Once They Were Eagles Read online

  “The Zero began to make a gentle turn to the left and was just a sitting duck. I knew this was entirely too easy so I looked around for the catch. Sure enough, there it was—the bait’s wingman was off to the right waiting for me to make a pass and sucker in.

  “I continued my pass, watching the hovering Zero out of the corner of my eye until he dove in on me. Then I suddenly jerked on the stick and kicked my rudder. My Corsair cartwheeled to the right and I was in a head-on run at the second Zero.

  “I could see pieces flying off his cowling as I held the trigger down during the run. The Zero pulled up and I passed directly under him and then pulled up in a chandelle to the left and saw that he was smoking badly.

  “I followed him, climbing, intending to finish him off, but he went down in a flat glide and crashed into the water.

  “I didn’t want to crowd my luck too far, so I headed for home again. However, I spotted a pair of Zeros about 3,000 feet below me. They turned on me, evidently thinking I was a cripple.

  “Since a strong offense is the best defense, I made a head-on run at the leader. When he pulled out to the right, I swung toward the second one. He began to smoke, but I was low on gas, ammunition, and altitude, so I continued on for home, climbing to about 10,000 feet.

  “I then spotted a single plane, only about 3,000 feet off the water, which I thought at first was a Zero, although it was headed toward Vella Lavella. Then I saw two planes attack the single and knew that they were the Zeros. I pushed over and opened fire at extremely long range, hoping to drive them off the friendly plane.

  “One Zero pulled straight up in the air, and I followed him, firing a succession of short bursts. Then he slow-rolled, going practically straight up, and I held the trigger down and stayed with him. Suddenly, four of my guns quit firing, but I didn’t need to fire anymore—the Zero burst into flames and spun down, leaving me on my back in a spin at 10,000 feet.

  “After getting straightened out, I looked around but couldn’t see either the friendly plane or the other Zero, so I headed south again and pancaked at Munda.”

  At Munda, it was evident why four of his guns quit firing: they were out of ammunition. He had only 30 rounds left in two guns and barely enough fuel to taxi to a revetment!

  I added up our Black Sheep score for the day: 11 Zeros shot down for sure and 9 probables—a fine score for a group of replacement pilots whipped into a squadron practically overnight. In those few minutes, they had become a combat team of fighting men. Referring to this mission in his book Strong Men Armed, Robert Leckie says: “Soon the baaing of the Black Sheep would be heard all over the South Pacific.”

  It was a fine score—but “Rootsnoot” Ewing didn’t come back. The last seen of our 23-year-old Flight Officer was when he crowded over to make that initial run. He wasn’t in trouble at that time.

  But he didn’t come back.

  What had happened to him? No one could say. He might have been shot down and died at the controls of his plane. He might have bailed out and been killed in his chute. He might have landed safely in the water and been picked up and made a prisoner. The possibilities were many. It was too late to search for him that night.

  Sadly, I wrote “MIA” for “missing in action” beside his name in my War Diary. We all hoped he’d turn up soon, and I could erase those letters.

  But he never did.

  8 | Munda

  In the evening, Boyington and his pilots went over the lessons learned from the Ballale action.

  Later, an operations officer came in and told us that we were to move to Munda the next day. At 7:30 A.M., five of us left in a transport plane, while the rest of the Black Sheep took off to search for Ewing. They were to land at Munda on their return.

  Munda, on New Georgia, was an example of the costs of war. One entire end of the island had been leveled by bombs, artillery, and naval gunfire. A few splintered stumps were all that remained of a huge coconut grove. Wrecked airplanes lay all around, pushed to one side if they interfered with the work on the strip, otherwise left where they were. Some were upside down; some had tails high in the air; others were broken into several pieces. The shallow water at the end and one side of the strip was studded with them. Roundels identifying some as Japanese stared at us like big red eyes. Here and there, crashed American planes showed that the vital strip had not been won without cost.

  Everywhere there was activity. Bulldozers worked in the glare at one end of the runway, lengthening and widening it. Trucks buzzed around. Aircraft landed and took off regularly.

  A truck hauled us along the strip, around its end, and up a winding hill to our camp area—a cleared space, bulldozed out of the jungle. Back under the trees were the tents and the mess hall.

  Doc Reames and I moved into one of the 16-foot-square tents along with Boyington and Bailey. Our new home had a wooden deck and two six-foot foxholes. The sides of the tent were rolled up to take advantage of any breeze that might come along.

  It was hot, steamy. A foul odor pervaded the air. Flies were having a field day: there’d been no time yet to bury the dead Japanese.

  We walked back to our truck and went down to the airstrip and our “office.” The fighter intelligence office was another 16-foot-square tent with a long table constructed from rough-hewn teak boards. A couple of homemade bulletin boards lined one side. We looked forward to the return of our men from the search mission, but when we saw their long, sweat-streaked faces, we knew that they’d seen nothing of Ewing.

  They flew patrols, photo escorts, and search missions all day. At seven o’clock, the last flight in, darkness covered the island. The strip was secured and we climbed into the trucks to go to our camp area for chow.

  A sign over the mess hall door read: “MAUDIE’S MANSIONS—A HOME FOR WAYWARD PILOTS.”

  We crunched along the rolled coral floor, sat on splintery mahogany benches at long, rough mahogany tables, ate fly-covered Spam and beans with dehydrated potatoes, and drank warm chicory. (To this day, I can’t stand Spam!)

  After our evening meal, we found our way to our tents and took off our sweat-crusted clothes. Then, dressed only in field shoes, we slung towels over our shoulders. With a bar of soap in one hand and a flashlight in the other, we picked our way around the stumps and mud puddles to the showers in a corner of the camp area. A raised frame had been built some three feet off the ground. Over this had been laid a few strips of the steel Marsden matting that was used to provide a firm surface on coral airstrips. On racks above were a dozen 50-gallon oil drums, and hanging on the nozzles were tin cans with holes punched. These were our showers. The cool water felt good as we soaped and chattered contentedly. Life here was reduced to its lowest common denominator: if you were alive and comfortable and not hungry, all was well. The showers were a luxury. So was our only woman within hundreds of miles: the well-endowed nude (being chased by three pilots) painted on the corner of the mess hall sign.

  Back at our tent, we lighted a candle and sat on our bunks and talked for a few moments. Then we adjusted our mosquito nets and stretched out nude, sweating again from the mild exertion of having walked from the showers.

  The dark, heavy, green foliage pressed in on us almost visibly, working its way back over the area that had been cleared. Jungle birds, tree lizards, and frogs called to each other with eerie, screeching cries. Rain began to pound on our tent and run off its sides in solid sheets. It was like a scene from the movie Rain. Now I really understood what the phrases “coming down in buckets,” “raining in sheets,” and “frog strangler” meant. It was as though a giant had suddenly dumped an entire swimming pool onto our tent.

  I raised my netting and put my hand out under the solid stream; the water was as warm as a YMCA pool.

  It was only nine o’clock, but we had to be up at 4:00 A.M., and that would give us seven hours of sleep, we thought.

  We thought wrong.

  It started with a dull humming inside my head. It grew louder and louder. I shook my head and t
urned over, but the hum—now a wail—persisted, beating and beating at my brain. Then I heard a scuffle of feet, thuds, the crash of bodies moving through the jungle. I suddenly sat up, bumping my head on my mosquito net support pole.

  An air raid! It was 1:00 A.M.

  Nothing happened for a few minutes, so we stepped outside the tent. It was clear and bright. The rain had stopped. A full moon illuminated everything, and I knew what “Bomber’s Moon” meant.

  Boyington, Bailey, Reames, and I—we were a strange sight, naked except for steel helmets and field shoes; shirts and trousers wouldn’t have been any help.

  Suddenly, a searchlight flung its long finger upward, probing the sky like a surgeon probing a wound for a bullet. Another one flicked on, and another and another, fingers interlocking and opening and moving about relentlessly.

  We could hear the uneven drone of unsynchronized engines.

  “Yes, that’s Charlie,” said Bailey.

  The searchlights continued their restless movement until one passed across the enemy formation; it jerked back and clung there. The others quickly swung and there, like tiny moths caught in the glare of our lights, were six Japanese bombers, making no effort to evade. Our antiaircraft opened up. Ka-bloom, boom; ka-bloom, boom; one after the other the shells burst, at first low and to one side, then closer and closer as the directors began to get the range.

  A shell burst alongside one of the flanking planes; it faltered a moment and then began to go down in a long flat glide, trailing smoke.

  Like the roar at a baseball game when a batter hits a home run, a cheer went up all over our camp.

  “Time to get in our foxholes,” said Boyington.

  “Nobody has to tell me that!” Doc Reames said, who was already in his.

  The rest of us started toward our foxholes and ended up diving in when we heard the whistle of bombs. Down on our hands and knees, we heard them come closer, and then the earth shook with the concussion as they detonated. Bits of rock and coral bounced down the sides of the hole. We crouched there for ages, our shoulders hunched against another blast.

  When we crawled out, everything looked the same. Twenty minutes later, the all-clear sounded; we went back to bed.

  I woke immediately the next time I heard the siren. It was 2:35 A.M., and Washing Machine Charlie was back. This time it was a lone plane. He flew a straight course in spite of the lights, made no effort to dodge either them or the AA bursts, which came close but never touched him. Once again we ended in a scramble for our foxholes, and the bombs crashed somewhere toward the strip.

  We were hardly back on our bunks when the siren wailed again. By the time the all-clear sounded, it was four o’clock and time to get up.

  Breakfast consisted of grapefruit juice, chicory coffee, and creamed hamburger on toast—which Marines had awarded the expressive and alliterative title of “shit on a shingle,” or SOS.

  The air raid sirens wailed again as we climbed into the trucks to go to the strip. Since no planes could be seen, however, and the Black Sheep were scheduled to take off at five o’clock for a rendezvous with a convoy coming up from the south, we started out. The moon had gone down. All lights were out. Everything was soft, warm, clinging blackness.

  Our driver, who would rather have been in a foxhole, wound up the truck in second gear and raced at 45 miles an hour down the slippery coral road to the airfield. We rounded the curve at the bottom without mishap and straightened out on the road that crossed a long open area.

  Suddenly, the antiaircraft batteries sprang to life and the searchlights came on again. Our driver jerked on the emergency brake and jumped out of the skidding truck, leaving us in a heap on its floor. We scrambled out and lay down in the muddy ditch along the road, feeling more than a little exposed.

  The flight of bombers passed over us and unloaded some of their eggs before the lights lost them. We lay there awhile till the lights had all flicked off, leaving the island blacker than it had been before. Then we piled into our truck, and our jittery driver raced once more toward the strip.

  We hadn’t gone half a mile when the AA opened up again, and once more we scrambled out and flopped into the ditch. But this time we climbed back into the truck as soon as the planes passed over us, realizing that even if they had released their bombs directly overhead, they would fall some distance away.

  We reached the field at ten minutes to five, and the Black Sheep were gathering their gear when the AA started again. We sprinted for a huge foxhole, covered with coconut logs and sandbags, beside our ready tent. Not all of us made it. A stick of antipersonnel bombs walked right down the taxiway, past our tent and past our foxhole, one bomb detonating within 30 feet of us.

  I still have the tail fin off that bomb, and the scar it made.

  One of the mechs dived under a truck that had been parked only a short time. Bomb fragments were flying all around, and in the midst of it, we heard an agonized groan from under the truck. We tried to help the man out.

  “Don’t touch me. I’m hit bad. Blood all over.”

  In the beam of the flashlight, we could see him huddled face down, his head on his folded arms. The “blood” was warm oil dripping from a hole in the crankcase of the truck’s engine.

  Later that morning, Harper had a new name: “The Mole.” During the air raid, he’d hit the ground on his hands and knees and hadn’t wasted time to get up; instead, he had scuttled along the ground on all fours, dived into the huge open foxhole, and then tried to burrow into the side of it.

  Repeated bombings or not, we still had our Task Force cover to get off. The pilots were only five minutes late despite the confusion.

  The Task Force was bringing men and supplies for our beachhead at Barakoma, Vella Lavella, north of us. Black Sheep pilots, in four- and eight-plane divisions, covered the convoy two hours at a stretch all day long, relieving each other on station.

  At 1:30, Bill Case came in, reporting downing a Zero. I had hardly finished recording his success when a plane called our control tower requesting clearance for an emergency landing. It was “Wild Man” Magee.

  He nursed his crippled Corsair into the groves, eased down carefully as though he were handling a crate of eggs, and then rolled free. As he flashed by us, we could see that one tire was flat, and jagged tears showed in his tail, fuselage, and wings. The actual count was 30 bullet holes.

  “I got off late because I had to change planes at the last minute,” Magee told me. “Then I couldn’t locate my flight, so I joined with three other Corsairs over Vella Lavella.

  “We spotted 30 dive bombers heading toward Bougainville. We nosed over, gained speed, and came up under them in a low stern pass. One of them pulled off to the side and I followed him, giving him three medium bursts. He caught fire in the middle and went down burning.

  “At this time, I spotted 15 dive bombers heading for our shipping off Barakoma. I’d lost the other Corsairs by then, and our batteries were throwing plenty of stuff up at the dive bombers, but I knew they couldn’t get them all. I pushed over and went down at them.”

  “All by yourself?”

  “Well, yes, there were no other friendlies around. I caught them about 100 feet off the water and made a high side pass at the formation. One broke loose, and I chopped his tail off. He nosed over and crashed in the water.

  “The dive bombers jettisoned their bombs and headed for home, so I picked out a straggler and started a high side pass at him. I passed over him before I could get in an effective burst, so I circled and made another high side at him. He turned in to me, and we came head-on. I gave him a long burst and saw pieces of his cowling and fuselage flying off. Then he nosed under me.

  “I was going to circle and finish him off when I heard that old typewriter sound and saw holes begin to appear in my right wing. I kicked hard left rudder and then hard right alternately and dived toward our AA. Looking back, I could see four Zeros on my tail. They pulled off as I went down, so I circled and climbed back on station.”
r />   “You climbed back on station?” I asked him. “When you knew your plane had been shot up? Why didn’t you come home?”

  “I hadn’t been relieved yet. There were no other friendly planes in sight, so I thought I’d better stay. In about 15 minutes a flight of New Zealand planes showed up, and I came on in.”

  “You ought to get the Navy Cross for that performance, Maggie. I’m going to write up the recommendation.”

  “Hell, I don’t want any medals,” he said. “Just killing the yellow bastards is enough fun for me!”

  But I wrote up the recommendation anyway, and Maggie did receive the Navy Cross.

  On the ground, Magee was quiet, reserved; in the air he was a junior edition of Boyington, a wild man, man-handling his plane like a cowboy bulldogging a steer. But he could fly with a delicate touch, too. Three days later, his engine was hit while he was strafing Japanese barges and quit as he flew parallel to our field. Instead of bailing out and letting the plane go into the water, he brought it in.

  Life at Munda was grim. The pilots were flying all day, everyday. One or two divisions were up at 4:00 A.M.; others were never in until after dark. Doc Reames and I were up with the first and waited at the field for the last.

  It wouldn’t have been so bad if we could have slept at night, but enemy air raids were nightly occurrences, usually spaced so as to prevent our getting more than an hour or two of sleep at a time.

  The food had a nauseating sameness about it—Spam, beans, dehydrated potatoes, and SOS. Flies ranged regularly from the bodies of the dead Japanese, still unburied, to the “heads” (toilets) and onto our food. Dysentery (“GI runs”) was common. We all had a dull laugh one day when Doc brought in a piece of literature he’d received in the mail. Prepared by a board of doctors and surgeons in Washington, it was a detailed report on the importance of proper nutrition for pilots. Never, it said, should pilots be fed greasy foods or beans. Fruits and green vegetables should be regularly on their diets.