Authors: Martin Caidin
Samuel Arthur Beddingford, the mayor and home defense leader of Bowen, ensconced in his crude basement shelter with a crowd of curious onlookers, fiddled with the dials of a military radio set that had been provided to the community for emergency communications. He looked up at the others with triumph as a Japanese voice came through clearly, barking out commands to the pilots even then hammering the dock area.
Mayor Beddingford, to his surprise, discovered the telephone lines were still working, and he rang through at once to Melbourne, punctuating his report with curses that "even as I'm talking with you, mate, I can 'ear the bloody Nips giving out orders to blow us all to hell and kingdom come!"
An emergency signal was flashed to the nearest military airfields, including Garbutt.
There the frantic call from Melbourne was received with incredulous looks. Nonetheless, Major Tim Benson, airdrome defense officer, scrambled every available fighter ready for takeoff. Two P-39s and one P-40 got into the air approximately fourteen minutes later and headed south, quite convinced nothing would be found.
In the interim the people of Bowen remained under cover. They looked at one another with shared satisfaction that the town itself was being spared. Let the slanty-eyed bastards have their way up at the docks and the rail spur. Just keep your fingers crossed, mate, that they stay the hell away from us…
Whip Russel looked down from his B-25 as he brought the formation about in a tight turn for another attack run. In the number three position Captain Elmer Rankin gabbled away in fluent Japanese, although no one save the captain knew what he might be saying. By agreement the other pilots maintained strict radio silence.
Alex Bartimo looked across his cockpit at Whip Russel and shook his head. "If anyone, if
anyone
, had ever told me I'd be bombing an Australian town…" His words trailed off in disbelief as the bombers swept earthward again, laying a string of 100-pounders neatly in open ground, but dangerously close to the loading docks where they could see the crates piled along the shore. They banked sharply along the beaches and machine guns poured their fire into the surf, sending up geysers of spray and foam.
"You're not bombing a damned thing except desert," Whip grunted at him. "We haven't even mussed anyone's hair." He studied the hills to the north. "Any sign of the trucks?"
Alex nodded. "There. That dust cloud. That's them."
Whip fingered the intercom button and called Staff Sergeant Joe Leski, his radioman-gunner. "Joe, we're going to swing around in front of the trucks. Give them a couple of green flares."
"Yes, sir. Two greens coming up."
They swept low over the road, just before three trucks speeding south toward the dock area. Two green flares arced away from the bombers and they saw men waving. Whip took them back for another "bombing run" and again the air was filled with the chatter of machine guns and the slapping concussion of exploding bombs.
The timing was everything. The three trucks cleared the last rise overlooking the town and the dock area, and with the "attack" at its peak, the trucks pulled up in heavy smoke alongside the crates. Men heaved and cursed and sweated as they grabbed boxes of machine guns and parts. Several men pointed to a stack of large crates and they were manhandled into the trucks. Not a moment was wasted. The racketing thunder was keeping the locals under cover and the trucks pulled away from the dock area, speeding north, and within seconds over the hill and beyond sight of anyone who might venture forth from ground shelter.
By the time the attack dissipated and the first people clambered into the streets within the rapidly thinning smoke, there was nothing to be seen but a final glimpse of the yellow-ugly Japanese raiders heading out to sea.
The townspeople moved cautiously, still coughing and wiping away tears from the biting smoke. But the skies remained quiet, and people turned their attention to the expected damage.
Not even the docks had been hit. The shock of the bombing attack turned to elation when the townspeople discovered how badly the enemy had done. "Damned buggers can't even shoot straight," crowed the mayor.
No one had counted the crates when they'd been brought ashore from the crippled freighter. In the delight of survival without damage after the raid, no one bothered counting now. It was obvious. Craters were everywhere except where the Japanese had aimed. Nothing was damaged, nothing was missing.
10
Well, fat man, what now?
Lou Goodman leaned back in his office chair, rolling the frayed cigar stub from one side of his mouth to the other, trying to concentrate upon immediate and pressing problems.
It was a hopeless task, for at unexpected intervals the mirth in his mind would bubble forth and he would chuckle and shake all through his bulk.
Those crazy bastards had pulled it off. They'd actually done it. It was a lunatic caper from the word go; impossible, stupid, without a chance of succeeding, and yet so incredibly outrageous in its concept and so perfect a manipulation of human fear and foibles that it had worked. Goodman still didn't believe it, but in his combination of shock and mirthful pride, he made certain the crates in which the machine guns were stored had "disappeared." No sooner had the trucks rolled back to Garbutt Field than they were driven to a remote part of the airbase, where men were waiting to tear open the crates and remove their contents. It was just as important that the crates themselves disappear, with their incriminating numbers and identification marks. The numbers were burned off with hot irons and chisels and the slats put to immediate use in improving the integrity and appearance of the officer's club. Within hours of the trucks rolling onto Garbutt Field there simply
weren't
any crates.
The machine guns were another matter. Here Lou Goodman put to good use his expertise in handling other machinery in his past — the filing down of serial numbers, the changing of identification marks and the stamping of new I.D.s onto the weapons.
Bills of lading were manufactured by his administrative staff, who somehow never quite managed to wipe away the grins that kept returning to their faces. The caper that crazy bastard Russel and his men carried off had done more to boost the morale and spirit of the entire field than anything else in the damned war.
Goodman turned to Whip. "You figure your schedule yet?"
Whip sprawled in what had become "his" chair in the colonel's office. "Uh huh." He hesitated. "The crews, Lou, well, they sort of wanted me to, you know — "
"If I have a choice between thanks and a medal I'll take two Iron Crosses with three clusters each for risking my career."
Whip grinned. "Okay."
"Now, that schedule."
"How long you think the modifications will take?"
Goodman ran it through his head. "Working day and night without a break, using your crews and my people, anywhere from ten to eighteen days."
"
That
long?"
Goodman wanted to curse. "Jesus, Whip, use your head."
"We hadn't counted on being out for the rest of the war."
"The chaplain's on leave, son. Go tell it to Jesus."
"Okay, okay." Whip held up his hands. "If those are your numbers I know they're the best."
"Believe it. They are."
"Well, I guess a couple of us will go upcountry then."
"You can't get much more upcountry in Australia than where you are now."
"Not here. Papua. New Guinea."
"What the hell for? You that eager to get shot at again? I thought you'd wait for your iron birds to be ready."
"We've got things to do. We're leaving most of the people here, but Muhlfield is going with us. He's the key to the whole operation we've got in mind." Whip's eyes had narrowed and Goodman knew he was easing into, well, whatever it was that pulled him back to the combat zone.
"Care to fill me in?"
First Lieutenant Paul Muhlfield — Mule — nodded. "Ain't no way we can keep from telling this man what we're doing, Captain."
"Yeah." Whip turned back to Goodman. "I didn't say anything about what we've got cooking because I figured we put you into enough hot water as it is. Mule used to spend a lot of time in the hill country of New Guinea. Before the war, I mean. He did some flying there for the Dutch. Some old Junkers and Lockheeds up to the gold mines in the back country. He knows the place better than most of us know our own neighborhoods."
Goodman turned to look at the silver bar on Muhlfield's collar. "How much time you got?" he asked.
Muhlfield showed a thin smile. "Fourteen thousand hours, Colonel."
"You're how old?"
"Forty-three."
"What the hell are you doing being a first looie? Major or light colonel would be more like it." Goodman was surprised and he didn't bother hiding it.
The weathered face looked back at him from amazingly clear blue eyes. "They know how old I am," he said softly. "It's training command or flying some old clunker of a transport. So I lied and told them I was twenty-three and I wanted bombers."
"Mule, there ain't nobody ever believed you were twenty-three years old."
"Course not, sir. But the man sitting across the desk from me was an old pilot. Like myself.
He
lied."
"The whole goddamned war is being run by thieves and liars," Goodman murmured. He sat up straighter. "All right. Tell me what harebrained scheme you maniacs are working on."
Whip picked it up. "We're flying back to Seven-Mile Drome at Moresby because we want to see how Field X is coming along."
"Field who?"
"We call it Field X because no one's bothered naming it yet. Its up Kokoda way, but not near anything. Completely isolated. Look, Lou, we've been working on a special assignment. That's why its so important to get our airplanes modified into gunships, the way we've worked it out. The Japs are giving us their own special brand of hell because of all the fighter fields they've got along the northern coast of New Guinea. Salamaua, Lae, Buna, the whole lot of them. That's only part of the problem. The real nut is that they know every field we've got. They're able to keep track of just about everything we do."
Whip took a deep breath, let it out slowly. "You know the numbers, Lou. They've been knocking the crap out of our fields, they outnumber us, and well, I don't think you believe our press releases. General Smyth down at FEAF is going to let us take a crack at a project I've been selling him for some time. That's to get an outfit up in the middle of the combat zone, but without the Japanese knowing anything about what's happening.
That way we can keep them guessing, hit them in a way they just don't expect. If we can get them off balance, and they don't know where we live, we can do them some damage."
"You're going to be living right in their back yard, Whip."
"I know, I know," Whip said, impatient with the explanation he had to offer. "Look, right now we've got the B-17s hitting Rabaul up on the far end of New Britain. Every once in a while we send some B-25s or B-26s along, but when you get right down to it all we're doing is squeezing pimples on the Japanese ass. We're not really hurting them because we can't hit them one shot after the other. The reason General Smyth is so willing to take the long shot with our outfit is that Intelligence is reasonably sure the Japs are going to make an all-out effort to push down from their positions along the north coast of New Guinea. A real hammer job and — "
"They'd have to cross the Owen Stanleys. That may be too tough even for the Japanese,"
Goodman observed.
"They haven't been stopped yet," Whip retorted. "Besides, it's not our people who are taking the worst of it in the jungles and mountains in New Guinea. It's the Aussies.
They're having a bitch with it, Lou. A real bitch."
Muhlfleld moved into the conversation. "Until you've seen it, Colonel, there's no way to appreciate the problems of moving along those mountains. The Japanese soldier has an advantage. He lives off what he carries and he forages in the field. He's the closest thing to a native you can find. If they're willing to spend the lives to do the job they can get across. Once they're on the way down the southern flanks of those mountains it may be too late to keep them back. And if that happens, we'll lose Port Moresby and that whole complex of airfields. I don't think I need to spell out what that means."
"No, you don't," Goodman said grimly. "We're next."
"Yes, sir."
"Go on, Mule."
"You see, sir, right now the Japanese can't do the job. Not yet, anyway, and it's a very big 'not yet.' The first thing they've got to do is increase, by a considerable margin, their flow of supplies into New Guinea. Supplies, and men."
"In the meantime," Whip broke in, "
we're
short of everything. Men, supplies, aircraft.
You name it and we've got a shortage for you."
Goodman grimaced. "Tell me about that."
"Well, there's no reason we've got to be short of ideas. That's why we're doing the job with the B-25s, and why we're going to set up an advance base in hill country."
Goodman rose to his feet, pacing slowly. "I've been thinking about that ever since you mentioned Kokoda. You don't really expect to get away with that lunatic idea. You
can't
."
Whip didn't find the conversation amusing. "I don't think you understood us, Lou. We're not just getting away with it. We're doing it. We've already started."
"How the hell can you handle your supply situation, for God's sake! You know what it takes to run an outfit like yours! Ammo, fuel, parts, bombs — the whole package, Whip.
There isn't enough manpower in all of New Guinea to do that kind of job. And I haven't said a word about the field. You'll have to carve out a runway for B-25s. In the mountains? Right under the noses of the Japs?"
"There's a way, Colonel."
Goodman turned to Muhlfield. "You'd better have your own brand of miracle, Lieutenant. I accept you know the country. You'd better accept I know logistics."
"Yes, sir, I understand. But we do have what you call a miracle."