The Pacific (9 page)

On May 2, the enemy spotters located one of the last great batteries still firing on the Rock, Battery Geary. It took three hours, but one of their shells penetrated Geary's magazine. The detonation of that much ordnance rocked Shofner's tunnel back in Middleside. He went to help. Only a few shards of the eight twelve-inch mortars remained. Chunks of concrete and metal littered the west end of the island. All the trees within a hundred yards had been cut to stumps. He and some others eventually rescued five men from an adjacent magazine.

A few nights later Shofner happened to catch the English broadcast of Tokyo radio. It predicted "the war in the Philippines would soon be over." Only a few hours passed before he heard a report of small-arms fire on the beaches of Bottomside. Shifty stayed at the entrance of his tunnel in Middleside, watching. It could be another false alarm. A few weeks earlier a report of an enemy landing had turned out to be two of his platoons shooting at one another. Before midnight, however, he received confirmation of a small landing in the 1st Battalion sector. With it came the order to be ready to move out immediately. After midnight, he could see the flashes of battle down on the beaches. At dawn on May 6, he saw about forty landing boats departing. The enemy landing, he was relieved to see, had been repelled.

He wanted to get his men aboveground and to the barracks for a proper meal, but the artillery barrage had not lifted, so they ate some C rations. Echoes of machine-gun and cannon fire down on the beaches still reached him. Someone was still fighting. At about eleven thirty a.m., the phone rang. His CO ordered him to "execute Pontiac by 12 o'clock." Shofner had just been ordered to surrender.

It came as a shock. They had not fired a shot. They had not been called to help repel the landing. The CO directed him to have his men destroy their weapons. He was to prepare them to move to an assembly point, to offer no resistance, and to avoid reacting to the insults that were sure to come. Captain Shofner called his men together. Any man who had stood with him these past few months was now a member of the Fourth Marines, regardless of his original unit. Shofner was proud of all of them. "Marines," he began before emotion choked his voice. Tears came. Months of anguish had come to naught. He noticed bitter tears on others, even in the eyes of his sergeants. Their captain struggled to find the words. They heard him say, "Boys, we've lost, but we've got to survive, we are not gonna give up within ourselves."

Captain Shofner unsheathed his Mameluke, the traditional sword carried by officers of the United States Marine Corps. No marine unit had ever surrendered in battle. He dashed the gilded blade into pieces. It was over. He ordered them to begin disabling their weapons, starting with the larger calibers and working down to their rifles and sidearms.

The destruction ceased at noon and white sheets were displayed on poles and on the ground. Austin Shofner encouraged his men to go to their former barracks and retrieve their packs, clothing, gear, and personal items. As his men scattered, he did the same. Shifty took great care in selecting and packing his gear. Knowing he would be searched, he found clever ways to hide small items of value, like rolling Philippine pesos into his roll of toilet paper. Always one for tradition, he took out the plaque of the Fourth Marines Club. It bore the emblem of his beloved corps and could not be discarded. He handed it to his runner, Private First Class Arthur Jones, reasoning that a private would not be as thoroughly searched as an officer. "Hang on to that plaque."

"Yes, sir."

A few men started to shave and get cleaned up.
⁴⁶
The opening salvo of artillery caught everyone off guard. The drone of oncoming bombers soon followed. The unexpected attack killed several of his men and wounded more.
⁴⁷
One round knocked Shifty to the ground, again, but he made it back to the tunnel. He listened to the radio station KGEI, in San Francisco, broadcast the news of the surrender, then lay down and slept. The next morning, soon after the shelling stopped, the first Japanese troops arrived.

As soon as the enemy assured themselves of no opposition, they shouldered their rifles.
⁴⁸
Looking quite pleased, the soldiers searched their prisoners for small arms, helped themselves to any items of value, then marched the group off toward the beach. The Fourth Marine Regiment no longer existed.
^d

AFTER WEEKS OF TRAINING IN THE FORESTS AND SWAMPS AROUND NEW RIVER, the crew of #4 gun could set up their mortar in thirty-eight seconds. The payoff came in the first week of May. They fired their first live rounds. Allotted sixteen shells, Sid and Deacon and W.O. and the other members each took a turn dropping a shell into the big mortar tube. The round launched with a dull, brassy ringing sound, arched high into the air, and exploded a few hundred yards away. Deacon, the squad's gunner, called them "beautiful."

Sid, the assistant gunner, liked the complexity of the 81mm mortar. Aiming and firing the weapon required a lot of skill. He and Deacon had to shoot azimuths and calculate both range and deflection. They consulted range cards to determine the correct amount of propulsion and the proper angle to launch a shell a specific distance. The mortar squad also began applying that knowledge to specific circumstances, or what they called field problems. Aiming at stationary targets gave way to multishell salvos, such as zone firing or sweeping fire.

On the weekends they usually had liberty. If they went with Deacon, they would go into Wilmington, see a USO show, and maybe even meet some girls. There would be no alcohol, however. Deacon would not stand for it. His adherence to all the tenets of his Baptist faith made him an unusual marine. Sid and W.O. did not mind overly. They did not always make liberty with Deacon. One Saturday they told Deacon they were going to Wilmington, but they went to the Civil War battlefield of Bentonville, North Carolina, instead. Sidney and W.O. knew without asking that everyone in their squad would have called them stupid for wasting a liberty like that. With the recent departure of the Fifth Marines, the First Marines would be leaving for their own battlefield, somewhere, quite soon.

WITH NEW QUALIFIED PILOTS ABOARD, THE VETS IN SCOUTING SIX SEEMED only too happy to let them practice their craft by flying the scouting missions. The senior officers had had their fill of missions that were seemingly intended to improve morale rather than achieve "significant military results," and ferrying planes to some island base qualified.
⁴⁹
As another vet put it, "this looks like another assault on the outhouse of Wake [Island]."
⁵⁰
In the first week of May, Mike flew most every day as the task force steamed south. In four hours, he flew out two hundred miles, took a dogleg of about thirty miles, and then flew back toward the ship.

Tasked with spotting Japanese submarines, Mike worried about finding his way back to the carrier. The hours it took to fly a 430-mile dogleg search pattern created more than enough ocean to get lost in. Even as prevailing winds and cloud banks affected his course and speed, his carrier changed directions and speeds as part of its operation. Point Option, where plane and ship planned to meet four hours later, was an estimate. Before he left the ready room, Lieutenant Dickinson, the squadron's executive officer (XO), checked to make sure Micheel had all the data correctly entered into his Ouija (plotting) Board. Dickinson offered no encouragement, although the XO disliked inexperienced pilots who dropped bombs on any shapes they saw in the water and thereby killed schools of fish.
⁵¹
Mike found antisubmarine patrols a lonely business.

For all the important information measured by the aircraft's gauges, two essential pieces of information were not displayed: the speed and direction of the wind. He marked these down on the Ouija (pronounced wee-jee) Board before departing, knowing that it could change drastically during a long flight. Mike had been taught to read the surface of the ocean through his binoculars: the stronger the wind, the larger the waves. Seen from an altitude of fifteen hundred feet, the foam flying off the wave tops indicated the direction. During the course of a two-hundred-nautical-mile flight, the wind could change from ten knots out of the east to twenty knots out of the west. Such changes had drastic effects upon the plane's ground speed, fuel consumption, and direction. If the mood of the Pacific was calm and its color one limitless shade of cobalt, then his course had not been disrupted.

Along with tracking the wind, Mike had a secret weapon to help him find his way home: a navigational aid known as the YE/ZB. Toward the end of his flight on May 7, as he approached Point Option, Mike took his plane up to about five thousand feet. Disconnecting his long-distance communication radio, he plugged in the YE/ZB, which received a simple coded signal broadcast from his carrier. It provided, within a limited range, enough directional information to locate the ship. Taking his plane up to altitude was the moment of truth. If the YE/ZB wasn't working, or if he had failed to write down the day's code for its signal, or if his calculations had been off and he was out of range--he and his gunner would disappear. Two search planes had disappeared six days earlier, one flown by an experienced pilot. The doubts tugged at him until he verified his course. It came in loud and clear. He plugged his long- range radio back in and closed on the Big E.

After making carrier landing number eight, Mike went to the squadron ready room and heard the news. USS
Lexington
and USS
Yorktown
, America's other two operational carriers, had found Japanese carriers in the Coral Sea, just north of Australia. The planes of
Lexington
had sunk an enemy carrier. The commander of the Lex's scouting squadron had radioed the immortal line "Scratch one flattop!" The sinking of
Ryukaku
was news sure to put a grin on every face.
^e
In the first battle against enemy aircraft carriers, the Dauntlesses had proven they could do the job. The radiomen in the Big E's communications center were besieged for news about the course of battle. Those who heard passed the news throughout the ship. It was all anyone could talk about.
⁵²
The enemy task force included two of the carriers that had bombed Pearl Harbor,
Shokaku
and
Zuikaku
. Bad news followed, though, as the enemies' planes hit some of the U.S. ships in the Coral Sea before darkness fell.

Looking over their maps, the pilots of Scouting Six could see that their intended destination, Efate, would position them just two days from the battle in the Coral Sea. So they went to bed that night pondering the possibilities. Mike did not fly the next day, so he could hear the latest reports. The news was bad. By midday, Japanese pilots put two torpedoes into
Lexington
and dropped a bomb on
Yorktown.
By day's end, U.S. pilots scored some hits on
Shokaku
. The Lex, however, went down late that night. The experienced pilots in Micheel's squadron knew many of those serving on both the Lady Lex and
Yorktown.
Naval aviation had been a small fraternity until recently. News reports the next day confused the situation.
⁵³
The Navy Department claimed it sank nine ships and damaged three. An Australian broadcast increased the total to eighteen, while the Empire of Japan alleged its planes had sunk one battleship, the
California
, two U.S. carriers (Lex and
Yorktown
), and one British carrier,
Warspite
.
^f
The navy officers listening to the enemy claims in the wardroom of the Big E could laugh them off--the battleship
California
was still in Pearl Harbor. Scouting Six's XO, Dickinson, asserted that the Lady Lex "had more than paid for herself in dead-jap currency."
⁵⁴
Still, they had to wonder what this loss meant for them. No one knew the extent of
Yorktown
's damage. The United States might only have two operational aircraft carriers, while the Imperial Japanese Fleet had at least eight flattops of various sizes, if not more.
⁵⁵

More experienced pilots than Ensign Micheel flew the Big E's scouting missions for the next few days. One of the scouts launched from
Hornet
, though, not only got lost, he failed to switch off his long- range radio when he spoke to his rear seat gunner on the intercom about the YE/ZB. Ships all over the fleet heard him say, "Get that receiver working. What's this little switch for? Boy, this is serious. Can't you hear anything? I can't hear anything either. What the hell do you suppose is wrong with that thing? It worked all right yesterday. What the hell good is a radio beam when you can't pick it up?"
⁵⁶
No one spotted the enemy and therefore the flattops continued with their mission to deliver reinforcements. The island of Efate proved unprepared for the marine squadron, so it flew off to Noumea, the port city of New Caledonia, instead. With its mission completed the task force turned toward Hawaii. The ensigns went back to conducting antisubmarine warfare (ASW).

In addition to the routine ASW missions, the skipper assigned Mike the duty of assistant mechanical officer. As such, he started working with the plane captains and their maintenance men in the giant effort it took to keep the squadron's eighteen Dauntlesses flying. A lot could go wrong with the plane's R-1820 Cyclone radial engines. Mike had learned about radial engines and the other parts of a plane during his training, and again when he was punished on North Island, but he was no mechanic. As an officer, he supervised the work and made sure the paperwork got processed.

The men he supervised were a part of his squadron, or what was then called the "brown shoe navy." All of Scouting Six, from Skipper Gallaher to the lowliest aviation mechanic's mate third class, had boarded the carrier as one unit. As airmen, their uniform was a khaki shirt, khaki tie, khaki pants, and brown leather shoes. Their duty stations, in the air or in their squadron room, tended to separate them from the men of the ship's company. Mike's new job, however, brought him into contact with the officers, petty officers, and seamen who served on the Big E regardless of the squadrons she embarked. These men, members of the "black shoe navy," tended to refer to airmen as Airedales.