March 23, 1943
Camp Muckley, Archerfield
Brisbane, Australia
Inside an Australian-built, unpainted barracks building, three pissed-off fighter pilots drowned their frustrations with their last bottle of Stateside hooch. Wally Jordan produced it after another terminally awful day at the hellhole bush-backwater base they landed in after arriving aboard an LB-30 transport from Hamilton Field earlier in the month.
Camp Muckley represented everything they hated about Army life. The base REMFs—“rear-echelon motherfuckers”—were a bunch of combat-shirking martinets terminally obsessed with the brainless minutiae of service. Since getting billeted here, they’d been harassed nonstop by these officers as if they were dodoes back at flight school getting hazed by upperclassmen. Bunks had to be so tight, dimes bounced off them. Hair properly cut, or the wrath of the reigning little field-grade dictator would be felt. Ties were to be straight. Long pants and a full uniform with tunic were expected. Anything less brought rebuke.
They were getting ass-chewings for not having their ties properly aligned. This from noncombat types who knew nothing of what it was like to be in battle. Their war was clean latrines and spotless laundry, not dead friends and icy crash landings. The three pilots brimmed with contempt.
“No liquor in the barracks,” Wally Jordan growled as he handed the bottle of Yellowstone over to Gerald Johnson. Wally sported his trademark Clark Gable mustache. He looked like a cross between a street fighter and a rake.
Gerald took the bottle and regarded it. He was not a big drinker, but after the last few months he decided to take a long pull and feel the liquor’s fire trickle down his esophagus into his stomach. He handed the bottle to Tommy McGuire, sitting next to him on a cheap, wooden barracks bunk.
“Beats Russian vodka.” Tommy grinned and took a slug.
“Heard about that. Those Russians are a tough bunch,” Gerald said.
“I kicked their asses!” Tommy lied shamelessly.
“By passing out on them,” said Wally.
Tommy took another drink, then handed the bottle off. That signaled a change of subject.
“Never thought getting promoted would cause so much trouble,” Johnson groused.
“Yeah, I almost belted that son of a bitch,” Jordan said.
“What happened?” asked Tommy.
Gerald explained, “We were over at the field today, and some second lieutenant comes storming up to us and demands, ‘How’d you two get first? I’ve been out here for a year flying in combat and I ain’t got promoted yet.’”
“Jesus.”
“So I said, ‘Ever heard of Kiska?’”
Wally said, “Apparently the asshole never saw a newspaper.”
“He shut up after Wally told him I’d gotten two Zeroes. I don’t think the guy had any.”
“Good thing he shut up. I wanted to belt him,” Wally said again, taking a long drink from the bottle.
“The worst part of all this? I swapped Form Fives with that other guy McCorkle wanted to cut loose because I didn’t want to hang around doing nothing in the States and take orders from a bunch of twenty-year-old captains—”1
“Who have never been in combat,” Gerald interjected, “and who can’t fly.”
“Yeah, the foreign service guys back at Harding sure could fly circles around them,” Tommy agreed.
“Strictly straight-and-level boys,” Gerald added.
“Who would want to sit around and take that? All those people promoted ahead of us, and nobody asking any of the combat vets to impart lessons. Remember those guys we met from the Dutch East Indies and the Philippines? They were just as frustrated as us. Maybe more so,” Gerald said.
“Yeah. Then we get here, and we’re the assholes with the undeserved rank. How the hell did that work out?” Wally said.
“Like it’s somehow our fault they’ve not been promoted,” Gerald agreed.
“So they go around picking fights over it.”
Tommy took a pull, then handed the bottle to Johnson. He held it and took a short slug as Tommy got up and started pacing between bunks.
Wally shook his head, “Tommy, you’re the only guy I’ve ever met who can never sit still.”
Johnson agreed. “Yeah, I swear you run laps in your bunk every night as you sleep.”
“Bet your wife loves that,” Wally chortled. Then he glanced at Gerald, the only unmarried one of them.
“I’ll have you know, my wife happens to love my energy,” Tommy said proudly, snatching the bottle and taking another pull.
“You dog!” Wally laughed.
Johnson looked over at him and said softly, “I asked Barbara how she would like being a major’s wife.”
“Major? You! A major?” Tommy howled.
“Said the only second looey in the room,” Wally fired back. All three erupted in laughter.
Outside, in the darkness, a kookaburra bird suddenly began calling out. Another soon answered. The air filled with their harsh, witchlike cackles. The men sat and listened in silence for a spell until finally Wally said, “Jesus, those things are loud. Make this place seem like a loony bin.”
“If we do any more PT, I’ll be ready for one.”
The kookaburras spun up again, filling the night with their bizarre and shrill calls.
“Those things are like nails on a chalkboard. They have ’em in New Guinea?” Tommy asked.
“No idea. They have everything else.”
“One of the pilots at the field told me about some poor son of a bitch who got eaten by a crocodile,” said Wally.
The banter and the bonding continued late into the night, elevating their mood as the liquor flowed. The frustration they felt eased for a time, thanks to each other’s company. They’d been together for most of the year now, thanks to Sandy McCorkle. Johnson got back from Alaska and his home leave only to be sent to fighter commander’s school in Florida. When he wasn’t promoted to captain afterward, he felt robbed, especially given the number of officers he considered useless that seemed to be clogging up every Stateside base now.
Tommy came back from leave, then married his girlfriend Marilynn, whom he’d met while in flight school down in Texas the year before. He figured they would have at least a little bit of time before he ended up overseas again. It was not to be, thanks to a request that landed on Col. Sandy McCorkle’s desk.
The 5th Air Force needed experienced pilots rated in the P-38. The 54th Fighter Group was tasked with cutting loose four men for duty in New Guinea. Normally, this was an opportunity to get rid of malcontents, screwballs, and malingerers. McCorkle knew the 54th would not be going out again any time soon and would probably end up as a fighter-training unit Stateside. He decided to send four of his talented but troubled cases. One never made it past transition training; Wally Jordan swapped out with another. That left Tommy McGuire, the least popular but probably most talented second lieutenant in the group, and the promising but impulsive and overemotional Gerald Johnson.
They headed to Southern California, learning to fly the P-38 at an operational training unit outside of L.A. In March, they flew west to join General Kenney’s band of jungle castaways. Along the way, they bonded as men of diverse backgrounds and personalities can only do when circumstance throws them together in unfamiliar environs.
McGuire continued to have bad luck with the ’38. He crashed one during a training flight but miraculously was able to walk away.
Through transition training, Johnson pined for Barbara, always looking for an opportunity to get north to Portland to see her one more time before he departed. He never got the chance, which made him lonely and emotional. His two Alaskan friends learned to weather his moodiness, just as Gerald and Wally learned to accept Tommy’s occasional barbs and acidic comments.
On the plane ride over, they even took grief from the LB-30 crew. Somewhere over the Pacific, one of them began teasing Tommy about his watch, which was stylishly large and nonmilitary. Tommy covered it with a sleeve, acting remarkably self-conscious for a man usually unafraid to fire back.
He got his chance a little later when the same crew member cracked wise and said, “Hey, how’s it feel to fly peashooters anyway, especially after you’ve gotten to fly in a real aircraft now?”
Johnson and Wally ignored the comment. McGuire snarled, “I’d rather fly a peashooter than be a bus driver like you.”
Now, stuck in limbo at Camp Muckley, they went through in-theater checkouts by some of the old hands to make sure they were competent pilots. It was an early iteration of the “clobber college” V Fighter Command wanted to establish to ensure all incoming replacement pilots received theater-specific tactical training. What worked against the Luftwaffe didn’t against the Japanese. Using tactics devised to defeat the Germans over the skies of New Guinea was a sure bet to get Americans killed.
They didn’t mind the flying, of course, but the base was interminable. As they shot the bull through that night in their unpainted barracks, a plan of revenge took shape. First chance they got, they would stick it to the spit-and-polish jerkweeds running the show in this backwater.
At length, they began talking shop, swapping stories about their time in the far north. Tommy related his crash-landing tale, while Johnson spoke of being so cold in the cockpit over Kiska that he had to use his entire fist to press the button atop the control stick to fire the 37mm cannon.
Tommy related a night at the Polar Bar when one of his squadron mates, drunk and sloppy, got pissed off at the owner during an argument. The pilot drew his Colt .45 and shot up the bar, sending everyone diving for cover. Moments later, as the pilot left, everyone returned to their drinks as if nothing had happened.
That brought up one of the worst memories of Adak for Wally and Gerald. The 54th included a pilot who had grown increasingly bizarre and unstable as the deployment in the Aleutians progressed. One day, at the alert tent at Adak, the pilot was sitting alone as everyone was chatting, playing cards, or reading. The pilot drew his pistol, an old-school revolver, and dumped the bullets out into his lap. Nobody really noticed this at first. Then he put one back in the cylinder and closed it with a snick that drew some looks. He drew the hammer back, spun the barrel, and then pointed the pistol to his head.
“The guy actually started playing Russian roulette with himself,” Gerald related.
He pulled the trigger. Incredulous, the other pilots stared at him, most not comprehending what they were witnessing.
He drew the hammer back again. Pistol cocked, he put it to his head and pulled the trigger.
He blew his brains all over the back of the tent.
Long after midnight, they took their final swigs from the bottle of Yellowstone. Most of the time, the pilots maintained a front with each other. Show no fear; be the baddest, best pilot in the air. Teammates were also competition in the race to be the best in the unit. They were brash and sometimes boastful, always fueled by the ego required to get into a fighter’s cockpit, but every once in a while, moments like these would come along, and if the chemistry was right, they’d get under each other’s facades. That happened at Muckley that night for Wally, Tom, and Gerald. As they finally called it and headed to bed, all three were as happy as they’d been in months. That night in the barracks represented one of the best times they’d had since joining the service.
The next morning, the three received a summons to visit Gen. Paul Wurtsmith at 5th Air Force Headquarters in Brisbane. They arrived, quietly prepared for more frustration and grief. Instead, they found Wurtsmith to be almost one of them. Only thirty-six years old and sporting his own Clark Gable mustache, Wurtsmith looked the part of a dashing, type-A fighter pilot. In fact, less than a year before, the Detroit, Michigan, native had commanded the 49th Fighter Group over in Darwin, the only outfit in the area racking up a slew of kills against the Japanese. Kenney made him a general and put him in charge of V Fighter Command. It was a bold move that outraged countless aging colonels far higher on the promotion list. MacArthur and Kenney didn’t care. Wurtsmith was an aggressive leader, exactly what the fighter pilots in New Guinea needed.
The general talked freely with the three men, plying them with food and Cokes, listening to their tales of the far north. He asked questions about the way the 54th employed its P-39s in the Aleutians and told them a bit about the fighting here.
The royal treatment continued until Wurtsmith dropped a bombshell. “We’ve got a glut of first lieutenants in the squadrons up in New Guinea. There’s just no slots for you two,” he said to Wally and Gerald. “You’re going to be observers with the 9th Fighter Squadron—the Flying Knights. You’ll stay for a few weeks up at Moresby, seeing how things are done, then we’ll send you back to the States to share that knowledge with training command.”
Gerald and Wally were thunderstruck. They stared at the general as he turned to McGuire and told him, “You’re going up to the 9th as well. Plenty of slots for a second looey.”
As they walked away from that meeting, Wally growled, “There is no way in hell I lied to get all the way out here, only to be sent back home for nothing.”
Johnson thought about a moment back in California in February. The commander of the P-38 training unit approached him and gave him a choice. “You can stay here and train pilots, or you can go on to foreign duty. What do you want to do?”
Staying in Southern California meant more opportunities to see Barbara, maybe even find a way to get married despite Mrs. Hall’s continued objections. Barbara had just taken a fall at OHSU, breaking her shoulder. Gerald was worried about her. If he stayed, he almost certainly could have wangled a few days leave to get up and help take care of her.
“Foreign duty, sir,” Gerald answered without hesitation. Later, when his folks found out and his mom was upset at his decision, he wrote home and pointedly asked, “What would you have chosen, Dad? Yeah, thought so, too.”
To come all this way, only to be an observer, not a warrior? It felt like a kick to the groin. If the world wasn’t upside down enough, in the middle of a shortage of good aviators willing to fly and fight over a primeval jungle full of Japanese, crocodiles, and cannibal natives, two pilots who only wanted to battle the Japanese now faced bureaucratic bullshit to even get that opportunity.
They found an ally in the 49th Fighter Group’s deputy commander, Lt. Col. Robert Morrissey. He understood Wally and Gerald’s position and recognized an aggressive spirit in both of them that would fit right into the culture of the 9th Fighter Squadron.
He told them he would advocate to get them on the roster. But then he cautioned them as well. With no first lieutenant slots open, they would be ordinary wingmen. They were not to expect to have their own element or flight. The combat pilots led regardless of rank. The new guys, blooded or not in a different theater, would have to prove themselves.
“Some of the guys may be a little resentful of you too. For every first looey that comes in, it means one less in the outfit’s going to get promoted. Don’t forget that.”
The orders went through a few days later. The next morning, the three pilots showed up to mandatory morning PT at Camp Muckley. They’d packed their bags and were ready to catch a flight to Moresby, only waiting for the transport order to come through.
The officers rotated leading the PT routines. It happened that this final morning, that duty fell to Gerald Johnson. It also happened that some of the worst of the base’s martinets turned out to participate that day. They’d occasionally show up and take part, perhaps to feel like they were showing the troops they would not expect them to do anything they would not do. It was supposed to be a morale builder, seeing them there. Instead, they usually nitpicked and made asses of themselves.
Johnson seized the opportunity. A physical specimen, his body hardened from years of outdoor adventures, he possessed rare endurance. He led the group in a wicked intense regimen. The others soon clued into what he was doing and pushed the pace. The REMF officers started to fail. Johnson ran them through the ringer and left them gasping and smoked. They staggered off, furious and humiliated, but unable to retaliate since none of the rank and file fell out.
Afterward, they caught a flight to Townsville, where they transferred their bags to an Aussie flying boat tasked with returning aircrew to New Guinea after their short rest leaves in Sydney. As they settled into a crowded passenger area in the hull, a dark-eyed, curly-haired American with a bag slung over one shoulder stepped through the hatch and sat down near them. When he set his bag down, it clinked, as if full of bottles.
He was unusually skinny, carried a pair of Colt .45 automatic pistols in shoulder holsters and a gigantic knife the size of a bayonet on his belt. He wore an Army Air Force blouse, mostly unbuttoned, Aussie shorts, boots, and captain’s bars. He looked like an emaciated pirate.
The man gave them a once-over, and they could almost see him mentally dismiss them as fucking new guys. Then he promptly closed his eyes and went to sleep.
Jordan and Gerald exchanged glances. Tommy regarded the men without expression. Finally, Gerald whispered to Wally, “Who the hell is that character?”
Another passenger overheard the question and answered, “That’s Captain Tice. He’s with the Flying Knights.”