Tales of the South Pacific (42 page)

"No," Mr. Wilkins said aloud. "The skipper of the Alceste wouldn't be likely to know that."

"Not likely," Mrs. Wilkins agreed.

It was Mr. Heskwith who had the bright idea! He stepped forward hesitatingly. "Why don't you send one of us back to the island?" he suggested.

"Yes!" the Wilkinses agreed. They all stepped a few paces forward, toward Commander Hoag. He was taken aback by the proposal.

"There are Japs on the island. Hundreds of them," he said roughly.

"We know!" Mrs. Wilkins replied.

"You think you could make it?" Pearlstein asked.

"We could try," Mr. Wilkins said. It was as if he had volunteered to go to the corner for groceries.

"You have submarines to do things like that, don't you?" Mrs. Wilkins asked.

"Do you mean that you three would go up there?" Commander Hoag asked, incredulously.

"Yes," Mr. Wilkins replied, establishing himself as the authority.

"I think I should go," Mr. Heskwith reasoned.

"He has been in the woods more," Mrs. Wilkins agreed. "Maybe three of us should go by different routes."

Commander Hoag thought a minute. He stepped to the map. "Is either of these mountains coral?" he asked.

"We don't know," Mr. Wilkins answered.

"Pearlstein! Could a man tell if a mountain was coral? How far would he have to dig?"

"I should say... Well, five feet, sir. In three different places. That's a minimum sample."

Commander Hoag turned to Mr. Heskwith. "Would you be willing to risk it?" he asked.

"Of course," Heskwith replied. It was agreed upon.

I was given the job of selecting from volunteers ten enlisted men to make the trip. All one hot afternoon I sat in a little office and watched the faces of brave men who were willing to risk the landing on Konora. There was no clue to their coming, no pattern which directed these particular men to apply. I saw forty odd men that day and would have been glad to lead any of them on a landing party.

They had but one thing in common. Each man, as he came in to see me, fingered his hat and looked foolish. Almost all of them said something like: "I hear you got a job," or "What's this about a job?" I have since learned that when the Japs want volunteers for something unduly risky, their officers rise and shout at the men about ancestors, emperors, and glory. In the SeaBees, at least, you sort of pass the word around, and pretty soon forty guys come ambling in with their hats in their hands, nervous like.

Married men I rejected, although I did not doubt that some of them had ample reason to want to try their luck on Konora. Very young boys I turned down, too. The first man I accepted was Luther Billis, who knew native tongues and who was born to die on some island like Konora. The gold ring in his left ear danced as he mumbled something about liking to have a kid named Hyman go along. I told him to go get Hyman. A thin Jewish boy, scared to death, appeared. I accepted him, too. The other eight were average unimpressive American young men. It would be fashionable, I suppose, to say that I had selected ten of America's "little people" for an adventure against the Japs. But when a fellow crawls ashore on Konora at night to dig three holes five feet deep, he's not "little people." He's damned big, brother!

As soon as the group was dispatched, Commander Hoag and his staff seemingly forgot all about them. Mr. and Mrs. Wilkins were sent back to Intelligence. In their place Admiral Kester's leading aviation assistants were called in. Commander Hoag was tough with them.

"I want plenty of air cover on this job," he said briskly as I took notes. "And I want it to be air cover. No stunting around. I don't want the men distracted by a lot of wild men up in the air. And under no circumstances are your men to attempt landings on the airstrip until I give the word." The aviators smiled at one another.

"An aviator's no good if he's not tough," one of them observed.

"Right! Same goes for SeaBees. But tell them to save their stuff for the Nips. Now what do you think of this? You men are the doctors. Tell me if it's possible. Let's have a constant patrol of New Zealanders in P-40's for low cover. They like those heavy planes and do a good clean-up job with them. Give us some F6F's or F4U's for high cover. And send some TBF's out every morning, noon, and night at least two hundred miles."

"You'll tip your hand, commander," an aviator observed.

"You're right. But the Nips will know we're on the move the minute we hit Konora. Can't help it. So here's what we'll do! We'll send the TBF's in three directions, Kuralei, Truk, Rabaul."

Problems of air cover were settled. Then logistics men appeared and said what ships we could have and when. Oil tankers were dispatched from San Diego to make rendezvous three weeks later. Commissary men discussed problems of food, and gradually the armada formed. On the day we finished preparations, eighteen bombers plastered Konora. The island was under fire from then on. It knew no respite. And from all parts of the Pacific Japan rushed what aid it could. Those Jap officers who had smugly advised against building a fighter strip at Konora-since it would never be attacked-kept their mouths shut and wondered.

Finally Commander Hoag's staff moved its equipment and maps on board a liberty ship. That night, as we mulled over our plans, Mr. Heskwith and Luther Billis returned from their expedition. Billis was resplendent in tattoos and bracelets. He looked fine in the ship's swaying light. Mr. Heskwith was thin, rumpled, reticent.

"We had no trouble," the Australian said quietly. "It was most uneventful."

"Was there a ravine?" Lieut. Pearlstein asked eagerly.

"A deep one," Mr. Heskwith replied. "Runs due north and south. Two small streams filter into it."

"How deep? At this point?" Hoag demanded.

Mr. Heskwith deferred to Billis. The jangling SeaBee stepped for-ward and grinned. "Not more than twenty feet," he said. "And how wide?"

"Thirty yards, maybe," Billis answered. He looked at the Australian.

"Not more," Mr. Heskwith agreed.

"And the two mountains?" Hoag inquired.

"The hills?" Heskwith repeated. "We could not get to that one. We don't know. We were able to dig only one hole on this one. It was late."

"But was it coral?"

"Yes."

Billis interrupted. "We got coral, but it was deeper down than any hills around here. Lots."

"But it was coral?"

"Yes, sir!"

Commander Hoag thanked the men and dismissed them. He smiled when he saw Billis clap a huge hand over Mr. Heskwith's frail shoulder. He heard Billis whispering: "Guess we told them what they wanted to know, eh, buddy?"

Hoag turned and faced his officers. "There is a considerable gully there. Don't call it a ravine. We assume this hill is coral. Probably three feet of loam over it. All right! We're taking chances. We lost on one and gained on the other. Got a gully and the coral to fill it with. Pearlstein. We'll give you all of 1416, and the heavy trucks. You'll beat a road directly to that hill. Don't stop for anything. Food, huts, gasoline. Nothing. Rip the loam off and move the hill over to here!" He indicated the gully. Before anyone could speak, he barked out eight or ten additional orders. Then he dismissed the men. When they were gone he slumped down in a chair.

"I don't know what we'd have done if there had been a ravine and no coral!" he said. "I guess God takes care of Americans and SeaBees."

On the way north I got to know Commander Hoag fairly well. He was an engaging man. The finest officer I ever knew. The fact that he was not a regular Navy man kept him from certain supercilious traits of caution that one expects in Annapolis graduates. Hoag was an enterprising man and a hard worker. On the other hand, his social position in civilian life was such that he had acquired those graces of behavior which mark the true naval officer and distinguish him from men of the other services.

Hoag's men idolized him and told all sorts of silly stories about things he had done. Even his officers, who lived with him daily, revered him and accepted his judgment as almost infallible. I got a sample of that judgment when he confided to me why he had given Pearlstein the job of filling the gully.

"You see," he said thoughtfully, as he watched the Coral Sea, "Pearlstein was right. By shrewd deductions that were available to all of us, he concluded that there must be a gully there. Then he stuck his neck way out and argued with me about it. He was argued down. Or, if you wish, I threw my rank at him. Then it turns out that there really is a gully there. So the logical thing to do is to give it to him to take care of. You watch how he goes about it! He'll steam and swear and curse, but all the time he'll love that gully. Proved he was right and the old man was a damned fool! I'll bet that Pearlstein will fill that hole in a new world's record. But how he'll bitch!"

From time to time on the trip I would hear Pearlstein muttering to himself. "Of all the silly places to build an airstrip! I told them there was a gully there!" When he got his special group together to lay plans for their assault on the coral hill, he confided to them, "We've got a mammoth job to do. Biggest job the SeaBees have tackled in the South Pacific. We've got to move a mountain in less than fifteen days. I kept telling them there was a big hole there. Any guy could see there'd have to be. But I think we're the team that can fill it up!"

It seemed to me, as I listened to the various officers talking to their detachments, that each man in that battalion had generated a personal hatred for Konora and everything related to the airstrip. Men in charge of heavy equipment kicked it and cursed it while they lovingly worked upon it in the ship's holds. Luther Billis, who was in charge of the trucks and bulldozers, was sure they were the worst in the Navy. "Look at them damn things!" he would moan. "They expect me to move a mountain with them things. They ain't a good differential in the bunch. But I guess we'll do it, all right!"

At Guadalcanal two experts came aboard our liberty ship. They carried papers and conferred with Commander Hoag in hush-hush sessions. Finally he called us in. One of the men was a commander and the other a civilian in military uniform. Hoag introduced them and spoke briefly. "Gentlemen," he began. "I have good news and bad news for you. Bad news first. We are going to have to replan our entire layout. We've got to dredge our coral from the inner shoreline of the knee, right here. Got to get enough live coral to cover the airstrip, exclusive of the revetments. You gentlemen will be expected to lay plans accordingly. The good news is that if we use live coral for our runways, they will be better than any in the area. Because, we can keep that coral living with plenty of salt water every day. And live coral binds better, is more resilient, and won't throw dust!"

A storm of chatter greeted this announcement. Was the old man nuts? Hoag let his energetic men damn the project and then called upon the civilian to explain. "It's preposterous I know," the expert said briefly. "But we have more than proved that coral will stay alive for some days if watered daily with fresh sea water. If the organisms remain living, they grow ever so slightly and fill the interstices that otherwise develop. Your airplane then lands upon a living, resilient mat. All you have to do is to keep feeding it sea water."

The visiting commander than took over. "We decided to make the experiment... No, it's not an experiment! It's a fact! But we decided to do it for the first time in a big way on Konora. We have a ship off Lunga Point with special dredging equipment. And we have four massive, glass-lined milk trucks with rustproof spigots for watering. We've put it up to Commander Hoag. We're not forcing this upon him. Meeting his schedule is still of paramount importance. But you'll have a much better job if you use this new method."

There was a long silence. Then an ensign spoke up. "You dig the coral from under the water?"

"Yes, sir."

"Special equipment?"

"Yes, sir."

"Gasoline or Diesel?"

"Diesel." There were no more questions. Commander Hoag thought a moment, studied the map. He was going to make some comment but thought better of it.

"That's all, gentlemen," he said dryly. "You know what this means. Run your roads down here. Oh, yes! That's what I was trying to remember. You'll have to run trucking lines to each end of the airstrip. Pearlstein tells me it will take at least twelve days to make his fill. We'll work both ends and meet in the middle."

The visitors left, and that night our ship started north. Behind us trailed the new ship, with its strange equipment. I noticed particularly that the officers no longer ridiculed the idea of live coral. "That guy may have something," one of the wiriest of the young men said. They did, however, complain bitterly about the extra work. To hear them talk you would have thought it absolutely impossible to build an extra road on Konora.

All arguments ceased, completely, when five troop transports of Marines met us one morning. It was a solemn moment when they hove into sight. We knew what the ships were, and that our lives and fortunes depended upon those Leathernecks. At such moments a bond is established that no subsequent hardships can ever break. From that moment on, the Marines in those ships were our friends. We would see none of them until we hit the beaches they had won for us, and some of them would never speak to us, lying upon the shores... Those Marines were our friends.

Two days later heavy warships swung into line, and next morning we were at Konora. All day our forces alternated between aerial bombardment and naval shellfire. It was awe-inspiring to witness the split-second timing. It was wonderful to contemplate the brains that went into the operation. It was sickening to imagine one's self upon that shore. I recall my thoughts distinctly: "A long time ago the Japs came down like this and shelled us on Guadal. Strange, but they'll never do that again!"

In the night great shells whined through the air, and at 0400 we saw the first Marines go ashore. The landing was neither tragic nor easy. It was a routine Marine landing, with some casualties but with planned success. At four-thirty in the afternoon the first SeaBee detachments went ashore. They were to throw up huts and a camp area. That night they were attacked by Japs and four SeaBees were killed.

At daybreak our first heavy lighters headed for shore. They carried Luther Billis, a dozen bulldozers, and Lieut. Pearlstein's men. I saw them as they hit the shore. In three minutes a bulldozer edged onto the sand and started for the brush. In four minutes more a tree was toppling. All that day Pearlstein and his men drove madly for the coral hill. It took two companies of Marines to protect them. At sunset that day Pearlstein was halfway to the hill. His men worked all night, with ghostly flares, and two of them were wounded.

One of the wounded men was Luther Billis, who insisted upon being in the front lines. He suffered a superficial flesh wound, but the corps-man who treated him was a bit of a wag. He had with him a homemade purple heart, which he pinned on Billis' pants, since the "big dealer" could not be made to wear a shirt. Next morning Billis barged into the head of the line where they were serving coffee. "I'm a bloody hero!" he bellowed. "Special privileges." He then proceeded to revile the Marine Corps in frightful language. "They didn't protect me!" he roared. "Ran away when the going got tough!" The Marines, who had taken a liking to the fat nomad, countered with an improvised sign painted with mercurochrome: Billis Boulevard. The name still stands on Konora.

There were more Japs on the island than we had anticipated. It would be incorrect to say that the SeaBees had to stop operations in order to fight the yellow devils, but each working party had to have infantry protection. If Marines were not available, SeaBees had to provide their own snipers. Artisans forty years old who had expected to work in Pearl Harbor and sleep between sheets, swore, bitched, and grabbed rifles. I doubt if the SeaBees altogether killed two Japs. But they sure used up a pile of ammunition!

By the third day the Marines had a perimeter safely established. That night at seven o'clock Pearlstein reached his first objective: the coral hill. Billis and some rowdies set up a terrific small-arms barrage in honor of the event. The Marine commandant sent a special runner to see what had happened. He was furious when he heard the explanation, and called for Hoag.

"I won't have your men firing that way!" he snapped.

"Yes, sir!" Hoag replied briskly. But he said nothing to anybody about the rebuke.

On the fifth day, with tractors and bulldozers making a shambles of Konora, I went to see how the live-coral project was developing. In the lagoon, within the protecting angle of the bend, an energetic crew had established a dredging process. They had half a dozen massive steel maws which they sank onto the coral bottom. The maws were then slowly dragged onto the beach, where a tripping device threw the collected coral into piles. As I watched, a giant steam shovel came slowly out of the jungle behind me, like a pterodactyl. It moved with horrible slowness, crunchingness, and grinding. It took up a position on the beach from which it could scoop up the live coral. Trucks were already waiting for their first loads.

"Would you like to see what we're getting?" an officer asked me. I went with him to the farthest dredge. We waited until a fresh batch was hauled in and tripped. Then we stepped forward to examine the catch.

In the crushed pile at our feet we saw a wonderland. Coral grows like an underwater bush. It is of many colors, ranging from exquisite pastel greens to violent, bleeding reds. There is blue coral, orange, purple, gray, amethyst, and even now and then a bush of stark, black coral. Like human beings, it grows white as it approaches death.

The officer broke off a branch of living coral and handed it to me. It was purple, and was composed of a stony base, already calcified. Next that was a pulpy, mineral segment, pale white in color. The extreme tip was almost purely vegetable. It exuded a sticky milk which smelled noxiously. Over all were suction caps like those on the tentacles of an octopus. They were potential tips which had not matured.

It was impossible to believe that this tiny organism and its stony shell had raised the island on which we stood and was at that moment raising thousands of new islands throughout the Pacific, most of which would never break the waves but would remain subterranean palaces of rare wonder. It was equally difficult to believe that the evil smelling whitish milk would shortly go to work for the SeaBees!

The days dragged on. I saw little of Pearlstein, but I heard that he had run into all sorts of trouble. On the seventh day he got more than his share. A Jap bomber came over, one of nine that tried, and laid an egg right on Pearlstein's steam shovel. Killed two men and wounded one. The shovel was wrecked. I was sent up to see what I could do to get him another.

Pearlstein had tears in his eyes. "Goddam it all," he said. "You try and try! Then something like this happens!" He surveyed the ruined shovel. I knew little about machinery, but it seemed to me that the shovel was not too badly wrecked. After the dead bodies were removed, we studied what was left of the machinery.

"Billis?" I asked. "Couldn't you run that without the controls? I mean, couldn't you counterweight it with a tractor? The boom still works."

Billis and his men looked at the complex job I had set them. "It could be done, sir," the dirty fat man said. "But it would take..."

"Let's start right away!" Pearlstein cried when he perceived what might be done. "Look, fellows. All we'll have to do is bulldoze the coral over here. We won't move the shovel again. Let's see what we can do!" I left Pearlstein, bare to the waist, high up the boom of the shovel, loosening some bolts.

At night we could hear shots in the jungle. Some men swore that Japs had infiltrated the lines and stolen food. Others were afraid to sleep. But gradually the lines were pushed back and back. There were now apparently no Japs within the knee. And Marines had landed at each tip, so that two tightly compressing pockets were all that remained for the yellow men.

On the eighth day New Zealanders put on a terrific air show for us. Two squadrons of Jap fighters came over and shot us up fairly badly. Eight men were wounded and three killed. But the New Zealanders, in their crushing style, drove the Japs into the sea. Everybody stopped work, of course, and we counted seven Jap planes crash either in the sea or on Konora. One wild Jap tried to crash on the airstrip but instead crashed into the coral hill, where he completely demolished Pearlstein's improvised shovel and injured four men.

That night we had a hurried meeting. It was decided that the steam shovel at the live coral pits should be moved to the hillside. For if the gully was not filled, it mattered little whether live coral were available or not. Therefore, at 2100 a strange procession set out across Konora. Billis rode in front on his favorite bulldozer. Any tree that might hinder passage of the steam shovel was knocked over. It was astonishing to me how easily a huge tree could be uprooted and shoved aside. Billis later told me it was because the roots had nowhere to go. They could not penetrate the coral.

Slowly, with horrible noises, we inched our way along the jungle trails. At one place water had collected and the bulldozer bogged down. We waited an hour till another came to haul it free. Then together, like monsters, they shoved tree after tree into that depression. Slowly, the giant shovel edged its way onto the bridge, into the middle and across. By that time Billis was on ahead, knocking down a banyan.

At the foot of the hill six tractors threw down cables and inched the shovel up the incline. At dawn it was in place. At dawn a smart young ensign at the live coral pits had completed a platform arrangement whereby dredge loads could be emptied directly into trucks. At dawn work went on.

All this time Commander Hoag was a great, restless reservoir of energy. He worked with all hands, helped to build the platform at the live coral pits. He was constantly with the wounded and had to bite his lip when he watched a fine young friend lose a leg. But mostly he was on the airstrip. It progressed so slowly. God, it crawled along!

Starting from either end two companies with tractors had knocked down all the trees and pushed them into the southern extremities of the ravine. Hoag would not permit trees to be used as filler for the airstrip itself. That must be coral. Next the foot or so of topsoil was bulldozed away to block the highest section of the ravine. In this way the normal flow of rain water was diverted into the ocean without crossing the strip. That left a long, fine stretch of native coral rock, broken in the middle by the ravine.

Again starting from either end, bulldozers slowly pushed the top layer of coral toward the ravine. By that time Pearlstein's trucks were beginning to roll. Coral from the hillside rumbled to the airstrip twenty-four hours a day. At the same time, live coral from the sea was hauled to the two ends. Six steam rollers worked back and forth constantly. At the north side of the strip, a company of carpenters built a control tower. Electricians had already completed two identical power plants and were installing flood lights. From then on day and night were the same on Konora.

As yet no one but Hoag was sure the airstrip would be completed on time. With his permission I sent Admiral Kester a message telling him to schedule bombers for the field at the appointed time. On the sixteenth day the bombers would be there! We wondered if there would be a field for them to land on?

At this point a wonderful thing happened. Luther Billis disappeared for two days! We thought he was dead, lying somewhere in the bush, but on the evening of the second day he appeared in camp with two Japanese Samurai swords. He gave one to Commander Hoag just before he was thrown into the brig. After dinner the Marine commandant came over and asked if Commander Hoag wouldn't please drop charges against Billis. It seems some Marines had been saying how tough they were, and Billis listened for a while and then bet them that he could go down the west leg and get himself a sword, which they wouldn't be able to do down the east leg. It seems that Billis had won, and it wasn't quite right, the Marines thought, that he should be punished. Besides, he told them where the Jap camp was.

Commander Hoag thought for a while and released the "big dealer." Billis told us all about it. Seems his old lady ran a newsstand in Pittsburgh. He sent her a Jap ear from Guadal and she hung it up in the store. People came from all over to see it. He'd promised her a Jap sword, too, so he thought he'd better be getting one. He was going to send it to Pittsburgh. What Commander Hoag did with his was the old man's worry.

That night we had torrential rains. Floodlights on the field silhouetted men working in water up to their ankles. The gully, thank heavens, held. The dirt and trees had really diverted the rains. In the morning there was hardly any sign of water. Men who had slept through the deluge refused to believe there had been one.