XIII

(One)

The Elms

Dandenong, Victoria, Australia

2105 Hours 6 June 1942

As Corporal Stephen M. Koffler and Petty Officer Daphne Farnsworth approached Melbourne, they came up to a road sign indicating a turnoff to Dandenong. It occurred to Corporal Koffler then that he’d better check in before he took Petty Officer Farnsworth home.

“Would you mind sitting in the car for a minute while I tell Mrs. Cavendish I’m back?” Steve asked as he made the turn. “Maybe there’s a message for me, or something.”

“Of course not.”

He drove down the long line of ancient elms that lined the driveway. When they reached the house, there were two cars parked in front of it. One was a drop-head Jaguar coupe and the other a Morris with Royal Australian Navy plates. After a moment, to her surprise, Daphne recognized it as Lieutenant Donnelly’s car.

She wondered what he was doing out here, and then she wondered what he was going to think when he saw her with Corporal Steve Koffler of the United States Marines; she was supposed to be still at home, grief-stricken.

“Oh, shit!” Steve Koffler said, when he saw the cars.

When Major Edward J. Banning, USMC, noticed the glow of the headlights flash across the front of The Elms, he rose to his feet and went to one of the French windows in the library. As he pushed the curtain aside, the Studebaker pulled up beside the Jaguar and the Morris.

It has to be Corporal Steven Koffler, goddamn the horny little A WOL sonofabitch!

I am not going to eat his ass out. It is not in keeping with the principles of good leadership to eat the ass out of an enlisted man just before you ask him to parachute onto an enemy-held island. If he doesn’t kill himself in the jump, there is a very good chance he will be killed by the Japanese, probably in some very imaginative way.

If I were a corporal, and they left me all alone with the keys to a car, would I take the car and go out and try to get laid? Never having been a corporal, I can’t really say. But probably.

Banning couldn’t help recalling Kenneth R. “Killer” McCoy, late Corporal, 4th Marines, Shanghai.

If I had set up the Killer in a house like this in China, and told him he would be left alone for a week or ten days minimum, he would have had a nonstop poker game going here in the library, a craps table operating in the foyer, half a dozen ladies of the evening plying their trade upstairs; and he’d be using the Studebaker to ferry customers back and forth to town.

It was not the first time Banning had thought of Corporal Killer McCoy during the past twenty-four hours. He started remembering McCoy just after he and Captain Pickering arrived at The Elms; they were informed then by Mrs. Cavendish that Corporal Koffler had taken the Studebaker at five the previous afternoon, and that he hadn’t been seen since. And no, she had no idea where he might have gone. That sounded like something McCoy would have done.

Which did not mean that Corporals McCoy and Koffler were not stamped out of the same mold—far from it. Banning would have been nervous about sending Killer McCoy to jump on Buka, but he wouldn’t have had this sick feeling in his stomach. Killer was probably capable of carrying off something like this with a good chance of coming through it alive. Banning did not think that would be the case with Joe Howard and Steve Koffler. The words had come into his mind a half-dozen times: I am about to send two of my men to their deaths.

It was not a pleasant feeling, and his rationalizations, although inarguably true, sounded hollow and irrelevant: I am asking him to risk, and perhaps even give, his life so that other men may live. And: He’s a volunteer, nobody pushed him into this at the point of a bayonet. And even: He’s a Marine, and Marines do what they are ordered to do.

There was really no point whatever in wishing that the Killer was here. For one thing, Killer was no longer a corporal. He was now an officer and a gentleman and would soon find himself ordering some enlisted Marine to do something that would probably get him killed.

And there was no other enlisted man in Special Detachment 14 who could be sent. No one else, not even the Commanding Officer, knew how to jump out of an airplane without getting killed. And that, as applied to Joe Howard, violated a principle of leadership that Banning devoutly believed, that an officer should not order—or ask—someone to do something he would not do himself.

“I think that’s him,” Banning said, turning from the window to Captain Pickering and Lieutenant Donnelly. He kept his voice as close to a conversational tone as he could muster as he continued, “Maybe I’d better go find Howard and his nurse.” They had not been seen, which surprised no one, since they had left the sitting room.

“I’ll get him, Major,” Lieutenant Donnelly said.

“Good evening, Sir,” Corporal Koffler said, coming into the library. Nervously, he looked at Pickering and Banning in turn, and said, “Sir,” to each of them.

“Welcome home,” Banning said.

“Sir, I didn’t expect to see you.”

“Well, you’re here. Have you been drinking?”

“No, Sir.”

Lieutenant Donnelly came into the room.

“They’ll be here in a minute,” he said.

“You know Captain Pickering,” Banning said to Koffler, “and I understand you’ve met Lieutenant Donnelly.”

“No, Sir. I talked to him a couple of times on the phone.”

“How are you, Corporal?” Donnelly said.

“How do you do, Sir?”

Banning saw in Donnelly’s eyes that he had expected Corporal Koffler to be somewhat older. Say, old enough to vote.

“Something pretty important has come up,” Banning said.

“Yes, Sir?”

“There’s several ifs,” Banning continued. “Let me ask a couple of questions. First, would it be possible to drop one of the Hallicrafters sets by parachute? Or would it get smashed up?”

“I thought about that, Sir.”

“You did?” Banning replied, surprised.

The door opened again, and Ensign Barbara Cotter and Lieutenant Joe Howard came into the room.

Barbara Cotter averted her eyes and looked embarrassed, confirming Fleming Pickering’s early judgment of her as a nice girl. Then he had a thought that made him feel like a dirty old man: Christ, I could use a little sex myself.

“How goes it, Steve?” Joe Howard asked. “We were getting a little worried about you.”

“Hello, Sir.”

“The lady is Ensign Cotter, Koffler,” Banning said. “Lieutenant Howard’s fiancée.”

“Hello,” Barbara said.

“Ma’am,” Koffler replied uneasily.

“Should I be in here?” Barbara asked.

“You don’t look like a Japanese spy to me,” Pickering said. “And it seems to me you have an interest in what’s going on.”

“Sir…” Banning started to protest. Ensign Barbara Cotter, whatever her relationship with Joe Howard, had no “need to know.”

“Ensign Cotter is a Naval officer,” Pickering said formally, “who is well aware of the need to keep her mouth shut about this operation.”

Banning had called Pickering as soon as he arrived at the airport in Melbourne. He thought he should know that USMC Special Detachment 14 was about to drop two of its men behind Japanese lines. Pickering had been more than idly interested. In fact, he promptly announced that if he “wouldn’t be in the way,” he would pick Banning up and drive him out to The Elms while the operation was being set up. Banning had wondered then if Pickering was in fact going to get in the way, and now it looked as if he was.

For a moment, Banning looked as if he was on the edge of protesting further, but then reminded himself that Special Detachment 14 wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for Pickering.

“Yes, Sir,” Banning said finally.

“Corporal Koffler was telling us how he would drop one of the Hallicrafters by parachute,” Pickering said. “Go on, please, Koffler.”

“You’d need a parachute,” Koffler said. “I mean,” he went on quickly, having detected the inanity of his own words, “I mean, I think you’d have to modify a regular C-3 ’chute. All the cargo ’chutes I’ve ever seen would be too big.”

“I don’t understand,” Fleming Pickering confessed.

“Sir, the whole set, when you get it out of the crates,” Steve Koffler explained, “doesn’t weigh more than maybe a hundred and fifty pounds. Cargo ’chutes, the ones I’ve seen, are designed to drop a lot more weight—”

“The question is moot,” Lieutenant Donnelly said. “There are no cargo ’chutes available. Period. You’re talking about modifying a standard Switlick C-3 ’chute, Corporal?” Steve nodded. “How?” Donnelly pursued.

“Do you think I might be able to get you the parachute, parachutes, you need, Banning?” Pickering asked.

“Sir,” Donnelly replied for Banning, “I don’t think there’s a cargo parachute in Australia.”

“OK,” Pickering said. “You were saying, Corporal Koffler?”

“Sir, I think you could make up some special rigging to replace the harness. Make straps to go around the mattresses.”

“Mattress?” Banning asked.

“Mattresses,” Steve said. “What I would do is make one package of the antenna and the generator. I think you could just roll them up in a mattress and strap it tight. And then add sandbags, or something, so that it weighed about a hundred seventy-five pounds. Where do you want to drop the radio, Sir?”

“Why sandbags? Why a hundred seventy-five pounds?”

“That’s the best weight for a standard ’chute. Any more and you hit too hard. Any lighter and it floats forever. You couldn’t count on hitting the drop zone,” Koffler said, explaining what he evidently thought should be self-evident to someone who was not too bright.

He obviously knows what he’s talking about. Why does that surprise me?

“And then do the same thing with the transceiver itself,” Koffler went on. “Wrap it in mattresses, and then weight it up to a hundred seventy-five pounds. It would probably make sense to wrap some radio tubes—I mean spare tubes—in cotton or something, and put them with the transceiver. They’re pretty fragile.”

“I have some parachute riggers, Corporal,” Lieutenant Donnelly said. “Civilian women. They have some heavy sewing machines. Could you show them, do you think, how to make such a replacement for the harness?”

“Yes, Sir,” Koffler said. “I think so.”

He looked uncomfortable.

“Speaking of civilian women, Sir, I’ve got a lady outside in the car. Could I take a minute to talk to her? I was about to take her home.”

“Sure,” Banning said. “Go ahead.”

When he was gone, Fleming Pickering said, “Well, what do you think, Ed?”

“I don’t know what to think, Sir. He doesn’t seem to think there will be much of a problem. More important, he seems to know what he’s talking about.”

“I was thinking, for a moment, that he seems so young for something like this. But then I remembered that I was a Corporal of Marines when I was his age; it’s probably not that he’s so young, but that I’m so old.”

Steve Koffler didn’t have to go out to the Studebaker to find Yeoman Daphne Farnsworth; she was standing in the foyer, just outside the corridor to the library.

“I had to go to the ladies’,” she said.

“You found it all right, I hope?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Something’s come up,” Steve said.

“I heard, I went looking for you.”

“I don’t know how long this will take,” Steve said. “I’m sorry, I should have taken you home first.”

“Are you in some kind of trouble? About taking the car, maybe?”

“No, I don’t think so. I thought I would be when I saw that Captain Pickering was here, but I think they want me to jump in with the radio. Otherwise, I think my ass would have been in a crack.”

“You’re sure?”

He nodded. “I’m sorry you have to wait. I was going to tell you to wait in there,” he said, pointing toward the sitting room. “There’s couches and chairs and a radio.”

“All right,” Daphne said. “You’re sure you didn’t get in trouble coming out to see me?”

“I’m fine,” he said, smiling. “No trouble. Things couldn’t be better.”

He turned and went back down the corridor. Daphne walked into the sitting room. She sat down on a couch and picked up a magazine, and then threw it down angrily.

That American Navy captain and Steve’s major and lieutenant and Donnelly didn’t come here on a Saturday evening to discuss a training mission. I know what the Marines are doing here with the Coastwatchers. If they’re going to parachute him anywhere, it will be onto some island in Japanese hands. And the only reason they would do that is because there’s some sort of trouble with the Australian already there.

She looked impatiently around the room. Her eyes fell on several bottles, one of them of Gilbey’s gin. She walked over to it, looked over her shoulder nervously, and then took a healthy pull at the neck of the bottle.

“‘Otherwise,’” she quoted bitterly, “‘I think my ass would have been in a crack!’ Oh, Steve, you bloody ass!”

Then she capped the Gilbey’s bottle and walked down the corridor to the library door, where she could hear what was being said.

“I’ll try to get to the airfield to see you off, Steve,” Captain Fleming Pickering said, “but if something comes up…good luck, son.”

“Thank you, Sir,” Steve said.

They were standing on the porch of The Elms. All that could be done tonight had been done. The officers, except Lieutenant Howard and his girlfriend, were leaving.

“You’ve been taking some kidding, I’m sure, about being a corporal, as young as you are,” Pickering went on.

“Yes, Sir. Some.”

“Well, it’s going to get worse,” Pickering said. “As of this moment, you’re a sergeant.”

“Sir?”

“I think, Ed,” Pickering said to Banning, “that between us we should have the authority to make that promotion, shouldn’t we? I’m not going to have to trouble the Secretary of the Navy with an administrative problem like that, am I?”

“No, Sir,” Banning chuckled. “I don’t see any problem with that.”

“Then good luck again, Sergeant Koffler,” Pickering said, and patted Steve, a paternal gesture, on the arm. He went down the stairs and got in the Drop-Head Jaguar.

“I will see you and Lieutenant Howard at half past six, Sergeant, right?” Lieutenant Donnelly said. “At the airfield.”

“Aye, aye, Sir.”

“Don’t get carried away with your girlfriend tonight, Sergeant,” Banning said softly. “Have fun, but be at the airport at 0630.”

“She’s not my girlfriend, Sir,” Steve said.

“Oh?”

“I wish she was, but all she is…is a very nice lady.”

“I see.”

“I’ll be at the airport on time, Sir.”

“Goodnight, Steve,” Banning said.

He got in Pickering’s Jaguar. Steve stood on the porch until both cars had disappeared down the driveway, then went looking for Daphne. He suspected that she would probably be sort of hiding in the sitting room. It would have been very embarrassing for her if Lieutenant Donnelly had seen her. He would have gotten the wrong idea.

Daphne Farnsworth was not in the sitting room. Nor in the toilet off the corridor. Nor in the kitchen, Nor anyplace.

Jesus! What she did was walk all the way to the goddamned road, so that she can try to catch a ride!

He ran to the Studebaker. Daphne’s bag was not in the backseat.

She’s even carrying her goddamned suitcase!

He got behind the wheel, squealed the tires backing out and turning around, and raced down the drive between the ancient elms. She was not in sight when he reached the highway. He swore, and then drove toward Melbourne. Once he thought he saw her, but when he got close it was not Daphne sitting on her suitcase, but a pile of paving stones, neatly stacked by the side of the road.

Finally, swearing, he gave up, and drove back to The Elms.

At least she didn’t have to carry that heavy goddamned suitcase; I would have carried it to her in the morning.

And that would have at least given me the chance to say “so long.”

When he got back to The Elms, he saw there was only one light on, on the second floor. That meant Lieutenant Howard and his girlfriend had gone to bed. Together.

Jesus, talk about good luck! Having your girlfriend right here. But then he considered that. Maybe it would be better if she wasn’t here, especially since she knows what’s going to happen tomorrow. The minute they were alone, she probably started crying or something, and that would be hard to deal with. And then he considered that again. At least they could put their arms around each other and not feel so fucking alone.

Steve went into the library. He thought he would write his mother. But when he was sitting at the little writing table with a sheet of paper in front of him, he realized that was a lousy idea.

What the hell can I write? “Dear Mom, I’m fine. How are you? I’ve been wondering when I’m going to get a letter from you. Nothing much is happening here, except that I’m living in a mansion outside Melbourne; and tomorrow or the next day they’re going to jump me onto an island called Buka. I don’t even know where it is.”

I can’t even write that. This whole thing is a military secret.

He thought about going into the kitchen and maybe making himself an egg sandwich, but decided against it; the last time he’d done that, he’d awakened Mrs. Cavendish, and he didn’t want to do that tonight.

He went up the broad staircase to the second floor, and down the corridor to his room.

Tomorrow night, or maybe the night after that, I’ll be sleeping in the goddamned jungle with bugs and snakes and Christ knows what else. I should have known a good deal like this couldn’t last—a room of my own, with a great big bed all for myself.

He pushed open the door to his room and turned on the light.

Yeoman Daphne Farnsworth was in his bed, with the sheet pulled up around her chin.

“Jesus Christ!” Steve said.

“I saw you drive off in the car,” Daphne said. “I didn’t know when, or if, you would be back, so I decided to go to bed and worry about getting into Melbourne in the morning.”

“I was looking for you,” he said. “When I couldn’t find you downstairs, I thought you had probably tried to hitch a ride into Melbourne.”

“Oh,” she said.

“I’m going to jump onto some island called Buka.”

“I know. I heard.”

“How come you took your bag out of the car?” Steve blurted. “I mean, you must have—”

“I know what you mean,” she said, very softly.

“Jesus!”

“I didn’t want you to be alone tonight,” Daphne said. “If that makes you think I’m some kind of a wh—”

“Shut up!” he said sharply. “Don’t talk like that!”

“And I didn’t want to be alone, either,” she said.

“Once, in the car,” Steve said, “we were talking about something, and you leaned close to me and put your hand on my leg, and I could smell your breath and feel it on my face, and I thought my heart was going to stop….”

They looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment.

Finally, softly, reasonably, Daphne said, “Steve, since you have to be at the airfield at half past six, don’t you think you should come to bed?”

(Two)

Port Moresby, New Guinea

0405 Hours 8 June 1942

When Flight Sergeant Michael Keyes, RAAF, went to the tin-roofed Transient Other Ranks hut to wake him, Sergeant Steve Koffler, USMC, was awake and nearly dressed, in greens that still carried the stripes of a corporal.

Lieutenant Howard had tried to fix it so they could be together overnight, but the Aussies hadn’t let them. Steve had told Howard not to worry about it. He thought Howard had enough to worry about, like making his first jump, without having to worry about him having to sleep by himself.

“Briefing time, lad,” Sergeant Keyes said.

“OK.”

“First, breakfast, of course. The food here is ordinarily bloody awful, which explains the stuff we brought with us.”

“I’m not really very hungry.”

“Well, have a go at it anyway. It’s likely to be some time before steak and eggs will be on your ration again.”

“Some time,” shit. By tonight I’m probably going to be dead.

“I guess I better put this on now, huh?” Steve said, holding up an RAAF flight suit, a quilted cotton coverall.

“Yes, I think you might as well,” Keyes said.

Steve put his legs into the garment and shrugged into it. There were the chevrons of a sergeant of the United States Marine Corps on the sleeves, and the metal lapel insignia of the Corps on the collar points. Staff Sergeant Richardson had taken care of that yesterday in Townesville, when Steve and the crew of the Lockheed Hudson were packing the Hallicrafters set and loading it into the airplane.

He had also given Steve a Colt Model 1911A1 .45 pistol. Steve suspected that Staff Sergeant Richardson had given him his own pistol; only the officers and a couple of the staff sergeants had been authorized pistols. He thought that had been a very nice thing for Staff Sergeant Richardson to do.

Steve had decided the best—really the only—way to take his Springfield along was to drop it with the antenna set; it and his web cartridge belt and two extra bandoliers of .30–06 ammunition and a half-dozen fragmentation grenades had been wrapped in cotton padding, and then that bundle had been strapped to the antenna parts.

Now that Richardson had given him the pistol, at least when he got on the ground he would have a weapon right away. There was no telling how quickly he could get the Springfield out of the antenna bundle. If he could find it at all.

Steve took a couple of foil-wrapped Trojans from a knee pocket in the flight suit, ripped one of them open with his teeth, unrolled it, and then tied it around the top of his boots. Then he bloused the left leg of the flight suit under it.

As he repeated the process for the right leg, Flight Sergeant Keyes said rather admiringly, “I wondered how the hell you did that to your trousers.”

“They call it ‘blousing,’” Steve said.

He strapped Staff Sergeant Richardson’s pistol belt around his waist, and then tied the thong lace around his leg through an eyelet at the bottom of the holster.

“Ready,” he said.

“Good lad,” Keyes said. “We have to get hopping.”

They left the tin-roofed hut and walked across the airfield to the mess. Based on his previous experience—in the movies—with what war should look like, Port Moresby was what Steve had expected to find when he got off the Martin Mariner in Melbourne. The people here went around armed, and they wore steel helmets. There were sandbags all over the place, at the entrances to bomb shelters, and around buildings, and to protect machine-gun positions. This place had been bombed.

Their airplane, the Lockheed, had been pushed into a revetment with sandbag walls. There were other airplanes, none of which was very impressive. There were three bi-wing English fighter planes, for instance, that looked as if they were left over from the First World War.

In the mess hut, Sergeant Keyes took his arm and guided him into an anteroom under a sign that said, OFFICERS. Lieutenant Howard and the rest of the airplane crew were there: the pilot, who was a “flying officer,” and the navigator, who was a sergeant, and the gunner, who was a corporal. Steve decided that in the RAAF, if you were a flyer, you got to eat with the officers.

But he quickly learned that wasn’t the reason Sergeant Keyes had taken him in the Officers’ Room.

“Good morning, Sergeant,” a voice said behind him. “About ready to get this show started?”

Startled, Steve looked over his shoulder. There was another RAAF officer, an older one, with a bunch of stripes on his sleeve, standing by the door.

He’s at least a major, or whatever the hell they call a major in the RAAF.

“Yes, Sir,” Steve said.

“We’re running a bit behind schedule, so I’ll just run through this while you eat, all right?”

“That’ll be fine, Sir,” Lieutenant Howard said.

The officer gestured to the navigator, who picked up a four-by-four sheet of plywood and set it down on the table.

“Sit here, Sergeant,” the navigator said, indicating a chair at the table beside Howard. Steve saw that Howard had already been served his breakfast, but hadn’t eaten much of it.

Steve sat down. The old RAAF officer went to the map.

“Here we are, in Port Moresby,” the RAAF officer said, pointing. “And here’s where you’re going.

“Buka is an island approximately thirty miles long and no greater than five or six miles wide. It is the northernmost island in the Solomons chain, just north of Bougainville, which is much larger. Where you are going, here, is 146 nautical miles from the Japanese base at Rabaul on New Britain. There is a Japanese fighter base on Buka, another on Bougainville, and of course there are fighters based at Rabaul, along with bombers, seaplanes, and other larger aircraft. From his base, Sub-Lieutenant Reeves has in the past been able to advise us of Japanese aerial movements as they have occurred. These reports have obviously been of great value both tactically and for planning purposes, and now that they have been interrupted, getting Reeves’s station up and running again is obviously of great importance.”

A heavy china plate was put in front of Steve. On it was a T-bone steak covered with three fried eggs, sunny side up. This was followed by a smaller plate with three pieces of toast and a tub of orange marmalade, and finally by a cup of tea.

I don’t like tea, hate orange marmalade, and, anyway, I’m not hungry. But unless I start eating that crap, they’re going to think I’m scared. I am, of course, but I can’t let these Aussies see that I am. And maybe if I eat mine, Lieutenant Howard will eat his.

He unrolled a heavy paper napkin, took stainless-steel cutlery from it, and sawed off a piece of the steak and dipped it in the yolk of one of the eggs.

When he looked up again, he saw the RAAF officer was waiting for him to give him his attention again.

“On leaving Port Moresby, the Hudson will climb to maximum altitude, which we estimate will be about twenty thousand feet, and will maintain this altitude, passing to the west of Kiriwina Island, until it nears Buka itself. There is nothing in the Solomon Sea, except, of course, the to-be-expected Japanese Navy vessels, and possibly some Japanese naval reconnaissance aircraft. The thinking is that at high altitude our chances of being spotted—or, if spotted, identified—by Japanese surface vessels will be minimal. Further, we expect that if Japanese reconnaissance aircraft are encountered, they will be at ten thousand feet or so, and will be directing their attention downward. And again, the chances of detection are minimal. Finally, if we are spotted by Japanese reconnaissance aircraft, the odds are they will be seaplanes or amphibians, which will have neither the speed nor the agility to pursue the Lockheed. In the worstcase scenario, detection and/or interception by Japanese fighter aircraft, we have the twin .303 Brownings on the Lockheed to protect ourselves. Are you following me, son?”

“Protect ourselves”?Bullshit! You’re not going.

“Yes, Sir.”

“As I say, I think that on the way in, our chances of detection are minimal.”

“Yes, Sir.”

The navigator replaced the map of the whole area with a map of Buka itself. This one was drawn on white-coated cardboard.

“You’ve seen the photographs, I understand, of Sub-Lieutenant Reeves, and the message he cut out in the grass?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“They were taken here,” the RAAF officer said, pointing. “There is a natural field, a plateau, so to speak, in the hills. It is at 2,100 feet above sea level. It is approximately twelve hundred feet long and, at its widest, about seven hundred feet wide, narrowing to about five hundred feet near this end.”

Jesus Christ! We’re going to wind up in the fucking trees!

“Once the Lockheed nears the target area, it will make a rapid descent to 3,500 feet and approach the drop zone from the north. From the time the descent begins, of course, the chance of detection increases. We believe, however, that it will not be possible for the Japanese to launch fighter aircraft in time to interfere with the drop.”

“What happens afterward?” Steve blurted.

“Well, you’ll be gone, won’t you?” the RAAF officer said.

“We’ll hide in the clouds, Sergeant Koffler,” Flight Sergeant Keyes said. “With a little luck, we’ll have some at ten to fifteen thousand. Once we’re in them, finding us will require a bit of luck on the part of the Nip.”

“You will exit the aircraft at 3,300 feet, and the aircraft will have established an indicated airspeed of ninety miles per hour. If there are the expected prevailing winds, that will produce a speed over the ground of approximately seventy-five to eighty-five miles per hour.”

“You can’t get any lower than that? Thirty-three hundred feet will be twelve hundred feet over the drop zone. You can get yourself blown a long way if you jump at twelve hundred feet,” Steve said.

“I’ll put you in at any altitude you want,” the pilot said.

“Eight hundred feet,” Steve said.

“Done.”

“Will there be enough time, if you jump at eight hundred feet, to activate your reserve parachute?” the RAAF asked.

“No,” Steve said. “But I don’t want us to get blown into the trees. We won’t take the reserve.”

The RAAF officer looked at him with his eyebrows raised for a moment.

“Is that all right with you, Lieutenant Howard?”

“Steve’s the expert,” Howard replied. “Whatever he says.”

“Well,” the RAAF officer said, after a moment’s thought, “unless there are any other questions, I think that wraps it up.”

Steve looked down at his steak and eggs.

He was suddenly ravenously hungry.

“Can I finish my breakfast?” he asked.

“Yes, certainly,” the RAAF officer said.

(Three)

Buka Island

0725 Hours 8 June 1942

The pitch of the Lockheed’s two Pratt & Whitney 1,050-horsepower Twin Wasp radial engines suddenly changed, bringing Sergeant Steve Koffler back to the tail section of the Hudson. He had been in the neat little bungalow he was sharing with Mrs. Koffler, the former Yeoman Daphne Farnsworth, in postwar Melbourne, Australia.

He’d seen such a bungalow, a whole section of them, on curving little streets on a hill. From the top of the hill you could see the water in Port Phillip Bay. On the way from Port Moresby, he had picked the exact house and furnished it, paying a lot of attention to the bedroom and the bathroom. In the final version of the bathroom, there was a shower—not just a tub with a shower head and a curtain, but a pure shower, with a door with frosty glass, so you could see somebody taking a shower inside.

When the sound of the engines changed, slowed down, he had just come home from work. He didn’t know exactly what kind of job he had, but it had something to do with importing things from the States to Australia, and it was a pretty good job. He wasn’t rich, but there was enough money for the bungalow and a car, and the steaks and stuff he’d brought home from the grocery store. Daphne wasn’t in the kitchen or the living room. When he looked in the bedroom he heard the sound of the shower, so he stuck his head in the bathroom, and just stood there admiring, just that, admiring, nothing dirty or anything. Daphne was just standing there on the other side of the frosty glass, and she was letting the shower hit her on the face and a little lower.

Then he went to the shower and opened it just a crack and said, “I’m home, honey. I got some steaks.”

And she covered her bosom and down below with her hands, because she was modest, even if they were married and had done it several hundred times, not just three the way they really had.

And Daphne smiled and said, “Steaks are fine, but I’m really not hungry right now. Don’t you need a shower?”

And he knew what she meant. He put the steaks down and started to get undressed so he could get in the shower with her; and then the fucking engines changed pitch, the way they do when the pilot is slowing it down and lining it up with the drop zone. And he was back in the rear of the Lockheed, wearing an oxygen mask and fifty pounds of sheepskin jackets and pants and boots and hat and still freezing his ass.

He felt like crying.

He pushed himself to his feet so he could look out the window, and at that moment the Lockheed began a steep, descending turn to the left. He slipped and fell against one of the aluminum fuselage ribs, and pulled the oxygen tube loose from the bottle.

He had a hell of a time trying to plug the damned thing in again, with the heavy gloves on, holding his breath until he did; Sergeant Keyes had told him he would lose consciousness in ninety seconds without oxygen.

He took several deep breaths when he had it back on, and then tried to look out the window again. All he could see was clouds and far below, water.

The Flight Sergeant navigator came back, carefully making his way past the bomb bay. He was wearing a walk-around oxygen bottle. When he got close to Steve, he pulled it away from his face.

“You all right?”

Steve decided if the Flight Sergeant could take his mask off, he could too.

“Fine.”

“We’re over Buka, making our descent.”

Steve nodded.

“It won’t be long now. You’d better ’chute up.”

Steve looked around until he saw the parachutes, then made his way to them. Lieutenant Howard came up; and following Steve’s lead, he started to take off his sheepskin flying clothes.

It was still so cold that Steve started to shiver as, with difficulty, he worked into the harness. The Flight Sergeant gave the straps a couple of good jerks, drawing them tight around his legs.

If they weren’t tight, they slapped and burned the shit out of your legs when the canopy opened, and Steve had heard stories of what happened to guys who got their balls between the harness strap and their legs when the canopy opened.

If the straps were tight enough, they were too tight, and your legs started to go to sleep, like now.

Steve motioned for Lieutenant Howard to stand with his hands holding on to the fuselage frame above him, and then he checked Howard’s harness, tugging the straps very tight.

He felt very sorry for Howard. Making your first jump was bad enough. Steve clearly remembered his. But when that had happened, he had had a lot of training, and a reserve parachute, and there had been medics on the ground in case something went wrong.

Lieutenant Howard must be scared shitless. Poor bastard.

It seemed like it took forever to make the descent. Steve remembered a Clark Gable movie where a test pilot had torn the wings off an airplane by making it dive too fast.

Then the plane started to level out. Steve looked out the window again, and all he could see was green. Trees. Not even a lousy little dirt road. He wondered how the hell the pilot knew where they were.

The moment the plane was level, the bomb-bay doors started to open, and there was a hell of a rush of air and the surprisingly loud sound of the slipstream.

Steve made his way to the bomb bay. The bombardier was on the far side of it, wearing a set of earphones. He had secured the two bundles on either side of the open bomb bay, their static lines already tied to a hole in one of the aluminum fuselage ribs.

The Flight Sergeant touched Steve’s shoulder and, when Steve turned to look at him, gestured for Steve to get in position. Very carefully, Steve lowered himself to the aircraft floor, and then scooted forward so that his feet hung over the edge.

He looked over his shoulder again, and saw the Flight Sergeant giving a good jerk to the static line he had tied to a fuselage rib.

Steve looked across the open bomb bay, where Lieutenant Howard was getting into position. He smiled at him, to show that he wasn’t scared.

I am, after all, a member of the elite of the elite, a Marine Paratrooper.

Howard smiled at him, and gave him a thumbs-up sign.

What he’s doing, Steve realized with surprise and admiration, is trying to make me feel good!

There was immediate confirmation. Howard cupped his hands and shouted. Steve could hear him, even over the roar of the engines and the whistling slipstream.

“How you doing, Koffler?”

Steve cupped his hands over his mouth, and shouted back, “Semper-fucking-Fi, Lieutenant!”

Lieutenant Howard smiled and shook his head.

Steve smiled back, and then looked over his shoulder to smile at the Flight Sergeant.

The Flight Sergeant was doing something weird. He had his hands in holes in the fuselage ribs, and was hanging from them, with both of his feet in the air.

And, in the moment Steve understood what was going on, the Flight Sergeant really did it. Steve felt an irresistible force on his back.

That sonofabitch really kicked me out!

Arms flailing, face downward, Steve fell through the bomb bay. He felt the rush of air from the slipstream, and then a slight tug. He didn’t hear, or sense, the pilot chute being pulled loose. Just all of a sudden, the canopy opened, and there came the shock, the sensation of being jerked upward.

He looked up and saw the other parachutes. Lieutenant Howard’s canopy filled with air as he watched, and then, almost together, the canopies of the cargo chutes opened. The load in one of them began to swing wildly back and forth. The second load was hanging just about straight down. Both were going to land on the field.

Steve looked down between his legs. He had three or four seconds to realize that he was going into the fucking trees, and to realize that there was not one fucking thing he could do about it.

“Oh, shit!” he said.

He pulled his elbows against his sides and covered his face with his hands and waited to hit.

There was a brief sensation of his feet touching something, and then of passing through something, and then something was lashing against his legs and body and the hands he had against his face. And then he felt another jerk, even harder than the opening shock, and he stopped.

He opened his eyes. Everything was fuzzy at first, but then came into focus. It was dark, and he wondered if something had happened to his eyes, but then he saw bright spots, with rays of light coming through them, and understood that the reason it was dark was because the branches and leaves of the trees came together, forming a roof.

He was swinging gently back and forth, forty or fifty feet in the air. When he looked up, he could see the canopy, torn and collapsed, with tree branches holding it. Above the canopy, the branches of the trees had closed up again.

I’ve got to get the fuck out of here before the canopy starts ripping and lets me fall the rest of the way.

He started to make himself swing, by jerking his legs, with ever increasing force. Twice the canopy ripped and he felt himself falling, once about six feet. But both times other branches caught part of the canopy and stopped his fall.

Eventually he was able to reach a branch with his hand, and then, carefully, to pull himself onto a substantial limb. He straddled it, holding it tightly between his legs, pulled the safety from the quick-release, and shoved on it. The harness came free and moved upward with surprising and frightening speed, propelled by the elasticity of the branches on which the canopy was caught. One of the metal ends slashed across his forehead, hurting him like getting hit in the head with a rock. When he put his hand to it, it came away covered with blood.

He probed his face with his fingers and they all came away bloody.

“Shit!” he said softly.

After a moment his heart stopped pounding so quickly, so he moved his extremities and limbs enough to know that while he was sore all over, nothing was broken. Then he started, very carefully, to climb down the tree.

Twenty feet off the ground, he ran out of branches to stand or hang from. He wrapped his arms around the trunk, putting his fingers in ridges in the bark. They were more like ribs in the tree than bark.

Like handles! I can even wedge my toes in them!

He started to very carefully climb the rest of the way down. He had gone perhaps two feet when, at the same moment, the bark his left hand was holding and the bark his left toe was jammed into gave way.

He fell to the right, on his back. He felt himself hit something squishy and then everything went black.

Someone was slapping his face. He opened his eyes.

A man was looking at him, so close that Steve could smell garlic on his breath. He was sharp-featured and had a bushy black mustache. Steve started to try to get up.

He felt strong hands pushing him back.

“See if you can move your legs,” the man ordered. Steve moved his legs. “And your arms.” Steve moved his arms.

The hands that had been pushing him down now pulled him into a sitting position.

“I’m Jacob Reeves,” he said. “Who are you?”

“I’m Corp—Sergeant Koffler, United States Marine Corps.”

“United States Marine Corps? Well, I will be goddamned. A sodding American!”

“Yes, Sir,” Steve said.

Steve felt a sting, and slapped at his face, and then looked at his hand. It was the largest mosquito he had ever seen, if it was a mosquito. He also became aware of a stench, something rotten.

“What smells?” he asked.

“At the moment, old boy, I’d say that’s you. The jungle stinks, but not quite that much.”

Oh, my God, I shit my pants! he thought in horror. And then he had another horrifying thought: Lieutenant Howard! Where the fuck is he? Did he go into the trees, too?

“Sir, there’s somebody else. And two cargo parachutes…”

“We have the mattresses,” Reeves said. “Your other man landed in the trees.”

“Is he all right?”

“I don’t know. We’re still looking for him. The girls are already carrying the packages to the village. Are you all right to walk?”

“I think so,” Steve said.

“Good,” Reeves said. “The sodding Jap chose to send another of his sodding patrols looking for us. We’re going to have to do something about that.”

“You think they’re going to find us?”

“We have to find them,” Reeves said. “They must have seen the aircraft and the sodding parachutes, so they know there’s something going on up here except some unfriendly natives.”

“I don’t understand, Sir.”

“The Japs are now headed down the hill,” Reeves explained, “to report what they saw. We have to make sure they don’t make it. Otherwise, the Jap will send troops up here and keep them here until they do find us.”

Steve got to his feet. He had to steady himself for a moment against a tree trunk, but then he was all right.

He slapped at another mosquito.

“What about Lieutenant Howard?” he asked.

“I told my head boy he has five minutes to find him,” Reeves said.

“And if he doesn’t find him in five minutes, then what?”

“Then we’ll have to stop looking, I’m afraid. What has to be done is stop the sodding Japs from reporting what they saw.”

“Fuck you,” Steve said. “I’m not going anywhere without Lieutenant Howard.”

“I’ve explained the situation, lad,” Reeves said evenly.

“So have I,” Steve said. “I’m a fucking Marine. We just don’t take off and leave our people behind.”

“That’s a very commendable philosophy, I’m sure, but—”

“I don’t give a shit what you think of it,” Steve interrupted. “That’s the way it’s going to be.”

The discussion proved to be moot.

A brown-skinned, fuzzy-haired man appeared out of nowhere. He was wearing a loincloth, a bone in his nose, and a web cartridge belt around his neck, and he was carrying a British Lee-Enfield MK III .303 rifle. He announced, in understandable English, “We have the other bloke, Mr. Reeves. He was hanging from the trees. He has broken his arm.”

At least he’s alive, Steve thought. Thank God! Then he thought, What’s he going to think when he finds out I shit my pants? My God, I can’t believe I really did that!

A moment later, there was the sound of something moving through the muck on the forest floor. And then Lieutenant Howard appeared. His left arm was folded and strapped across his chest with his cartridge belt; his right arm was around the shoulder of a short, plump, brown-skinned, fuzzy-headed, bare-breasted woman. She was wearing what looked like a dirty towel, and carrying Howard’s Thompson .45-caliber submachine gun.

“Jesus, I was worried about you,” he said to Koffler.

“I’m Jacob Reeves,” Reeves said.

“Lieutenant Howard, U.S. Marine Corps,” Howard said.

“Cecilia,” Reeves said to the bare-breasted woman, “I want you to take this gentleman to the village. You think you can do that?”

Cecilia smiled, revealing that her teeth were stained almost black.

“Of course,” she said. “I think one or two of the other girls are about to help, if need be.”

Christ, she sounds just like Daphne!

“Make him as comfortable as you can. Give him some of the whiskey. When we get there, we’ll tend to his arm.

“You better take that tommy gun, Sergeant,” Reeves said to Steve Koffler, adding to Howard, “We’ll see you a bit later, then.”

“Where are you going?” Howard asked.

Reeves didn’t answer. He started trotting off into the jungle. Steve Koffler took the Thompson and two extra twenty-round magazines from Howard’s pocket, and ran after him.

(Four)

Steve became aware as they moved through the forest that others were with them besides Jacob Reeves and the guy with the bone through his nose, although he had trouble getting a clear look at any of them.

They were going downhill. Although it wasn’t like the sticky muck where they had landed, the ground was still wet and slippery. He had to watch his footing and to keep his eye on Reeves. His chest hurt from the exertion. There seemed to be a cloud of insects around his face, crawling into his ears and nostrils and mouth.

What seemed like hours later, they stopped. According to his watch, it was only thirty-five minutes. Steve stood there, sweat-soaked, breathing hard, looking with mingled amazement and horror at his hands and arms, which were covered with insect stings.

Reeves came up to him.

“Do you know how to use that tommy gun?”

“I fired it in boot camp,” Steve said.

“In other words, you don’t.”

“I qualified,” Steve said sharply.

“The way we’re going to do this,” Reeves said, “the Japs will be coming down a path this way. What I would like you to do is make sure that none of them gets past you. This will be successful only if we take all of them. If one of them gets away…You understand?”

Steve nodded.

“We’ll have our go at them about fifty yards up the footpath,” Reeves said. “It then passes just a few yards from here. You go have a look at it, and then find yourself a place. Clear?”

“OK,” Steve said.

“It shouldn’t take them long to get down here, so be quick,” Reeves ordered.

“OK,” Steve repeated. He swung the Thompson off his shoulder. When he looked up again, Reeves was nowhere in sight.

Steve made his way through the thick undergrowth until he found the path. He walked ten yards up it, and then ten yards in the other direction, and then backed off into the underbrush again and leaned against a tree.

After a moment, he allowed himself to slip to the ground. This action reminded him that his shorts, and now his trouser legs, were full of shit.

He started to think about his and Daphne’s bungalow in postwar Melbourne again.

Shit, if I do that, I’m liable to doze off and get my fucking throat cut!

All he could hear was the buzzing of the insects.

And then there was noise.

He worked the action of the Thompson and then looked down inside at the shiny brass cartridge. When he pulled the trigger, the cartridge would be stripped from the magazine by the bolt, driven into the chamber, and fired. Then, so long as he held the trigger and the magazine held cartridges, the bolt would be driven backward by recoil, hit a spring, and then fly forward again, stripping another cartridge from the magazine.

He heard something on the trail.

What the fuck is that? It can’t be a Jap. If it was a Jap, Reeves and the others would have been shooting by now.

But, curious, he slowly pulled himself to his feet.

It was a Jap. He was wearing a silly little brimmed cap on his head; and he was carrying a rifle slung over his shoulder that looked much too big for him. He was coming down the trail as if he were taking a walk through the fucking woods.

Shit!

The one thing he had learned at Parris Island was that you couldn’t hit a fucking thing with a Thompson the way Alan Ladd shot one in the movies, from the hip. You had to put it to your shoulder like a rifle, get a sight picture, and just caress the trigger.

He did so.

Nothing happened. He really pulled hard on the trigger. Nothing happened.

The safety! The fucking safety!

He snapped it off, pulled on the trigger, and the Thompson jumped in his hands.

The Jap dropped right there.

There was no other sound for a moment, and that too was scary.

And then there was fire. Different weapons. A burp-burp noise, probably from that funny-looking little submachine gun Reeves had; and booming cracks like from a Springfield, and sharper cracks. Probably from the Japs’ rifles.

Now he could see figures moving through the trees. Not well. Not enough to tell if they were Reeves’s Fuzzy-Wuzzies, or whatever the fuck they were, or Japs.

Jesus Christ!

There’s a Jap!

The Thompson burped again and suddenly stopped.

Oh, shit! Twenty rounds already?

He slammed another magazine in and saw another Jap and fired again, and seemed to be missing.

Another figure appeared.

One of the fucking Fuzzy-Wuzzies.

And then Jacob Reeves.

“I think that’s all of them,” Reeves said. “We counted. There were eight. They usually run eight-man patrols.”

Steve came out of the underbrush onto the trail.

“You all right, son?” Reeves asked.

“I’m all right,” Steve said.

There was a body on the trail. Steve walked up to look at it. It was the first one he’d shot.

He looked at the face of the first man he had killed.

The first man he had killed looked back at him with terror in his eyes.

“This one’s still alive!” Steve said.

“We can’t have that, I’m afraid,” Reeves said, walking up.

Steve pointed the Thompson muzzle at the Jap’s forehead and pulled the trigger.

I already shit my pants and now I think I’m going to throw up.

The village looked like something out of National Geographic magazine. It was much larger, too, than Steve had expected, although when he thought about that, he couldn’t understand why he thought it would be any particular size at all.

Brown-skinned, flat-nosed people watched as he marched after Reeves into the village. Some of them had teeth that looked like they had been dyed blue and then filed to a point. Most of the women weren’t going around in nothing but dirty towels with their boobs hanging out, like Cecilia. They were wearing dirty cotton skirts and loose blouses, some of which opened in the front to expose breasts that were anything but lust inciting.

There were chickens running loose, and pigs with one leg tied to a stake. There were fires burning. And he saw women beating something with a rock against another rock.

A clear stream, about five feet wide and two feet deep, meandered through the center of the collection of grass-walled huts.

“I’ll go see about your lieutenant’s arm,” Reeves said.

“What can you do about it?” Steve asked.

“Set it, of course,” Reeves said.

“Can you do that? I mean, really do it right?”

“I’m not a sodding doctor, if that’s what you mean,” Reeves snapped.

“No offense,” Steve said lamely.

“I’ll have them put up a hut for you, while you’re having your bath,” Jacob Reeves said after a moment. “Just leave your clothing there. The girls will take care of it for you. And I’ll send you down a shirt and some shorts to wear.”

He pointed to a muddy area by the stream, at the end of the village. It was apparently the community bath and wash house.

I think he actually expects me to just take off my clothes in front of everybody and sit in that stream and take a bath.

“That water’s safe for bathing,” Reeves said, as if reading Steve’s mind. “But don’t drink it. I’ve been here since Christ was a babe, and I still haven’t built up an immunity to the sodding water. There’s boiled water and beer.”

Steve looked at him in surprise.

“Well, it’s not really beer,” Reeves admitted. “We make it out of rice and coconuts. But it’s not all that bad.”

Reeves walked off. And after a moment, Steve Koffler walked to the edge of the stream and started to take his clothing off.

(Five)

Eyes Only—The Secretary of the Navy

DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN

ORIGINAL TO BE DESTROYED AFTER ENCRYPTION AND TRANSMITTAL TO SECNAVY

Melbourne, Australia
Monday, 8 June 1942

Dear Frank:

This will deal with the Battle of Midway, from MacArthur’s perception of it here, and the implications of it for the conduct of the war, short-and long-term, as he sees them.

But before I get into that: Willoughby somehow found out, I have no idea how, that I am on the Albatross list; and he promptly ran to tell MacA. MacA., of course, knew; like everyone else on it, he had been furnished with the list itself. I am quite sure that MacA. brings Willoughby in on anything that would remotely interest him whenever he (MacA.) receives Magic intelligence. But Willoughby is not on the Albatross list himself, and as a matter of personal prestige (he is, after all, a major general and MacA.’s G-2), he found this grossly humiliating even before he learned that lowly Captain Pickering was on it.

The result of this is that MacA. fired off a cable demanding that Willoughby be added to the Albatross list. Then he made a point of mentioning to me that he understands how critical it is that Magic not be compromised, and the necessity for keeping the Albatross list as short as possible. The implication I took was that he really would be happier if Willoughby were kept off the list and rather hoped that I would pass this on to you.

I’m not sure what his motive is (motives are), but I don’t think they have anything to do with making sure Magic isn’t compromised. Quite possibly, MacA. regards the Albatross list as a prerogative of the emperor, not to be shared with the lesser nobility. He may also be hoping that if you (“Those bastards in Washington”) refuse to add Willoughby to the Albatross list, it will ensure that Willoughby hates you as much as the emperor himself does.

Personally, I hope that Willoughby is added to the list. It would certainly improve my relationship with him and make my life here in the palace a little easier. But that’s not a recommendation. Magic is so important that I refuse to recommend anything that might pose any risk whatever that would compromise it.

Tangentially, I do not receive copies of Magic messages reaching here. I don’t have any place to store them, for one thing. I don’t even have an office, much less a secretary with the appropriate security clearances to log classified material in and out. There are four people here (in addition to MacA. and me) on the Albatross list. They are all Army Signal Corps people: the Chief of Cryptographic Services, a captain; and two cryptographers, both sergeants. There is also a Lieutenant Hon, a Korean (U.S. citizen, MIT ’38) who speaks fluent Japanese. He is often able to make subtle changes in interpretation of the translations made at Pearl.

When a Magic comes in, the captain calls me. I go to the crypto room and read it there. Lieutenant Hon hand-carries the Magics to MacA., together with his interpretation of any portion of them that differs from what we get from Pearl. MacA. stops whatever else he is doing and reads them—or, I should say, commits them to his really incredible memory. The paper itself is then returned to the crypto safe. Only twice to my knowledge has MacA. ever sent for one of them to look at again.

On the subject of the Albatross/Magic list: I would like permission to make Major Ed Banning privy to Magic messages. He has managed to establish himself with the Australian Coastwatchers. He speaks Japanese, and has, I think, an insight into the way the Japanese military think. I have the feeling that with input both from the Australians and the Magic intercepts, he could come up with analyses that might elude other people—of whom I’m certainly one. He already knows a good deal about Albatross/Magic, and I can’t see where my giving him access to the intercepts themselves increases the risk of compromising Magic much—if at all. I would appreciate a radio reply to this: “yes” or “no” would suffice.

Finally, turning to the Battle of Midway: We had been getting some rather strong indications of the Japanese intentions throughout May—not only from Magic—and MacA. had decided that it was the Japanese plan to attack Midway, as a steppingstone to Hawaii.

I asked MacA. what he thought the American reaction to the loss of Hawaii would be. He said that it might wake the American people up to the idea that basic American interests are in the Pacific, not in Europe; but that if it fell, which he couldn’t imagine, American influence in the Pacific would be lost in our lifetimes, perhaps forever. Then he added that a year ago he would have been unable to accept the thought that the American people would stand for the reinforcement of England, knowing that it would mean the loss of the Philippines.

MacA. expected that Admiral Yamamoto, for whom he has great professional admiration, would launch either a two-pronged attack, with one element attacking Midway, or a diversionary feint coinciding with an attack on Midway. He would not have been surprised if there had been a second attack (or a feint) at Port Moresby.

MacA. reasoned that the Japanese loss of the carrier Shoho and the turning of the Port Moresby invasion force in early May had been the first time we’d actually been able to give the Japanese a bloody nose. For the first time, they had been kept from doing what they had started out to do. Their admirals had lost face. But now they’d had a month to regroup, lick their wounds, and prepare to strike again. They could regain face by taking Port Moresby, and that would have put their Isolate Australia plan back on track.

He was surprised when the Magic messages began to suggest an attack on the Aleutians. He grilled me at length about the Aleutians, whether there was something there he hadn’t heard about. He simply cannot believe the Japanese want to invade Alaska. What could they get out of Alaska that would be worth the logistical cost of landing there? MacA. asks. Their supply lines would not only be painfully long, but would be set up like a shooting gallery for interdiction from the United States and Canada.

He therefore concluded that the attack on the Aleutians, which came on June 3, was a feint intended to draw our Naval forces off; that the Japs believe that the Americans would place a greater emotional value on the Aleutians than was the case; and that we would rise to the bait. MacA. predicted this would be a miscalculation on their part.

“Nimitz is no fool,” he said. “He doesn’t care about the Aleutians.”

Events, of course, proved him right. We learned from Magic intercepts that Admiral Nagumo (and thus the entire Japanese fleet) was very surprised on 4 June, when his reconnaissance aircraft reported seeing a large American Naval force to the northeast of Midway.

We later learned—from Magic!—that these were the aircraft carriers Yorktown, Enterprise, and Hornet, under Admirals Spruance and Fletcher. We were getting our information about the movements of our own fleet from Japanese intercepts, via Hawaii, before we were getting reports from the Navy. MacA. is convinced, in the absence of any other reason to the contrary, that the Navy believes that the war in the Pacific is a Navy war, and consequently they have no obligation to tell him what’s happening.

I have a recommendation here: I strongly recommend that you direct Nimitz (or have King direct Nimitz) to assign one commander or captain the sole duty of keeping MacA. posted on what’s going on while it’s happening—not just when the Navy finds it convenient to tell him.

We learned (again via Magic intercepts) that the Japanese came under attack by torpedo bombers at 0930 4 June. The aircraft carriers Hiryu, Kaga, Soryu, and Akagi all reported to Yamamoto that they were relatively unhurt, and that the American losses were severe. Then came a report from Hiryu, saying she had been severely damaged by American dive bombers. Nothing was intercepted from any of the others.

Then there were Magic intercepts of Yamamoto’s orders to the fleet to withdraw.

And then, many hours later, we heard from the Navy, and learned that the carriers Soryu, Kaga, and Akagi had been sunk, and that we had lost the carrier Yorktown. It was a day later that we learned that the Hiryu was sunk that next morning, and about the terrible losses and incredible courage of the Navy torpedo bomber pilots who had attacked the Japanese carriers. And that Marine Fighter Squadron VMF-211, land-based on Midway, had lost fifteen of its twenty-five pilots; in effect it had been wiped out.

The Japanese seem to have suffered more than just their first beating; it was also a very bad mauling. And MacA. sent what I thought were rather touching messages to Nimitz, Spruance, and Fletcher, expressing his admiration and congratulations.

And today he sent a long cable to Marshall, asking permission to attack New Britain and New Ireland (in other words, to take out the Japanese base at Rabaul) with the U.S. 32nd and 41st Divisions and the Australian 7th Division. To do so would mean that the Navy would have to provide him both with vessels capable of making and supporting an amphibious invasion, and with aircraft carriers. I don’t think he really expects the Navy to give him what he asks for. But not to ask for the operation—indeed fight for it, and the necessary support for it from the Navy—would be tantamount to giving in to the notion that the Navy owns the war over here.

I won’t presume to suggest who is right, but I frankly think it is a tragedy that the Army and the Navy should be at each other’s throats like this.

I mentioned earlier on in this report that Banning has developed a good relationship with the Australian Coastwatchers. Early this morning, the RAAF parachuted two Marines, a lieutenant and a sergeant, and a replacement radio, onto Buka Island, north of Bougainville, where the Coastwatcher’s radio had gone out. Loss of reports from the observation post was so critical that great risks to get it up and running again were considered justified. The only qualified (radio operator, parachutist) Marine was eighteen years old. And that is all he can do. He can’t tell one Japanese aircraft from another, or a destroyer from a battleship. So one of Banning’s lieutenants, Joe Howard, a Mustang, who had taught aircraft/ship recognition, volunteered to parachute in, too, although he had never jumped before. Banning confided to me that he thought he had one chance in four or five of making a successful landing.

The Lockheed Hudson that was to drop them was never heard from. We took the worst-possible-case scenario, and decided it had been shot down by Japanese fighters on the way in and that everyone was lost. Banning immediately asked for volunteers to try it again. All of his men volunteered.

As I was writing this, Banning came in with the news that Buka was back on the air. The Lockheed had been shot down on the way home. With contact reestablished, the RAN people here had routinely asked for “traffic.” This is what they got, verbatim: “Please pass Ensign Barbara Cotter, USNR, and Yeoman Daphne Farnsworth, RAN. We love you and hope to see you soon. Joe and Steve.”

Those boys obviously think we’re going to win the war. Maybe, Frank, if we can get the admirals and the generals to stop acting like adolescents, we can.

Respectfully,
Fleming Pickering, Captain USNR

(Six)

Menzies Hotel

Melbourne, Victoria

16 June 1942

Lieutenant Hon Song Do, Signal Corps, Army of the United States, was sitting in one of the chairs lining the hotel corridor when Captain Fleming Pickering, USNR, stepped off the elevator. Captain Pickering had just finished dining, en famille, with the Commander-in-Chief and Mrs. Douglas MacArthur. Over cognac afterward, General MacArthur had talked at some length about the German campaign in Russia. The dissertation had again impressed Captain Pickering with the incredible scope of MacArthur’s mind; and the four snifters of Remy Martin had left him feeling just a little bit tight.

“Well, hello, Lieutenant,” Pickering said when he saw Lieutenant Hon. Hon sometimes made him feel slightly ill at ease. For one thing, he didn’t know what to call him. Something in his mind told him that “Hon” was, in the American sense, his last name. He could not, in other words, do what he had long ago learned how to do with other junior officers; he couldn’t put him at ease by calling him by his first name, or even better, by his nickname. He simply didn’t know what it was.

And Lieutenant Hon was not what ordinarily came to Pickering’s mind when “Asian-American” or “Korean-American” was mentioned. For one thing, he was a very large man, nearly as tall and heavy as Pickering; and for another, he had a deep voice with a thick Boston accent. And on top of this, he was what Pickering thought of as an egghead. He was a theoretical mathematician. He had been commissioned as a mathematician, and he’d originally been assigned to Signal Intelligence as a mathematician. Only afterward had the Army learned that he was a Japanese linguist.

“Good evening, Sir,” Lieutenant Hon said, rising to his feet. “I have a rather interesting decrypt for you, Sir.”

“Why didn’t you bring it downstairs?”

“I didn’t think it was quite important enough for me to have to intrude on the Commander-in-Chief’s dinner.”

Pickering looked at him. There was a smile in Lieutenant Hon’s eyes.

“Well, come on in, and I’ll buy you a drink,” Pickering said, then added, “Lieutenant, I think I know you well enough to call you by your first name.”

“I wouldn’t do that, Sir,” Lieutenant Hon said dryly. “‘Do’ doesn’t lend itself to English as a first name. Why don’t you call me Pluto?”

“Pluto?”

“Yes, Sir. That’s what I’ve been called for years. After Mickey Mouse’s friend, the dog with the sad face?”

“OK,” Pickering chuckled. “Pluto it is.”

He snapped the lights on.

“What will you have to drink, Pluto?”

“Is there any of that Old Grouse Scotch, Sir?”

“Should be several bottles of it. Why don’t you give me the decrypt and make us both one? I think there’s a can of peanuts in the drawer under the bar, too. Why don’t you open that?”

“Thank you, Sir,” Pluto Hon said, and handed Pickering a sealed manila envelope.

Pickering tore it open. Inside was a TOP SECRET cover sheet, and below that a sheet of typewriter paper.

NOT LOGGED

ONE COPY ONLY

DUPLICATION FORBIDDEN

FOLLOWING IS DECRYPTION OF MSG 234545 RECEIVED 061742

OFFICE SECNAVY WASHDC 061642 1300 GREENWICH

COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF SOUTHWEST PACIFIC

EYES ONLY CAPTAIN FLEMING PICKERING USNR

REF YOUR 8 JUNE 1942 REPORT

SECNAVY REPLIES QUOTE

PART ONE YES

PART TWO YOUR FRIEND BEING INVITED HAWAIIAN PARTY

PART THREE BEST PERSONAL REGARDS SIGNATURE FRANK

END QUOTE

HAUGHTON CAPT USN ADMIN OFF TO SECNAVY

Pickering walked to the bar. Pluto was just about finished making the drinks.

“A little cryptic, even decrypted, isn’t it?” he said to Pluto, taking the extended drink.

Pluto chuckled. “I don’t think it’s likely, but even if the Japs have broken the Blue Code, their analysts are going to have a hell of a time making anything out of that.”

“Would you care to guess, Pluto?”

“There was a message from the JCS adding General Willoughby to the Albatross list. Am I getting warm?” Pickering smiled and nodded. “I have no idea what ‘Yes’ means,” Pluto Hon said.

“I asked for permission to give Major Banning access to Magic intercepts,” Pickering said. “What I decide to show him. I didn’t ask that he be put on the Albatross list.”

Pluto nodded. “Are you going to want that logged, Sir?”

Pickering shook his head, then took out his cigarette lighter and burned the sheet of typewriter paper, holding it over a wastebasket until it was consumed.

Lieutenant Pluto Hon refused a second drink and left. Pickering went to bed.

In the morning, at breakfast, Major General Willoughby walked over to Captain Pickering’s table in the Menzies Hotel dining room and sat down with him. A large smile was on his face.

“Have you had a chance to read the overnight Magics yet, Pickering?”

“No, Sir,” Captain Pickering said.

“You should have a look. Very interesting.”

General Willoughby looked very pleased with himself.

(Seven)

The Elms

Dandenong, Victoria, Australia

1825 Hours 1 July 1942

It was windy; and there was a cold and unpleasant rain. As Captain Fleming Pickering drove the drop-head Jaguar coupe under the arch of winter-denuded elms toward the house, he was thinking unkind thoughts about the British.

As cold as it gets in England, and as much as this car must have cost, it would seem reasonable to expect that the windshield wipers would work, and the heater, and that the goddamned top wouldn’t leak.

As he neared the house and saw Banning’s Studebaker, his mind turned to unkind thoughts about Major Ed Banning, USMC.

He didn’t know what he was doing here, except that he would be meeting “a friend” and somebody else Banning wanted to introduce him to. Banning, on the telephone, acted as if he was sure the line was tapped by the Japanese, even if all he was discussing was goddamned dinner. No details. Just cryptic euphemisms.

And I will bet ten dollars to a doughnut that both “a friend” and “somebody else” are going to be people I would rather not see.

He got out of the car and ran through the drizzle up onto the porch.

Mrs. Cavendish answered his ring with a warm smile.

“Oh, good evening, Captain,” she said. “How are you tonight?”

“Wet and miserable, Mrs. Cavendish, how about you?”

She laughed. “A little nip will fix you right up,” she said. “The other gentlemen are in the library.”

I had no right to snap at her, and no reason to be annoyed with Banning. For all I know the goddamned phone is tapped. Maybe by Willoughby. And it is absurd to fault an intelligence officer for having a closed mouth. You are acting like a curmudgeonly old man. Or perhaps a younger man, suffering from sexual deprivation.

The latter thought, he realized, had been triggered by the perversity of his recent erotic dreams. He had had four of them over not too many more nights than that. Only one had involved the female he was joined with in holy matrimony. A second had involved a complete stranger who had, in his dream, exposed her breasts to him in a Menzies Hotel elevator, then made her desires known with a lewd wink. The other two had been nearly identical: Ellen Feller had stood at the side of his bed, undressed slowly, and then mounted him.

“I didn’t mean to snap at you, Mrs. Cavendish,” Pickering said.

“I didn’t know that you had,” she said, smiling, as she took his coat.

He walked down the corridor to the library and pushed the door open.

“I will be damned,” he said, smiling. It really was a friend. “How are you, Jake?”

Major Jake Dillon, USMC, crossed the room to him, smiling, shook his hand, and then hugged him.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” Dillon said. “Patricia’s sitting at home knitting scarfs and gloves for you, imagining you living in some leaking tent; and here you are, living like the landed gentry—even including a Jaguar.”

“If I detect a broad suggestion of jealousy, I’m glad,” Pickering said. “I see you’re already into my booze.”

“Banning took care of that, after I told him how dry it was all the way from the States to Wellington, New Zealand.”

“That was probably good for you. I’m sure you hadn’t been sober that long in years. You came with the 1st Division?” Headquarters, 1st Marine Division, and the entire 5th Marines had debarked at Wellington, New Zealand, on June 14, 1942.

“All the way. And it was a very long way. The ship was not the Pacific Princess. The cuisine and accommodations left a good deal to be desired.”

“What are you doing here? And where did you meet Ed Banning?”

“Here. Tonight. He’s a friend of Colonel Goettge.”

“Who’s Colonel Goettge?”

“I am, Sir,” a voice said, and Pickering turned. Banning and a tall, muscular Marine colonel had come into the library from the kitchen. “I suspect that I may be imposing.”

“Nonsense,” Pickering said, crossing to him and offering his hand. “Any friend of Banning’s, etcetera etcetera.”

“Very kind of you, Captain,” Goettge said.

“Also of Jack Stecker’s,” Jake Dillon said. “It was Jack’s idea that I come along. He sends his regards.”

“So far, Colonel,” Pickering said, “that’s two good guys out of three. But how did you get hung up with this character?”

“Watch it, Flem. I’ll arrange to have you photographed being wetly kissed by a bare-breasted aborigine maiden, and send eight-by-ten glossies to Patricia.”

“He would, too,” Pickering said, laughing. “Colonel, you’re in dangerous company.”

“Colonel Goettge is the 1st Division G-2, Captain Pickering,” Banning said. “He was sent here to gather intelligence on certain islands in the Solomons.”

Pickering met Banning’s eye for a moment. They both knew more about pending operations in the Solomon Islands than Colonel Goettge was supposed to know, even though he was G-2 of the 1st Marine Division.

Pickering was worried, however, about how much Goettge actually knew.

On Friday, June 19, twelve days before, Vice-Admiral Robert L. Ghormley, USN, had activated his headquarters at Auckland, New Zealand, and become Commander, South Pacific, subordinate to Admiral Nimitz at Pearl Harbor.

Pickering immediately flew down to meet him, not sure in his own mind if he was doing so in his official role as observer for Frank Knox, or as a member (if unofficial) of MacArthur’s palace guard.

Once he saw Pickering’s orders, Admiral Ghormley had no choice but to brief him on his concept of the war, and on his planning. But he went further than paying appropriate respect to an officer wrapped in the aura of a personal representative of the Secretary of the Navy required.

There were several reasons for this. For one, they immediately liked each other. Over lunch, Ghormley drew out of Pickering the story of how he had worked his way up from apprentice seaman in the deck department to his “Any Ocean, Any Tonnage” master’s ticket. And it quickly became clear that the two of them were not an admiral and a civilian in a captain’s uniform, but that they were two men who had known the responsibility of the bridge in a storm.

And, too, Ghormley had come to the South Pacific almost directly from London. Thus he had not spent enough time in either Washington or Pearl Harbor to become infected with the parochial virus that caused others of his rank to feel that the war in the Pacific had to be fought and won by the Navy alone—perhaps as the only way to overcome the shame of Pearl Harbor.

And to Pickering’s pleased surprise, Ghormley had independently come up with a strategy that was very much like MacArthur’s. He saw the Japanese base at Rabaul on New Britain as a likely and logical target for the immediate future. He thought it would be a very reasonable expenditure of assets to assault New Britain amphibiously with the 1st Marine Division, and, once the beachhead was secure, to turn the battle over to the Army’s 32nd and 41st Infantry Divisions.

Pickering then informed Admiral Ghormley that he was privy to General MacArthur’s thinking, and that the two of them were in essential agreement. He made this admission after briefly considering that not only was it none of Ghormley’s business, but that telling Ghormley such things would enrage both Frank Knox and Douglas MacArthur if they learned of it, as they almost certainly would.

Which was to say, of course, that MacArthur and Ghormley both disagreed with Admiral Ernest King’s proposed plans for immediate action: These called for a Navy attack under Admiral Nimitz on both the Santa Cruz and Solomon Islands, while MacArthur launched a diversionary attack on the East Indies.

When Pickering returned to Brisbane, he dropped the other shoe (after one of MacArthur’s private dinners) and informed MacArthur of Ghormley’s ideas for the most efficient prosecution of the war. Lengthy “independent” cables then went from Ghormley (to Admiral King, Chief of Naval Operations) and MacArthur (to General Marshall, Chief of Staff of the Army). These strenuously urged an attack to retake Rabaul as the first major counterattack of the war.

General Marshall cabled MacArthur that he fully agreed Rabaul should be the first target, and that he would make the case for that before the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Admiral King, however, not only flatly disagreed with that, but was so sure that his position would prevail when the final decision was made by the Joint Chiefs of Staff that he “unofficially” alerted Nimitz, who in turn “unofficially” alerted Ghormley, that a Navy force, with or without MacArthur’s support, would attack the Solomons as soon as possible—probably within a month or six weeks.

“Presuming” that Nimitz certainly would have told MacArthur of the Navy’s plans, Ghormley discussed (by memoranda, hand-carried by officer courier) Nimitz’s alert with MacArthur. This, of course, resulted in more emphatic cables from MacArthur to Marshall. It was still possible that the Joint Chiefs of Staff would decide against King and in favor of striking at Rabaul first.

The decision of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was not yet made, although it was clear that it would have to be made in the next few days.

Pickering had briefed Banning on his meetings with Ghormley and all that had happened after that. He now wondered if that had been a serious mistake. Had Banning told his old friend, Goettge, the First Division G-2, any—or all—of what Pickering had told him in confidence?

“Captain Pickering,” Colonel Goettge said, “it’s been my experience that when you have something delicate to say, you almost always get yourself in deeper trouble when you pussyfoot around it.”

“Mine, too,” Pickering replied. “What’s on your mind?”

“I can only hope this won’t leave this room—”

“You’re pussyfooting,” Pickering interrupted.

“The word in the 1st Division is that General MacArthur’s attitude toward the Navy generally, and the Marine Corps in particular, is ‘Fuck you,’” Goettge said.

“That’s unfortunate,” Pickering said.

“There’s a story going around that he wouldn’t give the 4th Marines a Presidential Unit Citation in the Philippines because ‘the Marines already get enough publicity,’” Goettge said.

“I’m afraid that’s true,” Pickering said. “But I’m also sure that he made that decision under a hell of a strain, and that he now regrets it. MacArthur is a very complex character.”

“General Vandergrift thinks we will invade the Solomons. Or at least two of the Solomon Islands, Tulagi and Guadalcanal,” Goettge said.

“Where did he get that?” Pickering said.

“I don’t know, Sir.”

Pickering looked at Banning. Banning just perceptibly shook his head, meaning I didn’t tell him.

I should have known that, Pickering thought. Why the hell did I question Banning’s integrity?

“My job, therefore,” Colonel Goettge said, “is to gather as much intelligence about Guadalcanal and Tulagi as I possibly can. Phrased as delicately as I can, there is some doubt in General Vandergrift’s mind—and in mine—that, without a friend in court, so to speak, I won’t be able to get much from General Willoughby when I go to see him tomorrow.”

My God, Pickering thought, sad and disgusted, has it gone that far?

“And you think I could be your ‘friend at court’?”

“Yes, Sir, that’s about it.”

“It’s all over Washington, Flem,” Jake Dillon said, “that you and Dugout Doug have become asshole buddies.”

A wave of rage swept through Fleming Pickering. It was a long moment before he trusted himself to speak.

“Jake, old friends or not,” he said finally, calmly, “if you ever refer to MacArthur in those terms again, I’ll bring you up on charges myself.” But then his tone turned furious as anger overwhelmed him: “Goddamn you, you ignorant sonofabitch! General Willoughby—who is a fine officer despite the contempt in which you, Goettge, and others seem to hold him—told me that on Bataan, MacArthur was often so close to the lines that there was genuine concern that he would be captured by Japanese infantry patrols. And on Corregidor they couldn’t get him to go into the goddamned tunnel when the Japs were shelling! Who the fuck do you think you are to call him ‘Dugout Doug’?”

“Sorry,” Dillon said.

“You fucking well should be sorry!” Pickering flared. “Stick to being a goddamned press agent, you miserable pimple on a Marine’s ass, and keep your fucking mouth shut when you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!”

There was silence in the room.

Pickering looked at them, the rage finally subsiding. Jake Dillon looked crushed. Colonel Goettge looked painfully uncomfortable. Ed Banning was…

The sonofabitch is smiling!

“You are amused, Major Banning?” Pickering asked icily.

“Sir, I think Major Dillon was way out of line,” Banning said. “But, Sir, I was amused. I was thinking, ‘You can take the boy out of the Marines, but you can’t take the Marines out of the boy.’ I was thinking, Sir, that you sounded much more like a Marine corporal than like the personal representative of the Secretary of the Navy. You did that splendidly, Sir.”

“Christ, Flem,” Jake Dillon said. “I just didn’t know…If I knew what you thought of him…”

“Jake,” Pickering said. “Just shut up.”

“Yes, Sir,” Dillon said.

“Do something useful. Make us a drink.”

“Would it be better if I just left, Sir?” Colonel Goettge asked.

“No. Of course not. I’m going to get on the phone and ask General Willoughby out here for dinner. I’m going to tell him that you’re an old friend of mine. If he comes, fine. If he doesn’t, at least he’ll know who you are when I take you in tomorrow morning to see him.”

“Sir,” Banning said, “I thought it would be a good idea to put Colonel Goettge in touch with the Coastwatchers—”

“Absolutely!”

“To that end, Sir, I asked Commander Feldt—he’s in town—”

“I know,” Pickering interrupted.

“—and Lieutenant Donnelly to dinner.”

“Good.”

“He’s bringing Yeoman Farnsworth with him,” Banning said.

“Why?”

“It was my idea, Sir. I thought it would be nice to radio Lieutenant Howard and Sergeant Koffler that we had dinner with their girls. I asked Ensign Cotter, too.”

“If General Willoughby is free to have dinner with us, Ed, I can’t imagine that he would object to sharing the table with two pretty girls. God knows, there’s none around the mess in the Menzies.”