was checking his. It was a standard defensive maneuver: If enemy fighters were closing either Hellcat from behind, the wingman would be in position after a simple turn to hit the attacker with a deflection shot. At the limits of the weave, both fighters turned back towards the center, crossed over, and repeated the pattern. On the second weave, a Zeke turned onto Fred and came under Jack’s guns. He snapped off a quick burst, trying to conserve ammunition, and the Zeke dove away below. Jack resisted the temptation to follow him down—the Hellcat was heavier and could catch up with ease—because the Japanese pilot’s comrades were now on three sides and high. Goddamn it, where was the rest of the squadron.
“Behind you, Skipper.” Jack looked and saw the two clean little fighters curving in behind him. He moved stick and rudder to turn toward his wingman. When he did, he saw that another Zeke was closing Fred from behind. There were just too many…
“Behind you, Trusty.” Jack had time for a single burst, then hauled it around to try to follow the Japanese fighter. Damn the Zekes on his tail! He would take his chances with Fred’s shooting. Jack lost sight of his wingman as he followed his target down and away. The enemy pilot was fatally inexperienced. His turns were rough. Still he headed down. Jack centered him in his sights, squeezed off a burst. The tracers seemed to arch out ahead. He fired again, holding it down. A puff of black smoke chuffed back. He hung on grimly, firing continuously. The Zeke started burning. Debris tore off, fluttered back. An explosion! His victim collapsed into a falling tangle of burning junk, and Jack racked his heavy fighter around and up, looking for Trusty—or a friendly aircraft of any kind.
A burning Zeke was falling, a parachute was blossoming, and Fred Trusteau was hot on the tail of another. The two aircraft twisted through the air in a strange and deadly dance. As he watched, the enemy fighter trailed flames and smoke, fell off on one wing and headed down. Jack turned for Fred, trying to join up again.
“Join up, Trusty, let’s get out of here,” said Jack. He saw Fred turn toward him, in an elegant, plunging roll. His wingman was flying like the ace he was.
“Look out—” Tracers zinged past his canopy, slugs chewed into his wingtip, and Jack snapped into a roll without thinking, acting purely on instinct. Suddenly they were all around him, looping, rolling, firing. Jack lost sight of Fred then as he fought for his life, not flying level for more than a few seconds at a time, evading the Zekes only by virtue of his experience and his desperate need to survive. He lost altitude steadily, never able to climb long enough to get safely back above them. He was almost to sea level, out of flying room and time when the rest of Fighting Twenty arrived.
He would remember those minutes of combat for the rest of his life, as though they were a strange and marvelous dream burned too deeply into his mind to forget. He leveled off one final time, below the tops of the trees on the islands. Above him, the rising sun painted the fluffy clouds pink and gold. All around him were deep green islands and blue waters—and drifting black columns of smoke. He knew he could go no further, that it could be minutes, even seconds, before they closed in on him and killed him. He had done his best, and it just wasn’t good enough. Fear, though, made him look over his shoulder to see how close they were, to see how long he still had. What he saw, to say the least, was far more comforting.
The big blue fighters cut down on the Zekes with unmatched ferocity. Even as he watched, two Zekes exploded in flames and tumbled down. As a third caught fire, the rest turned to meet the new threat from above. But it was too late. Jack circled and climbed and watched the slaughter. A fourth Zeke stonewalled with the water, a fifth landed in a bloom of flame on a nearby island. Parachutes began to drift down, as a sixth and then a seventh Zeke went down. Amazed, awed, Jack lingered and watched two more Japanese planes destroyed, and then he remembered Fred.
It seemed like hours since he had heard from him. He went to his throat mike. “Trusty, where are you, Trusty.” There was no reply.
A pair of Hellcats crossed in front of him; the pilots waggled the wings and held up their fingers showing the number of kills they had. Jack ignored them, then realized with a start that he couldn’t hear anything on what had to be a cluttered circuit.
He tried again. “Any Banger aircraft respond. This is Banger Leader, come in please.” Nothing. Jack wrenched around in his seat and looked at his antenna, a short stubby mast aft of the cockpit. It was gone, shot away. Fine, he thought. Where would he go?
He checked the time. 8:20. Rendezvous would be in ten minutes. Maybe Fred was already there. Jack looked around quickly, getting his bearings by the morning sun climbing above the horizon, and headed back the same way they had entered the lagoon area. Antiaircraft fire followed him, but he didn’t notice. One thing alone occupied his mind.
What was the reciprocal course on which they had come? Subtract one eight zero from two four zero. Zero six zero. Jack increased speed, turned to zero six zero as he crossed the reef and headed out to sea. He had to be here. He flew for five minutes, nearly losing hope, before he found the Hellcat.
It was at one thousand feet but slowly losing altitude. As he approached, he saw it was streaming smoke, a wispy white trail that hung in the air behind it and drifted with the wind. Jack increased throttle to come alongside. His heart rose into his throat as he realized who it was. The Hellcat was missing part of its rudder and left elevator surface. An aileron was gone. Oil oozed from the engine and smeared the fuselage and canopy. As he came abreast, he saw the pilot—grimly staring straight ahead, seeing nothing. He held the stick in both hands. Jack had found his wingman.
Duane and the seven Hellcats following him lost the First Division in the circle and climb to fifteen thousand feet, halfway to the target. The mix up was partly his fault, partly sheer chance.
When the time came to make the circle and climb, Higgins noticed that Second Division had joined up completely wrong. It was barely light enough to make out numbers on adjacent aircraft, and he saw with a start that he was escorting the last section of Hardigan’s division, Fitzsimmons and Hughes. He signaled his wingman, Bracker, who saw and understood what had happened, and was about to signal the rest when they entered the turn. Hoping the rest of the flight would see what he was doing. Higgins dropped back to allow the First Division to pull ahead, and the rest of his division to catch up. As he and Bracker fell out of formation, the second section of his division pulled alongside and passed them, causing Duane to curse helplessly at their oblivious manner of flying. He then led Bracker down and under the second section of his division to come up on the correct side of them, turning and climbing all the while. Just when he thought they should be moving into the correct configuration, they passed through a thick layer of clouds that had them flying nerve-rackingly in the blind, still climbing and turning, until they were out of it.
When they were in the clear again, Duane checked around in the growing light and found that all eight aircraft of the Second and Fifth Divisions were nicely in place, in perfect formation. And then he checked on the First Division. They were nowhere to be seen.
It took him ten minutes of flying in the wrong direction to discover that he had leveled off at fifteen thousand feet on two six zero instead of the correct heading of two four zero. He cursed again, this time at his own stupidity and the blithe way his squadron mates had of accepting his error and following him off into the wastes of empty ocean. Knowing that the Skipper and his division would now undoubtedly arrive at the target many long minutes before they would, Duane turned back toward Truk, to two three five—five degrees short of the original heading of two four zero. He increased speed to two hundred knots, hoping his dumb followers would have the sense to keep up. Screw them, he thought. He, at least, would not leave the skipper to tangle with God knew how many enemy fighters without assistance. He hoped almost desperately that he wasn’t too late, remembering another time, at Guadalcanal, when he and Jack had lost the main body of a flight and gone in alone against dozens of Zeros, and had almost been killed. He wouldn’t let that happen this time. The eight Hellcats arrived over Truk fifteen minutes late.
His first sight of the breathtaking beauty of the atoll and its mountainous islands included a flight of six or seven Hellcats chopping a formation of Judy dive bombers into flaming ruin, low on the water to the northeast of the reef. He led his eight fighters past the fight, knowing that it couldn’t be the Skipper. Next he sighted falling planes near the center of the atoll amid spotty flak. He hurried toward them, increasing speed to be ready for whatever turned up. What did turn up was a gaggle of Zekes chasing a single Hellcat around and around, dropping close to the water and swirling back up again. Had he had time to observe, Duane could have determined that it was indeed the skipper. Now he could see only that the lone fighter needed help. They tallyhoed and went down.
Never in his life had Duane seen such a battle. The Zekes were well trained and aggressive, but the heavier, faster Hellcats fell on them recklessly from above. Duane got his first with a simple six o’clock shot. The enemy fighter burned quickly, alerting the others—too late—to the danger from above. He reeled in another with a short burst that sent the lithe little fighter into a desperate split-s at five hundred feet. Duane almost followed, but instinct held him back, and he watched the Zeke dive straight into the water from a doomed maneuver. When he had time to catch his breath and look around, he found not another Zeke in the air. Two of his Hellcats cut victory loops in the sky over the lagoon. Then someone was calling on the radio that millions of Jap fighters were taking off from an airstrip near the northern edge of the reef. The Hellcats around him stumbled over themselves to find the action, a deadly, rampaging gang of killers. Duane almost followed them, but instead he found the skipper.
Duane saw the zero two on the fuselage as Jack Hardigan’s plane flew right across his nose, at lower altitude. He curved in behind him, calling repeatedly on the radio but getting no answer. Hardigan was flying fast, leaving the area on the return heading, and Duane tried but could not catch up. He followed at a distance, a little mystified. Five minutes after crossing the reef another Hellcat appeared ahead, trailing smoke and descending. Duane watched the two fighters join up and continue toward the task group, and he wanted to stay with them, but the chatter from the radio said that another rhubarb was forming up over the airstrip on Eten Island. He got close enough to determine that the damaged Hellcat was Trusteau, and then he peeled off and headed back. If anyone could help Trusteau, it was the skipper.
Back over Truk again, Higgins found the battle and eagerly joined in, adding another kill to his growing score. The rest of the squadron added another seven. It was, as Bagley would say later, a field day….
After the fight over Eten, Higgins gathered the elated pilots, including Hughes from the First Division, and headed for Ironsides. His own personal bag of three and the excited bragging of the other eight men made him think that everything was all right. But he discovered when he landed that an error of his had again caused the loss of three pilots: Fitzsimmons, Trusteau, Hardigan.
Fred killed the first Zeke as it tried to walk up on the skipper’s tail, with a low-degree deflection shot that was just like shooting at a towed target sleeve. The enemy pilot had shown a fatal lack of attention by letting Fred get that close in perfect firing position. It took three seconds of shooting. Every shell seemed to hit; the great greenhouse canopy was smashed and one wing was torn off completely. He had time to notice that the pilot was bailing out and hoped he could be that lucky if the time ever came. Obviously, the stories of Japanese pilots jumping without parachutes were not completely true. The second Zeke had come at him from ahead and above and it missed; then stupidly it had tried to outclimb the Hellcat. Fred simply followed him into a well-executed Immelmann, rolling out at the top of the half-loop to find himself in perfect position. He exploded the Zeke’s fuel tanks with a single long burst. Then he split-s’ed back to his previous altitude in time to see the skipper begin tangling with five or six more Zekes.
He wanted badly, desperately, to help, but it was impossible. The enemy pilots that came at him now were obviously better trained than the others; nothing he did could shake them, and they were steadily shooting him to pieces.
The first one scattered machine gun bullets down his right wing like a handful of rocks, leaving a random pattern of little holes. Another sawed off several inches of wingtip and put a very ominous, single small hole in the engine cowling. In minutes the overheated engine began to throw oil, obscuring his vision forward just when he needed it the most. After a particularly violent maneuver in which he climbed vertically until he stalled and then fell like a stone for five hundred feet before regaining control, a pair of deadly Zekes hit him hard somewhere in the rear. The rudder controls became very sluggish. Once during the struggle he saw a Hellcat locked in another tangle with several Zekes and thought it might be the Skipper, but he couldn’t be sure. They had him trapped and almost done for when he heard someone tallyhoing. It sounded like Duane Higgins. Hellcats dove past him and burning Zekes began falling like so many autumn leaves. But the last enemy pilot, as if giving him a parting shot, hit him hard and very nearly killed him.
It was a single twenty-millimeter cannon shell, he was sure, that slashed through the canopy just above his eyes and exploded outside of the aircraft with a tremendous whomp that tore the stick from his hand and blinded him with its flash. When he could see again he was almost on the deck, fishtailing erratically and barely flying. But calm instinct took over and he trimmed the plane. He began to climb, dimly aware that something was very wrong. It was then that the pain hit him.
The pain was like a living thing surging up through his arm and side and wrenching control of his own body away from him. It overwhelmed him and he nearly blacked out. He came to only by the strength of sheer terror and shock, and then he knew there was no time to lose and that he must get back to the ship. When he tried to climb again, he realized that something was wrong with his right hand, the hand on the stick. When he moved it, the pain shot through his arm and washed in waves over his heart. He grabbed the stick with his left hand, and the pain eased somewhat. Forcing his mind to work, he remembered the course back to the task group and shakily turned to zero six zero, crossed the islands and the reef and headed out to sea. He flew mechanically, totally oblivious to the blood slowly saturating the right side of his flight suit.
In a few minutes, his engine began to run rough and trail smoke. The idea that he might not make it back penetrated his barely functioning mind. He looked past his bleeding hand to the instrument panel, saw that oil pressure was nearly gone and engine temperature was far into the red. He began to lose altitude in order to ditch. He took it down to one hundred feet before decreasing the throttle, knowing he couldn’t reach it with his throbbing right hand, yet unable to take his left off the stick and face the pain that would inevitably follow. Finally he could wait no longer. For a moment he clenched his teeth, then shouted deliriously when the weight of flying again hit the damaged hand. But he cut back on the throttle, even lowered the flaps some, before taking the stick again with the left hand. Concentrating grimly on the task at hand, unaware of anything else, he mothered the sinking fighter to the surface of the water, flared to drag his tail portion first, hit hard, bounced once, and nosed over to a crashing stop. At the final contact, the straps on his right side tore loose and his body was flung into the instrument panel. His head crashed into the gunsight.
Strangely, he was feeling no pain as he calmly pushed himself back into his seat, reached up and slid the canopy back. The sudden quiet after hours of continuous noise was somehow comforting, and he disentangled the straps on his left side and tried to hoist himself out of the cockpit. When his right foot found a step on the seat, his leg collapsed and he dropped back. “Damn,” he said out loud, and he began again to crawl out of the sinking plane, pulling himself with his left hand and pushing with his left foot. He rolled onto the wing like a sack of potatoes, slid head first into the warm sea water, and quickly pulled the handle on the Mae West to inflate it. It whooshed up around him and he bobbed, contented. He was alive.
Relaxed, Fred suddenly felt half-asleep. The sea water and the quiet lapping of small waves against his life jacket seemed to ease the hurts, and he thought, I’ll just take a little nap, then head back to the ship. Things will be all right then. I can have dinner with the guys and the skipper, maybe take in the evening movie; then I’ll hit the sack and get a good night’s sleep. It will be nice. Everything will be all right.
He slept.
Jack watched Fred’s Hellcat sink. Then he saw the tiny figure of the pilot floating on the water like a piece of debris. He slowed to minimum speed, lowered flaps, and drifted over at fifty feet. Fred was alive. He had to be. How else could he have gotten out? Or inflated the life jacket? Jack circled and flew over once more, torn between staying near Fred or flying away and leaving him. If I leave him, he thought, he’ll die. There could be no other end. He checked all around him, seeing only empty sky. His aircraft seemed in good shape. The engine ran smoothly. On the horizon, delicate smoke rose from the islands of Truk.
He ditched almost casually, nearly losing sight of his wingman on the final approach. Then for a horrible second he thought he would run over him in the water. But the Hellcat mushed in and stopped short of the bobbing figure by a good hundred yards. As though it were an everyday experience, Jack lay back the straps and turned off the power switches just the way he did when he left the fighter on the deck of the Constitution. He stepped out, reached back in for the seat-cushion raft, and plunged into the water. He inflated his life jacket first, before his heavy flight boots could drag him under. Then the life raft was blown up and he struggled into it. The little folding paddle and the first-aid kit were right where they were supposed to be. Jack took out the paddle and began to row.
One hundred yards in a rubber doughnut proved to be almost more than he could manage, and it took him an agonizing thirty minutes to reach Fred. When he did reach him, he was so motionless in the vinyl pillows of the Mae West that Jack thought he was dead. The water around him was brownish with blood.
“Fred.” Jack tucked the paddle under his feet and grabbed Fred’s collar. “Fred, wake up.” He shook him.
“Hi, Skipper.”
Jack heaved a deep sigh of relief and tried to pull Fred’s inert form into the raft. “Help me here, Fred. Please.” Jack reached out and removed Fred’s goggles; then he saw with shock that Fred’s eyes had been forced shut in his black, swollen face. “Come on, Fred. There’s room in the raft. Come on.”
“Sure, Skipper,” said Fred. Sluggishly, he placed both hands on the side of the raft. Jack saw that one hand was bleeding. He grabbed Fred by the back of the flight suit and tugged with all his strength. The raft nearly foundered, but when it settled, Jack had Fred halfway in.
“Come on, Fred, help,” he pleaded. Fred groaned, began to crawl painfully. Working together, they inched his body into the raft. Jack turned him over, holding him like a baby.
“Oh, Jesus,” said Fred, and was quiet.
Jack looked at him carefully, afraid that he’d stopped breathing, and put his head on Fred’s chest to listen to his heart. He couldn’t hear it but felt his chest expanding and contracting. He lifted Fred’s right forearm and pulled off the glove. The ring finger tore off and stayed in the glove and a fountain of blood poured out. Aghast, Jack fought to keep control and scrabbled for the first-aid kit. Fred came to again and began thrashing and moaning as Jack broke open the little package, found a bandage, and tried to stanch the flow of blood. Fred passed out again, thankfully, and Jack wound the bandage around the hand and nub of finger, then took out the second and last bandage, wound it into a strip, and tied it as tightly as he could around Fred’s upper arm. He hoped it was enough.
Fred moaned, delirious. Morphine. That would help. Jack searched through the kit and found five Syrettes. Shaking uncontrollably, he broke one open, uncovered the needle, pulled back the left arm of Fred’s flight suit, and jabbed it in. Fred almost immediately calmed. Breathing easier, Jack dropped the Syrette overboard and began to search the rest of the body.
Halfway down Fred’s right side was another surprise. He caught his finger on something sharp and jagged, then rolled him over to get a better look. A three-inch piece of aluminum was protruding from his side. He touched it gingerly, finding it solidly wedged in between the ribs. There appeared to be little blood, so he left it. He searched some more, and found an ugly, black-and-blue, knobby fracture in the right leg below the knee. He took his hands away, grateful that there was nothing more to find, but still overwhelmed by the nature of the wounds. He could no more help Fred than he could get them both back to the ship. He drew a shuddering breath and exhaled it. He felt very helpless.
“Not time to go yet,” said Fred, distinctly.
“No, Fred,” said Jack. He tried to hold him close. “I won’t leave you.”
“Champ,” said Fred, “and don’t you forget it.”
“I won’t,” said Jack.
“Skipper wouldn’t like it. No more doping around.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll be all right.”
“Me and Heckman.”
“Yeah,” said Jack. “You and Heckman.”
Then Fred was still, and Jack held him all through the morning while the sun burned down on them. A strike force of bombers and fighters passed overhead. Two of the fighters stopped to circle. Jack waved frantically, but the fighters left, and they were alone again.
Some time in the early afternoon—Jack couldn’t tell exactly when because his watch had stopped—Fred came to. The morphine was wearing off. For a few minutes, before the pain became too much, he was lucid.
“How’d you get, here, Skipper?” he asked.
“I flew,” said Jack. “Don’t talk. You’ll be all right.”
“I’m getting pretty good at this ditching business.”
“I’d say you got it down pat.”
“I never got to show you how to tie a knot in a cherry stem.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Got a cherry on you?”
“’Fraid not, Fred. I’m sorry.”
The sea rocked them gently and the piece of aluminum bore into Jack’s stomach. “Looks like the guys did pretty good back there,” said Fred.
“I knew they would,” said Jack.
“If only they’d gotten there a little sooner.”
“Yeah.”
“What time is it?”
“Two-thirty.” Jack didn’t even look at his stopped watch.
“Already?” Fred chuckled, his eyes squeezed shut by the swelling. “Were you really mad at us yesterday?” he asked.
“Nah,” said Jack. He was looking for another Syrette. “Not really. Not at you anyway. But I had to do something.”
“Well, it sure worked.” Fred’s ugly black face contorted into a grimace of pain.
“Yeah, it worked.” Jack found the morphine, injected it, and his wingman drifted away. The afternoon sun beat down on them, burning Fred’s lips until Jack covered them with his handkerchief. Feeling hopeless enough for prayer, Jack tried and could remember only part of one, from his boyhood days in church: We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and done those things which we ought not to have done. And there is no health in us.
The sun sank low. Jack’s body hurt from the cramped position he had held all day, from sunburn and hunger. When it was nearly dark and Jack was sure Fred would never last through the night, a submarine named Searaven grumbled and smoked over the horizon and plucked them both from the sea off Truk.
Although postmission analysis reduced Fighting Twenty’s claim of thirty-six kills over Truk on 17 and 18 February to a more modest twenty-four, it still stands as the highest score for any squadron engaged.
Jack Hardigan led Fighting Twenty with an iron hand for another four months of unremitting action, culminating in the incredible fighter victory of the Turkey Shoot off Saipan in June, 1944. Under another C.O. the Jacks fought in every major action up to and including Okinawa, emerging in the top three wartime squadrons for most confirmed kills.
Without reservation, it can be said that Fighting Twenty went to Truk a dispirited, hard-luck outfit, and emerged two days later a striving, deadly squadron satisfied only by excellence. To the skipper must go the credit…
Lt. Cmd. James
R. Bagley, USN:
“Jacks Over Truk: The Metamorphosis of Fighting Twenty,”
Sea Power,
Vol. VI, no. 6, June, 1953.