Late evening, October 13, 1943
Dobodura, New Guinea
Gerald sat in his cot, penning a letter home to Barbara with the aid of a single bare bulb dangling from a wire over his head. The tent was quiet. Somewhere in the darkness beyond that bulb, the squadron’s harmonica player picked up his instrument, filling the air with a tune from home. Gerald’s pen stopped as he paused to listen, closing his eyes.
Today had been the worst day of his life.
Kenney’s maximum-effort strike on Rabaul on the twelfth was just the start of a concentrated campaign to destroy the Japanese aircraft and shipping based there. Time was short: a new Allied invasion was scheduled for November 1, 1943, that would be well within range of enemy bombers using Rabaul’s airfields. If those bombers weren’t destroyed, the invasion fleet could suffer heavy losses. More pressing for the 5th was the lack of P-38 replacements coming into theater. Kenney heard rumblings in September that the heavy losses in the European theater triggered a shift in production priority. The B-17s couldn’t survive in the sky against the Luftwaffe without long-range fighter escort, so the P-38, the longest-legged type the Army Air Force possessed, was sorely needed in Europe. The flow of new P-38s to the 5th slowed to a trickle. The ones in theater were pieced together and kept flying with the sweat and ingenuity of the ground crews, but the numbers available slowly dwindled. If the replacement flow was curtailed any further, the 5th would not be able to keep its six P-38 squadrons in the air.
Timing and capabilities meant the aircrew would carry the burden on their shoulders. Rabaul would be attacked every time the weather allowed—and even sometimes when it didn’t.
Another maximum-effort strike force sallied from New Guinea’s airfields that morning, only to run into fierce tropical storms. Tommy McGuire, flying with the 431st, suffered mechanical failure and landed back at Dobo only thirty minutes after takeoff. The rest of the squadron tried to get through the weather, couldn’t find any holes, and turned for home. The rest of the 475th followed suit and aborted the mission.
Johnson did not. Over the summer, he’d made fast friends with some of the bomber leaders, especially Jock Henebry and Dick Ellis in the 3rd Attack Group. An old friend from Eugene also happened to be in the 3rd. There were more than three hundred Japanese planes at Rabaul; if the bombers reached the target without fighter escort, Gerald knew they would be savaged.1
They made the rendezvous with the bombers, along with the 39th and 80th Fighter Squadrons, but the weather worsened. The bombers flew through thunderclouds, dodging and weaving through the worst of it until they were spread out and scattered. The weather grew steadily worse until the men were flying practically wingtip to wingtip just to be able to see each other in the thick soup. He should have called it right there, somewhere off the south coast of New Britain. Instead, Johnson pushed it, risking the squadron to try to make sure the bombers could be protected.
A recall order was broadcast over the American radio frequencies. The bombers heard it and turned back for New Guinea, as did the Cobras and the Headhunters. The 9th didn’t hear the recall. By the time of the broadcast, the Knights were flying through torrential rain, searching for any way to continue.
They passed through one squall, came out the other side to see a veritable wall of thunderclouds ahead of them. Gerald, with Stanley Johnson on his wing, tried to go around to the left, diving for what looked like a hole through the storm. The rest of the squadron, following behind Gerald, emerged out of the rain, saw the front before them, and broke hard right to avoid it.
Johnson lost everyone after that. He passed through part of the storm, ice accumulating on his aircraft, which closed his pitot tube and knocked out his airspeed indicator. Enough was enough. Heavy heart, he keyed his microphone and ordered the squadron home.
Four and a half hours later, half the squadron was missing. Gerald’s flight returned to Kiriwina, refueled, and went home to Dobodura. A few others straggled in that afternoon. Wally and his entire flight remained unaccounted for through the early afternoon. Three other pilots from Green Flight, including Theron Price in Watkins’s old mount, Charlcie Jean, were also missing.
Despite the weather, the Knights mustered four aircraft and went off to search for their missing friends. They found nothing, though Wally’s flight finally reached Kiriwina and reported in that they were safe.
Theron Price, Ralph Hays, and Frank Wunder vanished in the storm. As best as could be determined, they’d collided with each other in the clouds.
It had been Gerald’s decision to continue, and he knew he was responsible for their deaths. These were his men, and however noble his intentions, his call still got them killed. At least, that’s how he saw it that night, sitting alone in his tent.
He put his pen down and walked out into the night. Most of the pilots were over at the O club, nursing drinks. The ground crews labored on the remaining P-38s a few miles away at the flight line. The squadron functioned well. They were a great team. Today, Gerald felt he’d let them down. He wouldn’t go to the O club that night. Instead, he walked down to the river and stood regarding the moonlight playing across its surface.
I can’t do this. I’m done.
He felt hollowed out, consumed by guilt. He’d failed, and now he would have to write three letters home. The thought of that drove him deep into despair. He knew these lost men like he knew his brothers back home. Their survival was his mission. Killing Japanese was a distant second to that. He worried that he had somehow lost sight of the order of these priorities.
I can’t be their leader. My nerve’s gone. I don’t deserve this responsibility.
This was the most brutal part of the warrior’s path, these moments in the dark after fatal decisions. At twenty-three and over a hundred and thirty combat missions, Gerald reached that point in his combat journey where he’d either grow or break. By the river, his heart hung in the balance.
The best warriors, the ones men will follow through all manner of hell, are the men with heart. They don’t live emotionless lives. They are not automatons, or wantonly careless. To the core, they are invested in their fellow warriors. That is the core of their bond.
Gerald’s men knew what he was trying to do. They knew his heart and believed in his judgment no matter what happened that day. They were still with him.
But was he still with himself? In the moment, it didn’t feel like it. Confidence blown, judgment second-guessed, he was on the verge of collapse. Other men broke under this kind of pressure and pain. It was more common than the military wanted to reveal. It takes a unique combination of character traits to be twenty-three years old and give orders that could kill your closest friends. When the worst happened, some simply couldn’t hack it and were reassigned out of combat.
Gerald had grown up in a devout family. Under that New Guinea moon, he thought of those Sundays back in Eugene spent downtown at the First Christian Church. He’d never lost his belief in God, but so many times the warrior road he traveled diverged from the path of the righteous. In that context, he felt he’d lost his way a long time ago, straying from the path his parents and Barbara expected of him.
He looked up at the moon, shining between roving clouds, thinking of that first kiss with Barbara, those nights he’d crept onto her roof to whisper for hours with her through the window. How could he ever return to her after all he’d seen and felt? How could he return, knowing that combat had killed the boy his family knew and loved? The battles here were changing him. He knew it, could feel it. He didn’t know what he was turning into and, next to losing men under his command, that was his greatest fear.
He glanced back down at the water as a thought struck him. He couldn’t change what happened today. The best decisions were thrown into the chaos of combat and often were milled to dust.
He could control his response to it.
Gerald began to pray. He closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of the river burbling over stones and windfallen branches as he dug into the well of his faith. The torment he felt eased with a rush of newfound strength. He would never outlive the guilt of this terrible Wednesday, but he could grow around it and learn from its pain.
I remember the men who served their fellows—soldiers, poets, doctors, they served the greatest and the least. The emptiness vanishes and I am alert, alive, filled with a spirit that my task shall be completed. I ask not for wealth, or fame or long life, only that I may have the strength and courage to get to my objective and hit it, and hit it, and hit it.
This would become his soldier’s mantra, and in the many difficult nights ahead, he resolved to close his eyes and mediate on this humble prayer. When he returned to his cot later that night, he knew this ordeal would not break him.