Once They Were Eagles (20 page)

The Australian questioned the chief in pidgin English—“Massa Manheim, he come along here?”—but got no response until he brought up the butt of his submachine gun and knocked the chief to the sand—while the PT captain and I crouched with our weapons at the ready, envisioning ourselves in iron pots as “fresh meat.”

The Australian said: “You talk-talk, plenty fast, savvy?” The chief scrambled to his feet and motioned us to follow.

We found the German's place, all right, but he had gone. We destroyed a warehouse containing several tons of rice, burned his house, stove in and burned a small power-boat that he had hidden in the mouth of a stream. Then, aware that the rising smoke would cause enemy reaction, we hurried back to the PT boat. In my den, I still have the sign I took from the rice warehouse: in Japanese it reads: “Do not touch, Japanese Civil Government in charge.”

From Emirau, I was sent to Bougainville to act as Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2, for Air Command, Northern Solomons. The tiny beachhead that the Marines had carved at Empress Augusta Bay was barely large enough to contain the runways and the supporting buildings.

The Japanese dragged artillery pieces into the mountains surrounding our base and lobbed shells into our camp.

Among my duties was the presentation of a daily intelligence situation briefing to the senior staffs of the various commands present, and once a week our section provided an intelligence briefing for all the troops at the movie theater.

With the war in our area winding down, however, we had time for recreation: volleyball and swimming in the ocean. For the rest of my life, I'll remember swimming off the black sand beach of Bougainville while our planes blasted Japanese positions surrounding us on three sides.

After the war, released from active duty, I returned to the Los Angeles Police Department, and an appointment as lieutenant (I had taken the examination in the South Pacific, a towel wrapped around my arm to keep the sweat from staining the papers). I also resumed my college education and earned a master's degree in government, and was a member of the 1948 U.S. Olympic water polo team.

I retired in 1959 to accept an appointment as a Foreign Service Officer in the Department of State and spent the next 12 years in Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand, Libya, Laos, and Washington, D.C.

I remained a member of the Marine Corps Reserve, was called up for a year's service during the Korean War, and finally retired as a colonel after 27 years' total service.

I live in Hawaii now, swimming, playing golf, and doing some writing—this book, for instance.

New Smyrna Beach, Florida, population 14,000, is about a dozen miles south of Daytona. Here, in an office not far from the remains of a sixteenth-century Spanish fort, John Bolt carries on a busy law practice. Behind the desk in his office, silver-haired, dressed in a business suit, the slender, soft-spoken Bolt bears no resemblance to the intrepid, aggressive combat pilot he once was. Yet he is a jet/prop ace, the only one the Marine Corps has had. He shot down six Zeros with the Black Sheep, and followed that up by scoring six MiG kills during the Korean War. He is one of only seven Americans who were aces in both World War II and Korea.

Mementos of the Black Sheep, as well as of his Korean service, dotted the wall. I noted the date on his Law Degree: 1969. He'd earned it at age 48.

“Bring me up to date on your career,” I asked.

“Well, it's kind of checkered. I retired from the Marine Corps in 1962 after 20 years' service. I'd been able to get my bachelor's degree in military science. But I felt that the military life was hard on teenage children, and I had one in high school and another coming up. Also, I always had a strong feeling for my hometown of Sanford. I had an opportunity to go into a business with what looked like a good stock option, and I worked there for about seven years. It wasn't turning out as it had been presented to me, though, so I dropped it and went to law school, going straight through in 27 months. Then I stayed on the faculty for two years.

“After leaving Gainesville, we came to New Smyrna Beach and I opened up my own law office.”

“Looking back on your Black Sheep experience, did our squadron differ from others you served in?”

“Yes, in several ways. The most significant thing about that tour was the introduction of the Corsair with a capability that just overwhelmed the Zero, which had only about half its horsepower. We were just learning to use the Corsair. It's a great experience to introduce a fighter plane that has twice the horsepower of your opponent's. In my opinion, the Corsair was the real hero of the Pacific war. The squadron got the credit because Americans like people to be heros, not weapons or weapon systems.

“However, the spirit of the Black Sheep was different, too. The pressure and the accomplishments, along with Boyington's leadership, made it a great team. Unfortunately, Boyington has tended to minimize the contribution of others; people like Emrich, Harper, and Tucker haven't received the credit they're due.”

“Do you think the day of the man-to-man aerial dogfight is over?”

“Yes, it's not the intimate experience we had when we got pieces of the enemy plane stuck up against our planes. I remember Ed Harper shot a Zero, then flew into its fireball. His plane was covered with soot when he landed. In Korea I got a piece of MiG, molten aluminum, stuck in my armor glass.”

“If you had it to do over again, would you stay in the Marine Corps?”

“I've told my wife several times that I should have gone to law school after the war. Dottie protests this. She loved the Corps and thinks I'd have gotten tired of practicing law if I'd started so soon. We enjoyed the Marine Corps and the friends we made there, and we certainly have no regrets.”

“Why did some shoot down planes, and others not?”

“Well, Waldo, I couldn't have answered that at the end of World War II, even after a second tour aboard carriers. I learned the answer in the Korean War. The answer is that you simply want to shoot down airplanes more than anything else in the world.

“When I was flying F-86s with the Air Force, I failed to capitalize on a couple of opportunities because I was too conservative. I determined at that point that the next one I saw was a dead man, and I didn't care where he was or how many protectors he had—he was a dead man.

“That particular time is on film: in the middle of a gaggle of MiGs about 43,000 feet, I'm pounding away at this one guy.

“I see this in animals: lions, other predators, when they attack the grass eaters. The grass eaters may be scattering in all directions, cutting back and forth between the predator and his target, but he never changes target. He selects his target and that's it; the others can run off. They don't distract him.

“It's true in quail shooting, too. The guy who doesn't shoot any quail is the guy who tries to kill the whole covey. The guy that gets the birds, gazelles, lions—whatever—and the fighter pilot who makes his kill is the one who selects his target and stays with it ignoring everything else.”

“Singleness of purpose?” I asked.

“Absolutely, and a dedication to it that gets you up early in the morning, and puts you to bed late at night. It's a commitment like anything else, but there, of course, you're playing with your life.”

“That's a long time ago. What's your attitude now?”

“I'm a workaholic—I like my law practice. But I go skin-diving frequently, too. My son likes to dive. You don't have good diving until you're down to about 95 feet. There are strong currents out 23 miles. I damn near got killed out there about three years ago and haven't gone back. We can get lots of lobsters in the Keys.

“But my big sport these days is cast-netting for mullet. I sell them commercially. It's hard work, slogging through the mud and eel grass. The mullet eat algae on the bottom of the eel grass. This past Sunday I caught 150 pounds. I gave away one full box, and sold 104 pounds.

“I also do a little hunting. I keep in close touch with a few Black Sheep and will see them at the New Orleans Marine Corps Aviation Association Convention.”

Accounting for 20 percent of the nation's wheat output, Kansas ranks as one of our chief agricultural states. Topeka, the state capital, is a city of some 120,000 near its eastern boundary. It lies on Interstate Highway 70, a few miles south of the Potawatomie Indian Reservation.

I drove out to John Begert's old family home on the western outskirts of Topeka, part of a farm that has been in the family for years. One wall of his den is covered with Black Sheep memorabilia; shelves on another wall are filled with gold trophies—John is a four-handicap golfer.

Begert had sent me a letter in 1944 about what to expect when we got home: “Be prepared for a wonderful welcome…. The attitude of the people toward anyone who was in combat is more than gratifying. It made me feel sheepish not to be able to say I'd done more. Merely the fact that you've been ‘out there' makes you a hero to your old friends.”

Now, John was lean, tanned, healthy. It was easy to see how he would have a four handicap.

He pulled out reams of files of orders, photos, news stories, and we spread them out on a huge table to refresh his memory.

“Seven or eight of us went out together from the States. We had two combat tours before the Black Sheep were formed. Boyington was with us on one of them, but he broke his leg in a barroom brawl and missed the second. He'd been sent to New Zealand to recuperate, and when he got back, he was placed in command of the newly formed 214.

“Before that, we sat around doing nothing. There was some idiot colonel in charge of the base; I think in the TV show he was Colonel Lard. He made us go out and pick up cigarette butts, and he was hot on using mosquito nets, poking his flashlight into every tent. He was lucky he didn't get shot.

“While we waited, 20 or so more people came in, including Fisher, Bragdon, Harper, and Olander.”

“So that's how there happened to be enough for a squadron,” I said. “Compare the way Boyington ran things to the other COs.”

“I thought Stan Bailey ran the squadron as far as administration was concerned.” Begert replied.

“Boyington was very strict on air discipline, but he didn't worry too much about what went on on the ground,” I agreed.

“Right, but I'd say the main reason we made the records was because of training—we did more training with that squadron than we did with both the others—and the bull sessions we had at night about tactics.”

John Begert